And All The While Knowing

It swings. It crashes. It moves from one extreme to the other, and that’s what tells her that this is real.

This is no play acting approximation. Every encounter brings out some form of violence. The violent palpitations of love that echo the adrenalin fuelled desire to fight. That very morning, she wanted to punch him until he lay senseless on the floor. She wanted to punch him with a fervour that mixed love with hate with lust with frustration, and all the while knowing that she wanted nothing more than to be near him. Mentally, physically, his presence in her life a drug. As good as any chemical she could shake from a bottle. As good as any endorphin her body could produce.

A fist. Thumb on the outside for strength. First principle of bare knuckle fighting. A fist, a clenched hand, offered up in challenge. A hand, clenched and angry, that he could then kiss open.

This makes her mad; the knowledge that his kiss, real or implied, can so easily bring her to submission.

The day has to begin, in all its mundanity of motion. She stands, for as long as she thinks she can get away with, under the jet of water in the shower. She stands and hopes that the water will wash away the anger, will leave her cleansed. She washes her hair, the shampoo lathering strongly in the soft water. It takes an age to rinse away; an age she can’t afford. She rinses and conditions, with the water playing around her body. Her body is clean now, but still vibrates with anger.

Every thought in her mind this morning is a diatribe against him. A string of expletives that feed and frenzy and procreate, producing ever more colourful turns of phrase, fat with insult and spiked with venom. She would write them all down on a square sheet of paper. She would shout them at him down the phone. But she hasn’t an address, and she hasn’t a number any more, and he isn’t here to receive those words in person. All this feeds her anger.

Every thought in her mind says she hates him. An expense of energy and a passion that is uninvited but willingly embraced.

He is sleeping in some bed, in some house, in some suburb across town, while she is showering and hating. He couldn’t even tell her himself that he was back.

She leaves her hair wet while she makes her breakfast. The day is warm and humid already. Her hair dries quickly, but it dries badly. She feels it frizz, and knows that no amount of straightening will help it hold out today, so she pulls it back, she pins it up.

The tv is on as she eats her breakfast, but it doesn’t hold her attention. She has all the news she needs in her head. He is back. Headline news. More important than the mended metatarsal of some footballer. More significant than the death of some terrorist leader in the Middle East.

He is back, and the world begins to spin in the wrong direction. He is back, and it will start up again. The secret meetings. The planning, the organising. This island has been quiet for ten years. The biggest bomb in mainland Britain. His work, her work. The rebirth of a city.

He is back, and the only way she knows is that Terry told her. He has yet to make contact. She shivers, and her hands clench. She remembers the last time. Standing beside the van. She had just fitted the explosive. It had taken months of preparation, working out the exact position, so that the explosion would be clean. The van was to be parked on the busiest street in the city centre. It had to explode cleanly so that the brunt of the damage was borne by buildings, not by people. The explosive had to sit in just the right place.

She was good at what she did, back then; best person for the job. The bosses back home, the others on the team, Franny, Michael, even Terry; they hadn’t wanted a woman, but he had believed she was fit for the task. She paid him back for that belief. She placed the explosive just right.

Terry was the only one to congratulate her afterwards. Terry was the only one who was left behind. The others had already gone; fled the country, back home. No goodbye. No “well done”. She understood. She had been employed to do a job, and she had done it. No congratulation necessary. If she’d fucked up, then she would have heard; but a job well done was congratulation enough, in his book.

His “well done” was what she wanted, though.

Standing there, beside the van, the explosive fitted, he could have said anything to her. He could have, but he didn’t. And afterwards, when the dust had settled, he was gone.

Terry was the one who stayed. Terry, who waits around her edges, never confident enough to ask for what he wants. He waits and is solicitous; a good man, and uncomplicated, but he doesn’t get the fire going in her belly. She can take all the goodness in the world, but if she has no fire in her belly, then what’s the point?

Comfort in the night. Dependability. A guaranteed warm welcome. Is that the point? She thinks she'd be better with a dog.

She leaves the house and walks up to the bus stop. Northenden is quiet this morning. The schools have broken up for the summer, and there are no children dragging their feet along the pavement to the bus stop. The day is already warm, and she regrets the jacket she picked up as she left the house. She doesn’t remember when she became so cautious. She doesn’t remember when she started planning for the worst.

As she passes the old mill site, she wonders how the dig is going. The car park has been taken over and tape marks out squares where the excavations are taking place. There’s nobody there at this hour. The site is deserted.

She crosses the main road and stands at the bus stop. Her phone rings. Woolworths is just opening for business. She looks at her phone and doesn’t recognise the number, so she lets it ring out.

Later, she will be glad. For at least a week, she can be glad, because of the message he leaves on her voicemail. For a week she can listen to the richness of his voice, to those same words that he is speaking now, unheard, while she stands at the bus stop waiting.

The bus arrives, and she hears her phone beep. She sits at the back of the bus and tries to listen to the message over the sound of the engine she is almost sitting on top of. The first rise and fall of that familiar baritone makes her heart stop beating, rise up into her throat, then thud back into life. She no longer wants to punch him. She no longer wants to make a fist, thumb to the outside. The sound of his voice again is kiss enough to unfurl those fingers.

She listens to the instructions. She memorises the place, the time, the date. She knows that she should delete this message as soon as she has heard it, but somehow she presses 2 to save, and the evidence is there. The solace is there too, for her to listen to, each day for a week. The richness of his voice, its cadence. She plays it back now, as she sits on the bus, as it makes its way up Palatine Road, through Withington and on to Oxford Road.

