Mr. In-Between (22 page)

The scars left by the jaws of dogs, by broken glass and baseball bats, by the carefully applied ends of burning cigarettes. Even damaged nipples where, on one occasion he had failed to forget, electrodes had been attached. The sewn, puckered mouths of two gunshot wounds that had just failed to kill him. The grim zigzag and hairless patch of knee that testified to shattered patella.

Without disturbing the rising steam, a chill passed through the room. Goose bumps raced up his legs and he felt the flesh on his back tighten as they advanced on his spine and came to a tickling halt at the down at the base of his neck. He shivered.

Then warmth settled on him from above, as if by the gentle draping about his shoulders of a soft, warm towel. He thought for a moment to detect the faint trace of the scent of fabric conditioner. His nostrils dilated but the elusive aroma was gone. He found himself moved by a sudden hollow pity of which his patchwork body was the vehicle but somehow not the object. He wanted to hug himself, to step outside of this frail, damaged frame and envelop it, to forgive and protect it.

Blinking, he imagined that he saw diaphanous tendrils of steam beginning to converge about a point just before his eyes, to grow milky and opaque. He tried to focus on the movement as with agonising grace it slowly appeared to spiral, falling towards a discrete, localised gravity, as if he were observing the unthinkable rotation of a distant galaxy, a spasm of cosmic savagery and explosive grandeur whose impossible heat, in crossing unmappable voids, had exhausted itself, become meagre illumination by the time it reached his eyes. Then, with a heavy, wet thud of his heart, Jon thought that he saw the suggestion of a human face, trailing off to a neck and shoulders that faded transparently into curtains of water vapour. He feared to blink and dispel the image. Indistinct, perhaps a construction of reflecting light and the play of shadow cast by his own form across the steam, he began to recognise the face. It was a face of which he had been dreaming. It was like the projection of an over-exposed film in an over-illuminated room against a white wall. There was a suggestion of movement where he thought her mouth might be struggling to find density, as if she were beginning to smile, and he thought that soon the vaporous sketch in which he saw the formation of her lids might finally pool, then open to reveal indulgent eyes that gazed fondly upon him. He reached out his hand.

There was a click, and the bathroom door sprung open on its latch.

The steam rippled and billowed and split and whipped lazily this way and that. It began to pour from the room, withdrawing to another space.

His heart thudding quick and steady, Jon sat once more on the edge of the bath. He thought of Cathy and something within him broke in two, something improperly mended. With an aching, urgent intensity, he needed to masturbate. It did not take long. He sank to his knees and thought of the smudge of lipstick on her front tooth, of the shy and forgiving way she broke his gaze, flicking a strand of hair from her face and looking at the ceiling when, dancing with her friends, she had glanced over her shoulder and seen that he had been watching her. The vividness with which he recalled the softness of the flesh of her wrist, gently compressed by the strap of the watch Andy had given her as a fifth anniversary present. The way he had wondered with schoolboy shame if she knew or suspected the existence of the urge he had pretended to himself had been a struggle to control, to reach and trace the curve of her breast with a gentle index finger, then cup its full weight in the palm of his hand, and take a step towards her, to nuzzle into the space behind her ear and in one long inhalation which made his lungs ache, to take into himself that scent and hold it inside, where it might flow through his veins like fresh air through the window of a long unoccupied house. How he had even imagined that she might allow him—how she might
want
him—to gather the hair at the base of her neck gently, like twine in his fist, and ease back her head so that her throat was taut and kiss her neck and shoulders and eyes and mouth, luxuriating in each contact, gulping her in like he was parched. The knowledge that, had he attempted to do so, she would in fact have taken a step back, embarrassed, surprised, possibly even pleased, but insistent. The suspicion that, even so, she would have been breathing more rapidly, shallow and quick, and that she would cover the shaky way she caught her breath by coughing into her fist. The knowledge that she had wrapped him naked in her arms and wanted what had happened to him never to have happened.

