Slights (33 page)

  Mrs 48, mother of four, more concerned about leaving them behind than leaving herself.

  I told them what I saw and they went away, a little more fearful of death. What faces would they see? I could see them adding up the slights, remembering faces of hurt people. Why would the giving up of a train seat matter more than the anniversary of my father's death? I imagined people were more careful with their lives after I spoke to them. I taught them not to be petty, not to remember the slights. Because it is them who wait for me. Them who suffer.

  "I see the same look on every face," I told people, "but I couldn't identify it until I caught a train one morning. As we pulled into the station, I saw a platform full of people with the look. Boredom, anticipation, and desperation, desperation for the boredom to end. Until I realised what was waiting for me after death, I despised life. Even then, I found death enticing, because there I am queen. The centre of attention. Even after I realised what the people were waiting for, I couldn't stop their numbers from growing."

  I became popular; in demand. I spoke to the people who came to see me at the hospital, some who had returned from death and wanted to know the truth in what they saw. Some saw the dark room. I told the others they had not seen the truth; that they blocked the truth out.

  I said, "The people waiting in the room suffer. They are alive, but part of them is snapped away at each slight. The snapped bit attaches itself to the offender, and this is what he sees after death. So the more you believe you are slighted, the lesser person you become. The horror of it is that if someone hurts you, you are in their power, because you remember them forever, whereas they will soon forget. The one who does the hurting usually doesn't care what happens to the other, or will certainly forget that particular hurt. It is foolish to be wounded by such small things; the paper cuts of life, the slights, when the world is so terrible around us." The other staff members listened. They loved this stuff. It made sense of what they did.

  I met a lot of people who'd seen death after life. They came to hear what I had to say; they wanted me to hear their tales. Every one of them felt special, singled out.

  "So, what did you see?"

  "It was terrifying," Mrs 51 said. I was thrilled. I'd found a soul mate. She said, "It was very dark. I walked and walked, because I didn't want to stand still. There was a flash of something up ahead, and a voice said, 'Come to the light.' But I didn't know what the light was, and I turned and ran the other way. Into darkness. But everywhere I turned, light appeared. 'Come into the light.' It was so terrifying I had to climb the air to get away, and that was how I clawed my way back to life."

  She closed her eyes, remembering.

  "What about you?" she said.

  "The horror is the unimagined, unavoidable, forgotten slights; the man you snubbed, the woman you bumped, the teacher you teased. Nobodies, nothing events, and yet they guide your fate. In all my trips to the afterlife, I have never been guided by a light. There is no journey; there is only awakening. And from the looks of horror which come over the faces of those who have died in my arms, my mother's screams, they see what I see. I can only think that those who talk of light, tunnels, loving faces, were not really dead. Or they are lying."

  I felt in a better place than I had for a long time, so when Peter called me, I didn't hang up in his ear. "So, want to come to a thing at Maria's parents? Should be okay. Her parents ask about you, believe it or not."

  "Hey, I believe it. You're the one who hates me."

  "Ha ha ha. So, ya coming?" I could hear a difference in Peter's voice when he spoke to me. He was eleven, I was nine. We had not progressed much past there.

  "Free food?"

  "You have to bring some wine or something."

  "I'll bring a surprise."

  I brought a case of beer.

  The youngest daughter-in-law, the one married to Adrian, got very drunk on the homemade wine they had provided. She dozed, the others went to check the children, and I was left, ignored.

  Adrian came in. He bent, looked into her face, straightened, smiled at me.

  "She's asleep," I whispered, feigning concern.

  "So I see."

  "She doesn't know how to hold her liquor. I don't seem to have that problem." I licked a nonexistent, wayward drop of beer from my fingers. "Luckily."

  He smiled. I had heard reports his wife had gone off sex since the six month-old was born, and that he and his brothers were known for their appetites.

  Adrian was broad and brown. He had a smile which creased his face, a flicking tongue which mesmerised me. And I was full of magic; I was teaching people how to live their lives. And people were listening.

  "Let's go for a drive," I said.

  "Sure. I'll just tell the others."

  "Let's just
go
."

  I didn't wink, though I was greatly tempted to.

  We walked to my car, not talking. That's when it always fails, when I'm supposed to talk, because I can't invent words like that. I find it a terrifying challenge.

  Adrian and I flirted from our first meeting, years ago at Peter's wedding. Adrian's wife was his fiancée then, but she was preoccupied with sucking up to his parents, so we flirted and cheeked each other. I thought maybe he liked me enough not to marry her. We reached my car. He looked in the passenger side. Others who'd done that went silent, or said, "Is that where…?" I don't think he had any idea.

