Rhinoceros 22
Lines of rain lashed dramatically against the window as though on a film set. Great bruised clouds, like lost planets, had descended on Sheffield and rolled and thundered through the valleys, sending people scattering for shelter. Occasionally a flash of white light lit up Alan's clutter and furniture with stark black edges.
Alan sat in his favourite armchair in his flat, though not as relaxed as he would normally have been. Every now and then he would painfully ease his aching body into a relatively upright position and stumble around the flat, perhaps to fix up a snack, or fill the kettle, or check the door was locked, maybe see that the phone is on charge. Sometimes he would just stare out of the window at the gobs of dirty rain being spat onto the city, great gusts of bellowing wind collecting up litter and leaves and sending them into rivers and across the lee of roads and driveways.
Of course, he told himself, he should phone the police right now, with an urgency that this case demanded. That much was given. He could list the crimes committed extensively, although some of them were crimes of morality, or dignity, not yet on the statute books.
He couldn’t remember the passage of time and events after he fainted in Ryon’s sitting room. For faint is very much what he did. Not very dignified, Alan sighed to himself, but there it is. He was an ordinary mortal. Very ordinary. All he knew, beyond blacking out, was that he awoke in a barely furnished house that must have been occasionally occupied, judging by the scattered items on the floor: cigarette papers, a lighter, some foil, various pieces of torn card. These were mingled with rat droppings on a carpet of unconvincing pattern, melted to hard lumps of brown plastic in places. None of this Alan had much strength to quantify.
He neither saw nor heard anyone, as though people knew to keep away, and after he had dozed for a while, he slowly and painfully managed to struggle to his knees – one of which felt shattered – and then to his feet. In his hand, all along, he had held on to that small, hard object, the one which had implanted itself so painfully into his knee. It was a while before he could will his hands to open, like a reluctant flower, and reveal the contents, before he could focus his eyes and arrange his thoughts, before the object made any kind of sense and lit up the synapses in his tired brain, before realisation followed recognition and he knew exactly what he had picked up from the filthy carpet of Ryon’s sitting room.
And then, after staring at it for a while and putting together the fragments of the story – his story, Alan had eased himself upright, a biped once more; he then he simply walked, in a fashion, from the house.
He did this by holding gingerly onto the stained walls of each room in turn, the bare hallway being his destination, a seemingly great distance from the back room he had been placed (or dumped) in. And then he tried the front door. It rattled open and a gloomy day presented itself to his senses. He couldn’t tell what time it was, and there were no people about in the street. The house was similar to Ryon’s, the street possibly familiar.
So with a supreme but necessary effort of will, reeking of urine, dishevelled, Alan, like a recovering drunk, made his way randomly to the left, and with the aid of fences and lamp posts he gradually found his bearings.
A few people saw him on his travels, but studiedly ignored him, or took a wide berth around him. No-one tried to help.
After a while – perhaps half an hour – Alan found his car and discovered that he still had his keys in his pocket. His car was parked on Ryon’s street, but the houses, including Ryon’s, were blank, unfathomable. He climbed into his car and sat there for a long time, gazing at the dark and pinched facades of the houses, all of them willing him to go away. His thoughts were hazy, more in the realm of uneasy bemusement: here he was, in an unplanned time and place, the culmination of calamitous events. But he couldn’t go back and find the point where he went wrong. He could only make small, minimal movements in his car and go from here.
And through a series of forgettable adventures he found his way home, life repeating itself, a groundhog day of pain and suffering. He took the back roads, and pulled up more than once as though he needed to catch his breath. At the block of flats he parked by the shrub he had snapped in two the last time and made the Herculean effort to ascend the heights to his domicile. It reminded him of the effort it took for him to circumnavigate Bad Step in the Cullins on Skye one badly mistimed, midge-filled August a few years ago. He remembered in particular the roiling sea below him, trying to pluck him from the sheer slab of rock to which he clung, his backpack pulling him outwards, an ungainly insect. That’s how his life appeared right now.
Once his door was safely locked, he found his way into a bath, into clean clothes, and into his armchair, toast and coffee at his side, going cold. And then, for the first time in many hours, it seemed he could breathe, as though he had come up for air.
Now he paced. He had an old walking stick he had acquired somewhere, and he used this to get about. The clump of the stick on his carpet was somehow comforting, an indication that he was still acting rationally.
