Authors: Karen Campbell
He is a fine boy, his Euan.
The conference, too, was fine. Lots of stirring seminars: ‘Moving Out and Welcoming In’; ‘Open All Hours: 24/7 churching’ (churching – note the verb. The minister leading this workshop wore his cross on a leather thong). When the first day was over, some of the younger ministers hit the town. Being neither young nor old, Michael tagged along for a wee while. He was feeling pretty chuffed with himself. He had survived. He’d left his parish under a cloud: rumours and long sad smiles were the order of the day. But he was entitled to be here (although he had bunked off ‘Consider the Lilies: Community Gardens in Graveyards’). These folk were his tribe, his people. And it felt good. He was still an ordained priest. Hannah hadn’t taken that away from him. This made him really happy, until about his third pint, when it made him really sad. Then angry. Michael’s not a big drinker. A gaggle of hens (a cluck?) came stoating into the bar as he was preparing to leave. In time-honoured tradition, they descended on all the male drinkers in the pub, banging their pots and demanding money for the bride, in exchange for kisses. When they discovered they’d cornered a bunch (a blessing? a muddle? a mourning?) of ministers, hilarity ensued. Feather boas were draped, some dancing broke out. Another round of drinks ordered. Most of the hens were nurses. Ample thighs, amenable shoulders. He didn’t do anything. Just talked to one of them, a soft Irish lass who was good at listening.
‘I mean, why’s itshtill me trying to make her happy? Shouldn’ it be thother way roun’? You know? I mean, I really, really love her. But she’sh ripped my heart out.’
Eventually, the nurse got bored. She had patted him kindly. ‘You poor soldier, you.’ Before she went, she slipped her hand along the length of his thigh. A jolt of electricity shot up his penis.
‘You need to love the world again.’
‘Mike!’ called the thong-crossed minister. ‘We’re going clubbing. Fancy it?’
The nurse shook her head. ‘No, this wee lamb’s had enough. He’s going home, aren’t you, sunshine?’
He left the merry throng somewhere in the Merchant City (which
is
a lovely tourist destination) and weaved over Albert Bridge to return to the Gorbals. Halfway across, he noticed a young man, elbows resting on the parapet. Four cans of lager were beside his elbow, a fifth at his mouth. As Michael came alongside, the lad flung his can into the Clyde.
‘Hoi!’ said Michael.
The lad turned. On his neck was a swallow tattoo. ‘Who the fuck’re you talking to?’
Backing away. ‘It’s jusht, you shouldn’t . . . litter.’
‘Away and get tae . . .’ But it was an exhausted aggression, one in which all the energy was spent. The young man returned to his examination of the Clyde. His hair was razored into the nape of his neck, one of those necks that is neat and branches perfectly into the supporting sinew, bone and muscle required to cradle the skull. Michael’s neck has hairy clumps which the barber discreetly zipped off. He’d started doing the same with the tips of Michael’s ears.
Even in the dark light, he could see the pulse running up the man’s corded neck. The swallow wing of his tattoo dancing.
‘Are you all right?’ Michael touched his arm; the young man spun to swing a punch, his cans clattering over the parapet and into the thick-churning river.
‘You stupid fuck!’
Distracted by this loss, the man’s fist fell. In fact, his whole pumped-up body sagged, like it was drum-stretched over a gaping hole, and had been ruptured. His eyes hooked on to Michael. He was waiting. Waiting for something to make it right.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’ Michael’s words sharpened, the warmth and softness of the alcohol receding in the desperate vacancy of the young man’s stare. He played his trump card, the decider that made folk split themselves open or clam up. ‘Look, I’m a minister—’
The man snorted.
Michael forged on, because thy word is a lamp. Michael and his flaming sword of truth.
‘You upset? Yousheem upset.’
‘Is that right?’ The man took a long, slow gob into the Clyde. ‘Nae offence, pal, but would you just fuck off?’
‘Sure. It’s just. If you wanna talk about anything, I’m a good listener. Maybe help? D’you need a bed for the night?’
