The Domino Men v-2 Read online

  At last we creaked to a stop, the brakes of the bus whinnying and wheezing like an old nag days from the glue factory, outside the sprawling, red-brick mass of St. Chad’s. The entirety of my journey had been spent crammed next to a fat man in a Garfield T-shirt, who ate chicken from a cardboard box and listened to pop music unsociably loud.

  I skittered through the big sliding doors at the front of the hospital before spending the next ten minutes wandering about looking lost. Eventually a nurse took pity on me and directed me to the Machen Ward, a soporific antechamber at the rear of the fifth floor sealed off from the rest of the hospital by a thick glass door. Inside, half a dozen elderly men lay stretched out on narrow beds, motionless, silent and still. The room was filled with old-fashioned smells — bleach, soap, floor polish and, everywhere, the insidious odor of decay.

  A few beds down, a nurse was wrangling a patient’s pillow into place and muttering something she presumably intended to sound soothing.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  The woman turned her head to look at me but carried on with whatever it was she was doing. “What?”

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “Name?” Her speech was clotted with an accent which sounded like it might be from Eastern Europe.

  “His name’s Lamb.”

  She glared scornfully at me, as though I’d just asked if the hospital had a bar.

  “He’s my granddad,” I added, rather feebly.

  “Behind you.” She shot me another contemptuous look and bustled back to work.

  Supine and oblivious to the world, the old bastard had aged about a hundred years since I’d seen him last. Now he was all the things he’d never seemed before — frail and fragile, feeble and faded. White hairs curled unchecked from his ears and nostrils and his skin was drawn tight around the bones of his face. Tubes, wires and metallic lines snaked from his body, linked in some mysterious way to plastic pouches of liquid and a monitor which beeped officiously at intervals.

  There was a large window behind his bed decorated, in a puny stab at festivity, with a single, balding strand of tinsel. Thin winter sunlight played across his chest and lit up the dust which fell about him until it looked like confetti.

  I found a chair, pulled it over to the bed, sat myself down and immediately started to wonder whether I should have brought grapes. Flowers? Chocolates? Hard to see how he could appreciate any of them.

  I tried talking. Isn't that supposed to help? I’m sure I’d read somewhere that chatting at though everything is perfectly normal is supposed to be good for people in his condition.

  “Granddad? It’s Henry. I’m sorry I haven’t seen you in a while. Work’s been hectic. You know how it is before Christmas…” But my voice sounded hollow and insincere and I stopped and sat awhile, not speaking, listening to the cold metronome of the machine.

  Eventually, I heard someone walk up behind me. From the clack of her high heels and the smell of the only perfume she ever wore, I knew who it was before she even opened her mouth.

  “Poor old bastard,” she said. “Even I feel sorry for him now.”

  You’re probably surprised that she even bothered to turn up at all. To be honest, I don’t fully understand it myself. But then things always seemed so complicated between them.

  Mum circled her big, meaty arms around my waist and pulled me close. Caught unawares, squeezed anaconda-tight as a tsunami of scent broke over me, I was eight years old again and, for a second, felt almost happy.

  We sat beside him in silence. I held the old man’s hand whilst Mum produced a book of puzzles and set about working through a page of Sudoku with the single-minded pertinacity of Alan Turing squaring up to a fresh cipher from Berlin. The quiet was broken only fitfully, by the beeps of Granddad’s machine, the rap-tap of my mother’s pen on paper, the occasional passing of a nurse and the distant echo of a telephone. We saw no doctors, no one came to ask who we were or what we were doing and the other patients who shared his ward made no noise at all, not the slightest sound or whimper. I’m not sure exactly what I’d expected — death rattles, I suppose, ragged breathing and delirium — but the business of mortality is quieter than you’d think.

  We’d sat in the same miserable tableau for at least half an hour when something appeared in the window behind my granddad. First a frond of red hair swaying in the breeze, then a squitty, pinched face, then a yellow safety jacket, a squirt of foam, the underside of a sponge puckering against the pane.

