Dead of Light

Chaz Brenchley

Three: No Lunch for the Wicked

The meeting ran on, as any meeting will; but there was no point to it, everything that mattered had already been said. And was implicit anyway, hadn’t needed even that much saying. One of the family was dead, and this was vendetta.

When the last person who wanted to speak had spoken, Uncle James allowed just a minute of that good Macallan silence; then he dismissed us with a spread of the hands like a release, like a blessing, go out into the world and find these fuckers, and bring them back to me.

Not that anyone was going anywhere yet, except for me. There was still that wake to come, and none of my family was much for missing a good party.

Trying to filter through the crowd as it spilled out into the hall to join the women, trying to be invisible, hoping to catch my sister quickly without anyone else catching me, I failed utterly. And no surprise there, it was just something else that marked me out from the rest of them. They succeeded, and I failed. That was a given.

Specifically, in trying to escape everyone’s attention I came face to face with my parents.

Dad gripped my arm and said my name, heavy with last night’s beer and this morning’s sentiment. His belly had grown to overhang his belt now, and he had jowls where he used to have a jaw. That made it easier, a little. Easier to stand off, to hold yourself apart from a man when you only see him in time-lapse and his body is melting.

My mother wasn’t melting, she was fading gently as her black funeral dress was fading into grey. Her hair was on its way from blonde to white, caught in that uncertain ground between; the fine creases of impending age had softened the lines of her face, so that it too seemed to be losing definition. She was a classic Macallan wife, my mother. Quietly pretty and well domesticated, subservient and content, she might have been made for the role, unless she’d been remade to fit it. We were a male line, almost without exception; wives were necessary adjuncts, for the breeding of more men. Daughters likewise, and daughters were expected to marry cousins. Never mind genetics, inbreeding was a boon to us. What we had, we kept to ourselves.

Or they kept, rather, what they had. Not I. I had none of it, and blessed be. It was a birthright impossible to sell, and loathsome to me.

“Benedict, lad,” my father rasped, punching me lightly. “How’s the rebel, eh? How’s the rebel?” Meaning, you came, of course you came, and so much for your rebellion, and welcome back, my son.

My mother had always had the greater share of whatever brains there were between them. She looked at me and shook her head, said, “I expect your sister brought you, didn’t she?”

“Oh.” Even Dad could follow that. “Oh, did she?”

“Yes, Dad. Of course she did.” You think I’d have come here else? Even for Marty?

“He’s your cousin, Ben.” No part of his true talent, but sometimes my father could read minds. Read mine, at least. We’d often had these conversations, where he replied to what I hadn’t said.

“He was,” I agreed. “Not any more.” And let them read that whichever way they chose, whether the relationship ended with my leaving or with Marty’s death. It didn’t matter. They’d still misunderstand me, either way. That was one of the facts of my life, that my parents truly didn’t understand.

And then my sister joined us, with the smell of soap on her hands.

“We’ve been dressing him,” she said. “For the wake.” And her eyes glancing at me said what I’d already deduced, that I wasn’t invited for the wake. Time to go, bro, her eyes were telling me.

“You taking me home, then, or what?”

“Get a bus, Ben,” she said wearily, tired of me now; and that was what I did. Of course it was. I always did what Hazel said.

o0o

I looked around for Jamie on my way out, but didn’t spot him and wasn’t going to search. I was as keen to go as Hazel was to see me gone; and a friendly goodbye from my closest coz would have been good, maybe, but I couldn’t depend on it. And didn’t need it, either. Divorced, disinvested, disowned, right?

Right.

So I positively sauntered out of the house under the eyes of those my relatives who could be bothered to watch, who betrayed that much interest in me: hands in pockets and head high, all the treacherous insolence of youth and none of the respect due either to death or to family. Get you gone and good riddance, I wanted them saying, don’t come back.

I walked out on my gathered family for the second time in my life, and had no intention of going back.

o0o

The bus stop was up on the main road, ten minutes’ steep climb from the house; and buses were one an hour or used to be, and unless they’d changed the timetable radically I’d just missed one.

No hassle, that was utterly cool. I’d been climbing this hill and missing those buses half my life, I wasn’t going to get uptight about it now. Nor was I going to resent Hazel’s cavalier dismissal, nothing so foolish. She brought me here, she could at least take me back—but such a thought would be stupidly inappropriate, and I wasn’t going to think it. This was Hazel, after all. Hazel was as Hazel did, and this was exactly the sort of thing that Hazel did. I’d had a lifetime of it, or at least a childhood and adolescence; and three years’-worth of other living wasn’t anywhere near enough to break an acceptance so deeply ingrained.

