~ Mobius ~
Take a strip of paper
As they chew up the endless miles of motorway, a cloud settles over Daniel that obliterates all thoughts of a future and blackens the past into one long, festering deceit. All those years of resentment he’d felt towards his mother and the terrible, subversive ways he’d punished her for it. If once he might have justified those punishments as impulsive acts of spite, forgivable for a child, now he sees nothing but the deeds of a bullying little coward. He senses the evil close around his hands at the wheel and draw his eye to the fast lane to his right. How easy just to flip the wheel and send the car careering into the central barrier.
But the car only carries him further and further into a black hole. Gulnaz told him that he rejected closeness for fear that people might die. Well, now he knows she’d been wrong. He’s been turning his back on people to stop them seeing through the veneer – into the rotten core within. But, fool that he is, Daniel had failed to realise that they’d clocked the masquerade right from the outset. That’s why no-one had ever truly let him into their lives, why no-one had ever trusted him, no-one ever cared for him.
No-one, until perhaps Gulnaz.
Arriving home to her string of ever more perplexed phone messages does not exactly help matters. The new machine plays them back, while Daniel gulps from a coffee mug at the kitchen door. Alex, the silent critic, sits studying him.
“Okay, okay, I’ll ring her,” Daniel hisses.
Yes, he should have let Gulnaz know. But hang on, Alex can wipe that ‘holier-than-thou’ expression off his face. They were both out on the golf course that day. Sure as eggs is eggs it wouldn’t have been Daniel’s idea to flout their mother’s orders. And they might have got away with it had Alex not been stupid enough to fall. They certainly wouldn’t be in the bloody mess they’re in now if, in the days, weeks, even years that followed, he had only bothered to make one simple phone call. So, just who the fuck is Alex to sit there in judgement? Hadn’t Daniel run to get help, done all he possibly could? No point in getting himself killed trying to tackle those cliffs – what good would that have done? He may have done his mother an injustice – yes, guilty as charged, but Daniel wasn’t the only one with a marked, fucking card.
So clever, so cunning. In those few years they’d been together, Alex had always managed to get one over on him. Always the first to be championed, always keeping Daniel in the shadows. And through that one reckless act of machismo he’d succeeded in extending his grip over the next quarter-century of Daniel’s life.
On a floral carpet a boy in a top hat takes a strip of paper. The boy’s chest is heaving, not from gleeful absorption but from running. There is something he’s desperate to confess. A battle rages in the theatre of his little brain, the clashing of Titans – like the battalions of soldiers that face each other across the battlefield of new toys. On one flank stands the army of compassion, its front rank of foot soldiers: shock, urgency, the need for action. Behind them, the generals: brotherly love, responsibility, courage, honesty. Across the hill, their adversaries: guilt, fear, retribution, denial, blame. An unstoppable force meeting an immovable foe.
“Have you seen Alex, dear?” his mother is asking from the kitchen. Beneath the hat Daniel’s scalp tightens. He stares at his hands, watching the Mobius ring take shape before speaking his lie. The army of compassion suffers heavy losses.
“Go and check for me whether he’s up in the tree house. And tell him to wash his hands. Lunch is nearly ready.”
A small advance as the enemy regroups. “I think he said he was going to the cliffs.”
The clash of weaponry becomes the clatter of kitchen utensils as his mother downs tools and appears at the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron and already untying its strings. “When? What do you mean? Daniel, look at me!” She rushes forward, squats down and grasps his shoulders. He reads her face. “What do you mean? On his own!? How many times have I told you!!”
And so she is running from the house. The scene plays out as before. Compassion is narrowly the victor, but the shackles of guilt and blame remain the child’s lifelong burden.
“No. Damn you, Alex,” he breathes, “it didn’t happen like that. I didn’t just sit there. I got help straight away, just like I promised I would. I know what you’re up to – trying to piss around with my head.”
He pushes himself off the wall and strides across to the window. With a trembling hand he pulls the scotch down from the cupboard and refills the mug. Its fire cauterised the pain enough to give him courage to pick up the phone.
“Hello?”
The note of anxiety he’d heard in the messages still infuses her voice.
“It’s me,” he grunts.
“Daniel? Where have you been?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. We went for a short trip. I had to get away. I should have said.”
“Your car wasn’t in the garage. I was worried about Alex. You know he needs complete rest.”
After a deep breath, he hears himself promising not to leave again without telling her, and says he’ll call by the next evening to explain properly. In many ways he aches to offload everything, but how to own up to what happened on those cliffs? She already thinks he’s a selfish idiot – no time to be admitting to having disobeyed his mother, failed to look out for his brother, to having conveniently forgotten the whole episode in order to wash his hands of guilt. So he says only that the trip was a short convalescence. All sightseeing and gentle strolls.
By the time the conversation is through his head is done in. She must never see him like this. In no time at all she’d have Alex out of the flat and banged up somewhere. For two weeks he’s been relying on the Cipramil tablets, but the last one was taken before they’d set off for Devon. Now he knows he urgently needs more. He swigs back a third scotch to help him think. Threadbare will be at the pool semis tomorrow. It means ringing Gulnaz again and changing their meeting to Saturday. Not good. But at least it’ll give him a chance to do a deal before he sees her.
Nervously, he picks up the phone and presses redial.