Head Injuries (7 page)

    The afternoon's beer had made me sluggish. It would be nice to curl up in bed with something brainless playing on the TV. Instead, I drank a pint and a half of water before deciding to dress against the mood's grain which had developed throughout the day. On went a Daffy Duck T-shirt, improving my temperament enormously. How could the others speak of shadows and danger while I was acting the fool? Hopefully we would talk of lighter things this evening.

    True to form, Seamus turned up at the guest house with quarter of an hour to spare. Even his punctuality unnerved me. I felt awkward, tying up my boots while he hovered, flicking through my paperbacks and tapping on the window as he looked into the street. If he asked about my paintings, I'd tell him I'd burned the lot.

    'Anyone interesting die today?' I asked him.

    He gave me a name but I didn't recognise it. 'She was an economist and a translator. Italian ambassador to Washington too. Leukaemia. Seventy-four.'

    I ushered him out of my room. I might have laughed had I tried to say something. Would he think I was ridiculing him if I asked whether or not he kept files on dead public figures? At college it just seemed like a bit of a lark, an idiosyncrasy by which we recognised Seamus or referred to him. He would enter a room, crestfallen, to announce the death of an Australian chef or a joke writer or a stalwart of the Japanese film industry; all unknown to me-and to him, which was where the humour, or his perception of it, lay. It
was
funny at first, so it was probably my fault for laughing because it encouraged him to repeat his performance every morning. By the time we'd forgotten to laugh, or ignored him, he was into the business of tributes in a big way. He would watch TV specials about a celebrity's life and then, if they were cinema stars, he would make sure he caught every one of a season of their films. Biographies began to crop up on his bookcases. Because of his nature, I couldn't help but think he was simply cultivating this image to try to make himself more mysterious and attractive.

    He drove well, guiding his black Mini confidently through the night. Lancaster looks almost appealing when you approach it by road. The Ashton Memorial's copper dome looks like the cerulean wash from a Mediterranean watercolour. Impossibly beautiful. In contrast, Lancaster Castle-cum-prison is imposing and dung-black, mottled like the imperfect plumage of grubby pigeons, suitable abode for those languishing in its cells. Though I haven't seen it, I know they have what's called the Drop Room, where condemned criminals waited for the noose. Seamus reached across me and stuck a cassette into the player hanging beneath the glove compartment. Something spare and quirky trickled from the speakers, beefed up after a few seconds by a chunky bass line.

    
'Qu'est-ce que c'est
?'

    'PJ Harvey,' he said. 'I love female singers, especially this one. She's got a raunch, a swagger.'

    'Really. Where's Helen?' I wiped away condensation on the window in time to see a white neon crucifix hanging in the sky.

    'Meeting us there. She's been in town, mooching around for treasure. You know what she's like. Looking for stuff that she can work on for her craft shop.'

    'What did you do after I left?'

    'Went back to hers for a coffee then I drove her into Lancaster.' Maybe he could sense I was digging for something else. 'She's worried about you, Davey.'

    'Come on, Seamus. Like we've been in each other's back pockets for the last four years? The last time I talked to you was on our graduation day. All this concern, it's crap.'

    'It's not crap. It's crap that you think it's crap.'

    He didn't say anything else for a while. The Ashton Memorial was a bald giant shrugging its shoulders on the skyline. Scarves of mist flapped about the fence separating the road from the river. Every car or bus window that swept by was fogged; filled with smears of shadow which shrank and grew beneath the streetlamps.

    What have you been doing with yourself then, Seamus, these past few years?'

    His face clenched in the half-light, as though this was a question he knew was coming but which he dreaded. He steered the car over Skerton Bridge, the new sweep of road casting blue and orange shapes across the famished oval of his head.

    'I've been underground for much of it,' he sighed. I readied myself for some tale of clandestine political agitation. 'You might have seen some of my caving gear in the back seat when you got in.'

    I glanced round and saw a nylon rope, a carbide lamp and a pair of knee pads.

    'So your pot-holing venture took off?' The image of Seamus squeezing himself into dark crevices seemed inexplicably apt.