I walked slowly up the lane, past all the cars and past little groups of people coming down. Non-family, these: guests invited for the wake or some part of it, the public part. Important people, councillors and bankers, the movers and shakers of the city all coming when my family whistled, and doing this last stretch on foot because they couldn’t get their cars anywhere near and not even grumbling because you didn’t do that, you didn’t grumble at any inconvenience the Macallans might put you to.

What I wanted to do, what I really wanted to do was stroll up that lane with a coin or a key in my hand, digging deep into the cars’ paintwork, leaving a multicoloured scratch behind me all the way from the house to the road. And of course I didn’t, I would never have dared; but not from fear of the witnesses, all those movers and shakers.

I was a Macallan, my inheritance too clearly marked on my face, unmistakable; and they wouldn’t have said a word, those important people.

o0o

But I didn’t mark the cars, I only dreamed about it; and when I reached the road I only sat politely in the bus shelter, stone-still, bone-still, still as Marty’s bones. No chucking pebbles at the traffic as I used to do with Jamie, points for contact and bonuses for breakage; no solo games of chicken; no games at all. I was too old now—older than yesterday—and too much alone, and we’d learned all those from Marty.

And having no one to talk to now about girls, as Jamie and I used to do sitting right here waiting for buses to take us to them, to carry us to the girls of our dreams, all I did was sit and think about girls, about one girl, waiting for a bus to take me at least closer to her, to the girl of my dreams, oh Laura.

o0o

When the bus came, I didn’t know the driver from Adam; but he knew me. Or the set of my features, at least, he knew that. He’d have to, driving this route.

And he drew back a little in his chair, waved my proffered money away with a mutter I couldn’t make out, didn’t bother to give me a ticket.

It happened, even in the centre of town it happened, and I was almost ready for it today, with so much out of kilter and my new life all but lost in this sudden surge of past tides. I nodded politely, trying to look accustomed, and made my way to the back where I could sprawl with my feet up and look, aye, every inch a Macallan.

It was an old wreck of a bus, vinyl seats slashed and torn and leaking foam rubber, smoking very sensibly forbidden but the reek of stale smoke in the air regardless, stubs on the floor. I didn’t like the feel of those seats, cool smoothness and sudden cracks, recalling Marty’s blisters to my fingers’ ends; so I shoved my hands back in my pockets again, feel nothing, nothing to feel, and turned my eyes to track the route outside: familiar, resurgent, and I’d thought it all so thoroughly suppressed.

o0o

Back in the city, telling myself back home, I didn’t go back to the flat. Jacko would be full of questions, just when I was emptied out of answering; and besides, it was no safe refuge any more. Hazel had been there once, and forever after I’d be falling silent at the sound of an engine slowing in the street, wondering is that a bike, is that her, if it’s a car it could be one of the others come to get me again...

No easy life, being the family traitor. If the family started to show an interest, it would be, I would be paranoid and impossible.

What I wanted, I wanted to run to Laura, my only true refuge, my inherent safety. But lessons learned hard bite the deepest, and I’d never, never put her in that position again. She couldn’t cope, bless her, she couldn’t handle being so elevated out of the common pool of my friends; she needed not to be different just when I needed to announce her difference, and neither her logic nor mine could handle the discrepancy. The one time I tried to force the issue the whole system crashed, and took months to rebuild. We were on safer foundations now, with those limits clearly, brutally defined. She’d be a friend in need, of course she would, that lay well within her parameters of friendship; but she’d never be the friend I needed.

So no, I didn’t run to her, didn’t strand myself on her doorstep and both of us on a desperate shore. Best I could do, best I could hope for was to persuade fate into a chance meeting, let her find me in trouble, let her think I hadn’t come to her. Not good, not what I needed; but as with so much—as with everything that touched Laura, everything that Laura touched—it would at least be a long way better than nothing.

Fate and chance are flexible concepts, and I manipulated them as much as I dared. Walked past her flat twice before I even looked up at the windows; saw that the curtains were pulled and loitered instead for ten or fifteen minutes at the corner, hoping she’d come palely out for paracetamol or else robustly in search of bacon and sausages for a serious breakfast. Some people eat and eat after a rage, some simply repine. It epitomised my life and the waste of it, that I didn’t know which school Laura followed. Never had the chance to observe, and I didn’t ask questions, not about the ordinary things. There was too much I didn’t know; once get started and the questions would never stop. I’d want it all and that was the trap again, the temptation to do the forbidden, to raise her out of the ordinary.