It was sometime later that a rattle of the door startled him, and he shivered even though he’d turned the heating up. He realised that he was in shock – he’d be able to tell the police now that he was post-traumatic, or whatever it was – and that he was afraid. This fear, imperceptible at first, could now be made manifest by the sound of his door; it suggested that the nightmarish events of his life could still find him at home and pummel him back into agony.
But it was just the post. The flats he lived in were unusual, and unpopular with the postal service, in that letters were delivered to doors. Parcels, though, were crossly dumped on an old table in the entrance hall. There were four letters. Two could be discounted immediately, unless his life was about to change against all the odds courtesy of the Reader’s Digest, one was from his pension company, and the other was handwritten, the writing somehow familiar. He stared at it for some time before propping up his stick and ripping it open.
Dear Mr Scope
I hope there no hard feelings. Things don’t always go to plan, I suppose. But look on the bright side, you got your old job back, and that bastard Head has gone. Wish I’d been around to see it all, but I’m not staying where I’m not welcome.
You know I’d never have done it, don’t you? They just like to put the shits up people, it’s what they enjoy. Like I’d told you before, Gary used to put knives to me, see if I was scared. They like the fear, you see, they get off on it. Proper psychos.
I knew the police wouldn’t do nothing. They never do until it’s too late. Too fat to get out of their cars, most of them. They started hassling me and my mum, saying they needed more info, then I had another visit from the Mitchelsons. Good job you weren’t there for that one, they went proper mental this time. Telly smashed in, lamped me a few times, but I didn’t care. They were just making a point. But still, I’m not their fucking puppet whatever they think. They started making demands again. Worse than the pigs. That’s when I decided to get out.
It’s alright here, I always liked the seaside, from when I went to Skegness once on a trip the holiday club organised. Spent all day on the beach, didn’t want to leave. Threw a tantrum when we had to get in the coach, took three of them to get me in. Never went again.
I’m living rough, but I’ve found a few mates, and we’ve started kipping in an old house. You can see the sea from upstairs, it’s brilliant. When I’m sorted better you can visit. If you want to, that is.
It’s different for you. For me it’s survival. I do whatever I have to do to survive. Anyway, I don’t do sorrys as a rule, so this is a bit of a first. You should thank mum, by the way. She went to get help when you fainted.
Get a new jacket.
Ryon
The rain continued to teem down windows and make gurgling sounds through broken gutters. Alan took the letter back to his armchair and winced as he creaked back into it, the letter still clasped in his hand.
His first thought was about the apology. Ryon didn’t actually apologise, Alan noticed. Unless the whole letter was an apology. Which, on reflection, it sort of was. But it wasn’t a confessional Ryon, no stories, just, ‘I’ve gone, but I’m not saying where.’ Besides. It was just too much. Alan had tasted the bitterness of new experiences in too short a time. Now he needed to process and calibrate. No address to reply to. And anyway, he wouldn’t want to reply, he had nothing more to say to Ryon. Or indeed Doreen. What did she do? Got some friends to dump his lifeless form in some drugs den? Or did the Mitchelsons themselves do it? No, they will have cleared off. Doreen just wanted him out of the house. You can see the sea from upstairs, it’s brilliant. During that last terrible visit to Ryon’s Alan finally saw into the heart of his amorality. Ryon was too far gone, evolved into a mass of blubber and unconcern by the sheer weight of Darwinian survival. He had been thwarted for too long, Alan felt, hardened like a stale loaf. Alan’s father used to deliver bread, before progressing onto pine furniture, and he once said that you could temporarily revitalise a loaf just before delivery to the shops by punching it in its bag, aerating it for a few minutes. And that was Ryon, too. That’s how he took a kicking from the Mitchelsons so philosohpically, as occasional sharp reminders that he was alive. So sleeping rough would be a doddle. Alan would have been terrified of course, constantly alert to the risk of being mugged, or forgotten, or even left to die. For Ryon it just was another adventure, a change and, in a way, not a change. Alan saw how their lives had once overlapped, but no more. They didn’t need to cross over any more. The Venn diagram of their lives had ripped itself apart in Ryon’s front room. And he took one last look at the letter and then purposefully screwed it up. Then he unscrewed it and ripped it up, finally dropping the pieces, like dead blossom, into the bin.
