Nothing Sacred Read online

  Now I was sitting at her kitchen table with Vick opposite, an empty glass in front of her, a cigarette unnoticed in her hand. Her hair was dirty and her face still wore traces of smoke, her eyes dark with exhaustion and ingrained soot. It was only eleven in the morning but she was, I could tell, more than half-cut. Probably still sedated, too. She was not watching me; she was looking through open double doors into her ruined living room, where a man wearing a black suit was holding a piece of metal in his hands. The metal was shaped like a Y, each hand holding a branch of the Y so that the stem was pointing away from him. He was pointing it at the walls, which were blackened and inky with sooty edges spreading over the ceiling, gradated as if by a spray can. Her furniture was destroyed, sofa and chairs burned down to their frames, charred springs exposed. The floor was under an inch of water, the patterned carpet underneath it like the dappled bed of a dirty pond.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I said.

  ‘Quiet,’ the man said, as if I had addressed him rather than Vick. He was tiny, maybe five-foot-three, and he had black hair so heavily waxed that it looked lacquered, like glossy tar. He was slim, his face smooth and his hairless hands amazingly small; he looked like a little doll. It would have taken three of him to make one of me. The metal object in his hands twitched as he pointed it into different corners of the room, the water rippling silently as he moved.

  ‘He says there are unquiet spirits,’ said Vick. She put her hand on her glass and swayed slightly, as if her glass was stuck to the table, like it was the only stable thing she had to hold onto. I revised my opinion: she was more than half-cut.

  ‘Entities,’ hissed the little man. ‘We don’t call them spirits.’ This said as if Vick had used the wrong political terminology, displayed some inexcusable supernatural insensitivity.

  Vick and I did not say anything, sat and watched the absurd little man as he put one immaculate black shoe, then another, on one of Vick’s ruined armchairs, reached up with his metal object into a corner of the room.

  ‘There are echoes,’ he whispered. ‘Throughout this room.’

  Vick watched him without expression, took an oblivious drag on her cigarette with a shaking hand.

  ‘There is…’ The man paused to balance on the charcoaled frame of Vick’s armchair. ‘Malevolence.’

  I could not listen to any more of this. Soon I would either have to laugh at him or hit him.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked as he stepped carefully down from the armchair.

  ‘Salvatore,’ he said in an accent that was pure Estuary.

  ‘Bollocks,’ I said. ‘The name you were born with.’

  The little man swallowed and blushed, embarrassed to be put on the spot in front of his client, too gutless to stick up for himself. Given our discrepancy in size, I could not honestly blame him. He was no more substantial than a child.

  ‘Steve,’ he said after a few seconds’ hesitation.

  ‘You give Steve any money?’ I asked Vick, who was still smoking impassively, as if she had no involvement in what was playing out in her own home.

  ‘Fifty,’ she said.

  ‘Give it back,’ I said to Steve.

  ‘Now hold on—’ he started.

  ‘Give it back,’ I said, ‘and fuck off. Last thing Vick needs is a fraud like you.’

  ‘Fraud,’ said Steve. ‘Uh-huh. Then explain the bird. The table moving, the demonic injuries. Explain how that fire switched itself on.’ He pointed his stick at the gas fire, or what had once been the fire, its black absence.

  I could not, and as my silence grew, Steve smiled. I stood up and took a step towards him in the living room. He stepped back, water lapping the heels of his shoes. He took notes out of his trouser pocket, threw them onto the floor, where they floated briefly before sinking into the tarry murk.

  ‘You believe in magic,’ I said. ‘So do yourself a favour. Disappear.’

  ‘How long you been drinking again?’ I asked. I sat back down opposite Vick in the kitchen and passed her a coffee, strong black.

  She looked at the clock on her oven, thought for a few seconds. ‘About three hours now.’

  ‘Christ sake, Vick,’ I said. She would not meet my eyes, stared down at her coffee cup, turned it with her fingernails. I thought about her children, taken away from her, thought about her waking up with a strange man in her room, her home on fire. Could I condemn her for finding comfort in a bottle?

  ‘What did the police say?’