    'Caving, please. Pot-holing is different. To me at least.' He swung the Mini into the car park across from Salisbury's, cut the engine and sat there, sniffing. The eye-patch gave his face a punched-in look. 'Up until September I was caving most of the time. There are some good wild caves in Britain. I've done them all: Giant's Hole, Lancaster-Easegill, Ogof Craig-a-Ffynnon.'

    He kind of trailed off here and I could see something was wrong. I didn't want to push him but then he changed the subject anyway.

    'I met someone this afternoon, shortly after dropping Helen off,' he said, carefully. He didn't seem all that certain of what he was telling me. It was as if, in the saying of it, he would somehow firm up what had happened in his own mind. 'On the way back to Lancaster. I was driving along the one-way system in town and I saw this girl. She was in distress.'

    I gritted my teeth and shivered; closed the window.
So did I,
I was going to tell him, when I got the chance.
Hey, so did I.

    'She was hurrying along with her hand up, as if warding something off. I thought she was a nutter, but she was cleanly dressed.'

    I snorted at this and nodded, aghast at the way Seamus' head worked and about as surprised as a man who has had his surprise gland removed.

    'It wasn't raining, but she was clutching her coat closed and she had her hand up in the air, you know how people do when it's pissing down. So I stopped. She came straight over to the car and got in. Said her name was Dawn and could I take her home. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she was having a nightmare.'

    'But she was awake?'

    'Yeah,' Seamus glanced at me, to see how I was taking it. I must have been wearing a pretty unusual expression because he came back for a second look. 'What do you think of that?' he said.

    Was she sleepwalking?'

    'No. She was aware of who she was and where she was and what she was doing. She couldn't stop herself.'

    'Was she daydreaming?' I suggested and then thought about it. 'Like, um, daynightmare… dreaming?'

    'I don't know. Thing about daydreaming is that you don't know you're doing it until some maths teacher hurls a board rubber at you.'

    'You're right there,' I said. 'Maybe she was rehearsing. Maybe she's an actress and she was getting into her part.'

    'I don't think so,' said Seamus, hardening his face a little.

    Well, what was she dreaming about?' And I thought about it a little more. 'Seamus, lad. She was taking the piss. Must have been.'

    Seamus shook his head. 'I don't think so. She looked pretty flustered. And she was grateful to get in the car. She calmed down instantly.'

    'Her nightmare? Did she tell you?'

    'Yeah. She said her roof was falling in.'

    'What roof?'

    Seamus smiled grimly, his lips pressed together. He looked at me again. 'Her head,' he said, searching my face for signs of understanding. I knew then that he'd fallen for her story.

    'Her
head?
Is this woman still at large?'

    'No, she's back at my place.'

    'Bloody hell, Seamus. So what's the story? She suffers from migraines or something?'

    He shrugged, staring at the blasted rubble around us. We sat listening to the engine cool down. 'I don't know what she's suffering from. I haven't had a chance to talk to her properly yet. I just gave her the key and told her to make herself at home. She didn't look happy about being left alone, but she was a damn sight happier than when I found her.'

    I opened the door and waited till he'd got out before turning to look at him over the roof. I slammed the door shut and told him about Eve. He seemed shocked and he seemed unhappy too, as though I'd trumped him in some way.

    'She as weird as mine?' he asked. I liked that possessive-ness.

    'She was sitting in a knackered car eating an apple. Pretty fucking nuts if you ask me.'

    It was a little milder now we'd left the coast behind us. We walked back along Parliament Street to the Indian restaurant, Seamus silent with whatever was uncoiling in his thoughts. I left him to it and watched the bloated river surge by narrow houses on the opposite bank that seemed lifeless and shrunken.

    'I would like to talk to you, a little later. About something that happened to me in the summer. Hello Helen!' He waved and strode ahead of me, leaving me to gawp like a fish. Helen was a dim shape against the wall; I suddenly noticed how fragile she appeared, although it could have merely been a trick of the light, and the heavy clothes she wore. Her cheeks were daubed with shade; she looked like a figure from a painting by Munch.

