The Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime, Volume 8

As God Made Us A. L. Kennedy

Dan never explained why he woke up so early, or what it was that made him leave the flat. Folk wouldn’t get it if he told them, so he didn’t tell. He’d just head off out there and be ready for the pre-light, the dayshine you could see at around 4 a.m. — something about 4 at this point in the year — he’d be under that, stood right inside it. Daily. Without fail. Put on the soft shoes, jersey, tracky bottoms and the baseball cap and then off down the stairs to his street. His territory. Best to think of it as his — this way it was welcoming and okay.

He’d lean on the railings by number 6 and listen and settle his head, control it, and watch the glow start up from the flowers someone had planted in these big round-bellied pots, ceramic pots with whole thick fists of blossom in them now: a purple kind and a crimson, and both shades luminous, really almost sore with brightness, especially when all else was still dim. They only needed a touch of dawn and they’d kick off, blazing. Dan liked them. Loved them. He would be sorry when they went away.

Since the birds would be more of a constant, he made sure he loved them as well: their first breaks of song across the stillness, the caution and beauty in signals that hid their location, became vague and then faded as you hunted them. He thought there was practically nothing so fine as feeling their secrets pass round him and do no harm and he’d let himself wish to hook out the notes with his fingers like smooth, hot stones: little pebbles with a glimmer he could easily hold, could picture putting in his pockets, saving them. He’d imagine they might rattle when he walked: his weight landing and swinging and landing in the way it did, the only way it could, providing enough clumsiness to jar them. Or maybe they’d call out again when they took a knock, maybe that would happen. In his head, anything could happen — it was freedom in there: big horizons and fine possibilities, that kind of balls — and chirping whenever he moved would be nice. So Dan would have it. He’d insist.

The other noises Dan could do without — there were too many of them and they were too much. They came in at him off the bare walls in his new digs, rebounded and propagated among the landlord’s efforts at furniture. He’d to put up with clatters and small impacts — perhaps impacts — and vehicles — engines, metal sounds — and shouting and murmuring: voices that might be planning, that could have a bad intent, and footfalls: creeping, dashes, jogging. Fox screams were the worst — they sounded like bone pain and being lost, losing.

Caught in the house, you could not assess your situation, could neither prepare nor react — you were held in an impermissible state. Being caught at the railings wasn’t as bad. Standing there you would realize that you were naked: no cover, no recourse: and so you would send a ghost of yourself running down to the basement door — send this lump from your thoughts that would chase and then lie out flat in the shadows you’ve seen at the foot of the steps. It could hide there, your mind between it and any harm. It could even curl up like a child, like a hiding boy, while you mother it, father it, let it be secure. The rest of you, which was the part that was real and existed and knew what’s appropriate: that part could stay where it was and be firm — nothing going wrong — and could appreciate a mercy was taking place, a chance of survival all over again, and a measure to show your recovery’s success.

This kind of trick in his thinking was needed because, as had been previously and very often discussed with professionals of several kinds, he was a brave bastard — the brave bastards being the ones who were shitting themselves and did what they had to, anyway.

He managed.

He’d begun to use earplugs when it was night. He’d be snug in his pit by ten and the covers up over his head — which made him hot, but then again he’d been hotter and covers up over would let him sleep — and the plugs would be in and packing his skull with the racket of being alive: swallowing and a background thrum — like he had engines and they were running — and his breath pacing back and forth and keeping as restless as you’d want it, keeping on.

Sometimes the press of the foam would make his ears hurt, or start to tickle, but that he could tolerate. Putting in the right one was very slightly awkward. Could be worse, though — could be having to sew on a button as part of his personal maintenance, or peeling potatoes, or that whole palaver of taking a crap — which, these days, he really noticed how often he did, even though he’d cut back on eating potatoes, obviously — except for chips from the chipper, from Frying Tonite, which were made by either Doris, or Steve, who was her other son, the one who wasn’t dead. Those things were personally developmental and necessary tasks. They were interesting challenges in his reconstructed life. They were fucking pains in the arse.

