States of Matter
by John Ravenscroft
Email: john@ravenscroft87.freeserve.co.uk
We're sitting on this
beach together, the old man and me, staring out to sea. There are gulls
flying in circles over our heads, screeching like gulls do. Big bastards,
bigger and louder than the gulls I remember from holidays when I was
a kid.
The old man
shades his eyes and says he can see ships in the distance.
I look, trying
not to think about Mary, trying not to remember the water in her hair,
in her mouth. I remember it anyway.
'What ships?'
I say.
It was
a mistake coming here, says a voice inside my head. You should
stay away from the sea.
I know I should.
But I can’t. Not for long.
'Three of
'em, a long way out,' says the old man. ‘I was
a sailor, once, Jack. Got a trained eye.’
I scan the
horizon for the old man’s ships, but still can’t see a thing.
While I'm
searching I hear him cough, hawk up some phlegm and spit it into the
sand. It's been five, maybe ten minutes since the last time he did that.
I glance at the mess. There's less blood in it now.
'You see that?'
he says.
'Yeah,' I
say. 'It's a good sign.'
He nods, pats
his mouth, and reaches deep into the folds of his stained and crusty
coat. He hauls something out of an inside pocket, places it on the palm
of his hand, and holds it up for me to take a look.
'You see that?'
he says.
My eyesight's
no good for ships, even worse for close-up stuff. I squint. It looks
like a bottle. A tiny glass bottle. I reach for it, but the old man
closes his hand and shakes his head.
'Just look,
Jack. Don't touch. Like you do with women in windows.'
My name isn't
Jack, but the old man's been calling me that ever since we met - all
of an hour ago. It makes no difference what he calls me. Jack will do.
It's a better name than most, a better name than I deserve.
His hand slowly
opens up for me, a grubby flesh-flower, the bottle a glittering carpel
at its centre.
I shuffle
up the log we're sharing until I'm sitting right next to him, my left
leg pressed hard against his right, a flap of coat between us. His stink
has me breathing quick and shallow, but I'm not as particular as I used
to be. Everyone I know these days stinks. I stink, too. Like the song
says, it really doesn't matter any more.
'You see it?'
His lips are
swollen from the kicking he's taken. His voice is croaky.
I lean in
close, my nose six inches or so from his hand.
The bottle
is just like the other one. The one the kids stole. It's full of dark
yellow liquid.
'Yeah, I see
it,' I say. 'What's in it? Whisky?'
I sound hopeful,
and the old man cackles.
'Whisky?'
he says. 'No. Used to be. Not any more, though.'
I shake my
head. I don't want to look disappointed, but I am, and he sees it.
'What about
the other one?' I say.
He coughs
and spits again. Almost no blood this time.
'Nope. No
whisky there, either. Thieving little bastards.'
The two kids
who jumped him and took his other bottle are long gone. They couldn't
have been much more than thirteen, fourteen years old. They didn't see
me dozing behind the sand dunes, dreaming of the waves, didn't know
I was there until they felt my hands on them.
Stepping across
the sand, not too fast, not too slow, I was thinking of Mary. The sound
of the sea brings her back, conjures images. That’s why I’m drawn to
beaches like this. I need to see her in that deckchair again, her pink
hat on her head, her straw basket at her feet. The downside is I also
see her in the water, her arms open, her hands slack on her wrists,
her hair floating about her head like poor drowned Ophelia.
The smallest
kid was nearest - an ugly specimen with a blue-painted head and a ring
through his nose. He'd already stamped on the old man's face and his
booted foot was drawn back, cocked to finish him with a kick. I grabbed
him from behind, found his nose-ring and ripped it out. He screamed
a high, piggy squeal, and his cupped hands flew to his nose to bowl
his own blood.
The other
kid was a tub of lard, his fat face already slack with fear.
I caught them
both by the hair and smashed their heads together. Not as hard as I
could have, but hard enough.
When I let
them go I could tell Blue Head wanted to make an issue out of it, but
though I'm nothing like I used to be I can still trade on my looks.
I look like bad news. I eased out my knife, made it wink in the sunlight,
smiled sweetly at them. Now we were in the pipe, in and of the moment.
