Byron Easy (62 page)

All the available methods, come to think of it, don’t actually warrant close inspection. Even contemplating them impartially fills me with a kind of animal dread. Let’s look at the options. Cutting your wrists in the bath? All the candles, incense, soothing music and sellotape in the world won’t prepare you for the egregious sight of your own lifeblood filling the water like spilt ink. As suicidal as you might have been, the instinct, surely, would be to jump out and attempt to drink back that lost blood, that ebbing essence. Then there’s the leap from the motorway bridge. The fact of your altitude, the wind and traffic sounds heightening your own awareness of the conscious moment, argues against the motorway option. No way do you want to be that alert as you check out. And think of the mess, the road pizza you would create. Worse, you could end up in the front seat of a family saloon and take out some perfectly innocent couple heading for a day-trip to Bangor. No, the plunge from the motorway bridge is beyond contemplation. The old belt around the timber joist? Forget it. There’s the strong possibility of dangling there and slowly turning black for half an hour. Pills? Too risky. Get the dosage wrong and you wake up in a hospital bed a paraplegic or brain-dead. Exhaust pipe through the window? Better, but gives you too much time to contemplate the road back. Self-immolation? Horrific in the extreme. And what if someone managed to turn a fire extinguisher on you? You would have to spend your last hours like a peeled grape as the body dehydrated down to nothing. Drowning? Now, there you would discover that you were your own worst enemy. The organism, in its very DNA, carries the instinctive will to live. The genes would order you to grab the lifebelt as you went under for the third time. No, I know all about almost drowning, voluntarily or not. Also, as with immolation, there is always the possibility that some passing hero would jump in and drag you kicking and screaming back to the problems you wanted to leave behind. The only options, in the end, seem to me what you might term Roman: the sudden strike to the heart with the broadsword, the cutlass across the throat—the bullet to the brain. The sudden eternity. Obviously, out of the last three, the gun wins hands down as the most savagely effective. Brutus probably took upwards of an hour to die. One tiny movement, one command from the mind, one electrical spark across the synapses and you’re through. The
felo de se
that’s as quick as changing channels on the television. It virtually defines that nonsensical phrase: the easy way out.

The only problem is: I don’t have the courage for any of them. Not even the easy option. Nor do I have any booze. More pertinently, I don’t have a gun. But the frequency of the vision, the cold barrel in the hot mouth, must mean it’s something I deeply want, deeply desire. And this is typical of the kind of thinking I do about death (constant, non-conclusive). It precludes the other, normal kind of thinking people do about it—the kind that leads to decisions over cremation versus burial, or how to meet a friend’s passing without hysteria.

Outside, the fields are tumbling by under darkness. In the summer, when I last made this lone journey to visit my mother, the hurtling landscape looked marvellous: the hedgerows dense, the green foliage oily and fresh, the air alive, the expanses of water scintillating. Hayricks dotting the sloping fields under the warm, yeasty breeze. The fields seen from the train not flashing by, but seeming to
revolve
in a kind of circle: the near distance moving faster than the far horizon, with its almost static pylons—an intensely graceful movement. It had almost lifted my heart. Now there is just a void through the bleared window. Anxiously, I wonder whether eternity holds a similar absence, a corresponding blackness, and turn away. The reflected, artificial light of the carriage is tiring in the extreme. My eyeballs feel melted, corroded to the core. A rank, tarry taste from the cigarette is in my mouth. The beginning of a hangover is trying my cranium with its exploratory instruments, its dental picks and incisions. My legs prickle sleepily, and I do indeed have the first warnings of hospitalising indigestion. The journey is almost over. A few passengers are stirring, checking watches, stretching, yawning. Soon it will be time for them to haul their leather cases from the racks or the over-clogged pens between carriages, then descend onto the floodlit platform, the big runway of Leeds station, and jump into the arms of loved ones.

Soon, also, it will be time to tell you about last things, about where everybody ended up. I don’t feel I’ve given a proper account of these significant others. Oh, I’m sure they will be all sleeping soundly in their beds tonight, waiting for the felicitous footsteps of Santa as he makes his rounds. Take Martin, for instance. He’s spending the holiday with his family, as he always does. Oh, and he gave me my old job back. Did I tell you that? Out of pity, mainly. He told me he knew what a failed marriage felt like; that he had special insight into the debilitating feelings of despair and self-hatred. Nice to think you’re not alone. He also surprised me with some facts pertaining to his past life. Last week in the shop, with the tinsel sadly draped over guitars that nobody wanted to buy their sons for Christmas, he told me an interesting fact about his ex-missus. Apropos of nothing, he said, in his smoker’s growl: ‘Sharon used to hit me too, if it’s any consolation.’

