Dead of Light (15 page)

o0o

And somewhere in the midst of all this confessional, Mike the landlord came round for our glasses. “See your drinks off now, please, it's half eleven...”

Which was already later than the law allowed, but even Mike didn't have any great urgency in his voice, and nobody noticeably moved. Looking around, I saw that a lot of people had pints hardly touched in front of them, and didn't seem concerned about it. Largely, they just went on playing.

I shrugged, took a sip rather than a gulp, and went on talking.

o0o

A bit later, needing the loo, I left off talking and went through to the other bar.

On the way through, I noticed that the door out was closed and barred and bolted.

When I came back, a girl I didn't know was standing on a table, giggling and swaying and conducting a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday' to herself. Carol had her squeezebox in motion again, which limited my room to sit down; when she saw me hovering, she laid off the chords long enough to reach in her pocket and find a fiver.

“Get us a couple of pints, will you?”

“What? No, hang on, it's my turn...” And I already had little enough money left, and maybe I'd better just leave now, if I could find anyone to let me out.

“Don't be stupid. Take it.”

Jacko really had been talking to her, clearly; and punishment would most surely follow. My financial problems were my own affair, certainly not that of a casually-known accordionist.

Back at the hatch they were serving again, and Jonathan was there, waiting in the queue. He grinned at me, a little ruefully. “Sorry, didn't know it was going to turn into a lock-in.”

“Don't worry, I'm fine.” I had someone to talk to, however much I might resent some of what she knew or wanted to know; and getting plastered, getting totally out of my box might prove the answer to several questions, including the little matter of getting to sleep tonight. There's a limit to how much cocoa I can drink.

o0o

The birthday girl was called Jo, and she wanted a song from everyone. Didn't get one from me, sing I don't. But Carol sang, an old yiddishe number, to break the relentless Irishness; and someone else sang country, and a couple sang a ridiculously silly duet, and this wasn't a lock-in any more, it was a party.

So no surprise that when Jo invited people to move back to her flat, “more comfy and I've got some grass,” she included everyone in that invitation; and no surprise that along with almost everyone, I said yes. Said yes, please. Getting stoned would add one more layer of detachment, another degree of separation. And the more the merrier, it seemed to me just then.

o0o

Carol came too and I did the gentlemanly thing, I carried her accordion for her, though she laughed at me for doing it. And on the march up I manoeuvred us next to Jacko and Jonathan, and did a little promissory work with my elbow in Jacko's ribs, murmuring about the trouble he would find himself in, all my old pride unexpectedly rising,
you don't gossip about me, right?
He just grinned, shook his head mockingly,
don't talk stupid, everyone gossips about you
, and said Carol was just what I needed.

Wrong. What I needed was all that I couldn't have, and I didn't come anywhere near Carol's definition of happy.

o0o

But even Carol's value-system recognised that happiness is relative: it's only ever a matter of what you measure it against, how you define your standards.

Chemical interference can do a lot, to make the scales weigh things differently. Happiness is an attitude of mind; thought is an electrical activity taking place in a chemical stew; ergo and therefore, stir a few more chemicals into the pot, and you can come up like a beamish lunatic and
mean
it.

Alcohol's a chemical; so's tetrahydrocannabinol.

o0o

Alcohol I had already, sloshing around in my bladder and my brain, and some still circulating in my bloodstream, waiting its turn. By any reasonable definition, I'd had enough; but that is not to say that there was no room for more. Moderation, I guess, is another sign of contentment, and so — by definition — inappropriate. I lived from feast to famine, famine to feast; and tonight, the table was loaded.

Literally, the table was loaded. Not me, but a dozen of us had brought carry-outs from the Duke; those were stacked up on the living-room table as we trooped in, next to the tray of cans that Jo had in already, and the couple of wine-boxes and the bowls of crisps and Shanghai nuts and olives.

At the back of the table, teasingly lurking, was a bottle of cheap whisky with a ribbon round its neck and a label attached.

