The Late Hector Kipling (33 page)

Mum and Dad still favour a phone with a dial and when it rings it rings exactly like phones used to ring. The way they should always ring. For some reason they keep it out in the hallway on a little wicker table, with nowhere to sit.

Maybe it’s Mum.

I hope it’s not Mum.

I don’t want Mum to phone.

I want Mum to ring the doorbell.

I don’t want a scenario whereby Mum is sobbing in some phone box on the edge of the M6.I want her here, safe inside. Safe in my arms, cos
then I’ll find the words. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I think I know what to say now. I think it’s all gonna be all right. In fact I’m sure it is.

‘Hello? Mum?’

‘Hector?’

‘Dad?’

‘Hector?’

‘Dad! What are you—’

‘No, Hector, it’s me. It’s Lenny.’

‘Lenny!’ I shout, as though I haven’t heard from him in over a decade. ‘Lenny, mate, how are you?’

‘Yeah, good.’

This is obviously not true, since he sounds like he’s speaking from the bottom of a mineshaft, up to his neck in water.

‘What is it, Len? What’s the matter? Is it Brenda?’

‘No, it’s not Brenda, er ...’ The line goes dead.

‘Hello? Lenny?’

‘Yeah, I’m still here.’

‘Right, cos I thought that the line had gone dead.’

‘No, I’m still here.’

‘So what is it?’

‘Hector, listen ... are you listening?’

Oh God, I don’t like the sound of this. Why is he asking me if I’m listening? Of course I’m fucking listening. What does he think I’m doing? ‘Yeah, Len, of course I’m listening.’

Fearing that I may be about to fall to it, I lie down on the floor. Fuck it’s cold.

‘Hector,’ whispers Lenny, ‘Kirk’s dead.’

Silence. Absolute. The collision of dust. The breath of mites. The sound of nothing bumping into never.

At last I say, ‘What?’ as one does on reception of bad news, thus urging the messenger to revisit the agony of the report.

‘Kirk died this morning.’

‘Kirk died?’

‘Yeah. He’s dead, Hec. His mum phoned me about an hour ago. I’d have called you straight away but I haven’t stopped crying.’ He pauses and I can hear that he’s off again. And you know what? I think I might be about to join him. I think this might be it. I think this might be the Big One. I thought that Sofia might have been the Big One, but then I hardly knew her, and when it came to the crunch it turned out that she wasn’t the Big One at all. But this is different. This is Kirk. Little Kirk Church with his bonkers blue face.

‘Oh my God!’ I say. It’s something to say.

‘I know, Hec,’ says Lenny, ‘I can’t get my head round it.’

‘Neither can I.’

‘It’s like going back thirty-one years.’

‘Thirty-one years?’

‘Come on, Hec, what happened thirty-one years ago?’

‘I really don’t know, Lenny, what happened thirty-one years ago?’

‘It’s thirty-one years since my dad died.’

Bastard! Oh, he had to bring that up, didn’t he? Had to get that little dig in. Had to take the first tentative steps towards the subjugation of my grief. Christ, I can’t believe that he’s gone for it so early in the game. Like a goal scored from the centre spot. I can’t fucking believe it. The audacity of the man. There should be laws against this kind of thing.

‘Oh my God!’ I say again, until I can work out the next thing to say. It’s not easy. You think this sort of thing is easy? No, it’s not easy. In fact I know what I’ll do. I’ll just cry. The tears are there awaiting instruction; the lump in the throat, the fever behind the eyes, the build-up of snot. Snot and spit of the finest quality, saved up for just such an eventuality. Here goes, I’ll show him. I’ll show him who’s who and what’s what when it comes to suffering. Just like when his dad died! Hah! I’ll show the fucker a thing or two. Here goes. Boo hoo. Boo hoo.

‘Hector, lad. Hector, don’t.’

‘Why not? What do you expect me to do? You expect me not to cry?

Lenny, you’ve just told me that our best friend’s dead. What do you fuckin’ expect? You expect me not to cry? Huh? You expect me not to cry? Is that what you expect?’ I might be laying it on a bit thick here. I’m sounding like Harvey Keitel.

‘Hector, this is awful. Really fucking awful. I don’t know what to say. I erm ... I can’t really speak right now. I just thought that I should let you know ... and ...’

‘And I appreciate that.’ Big sniff.

