BLACK TIES

by
Rik Haslam

The church was almost full, as Will had known it would be. A few heads turned as his feet rang on the aisle’s marble floor. He took a seat alone at an empty row near the rear of the church and watched more heads turn as word of his presence spread. He recognised some of the faces that began to steal glances. Others, less inhibited, glared. One sallow-cheeked man, an old colleague of his father’s, held his eyes for a time and mouthed the words ‘fuck off’ from between tight, almost fleshless lips. Will let a second pass before replying with a slow shake of his head.

At the front of the church, he saw Ruth and his son, both sat with their backs to him. Miles was wearing a black suit similar to his own. The boy was barely older than he’d been at the funeral of his own grandfather. With a satisfaction he hadn’t expected to feel, he noted the new husband’s absence.

Will watched as a tall man approached Ruth and knelt by her side with a hand resting on the wooden pew. The man whispered something and Will noticed his ex-wife stiffening. She nodded and seemed to stare resolutely ahead toward the altar. As the tall man walked back to his seat he looked directly at Will as if he were issuing a challenge. With a sudden awkwardness Will realised it was the desk sergeant from his days at the Stoke Newington station.

Embarrassed, Will turned his attention to the narrow shelf in front of him. It held a book of common prayer, a song book and a James the First bible that he picked up and flicked through. The bible’s frontispiece said it had been first published in 1604. Will wondered whether anyone still really believed the old text, but then he remembered his passing out day, and the innocence with which he’d sworn the oath, carefully voicing each word as if it were real and honest and fragile.

He opened the prayer book and saw that it was organised by a religious calendar. He searched for that day’s date, working backwards from Easter and eventually guessing that it was only a couple of days from the third Sunday in Lent. The first sentences he read came from St Luke’s Gospel:

‘Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.’

He snapped the book shut and placed it back on the shelf. He turned to the entrance of the Church, where Tom Staples, the Chief Superintendent of Brent Police, had just appeared holding a large candle in the air. Behind the Chief, Will saw six pallbearers, dressed in immaculate police uniforms, supporting his father’s coffin on their shoulders. Will imagined the heavy load pressing down on his own back.

Once the men had taken the coffin inside the main body of the building, two churchwardens wearing tunics sprinkled it with water. Will was certain Tom Staples and the pallbearers deliberately ignored him as they paraded past with his father’s body. He felt the pressure of the entire congregation on his shoulders just where the heavy, blunt edge of the coffin should have been. He wondered if Miles had seen or recognised him, and hoped not. He didn’t want to cause his son any more upset.

As the coffin was gently placed upon a brass stand in front of the altar, and the Vicar began to read from scripture, Will murmured ‘God bless’ and left, feeling no compulsion to join the singing or to listen to the tributes of his father’s friends from the force. He knew their words could never approach the truth.

*****

In all but the most essential respects, the morning had begun like any other. The Today programme: suicide bombs in street markets, trade disputes, a famous divorce, street crime, the planet melting.

Under the quilt, Will patted a hand against what he worried might be the very beginnings of a gut, and spoke sourly to the empty room, congratulating himself sarcastically on the still sealed bottle of Grant’s Family Reserve standing next to the bedside photograph of his ex-family. He turned over and wrapped the bedsheets around his body as if he wished to hold the day at bay.

A long blue bag hung from one of the wardrobe doors at the far end of his bedroom. Inside it a black suit was pressed and ready. The adjacent door supported a freshly laundered shirt, covered by a clear plastic sheet from underneath which a faint trace of detergent filled the room, like an embalming fluid for fabrics.

Will increased the volume on the clock radio, filling the tidy room with the female newsreader’s thin drone. He eventually folded the sheets back, letting the bed air. He was naked, having slept, as usual, unencumbered.

He set the shower close to scalding. Over the steaming hiss he listened to some ministerial lackey defend the government’s record on law and order.

