No obvious damage to ribcage, sternum or clavicle bones, the doctor says. No evidence of violence to the torso, nor of any attempted resuscitation.
Second time Laura came home she asked her dad if she could stay for a while. Remember that. He thought all his birthdays had come at once, thought he was going to keel over with it there and then. Thought things were going to be all right after that. He could see she’d got herself in a bit of trouble, bit of a mess, but it was something they had in common now, something they could get sorted out together, the two of them like a team, like father and daughter getting things right together, making up for lost time. Like fuck.
The pain in his head, sometimes. Blocking out everything Yvonne was saying to him, making him want her to go away, to
be quiet, to just fucking shut up and go away that pain in his head like nothing else. But she didn’t believe him, or she thought it was his drinking, or she thought he was being a wimp. Drinking was just about the only thing that made it go away. Like someone hammering a nail into the side of his head. Jesus what was it. If he kept moving he couldn’t feel it. If he drank enough, and kept moving, and she shut up fucking shut up a minute it went away. But it always came back, and, sometimes. Made him act wrong sometimes.
The pain in his head when he first heard Yvonne warning him what she was going to do. The feel of the sound of it. Like a what, like a storm, like a storm behind glass. Shrieking into his face to make sure he could hear, beating on him. Her tight little fists shaking in the air. I’ll go back to my mum’s, I will. Are you listening to me. I don’t want to but I can’t stay here like this. And everything he’d heard her saying to her mum on the phone. No he hasn’t been looking for a job yet but he, I thought he just needed a bit of time to get over it, it was such a shock the way they all got locked out like that with no warning, they all took it hard and it’s not like they’ve had much help, I mean most of them just went straight on the sick. But he’s had long enough now, it’s been long enough, he could at least give me a hand about the place. Standing by the kitchen sink with another drink while she hid in the bedroom and said all this and she thought he couldn’t hear. He’s leaving everything down to me and I’ve had enough, there’s bills stacking up, Mum, I’ve been swinging a few extra shifts but I still don’t see how we’re going to cover it all. I don’t know, Mum. I don’t know what I’m going to do. And Laura waking up to hear her mum shouting again, shouting I’ll go back, Robert, I will, I’ll take her with me and all, you bloody watch me, I don’t want to but I will. Are you listening? Are you bloody well listening or what? And then the thumping, like before, coming through the wall, her mum’s little fists against her dad’s chest, pounding through him and the thin wall and knocking against Laura where she was sat up with her back against the headboard of her bed. Until it stopped, like it always did, and they were both crying, and she could hear the shuffling three-legged footsteps of the two of them helping each other to bed, and she fell asleep, and years later she was lying with her head in Heather’s lap telling the story all over again. Not feeling nothing about it this time.
These things all coming together now. Coming up to the surface.
