Wreckage (28 page)

Wendy thought: ‘Seriously injured.’ She thought: ‘Critical condition.’ And she thought of other gunshot wounds that she’d treated, of the appalling damage guns will inflict. Of the way bullets blast and blunder through miraculous delicacy, through processes of fine-tuning measured over millennia. And her heart sank when Sister Thomas entered the room and told her she was needed now to help treat such a wound; some young thug complaining that he’d been shot in the eye and that he was going to kill the people who’d done it, only he wasn’t using the word ‘people’. Hysterical, Sister Thomas said he was. Highly agitated. Very probably about to get violent.

Shot. In the eye. But the patient had calmed somewhat when Wendy arrived at the scene; still and supine he was, with a nurse on each of his arms and a leaning doctor closely examining the damaged eye, shining a light into it, squinting. The patient was typically dressed; trainers, shellsuit trousers tucked into white sports socks, fingers chunkily agleam with sovereign
rings
. One of the nurses explained to Wendy how this man had been shot in the eye at extreme point-blank range with an air rifle; it hadn’t been loaded, but it was fired at such close quarters that the blast of compressed air had popped the eye from the socket and damaged the eyeball so severely that it would almost definitely have to be removed. He’d been given a sedative to calm him; he’d arrived at the hospital in a fury. Wendy smelled urine and studied the patient’s face and remarked to herself how one eye might be irrevocably ruined but that the remaining one was working enough for two; surrounded by the blue bruising of some older wound it was darting madly from face to leaning face, flitting across features with the lips below it grinning and nostrils flared with the sedative-high. It took everything in, this one eye; gulped all before and above it with a hunger great and rapacious. And when it swooped on to Wendy’s face it locked instantly on to the hirsute wart on her upper lip and the subconscious zeal with which it searched for and the skill with which it found her weak spot made her flinch, made her unsteady on her feet. Made her feel sick, this simple glimpse into a soul so attenuated and weakened that its gusto for cruelty propelled the motion of one eye even as its twin was dying. Even as it was being removed. That there could exist a need for power so great that it narrows ocular function down to one sole perverse purpose even in sedation, even in pain.

The unknowable darkness in that one eye. Wendy dropped her gaze from it, down towards the scabbed mouth. It was sneering at her.

A stretchered overdose case crashed then through the nearby double doors with calls for assistance and, thankful, Wendy moved away from the eye to help. And on her way home that night upset and exhausted she decided to leave her job. Eating curry and chips alone in her flat above a bookmaker’s she decided that she’d had enough; enough of death, enough of injury, enough of the knowledge of the human heart’s hopelessness and the suspicion of its terminal unperfectability. Enough of slashed faces, like the one brought in yesterday; enough of a world in which as a punishment a man is ironed, about two years ago, brought into Accident and Emergency with his face, his hands dripping yellow with melted skin and fat. So she handed in her notice the following day, and two months from now she will find work in the gift shop of the Catholic cathedral and in a year’s time she will commence a platonic affair with a priest a full decade older than her and this affair will become physical when, unable any longer to resist temptation, this gentle and kind and caring man will leave the priesthood and they will marry and then as Wendy Murray-Donaghy she will bear three children to him. He will for ever carry with him a deep sense of disappointment and sadness at the failure of his calling and he will die first and seven years later at the age of seventy-nine Wendy will pass away at her home on the Wirral overlooking the Dee estuary and beyond that Wales and the huge bridge that will be linking the two by then, she will expire attended by one of her grandsons who had just popped in to see if she needed any shopping and his concerned stare into her face will
be
the last thing she’ll ever see, his eyes, his pair of beautiful, bright blue eyes.

ALASTAIR

NO NO THIS SHOULDN’T BE HOW IT WORKS NO I’M SORRY THIS IS FOR YOU LOOK HERE’S MY HERE’S YOUR NO NO IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN LIKE THIS MY VOICE I NEED TO SPEAK HEAR MY WORDS PLEASE LISTEN NO DON’T

I’M SORRY DON’T

shoot

To wake in pain. Or
not
to wake in pain, that’s the aim, that’s what he craves, to wake safe in his own bed without a vicious booming in his head and with the surety that the stalking pain of the world has found someone else, has locked on to another target, someone somewhere not him. He hasn’t caused enough pain himself recently, that’s what it is; he hasn’t tipped the quotient of suffering in his favour. If he can cause enough people to hurt so that he exhausts the city’s supply of anguish then he’ll be able to come conscious again without this ache, without this breaking. Without a throbbing in his skull so sharp that it clangs and jangles in his back teeth.