Will regarded his body with near contempt. Where once he’d been lean, bone-hard and muscle-tough, now he felt as though another less-disciplined flesh sat on top of his, shaking as he ran, straining at his belt should he take more than a couple of drinks, displacing ever larger volumes of water whenever he took a soak, as though the space he commanded in the world was increasing rather than diminishing. He half-promised himself another session at the gym, though these days the only exercise he took there was in the pool, and then he didn’t so much swim as drift.

He stood unmoving, like a statue undergoing restoration work, letting the hot water drill into a single spot in the centre of his chest, waiting for the moment when the heat would become too unbearable and he’d be forced to shift position.

Anna Ford was handing over to a correspondent in Harare. Will shaved, listening without emotion to the account of a squatter camp bulldozed into oblivion. The phrase ‘many arrests’ repeated itself in his mind.

As if he’d already witnessed the scene on television, he pictured coal-black arms extending from white short-sleeved shirts, flailing truncheons, the rear doors of 4x4 security vehicles, protesting figures in old-fashioned knitwear.

He doubted things were so bad out there, otherwise they’d be bringing news of massacres, not ‘many arrests.’ He knew well enough what happened to detainees once you faced them in the cells. Torture, the BBC man would no doubt judge it, but before Will had left the force he’d seen, and on occasion inflicted, enough broken noses and worse, passed off as resisting arrest, to know that the moral superiority the reporter felt was a convenient fiction. ‘We’re none of us any different,” Will reflected.

Leaving the door of the en-suite shower open and returning to the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, Will left a trail of wet footprints and thought back to some of the things Ruth used to say. “You make yourself a victim,” she’d claimed when he got suspended for corruption. “The shame of it is you won’t allow yourself some pity. Maybe then you’d think others deserved some.” That pearl came when he’d refused to appeal the force’s decision. “I did wrong, I got caught. End of.” He’d never seen any reason to add to that view, knowing it was his own stupidity that had cost him the job. He hadn’t blamed her when she left taking his son with her.

Thinking about all the things he’d lost, he snorted dismissively. It was ironic that in his new career his task was to find things, mostly obvious things, like discovering that suspected partners were, in most cases, unfaithful, that debtors frequently did have money — they just didn’t want to pay, and that missing persons usually had no intention of being found. Ironic too that though he knew exactly where he’d find his wife and child, he’d lost them too — to another family they’d formed afresh. Unzipping the suit cover, he wondered if Ruth preferred her new husband, Miles his new father.

He wore shirts, trousers and jackets. First at school, then in the police, and now as a freelance. It wasn’t about being smart or scruffy. He didn’t know what it was. He studied his fingernails, trimmed, even and clean, not for anyone else but himself. Others might have let their standards slip. He felt no pride in not having done so; it was a matter of routine not effort.

He peeled back the curtains, fighting against the weight of the day, pushing the coming hours away. He slid the double-glazed window open. From across three narrow feet of decking and up from the six floors below, the city entered; the churning diesel engines of buses stopping and starting, sirens and horns and the harsh squeal of vehicles suddenly braking.

The traffic was building, anticipating rush hour, but already almost gridlocked. It was nothing weather: grey, cheerless, neither humid or fresh, bright or dull. It may have rained overnight. An almost imperceptible breeze carried the shower’s lingering steam away on its current. Will decided he would wear the woollen coat. Women often commented on the coat, complimenting him, asking if it was cashmere. He suspected it made his clients suspicious. They expected a dishevelled gumshoe, some unshaven relic in a grubby overcoat, with slow eyes and quick fingers. He made them nervous, concerned that behind his low fees lurked some hidden surprise, but he’d found the coat in a sale. It wasn’t expensive; it just looked good on. When you went to pieces nobody had to know.

Over the street a pigeon landed on the guttering of the theatre opposite his building. The Empire. The decaying Georgian theatre had been closed for renovations since he’d moved into the flat after selling his house. He’d let her have the proceeds. A one-off lump sum, regular maintenance payments for the boy, no need to involve child support agency, no further contact, all ties unbound, that was their agreement. At the time, he hadn’t been inclined to argue. Words would have been needed and he was short of any with meaning.