She didn’t come, nor any flatmates I could interrogate; so I thought maybe she had hero blood in her veins, maybe she’d gone in to college. I bought a couple of cheese pasties to munch on the way—I’m an eater and I hadn’t had the chance yet, my body was howling empty—and hustled down to the campus. I had Laura’s timetable fixed firm in my head, knew it better than my own; if she was there, if she wasn’t just sleeping and sleeping because there are a few lucky souls who can do that too, who don’t need to be conscious until all the damage is fixed, she’d be scalpel in hand among the cold cadavers, learning what made the human body cease to tick.

No question of interrupting her there. There are ways to suicide and ways not; and sauntering into the dissection labs with a smile for Professor Duncan and a glance around, “Hi, is Laura here, sorry but I need her, she’s the only thing that counts”—no. That numbered not. He would have peeled me in that palace of peeled flesh, she would have dismembered my joints.

Eventually he’d have to let them go, though, class dismissed and don’t forget your homework. It was coming up lunchtime, and even medics have to eat. And let them scatter where they would, left and right, upstairs and down, to the med school cafeteria or the union bars; let them flock and chatter, I knew what Laura would do. This once, at least, I could get ahead of her.

It was Friday; and Friday lunch was ritual, Friday lunch was sacred. If she was in school—if she was, if she wasn’t sleeping and sleeping—her sweet size nines (Bigfoot the other girls called her, if they were talking shoes) had a predestined path to follow.

It was Friday; and Friday was kosher day, last chance before Shabbat and not to be missed. Five minutes from campus, in an alley off a side street, area steps led down to a plain cream-and-green eatery, bench seats and communal formica-topped tables and an ugly white counter, no food in sight and no style at all. One sign on the wall outside, Morry’s Deli, otherwise you might have thought yourself in Orwell territory, 1984 a decade on.

And oh, how wrong you would have been.

Morry Green and his family—and it was, it was all family again, another family business: from the accountant to the washer-uppers, everyone was blood—they served their God and their community, devout hearts and a strong sense of duty. Just so happened they also served the best classic Jewish food north of Primrose Hill.

They didn’t give a toss for the décor, and quite right too. Mostly they catered for us, the student body in its separate hungry cells; we’d squash up happily, six to a bench and tuck your elbows in, for good cheap food and plenty of it. Keeping the place ugly kept the prices down and it kept the business community out, which suited Morry and it suited us.

Four days a week, Morry’s was open early till late. But they closed at three on a Friday, to be at home and bathed and properly ready by sunset; and of course they didn’t open again until Monday, so everything had to be used up or thrown away, and they really didn’t like throwing anything away.

Fridays in town, we wouldn’t have lunch anywhere else.

o0o

It was Friday, and it was early yet, good children were still in school. If Laura was being good today, a medic she and no sweetly slumbrous girl, I had maybe an hour to kill.

Not a problem. I’d wasted more, far more time than that in places where I was far less likely to find Laura.

So I went inside. The place was near enough empty, just a few scattered skivers like myself sipping coffee and waiting to be hungry, no one serving. I swung the door to and fro a few times before I closed it, making the bell jangle, letting them know there was another customer in. Old habit, Morry appreciated it.

I claimed a table and a bench, settled myself nice and comfy against the wall and closed my eyes, hoping not to open them again till a mocking chuckle and a light-fingered touch told me that Laura had arrived.

Not a chuckle, though, next thing I heard; and not a dreamgirl’s hand, next thing to touch me.

o0o

Actually what I heard was a rattle, as of cup in saucer in earthquake, or at any rate in palsy-stricken hand. Behind that I could hear someone breathing, hard and fast and frightened.

That was all so unlikely that I opened my eyes regardless. The service at Morry’s might be rough, might even be slapdash if you were a friend and they were busy, but it didn’t generate those sorts of noises.

So I looked, and saw Warren. And on one level that was exactly right, exactly what I expected to see this time of day, what I’d been banking on; and on another level it was all very peculiar indeed, because he looked pale and his hands were trembling, and he wasn’t at all pleased to see me.

Warren was a fixture, or possibly a fitting: at any rate he belonged there, as much as Morry himself belonged. He was family, naturally, some species of cousin, though no one seemed to know how close. Or more likely they did know, they surely must have known, it was only that they didn’t want to say. Shame on them, we all thought, where maybe we should have been applauding the fact that they acknowledged him at all, let alone gave him a job out front where he could brandish the relationship as he brandished so much else.

He must have been late forties when we knew him, lean of build with greying, thinning hair close-cropped and a nose to make Corporal Klinger blush; and he was cheerfully and screamingly camp, was Warren. He’d have been a burden to any decent family, let alone a religious one. It needed a liberal despot like Morry to make a place for him; a weaker paterfamilias or a more bigoted would have allowed the slow tides of contempt and disgust and what-will-the-rabbi-think? to force Warren out, to drive him into an exile that he would never have chosen, that he didn’t have the strength to survive.

