Breathless
written by: David Milner
Eight days had passed since Nancy Spinks had burst into the reception office at Olive Tree Lodge. A schizophrenic, she was difficult to deal with at the best of times (especially if she was refusing to take her medication) and interrupting Denis Macroom as he was about to deliver a punchline was not the best of times. Neither of them could understand what she wanted; in a breathless defiance of syntax her words imploded as they hit the air, “dorrwan closeno dorr on there…” Denis had raised his voice, which hadn’t helped, and never helped, and he had pleaded with Alex to get rid of her, calm her down – or “just feckin deal with it.” And that is what he had done, shooing Nancy, all skin and bone of her out of the reception office; but she was back again soon enough, even more demented. Ten minutes passed. When things could have turned out differently. Instead of farting about with old jokes, ten precious minutes were gone, before they’d taken the time to follow Schizo Nancy to the lift. There he was on his knees, backside in the air, slumped dead as leather over the threshold, as though he’d been trying to crawl his way out… dorr wont closenodoorclose…
What took place next had been much nearer to panic than negligence.
Otherwise, an ordinary night. Quiet. Same as ever. They had cared enough to panic.
Edwin Chester Hulford had been the Lodge’s longest serving resident, although at ninety–three he wasn’t its oldest. Most of the residents had mental health issues. A select few were just old. Edwin had no right to be crumpled dead in an over-lit lift. Edwin had no right to be in the lift unaccompanied in the first place. He was blind.
“Why bring me here? I thought we were friends?”
“Keep your voice down, Denis.” Alex took a sip of his scotch.
“Covid couldn’t kill the place off! I’ll drink to that….”
They were seated at a scarred and chipped old wooden table in a dusty corner flanked by two disreputable looking yucca plants that were only dying of thirst.
“Is it the barman, he’s the attraction?”
“Voice, Denis.”
“I bet those piercings weigh more than he does.”
“You pick the pub next time.”
“He could slide under a door he’s that feckin thin.”
“You told me you didn’t like gastropubs and newfangled…”
“Ever wonder how they keep the rings and studs clean? Imagine yer head to yer arse like yer man here?”
“Denis, will ya please…”
“Take you all feckin day!”
“Go ask him, you can’t keep your eyes away!”
“What now?”
“I’d rather we discuss something else, Denis.”
“Chill yer beans. Lemme get my arse settled in the seat.”
“This isn’t a night out, Denis.”
“You’re tellin’ me it aint!” Denis wrapped his stubby fingers around his glass, lifted it to his face, opened his mouth, and devoured the St. Clements in gulps. His left elbow brushed against the slightly healthier looking of the two yucca plants. Alex noticed a disturbance of dust.
“It’s better that we get… our version of events, you know, like you said, inconsistencies will serve us…”
“The boy’s catching on. D’you want another?” Denis asked, indicating the glass of scotch and finishing the last of his St. Clements. Alex Bolt could always do with another when someone else was paying. “You get them in,” Denis said, handing Alex a crisp twenty-pound note, “ask Pinhead if he wants one.”
“Keep your voice down.”
The Ship was the only public house in the area that hadn’t been transformed into a wine bar or gastropub. Alex called in when his mood was low or stumbled in barely conscious, thanking the heavens for tender mercies, in need of something to see out the night. He was convinced the interior hadn’t seen a lick of paint since the late 1970’s. Neglect seeped out of the walls, and out of the faces of its irregular patrons; jaundice came to mind wherever you cared to look. The place sagged like an old, abandoned cobweb. Cash was still accepted, often preferred. The only other redeeming feature was a framed and faded portrait of Brigitte Bardot pouting in an off the shoulder number, hanging on the wall between the male and female toilets. The Ship offered loneliness to strangers. The light was unforgiving over every square metre.
Alex placed the two empty glasses on the bar as the barman smiled at him through a multitude of piercings, too many to count, silver rings for eyebrows, studs at the bridge of his nose…
“Same again?”
His name was Martin, Alex remembered. And Martin Barman has a certain ring to it.
“No, not for me,” Alex smiled, “I’ll have a bottle of Stella.” Not a bad looking chap, quite attractive with a shaved head, delicately oiled, fifty years of age, give or take, a festival botherer, for sure.
“Out of Stella, I’m afraid.”
