The Kimota Anthology Part 3

Dylan said nothing.

His mother said, "Where did you go when you went out this morning?"

"Just playing," he said.

"Who with? The ones I've had to keep telling you about?"

Again he said nothing, but the way that he avoided her eyes was a form of admission.

She said, "There are two policemen downstairs. They're going to ask you this, but I want you to tell me first. Did you touch Kelly at all?"

Touch her? He'd had to. He said, "I pulled her out when she banged her head."

"Pulled her out of where?"

"This place they were showing me." He couldn't bring himself to tell her about the other part.

"Were they making fun of you?"

"We were all just laughing."

Then his mother said, "Listen to me, Dylan. They're children. You're twenty-six years old. I've tried to explain this to you but I can never seem to make you understand. You're not one of them. They're not your friends and they never can be. Now, tell me again. Did you touch her?"

Dylan swallowed.

"Not like that," he said.

The hurt was coalescing into something deeper and more vivid now; an apprehension that was all the more fearsome for being without a shape or a name.

She said, "Come on, Dylan."

"Come where?"

"We've got to go down and talk to these policemen."

"I don't want to," he said.

"I know you don't," she said.

And then she took his hand, and he had to let her lead him down the stairs.

[Originally published in Kimota 6, Summer 1997].

COLD COMFORT.

by Mark Chadbourn.

The house was perfunctory, some would say charmless, but it was theirs. Plain front, flat windows, nothing to trouble the eye or mind. The front lawn was small, square, a little overgrown. There was a similar one at the back. The street was quite reasonable, not too busy, not too quiet, not covered by the warning paint marks of the utility workers. It was on an estate called The Green. Every town had one called The Green; it was one of those great unwritten rules.

John Robson stood on the pavement and looked at it ambivalently. It was a small, detached house which, thanks to the curve of the cul-de-sac, stood a little apart from the neighboring properties. He would have preferred something with a bit more character, something older, but they could afford this one easily and with a child on the way it wasn't wise to take risks. When they had first received the estate agent's particulars it had hardly seemed worth looking around it. The layout of the house was quite obvious from the photo; squares and rectangles, three bedrooms, one of them barely big enough to be called a closet. No surprises there.

Gill slipped her hand inside his pocket and gave his own hand a little squeeze as if to rea.s.sure him they had done the right thing.

"Aren't you going to carry me over the threshold?" she asked.

"At your size? I'm a man, not a JCB. Anyway, you only do that when you're newly-weds."

"Since when did romance follow logic?"

"Okay, maybe not logic, but definitely the laws of gravity." He glanced at her swollen stomach; not long to go. John put his arm around her shoulders and led her towards the front door, swinging the key almost absent-mindedly with his other hand, but really thinking about romance, or the lack of it. Sometimes it hit him like a punch in the stomach. Their friends always said they had the perfect relationship, never arguing, kissing, caressing, in public, in private, two as one in perfect harmony. They married and honeymooned and lived together and gradually things changed. s.e.x went out of the door like an unwanted pet, not noticed until it was a neighborhood away. The touches and the hand-holding had disappeared around the time they decided to sit at opposite ends of the lounge in their rented flat. Their love didn't really go. It just became frozen in a block of ice and by the time they noticed it, it seemed too late to chip it out. And so they carried on as they were, listening to the arctic wind that howled through their home into the night.

Gill took the keys from his hand and slipped out from under his arm, skipping up the path with surprising lightness of foot. She stayed a few steps ahead of him throughout the house until he caught up with her in the smallest room. It was actually bigger than he expected, but not much. Gill was on her knees, plucking something from the floor in the corner when he walked in.

"Look at this."

She held up a child's dummy, covered with dust, a cobweb trailing from the ring.

"It's a sign," Gill said. "This room will be the nursery."

John took it off her and examined it closely. "I don't remember seeing this when we first viewed the property."

"You probably missed it. Give it here. It'll be a good luck charm." She placed it on the window ledge. Then, as she walked back into the centre of the room, she clapped her arms around her and shivered. "Is it me or is it cold in here?"

"It's in the seventies outside," John replied.

But he felt it too.