When he’s together with the lads he doesn’t much mention such details because they are obvious and aren’t important, not like they seem when he’s alone.

“Oh, the many, many pains in young Daniel’s delicate arse... But on the other hand...”

“On the other hand — Aaw... look, I dropped it.”

“Well, fucking pick it up again, hands are expensive.”

Once every month they swim together: six gentlemen sharing a leisurely day. They choose whoever’s turn it is to be host, fire off the emails, travel however far, and then rendezvous at a swimming baths and christen the Gathering.

They call it that because of the movies with the Highlander in, the ones with everybody yelling at each other — there can be only one — and mad, immortal buggers slicing off each other’s heads with these massive swords.

You have only got the one head and shouldn’t lose it.

For this Gathering they’ll do the usual: swimming in the morning and then a big lunch and then getting pissed and then going back to Gobbler’s place, because this was his turn, and eating all his scran and some carry-out and then watching DVDs of their films and getting more pissed and maybe some porn and maybe not. They’d tried going to clubs in the early days — strip clubs, lap dancing — and one night in Aberdeen they’d gone to a neat, wee semi full of prossies — foreign prossies in fact, prossies from Moldova — but that never worked out too well. Porn was better sometimes.

In the baths everything is standard, predictable, doesn’t matter what pool they come to. First there’s the push or the pull on heavy doors and that walk into a thump of hot air — stuns your breath — and then chlorine smell and kiddie smell and there’ll be that knowledge of a space nearby, light and high with the huge tearing windows — the windows will take out at least the one wall — and all of that water trapped underneath the airiness, that pressure and weight.

Dan and the others, they’ll start mucking about, getting wound up by the anticipation of effort — flailing themselves from one place to another, hither and yon — the idea of fitness, applicable force — and more mucking about.

“Hey! Salt and vinegar!” Gobbler is shouting at Dan. Gobbler with an accent that is east of Scotland and Dan who sounds west — sounds, he supposes, like he’s from Coatbridge, because he is. Gobbler is from salt and sauce land and Dan is from salt and vinegar. On occasion, they set out the subtleties of this to the others.

“Gobbler’s from the heathen side — they put salt and sauce on their chips.”

“Jockanese bastards — everything’s spuds with you. Like the bloody Micks.” Frank dodges in with this, yelling — sounds like he’s near to Gobbler, out of sight behind a row of changing cubicles. “How long are you meant to live, anyway, on fried Mars bars and fried pizza and fried fucking pies?”

“About till we’re twenty.” Dan remembers the trip they had to Kettering — which is where Frank has settled. It’s a wee, grey hoor of a place. “Twenty years in Kettering, that’d feel like eighty. I’d top myself.”

The lot of them of them shouting back and forth at each other, scattered in the room, while they change and are overexcited and Dan thinks of being at school and how that was: swimming days with rubbish pals — pals who weren’t pals at all — and not wanting to get undressed, being scared that he’d maybe sink this time, choke, scared of standing in nothing but trunks and somebody picking him out, starting something, having a go, and then the teachers coming in to the troublemakers and saying they had to behave and this being a relief to Dan, but also shaming — he knew it wasn’t right, that he should sort his own problems, but couldn’t. He’d been shy then and not aware of his potential and people could miss things in children — this happens constantly, he’s certain — and even if an adult might try to be helpful, they might not do it a good way. Not enough care is taken. He worries for kids quite often. He wonders how they get through. He is extremely concerned that each possible kid should get through. He considers doing voluntary work with youngsters.

Dan as a youngster, he’d got his head down and tried to be correct, quiet and correct, tucked himself out of sight inside the rules. It was two years back, three, since he’d left that stuff — such a long while. He’d not forgotten, though — how he’d been useless.

Gobbler is hammering on the lockers between him and Dan and asking, bellowing, “You got your kit off yet?” Gobbler who had another name in other times and places, when he was with other Gobblers, but now he is by himself and not in a regiment, so he is the Gobbler — he is the representative of his type. “Oh, Danny Boy... You having trouble?”

No one will come in and tell them they have to do anything today. They will misbehave.