Decision time. Moments like this, Clint Eastwood drawls inside my head:
So, tell me, punk... you feel lucky?
The old man
groaned. He rolled onto his side, braced himself, and threw up.
I looked at
Fat Boy, raised my eyebrows, and moved forward. Fat Boy broke and ran,
heading for the sand dunes, still clutching the old man's bottle. I
turned to Blue Head. He glared at me, but there was no real fire there.
After a few seconds he followed his friend, walking backwards, shouting
filth, promising revenge. Same old shit. Nothing I haven't heard before.
I helped the
old man to his feet and we moved over to the log. We sat down and I
took a look inside his mouth. Couple of loose teeth, a chunk bitten
out of the side of his tongue. Painful, but nothing serious.
'You'll be
OK,' I told him.
I was feeling
sparky. Sparky for me, anyway. Today I’d made a difference, been of
use to someone for the first time in... how long? I didn’t know, but
it was a good feeling.
The sun was
going down, sinking towards the flat blue sea. That old man and me sat
on our log like a couple of good friends, sharing the dying of the day.
And then he
brings out his bottle...
'Whisky,'
he says, chuckling.
His free hand
pats his mouth once again, delicate on the swollen lower lip.
'No, what
you're looking at here, Jack, is all I've got left of my old lady.'
He strokes
the little bottle with his little finger. The nail is cracked in two
places, and amazingly dirty.
'Your old
lady?' I say.
He nods. 'Sandy,'
he says.
'Your wife?'
He snorts.
'Wife? Hell, no. We didn't have no paper. But she was more of a wife
to me than the one I married. Twenty years we had together, Sandy and
me.'
'That’s a
good time,’ I say. ‘A good, long time.’
The old man
says nothing. I stare out over the water, and now I can see his ships,
three vague white smudges where sky meets sea.
‘So what happened
to her?'
He looks at
me and shakes his head, like he can't believe I'm so stupid.
'She died,'
he says. 'She went and died on me.’ He plucks the bottle off his palm
and holds it between his thumb and forefinger. 'And this... this is
all I've got left of her.'
We sit there,
both of us fixed on his bottle, thinking our own thoughts. I think of
Mary, wonder about Sandy. Maybe, in a different life, a different universe,
the four of us could have been friends. Maybe we could have had normal
lives. Jobs, dinner parties, kids.
'So what's
in it?' I say. 'It still looks pretty much like whisky to me.'
The old man
lifts the bottle to his lips and kisses it. He holds it up to the sky
and the low sun sends a spear of sharp, amber light straight through
it.
'What you're
looking at here, Jack, is a bottle of piss. My Sandy's piss. Eau-de-Sandy,
you might say.'
I stare at
him, wondering if he's for real, but something about the way he's loving
up that bottle convinces me he's telling the truth.
'Her piss?'
He nods.
I nod, too.
It takes all sorts, I tell myself. If anyone ought to know that, I should.
'How long
you had it? When did she die?'
'August 11th,
1990,' he says. 'Three-fifteen in the afternoon. Hot, like it is today.'
I concentrate
for a second or two, do a bit of back-counting on my fingers.
'August 11th?'
He nods again.
'What's today?'
'August 11th,'
he says. 'Sandy's deathday. You got a watch?'
I don't know
what to say. I know how I look - ugly - and I've hurt my share of people,
but I'm not much good around death. When Mary’s mother wanted to talk
to me, talk about what happened, get some of her questions answered,
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t help her. I told Mary’s mother I was sorry,
and then I walked away.
Now I tell
the old man the same thing. I'm sorry, I tell him, and no, I haven't
got a watch, but look, the sun's low on the horizon. It's maybe eight,
nine o'clock.
He doesn't
say anything and we sit in silence for a while.
I hear a scutter
and scuffle behind me and spin around, thinking Blue Head and Fat Boy
have come back for a ruck after all, but it's just a bird kicking up
sand.
We listen
to the waves break and the gulls scream overhead. The bird behind us
stops scuttering and flies away.
Finally, I
ask him.
'So how come
you carry a bottle of thirteen-year-old piss around in your pocket?'
He looks at
me and shakes his head again. 'What does a kid like you know? You wouldn't
understand.'