There was no harm referring to him by name, “Any suggestions, Martin?”
“Dos Equis, though I haven’t a wedge of lime to stick in the top.”
“Your secret’s safe with me, Martin.”
“And your friend, he on the same?”
“Another St. Clements.”
“Not a drinker?”
“For the good of his internal organs.”
From someplace dark under the counter Barman Martin produced a bottle, blew dust or whatever from its neck, then using the bottle opener dangling on a chain from his studded belt popped the metal top off. So much for hygiene and the lime!
Alex glanced over his shoulder to see Denis shifting his considerable weight from buttock to buttock trying to get comfortable between the arms of the wooden chair.
“You seem to have a lot to talk about.” The voice seemed to come at Alex from another dimension.
“What do you mean?” he replied as though grabbed by the lapels.
“Like you’re in conference.” The barman bobbed his head furtively, lowering his reedy neck onto his reedier looking shoulders. Alex felt like telling the pasty-faced twat to mind his own fucking business. “Looks like he’s got ants in his pants.” The pierced-to-buggery face smiling, solicitous, rings of plated gold and silver near to jingling…
“What?”
“Break the legs off the chair he’s not careful.”
“Who cares?” The temperature felt like it had dropped twenty degrees.
“Just an observation, dear. Will that be all?”
Ever since that night he’d been unable to rid, or cleanse himself, of the old man’s smell. He’d never been aware of it, not in any way consciously, before that night; now he could taste Edwin’s wispy hair and mottled scalp and thin, grey skin on his lips, on his tongue, and deep at the back of his throat…
“Will that be all then?”
Denis at the feet, Alex at the shoulders, held him between them… no more weight than a small child. Out the lift onto the upper landing, Denis breathing heavily, wheezing wet at the lips… backing up his stubby legs… to the room where the old man lived. One shoe left foot… rubber sole pale brown old man’s slip on shoe… right foot bare necrotic black toenails. Where was the missing shoe? Otherwise, a quiet night. Same as ever. Where was Nancy then…?
“We’ve run out of crisps and peanuts, would you believe.” Barman was saying, while handing over a note and small change.
“We’re just talking. Nothing.” Alex shrugged and remembered to smile.
On his way to the dusty corner Alex passed a septuagenarian couple, man and wife, an open packet of crisps on the table between them. A phone rang and was answered. If anyone recognized him, it wasn’t showing. Alex felt lightheaded. Whisky doing its stuff. He wasn’t sleeping well, or he wasn’t sleeping at all.
Denis seemed to be weighing the loose change in the palm of his hand as Alex seated himself.
“Yer man refused a drink?”
“Er… I forgot to ask.”
“From here to the bar?”
“I have something else on my mind.”
“Try giving it a night off.”
“Yeah right.” Alex sat back in his chair, swigged from the bottle of lager. He glanced over the tessellated pattern of the carpet, old and worn, dirt and whatnot encrusted in the fabric. Lifting his eyes, Alex watched as Denis wiped each lens of his glasses on the cuff of his shirt. Loved a pink shirt, Denis did. Whoever told him pink was his colour wasn’t a friend. And whatever shade of pink he was wearing tonight was nothing short of desperate. Mind you he was desperate and pink allover; like a shank of ham ready to boil.
A stubby thumb and finger clicked Alex back in the moment.
“I’m telling you and I’m telling you now, boy, you’re a hair’s breadth from getting the job.”
“You’ve heard something?”
“I don’t need to. A hair’s breadth….”
“From Harvey, you’ve spoken to him?”
“I don’t need to,” Denis tapped the side of his bulbous nose with his finger, “twenty-seven thousand start-off pay, and you’re that close.”
“It’s about time.”
“About time!” Denis laughed and rapped his knuckles on the table; better to see a bit of fight in the boy instead of the maudlin Minnie.
“We should get into the habit of removing our shoes…”
“What now?”
“Indoors, as is the custom in Japan.”
“Twenty-seven thousand, start yers off.” Denis placed his hand over Alex’s wrist and searched for a light in his companion’s eyes, something to rely on, something he could use. Alex hadn’t worked a regular job for some time. Didn’t want to work, seemed content to drift on broken dreams, spending his days bollockin about, volunteering here and there, a helping hand, come what may. No fucking way to live.
“Venerate the elderly, Denis…” Alex raised the bottle to his lips.