He hears voices, in this unique darkness of his; Squires’ voice, followed by Tommy’s:

—An Snake Tong Tony’s in on this caper, is he?

—Aye, yeh. Euro Objective One, lar, them cunts’re fuckin brewstered. Tony Tong’s settin up this import business, some fuckin spices from China or somethin. Piecer piss, Goz. Sully’s round there now, likes, patchin things up with Tony, learnin the ropes, altho it’s gunner take him fuckin years, soft get tharry is.

—An so yer apply for these funds …

—Yer apply for these funds to, to
diversify
into legit businesses. Simple as. Investment in domestic and
commercial
properties an opening trade negotiations with other countries, that’s what theer lookin for, lar. Tellin yeh; easy fuckin graft, this. Stega’s been at it for ages.

—Who, Stephenson? One snidey get that Stega, lar. Stay well away.

—Aye, Goz, but Joey’s been at it n all. Tony Tong, same thing. Not seen Tony’s new bar? Used to be the Shangri-La club?
You’ve
been there, Len, aven’t yeh?

Darren can’t move. His arms, his legs, they are concrete. And the voices are like chainsaws in his head, he blacks out to block them out but when he reawakes they’re still there, still rattling and snarling in the razor dark:

—Tellin yiz, lads, that fuckin brudder of mine, his fuckin conscience’ll kill him. He’s all for goin completely fuckin legit, believe that shite?

A snort. —More or less already
is
straight, lar.

—That’s what I’ve told him. Joey, a said, a said buyin debts for half theer price then sendin a coupla mushers round to collect em in full, that’s exactly what big fuckin businesses do. Only difference,
they
buy em off banks n stuff and
we
buy em off dealers an twats like tha. That’s thee
only
fuckin difference.

—Aye, an
them
cunts’re friggin legal. Bailiffs an stuff. That’s another diff.

—Aye yeh. But –

Roar. Blackness. Black
out
again. And reawake still to Tommy’s voice:

—An another fuckin thing, what’s this fuckin Leo Sayer revival all about? Never could stand that fucker, me.

—Not aware that there
is
one, Tom.

—Aye, Len, there is. Seen the twat on the telly, aven’t we, Goz? Member when he used to dress up as a fuckin clown? In the seventies? Clown is
right
, lar.
Shoot
that knob’ed, tellin yeh. Fuckin shoot him. Ever heard that joke about the bus in Belfast, and –

A groan escapes. Too eager to express some mountainous pain it flees his broken mouth before it can be gulped back.

—Aye-aye. Gobshite’s awake.

Something cracks his face, snaps his head to the side. Old scabs inside his mouth reopen and he tastes the copper of blood.

—Wakey-fuckin-wakey, dick’ed.

—Slap im again, Tom.

—Wakey-wakey. You’ve got a fuckin story to tell us, Darren.

His eyes open to stare into a black hole brightly circled that is the entire cityscape. He can see down into that hole, can see the spiralling set into the metal that will cause the bullet to spin as it exits thereby maximising impact damage. He can smell cordite. Then he can smell urine, his own. He doesn’t want to die.

Too excited for breakfast Alastair pays for the room and leaves the pub, squinting into the sunlight that bounces off the windows and flanks of the buses arranged in grumbling queues. He crosses the tarmac apron of the bus station and consults the timetables on the wall and notes the number of the bus he requires. He has seven minutes to wait. Despite the arrayed vehicles there is no one but him waiting here
at
the stand and small hidden birds are singing from litter-strewn tree and bush and the grey skies and drizzle of the last few days have gone and there is a strong sun in the pale blueness above and no cloud at all. Soon his conveyance will come, soon.

—WANNA FUCKIN BULLET IN THE BRAIN CUNT WANNA FUCKIN –

—JESUS TOMMY I NEVER

—I’M GONNA FUCKIN DO IT LAD YERRAH FUCKIN DEAD MAN NO CUNT LAUGHS AT ME TIME TO DIE YEH FUCKIN – … Ey, Lenny; where the fuck djer think
you’re
goin, lar?

—Need a slash, T. Him pissin isself; smade me wanner go as well, see.

—Alright well. Be quick. TIME TO FUCKIN DIE DARREN YERRA FUCKIN CORPSE LAD THIS IS WHAT YEH GET YEH FUCKIN

The bus arrives. Alastair gets on, pays his fare, takes his rucksack to the back seat and sits down. Gazes out the window at the bright and waking town as he leaves it. He sees a milkman and a stray ginger cat; he sees many papers.

—NO TOMMY PLEASE I NO TOMMY I

—HERE IT FUCKIN COMES LAD TIME TO FUCKIN DIE DARREN YEH FUCKIN

—Do it, Tom, do it! Pull that fuckin trigger, lar!
Waste
that no-mark get!
Laughing
at yeh, Tommy! Pure fuckin
laughin
at yeh, lad!

