The Missing Marriage

‘He’s gone missing.’

‘Bryan?’

‘Bryan. The police are looking for him.’

Bobby turned back to the window, distracted by a woman next door who looked vaguely familiar, wheeling her bin out onto the pavement. The bin had the number eight painted on it, in white. Bobby wondered about the number and the woman, who was staring at him and who looked like she had a freshly pruned rose bush up her arse.

Laughing quietly to himself, he waved, but she didn’t wave back.

In fact, she almost ran back up the garden to her front door.

Still laughing, Bobby mumbled, ‘That’s it – piss off back to where you came from.’ Then, turning away from the window and seeing a man standing in the room behind him, smoking – who he was sure hadn’t been standing there earlier – he said again, ‘Can I have one?’

‘Give over.’ Jamie threw the cigarette into the fireplace’s empty grate.

Bobby followed its course through the air and into the grate, waiting.

When the man left the room, he called out, ‘Where are you going? I’m hungry.’

He followed him out into the hallway, desperately trying to think of a way to make him stay, suddenly terrified at the thought of being left alone. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said again.

Jamie paused at the front door, leaning back against the wall and accidentally turning the light switch on. He seemed preoccupied – bored, even.

Bobby was fiddling with the zip on his Texaco anorak, wondering where the door in front of him led to.

‘You already ate,’ Jamie said. ‘When?’

‘Just now. Can’t you smell it still?’

Looking around him, Bobby gave the air a quick sniff. ‘What did I eat?’

‘Sunday roast – the full works . . . beef . . . yorkshires . . . roast potatoes.’ Jamie belched. ‘Excuse me.’

‘My stomach feels tight.’

‘Cause you stuffed yourself silly, that’s why.’

‘But, I’m still hungry.’ Bobby was starting to panic again now. ‘Is it Sunday?’

Jamie pulled open the front door and Bobby saw the crescent of bungalows curving round the green. In the centre of the green there was a yellow bin, lying on its side. It looked like somebody had tried to set fire to it. Tilting his head slightly, which hurt, he could just make out the words Wansbeck Council.

‘The man who was here,’ he called out, suddenly, ‘he was Laviolette’s boy. That’s who he was,’ Bobby declared, his voice triumphant.

Jamie walked back towards him. ‘I don’t know what you’re sounding so pleased about. I don’t know how you can even bear to say that man’s name.’

‘I used to sing with Laviolette in the colliery choir – the Ashington Male Voice Choir. We went to Germany together with the choir.’

‘And what else, dad? What else did you do? You don’t even remember, do you?’

Jamie slammed him hard against the wall – the crown of his head catching the bottom of the electric meter.

Bobby, slumped against the wall, shook his head.

‘Mum. D’you remember her?’

Bobby fought hard to catch at something flitting round inside his head; he shut his eyes and pushed his hand out to take hold of the flower proffered. ‘Red carnations,’ he gasped. ‘The women were in the pit yard, waiting for us. They gave us flowers – carnations for heroes – to take the hurt out of having to go back after the Strike.’ He shook his head sadly, the clarity and sharpness of the women’s faces he’d summoned, already fading. ‘But there were no heroes by then – everything was broken.’

Jamie shook his head in disbelief. ‘Yeah, everything was broken.’

‘I looked for her,’ Bobby insisted suddenly, ‘among the women with flowers, but she wasn’t there. She’d already gone by then, hadn’t she?’ he appealed softly to Jamie, his eyes wet.

‘Oh, she’d gone a long time before that only you were too busy with the bloody Strike to see.’

‘She was tired – thirty-one pounds a week minus the fifteen the Government took off her saying we got paid by the Union, only we didn’t. What does that make?’ Before Jamie had time to work it out, Bobby said, ‘Sixteen pounds a week. Sixteen pounds a week makes you tired – it would make anyone tired.’

‘How the fuck d’you remember that – sixteen pounds a week – and not remember Roger Laviolette?’

‘Roger Laviolette,’ Bobby echoed happily. ‘I used to sing with –’

‘Yes, you used to sing with him,’ Jamie yelled into his face, holding onto him by his anorak, which smelt terrible up close, ‘and how is it that you remember the singing, but you don’t remember the killing?’

‘I never killed anyone,’ Bobby said, frightened.

‘Yes you did. You killed Roger Laviolette because of mum and him.’

‘Wait – where are you going?’

But Jamie was no longer there.

There was washing hanging across the balconies of the flats above the shops and Bobby stared for a moment at a large bedspread with a picture of a leopard on it, before walking, barefoot, out the front door and down the overgrown garden path to the gate as a white van turned the corner out of Armstrong Crescent.

He was waiting for somebody, he was sure, but he was only sure for a few moments. Then he forgot who it was he thought he was waiting for.

Then he forgot he’d even been waiting, and no longer knew what he was doing standing barefoot at the end of the path, leaning against the gate – so he let himself out and crossed the street onto the green opposite, still curious about the yellow bin.

After contemplating it for a while, he looked about him trying to work out not so much where he was going, but where he’d come from. Neither the bungalows in front of him nor the block of flats behind signified anything much. He only knew that his feet were cold and that the left foot hurt. Looking down, he saw that his feet were bare and that the one on the left was badly bruised.

The front door to one of the bungalows opposite was open and there was a woman staring at him from the windows of the bungalow next door to that.

If he just sat down in the grass and waited, it would probably be okay. What would come to pass would come to pass in a world that was as tired of him as he was of it.

A flock of seagulls flew overhead then circling the upturned bin and its contents, interested. They only came inland when the weather was bad out to sea.

Bobby tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, the fast moving clouds disorientating him further.

Was it today he’d been down to the beach and onto the dunes with the pit ponies?

Was it today he’d seen the small girl in the dress? It couldn’t have been – this was no weather for dresses like that, and the dress had been stained with some kind of fruit, but it couldn’t be blackberries because it was too early in the year for blackberries.