"Same thing, isn't it?"

"I wouldn't say quite."

"Still teach, don't you? Still live off them that works, as well."

"Now, Joe," Mary interrupted. "You'll have our new mate not wanting to stay with us."

Jessop could have told her that had happened some time ago. He was considering how much of his portion he could decently leave before seeking another refuge from the gale, and whether he was obliged to be polite any longer, when Tom demanded "So what do you lecture, Des?"

"Students," Jessop might have retorted, but instead displayed the Beethoven score he'd laid out to review in preparation for his introductory lecture. "Music's my territory."

As he dipped his spoon in search of a final mouthful Mary said "How many marks would our singing get?"

"I don't really mark performances. I'm more on the theory side."

Joe's grunt of disdainful vindication wasn't enough for Tom, who said "You've got to be able to say how good it is if you're supposed to be teaching about it."

"Six," Jessop said to be rid of the subject, but it had occupied all the watching eyes. "Seven," he amended. "A good seven. That's out of ten. A lot of professionals would be happy with that."

Betty gave a laugh that apparently expressed why everyone looked amused. "You haven't heard us yet, Des. You've got to hear."

"You start us off, Betty," Daniel urged.

For as long as it took her to begin, Jessop was able to hope he would be subjected only to a chorus. Having lurched to her feet, she expanded her chest, a process that gave him more of a sense of the inequality of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s than he welcomed, and commenced her a.s.sault on the song. What was she suggesting ought to be done with the drunken sailor? Her diction and her voice, cracked enough for a falsetto, made it impossible to judge. Jessop fed himself a hearty gulp of Captain's Choice in case it rendered him more tolerant as she sat down panting. "Oh," he said hurriedly, "I think-"

"You can't say yet," Daniel objected. "You've got to hear everyone."

Jessop lowered his head, not least to avoid watching Mary. Betty's lopsidedness had begun to resemble an omen. The sound of Mary was enough of an ordeal her voice even screechier than her friend's, her answer to the question posed by the song even less comprehensible. "There," she said far too eventually. "Who'll be next?"

As Joe stood up with a thump that might have been designed to attract Jessop's attention, he heaped his spoon with a gobbet of scouse to justify his concentration on the bowl. Once the spoonful pa.s.sed his teeth it became clear that it was too rubbery to be chewed and too expansive to be swallowed. Before Joe had finished growling his first line, Jessop staggered to his feet. He waved his frantic hands on either side of his laden face and stumbled through the doorway to the toilets.

The prospect of revisiting the Gents made him clap a hand over his mouth. When he elbowed the other door open, however, the Ladies looked just as uninviting. A blackened stone sink lay in fragments on the uneven concrete beneath a rusty drooling tap on a twisted greenish pipe. Jessop ran to the first of two cubicles and shouldered the door aside. Beyond it a jagged hole in the glistening concrete showed where a pedestal had been. What was he to make of the substance like a jellyfish sprawling over the entire rim? Before he could be sure what the jittery light was exhibiting, the ma.s.s shrank and slithered into the unlit depths. He didn't need the spectacle to make him expel his mouthful into the hole and retreat to the corridor. He was peering desperately about for a patch of wall not too stained to lean against when he heard voices a renewal of the television sounds beyond the rear exit and, more clearly, a conversation in the bar.

"Are we telling Des yet?"

"Betty's right, we'll have to soon."

"Can't wait to see his face."

"I remember how yours looked, Mary."

It wasn't only their words that froze him it was that, exhausted perhaps by singing, both voices had given up all disguise. He wouldn't have known they weren't meant to be men except for the names they were still using. If that indicated the kind of bar he'd strayed into, it had never been his kind. He did his best to appear unaware of the situation as, having managed to swallow hard, he ventured into the bar.

