Tim Maughan - Infinite Detail

“But you could just tell him—”

“Janet. I can’t talk to Mark. He can’t hear me, Janet.” Mary swallows hard. “I can’t… he’s dead, Janet.”

“Yeah, but—” Janet is unflustered, not even decelerated, by this statement of unquestionable fact.

Mary decides to let her finish. The path of least resistance.

“Yeah, but if you do see him, yeah? If you do, can you tell him just one thing? From me?”

“What’s that?” Mary asks. Polite, redundant. She knows the answer.

“Just tell him his dad is sorry. Please?”

The doorbell again.Two people this time, a couple, presumably. Newbies. Husband and wife from the looks of it, father and mother most likely. Old. Well, old for around here.

They also look shit-scared. Tyrone is used to old white people looking at him and being shit-scared, but he’s pretty sure they were shit-scared before they even knew he was there. It’s in the way they stand next to each other, almost too close. Huddled. Tyrone guesses they’re not only not from around here, but have probably never been to the Croft before. The armed security on the gate, the explosions of graffiti across bombed-out architecture, that ever-present edge of tension in the spice-scented air. It can be a pretty shit-scary place, your first time.

The guy, gray hair, gray face, gray clothes—old, washed-out, hand-repaired, but still maintaining some aging artifice of respectability—stops glancing around the shop and looks directly at Tyrone. It’s clear he wants to speak, but isn’t sure where to start. Tyrone decides to put him out of his misery.

“Morning. What can we do for you guys today?”

“We… well, my wife…” The guy pauses, glances at the woman, who is still staring, silently, at the dead faces on the walls. “She wanted to come down here, she’d heard the stories. She’s… curious.” His voice trembles with fear run through with skepticism.

Tyrone nods, smiles. The stories. “Of course. Where you guys from?”

“Bath.”

“Wow, that’s quite a trip. You drove?”

“God, no.” The man laughs, politely. “God. No. We got the train.”

“Oh, they running?”

“As far as Keynsham. We walked from there.”

“Nice day for it.” If in doubt, mention the weather.

“Yes, yes, it is.” The man smiles, the fear edging away slightly. “So… I’m sorry. What’s the setup here exactly? How does this… work?”

Tyrone takes a breath, prepares the spiel, but he’s hardly got the first syllable out when he’s interrupted.

The woman floats one hand in front of her mouth, fingers and lips both trembling, as she steps away from her husband, her gaze fixed on a spot on the wall. On a face. Her other hand darts back behind her, blind fumbling to grasp the man’s arm, and when it finds his elbow it grabs hard, holds tight. Tyrone is unsure whether it’s to get his attention or to anchor herself, to make sure she doesn’t stray too far.

“Diane…?” The man sounds breathless, startled. He glances from the viselike grip on his arm to her face, unable to make eye contact as he turns away from her, transfixed. Tyrone watches the fear return.

“It’s him.” The woman takes the hand from her mouth to point weakly, the shaking increasing in frequency, as it spreads up her arm to her larynx, modulating her words. “It’s him, Alan. Look.”

The silenceunnerves Mary. Tyrone has stopped playing the old jungle tape he was listening to—he always does when they get an ID, without her ever asking, out of respect for the customers—and she wishes it would come back.

She closes her eyes for a second, wills it to return.

Nothing. Just silence.

Eyes open again. They’re still here. Alan and Diane, peering at her from the other side of her desk, over the multicolored walls built from trash and gratitude. Mary has to look away from them both again—it’s too intense, Diane’s expectation, Alan’s skepticism, their combined fear. It amplifies her constant discomfort, heightens it. She can feel their fear merging with her own, infecting it, making it stronger.

So she looks down at the desk, at the picture they handed her, that Tyrone had taken down from the wall for them. A man’s face—no, a boy’s. A teenager. Pale, young. Glasses. A scruff of blond spiked hair drawn in yellow chalk, freckles spotted on cheeks in brown felt-tip. A child’s scrawl, a child’s face. She remembers when she first saw it. She remembers them all.

“So this is your son?” Mary’s voice is small, tiny, but it shatters the silence.

“Well, it… it bears a resemblance to—”

“It’s him,” Diane interrupts her husband, her voice as small as Mary’s, but the conviction demanding attention.

“Darling—”

“It’s him, Alan.” She smiles, almost imperceptibly—at her husband, moisture in her eyes, her hand gripping his. It’s enough to silence him, to make him swallow back his doubt, just seeing her like this, and he squeezes her hand in return. She turns back to Mary. “It’s him, that’s Ian. Our son.”

Mary attempts to smile back at her, to transmit warmth, understanding. She has no idea if it works. Tyrone is much better at this stuff. It’s a shame he can’t do the rest of her job.

“And you’ve not seen him since…” Mary pauses, picks her words. “Since that night?”

Diane looks wordlessly down at her lap. Alan moves forward to fill the silence.

“No, we’ve… not. We’ve had no word from him since then. I mean, not even that night—about a week before. We’ve not heard anything from him since… since everything stopped working.”

“Of course. And he lived round here?”

“No, but not far. In Bedminster.”

“Southville,” Diane corrects him. From the corner of her eye Mary sees Tyrone, always eavesdropping, smile and shake his head.

“Sorry, yes. Southville. Just off North Street. He was sharing a house there. He was a student.”

“Medicine,” adds Diane, a brittle shard of pride. Dead, buried significance.

“But he was here that night?” Mary asks.

“I… we believe so. We…” Alan’s face suddenly becomes more sullen, his eyes fall. “We couldn’t get here. Not straightaway. Not… not for months, in fact. I don’t know if anyone realizes, but things were pretty bad in Bath, too. I mean, it must have been pretty bad everywhere. When we got here his house was deserted. There was no sign of him, just a few of his things. Not many. A few clothes. All the electronics and devices, obviously. Everything else was gone… the house had been broken into, so… what I’m saying is, I don’t think he took the rest of his stuff with him… it must have been stolen and…”

He stops talking, like the words have just dried up. Mary recognizes the guilt, the regret, the helplessness, recognizes it all from Janet and every other parent that’s walked into the shop before them.

“It’s okay.” Diane squeezes his hand, looks back at Mary. “We were looking for months. Eventually we found an old uni friend of his. She thought he’d come up here. But of course we couldn’t get in here back then, it was all shut. But that’s what she said, that he’d come up here. I mean, that’s what people did, didn’t they? People came here that night?”

“I believe so, yes.” Give them what they want.

Diane forces a smile. “You’re too young to remember, of course.” She nods at the picture in front of Mary. “You drew him, though?”

“Yes. I’m afraid I ain’t a very good artist.”

“No… it’s great. Really. It’s a very good likeness.”

“Diane—”

“Alan, please. It’s him. Look. Please.”