He wished he still smoked. He’d light one now, before dressing, allowing the burning nicotine to make the room a fog of ghosts. He liked the idea of filling his lungs then releasing his apathy in a single breath. He knew from experience this rarely happened. His lack seldom dissipated, it just expanded to fill the moments he inhabited. Besides he’d only ever smoked for something to do, or to pass the time while he stared from behind windscreens watching doors and windows, comings and goings. And before that, he’d used cigarettes to mute the dreary conversations in the station canteen. Once, early in his career, it had taken a cigarette to force a confession. He doubted that happened much now. For a fleeting second his father’s hypocrisy cast a shadow over his musings, but then the pigeon lifted from its temporary perch and fled into the bleak air. They said these birds carried over thirty diseases, but if that were true surely the entire city would have grown sick by now.

He liked the flat. After moving in he’d done little to add to it. The developer had provided unobtrusive furnishings: plain curtains — a woven beige, a branded washing machine, dishwasher, fridge-freezer, oven and hob; slate kitchen work-surfaces; white tiles in the bathroom; a mirrored cabinet; the power-shower; fitted cupboards; pale cedar floorboards throughout. He liked the blankness of everything and had no desire to impose a personality. He’d bought sensibly. No neighbours above to disturb him with arguments and television. The top-floor penthouse, affordable because of its small size and the unfashionable Hackney location: zone two, some distance from a tube. In any case the purchase took the bulk of the funds they never found. With what little remained he’d bought a laptop from which he now did most of his work.

These days, a few nimble keystrokes achieved more than his old strong-armed approach ever had. When interrogated a web search or polite email normally produced whatever information he needed. Usually his work only took him into the world to confirm what the laptop had already told him. Regardless of all the bribes he’d once accepted, his professional ethics remained and he followed all leads up. And clients still preferred to meet face-to-face.

Time had rid his showered body of moisture. Only his hair was wet now, but still he didn’t dress immediately. In the hallway was a delicate shoe-rack, teak, hand-made and handed down from his grandfather, one of the few possessions Will cherished. He lifted a pair of black Oxford brogues, gripping the two shoes delicately between a single forefinger and thumb.

Glass ran along two sides of the kitchen-diner-lounge. He seldom closed the blinds. Even if people could have seen up to his flat, he no longer had anything to hide. Apart from the stacked towers of books, the dining table, a single chair and the computer, he suspected a visitor finding themselves in the room might deduce nobody lived here. Two books sat open on the table, pages face down, their spines bent miserably, a philosophy title – Seneca, and a book on ancient history – an account of the battle of Thermopylae. In recent years Will had discovered a fondness for non-fiction, although he questioned how much of it was true.

Taking a piece of cloth and a tin of polish from a cupboard underneath the sink, Will sat in the chair and began to polish the shoes. As he did so he remembered having performed the same act before retiring to bed on the previous evening. He paused and watched an aeroplane pierce the low clouds outside. He spat on the shoe-toe and began regardless to rub the polish-stained rag against the bright leather, hard enough almost for the friction to blister his skin.

He’d once stared down at these same shoes in the interview room. A familiar room. Cold breeze-blocks. He knew before they pressed the red-dotted record button that he was going to unburden himself. It seemed bad form to lie. They mistook his pride for arrogance, as if one moral flaw implied many others. He answered all their questions apart from two. At, “Where’s the money?” he’d shrugged. Then the youngster asked “What do you think your old man’ll make of all this?”

The boy looked like he’d only graduated a year since. Acne, a centre-parting, hair cropped too close around his neck. A cheap barber’s cut. Will went for him, using both his hands to pull the boy’s face down onto the table, breaking his nose before the others pulled him off. The boy had to be helped from the room, tears mixing with blood, snot and cartilage. Who’s not fit to wear the uniform?

“I’m calm,” Will said and when they took their hands from him, he’d sat back down. “Leave my father out of it,” he said before telling them almost everything they wanted to know. He’d finished his own and a few other promising careers that day.

