Rocks in the Belly (25 page)

‘No, bugger you,' he says. ‘I'll guess your age. Just hold on, let me get my bearings. Gets harder to tell as you age. People are having sex at about twelve these days, looks like.' He steps back, straightening out his big, thick coat. ‘You gonna give me a spell on that wacky baccy then or what?'

I look at the smile on his face, at the wolf sitting in there beneath those folds of skin — that disguise. The young soul still in there underneath all that old age. I grin at him. ‘You sure you can
handle it, old man? I don't want to be holding your hair while you throw up.'

‘What hair.'

‘Fair point.' I hand him the joint and he gives me his rollie to guard, the end all brown from soaked-in saliva. He takes a puff and looks at the workmanship, appreciating the difference. Then his eyes are on me and I try to meet his gaze, my attention flicking repeatedly to that front door.

‘You're about twenty-five I'd say, pretty boy. Though you've still got a lot of growing up to do for a man. I'd been married three years by then. You married?'

I shake my head.

‘How did I fare?' he says and takes another pull of smoke.

‘Close. I'm twenty-eight. What makes you say I've got growing up to do?'

‘You're not married.'

‘Not everyone has to do that. It's old hat.'

‘Well, you're not living your life are you then, unless you give it away. Everything's a lot easier once you stop focusing on your own stuff. It's never-ending you know, that stuff.' He hands me the joint, takes back his cigarette. ‘Thanks for that. ROCKET!'

I look round as the dog comes bounding from a garden, tongue out. He jumps up at his owner then turns and does the same to me. I stroke him behind the ears, feeling the man watching.

Maybe if I got a dog. Dogs are good company.

‘He likes you,' he says. ‘Animals can spot souls, you know. Like children can. I always say to myself — Reg, I say, if he's alright with Rocket then he's alright with me.'

Reg.

I bend and let Rocket's tongue lick my neck and then it's wet and warm and right inside my ear, my mouth opening, eyes squinting shut. I straighten again, wiping off the wet. ‘It's impossible to think
about anything while a dog's licking your ear. Someone should patent a machine.'

‘True,' he says. ‘You married to that reefer?'

I take a drag then hand it over again, our interaction seeming imminently at an end and yet we're both still standing here, waiting for something — hoping for some truth.

‘I look like a good soul then, to you?' I say, my gaze alighting on him briefly.

He breathes out the smoke, inspecting the remnants of joint, rearranging it between his fingers for better purchase. ‘You do,' he says, resolutely — takes another puff, exhales. ‘So, how old am I? Go on.' And again, he pumps himself up for a team photo.

‘Doesn't it all become much of a muchness after seventy?'

‘Bugger off. Who says I'm a day over sixty!'

He erupts into a gale of laughter which threatens at all times to descend into rampant asthma — the phlegm rattling in him.

Once he recovers he stands up again, waiting, drops the joint on the grass and scuffs it out. I'm circling, giving him the once-over.

I subtract a few years, for safety. ‘Sixty-eight.' He absorbs it, smiles in a way that isn't readable as satisfaction or disappointment. ‘I guess when you get up to those numbers a few years under is no great compliment, is it,' I say, giving him a grin.

‘Pretty close,' he says. ‘Pre-tty close. You got any more of that wacky stuff?' His eyes are even more bloodshot now, shining in the streetlight.

‘I have.'

‘Shall we?' he says, looking over at the bench — a little somewhere for sleep-starved mums to bring their prams in the early morning. Or for teenagers to fumble at love in the twilight. Men to smoke behind their wife's back at night. Or phone their mistresses.

I'm rolling us a joint and feeling the beginnings of a smile. We're sitting here without expectation, just strangers striking up
a moment with some weed. I could hug
him
.

‘So what you and your lady argue about, if you don't mind my asking?'

‘Long story.'

Rocket grumbles as he lies down at Reg's feet, his head alert and perky, his ears picking up things we can't.

‘Well, if that's code for mind your own business, that's fine. Otherwise' — he looks at me — ‘I've got time.'

I busy myself with the joint. A door slams across the park and I glance up but there's no sign of her.