“In Japan? Fuck they do. The old there as anywhere are a strain on the public purse,” Denis continued through a peal of laughter, “venerate the elderly that’s for the myth merchants and tourist board.” Denis drank his St. Clements, wishing it was a lager, cold as ice going down a treat. “Sayonara, boy, Sayonara!”
“What I can’t figure, I mean what I can’t get my head around is… no one apart from Nancy, no one saw him in the lift?”
“She isn’t a schizophrenic.”
Alex wasn’t sure if Denis had sighed or stressed the indefinite article, “I’ve never said she is.”
“Nancy Spinks is trauma undischarged. She’s trapped inside that trauma.”
Denis took a breath then exhaled slowly. Since the cardiac event, Denis was eating salad on wholegrain bread rolls for lunch, Alex caught a whiff of undigested raw onion, grimaced and let the old sage continue. “She hasn’t the mental faculty to crawl her way out.”
“Right, thanks, Denis, but, what if someone else saw or heard something?”
“Ahh…What if.” Denis dismissively harumphed his rump back in the wooden chair, his beefy arms flopped at the side.
“And all they – no, all we, Denis – all we are waiting for…”
“Is this someone.” Denis chipped in.
“To remember.”
Eight days of torture it had been, kept awake at night by a dead lump of flesh on a mortuary slab, like a scene from CSI shot in icy morbid sterile blue. This is the image Alex had. Little Edwin deemed unfit for his final resting place while questions hovered over the bruises, cracked ribs and bashed innards. Thoughts foregrounded against a backdrop of assurances that “old men fall over all the time,” that things were going to be alright.
“The only thing to remember, Alex, is that you weren’t there.”
“When the body’s released and the full inquiry starts…?”
“You had left, remember?”
“Nancy Spinks!” Alex clutched the edge of the wooden table, his knuckles whitening.
“I didn’t see her.”
“If you’d tell me what you’re going to say.”
“Oh, no, no,” Denis raised his right hand and left it midair, fixing Alex with a weighty stare, “that wouldn’t do at all.”
Alex couldn’t get away. Needed him. Sat there like a mediaeval bishop controlling the narrative, compounding the torment. Denis had all the answers. Alex felt as though he were dreaming with his eyes open. Tied in woebegone alibis, each needing the other, with little respite; trying to figure how they were going to save their wretched skins. Soundlessly he rose from the seat pushing the wooden chair away with the back of his tired thighs. Denis nodded ruefully, smiled, shifted his slate grey eyes towards the bar.
“I’m going for a smoke.”
Supposed to be in recovery after the heart attack – that most of the staff thought, and hoped, would see him (at least) retire, like the least he could do – the fat bastard had never looked better! He’d returned afresh. Reinvigorated. He was eating healthier food. His shirts were pinker, hundred percent cotton collars stiffer, that bit more expensive aftershave he was using (Givenchy Redux?), light on his feet in the Hush fucking Puppies. Reaffirmed!
Carried the old man to his room. Door half open. Lights on… bedside table cheap lamp. Wallpaper the colour of curdled milk. Never set foot in the room before. Stink in the air was overpowering. Not completely blind. Suffered with cataracts. Who was it washed and dressed him? The sound of a television in the room adjacent… volume high. Close the door… close the feckin door. Denis, his red face sweating. Panic.
A person chancing upon The Ship this ordinary autumnal evening would be forgiven for thinking they were approaching two old coves at the bar…
“A half pint isn’t worth pouring…”
“Not with the black nectar.”
“And not at these prices!”
Denis threw his head back, laughter sustained from his diaphragm, offering something like a promise tonight within the crumbling brickwork of this hoary old Lambeth tavern.
“And you were in King’s, yes?” Martin the Barman continued his inquiry, his tattooed hand firm and steady at the pump.
“In and out in four days.”
“Four days?”
“Could ‘ave been five… Could ‘ave been longer, for me. Like a feckin holiday I was having, you know? The royal treatment for a change… Marvellous.”
“That’s the wonder of our NHS.”
“Marvellous… Marvellous, Martin – it is Martin?”
“It is.”
“At my age I hear a name for the first time, and it can be lost, you know, in the marshlands of me brain.”
Placing the creamy topped pint of Guinness on the bar, Martin continued his inquiry, “You’re not married, you mind I’m asking?”