He carried the over-polished shoes into the bedroom and began finally to dress, hurriedly now. The clock told him he’d have to rush. Time rarely took him by surprise like this. His black socks, fading black underwear, black single pleated trousers, white buttoned white shirt, silver cufflinks and black belt with slim silver buckle, he managed without effort. He sat down on the bed and, with a callused thumb against leather, slid his feet into the shoes. Ahead of him were the cupboard doors.

Shoving aside shirts, coats and trousers, Will revealed the familiar length of the black tie, hanging deathly and vertical like a thin chalkboard waiting for some sort of lesson to be written on it.

He could sense the clock demanding he take the tie and leave, but the awful mass of those inches of black silk couldn’t so easily be lifted. Each time he knotted that bitter exclamation mark around his neck, it was as if the oxygen had been choked from another life.

He remembered his first funeral. His shirt had been too tight. The top button nipping against his Adam’s apple. His mother, stressed and wordless, forcing the knot fast around his throat. He’d been thirteen. Everyone said to be brave. He’d concentrated on breathing and had tried to ignore the relentless grip of the black tie pinching against his maturing throat.

They buried his grandfather’s toolbox with him. Afterwards, but before the sandwiches, they’d distributed his bits and pieces among the relatives. The other grandchildren took the small exotic animals, elephants and tigers, that his grandfather carved for pleasure, but Will already felt himself growing too old for toys and asked for the shoe-rack. He’d wanted something he could use forever.

After that there’d been too many other funerals, other ties, and now, whenever he returned to the cupboard for his current black tie, each death spoke to him. As he’d aged, the body count had risen. Family, close-friends, colleagues, victims he knew only from working on their case notes – he’d often attended their burials too, not out of duty, and only partly because he felt that the families would wish it, but more from a weary bearing witness, as though these moments might eventually explain something vital to him. The thank-you-for-comings of so many strangers never made clear what that vital thing was, and over time he lost hope of any revelation, and went to the funerals only to assure himself that none of it mattered and neither did the money he’d started to take.

With the tie fast around his collar like an inverted hangman’s noose, Will gave himself a final inspection in the mirror. He felt like he’d stood looking at himself in the same clothes, in the same pose, for the same reason, far too many times. He turned from his reflection and left the flat.

*****

The Somalian mini-cab driver hurtled across East London like he was late for Friday prayers. Will sat in the front seat and turned down the heating without asking. He knew the streets better than the cabbie, but declined to issue instructions. They drove past the pet shops and fried chicken outlets of Graham Road, passing Hackney Central and running parallel with the train lines. A few months earlier there’d been a long siege here after an armed man fired shots as the police tried to remove his illegally parked vehicle. Will remembered the man had taken someone hostage, for a week or more. There’d been a fire. Nobody knew who’d started it. The man died and the hostage escaped. There was no longer any sign of the charred house. Even here, Will supposed, in one of London’s most neglected backwaters, the city soon scabbed over its injuries.

A few minutes later they joined Stoke Newington High Street. The terrain was familiar from Will’s earlier career. He’d done his first stint as a young constable here in the seventies, quickly learning that the rules and methods they’d taught him at the Police College in Hendon didn’t apply. The trick was not to get caught breaking them. It was the one thing the old man had never told him. By the eighties the area was full of heroin and cannabis. Will made the drug squad and it wasn’t long before his new colleagues made it clear he was expected to take the money that came his way without asking any questions. In a round about way he’d tried to raise the matter with his father. Just a finger raised to the lips, had silenced Will’s conscience forever.

As they turned onto Stoke Newington Church Street, Will reflected on the area’s changes and its subtle divisions. From the Turkish social clubs, halal butchers, and gaudy furniture shops of the High Street, they’d entered a region of health food, delicatessens, bistro cafes, expensive pushchairs and yoga classes. It seemed like everyone was on the make, but some were doing better than others. They were only a few hundred yards from the church now. Will glanced at the dashboard clock. He was a couple of minutes late. This suited him. He could enter unobtrusively and sit at the rear without disturbing anyone or bringing any attention to himself.

Will became aware that the driver had politely slowed down to allow an elderly lady to cross the road at a zebra crossing. Once he’d believed in playing the good citizen. That’s why he’d joined the force. That and to be just like his old man. The model policeman.

