Ben McPherson - A Line of Blood

I lit two cigarettes at the stove, handed her one. She gripped the cigarette like a pen, took a drag, watched the smoke as it curled upwards. She was nothing like Millicent but she had something of the same underlying strength, some quality that made me feel I could trust her, almost as if we shared a secret, though if you had asked me to define what I liked about her I would have struggled, would have worried that you thought I was attracted to her.

‘Was it awful for you?’ The aching sadness was back. ‘Did it look as if he was suffering? I mean, of course he was suffering. He had to be to do that. But how did he seem?’ I could feel her struggling for the words. ‘Did he look all right?’

‘I think it was OK. He looked OK.’ I thought again about that rictus smile. Of course it was awful. The erection. The violence of it. Of course he didn’t look all right. But the poor man was someone’s brother. He was Rose ’s brother.

‘He looked dignified. He looked peaceful.’

He looked murdered .

‘You’re a good man, aren’t you? Was it really not awful?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not good. Other people are good. And it wasn’t awful.’ I was lying to soften the blow.

‘You are good, you know,’ she said. ‘There’s kindness in your voice.’

She got up, asked if she could use the lavatory. Of course, I said, of course. I hoped we had shut the bedroom door.

When she came downstairs I could tell she had been crying.

‘He really wasn’t a bad man,’ she said. ‘It’s important you understand that.’

‘Why would I think he was a bad man?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘You might. For what he did.’

I told her I understood, although in truth I did not.

‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Thank you for the coffee, and for the cigarette.’

‘Coffee and cigarettes is pretty much all I’m good at.’

‘Don’t forget kindness.’ She took my hand in hers, then stopped as if embarrassed. ‘Will you come to the funeral, Alex? He didn’t know so many people. Bit of a loner.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

Then she kissed me on the cheek and was gone.

I sat down at my computer at the kitchen table.

Max came home at four. He commented on the smell of cigarette smoke, made his own sandwich, and went up to his room. Then he came back down and asked me for five pounds.

‘What do you want five pounds for?’

‘We don’t have any milk.’

‘Milk doesn’t cost five pounds.’

‘OK, two pounds then.’

‘All right, Max. Here’s two pounds.’

‘Thanks, Scots Dad.’

‘There’s nothing mean about me giving you two pounds to buy milk.’

‘Do you want the change?’

‘Yes.’

‘O K , Dad. You’re not mean at all.’

I ruffled his hair.

‘Want me to come to the shop with you, Max?’

‘No, it’s OK.’

I rang Millicent again. Left the same message again. Added that I missed her and wanted her to come home, then felt foolish and tried to rerecord the message. The answering service cut me off.

Max came home with a small carton of milk and a packet of Maltesers.

‘I don’t remember saying you could buy those, Max.’

‘You didn’t say I couldn’t.’

‘I said I wanted the change.’

‘Here.’ He handed me seven pence. ‘Do you want some Maltesers?’

‘Yeah. All right.’

I pushed my computer to one side. We sat at the table drinking milk and dividing up the Maltesers. Max got a kitchen knife and cut his Maltesers into halves, and then into quarters. He sat dissolving them on his tongue, then sticking out his tongue to show me.

‘What do you want for supper?’

‘It’s Mum’s turn to make dinner.’

‘I’m making it tonight.’

‘Fish and chips. From the fish and chip shop, not home made.’

‘OK.’

‘Can you give me the money, and I can buy it?’

‘Later, OK?’

‘OK, Dad. Dad?’

‘Max?’

‘Aren’t you going to eat your Maltesers?’

‘You have them, Max.’

‘OK. Dad?’

‘Max?’

‘Tarek said you’re going to send me to a psychiatrist.’

‘Why did he say that?’

‘I told him what I saw.’

‘Well, what you saw was pretty upsetting, wasn’t it?’

Max said nothing.

‘Max,’ I said, ‘Max, if you ever feel the need to talk about what you saw, doesn’t matter where or when, we can talk about it, OK?’

‘Is it because of the boner?’

‘What do you mean, Max?’

‘Tarek said that if you see a grown-up’s willy and it’s a boner then all the other grown-ups go spectrum, and you have to go to see a psychiatrist.’

I sat, trying to find an answer to this. Tarek had covered a lot of angles in one sentence.

‘So do I have to go and see a psychiatrist?’

‘I don’t know, I think it might be a good idea.’

‘Do you have to go and see a psychiatrist too?’

‘No, Max, I don’t think so. But Mum and I will be coming with you when you go for the first time.’

He bristled at the injustice of this.

‘You saw the boner too, Dad.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘So why don’t you have to go?’

‘Max, you’re eleven.’

Max rolled his eyes in that way only eleven-year-olds do.

‘In the next few years you’re going to be discovering a lot about your body. And about other people’s bodies. And Mum and I want to make sure that you don’t find that scary.’

‘I know about sex, Dad.’

‘I know you do, Max. But Mum and I want to make sure you’re OK.’

I tried to take his hand but he pushed me away.

‘Are you going to tell Mr Sharpe about the psychiatrist?’ There was humiliation in his eyes; his voice was very small.

‘Yes, probably. But he won’t tell anyone else. And if you go for a few times and Mum and I decide it’s not really necessary, then you can stop. OK?’

He picked up the rest of the Maltesers and went upstairs to his room. I sat, feeling worse than ever. I’d be angry with me too if I were him.

Max and I ate our fish and chips.

The doorbell rang. My first thought was Millicent without her key, and my second thought was the police.

It was Fab5.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘All right, Alex,’ said Fab5. He went through to the kitchen and sat in my chair, stole a large chip from Max.

‘Hey,’ said Max.

‘Good to see you too, wee guy.’

I had hoped Millicent would love Fab5. She never did.

‘Fab5? Like, we’re cool and we’re black and it’s 1979? Guy needs to accept his reality.’

Fab5 thought Millicent lacked a sense of irony; she thought the same about him. If you forced me I would side with Millicent; she saw from the start what I did not: that he had slipped his moorings, that he was adrift.

Fab5 was my oldest friend, though. True, there was something a little faded about him now, a little stretched around the edges. It was getting harder to laugh at the stories about women and cocaine. He partied a little too hard and his hair had taken on a warm red-brown sheen that doesn’t exist in nature. He knew this, though, and that’s why we were still friends. Behind the laughter there was a wistfulness for a time when he and I were young together, and London, it seemed, lay at our feet: a time before Millicent, in other words. I wondered sometimes if Millicent disliked Fab5 for that reason too – he was a reminder of a younger, less faithful me.

My wife worries that I might revert to type.

Fab5 helped himself to one of my cigarettes. ‘You going out like that, Lex? She’ll not be pleased.’

‘What?’

‘Dee, you incorrigible twat.’

Dee Effingham. The Sacred Cock at seven.