Authors: Gary McMahon
“Yes.” I stared at her. The blue eyes, the dark blonde hair, the severe, knife-like cheekbones. I’d loved this woman once; loved her with every fucking ounce of me. But that love had mutated into something else, something toxic. And now that toxicity had tainted our daughter, who was the very best of us.
“Please keep me in the loop. We both need to help solve this. Whatever I need to do, I’ll do. Just know that. Be aware of it. I love her so much…” I couldn’t find the words; despite my education, my vocabulary was far too limited to enable me to express the depth and breadth of my feelings.
“I know,” said Holly, and she did; she always did. For a moment I thought she might reach out and take my hand, or at least lean across the tabletop and touch it. I saw her fingers twitch; the back of her hand began to tremble. But then the moment passed; she rode it out, holding back from the vast potential that lurked behind any such contact.
I could tell that she was buckling under the strain. Initially, I’d thought she was using again, but now I wasn’t so sure. The effects of stress can look like those of drug abuse: the starved body, the thinning hair, the self-neglect, that constant look of being on the edge, of being hunted.
I didn’t know, and that was the truth of it. I just didn’t know, and I was in no position to ask—certainly not now, at this minute, when we seemed to be struggling toward some common ground in the battlefield of our lives.
So I left it there, a question not asked; it sat on the table between us, leering, mocking me, and knowing that it was safe for now.
I waited until they left, watching them as they got in the car. Then I watched the car drive away, feeling an acute sense of loss. Like a blade slicing me inside, so deep that only the heart could pinpoint its location.
I got up and went out to my own car. The temperature wasn’t that low, but I felt cold. I was freezing. Sometimes, when I feel like this, it seems like I’ll never get warm again.
FOURTEEN
Underneath
That night I had another bad dream. This time it started in a banal fashion. I was walking around the house in my shorts. The lights were out; moonlight washed through the windows, providing enough light for me to see. I went into the kitchen, filled a glass with tap water, and took a drink. Then I threw the glass down into the sink, breaking it.
I picked up a sliver of broken glass and drew the sharp edge across my forearm, digging in deep and drawing blood. The blood was brilliantly red, like cartoon blood. I watched it pump out of the wound, staining my shorts and spattering on the floor. There was no pain. I felt nothing.
After a short while I started moving again. I walked out of the kitchen and toward the cellar door. The door was open. I walked down the cellar steps. The room looked different; it didn’t look real. It reminded me of a film set: flimsy, insubstantial, as if I could knock down the walls simply by running at them.
A large black cat stalked out of the shadows at the far end of the cellar. It was huge, the size of a horse. The cat stopped, sat down, and looked at me. It wasn’t Magic, that was clear, but it had the look of him, as if it might be related in some way—a sibling?
“Hello,” said the cat. Its voice was cool and measured. I didn’t recognize it per se, but I did feel that the tone or perhaps the timbre of that voice was familiar.
I wasn’t surprised that it spoke. “Hi,” I said. Then I knelt down, made some strange kind of genuflection with my hands at my chest, and bowed down my head.
“You know what you have to do,” said the giant black cat. “What must be done?”
“Yes, I do.” Even in the dream, I had no idea what this meant, but it seemed like the right thing to say. I had faith that it would come to me, that I’d know exactly what to do when the time came.
“She’s special, your daughter. We like her.”
“I know.” I lifted my head and looked at the cat. Its eyes were strange. It took me a while to realize what was wrong with them, that they were human eyes and not the eyes of a feline. They were, in fact, my dead father’s eyes.
Behind the cat, outlined in the darkness, I could see a small group of figures backlit by some kind of gauzy illumination. Small, short, and very thin, they were holding hands. I realized there were children back there, in the shadows. They began to hum a tune. I didn’t recognize what it was, but I felt calmed.
“Do everything you can. Make it all right again.” The cat licked its lips. My father’s eyes stared me down; they stared right through me, to the bone.
“I’ll try my best.”
“I know you will, son.”
When I woke up, I was terrified. I was convinced that the giant cat with my father’s sad eyes was sitting just outside my bedroom door, waiting for me on the landing.
It took me a long time to get out of bed and take a look. It took me even longer to get back to sleep afterward.
FIFTEEN
Signs of Violence
When I got up the following morning, I felt like I hadn’t slept. It was late. I made a nice brunch of coffee, toast, and fried eggs. The food filled me up; the coffee helped me pretend that I was properly awake. I cleaned the house, straightened Jess’s room (that was how I thought of it now: her room, the room in which she belonged).
Magic followed me around the house, slinking along behind me. He never took his eyes off me, but whenever I reached down to run my hand across the fur of his back, he scampered away—just a few feet, then he’d stop and lick his balls.
“Please yourself, bastard cat,” I said.
Later that afternoon I got together my karate gear and left the house. It was to be my first time at the new dojo, and I was excited. I’d never stopped practicing karate, but it had been a long time since I’d attended any official classes. I used to teach a few students myself, back in the day. I didn’t realize I’d missed it until now.
The dojo was located on a tiny industrial estate, in a room above a bedding factory. It took me twenty minutes to drive there, and when I arrived, nothing looked open. I was pretty sure the retail outlets attached to some of the warehouses must be open for business, but there was hardly anyone around. The place looked kind of bleak, as if nobody wanted to go there. That was fine by me.
I parked the car and got out, hauled my big sports bag onto one shoulder as I walked across the car park and toward what I assumed was the entrance. There was a fire door to the right of the main warehouse doors with a sign above it that read “Karate Classes.” I tried the door but it was locked. There was a buzzer with the letter K written beside it in an elaborate Japanese style, so I pressed that. I heard the muted sound of the buzzer through the tatty old intercom. There was a lot of static, and then somebody said, “Yeah. Come on up.” The buzzer sounded on this side of the door; a latch clicked. I pushed the door open and went inside.
