“The quiet ones are the worst.” I’ve never understood that expression. What’s wrong with quiet? Surely it’s the noisy ones who are the worst. Surely it’s noise, generally, that there’s too much of.
I don’t like noise. I had enough noise in the Hussars. But they say the quiet ones are the worst. If everything’s quiet, it means a bomb will go off. You can’t win.
It seemed to be the issue when Shirley kicked me out. My quietness, I mean. I don’t mean Shirley literally kicked me out. There was no kicking. Shirley didn’t kick me. I didn’t kick her. It wasn’t a case of the “domestic violence” you hear about. It was my quietness that started it. Shirley could see that I’d gone into myself. That’s what I used to do in those days—I’d go into myself.
Shirley said, “You never talk, you never say things.” I think what she meant was that I wasn’t much fun anymore. I’d agree with that. If I ever had been, I wasn’t anymore. I’d stopped being fun. I’d gone into myself, like a worm into a hole. I think she meant she’d found out at last—and I’m surprised it took her so long—that she’d hooked up with a sort of invalid.
I said to her once, and it was all I ever said on the subject, “I was in the Hussars in Iraq, Shirl.”
“What’s a Hussar?”
“I’ve no idea, Shirl, but I was one.”
When Shirl started to go for me, I said, “Don’t raise your voice.”
“I’m not raising my voice.”
“You are.”
She wasn’t shouting, she’d just raised her voice, but I was afraid she might start shouting, and then things would get noisy. I’d never raised my voice at Shirley. I hadn’t been with her for that long, but it was longer than I’d been with anyone else. I’d never shouted at her or done anything worse. I’d never raised a finger, let alone my voice. But now, it seemed, I’d gone too quiet.
She said, “Two, three nights a week, you’re not even here. Even when you’re here, you’re not here.”
I didn’t deny it. I thought, All this is fair enough and I had it coming. That’s a good expression: I had it coming. You had it coming. He, she, or they had it coming. We all have it coming.
Shirley was a good woman. There was a time with Shirl when I’d let myself think, Now I’m home. This is home. A crap neighborhood, but it was home. She worked mornings at a nursery school. Then she’d work afternoons at a coffee place, one of those kiosks close to the Tube station. Sometimes I’d be passing by and I’d go to the kiosk and order a coffee and pretend I didn’t know her, and see how long she’d pretend, too, that she didn’t know me. That we were complete strangers. Which of us would blink first? Laugh first?
Yes, for a while we had fun. We’d laugh. Laughter’s a kind of noise. Kids in a nursery school must make a lot of noise. I wondered if Shirley ever told them to shut up, just to shut up.
I worked as an orderly in a mental hospital, the Langston. It was work I could get, work I could do. It sometimes got noisy at the Langston, but the strange thing was, I didn’t mind it. I never found the Langston scary or creepy. It takes one to recognize another, maybe. In and out of a mental hospital every day, sometimes night shifts, too. But it didn’t bother me. I didn’t find it strange.
Shirley said, “Why do you work in that place?”
“It’s a job, Shirl. It pays the rent. It doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you?”
Shirley didn’t answer that, but she looked at me. She looked at me the way she did when she was serving me a coffee and pretending not to know me. But she wasn’t getting ready to laugh.
Shirley used to wear a red dress, a tight red dress. I mean, not all the time. It wasn’t an all-the-time dress. It was like Shirley flying her special flag. She certainly didn’t wear it to the nursery school. Then there’d have been some noise. I said, “I like you in that dress, Shirl. It’s your color.” She could tell I meant a bit more than that. “I like you in that dress and I like you when you’re not in it.”
Yes, we used to have some fun, but then I went into myself. I thought I wouldn’t. I’d been starting to think I never would again. But I did.
Some people say that red is a “loud” color. But how can that be? How can any color make a noise? “Red rag to a bull.” “Seeing red.” I’ve never understood those expressions, either. Why red is the color of anger. I just told Shirley that I liked her in her red dress. So she wore it quite a lot.
But then one day, when I’d gone into myself, I said, “Don’t you ever get tired of that red dress, Shirl?” It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair to say that. And she kept wearing it anyway, she kept wearing it even more after that. It troubled me. But I kept quiet, I didn’t say anything. A color is just a color.
And now she was saying to me, “Even when you’re here, you’re not here.”
Well, that might have needed some thinking about. But I didn’t deny it. I understood it. I didn’t ask her what she meant. I might have said that she was spot on.
I said, “Are you chucking me out, Shirl?” I said it quietly. I wasn’t arguing. I wasn’t lifting a finger. “I want to be clear about it. Are you chucking me out? I’m not chucking you out. But we share the rent on this place. Are you chucking me out?”
I could see that she was getting pent up, like she might, instead of saying things, start throwing things around. She wouldn’t hit me, I wouldn’t hit her, but she might start throwing things, even throwing them at me. I could see that things were starting to get tricky.
I said, “Yes or no, Shirl?”
She made a sound, through her teeth, a sort of savage sound. She’d said that I never talked, but now it seemed that she was the one who couldn’t get the words out.
“Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
Then she raised her voice.