  "I'll take you for a drive," I said. He was leaning against the door. "Get away for a few minutes." I reached my arms around him, laid my head on his chest. He had a very broad chest. He wore a jumper his wife had knitted. Unwittingly, she had made him something sexy. The stuff she wore herself was terrible: cardigans, jumpers too short, scarves garish, little pert hats in grey. This jumper was dark brown, thick, soft, my head against his teddy bear chest and I unlocked the door behind his back.

  "Where will we go?" he said. He took the keys from me; he wanted to drive. He wanted to drive me, too, turn my wheels, and I would be an instrument. I would not speak, I'd hum and purr. I'd need some petrol which he'd give me, a nice whisky or a beer, and I would take him from A to B.

  "I'll drive," I said. Let him be the car; let me steer fate. I drove to the local park. Missed it once and chucked a U-ie, roared past a slow coach in my desire to get there. There was no one about in there; it was a very dull place. The playground equipment a sticky slide and an old railway carriage, off its wheels. Kids were scared to go in there: beer bottles, broken glass, evidence of adults hidden inside. Some kids hate the smell of an adult.

  We kissed at Peter's wedding when everyone was drunk. He pretended it never happened; I had the bitten lip to prove it did.

  "I want a swing," I said, and I squeezed my bum onto the child-size seat.

  "Steve," he said, rolling his shoulders, embarrassed. "Come on, Stevie."

I swung my legs to get started. "Give us a push."

  "I push my kids all the time." He had two others, apart from the sex-stealing baby.

  So swings weren't a sexual thing for him. They reminded him he had a family.

  Maturity was what he liked.

  "I've never done this before," he said, thank God, saved me from saying it because it sounded pathetic.

  "Done what?" I said. I leaned over and kissed him. "That?" and I bit him on the palm. "Or this?" I said. He closed his eyes; his conscience needed to be seduced.

  He shivered as I played him, shivered, his eyes shut like he was dreaming. When I stopped he squinted at me. I leant and breathed in his ear, "Come on, Adrian," and he growled, he kissed me, the back of my throat, and now I meant it, I shuffled my jeans off and he touched me, his hands gentle, his body shaking with the effort, and I rolled his jeans down for him. I pushed him back into his place and a knee on either side of his thighs.

  "You're gorgeous, Stevie," he said. "Gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous." He said it faster and faster. I didn't want to escape; I wanted him as my own.

  He winked at me afterwards, casually, thinking it had meant the same to us. I wondered how he would clean up but I didn't care; I shoved him out at the end of the street, and sung ad lib to
Ode to Joy
all the way home.

I'd had a shower, I was in my pyjamas, and Peter called.

  "I fucking hate you sometimes. Where did you go? And what happened to Adrian?" he said.

  "What do you mean? What's wrong with him?"

  He whispered, "He's pissed off. Someone asked him if he wanted some cheese and biscuits and he just started shouting."

  "Don't tell me you're still there. I thought you would have left hours ago."

  "Kidding. The girls are acting up and Maria's in her element, 'But what is it, Adrian? Please, darling, what is it?' Like he's going to tell her."

  "Maybe he just doesn't like cheese and he can't hide it any more."

  "Ha ha. What did you
do
to him, Steve? I've never seen anything like it."

  "I know you think it's funny. Don't try to pretend you're shocked."

  He laughed. "You're terrible, Steve. Tell me what you said to him. In case I can use it myself."

  "Think of your own mean things to say," I said.

  Actually I didn't want to confess just how awful I had been. When I pushed Adrian out of the car I'd said, "By the way, I bet your daughter an ice cream I could suck your cock before I went home. She said, no way, he only likes kids my age."

  I could hear shouting.

  "Oh, fuck," Peter said. I could tell he was smiling. I hoped he wasn't hysterical; the girls needed one sane parent to keep them steady. "The mother's into it now. I can't quite see, but I think she just chucked a bowl of jelly at the father."

  "Where are you?" I said.

  "I've got the phone in the hall cupboard. It's too bloody dangerous out there. There's punching in the backyard and the women keep accidentally scratching each other with their nails."

  "And Adrian won't stop shouting."

  "Waah! Waah! Gotta go," and he hung up.

  Peter told me later that Maria was silent all the way back, and went to bed wordlessly. Kelly went out without asking and Maria left it up to Peter to deal with.