And remember Robert told Steve about it too. Said it had been more or less the only clue that something was up, that something was going wrong. Said he’d known she didn’t like him drinking so much, and he’d known they’d been doing plenty of arguing, but he’d thought it was normal. But that’s just it Rob mate, Steve told him, the two of them sitting in their armchairs in the empty room and working their way through the day’s drinks, nothing’s normal for them is it, nothing’s good enough. They’re always after things being different, being better. You’re better off without mate, he said, and they knocked their cans together in agreement, looking out across the playing fields and the sun going down behind the trees by the river. That’s what Steve told him. Didn’t he. That’s where he went wrong, he broke the golden rule, let himself get in too far. You start leaning on someone, when they do the off you’ll fall over. Stands to reason. Never lean on no one. Never trust no bastard. Golden rule, that’s what he told him. Remember that. That’s where he went wrong with what’s her name, as it happens, the woman from the shop. Marianna, Marianne, Marie. Whatever her name was. Let down his guard, got to the point where he’d do all sorts of bollocks for her, like he was trying to impress her, like he thought she was bothered. Then when he came back from that roadtrip to bloody Bosnia she didn’t want to know. Said things had changed. Said Steve had changed, said he was too moody and it was too hard being around him any more. Too right he’d changed, what else did she expect. He’d seen a few things when he was over there. Things that had, even someone who’d been on all the postings he’d been on, they’d taken him aback a bit, more or less. He wasn’t looking for sympathy, he’d never asked for that. Just a little bit of patience. A bit of understanding. She made out like he’d got too quiet and moody but she only had to give him a chance to think. Just sometimes. Jesus. He was still up for a laugh and a joke but he needed to clear his head and she didn’t really get it. Giving it all Maybe you should talk to someone about it, like that would help. There was that time, the two of them stood on the bridge over the canal, it was right when he was getting his tenancy sorted out and he’d said something about she could stay over sometimes and as soon as he’d said it he knew he was stuffed. She wouldn’t even look at him. Hands deep in her pockets like she had a weapon hidden away in there. Giving it all Oh but the thing is really, Steve, things are a bit different now, things have got a bit weird. I wasn’t really up for anything serious. Looking down at the muddy brown water like she was hoping he’d jump in or something. And after that the staff wouldn’t let him work in the shop any more, or even go in there at all. They said it wasn’t appropriate, which was a joke because he wasn’t the one with the problem. He wasn’t the one who’d said things had got a bit weird. He wouldn’t have bloody minded only he never even got to bang her whatever her name was Maria or Marie or whatever. Would have liked to. She had nice hands and that.
The technician reaches across Robert, grasping the top of his ribcage and lifting it away from his body. It comes off in one piece, like the breastplate from a suit of armour, and she lays it down on another stainless-steel table. We move in close around his body again, our hands resting on the table, and peer in at the strange swollen gleam of his insides, the flabby organs crammed wetly in upon each other. The doctor scrapes away more layers of creamy yellow fat, slices through a series of arteries and veins, and then lifts the organs out as a single block, easing them on to a plastic tray which they carry over to a cutting board on the counter running along the wall. Behind them, in the scooped-out hollow of Robert’s body, we see the rib-bones fanning out across his back, the knuckles of his spine, the coiled mass of his intestines and bowels already slipping and spreading out to fill the space.
Should be something more like. We prop photos up amongst the candles, snapshots from younger days, better days, so that people can look and tell lies about how he hasn’t aged all that badly, considering. A photo from his army days, in full dress uniform, so that his former colleagues can pick it up and put it down and catch each other’s eyes and not need to say a word. A photo Laura once found in the bottom of her mum’s wardrobe, of a young-looking man with a soft round face and a broad flat chest, his shirt hanging open and a young girl grinning wildly on his shoulders. She used to go and look at it when her mum was out of the house. The young girl on the shoulders was her, she supposed.
All those years thinking about him, and once she was back there she found it hard to think of him as her dad at all. He didn’t even look much like that photo, by the time she got to him. The Robert she met – fat with drink and sorrow, unwashed, with a crushed face and a sunken posture, each hand punched into an arthritic curl – was the man her mother had warned her about, the man she’d always been told they’d left. The man Robert had only really become once they’d closed that door behind them and he’d started drinking seriously. Once he’d given up expecting them to ever come home. She’d imagined hugging him when she came back. Sitting on his lap, resting her head on his shoulder. Making up for everything they’d lost. Which had sort of happened, once, soon after the second time she came back, putting her arms around him and clinging on desperately until the smell of his long-worn clothes had pushed her away. After that, she’d only ever touched him when she wanted money. Crouching beside him and resting a hand on his knee, or standing behind him with her hands on his shoulders, leaning over and talking softly into his ear. She felt bad asking, but she felt like he owed her. All those years he hadn’t been around. That one time though, she thought about it sometimes. When she wasn’t thinking about other things. The way it felt. Nothi
ng like she’d been expecting. The solid, numbed stillness of him. Like hugging a tree. His arms by his side, lifting out into the air for a moment, uncertainly. Like he’d forgotten what he was supposed to do, and by the time he’d remembered she’d already gone, again.
