Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

Apparently several cars had swerved to avoid hitting him. But he stood there, unmoving, facing the flow, and eventually the driver, an engineer with a family and no history of driving offences, ploughed straight into him.

It was so tempting to grasp for other explanations: was Petey high, tripping on something, or sleepwalking, oblivious to the peril? Each fiction, thin as tissue paper, tore under the slightest examination.

He hadn’t left a suicide note, and that gave us hope that he’d had no set intent to end his life when he left home and walked to Regent Road in the rain. Perhaps it was a whim, a bad few hours, and if the car hadn’t struck him or the traffic had been lighter, or it hadn’t been raining or someone had stopped him for a light, he might have changed his mind.

We were looking everywhere but at the truth. Plain and stark and mystifying. Petey had deliberately stood in a road because he wanted to die. We never knew why he wanted to die, presumably because carrying on living was unbearable. It’s hard to accept that someone you love can feel so desolate, that you are incapable of providing what they need to make life tolerable.

Over the weeks that followed, we tried to make some sense of it, going over what we knew of him, what we’d seen, how he had been. We failed.

There hadn’t been any cloud of depression like a black halo over his golden hair that final weekend; he had not been surly or angry or anxious in our company.

He’d barely seen his father since moving out, so it wasn’t as if he’d been attacked again recently. We could find no explanation, no justification. His death was like something random, wicked, fickle. It took me years to be able to think about Petey without the cramping pain of grief and guilt.

And of course what hurt more than anything, a sting in the heart, was that he hadn’t been able to tell us; we hadn’t been able to help him.

The funeral was ghastly. A Catholic service with lots of prayers and hymns and communion. It had nothing of Petey in it. Not in what was said or the music or the flowers. We could have been burying his grandmother; apart from the name and the reference to this young man , it would have been exactly the same.

We sat at the back, a gang of us, his mates, like interlopers. Dino, her face softened by sorrow, holding the baby on her hip, was the only one who even spoke to us. Their mother had to be helped to walk, so distressed was she, and their father, a big beefy man with a large head, was like an ogre in my eyes.

I fantasized about exposing him, laying bare the truth of how he used to terrorize his son. Cloud cuckoo land; besides, I didn’t really know the hard facts about his mistreatment.

After the cortège left to go and bury Petey, we all got the bus to the Grant’s Arms in time for opening hours and held our own version of a wake. Drinking beer and putting our favourite tunes on the jukebox. I kept expecting him to join us. Someone would come into the pub and I’d glance across, my heart rising in hope, thinking I’d see his flare of hair and his sweet face; that he’d pull up a stool and drum on the table or scrawl a picture on a beer mat or print the opening line for a new song. Beat me at arm-wrestling.

We’ve a few photos from those days. My favourite, the one I got blown up to A3 and mounted for Phil’s fortieth birthday, is one of the band after they had played a little club off Shudehill behind the Arndale Centre. It’s dark and it’s been raining and the four of them are outside, with the gear, waiting to load it into the van that Ged had borrowed. It’s in black and white, and the flash picked up silver drops on the brickwork behind them. Lorraine and Ged are to the right, then Petey in the centre and Phil on the left. Someone has said something funny and the other three, their faces bright with amusement, are all looking at Petey, who is finding it absolutely hilarious. His head is flung back, he’s got this great smile on his face, one hand clutching his chest as though he’d die laughing, the other half raised in a little fist of triumph. I can’t remember the joke, but that’s how I like to remember Petey: happy, helpless with laughter, with his mates, loved.

The Blaggards never played again.

Carmel

The next couple of party guests only added a little to the picture. Francine Moorhead had talked house-hunting with Naomi. Apparently Naomi was already fantasizing about getting a place with Alex, now that he had a job, and Francine had bought a flat in the Northern Quarter in the city centre. But Francine had left after that conversation, so there was not much point in meeting her. Stella Connor was vague on the phone, struggling to remember Naomi, but finally recalled that they had talked briefly about club nights while getting food from the buffet soon after Naomi arrived.

‘You can’t remember for her,’ Phil said, one day. He thought I was becoming obsessed. ‘It’s futile.’

I didn’t argue. I didn’t want to get him any more stressed. He may have taken my silence for consent, assuming that I agreed with him, but I went on in my own sweet way.

Pip Shiers and I had talked a bit over the buffet. Jonty’s colleague, she was getting used to life outside London but admitted she still missed living there. ‘I’ll give it another couple of years,’ she said, ‘and then decide whether to move back. Depends if I can get any work, of course.’

When I rang Pip, she said she had spent some time with Naomi at Suzanne’s. ‘We got the dancing going,’ she said. ‘Not at all easy on gravel.’

Another nugget of information to tell Naomi – you were dancing. I could just imagine it, her dancing her heart out, arms raised and waving above her head, grinning at everyone. I hadn’t yet sat her down and laid out all the memories I’d been collecting for her.

I asked Pip if she’d meet up with me.

‘Not sure when – I’m up to my eyes with pre-production for Aberdeen.’

‘I could come to you, if that makes it easier?’

‘Great.’

Pip lived in one of the new flats in the developments at Harbour City, where Salford’s docks have been transformed. Her instructions for parking and finding her place were complicated but precise, and we met after she got back from work late one evening.

‘Sorry to drag you all the way out here,’ she greeted me.

‘No problem,’ I said.

‘How is Naomi?’

‘Still in hospital. Should be home in the next couple of weeks, we hope.’

Pip just shook her head. She offered me coffee but I didn’t imagine I’d be there all that long. She had a mesmerising view from her window, over the tramlines to other tower blocks and one of the canal basins. It was beautiful, a clear, still night. Lights reflected on the black water. There was an amazing number of stars visible. When I commented on the view, she said, ‘Yes, though I neglect it terribly. Too busy staring at the television. Comes with the job.’

‘So, you and Naomi started off the dancing?’

‘Yes, she’d got a party mix and she put it on. Jonty had speakers rigged up. I agreed to dance if she did and we got a few people up eventually.’

‘Can you remember any of the music?’ Music was supposed to be good for evoking memories, like smells, acting like a direct line to the part of the brain where they are stored. Maybe I could play Naomi the music?

‘Ooh, a real mix, “Dancing in the Street”, “Simmer Down” and that Smokey Robinson one…’

‘“Tears of a Clown”,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, and “Candyman”. What else? Oh yes – “Jump Around”, “I Got You Babe”…’

I recognized all the tunes she mentioned. ‘Did you talk about anything in particular?’