chapter TWO
MARC WATCHED THE short funeral cortege as it made its way off the main road and into the grounds of the Near Grove Crematorium, following the narrow tarmac road past the gravestones and monuments. Most of the cars were old, outdated models, but kept in good shape by their mostly aged owners. None of the old man’s friends had been what anyone might call well off. They were normal people, with normal amounts of cash in their pockets.
He sat in his car outside the front gates, watching through the grimy windscreen. He recognised not one of the cars in the small queue of vehicles. In fact he didn’t know anyone who’d known Harry Rose apart from his uncle, but his uncle was dead too, five years in the grave from cancer of the liver. Uncle Mike had introduced Marc to Harry Rose, but only from beyond the grave – his name had been enough to convince the old man to talk to him. The two men had once drunk together. They’d been long-ago beer buddies.
The stereo was playing softly; the CD was a compilation of Ennio Morricone’s film scores Harry Rose had given him not long after their first meeting. Marc closed his eyes and listened to the music, trying not to think about the immediacy and inevitability of death.
When he opened his eyes again, the final car in the grim little procession was inching its way through the crematorium gates. Bright shards of sunlight broke through the clouds and made patterns on the shiny roof and bonnet, which were a direct contrast to the dirty, dented bodywork of his little Nissan. He stared at the layer of dust on the dashboard, a light scattering of grey. The torn seats, the battered interior... somehow the poor condition of the car represented a facet of his lifestyle that he didn’t like to think about. It had been new once, this vehicle, but now it was old. Not a profound insight, but one that moved him deeply on this particular day at this grim hour.
Marc turned off the engine, removed the ignition key, and opened the car door. He stepped out onto the road, glancing to the side to make sure there were no cars speeding towards him, and locked the door (he used the key; there was no central locking on this old beast). He pulled up his collar against the slight autumnal chill and jogged across the road, towards the iron crematorium fence. He had not been here for a long time – not since they’d cremated Uncle Mike. The place made him feel uncomfortable, exhuming memories that he’d rather stayed buried. Conflicting images and sensations almost overwhelmed him: the smell of booze on his uncle’s breath, the man’s strong arms lifting him off the ground when he was a child, his harsh voice, the way the skin around his eyes had creased when he smiled, almost covering his eyes.
He stood at the fence and stared through the trees. People were moving around in there, climbing out of their cars, milling around like geese in a field before the service began. He could see some of them shaking hands or speaking softly to one another, and others lit up cigarettes to smoke away the minutes before they were allowed to enter the small redbrick crematorium building. The weight of the dead was heavy here. Marc could feel it everywhere, even on the oft-trodden footpath outside the fence.
Marc wasn’t sure what he was doing here. He had not known Harry Rose for long, and he had not known him too well. Yes, the two men had forged a bond of sorts over the past few months, but it was based on Marc’s desire for information and the old man’s need for company in the long, dim days before he died. They had been convenient companions, nothing more.
Yes, Harry had once known Marc’s Uncle Mike well, many years ago, but Marc had known neither of the men beyond the superficial.
He reached inside his pocket and took out his mobile phone, checked it for messages, and then switched it off. He rarely received calls or texts. He led a deliberately friendless lifestyle, preferring to spend time on his own. He didn’t know why he chose to ostracise himself from others, but isolation agreed with him. That was all he needed to know, the only justification he required.
He started towards the main gates, reluctant to enter, yet knowing that it was the least he could do – to pay the man his respects, say a final goodbye before the flames took him. He didn’t need to hang around afterwards, and the strangers here would not press him to do so.
Loose stones crunched under his feet as he walked along the path, between grubby monuments and grave markers. The air was chill, the sky bright and open. Traffic noise dimmed behind him, as if he were in the process of entering a sealed environment.
Marc stood at the edge of the small group of mourners, trying not to be noticed. He wished he hadn’t given up smoking; that would have given him something to do with his hands as he waited.
“Excuse me.”
Marc looked up, resisting the urge to sigh. He had been staring at his feet, so failed to notice the man’s approach. “Hello,” he said, holding out his hand in an instinctive gesture that he didn’t really mean.
The man shook his hand and smiled. “You must be Marc.” His face was lined, his hair was thin and grey; he looked as if he was in his early sixties. “I’m Vic. Victor Rose... Harry’s brother.”
