At the Edge of the Game (2 page)

Stephen
Baynes, Senior Development Manager

I crumple it up
and toss it out the window. It lands on the porch roof over the main entrance.

I had better
phone Helen. I dial 9 for an outside line, but nothing happens. They’ve
actually cut off the phones. Unbelievable. Have to use my mobile.

‘Yeah?’

Heathshade’s
voice. I hate it when he answers the phone. It’s not his phone to answer,
something he seems unable to comprehend.

‘Marcus.’ I am
civil to him as always. ‘It’s George. Is Helen around?’

‘Oh hello, mate.’

His voice is
scratchy and subdued. In the months since he became our lodger he and his Manc
accent have some to symbolise all my misery, all the limitations and
compromises of the lives we find ourselves living. €30 a week he pays us. €30.
Talked us down from a still-pathetic €50.

‘Sorry, mate.
Bit hoarse. Jesus, what a night last night. Still a bit drunk if I’m honest. Anyway,
here she is now mate.’

‘Hello?’ Helen’s
voice.

‘Well, it’s
happened.’

I’ve been too
blunt. I hear her gasp at the other end. She’d held out some hope. It strikes
me how upset this will make her.

‘What’s the
package like?’

‘Legal minimum.’

There’s a
pause. ‘You okay?’ I ask her.

‘I don’t know.’

‘We knew it
would happen, didn’t we?’

‘It’s different
when it’s real.’

And so it is.

I promise to
come straight home. No one even to say goodbye to here. I don’t have any
friends in the office any more. It’s not like the good old days. Everyone I got
on with has left, got out before the ship sank. All except for shiftless me,
too lazy to apply for other work, too contrary, too in love with my own
perverse sense of personal dignity to make a good impression with the boss.

I have to pass
by the police and the ambulance crew fishing the body out of the mud. The smell
of putrefaction is stronger now. Cross to the brewery side of the road to
minimise the chance of witnessing something disgusting. And I’ll give the bus a
miss, I think. Walk through the city centre. Temple Bar and Grafton Street. Stop
by a record store for a few minutes, but only succeed in depressing myself. Can
afford nothing. Stephen’s Green, then Harcourt Street and across the canal. Stop
in an air-conditioned shop in Ranelagh to get a two-litre bottle of water. I
tarry there for a few minutes, leafing through magazines, to enjoy the coolness
of the air. But I am rumbled by a bouncer, and told to make my purchase and
leave.

I get back
little change out of a tenner and return to the enveloping heat outside. A
water tanker is rolling past, one of the hundreds that enter the city every
day, converted creamery lorries from the relatively moist west of the country. It’s
got an escort of two cycle cops, armed. Seems like every other week there’s a
news story about a tanker hijacking, as often as not involving gunfire.
Sometimes it’s the crime gangs, sometimes the Unity IRA. One thing that never
changes is that it’s always scum attracted by the promise of easy money.

The tanker is
leaving behind a trail of water on the asphalt sucked almost instantaneously
into the dry air.

In the front
door now, the smell of some sort of casseroley thing reaches my nostrils.

Heathshade’s
sitting in front of the TV. He’s got a black eye. No doubt his night on the
town was a suitably sordid affair.

‘Lunch smells
good. Eh, mate? Your lady’s a hell of a cook.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Kitchen.’

She’s sitting at
the table waiting for me.

‘How are you
feeling?’ I say.

‘Worried.’

‘I promise you,
things will turn around.’

‘Don’t promise
things you can’t control.’

‘But…’

I don’t say what
I was going to say. She knows what it was anyway, and I know she doesn’t want
to have to give the answer she’d give.

Yes, my graphic
novel might end up making us some money, but that it is not very likely.

There is nothing
to be gained from covering that territory again.

Heathshade
appears for his lunch, and whatever more there is to be said on this matter -
not much, I expect - will have to wait until later.

Eat in a silence
sullied by Heathshade’s slurping.

‘Nothing so good
as real food,’ he says.

He steps over to
the fridge, takes out a couple of cans of his Dutch Gold.

