He would replay the next few minutes of his life over and over again. They would be the dividing line that cleaved his existence into two separate parts. He’d see the dark shadows of the tall trees on the road and the light that flashed across his windscreen whenever he emerged from them. He’d see the yellow car veering suddenly and the driver’s surprised and then angry face as she shouted at him. He’d have a vague sense that he was in the wrong. He’d see the red kite looking down from the telegraph wire and the old couple leaning on each other as they ambled along the pavement towards the supermarket. He’d remember passing the bus stop and the small crowd huddled within it, and the two boys on bikes who zipped in front of him and were gone before he’d even properly seen them. He noticed none of these things at the time, but each subsequent recollection would come back fuller. He’d remember all his thoughts crowding into his head at once, a single baying, swelling mob shoving out from the inside, each fighting for his attention and each just adding to the mayhem. He’d remember approaching the corner a little too quickly and how the steering wheel had wrenched in his hands and the instantaneous realisation that something bad was happening. He would never be able to recall exactly what happened next, although it would be told to him, but he would remember sitting in his car a split-second later knowing that the bad thing that was happening had already happened.
Beth didn’t so much see the car that hit the pushchair as feel it. One moment she was striding along the pavement, opposite the bus stop, contemplating – what had she been contemplating? She’d never know – and the next a great jarring force was shuddering up her forearms, ripping the plastic handles out of her grasp and sending her spinning sideways and backwards, like one of those wooden tops she used to play with when she had been Ruby’s age. But even before she landed, even before this sudden violent energy had passed through her and dumped her down on her backside away from the road, she had registered the horror of what was coming. It wasn’t just the horror of what she’d see next, although that would be horrific enough, but, as well, it was the horror of knowing that this had just started, had only just started, and that from this moment on it would only grow more awful, more ghastly and obscene, and that she would never be released from its torment.
The car was not moving. Ben could hear nothing apart from a tap, tap, tap which was coming from inside the car. He looked up and saw the plastic trainer swinging back and forth against the windscreen. He wondered how the windscreen had been cracked. Directly in front of the car was a wire mesh fence held up by cement pillars and on the other side of that was a brick building which he knew was the electric substation. He saw that the front of his car had wrapped around one of the cement pillars and smoke was drifting up through the bent metal. He reached up and stilled the plastic trainer. As he did so he saw in the rear-view mirror a man running across the road. Behind him people had stopped walking. Some were looking in his direction. Most were looking at something else. A dog strained against a leash. A woman put down her shopping and put her hands over the eyes of a young boy. A second person ran past. Ben opened the car door to get out but a weight against his legs pinned him in place. He glanced down and saw that the steering-wheel column was pressing against him. He reached down and slid his seat back on the rollers and as he did so the key in the ignition was dislodged from the hole it had made in his right knee. As he moved backwards a torn thread mixed with something else stretched between the two points until he broke it with his hand. He realised a man was leaning down saying something to him. His mouth was moving very fast. He seemed agitated. His tie was tucked into his belt. After a minute the man disappeared again and Ben got out of the car to follow him. His legs wouldn’t hold his weight and he collapsed to the ground. Through the silence he heard a sharp snapping sound but he felt nothing. Using the open door to support his weight he climbed to his feet again. People were still standing on the opposite side of the road, only there were more of them now. The woman who held her hands over the boy’s eyes was crying. No one was looking at him anymore. He followed their eyes and saw a mangled pushchair lying on its side, half in the gutter and half on the pavement. A thick bundle of blankets had been thrown from it. Two men were standing nearby. They were on their phones but both were looking down at a woman who was crouched over the bundle. She was bent so low that her brown hair hung on the ground. One of the men put his phone away and touched her on the shoulder. The other man said something to him and he stepped back again. Eventually the woman sat back on the kerb and looked up at the sky. Ben had never seen such an expression on a person’s face before. She cradled the thick bundle in her arms, rocking it from side to side. Ben looked closer. From beneath the blankets, almost lost in the creases of her coat and almost too shocking for the eye to accept, two small stockinged feet flopped loosely in the cold air.
