The Burning Barrow

FICTION

by Jack Jenkins

          And then you are landing, with your bag full of holes, landing in the middle of the night and you barely queue for the woman with bloodshot eyes, who stamps your temporary passport and tells you to organise a new one at your earliest convenience, and you get the sense that she hates you but you thank her and say yes, of course you will, although deep down you know that you are never going anywhere ever again.
         Outside it is cold and objects begin to tumble from the holes in your bag, and you end up cradling the whole lot in your arms like a baby as you leave the airport and head down the hill. You walk for half an hour, just you and the darkness and, occasionally, the sky fills with the sounds and blinking lights of an incoming plane. Your car is still where you left it, almost a year ago, parked up in a passing point on a country lane, covered with mud, embedded in a hedge which has begun to grow around it, with a smashed wing mirror and three parking tickets tucked beneath the wiper blades, but it still opens, still makes that lovely click as you press the button, and the engine starts and you drive back to Bristol, pulling in beside a park around the corner from where you grew up. You recline your seat and go to sleep.
         You wake to the sunshine. Dog walking, children playing and, when you roll down the window, you are greeted with a light breeze. Eventually you get up and wander to a newsagent’s where you buy a tube of biscuits and a multipack of crisps. Several weeks pass very quickly, nobody bothering you, and you have £113.50, which slowly dwindles until you are down to £19.70, and you cut out the crisps and downgrade to the unbranded custard creams which cost 90 pence for a double tube – one biscuit for breakfast, one for lunch, three for dinner – and you are happy to have achieved total numbness, although you are also aware that this is fragile, this alliance you have made with yourself, and that even the slightest disturbance will cause everything to come tumbling down around you, yet you carry on until, eventually, you are down to £6.80 and two custard creams a day, one for breakfast and one for dinner, and your car no longer starts, and you keep your head down until, one day, you are crossing the park with your double tube of biscuits, keen to return to the safety of your boiling hot car, when you hear your mother’s voice, calling your name.
         Used to the voices in your head, you don’t turn around, but your mother calls your name again, just as she did when you were little and you weren’t coming downstairs, and the voice is sweet and singsong with the tiniest hint of threat, and you turn around and a fluffy little dog barges into your knees and jumps up at you.
         ‘Down Estoban,’ your mother says, who is dead but appears in blue jeans and a roll-neck jumper, and she is very similar to your mother but she is taller and her face is narrower and she pulls you into a hug which knocks the breath out of you with a little sigh.
         Your auntie is fifteen years younger than your mum and looking into her face is like looking into a portal to your own childhood. She was wild as a teenager but seems to have settled herself into a life of quiet ordinariness; a dog and a daughter and a husband who installs radiography equipment in private hospitals, and she shows you photos on her phone while you share coffee from her thermos. You think about how much you must smell, how you haven’t had a shower since you’ve been back, and her dog Estoban is off chasing squirrels and the wall of numbness you have been cultivating begins to unravel and the raw nerve endings are exposed, and your auntie asks you about your ‘trip,’ and you tell her some wonderful lies and she pours more coffee and asks if you have been to see your Grandad Ray. You shake your head and watch a group of twenty or thirty people, dressed in neon sportswear like some shoal of tropical fish, run past you, and your auntie pours another thermos of coffee and says:
         ‘It’s such a shame you weren’t here for your grandmother’s funeral,’
         And your silence breaks as you ask ‘Grandma is dead?’
         And somehow your auntie sees this as an attack, you feel her defences go up as she tells you it was a very busy time, that there was lots of family to notify, and it wasn’t her fault if – I mean, do you even have a phone? And she makes herself angry and you watch her glance around the park, wincing in the sunshine. She calls Estoban away from playing with some other dogs and then she tells you that your Grandad Ray has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act – and she gives you the name of a ward just outside of Bristol. There is silence, and you watch another wave of self-hatred and bitterness crash over her.
         ‘It wasn’t my choice,’ she tells you. ‘He wasn’t eating. The professionals were worried the starvation was beginning to damage his brain,’ and she invites you for dinner but doesn’t mention when, or her address or phone number, and then you share a stiff hug and watch her leave.
         Two buses and a forty-minute walk leaves you outside of the North Amblescroft Psychiatric Facility, a pebbledash building down in a valley or a sinkhole, which seems to get less light than a normal place, light which is yellow and thin and you expect some resistance from the staff, some request for ID or proof you are related, but they seem happy for you to visit, and the possibility of guards dragging you away to your own padded cell seems like wishful thinking as you follow an orderly down a corridor with rooms called ‘Drainage’ and ‘TV/Social,’ and through a door to Grandpa Ray sat on a bed with his back to the wall and his legs straight out, bathing his face in the thin, yellowy light which shines through the window.
