I finished my pizza before I broke the news. ‘I’m going home,’ I told them.
Ulric responded tartly. ‘That’s not a good idea.’
Ruth smiled. ‘I’m afraid he’s right.’
‘What’s so wrong with staying with your buddies here?’ Paddy drained a beer in one go. ‘We’re not so bloody awful, are we?’
Dianna laid her hand on my forearm. ‘You’re getting to know our funny little ways by now, aren’t you?’
‘I know Ulric is a walking compendium of revolting habits.’ Paddy wedged a whole quarter of pizza into his mouth. ‘Buff ee ziz orrr …’ Or words to that effect. Ulric scowled at him.
‘You have us now.’ Ruth’s smile was compassion per se. ‘But the reality is you must forget your old life.’
‘Whatever you decide,’ Ulric sounded prim, ‘there isn’t a shred of a possibility of you going home. It’s not an option.’
‘C’mon.’ Paddy ripped off a bottle cap with his teeth. ‘Have another beer with me. Tonight I’ll have a party … and you’re all invited.’ His booming laughter rattled the dishes. ‘The drinks are on me.’
Dianna moved from resting her hand on my bare forearm to gently rubbing her palm against my skin. ‘Stay with us, Mason. You’re liked more than you think.’
I smiled and told them of course I’d stay. I wouldn’t dream of leaving.
But I’d made up my mind. I’m going home.
I lay awake in bed. The time had long since crawled past midnight. Now the clock downstairs chimed a sombre one in the morning. Outside, a breeze rustled the trees. My bedroom belonged to a child. A cartoon wallpaper depicted robots chasing after comic-looking cars; shelves were crowded with more robots in the form of electronic toys. One startled me with the words, ‘Good night, Thomas. Nighty-night. Sweet dreams. And if you should die before you wake …’
Great sense of humour the parents have, whoever they are. They programme child Thomas’s android to remind him that death is inevitable. The Romans had a similar saying: Memento Mori: remember you must die.
In the next room Paddy made love to Ruth. Their voices came through clearly enough. Even though I couldn’t make out any words (not that I tried, you understand) the meaning was clear enough. I love you; you’re beautiful; that’s wonderful; don’t stop; faster, faster; that’s it; that’s amazing. Like I need to tell you what lovemaking sounds like? I clamped the pillow over my head but I could still hear. Worse, I pictured Ruth naked as Paddy caressed her full breasts. I tried to think about other stuff: the mummy, the Echoman with my face, even the pizza feast, but images barrelled through my skull of Ruth’s smile, her gleaming teeth, her flushed cheeks, her sparkling eyes as Paddy wiggled on top of her. Worse, I felt that ‘body-tingle’. Hearing other people make love is a turn on. I didn’t want it to be, but how do you block a million years of evolution?
I needed everyone to fall asleep. Then I could go. As simple as that. OK, I lied. No way would I return home, I assured them. But the moment my gang of heroes fell asleep I could slip away into the night with my toes pointing homeward. Not the apartment I’d lived in for the last six months, but back to the house where I grew up.
Maybe it was the moans of the pair reaching ecstasy that triggered the robot’s sensor. The electronic voice whispered a seductive: ‘Good night … sweet dreams … if you should die before you wake …’ Fucking robot. I wanted to smash its android brain. I hated the parents of the child whose bed I slept in. You don’t do that kind of crap to your kid.
‘Oh … oh … oh! More!’ Ruth enjoyed the orgasm of the year. A huge, convulsing cum that not only rattled the bed springs but must have vibrated the atoms of the house. Even the corpse of the Echoman lying under the bushes outside must have been twitching merrily to that kind of earth-shaking boning. It sent a rush of blood to my groin. I thought of past girlfriends. I tried not to, but you know how it goes.
The robot responded with: ‘If you should die before you wake … if you should die, do not lie screaming in your grave. Lie still, wait for worms to eat your brain.’
Crap! I jumped off the bed, knocked my knee against a chair in the dark, cursed some more, snatched the robot off the shelf then returned to the bed where I fumbled in the dark to open up the battery pack so I could kill it.