All of this in a second or two, like a pile of photographs thrown into the air and caught in slow motion, blank side turning to reveal image, image to reveal blankness, upon none of which his mind was allowed to settle: from one incomplete image his mind flitted to the next, the next, the next, desperate both to fix the instant in eternity and to reach the next plateau, for it to be finished.

He spasmed when he came, like a cripple trying to find his feet. The lumps of his spine crashed against the side of the bath, down which he slowly slid, with a moan, until his forehead rested against his knees. Pearly beads of jism rested on the thick, wiry mattress of his pubic hair, between his fingers, had made a pool in his navel. He wiped his palm on one knee and watched intently as the small, glutinous drop of seminal fluid began to form into the temporary jelly state of whose purpose he had little idea. He rubbed the jelly between the tips of his thumb and forefinger, his head full of the concussion of fully open taps emptying water into a bath that was full to capacity. He wondered for the first time in his existence if he was sterile. The thought that it might be possible for him to play any part in the perpetuation—the creation—of life was abhorrently comical.

He thought of Cathy, and the first sob gathered in him, rushing down his spine like flood water and gathering under increasing pressure in his stomach until, before he became aware of what was happening, it exploded from within, forcing open his clenched jaws, gushing through his open mouth. It was an expression of an agony that he had been unaware lurked within him and, as if he had accidentally belched aloud in class, his hand went to his mouth and his eyes opened wide in surprise and humiliated shame. He groaned again, and began to shudder and sob, rocking on the pivot at the base of his spine, all the while holding his face to his knees to muffle the sounds that issued from him, although it took a long while to subside and although there was no one to hear.

When he had done, he stood and, reaching into the bath, let sufficient­ water flow away for him to immerse and clean himself. He stepped out for a moment, one foot on the carpet, the other in the water, to retrieve from a low shelf a shaving mirror, razor and foam. He dipped the mirror in the water to wash the obfuscating­ steam from its reflective surface, then soaped and very carefully shaved his face. After drying himself, he ran the electric hair-clippers over his head, brushing the clippings into the sink. He felt he was beginning to recognise himself again, although he didn't look quite as he had always imagined. It was as if he had been looking, all these years, not into a mirror but at a slightly callous caricature, the authorship of which was obscure. He ran his hands across the smooth suede of his scalp.

He stood at the bathroom window and with one finger lifted the blind a notch. He looked at a slate-grey drizzle being kicked irritably this way and that by a petulant wind.

He began to plan his redemption.

When he was ready he knew time to have passed in the world external. It was dark outside. He sat in the blackest of shadows near the phone and lifted the receiver, blowing non-existent dust from the mouthpiece.

Chapman answered on the third ring. His voice was muffled, and Jon could picture him cradling the phone in his neck, a cigarette clamped in the corner of his mouth as he looked about for an ashtray.

‘It's Jon,' he said. ‘Jon Bennet.'

His name was an exclamation of something like joy in the priest's mouth. ‘I've been hoping you'd call,' he said, ‘I've tried to call you many times but there's never any answer. I even called round once or twice but you were out. It's really good to hear from you. How've you been keeping?'

‘Fine.' He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘Listen, I'm sorry to bother you at this time of night—'

‘Not at all.' The last word was distant but clearer; the head turning from the receiver, the cigarette being removed and its tube of ash deposited into an ashtray, a sigh as the priest eased himself into an armchair and crossed his legs, upon which uneven surface he balanced the phone. ‘What can I do you for?'

‘It's Andy,' said Jon. ‘I wanted to speak to you about Andy. Have you seen much of him lately?'

A moment of silence, a whisper of interference. Chapman sighed clicked his tongue. ‘I've popped by once or twice,' he confirmed. There was something guarded in his response. ‘Have you not seen him since—'

‘Since I got better. No. He doesn't call.'

‘Perhaps he's been round. You're very difficult to get hold of.'

‘No,' said Jon. ‘I'd have known. I haven't been out that much.' Sensing Chapman's eyes narrowing with concern, he added, ‘I still looked like Frankenstein's monster until recently. I didn't want to scare any children.'

Chapman laughed, or tried to. He said, ‘I hope you're fully recovered by now.'

‘I'm on my way,' said Jon.