         Your grandad was always robust, the kind of man who never got ill, the kind of man you would find halfway up a ladder, fixing some guttering, but now he is little bigger than a child. He leaps up as you come in and then seems to lose his balance and fall back onto the bed. You can feel his spine as you hug him and he covers his face with his hands and says ‘I’m incredibly sorry, but I don’t have anything to drink,’ and he picks at a fray in his shirt while you tell him not to worry, that you didn’t expect anything, but this kicks off another thought in your mind and, suddenly, you are aware of how long it has been since you had a drink, a thirst which you only notice now, and you think about how good it would feel, and Grandpa Ray is sat there giving you this funny sideways look, and then he leans in and whispers –
         ‘There’s no insulation in the walls and they aren’t tied together.’ And he brings a shushing finger up to his dry lips. ‘One day this place will collapse.’
         Grandpa Ray brings his hands up to cover his face again and you realise that the family, the people you grew up around, who always seemed a million miles away from you with their stability and predictability, that those people, too, end up here.
         ‘Someone poured a bag of gravel through my car window,’ Grandpa Ray tells you.
         ‘But you don’t drive anymore?’
         He taps his nose with his finger and gives you a vaudevillian little wave.
         Something about seeing your grandpa snaps you out of your fugue state, bringing back all the pain and discomfort but, also, an injection of willpower – and understanding of what is needed to drag you from this situation – to earn some money. Two days later you are meeting Deuce, a man with a gold chain, a rolled-up beanie, and a tattoo of a mushroom on his neck, and Deuce seems to be in a hurry as he hands over an enormous sack of flyers, twenty thousand he says, and he tells you to deliver them wherever you like as long as you don’t double up on the houses and to call him when you are done and he will drop off your payment – £225 in cash – and you try not think about how much that is per leaflet as Deuce folds his long legs into his tiny car and drives away. The sack is made from a tough, woven blue plastic with a long handle which you loop over your shoulder, dragging the bag behind you like some kind of deadbeat Santa, stopping at every house to stuff two or five leaflets through the letterbox, leaflets for hair-loss cures and divorce lawyers and juggling schools and green vitamin powders, and you keep going until you reach a flooded underpass where two men play frisbee with the lid of a paint pot, bare feet splashing in the water, trouser legs soaked and, leant against the concrete wall, there is a rusted wheelbarrow. It has the dirty tang of old piss but you pick it up and heave the sack of flyers inside, and now your load is a little easier, and you keep walking until the houses get fancy and the sun begins to set – tree-lined roads with Range Rovers – and the sack of flyers is still full to the brim and, at each house, you have to open a gate, climb a flight of sandstone steps, and shove the wodge of flyers through a brass letterbox with NO JUNK MAIL emblazoned on it and you wonder how many flyers you would have to deliver to buy a house like this – whether those flyers would form a small island if you dumped them out in the middle of the ocean – whether there were enough breaths in your body – enough letterboxes in the world – and you approach a particularly opulent house, with little cherubs and Latin phrases carved into the stone around the doorway. You stick the flyers through the door and then, as you turn to leave, something glints at you. On the floor, behind the plant pot, is a key, and this key fits perfectly into the door, which slides open with that hushed sound of the brush doormat. You ring the doorbell and stand there, listening for footsteps or voices or movement upstairs, but there is nothing, and you turn to look back at the road, and the Victorian streetlamps all flick on in unison as you stand at the threshold of the door, watching the quiet street in its orange glow, trying to spot the twitching curtain of some neighbourhood watch enthusiast across the road, and a faint wind blows a couple of leaflets towards you, serial killer boat tours and laser eye surgery and you step inside and shut the door. You spend a moment in the hallway and then you thrust your hands into your pockets and go and find something to steal.
         Large rooms filled with immovable objects. A Moroccan carpet, a chaise longue, vague art on canvases, and flat-screen TVs, and you wander into the kitchen, rummaging around, taking an air fryer and a heavy-bottomed pan out of the cupboard and then putting them back. You need stuff that will fit into your pockets. You need jewellery. Upstairs. More rooms with bland, expensive-looking furniture, so bland you wonder if this is a holiday rental, if you are about to hear the door slam and the downstairs hallway become suddenly consumed by an American or a Japanese family, and you root through some drawers but find nothing so you keep going, up another flight of stairs, and at the top there is only one door and inside there is a dark room, blinds drawn, filled with an eerie blue light, a spaceship glow, and you step in and a floorboard creaks beneath you and a voice says:
         ‘Come on in, take a seat.’
         You look for the voice but all you can see is a fish tank which stretches the length of the room, lit from below by blue lights, and then the voice continues:
         ‘Don’t be shy.’
         You pass the tank and there is a small sofa with a woman in black shades, a white stick across her lap, and she says:
         ‘Please, give your mother a hug,’
         And you stall a moment, trying to choose between running away and playing this game, and then you lean down and embrace this woman, who smells of nice soap, and she pats you on the back and says:
         ‘Don’t they feed you over there?’