Marc nodded. Of course; Harry had told him about his brother, and the falling out the two men had experienced several years ago – some family thing, a silly argument that had stretched and changed into a longstanding estrangement. “Ah, yes. I’m pleased to meet you.” When the man let go of his hand he didn’t know what to do with it, so he just let it hang at his side, the fingers clasping an imaginary cigarette.
“I suppose Harry told you about me. About what happened between us?”
“A little bit, yes. Not in any great detail, though.” He felt awkward, not really knowing what to say to this man. He hated small talk. It was meaningless.
“I wish we hadn’t been so stupid. If I knew what was going to happen... how ill he was... well, you know.” He smiled, sadly. His pale blue eyes were moist. His face was like parchment paper stamped with the signs of loss.
“I know. And I’m sure Harry felt the same.” He had no idea what Harry had thought about the matter. Even if he’d been told, he had not retained the information.
An awkward silence descended between the two men, pushing them apart. Again, Marc wished that he could smoke. He hadn’t felt the craving this strongly in a long time, perhaps for a couple of years.
“If he’d have told me how ill he was, I would’ve gone round, made up with him. He was my only brother... I loved the old bastard, even though I don’t think I ever told him how I felt.”
Marc was just about to say something – he didn’t know what; just anything to break the uncomfortable, candid moment – when people started to shuffle inside the building.
“Looks like we’re on now,” he said, smiling at Victor Rose. “Please, after you.”
Rose nodded and began to walk towards the entrance, hanging back enough that he didn’t get too far ahead of Marc. He doesn’t want to go in alone, thought Marc. He increased his speed and drew level with the older man. “Okay if I sit with you?” He was unsure why he’d made the offer, but once he did he felt better. Perhaps in this situation, a companion would help ease the tension.
Rose looked relieved. “Yes... yes, that would be fine.”
Marc placed a hand on Rose’s shoulder and guided him inside. He hoped that he would never get so lonely that he needed the company of a stranger at a family funeral – then he realised that he was already there. If he was called to the interment of some distant family member tomorrow, he’d have nobody to take with him.
Perhaps he’d ask Victor Rose.
They followed the other mourners inside and took their seats near the front of the narrow room. Marc looked around and concluded that there must be no other family members present. Not one person acknowledged Victor; no-one even looked in his direction. Either the trouble between the brothers had been worse than he imagined, or Victor had become so detached from his older sibling’s life that he did not know these people.
Whichever reason were true, it was a sad state of affairs.
They stood when the service began, sang half-heartedly along with the hymns, and listened to the vicar as he described someone Marc barely even recognised. After what felt like a very short time, the velvet-draped coffin began to move on its roller towards the furnace door.
Marc felt unmoved by the brief ceremony. He was unable to connect with anything that had happened, any of the words the man at the front of the room had said. It all seemed too generic, so homogenised, that it might have come out of a can. Instant funeral service: just add water.
Before long, the mourners started to file outside. Their faces were unchanged; nothing had penetrated the façade.
“Can I offer you a lift?” he asked Victor Rose, as they were standing outside, waiting for something that had already happened.
Rose nodded. “Thank you. I came here on the bus... it would be a rather depressing ride back to Harry’s patch on my own.”
Marc said nothing. He just led the way to the car, walking slowly to enable to other man to keep up.
Once the car was moving, he switched on the radio, keeping the volume low. The local news was reporting more job lay-offs and a story about yet another company going into liquidation. Times were hard; people were struggling. It was the same old story told in a different way, or a sequel in which every move could be predicted on the evidence of what had gone before.
“Back there in the crematorium.” He glanced to the side, at his passenger’s profile. “It didn’t seem like anyone knew you. I mean... not one of those people spoke to you.”
Rose sighed. “My brother and I led very different lives. To be honest, I very much doubt those other mourners even knew who I was. Even before we fell out, Harry and I were distant. We always have been – ever since we were children.”
Marc didn’t respond.
“I suppose you think that’s strange?”
Marc shook his head. “I really wouldn’t know. My own lifestyle isn’t exactly what you’d call conventional.” He thought of his ex-wife, who was now living with a female tattoo artist in Singapore, and his nomadic existence as a freelance reporter for a variety of newspapers and magazines; his self-imposed exile from the human race. He’d never settled down, never made a mark of any kind in the world. Even the stories he reported faded a day or two after they were told, impermanent, not mattering to anyone for longer than the minutes it took to read them.