  It looked miraculous, as though the man was levitating. The illusion was shattered when the window cleaner peered through the glass, looked directly at my mother and winked. Mum giggled, the sound of it grotesquely out of place here, like laughter in a morgue or a smirk at a cremation.

  I gave the man my frostiest look but I’m afraid I saw Mum grin back.

  As if in response to this pantomimed flirtation, the life support machine made a chirrup out of sequence, a squeak of distress, an electronic hiccup. I was on my feet at once, the window cleaner forgotten, casting around for someone to help. But almost immediately the machine returned to the same rhythm as before and Mum told me to stop flapping and sit back down again, all the while admiring the window cleaner from the corner of her eye.

  She left a short while later, muttering something about meeting a friend for a drink. Evidently I was not invited so I stayed and sat with Granddad, gripping his hand in mine until, eventually, the nurse returned, growled that visiting hours were over and motioned me toward the door. I laid Granddad’s hand beside him on the bed and, feeling guilty but grateful, walked back into the light, the beeps of the machine still echoing in my ears.

  It was cold outside, already growing dark as the day surrendered to the eager dusk of winter. My breath steamed in the air and I was looking forward to getting home when something immensely improbably happened.

  First, there was a noise — a sort of faint yelp, a stifled cry, a distant yell of shock.

  Then the air seemed to shudder before me and I glimpsed a blur, a kinetic smudge or red, yellow and black. Finally, there was a dull, decisive thwump as something big, fleshy and in pain sprawled by my feet.

  I stood very still. I looked away. Then I looked back again just to check that I hadn’t imagined it. But there he was, still there.

  A man had fallen from the sky, missing me by inches.

  Too numb to move, I stared at him and he, barely breathing, stared back. Distantly, I recognized his squinty face, his mop of ginger hair. The earth around the fallen man glittered with broken glass lit up by the artificial illumination of the hospital — a miniature constellation in the earth.

  “Henry…?”

  How did he know my name? How on earth did a hospital window cleaner know my name?

  “Henry?”

  “Hello?” Even to my own ears, I sounded stupid. In the distance — shouted orders, the roar of engines, people sprinting toward us.

  “The answer is yes,” he said. “It was a struggle for him to speak and the words forced themselves out in a brittle rasp.

  I knelt down beside him and, panicking over what to do next, grabbed for the nearest cliche. “Don’t speak,” I said. “Don’t try to move.”

  But the window cleaner seemed determined to talk. “The answer…” he said again, his eyes alight with fervor, like this was the most important thing he’d ever say. “Henry…” He wheezed again, a terrible percussive rattle. “The answer is yes.”

  “Then I was pushed aside as people rushed to help, professional life-savers with their flapping coats and sharply worded questions, a babble of don’t touch him and how did he fall and we need to get him inside. Actually, I think the word miracle was tossed around more than once.

  Even as they took the man away, levering him gently onto a stretcher, trying to calm him down, giving him something to ease the pain, he was still staring at me, mouthing the same words over and over again.

  “The answer is yes.”

  I stared back,
frozen to the spot.

  “The answer is yes.”

  He struggled up in his stretcher and tried to shout.

  “The answer is yes!”

  I suppose it’s unusual to get within spitting distance of thirty without ever having been in love. All I can say is that it’s been worth the wait.

  I’d met Abbey six months earlier when, having noticed her advert in the “To Let” section of the city newspaper, I had called round to see her about the spare room. I saw from the instant that she opened the door that I’d never want to share my life with anyone else. Dispiritingly, I saw also that she was radiantly beautiful, a shimmering vision in skinny jeans and canary-yellow heels and therefor stratospherically out of my league.

  When I got back from telling about a dozen different people the story of how the window cleaner had fallen at my feet with that unforgettable thwump, she was sitting in the lounge, slouched in front of our TV — an ancient old box which she said had been sitting in the place when she’d bought it.