“Piss off.”

“Your pants are removed over the feet, remember — not over the head. Poor bloody Paras, you do get confused.”

“Fuck off.” And they are none of them useless.

“Are you naked yet, though, Danny? Getting hard just thinking about it.” Gobbler rattles something that sounds metallic and laughs. “And here’s old Fez, living up to his name... a dapper and fragrant man. Your heady aroma, sir, reminds me of those lovely evenings back at the mess when I ran the naked bar.”

A few strangers are in here too, but they are minding their own business. Mostly. Dan catches one of them giving him a walty look, in fact, the most perfectly walty look he’s met: that civilian mix of need and disgust, someone who thinks he might like being scared, but wouldn’t want the whole real deal, not a bit — wants to flirt, not end up being fucked. Dan stares at him while shouting back to Gobbler, shouting hard so that spittle leaves him, so that his heartbeat wakes.

“Bollocks!” “Exactly. And where there’s bollocks...” “Don’t start.” “There’s the mighty Gobbler javelin of Spam. You know when I get hard now—” Everyone joining in here, because they know the words, “It looks like I’ve got two dicks.”

Gobbler’s left leg gone from above the knee — which is called a transfemoral amputation — this allowing him to repeatedly assert a lie that keeps him merry, or relatively so. There are six of them today: Gobbler, Petey, Fezman, Jason, Frank and Dan. That’s two transfemoral — one with a transtibial to match — an elbow disarticuation, a transradial, a double wrist disarticulation — Frank’s been hopeless at knitting ever since — and then there’s Dan: he’s a right foot disarticulation and a right arm transhumeral — roughly halfway between the elbow and the shoulder — the elbow which is not there any more and the shoulder which is — the elbow which Dan still feels — the elbow which is frequently wet: warm and wet, like it was when he last saw it. This is another variety of repeatedly asserted lie.

“Here we go, then. Where’d you get the trunks from, Fezman?” This from Jason who’s hidden by the lockers nearest the exit.

“Girlfriend.”

“Got the DILAC trunks from his girlfriend, everyone.”

When they move out for the main event, Jason will be on one side of Petey and Fezman will be on the other. They will cradle him, but won’t talk about it. They will look mainly straight ahead. They will halt when they get to the footbath and threaten to dip in Petey’s arse. This will make them laugh.

“He doesn’t have a bloody girlfriend.” Gobbler again — a man who’s fond of the chat, who probably was the same before.

Jason answers him from the footbath, “Ah, but he’s definitely got the trunks.”

“Got it the wrong way round again, Fez, you minging big window-licker. You want to have the girlfriend and fuck the trunks.”

“No. I want to fuck the girlfriend and have the trunks.”

They’re all giggling, Dan can hear from every side, pissing themselves over nothing, letting themselves get daft, because that’s what they want.

Gobbler’s all set now for his own trip to the poolside. So, “Come and get it then, you big Marys.”

Gobbler calls for him exactly as Dan drops his locker key, has to reach it back up, pin it to his trunks without stabbing anything precious. He removes his foot before swimming. In the thickness of the water he can feel he doesn’t know it isn’t there, but meanwhile he grabs on to the lockers to make his way, works himself round the houses in hops and sways like he does at home.

The other two are waiting by the time he reaches them.

Then Dan and Frank and Gobbler huddle up and start to stumble themselves along — four feet between them out of the possible six.

“Mind where you put your hand, ducky. None of that 3 Para Mortar Platoon stuff here.” Gobbler sways them too close to a wall and then back.

Dan isn’t much of a talker except out on the Gatherings. “Make your bloody mind up, Gobbler.” The rest of the time he’ll maybe ask for his stop on a bus, or say something mumbly and stupid to Doris at the chipper, because she wants him to be guilty and he agrees. Probably in her mind she has the truth that there’s a set amount of death and what missed Dan found someone else. She misunderstands the working of that truth, but he won’t help her to figure it out. It’s none of her business. “Are you scared that we’re gay, or are you just worried about yourself?” And Dan maybe does eat more chips than he should. “Because we’ve always thought you were a fudge packer.” He could give them a bye and not have to meet her again. “Didn’t want to say so in case you got upset.” Except she needs him to be there, he can feel that. “You’ll just end up crying and then your mascara’ll run.” He needs it, too.