It was 4.27pm. Tim, forty miles away, stopped working and sat at his desk, doing nothing at all. He picked up his phone and stared at the blank display. It started to ring. He answered it and then listened, saying very little. Afterwards, he stood up and walked into his manager’s office. His back was turned to everyone else but through the glass partition they saw his manager’s face go white. A moment later he was leading Tim quickly back through the office. His hand, awkwardly, because he had never been a tactile person, was around Tim’s shoulder. Something about his manner, and the expression on Tim’s face – or the complete lack of expression – made everyone who was there stop what they were doing and watch. At the door hushed words were quickly exchanged and then Tim nodded and left. His colleagues were still staring when his manager returned to his office and put his head in his hands on the desk. He appeared to be crying.
PART 2
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Benjamin Tate had lived in the same flat for twenty years. It had two front doors. The first was hidden halfway down a small alley that ran between two houses and was invisible from the road. People had lived on that street for years, walked up and down it every morning and evening and never known of its existence. It was made of frosted glass and opened onto a flight of stairs that led up to a second door, a red one, wooden. The number four had lost a nail and slipped to an angle.
‘Nice and quiet,’ the estate agent had said, pushing it open with a flat hand that held the number in place until he was inside. ‘You won’t be disturbed here.’ He was right in one sense of the word.
Now, after so long, Benjamin Tate knew it all so well, the spaces, the distances between the walls, the patches of floor that caught the sun – sometimes in summer, or on those bright winter days, he’d spend hours curled up on the carpet, following the warm yellow square as it moved gradually across the room. There were other times, particularly at weekends, when he would say something just to break the silence. Often then his own voice would startle him, sound alien, intrusive, like a disturbance. He’d feel the things around him cast a disdainful, reproving eye and turn away. Chastised, he would fall silent again and more hours would pass.
On this Tuesday morning he lingered in bed, taking pleasure in the softness of the mattress and the crisp, crack-and-whip feel of the sheets. Eventually he roused himself and slipped into the slippers and dressing gown that had been placed neatly on the stool the previous night. The kitchen was more a corridor, with cupboards leaning in from both sides and a small sink sulking at the end of it. The hot tap was stiff, had been stiff for years. It meant the water didn’t come out at all and then suddenly it would gush, like a keeper of secrets finally letting go. Beside the sink the kettle had been filled to a finger’s width above the minimum, and the coffee had already been scooped into the mug.
He took his drink into the living room. The buttons on the only chair stared cross-eyed at the opposite wall. He straightened one of its cushions and went to the window. Just on the other side of the glass the branches of an ancient tree were scratching to be let in. He liked the tree. He might have even called it his best friend. When he looked at it sometimes, he felt like it was looking back at him, especially on gloomy days, when its shadows and shapes turned into things other than themselves. He could see its eyes, dark knots regarding him silently from within a gnarled face. People spoke of the tree of wisdom, the sage, the sentient thing that watches through the ages. Over the years he’d seen it change and change back so many times, unveiling new versions of itself with the seasons, yet it was always the same thing. He respected that. A bird opened its wide wings. It flapped on its branch and then flashed black across the pale sky and was gone. Benjamin Tate sighed. He reached forward and fingered a date into the mist that had settled on the window, staring at it until it leaked over itself and disappeared. If only it could have really been like that. The big things had ended that day. He took pleasure in the small things now because the big things that had been planned for him, whatever they might have been, had ended.
Normally he would close his front door between 8.34am and 8.36am and that would afford him all the time he needed. There were mornings, strictly rationed, when he would adjust his schedule by twenty minutes. It was no small thing for Benjamin Tate, this breaking from routine, but when it was called for he would walk slowly to the café, slow enough to savour each of the 749 steps. This morning was such a morning. He had put on his black tie for the occasion. He owned a blue tie as well but the black tie was slimmer, more confident, a sartorial arch of the eyebrow, and in front of the mirror, at the third attempt, he’d got the length of it just so. Beneath the tie he wore the newest of his four blue shirts and a jacket that was also blue. Benjamin Tate had settled on his colours many years ago. In a rare moment of élan he had parted his hair the other way, and when he caught sight of himself in the Perspex of the bus stop he was, within his own limits, not cripplingly discouraged.
Although – and this nagged like a loose scab catching on his clothing – the brown shoes. He wondered what he’d been thinking. He had black ones. They had been sitting there waiting for him, right next to the brown pair, squared off, shining, ready for service. He’d even reached for them. But then what? It made no sense. Something had made his hand sweep past them and the next thing he knew his fingers and thumbs had clasped the heels of the brown ones and now here he was, halfway down the road already. He considered turning back. The colours didn’t work together, they would undermine him. But then he came upon the solution, genius in its simplicity, like a swimmer might come upon a warm patch in cold water; he need simply stand closer to the counter and she’d be none the wiser.