They stand around the cutting board, the doctor and the technician and the assistants and the photographer. The rest of us pressing in around them. The doctor separates out the liver, lifting it in one hand and resting it in the shining bowl of an electronic set of scales. Two thousand seven hundred and forty-three grammes, he says, and one of them just about whistles, and the junior doctor writes it down on the whiteboard. The liver is a yellowish orange colour, like a sponge, speckled and grainy, and thick gobbets of fat spread out across the knife as the doctor slices into it. What can you tell me about this? he asks his junior. Cirrhosis, the younger man says. Advanced cirrhosis. Thank you, the doctor says, smiling. The technician takes one of the liver slices and puts it into a clear plastic container, soaking it with formaldehyde and carefully labelling the lid. The doctor separates out the heart, an awkward-looking lump of flesh with severed pipes and tubes fingering out in all directions, weighs it, and puts it back on the board. He cuts into it, exposing the chambers, the valves, the arteries, using his scalpel to indicate particular features while he dictates his notes.
Heart: enlarged, flabby, otherwise of normal external appearance, firm, reddish brown, no lesions apparent. Left and right ventricles normal, cardiac chambers normal although some clotted blood apparent, endocardium normal. Sections through the coronary arteries show significant narrowing, of approximately seventy to eighty per cent, indicating severe coronary artery disease.
If it comes down to it la I will cut out your heart.
Remember Danny and Laura and Heather and Ben all cooking up together one time. Down under one of the arches by the canal because Mike was up at the flat and he hadn’t put any money in for the gear. Was it that or just we didn’t want him around. Danny doing all the prep and the rest of them watching like coppers so the shares would be even. Got a couple of two and one deals between them all, so he mixed up the dark and the light in the spoon and got it cooking, drew the whole lot up into one barrel to measure it and then squirted it back out into the spoon, shared it out into everyone’s pins, and then everyone backed off to get digging. Heather laughing at Ben because he said he still didn’t like needles and that was a fucking joke that made them laugh every time. Danny and Laura going at the same time, bang on the same time, the crack kicking in first and the two of them watching each other when it did, some kind of fucking beautiful going off there between them for what is it seconds a minute two minutes like you you euphoric between them like a whoosh like a bullet through a tunnel bursting out into the sunshine firelight with this what this great big God almighty yes yes yes before sinking settling down into the cotton-wool embrace of the dark the brown taking the edge off taking the edge all the way right fucking off. Heather still laughing away at Ben, going I reckon you’re in the wrong fucking line of work here Benny boy, all four of them laughing and lying back on to the rubble and ash under the arch, listening to the white-noise roar of the water pouring over the top of the lock, the clatter of the trains running over them, Danny turning to look in Laura’s eyes again but she was all gone away. Rubbing his fingers over and over his face, feeling well, feeling welcome in his body again. Feeling like, fuck, the things a body can do, these fingers, these bones, this muscle and skin, the bones of his face, the jaw and the cheeks and the eye sockets, the cells dividing and forming and healing and beginning again, all the things we do to these bodies and they keep beginning again, the cuts and bruises and festering wounds, this crash helmet of a skull keeping this suffering brain safe. For what. For this. For this feeling well again. For all the things a body can be. For when all this is over and done with and life can begin again.
Would like to have seen her naked one time. Just once. Probably she was all fucked up, all bones and bruises and broken veins, but still even so. Would have liked to see what her body could do, what her body could be. Long and white and pale and turning towards. Opening towards.