‘I shall enjoy
these all the more now.’

Up to his room
he goes. Some sort of industrial sonic gunk starts to boom through the floor,
accompanied by his own crashing and banging. I imagine him pogoing, moshing
around the dark box room, head pummelling the lightshade like a punchbag.

He has almost
nothing in the room. A coarse blanket and worn sheets on the bed, one drawer
with some socks and underwear, another with two pairs of jeans and two white
shirts – his uniform – and the third containing a can of tuna. The wardrobe is
completely empty. There was on the wall a print of an 18
^th
century
painting of a sailship moored outside the Custom House in Cork, but for some
reason he’s taken that down and put it under the bed with his stash of
pornography and weaponry magazines. The walls are now completely bare.

‘I’m not mad at
you, George,’ she says.

‘No?’

‘Really, I’m
not.’

I hope she means
it but the look on her is not reassuring.

‘I feel
terrible.’

‘I know. We’ll
make do.’

I do the
washing-up. A penance. Time now to retire to the spare room to spend the
afternoon working on the graphic novel, which I do freely admit is my refuge.

Been working on
the design for a key plot point in which an emissary from the Neanderthal
kingdom rides down the long road through the dry Mediterranean basin to the
capital city of the modern humans, which I’ve opted to locate a few miles east
of the Straits of Gibraltar. Here the present-day sea-bed slopes downwards from
the shallow straits into the depths of the Mediterranean.

It’s rather
interesting, actually. A few million years ago, the Mediterranean dried up, leaving
behind a desert of salt. The Atlantic poured over the Straits of Gibraltar as a
kind of super-waterfall, but the heat caused the water to evaporate, leaving
behind ever-increasing deposits of salt. Far to the east the Nile also poured
into the Mediterranean basin.

Those are
scientific facts, and the discovery of them was the genesis of my graphic
novel. I thought that it would be a great choice of unknown land in which to
set my saga involving the Neanderthals and the Sapient humans.

Anyway, flanking
the Neanderthal emissary is a troop of Neanderthal guards dressed in chain
mail, carrying maces and axes. I’m trying to give them a North-African look,
with a hint of Celtic. I’ve been working on their outfits for days, but I
haven’t come up with a good design yet. I’m getting nowhere with it tonight
either, so I turn instead to the least laborious aspect of the project –
designing the human capital city. I fritter away a couple of hours adding
detail to the city map – a task not strictly necessary to the novel itself, but
therapeutic. It makes the whole vision more complete for myself.

I don’t emerge
from my dream world until four in the afternoon, stiff from stooping over the
desk. Helen’s gone out somewhere, probably to escape Heathshade’s noise. How many
times have we asked him to keep the volume down? He just disregards us, well
aware that we can’t afford to evict. His bedroom door opens and he comes down
the stairs after me, in search of conversation. He’s one of those types who
need always to have something going on, whether they are talking or watching TV
or listening to music, or whatever. Can’t abide for even a few minutes the
opportunity to think.

‘Alright,
George?’

‘Hi, Marcus.’

‘Hey, get your
rent cash for you tomorrow. Dole day.’

‘That’s great.’
Might as well tell him. ‘I’ll be joining you down there soon. I got laid off
today.’

‘Yeah, sorry
about that, man. Your lady told me this morning. Tough break, that.’

Heathshade has
difficulty understanding why anyone would choose to seek employment when the
government is willing to pay out hard cash to you anyway.

‘Good lady, she
is, George. Needs to be looked after.’

It’s easiest
just to humour him. He’ll get bored and go away, with some luck. I make my cup
of tea.

‘Yeah, you did
well there, but you’ve got to keep ‘em once you have ‘em, know what I mean? Learned
that the hard way, I did. I was married once.’

I didn’t know
that. Extremely difficult to imagine this man married.