I stood there embarrassed, two flight cases in my hands, as if I were going on holiday. The past few months had drained me of the ability to feel empathy with anybody else’s nightmare but my own. Not knowing what to say, how to inject the right note of concern into my voice, I adopted the neutral tone of the interviewer. ‘I thought you said it was the drinking that put an end to that one.’

Martin shifted slightly behind the counter. The corrugated skin on his face burned a delicate crimson. His posture was that of a man about to reveal all to police inspectors.

‘That was a factor, make no mistake. But it was her—her temper—that really finished it off. We had this record shop on the Camden High Street. In a year she had pissed off all our customers. Every one.’

‘I see,’ I said, putting the flight cases down. It was unusual for Martin to talk about personal stuff, but the shop was empty. The sound of Slade’s ‘Merry Christmas’ from a passing car was suddenly very loud, then distant. ‘And how did she do that?’ I asked, fearful of revelations too similar to my own sorry history.

‘She once punched out a bloke trying to flog all his Bowie vinyl. Offered him five quid for the lot—said the eighties’ albums weren’t worth the electricity used to record them. Then decked him when he called her a philistain.’

‘Stine.’

‘Whatever. She wouldn’t listen to the appeal of reason.’

‘Sounds familiar.’

Martin continued, taking the elastic band from his greying ponytail and raking the hair back with his free hand. It was costing him much to confide in me like this. ‘For three months after we got married, everything was great. Total bliss. We opened the shop, she seemed happy enough. Of course, I was drinking a bit then, but that was a hangover from the Drifter days.’

The moment was too solemn to indulge our usual banter about his forgotten group, but he paused anyway to allow me the opportunity.

‘Go on,’ I said, feeling somewhat relieved that I wasn’t the only man in the world who had married a maniac.

‘Then she started going for me for the slightest reason. Over dinner, in the shop, in the car—Christ, that was scary. And I mean full-on punches, too, not slaps. She almost caused a motorway pile-up when she jabbed me in the knackers on the M4.’ I didn’t ask why she had behaved in this way, as I knew there didn’t need to be a ‘why’. ‘I lost count of the amount of times I moved out only to move back in a week later. I should’ve stayed away, but that’s the problem—you’re not thinking with your head.’

Martin stopped, frustrated at his inability to articulate any of this properly. The question that filled the silent shop was: In what other organ does thinking take place? However, I felt like helping him.

I said, ‘I know. You’re thinking from the heart.’

Pleased with this distinction, but uneasy that he might have said too much, he tried to grapple with the subject in general terms, his grey eyes gleaming. ‘Thing is, only now do I see it for what is was—abuse. It’s hard for a bloke to admit that his trouble and strife is knocking him about. Other people—other men in particular, just laugh. Women think you’re a wimp. The police don’t want to know. But it is abuse. No two ways about it. And abusers tend to go for people who love deeply, because they know their victims will put up with it for longer. They know they will keep coming back. They know their loving nature will prevent them from fighting back.’

We both expected a customer to walk in and break the spell. But none did.

‘Sounds like Mandy,’ I said. Martin looked a little guilty at this, as we both knew that he was complicit in encouraging us to get together. She had been Martin’s acquaintance long before our marriage.

‘Well, people keep a lot hidden. I kept wishing Sharon would turn back into the woman I first knew. But she was always like that, underneath, I mean. Deep down. The fact is, an abuser will figure out how much you can take then play you like a fish on a line. They will push you to the limit of your endurance, then, when they sense you’re about to snap, they back off and tell you they love you, or manipulate you with guilt, or both. They give you crumbs of hope, and hope is always fatal for people who love deeply.’

‘Why is that?’

He couldn’t answer. I hoped very much he wasn’t about to cry. Eventually he said, ‘Because, if you’re not totally cynical, hope is just another way of saying you still believe in people.’

Martin cleared his throat and looked down. I searched for something to say. In that instant I wanted to escape from the imprisonment of my past, the vortex of dismal human beings, of abusers like Delph and Mandy I floundered around for a subject that would bring us back to the present.