And what about Ben. Jesus. That time in Laura’s old bedroom when Heather had some rocks to offer him. No one really knew about it at the time except we knew something had gone off. We know about it now though but. Pulling him into the room and closing the door. Sitting down on the bed, near enough falling down on the bed, saying Come here Benny boy do you want a smoke do you want a go on the pipe? Reaching in her pocket and taking out a bag. Ben smiling that smile again and going Heather mate does the Pope shit in the woods or what? Heather filling a pipe for him and offering it up, and Ben’s brain going pop pop pop as he sucked away on it. Heather waiting, watching, Ben chatting on about the trouble he’d been having at the hostel, something to do with another resident lying to the staff about him tooting in his room and when the staff came to search it they planted some rocks under the mattress because they had it in for him anyway they wanted an excuse to get him out of there he’d been lippy one time too many and they like you to know who’s in charge who’s the boss who’s the fucking what what the number one. Heather watching his eyes flicker to the pipe and the lighter and the bag hidden tightly in her fist. Ben stuttering and stopping and saying Heather I’m not being cheeky or nothing but can I have some more? The hunger it gives you, the need. Nothing you could ever need as much as another go on the pipe. The first time the best time and you’re always chasing after that. Do anything to get back to that. Never get there but you always get close and you always keep reaching. Don’t you. Heather looking up at him, her eyes unfocused, saying Come here then. Lowering her voice and saying Come here. Putting her hands out and pulling him towards her by the waistband of his jeans. Ben pulling away, and Heather pulling him back, saying Come here Ben, come here, pulling him to the edge of the bed and keeping him there with her legs squashed around his. Looking at him looking at the pipe. Looking at him as she undoes his trousers and keeps him from pulling away. Saying Come on Ben, come on. What are you scared of? You’ve known me long enough, haven’t you? Come on, come on. It’s not going to do any harm. Ben looking away, to the battered wall behind the bed, to the corner of the room, saying Heather I don’t really want to. I don’t want. Heather still murmuring, reassuring, one hand behind him now and the other hand working on him through his pants. Saying Do me a favour love. If you want another go on the pipe. There’s plenty more where the last lot came from. Saying What’s the matter Ben, don’t you like me or something? And Ben, his whole body stiffened and still, saying Heather it’s not that of course I like you it’s just it’s not like that I don’t want to. Cold resignation in his voice. Taking the pipe as she hands it up to him. Taking long blistering draws on the smoke while she pulls down his pants and does what she wants to do, squeezing his balls, tugging at his unwilling erection, working her calloused fingers into the crack of his arse while a smell like pear drops bubbles into the room and his brain goes pop pop pop and he pictures the light sparkling round through his bloodstream, surging, charging, roaring, picking him up up up and over the room looking down and further right out of the room and the first time he met Heather outside the train station where he was tapping people up and she told him You don’t want to do that here sweetheart you’ll get picked up in no time, couple of coppers on the way over even while she was talking and she took his arm and led him straight off down the road. Weight of her hand on his elbow. Her wide round hips squashing into his. Funny-looking woman but he didn’t mind going off with her, seemed like she knew a thing or two. Leading him like a blind man which is what he was more or less when it came to living out on the street. Was a lot better now but he never saw this one coming. Should have done but he didn’t, the pipe burning dry and the popping in his brain fading away and the anxious gnawing appetite sliding back in. Looking down at the back of her head while she sucks away at him, her greasy half-red hair with the black roots turning grey, the smell of the burning crack drifting off and the smell of her replacing it, the smell of drink and old sweat and bad teeth and he tries to pull her head away by the hair but she don’t stop. Saying Fucking stop it stop it Heather will you stop it please. Things she warned him about but she never warned him about this. Heather wiping her mouth and smiling and saying Oh come on Benny boy, what’s wrong, you don’t want any more goes on the pipe? Looking at him looking at the bag of rocks in her fist. Saying Come on now Ben. No one’s going to know. I won’t tell anyone. Come on. Give me some more and I’ll give you what