Under the Limbo Tree Read online

  She knew what everyone else was afraid of. She knew what he was, but she still wanted to pull him in. She wanted him when no one else did. And he wanted to go to her but it was like walking in water. He never quite got there. She got further and further away, like she was falling away from him. And then he woke up.

  His dreams showed him the one, the one true one, the woman he’d live and die with, an instant hypnotism and surrender, the final part of him. His dreams showed him the woman he’d been waiting for pretty much as soon as he understood what love felt like.

  Back in the real world, he’d wake up feeling just as isolated as he had in his dream but there was no girl with her arms pulling him into her. He’d wake up yelling at the gods to put him right back in the dream but the gods never did. Maybe now, they had.

  After a few nights of dreams, last Tuesday happened and everything changed.

  It was about nine pm, it all started to go a little weird. He was in the laundrette. He didn’t even know Amanda Jenkins was there. He just brushed past this woman and it turned out it was her.

  She waited till he was standing outside the office door and came up to him, looked up at him. She pushed him inside. She suddenly had her hands in his pants and she grabbed on.

  ‘I want you to fuck me and fuck me proper,’ she said.

  She didn’t care there was an old dear sitting behind the desk, having a nice cup of tea. She was a fever, just wanted him inside her. There was something seriously up with this. He started to feel a bit dizzy and when she reached down to take her panties off, Bullit had to call time on it and he was out of there, laundry mission abandoned due to immense oddness. Maybe it was a Twilight Zone laundrette where everybody did that sort of thing or had she been hiding some secret love. He’d known Amanda all through school and after that. She’d never given him as much as a look.

  Before it started weirding him out full time, he had to chuckle at what he left behind. Mandy standing in that little office, pulling her knickers back on, old girl with her biccie still in freeze-frame. When Mandy emerged she was angrier than he’d ever seen any human being. She was spitting as she spouted the sort of words that would make everyone else believe in God. It was truly unholy. He was glad there were only a couple of cats and a stray balloon to witness it.

  And then it happened again, that same night.

  In the Lock and Quay bar over the other side of the river, this waitress, skin everywhere, the mandated Lock and Quay uniform, came close enough for him to move for her and even though he did his best, she brushed him on her way past. She stopped right there and turned to look at him. She smiled and edged up close. Her smell hit him before she did, she put her head into his neck and started softly nosing around in it.

  ‘Mmm. You smell of almonds,’ she said.

  Until now, she’d been mad dashing it all over the place, average life of a busy bar and all, but now suddenly there was no urgency, she was just absorbed in him. She came in for a kiss, hovered her lips in front of his and said, I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life. In the middle of not believing any of this was happening, he was annoyed that song suddenly popped into his head.

  He felt dizzy again, enough to perch on the barstool like some pisshead, and he politely pushed her away. But she wouldn’t stay away. Even one or two gentle reminders from fellow servers to fucking help out a bit did nothing to stop her, so he thought leaving the bar was the only way to go.

  The same sort of lingo as Mandy Jenkins started emerging from the waitress as he picked up his pace towards the door. Accompanying a yell of fury from the waitress was an airborne pint pot, which hit him on the shoulder and bounced off to take out another two wine glasses at a table near the door. He passed several people looking at him really oddly, especially this one bloke who grabbed his arm, asked him if he wanted a drink.

  The doors were breached and the noise slowly slipped back inside as they closed. Bullit stood still and took a deep one. He took a seat on the end of the jetty, touching the bottom of his shoes flat on top of the water and waited for his head to clear. It wasn’t clearing easily though. And then it did.

  He remembered when he went in there earlier, he did put his hand on that bloke’s arm to get past him, and the waitress brushed past him and Mandy brushed past him. He’d never imagined wondering how many people we touch in the average day but he could honestly say he’d touched three. And he’d infected all three with whatever the fuck this was.

  His touch made them behave this way. He felt freezing ice slip up his spine and spread out into his head. He thought he might pass out and he only just didn’t.