I shrug my
shoulders. If I closed my eyes now, I'd see Mary in the water. I think
about showing the old man my own keepsake, a lock of her hair. Maybe
show him we have something in common.
'Try me,'
I say.
He's shifting
his tongue around inside his mouth, worrying away at something. Suddenly
he puts half his hand in, takes a deep breath, yanks. When he pulls
his hand out, he's holding one of his loosened teeth. He spits into
the dust. Red again.
'Little bastards,'
he says. 'What's the matter with kids these days? They got no respect.'
'Don't it
hurt?'
Once more,
the idiot look.
'Hurt? Sure,
it hurts. It hurts like hell. But pain's nothing, don't you know that
yet, Jack? Pain's all in the head, just chemicals and electricity, like
everything else that keeps us ticking.'
I remember
something Mary used to say about people. ‘They’re full of stories,
amazing stories. Even the ones who look like nothing’s ever happened
to them.’
Me, I’ve never
had much time for humanity, but there’s something about this old man.
Even I can see that.
'What's your
name?' I ask.
He shakes
his head a third time.
'Names are
like pain, Jack,' he says. 'They're nothing. Unless you're dead, of
course.'
He smiles
back at me, his teeth red with blood.
'So... you
wanna hear about Sandy, or not?'
I nod.
He puts his
tooth on the palm of his hand, next to the little bottle full of dead
Sandy’s piss. He snuggles them up close together. 'Reunited,' he says,
turning to me and grinning.
I notice for
the first time that his eyes don't match. The left is brown, the right
green. They look tired and heavy, but they’re still alive.
'OK, Jack.
The thing you have to understand about Sandy is, she was into liquids.
Born in the rain by the sea, right out in the open on some beach. That's
what she told me, anyway. All her life, had this thing about liquids.
I'm a liquid person, she'd say. I'm the second state of matter.'
I remember
long-ago physics lessons. The teacher whose Adam’s apple was the size
of a hen's egg. The young lab-assistant with the big boobs, all the
boys watching as she moved through the room.
'Solids, liquids,
gases,' I say.
'You got it,
Jack. Now you and me, we're a couple of Solids if ever I saw 'em. First
state of matter types, both of us. Anyone with eyes can see that. But
not my Sandy. She even moved like a wave. Sandy didn't have a walk -
she had a flow.'
I knew what
he meant. I’ve known a few women like that. Some of them, you put it
down to their long skirts, their high-heels, but a few flow even when
they're naked. Mary was one. I’d watch her flow from kitchen to bedroom,
back to kitchen.
The old man
carries on talking.
'Sandy, she
had this big old bath. She'd lay in it for hours, her skin getting all
puckered. Stay there all day and all night if she could. And she'd pour
in these lotions. Christ, she used to spend half my pay on her lotions.
But she'd come to bed oiled, smelling so good you can't imagine.'
He’s wrong.
I can imagine, but I don’t need to. I remember.
I reach into
my pocket, take out my little box, show him Mary's lock of hair. He
stares at it, touches it with a grubby finger, nods.
‘She gone,
too?’
He’s a strange
one, this old man. I’m glad I was able to help him.
I notice the
sun has sunk a little lower.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Mary. She was a second state kind of girl, too.’
I’ve got this
pang in my gut, a longing I haven’t felt in years. Someday soon I might
try going back home again. See if anyone remembers me.
We don’t talk
for a while.
Suddenly the
old man gets up and walks towards the sea. His ships are closer now.
I join him, Mary’s hair still in my hand.
He kisses
Sandy’s bottle, holds it for a moment longer, then tosses it into the
water.
‘I came here
to throw ‘em both in,’ he says. ‘Still... one will do.’
He looks at
Mary’s hair and raises his eyebrows, but the time isn’t right for me,
not yet. I take out my box, put her hair back inside, return the box
to my pocket.
‘Maybe one
day,’ I say.
The old man
nods.
‘It’s getting
late,’ he says. ‘You got somewhere we can sleep?’
My van is
parked beyond the dunes.
‘Yes,’ I tell
him.
The gulls
scream overhead, and the sea surges back and forth, moving its molecules
of matter.