‘That's good,' the priest told him. ‘Good for you. Keep it up.'

Jon scratched the base of his skull. ‘Anyway, like I said, it's really Andy that I want to speak about.'

‘So you did, so you did. How can I help?'

He gritted his teeth. ‘How did he seem the last time you saw him?'

‘Oh, you know Andy,' said Chapman. ‘He's fine, all things considered.'

A passing car threw a dirty, sweeping arc of yellow light through a crack in the curtains and across the room, bathing him for a moment in its glow.

With gentle but sufficient emphasis, Jon said, ‘This is important.'

‘I know how important he is to you …'

‘That's not the issue. Just a second.' Half-blind in the darkness, he reached out a hand, snagged a cigarette packet, removed and lit one. The end glowed fiercely and the half-glimpsed smoke taunted him as he expelled it with the faces it refused to draw. ‘I want your honest opinion,' he declared, ‘unmediated by the need to spare my feelings.'

‘I'm not sure it's for me to say,' answered Chapman directly. ‘You know Andy far better than I. Would it not be easier for you to pop round and see him at work in the morning—'

‘That's not possible.'

‘Or to phone him in the evening, then? I'm sure he'd jump at the chance at going for a drink. Especially as it's been so long since you saw each other.'

‘I've tried to phone him. He never seems to be in.'

More silence.

‘No,' agreed Chapman. ‘No, he doesn't.'

‘Have you any idea—' Jon began.

The priest pre-empted him. ‘Jon, I'm sorry. I know your concern's genuine but I don't feel comfortable talking like this over the phone. I know it's nothing of the sort, but I can't help but feel like I'm
gossiping.
Why don't you come round for a cup of tea in the morning? We'll have a chat.'

Jon straightened in the chair, almost dropped the phone. Something about the peculiar intonation of that innocuous final word had jarred him. He frowned, and with the hand that held the cigarette pinched the bridge of his nose.

‘—Jon?'

‘Sorry,' he said distantly, then, ‘Yeah. Thanks. That's a good idea. When would it be OK? Don't you have confessions and masses and whatnots to get out of the way?'

‘Don't you worry about that. Come round when it's convenient. If I'm busy then someone'll let you in, I'm sure. You can make yourself at home. How's that?'

‘Thank you,' said Jon. ‘I appreciate it. I really do.'

‘It's nothing. It'll be a pleasure to see you.'

No it's not, thought Jon, as he hung up. And no it won't be.

He finished the cigarette and ground it cold in the ashtray, which he carried, still in darkness, and ran beneath a kitchen tap. How he wished to lift the blinds and stand there, bathed in electric lamplight and weak starlight, exposed to the enquiring gaze of the Tattooed Man.

You finally taught me what I am, he thought.

He would not lift the blind because of a childish fear that the Tattooed Man would be standing there, just the other side of the glass, closer than his own reflection, sodium haze casting him in half-formed silhouette. What expression would Jon read there, what form could he not help but impose on that void?

His scrotum crawled with fear and anticipation. For the first time in many weeks he felt charged with energy, unable to keep still. He paced the floor for a while, then began to gather about him all the things he thought he might need. Over a black t-shirt, black shirt and faded blue jeans, he pulled on his overcoat, shrugging himself into it as if to re-establish an old fit. His keys hung from the keyhole in the door. He locked the house behind him.

It was long past one a.m., on what day he did not know, nor even in which month, although he knew the winter had passed its nadir. He took in a lungful of air which tasted faintly of the city. He knew that he had been gone a long time when he could taste the air so specifically—the exhaust fumes, the take-aways, the carrier bags, the sweat and deodorant, the cheap shoe shops, the sterile supermarkets, baby talc and vomit, cigarettes and alcohol, all passed briefly across his nose and palate, lining up to re-introduce themselves. The street was dark and lined with cars. Some bedroom lights still shone, but each house might as well have been a mausoleum like his own for all the vitality it projected. He lit a cigarette, pleased with the sound and scent of the petroleum flame whipping in the wind. He was followed by the reverberations of his footsteps.