Simon Beckett - Owning Jacob - SA

“You fucking idiot.” He shut his eyes and rested his head on the steering wheel — Jesus Christ, what had he been thinking of? The thought of how close he’d come to being worked over by two pairs of boots and pool cues made him feel sick. A pub fight was a different proposition to a scrap on a football pitch. Yet he hadn’t just been ready, he’d wanted it to happen. That wasn’t courage, it was fucking madness. But he hadn’t cared. Even more incredible was that he had got away with it.

Perhaps that’s the trick, he thought, you just have to not care.

A sudden spatter of rain against the windscreen made him lift his head. Fat drops the size of pennies were flattening themselves against the glass. The blue-black clouds bellied overhead like a water-filled awning. The rain came down more heavily, obliterating his view of the world outside. He looked out at the transient, spun-glass strands it formed as it bounced from the bonnet and told himself how stupid he’d been. This time, though, the self-flagellation lacked conviction.

He was more relieved than surprised when he realised he didn’t regret what he’d done. Not even the confrontation with the pool players.

You’re getting as bad as Kale, he jeered, but he couldn’t deny he was glad he hadn’t lost face in front of Kale’s wife.

She’s just a fucking whore, he thought, angrily. Then: I want to fuck her.

It was like lancing an abscess. He felt he couldn’t breathe with the sheer pressure of lust, the need for rut.

The rain beat against the car. Condensation had steamed the glass, making a dry, private cave of the interior. His fingers trembled with haste as he unzipped his fly and pulled his erection free. He gripped it and closed his eyes. He pictured Sandra Kale undressing in the bedroom, the man’s penis in her mouth. With his eyes still shut Ben looked down and saw her sitting on the bed in front of him. She stared back, her plucked eyebrows mocking and callous as he thrust himself between her lips. He threw her on to the bed, ramming himself into her, and with a choked cry he came, arching his hips as the scalding white stream spurted over him, splashing the steering wheel, dashboard and the door panel until he felt he was pumping out his entire self and it would never stop.

Then it did. He slumped in the car seat. Gradually, his heart slowed to something like normal.

The rain drummed on the car roof as he looked down at the sticky mess he’d made. He felt disgusted with himself, but not as disgusted as he probably should. Or guilty, since it was the first orgasm he’d had since Sarah died. He thought about the last time they’d made love, but it seemed unreal and long ago. A solitary ejaculation in a steamed-up car with the vision of a cheap prostitute for company seemed infinitely more real now. Far from bringing any sort of release, though, it had left him only with a dull and heavy sense of depression. With a sigh he began searching through his pockets.

He hoped he had some tissues.

It was only because of a sleepless night that Ben found out that Kale was keeping Jacob from school.

Insomnia had never been something that had troubled him before Sarah’s death. Since then, though, and especially in the last few weeks, he was beginning to become familiar with its company. He’d fallen asleep when he went to bed but woken just after three, suddenly wide awake — a feat he wished he could achieve as painlessly at a more humane hour. There had been no reason for it, no noises or disturbance he could blame, but sleep was suddenly as far away as if he’d been up for ages. He’d lain watching the luminous digits of the clock radio beside the bed counting off the night’s passage with silent, infinitesimally slow beats. Sleeplessness, he’d found, distorted time more than the acid he’d tried at university. He would wait for one minute to lick into another. The numerals were an electronic cage that time seemed wantonly to wind in and out of, cramming more and more of itself into each sixty seconds until Ben became convinced that the clock had stopped. Then the numbers would change, and he would watch and wait again.

His mind began to run like an automated cinema projector, throwing up images that the dark had kitted out with spikes and poison. He reviewed his bravado in the pub and saw it was juvenile. It had been a ridiculous posture, a bluster to hide the fact that he daren’t do anything where it mattered, with Kale. He replayed their encounters and felt shamed. He had backed down at every one. In the daylight he could tell himself that Kale was a trained soldier, used to violence, that he was unbalanced and provoking him would be suicidal. But the darkness stripped those rationalisations away.

The uncushioned truth was that he was scared of him.

He remembered a street fight he had seen when he was a student. A group of men had been arguing outside a pub, and as Ben had crossed to the other side of the road to avoid them the argument had suddenly exploded. He saw one man drop to his knees and have his head kicked like a football. The dull crack of his skull hitting the pavement had been audible even across the street, and as the fight spilled into the road Ben had hurried away from the sight of someone jumping with both feet on the fallen man’s head.

He never heard anything about the fight afterwards, but he’d felt sick, sure he’d watched a man being killed. He’d hated himself for not doing anything, just as he hated himself now.

You’re a fucking coward. He visualised the scene again, only this time with Kale as the attacker, and himself the figure on the floor. As he stared at the bedroom ceiling he felt a four-o’-clock-in-the-morning certainty that there wasn’t going to be any amicable ending between them. The soldier had slipped whatever restraints checked most people. If Ben kept on trying to see Jacob, sooner or later something would snap when there wasn’t anyone around to intervene.

If that happened, Ben knew Kale wouldn’t stop until he was dead.

At six o’clock he threw back the quilt and got up. It was still dark outside. He turned on the lights and tried to shrug off the disjointed feeling that still hung over him. He showered, treating himself to longer than usual, and under the hot needles he immediately began to feel tired. He was tempted to go back to bed, but he knew if he did he’d feel worse than ever when it came to getting up again in an hour or two’s time.

He went downstairs, switched on the radio and set some coffee percolating. Jacob used to like morning TV, but Ben couldn’t bear to listen to it now. He ate a bowl of cereal standing by the kitchen window while he waited for the toast.

There was a faint paleness in the sky, but not enough to suggest that daylight was on its way. He put his dish in the bowl and spread sunflower margarine on the toast. Sarah had weaned him off butter and he still felt guilty if he spread anything remotely cholesterol-friendly on his bread.

By the time he’d finished breakfast it was almost seven.

He had to be at the studio later that morning for the day’s shoot, a fashion piece for a magazine. But he still had time to kill. He poured himself another cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table. The salt and pepper mills lay exactly where he’d left them the night before. At the far end of the table was a ring from the coffee mug he’d almost knocked over the previous morning. He’d meant to wipe it up but had forgotten. The stain would stay there until he did something about it. He looked around the kitchen. Everything in it would remain exactly as it was now, unless he made it otherwise. There was no one to scold him for not washing the dishes, no one to move a chair out of place, to disturb a single spoon except him.