“No. Never, never. I don’t mind. Yourself?”
“That’ll be the day, Denis!”
The laughter rose and swirled over the heads of steady drinkers, a mist of mirth, it couldn’t be worse rolling toward the old mahogany door, getting loose at the hinges should anybody notice…
The sound of laughter catching Alex unawares, causing him to wince in the cool air of this autumn evening. Trying to hold his shit together, unable to get a decent smoke rolled between his tired fingers and thumbs. Baccy as dry as brittle bones. Otherwise, same as ever. Listen to the fat one now laughing his bollocks… Denis with more stories than the Death of a Salesman. Wind-bagging the thin streak of piss behind the bar. For shit’s sake!
A display of fallen apples at his feet, Alex tread softly between them in his leaky trainers. Couldn’t ascertain what tree they’d come from. A row of Victorian terraced houses to his right, shuttered shops and a Chinese takeaway, devoid of customers, to his left. No apple tree in sight. The nearest tree was a London plane, its camouflage-like bark flaky, peeling. He rubbed his tired eyes, lit his cigarette; ineptly rolled, it was gone in three puffs. Forlorn figure he surely cut. Cars passed by in a shimmer of headlights, taillights. Alex straightened his back to stare intently at what he took to be a very tall person moving in the middle of the road before he realized it was a man riding an electric scooter. Unlit, dangerous confounded things. Serve the idiot right he gets squashed under the wheels of a delivery van, Alex sneered. A sudden gust of wind rattled the graffiti-stained metal shutters and Alex flinched as though he were hearing the snap of Edwin’s bones as his little body was bounced around the lift. How much time had elapsed? Nancy Spinks on the second floor pressing buttons. Stupid, schizoid… door of the lift banging into the little old…
“A penny for them.”
“Like creeping Jesus, you are.” Alex shuddered and turned to face Denis bathed in light from the Chinese takeaway, arms and shoulders hunched against the growing cold, legs parted looking anything but pretty in pink.
“Coming back in or what yer doing now?”
“Thinking about our little friend.”
“There’s a surprise.”
“Going up and down in the lift. Bouncing around weightless, must’ve thought he was in fucking space!”
“You’re not doin’ yourself any favours.”
“Call it the incessant patter of a guilty conscience.”
“What am I without you?” Denis said, turning his palms skyward.
“Some quirk of fate the cameras not working.”
“No quirk of fate,” Denis shot back, narrowing his eyes, “the cameras on that floor haven’t worked in months.”
“There’s… no certainty is there?” Alex paused to swallow but it felt like his tongue was coated with glue.
“Well, most philosophers would agree.” Denis added with a smile.
“Fuck you!”
“Oh, will you stop yer bitchin’.”
“Stop my what you just said?”
“Alex, come on, son, come back inside.”
“What were we thinking?” Alex entreated.
“We weren’t thinking.”
The two men fell to silence. Denis removed his glasses to pinch and massage the bridge of his nose. Slightly raising his downcast eyes Alex watched as Denis took a faltering step backwards moving his bulk in a semi-circle to face the light of the Chinese takeaway. He’d lost a fair amount of weight over the last few weeks, perhaps a stone, so that the cut-price denim jeans he favoured for work were starting to bag out at his knees, hips, and places you didn’t want to think about.
“Are you getting that bittersweet aroma?” Denis inclined his body toward the light, “Soy, ginger, anise… I’d love a bit of roast duck, so I would…”
“Never seen a dead body before.”
“Pray that you never get used to the sight.” Denis put his hands in his pockets, ambled a few paces toward the plane tree at the kerb. “You think I don’t miss the old sod?”
“I believe you do, Denis.”
“I cared for him.”
“That’s not the issue.”
“I panicked.” Denis had withdrawn his hands from his pockets, “I admit that I… Panicked.” Alex noticed the balled fist and the roll of heavy shoulders as though Denis was getting ready to jab, “He didn’t deserve that kind of fucking end! He was my friend. No fucker,” Denis was pointing his finger defiantly, “takes that away from me.”
