A Ton of Malice Read online

  For Mags, John and James

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  HOME

  JOB

  GLOW

  MUSIQUE

  LOVE

  ART

  FRANCE

  THIGH

  CONVENT

  BOY

  MOTO

  CON

  FREEDOM

  STORYTIME

  RENT

  MOON

  THEREMIN

  OH

  EMPIRE

  WATERMARK

  DOGS

  BURNING

  PATRIARCH

  SMOKE

  INTERVIEW

  SKIN

  LOST

  CHIN

  DUST

  BLACK

  SOULS

  BLOOD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  1

  HOME

  SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1979

  You should never get stoned when you have to carry a coffin.

  My brother Niall squeezed my arm as we left the chapel, and for that I could have slapped the bastard. I shouldered the front left side of the coffin and wobbled under a weight that seemed too great for a woman who by the end had shrunk to the size of a doll. Niall was on the other side, his arm draped weakly around me. I couldn’t see his face, and I didn’t want to because grief makes people uglier than usual. We walked to the open grave, guided by a man in a black Abercrombie who huffed steam into the cold air.

  “Have you been drinking?” hissed Niall, showing how little he knew me. I hadn’t been drinking, but earlier that morning I had gone through the medicine cabinet looking for Percocet or Demerol. She must have used it all up in her final agony. Instead I’d smoked a joint under the apple tree in the garden.

  “What are you at?” said Niall.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re going to the left.”

  “Am I?”

  Niall tugged at the coffin to steer us back on course and I almost dropped it. There was a gasp from the crowd, but I barely heard it. I was miles away, thinking about Kim Sutton in London, imagining her running her fingers through Roland’s matted hair. Roland was a yoga instructor.

  We stopped at the graveside, where a lone piper was playing a screeching lament.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “That’s Cousin Phil,” said Niall, his voice made distant by the hard oak and the dead woman between us.

  “He looks a right cunt,” I said.

  “Shut it!”

  I hadn’t seen Phil since I was a kid and now here he was with a big hairy hat and a cow’s stomach under his arm. Screeee-scraw-scrawdiddly went the bagpipes. It was a terrible racket, but unfortunately not enough to wake the dead. The coffin sliced through my collarbone and I had a stoned image of Roland sitting in the lotus position in his Kennington flat, spaghetti bubbling in a kitchen pot like the entrails of a small animal. I pictured Kim Sutton arriving with a bottle of inferior Côtes du Rhône for her inferior new boyfriend. Then Roland lit an incense stick, and I smelt it in Ireland. It turned out to be frankincense burning in a cemetery thurible.

  After we put the coffin in the ground, they covered the hole with fake grass and crossed muddy shovels to show it was all over. Forever. I spent twenty minutes shaking hands with a long line of depressed overcoats. Men who looked like earwigs in belted gabardine and who smelt of prune juice, pipe tobacco and Power’s whiskey.

  “Sorry son… Awful tragedy… Loss… Loss… Grief… Sadness… Loss.” I only heard words, not sentences. I shook their hands. They went away happy.

  Niall drove me to the ferry in his respectable car, and we said goodbye while looking in opposite directions. I needed to get back to London. Ireland was already empty and there was a blank space in my head where home used to be.

  The harbour horn sounded and the water hurled itself against the hull. The ship dived between the waves like a moaning, rusting whale and the Dún Laoghaire streetlights disappeared behind a screen of spray. I checked my wallet. Twenty-six pounds. Sterling. Ugly money with the Queen looking at you sideways, as though you’d pushed in beside her on a bus seat. I went below to the heaving car deck and rolled an unsteady joint, a mangled stalk of paper and spit fabricated in a dark, diesel-slicked corner. I thought about Kim Sutton, and I knew she too was lost.

  Two days earlier, she had kissed me sweetly in Euston station. She’d given me a copy of the Evening News and a packet of Fox’s glacier mints before pressing herself against me for the last time. I’d watched her as the train pulled out and tried to open a window, but you can’t do that anymore. You can’t touch the fingers you love. Something to do with air conditioning.

