Departures (7 page)

“That's not the way, you know,” she said. Her hands at last were trembling, and she did not look at me as she spoke. “Your father'll be sure to tell you so tomorrow, so I might as well say it first.”

Geordie's solicitor was just leaving as I touched my father's sleeve. “My advice to you, mister,” he said in parting, “is to stay out of the way. You've dealt my client here a serious blow, a very serious blow indeed. Let's hope for your sake it's not more serious than it seems.”

“What's he talking about?” I demanded, and even called after him, “What've we done?” but neither of them answered. Within a week the authorities had found us and had begun proceedings against my father for the money they said he'd stolen while claiming to be unemployed.

At the burial my father stood apart from the small assembly—the grave digger, the minister, a few from the Road still able to walk, and Geordie—and we stood by his side. Just as he had said, “This is it,” five months before when at last he'd introduced us to our home, so he now turned round to us as they lowered Harry's coffin and said simply, “This is death.” I think he believed that, for all my mother's funeral had been a grand affair. There had been music and laughter at the reception, platters of food and a great deal of drink, a final triumph of one tradition over another. Everybody who had ever known her came, and the rooms were filled with the aura of reunion, not of loss. I could feel my mother's presence there as clearly as I had when I was a child and she had held me and spoken to me as she gently stroked my hair. I imagined I could see her, leaning against a bookcase, a glass of wine in her hand, looking on with satisfaction and distaste as we sang and drank in front of her. I tried to tell my father that, for the sight of him, bent and lonely in a chair by the door, surrounded by colour, by texture and sound, made me throb with sorrow and the wish to give comfort. But I was young and inarticulate; when I told him I could see her he grasped me by the arms as I stood before him and shook me, asking where, where.

Stigmata

The complex consisted of twin towers, each fifteen stories tall, each equipped with a single pay phone in the lobby and a set of four washer/dryers in the basement beside the lift shaft. There were eight units on every floor, each designed for a single tenant with little time to spare; the rooms were small, and with only two to choose from, time spent in the flat could pass slowly. Each unit on the ground floor had its own tiny, self-contained garden, the false appearance of the semidetached.

It was the garden that had attracted Eileen to the flat in the first place, that and the convenience of the complex to a depot from which she could catch the bus into town. She'd seen its potential when she first viewed the property, had pictured the look of the blossoms and hedges as she gazed out the window, her mind moving on to the cost of the necessary implements even as she agreed to the terms of the lease. Yet in the end she'd found little time for gardening. She'd dug the hard ground with the shovel she'd purchased and spread it with grass seed as the packet instructed one Saturday just after she'd moved in, but though she'd been there a year and a half already, still nothing had taken root.

It was the third evening she'd worked late that week, and close to eleven when she turned from the footpath towards the first block of flats, digging for her keys. Though she was proud of her reputation as a reliable worker and considered the last-minute requests of
employers less imposition than a sign of respect, she'd been finding it difficult lately to maintain the pace. Fatigue made her stupid; she dropped things in public, ordered coffee when she meant to say tea, in the evenings discovered stains on her person which must have caused comment during the day. . . . And she mislaid things. She was still rooting around in search of her keys as she scraped the bolt back across the low, wooden gate at the foot of the garden and turned around to face her front door. It was only then that she saw the man.

He was slumped across her doorstep just inside the alcove, his arms tightly crossed against his chest, his chin buried in the folds of a thin, grey scarf, his face half-hidden by the hood of his anorak. When she saw him she started violently and cried out, more from surprise than from fear. But then panic did grip her and she stumbled frantically back to the gate, struggled again with the rusty bolt, and scrambled round to the other side, slamming and bolting it behind her, deafened momentarily by the sound of her own breathing.

Despite the disturbance, the figure in the doorway had not stirred. Gradually his inaction bolstered her courage; if he'd meant to attack her, she decided, he would have done so by now. After all, she'd been standing practically on top of him just a moment before—even now she wasn't much more than a few feet away—and he looked to be a big man, one who could easily have grabbed her before she'd had the chance to scream.