More had happened than he knew. Joe had transferred his bulk to the stool that blocked the street door. Jessop pretended he hadn't noticed, only to realise that he should have confined himself to pretending it didn't matter. He attempted this while he stood at the table to gather the score and return it to his briefcase. "Well," he said as casually as his stiffening lips would allow, "I'd better be on my way."

"Not just yet, Des," Joe said, settling more of his weight against the door. "Listen to it."

Jessop didn't know if that referred to the renewed onslaught of the gale or him. "I need something from my car."

"Tell us what and we'll get it for you. You aren't dressed for this kind of night."

Jessop was trying to identify whom he should tell to let him go the barman was conspicuously intent on wiping gla.s.ses and what tone and phrasing he should use when Daniel said, "You lot singing's put Des off us and his supper."

"Let's hear you then, Des," Joe rather more than invited. "Your turn to sing."

"Yes, go on, Des," Mary shrilled. "We've entertained you, now you can."

Might that be all they required of him? Jessop found himself blurting "I don't know what to perform."

"What we were," Joe said.

Jessop gripped his clammy hands together behind his back and drew a breath he hoped would also keep down the resurgent taste of his bowlful. As he repeated the question about the sailor, his dwarfed voice fled back to him while all the drinkers rocked from side to side, apparently to encourage him. The barman found the gla.s.ses he was wiping more momentous than ever. Once Jessop finished wishing it could indeed be early in the morning, if that would put him on the ferry, his voice trailed off. "That's lovely," Betty cried, adjusting her fallen breast. "Go on."

"I can't remember any more. It really isn't my sort of music."

"It will be," Daniel said.

"Take him down to see her," Betty chanted, "and he'll soon be sober."

"Let him hear her sing and then he'll need no drinking," Mary added with something like triumph.

They were only suggesting lyrics, Jessop told himself perhaps the very ones they'd sung. The thought didn't help him perform while so many eyes were watching him from the dimness that seeped through the nets. He felt as if he'd been lured into a cave where he was unable to see clearly enough to defend himself. All around him the intent bulks were growing visibly restless; Mary was fingering her red tresses as though it might be time to dispense with them. "Come on, Des," Joe said, so that for an instant Jessop felt he was being directed to the exit. "No point not joining in."

"We only get one night," said Tom.

"So we have to fit them all in," Daniel said.

All Jessop knew was that he didn't want to need to understand. A shiver surged up through him, almost wrenching his hands apart. It was robbing him of any remaining control and then he saw that it could be his last chance. "You're right, Joe," he said and let them see him shiver afresh. "I'm not dressed for it. I'll get changed."

Having held up his briefcase to ill.u.s.trate his ruse, he was making for the rear door when Mary squealed "No need to be shy, Des. You can in here."

"I'd rather not, thank you," Jessop said with the last grain of authority he could find in himself, and dodged into the corridor.

As soon as the door was shut he stood his briefcase against it. Even if he wanted to abandon the case, it wouldn't hold the door. He tiptoed fast and shakily to the end of the pa.s.sage and lowered the topmost crate onto his chest. He retraced his steps as fast as silencing the bottles would allow. He planted the crate in the angle under the hinges and took the briefcase down the corridor. He ignored the blurred mutter of televisions beyond the door while he picked up another crate. How many could he use to ensure the route was blocked before anyone decided he'd been out of sight too long? He was returning for a third crate when he heard a fumbling at the doors on both sides of the corridor.

Even worse than the shapeless eagerness was the way the doors were being a.s.saulted in unison, as if by appendages something was reaching out from where? Beneath him, or outside the pub? Either thought seemed capable of paralysing him. He flung himself out of their range to seize the next crate, the only aspect of his surroundings he felt able to trust to be real. He couldn't venture down the dim corridor past the quivering doors. He rested crate after crate against the wall, and dragged the last one aside with a jangle of gla.s.s. Grabbing his briefcase and abandoning stealth, he threw his weight against the metal bar across the door.

