Chapter 8: Distrust camels, and anyone else who can go a week without a drink.
Monday
I know this because I persuaded, nay, begged, Tom to put on Radio 4. It must have been a long time since I heard the 'Today Show'. I'm sure it wasn't this frenetic before. Tom stopped putting the radio on because, despite the calming tones of John Humphrys and Sue McGregor righteously tearing apart politicians, I was getting quite irate over various political debacles. Even 'You and Yours' started to set me off, there was an episode about the price of milk which really got me going. Tom declared it wasn't conducive to my wellbeing, or rather he said: "To be honest I don' know why you're bovverd mate, I mean, it's all just a lot of hot air like. It's goin' off."
I asked this morning, as nicely as I could, if we could have it on again. "I can quite contain myself," I insisted, thinking of Connie Simm's advice, "It's time". Tom was reluctant at first, but he came around. They are arguing about whether some civil servant should quit over a sexual misdemeanour. It's refreshing to find that nothing has changed. I could live for a thousand years and I suspect the demoi will continue to demand for the heads of their Kings.
Perhaps if I can sustain my patience with this small thing it may be possible to succeed with something bigger? That was how it started with Leo. One step at a time. With Leo I earned a domino for every small victory, until I had the whole set. No such prizes from Tom, I shall have to hold out for the greater award.
They are discussing sport now, this may be harder than I had expected.
Wednesday
"I don' know Hal," Tom scratches his head, "I don't think yer ready mate."
"Alex?" I ask, hoping for some support for my case.
"I dunno, he has been pretty good Tom."
"Back to normal like?" Tom looks to her with those plate-like eyes wide with expectation.
"Well it's not like I was around a lot before but if by "normal' you mean: insanely awkward, difficult te have a conversation with and full o' his own self importance then, yeah, normal…ish."
Tom pauses. He looks back at me, so happy. "Hal!" he says, "It's workin' mate!"
"You've done a wonderful job, the two of you…"
"Aye, you can tell me!"
"…but I can't hope it's over yet."
"Well, no, I mean, like…" Tom shook his head, "…nah sorry, mate, yer lost me."
"He means," Alex rolled her eyes, "It's not over yet."
"I'm ready. it'll be okay. Look at me. I'll be fine. It's fine. I just need to get back into a routine."
Thursday
On the Today Show today Sue McGregor is haranguing the head of the Department for Trade and Industry about corporate tax avoidance. I have my eyes closed, I am counting. It's not a good moment. Their nasal whine sounds like nails on slate and I have found myself imagining what it would be like to rip out the larynx of the DTI's head and wear it as a scarf.
With a click the radio goes mute. I open my eyes ready to snap, but manage to remain calm. It's a warmly familiar feeling to maintain such control. I find Alex and Tom opposite me, as they did when we first began this process. It's horribly like being interviewed. I recoil a little in surprise.
"I was fine. Wasn't I?" I ask wondering if my imaginations somehow betrayed me?
Neither of them is smiling, but I don't think I've done anything wrong. I feign a slow smile in response. I don't think they are sure what to say.
"Alrigh'" says Tom, finally, "We've had an 'Ahhs Meetin' like," (I presume he means house meeting, 'don't react, Babes, we'll get through this', I hear a sweet voice in my head say) "an we think we should give it a go."
"Give what a go?" I annunciate, trying to not to sound exasperated and equally unnerved.
"Whatever's next," Alex explains for him.
"Next?"
"Aye, well you've done this before, so, what's the next bit? I mean, you didnae plan te stay like this forever, righ?" She looks unsure, as if perhaps I did in some warped way.
"No! It's just," I say, but they look as if they doubt their own convictions. "I mean, no there's a next step, a Plan B." That's what Connie called it right?
"Isn't Plan B what you do when Plan A fails?"
"Is it?" I say as innocently as possible and then repeat to them, verbatim, Connie's instructions.
Friday
"You'd have a go at us either way!" Alex insists as I frenetically tidy my room. I have to stop to rest, my limbs ache from under-use.
Alex tries to help but a push her away. She's only there to guard the window. Tom is behind the door, he has the key. I can smell the sweat of his palm and the coppery residue that swims in it as he paws at it. Alex rentaghosted us both into my room ten minutes ago and it was only then I appreciated the full horror of the mess Belinda left behind when she ransacked my room. I hated her a little for a moment. Then I loved her for it. I needed something to focus on to stop me from throwing myself head first out of the window.
