28
Becoming warm in sheltered areas, unsettled later in the evening, a dry night
I MAKE MINCE and onion. Put a peeled onion in each room of your house you will never catch a cold, keep meaning to test that. Kitchen clock starts ticking again. I put the kettle on. I sit and rest my head on the table and fall asleep for maybe a minute.
I wake. The clock goes, Tick tock tick and then it forgets. I try to think. My mind is swinging about. Lee Hart, you have f*cked up this time, it says. Talk about slow on the uptake. Might have known. No greater knobhead hath e’er. Whatever.
I shall have to report him to the police. They will want to question him. Best of luck with that. I don’t know what he’ll get. A warning? Community service? Detained at Her Majesty’s? A police record. Nice one, Neds, that’ll look good on your CV. Something to look forward to. Good afternoon, Mr Hart. Please take a seat. Can you tell us when you first noticed your brother rambling the public bridleways in a ladies wig?
I stand to do the dishes. I turn on the taps at the sink, drop the mugs into the foam. I stop to catch my breath. I look out at the field, the sky. I would like to tear it all down. Burn the field, burn the house. Let it all just. I feel my breath suck. Why does it? Why can’t it f*cking? I swing my fist through the window and listen to the glass shatter into tinkling pieces onto the path on the other side.
I lie on my bed. I have no idea what time it is but there is a rod of sunlight on the floor. My hand throbs. It is wrapped in something and taped over. I see him hovering, checking, closing the door, opening it again; this is all new to Ned. He looks like he’s been asked a question to which he does not know the answer.
He brings me a tray. Soup and a sandwich and Panadol. Clear as day I see I should’ve done this years ago, step aside; let him be. I don’t like cucumber. I take it out of the sandwich. He watches me eat. I don’t ask if he has eaten. I don’t ask anything. He watches carefully, his chin low, his hair in his eyes. He tries to breathe through his nose rather than his mouth. He chews his nails. Tearful, he looks. He touches my face.
No cry, Gog, he signs.
I shall have to correct him there. He needs telling. I open my mouth. Nothing. A squeak at the back of my throat. I gasp, I try to swallow. Ned stares.
In my head the voice of reason has arrived. Buenos dias. I pay attention. Good afternoon, Mr Hart. Can you tell us why you have chosen to lie malingering here, boo-hooing and scoffing sandwiches, while your colleagues are all hard at work? Ned reaches out, takes my hand. I do nothing. I lie there like a dead man, like one of our own dearly departed, while he fusses, wipes, breathes. Is it or is it not the case you allow your brother to slice cucumbers with unwashed hands and patrol the highways in a state of semi-undress? Ned examines my fingers, holds them. He presses them against his face. While all the time paid-up clients lie waiting, uncremated, on Seddlescombe Road? Do you have anything to say, Mr Hart. Mr Hart?
I have nothing to say. I close my eyes.
Ned is gone. The room is dim, dusk outside. The field has turned mauve in the half-light. I get up. I find my jacket, my keys. Downstairs the clock ticks loudly. I let myself out.
I sit with her at the edge of the field till the light in the sky is a pale thin line. The birds are roosted, silent. I will head back soon. Getting cold. I will make a plan. I will call the police. Then I think, what for? What for? Then I do nothing at all. Then it is dark.
When I think back down the years, it’s like we were all holding on. To what? Some thread. Some chance of. Like one day we’d dance with roses between our teeth, as if we were the lucky few in a jackpot life. Life is a lottery, they say. No good wishing you had someone else’s ticket. We are holding on still. Because it could all change tomorrow, things do, I know that much. That time in the kitchen, she and me, just the light from the oven timer, a slow dance to no music, just the sound of our shoes shuffling, turning, turning, like time on a clock, counting ourselves down.
Farming is no life, she told us. She wanted our lives to light up under our feet, like the yellow brick road. The world is your oyster, she said. You had to believe, belief was everything. She believed, we believed. The circus had packed up and gone but we stood there still, clapping, believing. A roll of the dice. You hope for sixes, everyone does. Sixes are rare, that’s all.
I hear him. Midnight by now, or thereabouts. He calls my name, over and over. Looking for me. An animal noise. I listen. I let it go on.
*
IT WILL NOT be the same from now. Time to go our separate ways. I tell him this next morning in the kitchen before I leave for work. He sits perfectly still in his pants and watches me sign. He pours out his own Cheerios. A first.
A new beginning, I sign him. I thumbs-up. He thumbs-up back.
Gog, he signs.
What? I’m late.
He smiles. Nothing, he signs.
Cheers, Neds. Laters.
*
I GO THE short route home. It rained earlier but now the air is clear. The trees drip. We’re having chicken kebabs tonight. We bought our own skewers many moons back, with barbecue parties in mind. Nice evening, summer on its way. Maybe we will sit in the garden. I’ll wipe down the bench.
I have bought chocolate mini rolls. Talk about pushing the boat out. Only joking. What’s done is done, I reckon. Turn our attention to the future. I will make enquiries about the removal of aerosol-spray graffiti. Perhaps we will paint the house. At any rate we’ll sell the house, as per original plan. A flat near town. A job. I can re-train. I’m only twenty-five, not old. Never say never. Ned will find a job, there are jobs in town. Fresh start, leave the rest behind.
The lane glows in the evening sun. The hedge has started its sproutings. I spot a tall flower in the ditch.
I’m home! Stupid really. Just a habit. Most habits are harmless.
The chocolate mini rolls are in my hand when I go into his room – a bit of brandishment I have in mind. Look what I got. Not telling. Don’t be a knob. Three guesses.
Ned has a bigger surprise. In this regard he has blown me through plate glass. Checkmated for all eternity. Like a horse, a calf – some slaughterhouse thing – he is strung from the ceiling fan, feet dangling. Mid-air. Long and loose, limp as a snap-necked bullock. The force of my entry floats him slightly left.
I do not move. I stare.
Lee the visited. Him the messenger, hovering, silently talking of everything.
I can see he is gone, anyone would. Hours, looks like.
Rewind. Re-enter. Do not move, maybe it will stop.
Ned? It comes out as a question. For a moment I forget he is deaf.
When I go downstairs it is almost dark. I put the chocolate mini rolls in the bin.
We lie on the floor. I am out of breath. I stop blowing into his mouth. Ligature’s done its job, closed his throat.
He is a skinny f*ck, but. Twenty minutes, more, to get him down. This stuff was not designed to be cut. They should incorporate plastic washing line on space shuttles. Here is an item that will not deteriorate or detach under any conditions. Plastic washing lines will inherit the earth along with the cockroaches.
He is heavy on my legs, pinning me down. Here lies my brother, Ned Joseph Hart. Poor Ned. God Almighty, Ned. What did you think. Here is my baby brother. What now? What in the name of. What were you. For f*cks. What.
What!
I yell in his ear.
WHAT!
My voice enters the walls, the bricks, the spaces between. This house with its unspoilt views.
WHAT! WHAT!
That’s it, Lee. Cry like a baby. Look at this. What have you done? What you have done.
*
My name is Lee Hart.
Address is number four Cinders Lane, Lye Cross.
My brother has hanged himself.
Ned Joseph Hart.
Twenty-three.
He is.
I have given CPR at the scene. No, no respiratory function.
Not medical, no. I am the trainee at Shakespeare’s Funeral Services Ltd on Seddlescombe Road.
OK. Thank you.
Typical that he should choose death. Claim the thing that is mine. Now it is his.