In My Mind Read online

  This time he bangs the door tightly shut. He pushes himself close to her as she tries to wriggle away but she’s helpless, her limp body has seen more energetic days. He puts her head on his lap almost on his cobbled knees and asks if she’d like to have the painkillers and the glass of drink. He tells her that he can’t see her in pain so he brought a very strong painkiller, as paracetamol is rubbish not strong enough for him or her. He tells her that the drink will do her good, it will warm her up in this chilly white cellar and now that they are both here, it will warm up soon enough. He tells her that you get the painkillers from “eight till late” shop, not from a drunken drugstore manager or a chemist, he’s also got them blankets to keep warm. He spreads the fluffy blanket wide and lays her hair and torso onto the warmth. He reaches out for the fluffy tiger pink woolly blanket and spreads it over her whilst putting her head back in his lap and covers her trembling body with his hand.

  He puts his head down and apologises for disturbing her again and she utters nothing. He smiles then asks why she will not drink or take the tablets. He tells her that maybe she needs her wound attended to. Near the brown barrel there is a first-aid kit in a green plastic and worn out, almost beaten up, container. He looks at it and wipes the dust away from it onto the floor. He wipes his hand on the back of his trousers. Neatly, he takes each strand of fluff off. He notices the cobwebs but he doesn’t want to be dangled up with them now.

  “Don’t worry, Gabriella, my most beautiful, precious butterfly, you don’t worry. I did my first aid training when I was a young lad just after school so I know what it’s all about, you know what I mean, cleaning, seeing to wounds, lessening pain, antiseptic, anaesthetic, Germolene, Dettol, etc. Don’t worry, Gabriella, you’re in safe hands. I’m not in your class or league so I just didn’t get to play chess.”

  He makes a white ball out of the fluffed up cotton wool and pours the Dettol liquid over it.

  “Damn!” He snaps. “That was a little too much. Anyhow, who cares.” His index finger, rough and withered, worn with life, rubs the blood away as he explains to her that today was indeed supposed to be a good day. He explains to Gabriella that just because his finger can’t be calm, he can. It doesn’t mean that he has Parkinson’s.

  “No,” he says, he doesn’t have anything but he tells her that he knows that her upstairs, she must have a tiny bit of it as she gets the shivers now and again.

  “Anyhow, Gabriella and Steve or Stephen and Gabriella, yes, that sounds far better together. At last, no one to interfere and no one else here right now except for you and me. I don’t want anyone to disturb us.” Calmly, he looks at her right thigh. He looks at the laddered tights and kindly strokes his hand along the ladder. Bluntly, he asks her why she’s not wearing the appropriate clothing, nice and loose, as smothering tights or stockings always attract men and in this world of men, females cannot dress like this, it’s not acceptable. He tells her that now the tune will be better and that finally he will be able to make sure no-one’s eyes are on her anymore.

  Tenderly, he approaches her head and he whispers to her that all will be fine now. The dripping white cotton wool is now drenched with brown and red, as the liquid drips in every direction. He smothers her blood over and over again.

  “Do you know how effective this liquid is?” His thoughts are gathered elsewhere. He wipes down and around and around, yet no word anymore. It’s almost as if he doesn’t know who he is or what he is doing, as if he is questioning himself and this hell of a life. Who is he, who is she, what is he doing and what is this all about? The second hand on the clock ticks ever so slowly as if the Earth has slowed its movement, as if time has stood still, his mind has!

  “Okay, so what was I doing. Yes, yes that’s it, making you comfortable, my precious Gabriella, my princess, so let’s see.” Slowly he gathers his thoughts and lays back in the same spot. He tells her that she’s looking colder and he is also cold. It is always cool down here, so he folds her neatly in the brown fluffy good morning blanket that’s tainted with wine stains and orders her to slowly lay on that in the corner.

  “Do you know it’s not normal for me to keep ordering and asking you every minute to help yourself so we can finally reach the first finish line?” He pulls her but it’s a struggle but he doesn’t want to use his force onto it. Still treating her with care, he manages to place her being on the fluffy warmth.

  “Show me that you are well now, you will be warm and out of the cold and dirt.” He scurries around in a frenzy, looking at the blood and telling her empty stories and why he had to do this now, why now, she has to believe it.

  “Gabriella, this wasn’t supposed to be like this, no blood, no tears.” He picks up a square folded tiny blanket, World War One to its last thread and quietly hugs it. Steve is upset.

  “There, see, Gabriella my precious butterfly, you’ll get comfortable soon enough. I’ve got to just attend to a few things whilst you rest your precious self and then life will get back to normal.” His nose smells the red colour again and again as his nostrils flare from side to side. He runs to the calendar and then notices the last month’s sun newspaper with the pictures ripped out like flesh from the creature. Black and white words lay dead against some white background. With his helpless knees on the ground and his back towards her, he uses all his force to erase the words written in red.