‘If you should die, rot in peace.’ I see the work of a big brother or sister here, I told myself, as I fiddled the battery from the back of the robot. ‘Nobody will remember your name.’ They’d programmed the toy to give their brother a midnight scare. ‘Graves are lonely places … deep, dark … filled with pain …’ As I sat on the bed with the robot on my lap the bedroom door ghosted open. A dark figure materialized to peer at me yanking at the toy’s innards.
‘Mason? What on earth are you doing?’
I recognized Dianna’s silhouette. ‘It’s one of the toy robots …’
‘Is it bothering you?’
Lucky she couldn’t see how embarrassed I was by the question, or how foolish I felt. ‘Something’s activating it. It’s keeping me awake.’
‘Oh? Do you want me take it out of the bedroom?’
‘I’ve got it.’ I held up the battery. ‘It’ll stay quiet now.’
She moved through the gloom to sit beside me on the bed. Although it was too dark to make out much I could see her legs were bare, and did I tell you she had such long, long legs? I saw the gleam of skin as those legs ran up to disappear under the T-shirt she was wearing. I noticed her legs as I heard sex coming from the next bedroom. The grunts of rapture were faster now. They’re hungry … there’s pent-up lust there. Despite myself I pictured a tangle of naked limbs. And now here’s Dianna. I saw the glint of her eyes in the darkness; there was no mistaking her perfume either. From her glances at the partition wall I knew full well she heard love-making, too.
I shoved the robot back on its shelf. ‘That’s the toy silenced, but there’s no stopping those two.’
Dianna gave a breathy chuckle. ‘Ruth and Paddy have been an item for a while now.’ Then she said quickly, ‘I don’t know what the effect of hearing people making love has on you, but …’ Her eyes fixed on me. ‘It makes me so wet.’
‘Dianna?’
‘Can I get into bed with you?’
Hell. What a question. Dianna’s beautiful. A willowy goddess of a woman with long blonde hair.
She reached out to grip my forearm. ‘Mason, I really want to.’ Heat flowed from her skin into mine. ‘You’re nice.’ Hot, driving sex in the next room? Dianna’s hand on my arm? A divine presence? Yes, my heart pounded. ‘Mason. Do you mind if I get in?’
‘Dianna?’ That was Ulric’s voice. A door creaked down the passageway.
She clicked her tongue in frustration and slipped out of the bedroom leaving me alone with the sounds from next door. Damn, what now?
chapter 3
They slept – I went. Paddy lay in bed with Ruth, Ulric with Dianna. There wasn’t time to ponder Dianna’s bedroom encounter. As quietly as I could, I left the house before the sun rose. Even though it was spring the air was cold as winter. My breath showed as white gusts as I walked down that lane flanked by fields to a main road. There I hitched a ride on a truck heading into England’s northern lands. At that time of the morning there wasn’t much in the way of traffic, so the trucker could push his wagon hard. If we could maintain this speed I should be seeing my mother and sister in three hours.
It seems to me that men who drive trucks usually have a shrine to Elvis either in their cabs or in their hearts. The driver I’d hitched a ride with boasted sideburns, slicked down black hair, with a suggestion of an Elvis Presley fringe. This one was aged about forty-five, putting him fifteen years my senior. Sure enough, there was an Elvis doll in black leather come-back tour costume that danced on a spring on the dashboard. As the guy drove, I’m sure the look-alike hummed snatches of ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ Truckers are solitary animals, but it’s often the case you get an opposite character trait. Elvis was trucker tur
ned star. Most truck drivers I’ve met enjoy the solitude of the open road but they yearn to be showmen, too. They dress for their rolling stage. Often something with a Wild West twist – cowboy boots maybe, or eye-catching shirt; the vehicle is their billboard: they announce their name either painted above the radiator grille, or on the door, or on a plastic sunshade strip blazed across the windscreen. When they drive alone I’m sure they hold the wheel, and engage the gear-shift, and apply brakes in the same understated way as your grandma tootling her car to the supermarket, but let the trucker gain a passenger then they drive to impress, with great sweeping turns of the wheel and big exaggerated movements of their hands as they turn up the King, blasting out ‘Viva Las Vegas’. With that rousing anthem, they slam home the gears while sounding the horn with enough aplomb to make the dead cover their ears.
My trucker drove – no, not just drove – but DROVE in capital letters. He made it look like the work of heroes, as if the very way he hurled that three-ton machine along the highway saved the free world. All this in a cab that smelt of fried bacon overlaid with spearmint gum and, when he saw himself in the mirror, he knew he was magnificent.