Alex had the testimony of his eyes and senses for confirmation. Most of the staff reckoned Denis was using the old boy as a cash dispenser, a spare ten or twenty pound at the end of the month when funds were low. What Alex had witnessed was a friendship imbued with love, patience, respect. He was envious! A privilege of sorts, as though he were taking part in a long-running disputative education. Over a snifter of brandy (hush hush, say no more) Alex had seen the two of them reeling in the years of democratic militancy and union activism. Evoking smoke-filled rooms and cash in brown envelopes, blacklists and wild cat strikes, a world fit for working class heroes and gobshites, a million miles removed from focus groups and the politics of consensus. The better part of forty years between them, Edwin and Denis were comrades through and through.
“I preserved his dignity.” Denis jabbed his stubby finger for emphasis.
Alex had taken a step back; for his flabby fifteen stone Denis was alarmingly light on his feet, “No one would deny that….” The words fading in the wind that was picking up and ruffling the denuded crown of the plane tree.
“So, Alex, son, trust me will ya’? Trust me to sort it out.”
“But Nancy…”
“Ahh, will ya fart and fuck off with that one – she’s already forgotten that Edwin ever existed!”
Denis began to laugh, removed his glasses to wipe his eyes on the back of his hand, lifted his face to laugh longer and louder at the bruised black and blue of the sky.
“You laugh, Denis.”
“I’m doin’ all of yous a favour.”
“I’m not settled till that coroner… has.”
“That coroner is Fact Finding, not Finding Fault.”
“And what are the facts?”
“Whatever I say they are!” Denis roared with laughter, “I was the only one there.” Denis raised his arms and began to twist and turn his body slowly and heavily, lifting his feet in pale imitation of a man walking on the moon.
“Denis, please. Stop.”
“The facts will settle, boy…” Denis speaking in slow motion essayed a pirouette, just as a bus was passing.
“People are watching,” Alex pointed at the bus.
“The facts will settle round whatever comes out of my mouth.”
Alex scrunched his eyes shut, hoping this fat pink mime act would disappear. He feels a heat rising within, a familiar and unfamiliar hand on his chest, he steps backwards, sidewards and can’t fathom the distance from here to the pub to the tree to the light of the Chinese.
“The last thing the management want or need right now is an inquiry.”
“The doorof lift…” Alex is speaking these thoughts.
“What now?” Denis inhaled the cool night air, his chest expanding.
“The lift door banging into his little side.”
“A sad last journey for the man. I was hoping to retain his dignity.”
The distance from his fingers feels like velvet, something he can’t name, his throat constricting, catching shallow breath, heartbeat of it racing… dangerous, heat rising within.
“…But don’t you worry about the details.” The flushed fleshy face is speaking as Alex feels himself splitting… “I’m the details. I’m. The. Details.”
Like a chrysalis, some entity emerging, something stronger to devour the rest of him.
“I can’t breathe…”
“I’m maintaining the integrity of the company. Me, the guy holding up the crumbling walls here. I get no fucking thanks!”
“I’m havin’ a panic attack.”
“Jesus with holes in his hands and feet not everyone has to know what they don’t fucking know!”
“I’m havin a panic attack.”
“All clued up, your generation, crusading against disinformation…”
Drawing on shallow breath Alex places a hand on his chest – if it was his hand and was his chest, as nothing feels like it belongs to him – in readiness for an onslaught.
“I can’t breathe…”
“You’re so easy to dupe with your likes and amazing things and conflating inalienable rights with your feelings.”
The fat ginger one, grown bigger than the tree, blotting out the dark skyline of homely rooftops, the moon hidden behind the beast’s broad back.
“Stay away from me, Denis.”
“And I’m telling you, Alex, stay away from the Lodge next few weeks. Volunteer some other place.”
“I will.”
“Worry your arse a new hole. Eat something.”
“I’m havin a panic…”
“It will pass. Stay Away, you hear me?”
“Help me, Denis.”
Now, normally, come this time, Martin would be out the back having a smoke and on the phone nattering to his mother. This evening he’d been drawn out to the front by a pair of fabulous eejits. Under the cast iron awning he lit his one-skinned bit of weed, took a satisfying drag, and watched as the older one tenderly lifted the younger to his feet. More of a fatherly gesture as they didn’t hug. Something going on between these two. The older must have been feeling the chill in his pink cotton shirt. The younger one was anyone’s guess.
“You can trust me, Alex.” These words reaching his ears, Martin flicked his smoke into the cold night air. He resisted the urge to open his arms at their return.
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