The Disappearance Boy (24 page)

Two breakfasts ago, he’d heard a workman on the table next to him deliver a warning to his mates to steer clear of the saloon bar at the Dog –
Not unless you’re bloody desperate, mate
had been the crowing punchline of the story. The other men at the table had laughed, throwing back their heads and showing their teeth. Reggie had kept himself busy with his tea and slice, head down. One of the man’s overalled friends had chipped in with a story of his own, one about an offer he’d been made –
a spot of bother
, he called it – on the stones under the Palace Pier. He’d only gone down onto the stones for a quick piss, he said, and the men all laughed again. That laughter and the men’s careless, white-teethed faces were the pieces of information that Reggie’s restless body now retrieved. Looking up at the flags turning pale around the lamps on North Road, he picked at the memory like a twist of sugar he’d been saving for later – like a short cut; an alleyway on a map, one that the day-trippers never noticed.

It wasn’t what he wanted, but it would bloody do. The air was starting to thicken with sea mist, and he hunched himself up against the cold. He pictured the flight of concrete steps down on the seafront where he’d picked up that pebble last week – they had a handrail, so far as he remembered, and that would probably be the best way of getting down onto the shingle at this time of night.

That thickening of the air had been a warning.

Everything on the seafront was gone – lost, in a thick wall of sea fret. He’d only been able to find the steps by following the promenade railings and waiting for a gap to appear, and now that he’d found it all he could see when he looked down was blackness. The lamps up above him on the front had been reduced to suspended globes, glowing, but shedding no light.
Ah well
, he told himself,
all the better to hide you with
. Throwing away his fag, he did something he hadn’t done in years: holding tight to the metal rail to make sure he didn’t slip, he headed down the stairs backwards, counting them under his breath like a child. When his boot hit the first stones they chuckled and shifted, slick with damp. So long as he took care where the beach suddenly tipped into that steep bank at the high-water mark, he told himself, he’d be fine.

At some exceptionally low spring tides the flints of Brighton beach give way to sand, and that night there was a hard level of it stretching a hundred yards before it met the water, right to the far end of the Palace Pier. Sliding down the stones, Reggie didn’t see the sand coming, and because his feet were expecting more shingle, and because he was in a hurry, he fell. He righted himself, scraped his hands clean on his trousers, and realised what he was walking on. The lights behind him on the prom had disappeared entirely into the fret now, but floating above him and to his right his destination was still visible as a raft of hazy colour, pink, green and yellow. One whole long connecting section of lights suddenly went out as he looked, casting the raft adrift into the surrounding darkness.
Good
, he muttered.
Closing Time
.

He hurried on across the bare sand. The fret was absorbing the sound as well as the light now – the sea was nowhere, and the last late traffic and shouting of the town had been entirely swallowed. All that was left was his own stabbing feet, and breath. The remaining lights of the pier loomed up above him, and he began to smell seaweed – harsh, iodine, rank. Then, suddenly, with no warning, a stinking pillar of metal walked up out of the darkness and blocked his path. He stopped, and went forward carefully.

The pillars and cross-struts of the thick-trunked forest that supported the pier were all around him. He reached forward to guide himself, and his hand was met by a cutting cluster of mussel shells; he shivered, feeling the cold of the water that would be pressing round this drowned world in just a few hours’ time. He stopped to look up; somewhere above his head there must be a cathedral ceiling of boards, but his eyes couldn’t find it. This was it, then. This was where the man in the cafe had meant. He steadied himself, quietened his breathing, and let his eyes adjust to the darkness.

First there was a cough, some distance away. Then, after about a minute, something in the darkness in front of him shifted and made itself distinct. What he had taken for another pillar resolved itself into the fog-softened outline of a body, and when its owner turned, the scene acquired its first faint punctuation mark of light. The pulsing tip of a cigarette came, and went. The man seemed to be wearing an overcoat. As Reggie watched, the red ember glowed, died, shifted, glowed brighter – then arced and hissed itself out as the man tossed the butt end away. Reggie stayed quite still, and listened, scanning the dark. He knew there’d be others.