  She had disappeared quickly. The train rumbled and then swerved through grey sunlight and back yards full of wreckage. I sucked on a Fox’s glacier mint, and watched London as it thinned out into long, streaky suburbs where women struggled with prams and shopping bags, like pack mules in headscarves.

  In Holyhead harbour, the North Wales police, all cheap suits and droopy moustaches, swarm around the young male immigrants like bees about a honey jar. So many to choose from and so little jail space. “All right, sir. If you wouldn’t mind stepping this way, sir. Over here, sir.” It’s a competition to see who can put the most “sirs” in a sentence, yet remain hostile.

  “For what reason?” I ask.

  “Reason, sir? I don’t need a reason.”

  I mention that I might miss the train to London.

  “Sir, please step into the booth, sir, now!”

  Inside the booth, there’s a desk with a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper. It’s the Prevention of Terrorism Act. I sign it, and a moustache curls upwards in a smile.

  On the platform I approach a uniformed man with a whistle and a hearing aid. “Is this the 6:55 to Auschwitz?” I ask.

  “Enough of your cheek, lad.”

  “Arbeit macht frei!”

  “What?”

  “It’s Gaelic for thank you.”

  “Thank you too. Now get aboard or we’ll leave without you.”

  The ashtrays overflow and the seats reek of Paddy sweat mixed with cement dust. The heating doesn’t work and the floor is sticky. The luggage racks sag, and there is no buffet service, because God only knows what demented energy might be awakened if they actually fed us.

  The track rattles, passengers shake in their sleep, until BOOM! London. Honey, I’m home.

  Roland is extremely surprised when he opens the door and finds me standing there. “Hey, Barry! Sorry to hear about your mum.”

  I nod. Inside the house, a floorboard creaks.

  “Mind if I come in?”

  He looks back over his shoulder, nervously, and then says in a loud, deliberate voice, “Sure. Come on in, BARRY!”

  Roland walks in front of me. He has a nice arse, as men’s arses go. I picture Kim Sutton kissing it, and then I picture Roland kissing it. He teaches yoga, so it is conceivable. We pass the kitchen and I notice two plates, freshly daubed with spaghetti sauce, soaking in a blue basin in the sink. The floorboard creaks again. The evidence is mounting.

  Into the living room we go, with its Pink Floyd pyramid poster and cat-scratched stereo speakers. Roland falls back into a corduroy beanbag so soft it could sap his soul, if he had a soul.

  “Like to do a line?” he asks.

  “Why not?”

  Roland chops out two fine lines of amphetamine sulphate, and this gets me thinking. If he knows why I’m here – if he is concealing my girlfriend in a bedroom upstairs – if he has heard the rumours concerning my extremely volatile temper – then what the fuck is he doing giving me something that’s only going to make me angrier? I
offer him my last Fox’s glacier mint. He looks puzzled as he refuses. Upstairs, now there is only silence.

  He snorts his line. Then I snort mine.

  “So what brings you here?”

  I tell him I’m just killing time and he drifts off into some nervous chit-chat that washes over me. I switch him off, but his lips continue to move. Maybe it’s the tiredness. I haven’t slept in such a long time. I keep promising myself some rest, but then I think, You’ll have all the time in the world to sleep when you’re 30.

  I know that back home, Niall is going through the cardboard boxes laden with her possessions. He’s putting to one side anything that looks vaguely official. He’ll pay all her bills. Death, after all, is no excuse for a lapse in financial propriety. Anything personal he will carefully save in a box marked “Personal Effects”. This will include the plain postcards I have sent her. He will read each one with a look of bafflement on his face. My jokes about the English and their love for whippets, bingo and garden ornaments will strike him as mean-spirited and ungracious. He will place my cards at the bottom of the box and cover them with dry-cleaning receipts and invoices for minor household repairs, like a dog burying an unpleasant mess.

  I look at Roland.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  “Right enough for another line,” I reply.