His pace quickened again. This, for Benjamin Tate, could be considered exuberance. He started humming. He decided Louis Armstrong was right, it was a wonderful world, and there were trees of green. He scanned the gardens for red roses. A cat appraised him from a low wall. Benjamin Tate squatted down and put his hand out. Is there any creature on this earth more capable of conveying contempt than the cat? He’d read somewhere that they spend much of their time plotting to overthrow their owners. Only size held them back. The cat noticed him with languid indifference, stood up, stretched out its lithe body and then settled back down, sphinx-like, looking the other way. With a derisive swish of its tail, Benjamin Tate was dismissed.
He continued on his way. He felt the morning on his cheeks, took covert delight in the sun and moon appearing together in the same clear sky; it was a bright new day and he resolved to be bright and new as well.
There was nothing special about the café. It was fitted out with three flimsy metal tables, one of which wobbled over a scrap of paper bent double beneath a leg. A chalkboard on the wall advertised full breakfasts, home-made lasagne and cottage pie, while a heater in name only cowered in the far corner. A draught blew whatever warmth it produced back in on itself. Benjamin Tate pushed open the door and his brown shoes propelled him forward into the room. Deliberately casual is perhaps the phrase; lips pursed as if he was whistling, but he wasn’t; eyebrows knotted as if he was preoccupied, but he wasn’t; a hand nonchalantly in his pocket, but that hand was clammy.
He gazed up at the day’s menu on the opposite wall. It never changed. Near the window two women were slopping up runny eggs and spearing bits of sausage. A blue-collar worker sat at the broken table. Whatever had been there before him was seeping into his newspaper. The third table was empty.
Finally, Benjamin Tate allowed himself a glance towards the counter. Clare was looking directly at him. She smiled a hello and instantly he looked away. He started to rummage in his pocket for something he knew wasn’t there. He looked at the two women who were both talking now. He looked back up at the menu that never changed.
Three boys burst in behind him. They were loud and immediately they filled the room with their loudness. They brushed past him and strode towards the counter. They didn’t acknowledge Clare directly. Instead, in their loud, breaking voices they told each other what they wanted and how they wanted it and then continued talking amongst themselves while they waited for it to arrive. Then they were gone and Benjamin Tate was again standing alone on the sticky floor of the café.
Clare’s hair on this Tuesday morning was dark red. It hadn’t always been red. It had been black, blue-black, deep purple, sandy brown. It was down to her shoulders and that day she had tied it up in a high ponytail that exposed her ears and neck. There were wisps hanging lightly against her skin.
‘Sorry,’ she said to him, rolling her eyes. ‘Boys will be boys.’
He began walking towards the counter. ‘Yes, the boys,’ he replied, pointlessly.
She laughed. ‘So, what can I get you? Coffee, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
And that’s all it was. His special treat. Her fingertips stopped short of touching his palm when she gave him his change – or perhaps he dropped his hand a notch to avoid contact – and then he was heading briskly out the door. He walked a short distance until he knew he was out of sight and then leaned against a wall. He looked at the polystyrene cup. He wasn’t even thirsty. He thought of the date on the glass and sighed deeply, realising how tired he felt. He wondered if everyone found it such hard work being themselves or if it was just hard work being Benjamin Tate.
He looked at his watch. It was 8.37am. He brushed his hair back the other way and started walking again. He didn’t want to be late.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Benjamin Tate had worked at the same place for twenty years. It was a vast white building that dominated its block. Beneath it a basement had been hollowed out and buried within that basement were the medical records, a rolling history of health and ill-health, of everybody who’d lived, and was still living, in the district. The notes had been kept, meticulously, mercilessly, by the doctors who practised in the offices upstairs. Some worked there still, some had moved away, many were themselves now names on a card.
They’d been filed alphabetically, these loose, faded-by-time cards, in cumbersome metal filing cabinets with sliding drawers that clanged and clattered along their rollers. Years of heavy-handedness had bent many of their rails out of shape. Not all the drawers closed fully now; some, more than some, twisted in at odd angles and wedged inches short of flush. The cabinets themselves were stacked three and four high in long unstable rows that towered to the ceiling and barricaded the windows.