  What every teenage boy would call a superpower and literally give a kidney for was Bullit’s super-problem. The isolation of his dreams became manifest there on the jetty.

  It was at that point he realised he could have no contact whatsoever with living human beings.

  He briefly imagined a Grizzly Adams life in a cabin in Iceland somewhere, catching his own fish and doing nothing else whatsoever until the day he died. And would the funeral people be poisoned by him even after he’s dead?

  Either way, his dream had told him about his affliction. This was his affliction. This is why everybody ran from him in his dream.

  So where was the girl in his dream to run to?

  Still no one had come outside looking for him but he’d need to get in shape for the boat back across. Get behind closed doors and fucking stay there. The boat looked like it was about half way over. About five minutes, he reckoned.

  So, how did it work? Was it just Mandy Jenkins and the waitress in there or was it everyone, everything, was this jetty now in love with him? Was the river?

  ‘I mean, what the fuck?’ he said to something in the river.

  People bump into other people all the time, brush against them, in some way make contact with them. In the normal workings of life, it can’t be helped.

  The old lady getting the ferry back across with him was a pretty tricky one and the lady walking her dog past his front door in Middle Street. The confused little dog was suddenly let go. It was free to fend for itself, but stuck around just long enough to see its owner make a fool of herself.

  Once he was inside with the door shut and seriously double locked and sitting right where he was now on the doormat, he felt dizzy again.

  Alone in his house, with a head about to explode, he did what some do, random, pointless things, unrelated to the problem at hand, diversion, a default mechanism. He moved a few forks from the drawer and put them on a shelf, stuck a blank green stickie note on the TV screen and turned the doormat upside down, then sat on the doormat. Was this what a breakdown felt like? He touched a picture of Natalie Portman on a magazine cover and laughed, then called himself an idiot in case it worked. He couldn’t risk doing it to Natalie Portman or anyone else.

  Jesus, he couldn’t see the doctor if he was sick. He’d never have another massage, never play football. And he’d never love anybody. The ice was still swilling round his skull.

  And so then, after all that, what was he doing in the Rose earlier tonight, an evening that led him right back here to his doormat a good deal less solid-minded than he’d left it. It wasn’t the beer. He had beer at home. It wasn’t the sounds and smells of the Rose pub. He could take or leave the toilet duck aroma.

  Maybe he was trying to prove everything was still normal, nothing had changed. He could still have a normal existence. He’d engaged the notion that he had to tell someone and he’d told a complete stranger all about it, even knowing he was a pretty unstable kind of stranger, and he’d set the markers for everything that would follow.

  The Rose was just a few doors down. Luckily, it was almost empty, no one this side of the bar so he grabbed a little table over in the corner, just a few folks up the steps the other side. He had eyes on everything from where he was. But it wasn’t long before he started to get the fear.

  As the minutes passed, the worse this idiot idea got. Some last grasp at a rea
lity long gone. Get home, abandon mission and don’t be so daft again.

  But then Bullit noticed there was a bloke sitting at the bar staring at him. He was a big one as well, just about squeezed into his shiny blue suit jacket, like a prop forward with a battered boxer face. Thing is, when you know someone is staring at you, you keep checking to see if he’s still staring at you. And that means you’re staring at him too. Then he sees you’re staring at him and problems are created.

  The bloke at the bar considered the exchange of covert stares sufficient enough to come on over.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Bullit to himself.

  Bullit had to pull an immediate cough out of the bag and put his hand up to keep the bloke away, courtesy of the most horrible lurgi. It was good enough and he backed off the handshake. The bloke looked around and the coast was apparently clear. He took a seat and his eyes bored into Bullit’s. If he was here to deliver some random beating to knock his head back to the real world, then bring in on.

  The bloke attempted his beer but poured most of it down his shirt.

  ‘Is it ever going to stop fucking raining? Fucking Cornwall. Alright fella, Steve.’

