Captives

THIRTEEN

It was almost 1.30 A.M. by the time Scott finally got home.

He trudged into the main entrance of the block of flats where he lived, heading towards the lifts. Behind him he-left wet footprints on the tiled floor. As he reached the lifts he noticed that a sign had been affixed to the door: OUT OF ORDER. Beneath it, in biro, someone had scribbled: THEY ALWAYS FUCKING ARE.

Scott sighed and made for the stairs. Fortunately his flat was on the sixth floor; it wasn't too much of a trek. He wondered, briefly, how those on the fifteenth and sixteenth floors were managing. The block where he lived, like many others in Brent, was home to a wide variety of people. One-parent families, those in temporary accommodation, the usual ethnic mixture and, of course, long-term residents like himself. As he climbed the stairs he glanced at some of the graffiti sprayed or drawn on the green painted walls.

TORIES OUT ARSENAL FC ARE CUNTS

As he reached each landing he glanced out of the large glass windows looking across to the other blocks that thrust upwards into the sodden night sky like pointing fingers. He saw the anti-collision lights of a plane high above in the blackness. It was leaving London, heading north. Scott wondered where its passengers were bound for.

He finally reached the sixth floor and rummaged in his jacket pocket for his key. As he stood in the corridor trying to find it he heard shouting from the flat next door. A man's voice, then a woman's, swapping obscenities and insults. Further down the corridor behind him a baby was crying.

Scott finally found the key and let himself in, shutting the door behind him, slipping the bolts across. There had been a spate of burglaries in the block lately. He didn't want to take any chances. He was, however, better prepared for intruders than most of the residents of the block. Locked away in the cabinet beside his bed was a 9mm Beretta automatic 92S.

He pulled off his jacket and trousers and hung them on a hanger over a radiator to dry off, then stripped down to his underpants and padded through into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

From next door he could hear the couple still rowing. Scott didn't know their names, despite the fact that they'd lived next to him for more than five years. He'd never taken the trouble to get to know them or any of the other residents. He didn't want to know them, he wasn't interested in their lives and he was damn sure they weren't interested in his. He filled the electric kettle and pressed the 'play' button on the radio-cassette that stood beside it, adjusting the volume so that he could no longer hear the rantings from next door. Noisy fuckers.

'… All alone now, except for the memories.

Of what we had and what we knew.

Every time I try to leave it behind me,

I see something that reminds me of you…'

He stood staring at the kettle as if willing it to boil. Then he pulled open a cupboard and searched for the tea bags, dropping one into his mug.

He thought about Carol.

The image of her floated into his mind unbidden. He savoured it for a moment, his thoughts interrupted by the clouds of steam that began to billow from the kettle.

Carol.

He wished she was with him now. She seemed to be on his mind constantly, whether he wanted it that way or not.

Couldn't he do anything without thinking about her?

That's what it's like when you're in love.

He grunted.

Love. What the fuck did he know about love?

His father had told him that many times.

His father…

He pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind and wandered through into the sitting room, switching off the cassette first. He drank his tea then decided to have a shower before retiring. He was tired and his body ached; he wouldn't need much coaxing to sleep but he felt as if he needed to cleanse himself.

He passed through the sitting room, through another door past his own bedroom. Past the other bedroom.

The one he kept locked now.

The one where his father…

Fuck it.

The memories were there; they always would be. No amount of time was going to make them disappear. Perhaps the years would make them less potent but they would not easily be excised from his consciousness. He paused by the door to his father's room, or what had once been his father's room. Then he twisted the key and walked in.

It was bare, completely empty but for the single bed, now stripped, which stood beneath the window. His father had lived with him for three years prior to his death ten months ago. A stroke and then a gradual decline into senility, followed by a second devastating brain haemorrhage, had seen the old man off. It was the time after the first stroke that Scott had found so trying. His father, then seventy-two, had been rendered more or less helpless, housebound and unable to do anything but sit and stare at the television or out of the window all day. Scott's mother had left home when he was fourteen; he had no brothers or sisters to help him care for his father. The burden had fallen squarely on his shoulders. At first it hadn't been too bad. The old man could feed himself at least, but then he began to suspect that Scott was trying to poison him. He refused to eat. His weight dropped from twelve to seven stone. Scott had felt pity for him but, as the old man refused to eat, pity had given way to anger and then to hatred. He had seen his father wasting away but Scott had known that it could have been avoided. He lowered his head as he thought of the hatred he had felt for the man sometimes.

Was this shame?

Scott had brought him food only to see it hurled across the kitchen.

More than once he'd come close to hitting the old man.

Old bastard.

Now, now; he couldn't help himself.

Scott had wanted to believe that but it didn't alleviate the frustration he felt.

Don't you mean hatred?

At times it had become almost impossible for him to distirfguish where he drew the line between his loathing of his father or his hatred of the illness that had transformed him.

'You bloody fool,' his father would repeat, glaring at him venomously. 'I can't eat that.' Then the tray or the plate would be hurled across the kitchen once again.

Just die, you old fucker. Do us both a favour and fucking die.

How easy it would have been to place the Beretta against the old man's head and blast what was left of his brains all over the wall.

And when the second stroke had taken him Scott had felt something akin to relief, until he visited him in hospital only hours before he died. He had walked into the room at the side of the ward and found his father's shrivelled form in an oxygen tent, tubes attached to his arms and nose. Scott had sat beside him, his mind blank, as if he had no pity, no hatred, no emotion of any kind left inside him. It was unsettling. His own indifference towards his father's impending death was infinitely more disturbing than any emotional outburst he may have been prone to.

Should have been prone to?

The hospital staff had told him it was just a matter of time; all he could do now was wait for the end. He might as well sit outside. But Scott had remained at the bedside, watching his father's sunken features, still unable to feel anything, still frightened by his own lack of emotion.

Why hang on? Just let go.

The father Scott had known and (had he loved him? Truly loved him, ever?) lived with for so many years had been dead long before this second stroke. The man he had (loved?) known had ceased to exist after the first haemorrhage. The soul was gone, he was watching the decay of the husk now. Scott had been preparing to leave when his father's eyes had flickered open and, instead of a glassy stare, Scott had seen recognition. It had shocked him, brought all his feelings flooding back. In a moment of horrible clarity, it was as if his father knew and understood that he was going to die, and in his eyes that realisation was reflected. He knew he was going to die and he wept at the inevitability of it.

Then, just as quickly, the glazed look had returned and he had slipped back into coma and then beyond to death.

Scott stepped back and slammed the door, as if shutting out the sight of the room would close away the memories.

It didn't.

He couldn't sleep.

Scott had lain awake for over an hour listening to the wind whistling outside the window. Thinking.

He thought about his father.

He thought about Carol.

Finally he swung himself out of bed and crossed to the window.

Rain spattered against it like wind-blown tears.

He felt very alone and he didn't like the feeling. Not much frightened him but loneliness scared the hell out of him.

I don't want to die alone.

He thought of Carol.

His hope. His salvation.

She would be with him; he wouldn't be alone.

He glanced at the phone beside the bed, thought about calling her. He just wanted to hear her voice.

Maybe in a little while.

The wind continued to howl.