Benjamin Tate’s task, and it had been his task for twenty years, was to collect these cards and turn the scribbles of blue and red and black ink into clear, chronological data entries. He ferreted along the dim alleyways, banging his shins on the sharp edges lurking in the shadows. He didn’t stop to consider how many cards he’d processed, or how many still remained. Too many. And with every birth, one more still. He could remember his first. Carmichael. Dementia. And something else. Angina. Seventy-six years old. A widower. Since then he had learned all about human frailty. He had transcribed every malady and misfortune that can strike at the human body and mind. He had not missed a day. The three desks that sat alongside his, tucked into a tight alcove and weakly lit from above by one of those half-hearted, energy-saving lightbulbs, had been at various times occupied and unoccupied. The men and women who were there on his first day had long since drifted away. Their replacements too had been replaced many times over. Benjamin Tate, though, he’d survived – was that the word? It probably was.
On this Tuesday morning Benjamin Tate arrived at work at 8.56am. His brown shoes echoed in the stairwell as he descended. At 8.58am he sat down at his desk. He was the first to arrive. He switched on his monitor and while it whirred into life he checked to make sure all the items on his desk were still squarely aligned. When he was satisfied he picked up the batch of cards that had been correctly placed at a right angle to the keyboard the previous evening. Douglas, K. Obesity. High blood pressure. Diabetes. Douglas was forty-three. Carmichael to Douglas. Twenty years of life. He began tapping at the keys.
Over time his day had been divided into four subsections. From 9 to 11am was the first of them and it was all about finding a steady pace. He’d been a runner once and understood about rhythm and not going out too hard, too early. So, the first few hours were key to establishing an easy forward momentum, keeping something in reserve to make sure his race wasn’t run by mid-afternoon.
It would be tempting, once he’d found his stride, to put in a bit of a spurt before lunchtime, to hit 11am and begin a gradual wind-up. But session two required discipline, keeping the brakes on. There’s always a sense that the faster you work the quicker you finish, but he’d learned, down there in the basement, doing what he did, that work was a continuous thing. One card, ten or one hundred, the end would always remain out of sight, round one more bend. And he’d seen it before many times, those fresh faces, new blood that had trickled down through the floorboards to puddle up in the basement beside Benjamin Tate, ticking along at the beginning, all buzz and bluster, but then winding down like an old clock as the scale of the task dawned on them. ‘How long did you say you’d been here? How long?’ They’d stare at him in wonder, and that would be the moment, a stark, terrifying vision of the destination awaiting them. Many would be gone within the week.
So, Benjamin Tate was in no rush. One o’clock would come and go, the afternoon would start and session three, the dead time between 2pm and 4pm, when he was a long way from both the start and finish, would take its course. If he were to have a weak moment during the day it would occur here, when his powers of endurance might be examined. It was sometimes as simple as a lull, as though a parachute had suddenly opened behind him and was slowing everything down, but sometimes it was more than that, more like a strained tension, probably only fatigue-induced, but it had a physical quality and they would all feel it, like someone with a nasty past they all knew about had entered the room and was loitering just behind them. It would though, it always did, dissipate as 5pm approached and Benjamin Tate might permit himself a downhill run to the line, letting his step quicken and his hands tap at the keyboard with a touch more zing.
But this Tuesday morning was different, as he expected it to be, and by 9.16am Benjamin Tate was still holding the same card he’d picked up when he’d first sat down. He read it again. Douglas. Obesity. High blood pressure. Diabetes. Forty-three. Older than he was. There were dates down the side. If he turned the card over he’d know if Douglas was dead or alive. Two of the three other desks had been filled by now. He’d not noticed it happen. Where had these people come from, these fellow moles, not just the two that sat beside him now, but the dozens that, at one time or another, had sat beside him? Some had been older than him, many had been much younger. How and why had they ended up there? What could have happened to send them scurrying out of the light? Perhaps they too had… He stopped the thought before it developed. Obesity. High blood pressure. There was a barely legible note about exercise and diet. Benjamin Tate could just make out the word yeast. He looked back at the screen and then rubbed his eyes and started at the top again. Diabetes. 9.36am. Suddenly Benjamin Tate tore a strip off part of the card and stuck it over the date that had been glaring at him from the corner of the screen.
‘Everything okay there, buddy?’ Pete asked. Pete sat at the desk beside his. ‘It’s too early to be clock-watching, you know. And anyway, you’ve still got that bastard up there.’
He pointed up at the clock on the wall, then got up and disappeared behind the filing cabinets. When he returned he was carrying a stepladder under his arm. He climbed up and took the clock down. ‘How’s that, buddy? Better?’
