Close to the Centre, Close to the Sea

By Matthew Beven

Alpine Fellowship 2022 – Writing Prize Winner

Darren was a lucky sort of guy, good to have around. This was a man who had — by his own calculation — a 33.3% hit rate on the scratch cards. He would catch a beer bottle knocked off a step, remember at the last moment that he’d left his bag on the bus, that sort of thing. He was good to have around. The emergency funding came as no surprise. Short term holiday lets sitting vacant, a whole population they didn’t know what to do with. A key in an envelope, the weight of it just right in his breast pocket. He knew enough to not get too excited until it fit perfectly into the door, but it did. Close to the centre, close to the sea. He was always telling folk, stick with him and these things happen.

There was a strict itinerary. Lots to damage. The sort of bleach smell that would cling to your fingernails. The floors were wood panelled, there were mirrors, and there was enough light. The walls were shelved with DVDs and a handful of crime novels. Cleaned and cleared out, just him, some furniture and the films. His bags he had slung down, carefully avoiding the runner carpet in the hallway. He saw no pictures of the living or the dead, no empty frames. He paced, running fingers across shelves, no dust, the stuff of fingerprints, the dust now would be all his. In his chest he felt a lightening of spirit that was alien and euphoric. That night he slept in his clothes, outside of the covers and in his sleeping bag, but only the first night. His body safely horizontal he looked at the tilted screen of his blue-lit phone. Those first nights inside were so good that by all rights they should’ve belonged to someone else.

The mornings were good too, out of his usual body. He’d see some of the lads on steps and in doorways and they’d wave and have a gab over a morning cigarette, sharing intel and whatever gossip they could eek from those samey days. Who’s in business, what’s the drama, who’s alive, who was lifted, and who got away. They were a catty bunch to be honest, but they knew everything. Few beers during the late morning / early PM for an easy springtime buzz. The rapture was bad for the income stream with less footfall. And aye, it would be the case that everyone else ascended to their place in heaven and they would be still stuck here with the polis, who would peacock around with even less of a sense of humour. Darren saw things fall into place in the absence of the world. A social worker or someone came round, showed him some forms on coloured paper which she handed to him gingerly with a blue gloved hand. He even offered her a tea and that, settling into his role. She had the bullish look of a reformed hockey player, and spoke to him through the doorway, refusing the brew. At one point he walked away from her and left her waiting, out of sight. She anxiously called out, Darren, you still there hen? And he popped his head round the door at a low angle, hands on the frame, like he was being dragged into the room by an unseen monster. Didn’t get a laugh, was funny as fuck though.

*

He had to do something about this pain. A cosmic meteor had struck his jaw and left him with something close to hell located in his lower molars. What the fuck had he done to deserve this? Whisky mouthwash was the thing wasn’t it? Or was that for wisdom teeth? He’d wake up from dreams where he was screaming. The social worker had asked if he was registered with a dentist and he laughed — finger on the pulse this one. Methadone was kicking about somewhere. He had resisted enough so far but that would be his last stand, his Alamo, he’d always have that to fall back on. It was a very centering drug in that way. Once you’d had it you could adjust to being in its orbit, keeping tabs on it like a jealous lover, an anxious parent. His mother his father his best friend his child, and easy enough to find. But he wasn’t about to go back on the harder stuff now that things were falling into place for him. And by the sounds of it he would have some money coming his way, about time, mind...

…but nonetheless he would still be leaving the supermarket queue with full pockets and a locked jaw, security fella unbothered, your man there checking his phone for further signs of the apocalypse. He looked up and Darren tried to twist out a constipated looking smile to him as he passed, all the while a screaming of the nerves along his jaw a cruel reminder of who was boss. Fucking teeth man. Today there was a woman doing the same as him, lifting some essentials from the basics section —  her and her lad.  She and Darren would’ve been about the same age. A sort of embarrassment for them both. Poor little fella too, school’s out, same with the dinners, so you did what you can. Wasn’t really a crime to steal from the fat Sainsbury brothers or whoever. She had made the same calculation. People weren’t too inclined to check in a pram he supposed. He needed to get one of them. In the park he chewed painfully down on a hoisin duck wrap, washing down some co-codamol & ibuprofen & aspirin (cocktail hour, right) with a sip of lukewarm shelf beer. Reading material: a discarded Metro, nothing but histrionics. He snapped open the comment section with a retired headmaster’s snort. Dreadful business. One for the overflowing bins. Rats must be confused, turned to cannibalism or whatever. Fearless and sun-warmed he wandered down streets that now curved his way. Thoughts of that lad and his mam. He had time to remember some things, do some thinking. Now a dull thud in his jaw. Over and over. He’d try and explain this as John, ex-army and with the tattoos and mannerisms to prove it, helped him find a good spot to stick a needle. Preferred between the toes. John prattled on as Darren thought of an escape route. Time is 14 hundred hours, John said, the prick, and it was just time for something like the sun god Ra filling Darren’s veins with golden honey and light. He missed having a film to watch. That was his thing you know. Eyes flicker. Aye, John said, mine was the darts. John’s voice further and further below him, on the shore…

 …it was an early evening where the dark was pushed back even further. Cleaning the edge of a plate with hot water and left-over dish soap he could see the shoplifting woman, where else but in the communal back garden, the very garden that was by all rights his to use as well, smoking the end of a cigarette, waving to someone out of sight through the window. It looked a lot like her at least. By the time he had got his shit together there was no sight of her, so he had to use up a smoke out there for the look of it.