From the far side of the fence she called out to him.

“Hey,” she said softly, straining to distinguish his features in the uneven, amber light. She called again, louder this time, but still he did not move.

Cautiously, and with as little noise as possible, she slid the bolt across and stepped slowly around the gate, closing
it softly behind her. Even so slight a reduction in the distance between them brought him more sharply into focus. From the little she could make out he might have been an attractive man once, even imposing. A small knot of tension throbbed suddenly at the back of her neck. She took a step closer and leaned towards him.

“Hey, are you alright?” The figure rolled slightly at the sound, like a moored ship against a wave. Eileen stepped back quickly, but the movement hadn't wakened him. A sudden thought struck her—Perhaps he's dead. Inexplicably the thought made her giggle. There would be an inquest, of course, and then the funeral, which she would pay for and which only she would attend. She thought of the fistful of earth in her hand, the touch of the veil against her cheek, of the questions that'd be asked of her when she returned to the office, a black ribbon round her arm, of the office girls clucking and fussing and making her endless cups of tea. . . .

She shook the images away, suddenly annoyed. She strode the two steps over to where he lay, knelt down, and gingerly prodded his arm with her bag.

“Hey. Hey, listen. You can't stay here.”

The figure did not respond. Eileen released an exasperated sigh, uncertain how to proceed. She was clearly conscious only of the cold, of a loss of sensation in her toes and fingers, but she was nevertheless impressed by the absence of the expected. Puzzled, she put her bag down beside her and gently laid her hand on his sleeve. She was inches from his face, and the soft sound of his breathing now mingled with her own, yet there was no smell of alcohol, no stench of perspiration or of filth accumulated over time. She could see now that he was roughly her own age, somewhere between thirty and forty. His hair was an unremarkable brown, of varying length and irreversibly thin,
the scalp of an invalid in rapid decline. Despite his bulk, his limbs appeared fragile, too slender to sustain their own weight. And yet his cheeks were not sunken, his face not as gaunt as she'd first imagined. She'd seen faces like it in hospital beds; both her parents had worn it briefly towards the end. It was an in-between face, potentially, from under which familiar features could resurface or be replaced altogether. She saw herself suddenly, laden with fruit juice and flowers, the night nurses whispering at the far end of the ward, the matron's gentle touch on her shoulder pressing her back into her seat by his bed, the sound of the curtain drawn close around them, the doctor responding without hesitation, I understand; of course you can stay.

The path and overhanging vegetation to her left was lit momentarily by a haze of white light, and Eileen heard the sound of tyres twisting up the driveway to the block. At the same time she sensed a sluggish movement in her direction; the man was leaning like a tree about to fall. She stared at him for a moment, watching his gathering momentum and wondering how it could possibly fail to disturb his sleep. When his shoulder touched hers she panicked; she dropped her briefcase beside her bag and pushed against him with all her strength, but he was the heavier and hers the more awkward position. She lost her grip and slumped onto the path, legs splayed, skirt hitched up above her knees, supporting his head uncomfortably in the crook of her arm. From the car park came the sounds of footsteps on the gravel, a car door slamming, the exchange of cheery farewells. Light swung away in an arc from the path as the car reversed, turned, and drove back the way it had come, and Eileen heard laughter and the sharp, military click of stiletto heels as whoever had been the passengers now headed towards the back of the block.

They were a young couple in their mid-twenties, stylishly dressed for a night on the town. He had his arm around her waist and was pulling her close, his mouth against her throat, his free hand wandering. Then the girl saw Eileen and pushed his hand away.

“Here, Arthur,” she said indignantly. Her companion murmured something and clutched at her blouse. She slapped his hand down. “I thought you said this place was posh,” she accused, nudging him and straining away from his embrace. The boy glanced up briefly and took advantage of her lingering footsteps to run his hand along her thigh.