"You could have at least run the hover around," I say, obsessing comfortably over inches of dust which I feel as if I am wading through, as well as splayed books, heaped clothes, upturned tables and... "You've taken out half of the wooden furniture and anything I can use as a weapon and but not bothered to clear up the mess!"
"Do you want to go back downstairs? Don' think we won't do it."
"No, of course not, but look at it!"
"Well, it'll keep ye busy won't it? Want some marigolds?"
I stop. I take an empty breath, and I nod. "Marigolds would be lovely, thank you, Alex."
Saturday
Today is not a good day.
"Let me out!" I rail.
On the Today Show they are talking to the person from the DTI again. Yesterday I piled all my furniture against the window and today I am taring it away like a man trapped in a mine. As soon as I move something Alex swipes it back. For a ghost she looks tired, but manages to dodge as I throw my radio at her. The door slams downstairs, Tom back from work.
"Seriously, Hal, calm down! It's okay," Alex insists. "Do you want to do this or no?"
"No. No. I can't. Seriously, stake me." I slump to the floor, head in my hands. This was different to the last time. I have something to focus on, something big, something so much greater than a pitiful lump of ivory or the trust of a friend; but at this very moment it feels like a myth. It feels as if it never happened.
Maybe I imagined it. Maybe there never was a Belinda Weaver. No Connie Simm. Maybe I hallucinated everything. It would make sense, stuff like this had happened before.
"I'm no staking you Hal," Alex explains, sitting down beside me. "You're doin' okay. Seriously."
"I'm just tired."
"Aye, well we're all tired. I don't sleep. How shit is that, that I cannae sleep. I mean sleep was like my all time favourite thing when I was alive, and now! Now! Nooooo. Maybes I sleep when I get to heaven."
I look at her in disbelief, "I thought you didn't believe in 'Heaven'."
"Aye, well, whatever's behind the magical portal or whatever it is. Maybe Heaven's like a really top-class Travelodge. With a mini-bar. I miss mini-bars."
I am about to begin a philosophical debate to pass the time when I see something in a box at the bottom of the wardrobe which sits on the chair under the rest of my furniture. There's a pair of high heal shoes in there. I can see them, I'm sure I can. I run towards the mess again to try and dig them out but Alex tries to pull me back. She must think I'm trying to make a break for it again.
"I'm fine!" I yell, pushing her away.
I think I reach them, that tangible thing that proves I am not going mad, when she hits me around the head with one of my weights.
Sunday (I think)
When I wake up, my head still stinging. I expect to find that my lapse had resulted in a return to the sitting room. It is a pleasant surprise to find that my friends have clearly maintained their trust in this new plan. Tom sits at the end of the bed.
"A'right mate," he says. "A's yer 'ead?"
I smile, "sore."
"This is what yer want righ'?" he asks. "Only it don't seem to be workin'. I thought you said you was better like?"
"It's not easy Tom."
"I ain't sayin' that, it's jus'…" He scratches his old wounds, a tick I have noticed he is plagued with when he can't find his words. "I want things to be the same as they were."
"Things change Tom, nothing ever stays the same."
"I know that, jus' when it was you an' me an' Annie an' the baby like it were…"
"Annie has gone Tom."
"I know that, it were jus' nice like."
"Yes, it was very nice, for a time." I try to reach out to comfort him, but my hand hesitates before I am able to rest it on his shoulder. It feels over familiar, even after everything. "Even with any impending Vampire Apolcalypse, it was nice."
"An' the caf' just ain't the same. An' Alex is - she's lovely - but she ain't… and what abaat when she finds her body, then what if you're not better." He scratches his head again, so much must have been plaguing him. I forget how young he is sometimes. He has experienced so little of this world, the world of real people, of hard choices, disappointment and loss. It's at moments like this he seems like a lost boy in a supermarket, blinded by the bright lights, harsh sounds, crowds and kerfuffle; searching for his father.
"I sadly doubt she will find what she's looking for Tom, but even if she doesn't its likely one day she too will pass over, and I hope … I hope you haven't given up on me yet. I haven't."
"Yeah, about that. After yesterday…"
"It won't happen again Tom."
"See I think it will, an' so does Alex. We've worked it out." He reaches to the floor and produces a box, from within he removes, first, a new radio, second, a hammer and a box of nails.
"Tom what on earth is that for?" I demand.