As if in reply to the cigarette, the flare of a lighter defined a charcoal figure away to his right. This man still had his hat on. Reggie would have moved to investigate, but before he could do it the silence right behind him was interrupted. He stilled himself. There it was again; a sharp, repeated, interrogative scratch. Someone was trying to strike a light. Reggie turned slowly, not giving himself away. Another short, enquiring cough came through the dark away to his right, and Reggie held his breath, waiting to see if his newer and closer companion would stay and reveal himself. The match rasped again, and took; the blue flash of phosphorous was followed by the pink of a cupping hand. The man was so close that Reg could see each finger. No rings. Reg stiffened, and shifted. The owner of the match lifted it to his face to catch the tip of his fag, and the flame sketched his features in a quick, softly stroked-in grisaille. Reggie flinched, not sure if the light was catching his own face; the match guttered, and was flicked away, but it was enough. The smudged proof of wet hair, searching eyes and a damp macintosh collar had already been inked and pulled. Reggie felt a warm, decisive kick in the pit of his stomach.

It was his twisted left foot that moved first. It did it without permission, and just as well – places like this aren’t meant for conversation, and it is your body that has to speak your mind. As clumsily as he had lurched across the stones of the beach, Reggie took three sudden steps through the dark, waited for the cigarette to come out from between the young man’s lips, and then kissed him before he had time to refuse the offer.

Reggie was a good kisser – a fierce one, when roused – and soon got the man’s mouth open. Emboldened by the lack of refusal, he reached up and round and filled his free hand with the man’s hair, pulling him closer. Then, as whoever he was got over his surprise and began to kiss Reggie back, the dynamic of their embrace shifted. Now it was Reggie who was having his mouth explored. Full as it was, he whimpered as hands began to graze first his back, and then his chest. He pulled away, momentarily breathless, and his partner wiped his mouth for him with the back of his hand. This may seem too intimate and animal a gesture for so early in the proceedings, but trust me; it happens. For just a moment they simply stood there, their breaths fogging and mixing between them, entirely unconcerned now as to whether they were alone in the dark or not. Then Reggie licked his top lip, and moved in.

I wish I could tell you it was romantic, what happened next, or at least tender, but it wasn’t. Reggie fell on this other man’s face as if he’d heard the bell ring for a second round, or as if he hadn’t eaten for weeks, taking hold of it with both hands the better to take his opponent’s breath away, or to finish his meal before someone snatched the plate away … There was a collar and tie underneath the macintosh, and Reg began trying to find a way in past the buttons to the man’s skin. The sound of something tearing produced the first urgent whisper of the scene, but Reggie was in no mood to stop. His mouth and hands became insistent, his frustrated fingers dug in hard, and somewhere inside their lips enamel caught on enamel. The young man pushed him away with a snort.

‘Christ, you – oh dear –’

At first Reggie had no idea what the taste inside his mouth could be, but when he saw the flash of a white handkerchief coming up to the other man’s face, he realised. One of them had bitten down on something – a tongue or lip-lining – and his mouth was suddenly full of his own or somebody else’s blood.

‘Are you all right?’

The question was whispered. Reggie stepped back, almost falling over, spitting. Looked-for stranger or not, this wasn’t what he wanted. This wasn’t how he wanted it to be at all. Not in the dark, and certainly not with bleeding.

‘Are you all right? Look, borrow this –’

The voice was shocked, but gentle, and accompanied by the reach of the other man’s hand. Reggie knocked it away. Whatever its proper name was, the awful scrambling together of fear and need had now left him as suddenly as it had descended, and now he needed to leave too – to get away, and get back to the lights. The dark was suddenly very, very cold.

‘Sorry. Sorry.’

That was all he managed. Avoiding the outstretched hand, he turned, and ducked. Which way? Pillars with arms loomed on both sides; his eyes were dark-adapted now, but the metal seemed to be everywhere. He ducked, dodged, spat, dodged another cross-piece as it dashed its stinking festoon into his face, spun on the spot – narrowly missing another figure, human this time – and then, in desperation, unable to see a way out, did what he did in the cabinet: closed his eyes, and just lunged. Throwing his arms in front of his face to protect it, he lurched recklessly into what he could only hope was space.