  She laughed softly. ‘Already think I’m a loony. Told me to be more careful, said not to dry clothes near a fire.’

  ‘Got a point.’

  ‘I didn’t, Danny. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Fires don’t start by themselves.’

  ‘It wasn’t on. I ain’t had it on. Can’t afford it.’ She took a drink of coffee. ‘How’d it just turn itself on?’

  Again, I could not think of an answer to that. Vick’s confusion and fear seemed total, but still. Fires did not start on their own.

  ‘It wasn’t magic,’ I said. ‘Somebody did this.’

  ‘Salvatore,’ she said, ‘told me this house is bewitched. That it hates me.’

  ‘Salvatore,’ I said, ‘was talking bollocks.’ This raised the ghost of a smile from Vick.

  ‘You can’t stay here.’

  ‘Got somebody picking me up. Stay with them.’

  ‘Vick… There’s got to be an explanation.’

  ‘If it ain’t magic, then I must be mad. Am I mad?’

  Seeing one of Vick’s tears fall onto the flat surface of her coffee was, I thought, one of the saddest things I had ever witnessed. I left her to weep silently over the steam from her mug, her shoulders gently shaking, for her children she could no longer see, and her life she could no longer fathom.

  ‘I think I must be mad,’ she said eventually. She looked up at me. ‘Aren’t I?’

  I was not prepared for this; I had come round to see Vick to tell her about my visit to the social worker, to reassure her as best I could. I had not known about the fire, had not expected to be sitting in her kitchen, trying to comfort a woman who had lost her husband, her children, her home, and who had very nearly lost her life only hours before. I believe that she was still under the effects of her sedation; drink alone could not have given her the otherworldly calm she seemed to possess, as if her emotions were working too far beneath the surface to trouble her exterior. Still, I did not know what I could do, or say. Steve the psychic would probably have done a better job.

  She nodded and quietly drank her coffee as I told her about Ms Armstrong, told her that her children were in safe hands, that she would have them back soon, that I hoped she would have them back soon. The truth was, I had little to tell her, very little to reassure her with.

  Perhaps it was the mention of her children, but she suddenly sat up straighter and looked at me, said, ‘Photos.’ With an unsteady panic she opened a dresser in the living room and took out photograph albums, made a sound like the coo of a bird when she realised that they were not damaged, that she had not had that taken away from her.

  ‘You never met Ollie and Gwynn, did you?’ The way Vick said their names, lingering on them as if savouring their taste – love showed itself in the quietest ways.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Here,’ she said, sitting down next to me at the kitchen table. She put the albums down, picked the top one and put it between us. With Vick next to me, the album open between us, I felt a strange intimacy, as if we were a couple revisiting the highlights of our history together. I wondered how aware she was of the ruins of her home around her; how much of her realised the full horror of her surroundings and situation. She seemed far from rational.

  ‘That’s Ollie,’ she said, pointing to a shot of a little boy knee-deep in the muddy brown water of the Thames estuary, a spade in his hand and a wide smile on his face. ‘And there’s the two of them,’ holding dripping ice creams and squinting into the sun. On the opposite page of the album was a picture
of the two children wrapped in the arms of Ryan.

  ‘Vick,’ I said, ‘what’s the story with Ryan? What happened?’

  Vick shrugged. ‘After the kids, he didn’t want it.’ She looked above her at the ceiling for some moments, drifted away into her past. ‘He loved to be with me, bought me flowers, so many flowers. Looked after me, did anything for me.’

  She leaned forward, picked up a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, lit one. She inhaled, swallowed the smoke with a sad gasp. She looked at her coffee as if seeing it for the first time, lifted it and drank.

  ‘Vick? Asking about Ryan.’

  ‘When I met him I was a mess. He sorted me out. But then, soon’s we had the kids, it all changed. I lived for them, and he weren’t so… necessary. Least that’s what he thought. Changed everything.’

  ‘You know he’s gambling again?’ I said.

  She didn’t. She paused, cigarette frozen just before her lips. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Saw him the other night. Betting more than he owns.’

