Burial (6 page)

Passing his car coat to the doorman, he caught a whiff of Elise's perfume; something young and clean, the smell of sleepy sunny afternoons, the smell of laughing on English seafronts.

Bob followed him to the ballroom, where Nathan expected the guests to form a slow, chanting ring around him. But no mob formed.

They were too busy dancing to 'Waterloo'.

He got himself a drink. He had to order it three times; his voice had gone. He drained the glass and asked for another. No tonic this time.

He followed the bleach stink to the swimming pool. Several girls were in there, all of them wearing swimming costumes and bikinis, having come prepared to be spontaneous. There were several men in there, too -- in Speedo trunks and board shorts, their underwater bellies pale and rippling, their tuber-pale legs diminishing to points.

There was some modest screaming and splashing.

Wearied by the din of the main room, many guests had retreated to gather round the edges of the pool; they stood in discreet, sedate clumps. In one of those clumps stood Sara. Her group was comprised of several women and a few men. Among the men were Mark Derbyshire and Howard.

Sara was as flawless as the retreating cliffs of Dover, her purity a trick of distance and light. Nathan joined the group, which grew quiet in a way that implied he'd been the topic of conversation.

Pretending not to look at him, everyone looked at him.

Sara said, 'And where have you been?'

He had no name for it.

'I'm sorry. I had too much to drink. I went for a walk. To clear my head.'

'You went for a walk where?'

'I don't know.'

'Because there's not really anywhere to go, is there?'

'Well, obviously I know that now.'

'I don't know what's wrong with you.'

This was quite enough for the other members of the group, each of whom had now found somewhere else to look. 'Waterloo' ended.

'Ant Music' came on. Screeching and splashing in the pool behind him. Perfume on his lapel. Semen in his underwear. And Bob behind him, casting a violet shadow.

Mark Derbyshire was grimacing, perhaps trying not to smirk.

Howard was staring into the depths of his drink, a grey lock fallen across his brow.

'Look,' said Nathan, 'I had too much to drink. I'm sorry.'

'You had too much of something.'

'Too much of you.'

He had a little time to wonder where that had come from --before Mark Derbyshire grabbed his elbow and said, 'Right, sunshine.'

Nathan

struggled, but Mark Derbyshire's hairy grip was absurdly powerful.

A flush rose from between Sara's breasts and spread over her sternum.

Nathan

pulled at Mark Derbyshire's hand, shouting, 'Fuck off!"

Mark Derbyshire was implacable. 'Mate, you had way too much of whatever you've had. Now let's all calm down a bit.'

Nathan tried to punch him. But he drew his fist back too far, too fast, and lost his balance. He fell. The ground slammed the wind from him. He struck his head on the wet edge of the swimming pool.

He lay there on his back, in the wet, trying to breathe. Mark Derbyshire and Sara and Howard and Bob were looking down on him.

Behind them, steam and accumulated human exhalation on the glass ceiling had erased the crisp night sky. There was only a shifting, grey obfuscation that seemed about to clear, but never did.

As Nathan got to his feet, he was aware of a great quiet. The guests in the pool stood like statues on a half-drowned island while he brushed the worst of the water from his sopping arse.

Sara's lip twisted, and soon the rest of her face followed. She spat, very slowly: 'Just piss off, Nathan.'

He thought of a dozen replies. Instead, he put his hands in his sodden pockets and said 'What's the point?' before marching away from the swimming pool and past the ballroom and once more - the final time - to the balding man at the coat check.

All this time, Bob loped at Nathan's heel like a faithful Newfoundland.

'That wasn't half an hour,' said Bob, outside. 'But it was pretty fucking committed, I'll give you that.'

They buried Elise face down, by the river. The grave was shallow, dug in the cold earth with their raw hands and the edge of chalky boulders. They covered her with rocks and gravel, upon which they sprinkled moss and twigs and leaf mould. They stuffed her clothes and shoes into a knotted carrier bag, rooted from some corner of the Volvo's boot, and buried that alongside her.

In the car on the way home they rehearsed again and again their simple story, until Nathan half-believed it to be true.