Frank listens and smiles down at a skinny coffin-dodger who’s folding his kecks on the bench nearest to them and trying to act invisible. Frank enunciates very clearly past Gobbler’s ear, “I can give you a special handjob, help you decide — clear all your pipework.” He waggles his free stump and winks. “Just bend over and kiss Danny’s ring.”

They stagger on, holding tight, and under other circumstances it might simply be that they’re drunk already and out somewhere late at night — it might be there’s years not happened yet and they’ve some other reason for being mates.

Hospital — great place to meet folk, get new mates. Get proper pals. Once they’re out at the pool, Dan breathes in warm and wet and is harmed by the sharp light and the din from the kids, hard noises.

A school party’s here, maybe a couple — lots of primary-age heads and bodies — the water’s splitting and heaving with them — all polystyrene floats and nervous piss.

Dan is aware they could prove to have an overwhelming nature, could defeat him, and he never does handle this bit too well. The panic is up and in him before he can jump and be ears full of water, wrapped by it and washed and free. He concentrates on being glad of Frank and Gobbler: the carrying, discomfort, distraction.

And he knows that once he’s swimming he’ll be fine. These days he goes on his back and is quite accomplished, purposeful, almost steers in the directions he intends.

“Nearly there, then.”

“Well, I had actually guessed that, you mong — cos of the fucking pool being right fucking here.” Gobbler shifts his weight and they stagger to the edge faster than intended.

Dan makes a point of exhaling and starting to grin. He is about to improve himself. He has grasped the theory, read the leaflets — people like him need a way to ignore their reminders, the signs of wounding which are their obvious and inconvenient new shape. His body is not an aid to mental rehabilitation. So he swims, makes everything glide and be jolly. This means he’ll improve faster. But never as fast as he would without his injuries. That’s a medical fact — if he still had his foot and the rest of his arm, he’d be finding life much better than he is.

He frowns, brings his thinking forward, peers ahead of his skin and his skull to the spot where Pete is already bobbing, hand at rest on the side and frowning up at a woman who is pacing and speaking to Fezman and Jason. They are both still dry and standing on the tiles, Fezman in these mad, knee-length trunks like he’s going to play football in the 1920s but with Day-Glo palm trees and dolphins and surf on them. You can tell he fancies himself in them and they’re new. They maybe are from a girlfriend.

The speaking woman is round-shouldered and wears a blouse and a long skirt so tight it almost stops her walking, only this isn’t good because she has no arse, no pleasantness to see. When she angles herself and faces Dan, he ends up looking right at the curve of her little belly and her little mound and he doesn’t want to. They make him sad. Everything about her is sad — browny grey and bloody depressing — hair, clothes, shoes that she clips and quarter-steps along in — and Dan can tell she’s a teacher, because she’s got that fake cheerful thing about her mouth and darty little eyes that are tired and want to find mistakes. Every now and then, her lips thin together and it gets obvious that her job has gone badly for her, and probably also her life. And here she is taking her class for swimming lessons on a Tuesday afternoon — for safety and fitness and possibly something else that she can’t quite control. Dan is of the opinion that she should not have any kind of care over children.

“Excuse me.” The teacher doesn’t speak to Dan, although she has left the others and drawn really near to him. She’s maybe only in her forties, but he notices she smells of old lady.

“Excuse me.” She focuses on Gobbler. “I realize you’ve been here, that you come here quite often...” She swallows and angles her head away, starts seriously watching the children — you’d think they were going to catch on fire, or something — not that she’d be any use to save them. “And I’ve explained you to them, but now—”

“What d’you say, love?” Gobbler interrupts her and his arm around Dan flexes. “You’ve explained...?”

“Yes, I could explain you to them.”

Gobbler’s arm getting ready for something, thoughts roaring about inside it, Dan can hear them.