  Abbey seemed tired and disheveled and was doggedly picking her way through a plate of over chips, but she still managed to look heart-piercingly gorgeous.

  I said hello and at the sound of my voice, my landlady struggled to sit upright.

  “Sit down,” she said, still chewing, reaching for the controller to switch off the TV. “I haven’t seen you for days.” She thrust her plate in front of me. “Have one of these.”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Please. I can’t finish them.”

  “Really, I’m fine.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Well, no, but-”

  “Have one, then.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “P’raps I will. Thanks very much.”

  “My pleasure.”

  I took a chip.

  “How was your day?” Abbey asked, upon which, for the first time in almost a decade, I burst into tears.

  After that, we talked. Dabbing surreptitiously at my nose with a Kleenex, I told her about my granddad, the phone call from my mother and the man who’d fallen from the sky. She seemed to sympathize and at one point even made an awkward move toward me as though to offer a hug, although I flinched away and she shifted back.

  “Henry?” she said, once the story was told, sounding eager to cheer me up.

  “Yes?”

  “When’s your birthday? You said it was soon.”

  “Oh.” I’d almost forgotten. “Monday. Why?”

  “Just wondering.” She raised an eyebrow and seemed to be about to say something else when the telephone rang.

  Abbey answered. “I’ll get it,” she said, and looked over at me. “It’s for you.”

  Frowning, I took the receiver. “Hello?”

  I didn’t recognize the voice. It sounded like it belonged to an elderly woman — crisp and determined, though underscored by a hint of frailty. “Mr. Lamb? Mr. Henry Lamb?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good evening to you, Mr. Lamb. I’m calling on behalf of a firm called Gadarene Glass. I was wondering if I might interest you in having a new set of windows installed.”

  “Actually, I don’t own the house,” I said. “I only rent a room here. But, in any case, I’m sure the answer’s no. And we’d prefer it if you didn’t call so late in the future. Come to think of it, we’d prefer it if you didn’t call at all.” The woman tutted at my impertinence and the line went dead.

  “Salesman?” Abbey asked.

  “Double glazing, I think. Nothing important.”

  “Oh.” She gave me a tentatively hopeful smile. I smiled back and for a moment we stood there just smiling at one another like a couple of idiots, still a little giddy from all this unexpected intimacy, still innocent of the horror which even now was pawing at our door.

  Chapter 5

  At first, the next day didn’t seem any different. As usual, I woke a few seconds before my alarm whooped its good morning. As usual, I levered myself out of bed, rooted through the fridge for breakfast and hung around hoping for a glimpse of Abbey. As usual, I left the flat disappointed.

  I had abandoned my bike in the parking lot at work so I had to trudge down to the underground and strap-hang for eight stops on the Northern line, sucking in stale sweat and halitosis. Consequently, I got into work late and, still half-asleep, retired immediately to the bathroom. I was busy splashing cold water on my face when Peter Hickey-Brown emerged from the stalls, produced one of those combs which look like a flick-knife and began to fastidiously scrape back his graying hair. He didn’t turn to look at me but just gazed adoringly ahead, a paunchy Narcissus in an office lavatory.

  “How’s Babs getting along?” he asked, once the posturing was done.

  “Fine, I think.”

  “You show her round yesterday?”

  I said that yes, naturally I had.

  “Did you take her down to the mail room?”

  The mail room? “No. Why?”

  “I think she should see it.”

  “I don’t like it down there.”

  “So? Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Henry. Just take her.” He flipped on the cold tap, wetted his fingers and teased the hair at his temples back behind his ears. “Phil tells me you had to dash off early yesterday.”

  “Family emergency.”

  Hickey-Brown frowned, not from any anxiety for me but purely out of concern that the work of his department might be disrupted, that I might get behind with his precious filing — petrified that if I didn’t do my job we’d all be engulfed by an avalanche of ancient appraisal sheets and leprous-colored meeting forms. “Everything OK?” he asked.