‘Yeah, still am
officially, I suppose. It was in my Army days in England. I was on leave. Came
home one evening, found my things in the hall in one big pile. See, she had a
friend, name of Doris, who I met on the train the first day of leave. You
understand, I had hardly seen a woman in months, and so I was looking forward
to seeing to my lady wife. Train gets into the station and instead of going
home I go to her house. I couldn’t help meself. She was all over me. Didn’t get
home until 11 o’clock that night, and had to do some fast talking with the
wife. Then more sex with her. Anyway, Doris feels guilty about a week later,
tells a friend who tells me wife. I come home after a good night to find that
she’s kicking me out. End of me marriage, then and there. Court order stopped
me trying to patch things up. Left me a bit depressed, so that I could not
properly return to the Army life. Got meself out of that gig by and by, though
not without a good deal more strife.’

I cast the last
of my tea into the sink. ‘Sorry to hear that.’

‘Water under
the bridge now, George. Past history, so to speak. Move on with life. That’s
what I say. That’s why I came here originally, you see, to try and get into the
Irish Army. Didn’t know that they would find out about what happened in the UK.
Bit of bad luck, that. But promise me this, George, cos I say it as a friend -
don’t make the mistakes I made. Keep your lady contented to the best of your
ability.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘I see things
are not… well, you know.’ He’s staring at me with his sly, lashless eyes. ‘She’s
a bit down, ain’t she?’

Time to bail out
of this conversation. I go back up to my desk, but I can’t work any more. I’ve
lost the thread. And also, I’m massively tired. So I get into bed for a
lie-down. Immediately I start to drift. I always know when I’ll be able to sink
into deep sleep. If in my half-waked state I see images, I will sleep soundly. If
I hear voices, disjointed phrases and names, music, I will sleep only fitfully.
Currently my state is of the latter type. When I wake, if I remember any of
these manifestations, I will understand, as I always do, what they mean. I will
be able to relate them to where I stand in the waking world. I have found,
though, that being able to do this makes no difference to anything, is of no
help to me at all.

I can’t find a
comfortable position in the bed. I am aware that I am only semi-conscious, but
this does not stop me from being irritated at the certainty that I will not be
able to sink past this level, that my nap will be unsatisfactory. The one
benefit of being unemployed should be having the opportunity to get
comprehensive rest, but even this is denied me. I ought really to get up, move
around for a few minutes, watch TV, but Heathshade lurks downstairs. That’s not
an option. What, then?

I stand at the
door of the bathroom. The living-room curtains are open, and the lights of the
city are all that illuminate the dark apartment. Though I know I have lived
here all my life, I can't remember the name of the city. I can't even remember
what I was doing five minutes ago. I go to the window and look down at the
traffic in the street far below. The white headlights and the red tail lights
form a long, moving chain that stretches into the shady electric gloam of the
middle distance. It strikes me how beautiful is the street, how beautiful this
traffic jam. I open the window to let in some air. It opens only a little way. The
mingled motor noises of the city are, hushed and caressing, pleasant to the
ear. The air is cool and fresh – a sea breeze that, so high up on the thirtieth
floor, is untainted by urban fumes.

Perhaps I am
concussed from some minor mishap. My short-term memory extends back only as far
as a moment ago, to when I was standing outside the bathroom. I try to recall
the test for concussion. I wonder if it is valid to perform such a test on
oneself.

I take a
cigarette lighter - not mine, I don't smoke - from the coffee table. I go into
the bathroom, switch the light on and look around. No signs of mishap in here,
such as bloodstains on a sharp edge. I look at myself in the mirror. My face is
not quite familiar. I seem to recognise it as my own and yet I think it is not
mine. I would not wear my hair so long. With a slightly shaking hand I switch
off the bathroom light and switch on a lamp in the hallway.  The bathroom is
now lit dimly. I return to the mirror and stare closely into my own eyes. They
are lined quite deeply. I cannot be so old - middle-aged. I feel that I am
young. I light the cigarette lighter and bring it up to my face. My pupils
dilate. I do it again, and again they dilate. So I am not concussed, then, I
think. I wonder if I have remembered the concussion test correctly. Shaking my
head I realise that the test, even if it is not an invention of my imagination,
tells me nothing.