The ground-floor area in which I was standing had a couple of battered wooden garden benches positioned along one wall. I ignored them and climbed the narrow stairwell to the first floor. The staircase jinked to the left, and then ended in a small landing. Another fire door with a strengthened glass panel set at eye level barred the way. Somebody had pinned a handwritten notice to the door: it said “Osu,” which is a Japanese word meaning to show respect.
I took off my shoes and held them in one hand, then pushed open the door with my free hand. I took a step forward, made a quick, shallow bow, and then continued inside onto the padded floor. The feel of the mats beneath my feet took me back in time. It made me feel young again, forced me to remember the first time I’d ever stepped into a dojo at the age of eight or nine. I was terrified but exhilarated. After that single hour’s class, taught by a short, fat man who in all honesty didn’t really know his
Mae geri
from his
Mawashi geri
, I was hooked on martial arts for life.
To the left, the big windows looked down on the car park. Against the wall alongside the door I’d used to come in, there was a short counter. A man in a loose-fitting karate
gi
stood behind the counter, writing something down in a notepad. He didn’t look up until I’d walked right up to him and stood on the other side of the counter.
“Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“My name’s Adam Morris. I called several weeks ago about training here, and whoever I spoke to told me to just turn up when there was a lesson on.”
“Yes, that would have been me. I’m Ted Hannah; I run the place.” He bowed from his neck, stuck out a hand, and I shook it.
“Good to meet you.”
“Likewise,” he said. “Although, we almost know each other already.”
I was intrigued. “How’s that?”
“You know Toby Salt, don’t you? Big bloke, had a glass eye, trained out of your dojo in North London.”
I nodded. “God, that takes me back…it must be fifteen years since I saw Toby. How is he?”
Hannah paused, shrugged his broad shoulders. “He was put away for manslaughter about five years ago. He killed a man during a fight over a woman in a pub car park.”
“Ah…right. That sounds exactly like the Toby Salt I knew.”
Hannah laughed. He came around from behind the counter. He was a couple of inches shorter than me, but he had long arms—a good reach—and wide legs. He looked lethal. “Small world, isn’t it? I bet we know half a dozen of the same people.”
“How come he remembered me, then? I mean, Toby and I were hardly best friends. We just trained together for a while.”
“Toby is many things, but he isn’t ungrateful. You helped him through his black belt grading. He loved you for that—when he moved away from London and came here, he trained with us. Wouldn’t shut up about it. You know what Toby’s like…”
I smiled, remembering the good-natured man-mountain who’d come to my classes three times a week. He was keen but not too skilled; more about strength than technique. That was probably what got him locked up—that brute strength, the untamed aggression.
“So, you aren’t teaching anymore?”
“No, I gave that up years ago. To be honest, I haven’t trained properly for a while, either. I worked on pub doors for a while, started using lazy techniques. I’m interested in getting back into the traditional side of things again.”
“Excellent,” said Hannah, slapping me on the shoulder. “Let me show you around.”
He led me across the dojo floor to a door in the opposite wall. He opened the door, bowed, and walked inside. I bowed and followed him.
“This is our humble changing area.” He raised a hand, indicated the hooks on the walls, the benches, the two tiny shower cubicles. “This is the men’s. The door on the other side is the women’s. We’re pretty basic, I’m afraid, but it suits our needs.”
“It’s great,” I said, and I meant it. I’d been out of this environment for too long; I needed to go back to basics, to start afresh. “This could work out well for me, as long as you’re happy with me training here.”
“Couldn’t be happier,” said Hannah. “The class starts in twenty minutes. Students should start drifting in shortly. We have a good cross-section of ages and abilities: a couple of novices, and then everything up to Second Dan. They’re all good people. No egos, no nonsense, just students who want to train hard and learn hard.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said. I set down my bag on one of the benches and started to unzip it. “Do you want me to sign up now, or after the class?”
“Afterward will do,” said Hannah. “See if you like it here first, then we can talk about club fees and everything else.”
He left me to change. I stripped off my clothes and put on my
gi
, enjoying the feel of the cool, crisp material against my skin. I fastened my belt and sat down on the bench, trying to clear my mind. It wasn’t long until the first of my fellow students walked in, and after that the changing room slowly filled with eager voices, anxious chat, and quiet introductions.
After the class I went back out to my car and sat behind the wheel. My body ached. I’d worked hard and enjoyed it. The muscles in my thighs felt like they were throbbing. My fists were like stone; they felt heavy, unstoppable. It had been a good session. I’d had no qualms about signing up for the long run.
I watched the stragglers leave, then a few minutes later Ted Hannah came out, locking the door behind him. He didn’t see me looking at him, so I just sat there and watched as he climbed into a small blue van and drove away.
I felt poised on the verge of big changes, as if I were sitting on the edge of a cliff and waiting to topple off into the cleansing waters below. Everything was changing: new place to live; new place to train; new way of thinking. I could get behind this. I could really make a difference to my life. Perhaps I could even become the kind of father Jess really deserved.
I drove back home cocooned in silence, not even bothering to turn the radio on. As well as being good for me, the training session had brought back some bittersweet memories—of people I’d taught and trained with, things I’d done, risks I’d taken. Darker memories hovered nearby, like the huge black wings of something that was somehow stalking me from all sides. I pushed them away, not willing to examine them. There would be time for that later. I’d avoided thinking about the secret Holly and I shared, the one great, bad thing we did together—the thing that effectively ended our marriage—for such a long time that it was like second nature to do so.