*

With credit back on his phone he’d text out some digs like. He was set, the weeks kept on coming and that big old wheel wouldn’t crush him just yet. He debated seeing if any of the old bars had the same staff, see if he could get a bit of work on the door or collecting glasses. On his wanders he spied some left behind baccy out on a windowsill, victim of a late house party no doubt. It was a quick hop over to retrieve and do the honours. He had been to parties. The length of his rolled cigarette saw him half way through to town. Now it was empty of traffic he took the centre of the roads, crossing ley-lines. Blue flowers around the edges of green as memories unfurled. She was in his English class, right? Anya? Not from here but sound. As for the bars there was no joy — each one he passed were boarded up and that — couldn’t have it all. With any luck he’d run into her again. Maybe when he was working, parka zipped up, armband on. That night he watched an old Bond, selecting a DVD and pulling it towards him with one finger, examining the back. A fussy little prince in his castle. He found new places to sit in the flat, under the table, on the floor in front of the sofa. He’d lie flat parallel to the bed. No-one to give him bother.

*

Short the door Alec there’s a draft!

Alec?

*

ASDA this time. She was comparing two soups, dropping one into the bag on the floor. Imagine when her lad was older he could nick them from the lower shelves. It would be a whole operation, plausible deniability and that. The three of them could have an Oceans 11 crew going on. He lost sight of her. Another time, maybe.

It was warm enough to sit out, so he sank an ale or two in the park whilst testing his memory of her face. There was no-one about and night fell quickly on his plans. He sent himself on an earlier than expected mission home. A fox silently followed him, stopped when he stopped, looked at him the way he looked back. Looked a bit mangled. The pain in his jaw was getting easier. He had just been on the ales and some choice painkillers, but it was still undeniable that all was a message, he was the decoder, and the world was readable and forever possible.

The flat still had some detergent, thank you to that tenant. Not wanting to risk breaking the washing machine he put his clothes with the powder in the bath, and washed his jumper, t-shirts, trousers by hand, himself naked but for his boxers and the steam from the hot water feeling like Velcro sliding against his lungs. Julia would be saying don’t you just love Prince, and Richard would say more than life itself. At a squint it was a bubble bath.

With his clothes drying, heating on full blast and Ibiza Hits 2003 on max volume in the CD player, he loaded up The Sims on the computer in the box room and begin again working to get that big house on the hill. The pain was getting easier. Time was going backward, he was ageing. His birthday was the seventh of May and he knew he’d make this one, beautiful 29, neither here nor there. There was knocking on the floor or roof to the rhythm of the pulse in his neck. Over as soon as it began. Had to be the upstairs flat, he was on the ground floor. This world would kill him, this world would be nothing without him.

*

In the charity shop he stopped in to see if anything took his fancy, music and film wise, as whilst there were undoubted bangers on the Clubland CDs he wasn’t made of stone, a bit of variety wouldn’t hurt. From around 2017 onward there was a blank spot, admittedly. Had it been that bad for that long? Well no, not all bad like. Some mates, some times of note. Of all the faces he saw in that long timeless bardo there was that scouse fella he would see the most, shared a similar stint at her majesty’s discretion as him, convinced that a war with Russia was around the corner. He was gagging for it, because wars meant conscription and that meant a place to sleep and fresh clothes and a salary guaranteed. They still have to pay you! They would still have to pay you. He said he was on a mission to god and it was all explained in his tattoos. You’d ask about this mission sent down from the heavens and he’d correct you, it wasn’t from him, it was to him. Nice one mate, nice one. It was good to have a purpose. He would be dead, Darren would keep on going.

There was a version of this afternoon, he thought, where he would meet the shoplifting woman. She would break his trip offof the step down. Easy, she would say. Hands on his shoulders, a comfort that could have brought him to tears. There would be a glimmer of something in her eyes as he would go about his apologies, and she wouldn’t hurry herself on. She would take in his state and he would worry that his clothes had a dampish smell. He would turn it around with a slightly day-drunk bravado that he could slip into like muscle memory. He would take his time in rolling a smoke for her, under an archway to shield from the wind. Just think if he hadn’t passed that windowsill that day he wouldn’t have had the chance to stall her going about her day. Her handprints forever on his shoulders. An itinerary of touch. The time before that would’ve been the barbers on his head, a guy who spoke to his phone screen and filmed his fade, the time before that Jeanine with the short hair. Times in between that would’ve been glances across his hand. She would have a Polish accent and be called Agnes. She would smoke like cameras deserved to be on her, held eye contact, she would have time for Darren, for whatever reason. A bit about home, a bit about the ongoing situation, a bit about family. He would have the presence of mind to not say that he had seen her before, but they would know that they knew each other, at least by sight. They would agree to go for a drink, he had all the time in the world with a place to lay his head. Like everyone she would ask if he had spent any time inside, and aye, he had, until he hadn’t. And they’d share numbers, agree to meet again. Maybe at the flat there’d be a notice through the door. At the beach that night he’d piss directly into the ocean and walk back to the pier with his head up, staring at the stars that wouldn’t move for him.

About the author:

Matthew Beven

Matthew is a writer and NHS worker based in Scotland. His work has previously appeared in Protean Magazine.