Always the Sun (25 page)

20

Drunk, he phoned Mel and told her she would not be welcome at the funeral. She screamed and called him a bastard and he called her a bitch and they were like children.

But she respected his wish. Or perhaps she was thinking about Jamie’s dignity. For the dreamy length of the funeral Sam couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t listen to what the man who didn’t know Jamie was saying about him. He kept expecting Mel to walk in. Many times, he glanced over his shoulder to see if she was standing quietly at the back of the room. But she never was.

When it was over, he endured a revolted hug from his mother-in-law. This time, there was no invitation to spend a recuperative few weeks at her house in Bath. Sam stank of death and loss. Diane was in a taxi shortly after Jamie was in the ground, and he never saw her again.

Few had come to mark Jamie’s life. The Ballards were there. There were some cousins, few of whom Jamie had given a second thought to while he was alive.

Unka Frank was there. He’d shaved his face and washed his hair and plaited it neatly down his spine. He wore a neat grey suit and a white shirt and a dark tie and he looked like an old man, he moved on stiff joints. Jamie’s death had sucked the life from him as surely as a tumour. He was desiccated and weak and the naughty crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes were deep wrinkles now.

Unka Frank held Sam’s hand like Sam was a child and he was grateful for that. He felt like a child. He felt lost in the woods. He felt as if somebody had punched his heart.

Later, Unka Frank came back to the empty, echoing house on Balaarat Street and sat with his haggard, narrow head hung while Sam worked his way through a bottle of whisky and buried his head in his hands and wept so hard he thought something inside him had torn.

Frank tucked him up in bed, as he had done once before.

Sam woke in the night, having dreamt of Jamie and Justine. But instead, he saw the moonlit profile of Unka Frank, laid out flat on his back. Sam’s heart shivered in his chest and he thought the morning would never come. But morning came, like morning always did, and he woke and stared at the ceiling and wondered how he was going to continue.

It wasn’t even grief yet.

Unka Frank had to leave that morning. He promised to be back soon. Sam thanked him. Then he turned and walked back into emptiness. When he closed the door, the universe outside popped like a soap bubble. He was alone with his imaginary friends. In the silence, he thought he could hear them upstairs, moving around. He imagined they were hiding from each other in corners and behind wardrobes, exchanging secret smiles. Perhaps they would sneak up behind him and tap him on the shoulder and giggle and disappear. Even that would be enough.

At some point during the unending day, somebody rang the doorbell.

Sam consulted his watch. It was the watch Jamie had bought him. He’d given a great deal of thought about which of his two watches would be the most appropriate to wear to his son’s funeral. The thought rushed through him like a drug.

He saw it was getting late. He wondered where the time had gone, and concluded that it had not. It was simply that the universe outside this haunted house moved at a different rate. Time in here was slowing down. Soon it would come to a halt altogether. Outside, walls would rise and fall, empires would crumble, wars would be fought and lost, there would be plague and pestilence and flood and fire. The stars would align in apocalyptic configuration. And nothing in this house would change. Sam would shuffle from room to room in bare feet, listening out for the giggling of his ghosts.

He went to the door, and opened it. There stood Dave Hooper.

Sam’s first reaction was to laugh, as if somebody was playing a joke.

Dave Hooper seemed greatly diminished. One shoulder drooped and he held his head low. Sam could see a curlicue of purple scar tissue around his eye.

Sam leant on the door for support.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ said Dave Hooper. He slurred his words. His powers of speech had not fully recovered.

‘That’s all right,’ said Sam.

Dave Hooper said, ‘I really need to speak to you.’

‘Not now,’ said Sam.

‘Please,’ said Dave Hooper.

Sam shook his head. They stood there, on the doorstep, two men with their heads hung as if over a grave. Sam heard a noise and when he looked up he saw that Dave Hooper was crying.

Dave Hooper said, ‘It wasn’t my boy.’

Sam had to bite back laughter.

He said, ‘What?’

‘It wasn’t Liam. He left Jamie alone.’

Sam couldn’t speak. He tried, but nothing came out. He stared at Dave Hooper.

He said, ‘You don’t have to do this.’

Dave Hooper tugged down the hem of his jacket.

He said, ‘I’m sorry. About your boy.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sam.

There was nothing to say.

Dave Hooper said, ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ said Sam.

‘Do you need anything?’

It was the cruellest possible question.

He said, ‘Really. I’m fine.’

‘Okay,’ said Dave Hooper. He made as if to leave, hands in the pockets of his windcheater. But he stopped.

‘Did you hear?’ he said. ‘About me and Mel?’

‘Yes,’ said Sam.

Hooper put his weight on one leg.

He said, ‘You’re welcome to come. If you’d like to.’

Sam laughed and nodded and blinked.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘Really,’ said Dave Hooper.

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Sam. Then he said, ‘How is Mel?’

‘She’s good. She misses you. It would be good if you called her.’

‘OK,’ said Sam, and smiled, knowing he never would.

They looked at each other. Two fathers.

He watched Dave Hooper limp down the garden path, and into the car that waited, idling, at the kerb. He didn’t see the driver.

He waited until the car had gone. Then he went back inside the house on Balaarat Street and closed the curtains on the daylight, on the time-rotten world outside. He wondered what he would do with the time he had, with all the time until the end of the world.

About the Author

Neil Cross (b. 1969) is a British novelist and screenwriter best known as the creator of the multiaward-winning international hit BBC crime series
Luther
, starring Idris Elba, and the international hit horror movie
Mama
. His highly acclaimed memoir,
Heartland
, was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2006. Cross has also written several thrillers, including
Captured
,
Holloway Falls
, and
Always the Sun
, which was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Cross continues to write for TV and film in the United Kingdom and the United States. He lives with his wife and two sons in Wellington, New Zealand.