I knew all about exile, and survival. I knew what it took, and I had a pretty good idea of what Warren had, and that wasn’t enough.

We all knew Warren. He loved us students, loved his job because the customer base was ninety per cent student and he could be a happy man all day, running around at our beck and call and doing more than any man should to please us.

Sometimes, maybe often, a student would make him a happy man all night also. I wasn’t sure how many times I’d met him on a Sunday morning (but never on a Saturday, never on Shabbat, he owed that to his family) in someone’s flat or someone else’s house, making breakfast in a borrowed bathrobe: still willing, still serving, totally content. These were only ever one-night stands or brief affairs, nothing serious, nothing for long. The boys used to say they did it for his experience, for his openness, for the laugh: “Well, come on, give us a break, Ben, it’s not going to be for his mind, is it? I mean, is it? We’re not talking intellectual giant here. We’re not talking anything giant, it’s just a laugh, that’s all.”

How much of a laugh it really was for Warren, I was never certain. But he went on smiling, went on serving, was always happy to see us and the more the merrier.

But not today. Today he wasn’t happy at all, and he certainly wasn’t happy to see me.

o0o

His hand shook, and the saucer shook in his hand, the cup rattled in the saucer and the coffee slopped. Warren loved to anticipate; he always brought us coffee first thing, we didn’t need to order it. Today was no different, except that today it looked like the last thing he wanted to be doing. I’d never seen a man that frightened, never dreamt of seeing anyone that frightened of me.

“Warren? What’s up?”

Actually, it was perfectly clear what was up: I was here, and he was having to serve me coffee, and he was trembling with terror as he did it. The true question was why?, but I couldn’t ask that directly. Warren, why are you scared of me suddenly, what have I done?—no, I couldn’t do that. Not fair to either one of us. He just might be scared enough to answer me, and I really, really didn’t want to know.

He got the cup and saucer down finally, dropping rather than putting it on the table and an awkward stretch away from me, with more coffee in the saucer than the cup.

“Not to worry,” I said, trying a smile to see if it helped. “I can slurp it.”

Didn’t help at all, that smile. He seemed to read a threat in it, where there was truly nothing but a promise, don’t panic, Warren, I won’t bite, honest. He scurried back, all but ran through into the kitchen and out of my sight.

I sighed, shrugged for any curious observers—just Warren, that’s all, nothing to get worked up about—and went over to the counter for a wad of serviettes, not to drip coffee down my shirtfront.

Too early still to hope for Laura, but I did that anyway, watching the door and listening for footsteps; and was still doing it when spitting fury came at me from the other direction, came from the kitchen, scorching down Warren’s wake.

Not Laura’s hand that touched me, and not light-fingered as Laura was: this was a man’s grip on my shoulder, digging deep, digging to the bones and hurting.

I startled, gasped, tried to pull away and couldn’t.

Looked round, and there was Morry. Short and heavy in his whites, shadow on his jowls and dark wiry hair curling even on the backs of his fingers, where they were clamped on me.

Absolute rage in him, making him also tremble even as he held me, this always-courteous man, this friend of mine.

“Out,” he said, lifting me one-handed from the bench, finding that so much easier than talking, his usual fluency down to monosyllables now and those making no sense to me. “You,” he said thickly, “out. Now.”

And pushed me towards the door, force enough to send me staggering into it, hard enough to bruise.

“Morry, what the hell...?” Angry in my turn, I twisted round to face him and never mind the audience now and never mind the dangers of too much truth, this was too much to let by. “What’s going on here, what have I done?”

He reached for me again, and that was all his answer; but I lifted a hand to resist him, and saw how he flinched back suddenly, this great squat bull of a man. That was all the answer that I needed.

A family affair, this was: my family and his, and I’d walked into the middle of something, where I clearly wasn’t welcome.

Oh, my priceless, Christless family. They could screw my life up without thinking, without realising, even; though if they realised they’d do it all the same. Probably do it with a little more relish, knowing what they did.

Understanding at last, I had nothing to offer Morry, no restitution in my gift. And I was still angry at him for manhandling me in front of witnesses: too angry to explain, even if he’d been calm enough to listen.

So I nodded abruptly, to let him know I had at least caught up with the action here; and then I opened the door and walked out, and thought, That’s another pleasure, another freedom gone. Terrific privilege, being a Macallan...

And I climbed the steps and stood irresolute on the pavement, bewildered and bereft; and that’s where Laura found me when she came, when she finally did come. Still there, still dithering, going a little this way and a little that and utterly unmindful of her.