  She inhaled, exhaled with a frustrated sigh. ‘Might explain why he ain’t been answering his phone.’ She stubbed her cigarette out, screwed it into the ashtray violently. ‘Oh, Ryan.’

  ‘You still haven’t seen him?’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘I’ve left messages, been round. Nothing. Can’t get hold of him. Like he don’t want to know.’ She reached for another cigarette. ‘Looks like it’s just me.’ She looked at me, and lit up in her eyes was desperation and something else, beseeching, as she flicked her lighter. ‘And you.’

  I left Vick’s house in the late afternoon. As I left her at her front door, she had looked at me with red eyes and wrapped herself tighter in her top, said, ‘I hate this place, Danny. It fucking terrifies me.’ She’d looked behind her, into her blackened hall. ‘Whatever it is, it’s wicked.’

  Her friend had arrived, was upstairs packing clothes for Vick, everything she’d need. But still, leaving her framed in her dark doorway, I could not help but wonder at what would happen to her once she had sobered up and the drugs had worn off. When she had to coldly examine the full horror of what had befallen her, and what little the future held.

  I had nothing else to do that afternoon, no clients or cases that needed attention, and I drove out east into the flat Essex country with the dying sun behind me, the skeletal branches of trees muted in the gathering gloom, dark birds flapping aimlessly over sleeping fields. The sky seemed vast and indifferent, and I felt small and insignificant underneath its weight.

  Heading away from the lights and dramas of my town felt almost as if I was travelling back in time, passing red-brick and clapboard cottages built so long ago that they seemed part of the landscape, formed in some forgotten past. I had heard that there were villages in the farthest reaches of Essex that still blocked up their doors with crossed broomsticks to ward off witches, people who claimed to have seen their forms crossing the night skies, fluttering blackly over ancient village greens. I thought back to Vick, left in a house she believed harboured malevolent spirits; was the best advice I could give her to cross broomsticks over her front door?

  But I was not a superstitious man, and I did not doubt that somebody had done this to her, that somebody had tried to kill her. I did not know who or why, did not know how I could help her, but I knew that I could not cut her loose or give up on her. I turned my car around and headed back to civilisation, and the only family I still had. If I needed any reminder that life was, in essence, base, prosaic and entirely bereft of mystery, an evening with my father would supply it.

  My father ate food as if it was still alive on his fork and it was only through determined and aggressive biting and chewing that it could be subdued and killed; he attacked his plate of dinner as if it was a threat, like it was personal. As Maria and I watched him, his huge tattooed forearms on the table, massive shoulders hunched over his plate, I could not help but think that this was the way he approached life in general: angry, violent and nasty. He chewed agitatedly and I could see the muscles in his jaws working, bulging under his skin, making a cracking sound with every bite down.

  Maria smiled winsomely but I could see in the fixedness of her smile that she was unsettled by my father’s presence, by his animal intensity, the subliminal rage he carried about with him. He had no business around a dining table; he held his knife like a weapon.

  ‘More wine, Francis?’ she said.

  My father, who everybody else in the world knew as Frankie, nodded, still chewing, took a huge swallow of meat, which made his throat visibly swell. ‘This, Maria, my darling, is fucking blinding.’

  Maria was one of the kindest, most generous and decent people I had ever met. It was true when I told her that I did not believe I deserved her, could not think of anybody who would. My father, on the other hand, was an embittered and uneducated bully who found pleasure in other people’s misfortune, who enjoyed inflicting pain and violence. I had never heard him laugh sincerely, had rarely seen him smile. I had seen people cross streets to avoid him.

  Now, though, he was doing his best to be polite, listening to what Maria was saying, nodding at his plate, agreeing, grunting responses. I had never seen him behave in such a civilised fashion, was astonished. Maria had my father wrapped around her little finger.

