Beneath The Skin Episode 39

He’s always liked the garden in the half dark. He likes the sounds and the tired smells: damp flowers, wood smoke, a soupçon of fried onions left over from teatime. He remembers the boy hiding in the apple tree, and as he climbs the drainpipe it’s as if the boy is watching him, hiding in the foliage of the past.

Walt has lost sight of himself now, but the boy can see him. The boy watches him unbind the washing line from the gutter, working it between his fingers until the hemp strafes his cold cuticles; but on he labours, as if there’s a lot riding on the untying of the rope.

He can almost hear gunfire. The cowboys are lynching their man and the boy is whispering in his ear: “They pee themselves when they’re hanged.”

At last the rope is free and coiled round his elbow like a skein of wool as he strides towards the tree.

The ancient knot is knitted into the bark and the tree still seeps around the wound. Walt tugs the rope, testing the tension, and the boy repeats: “They pee themselves, you know.”

That is the only thing he is afraid of.

Black box

As Walt crept from the bedroom, he sensed he wasn’t the only one up.

William was sitting on the bottom step of the attic stair, shoe-boxes fanned out across the landing carpet like tarot cards, lids carefully tucked beneath them. He was hunched over, his face furrowed with the effort of thinking.

His eyes looked pouchy, the soft skin underneath stained violet. He jumped when Walt spoke.

“What you doing, son? It’s not even light outside.”

“Something woke me up.” “What?”

“I thought... dunno.”

“Did you open my door a while back?” The kid’s head shot up. “No. Why?”

“Nothing. Just a faulty catch. What are you doing now?”

“I’m sorting my boxes

Look.”

William beckoned him over. The first box on the left contained all things yellow and orange. He had peach raffle tickets in there, into colours. a pencil stub, yellow plastic sunglasses and a carton of sandalwood joss sticks he’d pinched from his auntie.

He poked through the second box, obviously blue; there were his mother’s turquoise beads, a postcard from the Med, a small blue ceramic starfish.

Walt’s gaze roamed over the boxes: red, green, grey and so on. It was all a bit obsessive.

Walt wondered what Mouse made of it all, and experienced a dart of something fearful. He opened the red box: an old lipstick, a marker, a diary with a wine leather cover.

And underneath... He grabbed the stiff peak of a cap and pulled it out; items rolled to the floor and William squeaked in protest. He examined the cap, held it under his nose. It smelled faintly of the basement and the odour made his stomach crawl. “Where did you get that?”

“It was just lying around.” William shrugged, defensive.

“It was lying around in the basement. Your mother said we should throw it out.”

Walt held his gaze for a moment, but the kid was sharp, and quickly changed the subject.

“I have a black box,” he said. want to see in the black box?”

Walt sighed. A black box. You just knew there had to be a black box. Carefully Walt lowered himself to the floor.

“Right, talk me through this one.”

Snapshots

“Do you

As dawn streaked the sky behind the tenements across the street, Walt found himself sitting on the outside step. He’d lit a last fag, zipped up his too-thin jacket. The daylight settled in around him, moist with unshed rain.

He would get a train, go north. He glanced at his pack, slumped against the railings. He had all he needed.

Or he could just walk to the park. One last time.

His thoughts jerked back to William and his magpie collection. William had been keen to show off his treasures: an unwrapped, furry stick of liquorice toffee, a piece of sea-coal from Cramond beach, a ring with an onyx stone.

Does your mother know you’ve taken that? A black plastic comb. A leather wallet and, deep inside it, a pile of monochrome snaps. Walt had taken them out and held them up in the lamplight.

He recognised the backdrop – castle walls and stunted trees – from Mouse’s descriptions of her childhood. There was even a tumbledown structure that may have been the cowshed-turned-garage.

In one of the shots, two men, both in work gear, posed beside an old Ferguson tractor. Walt had traced a finger over the grainy image.

“Who’s that?”

“My granddad,” William had said, pointing to the man on the left. He was stocky, with a dark moustache and a bold stare.

Walt saw a faint shadow of the man in the care home; the strong bone structure, the large outdoor hands.

The second man was shorter, slighter, with a prim smile. His nose and his lips gleamed with dots of light.

“And him?”

“That’s Uncle Coby,” William whispered. “But we don’t talk about him.”

The front door banged, jolting Walt back to the present, to the cold stone beneath his backside. He fought the urge to hit the deck. Hypervigilance. Just go with it, the psychologist had advised.

He’d talked about grounding techniques. Hold on to something concrete. Rationalise your surroundings. Stating the obvious was supposed to be some kind of a mantra to ward off flashbacks.

When the past reached out to get you, just remind yourself, this is Monday. I am sitting on the step. That’s just the door banging, not a bomb.

He’d had a big problem with clapping in the early days. He’d been at one of the kids’ birthday parties, and the applause that greeted the birthday cake had sent him ducking under the table.

He was instantly in a ditch in Helmand, bullets cracking past his head. That was one way to spoil a party.

He examined the cap, held it under his nose. It smelled faintly of the basement and the odour made his stomach crawl

More tomorrow.

Beneath The Skin, by Sandra Ireland, is published by Polygon, £8.99. Her latest book, Sight Unseen, is out now.