A mirthless
aw fuck
. ‘I’m no a fucking jakey, man.’
Michael looked at the man’s pressed, short-sleeved shirt, at the muscular heft of his arms. ‘No. No, of course.’ He began to plan his exit, select what reassuring lump of scripture he could lob as they parted ways. The lad must have sensed this retraction, or some swell inside him shifted course, or the rind of moon slashing the face of the river spoke words beyond Michael, but anyway, there it was. A subtle change, the connection woven through them both. He started it. Michael started it, of that there is no doubt. But then the young man began to speak.
He told Michael that his name was Alan. He was a builder. Married, one wee boy, aged ten months.
‘That’s nice—’
‘No it fucking isny. No when you . . .’ His voice broke against the thin moon, a sob that hit the stars, then was swallowed almost instantly. ‘Fuck, man.’ He laid his cheek on the parapet of the bridge and wept. Today, he and his wife had fought. They were always fighting, ever since the wean was born. She said he loved him more than her. Today, his wife had told him that the child wasn’t his. The pain was unbearable.
‘I’ve just been walking for fucking hours. Walking and drinking and fucking greeting. I . . . I canny take it, know? I literally canny stand here wi’ my feet on the ground and stay straight. I don’t know what . . . I don’t know.’
He let him cry, awkwardly, with Alan’s face prone on the parapet and Michael’s arm resting on his shoulders.
‘Fucking poofters,’ a passing drunk shouted.
So who gave Michael the words that night? He was contriving to fashion some message of love and hope, watching this abject soul whose heart had been broken, watching the cold moon on the Clyde with the flow of the water rising, filling up his own shattered heart which he had pretended was stuck together.
‘Fuckin’ cows.’
‘Whit?’ Alan’s face came up, bleary and sore.
‘Women are fucking cows.’ He saw Hannah, on her knees. Her face was scarlet with . . . what? Panic? Guilt? Snot bubbling out her nostrils, her golden hair wired in a crazy halo. Her grief melting him. Making him take his own and fold it up, fold it smaller and smaller until he could tell himself that it was unimportant. Selfish even.
A clumsy pat to Alan’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you let her see you’re hurting.’
‘But I have to talk to her.’
‘Aye, but . . . they jus’ con you. Tell you how sorry they are and how much they love you, but it’s like . . . It’s jus’ spoiled. Like blood in milk. And then they make you feel guilty for making them stay.’
Alan pushed himself away from the parapet. He wobbled, clutched the bridge of his nose with finger and thumb. Michael noticed his knuckles were bleeding. ‘Aw fuck, man. I canny listen to this.’
‘Jus’ you protect yourself, son. You’re young. Tell her to fuck off. You think about number one.’
Alan had half-raised his arm, in farewell or a warding-off. Or maybe it was for balance. Michael likes to pretend it was for balance; that he was very wobbly that night. He watched the young man stagger off, back towards the town. Watched him turn left along the Clydeside, on to the Broomielaw where laden cargo ships would dock and laden emigrant ships would leave, once, hundreds of years ago. The boy, Alan, his name was Alan, became a misty outline, then nothing. If Michael was a good and sentient man, he might have followed him. Seen his unsteady progress all the way along the Broomielaw until it becomes a muddle of overhead motorway and pillars and shiny-façaded offices and there is a street there called Cheapside where a terrible disaster in the sixties means the ghosts of nineteen firemen haunt the spot and there is a street there called Finnieston which leads away from the river and takes you up to yet another leg of the motorway which spiders Glasgow. How it curves, this C-shaped climb. How it takes you up above the rooftops. You could be a bird up there, staring at your city. If it is quiet and dark and car-free, you could walk all the way up this soaring road. No one would stop you, not even a teary minister, who is climbing into his car and drink-driving from Gorbals to Govan (which is not far, as the crow flies). But you are a swallow. You could take your heart up there and carry it high. Present it to the sky-gods. Maybe ask again for help. Or maybe you are so, so sore that it no longer matters, and you present it to the water gods instead.
