Jonathan Lee - High Dive

The low murmur she used for Hail Marys. The chainsaw starting up again next door.

She turned to face the house, eyes down. She poked at the patio glass with the end of her stick. Another insect squashed, work lost.

‘I ran the shammy over that. What’s the point in me cleaning if —’

‘You’re going to have to sort it out, Dan. You’ll have to be sure to sort this out.’

‘Me?’

‘ You. Who else? My only son.’

Only one left here, she meant.

‘Ma, I’m not sure you’re with me. The letters. The phone calls. They’re telling us we’re on notice. This knotweed thing is not imp—’

‘ Notice ,’ she said, vicious. He watched as the power returned to her eyes. Impossible not to be impressed, ever since he was a little boy, by the gravity of this woman’s dissatisfaction.

‘Mother,’ he said.

‘You’re telling me you can’t protect an old woman from some little shites?’

‘Calm down now.’

‘You’re saying, Daniel, you can’t get some of your friends to help protect ourselves?’

He looked at her.

‘The fact I’m old doesn’t make me the fool. If you think me a fool you’re not paying attention, Daniel. I’ve got the Bridge Club quarter-finals. An important match. A cake to bake. Cake. You’ll deal with it alone, this one thing for me, one, sometimes, at last.’

‘We’ve an abundance of cake. We’ve got cake coming out of our fucking ears.’

‘It’s one I’m doing for Annie, isn’t it? Broken into again. Bakewells.’

‘Broken into?’

‘Again.’

She looked like she might cry.

‘Who by?’ he said.

‘What a question.’

‘You mean?’

A further burst: ‘ Will you sort the knotweed?’ She wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her cardigan.

Holding last night’s letter between forefinger and thumb he said, ‘But I have jobs to do. I’ve to find us a place to move to. Be safe.’

‘If we sold the house today with those damn roots, those roots wrecking our foundations, your father’s Beatles records and Rolling Stones records and all his furniture too? We’d be laughed at. Laughed. Same thing we should do to the teenagers.’

‘Who?’

‘Letter writers. Scare-mongers. Children them all.’

‘They’re not children.’

‘Oh, they are. Every man in this city’s a child.’

‘Let me make you a cup.’

‘You’ll have time enough to sort the garden and your jobs. You’re lying low, are you not, now this mystery trip to the mainland’s over? You’re keeping yourself free? Dawson McCartland no longer lives in my garden.’

Silence.

She showed him her cheek. He kissed it. The chainsaw started up again.

While she was upstairs he sat on the floor in the hallway. He called Dawson. No answer. There had been no contact since the debrief, no news at all for days. He had done what he’d been told. He had stayed the extra nights. He had passed on information about the Prime Minister’s schedule in case Plan B, whatever that was, was needed. They had asked him to get into conversation with the receptionist girl again, and he’d done that, found a few useful things out, so why had they then seemed so annoyed? Visibility, yes, but for the greater good — the bar was where he found her, it wasn’t a matter of choice — and if there was a Plan B then the scheduling could be useful for the Plan B, and if the Plan A worked then what exactly was lost? It was him that stood to suffer if his face was remembered. It was him that stood to suffer if he remembered the girl’s face. The cause would not be harmed.

Putting the phone down, picking it up again, trying to call Colum Allen to no avail. He dialled some of Colum’s people in finance, planning, intelligence, ordnance. He saw the receptionist girl swimming in a lake. He saw her smiling. He saw her thrown across the room by the blast. Finally he tried John C, one of Dawson’s more lowly job-doers, the last man whose number he could remember by heart.

‘Danny! Good to hear from you. I’m trying to unblock the old toilet. Same trouble as before. Did I tell you?’

John was one of those people who reported so many details about his life, minor and major — his allergy to shellfish, the moles he’d had removed, the latest fornications of his sex-addict sister — that you could easily be conned into considering him a friend. He was admired for his command of Gaelic and known for his collection of weapons.

‘John, my messages don’t seem to be getting through.’

‘They’re being passed.’

‘Where to?’

‘The paves.’

‘What?’

‘The pavements.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah.’

He had the feeling John had started smoking the green stuff again. ‘If my messages to him are getting through, and he’s not calling back —’

‘Don’t fret yourself, Danny. Y’know Dawson. He drops out of the old equation now and again. It’s the wee who-ha.’

‘Are you stoned, John?’

‘Not yet, but it’s a fine plan.’

‘I need protection, John. I need to speak to Dawson. I need a couple of D-squad guys in my house. I’ve probably got a few days, only, before petrol comes through my letter box. Do you understand?’

John sighed down the line. ‘Plenty safe places we got, Dan. I think Seán made it clear, no? Even showed you some places. Get you and your mammy in there in a flash.’

‘Seán’s an arsehole.’

‘Not a big one, though.’

‘How big an arsehole do you need to be?’

‘It’s an inverse proportion type-a thing,’ John said. ‘Bigger the arsehole, higher the rank. Squeeze a banana up that hole of yours? Middle-ranking. A melon? Top of the tree! But we’ve probably said enough, if you’re on the home phone. My point being, Seán’ll sort you. Seán’s nice enough.’

‘He’s not. He’s not nearly.’

‘Relativity,’ John said, and hummed a tune. ‘Relativity, relatives, relative.’

‘My mother won’t leave and she won’t let me sell.’

‘She’s got a number of nimble moves, eh? Mothers. I know your pain. One of those problems a lot of people have got. But strictly —’

‘John, you owe me this.’

Five pounds of Semtex, three detonators wrapped in toilet paper, five battery packs fitted with tilt switchers and timers: this was what John owed him.

‘Dan. Listen, Dan. Not to offend a rising star such as yourself, but dealing with family problems, it’s not really my area of the manual, y’know?’

Dan let silence soak down the line. He hung up. There was a world of bottled energy in his arm. Thirst dragged at his throat. In the kitchen he poured himself a pint of water. Outside in the street he dropped the glass; it smashed. Dawson. Knotweed. Silence. Armies. Her name was Freya but it didn’t do to remember names. Names were as bad as faces. Why was nobody answering him? A hero’s welcome was what he’d been promised. Instead a door seemed to have slammed.

With the outsole of his shoe he ushered broken glass into the gutter. Gravel sitting in stony reserve groaned as it went the same way. He saw that all four tyres on his van were still slashed. He’d half believed they would mend themselves overnight. He placed enormous faith in the miracle of materials, in what materials could make and do each day, but rubber wasn’t skin, it would never heal itself, and wishful thinking was the worst kind of thought.

SUMMER WAS BEDDING down into autumn. Days had begun to pass with surprising speed. She wondered if she was the only person in the world who preferred trees with no leaves. The branches looked dark and dramatic. Knots and crags were revealed. John’s dad was a botanist so John knew some species’ names. He introduced her to a few on a walk through Stanmer Park. Crab apple, common ash. She liked being able to name them.