  ‘Dennis.’ It just came to him. He’d never see this bloke again. What’s the point of confusing him with Bullit? The bloke checked behind him again like he was about to reveal classified stuff and came in a little closer.

  ‘There’s always a bloody Nazi round the corner, isn’t there?’ he said.

  Bullit instantly got a carnival kind of feeling, this guy was going to pull out a deck of cards and take him for a few quid, or was it a Twilight Zone or David Lynch scene, another breach in whatever logic he could assign to his current path. He didn’t mean to but he smiled. Maybe it was this Steve bloke, maybe he’d learn something, although he did sense Steve wasn’t entirely not-on-drugs.

  ‘Everywhere,’ continued Steve. ‘It doesn’t matter how careful you are, there’s a Nazi, just lingering about, and you know what else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Nazi just knows you’re up to something, straight away, just looks over at you and just knows. You’re all dressed up in the civvie gear, bit of German under your belts, getting on the bus and the Nazi just knows. “Good Luck,” he says and the geezer says Thank you. Nob.’

  ‘The Great Escape. Movies.’

  ‘Yeah movies, what do you think The Great Escape is? A laxative?’

  Steve creased himself up laughing and slapped a big fat hand on the table, took another swig of beer.

  ‘If you dream of getting a blowjob and then you go and get a blowjob from a hooker, does that still count as a premonition?’

  Bullit smiled and the bloke seemed genuinely pleased. It seemed like a comedy set was unfolding in front of him.

  ‘I used to go to school round here,’ said Steve. ‘First day I went to that school, French teacher, Miss Fache. Fuck me. Anyway, I hid under her desk, waited till she sat down, then spoke into her skirt. I said This is your pussy speaking, I’m feeling rather fruity, you really need to hook up with the new boy back row second left when he gets back from the toilet, take him for a drive and some messy wickedness. I was in class for literally four minutes longer than that before I was suspended.’

  Bullit returned the required facial expression but who the fuck was this completely random psycho? If this was a comedy routine, it needed work but more importantly Bullit now detected a degree of instability in this Steve and his mind turned to excuses and home.

  And then the bar was treated to a loud ‘for fuck’s sake’ from over by the darts board. Some bloke had just pinged one off the wire and landed it in his wife’s wine glass, shattering the thing and causing much sticky mischief. It was a fabulous opportunity for the wife to show everyone the upper thigh area where it got her wet, cleverly punishing her darts retard husband and getting more than one little tickle.

  Instead of making a polite excuse to get home, literally at the very moment he was about to get up, he looked at Steve who was just dead stare looking right back. It was like the room had just got a little brighter, a little louder.

  Bullit trusted in the anonymity of a stranger and unloaded. He’d be normalising Steve’s comedy show randomness with something really fucked up. The same attitude that brought him here in the first place prevailed now. Bullit sat back in his chair. If he pissed this Steve off and got battered, he’d also fall in love with him and the anger that would follow from this monster after Bullit’s polite but insistent abstinence, would be terrifying.

  Bullit set himself, adrenaline circulating full tilt and took a quiet, passive Steve through the horrors of Mandy Jenkins and notable others last Tuesday. And he took him through his dreams and the girl in his dreams, the one true one, predicting the state he finds himself in now.

  ‘All I need to do is touch someone and they fall in love with me. I could touch you and even you would fall in love with me.’

  Steve sat back as if Bullit was about to do that, took another slow sip and tried to compute someone else being more fucked up than him. He was still. There was no facial expression at all, just the big bulldog creases in his forehead and cold set eyes. His acceptance of Bullit’s own diversion wasn’t assured.

  ‘So that flu thing was just bollocks then.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Last Tuesday,’ said Steve, thumbing his chin and then putting that thumb up. ‘Peruvian flake night.’.

  ‘Peruvian flake?’

  ‘That’s right. Last Tuesday. Me and some mates were in this pub in Birmingham and this barmaid came over. Pure fucking porn like the one in your porn dream. I went up to her, stroked her arm, ooh, so smooth. I asked her if we all got our cocks out would she play them like a xylophone.’