‘I really don’t know what there is to say. I feel like you and me have so much to say to each other at the moment, and we’re not saying it. Or you’re not saying it. And something like this .. . well... I don’t know. It feels like the world just turned into a gas planet and . . . Listen, let’s talk when you get back, OK?’ His sobs have reached the pitch of wailing. I therefore work on an acoustic beyond wailing. Some might call it shrieking. Controlled shrieking I’d say, but shrieking nonetheless. This is how it goes:

‘OK, Lenny. OK,’ shriek, followed by a long moan, ‘OK, let’s just think about all this. Oh my God! Oh my God, Lenny!’ Implausibly protracted whimpering. ‘Listen, I have to go. I can’t do this. Not on top of everything else. Not with Sofia and Dad and Mum and . . .’ Almost a howl.

‘How’s your dad?’ he squeaks through a blocked nose.

I open up my jaw and make a sound so racked and primeval that there is nothing for it but to hang up the phone and collapse into the nap of the carpet. After all, Kirk is dead and, no matter what I might have led you to believe, my universe is coming apart at the seams. At least I think it is. I mean, it must be. It should be. No, it is. Of course it is. What do you take me for? I mean, come on, Kirk is dead. My friend, my beautiful friend. I mean, come on. You think I don’t feel something like that? You think this kind of thing doesn’t go through me like hot needles? I’m not messing about here. This is the Big One. Oh yes, this is the real thing, and I’m in hell. I’m sure Lenny is also in hell, but not
the kind of hell that I’m in. No, Lenny’s hell, terrible though I’m sure it is, at least has cushions, and fags, and toilets, and beds. My hell has none of these. My hell is like the surface of Pluto. Not a blanket in sight. In fact, no sight. Only ice. Nothing but ice. That’s the kind of hell I’ve got, Lenny. So what do you think of that?

Somewhere around midnight Mum came home. I’d raided Dad’s supply of lagers that he keeps under the stairs. In fact I drank them under the stairs, chatting away to the laundry basket and a packet of seeds.

I was awoken by the incessant punching of the bell. She pushed past me and made her way upstairs to attend to her toilet. A son does not interrupt his mother when she’s attending to her toilet. And fast on the heels of her ablutions came bed. I never stood a chance.

For a long time I sat outside the bedroom door and eavesdropped on her sobbing. I pressed my ear up against the painted wood until it dwindled to nothing. The air felt hungry for more, so I curled up on the landing and cried my heart out. Cried it all the way out. Cried it right down the stairs and off out the door, up the hill and down, on its way to the beach and, inevitably, out to sea. All the way to Ireland, across and over the hills to Blacksod Bay and on and across, all the way to America.

Oh God, Rosa. What are you thinking?

I’ve taken off all my clothes and I’m curled up in the bath, staring at Bob the budgie. Little dead Bob. It’s impossible not to think of Kirk.

But I don’t know what to think. Maybe it’s not about thinking. Maybe thinking shouldn’t come into it. But how can one not think at a time like this? What am I supposed to do? Not think? I’m thinking. I’m trying to think.

No one likes to be awoken by a phone ringing in the middle of the night. Worse still, a phone that rings and rings, stops, and then rings again.

Stops and rings, over and over. No one likes that sort of thing. No one that I know. I know I don’t.

Mum must have taken a sleeping pill or two, cos when I finally emerge from my bedroom, there she is on all fours at the top of the landing, trying to lift her head to negotiate the stairs.

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I whisper, turning her around and pointing her in the direction of her bed. ‘You go back to sleep. I’ll get it.’

‘Id’lll bi ve hopisal . . . hopistal . . .’ she mumbles, a rope of drool between her lips and the knuckle of her left thumb.

‘No, no, Mum. It’s probably some drunk with the wrong number.’

‘Id’lll bi abow y’ da ... bow ... Deri.’

Christ, what’s she taken?

‘Mum, go back to bed,’ I whisper, and I give her rump a little push with my knee. Off she goes, banging her head on the doorframe.

The phone stops just as I reach the bottom of the stairs. What a deformed sort of silence: the silence between alarms. It’s difficult to breathe in such a silence. Impossible to move the eyes. Impossible to move. I squat in the hallway, naked and shivering. I can hear a can in the front yard, clattering against the rockery. My teeth are clenched. I think I might be stuck like this for life.

When the phone rings again I almost pass out. Up in Mum’s room I hear a vase crash to the floor.

‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘Hello?’

Silence.

‘Hello? Who is this?’

The line isn’t dead. The line is alive. I can hear a siren in the distance and a soft breath. I can hear the creaking of plastic. Maybe a stomach.