‘Hear about the old chemical plant?' he says.

‘No?'

‘Caught fire. It's burning now. Just awful. National TV.'

And at that, a sharp bubble rises up through my middle and out. ‘My mum's dying.'

He straightens. I'm not looking at him but I turn away while he's gazing into the middle distance.

‘I'm sorry to hear that,' he says, really soft and steady. ‘What of? If you don't mind.'

‘Cancer.'

‘Oh, that bastard. I'm sorry to hear it, son.'

‘Well, you know.' I lick the joint.

‘How old is she?'

And I have to think about it, working back based on landmarks in my life. ‘Sixty-two.' I hand him the joint so he can have the honour of going first.

He looks at me, doesn't take the joint, turns away and stares at nothing in the middle distance. ‘After you, son. After you.'

Son.

‘What's your mum's name?'

‘Mary.'

‘Reg,' he says, and shakes my hand.

‘Michael.' The same lie I told Patricia, not that it worked. Reg smiles, looking away again, speaking to me now from the middle distance. ‘Where does she have the cancer? Or is it too painful? We can chat about the weather. I can talk about nothing till the cows come home. You learn that at my age, once there's enough you can't talk about. There's too much that happens to you once you get to seventy-four to not get good at skirting round.'

‘Seventy-four? Wouldn't have guessed it, Reg,' and I give him a smile but he's waiting for my answer. ‘Brain cancer. Knocked out her speech. She has the most aggressive cancer there is, apparently. Lucky us.'

He sucks air in over false teeth then tut-tuts them. ‘And is your father still with us?'

‘Heart attack.'

And at that Reg sags a bit. ‘How old was
he
?'

Old people always ask that, I realise. Anything happens, they want to know how old the person was, as if to ameliorate their own fears that it could be them. Everyone always makes it about themselves.

‘He'd be approaching your age now if he'd lived. Sixty-four. Died seven years ago. He was sat there one morning before work and he said to my mum, you look nice. She went upstairs for the dirty washing, came back a minute or two later, and he was dead. He was a comfort eater — fat as a small house by then. I left for Canada after he died. I'd had enough. Not bad for last words though are they — you look nice.'

‘Sixty-
four
.' He breathes out some smoke, a hint of a cough tickling him but he holds it in.

‘Bet you're glad you bumped into me, eh, Reg.'

He smiles a wan smile. ‘Only the good die young.'

‘I should live forever then.'

We share a quiet, clouds drifting over.

‘So why are you and your lady arguing? You've been through a lot.'

‘You can't really call it an argument. I dunno. I've not known her long.' I stay staring off towards her door, my hand coming up with the joint for him to take.

‘You got brothers or sisters?'

‘No. Just me now. I had a brother that died a few years back. Robert. But I'm a foster child, so it kind of doesn't matter. I mean …' I sigh. ‘I mean Robert was a foster child. I was —' Rocket takes up barking and Reg is gazing at me, his eyes full of salty water, although that could be his age.

He's staring into me and it's like looking at Time — all folds of skin and age and sun spots — two glinting blue specks shining out. All that experience but he's just as confused as me. The eyes have it. Seventy-four years. All those moments, and he's sitting here near the end of his run but still as dumbfounded by it all as I am.

In fact he's more hopeful than me that everything's going to be alright. And it isn't. It isn't going to be alright. It's all wrong. He's going to die. Alone perhaps. He's alone
now
probably. Nothing left but these walks and some nice smokes, he won't enjoy them all, or even all of one of them. He just has a few of those fettered little moments to look forward to where life flaps its wings for a second and things feel alright. Those moments when you get that blink of ok-ness.

Like that hug from Mum yesterday. Like Reg here, taking an interest — showing kindness. Like walking across this park in a minute and knocking on Patricia's door until she lets me in, in every way. Then going home and reaching out to Mum.

‘You got some help, son? Who's looking after your mum?'

This is all life is then, these small ok moments. And maybe a life can be measured by how many there are. So that if we fall to suicide or alcohol or violence or bitterness, it's because we fell into one of
those gaps in between the ok moments.