  In light of what anyone would have to admit was a pretty hefty fucking piece of news, Steve was clearly some form of idiot and it instantly told Bullit his revelation was a mistake.

  ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, if I’m not mistaken,’ continued Steve. ‘Ended up being two full jugs of beer over us though. Some people just haven’t got a flare for the impromptu.’

  Steve once again slammed his hand down on the table. It was like a bowling ball hitting it. This time Bullit’s expression wasn’t the forced smile. It was a look that wondered how could this buffoon drone on about xylophones when he was sitting opposite the disease that he was.

  This bloke was not going to be able to maintain a chain of thought. Bullit re-established communication with his initial idea, get home. He smiled at his own incompetence. The whole night, coming here, talking to this fucking nutter.

  But then, a dropped tray behind the bar gave him a second more to think again. If he had come here to talk to this odd bloke, see it through.

  ‘You heard what I said, right?’

  ‘I certainly did, my little snake charmer. Forgive the diversion. Helps me deal with fucking supernatural bollocks, always find blatant diversion is best. Your dreams would indeed be noteworthy premonitions.’

  ‘So you believe me?’

  ‘What, touch a girl and she wants to fuck you?’

  ‘Not quite. More dangerous, touch a girl and she falls in love with you.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s the same as my dream. Same look on their faces as the girl in my dream. And when you run from that situation, they get really angry, all of them. I don’t mean throwing things at each other in the house angry, I mean antichirst angry. If they had a gun they’d stick it up my arse and wouldn’t stop until the gun was empty and I was hollow.

  Steve looked like he was rebooting his system for about thirty seconds and an odd silence lingered.

  ‘Are you doing that diversion thing again?’ said Bullit and after a few more seconds Steve blinked twice.

  ‘I was,’ he said. ‘And my conclusion is bollocks.’

  Another uncomfortable silence followed.

  ‘Alright,’ said Steve. ‘Prove it. That one there. Still showing her pants,
solid lass. You say, all you need to do is touch her and she falls in love with you.’

  ‘Not going to happen.’

  ‘Fuck off, will she bollocks. Right. Tenner.’

  ‘Not going to happen. It’s changing their personality. And then the anger, like the anger if she’d been raped.’

  ‘Rape, my bollocks. You’re not forcing her.’

  ‘I am, that’s the thing. My touch is like Rohypnol. She wouldn’t be of her right mind.’

  ‘Unlike the rest of em, then.’

  Steve took a few sips, looked round the room a bit and put his glass back down.

  ‘Well, so there, compadre, is your solution.’

  It was Bullit’s turn to look confused.

  ‘You touch them. They fall in love with you. You leg it. They turn into pretty angry demons from hell.’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘So, your solution is simple. Do not deny them and do not leg it from your so-called situations or you will face hell and damnation. Put up with the inconvenience of having to shag anyone you want and avoid their considerable demons. Or am I missing something?’

  Bullit wasn't going to unleash his disease for this oaf and said nothing, seriously wondering why he kept diverting himself from the only logical course of action and leave.

  Steve took a final sip and planted his empty glass loudly on the table, sat back and rubbed his chin. Seconds passed and soon enough, Steve arrived at a verdict.

  ‘Fuck off,’ he said. ‘You’re not getting away with that. Prove it. I am calling your bullshit, touch a girl, my bollocks. I require a demonstration.’

  ‘No fucking way.’

  ‘Oh, yes fucking way. Lovely. More fun than I thought this would be. Prepare your approach very carefully, son. I’m getting the beers in.’

  Bullit wasn’t worried about proving it but was annoyed at now being forced to stay for another pint. He was also worried about fending off the anger of some poor invaded woman for the next however long. He wasn’t about to go anywhere near her. So what if Steve didn’t believe him. He was an idiot and a fucking mad one at that. Get through the pint quickly, hope he needs a piss and leg it.