jackal

He must have told the taxi driver the address. Because here he was, inevitably. In front of the familiar door. Mark’s house. He’d lost his jacket somewhere along the way, and everything that was in the pockets. He stood with his fingertips resting lightly on the plastic buzzer, not pressing. Then he turned and went around the back of the property, back to where the old bluegum still leant, the bricks of the walls built carefully around it like a wound healed around a thorn. He looked for the old footholds in the broken wall, smaller now, made for narrower feet. He put the tips of his toes into the holes, found places to hold. The wall was disappointingly low, although the drop on the other side was heavier for his old bones. He sat with his back against the garden wall, and for a while the ghost of a child, which one he wasn’t sure, came and sat with him too, companionable.

When he was ready, Con came through the garden to the house. He found her face in an upstairs window, the only one lit. Margaret seemed to be sitting quite still, staring at a wall; waiting for something to arrive.

And then another face, in a different window. A clean, familiar profile. Con could see them in their separate panes like icons in gilded frames, then together in the same frame – a magical moving portrait; and for a moment he was back in an art gallery somewhere far away, watching bright images shift and communicate mysteriously behind glass. The two faced each other, heads gently bowed.

Like a dog he crept close to the walls of the house. No, not a dog – a jackal, something wild and shut out from human warmth and exchange. The door was locked, of course, but the coir mat was a welcome of sorts. Con curled himself up small, there on the threshold, and fell asleep like a creature that doesn’t know a floor from a bed, as long as it’s a place to lie. Grateful, so grateful for a place to lie.

In the morning he woke in the dew, shivering, and stood up with a painful flare of feeling through his limbs. He wiped his hands carefully, sparingly, on a small patch of clean shirt that remained. Everything was ripped, soiled, barely clothing. The house was very quiet. He put up his hand to knock and then lowered it, not wanting to break the peace.

Con walked around the side of the house. He could see Mark’s empty room, a glass box varnished with reflection. There was a narrow figure standing inside it, obscured in shadow. But Con knew him at once: the stance slanted like his mother’s; the profile pronounced like his father’s. As Con watched, the figure opened the door of the room, stepped out into the sun. An elongated shadow spilt onto the grass.

Mark’s hair had grown long, and a beard fell onto his chest like a prophet’s, flecked with grey. He was very pale. Heavy-rimmed spectacles. The same, different, changed. Con wanted to run up to his old friend and put his arms around him and exclaim, my friend, what has happened to you? Ageing had never been on the cards for Mark, yet here he was, unaccountably damaged by time.

The hurt ran deep. Mark came walking across the grass, not with the striding lope that he’d perfected at age fourteen, but with a stiff pendulum leg-swing. Some deep rewiring or short circuit producing this jarring step, step.

He had not yet seen Con. He was making for Gerard’s old chair beneath the tree. Getting there took ages. Eventually, Mark had found the chair-back, walked himself around it, turned and lowered himself achingly into the seat. The orange cat came leaping up onto his lap as soon as he settled.

As Con came towards him, Mark looked up, and his eyes behind the thick lenses were the colour of veins. Con went down on his haunches next to his old friend, who observed him with gentle pleasure. A strange thing, to look at the face of someone you loved in childhood. You search for, and briefly find, the boy beneath the skin; he meets your eyes brightly, but then the aged face slips sideways into place again, over the ageless bones.

Mark was still a beautiful man. His eyes were wide and blue as ever, but guileless now. The sly knowingness had been burnt out of him, leaving, still, his grace. One hand moved rhythmically over the cat’s back. Every movement seemed a careful adjustment of ligaments. It was only then that Con saw: one of Mark’s sleeves was neatly pinned back, just above the elbow. Nothing below that. The other hand stroked, stroked the fur.

There was a joke in here somewhere, Con thought, an awful joke, truly bad taste, but he couldn’t quite bring it to mind.

“Mark,” he said softly. “How are you feeling?”

The cat was very old, the hair thinning on its back. It sat tight on Mark’s lap, hoping not to move at all, ever again. The sun and a stroking hand were its sole desires now. “Old boy,” said Mark. “This old boy has been in the wars.”

Mark sat delicately in his chair as if unable to put much weight on any part of his body for fear of splitting a seam, cracking a fragile mend. He wore a knitted cap, and Con wondered if the skull beneath it was shattered and held together like a softboiled egg in its shell. A long-sleeved blue shirt was buttoned to the neck; loose grey tracksuit pants. Between the pale face and the pale bare feet was a hidden country of potential pain. Skin removed and stitched back on. The stuffing coming out. Bits left off, bits gone missing. Was that the pale worm of a scar, creeping up his larynx? When he turned his head, it crept back under the collar. The face was unscarred. Dmitri must have been gentle with him, Con thought, to spare this much.

“Help me with this … bro?” Mark pointed at a box of cigarettes and a lighter lying on the ground at his feet. “Tricky.” And his voice was the same, just a shade deeper, a shade slower, as though some of the words required a moment of particular consideration before he released them.

Con fitted the cigarette to his own lips, clicked the lighter, held the flame to the tip. He was careful, conscious of the smartness and economy of his own movements. He managed with one hand, and reflected that Mark could well have lit his own smoke. But he’d wanted Con to do it for him.

Mark took the cigarette and dragged on it, then grinned at Con through the smoke. “You look like … shit.”

Con laughed. “Fine one to talk. So, are you going to get a …” He flexed his hand in the air, making pincers. The word-lag was catchy.

“A hook?” Mark laughed. “Captain Hook, for sure. Maybe …” He clapped his hand over one eye.

The door of the house opened and Con saw Margaret standing there, leaning on her cane. She started forward, then stopped when she saw the men together. Con straightened up and waved. She didn’t come forward, though; just raised her hand in greeting.

“Old lady. Better … go in,” said Mark, and started to rise from the chair, leaning heavily on one hand to lever himself up.

Con put out an arm to help him, but then hesitated, his fingers a few centimetres from Mark’s back. He was uncertain whether to touch; what hurt it might cause.

“S’okay … Lemme do it,” said Mark. Righting himself at last, he set off determinedly down the lawn to the house, limp swing, limp swing. He paused just before the door to call back: “Come again, bro. Another time, yeah? Good … to see you. Get a …” – long pause, some trouble with the tongue – “… get a suit.”

Mark raised his arm, as if signalling across a great distance with the sparking end of his cigarette, and then Margaret gathered him in – light arms, also not quite touching – and the door to the house closed behind them.

Pain, and the easing of pain. A long thorn, drawn from the flesh.