I am not a fan of Manchester United and I have nothing against Liverpool.
The papers on the coffee table were a week old. A hurricane in Sao Paulo, warnings of a tsunami in Indonesia; the Syrian conflict, American drones on Pakistani soil: deaths reduced to a neat, clinical number and a three-paragraph report. And on page 6 a detailed, whole-page dissection of a young starlet's wedding to some Italian independent film-maker. South-of-France, not far from where the first ships of D-Day docked. Page 7 was a tribute to the one-year anniversary of some neo-Picasso painter's death. Heroin in the bloodstream, same way his uncle went, apparently; a sick tribute, as it was.
Heroin in the bloodstream… Dion wondered briefly if one of his siblings left it there… that meddling fool Demeter no doubt, her with her whole-grain diet and "fish is the only meat" attitude. Her up at half past five in the morning to take a "walk" with the neighbour's dog bleating and the drowsy-eyed teenagers off to school… Well, to hell with that, he thought, already chugging down his first glass of wine. It was white, sparkling sporadically in the feeble morning light. I am thirty five years old and I am completely and inexorably capable for my own goddamned well-being!
"You're up early," he barked as one of teenagers descended from the stairs with heavy footfalls and an expression that suited the dead pasted over his face.
"School," he grunted, still obviously up there with his bed and blankets. "I'm always up this early."
"Smart mouthed little shit…"
"Any chance of breakfast?"
"Make it yourself!" His half-brother's brat, lithe and green-eyed; like the man himself. Every inch the insolent, the trouble-maker.
The sound of cereal falling into a glazed china bowl, then the milk clinking through the gaps. A nutritious version of the organic shop's imitation of Cornflakes: extra-grainy. Demeter, you health-obsessed freak, you.
"Oh yeah," the brat gulps as he tries to eat and speak at the same time, "you had a phone last night, the land line—when you were asleep."
"Oh yes?" A familiar stringy sound in his chest but he continues to flip through the paper. Unilateral disarmament demanded. Eighteen year old missing girl found dead. "And did you, by any chance, get the message? A name? Or were you—as per usual—too finicky to listen, too addled to compute?"
"If you don't want to know…"
Dion paused, knowing the boy would spill it anyway.
"Alright, it was your wife."
"And what did she say?"
"To call her back."
For a second, Dion thinks the kid is taking the mickey, but the boy's already hefted his backpack onto his shoulder and shoved the bowl under the sink. He's washed it, but there's undoubtedly a stray flake still pasted, wet, to the side of the china.
"Gotta run, might be late."
"Should have woken up earlier."
"I tried."
"Not hard enough, apparently."
"Tomorrow then."
"Bullshit."
"Tomorrow's a Saturday, anyway."
Then the screen door bangs shut and a bit of the morning traffic ekes in through the slight gap that had been made momentarily. The wine tastes sour at the back of his throat and the side of his left palm is bruised with the bled ink from the paper. What were the last words his dear old mum had said to him? You're a fucking drunk, a fucking disappointment. Lovely.
X
Now here he was, thirty-five and completely capable of taking care of himself, stuck in a house with his stupid half-brother and his wife, his nut of a sister and the teenage brat. Not an ideal arrangement, perhaps. Even less considering his estrangement, and the fact that he hadn't seen either of his sons for two months now.
Two breaths calm you down—three's just asking for a drink—four's for old men. By now the street is empty (empty enough) apart from a lady with her shopping pushed along in front of her and a baby strapped to her back. The wheels of her trolley clack in a maddening way on the gravel and puffs of her breath sift into soft clouds in front of her, fading winter, approaching spring.
J. Devonshire's is open twenty four hours, two streets down, even though white wine is as much as he is allowing himself to take. A bunch of teenage girls, their uniform skirts ten whole centimetres above regulation and blazers tied around their hips despite the cold are passing him by, giggling. He wonders if he looks to them as old as he feels and he certainly feels very much the Aged. When he was their age he might not have been the lady puller that some of his family members might have been, but he had been attractive enough in that half-off-his-face, slight twinkle sort of way. Everyone looks better under a buzz of alcohol, after all. Everyone up for a bit of fun.
X
J. Devonshire's by night is thriving, by day it is depressing. There's a table full of class types dissecting last night's football game—and he went in on that, didn't he? Two minutes to time, that bloody striker! And him at goalkeeping… absolute rubbish, but damned good for us… nearly lost fifty to that bastard Max, but thank god for lousy keepers —he blinks in the dimness, red bar lighting is terribly unattractive in the daylight hours and he feels queasy again. He must look an A-grade oddity, standing hapless with the door still open behind him, letting the chill in, and Winston at the bar lets him know. Would you close the fucking door?
X
It was on a bridge that he had first kissed her. He had been nineteen, hardly ever sober since seventeen—but then still able to keep it under wraps, to minimise damages and be smart—but he was sober then, funnily enough.
"There's that, then," he'd said after they drew apart. Rendered incapable of proper speech, hearts thumping like a rabbit's; car-lights above them, below them, and the river sparkling like some dream in autumn, half-forgotten.