  The more the blood spreads, the more his body moves in rigid anger. “How did it get like this? This is not how I planned it. Damn, it wasn’t planned, it was impulse, damn.” He keeps repeating, “Come on, damn it, come on, this is not the way it was meant to be, it was supposed to be special. No, no, this is dripping, this has spoilt everything. This blood has spoiled everything, this day just hasn’t gone how it was supposed to.” His nose is wet and dripping, he rubs at it with the blanket, then a rumpled paper bag. The tears from his regretful eyes full of sorrow, narrow a little as his brow tightens. His stomach churns as he sits weeping.

  She lays silently as the damp walls cradle her body. No one is listening to her silent voice. He sits on his stained jeans on the harsh gravel floor right next to her, he smiles. He places the wine glass next to himself and skims his finger around it to feel the edge. He forces his hair back and forth with his other hand, he is mindful of tangled ideas. His tongue is tantalised by the romantic thick liquid. He cracks the salted peanuts between his big teeth. He stops stroking his hair and starts to fiercely scratch his head, telling himself that it wasn’t supposed to be like that, oh, things just haven’t worked out as they should have, but then they never have really gone to plan. Who needs plans?

  “You see, my precious Gabriella, I’ve never had to explain anything to anyone ever but I think that I can share all my sorrows with you. I know you will not tell anyone because we have this secret bond that you know not of at the moment. This can be our little secret, there’s nothing bad or dirty about it, it’s just our secret. I know that you will find it in your heart to find the love for me that I feel for you, I know it. I’ve never said so. Well, I couldn’t really cry about it, but listen, Gabriella, I brought you here so I could talk to you and that is all I intend on doing, just talking, you know. Friends spending time and I know I will be able to make you see things my way and you know that, overall, it’s what you want, a better decision for both of us because you know we were supposed to be together, part of the same package.

  We were both supposed to walk down those stairs, you a good listener and me in a happy mood, and I do the talking and you would do the listening. I would’ve declared my love and my desire to protect you, you the perfect beautiful thing. You have to be away from those awful people that you hang around with. We would’ve been living happily ever after, that would’ve been it, that’s all I wanted, just you after Father. I only want simple things in life where others try to ruin it for me like her upstairs, the noisy beggar.”

  Steve’s childlike voice crackles, sque
aking like a chick trying hard to escape from the eggshell. He stifles his pain with his mixed-up words. His words are so confusing but in his mind, they’re very real. Maybe he’s just a misunderstood man. He talks to Gabriella, not at her, remaining courteous all the time telling her gently that in his own mind all is quite clear. She will see the real gentle him, the man that needs her and she’ll fulfil his desires. She will see the real person embedded deep down inside but she has to find him. They’ll be one team with the same needs and she will know how to fulfil their life. Hope is good.

  He tells her that she is young and naive and doesn’t realise it yet but she will in good time and she’ll listen. After all, they both need each other and so long as they have one another, there is no need for anyone else.

  “I know I have a chess board secretly hidden here as it was always comforting to take that out, rub the cobwebs away and play around with it as if you are here with me and everyone else can mind their own business, you see, Gabriella my butterfly.” His tone raises the tiny lashes as he continues. In his mind, they will live together happily ever after running this restaurant in bliss without that nagging woman going on and on at him.

  “That’s all she’s done, the whole of her nagging life. She doesn’t need anyone and no one wants her but how time brought us together every day, unfortunately.

  “Unfortunately,” says Steve, “she’s always been glued to me. You see, it goes back to the days when my father used to live with us, just three of us here and he used to run this joint happily with his staff and she used to look after me in the house upstairs where I live as well. It all went wrong when she, you know, her upstairs, well when he used to close this joint late, nag and nag and nag, when he’d entertain his mates, they were happy, this was his life. Why couldn’t he live it and why couldn’t she leave him alone? She went and spoilt everything. I can’t fight with her, no, no. I can’t side with her, she is wrong. She is wrong and will be forever. I saw him smile and laugh when he was with his customers and when he had been out to cash and carry and always coming back whistling.

  “She always accused him and he didn’t explain himself and I didn’t ask and I don’t ever want to know. You see, butterfly, you trust me, you’re not complaining. So why couldn’t she have done the same thing? You see, my precious, and that’s what he used to call her.

  “On the night when I was just a wee lad, when I was watching the television, and I didn’t do that a lot, and she had her ears to the stairs, that’s what she always did. He’d be downstairs and her on the top landing and her listening skills coming all the way down to the bar area. She sat there as I looked at her, cracked frowns and mouth open wide, sitting and listening. Bitter!! Busily she scratched the loose paint on the wall and treaded further on the potholes on the carpet. Her nails brittle, her life brittle and her pain got the better of her most days. It’s not me, it’s all her.”

  Steve continues, “There were many days like that and some the same as many other situations. That day, she sat looking hard to try and search for him, just to get a glimpse of what he was doing and because of me she couldn’t go downstairs to work with him in the bar so why did she have to ask that question, why not leave things as calm and quiet as before? One day, you see, he told her that she needs to be with their child because a child needs looking after, which was the only reason why she had to stay upstairs with me except lunchtime.