‘Where you headed?’ he asked, as he nodded to the rhythms of Elvis.
‘Home.’
‘Wife?’
‘No, mother and sister. I’ve been working away.’
He glanced to see if my hands were ingrained with honest grime. ‘Salesman?’
‘No, I make TV programmes.’
‘Any I might have heard of?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Try me.’
‘It’s sliver-casting.’
‘No, I’ve not heard that one.’
I glanced across as he worked the wheel with so much energy. His hands were clean, too. Even though parts of his truck were crusted in dirt and slippery with grease he never touched them. On the backs of both smooth, hairless hands he had a dragon tattooed.
‘Sliver-casting,’ I explained. ‘It’s programme-making targeted at a small but specific audience. Mainly it goes out on the internet.’
‘Ah …’ He understood. ‘Porn.’
It was easier to smile and nod. In truth I make programmes about real estate developments, vehicle road tests, niche hobbies, and product profiles. Rather, that should be made programmes. All that’s changed, of course, in the last three weeks.
‘So you’re not married, then?’ he asked.
‘Used to be.’
The driver sounded his horn. I didn’t see any other vehicles near enough to be any trouble, maybe for him the horn blast kept the road clear of demons.
‘I joined the same club.’ He grimaced as if he’d tasted something he didn’t like. ‘Bitch doesn’t let me see the kids anymore.’
The driver next to me was silhouetted against the stars through his window. I pictured him spending solitary nights sailing this battleship of the road, while listening to sad songs ghosting from the Elvis disks.
We made small talk for a bit then the hypnotic drumming of tyres on blacktop lulled us into silence. Later, sunrise over the hills held our gaze. I’d never claim to be a fan of Elvis Presley but his slower, moodier songs have a way of unlocking something inside of me. Memories started to surface. Until yesterday I’d almost forgotten my old buddy the mummy, Natsaf-Ty, keeper of the sacred crocodiles. I’ve already mentioned that when I was a child I saw the mummy in a museum. He had a scanty covering of bandages, mainly around the waist. His torso and head had been exposed to reveal a wise old face with closed eyes and the strange effect of the tip of his tongue protruding through his lips. After that chance meeting I found that Natsaf-Ty came to visit me most nights. If I slipped out of bed after midnight I’d find him sitting on the stairs, invariably third one from the bottom with his back resting against the wall. Even though his eyelids were closed I knew he’d be looking up at me in that solemn way of his. He didn’t move much, and then only very slowly. When I was eight I thought of him as having a liking for stillness. Now, I describe it as being serene. He had this aura of tranquillity as he sat there and talked to me, almost a shadow in shadow. And I’ve been through the possibility – or probability – that it was my imagination that evoked him there. After my mother took me away from my grandparents I missed them and invented the macabre substitute. Natsaf-Ty was always interested in what I’d done that day at school. In his wise old way he offered advice if I was being bullied, or worried about those things that seem so important when you’re eight. You know, how tall will I be when I’m grown up? Will I always get Christmas presents, or is there a cut-off age? How long will my hamster live? How does it feel to be dead (after all, that dusty guy must be an expert at it; he’d been dead 3000 years). This relationship with the mummy went on until I hit twelve. In retrospect I guess things changed with puberty. Oh, don’t get me wrong. He didn’t vanish in a puff of purple smoke one night. Ty remained there, guardian of the night-time stairs until I was in my mid-teens. It’s one of those strange things. Even when I was fourteen I’d still glimpse him there sitting on the stairs, with his hands resting on his lap, only I’d long since stopped talking to him by then. Like he was a chair, or picture on the wall I’d half-notice him, but it no longer occurred to me to say ‘hello’ never mind regale him with stories of how my day had been. Natsaf-Ty, keeper of the sacred crocodiles, was slowly fading from my life. I was changing. I careered on the hormonal roller-coaster ride of being adolescent. I listened to music with friends. Getting courage to ask girls for a date seemed to be an on-going process, not to mention an insoluble problem. Life happens, and I was enjoying it happening too much to find time to sit and talk to some antique Egyptian. But he’s the loyal kind. He returned every night to occupy the third stair from the bottom, his step, the one that he found so comfortable for his three-thousand-year-old bones.
