Fiction

A Lesser Man

No one had invited him but he went nonetheless. Perhaps even he struggled to understand what he hoped to achieve. Leaving the bus station, he cruised north between the empty arcades, the echo of his footfalls recoiling between the tiles and the glass dome above. Exiting onto the high street he turned left and headed up through the pedestrian quarter. The night air was stifled beneath a haze of sulphur and mist and a crackling splutter of distant fireworks. Stray revellers materialised. Lost souls, half-drunk. Their faces pinched by cold. Vanishing again into the night. Past editions of his self would cameo in window displays, the still light of a dress scene haunted by his fleeting ghost: a slighter form amidst mannequins and mock living rooms.
By the market stalls an old man emerged from the shadows and smoke, buttoning his fly. He raised an arm with some difficulty.
-How goes there, son? Don’t I know you? he wheezed.
-Nah, I don’t think so.
-Course I do! Nathan, aint it? Nathan Lackaster? I thought I recognised you. His head wobbled, a sly leer rippling across his face. He wore a stained trapper-hat tilted back on his crown like some carnivorous beak.
-Oh aye? So fucking what? said Nathan advancing. The old man raised his hands and smiled, stepping back. Nathan paused. And then turned and walked away.
-Everyone knows you round here son, the old man sang out in Nathan’s wake. I’ll be seeing you. Nathan looked back but the old man had wobbled out of sight.
Leaving the commercial district, he took the rise that wound up towards a pub called The Wheatsheaf. Beyond the pub a dull orange halo blazed, smudging the dark against the blacker vistas of night surrounding. Further back yet, similar blazing gouts pocked the hillsides, beacons to a horizon otherwise unfathomable. Two men stood smoking by the front entrance as he approached. Nathan nodded to one of them, a man he knew by face but not by name. Their empty stares followed him into the pub.
The barroom was swamped, some of the crowd still wreathed in the smell of smoke from the fire and red-faced from heat. Others doused in the fumes of spirits and red-faced as habit. Many with mud coated shins and shapeless hats and talk brassy and spittle-flecked. Many teeming over others as they jockeyed for space and position. The lamp-light was low and orange and music slurred somewhere in the background. He picked out some faces in the corner, nodded towards them and lifted an arm in hail. They did not respond.
He burrowed his way to the front of the bar, pushing in close amongst the throng. Twenty minutes after reaching the front, he still had not been served. No one met his eye or even glanced in his direction. Eventually, another of the night’s clientele intervened.
-He’s next cheers love, he said as the girl attempted to serve him. She turned her blank eyes upon Nathan, eyebrows raised.
-Pint of ale. She served him without a word or another look. Taking his drink, he sidled through the crowd, delicate to the interjections of elbows and the jostling threat of collision. Claiming a seat at their table in the corner, he marked the periphery of the group. Some faces darkened, glances exchanged. He nodded in greeting again, once comfortable, but the conversation continued without pause.
-So, I got out the shower thinking the house was empty and went downstairs. The TV’s on and he’s sat there with a four pack, racking up two lines for himself. Oh alright Marc, what the fuck are you doing here? I said.
-Typical fucking Cullen.
-He gives it Oh, the door were unlocked so I came straight in. I said No it fucking wasn’t.
-Watch out Jimmy, he’ll pull squatters’ rights.
-Then I notice Beth’s keys on the table. Lying cunt. He’d nicked her keys from the flowerpot and let himself in. Door was unlocked was it, Marc?
-Cheeky fucking bastard! chimed in Beth from the alcove.
-He gives it yeah well if you just leave your keys lying about you’re asking to be robbed aint you? Good job I found them. Anyway, I went into the kitchen to make sure he’s put the latch on and I spy four empty tinnies on the side. So I’m like How long have you fucking been here Marc? About an hour or so he says. And you didn’t think to let us know? He just goes Aw, I didn’t think anyone was home.
-For fuck’s sake! The others groaned and laughed.
-Marc Cullen, eh? said Nathan, you couldn’t reform him if you tried. -He out tonight? Uneasy half-seconds of silence. The ambient pub static seeping back in. Then the one called Jimmy resumed his tale.
-So anyway, I went upstairs to get changed and when I get back down, one of his mates has turned up.
-Aw, the guy takes the fucking piss!
-And I’m like Right! that’s it Ben, just fuck right off. You’re not fucking welcome anymore. The others nodded and grumbled consent.
-Well I hope he got the message, said the one called Beth.
-Oh aye, he did.
The pints wore on and so did the faces. Gap-toothed. Puffy. Disfigured by laughter. Sour at the mouth. After another protracted stint at the bar, Nathan returned to find the circle had tightened in his absence. But he did not seem to mind. He lent against the wall by the brown and yellow photographs, a fixture of exclusion amongst relics of nostalgia. He laughed when the others laughed, longer and harder in fact, before trailing off into the shaking head and pursed lips of silent mirth. Otherwise he did not speak. Occasionally he would flick a glance up to a passing face, casting a half-smile and nod in their direction. Each time he was left contemplating the empty space left in their wake, as if this had always been his intention.
In time, people started to filter out of the bar and into the garden. The group started to don coats and hats and collect their phones and cigarettes and left no break or entry in the ceaseless flow of conversation. Nathan drained the rest of his pint, swam against the tide and headed for the urinals.
The toilets were cool and dusky, muted by the same orange lamps as elsewhere in the pub. Dark wood. White tiles. Brass-coloured taps. Windows in medieval arches. A brew of several pasts, none of which had ever truly existed.
Whilst washing his hands in one of the cracked sinks, Nathan finally noticed the man that stood behind him. At first he had glanced upon a form in the mirror but had quickly convinced himself otherwise. When he looked again he felt the man’s stare burning back at him. He had cropped black hair sprinkled with ash and his eyes had a grimy red rheum to them. He stood tensed. Feet set apart. Like he had not moved for some time. -You’ve got some fucking nerve coming in here, he said. Nathan pulled several paper towels out of the dispenser, one by one.
-Think you’ve got the wrong man.
-You’ve got some fucking nerve. After what you’ve done.
-Oh aye, and what would that be?
-You know what I’m talking about. There wasn’t a paper that didn’t have your face on it. Telly as well.
-So what, you think you fucking know me? said Nathan. The man spat into the urinals.
-Everyone knows you round here. Fucking scum. Nathan scrunched the towels up and tossed them in the bin.
-Aye well, if that’s true then how come I never even made it to trial, eh? The man just shook his head. -Oh, what’s that? said Nathan, -you got summat to say now? The man spat into the urinal again and then walked out looking back over his shoulder.
Nathan waited a minute or two until his heartbeat levelled off. Then he exited the toilets, falling into the stream of bustle that led outside. He scanned the passing crowd, but could not see any of the group he had sat with, or his persecutor. He felt good for the first time since arriving, righteous and powerful. He made his way out.
The bonfire raged huge and bloated amongst the trees at the far reach of the adjoining garden, like the toppled head of some monstrous beast that refused to die. Its glare cast the assembly in a crude bronze tint, as if they had been moulded up through the mud and softly pressed into inchoate models. Nathan’s eyes hawked and twitched about the heat and the smoke but the air was jovial. Families and friends grouped together in laughter and anticipation. Casks had been rolled outside and the loud talk and cheer with them. Children careened and weaved between legs, their miniature battles of sorcery caught in the clash and flare of crossed sparklers. A steady rain of pocks and fizzes echoed out from other remote displays. Whatever dark stares he imagined out in the night were lost in the swirl and the mist.
The first rocket shivered high into the air, pulled taunt along a whistling string of sparks to erupt into a dome of shattered light, its ghosted after-trails arched crosswise against the brilliance of the next. Each iridescent vault collapsed upon the last. The faces gazed up in dazzled wonder, bleached white, or red, or green, or blue, before melting back to bronze.
And somehow Nathan felt it had always been this way. The same communal lights, the same feet clogged in the mud, gathered around the heat and against the darkness beyond. As if this was all there was that kept people together. But somehow it was enough. If people had a place anywhere in the world, it was places like this. A person could only be amongst others. Yet as soon as these thoughts came to him, they scattered into tiny black specks. A flock of pterodactyl screeches rent upwards from the bonfire and exploded with a resounding boom that shivered colossal in the earth.
He sensed it. Something was wrong. Too many fireworks seemed to detonate in too rapid a succession, nearer to the ground then seemed comfortable. He heard the oohs and aahs but now the first canary tremors came with them: a child weeping there – another’s squeal pitching from delight to terror – and that first ripple of panic dancing along a web of exchanged glances. A belt of Chinese fire-crackers machine-gunned into life close to the fire and the crowd swayed, repulsed as one by the sudden blow. Bodies winced and crouched and then staggered crabwise away. On the far side of the people, Nathan saw a group struggling to restrain a man, his arms flailing, spitting taunts and eyes intent on harm. He stepped back and felt his right knee go slurping into the mud and a ringing sensation possessed him. Funny, he thought, I didn’t…but then blackness took him and all the sounds of the night were sucked clean away through a distant funnel.