"We was talkin' an' Alex says yer need an incentive, you know, to get better properly. I couldn't think of nothin' but she said a' course I couldn't 'cause I care too much an' I don' want to 'urt yer feelings like, but she said there was this time when 'er littlest bruvver were misbe'avin' an' she took 'is favourite toy away. She said she put 'is this thing in this box and she locked the box, an' then she took that and locked that box in another box, and then again in anuvver. She said that every day that 'e behaved like that he'd give him a key. There were five days and there were five keys."
"I'm not sure where you're going with this Tom," I say. He is speaking very slowly, as if he has learned his speech by heart.
"There's 50 nails. We're gunna nail up the window so that stays shut, an' then the rest, well, we're goin' to nail the door closed, like. An' everyday that you're okay like we'll take a nail out. I reckon that's a month. I'll be fine, I'll just get on with work like an' then you'll be fine won't yer?"
I worked it out. In this scenario Tom was the favourite thing. It was a thought that was in equal parts sweet and distressing that Alex thought this.
I don't answer. I don't like this idea at all. Loneliness is a bad thing for me. It never worked out well in the past. But what is the alternative? I have to decide between depriving myself from my best-friend simply to sate the vain hope that I will repair myself and see a woman again; a woman that I am no longer certain existed in the first instance; or return to Plan A, the company of friend, but the likelihood that the paths of Belinda and I might not have another opportunity to cross for a very long time. It was a choice between lust and patience. I know one boded well for the monster in me, and one for the man.
Tom doesn't seem certain about this plan either. If loneliness is bad for me I'm not sure it's any better for my friend.
"If it don't work then we'll try the other way again. Deal?" he adds.
I nod.
Monster: 1; Man: 0.
Tom continues, sad, perhaps, that I have agreed to this strange idea. He gets up, hammer in hand. "Alex can get you anythin' you need, and she'll make sure you don't loose it and jump out the winder or nowt."
He stands and heads to the wide windows, pulling up a few panels of wood he proceeds to cover up much of the window, leaving a small pane so that I am not completely without light. The space he leaves is big enough for me to break and escape through, but when he's done he nods, this is Tom trusting me again. It's a pleasant feeling, it leaves me aching for the impending loss of that feeling.
While he completes his duties Alex attempts to distract me with a game of Scrabble, during which I learn she is almost incapable of spelling anything with more than 5 letters (I score 456; her best effort is the word zebra (with double letter on the 'a' for 18). We laugh, it has been a while since I have laughed like that. Tom and I share a joke. I mock his inability to knock in a nail without causing himself injury. But between us, in Alex's sad smile, Tom's turned back, my attempts to make small talk, the entire affair is tainted by the expectation of the moment when he will finish his task and will leave me to only Alex's company for this month of nails.
He pauses at the door a little before he leaves, box of nails in hand. I am arguing about Alex's misspelling of the word 'tired' and look up. The moment lingers.
Tom nods.
I nod, "I'll be alright," I tell him. "Tell the man at the cafe I'll be back at work in a month." I smile. Perhaps he realises I am being brave. He scratches his head. Leaves, closes the door. Alex and I look up at each other. She says nothing either. It seems like hours before Tom starts hammering nails into the door.
"it's T-I-R-E-D, not T-I-E-R-D" I explain with a sigh, but in my head I am counting the second nail into the coffin of my room.
Monday (early)
Alex suggested she stay with me tonight but I thanked her, as kindly as I could, and told her I would be quite alright by myself. I don't want her here. I find I need to be alone now. It's better that way.
I am unsure of the time but it has been dark outside for some hours when I finally get up. I head straight to the wardrobe and open it, finding the box at the bottom of the cupboard I pull it towards the moonlight pooling upon the floor, open it and discover what I had hoped I might find.
There they are. They are real. A pair of womens' shoes with heals so high they could pierce a man straight through. They feel real. They look real.
They are Belinda Weaver's. I would recognise them anywhere. They are the shoes of a woman who walked her life into mine. I took her life from her, and she gave me mine back in return. Connie insisted she was out there, abstaining, keeping a promise to me.
I sit the shoes a few feet in front of me, alone, without their owner, in the dark.
I smile when I think of her flashing about with them on her feet.
"I buy a pair every time I kill one of your lot."
"What am I going to be then, Miss Weaver?"
"A nice pair of Jimmy Choo's, since you ask, Hal."
I lean back against the bed and try to focus. Whatever comes first, Belinda, or Tom, there's no use fighting it now. I'll have to try.