He remembered the beatings in the cells below the station. Blacks had received particularly rough treatment, they’d often fitted them up as well as battering them. He’d never enjoyed that part. The money was one thing and he wasn’t interest in the power or sadism, but, if he was honest, even now he found it hard to think of Somalians, Nigerians, Jamaicans in the way he thought of Welshmen, Germans and Italians. They were all blacks or coloureds, though he knew they weren’t.

They pulled over outside the entrance to the church and Will handed over a ten pound note. When the driver started to scrabble around for change, he told him to keep it. As he entered the church he looked up at a gargoyle and thought about how the ugly warning was meant to keep evil away.

*****

It was only a short walk to the Abney Park cemetery, where Will planned to watch the burial from a distance so as not to disturb the laying to rest. He knew from the solicitor that, in line with his father’s wishes, special dispensation had been given for his internment in the family’s unremarkable plot.

Will knew Abney Park had been christened one of the magnificent seven cemeteries when it opened in Victorian times, but he saw now how neglect had largely claimed the overgrown rows of graves. He hadn’t visited since his grandfather’s burial. The guilt of that sudden realisation made him pause for a moment. He took several deep breaths and let the quiet of the cemetery wrap itself around him. He tried to remember what he’d been like as boy, how he’d thought, but it was as if that part of his life was simply too far away. He sighed, doubting that he’d be allowed to continue the line of Forsythes decaying into nature here.

While he waited for his father’s coffin to arrive, Will explored the cemetery, finding only a single mausoleum to interest him. He wondered if the lack of grand features explained why the burial park had been allowed to fall into disrepair, while others, like Highgate, attracted tourists from around the world and romantic young couples, whereas Abney Park attracted only glue sniffers, alcoholics and goths.

The columns at the entrance to the cemetery were covered with hieroglyphs. As Will admired the strange markings, the first dark car in the funeral procession arrived, packed with floral bouquets and senior police officers acting as undertakers for the day.

He’d only come to witness the burial, so he disappeared into the Oaks and Hawthorns, and made his way back to the family plot through brome grass and wood spurge, avoiding nettles, thorns and keeping a close watch for dog dirt.

He stood some distance away while they lowered his father into the grave, believing he remained undetected.

“I thought you’d done the decent thing and gone,” said a voice from over his shoulder. He turned to see the wan-faced man who’d sworn at him in the Church. Closer now, he put a name to the face.

“You’ve aged Frank. You’ll be joining him soon.”

“Cancer,” Frank said as if the two syllables required no further explanation. His skin was ashen, yet waxy. His yellowing pupils refused to flicker.

“I’m sorry,” Will offered.

“What you are doesn’t interest me,” said Frank.

It felt more like autumn than spring. There was something in the static air that suggested an end rather than a beginning. Will remembered that even by police officer standards, Frank had always been a dour, cruel man.

“I’m going nowhere,” Will said, turning away to face the graveside. People were now dropping clumps of damp earth into the gaping hole. For the first time that day Will felt angry. “I’m not breaking any law. I’ve every right…” he began to say.

Frank cut him off, saying, “Nobody wants you here lad.” Frank’s voice was momentarily softer, Will thought, as though he were admitting that any one of his father’s innocently corrupt colleagues could have found themselves standing where Will was now.

He gazed at the crowd of mourners, searching for his wife and son. He couldn’t find them and wondered if they hadn’t come after discovering he’d been in the church. After a while, he tugged his tie from side to side, loosening it and then pulling the knot undone. He dragged the miserable strip out from under his collar and folded it neatly in two. He looked beyond Frank and spoke as if unsure of who his words were intended for, almost as if he were talking to his father or the cemetery itself.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be staying. I’ve had enough of funerals,” he said pushing the folded, black tie into his jacket pocket. Then, before walking away, he suddenly became aware of two men standing by a large mound of soil, leaning on shovels as if they were waiting for all of the mourners to leave so they could get on with filling his father’s grave.

© Rik Haslam
Reproduced with permission