There were a few complications at the birth, the umbilical cord looped around the baby's neck, but nothing the doctors couldn't handle. It was a boy, 7lbs 3ozs, and they decided to call him Christopher James after their fathers. John had been extremely apprehensive before the birth, worrying about the effect it would have on both their lives, the erosion of self, of freedom and privacy. But in the end the baby was almost a relief, a focus that kept them from having to recognise and deal with their relationship's cancerous problem.

During the first few weeks when Christopher slept in a Moses basket next to the bed, John diligently worked on the nursery, hanging the brilliant yellow paper with coloured building blocks which Gill had chosen when she was pregnant, fixing the work surface for the changing of nappies, hanging the mobiles. Pride of place was given to the dummy they had found. Gill tied a new piece of ribbon to its ring, but left the old ribbon dangling, and John hung it from the light. He always banged his head on it when he went into the room, but somehow it seemed to belong.

When they moved Christopher into his own room for the first time they had a little party, just close family and next-door neighbours. No champagne. Beer and cheap wine was all they could afford on John's wages.

The house-warming came later, when Gill had stopped breast-feeding and Christopher could be palmed off on her parents for a night without too much trouble. Twelve weeks of enforced isolation proved too repressive for both of them; John had finished a four-pack before anyone had arrived, and though Gill swore at him for his thoughtlessness, she had secretly started working her way down the vodka. By midnight they were both drunk, ignoring each other, flirting with anyone who came by, yet each sneaking glances at the other and wondering what had gone wrong.

Gary Pearce came up to John at 1 am, his expression creeping between embarra.s.sment and pride and back again. John had seen him talking to the younger sister of one of Gill's friends. He couldn't remember her name, but he knew she was only 18. She had spent most of the night staring wide-eyed into Gary's worldly-wise face as he rambled on semi-coherently, probably about his job as a lawyer which seemed interesting at first hearing until one studied the minutiae of his daily ch.o.r.es.

"John, I've been your mate for a long time," he began, moving in close so he could whisper in John's ear.

"Spit it out, Gary. I don't need a preamble after all this time. What is it, Durex?"

"No, no, I've got them." He looked back at the girl, pretty in an immature way; she flashed a nervous smile. "I need a room where I can... you know. Somewhere where we won't be disturbed."

John glanced at Gill, laughing raucously with four of her friends in a cloud of cigarette smoke. "Christ, Gary, do you have to." He looked back at the girl, suddenly remembering how he used to be, and caught himself. "There's only Christopher's room. There are coats and things in the others. But for G.o.d's sake, don't let Gill find out."

"Thanks, John, you're a mate." Gary tapped him on the shoulder with his fist and then hurried back to the girl and whispered in her ear. A second later they were gone.

John watched Gill laughing at the centre of the whirl. It was just like when he had first seen her, that night in the bar when Andy Johnson's stag party had stumbled across Gill and her friends' Friday night out. The memory burned brightly in his mind, casting a long shadow over the last few months.

Gary Pearce appeared at his elbow. "Come on, John, raise your game," he laughed. "The room's locked. I need a key."

"There's no lock on the door, Gary. You've had too much to drink. Remember what a door handle is for? You turn it, the door opens."

"John, it's locked, I tell you." There was a snap of irritation in his voice. "We both tried it. Yes, we turned the handle. And I put my shoulder to it. Maybe it's jammed."

John shook his head. "You're going b.l.o.o.d.y mad. It never jams. A breeze could blow it open. Come on."

He pushed his way past Gary and led the way up the stairs, stepping awkwardly around the bodies in various stages of inebriation and romantic entanglement. The girl was standing outside the nursery door looking sheepish. John tried the handle and the door opened instantly, revealing a crack of darkness about six inches wide.

John looked at the girl, then Gary, and sighed wearily. Gary was shaking his head. "No, it was definitely..." He turned to the girl. "Did somebody...?"

The phone rang downstairs. Alcohol always diminished John's tolerance and he had had enough of Gary's stupid game. He went to push past him to go downstairs when he had the strange, magnetic feeling that someone was watching him through the crack in the doorway. Nerves fizzed up and down his spine. Slowly he turned and looked in, and for the briefest instant he thought he saw something. In the gloom there was a flicker of a shape that had seemed like a round, white eye staring from a shadowy face. Watching him. John turned back to swing the door open fully.