At the Langston, it’s sometimes part of my job to “restrain” a patient. Nobody told me it might be part of my job. I was never trained. On the other hand, I was trained. I think they looked at me and thought, He’ll be all right for the job.
She really raised her voice. “Yes! Yes, I am! And, while you’re at it, you can go to hell!”
That was telling me.
I said, “O.K., Shirl. Fair enough. It’s been nice knowing you.”
I didn’t raise my voice. But I know when I’m being told. I know when I’m not wanted. There comes a point when you know things.
So I got my zip-up jacket and I walked out the door. I didn’t slam it. I just walked out. It was dark and damp and chilly.
What was I going to do next? Did I have a plan? Search me. On the other hand, it was obvious. I walked to where I’d been going those two or three nights a week that Shirl had talked about. She’d chucked me out, but, on the other hand, nothing had changed. I walked to the Blue Anchor. We lived in an area of pretty rough pubs, but the Blue Anchor was the roughest of the lot. That’s why I went there. I’d never have gone there with Shirl. It was the sort of pub where you only ever saw men hanging out. And most of them pretty rough. And I was one of them.
A tricky patient at the hospital, a noisy one? No problem. I hardly ever had to use force. That’s because they could see that I could. Otherwise, at the Langston they liked to keep things polite. You weren’t even supposed to say “mental” hospital—it was “psychiatric” hospital. In the old days, they used to call such places “asylums.” They used to call the ones inside “lunatics.” Now it was “patients,” not even “inmates.”
But I wasn’t bothered. If they were inmates, poor bastards, I was an outmate. I was a mate, anyway. I wasn’t trained in psychiatry, but I’d say, “Take it easy, mate. Keep a lid on it.”
Shirley knew about me working at the Langston, but she’d never been in it. Why would she have been? And she knew about me going to the Anchor. Clearly. But she’d never been in the Anchor, either.
The place I’d go to that Shirley never knew about, and still doesn’t, was the Catholic church, St. Mark’s, on Winterton Road. Big red brick place, nearly always empty. I used to pop in there sometimes on my way back from my shift. The coffee kiosk, usually, but sometimes, by a different route, the Catholic church. I’m not a Catholic. My dad was in Northern Ireland. King’s Hussars. I’m not a churchgoer, but, if you go into a church and sit quietly, they can’t kick you out.
That’s what I’d do sometimes—just sit there quietly. I’d see those things like cupboards along the side—the confessionals—and I’d sometimes think, I wish I could do that, just for the hell of it. No, I don’t mean that. Just for the peace and quiet of it, the talking in whispers, with someone you don’t know and can’t even see.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. . . .”
“And what was your sin?”
“The sin of murder, Father. But I was in the Army and in another country, and it was a few years ago now.”
If you went into one of those cupboards and you weren’t a Catholic, or even anything, could they stop you? How would they know?
But that night when Shirley chucked me out I didn’t go to the Catholic church. I went to the Blue Anchor. The barman knew me. I mean, he didn’t know me, but he’d seen me quite a few times already, and he knew my game. I didn’t want any chatty talk. I just wanted to sit quietly with my drink, and always at the bar, if there was a space. On a stool at the bar, even though I didn’t want any chatty talk with the barman. What was wrong with that? It was a pub.
Barman? Landlord, too, I’d guess. Both. It was his place and he ran it. Not much of a place but the best he could get. And he was in charge, no doubt about it. He had to be. Big hefty bastard, too. You wouldn’t want to mess. Or most wouldn’t.
One night I’d come back from the pub with my face “all mashed up.” At least, that’s what Shirley said. It was just a few scrapes. “Your face is all mashed up.”
“It’s nothing, Shirl. Just a bit of bother.”
She said, “What the hell’s going on? This has got to stop.”
True. She never said a truer thing. If you want to cure yourself of something, if you want to pull yourself out of it, you stop it. Simple.
How much dope dealing was going on at the Anchor? Search me. Quite a lot. But it wasn’t my business. It wasn’t my problem. It wasn’t my poison.
That night, I went down to the Anchor again and sat at the bar. There was a space and I took up as much of it as possible. Elbows out, shoulders spread, and I’m not a small man. Always at the bar. Sit at the bar and mean it. So others at the bar, getting their drinks, have to reach round you or over you, or perhaps jog into you just as you’re lifting your pint to your mouth.
So then I could say, “Excuse me!”
“Excuse you what?”
“I’m sitting here.”
“You’re sitting there, are you?”
And then, if I had anything to do with it, it might all kick off. But the barman would see that I hadn’t started it, that it had nothing to do with me. I was just someone who’d been knocked into while sitting quietly with a drink. Oh, yeah?
And, that night, the barman must have seen that I really meant business. So I had it coming. He’d seen me before. He’d seen my kind before. And he had the look, himself, of someone who’d done time. I mean, not just behind a bar. Behind bars, maybe. In the Army. In a boxing ring. For all I knew, in the Langston loony bin.
You have to know about it, you have to know about being in a fight, before you go looking for one. My dad was in the Army, too. He loved it. He was a bully. He was over there in Belfast. He made me follow in the family tradition.
The barman saw me trying it on again. This time I really meant business. He could see it in my face.