“We were very different people, my brother and I. My friends don’t know he exists, and I daresay his friends never knew much about me. It’s how we worked. We didn’t need to be close in order to feel close. That probably doesn’t make much sense – I know it doesn’t to me – but it’s just how we were. Who we were...” He fell silent, as if tired of the sound of his own voice.
Marc followed the route from Near Grove to the Concrete Grove, feeling as if he were chasing a long, dark thread through the corridors of a familiar maze. He always became downbeat when he approached the area. It made him feel so low that sometimes he wished he’d never heard of the place. The closer he got to the heart of the area, the more dilapidated the buildings became, the more potholes appeared in the road, and the shabbier the people on the street began to seem. Part of this was psychological – his reaction to the location – but not all of it. This place was dark; it was well shadowed. Things had always been different here.
Marc had a theory that some places were always in shadow, no matter how hard the sun was shining. The Concrete Grove was a joyless estate. Apart from the poverty and the criminality that bred here, there was another layer of darkness that could be sensed rather than seen. He thought of a dark sea lapping against concrete pilings, the waves occasionally slopping up onto the land and breaking it away, slowly encroaching. But that wasn’t quite right. The analogy was close, but not precise enough to communicate exactly what it was he felt.
He drove the car along Beacon Grove Rise, following a couple of other vehicles that had left the crematorium just before them. As he drove, he was struck by the way things never changed around here. It was like a film set that had not been taken down when the production company moved on, and people had moved in to set up home inside the two-dimensional backdrop. There was a sense of impermanence, yet also the belief that everything would remain as it was now, as it had been since the estate was built.
He parked the car on Grove Terrace, in a spot opposite the small row of shops. When he glanced over at the newsagents, a short Pakistani man with thinning grey hair raised a hand in an informal wave. Marc smiled and nodded. The man turned away and went inside his shop.
“I suppose we have to go in, don’t we?” Rose was staring along the street at the Unicorn pub. His eyes were narrow and his lips were pursed.
“We don’t have to. I could take you home if you like.” Suddenly Marc was afraid. He didn’t know what had caused the fear, but it was there, gnawing away at him and unsettling his emotions.
“Thank you, but no. It wouldn’t be right. I should at least show my face.” He turned towards Marc, a tentative smile now playing at his lips. “Could I buy you a drink?
“No,” said Marc. “But I’ll buy you one. Come on, let’s get in there and raise a glass to your brother, the miserable old bugger.” He smiled and patted Rose’s arm.
They got out of the car and walked slowly along the street, not saying anything, just content to be silent. A few people entered the pub ahead of them, and when the door opened Marc heard the sound of many voices speaking at once, competing for attention, before it swung shut again.
They reached the pub doorway. Marc glanced at Rose. The old man nodded and Marc opened the door and stepped into the Unicorn.
He’d been inside the Unicorn a few times before, with Harry Rose. The old man had enjoyed a drink, and this place was just a few doors along from his house so had served as his local. Those times, clientele had been thin on the ground – just a few old men sipping bitter and studying racing forms, or the occasional young wannabe gangster spending his drug money and trying to play the big man in an infamous watering hole. Marc knew of the Unicorn’s reputation. Even in Far Grove, where he’d been raised by Uncle Mike, the place was spoken of as a roughhouse bar filled with hard men and aging prostitutes who’d take you to a nearby side street and gobble you for the price of a pint.
These days the place had lost its edge, but the essence of that hostility remained, wedged like ancient mortar into the brick joints. Even today, packed out with old men and women who were seeing off an old friend, there was the sense that violence might kick off at any given moment, triggered by nothing more than a change in the temperature or a rogue air current drifting in through an open window.
“What are you having?” He turned to Rose and leaned in towards the man, so he could hear a reply over the clamour.
“Whisky, please.”
“Double?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say no.”
Marc elbowed his way through the crowd and towards the bar. The two members of staff on duty were struggling to cope with the rush, so he had to wait a while before catching the barmaid’s eye. She raised her eyebrows to signal that she’d made a note of his presence and finished off pulling a pint of mild for an old man who looked drunk already.
The man paid for his beer and staggered away from the bar, slopping half the contents of his glass down the front of his shabby suit jacket. The barmaid moved over to where Marc was standing.
“Aye?”
