Nicholas Royle - Regicide

She had come and sat and talked to me — Annie Risk on one side of the bed, my mother on the other — and that had done the trick.

Later I unscrambled the sense of that final stadium PA announcement in my head. Something about the Queen emerging from exile to issue a pardon. My life had been spared, my guilt rubbed out.

‘To you,’ I said, lifting my glass to Annie. ‘If you hadn’t gone to see my mother I wouldn’t be here tonight.’

We both drank, I lit a cigarette and at that point, naturally, the food arrived.

I went down to see Jaz for the first time since coming out of hospital. I didn’t drive, because I didn’t have a car any more. You could have offered me a Mini Cooper S, a Mark II Jaguar or a Jensen Interceptor and I still wouldn’t have driven. I’d done enough driving for a while.

I went on the train.

I glanced up every branch line that veered off into the trees. I knew where they led now. I sat back, feeling more relaxed than at any point since I’d come out. Gradually my life was getting back to normal. I reached into my left boot for my cigarettes and took one out, lit it and inhaled deeply.

Arriving at Euston I thought about taking a short ride up to the Caledonian Road and having a look at the shop, but decided to go straight to Jaz’s place in Bethnal Green. I went south on the Northern Line and headed out east on the Central. I’d cleaned my jacket as best I could. In the crash it had got covered in engine oil and blood, both mine and the dog’s. My hair, which they’d shaved so they could open my skull, was growing back. It would take many months before it got to my preferred length, but I could wait.

I walked through the damp, blowy streets of Bethnal Green, crossing the road to avoid the requisite stray dogs in the council block car-park, and enjoyed the solid feel of my boot heels on the stairs up to Jaz’s flat. It smelt as glorious as ever.

‘It’s open,’ I heard Jaz shout from some distance as I knocked on his door. I pushed it open and wandered inside. ‘Won’t be a minute,’ he called. ‘Just finishing up in here.’

He was in the darkroom.

‘I’ll get a beer,’ I said. ‘Do you want one?’

‘Yeah,’ he shouted. ‘In the fridge.’

I looked in the kitchen. He had some strange-looking Thai beer in brown bottles in the fridge. I took two, levered off the caps and set one down on the work surface for Jaz. I took a swig and reached for another cigarette, wandering into the main room. My boots went clump, clump on the bare boards. I swallowed another mouthful of Singha beer and approached the wall to have a look at Jaz’s photographs. Clearly he was still doing his urban landscapes thing. The first grim picture — they were all monochrome — showed the tatty car-park opposite his building. He’d caught three dogs sniffing each other. The next was a desolate scene down at Rotherhithe. In the background was a half-full gasholder. I looked back at the first picture of the car-park: the two big gasholders on the other side of the canal were just visible over the top of the old building.

In the third photograph I recognised a pair of gasholders at Wood Green.

The beer sloshed uncomfortably in my stomach as I progressed to the fourth picture: an exterior shot of the Tube station at Bromley By Bow; in the background, out-of-focus but deliberately in the frame, a cluster of gasholders. I counted nine. And they were all full.

I felt a bit sick. A chill crawled spider-like up my spine and I shivered.

There were several more pictures hanging on the walls but I couldn’t bring myself to examine them. I was looking out of the window at the two copper-coloured gasholders on the other side of the canal. They were both full as well.

I heard footsteps behind me and dropped the bottle. It didn’t smash, just rolled on the boards, tipping out beer. I could feel Jaz’s breath on the back of my neck.

‘Brother,’ he said in a thick, insinuating whisper, ‘who the fuck did you think dropped the map in the street for you to find in the first place?’

I turned around slowly to face him. He wasn’t alone. Annie Risk was standing next to him. And they were holding hands.

I called out and opened my eyes. I was lying in Annie’s bed, my T-shirt soaked in sweat. The quilt was on the floor and Annie’s side of the bed was empty.

The telephone was ringing in the hallway.

‘Annie,’ I called.

Apart from the strident tone of the ringing telephone, the flat was silent.

I crawled out of bed, tearing my T-shirt off over my head. I grabbed Annie’s bathrobe and went to answer the phone.

‘Hello?’ I said. ‘Hello?’

There was no one there. Just the barely perceptible metallic scrape of a missed connection.

I hung up.

I shivered and pulled the bath robe tighter around my shoulders.

And then came the knock on the door.

END

The author would like to thank Kate Ryan, Florence Secret Rousselle, Jonathan Rees, Sarah Llewellyn-Jones, Chloë Bryan-Brown, Bill Starling (formerly of British Gas), Ian Cunningham.

Thanks to Paul J McAuley and Kim Newman, who published the short story ‘Night Shift Sister’, which formed the basis of this novel, in their anthology ‘In Dreams’ (Victor Gollancz).

Special thanks to all former members of the Passage, especially Richard Witts, Andy Wilson and Joe McKechnie. And to James Nice of LTM, who made the Passage back catalogue available on CD.