Beneath The Skin Episode 1

The girl hands him a mask. It has the colour and texture of an eggshell, carefully blank, with two slits for eyes. He can’t take his eyes off the eyes. “Don’t worry.” The girl smiles at him. Her badge says “Melissa”. “Take your time getting started. Don’t think in terms of creating a finished product – it’s the symbolism that’s important.”

She’s pretty. Earnest. Pretty earnest. What makes a lass like that get involved with a bunch of damaged squaddies, handing out stuff like it’s a children’s art class? What was she trying to achieve? Walt didn’t buy it, all this art therapy stuff, but his doctor had referred him. He was supposed to be grateful.

He sits and looks at the mask. You haven’t a clue, mate. You haven’t a clue what goes on in my head. You can walk away from the war but the demons walk with you, every step of the way.

“Any ideas? No?” Melissa tilts her head to one side. She has a sweet face. “There are examples around the walls from my last class, if you want to take a look.” It’s as good an excuse as any to get up from the desk, to keep moving. The guy opposite is really getting stuck in, mixing a palette of tomato-ketchup red. Walt shivers. Too close to the bone, man.

He begins to slowly circle the room. This trendy arts complex is on the outskirts of Newcastle. Steven and Natalie dropped him off and have gone to the Metrocentre for a couple of hours, leaving the wee ones with Mam and Dad. He has the feeling it had all been orchestrated before he’d even decided to do this.

The place has a print studio for kiddies and pensioners with nothing better to do. Now it’s full of wounded soldiers mixing paint and dabbing with thoughtful brush strokes. “Have a look at the walls,” Melissa reminds him.

The masks on the walls are horrendous. If that’s what people are carrying around in their heads they’re seriously damaged. He remembers that painting he’d seen once when he was on R&R in Oslo. The Scream. He remembers the round “O” of the mouth, the bulging eyes. The nose reduced to two slits in a jaundiced mask of a face. He’d been whole, back then, not really on speaking terms with anguish.

Some of these masks are split in two, asymmetrical horrors with bleeding eye sockets and black words carved into the cheeks, the skulls. Remorse. Grief. Guilt. Pain. Hate.

Some are painted bone-white, others yellow, sulphurous like the devil. They have stitches for mouths. They seem to close in on him like a screaming gallery of the dead and dying. They are the faces he sees in the night, the demons that live in his breast pocket. His knees weaken and the sweat begins to pool in his lower back.

Oh God. No, not now, not here. His heartbeat thumps in his throat, strangling him. He turns to Melissa. “I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t do it.”

And she says, “It’s okay. Take all the time you need.”

He finds himself outside in the cool air. There’s a café bar with patio tables. He wants to sink down onto one of the castiron chairs and light up a fag, but instead he walks unsteadily through an archway and across a timber bridge.

He can’t control it: the panic, the flashbacks. It’s happening a lot. No one ever speaks of it, the way you go off to war cocky and reckless and come back all messed up. They haven’t come up with a therapy that can give you back your innocence.

The arts centre is set in its own landscaped grounds, with a rippling stream and a woodland walk for the school kids. He moves into the cool drabness of the trees. Stopping beside a weathered oak, he lays a hand on it. The tough bark grows warm under his skin. The tree reminds him of his Mam’s garden.

He’s not sure how long he’s been gone, but Melissa looks relieved to see him. His hands are full and he drops his collection of twigs and bark onto the worktable and smiles for the first time that day.

“Got any glue?”

Grim tenement

He had arrived in Edinburgh without any clear notion of what he was going to do next and ended up in Stockbridge, of all places. He’d had an aunt in Stockbridge, and recalled dutiful visits to a grim tenement with a horsehair sofa and a teapot shaped like a crinolined old lady.

The place now had the feel of a bustling but trendy village. An entire basement culture seemed to be going on – bars, coffee shops and designer boutiques sitting snugly below pavement level. There was no plan. He, who had coordinated incisive military manoeuvres, was flying blind.

The train from North Berwick had terminated in Edinburgh, so he’d got off, hitched his rucksack higher and wandered out into the city. Its heavy brewery smell left him longing for a beer, but it was too early, even for him.

He’d headed north, slantwise across the New Town. Down and across, down and across, like a board game; pushing his luck at the pedestrian crossings, finding himself looking up at St Stephen’s Church. It sat at the junction of two roads, where the cobbles made the walking hard.

From there, he’d carried on into Stockbridge, not quite sure where he was going, what he was doing. At least it was dry; he could sit in the park, make a plan. In this tourist city it wouldn’t be hard to find a cheap hostel for the night.

He shared the pavement with smartly dressed professionals grasping to-go coffee cups, dog walkers, elderly shoppers with bags of groceries, young parents with prams. They all looked busy, content. He kept to one side, head down, slipping past them all. He fingered the loose change in his pocket, counting the coins. It wasn’t a lot, but he had a few notes tucked into the bottom of his bag.

At the next corner, he turned left, and came to a sudden stop when he spotted a sign lashed to some basement railings: “Wanted: Assistant. Must be strong and not squeamish.”

Stone steps led into an abyss, and as he speculated about what was down there, in the dark, the weight of his rucksack threatened to yank him off balance. The straps were digging into his shoulders, squeezing his chest and stopping his breath. He shrugged off the pack and wedged it in the sharp turn of the stair. Down below, he found a dusty window and a closed door; the sign above read, simply, “Stuff It.”

No one ever speaks of it, the way you go off to war cocky and reckless and come back all messed up

More tomorrow.

Beneath The Skin, by Sandra Ireland, is published by Polygon, £9.99. Her latest book, Sight Unseen, is out now.