—DON’T LISTEN TO IM TOMMY THAT
GOZZY
CUNT I NEVER I NEVER NO PLEASE DON’T FUCKIN

Wrexham spreads and scatters into low brown council estates and these soon too dissolve, absorbed by the surrounding green. As if that word ‘green’ could sufficiently encapsulate the thousand tones and shades of that colour lying and rising roundabout. How much greener green was when as children we’d yet to learn the word ‘green’. How immeasurably more wonderful grass was as we crawled like quadrupeds through it whether in meadow or on hillside or even in the scrappy squares of dogshat and littered vegetation that separated then and still do the big beige blocks of corporation housing. Green the grass and green the leaves. Green the lichen, green the weeds.

Alastair holds the sackful of money tight to his beating chest and gazes out the window at the land beginning to swell, into the hills he moves through and towards the blue glassy mountains now visible in the near distance. He recalls this landscape as a recent acquaintance, familiar as he is with it from the unsuccessful trip to find and hurt for his sins the one-armed absconder. Three days ago, was that? Four? Seems like an entire childhood since between then and now was that THUNK and the falling old lady. The awful way she crumpled and in a coma in Wrexham General may not survive heavy blows to the head with blunt instrument probably badly brain-damaged doctors say if she should pull through. Trauma trauma and

THUNK. Darren, that psycho evil bastard. Yeh but
the
fucker’ll be tampin now, won’t he, runnin round the city tryna find this fuckin money … tryna escape Tommy … that bastard that evil fuckin …

THUNK with the hammer disgusting crime on a defenceless old lady. Catch the thugs who did this says the policeman on telly and bring them to justice, shocking wicked cowardly. This

Aye but she might be out of hospital. She might now be at home, back at her shop or her husband may be there but what if it’s empty? What then? Post it all back through the letter box note by blood-soaked bastard note all of it every last red penny. Because there must be more than this. Just get rid of the fuckin stuff just return it, give it all back because because there must be more please God let there be more cos otherwise this is this is all unfuckin –

The bus slows to a crawl to squeeze past another bus along a narrow lane, high hemming hedges on each side. Just two, three inches between the two vehicles, that’s all. Length of a thumb. Alastair regards the other bus, close as it is, notes its destination (RHYL) and that the driver of it is a woman and that she carries no passengers and that someone has fingertipped the words ‘CLEAN ME’ into the dried muck on the rear window. And that that muck is made up of a million brown pointillistic particles each one seen in close focus cracked and scaled like the surface of a salt lake. Each one and there are millions.

A torrent to him, the world is now. Each of the leaves that brush against the glass by his face, he sees their spines, their veins, the tiny frilled holes where grubs have fed. And the twigs from which they depend,
knuckled
like fingers, gnarled like the twisted fingers of arthritis like

Kate. Or those hands that handed to him his fudge and dropped his change. Curled atop starched white sheets in a hospital like –

The bus speeds up. Through a village still sleeping apart from a postman in a yellow rainproof although the drizzle of the last few days has now gone and the air hums blue, yet still cold. Alastair wonders what made that drizzle, how it was formed. Why it fell on him as he lay beaten to blackout in the gutter outside Ma Egerton’s pub. And why nobody stopped to help him unless of course down that quiet back street nobody passed in the mere minute or two that he spent unconscious.

Rhyl. It was going to Rhyl, that other bus. He recollects visiting the funfair there as a child. Several times, he went, often with Kate. And he wonders, here on this bus among the swelling hills, whether Darren, whether Tommy, whether Joey did the same, and whether like him they stood spun like candyfloss and awed by the mad machines that whirled people through space and scattered the screams of their lovely terror out over the throbbing lights and through the spokes of the Ferrises like the gearings of giant clocks. Wonders whether they stood dazed like he did in that gorgeous gaudy kingdom, the sweet smells and oniony smells and barks and blarings and saw something in those strobes of a vista open only to a child’s grace, pre-caries pre-sex pre-knowledge of a certain sort but known certainly to the lost and the lonely that tend for some reason to orbit those loud crowds as they do
bus
stations yet do not commingle since to do so would insist that what they search for is not only unattainable to them but is even in any form demarkable wholly unknown, and that that unknowing is part of the knowledge unwanted, never yearned for. And part of Alastair long interred but still writhing asks whether something of that wonder is ever able still to survive. Or whether it ever dies entirely. And thinks probably that at a certain age in such places among exhaust and bodies moving aimlessly that it does.