I go down on my bike. All the curtains are drawn. He’s generally an early riser, but after last night I’m not sure that he’s going to be up. The door’s on the latch, he must have forgotten to lock it last night, so I let myself in. I go into the kitchen to drop off the stuff and he’s there, sitting in his boxers, laptop open on the counter. One eye is closed, the lid red and shiny, the skin underneath stained purple shading to black. His nose is swollen, thickened across the bridge, and his lip is cut and puffy. His knuckles are scabbing over. There are bruises as big as hand-spans down the sides of his torso, blue and green circles with purple centres where the boots connected.
‘You’re lucky your ribs aren’t bust.’
I lay the boxes on the counter. The laptop goes to the screensaver downloaded from The Sun. He was probably on some porn site. The screen he was viewing comes back momentarily. He wasn’t looking at porn; he was looking at guns.
‘Will you look at that?’ He keeps his finger on the touch pad. ‘The Barrett M107 50 cal. Most powerful sniper rifle to date. The bullets are five inches long.’ He stretches thumb and forefinger. ‘Big as your dick, little brother. It’s accurate up to one and a half miles, maybe two. It can punch through concrete, armour-plating. If you get hit by that, you don’t get up.’
He closes the site and the screensaver comes back again.
‘How’s your lip?’
‘It’s nothing.’ He’s speaking with a lisp out of the left side of his mouth. ‘Must have got hit by a south paw. Don’t hurt. Much.’ He gives a lopsided grin and his laugh turns to a wince. ‘That does.’ He reaches across and opens the bag that I’ve put on the counter. ‘Not more stuff from Mum. Be Good to Yourself? Jesus Christ! I bet that’s Martha.’ He squints at it through his good eye. ‘Do us a favour and chuck it in the bin.’
But I don’t do that. I put it in the freezer. There is no food in the fridge. The shelves are stacked with cans and bottles: Guinness, Murphy’s, Stella, Carlsberg, Budweiser, Miller, Magners, all arranged by size and label.
‘Stop fussing around.’ He reaches past me to take out a Bud, then readjusts a Carlsberg that has got slightly out of line. ‘You’re as bad as the old dear.’
He pulls the tab and gulps the contents, the beer spilling down his chin and dripping on to his chest. He wipes it round, like it’s some kind of lotion.
‘That’s better!’ He lets out a belch. ‘Beer’s the best thing for a hangover, you know that? What you doing now? I fancy a full English. They do a good one down at Kelley’s. Wash it down with a pint of Murphy’s. Coming?’
‘Nah. I’m on my way to work.’
‘Punting the punters, eh?’
‘I’m the punter, to be strictly accurate.’
‘You said it!’ His laugh ends in a grimace. ‘Piss off, will you? You’re killing me! Literally!’ He doubles up. ‘They really did my ribs over. Jesus Christ! I think I’ve punctured something.’
‘Sure you don’t want to go down the hospital? Check it out?’
‘Fuck that! I hate hospitals. Look what they did to Grandpa.’
‘He had a stroke. There was nothing they could do.’
‘That’s their story. He was OK when he went in. Next thing you know, he can’t find his own arse.’
That’s not how it was, but there’s no point arguing. Rob loved Grandpa and doesn’t like what’s happened to him.
‘If it gets any worse, I’ll get Bryn to strap it for me. It’s only what they’d do, anyway.’
‘He still here?’
‘Yeah, sleeping on the sofa. Couldn’t face the wifey giving him grief. Lads stayed, had a bit of a session. What happened to you? I can’t remember that much . . .’
‘Bryn gave the cabbie money to take me on home.’
I look through the glass door to the living room. A couple of the guys are in there, sleeping on cushions. A faint reek seeps out: beer and cigarette smoke. All the bottles and cans have been removed and the ashtrays emptied. The magazines on the table are in a squared stack, spines facing out, even if they are porn. Even though his life is in chaos, Rob likes things to be neat. When he lived at home, he’d put his toiletries out in a row on the bathroom windowsill; he even had creases in his flannel. Everything had to be just so; he’d go spare if anyone so much as nudged his razor so it lay at a different angle. Martha thinks he’s got OCD – obsessive–compulsive disorder. Mum put it down to wanting to be tidy.
It suited him living with Grandpa. He was the same way. It’s probably something to do with being in the Army. Grandpa’s stuff is still about the place. His clock is on the mantelpiece, stopped on the day he left the house. Rob won’t wind it. Or perhaps he can’t be bothered. Grandpa’s souvenirs are arranged on the shelf above the telly with his books on military history. Rob keeps them dusted and polished, along with some of Gran’s ornaments: a pair of pottery dogs, a shepherd and shepherdess, little china baskets where she used to keep sweets for us. Grandpa only kept a few of her things, enough to remember her by. What Mum didn’t want, he sent to Oxfam. Strange to think that they are all still here and he’s not coming back.
‘I better get going.’
‘Yeah? Say “hi” to Alan for me. Sure you don’t want a beer?’
‘Nah, I’m good.’
‘Please yourself.’
He goes to the fridge to get another can. He looks vulnerable, dressed just in boxer shorts, his nakedness brutally revealing. He’s got a lot of tattooings, varying from unrecognisable squiggles to regimental insignia and more elaborate designs that aren’t finished, as if he got bored halfway through, or came to and left the tattooing parlour, but it’s not the gallery on his arms and chest which attracts the eye. His right leg is quite a bit shorter than the left. He wears an insert in his shoe, so normally it’s almost undetectable, but barefoot it’s obvious. It gives him a rolling gait, the limp very pronounced. He goes back to the counter and lights a cigarette, stretching out the bad leg. It still hurts him. Aches all the time. The crossed rifles, the snipers’ insignia, are high on the thigh. Below that the scars show in silver-white lines, up and down like zips. The muscles are twisted, puckered and pitted where the pins went in, the skin ridged and patched with transplanted flesh. I’ve seen him rage and cry with frustration, but through all the months of treatment he never complained about the pain. He just endured it. He’s brave – no doubt. But the other stuff, the stuff he wants to do but can’t, never will be able to, that’s getting to him now. I want to help, but there’s nothing I can do.
I don’t know what to do about him, or the sadness I’m feeling, so I just say, ‘See you,’ and I go down the hall past Grandpa’s photographs of past wars. Him and his mates perched on tanks and armoured cars, grinning at the camera, arms round each other, fags dangling. The photos are faded; all the young men in them are old now, dead or gaga.
‘Yeah, see you, bro.’
I leave him staring at his laptop, sucking on a can of beer, his other hand moving as he brings the picture back again. He looks vulnerable. Lonely. His life is fucked and he’s going nowhere, living in an old man’s house, surrounded by an old man’s stuff, in a geriatric cul-de-sac. He hasn’t adapted well to civilian life. He hasn’t adapted at all. He’s stopped going to counselling. He refuses to take advantage of any kind of rehabilitation package. ‘Lots of lads got it worse than me,’ that’s what he says.
He spends his time staring at weapon sites, wishing for his old life, wanting to be looking through his Schmidt and Bender standard sight, targeting the bad man, getting the cross hairs on the Taliban. He’s only happy when he’s hanging out with his mates, but there’s a space between him and them now. Soon, they will be leaving, going back to a life he can no longer share.
I turn away quickly. I wouldn’t want him to see me looking. It feels like spying. He wouldn’t want me to see him that way. From down the long hall, he’s just a dark shape receding, sitting motionless, silhouetted against the strong sunlight like a man in a photograph. His face is as familiar as my own in the mirror, but he looks like someone I no longer know.