“A double whisky and a bottle of Becks, please.”
She turned and bent over to the low-level cooler box, opened the glass door and took out a cold bottle. Marc stared at her enormous backside, unable to look away. The thin waistband of her tight black trousers had slipped down to reveal the lacy edge of her underwear and the flesh of her ample waist formed a bulging muffin-top around the beltline. She straightened and poured the whisky from the optic: two aggressive jabs with the glass.
“Anything else?” she asked as she turned back to him and placed the drinks on the wet bar. She had a pretty face but her dyed blonde hair was tired and dried out. Her makeup failed to hide the scars of a hard life.
“That’s all, thanks.” He took a sip of his beer straight from the bottle. It felt good, like a soothing balm for whatever might ail him.
Marc paid for the drinks and made his way back over to Rose. The man wasn’t standing where he’d left him and he felt stranded for a moment, gripping the two drinks and scanning the interior for a sighting of his companion.
Rose waved to him from across the room, where he’d managed to squeeze onto the end of a long seat at the edge of a table cluttered with empty pint glasses. Marc made his way over to the table, dodging elbows and spirited hand gestures. He reached the safety of the table without spilling a drop and set down the drinks before spotting the low three-legged stool Rose had commandeered for his use.
“Thanks,” he said, grabbing the stool and sitting opposite Rose at the narrow wooden table.
“Cheers,” said Rose, raising his glass. “Here’s to Harry.”
“To Harry,” echoed Marc, lifting his bottle and taking another drink.
The level of conversation inside the pub had settled to a lower volume. Now that everyone had a drink they were beginning to settle in and find a rhythm.
“I’m glad you called me to let me know about Harry,” said Rose. “I’d never have forgiven myself if I’d have missed his funeral.” His eyes were glazed. Marc wasn’t sure if the whisky was working already or the man was holding back tears.
“It’s okay,” said Marc. “To be honest, I was only doing what Harry asked me to do.”
Rose put down his glass. “What do you mean?”
“He’d asked a couple of times that I call you if anything happened to him. He knew he was ill. His heart wasn’t good. The doctor had told him that he shouldn’t make any long term plans.” He took a drink, licked his lips. “So he gave me your number and asked me to make you sure were informed when it happened.”
“Shit,” said Rose, wiping the back of a hand across his eyes. “We really were stupid... stubborn and stupid and intractable.” He gulped down the rest of his whisky. “My round,” he said and rose to his feet. “Same again?”
Marc finished his bottle. “I might join you in a whisky,” he said.
“Good lad.”
He sat and looked around as he waited for Rose to return with the drinks. Making mental notes, he studied the other people in the pub. It was the curse of a writer, this constant logging of minor details. He was unable to be anywhere without mentally listing character traits, quirks and twitches, even the dun colour of the wallpaper behind the heads of a chatting couple.
Most of the customers were the wrong side of middle age, but there were a few younger people present. Only about a third of the people here had been at the funeral, so Marc assumed that the rest of the group was made up of regulars and those who knew Harry but not well enough to attend the service. A bunch of kids in their early twenties occupied the bay window, talking in low tones, their faces hidden by the peaks of baseball caps. He watched a man and a woman as they kissed in the corner by the cigarette machine; her lips mashed against his teeth and Marc caught a glimpse of her tongue as it snaked into her partner’s mouth.
He wasn’t quite sure when he felt her gaze – even later, when he thought back to this moment, he could not be certain of the exact moment that he noticed her – but he gradually became aware of a vague warm sensation at the back of his head. Turning, he looked past the crowded bar and saw a tall, thin woman leaning against the wall by the jukebox. He’d caught her eye just as she looked away, but he knew that she’d been staring at him.
The woman’s face was long and narrow, vaguely horse-like, with a long nose and a wide, appealing mouth. Like a lot of women on the estate, she had dyed blonde hair, but hers was pulled back into a severe ponytail. Her black suit was cheap and in need of ironing but the blouse she had on underneath the jacket looked as if she’d spent a bit of money on it back when it had been in fashion. She looked at him again but this time she didn’t look away immediately; she held his gaze for a long moment and a smile played at the edges of her broad mouth.
“There you go.” Rose was back. He pushed a shot glass into Marc’s hand and slammed down two bottles of Becks on the table. “I dunno about you, but suddenly I feel like getting pissed.”
Marc raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”