Which must be where that eight-year-old me fell.

For some reason, seeing this seventy-four-year-old man as lost as me isn't scary. It stands me up. ‘Nobody is, Reg. I should probably get back.' I hold out my hand to shake his, Rocket barking again, the sound echoing in the dark. I'm shaking Reg's hand with both of mine because the thing is, if he's seventy-four and doesn't have the answers, there aren't any. Which means my answers are as good as any. Any map is good enough when you're lost. Besides, my map is all I've got.

I walk away but he calls after me, standing there stuttering because he knows there's more he needs but he doesn't know what it is or how to go about getting it.

‘Hey,' he says, that fluttering doubt in the back of his tobaccostained throat. ‘Will you let me know if you need anything. Perhaps I could help. Or, heaven forbid, pay my respects at least, when … You know.'

I turn from the warm glow of Patricia's lit window, as if going to her will be dying a happy death, or I'm an alien about to walk back up into the light of the spaceship — fly away from this earthly confusion.

‘Haven't you been to enough funerals, Reg?'

But I regret saying that because it changes his face. I've caused another small stain of sadness to spread in him. I regret that stain and walk towards him. He stands a bit straighter at the look on my face, when he sees what's coming.

I wrap myself around him and he's all juddering and thin like a sparrow. I can feel his brittleness — seventy-four years have eaten him down to this featherweight presence. Life could blow him away. One more tragedy, one more insult. He smells of burnt cooking oil and cigarettes, and I can feel that miniscule vibration in him, like he's quartz and you could set your watch by his melancholy.

But it's Dad I'm hugging.

Then I leave him there recovering. I'm walking away shoeless across the park but stop and call out, ‘It'll be St Margaret's when it happens, Reg.'

He lifts a hand to acknowledge me, Rocket skittering ahead of him, his tail up, transmitting information back to Planet Dog.

I can already feel that Patricia hug coming, but I get to her door and the picture is leant against the railings outside, one of my shoes on the top step, the other flung down here on the pavement, over on its side.

I knock anyway, not my bravest of knocks.

After a long silence I nod at the closed door, put one shoe on, then head down the steps and put on the other, leaving the picture behind, in case.

A last look at her house then I'm running home, the burning chemical plant showing up orange in the distance. The quiet wail of sirens.

Robert can come out of hospital today. Plus the police are here again with the Mandy social worker.

Dad doesn't join in. ‘Lots to do round the house.'

He's making everything Robert proof. There's a folddownable seat thing in the shower now just for Robert but I like to stand on it cos it makes the shower sprayer come almost right onto my head, the water really noisy in my brain like I'm inside a shaken up can of Coke. Plus I can't really think about anything with the water noisy and hitting my head.

There's a metal thing around Robert's bed now too, like in a hospital. To stop him falling out. Dad calls it a Robert proof fence.

I don't mind Robert coming home, I don't think. Except he might not if the investigation decides it's our fault he fell off the ladder.

I go into his room and there are tools and leads all over the floor and Dad's head is under Robert's bed, a bit of his bum crack showing. Normally that makes me laugh.

‘Dad?'

He turns round then goes back to what he's doing. ‘Hey,' he says.

‘Why aren't you shaving anymore? Is it because you're sad?'

He stops for a second then carries on. Looks like he's going to
put squidgy stuff on all the sharp bits on Robert's bed. Robert might fit a lot now apparently. And he won't be going to school for a while and he'll never go back to the same one and we only just got him his school uniform. I'll probably have to grow into it.

‘Can't you go and play or something? Your dad's got a lot to do and Robert'll be home in a while. You done the things Mum told you to do?'

I nod.

‘Have you?'

‘Yes.'

‘All of them?'

I nod. ‘Yes.'

‘Good boy.'

I'm staring at his drill. I try not to but I imagine it drilling into my hand or my head. Or I'm picturing picking it up and putting it into Dad sort of suddenly accidentally. The drill going right between one of those spine lumps in the middle of his back which are a bit like a dinosaur's. He gets them when he leans forward.