    She kissed Seamus lightly on the mouth, the glitter of her eyes never straying from my own. When I was close enough to feel the heat of her breath, she said: 'I met someone today.'

    

    

    

    It was a good meal. I was surprised and pleased to find a curry house so far north which served a decent Balti; a dish I usually had to wait for until I visited friends in Birmingham. We shared a bottle of red wine which Helen had brought with her (the restaurant was unlicensed) and, despite my alarm at her earlier words, the evening was thankfully free of anything enigmatic or threatening, as though we'd reached some unspoken agreement for a moratorium on the stuff we'd discussed in the pub. There'd been a subtle change in the way we tip-toed around each other; maybe Helen and Seamus had arranged this deliberately that afternoon, that their persuasions would be made separately in an attempt to eke something out of me that might not be so forthcoming otherwise. I was eager to find out what Seamus wanted to tell me but loath to share my own intrigues with Helen. If this was unfair, then I didn't feel too bad about it: I didn't like the way that they seemed to be cosy-ing up together and leaving me out in the cold, flying auto. Although there was probably something in it, I was reluctant to listen to them appropriate my memories, and the times we shared at Seven Arches and my strange adaptations of them, into something they could use as proof that I was being sucked into their tilted little world.

    'So who was it you met earlier?' I asked, trying to sound casual. That the three of us had forged new links at roughly the same time seemed too great a coincidence to be considered as such. But what else could it be? Helen had seemed the least impressed by these events. 'People meet people,' she'd said, at the start of the evening. That's what people do.'

    Now she lit a cigarette and, through the smoke, said: 'A guy called Jared.'

    'Jared?' Seamus and I said, simultaneously. 'What,' (Seamus went on) 'has he got a pint of beer between his shoulders?'

    'Not funny, Shay,' Helen sneered. I was impressed by her defence of the stranger. And jealous as fuck. 'Jared.
Jared.
It's a name. It's nice. I like it.'

    Seamus scoffed. 'Jared. What's his surname? Amsonjam? Do you get that?'

    'Oh fuck off, Shay,' Helen barked. Some diners turned to watch. 'Seamus. What a fucking boring name. Did you know that your name is an anagram of
emu ass?'

    'No. Jesus, is that how you spend your time?'

    I chipped in: 'So what's the story?' I was enjoying their tiff, but I could see the waiters getting antsy and I was curious. I wanted to find out how much of a tosspot Jared was so that I could feel better. So that I could get some sleep tonight.

    Helen lost her anger and reset her features, flinching her shoulders up as though she'd just been treated to a warm blast of air. 'He's lovely. But he's a bit odd. He came in the shop and started looking at some of my stuff, then he asked me how I worked, whether I used music or not. Then we started talking about relaxation techniques and he said I should try a sounds of the sea kind of thing. He said that was how he liked to relax.'

    'Christ,' said Seamus, 'why doesn't he just have a wank like everyone else?'

    Ignoring him, she fixed her gaze on me. Her eyes seemed too liquid, unstable in the candlelight. It was as if some of this water talk he'd charmed her with this afternoon had infected her. 'He told me he had lived by the sea all his life. He says that he's got test tubes in his room filled with water from every ocean in the world, collected by himself. He's working on smaller bodies of water now. He bought some of my water sculptures. He loved them.'

    Seamus swigged the last of his wine and beckoned the waiter. 'Would he like a bag of my piss?' he asked.

    'He wants to see me again,' she said, ignoring Seamus, but she didn't look massively enamoured of the idea. She chewed her lip. 'He wants to show me his underwater photos.'

    'I bet he does. Just before he tries to get a little moisture out of you.'

    'Seamus!' Even I was tiring of his act. Helen said to me: 'Something else happened to you today, didn't it?'

    After we'd paid the bill, Helen lingered on the doorstep, obviously wanting to talk to me some more. It was unnerving that she'd been able to read in my countenance the discomfort caused by the dream, but I was half-convincing myself she'd have said what she did regardless. She waved feebly, before crossing the road to the bus stop.