‘Hello? Who is this?’

More silence.

Well, I suppose the good news is that it’s not the hospital.

‘Eleni? Eleni, is that you?’ I hear the barking of a dog. ‘Eleni, say something.’

Silence.

Something tells me that it’s not Eleni. ‘Listen, you’ve been ringing this number for the past quarter of an hour. The least you can do is say something. Who is this?’

The line goes dead.

I hear Mum up on the landing, collapsing onto her face as her elbows give way.

‘Mum, it’s not the hospital. It’s just someone messing about. It’s definitely not the hospital. Now go back to bed.’

I hear her pivot on her knees and, once more, her head smacks against the doorframe.

My teeth alternate between clenched and chattering. I’m hugging myself up into a tight ball and turning blue. What now? Aren’t things difficult enough right now? What now? Who now? I sit there for another five minutes before it occurs to me that it really might be just some drunk with the wrong number. Or some drunk with the right number. What do I know? I don’t know anything about Mum and Dad’s friends.

I must have polished off a couple more lagers cos when I wake up, my nose pressed against my shoulder and my neck folded in two, I see a couple of cans lying on their side. I was dreaming about Lenny until the phone rang again. I was dreaming that he was lost at sea on top of a bouncy castle. He had one of those contraptions you see in old war films where you have to blow down some funnel to speak to the panicking captain. His brow was pearled with milky sweat.

I pick up the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘Er . . . erggggggghhhhhhh . . . ah . . . ahhhh . . . eerrrrrrggghhh.’

‘Lenny?’

Silence.

‘Lenny, is that you?’ Silence.

Suddenly alerted to something going on at the top of the stairs I look over my left shoulder. I wish that I hadn’t.

Mum’s naked and sliding down the stairs on her belly, one stair at a time, arms stretched out in front of her, like she’s body surfing –which I suppose she is in a way. In fact there’s no ’in a way’ about it – Mum’s body surfing down the stairs on her big fat naked belly, totally stoned, no idea where she is, no idea who she is, no idea who I am, in fact no idea about anything as she arrives at the bottom and concertinas against the banister, her bum pushed up against the wallpaper. An unprecedented spectacle, I dare say. But then what do I know? I left home twenty-five years ago.

‘Lenny? Lenny, listen, if that’s you then you’re doing this at a very bad time.’

‘Oogggghhhhhaaaaaaaghhhha ha ha ha ha ggggghhhhh!’

Shit. I don’t like the sound of that. I don’t care who it is; I don’t like the sound of that.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Mum? Mum, you all right?’

Her nostrils start to snore.

Another ton of silence comes in through the front door.

‘Who is this? Please, please tell me who this is. If you’re just someone trying to—’

‘Hector!’

Shit, they know my name.

‘Hector.’

‘Monger?’

Silence.

‘Monger, is that you?’

He offers up a small laugh, and then a sniff, and then: ‘Hector, my dear, you know perfectly well who it is.’

This is going to be difficult. Even when I thought that Monger had
appeared in my life as a figure of salvation it was difficult to stomach the unction of his tone, but now that he’s revealing himself as some sort of nemesis then I don’t know how long I can hold out. ’Monger, what’s going on? What have you done? What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?’

‘Kicking strangers in the head,’ says Monger. ‘Kicking strangers in the head and driving away. Not good, Hector. Not good.’

Oh Christ, he’s here. He’s still here in Blackpool. My life is turning into an urban myth. Next I’m gonna find out he’s speaking from the upstairs extension.

Take control, Hector! Yeah, I will. Go on, then. All right, give me a fucking chance. You’ve got to take control. I know. Don’t you think I know? Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got to take control.

‘You murdered Sparky!’ I scream, sounding a bit like Bonnie Lang-ford.

‘Who’s Sparky?’

‘The dog! Our dog! You murdered our fucking dog!’

‘Hector, calm down, sir.’

‘You murdered our dog, you robbed my fucking parents – my dad’s in fucking hospital – you fucking ... psycho! What’s going on? What do you want? What have I done? What do you want?’

‘Blood,’ says Monger, and leaves it at that.

‘Blood?’ I squeal, and then clear my throat. ‘Did you just say blood?’

‘What do you think I said?’

‘I’m going to the police.’

‘Hector,’ he whispers (I imagine him with his head tilted forward, showing me only his brain and eyes), ‘if you go anywhere near a policeman I will kill you. I will murder you very slowly, with things you didn’t realize you could be murdered with.’