Passing the Abbey, a fellah I think I knew said,
“Talking to yourself, that’s not a good sign.”
Tell me about it!
“For evil arises in the refusal to acknowledge our own sins.”
Scott Peck, People of the Lie
When I got to Newcastle Park, the house where Sarah Bradley had lived, I had to kick-motivate myself. The voice going,
“What a waste of time, not to mention bloody reckless.”
I knocked on the door, opened by an extremely ugly girl in dungarees and bare feet. Dirty bare feet.
She snapped,
“What?”
Like that.
I was tempted to say,
“Well, you could wash your feet for a start.”
Began my spiel as I fast-flicked my wallet at her. It had an expired driver’s licence and my library card.
“Sorry to bother you. I’m from Mutual Alliance, and there is a life policy on your former flatmate, Sarah Bradley. I need to check a few points.”
She shouted over her shoulder,
“Peg, there’s some guy from the insurance company, are you decent?…oh…I’m Mary.”
I didn’t catch the muffled reply, but it didn’t sound like welcome. Mary waved me in, moving ahead of me down a hall. The student aroma of curry, feet, beer, trainers and forced bonhomie. Peg wasn’t much to look at either, but she wasn’t having a problem with it. Dressed in a thigh-slit nightie, she came down the stairs, yawning. Her body language suggested she knew how to utilise that body.
She said in a Beavis/Butthead accent,
“Shit, I need some coffee, like yesterday.”
She probably hadn’t studied Clueless but she’d definitely taken lessons from Popular.
I was staring at the foot of the stairs, where Sarah had died.
Peg said,
“Let’s park it in the kitchen.”
Now she was Susan Sarandon. I followed. The room was like it had been hit by a careless bomb. Clothes, books, CDs, empty Chinese cartons (least I hoped they were empty), tights, bras, wine bottles with stubs of candles and discarded roach papers.
Mary was making coffee, asked,
“Get you some?”
“No, I’m good.”
I perched on a hard chair, got my notebook out, said,
“Just a few questions and I’m…like gone.”
See how Peg liked the echo treatment. It didn’t register. She gave me a coy look above the rim of her cup, said,
“You look like a guard.”
I gave her my shy smile, as if I was secretly pleased. I wasn’t entirely sure how to smile like a guy in insurance, but predatory had to be a good start. I asked,
“Was Sarah clumsy? I mean, would falling down be something she might be likely to do?”
Peg glanced at Mary and I tried to read it but failed. Peg rooted for a cigarette in a pile of crushed boxes, found one, lit it from the cooker, said to Mary,
“He’s asking if she was pissed, if she was a drinker…isn’t that what you’re asking? Then he puts that in his report and hey…no money.”
I reassessed Peg, the hard stare, the fuck-you body language, and figured I could play. Said,
“So was she? Fond of it I mean? Being a student, it’s part of the deal, best days of your life and all that.”
She dropped the cig in her cup, swirled the contents, the fizzle making a noise like rumour. She said,
“You’re a prick, you know that?”
I was warming to Peg, no doubt about it. Mary picked up a book, deciding I no longer mattered, asked Peg,
“You get to read this yet?”
I saw the title, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold. It begins:
“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.”
Peg gave a dramatic shrug, went,
“I don’t do saccharine shit.”
Mary turned to me, explained,
“Susie, in the book, she was murdered. Our Sarah died in a freak accident, so pay the fucking money.”
Before I could gear up, Peg went,
“Didn’t I read an interview in the Guardian with Alice Sebold?”
Mary gave a smile of sheer malevolence. She’d been waiting for a male audience to run this by.
Here I was.
She didn’t rub her hands in glee but it was there, in the neighbourhood. She began,
“Alice was eighteen, a student, and on her way home she was raped. Her attacker raped her with his fist and his penis, he beat her up and urinated on her face. When she got home that night, her father asked if she’d like something to eat.”
Mary paused, so I knew this was going to be rough. She continued,
“Alice replied, ‘That would be nice, considering the only thing I’ve had in my mouth in the last twenty-four hours is a cracker and a penis.’”
For once in my dumb life, I did the smart thing: I did nothing. They stared with expectation and I stared back.
Then Peg said,
“If there’s nothing else…Mr?…we’d like to get on with other stuff, like our lives.”
I stood up. God knows I’d been dismissed by experts. I had certainly been dissed. I asked,
“Might I see a copy of the book?”
Mary, suspicious, went,
“Alice Sebold?”
I watched their faces, said,
“A copy of a book by Synge, lying beneath the body.”
Peg shrugged, began to build another coffee. I was wondering how wired she was going to get.
She said,
“It’s in the bookcase…like…’cause…it’s where we keep…books.”
She enunciated this slowly like you would to a very slow child, but hey, I can do the tolerance rap. I asked,
“Might I see it?”
Mary stormed out, leaving me with the caffeined fiend. A few moments later she was back, held out the volume, asked,
“I give you this, are you gone?”
“Like the Midlands’ wind.”
I put it in my pocket, said,
“You’ve been most generous with your time.”
Peg brushed past me, not quite shouldering me but the intention was clear, and she said,
“Wanker.”
On that note, I was out of there.
I held off examining the volume till later, took a long walk out to the bay, bought a burger, large Coke and sat on the rocks. I refused to think about Ann Henderson, wished I had brought my Walkman. I hadn’t yet moved along to Discmans and, like some dinosaur, was still using cassettes. There is one benefit: they slide on your belt like a smooth untruth.
Then and there I’d have listened to Bruce and Empty Sky. That he’d finally released a new album should have been great news. Here’s the madness-and admitting it doesn’t dilute the insanity-
“You need booze, dope for music.”
Sorry, I need them. It’s the illusion. A bottle of Jack, six pack of Lone Star and then…you’re ready to rock. A cup of tea doesn’t do it. Johnny Duhan, the soundtrack to my life, also had a new album, and I’d heard ‘Inviolate’, the best song on grief ever. Forget Iris de Ment with the song on her dad or Peter Gabriel’s ‘I Grieve’…here is THE SONG. It didn’t lash me; it plain out lacerated.
I lit a cig and dwelt for a moment on a time with my father. We’d stand on these very rocks and cast for mackerel. Those times, the whole town was strung out along the bay, the fish literally surrendering. We took home eight and my mother threw them in the garbage.
Paulo Coelho in Warriors of Light writes,
“The warrior of light sometimes wonders why he’s encountering the same set of problems over and over-then realises that he has never progressed past them, which is why the lesson keeps returning to teach him what he does not wish to learn.”
I did not then, and probably not even now, want to know what drove my mother. I suspect it was rage, but as to where that came from or why, I didn’t want to know.
Since her stroke, she’d had a live-in nurse. Then a kidney infection landed her in the hospital. At my last visit, strained as usual, her speech had greatly improved, a catheter had been inserted, and I tried not to stare. She said,