  He is not happy about sharing his gear with a chap who might turn homicidal at any minute. He’s older, sure enough, but I’m bigger and Irisher and yoga is not a martial art. It’s fine for premenstrual tension, but it’s not going to stop a Doc Martens.

  He chops up two more lines then offers me the fatter of the pair. I lean forward, wink at him and then, with total disregard for druggie protocol, I snort both of them. I’m vaguely aware of his astonishment. “Mind if I use your bathroom?” I ask, but I’m already on my feet, marching towards the staircase. I pounce up the steps, two at a time. In the bathroom, I turn on the cold tap and watch it trickle and curl in the green-stained basin. Even the water in this house is grubby.

  I flush the toilet and walk out the door. At the bottom of the stairs Roland stands, a look of pure nausea spreading across his mangy features. I walk towards the bedroom. The door is half-open and there is a light glowing on the other side. I know. I definitely know. She’s in there, coiled fearfully on a bed, waiting for a world of anger to explode. She has seen me in full flight. She has witnessed the wreckage: furniture upended, windows smashed, ornamentation stomped, mirrors fragmented. I don’t hurt people, but I’m hard on fixtures and fittings.

  Roland shouts up the stairs: “Barry! Wozzup, mate? Oi!”

  I push the door. The hinges squeak. I look down the stairs at this man who has unwittingly shared with me the last of his speed. He looks up at me, the man who has unwittingly shared the last of his girlfriend. There is nothing between us but air and light and time.

  Time.

  I’ll read this again someday. Perhaps I’m reading it now. Maybe it’s 1989 and I’m thirty. I’ve lost half my hair and my belly is pressing against my belt. Or who knows, could it be that it’s 1999 and I’m forty? Older than Jesus. Older than Joplin. Fifty or even fucking sixty years old? I don’t think so. The future doesn’t stretch that far.

  If anybody is reading this in 2019, it’s you, Niall, isn’t it? You’re settling my affairs, paying my bills, and arranging for Cousin Phil, deaf and breathless, to give the final bagpipe lament. Perhaps you see reading my diary as a familial duty. Getting to know your younger brother now that he’s safely dead. Maybe you’re even reading it for the second time. If so, you already know that I stand for a long time at that half-open door, Kim Sutton on the other side. You’ve already watched me lumber down the stairs, push Roland to one side and step out into the cold, Kennington night. You’ve seen me hop a night bus for Brixton, where the bad boys on the front line are selling uncut energy wrapped in neatly folded paper. Two snorts on Coldharbour Lane and I turn into Super Paddy, the conflicted comic book hero who doesn’t know whether to fly, cry or sing “The Fields of Athenry”.

  I’m sure you tut-tutted at the moment where I run headlong and headstrong across Vauxhall Bridge, throwing jacket, shirt and shoes into the river. You’re shocked, but you’re exhilarated.

  Read on.

  2

  JOB

  MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1979

  I pound a fist on the drawing board, and startle half the office. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I’m surrounded by skilled architects, structural engineers and designers. I am an island of incompetence in an ocean of technical talent.

  Dave Rennie stands at the desk beside me. He is a 28-year-old Londoner with a mass of draughting experience. A little while ago, he leaned across the gap between our desks and asked, with genuine curiosity, “How did you ever get this job?”

  “Simple,” I said. “The man who hired me is trying to fuck me.”

  Dave Rennie laughed, but a pain shot through his heart. He is not a handsome young man like yours truly and therefore has no option but to rely on his ability. And, as everybody knows, ability fades.

  Two months ago, I came to this office on the Uxbridge Road for an interview with the project manager. Mr Longley wore a loose wedding ring that slid back and forth on his finger like a bead on an abacus. When he reclined in his swivel chair, his neck disappeared into the striped material that was part shirt, part optical illusion. He looked up from his notes, and was clearly surprised by my youth.

  “Oh!” he said, eyes dragging over my body like a stoker’s rake. “You’re quite… splendid. Please do sit down.”