‘Anyway, how’s your wife’s stones?’

Martin brightened, snapping the elastic band tight on his pony-tail. He had been holding it, like Yorick’s skull, through his difficult oration. ‘Fine, thanks! She has to go back in Feb to see if everything’s settled down … I’m flattered you remembered, with all you’ve got going on.’

‘Well, I’m not that busy,’ I said, forlornly. ‘Just loneliness and masturbation.’

We both chuckled at this.

‘Anyhow, are you going to put those guitars away in the stock cupboard? I don’t think anyone’s going to buy them at this late stage.’

‘I haven’t got the key.’

‘I’ll get it for you.’

I watched Martin’s retreating back as he ventured into the office to search for the key. The place was such a pigsty I knew he would be a while. It hit me with the force of revelation that Martin had been my father for some time. He seemed to have always been there—patriarch, provider and rock: all those chimerical things. It struck me then that Martin had taught me things, in the manner a father is supposed to instruct his son. The things they don’t teach you at school. Not the practical things, like how to run a shop or work all the recording equipment, but priceless things a father never taught me—discipline, circumspection, optimism, uxoriousness, how to handle money and difficult characters, how to trust your instincts, correct cynicism, childlike enthusiasm. And not just that, but how much he had imparted about how to behave, about masculine conduct. Superlogical, calm, shrewd, precise Martin. And fearless, too: to this day I take his who-gives-a-fuck example of walking through the London streets after dark as some kind of gold standard. He never cared—leaving the tiny studio at midnight in his brown bomber-jacket to traverse some of the most dangerous estates in England. He could handle himself: alone. Walk softly and carry a big stick. What father ever taught me that? As a man, no one ever teaches you The Rules, but he came closest.

Standing there, waiting for him to return, I wondered what sort of men Des and Delph really were. Why hadn’t they been so wise and supportive? Martin Drift, a surrogate father, who had survived electrocution and alcoholism in the name of rock ’n’ roll. Now, that’s what I called a dad! And maybe he felt a hint of the same filial feeling. He only had daughters, and there was some of the wistfulness of the father who longed for a son about him. I thought then of Des and his second wife Emmanuelle thousands of miles away in Sydney—stick-thin Emmanuelle who had borne him two children I had never met, and who didn’t know a word of English. I tried to calculate his age—almost sixty now, an old man. I felt a sudden pang of regret, always present, but unavoidable in that empty shop, the December winds hailstorming dead leaves against the window. Outside the day was freezing and winter sere—fullblown decay everywhere; Thor trying the roofs of houses; the leaves squashed by car tyres into the tarmac making a honeycomb mosaic until the rain destroyed their patterns. Des’s ten-year absence from my life had seen an ecumenical change. The landscape, the emotional landscape, had altered beyond recognition. If one were to keep score, then we had both been losers in some things and winners in others. As Martin hurried back to the counter with the key in his hand, I thought maybe I should pick up that phone before it was too late. As much as I loved Martin, as much as he had been a good surrogate parent, I decided I should leave my third father and see what my real one was up to.

‘Eureka!’ said Martin triumphantly, smacking the key onto the counter, his astute eyes meeting mine.

I smiled at him. He had heart, Martin, that much you had to give him. The secret, of course, is to have a lot of heart. Because if you don’t have heart, all you have is a point of view. All you have are opinions.

A week after I shoved my three filthy cardboard boxes into the shared flat, Mandy helpfully dropped some post off for me. She didn’t want me to come round and collect it, and, with the cicatrices of my wounds still sore under my sleeves, I had no intention of doing so.

Amongst the junk mail was a birthday card from Leo in Spain. I had always thought her remembering the date was a nice touch. But the Spanish are like that. Despite the fact that she must have been considerably resentful of both me and Mandy for not going along with the house idea for mad Montserrat, she had included a long note. She told me, in a flowing longhand of formal English, that she had found a solution to the whole problem. Instead of buying a house in London, she had put all her savings into a security-monitored apartment for her mother near the sea. Far from being an old people s home, the place was palatial, allowing Montse maximum independence, with a mentor who visited twice a day to fix her special meals and check she hadn’t murdered the neighbours. Thus, Leo and Carmen could live quietly together in the big, airy, tide-smelling apartment. She had managed to claw back her life while still doing her duty.