At that moment, Gill's voice echoed loudly above the thumping music and the hum of chatter. It was edged with panic.

"John! Where are you? It's Christopher!"

There were only a few people in the casualty department; a drunken student supported by two friends, his face a patchwork of small cuts; a sad young woman sitting alone, red streaking her blonde hair from a gash on her head; a stern-faced middle-aged couple waiting for results that were too long in coming. John had sobered up the instant that Gill had told him the news. Someone from the Royal Infirmary had called on behalf of Gill's parents; Christopher had been rushed in. They had no other information.

The drive over had been a blur of jumped traffic lights and erratic over-taking. All John could remember was the argument that had raged inside the car over whose fault it was, who had wanted the housewarming the most, who had suggested Christopher spend the night with Gill's parents. They arrived at the hospital in seething silence.

James, Gill's father, rushed out from behind a curtain before they could ask where Christopher was. He looked pale and ill.

"It's okay, don't worry," he said, trying to throw his arms around both of them at once in relief. "Christopher's going to be fine."

"Dad, what happened?" John recognised the hysteria that crept into Gill's voice whenever she was pushed to the edge.

"He gave us a right shock," James replied leading them through the curtain into a cubicle. Christopher was asleep in the moses basket that they had obviously brought him in, looking as peaceful and relaxed as when Gill had kissed him goodbye. Her mother, Marjorie, kept a vigil next to it, her face still streaked, pink tinting the bags beneath her eyes.

"It was Marj who noticed it," James continued in a whisper. "She went in to check on him and she could tell straight away that something was wrong. He didn't seem to be breathing." He bit his lip. "He wasn't breathing. Marj screamed and I rushed in and picked him up and...G.o.d, Gill, he was as stiff as a board! And he was so cold." He shook his head in disbelief. "He felt like he'd been in the freezer."

They all looked at Christopher, his cheeks flushed, his tiny lips puckered in an imaginary kiss. "What did the doctors say?"

"They couldn't find anything wrong with him," Marj said croakily. "He recovered almost the moment we got him here. They did a lot of tests - the poor tyke was bawling his eyes out - but they were all negative."

"So what do we do now?" John wanted to pick Christopher up and cuddle him, to comfort himself more than his son.

James shrugged. "They just said keep an eye on him." He paused and stretched out his hand before withdrawing it, as if he wanted to touch Christopher to prove to himself he was still alive. "He was so cold."

John and Gill barely spoke during the next seven days. Christopher's mystery ailment put even more stress on their piano-wire relationship which was still reeling from the protracted loss of freedom a new child brings. Neither of them could rest. Every time Christopher was asleep they would dash in every five minutes to check on his breathing. On the odd occasion they were together in the lounge, angry words would crackle out of the tension. John was concerned that Christopher's skin was taking on the faintest blue tinge like snow in brilliant sunshine. Gill was worried about his respiration. Once she was sure she had seen his breath plume even though his bedroom was centrally heated and his cheeks were warm to her touch.

On a foggy day in mid-October, John had finally escaped to the garden from the pea soup atmosphere of the house. He had never been much of a gardener, but among the dried-out buddleia and the fading, crinkled roses he felt he had found some kind of sanctuary. As he sat on the slabs outside the kitchen door, picking the mud from his boots with a pair of secaturs, Gill stepped out distractedly, saw him and let out a sudden shriek.

"Jesus Christ!" she snapped. "You scared the living daylights out of me. How did you get out here so quickly?"

"I've been out here for the last hour." He didn't try to disguise the irritation in his voice.

She shook her head dismissively. "Don't lie to me, John. I heard you moving around in Christopher's room. That heavy tread of yours could wake the dead. You walked over to the cot and looked in. I thought we agreed we wouldn't keep going in to him." He looked at her as if she was crazy. "I was in the dining room, for G.o.d's sake. Right beneath his room. I could hear your elephant footsteps going across the floor just over my head."

