Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

He stuck the two photos of Michael Church to the wall of his office at home. He’d seen this done in TV cop shows and it seemed a good start. One was a copy of the black and white photo he’d found in Michael’s house of him and Phil as boys. The other was the newspaper shot of Michael as an old man in a photo booth. He looked at the two faces of Michael Church and wondered at the distance travelled between them.

He tried to guess how old Michael and Phil had been when the first photo was taken. It was hard to gauge. The photo was taken in the era when boys passed from childhood to middle-age sometime around their tenth birthday. Frank tried to disregard the Ministry of Defence side partings and old men’s clothes and focus only on their faces. He thought they might be fourteen, though they seemed simultaneously both younger and older than that.

He was struck by how little there was to distinguish the boys at the moment the photo was taken. Perhaps Phil’s smile was more confident whilst Michael seemed shy, but essentially they were equals. He thought about their deaths and how the great contrast between them made each seem more extreme: the front-page headlines that followed Phil’s set against the utter indifference that greeted Michael’s. As Frank looked at the photo, he imagined Phil’s image expanding to fill the entire frame while Michael shrank down to a pixel.

Andrea came to bring him a cup of coffee. She frowned at the photos. ‘Is that the guy?’

‘Yes. And look — that’s Phil in that one.’

Andrea squinted and laughed. ‘My God, he looked cocky even then.’ She carried on looking at the photos. ‘So what is this?’

‘What?’

‘The photos, the interest. I mean you’ve remembered where you know him from now.’

‘They’ve got to find a next of kin.’

‘Yes, I know they have — the coroner’s office or the police or whoever …’

‘Well, I thought I might help. You know, they can’t always devote much time or resources to this kind of thing, and I did meet him one time, so it feels a little bit more personal and I thought maybe as a favour to Phil I …’ He noticed Andrea’s face and trailed off. He looked down. ‘No.’ He gave a little laugh: ‘It’s got nothing to do with me really. I just think someone should remember him.’

Andrea nodded. ‘Maybe he wouldn’t want to be remembered. Not just him, maybe the others too. Maybe their dearest wish was to pass unremarked and unacknowledged. Many of them chose to live alone; maybe they wanted to die alone too.’

‘I know. It just bothers me.’

Andrea smiled. ‘Is this how it’s going to be now? Not just taking flowers or attending strangers’ funerals, but actually investigating their lives? It’s a crap hobby, Frank. Couldn’t you just take up golf?’

‘I thought this might get it out of my system. Maybe if I did something tangible to help for once then I could let it go.’

‘You think you’re Columbo, don’t you? This is playing detectives.’

‘Like the lieutenant, I have a bumbling almost irritating exterior that masks a brilliant mind.’

‘Almost irritating?’ Her smile faded and she looked away. ‘Don’t turn weird, Frank. Don’t get all obsessed.’ She was silent for a few moments. ‘Your past weighs us down a lot. Weekends spent with your mother, letters sent to defend your father’s buildings. It feels like enough history and melancholy without actively seeking out more. Maybe we should spend the time we have with each other and Mo.’

He reached out for her hand and pulled her to him. He held her and said quietly: ‘I only ever want to be with you and Mo.’

After she’d gone he drank the coffee and thought about what she’d said. He looked at the face in the photo. Had Michael really hoped for the gentle fall of other deaths and other stories to cover his quickly and soundlessly, to be lost forever in that endless layering of beginnings and ends? Every day at work Frank added more news, more facts, more faces to the vast multi-layered mosaic of the city and amidst all this Michael was an empty space. It was always the gaps that drew Frank’s attention. They seemed to matter more than the other pieces.

Rush hour’s ended and the traffic has loosened once more to a steady flow. The sun has dropped and Michael sits right in its line, the whole bench bathed in warm, golden light. He experiences it as a gentle hand pushing him back down against the bench, not letting him leave.

The sun in his eyes always reminds him of their first few days in Port George, stationed in the transit camp. Phil thought life would be less regimented once they were posted overseas, but he was disappointed. Michael coped better with guard duty and the mindless marching. He found the strict routine allowed him to absent himself, to be somewhere else with his thoughts. Sometimes on shit days of endless drill he’d remember the characters he used to daydream about as a kid — soldiers and cowboys and tough guys called Buddy, and he could still imagine he was one of them.

Off duty, though, Phil found things to enjoy about Port George. The other lads didn’t like the atmosphere when they went into town. Most of them had barely left their hometowns before and found the constant attentions of Arabs trying to sell them lighters and dirty postcards disconcerting. But Phil could more than match the bullshit and bluster of the street traders and on the first night he was the man every other soldier asked to negotiate their purchase of a new lighter or a watch. He liked haggling with the vendors. The next time he was in town he’d remember their names and strike up conversations with them, asking about the best bars and places to visit.

Michael feels the golden light pressing against his eyelids and is once more with Phil exploring the back streets of the town on their own. They find an open-air café free of other soldiers and Phil is delighted at the discovery. At Phil’s insistence they share a hookah and Michael finds the orange-scented smoke working its way into the creases and folds of his brain. He closes his eyes and sees Elsie on top of Adam’s Hill, the wind blowing her skirt against her legs. He’s not sure how much time passes before he opens his eyes and looks at his watch.

‘The lorry’s picking us up in fifteen minutes.’

Phil shrugs. ‘We can get a taxi.’

‘Have we got enough money?’

Phil laughs. ‘Do I look like some sap who’s going to get us ripped off? I’ll negotiate a price. Just sit back and relax. We’re going to travel back in style, not like cattle in a truck.’

Later they find a taxi willing to take them back out to camp. Phil manages to barter a good price and they get in. Michael feels woozy from the smoke and the heat, and the inside of the taxi spins just a little. He sits with his head back on the seat behind him and looks up out of the window at the stars flying past overhead. He wonders what Elsie is doing right now; he wonders if she can see the same stars. He can’t remember ever seeing stars like them in Birmingham. He doesn’t know what time it is there. Maybe it’s not night. Maybe she’s on her lunch, sitting under their tree in the park, polishing an apple on her sleeve.

Suddenly Phil is whispering urgently in his ear. ‘We’re going the wrong way.’

Michael carries on looking out at the stars. ‘Why are you whispering?’

He whispers louder. ‘We’re going the wrong way. Away from the camp.’

Michael raises his head and gives a brief look out the front of the cab: ‘Nah. He knows where he’s going.’

‘He knows where he’s going all right, but it ain’t to the camp.’

‘How can you tell?’