I didn't read the label, didn't need to. Probably it was in code, probably it said
Happy Birthday, Jo
or something similar, something equally appropriate for a bottle of altered states; but actually it was an instruction. Whatever it said, it said
Drink Me
.

And no one else was doing that. I waited, I watched for five minutes, and they were all drinking beer or lager or wine. So I found myself a glass and filled it, settled my butt on a windowsill and sipped quietly.

One of the bedrooms in Jo's flat opened directly off the living-room. Half the musicians camped themselves in there, spreading out across bed and carpet and leaving the door open, unpacking instruments and tuning up and laying down a base of sound, firm footing that the party could spring from.

Or, in my case, a mattress of music I could topple back into, any time my mind slipped free of the talking.

Carol had let up on me, at least for the moment; I could hear her squeezebox underlying everything, through in the other room. I was talked out, in any case. All I wanted to do was listen, and drink, and not be alone. Not be at home and in bed and thinking about Tommy, or alternatively thinking about Laura.

The whisky was rough, coldly burning like nightfire in my throat and threatening later dismay to my stomach; but it was right for now, and now was all that mattered. Sufficient unto the day, unto the hour was the evil thereof: Father Hamish had taught me that, at confirmation class.

Matter of fact, Father Hamish had also taught me to drink. Also at confirmation class. At least that's the way I used to tell it when Marty was around to challenge me, to take offence, to growl “No he didn't, you little bugger,” and remind me with hard knuckles of the lessons I'd had from him. It was a ritual, it was a game we played together; and if it ended up every time with me bruised and yelping through my giggles, so what?

But in all honesty, Hamish had got in first.
This is the blood of Christ
, he'd said, offering a sip of Communion wine to my thirteen-year-old and curious tongue,
and this is the fermented juice of the grape
, sloshing a tumbler full of Liebfraumilch and pushing it across the desk.
You'll despise that stuff later, when you've learned discrimination
, he'd said, and sure enough he'd had a different bottle for himself, and wouldn't give me so much as a taste of it;
but it'll suit your palate well enough for now. And all you need to know for now is how to discriminate between the one and the other, the sacrament and the indulgence.

Under his tutelage and my cousins', I'd learned discrimination in wine and other things; but again, babies and bathwater were too confused in my mind to be distinguished now. I still drank Liebfraumilch, when it was offered. Drank it like a statement, indeed, like mute defiance hurled in the sweet teeth of my childhood truths.

But now I was drinking rotgut whisky, in defiance of memory and incipient dream; and circling the room — like the smoke and the conversation circled, in better order than my mind was circling — here came the last temptation, the ultimate persuader. What I was here for, in all honesty. Company was good tonight, and music was good, and drink was maybe better than either; but tetrahydrocannabinol, some nights that could just win out over anything. THC and alcohol mixed, no contest.

Three or four people were rolling joints with varying degrees of concentration and urgency, and the first couple were already on their way. Travelling in contrary directions around the room, and luck had landed me right where their meandering paths were doomed to cross. I'd barely taken hold of the first, barely started to suck in the heavy, soursweet smoke, before the second reached me; smoke leaked between my lips as I nodded a grinning thanks and kept right on inhaling.

Three hits off a joint is about right, I reckon, each time it comes around. Any less and you're a dilettante, you're not taking it seriously; any more and we're into bogart territory, greed winning out over manners. And it's enough, for me at least. Three tokes at a time will get me going nicely.

But that night I was charting territories of excess, and being gifted the opportunity. Two joints in my hands, and more on the way: no one would be going short, so I took four times from each cardboard roach before passing them along.

Smoke's bite and whisky's bite on the cables of an overstretched mind, and already it wasn't likely that I'd just perch still and quiet on my windowsill and listen to the party rolling on. I could yet tilt either way, alcohol dragging me down into melancholy and fear or dope bubbling me up into euphoria; but one way or the other, balance surely wasn't on the cards.

