To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

“Ourselves. Ourselves.”

Cart said, “My nickname is Carton, when spoke in full. I own three tobacconists, now also general grocers and off-licence. Bits and Booze they are called. So, not Carton for the hero in Mr Dickens’s work of the French Revolution, but Carton for the cartons of cigarettes. My wife died of cancer – oh, not of cigarettes, not she nor I smokes. But my son got into drugs and my beautiful daughter ran away with a man unworthy to lie under her foot. I tried to survive the lack of revenue for cigarettes, as everyone is told they must give up, and branched out into the groceries and alcohol. I paid my tax and my VAT. At night I go up to empty flat over shop and watch TV. One morning Sej comes into my shop. What you want? I ask him. You, he said. You interest me. Of course, I am going to call the pigs. They forget to arrive. But he arrives. Over and over he arrives. My cousin then was in a business, the sort you think I am in, Mr Roy. Only I am not, that is the playing. I hired for real these men to warn off Sej. They beat him up. As we have pretended to. He is a very strong customer, Sej. Only one week in hospital. He makes me strip and get in bath and then – he washed me. He does this without aggress, no nasty sex, like a kind mother when you are only four. That for me was my breaking. More gentle than with Marga. Or you, I think. To me, he is my mother. I call him this sometimes. I call him up and say, Mumma, how are you?”

The one they called Sid (Obsidian) spoke from another chair, a palmful of nuts ready in his hand to eat. “He breaks you. He breaks you and then you remake yourself, Roy. Get it innit? Like you’re badly made, but then you go to pieces and when you’re repaired, better than new. Now you work.”

The other man, who had been silent in his suit and shoes, said, “My name’s Jeremy. Only I’m not that here. I gave myself a new name, which is Biro. Marga’s name isn’t the original, nor Leo’s.”

His voice had the twang of the stockbroker belt. But he spoke quietly, modestly. I thought, this is AA. Hello, I am Biro…

“I am very, very rich,” said Biro, “And I, along with Marga, or should I say Marga’s husband unbeknownst to him, bankroll this group. None of us, however, are in this for profit or gain. We are in it, as Leo said, to play back at life. I first tried to top myself at fifteen. I’ve done that seven times in my life. Never made it. Cry for help? Cry for cry. I didn’t kill Sej either. It was a bit like you. I clubbed him with a cricket bat. Tough skull. Maybe now it’s just been thumped once too often.” There was a pause.

Now I knew him. I thought, He was with Sej the first time, in the pub in the Strand. That whole thing they did – Biro quiet, Sej volatile – attracting attention – an act to snare one more possible target. And it worked.

Leo, since deciding he would be the volunteer to relieve the girl Liss at the hospital, had left his second glass of champagne untouched.

“Are there more of you?” I asked. Sometimes one asks these things, whether believing they may be facts or not.

“A few,” said the man who called himself Biro. “You’ll get to meet them. Probably meet Liss tonight. Second time you meet her, of course. She works for a very prestigious company, likes her job. You’re our first writer.”

I said nothing. I wasn’t theirs.

Sid said, “All this is just sketches like, man. Just an overview.”

And then Leo got up. “OK, folks. I’ll go and relieve Liss. She must be worn out. See you later. Keep some dinner for me will you, Margie? I’m going to be famished.”

“Yes, darling. Lots of dinner. And I’ll roast your potatoes freshly.” To me she added “I love to cook. Husband never let me.”

“Blessings upon ye,” said Leo.

I found I too got up. “Wait.”

“OK,” said Leo.

“I’m going with you,” I said. “To this fictional hospital.”

“OK.”

Marga said, “That is a very good idea. Roy, a suggestion. Why not pretend to be a relative of Sej’s. You’ll get more access.”

“Why not,” said Leo. “You don’t reckon this is for real. You’ll get to see it is, maybe.”

I said, “Unless you kill me on the way.”

“Ah come on,” said Leo, smiling. It was Sej’s smile. They all had it – or one of them. I – had it. “We don’t kill people. Life does that. It can maim you, kill you. We just take risks. The same kind life makes us take, whether we want or not”

We were at the opening in the green plasterboard, the blue door ahead, and Marga called after us, “Sej once said to me, he was like Jesus Christ. He said I teach you how to live. Then you crucify me. I’m quite religious, in a laid-back sort of way. I’d have been offended. Only he was in the hospital bed then, getting over my carving knife.”

“He isn’t Christ,” I said. “Whatever Christ was or wasn’t.”

“No, he didn’t mean that, Roy. He doesn’t think he’s Christ. But he does teach, he does it with a scourge and a sword, and with – parables. And then we crucify him. And one day, one day, the cross and nails and lance will work. Perhaps it already has. And he won’t rise on the third day.”

Bitterly I said, “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

And they laughed. My God they laughed, with a kind of happiness in the concept, and in me for proposing it. And Sid and Biro raised their glasses, clinked them, and drank.

Then Leo went out and I followed him, down