  “Don’t know,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t know.”

  “You’re in for a treat,” I said to Barbara once I’d tracked her down at the photocopier. “Peter wants you to see the mail room.”

  The mail room squatted in the lowest floor of the building, stinking, forsaken and unloved. Something was always up with the heating, which meant that down there it was perpetually clammy and warm. A few weeks to go before Christmas and still everyone had a fan on their desk, all of them whirring away bad temperedly, grumbling about being used out of season. The room smelt stale, a pungent blend of perspiration and old socks.

  “This is where it starts,” I said. I’d given this tour before, to a group of kids in last year’s Bring Your Child to Work Day. “This is where the files are sorted.”

  The room was taken up by four large trestle tables, each stacked high with dun-colored folders, each populated by three or four workers — the only exception being the last table, whose occupant worked alone. A few of these unfortunates, pimple faced and greasy with perspiration, glanced incuriously over at us as we came in. They were sorting through the files, pulling out minutes, memos, action plans, graphs and annual reports, putting everyone in alphabetical order and placing them in a trolley. Later that day, someone would wheel them to the lift and distribute them amongst the floors above. This was the engine room of our department, the business end of the place.

  “Big turnover of staff down here,” I said. “People don’t tend to last long.” I pointed across the room to the woman who sat alone and who was busy opening parcel after parcel, filleting the contents with automotive efficiency. “Except for her.”

  Sausage-fingered, gelatinous and blubbery, she had greasy, lank hair and face, swollen and pink, had the consistency of Play-Doh. Beside her was a gargantuan bottle of cola from which she took frequent, compulsive swigs, as a baby might reach with blind dependency for the nipple. As usual she was pouring with sweat and her clothes were stained with inky spots of perspiration.

  “Hello,” I said, realizing that I couldn’t remember her name. Pam? Pat? Paula? No matter how many times I’d been told it just didn’t seem to stick. The fat woman made a slurred noise in reply.

  “This is Barbara,” I said, perhaps pronouncing my words a little too emphatically. “She’s just started upst
airs.”

  The woman made another incoherent noise (“herrow”) and groped again for her bottle of Coke.

  As we headed toward the exit, Barbara whispered: “What’s wrong with her?”

  “No one likes to ask,” I said. “It’s very sad, really. The poor thing’s been here longer than anyone can remember. She’s become a bit of an institution.”

  “Looks like she belongs in an institution,” Barbara muttered, rather cruelly.

  Governed by a strange impulse, I turned back. Coke bottle midway to her lips, the woman was staring at us, fury blazing from her blancmange face. Feeling suddenly guilty and ashamed, blushing scarlet, I hurried Barbara from the room, away from the grouchy hum of the fans, the omnipresent smell of sweat and the woman’s silently accusing eyes. We were both of us relieved to head back upstairs.

  At lunchtime, I met Mum for a sandwich in Cafe Nero.

  “How long did you stay last night?” she asked, slurping at her latte.

  I thought about telling her what had happened with the window cleaner, but then, guessing how she might react, decided against it. “Not long. There’s nothing I could do.”

  “He’d always had it coming,” she said. “We all know he used to like a drink.”

  “Will he be OK?” I asked in a small voice.

  Mum just shrugged. “Who knows?” She yawned. “Keep an eye on him, won’t you? Your Dad would have wanted you to.”

  “I’m going again tonight,” I said.

  She seemed surprised. “Really?”

  “I want to be with him. It’s not like he’s got anyone else.”

  “But who does he have to blame for that? Actually, darling, I was hoping to ask you a favor.”

  Her motive for lunch had suddenly become clear. “And what’s that?”

  “The old bastard’s house. Lord knows why but I’ve got a spare set of keys. Be a dear and pop round in the next couple of days, will you? Just make sure no one’s trashed the place or turned it over.” She deposited a bunch of keys on the table with a resolute clunk, as though this settled the matter, like there was no need for further discussion.