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Two days’ growth
He felt engulfed by a sudden wave of feeblemindedness –
Too tired
Too stoned
Too fucked…
He looked at her, hard, as if she might be the answer to his problem –
Chiropodist
‘Did you get rid of it?’ he asked.
She smiled, her eyes shining.
Kane rubbed at his own eyes. He felt a little stupid. He steadied himself.
‘Beede’s had that verruca since I was a kid,’ he said slowly. ‘It was pretty bad.’
‘I believe it was very painful,’ she said, still smiling (as if the memory of Beede’s pain was somehow delightful to her).
He coldly observed the smile –
Is she mocking him?
Is she mocking me?
– then he gradually collected his thoughts together. ‘Yes,’ he said stiffly, ‘I have one in almost exactly the same place, but it’s never really…’
His words petered out.
She shrugged. ‘People often inherit them. It’s fairly common. Verrucas can be neurotic…’
‘Neurotic?’
Kane’s voice sounded louder than he’d intended.
‘Yes,’ she was smiling again, ‘when a patient fails to get rid of something by means of conventional medicine we tend to categorise it as a psychological problem rather than as a physical one.’
Kane struggled to digest the implications of this information. His brain seized, initially, then it belched –
‘But a verruca’s just some type of…of wart,’ he stuttered. ‘You catch them in changing rooms…’
‘Yes. But like any ailment it can be sustained by a kind of…’ she paused, thoughtfully ‘…inner turmoil.’
The boy was now sitting on the floor and inspecting his matches. He shook each box, in turn, and listened intently to the sounds it made. ‘I can tell how many’s in there,’ he informed nobody in particular, ‘just from the rattlings.’
‘We’ve met before.’ Kane spoke, after a short silence.
‘Yes,’ she said.
(He already heartily disliked how she just agreed to things, in that blank – that untroubled – way. The easy acquiescence. The cool compliance. He connected it to some kind of background in nursing. He loathed nurses. He found their bedside manner – that distinctively assertive servility – false and asphyxiating.)
‘You treated my mother,’ he said, feeling his chest tighten. She sat down on Beede’s chair, facing him. ‘I think I did. Years ago.’
‘That’s right. You came to the house. I remember now.’
They were both quiet for a moment.
‘You’d just returned from Germany,’ Kane continued, plainly rather astonished (and then equally irritated) by the extent of his own recall.
‘Yes I had. I went there for a year, almost straight after I’d graduated.’
‘I remember.’
He sniffed, trying to make it sound like nothing.
‘You have an impressive memory,’ she said, then put a polite hand up to her mouth, as if to suppress a yawn. This almost-yawn infuriated him. He didn’t know why.
How old was she, anyway? Thirty-one? Thirty-three?
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just your mole. Your birthmark. It’s extremely memorable.’
She didn’t miss a beat.
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry,’ he struggled to repress a childish smile, ‘that must’ve sounded rude.’
‘No…’ she shook her head, her voice still soft as ever, ‘it didn’t sound rude.’
Didn’t sound rude.
Kane stared at her. She stared back at him. He took out his phone and inspected his messages.
‘A psychiatrist,’ she observed mildly, ‘might call what you do with that phone “masking behaviour”.’
He glanced up, astonished –
The cheek of it
– then quickly checked himself. ‘I guess they might,’ he said, returning casually to his messages and sending a quick response to one of them, ‘but then you’re just a foot doctor.’
She chuckled. She didn’t seem at all offended. ‘You have eyes just like your father’s,’ she murmured, gracefully adjusting the long hem of her skirt (as if hers was a life without technology, without chatter. A life entirely about thinking and pausing and feeling. A quiet life). Kane’s jaw stiffened. ‘I don’t think so,’ he murmured thickly, ‘they’re a completely different colour.’
She shrugged and then sighed, like he was just a boy. She glanced down, briefly, at her son (as if, Kane felt, to make the connection 100 per cent sure), then said blandly, ‘It was a difficult time for you.’
‘Pardon?’
He put his phone away. The tone of his voice told her not to persist, but she ignored the warning.
‘Difficult. With your mother. I remember thinking how incredibly brave you were. Heroic, almost.’
His cheeks reddened. ‘Not at all.’
‘Sometimes, after I’d seen her, I’d just sit in my car and shake. Just shake. I didn’t know how you coped with it. I still don’t. You were so young.’
She smiled softly at the memory, and as she smiled, he suddenly remembered. He remembered standing at the window and seeing her in her car, shaking: her arms thrown over the steering wheel, her head thrown on to her arms –
Oh God
His gut twisted.