Standing alone, on the Kingston Bridge. Oh the wind, up there. Would be fierce. And the swing of it, the concrete, the cables, the graceful arc. Did you look out and across? Down? Did you shut your eyes? Was your last conscious act unconscious?
Did you fly?
With a swoop. It was Michael’s words that sent him spinning.
Michael didn’t know this. Not yet. He was ranting in his car, frog-hopping the gears, picking the darkest streets. Oh, he was crafty enough for that. He was arrow-sharp and straight in his momentum.
Bitch
, he was crying.
Fucking bitch
.
Bastard
. Six months had passed since Hannah told him, or rather, that woman told him, about Gil. And the wee folded-up piece of hurt was uncontainable. It had billowed open. It made him a sail, took him wild and furious to where it all began, to the thing he had imagined and spied on and swallowed back and had eaten him alive.
Gil.
This man that had had his wife. Gil Ashworth was very pale when he answered the door. Michael remembers that. There were candles in his flat, and a faint muzzy smell that might be incense. But he was alone. What kind of a man lights candles on his own?
Flame animated him, lent his skin a rosy glow and burned the rage deeper into Michael. He was so tired of shadows. Brief glimpses of another, possible life, dragging behind, darting in front. His lost life. Tears and anger and pleading and contrition and then closure. Do we have ‘closure’? That is what she actually said. He had the strangest feeling that Hannah was close. That if he went outside and turned his head, she’d be waiting. If only she’d come back to him, properly. Extinguish this hanging-on. He’d lingered so long, burning, burning, half a man, that if she were to even breathe on him, he’d blow away. The fine dust of him would disintegrate in a line of ash.
Thinking of her was like bereavement.
The sad thing is, he thinks Gil understood. Gil would have done it too, if Hannah were his. Beaten fuck out of his opponent. Smashed his skull with wide blank fists; it would have to be fists. Was fists. Fists and feet, flesh on flesh, hammering out the flesh on unfaithful flesh you relive, daily in your head. He remembers pounding on the door. The opening of it, this packed figure which was him rushing into Gil, on him. Gil on the ground before he knew it. He remembers how the carpet soaked with blood.
The force of his fury scared him – that he was the creator of this unleashing is the thing which has unmade him more than anything else. Even when Gil’s eyes were jelly, the fists, the feet, kept pummelling. As if a demon had possessed him.
With each blow, he was trying to force his demon into Gil.
Afterwards, in his car.
Tell the truth
.
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he spoke. He doesn’t know if Gil was conscious, assumes he didn’t die, because he’d have heard, then, wouldn’t he? They’d have come looking for him then and it did, it did it came looking for him for ever, red lines of blood that twisted of their own volition, rose clean from his spattered forearm and took residence in his brain. Licked up the blood, puffed him gently on his way.
Michael slept in his car. Woke with a raging thirst and no memory.
Liar
.
His knee ached: he must have banged it. Careful depressions, slow-turning wheels. Michael made it back to the Days Inn to shower, collect his bags. He did not participate in the second day of the conference. Food poisoning. Did he say that? Possibly, but it was only a message left; he was careful not to let anyone see him. Sly, and pumped. Rock-hard cock of the walk. No contrition. No memory, you see.
Oh for shame, Michael
.
Swill of coffee in his room, quick flick through shopping channels to the news. Reporting Scotland, that two-minute round-up at the end before they go back to London and an interview on the couch.
Police are appealing for witnesses
Body of a young man
River Clyde
Eye for a jellied eye
No suspects
No memory, you see.
‘
He seems calmer now?’
‘Yes.’ The young man in his greeny-blue scrubs fiddles with a knob on the monitor. ‘Sedation does that.’ He writes quickly on Michael’s chart. ‘Good. Now, I’m going to have to ask you to make yourself scarce for an hour or two, I’m afraid.’
‘Why?’ Hannah grips on to the bed-guard. ‘But he’s breathing on his own now.’
‘We need to do some more tests, Mrs Anderson.’