"That's that."
He was just about over his second year at the university and every night he spent off his face. Pizza and blocks of undercooked instant pasta—cheese and macaroni stuck together in a hard, curdled mess, blistering hot on the bottom of the cup—constituted as his meals and he had a funny feeling that this was not how Promising Students should be spending their schooling years—welcome the new generation—but he had never been happier.
X
Two children and five years later he distinctly feels that he should be happier than this, should be more fulfilled. His stupid cousin shacking it up with a new girl every half-hour and regaling him the grisly details, post-cards from Rome—ARRIVEDERCI, GELATO, MILAN, MERCI (oh shit that's French, wish I was with a French girl) I WISH I WAS A FUCKING GLADIATOR!—from his old university mates just undermine the notion that he can find happiness in a bright green bottle.
No one contests him but his wife, of course, and how she contests him. One time she actually cries and he just stands there, helpless. His eyes red and he is thirsty, thirsty and every fiery gulp he takes makes it thirstier still.
This is not what I expected, but it is exactly what I should have known.
X
He walks now, towards the pier. He feels very proud for not having anything from the bastard at J. Devonshire's, those rude young bartenders with their stupid collared shirts with the purposely ripped hems. Most of them don't need even their glasses. Those idiots talking about nothing but the Red Devils and Liverpool's losing streak (You'll never walk alone).
He has tried rehab once. He really has: motivational posters, bright orange words on black backgrounds; the clinical smell; very clear realisations that he has hit rock-bottom; rich teenage girls chewing gum and rolling their eyes; rich teenage boys taking the lark out of every second with their therapists.
He pulls out his mobile and inspects it with a doctor's precision. There is a reason, he thinks, that his wife only dialled the home number.
X
"Your sons have been drinking."
"So what, they're seventeen! What do you expect them to do, exactly—volunteer for clean-up duty at church? Help at the library: the Dewey decimal system?"
"You know what this is—says a lot that you think that this is normal —this is not your regular teenage binge—what the hell is wrong with you?"
"Christ, I don't understand…"
"There's that, isn't it? You never do, you never did! God knows—heaven knows —I've tried. You expect me get them to behave when their own father…"
"When their own father what?"
"You're pissed, aren't you? Hell… Of course you are, I can smell it on you—don't deny it! Don't you dare deny it! You do you realise, that I have hardly ever seen you sober since we graduated, honest to God, I have hardly ever…"
"For God's sake!"
X
He stares at the phone again, eclipsed by a sudden desire to dial her, to tell her that apart from his selective wines, he has been very sober for at least a week now. It's a step, isn't it? White wine, it isn't exactly hard liquor, it's not fridge-beer or trailer park alcohol… there's that, at least, there's a consolation… there's a consolation…
Boats bob half-heartedly in the water. Out at the break the buoys—there's a word that always set him off into peals of raucous laughter when he was drunk, which means it is absolutely humourless now—are half-washed, glinting pearl-like in the sun. I am thirty-five and immensely capable of myself. I am thirty-five and I am on the brink.
He sits there for a while, not really watching the sailors throw nets at each other, watching flecks of salt water glint on scrubbed decks and watching the fish as they flop about in their last traces of life… he sits there for quite a while, not seeing really much of anything at all.
X
"Been for a run?"
"No, but great advice, incidentally. You should try it sometime, you're weedy, you are."
"I always expect such lovely words of praise from you."
"Shows how stupid you are, that does, yes?"
The teenage brat has his face stuffed with some sandwich of a certain brand, but anything is better than the Organic Unidentifiable that he had for breakfast, so Dion doesn't comment.
"You've got the worst timing, she called again."
"Swallow before you speak, you disgusting child."
"I'm off to do some homework!"
"Bullshit."
X
In his wallet is a faded photograph. Family portrait, holiday in Wales: mountains behind them blue and purple and crested with indigo, a weak watery sun glimmering faintly silver behind them; a discussion in winter colours, or cold summery evenings. Two identical sons, two identical gaps where their front teeth should be. And there's the two of them: the parental pair, tired and happy, checked flannel shirts and corduroy pants. What did he have in his bedside cupboard that night? A bottle? Two? Why Wales? Who knows—London was too busy, too blustery for young couple and their toddlers; too much a youthful tourist's destination. Wales had been just the right amount of concentrated chaos, the steady, dripping-tap calm.
Two breaths are good enough, three's just asking for a drink. He counts to ten, savouring the consistency of numbers.
Out comes the mobile, and the light's not on yet, the evening renders the room almost completely dark apart from the flicker of a neighbour's door-light. Brat's father is at a meeting, his sister is on a date (note to self: date, health-freak, inexhaustible list of bad puns). He brings up her number, thinks of his sons, hates himself into oblivion.
I have been almost sober for a week, he thinks, and that is a start. He hesitates briefly, thumb over the screen and he pushes on it, once. The dial comes up and he breathes in hurriedly. A night on the bridge, cars above and below them.
She picks up the phone.