“Don’t know what you mean though, love. How you’d explain me. What you’d be explaining.” Gobbler is nearly giggling which the woman shouldn’t think is him being friendly, because Dan knows he’s not. “Is that like I need translating? Like I’m a foreign language, because that’s not it — British me, British to the core.”

Dan wanting to clear off out of it, avoid, and also wanting to do what he must, what he does — he goes along with the lads: Fezman, Frank, Jason, even Petey in the water, they close up alongside Gobbler, make a curvy sort of line, and they watch the woman regret herself, but still think she’s in the right. “It’s the children — I know you can’t help it — but they get upset.”

Dan’s voice out of him before he realizes, “They don’t look upset.”

“One of the girls was crying.”

“They look fine. Splashing away and happy. I mean, they do. I wouldn’t say it, if they weren’t.”

She tries going at Gobbler again which is unwise and Dan wonders how she managed to qualify, even get to be a teacher, when she is this thick and this shit at understanding a situation. “I told them you were as God made you.”

“What?”

“But with so many... it isn’t your fault, but you must see that you’re disturbing.” Her hands waver in front of her, as if she can’t quite bear to point at them. “You are disturbing. I’m sorry, but you are.” She nods. “There must be places you can go to where you’d be more comfortable.” Her fingers take hold of her wrists and cling.

And the lads don’t speak. She stays standing there and hasn’t got a fucking clue. And the lads don’t speak. Dan can tell that she has no idea they’re deciding to be still, to be the nicest they can be, working up to it by deciding they will mainly forget her and what she’s said and who they are.

And the lads don’t speak.

She gives them a disapproving face, touch of impatience.

And Fezman nods, thoughtful, and says — he’s very even, gentle with every word — says to her, “These are new trunks. I like these trunks. They are DILAC trunks, which you don’t understand.” He presses his face in mildly, mildly towards her, “They are Do I Look A Cunt in these trunks? trunks and I am going to swim in them this morning. And you look a cunt and you are a cunt, you are an utter cunt and I am sorry for this, but you should know and you should maybe go away and try being different and not a cunt, but right here, right now — a cunt — you’re a cunt. You are a cunt.” He nods again, slowly, and turns his face to the water and the girls and boys.

Dan watches while the woman stares and her head jumps, acts like they’ve spat at her, or grabbed her tits and his gone arm trembles the same way that Gobbler’s does and he wants to run, can’t run, wants to — wants to throw up.

The woman kind of freezes for a moment and then takes a little, hobbled step and then another, everything unsteady, leaves them.

The lads wait.

Dan sees when she reaches the opposite wall and starts yakking to a guy in a DILAC suit, guy who’s standing with a Readers’ Wives type of bint — they’re colleagues, no doubt, fellow educators. He decides that he has no interest in what may transpire.

Dan and the lads take a breath, the requisite steps, and drop themselves into the water. They join Petey. They swim — show themselves thrashing, ugly, wild.

Dan watches the ceiling tiles pass above him and has his anger beneath him, has it pushing at the small of his back, bearing him up. It wouldn’t be useful anywhere else.

And he makes sure that he watches — regularly watches out — twists and raises his head and strains to see, makes sure that the kids have cleared out of his way, out of everyone’s. He wants no accidents.

In his heart, though, in his one remaining heart, there is a depth, a wish that some morning there will be an accident: a frightened kid, scared boy, choking and losing his way. When this happens Dan will be there and will save him.

He practises in his head and in the water — the paths that his good arm will take, the grip, the strength he’s already developed in his legs.

Once that’s over it will mean he has recovered himself again — become a man who would rescue a boy, who would always intend and wish to do that — would not be any other man than the man who would do that, who would be vigilant, be a brave bastard and take care.

He never would have done the thing that he couldn’t have. He never would have been the man he couldn’t be. He never would.

No tricks of the darkness, no sounds in the pre-light, no panic, no confusion, no walking downstairs to find it, to see how it lies like it’s frightened and shouldn’t be hurt. No mistake.

There should be no mistake. There should be no mistake. There should be no mistake.