It worked. When his feet realised that they were out on the unimpeded sand of the beach, Reggie broke into a limping run, his jacket flapping, sobs tearing at his side. Something tripped him, but he clawed his way back up to his feet again and stumbled on, swearing; an angry, frightened, foul-mouthed child. The darkness of the fog swallowed him, and soon he was nowhere.

Later that night – towards dawn, in fact, at about half past four – the fret tore and dispersed as quickly as it had thickened, and the Brighton promenade was graced by the year’s first clear sighting of the Pleiades, rising low over the eastern horizon in all their pale beauty.

If you had been standing at the top of Mrs Steed’s stairs at that time, watching the skylight over the stairs turn from black serge to grey silk, you would have heard a curious sound coming from the other side of Reggie’s bedroom door. Even if you had placed your ear right against the door, you would probably have found it hard to tell if what was being whispered on his bed was a curse or an endearment. It was in fact the sound of Reggie repeatedly drawing the blade of his mother-of-pearl-handled penknife down and across the surface of a black flint pebble, the one he’d carried back from those steps the week before and had placed on his washstand as some kind of souvenir. He was turning the blade with each stroke, honing it sharper with each grating whisper, completely intent on his task. The sound carried on until it was nearly light.

Flint makes a good whetstone.

Blood isn’t always a bad taste.

6

Reggie didn’t say good morning or ask if she was cold, didn’t even wait till he’d properly reached the stone, but started shouting straight away. He didn’t see why she should have a fucking lie-in when he hadn’t slept all night. He asked her in no uncertain terms what she thought she was playing at with that laughing bastard of a workman and his directions to the pier; told her exactly how foul his mouth still tasted, how broken and caked his fingernails were from where he’d fallen. He said that if she wanted to see him tearing the clothes off some stranger in the dark then she should be bloody ashamed of herself. He told her that if that was all there was, then she could fucking stick it for a game of soldiers. He told her to stop telling him that everything would be all right on the night, to just stop it, stop telling him everything would be fine once rehearsals were over, shouting at her that that was just a fucking lie, and that he was never coming here again, not ever.

He waited, and shouted the word again. The cemetery wind did its duty of hurrying it away as quietly as it decently could, and Reggie wiped his handkerchief across his face. A witness, had there been one, would have assumed that he’d been crying out there in that clear May sunshine, but in fact it was sweat and spittle and blood that streaked the cloth. Around him, the gravestones were as mute as they were pale, a patient, voiceless congregation.

He balled up his handkerchief and threw it away. You could tell from the way he was lurching towards the gate that he’d meant what he’d said. His mother didn’t call him back, or use his name – and the gate swung closed behind him, sealing off her silence with its metallic, heron-harsh creak.

7

Reggie got through the rest of that dreadful Sunday without really knowing how he was doing it. He had a vague memory of standing outside the Essoldo looking up at the titles in their black-and-white letters, and wondering what they actually meant.
I’ll Cry Tomorrow
, one said.

Later he’d sat on the bed looking at the roses, and at the stone and the knife on the top of his washstand. He closed the blade on the knife, and thought about tossing the stone out of the window or carrying it back to the beach and throwing it to join its friends. But he didn’t; he was exhausted, and knew it – the light-headed, heavy-bodied exhaustion that comes after you’ve thrown up all your feelings.

When the darkness finally came, he hardly slept at all. A gull woke him with a start at about eight, and he splashed his face and tramped to his cafe in bright sunshine. This was habit, pure and simple; it was only when his hand was actually on the door handle that he remembered that this was where that workman and his tableful of laughing mates had been, and that they might be there again, joshing and showing their teeth. Even if they weren’t, likely as not the young Italian chef with the curled black hair would be serving again this morning, and he’d have to decide all over again whether to stare at him or not. Exhaustion hit him – again – making him feel slightly sick. Willing his mind to stay empty, he pushed his way in and ordered a tea with two sugars. He kept his eyes down, seeing no more of the Italian than his hands; when he’d finished, he went up to the counter and dropped a threepenny bit in the saucer set out for tips. Outside, he told himself that tomorrow he’d go somewhere else. Then he re-wrapped his jacket, and set out to tramp along the front. That, however, meant seeing the pier – you couldn’t avoid it, walking into town. The sight of it made him duck his head and wince, but he forced himself to get his chin back up and stare at it, white in the morning sunshine on its stilts.