***

He awoke to a dangling wreath of orange lamps, a yellow ceiling that sagged in blotches, and the muffled sound of people departing. He was laid out on the floor, his head resting on a cushion wrapped in a carrier bag. He tried to lift himself up but this caused blue dots to pulse and explode behind his eyes. He relaxed back down. The pain dissipated gradually.
-I wouldn’t bother if I were you, rasped a female voice. I’ve rung for help. It should be here soon.
-Thanks, he managed thickly, trying to shift his gaze without moving his head. She sat on a bar stool a few feet away, a lit super-king nestled amongst a constellation of gold rings. He recognised her, thin and raven-like and glassy in the eyes. The landlady, Maxine. They were in the function room at the side of the bar.
-I don’t want your thanks. I just want you outta here. She shook her head and tightly smacked her lips against her teeth. -Daft cunt. Why did you even bother coming back in here? You were asking for it, if you ask me.
-If I’d done olt wrong then I wouldn’t be here, would I? he said. She tilted her head to one side in consideration and took a lengthy drag.
-Well, sometimes innocent people get blamed for stuff when it int their fault. Sometimes. And then sometimes the exact opposite happens. Think about this though: if you haven’t done olt wrong, how come you got stoved in the head? She stubbed out her cigarette. Through the window an urgent blue throb had appeared, a triangle flickering against the ceiling. Maxine left and he could hear her talking to someone just outside the door. Despite the pain he hoisted himself up and lumbered over to the window.
Outside, some people were slowly disbanding into the night. Others lingered in groups of shock and consternation. A crying child wandered aimlessly between. No one seemed to notice. From the opposite direction, four police men stormed politely through the dispersal to where Maxine now stood by the front entrance, a hunchback set leering and nodding in anticipation.
Nathan lurched to the back of the room and a doorway cloistered in shadow. He scraped back the bolts and tripped into the gloom of a long ante-chamber, pulling the door to in his wake. He stumbled past a series of high milky windows, with what felt like gravel beneath his feet and a brief panic of wings from the rafters bearing overhead. At his back he thought he heard voices of surprise, raised and gaining closer. He crashed through the outer-door, almost shattering it in the process, and blundered off into the woods.
For a time following, he could be heard: a dry snap of twigs and crunch of brush-land scrub chasing in the stream of his tattered breaths. And then no more – a lesser sound lost amongst the night.

James Throup