Nicholas Royle: First Novel

‘Bollocks,’ she says. ‘Pretentious, self-serving bollocks.’

‘I thought it might be,’ I say. ‘It’s the best I can do. Why would I want to kill my children? Why would anybody want to kill their children? The answer is you don’t. You don’t want to kill your children. You’re consumed by a compulsion to hit out, to punish. What punishment could be worse? It’s not the suicide — that’s nothing. If someone does that to you, leaves you thinking you’re responsible for their death, they’re beneath contempt, not worth bothering about. But taking the children, that’s unforgivable, the ultimate punishment. That is contemptible. There can be nothing more contemptible. You’re leaving me? Threatening to take the kids? Well, how about this, I’m leaving you and everything else and taking the kids with me .’

‘Don’t you dare make this my mother’s fault.’

‘I’m not. I did it. I’m the one who’s to blame. All I’m saying is, it happens without you deciding it should happen. Those thought processes, you don’t go through them. You work them out afterwards, trying to make sense of what you’ve done. Not make sense of it, but trying to understand how you could have done it.’ I pause. ‘Where is she, though?’ I ask her. ‘Your mother. You didn’t write about that, did you? She just seemed to disappear.’

‘She wasn’t perfect. She couldn’t handle it. But there’s no comparison.’

‘No. I know that.’

I realise I’m tired of standing and I sit down on the dusty floor. Grace does the same. Between us the pool of silence expands and becomes deeper. We don’t say anything for several minutes. I think about Lewis, about meeting him at AJ’s barbecue. Had others interacted with him or had he only ever spoken to me? Ksssh-huh-huh . I picture him at the pub. Did he speak to the other guys? Did he get a round in? I reach into my back pocket and bring out the folded photograph. I unfold it and look at the woman and the two blonde girls.

‘What’s that?’ Grace asks.

I look up and see her sitting on the other side of the black pool that lies between us. I reach across it, offering her the photograph. She stretches out an arm, then holds up the photograph to her eyes in the darkening room.

‘Who’s this?’ she asks.

‘Lewis’ wife and daughters?’ I say, my intonation rising at the end of the sentence. Grace, being a young person, won’t necessarily hear it as a question.

She gets to her feet and walks around the black shadow in the middle of the floor until she reaches the window, where there’s more light. She holds the photograph up for a closer look. I get up also and stand a foot or so away from her. While she’s studying the photograph, I take another step towards her, holding my breath. The dying light falls across her face and a tiny pool of shadow collects in the little round scar at the corner of her eye. She looks up and I raise my hand to take the photograph back and as I do so our fingers touch and I feel a sudden stab of emotion like an electric shock. I grab hold of her hand and the photograph falls to the floor. She looks at me, mistrust and confusion in her eyes. I pull her towards me and wrap my arms around her. She struggles and she’s strong, but I’m stronger and I use all the strength in my arms and upper body to hold her close and not let her go. Her struggles become less frequent and when she’s not trying to make me release her she stands rigid as a statue. Her face is pressed into my chest. I wonder if she can breathe. Her hair smells of grapefruit. We stand like that for half a minute, forty-five seconds, a minute, maybe longer, until I become aware that one of us is shaking. Either it’s her, or it’s me. Maybe it’s both of us. I think, after a short while, it is both of us. Eventually, I feel her relax her muscles and a moment later I release my hold and let her go. She remains where she is for a few seconds, then steps back.

I offer her a tissue, but she pulls out one of her own. She turns away to blow her nose.

‘There’s something I have to ask you,’ I tell her, my voice slightly unsteady. ‘That piece about the tramp that was read out in class, was it yours? Did you write it?’

She blows her nose again before answering. ‘That was an anonymous exercise.’

I wait, in case she might add something, but she doesn’t.

‘Right,’ I say.

I watch her back. She stands tense and hunched over her tissue. After a short while she puts the tissue away and walks towards the door.

‘Grace?’ I say, but she doesn’t answer, just keeps walking. I hear her feet on the stairs and then noises from downstairs. I turn to the window and watch her walk down the drive and turn left. I wonder if I will ever see her again.

I walk over to Grace’s road and push an envelope through her door. I hear it land on the hard floor, the keys inside it clinking together. Briefly I look up at the top-floor window, but there’s nothing to see. I turn and walk away. I start walking back to my house, but then stop and change direction. This time — the last time — I won’t take the path along the trackbed of the dismantled railway line. I join the river at West Didsbury instead, via a stile at the bottom of Stanton Avenue.

It’s early, an hour after dawn. A thin layer of mist lies above the river, which sits low in its channel, greenish-grey in colour. I walk upstream, due south, for a quarter of a mile. The river starts to meander and soon the only clue to orientation is a steady stream of planes coming in to land at Manchester Airport. I stop and watch a heron picking its way along the opposite bank, using its spindly, anglepoise legs to find the best footholds in the mud. When it draws level with me, it stops and looks back upstream. It stands very still. I also stand very still watching it. It doesn’t twitch or move even a fraction. When it does move again, I will carry on walking upstream. I will watch the planes coming in to land as I walk, my shoes damp from the dew. It will take me at least half an hour to get there, maybe longer, and when I get there I will call the police and I will wait there until they arrive and then I will go with them.

Thank you to Paul Auster, Julian Baker, Christopher Burns, Jonathan Coe, James Dingemans, Gareth Evans, Tom Fletcher, Dan Franklin, Myriam Frey, Steve Hollyman, Siri Hustvedt, Juliet Jacques, Stan Jawando, Christopher Kenworthy, Ladies of Lumb, Joel Lane, Stephen McGeagh, Jeannie Mackie, Frances MacMillan, Steven Messer, David Milner, More Maniacs, Mark Morris, Victoria Murray-Browne, John Oakey, Ra Page, Geeta Roopnarine, David Rose, Nicholas Royle, Kate Ryan, John Saddler, Ros Sales, Michael Marshall Smith, Joe Stretch, Colin Thompson, Will Vandyck, Conrad Williams.

Thank you to my family for their encouragement and support and to all my students and colleagues, past and present, at the Manchester Writing School at MMU.

I would like to mention Stars of the Lid, whose album And Their Refinement of the Decline I listened to constantly while writing the book, particularly the tracks ‘Tippy’s Demise’ and ‘December Hunting for Vegetarian Fuckface’.

Some short sections of the novel first appeared in earlier versions in Ambit, Black Static, Exotic Gothic 2 (Ash Tree Press), Rainy City Stories and Vertigo . Thank you to my editors, Martin Bax, Andy Cox, Danel Olson, Kate Feld and Gareth Evans, respectively.