  “The man has to be the breadwinner and he was. On occasions, she would help during the day, she helped but that was only because I was at school. When I came home, she would have to stay with me to look after me but she always hung around, not happily, but like a smell that just kept lingering. I sat, watching the television, not any particular program, but just because the noise from the box was louder than her. Sitting and watching with Heinz baked beans on wholemeal toast and lots of salt and butter, a delight, all finished. The angrier she got at Father, the more I scraped my knife on the finished plate. I remember then and even now, food wasn’t delicious and she wasn’t homely. I was at home and she had to be. Why wasn’t that enough for her? This life had to be enough for me and her, and getting attention from the punters shouldn’t have been so important for her. Men and women are different, you see, Gabriella.

  “That evening when it all went quiet, I laid in my bed. Once again, I put my hands on my ears to blackout the nagging. He tried to reason with her, he answered and reassured her that there was no one but her. She really mocked him and ridiculed him and laughed in his face. He quietened, she hissed at him. He sipped away as I scrubbed the brush through my hair. I didn’t really like pain but I needed to feel pain, dead pain that aches, like him dead inside to his happiness yet jolly on the outside. A tender moment of pain, pain can be your best friend, a surreal moment.

  “I had to feel what he was feeling inside. The down trodden man, the lost man would be a king once he stepped into his territory again. I, too, would be king once I was safely at school. School days just slipped away into mellow years and when I did leave school at 16, it was only so that I could help my father and maybe protect him as I did what I was told, as she said there was no need to carry on at college or waste time at university as those places were for the toffee nosed rich kids. She said that young boys need to work with their fathers to improve the business and provide for their families. That’s exactly what I did. The times that I spent with Father were definitely the best, just me and him, the king and his prince downstairs and her, sharing her time between sitting on the sofa upstairs whilst watching her favourite programs and downstairs in the kitchen cooking the meals. She was the happiest in the kitchen, like a queen, listening to Magic and all the ingredients for the day spread around her.

  “During lunchtimes, it was busy, then a few hours to rest in between before the evening rush once again. It was always the regular crowns that turned up but they brought their wallets with them. We three were happy when we were working, but happiness because we were in the company of others, Gabriella, away from the reality of our life and in my own mind, I think, that’s what real life is, that’s what happiness was. If there is no question in my mind, then there is happiness; but once these awkward silly question marks pop up and so many irritating things keep creeping up and playing tricks on one’s mind, that’s not quite right. Actually, there are lots and lots of things not right out there and not perfect here. So, little things matter the most and they should be seen as being right.”

  He clears his throat, pain in his eyes taken over as he breathes in slowly. He succumbs big breaths of this cold damp outside air and then there’s a sigh of relief, Is Steve in pain or despair?

  “Life,” says Steve, “could have carried on like that forever but then she got in the way again. You see, every day Father and I had good bonding time and that was when we both felt like kings on this small throne of ours. He would pull the pints and I would take them to the customers and then we would hear her howl through the hatch. The small trap between the public house bar and the kitchen. I know that he would often mingle with customers, or clients as you call them. He would often stay at their table and take the conversation elsewhere. The simple rule was that if someone went astray you would carry on and look after the joint the best way, just had to carry on as normal without letting anyone down.” There’s a sigh of relief.

  Steve utters confusingly, “Well, I had been working with Father for at least ten years and knew the duties inside and out. The salt and vinegar crisps in the yellow bowl on the left and the salted butter peanuts in the red bowl on the right dotted around, complimentary of course. She used to say that you have to give a little to get a lot back and so we did. But she knew it was not the crisps or the nuts that she was talking about. She was talking about her womanly self and I think that she wasn’t getting the limelight from him that she wanted, perhaps needy and we are all needy at times. Two different lives and yet one family. Her duties over in the kitchen and she’d d
isappear to our home upstairs. Both different, two different hats to put on, two separate languages spoken in a day and two different sets of clothes almost as if we were different people during the day.

  “You know, Gabriella, the thing is this, why couldn’t she leave things alone? Why couldn’t she just close her eyes to the things she didn’t want to know or hear or see, as I did or he did? It was a happy enough life, why couldn’t she let it be happy? But no, I remember I remember that night very well and it had been quite a jolly night. In fact, Punters very happy, jolly and jovial, glasses clicked and tinkered as they smooched around the hands and mouths of drinkers and the colours of red, white and creams serenaded in the glass.

  Conversations of the month, the weather, of different towns and working lives with fresh news off the press. Father had gone to a customer and I remember he was talking to a regular female and then I noticed that he wasn’t really there anymore and I thought nothing more of it, as it was a pretty normal thing that happened regularly. Just like the way she would take herself upstairs whenever she wanted and for however long. No one questioned anyone, that’s what happiness was. Through the hatch, she kept asking of him and I kept telling her that he is here somewhere and to stop poking her nose into things and get on with the work as I was.”

  Steve stops talking and takes a long pause as he sits and rubs his left hand up and down his yellow cheeks, tears rubbed away accidentally. There is silence on his tongue yet his head is full of great talking words. Pain sings along in his aching heart as he looks at his right fist. Pondering.