“Please,” Eileen said, struggling to disengage herself, but her throat was dry from disuse. The man in her arms moaned softly, shuddered, and turned his face towards Eileen's coat.

“C'mon, Arthur,” the girl said abruptly, her voice rising. “C'mon, let's go.”

She pulled away from him and hurried on down the path. Her sudden urgency pleased the boy and he ran after her, hopping on one foot for a moment as he readjusted his trousers and ran his fingers through his hair. Eileen heard them laughing as he fumbled with the key. Then their door slammed shut; the light from their sitting room stained the footpath till they drew the curtains and the whole block grew dark and silent once again.

With difficulty Eileen checked her watch. She thought of the door at the back of the block, and behind it the central staircase from which all the flats in the block could be reached via their emergency exits. Without a special key the door could be opened only from the inside; as a consequence it was used mainly by repairmen and tenants in the upstairs flats who had motorcycles or other heavy gear which they preferred to store inside. In the eighteen
months she'd been living there she'd never had occasion to use that back entrance; the caretaker had pointed it out to her when she first moved in. He'd not been a particularly friendly man, civil during working hours, yes, but hardly accommodating on weekends or after five. What his reaction to her present predicament might have been at a quarter to midnight on a Thursday she didn't like to think. In any event it was irrelevant; he'd left the job three weeks before, and no replacement had yet been found. There was no one else to whom she could turn.

It was her own fault, really, she thought darkly. She should have gotten to know her neighbours. As it was she didn't know anyone else in the block; in fact, apart from the caretaker now departed, she didn't know anyone in the estate at all. She'd tried to be friendly if she ran into others while doing laundry, but, like herself, they'd kept to themselves. She'd assumed they were busy, that their days were ordered much as hers were, with little opportunity to invite others in. Besides, she'd never expected to need their assistance; if there were repairs to be made or a problem to be sorted, it was the Council to whom the matter was properly referred.

Given the late hour it was unlikely that the stairwell would be in use; still, it was worth a try. Proceeding with caution Eileen eased the man back against the wall then rose stiffly to her feet. He still slept, but fitfully. The hood of his jacket had fallen away from his face, and she stood for a moment, watching his lips and eyelids tremble like liquid carried from one place to another and thinking, It should be such an easy thing, to simply reach past him, unlock the door, climb over him, and go in. If he fell into the entry when it opened, he could stay there till morning. The flat's inner door had been fitted with a pair of locks by a previous occupant; she'd be in no danger with those firmly in place.

“It should be easy,” she said aloud, and then sighed, and headed for the back door.

She hadn't expected it to be open; security on the estate was quite good, and such an oversight would have been unusual. But she had expected some response to her knocking; surely the sound of a shoe on an iron door would have alerted someone, somewhere? But fifteen minutes passed and a light, drizzling rain began to fall and still no one appeared. Damp and hoarse, with stockings torn, she was on her way back down the path towards the front of the block when the door opened. A young man in unbuttoned jeans and a worn dressing gown held it ajar with his foot and hurled a bag of rubbish some fifteen feet over the wall of the low, roofless enclosure opposite, into an unseen bin. Eileen heard the clatter as the bag made contact, knocking a lid onto the concrete floor behind the wall. The boy gave a quiet, self-appreciative cheer and turned to go back inside.

“Hey, wait a minute!” she called after him, squinting against the bright fluorescence of the hallway light. “Hold that door a minute, will you?”

She stumbled up to the step, conscious of her disheveled appearance, but the boy did not seem to notice.

“Forget your key?” he asked cheerfully, shivering for effect as he pulled the door shut behind them. The query was rhetorical; she opened her mouth to answer but he'd already turned away. He was halfway up the stairs when she thought to call him back.

“Excuse me, I don't mean to pry, but have you been in all evening?”

The boy stopped and looked down at her. He nodded shortly.

“It's just that there's a man at the side there,” Eileen explained, “I thought you might have noticed him—”