you need. Her hands all over in between his legs now, pulling at him, pinching and scratching him and pulling him closer. Ben turning his face towards the ceiling and screwing up his eyes. Saying Heather fucking hell fucksake. Saying it under his breath as if daring himself to say it, fucking hell Heather I don’t want to. You stupid fucking bitch. Heather’s eyes widening with anticipation when he says this, wrestling with her own trousers, the belt and the buttons and the tangle of shirts and shawls hanging around them, kicking the trousers to her ankles and falling back on to the bed. Pulling Ben down on to her and tugging him in and saying Say that again. Say bitch again. Ben with his eyes screwed shut but still the smell of her all over and the soft rolling slap of her body beneath him and the grunt and moan of her gaping crack-headed need swallowing him up. Thought he could trust her even though one thing she warned him was never trust no one and it turns out she was right about that. Should have learnt it years ago but. Way back when all those people he thought were helping him out were just grassing him up and getting him sent back to the home. In the day centre. At the church. That woman at the train station when he tried to
jump the barriers. That bloke he asked for money outside the theatre who put him up for the night. All of them going Yeah yeah I’ll help you out, son, and then running off to phone up and get him shipped off back to the home. Too late for them now though. They couldn’t do that no more, he was too old for care, too old to get taken back, he was on his own now and he liked it that way, it was better that way. Old enough to look after himself and he had been for a long time. Heather going Hold me down then now, like a bastard, you’re a bastard, go on, hold my wrists. Ben opening his eyes for a second and saying Fucksake Heather you mad fucking bitch, bitch, bitch, you mad fucking bitch, saying it to a rhythm without even meaning to and then holding her wrists down on the bed, thinking about the pipe, trying to think about nothing but the pipe and feeling himself lifted high above the room but still hearing her and feeling her and smelling her even with his eyes screwed tightly shut, the scabs and bruises of her thighs clenched around his legs, the cigarette burns across her stomach, her grunting and moaning and going Pull my hair fucking pull my hair you bastard you bastard and Ben trying not to listen, trying not to think of nothing but the pipe at the end of all this going You fat, fucking, bitch, you sick, fat, fucking, bitch, you sick, fucking, fucking, fucking, and Heather going Yes yes no please no.
We didn’t know this, before. Even Heather says she didn’t know, she sort of can’t remember, she must have been sort of out of it and she can’t quite believe it was her. But we know it now, we see it and we believe it now. None of us is shocked. Most of us have known something like it before anyhow. None of this is new. None of it matters no more.
The doctor turns back to the board and cuts open Robert’s lungs, and the airways spill into his hands like roots pulled up from the soil.
Lungs: normal external colour and appearance, heavy. Airways congested with aspirated blood. Primary bronchi and successive bronchi showing signs of tar-like deposits probably from cigarette smoke. Dilated airspaces at extreme upper lobes indicate probable emphysema. Note that trachea and large airways also contain blood.
The technician puts the heart and lungs and liver into a red plastic bag, and the photographer takes more pictures as the doctor weighs and dissects the other organs on the board. He shows something to the others, gesturing with his scalpel, and the technician goes to Robert’s hollowed body and fetches short lengths of his intestines, snipping them loose with a pair of blunt-nosed scissors and carrying them over to the workbench. She slices them open, washes them out at the sink, and puts them to one side. The doctor speaks again, and his junior makes more notes on the whiteboard.
Stomach: normal external appearance and colour, compressed and empty of food contents. Small intestine also empty of digestive content; descending section of large intestine contains faecal matter; conclude that the deceased had not consumed food for a period of approximately twenty-four to forty-eight hours prior to death.
We sit around talking in low voices, looking at him, and someone puts on his favourite CD, Neil Young singing I’m going to give you till the morning comes, and someone else comes out the kitchen with plates of sandwiches, sliced ham and cucumber and cottage cheese. Cut into little triangles and passed around the room, and when someone says Oh I couldn’t possibly someone else says Eh now come on you’ll want to keep your strength up la. And we light more candles. Do we bollocks.