  I found my attention drifting towards a framed photo on his desk. It showed a debonair and rascally gent with a spotted tie, trimmed moustache and a large toss of wavy hair. I wondered if it was his father, or else perhaps a lesser-known villain from Edwardian vaudeville.

  Did I mention I was stoned?

  “So, Barry,” he said. “You have worked in the nuclear power industry before?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “I worked for a French uranium company, back in Ireland. Exploration, that sort of thing.”

  “Parlez-vous français?” He asked.

  “Oui,” I responded nonchalantly. “Un petit peu.”

  He was impressed, but he had just witnessed the usage of my entire French vocabulary.

  “You are familiar with Calder Hall?”

  “Calder Hall,” I replied. “Yes, of course.”

  I pictured a great, stately pile occupied by Mr Toad. Nearby was a lake with Ratty and Mole in a rowing boat. I was incredibly stoned.

  “We need somebody to oversee the decontamination systems at Calder Hall. In addition, there is a cladding maintenance issue – straightforward stuff, five-millimetre stainless steel. You’ve worked with that?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied, my teeth parting slightly to allow the giant lies to escape.

  Then he moved off in a completely unpredicted direction. “I’ve never been to Ireland,” he said. “A lot of British people are put off. The political thing, you know. Things are difficult.”

  I agreed. Things were difficult.

  “You don’t have any…?”

  He was too polite to finish the question, but I shook my head anyway, assuming he was referring to evil paramilitary affiliations.

  “No, no. I’m from the Republic,” I said, as if that explained anything.

  “Yes, yes,” he nodded, with a combination of embarrassment and geographical confusion. “You’re miles away.”

  “Miles,” I echoed.

  He decided to return to a more comfortable topic. “I should give you a little info about the company. What you see on this level is a little less than a third of our operations. We’re spread over four floors in the building. Upstairs, engineering; downstairs, civil. We’re the technical chaps. You’re the second new man. Raymond over there joined us about four weeks ago. Wife left him. Messy, messy, messy business. You are not married, are you?”

  “No,” I said.


  “I expect you have a girlfriend?”

  “No,” I said, thinking of Kim Sutton and Roland Nice-Arse squirming around in a knot of dirty sheets, their bodies slapping each other like wet rubber gloves, their party-parts slurping each other’s juices. “No,” I repeated. “I’m as free as the day I was born.”

  The temperature rose slightly in the cubicle. He stubbed out his half-smoked Rothmans and lit another. We had a moment of silence as he searched for words to cover his desire.

  “We’ll soon be changing the project name,” he said, “but it’s just a PR exercise. Around here we’ll continue to call it Windscale.”

  A mushroom cloud parted inside my head. The recruitment agency had said very little about the job. They’d simply referred to it as a “prestigious life-changing opportunity”. They had entirely forgotten to mention the giant outlet pipe that crapped, like Godzilla’s arse, great radioactive turds into the Irish Sea.

  “Sellafield will be the new name.”

  “Sellafield,” I said, nodding my approval. Sell-A-Field. It sounded so harmless, like something a farmer might do if he were strapped for cash.

  Mr Longley continued to talk, but my mind was elsewhere. I had a mental image of a giant atomic shockwave blasting across the ocean, picking up trawlers and ferries, flinging saltwater and mackerel into the heart of the Irish midlands. I pictured drowned cats and floating coffins, pulled from the soil like loose fencing pickets. I watched partially fried dogs yelping on half-submerged rooftops while men and women, as ragged as their migrant forebears, crawled with exhaustion onto islands of bobbing debris. I saw a perfect globe of brilliant light, flashing like hot magnesium, eating up all the colours in the world, swallowing everything, even shadow. Only a moral dwarf would even consider accepting a job like this.

  “What’s the salary?” I asked brightly.

  “Starting at £14,000 a year, and please call me Chris.”

  A cluster of amphetamine crystals dissolved inside my head like temporal-lobe popcorn. My eyes opened wide and sparkled and a grin flashed on like a spotlight. Mr Longley seemed to interpret this behaviour as a small flirtation. He lost his way with words and grasped at the first notion that drifted into reach.