It wouldn't budge for rust. He dropped the case and clutched two-handed at the obstruction while he hurled every ounce of himself at it. The bar gave a reluctant gritty clank, only to reveal that a presence as strong as Jessop was on the far side of the door. It was the wind, which slackened enough to let him and the door stagger forward. He blocked the door with one foot as he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the briefcase. Outside was a narrow unlit alley between the backs of houses. Noise and something more palpable floundered at him the wind, bearing a tangle of voices and music. At the end of the alley, less than twenty feet away, three men were waiting for him.

Wiry Paul was foremost, flanked by Joe and Tom. He'd pulled his bobble hat down to his eyebrows and was flexing his arms like thick stalks in a tide. "You aren't leaving now we've given you a name," he said.

A flare of rage that was mostly panic made Jessop shout "My name's Paul."

"Fight you for it," the other man offered, prancing forward.

"I'm not playing any more games with anyone."

"Then we aren't either. You won."

"Won the moment you stepped through the door," Tom seemed to think Jessop wanted to hear.

Jessop remembered the notice about a compet.i.tion. It was immediately clear to him that however much he protested, he was about to receive his prize. "You were the quiz," Paul told him as Joe and Tom took an identical swaying pace forward.

Jessop swung around and bolted for the main road. The dark on which the houses turned their backs felt close to solid with the gale and the sounds entangled in it. The uproar was coming from the houses, from televisions and music systems turned up loud. It made him feel outcast, but surely it had to mean there would be help within earshot if he needed to appeal for it. He struggled against the relentless gale towards the distant gap that appeared to mock his efforts by tossing back and forth. He glanced over his shoulder to see Paul and his cronies strolling after him. A car sped past the gap ahead as if to tempt him forward while he strove not to be blown into an alley to his right. Or should he try that route even if it took him farther from the main road? The thought of being lost as well as pursued had carried him beyond the junction when Betty and Mary blocked his view of the road.

They were still wearing dresses that flapped in the wind, but they were more than broad enough to leave him no escape. The gale lifted Mary's tresses and sent them scuttling crabwise at Jessop. "Some of us try to be more like her," Mary growled with a defensiveness close to violence. "Try to find out what'll make her happier."

"Lots have tried," Betty said in much the same tone. "We're just the first that's had her sort on board."

"Shouldn't be surprised if her sisters want to see the world now too."

"She doesn't just take," Betty said more defensively still. "She provides."

Jessop had been backing away throughout this, both from their words and from comprehending them, but he couldn't leave behind the stale upsurge of his dinner. When he reached the junction again he didn't resist the gale. It sent him sidling at a run into the dark until he managed to turn. The houses that walled him in were derelict and boarded up, yet the noise on both sides of him seemed unabated, presumably because the inhabitants of the nearest occupied buildings had turned the volume higher. Why was the pa.s.sage darkening? He didn't miss the strip of moonlit cloud until he realised it was no longer overhead. At that moment his footsteps took on a note more metallic than echoes between bricks could account for, but his ears had fastened on another sound a song.

It was high and sweet and not at all human. It seemed capable of doing away with his thoughts, even with his fleeting notion that it could contain all music. Nothing seemed important except following it to its source certainly not the way the floor tilted abruptly beneath him, throwing him against one wall. Before long he had to leave his briefcase in order to support himself against the metal walls of the corridor. He heard the clientele of the Seafarer tramp after him, and looked back to see the derelict houses rock away beyond Mary and Betty. All this struck him as less than insignificant, except for the chugging of engines that made him anxious to be wherever it wouldn't interfere with the song. Someone opened a hatch for him and showed him how to grasp the uprights of the ladder that led down into the unlit dripping hold. "That's what sailors hear," said another of the crew as Jessop's foot groped downwards, and Jessop wondered if that referred to the vast wallowing beneath him as well as the song. For an instant too brief for the notion to stay in his mind he thought he might already have glimpsed the nature of the songstress. You'd sing like that if you looked like that, came a last thought. It seemed entirely random to him, and he forgot it as the ancient song drew him into the enormous cradle of darkness.

The Decorations (2005)

"Here they are at last,"David's grandmother cried, and her face lit up: green from the luminous plastic holly that bordered the front door and then, as she took a plump step to hug David's mother, red with the glow from the costume of the Santa in the sleigh beneath the window. "Was the traffic that bad, Jane?"

"I still don't drive, Mummy. One of the trains was held up and we missed a connection."

"You want to get yourself another man. Never mind, you'll always have Davy," his grandmother panted as she waddled to embrace him.

Her clasp was even fatter than last time. It smelled of clothes he thought could be as old as she was, and of perfume that didn't quite disguise a further staleness he was afraid was her. His embarra.s.sment was aggravated by a car that slowed outside the house, though the driver was only admiring the Christmas display. When his grandmother abruptly released him he thought she'd noticed his reaction, but she was peering at the sleigh. "Has he got down?" she whispered.

David understood before his mother seemed to. He retreated along the path between the flower-beds full of gra.s.s to squint past the lights that flashed MERRY CHRISTMAS above the bedroom windows. The second Santa was still perched on the roof; a wind set the illuminated figure rocking back and forth as if with silent laughter. "He's there," David said.

"I expect he has to be in lots of places at once."

Now that he was nearly eight, David knew that his father had always been Santa. Before he could say as much, his grandmother plodded to gaze at the roof. "Do you like him?"

"I like coming to see all your Christmas things."

"I'm not so fond of him. He looks too empty for my liking." As the figure shifted in another wind she shouted "You stay up there where you belong. Never mind thinking of jumping on us."

David's grandfather hurried out to her, his slippers flapping on his thin feet, his reduced face wincing. "Come inside, Dora. You'll have the neighbours looking."

"I don't care about the fat old thing," she said loud enough to be heard on the roof and tramped into the house. "You can take your mummy's case up, can't you, David? You're a big strong boy now."

He enjoyed hauling the wheeled suitcase on its leash it was like having a dog he could talk to, sometimes not only in his head but b.u.mping the luggage upstairs risked snagging the already threadbare carpet, and so his mother supported the burden. "I'll just unpack quickly," she told him. "Go down and see if anyone needs help."

He used the frilly toilet in the equally pink bathroom and lingered until his mother asked if he was all right. He was trying to stay clear of the argument he could just hear through the salmon carpet. As he ventured downstairs his grandmother pounced on some remark so muted it was almost silent. "You do better, then. Let's see you cook."

He could smell the subject of the disagreement. Once he'd finished setting the table from the tray with which his grandfather sent him out of the kitchen, he and his mother saw it too: a ca.s.serole encrusted with gravy and containing a shrivelled lump of beef. Potatoes roasted close to impenetrability came with it, and green beans from which someone had tried to sc.r.a.pe the worst of the charring. "It's not as bad as it looks, is it?" David's grandmother said through her first mouthful. "I expect it's like having a barbecue, Davy."

"I don't know," he confessed, never having had one.

"They've no idea, these men, have they, Jane? They don't have to keep dinner waiting for people. I expect your hubby's the same."

"Was, but can we not talk about him?"

"He's learned his lesson, then. No call to make that face at me, Tom. I'm only saying Davy's father Oh, you've split up, Jane, haven't you. Sorry about my big fat trap. Sorry Davy too."

"Just eat what you want," his grandfather advised him, "and then you'd best be scampering off to bed so Santa can make his deliveries."

"We all want to be tucked up before he's on the move," said his grandmother before remembering to smile.

Santa had gone away like David's father, and David was too old to miss either of them. He managed to breach the carapace of a second potato and chewed several forkfuls of dried-up beef, but the burned remains of beans defeated him. All the same, he thanked his grandmother as he stood up. "There's a good boy," she said rather too loudly, as if interceding with someone on his behalf. "Do your best to go to sleep."

That sounded like an inexplicit warning, and was one of the elements that kept him awake in his bedroom, which was no larger than his room in the flat he'd moved to with his mother. Despite their heaviness, the curtains admitted a repet.i.tive flicker from the letters ERR above the window, and a buzz that suggested an insect was hovering over the bed. He could just hear voices downstairs, which gave him the impression that they didn't want him to know what they were saying. He was most troubled by a hollow creaking that reminded him of someone in a rocking chair, but overhead. The Santa figure must be swaying in the wind, not doing its best to heave itself free. David was too old for stories: while real ones didn't always stay true, that wasn't an excuse to make any up. Still, he was glad to hear his mother and her parents coming upstairs at last, lowering their voices to compensate. He heard doors shutting for the night, and then a nervous question from his grandmother through the wall between their rooms. "What's he doing? Is he loose?"

"If he falls, he falls," his grandfather said barely audibly, "and good riddance to him if he's getting on your nerves. For pity's sake come to bed."

David tried not to find this more disturbing than the notion that his parents had shared one. Rather than hear the mattress sag under the weight his grandmother had put on, he tugged the quilt over his head. His grasp must have slackened when he drifted off to sleep, because he was roused by a voice. It was outside the house but too close to the window.

It was his grandfather's. David was disconcerted by the notion that the old man had clambered onto the roof until he realised his grandfather was calling out of the adjacent window. "What do you think you're doing, Dora? Come in before you catch your death."

"I'm seeing he's stayed where he's meant to be," David's grandmother responded from below. "Yes, you know I'm talking about you, don't you. Never mind pretending you didn't nod."

"Get in for the Lord's sake," his grandfather urged, underlining his words with a rumble of the sash. David heard him pad across the room and as rapidly if more stealthily down the stairs. A bated argument grew increasingly stifled as it ascended to the bedroom. David had refrained from looking out of the window for fear of embarra.s.sing his grandparents, but now he was nervous that his mother would be drawn to find out what was happening. He mustn't go to her; he had to be a man, as she kept telling him, and not one like his father, who ran off to women because there was so little to him. In time the muttering beyond the wall subsided, and David was alone with the insistence of electricity and the restlessness on the roof.

When he opened his eyes the curtains had acquired a hem of daylight. It was Christmas Day. Last year he'd run downstairs to handle all the packages addressed to him under the tree and guess at their contents, but now he was wary of encountering his grandparents by himself in case he betrayed he was concealing their secret. As he lay hoping that his grandmother had slept off her condition, he heard his mother in the kitchen. "Let me make breakfast, Mummy. It can be a little extra present for you."

He didn't venture down until she called him. "Here's the Christmas boy," his grandmother shouted as if he was responsible for the occasion, and dealt him such a hug that he struggled within himself. "Eat up or you won't grow."

Her onslaught had dislodged a taste of last night's food. He did his best to bury it under his breakfast, then volunteered to wash up the plates and utensils and dry them as well. Before he finished she was crying "Hurry up so we can see what Santa's brought. I'm as excited as you, Davy."

He hoped she was only making these remarks on his behalf, not somehow growing younger than he was. In the front room his grandfather distributed the presents while the bulbs on the tree flashed patterns that made David think of secret messages. His grandparents had wrapped him up puzzle books and tales of heroic boys, his mother's gifts to him were games for his home computer. "Thank you," he said, sometimes dutifully.

It was the last computer game that prompted his grandmother to ask "Who are you thanking?" At once, as if she feared she'd spoiled the day for him, she added "I expect he's listening."

"n.o.body's listening," his grandfather objected. "n.o.body's there."

"Don't say things like that, Tom, not in front of Davy."

"That isn't necessary, Mummy. You know the truth, don't you, David? Tell your grandmother."

"Santa's just a fairy tale," David said, although it felt like robbing a younger child of an illusion. "Really people have to save up to buy presents."