People think it’s all about being hungry and that but hungry’s got nothing to do with it. Can always find food if you want it. Soup runs and day centres and hostels and that. Food don’t cost much. Food don’t cost nothing if you know where to look. Can go without eating for a couple of days, more when there’s other stuff you need to sort first. Like getting sorted. Food don’t matter when you got the rattles coming on, and when you’re sorted you don’t even care. But Robert always liked his food didn’t he though. Was always after sending someone out to get him something. Pizzas and kebabs and all that. Don’t know where he got the money from but he was never short of food. Something must have happened if he didn’t eat nothing for twenty-four hours. Something must have gone off. All that talk about where he got the money from but he never went short of food or drink. These little shits tried robbing him once but they only found a tenner on him. Remember that. They never tried it again after we’d done with them. Must have kept it somewhere but. Liked having something to eat.
Little shits must have been waiting for us all to go out, watching, because they got Robert when he was on his own and we didn’t often leave him on his own. Said he liked company. He gave them what they could find, a tenner and some fags and a bottle of cider, and he got a good look at their faces while they were knocking him about, and as soon as we got back he told us who it was. We didn’t need telling twice though did we. Remember that. That was what it was, it was like a what, an unspoken deal. He let us hang out in his flat, do what we wanted there more or less, sleep there if we needed to, and we looked out for him. Got rid of people he didn’t want there. Sorted out his debts. And found the little shits who tried to tax him, followed them down to the underpass near the canal and near enough broke their fucking legs with a short bit of scaffold pole that Ben had happened to find along the way. Only two of them so it weren’t hard. Certain things we’d all do for Robert and that was one of them.
He shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. He should be in some fucking what some funeral home or something all laid out nice with flowers and candles and what and music. We should be here to pay our respects instead of all this. Who’s going to lay him out now. Where will they take him. The state of him once this lot have done. The box they’ll have to cart him off in, and who’s going to stick him in the ground, who’s going to pay for all that. No one’s going to get Yvonne to come back. Not now, not when she’s so far away. His parents are long gone. And will they find Laura, does anyone even know who she is. Someone’s got to take him and bury him and say all the prayers and all that. He shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t even fucking be here. We shouldn’t be here.
Always in the wrong place, the wrong time. The wrong fucking body, the wrong fucking skin.
And remember what Laura said that time, about wanting a new body, wanting to start again with a new body so she could go round all over again. Don’t work like that but she wanted it to. When Danny found her that time. When she’d run out of veins or she thought she had. Been trying to get a dig for over an hour, sitting there by herself just poking around with the pin trying to get in to all those collapsed and raggedy veins, trying to find the other ones deeper in but the pin weren’t long enough. Rooting around and getting more and more desperate, more and more scared. Danny found her round by the bins behind the hostel and for a minute he thought she’d been cutting herself. All that blood. Looked like it was just seeping out through her skin. She was crying and swearing and going Danny fucking what Danny what am I going to do now? Scratching her neck and pulling her hair and going Danny I’ve been trying for fucking ages I can’t do it. What the fuck have I done? Cold and white and the rattles on her so bad he could more or less hear them. Blood all over her hands, and then blood all over Danny’s hands when he tried to find a dig for her. Her voice all thin and tired going Danny fucking what what I need to fucking start all over again or something don’t I. Don’t even want to stop but maybe I got no choice. Danny giving up in the end and finding Mike, Mike coming round and sticking one in her neck, going You don’t wanna try this yoursen though la, you need to see what you’re doing an it’s too easy to pop an artery, you know what I’m saying. It’s game over when you do that an no mistake. Laura with her chin right up looking way past Mike to the sky, her eyes spilling with tears and holding her breath while he eased in the pin. Clinging on to his arms to keep still, like he was her only hope or something. Like he was the one who could make her body new. A new body and what though but. A new heaven and all that. All Laura wanted was one more vein. One more chance to begin again.
Ben had a laugh when she said that. No chance of that is t