         And you don’t really know what to say, and she continues, ‘If you’re just going to stand there you might as well make yourself useful and give them some dinner.’ She gestures at the fish tank, and there is a box of fish food on a stone plinth and you take it and climb a red stepladder and tip half the box into the top of the tank. There is a squabble of fins as the fish fight for their dinner, the big ones winning, the smaller fish relegated to the edges, snapping up the morsels that float towards them, and you notice a cluster of very thin, silvery fish waiting beside the rocks at the bottom of the tank, picking at the final scraps, and the woman in the sunglasses sighs and looks at you – or, at least, turns her head in your direction – and after a long pause she says:
         ‘It was such a long time ago. He has been dead for so many years.’
         And you know you cannot take this, whatever this reckoning happens to be. As you leave she gives this soft, beautiful kind of wail and then you are down the stairs and out through the front door, and you hold onto the key because . . . because you aren’t that much of an idiot, and night has really fallen now and the wheelbarrow stands in the orange streetlight like some kind of art installation, and the flyers have spilled out across the street, caught in trees and bushes and windscreen wipers. One has almost posted itself, wrapped around the brass knocker of the house next door, and yet, as you pick up the wheelbarrow, it is still full. As you set off, a portly man in a shirt and gilet walks up the steps to the house, the house full of emptiness with its loft room with its fish and its bright blue lights, and pauses, fist raised, about to knock, and then he seems to think better of it and he turns, retreats down the steps and heads off the way he came.
         You spend the last of your money at the petrol pump, the clear liquid sloshing straight into the wheelbarrow, six litres marinating the adverts for tree surgeons and industrial tea bag shipments as you set off, your load enormous now, until you are back at the park. It is dark and it seems to stretch out forever and you head to a cluster of trees and then you light one of the cigarettes you bought from the petrol station, smoking it right up to the butt and then dropping it into the wheelbarrow.
         The blast throws you onto your back and, somehow unharmed, you lie there and watch the fireball that reaches up and sends the burning leaflets raining down around you, ink turning the flames green and blue as you stand up and walk away. The next day you collect your money from Deuce and you think of Ciro, of the cartons of crazy juice, of your Grandpa Ray covering his face with his hands, and the thirst is too much and soon you are sloping from bar to bar, and the drinks go down very easily, although you have never understood the saying drink to forget, because soon you can barely stand and yet you are perfectly aware of every single thing that has ever happened to you, as if it were all taking place at that exact moment, and then your head is on your forearms, against the bar, the final inch of Amstel in front of you. A group of teenagers is messing around behind you and a pint of Guinness is knocked over the pool table and then the bartender is out there, cracking a radio aerial like a bullwhip, and the adolescent bluster is replaced with childish shrieks as the teenagers are driven out of the bar and, amidst the chaos, a man takes a seat beside you and orders a beer. He glances at your near-empty pint and raises his eyebrows in a question mark and you nod and the smile makes his face seem kind – reduces the hungry, wolfish quality of his narrow features, which are sharp, with his greying hair and beard, and before you know it the two of you are talking. He asks what you do – and when you tell him he is neither condescending nor judgemental, and then you are telling him everything, and he is buying you more beers and occasionally reaching over to push hair away from your face or lay a hand on your thigh, and you drink until the bar closes and he asks if you want to come over for a final drink, says he has a place nearby, and you walk for five minutes, the night suddenly chilly, and then he takes you upstairs into what is clearly some kind of Airbnb holiday rental, and he pours you a drink and you excuse yourself and go to the toilet. You lean your forehead against the bathroom mirror, thinking about how Deuce says he has more flyers for you, and you wonder if you could keep burning them and taking the money, how long you might get away with this for, and then you remember you have money, that you can check yourself into a hotel tonight, although when you reach into your pockets there are just a few scrumpled fivers – and you only had a few beers so something must have gone terribly wrong – and you head back into the living room and your friend has put music on and asks if you want another drink and, as he does, he crosses the space between you and puts his hand on your shoulder and looks you straight in the eye, and you do not feel he is being creepy or lecherous, no, there is a straightforward animal honesty in his blue eyes, and a digital faux watercolour of the Suspension Bridge hangs behind him and he reaches up again and you see the gold glint on his finger, and of course he is married, I mean, what other outcome is there, and yet it pushes you over the edge and reminds you that you don’t want to be here, that you would much rather settle back into your broken car with the last of your custard creams, and you push his hand away, and he looks hurt and a bit surprised and you push him harder and he stumbles back into the picture, cracking the glass frame, and you turn to leave and the drunkenness in your legs and the scuff of the carpet and the sudden movement pulls the ground out from beneath you and then, for a second, there is a still image of you frozen in midair and then there is just pain, something sharp and unforgiving driving into your temples, and when you reach up your hands come away covered in blood and a cold sets in and, somehow, you feel okay with this, this grubby little ending and, as the blackness closes around you and you lose feeling in your fingers you look up and see the face of a young, pretty woman, pressed to the window, watching the whole thing through the gap in the curtains.