The week after my sixteenth birthday I heard that my best friend had been with a girl I’d planned to ask on a date (after days of building myself up to it I’d finally mustered enough courage). Then the truth hit me as hard as an avalanche. Some kid at college I hardly know, said to me in the cafeteria, ‘Hey, did you hear about Tony Allen? There was party over at my place on Sunday and we heard shouting coming from the back lawn. We all went out to find your pal Tony screwing Susan Shepherd on the grass. They were slamming away like a runaway train.’
It’s OK, I’d told myself that evening when I went round to Tony’s. He’s my best friend. I’m all right about it. So, I won’t get to date Susan Shepherd, but it’s not as if she’s my girlfriend, is it? I never asked her out. Most I’d ever done was talk to her now and again, with all that ancillary stuff of lots of watching with aching longing from a tantalizing distance.
Tony invited me into the kitchen. His parents were out. The radio played a love song. In a civilized way I chatted about us going to see a band at an end-of-term ball. He never mentioned Susan. It was only when he turned his back to me to pour boiling water into the cups that the rage came down. How could he have sex with Susan Shepherd so casually? He’d teased me when I confessed I’d mustered the courage to ask her out. At that moment, in my imagination, I had to endure the mind-searing picture of Tony saying to her at the party, ‘Fancy coming outside for a quick poke?’
‘Sure, why not?’ she’d reply.
Why was it all so easy for Tony to charm the girls, yet all so tongue-tying for me? Fury hit me so hard I couldn’t speak. I shoved Tony against the kitchen counter. Boiling water slopped out of the kettle and on to his hand that held a cup.
‘Hey!’ It came as a yell as much as word.
‘You think you’re so fucking clever!’ I screamed at him, with all my sixteen-year-old angst. ‘You know I fancied Susan!’
‘Shit, Mason. Look at my hand!’
I shoved him again. ‘Don’t you lay a finger on her again.’
It was teenage madness. The hormonal tidal wave that knocks years of friendship out of your head in one jealousy driven whoooosh. Tony then knocked m
e off my feet with a single punch.
As I came round he was mopping spilt water from the counter. ‘Look at the mess. My mother will go mad when she sees this.’
Roaring out death threats, I blasted to my feet and swung another punch at him. He side-stepped it; my fist smacked into a steel rack that held fish slices, ladles and a sieve. Ten minute later I made it back home with a huge gash in the back of my hand that didn’t just bleed, it erupted red-stuff. I was a blood explosion. That crimson discharge could have been a expression of my anger.
That night, at half past midnight, I crept to the stairs as my sister and mother slept. A shadow sat on the third riser from the bottom. I looked down at Natsaf-Ty, keeper of the sacred crocodiles. He raised his ancient mummy face; a wise face I knew as well as the back of my wounded hand. His eyes were closed. The tip of his tongue protruded from his lips. The tawny skin of his hairless head seemed to be an assembly of atoms that exuded a subtle glow rather than actual physical presence. Even with his eyes closed he appeared to watch me as I sat down on the step halfway up the stairs. I sat all hunched and miserable there before managing to get out the words that had stuck in my gullet.
‘I don’t know why … I tried to kill my best friend today.’ My shoulders began to shake. ‘I feel sick at the thought of it. I knew I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t stop myself wanting to hurt him.’ My hands were shaking, too, as I bunched them into fists. The cut beneath the bandage pulled as if the sliced skin was being dragged open again. ‘I didn’t even manage to hit him. I punched a rack on the wall and did this to myself.’ I held out my right hand for Natsaf-Ty to ‘see.’ ‘I’m an idiot. I deserve smashing my hand up.’
Gently, he pulled back the bandage to examine the wound, tilting his head to one side as he studied the damage there. Sight of the scab sickened me as much as that stupid outburst of anger at Tony. I felt betrayed by the emotion that had made me act so bizarrely.
The mummy sighed.
‘You’re right,’ I muttered. ‘I deserved it. It’d serve me right if I got gangrene.’ In the gloom I stared at the wound. The cut formed a Y-shape of vivid red lines. The tips of the V-shape at the top of the ‘Y’ ran from my knuckles to converge at the centre of the back of my hand, while the horizontal column extended as far as my wrist.