The burning rug had made its mark. Arthur kept smelling it, its rank scent summarising his past-its-best marriage, Eau de Shite, a staleness such as came out of your hair when you washed it the morning after the night before.
When you still had hair, that was. Arthur circled the house until he felt the uneasy texture of broken glass under his feet. This must be the place, Threndle’s façade. One of the two panes of glass in the French doors had a hole in it. Arthur put his finger to the nasty edges. Was this his handy work? It had to be. After all, there was nobody else around.
He whistled. Delicious was the moment. They always were, visceral cigarette burns in the fabric of your day. Twisting the aerial from a car, tipping the bins over on your way home late at night, maintaining eye contact for that extra moment; doing something just for the pleasure of doing it when no one was around to catch you almost outweighed the desperate need to deny everything later on if ever questioned about the act. Arthur crouched. Here was proof of his presence: the neck of a bottle of white rum, broken off, the cap still screwed-on tight.
Now he remembered drinking the last of it, tightening the lid then throwing the empty bottle at the wall. Its detonation had zinged his face just as that coal lump at Brantford had done. Just as the firework had done on the 5th of November, 1957, when Het’s unforgettable scream tore through the Yorkshire air, seconds after The Mighty Atom blasted out of Sam’s hand and struck him in the jaw. Arthur was made to pay for that. He’d bought the fireworks and lit the Atom as Sam held it. “For a joke,” he’d wept. “I didn’t mean it.” His dad’s fist impacted on the bridge of his nose anyway.
“Fuck off.”
You could talk directly to the past when you wanted to. Arthur dropped the piece of bottle, licked his finger and weighed the options presenting themselves. Go home or go further. Bollocks or brains. Threndle House was the ancestral home of the Brantfords, who owned the pit before the whole industry went up the Litten Path, nationalised. Its windows felt almost unreal as he touched their stone surroundings, although he supposed everything felt a little fake when you really questioned it.
There was a longing inside of Arthur, and what could be done about that? He knew all about futility. All his life he’d done his best, and still he was a disappointment to his son. And as for Shell, thanks would be a fine thing. So they’d loved each other; she’d gotten pregnant. She was the one who wanted to do it all the time and hated rubber johnnies. Not to mention Arthur’s father always getting at them, constantly telling them how ashamed he was they weren’t married. Alec Newman refused to even look Shell’s parents in the eye until their children were wed. Shell didn’t have to listen to old Alec like Arthur did. She could have said no when the ring came out. And maybe she ought to have, if this was how she was going to be about it.
Fuck it. He pushed his hand through the hole in the French door’s window and reached for the key inside, finding nothing there. He belched, tasted rum, vomit and chips. He’d take a look around like he’d done on the night he found the moth rug. See what having the world on a fork got you. Let a politician be on the end of an executive decision for once. See how they bloody liked it.
He had to kick his way inside. This fucking living room was the size of the whole downstairs of his house, that igloo on Water Street. Everything was cast in blue. Arthur’s shadow pushed across the room’s cloaked features. He put his arms out so that his shadow looked like it had claws: a monster rising up the wall, sneaking up on the settee and the footstool, the sideboard, the piano, the armchair.
Those French doors had been locked tighter than he’d thought and now his foot was bloody killing him. He limped to the wall and managed to switch on the light, revealing an overcrowded room. Fancy wood with swirls in it. Raised wallpaper, dense carpet, a polished candelabra and cut glass. A large painting was there, too, and loads of boxes were piled up. Stacked and collected gubbins in every corner.
Arthur fixed himself a glass of port. He’d never liked it much but it was the kind of thing people drank in places like this, so he thought he should probably give it another go. He sank to the settee, drink slopping on to the cushions. The trick was to let your eyes close and your thoughts run. It was his mansion, his living-room. There was a gruff dog at his feet and the walls could have been made from wedding cake they were that white. Candles were lit everywhere, too. He’d wear a suit if he lived here. All day, every day. No tweed or worsted. A simple dinner black. The missus would be smiling by the piano. Shell. A younger Shell with bigger tits. Arthur knocked the port back and poured another. It tasted like cough syrup. He picked a candle up and put it down again, sparked it up then ran his finger along its length, into the swamp up top. Wax concealed his fingerprint. It was hot for a couple of seconds and then it was fine.
He opened his eyes. Same old Arthur. Couple of hundred quid a week Arthur. Shouting to make yourself heard Arthur. Sweating your tits off under halogen work lights Arthur. He took another sip of port, eased his shoe off and massaged his aching foot. Pain and swirling troubles were his lot, a life that would one day be lost that he’d never really had chance to start living.
After a while he shuffled into the atrium, stopping at the foot of the stairs to inhale the heavy smell of turps and white spirit. Threndle House felt deserted in the same way that schools do when the children have gone home for the day. In the same way that multi-storey car parks do when dusk falls.
There was a noise nearby that brought him back to Brantford, a persistent scrape similar to those made by the pit mice that first arrived in the hay bales when the ponies of old were still in use. Rodents in the districts, white-furred because they never saw natural light, chewing holes in your fucking butties if you ever made the mistake of putting them down. Arthur fumbled for another light switch, managed to find one and illuminated the hall, to be greeted by an ugly sight. Dust sheets bobbled with scrunches of masking tape were twisted into mad plaits up the floor, while padded fibreglass insulation the colour of intestines and a tabloid newspaper were scattered nearby. There were hunks of rubble and all kinds of detritus. The place was a bloody building site.
Arthur ran a hand along a wall covered by a landscape of part-stripped wallpaper, torn into bladed shapes, serrated peaks. Nearby a radio lay on its side with the battery panel open to reveal it had nothing to power it.
Down went the last of the port, only its rich taste mixed with the smell of turps made Arthur gag. He spat out his mouthful, leaving a thick puddle on the dusty tiles, and looked up to see an old mirror propped against the staircase.
He let the glass tumbler break on the floor, then knelt down so he could blink at his own reflection in the mirror and stick his tongue out, that overworked slab of grey meat.
He opened his mouth as wide as it would go and tensed his head until he could feel the blood in his temples going like the clappers and his face turning a boggling crimson. He used to do this in front of the old bedroom mirror when he was a kid after his classes with Miss Bose. Miss Bose, a retired local teacher who had way too much time on her hands, had been enlisted to help on Wednesday evenings because Arthur had a problem saying his ‘S’, or as his father put it, problems getting his mouth around what needed saying because he was otherwise satisfied getting it wrong.
Miss Bose’s services were paid for in kind: the three Newman boys to help her when she needed something doing. This might be a message delivering, a fence painting, her shopping fetching or her yard weeding. Old bird had aspic in the kitchen: a plate of opaque jelly with a boiled egg in it; pork pies or segments of spam. She devoured the Reader’s Digest and eschewed home remedies. She’d once held Arthur’s head over a can of tar because she said it would help with his chesty cough.