So he is back, and she has her instructions, and his voice, captured on her phone. She gets off the bus and starts to walk to work.

She is halfway from the bus stop to the Town Hall when her phone rings again. She knows the number this time. It is Terry. The conversation confirms the instructions, fills in some of the missing pieces. The saved message is a danger, a weak link in the chain, but it isn’t the whole story. He will have been doing the rounds, collecting his team, doling out individual shapes and symbols that they will have to piece together.

There will be at least six more conversations like this one, if memory serves her right. She is always the final point of contact. She is always the one who sews it all together. She is always the one who blows it all apart.

The job this time surprises her. But passing the dig at the mill this morning gives her an idea. Holes in the ground, ready made; the site will be closed and recorded by the end of the month. Less than a week away.

The job surprises her because her specific talents aren’t needed. And yet, she is still part of the team; still the last point of contact. She only has his message and what Terry has just told her, but it is enough to go on. It is enough to know that her skills won’t be called upon.

She is valuable, though. Her position, her job, the living she earns now; that’s what makes her valuable. She is best placed to find him what he wants. And the hole in the ground that he wants her to find will be filled by someone she has worked with.

She remembers the talk that followed what they did ten years ago. She remembers the conspiracy theories. The bomb was too clean. The destruction of the city’s infrastructure too convenient. The loss of life too small for the size of the bomb.

She was good at what she did, back then. She knew where to place the load.

She remembers the whispers in the corridors, that it was partly an inside job. Someone high up in the council knew what was going to happen. Someone high up arranged for it to happen; went along with the Firm; eased their passage. Back scratching. You destroy the crumbling heart of a crumbling city, no loss of life, massive government investment to rebuild, we give you the publicity. The biggest bomb in mainland Britain; your swansong in the fight.

But he’s back, bringing the fight back with him. And the love and the hate and the lust and frustration, that peaked into anger this morning, that’s back too. All those hints of his return over the preceding weeks. The unconfirmed messages. The clicks on her answering machine; phones being put down before she could ask “Is that you?” The untraceable numbers. The essence of the silence before the click and the buzz of disconnection, as rich as the timbre of his voice left behind in the message on her phone this morning.

The memory swings. It crashes. She can taste what he used to smell like in the air; she feels the tang of it against her tongue.

It’s hot, and the windows in this office don’t open. She drinks water, tries to keep hydrated. She works. She files planning applications. She mentally records which places in Manchester are due to begin building works; which are due to complete soon. She compiles a list of suitable places, and all the time the mill site in Northenden seems the best. A new 13^th century Pale. An Irish creation in England, this time.

The phone doesn’t ring again all morning. Only the message from him and the follow-up from Terry. She has had no instruction to pass on her message to anyone else. She calculates whether this is a job that might only take the three of them, but she doesn’t have all the information, so it can’t be. There has to be someone else involved, but she is not the last point of contact. She won’t be sewing this one together; won’t be blowing it apart.

She is tempted. The number is stored in her missed calls register. The option is there at the end of the saved message to call back the person who left it.

She is tempted to hear his voice in real time, to ask to see him again. She no longer wants to punch him. Hate is calm now, which leaves only love, lust and frustration. She discounts love. Infatuation passes, and ten years is a long time to hold a candle. So lust and frustration, then. The driving forces of temptation.

She is tempted to save the number, so that next time he calls she will know that it is him. She won’t ignore the call next time.

Terry phones after lunch. He asks how her morning has been. She talks about the places that are undergoing work. She mentions how much she has enjoyed the recent excavation work being done at Northenden Mill. She talks about how sad she is that it will soon be over, and the holes filled in again. She hears Terry listening. She hears the change in the way he breathes. She is onto something. She can sense that he feels it too.

She knows the rules, so she doesn’t ask. She knows better than to ask. The lust and the frustration. Her hands forming into fists; thumbs on the inside this time. No fighting fists, these, just childish frustration, the clench of longing. The fist that is formed to be bitten along the knuckle. All the Christmases of her childhood formed into curled fingers and tucked in thumbs.

She bites a knuckle.

She puts down the phone.

In the dreamlike dullness of the afternoon heat, as she files and records and carries out her duties as an officer of the council, her brain whirrs away, trying to calculate the wider nature of this job.

He is back for a reason, and she is not his number two.

A weak link in the chain, she thinks. Someone too close to the truth. Someone who might blow this all apart.

She catches the bus home again in the early evening swelter. She sits by a window, hoping that the breeze will be enough to stop her from melting, or passing out.

She can smell her own sweat on her, mixing with the chemicals in her deodorant, mixing with the chemical-pheromone smell of everyone else on this bus.

It is sharp, and it brings back the memory of how he used to smell. The tang of it.

She gets off the bus and crosses the road. She walks past the car park, on her way home. She glances to her left. She knows the dig team should all have gone by now, but there is someone standing there.

They face each other. He is back. Her hands form into fists, and the lust. The lust. Even in these last few moments, as he raises the gun and she releases her fists, the lust is the thing that dominates.

He looks good; she wants to touch him; and her hands are opening to welcome the conclusion.

She is the weak link in the chain. She is the one who could blow this thing wide open. She has drifted through this day, all the while knowing that this could be the only end.

Her hands are open. His hand is raised. His hand forms a fist around the handle of the gun. His accusatory finger points then curls.

She smiles.

The final point of contact.

© J R Hargreaves June 2006