When Bob pulled up outside Nathan's front door, it was still dark.

They were filthy.

Bob said, 'We shouldn't see each other again.'

'No.'

'But you can always trust me. I need you to know that.'

'I know that.'

'And can I trust you?'

'Yes.'

Nathan opened the car door. He wavered, and then said, 'Just as long as I never see you again, Bob. I mean, not ever.'

Bob nodded.

And Nathan climbed out, on to the pavement. Soil caked his clothes and his shoes and his hair and his eyelashes. His nails were split and black with it.

He went to the main door and fumbled at the lock. Then he rushed through the door and ran upstairs and into his flat. In the December dawn, he removed his shoes and socks and shirt, his suit and his underwear, and he threw them all in the washing machine.

Then he went to take a shower. He watched the water run brown, then grey, then clear. He stared at the bar of soap in his hand, a translucent lozenge of Pears, the cleanest smell he knew, and he began to cry.

She looked at him with tired and angry eyes. Her hair was still damp, showing the tines of a comb, fragrant with shampoo.

'Fine,' said Nathan. 'Whatever.'

When she'd gone, he stood staring at the door. By the time he'd snapped out of it, he was standing there in the dark.

There was movement behind him -- a furtive rustling, as if somebody was lurking there, in a dark corner. His hackles rose like a dog's and he moved quickly round the flat, turning on the lights.

When that was done, he sat staring at the yellow bulb, anxious in case it should blow while he slept, letting the inhabited darkness creep up on him.

What little remained of Nathan was wiped out by the sunrise.

Through the plasterboard walls he could hear the flush, the kettle boiling, the muffled radio: the neighbours, waking and stirring. He thought them hallucinations.

Sara came home in the afternoon, but only to leave him.

He was lying in bed and didn't speak as she packed three suitcases, ready to cram them violently into the boot of her old Golf. She was going to stay with her friend Michelle until next Saturday, by which time she expected Nathan to have found somewhere else to live.

He got out of bed. There were colourful detonations across his field of vision. He stood there, swaying.

'Look, I'm sorry.'

'What? That you thought I was flirting with that beardy little turd? Or that you left me all alone and then embarrassed me at a party where I didn't even know anybody?'

He woke with a spasm of panic. Somebody was in bed with him.

Nose to nose, she was observing the juddering of his dreaming eyes.

All the bulbs had blown. The flat was in darkness.

It took him a long time to breathe. But it wasn't dark: it was morning.

Monday morning, his second full day in this new world. The sunlight swam in and out of focus. He ran to the toilet and vomited.

He hadn't eaten since Saturday afternoon; there was nothing left to throw up.

Rinsing away the yellow acid taste, he was too frightened to look in the mirror. But there was nothing behind him, except the bathroom.

His pale reflection resembled the survivor of some disaster, a train crash or perhaps a bomb; one who is filmed hunkered at the roadside in a grey blanket, their forehead cobwebbed with blood.

He wondered what he could do.

There was nothing. It had happened. He couldn't make it unhappen.

58

59

Neil Cross

At this impossible thought, he grabbed the edges of the sink.

There followed a moment of strange elation. Something within him seemed softly to illuminate, then to swell until it was passing through the confines of his skin. It left his body, and he was floating in the high corner of the bathroom, looking down on himself, double-imaged in the mirror. Then whatever it was began to contract, to fold about itself like a pair of wings; to draw back into his body. When it had gone, this fleeting, illogical rapture, he could not say what he'd felt, or what he'd become when, briefly, he had broken away from himself.

He showered in a hurry because he stank, but he didn't shave. He found a pair of jeans, another band T-shirt, and a plaid, fleece lined jacket. He bundled his ruined suit and his shoes and his cashmere pea coat into a carrier bag, and hunted round for his house keys. Then he went outside for the first time since becoming whatever he had become. He had to wait in the hallway until the panic had gone.

The noise and the air of Monday morning. He huddled in his jacket. Outside the flat were buses and cars and people. He passed through them. He walked half a mile. His hands were very cold, red knuckled and raw. He passed the twenty-four-hour garage and the corner shops. Then he turned into the local high street. He went into the charity shop next to the dry cleaners and handed over the carrier bag which contained the clothes he'd worn on Saturday night. Then he went to the newsagent next door.

