Conrad Williams - Decay Inevitable

A breath of old things enveloped him. A smell of dryness and polish.

Again, he listened. There was a metronomic plesh of water dripping from a tap or a crack. The fluting of wind through a chimney that had not exhaled smoke for decades.

Sean pulled the door to behind him and let his eyes become accustomed to this fresh dark. He wished he had a torch, and considered coming back in the morning to explore properly, but realised there was no way he could do that now. When Salty saw that the door was broken it would be repaired and a better job made of it next time.

Ahead, a narrow wooden staircase took him down into an open-plan office above what must have been the ironmonger’s proper, where two old desks were arranged, facing each other. There was a Bakelite telephone on one desk, thick cord wrapped around itself. There were also two polished wooden trays, bearing labels upon which were written, respectively, in a cursive hand: IN and OUT. On the other desk sat a bulky Remington Noiseless typewriter, edged with a grin of light that had found its way in from the main road. There was a bowl with a single lemon in it, that had dried and shrivelled before its small wound of rot was able to spread. A game of patience had been abandoned.

Everything was coated with a fine patina of gum and dust. On the wall, a calendar for 1976 was pinned, forgotten. Sean flicked through it for anything to inspire him, but there was nothing beyond the glossy curves of women with bouffant hairstyles and heavy make-up.

Sean went to the window and looked out at the main street, feeling an itch beginning in the back of his mind that wouldn’t go away. Something wasn’t right. Across the road, saplings in a garden had been wrapped in plastic sheeting to protect them against the cold. Down on the shop floor, there was still a great deal of unsold stock. Grates and bedsteads and ovens formed solid shadows. Sean walked the narrow aisles between them, breathing air that was heavy with the clean, almost animal tang of the metal. There were drawers from old chests that were used to store different gauges of screws, nuts and bolts. A huge ledger was open on a crate, balancing a mug and a pencil within its pages. Saws on a rack winked at him as he went by. A heavy cash register sat on the counter, its tongue out. Post was still being delivered to the shop. A glut of it was fanned out by the door, ignored by Salty or whoever else locked and unlocked it.

Sean ducked under the counter and checked the recess for anything that might give him some edge over his colleagues. Three cardboard tubes were tied together with string, leaning against the back of the register.

It was while he was trying to make sense of the charts within the tubes that a key trembled through the lock and the front door swung open.

It was Ronnie Salt. Sean hunched under the counter and watched the older man stride through the shop, a mass of rope looped around one shoulder. Level with Sean, he stopped and sneezed. Sean watched him press a nostril closed with his thumb and blow the contents of the other nostril onto the floor. He repeated this process with his other thumb before climbing the stairs to the office. Sean was wondering whether to take the charts and escape when Salty came back. He retraced his steps through the shop and relocked the door. From outside came the snarl of an engine and the sweep of headlights across the shopfront as Ronnie departed.

Breathing raggedly, Sean nipped up to the office with the charts and, throwing caution to the wind, wrapped his jumper around the shade of a table lamp and snicked it on. Under the crepuscular flood, at first glance, the charts resembled blueprints or schematics, or architectural drawings, so clean and precise was the presentation of their lines. Yet Sean soon realised that he was looking at a series of maps, though they were constructed along the rules and regulations of no projection that he knew. The lands that were represented did not stir any recognition; they were unlike any countries he’d seen in an atlas.

He didn’t understand how these maps, if maps they were, could be of any help to him. After a few moments’ consideration, he repackaged them and stacked them behind the counter in their original position. He left the way he had come, after a cursory search for clues had yielded nothing else. All the way home, he thought of nothing but the alien charts that he had seen. And he carried them into his dreams too, the lines given substance, and he realised the places he had seen on the paper were places he knew in his own mind. Areas of his brain that had not been walked for many years.

He woke in a sweat, his hands shaking, but the dream was dead in his mind. As much as he paced, drinking coffee, he could not remember what it was that had filled his thoughts during sleep. Frustration had him on the verge of tears. He knew there was knowledge to help him. He just didn’t know how to access it. What lingered too, more than the maps, was the vision of the rope on Salt’s shoulder and the noose tied into one end.

EMMA LED A rogue stream of sunshine into the pub as she entered. Her fringe was flattened by her hood, and as she released it she gave it a scrub with her hand and made a beeline for the bar, smiling and pointing to Sean’s glass to see if he wanted another.

“What’s that?” Sean asked, when she returned with another pint for him and a small tumbler for herself.

“Malt whisky,” she said, luxuriously. Her green eyes filtered the light and spat it back at Sean, glittering with colour. Light fed her face, made her look impossibly attractive. She took a sip and her meaty lips disappeared as she savoured it. When they reappeared, they were red and wet and smiling.

“What?” she laughed.

“I’ll tell you, before too long,” Sean said, leaning across the bar to kiss her. He felt empowered whenever she was near. Unassailable.

“So what’s happening?” she asked. “You buying me lunch?”

“Of course.”

“What is it brings you up this way?”

Sean told her about the architect. “The place where I’ve been working is one of his,” he explained. “I’m pretty certain that the guys I’ve been working with were looking for something there. But they won’t find it now.”

“Why not?”

“Someone burned it down today, this morning.”

Emma said, “My God.” She reached for his arm. “You could have been working there.”

Sean shook his head. “I think one of the boys I work with did it. I think they just wanted to be sure that this something was there. I don’t think it was something you could put in your pocket and take away with you.”

“How do you know?”

“Just a feeling,” Sean said. “I think it was a search and destroy job.”

“What king of thing?”

He smiled. “I don’t know.”

Sean showed her the notes he had made. “There’s a house around here. This architect chap used to live there, or at least keep his fancy women there. I think these guys I work with would like to know about this place too. I think this place has something else in it that they don’t want others to know about.”

“Where is it then?”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “But neither do they.”

“Do you want me to help you find it?”

Sean drained his glass and nodded. “I think your intuitive skills might be of use. But no rush, hey?”

“Table twenty-six?” the waitress called out. They ate sandwiches and pinched chips off each other’s plates. Sean watched a customer punch buttons on the jukebox: Bowie, “Modern Love”. “This was the first single I bought,” they both said at the same time.

Emma told him that she was thinking of applying for a teaching course to get her out of the town. To start afresh. Sean spoke of his friendship with Naeem. Talking about him seemed to authenticate the memories, make them even more fresh and real in his mind.