  I had not wanted Maria to invite my father to dinner, had tried to talk her out of it; the thought of his presence in my home felt like a violation, as if some of his cruelty might rub off, taint it. I told her what he had done to my mother, the life of humiliation, fear and misery he had consigned her to; gave her details of his constant neglect, the hurt he had subjected me to. But she had not listened, insisted that it was important, that family mattered. Maria’s father, a kind Spanish man who spent thirty years cutting local men’s hair, had recently died and she visited her mother every other day, cooked for her. I had seen them together and they spoke to each other with love and respect and an ease that made them seem more like sisters than mother and daughter. I suspected that Maria simply could not conceive of the levels of dysfunction and resentment that underpinned the relationship I had with my father; though an evening spent with him would, I thought, likely give her an indication.

  ‘So he’s handcuffed to this midget, I should say the midget’s handcuffed to him, and the midget’s rotten, pissed out of his head, can’t stay awake, all he wants to do is sleep, but the geezer, he keeps slapping him on his head, wake up, I’ve paid you so fucking – ’scuse me, my darling – wake up. And this midget, he’s getting proper fucking angry, proper aggravated.’

  Maria nodded quickly, as if to hurry my father along, get this story finished with. My father took Maria’s nod for interest, enthusiasm for the details he was recounting. He took a deep breath, shook his head in malicious delight.

  ‘So the midget’s gone to sleep again and the geezer’s slapped him on the head, and that’s it, the midget’s had enough and next thing he’s picked up a bottle, smash, he’s broken it on the table and he’s stabbing the geezer, bang bang bang, course the geezer’s handcuffed to this fucking midget and he can’t get away, he’s screaming, the midget, he’s fucking crazy, the geezer’s mates are trying to get the bottle off him, oh, it’s fucking chaos.’ My father laughed, a hacking bark, shook his head again.

  ‘But Francis, that’s terrible,’ said Maria, an expression on her face as if she had just caught the odour of something revolting. ‘Just horrible.’

  ‘Fucking chaos,’ my father said again. ‘Oh dear, oh dear.’

  That was, apparently, my father’s favourite story, of a stag party he had met in a beer garden the summer before. They had been to the match, paid £300 to hire a dwarf for the day, who they had then made helplessly drunk by spiking his drinks. Perhaps it was the most palatable anecdote my father had in his repertoire; it would not surprise me.

  ‘Did you ever take Daniel to the football?’ asked Maria, grateful for an excuse to change the subject.

  My father turned to
look at me, a furtive glance, looked back at Maria. His demeanour had changed instantly, from delighted to a surly guilt. ‘Can’t say I did, no.’

  ‘But what was he like, Francis? As a boy?’ Maria was probing and I wanted to warn her off, change the subject, but she was looking intently at my father and would not meet my eye, would not let go.

  My father was chewing and he thought as he chewed, the silence only broken by the pop of his jaw. He swallowed, took a drink of wine, said eventually, ‘Quiet.’

  ‘Really.’ There was a forced brightness in Maria’s voice I recognised and knew was there to mask her true feelings, which I guessed were shock and revulsion. So that was it. I had been quiet. Eighteen years spent under his roof and that was the best he could come up with.

  ‘Took him snooker once,’ my father said, as if even he had realised the meagreness of his response to Maria’s question. I frowned, thought back, dimly remembered a dingy snooker hall, bright baize under the lights, my father pointing out the rudiments of the game until he lost his patience and went to the bar to sulk. I had played on my own, picking off the odd red, colour, waiting for him to be drunk enough to take me home.

  My father held up his fork, examined what he had skewered, said in an offhand way, ‘He was shit.’

  I brought my wallet with me to the doorstep, ready for the inevitable question, but this time my father did not even ask, just took my wallet from me, took out two, three, four notes, grunted what might have been a thanks.

  ‘Nice girl,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  Maria had not kissed my father when he left, had instead shaken his hand, an act that told its own story. I guessed that he would not be invited back in a hurry.

  ‘Right, well.’

  ‘See you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ My father half turned to go, stopped, as if there was something he wished to say to me. Since I had found out about my mother, and his part in her tragic story, I had felt that there was something he wanted to say to me, perhaps confess. But I did not expect him to ever find the moral courage and I was right, at least tonight. He turned without another word and walked away down the street, hands in his jacket pockets, hunched against whatever insult the world was preparing to throw his way. Some people were beyond help.