“Excuse me!” Spilled beer all over his bar, but nothing to do with me.
This time it was really going to blow up. Except, before it began, it was all over. Before I knew it, that barman had come round from behind the bar, opening and shutting his flap. Before I knew it, he was standing behind me, and everyone else was standing back. Before I knew it, his hands were on my arms, and not just on them but clamping them hard against my sides so I couldn’t move them, and he was lifting me up—just lifting me up, easy peasy—off my stool, so my legs were dangling and my feet weren’t even touching the ground.
And they never did. My God, he had some strength. Then he was carrying me, like I was a piece of broken furniture, arms clamped, feet not touching anything, to the door. He kicked open the door while still holding me, and then we were out on the pavement. There was traffic and lights. Passersby. Well, they had something to pass by. Only then did he put me down, only then was I standing on my own two feet again, but he still had my arms tight against me, and he was twisting me round, like some kind of pole. All, apparently, so that he could face me in the right direction.
He said, “Now you walk. O.K.? You walk. You walk in that direction.” He let go of my arms so that, in case I hadn’t got the message, he could point the way, but my arms still stuck to my sides. “You walk. And you keep on walking till you get to hell.”
That was telling me.
Why he thought hell was in that particular direction, I’ll never know. There were two possible directions along the pavement, but he’d twirled me around and he’d chosen that one.
I might have said to him, “You don’t have to do this. I’ve already been told to go to hell this evening.” Or I might have said, “You don’t have to tell me to go to hell. I’ve already been there.” But I didn’t say either of those things. I’m a quiet man. I don’t like noise. And I walked. I walked with my arms still pinned to my sides. I walked like a clockwork man who’d just been wound up.
And it happened to be in the direction I’d come from. Back to where I lived, or thought I’d lived. To where I’d shut the door, without slamming it, on Shirl, then walked to the pub.
And it happened to be not in the direction of hell.
Sometime after all this was over, it occurred to me that the other direction would have been my way to work, to the Langston. It would have been a long walk—I took the Tube to work, several stops—but, if the barman had pointed me in that direction, I think I would have kept on walking, just as he’d told me, till I got to the Langston. And when I got there I might have said, “It’s all right—I work here. But now I’m thinking of staying. I’ve got nowhere else to go. Will you let me in?”
If you want to cure yourself of something, you stop it. Fair enough. I might have said to that barman as he parked me on the pavement, “This isn’t the first time I’ve been chucked out this evening.”
But I walked. I walked in the direction he pointed out to me. And I didn’t stop till I got to the door that I hadn’t slammed behind me. And I knocked. It was quite hard to knock, because my arms still wanted to stay by my sides.
Shirley opened the door. Had she been expecting this? I’ll never know. I looked at her. I said, “I hope you didn’t mean it, Shirl. I hope you didn’t mean it, because I’ve come back.”
She looked at me. She looked at me for quite a long while, until I even thought, Does she recognize me? But then she said, No, she hadn’t meant it. And I said I hadn’t meant it, either, whatever it was I’d meant or not meant. And she let me in.
Home is where they let you in. I might have been in a police cell, with my face really mashed up. Serve me right. I might have been in the Langston and not getting paid for it. Wasn’t I lucky? Wasn’t I lucky that the barman had pointed me in the wrong direction for hell? How did he do it? How did he make such a basic mistake?
Shirley let me in. Then things happened fast. They’d already happened fast. I know that things can happen fast. Before you know it, they’ve already happened. I know all about that.
And before we knew it Shirl and I weren’t standing up anymore, looking at each other like strangers. Our feet weren’t touching the ground and we were in another, more friendly situation, where we generally remained all night.
And I’d swear now, looking back, that it was that night, by hook or by crook or by complete accident, that our first one—Martin (it was Shirley’s dad’s name)—got conceived. It was something else that happened that night.
One day I might tell Martin—he’s three years old now, and he has a little sister, Jessie—how it happened, how he happened. But maybe that wouldn’t be such a great idea. I might just say to him, “Promise me one thing, Mart: never join the Army.” And I’ll never know if Shirley had the same hunch as me, or even some kind of direct knowledge. That it was that night. I’ve never asked, she’s never said. But she had a job in a nursery school. I should have got the message. I should have seen it coming.
It was only in the morning that she said, looking at me in the daylight, “What the hell’s happened? What the hell’s going on? You’ve got big bruises on both your arms.”
I never went back to the Blue Anchor. Surprise, surprise. That barman must have thought that, sure enough, he’d sent me to the right place. And, so far—and it’s been a long time now and I have two kids—I’ve never gone back into myself like I used to. I’ve never gone back to that place.
My God, he must have had some strength, some arms. I wish I’d known his name. One day Shirl told me that she’d never known her dad. She’d just known—from her mum—that his name was Martin.
I might have said to Shirl, but I didn’t, “I knew my dad, and I knew his name. More’s the pity.”
But I said to her as she looked at the bruises, “Yes, I noticed them, too. I don’t think it was something you did, was it, Shirl? I’ll tell you all about it later. But I’ve got to get to work. I’ll tell you all about it later.” ♦
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