Something had to give, and something did; but not at all what I'd expected. Not my equanimity, not my mood unleashed but something far stronger and far more vicious, something I didn't even know that I held housed within me.

o0o

Eyes closed and head back against the bunched curtain, weight of glass in my hand unsupervised and my body relaxing in defiance of my dizzy mind, I breathed deeply and wondered what would come, what was on the rise tonight -

- and was overtaken, more than clutched at: gripped and seized and wrenched by monstrous need, appalling desperation.

My body arched, that much I knew, every muscle suddenly going into spasm; and I fell, of course, into the tangled protests of the party.

Fell and rolled, arched and bucked across the floor, across a mess of legs and crisps and spilling drinks and yelling. And my eyes were open, they say, but I was seeing nothing there; nor feeling any of the damage I did, with my sight spun inward, searching for the horror shouting in my mind.

o0o

All my life my sister had leaned on me, literally and emotionally and in my dreams also. Not for support, only to keep me down: only because she could, I often thought, because it was a talent she'd had before anyone was looking for signs of talent in either one of us.

Often and often I'd be dreaming and she'd be right there in my dream, uninvited, leaning. Putting her small strong hands against me, choosing her spot and pressing with her fingers,
see what I can do? And you can't stop me. Weakling...
And I'd wake up, dragged painfully out of the dream, and I'd have a dead leg or my arm would have gone to sleep, wherever she'd been leaning; and I'd look across the room to where she slept and see her, wide awake and smiling in the dark.

o0o

Not for years now, never since we'd reached puberty: since she'd developed her small talent, in other words, and I none at all. Or since I'd left, perhaps that was the significant moment, since I'd revealed myself as beneath even her rich contempt.

But now I wasn't dreaming, Christ, and she wasn't leaning either.

She was screaming. They say that I was screaming too, they say I rolled and screamed and threshed around like a mad thing on the carpet, running with saliva at the mouth; but all I knew was my sister, back in my head again and screaming this time, screaming for me.

Later, thinking back, I could never remember a time when it had happened like that. The opposite, yes, often: myself screaming for Hazel to come and help, to rescue me. Sometimes she'd do that, sometimes not. Sometimes she'd only come to laugh. But never this, never my strong sister screaming for me.

Maybe that's why I reacted so badly, so urgently. One reason. Maybe.

More likely it was only that she was being herself,
in extremis
as in everything. Bullying, demanding, taking possession: this time of all my mind, so that I lost my body with it.

Not even my sister could scream forever, not even inside my head where she didn't need breath to do it. When she stopped, she didn't go away; there was still a mute and dreadful hunger,
I need you
, dragging like gravity, sucking like the earth sucks, not to be resisted.

But at least I could breathe now and feel myself do it, at least I could choose to move and have my body understand me. My eyes saw carpet, and my fingers felt the same. Tremblingly I pushed myself up onto hands and knees and tried to crawl to the door, only that I didn't know where it was.

I had to lift my head, to look; and saw people's legs in a circle around me, every direction barred. Looked higher and saw their faces, dimly through the stinging water running from my eyes like my sister's tears, acid and disorientating. Heard their voices then, vaguely, though I couldn't make out any words through my sister's sobbing call; then felt an arm around my shoulders, strong and insistent.

Turned my head and saw Carol crouched beside me. Felt her hand in my hair, more rough than tender, tugging for my attention; and her voice to follow, “Ben, listen.
Listen
to me, Ben. Are you listening? Can you hear me? It's all right, do you understand? It's okay. Whatever's happening to you, you're with friends here. We'll look after you, but you have to tell us what's going on or we don't know what you need...”

And so on, insistent, inescapable, oddly comforting: the voice of a woman who's talked more than one person down from a bad trip.

But this was no trip, and wasn't going to go away by talking. I shook my head against her fingers' grip and surged upwards, snatching for balance; fought free of the hands that clutched uncertainly at my clothes, and plunged towards the door.