John returned to the inspection of his boots. "I haven't been in there. I'm out here to stop myself going in there. You're just acting guilty because you can't leave him alone."

"And what are you doing out here?" she continued, ignoring him. "What about all the things inside that need doing? Am I supposed to do them while you wander about the garden in a dream?"

"The garden needs doing as well..." But she had already gone, slamming the door behind her.

That night Gill tried to make up. "Come to bed early," she said, pausing at the stairs door. It was a euphemism for s.e.x, but it had been so long since they had done it that John no longer knew if he could. He couldn't even bring himself to see her in a s.e.xual light. Recently, in the depths of his subconscious, he realised he saw her only as The Enemy, waging a constant battle to stop him being himself. He smiled and shook his head with mock apology. "I've got to get this book finished," he said, tapping his paperback. She didn't believe him for a minute, and she disappeared up the stairs without saying good night.

"Sorry, mate, I can't help you." The central heating engineer closed his box of tools with a clang. "I've checked everything top to bottom - pressure, pump, boiler. It's all working fine. Look, feel it." He put his palm on the radiator in Christopher's room. "Hot."

"But it still feels cold in here." Gill rubbed her arms.

"Maybe you've got a draught."

"It's double-glazed," John said acidly. Christopher was starting to nod off on his shoulder, his lips sucking at his dummy in a steady rhythm.

"Could it be cutting out?" Gill asked. "Coming on intermittently, but not enough to heat the room?"

"Maybe it decides to come on when you're in here and switches itself off when you're not," the engineer replied sarcastically. He slipped out of the door before anyone could ask him any more stupid questions. Gill followed to let him out. John gently lifted Christopher off his shoulder and laid him in his cot, throwing a couple of blankets over him and then, as an afterthought, the small cover from his moses basket.

Through the window he could see the heavy grey skies that had transformed the mellow autumn into a biting foretaste of winter. The first heavy frost had iced the lawn that morning; it was imperative they sort out whatever was wrong with Christopher's room as soon as possible. The problem had been building steadily; however warm the rest of the house was - and it got very warm - Christopher's room always felt like an icebox. With the memory of that frantic flight to the hospital still strong in his mind, John didn't want to risk anything which could trigger another fit. They had considered moving him, but the other spare bedroom had become piled high with junk, and if he slept in their room their sleep was always disturbed.

Gill returned and beckoned to him to come out of the bedroom. "Well, what are we going to do now?" she said in a hard voice as if it was his responsibility to find a solution.

"I don't know. What do you think we should do?"

"For Christ's sake, John. I've got a heap of washing to do. There's a sink full of dirty pots that you should have..."

"Oh, shut up!" He forgot himself and almost shouted it. There was a split second pause and then Christopher let out a loud bawl of shock that developed into a wailing cry.

"Now look what you've done," Gill hissed, pushing past him.

John had stomped halfway down the stairs when Christopher suddenly stopped crying. A second later he heard Gill catch her breath. He leapt back up two steps at a time before she had a chance to call his name.

"What is it?" he said anxiously. Gill had plucked Christopher from the cot and was staring at him, wide-eyed and frightened.

She held the baby out, mutely, and John took him in his huge hands, afraid of what he would see. Christopher was still breathing, but he appeared to have been frozen: his eyes were wide and staring unwaveringly, and his little lips were blue. His body was rigid, like a block of wood, and there seemed to be a spiderweb tracing of frost across his skin, following the pattern of veins. It glistened in the light that came through the window. John was transfixed with shock. Gingerly, he stretched out his fingers and brushed the down of Christopher's cheek. It was like touching a window on a mid-winter morning. He s.n.a.t.c.hed his hand back and rolled his fingers into a fist as if that would deny the sensation.

"Christ..."

Christopher hovered there for a moment, and then John clutched him to his chest and ran downstairs. Gill found them in front of the gas fire in the lounge. Christopher was swathed in thick towels from the kitchen as the fire roared on full, while John rubbed his son's delicate hand, the tears streaming down his cheeks.

"What's going on?" he said as Gill breezed through the door. He looked pale and lost. "This isn't right. It's not natural."