  "What, it's your fault, is it?" I said when he described the scene to me.

  "I'm responsible for you. People blame me for you."

  "People? What people?"

  And he was fucking silent.

  "What people are you talking about?"

  "Maria. Just Maria."

  I wanted to believe that was true.

at thirty-three

Dougie Page said, "Stevie, you need to move away from your house. It's a bad influence on you." I let him take me out for dinner, but I wouldn't spend a night away. What would happen to the place if I wasn't there? Anybody could come in. Anybody could dig, if I wasn't there to stop them.

  He told me terrible things, whispered them to me, showed me proof.

  He took me home and showed me this wall, that picture, that crack, all of it meaning things about my family I didn't want to know. He said, "You need to get away, Stevie. Don't you know anywhere you could go? Somewhere to make you feel better?"

  My old neighbour Melissa had a boyfriend with a place in the country. She'd told me about it often enough, to make me jealous or something, I don't know. The walls were different to me now, the smell of my home, all the memories I thought were happy now sickened me. It was all wrong. Dad's chair, Mum's stove, Peter's bed, all of it different and with a whole new story.

  I don't often drive in the country. I like to get somewhere, find things on my journey, not just seeing the lovelies of nature. Melissa's boyfriend's place sounded good, though; secluded, atop a rise so I could stare out over a kingdom I could claim. My car rattled and farted. It was used to smooth, tax-payer roads and I was asking too much of it. I arrived in the early afternoon and found a large tin shed. It had windows, and the windows had curtains, it had a door. This was it. I carried my food, books, magazines in. The place was warm but dark; someone had built it so the sun didn't come in but that tin heated up. Useless design. It made me sleepy; I sat on the couch, ate a bag of chips and woke freezing. Really freezing, and it was dark, and all I missed was the smell of shit, because I could smell mothballs, all right, fucking mothballs. I had not even noticed where the light switch was. I was too scared to move around in the dark, touch walls, anything
sensible
like that, in case I touched a face, pointed teeth. So I lay on the couch all night and when I slept I dreamt of snow and snowing and very very cold.

  Ho, ho, and in the morning everything was lovely. I found all the light switches and the heater, I closed all the curtains and created an artificial world. I found the mothballs; old coats in a cupboard, each pocket holding two of the koolmint stinkers. I threw the coats onto the back porch. The smell of them upset me.

  It was all right, in that place. I made it warm and light and I didn't go outside until it was time to leave.

  I hate staying in strange places.

  When I handed the keys back to Melissa, she said, "Thanks for that," and asked me for the rent. I couldn't believe it. I was only a business thing to her. She was no friend at all. I could imagine how many people she had slighted.

  I told her she had to come to my place to collect it. She had plenty of people waiting in her dark room. I wanted to see some of them.

  This was enjoyable. So many years I waited to hurt that girl. This was the first time I enjoyed the journey, the pain she felt. Why did she stay loyal to me? That deserved punishment in herself.

  It took her a while to realise what I was doing. I stalked her around the house, a knife behind my back, and she laughed at first, thinking we were playing a game. She never was my speed. Then I backed her into the bathroom, and she began to feel nervous.

  "I don't need to go, Steve," she said.

  "Why did you charge me to stay at that place?"

  "Because it's a place you pay for! Everyone pays! It's no big deal. If you can't afford it, owe me the money. I don't care."

  "I care. You're supposed to be a friend, but you treat me like a business associate."

  She looked confused. God, she was annoying. I pulled the knife from behind my back.

  "Steve?" she said.

  "Have you never had any hint about what I am?" I said. "Never, in all our dealings, have you had the sense to be frightened of me."

  I jumped forward at her and she screamed, fell backwards into the bath. So helpful. I bent down and slit her throat before she could even blink. That's how fast I was. The blood came thick and fast. I held her head to keep her still in the bath, and I watched her eyes as they flickered. She gurgled at me, and I realised I'd made a terrible mistake. I'd cut her throat so she couldn't talk. How could she tell me what she saw?

  In fury, I slapped her. "Useless to the last," I said to her.

  As soon as it was over, I realised what I'd done. I was slighted by her, and now she was dead. I would be in her dark room. I shivered. They call for me. They are terrified at the prospect of dying without a priest there to wave an arm, toss some magic dust, save the soul. There is no time for that. Or for confessions, explanations, last words. I'm not interested in their needs; I have my own to look after.

  I think my actions are beyond my control. It is habit. My father had it too and perhaps his father. So what can I do? It's my birthright.

My Granny card said: