A Bright Light on the Horizon
The Cardiff Review
September 2022
15-minute read
Damian draped his arms around both women’s shoulders and they wrapped theirs around his waist. Every few paces they stopped, his mother and her friend Mrs Stephenson, their feet bare on the cold dark pavement that wound its way up the hill and away from town. In their free hands they each held a pair of black high heeled shoes. Damian, tall, sober, held them solid, Christ-like in black trousers and a white shirt stained with Mrs Stephenson’s cocktail. The orange slash across his chest had dried to the colour of rust and, under the halogen glow of a streetlamp, it looked like blood.
They stopped again and Damian patiently breathed in the night air, his arms spread wide. The ladies’ drunken giggles had given way to quiet concentration as they swayed as one, Damian something solid on the deck of a ship.
“Stop, stop, stop,” his mother slurred, even though they were stationary.
Damian was worried that she was going to be sick but when she looked up at him, he could see colour on her cheeks. Her mascara was etched in black watery lines. She smiled and he felt sad that she looked so worn out. From all the stress and the funeral and the booze.
“Good boy,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning back into the crook of his armpit.
“Gotta sit down,” said Mrs Stephenson as she slipped from Damian’s side. She kept a hold of him and slowly descended to the pavement, her arm around his waist, his backside, his knees.
Damian’s mother was unsteady, lurching backwards and then forwards and, with Mrs Stephenson clutching his ankles, he felt like he might go with her.
“Mum. You’re gonna have us all over.”
With this she stilled under his arm and without looking he knew she’d be squinting into the distance. Trying to get a fix on something solid and sharp out across the bay. The flame from the oil refinery would do it. Strong and constant.
“Mrs Stephenson? You ok down there?”
It reminded him of a game called Twister. They played it with his Uncle Barry who used to grope his sisters until his dad had taken him out into the backyard and broken his nose with a single punch. He wasn’t a real uncle anyway. Just some mate of his dad’s who’d worked at the port driving forklifts, stealing stuff when no-one was looking. He got five years in the end and the one time Damian had gone with his dad to visit him in the prison, it looked like he’d had his nose broken all over again.
“Mrs S?”
“Your mum didn’t see him coming. Did ya Kaz?”
His mother reached out towards the flame of the oil refinery. It was bright and clear on the horizon, its dance regular, like a heartbeat. Damian guided her to the ground, to hover alongside Mrs Stephenson on the curb until she dropped the last six inches with a jolt.
“I didn’t see him Daim. There wasn’t any lights.”
She was fiddling with the clasp on her handbag and managed to fumble for a cigarette.
“Didn’t see him.”
She gripped the cigarette between her teeth and seemed to beckon to the flame across the bay.
“You got a light for you mum?” Mrs Stephenson mumbled.
Damian took the bag and extracted the lighter between thumb and forefinger. His mother’s bag was generally a no-go area, and he lifted the lighter with a surgeon’s precision from its nest in a pair of scrunched tights. He thumbed the wheel, and his mother gripped his wrist with both hands, like it was the only solid thing in the world.
“You ok Mrs Stephenson?” he asked again.
Her eyes were all black and they stared back at him with an intense focus. It was like she was daring him to look away and he held her gaze and smiled. She was sat with her arms folded around her knees and out of the corner of his eye he spied an expanding pool of something wet around her backside. It formed a puddle and then a stream, and gently made its way down the pavement and beyond the streetlight into the dark. He crouched before her and squeezed her hand until she was done and then turned away.
“Didn’t see a thing,” she said, and Damian wished he hadn’t either.
She was sat on the curb and opened her legs to check what she’d done and closed them again with a tiny noise she made under her breath. Neither surprise nor disgust. Just quiet confirmation.
“Shall we go Daim?”
“Wait wait wait.”
His mother had leaned back on her hands. The cigarette filter was smeared with lipstick, and she took long full drags without moving it from her lips.
Damian stood and looked out across the bay. He didn’t know the boy his mother had killed, but they were the same age. There’d been a picture of him in the local paper sat astride a racer. His hair jet black and shaved at the sides. He was wearing a football shirt like one Damian had, but from last season. The bike looked too big. Too big for the kid and too big not to be seen, but his mother had hit it.
He’d died instantly at the scene. She’d been coming back from the cash and carry in the Ford Fiesta, and he’d been on the roundabout at the bottom of Lily Hill. It was dusk and she hadn’t seen him. It was just an accident. A tragedy.
She’d always liked a drink. His mother and Mrs Stephenson and ‘the girls’ as she referred to Stacey and Sue and Myf and the others. His father did too but he’d hated it when his mother got drunk and Damian had always thought that might be partly why he’d left. He wondered if his dad was afraid of her when she was full of white wine. Or whether he just didn’t find her attractive when she was like that. After he’d gone, she’d got worse. Four or five nights a week. Vodka. Gin. Anything that made the pain go away, he guessed.
He’d watched them both drink. His father in the Red Dragon with pint after pint of stout, a tiny table littered with empties. Damian would play games on his dad’s phone and listen in on conversations about football and boxing and sometimes troubles at home. Lucky Jim moaning about he could do nothing right, how his Cath was always angry about everything. Or Cuddles, whose wife had gone off with some other guy, but Cuddles wanted her back, whatever. The drink didn’t seem to change his dad. He could sink a dozen pints, more, and listen quietly, nodding to show he understood. Later he’d head home and do a crossword or a sudoku and drink a whisky with the telly on and the sound off until Damian’s mother crashed through the front door.
She was different. Damian could tell if she’d even had a mouthful. Something seemed to click inside her and although it took quite a bit to get her drunk, even the tiniest amount was a giveaway. ‘I just wanna feel,’ she’d sing, clutching her fists to her chest. And early in the evening it was all feeling. Laughter, tears, and then love or anger, depending on what was going on. But later it was like she’d used all the feeling up. Like it had all gone and, in its place, there was just a soft numbness. Something quiet and distant, and by morning, she’d forget everything.
After his dad left, she lost her job. She’d been quite high up in administration at the refinery. Good at contracts. Hiring and firing. People looked to her for advice, when there were difficulties, she said. She’d been a good negotiator and worked with the union to improve conditions for the men. But there’d been some trouble with her boss. She never told Damian what. And that’s when the drinking seemed to change from a bit of fun, a night out with the girls, into something darker, more habitual.
She never drank alone. That was her rule and she told Damian over and over that that’s what alcoholics did. ‘I’m just a girl that likes to have fun,’ she said, and Damian thought that sounded fine until she’d come home at 3am, her clothes all messed up, the screen on her phone smashed again.
His sisters were older and sometimes his mother would head out into town with the two of them and they’d drink pink wine or a fizzy orange cocktail they all liked. They had jobs and boyfriends and when she was out with them, she seemed happy and content. They’d come back giggling like old friends, always with stories about the men they’d seen. The guy who sang Tom Jones songs at the bar down by the marina and who’d given their mother a single red rose. Or Taffy, from the butchers, who they’d spied in a suit and tie outside the cinema, waiting for a date they were sure would never come.
His mother flicked the end of her cigarette and it spun off at an awkward angle showering sparks in the gutter. She shoved up next to Mrs Stephenson and wiggled her backside, unaware of the mess her friend had made.
“Love you Desi. Love love love you.”
Mrs Stephenson was humming quietly to herself, her dress hitched up in a bunch around her waist.
“He should’ve had lights. Not your fault love.”
Damian thought he should help her up. Cover her up at least.
“Mum? Mrs Stephenson? We should go. You’ll get cold down there.”
“Not her fault Daim. You mustn’t blame her.”
His sisters would both be out tonight. Clara was seeing Nick who had his own place out by the Amazon warehouse where he worked. And Lisa would be at Trevor’s whose parents let her stay over whenever she wanted. They bred dogs and had tons of space the other side of the golf course. Lisa had said she’d get Damian a puppy when he turned sixteen and, even though he thought she might not mean it, he desperately hoped she did. Something to love that would love him back.
The boy his mother had killed had a girlfriend. She’d been at the church and had made such an awful wailing that someone, the boy’s brother Damian thought, had taken her outside. All through the service they’d heard her in the churchyard. Like an animal that was injured, a terrible sound.
“I’m so sorry,” his mother had said, and the boy’s mother had just stood there, staring right through her.
Damian had gone up to the girlfriend afterwards. It was like she was all cried out, like there was nothing left to feel. ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he’d said, and regretted it immediately. It had been heartfelt, genuine, but it sounded like something from a film. She’d smiled weakly, her eyes sad and glazed, and Damian had had to turn to hide his pain, his heart breaking beneath the pall of her grief.
Mrs Stephenson lay back on the pavement, her dark hair fanned out to frame her face. She was short with orange skin and clutched her bag to her belly like a hot water bottle. She was Damian’s mother’s best friend and he used to call her Lady D when he was younger, before she got like this.
Her husband ran a scaffolding business until he had a bad fall and had to sell up. They’d been well off. A detached house that looked out over the park. But after the accident they’d had to move somewhere smaller, with ramps for his wheelchair and a shower on the ground floor that reminded Damian of a room he’d seen at Uncle Barry’s prison. She’d stayed married but not long after Mr Stephenson had come home from the hospital, she’d started to sleep around. At first it was just the odd fling before she came home from work. But after a while she became more brazen and started living with other men, a few months with one, and then she’d move on to another. She liked the ones with money, the ones who she felt looked after her, and once she thought they weren’t, she’d move on and find someone new. Gary was the latest and he had a yacht moored at the marina. Damian felt sorry for Mr Stephenson who he was sure knew what was happening and said nothing about it.
“Gary’s gonna buy me an Evoque,” Mrs Stephenson announced. “Just like new. Santorini black.”
She rolled the words around in her mouth like there was something else in there.
“You deserve it, Mrs Stephenson.”
Damian tried to hide his tiredness. It was after midnight and he’d played football earlier, before the funeral, scoring both goals. He’d had a pizza with his mate Lawrence after the game, but since then he hadn’t eaten, and he was hungry now.
There’d been food at the wake. All the things Damian liked but tiny. Pizza, quiche, sausage rolls. But he hadn’t fancied eating and he wanted to keep an eye on his mum, and Mrs Stephenson. There’d been loads of kids his age, friends of the boy that died, and he’d stood in the corner and wondered if he could join them. He’d been cornered by Mr Wright, his old maths teacher, who knew the boy’s parents and who’d asked him questions he couldn’t answer, about his dad and school. The vicar had said that they should celebrate the boy’s life. That the day should be solemn, not sad. There was a disco afterwards and it was difficult to hear what Mr Wright said. And then in the gaps in the music he could hear the other kids talking about him. About his mum and how they couldn’t believe that the two of them had turned up to the funeral.
“How’s your mum?” Mr Wright asked.
“She’s grieving. For the boy. She’s so very sorry. It was just an accident.”
It was like Damian was talking to the other kids, not just Mr Wright, and he tried to speak loudly and clearly over the music, the chatter.
“Sit down with me, Daim,” Mrs Stephenson slurred, patting the edge of the kerb.
He did as he was told and she leaned into him, her forehead resting on his collarbone.
“Good lad this one,” she announced like she was talking to someone else across the street. “My little Damo.”
She grasped at his neck, the back of his head, and pulled him clumsily onto her chest. She held him tight, rubbing the back of his head like he was a baby.
“My little Damo. You got all big. Didn’t you?”
Her perfume was all he could smell, and when he pushed himself away it was the only thing he could comprehend. Like some kind of poison that had leached into his skin, that was all over him.
“You’re gonna do alright Damo. You know that? I can see you in a fancy car. Need to work on these arm muscles.”
Her hands were on him and that, and the stink of the perfume, forced him to his feet.
“C’mon Mrs Stephenson. Mum? We’ve gotta go.”
“Don’t be like that,” Mrs Stephenson said, an exaggerated pout on her lips. “You don’t love me anymore? What about a little kiss for your Lady D?”
After the wake they’d dragged him to Mingles on the High Street and ordered triple vodka and tonics, and a coke for him. There’d been some argument at the door, about Damian being underage, but Mrs Stephenson had promised the bouncer that he wouldn’t drink and that he was only there to walk them home.
“Thank you darling,” she said, planting a kiss on the bouncer’s cheek, her hand on his chest. Damian could see that the bouncer wanted to take Mrs Stephenson home with him and do it on his kitchen floor. ‘She wraps men around her little finger,’ his mother had said, with a hint of pride that Damian could be barely comprehend.
His sister Clara had told him that she’d seen them fighting, once, in the middle of the Kingsway. Their mum had taken a shine to some guy in a bar, but Mrs Stephenson had snatched him from her when she was in the toilet. ‘Tore out a huge fistful of Desi’s hair, she did. Proper scrapping, they were.”
It was more than Damian cared to know and he’d never asked about it, and the next time they were together, his mother and Mrs Stephenson, they seemed the best of friends again. ‘Gold digger,’ Clara had said, and Damian had not known what she meant.
“I’m tired mum. I need to get us home.”
His mother fiddled with the packet of cigarettes and lit another.
“We should say a little prayer. For that boy.”
“C’mon mum. Mrs S? I’m so tired.”
“Just a little prayer.”
She was whispering but in the still night air her voice was all around.
“I swear to God, I didn’t see him. Bless that boy and may he rest in peace.”
She blew a long slow breath of smoke into the air and it when it cleared there were stars across the sky.
“Amen.”
“I’m so tired mum. We’ve got to go.”
“Shhh,” she whispered. “It’s ok my love. My baby.”
Damian wanted to head off up the road. To leave the two of them there, sat on the pavement. Mrs Stephenson covered in piss. His mum all drunk and maudlin. Everything felt pointless suddenly, useless. It didn’t matter what he said or did. They’d sit for hours. Mrs Stephenson talking about men she wanted and his mother smoking and crying and none of it remembered in the morning. He wanted to run home and pack a bag and head off into the night. He’d go looking for his father or the girlfriend of the boy his mother had killed, or anyone. He’d grab that puppy his sister had promised him and never look back. He’d run as far as he could. From all the booze and the pain and the sadness. From this small city and the hurt it seemed to hold like a giant might a nest of baby birds. He was done with drunks and money and all the death and sex that seemed to hang in the air like Mrs Stephenson’s perfume. He’d done all the caring he could. For his mother and her friends and for anyone else for that matter.
Mrs Stephenson let out a long slow burp.
“Desi!” his mother exclaimed, giggling.
Damian straightened and looked out across the bay at the refinery and the flame against the horizon. It was reflected in the sea by a million tiny mirrors.
He loved his mother but wondered why she struggled to love him back. Sober, she seemed distant. Like she was doing some complex mental arithmetic without a pen or paper. She’d stand at the kitchen sink for ages and stare out into the empty back garden, the wooden fence describing a perfect square. And drunk she’d hold him and tell him she loved him with all her heart, but then it felt empty, meaningless, like she was reading lines from a script. She needed help but beyond getting her home, he hadn’t a clue what to do. His sisters were no use. Mrs Stephenson too.
His father had just left without a word and that’s what Damian wanted to do. To disappear without warning, suddenly and forever. And then in another town or a city there’d be a young man with a big heart and a puppy, and nobody would know about his mother or the dead boy or Mrs Stephenson or any of it.
“My lovely Damian. Look at him, Desi. Isn’t he something to be proud of?”
His mother sounded clear, sober.
The sky held a canopy of stars and on the coast road blue lights flashed.
“C’mon,” he said, holding out one hand to his mother, the other to Mrs Stephenson. “Let’s get you home.”
END