The woman behind the counter was nervy and thin and tall. She suffered some mild form of mental illness - Nathan had stopped buying his newspapers there because sometimes she ranted at him, accusing the Council or the Royal Family or the police of having her under surveillance and controlling her thoughts. But she didn't scare him now.

He bought The Times, the Guardian, a Daily Mirror, the Sun and forty cigarettes. He folded the newspapers beneath his arm, left the shop and walked to the Moonshine Cafe.

An adult education college was being built across the road, and the cafe was full of builders in dirty jeans and work boots with exposed steel toecaps. Nathan ordered a cup of tea and a full English breakfast.

He

took an empty Formica table and opened the Mirror. He skipped through, looking for mention of Elise. Girls were missing, but none of them was her. He opened the Guardian, and skipped through that too. And the Sun and The Times.

Breakfast arrived. He pushed it around the plate and forced himself to take a mouthful of scrambled egg, which had the consistency of seafood. His body wouldn't accept it; he placed the fork on the edge of the plate. He sipped tea and tried to read the paper, but his eyes skipped over the words. He left two papers for the builders and stuffed the other two in the book-sized pocket of his jacket. He lit a cigarette. The nicotine nauseated him and made him giddy. He walked home.

The door to the flat looked blankly at him. He felt like a burglar.

This was Sara's place. He wondered what he'd do about finding another place to live.

At 3 p.m., when the sun grew low in the sky and dazzling, he scuttled round the flat turning on the lights. He turned on the television and watched it without seeing until it was time to go to work.

He took a second shower, more hurried than the first. He left the shower curtain open, fearing whoever might be standing there, waiting, when he opened it again.

When he'd dried himself, he didn't feel clean. He could smell his own breath, the smell of truffle, or tumour. He tried to clean his teeth and retched until luminous fish darted and wriggled in his peripheral vision. He dressed in his work clothes and the plaid jacket. He found his beanie and his wallet. From habit, he put a paperback book in his pocket. And then, as he did every weekday at the same time, he stepped out and caught the bus to work.

As he signed in at the desk, the security guard gave him a strange look.

He caught the lift to the second floor and walked to the studio.

Howard was making a cup of tea in the narrow kitchen; there were cold, squashed teabags dotted all over the glittery Formica.

Mark Derbyshire was in the tiny, shared office. Most of the lights were off. Mark's screen saver scrolled unread across his monitor, its beige casing smeared with inky fingerprints.

Stubble sprouted in the normally contoured beard that Mark believed made him look a bit less like a beaver. He was sitting at his desk, looking down into his cup of tea; his cuffs were loose, exposing his hairy forearms and gold identity bracelet.

Nathan rapped on the door. Mark looked up.

'You've got some fucking nerve, sunshine.'

'Are you going to sack me?'

'Oh, fuck. I don't know. Probably. Whatever.'

'Mark. What's wrong?'

'A friend of mine. Graham. He lost his daughter.'

Nathan wanted to sit down. He shifted his weight so it was borne by the doorway.

'What?'

Mark's scalp was naked, but for some baby-like fluff that sometimes caught the light and made him look simple and surprised, like a gigantic duckling.

'My friend, Graham. His girl. Elise. She's gone.'

'Gone where?'

'That's the thing, mate. Nobody knows. She was at the party.'

'What -- your party?'

'Yes -- my party. Then . . .' He made a fluttering, bird-like motion with his hand. 'She was gone.'

Nathan pulled up a moulded plastic chair. He hoped the gesture looked intimate and concerned. He could no longer stand.

'Where'd she go?'

'Nobody knows. That's the point.'

Howard arrived.

'Kettle's boiled.'

'Yeah,' said Nathan. 'Cheers. Has somebody called the police?'

'Graham's got friends on the force,' said Mark. 'They're already on it. None of this "missing for twenty-four hours" bollocks. They were round my place by Sunday evening. I was still in bed.'

'Well. That's great. That's good news.'