He turned and gazed out into the car park. He was unbelievably angry. He felt found-out – unearthed – raw. But worst of all, he felt charmless. Charm was an essential part of his armoury. It was his defensive shield, and she had somehow connived to worm her way under it –
Damn her
He drew a deep breath.
Outside he could suddenly see Beede –
Huh…?
– walking through the play area towards the blond imposter and the horse. The imposter had now dismounted. He was touching his head. He seemed confused. Beede offered his hand to the horse. The horse sniffed his hand. It appeared very receptive to Beede’s advances.
‘I wonder what happened to the other man,’ Kane mused, then shuddered. Everything was feeling strange to him. Inverted. And he didn’t like it.
‘Maybe there were two horses,’ the boy said. He was now standing next to the table and fingering Kane’s lighter. He looked up at Kane and held it out towards him. ‘Red,’ he smiled, ‘that’s your colour.’ The lighter was red.
He showed his mother. ‘See?’
She said nothing.
‘See?’ he repeated. ‘He comes from fire.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ His mother took the lighter off him and held it out to Kane herself.
Kane walked over and took it from her. She had beautiful hands. He remembered her hands from before.
‘I lived in the American desert,’ he said to the boy, ‘when I was younger. It was very hot. I once almost died in the heat out there. Look…’
He pushed back his sleeve and showed the boy a burn on his arm. The boy seemed only mildly interested.
Kane was about to pull his sleeve down again when the woman (Elen, was it?) put out her hand and took a firm hold of his wrist. She pulled his arm towards her. She stared at the scar. Her face was so close to it he could feel her breath on his skin. Then she let go (just as suddenly) and focussed in on the boy once more.
‘America,’ Kane said, taking full possession of his arm again, drawing it into his chest, shoving the sleeve down, feeling like an angry child who’d just had his school uniform damaged in a minor playground fracas. As he spoke he noticed Beede’s book on the floor. He bent down and picked it up. He shoved it into his jacket pocket.
‘In a magic trick,’ the boy repeated, plaintively, ‘they would’ve had two horses.’
‘How old are you?’ Kane asked, glancing over towards the serving counter and noticing Anthony Shilling standing there.
‘Five.’
‘Then you’re just old enough to keep it…’ he said, showing Fleet his empty hand, forming a fist, tapping his knuckles and then opening the hand up again. The red lighter had magically reappeared in the centre of his palm. The boy gasped. Kane placed it down, carefully, on to the lacquered table, nodded a curt farewell to the chiropodist, and left it there.
TWO (#ulink_6ae14bad-cbf8-5c57-8a78-1a4a430f3183)
‘I’m Beede; Daniel Beede. I’m your friend. Do you remember me, Dory?’
Beede peered up, intently, into the tall, blond man’s face, struggling – at first – to establish any kind of a connection with him. He spoke softly (like you’d speak to a child) and he used his name carefully, as if anticipating that it might provoke some kind of violent reaction. But it didn’t.
‘Of course.’
The tall, blond man blinked and then nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I remember…’ He talked quietly and haltingly with a strong German accent. ‘It’s just that…uh…’
His eyes anxiously scanned the surrounding area (the road, the horse, the tarmac, the vehicles in the car park). ‘It’s just that I suddenly have the strangest…’
He winced, shook his head, then gazed down, briefly, at his own two hands, as if he didn’t quite recognise them. ‘…uh…fu…fu…fühlen?’
He glanced up, quizzically.
‘Feeling,’ Beede translated.
The German stared at him, blankly.
‘Feeling,’ Beede repeated.
The German frowned. ‘No…not…it’s this…this…’ he patted his own chest, meaningfully, ‘fuh-ling. Feee…Yes. Yes. This feeling. This horrible, almost…’ he shuddered, ‘almost overwhelming feeling. Like a kind of…’ He swallowed. ‘A dread. A deep dread.’
Beede nodded.
‘…a terrible dread.’ He moved his hands to his throat, ‘Suffocare. Suffocating. A smothering feeling. A terrible feeling…’
‘You’re tired,’ Beede murmured gently, ‘and possibly a little confused, but it’ll soon pass, trust me.’
‘I do,’ the German nodded, ‘I do traust you.’ He paused. ‘Trost you…’
He blinked. ‘Troost.’
‘Trust,’ Beede repeated.
‘Of course…’ the German continued. ‘It’s just…’
His darting eyes settled, momentarily, on the pony. ‘I have an awful suspicion that this feeling – this…this…uh…’
‘Fear,’ Beede filled in, dryly.
