The Casualties Read online

  He spent the afternoon scratching the paint off the mats. First from a clipper, then a schooner, then a galleon. He was halfway through a barque when the knife cut into his hand. The wound was not deep, and the river numbed it, but the interruption was enough. The mats were no good without a table, and once he had that he would need plates, cutlery, glasses, napkins, a tablecloth, chairs, a vase for beautiful flowers.

  He broke the mats with a rock.

  But he had more trouble getting rid of the photograph album he found in a stack of newspapers in early March 2016. The album was covered in shiny, scaled skin; its pages were made of thick card. The photos showed three generations of a family and were labelled with place names and dates. The earliest was titled Portobello, 1925.

  The final picture was labelled Aberfeldy, 1938.

  There were perhaps thirty pages in the album, each with two photos. Although the pictures were from long ago, little seemed to have changed. People had houses, and these houses had things, and this made people unhappy.

  He saw the same crowds of people, desperate to buy more.

  But although these pictures seemed to confirm his worst fears—that the sickness of the present had its roots much further in the past—he could not stop looking. This was the danger of pictures: they contained so much. The more one looked, the less one knew. They raised too many questions. For example: What was the relationship between these women? Were they neighbours, friends, or sisters? Which of the men behind the women (if any) were married to them? Was it fashion or coincidence that made the women carry their coats on their left arms? Were there really, as the sign claimed, Dances Every Evening? However much one studies the image, there can be no answers. In its absence, we supply it ourselves. We mistake a casual glance for devotion, think silence proof of a feud. As for Alasdair, when he looked at three of the pictures, he saw grounds for hope:

  Whether dancing or posing by the edge of the field, these women were happy together. Their smiles stemmed from a love that did not depend on what they gave to each other, what they owned, what they hoped to acquire.

  But although the album was important, Alasdair did not want to keep it. If he did, if it was his, then it would need a shelf. The shelf would need a wall, and thus a room, and then there would be carpet, chairs, pictures, curtains, a table, a rug. He would have a house, a home. It would be his tomb.

  He knew he should destroy the album. Instead he placed it with the other things for sale. So long as someone bought it, the end result would be the same. That Saturday he sold a record player, a walking stick, a lion made of china. Then Mr. Campbell, who owned an antique shop on the street, asked to look at the album. His version of what happened appeared in the local newspaper several days later.

  MARCH 25, 2016

  As both a long-time resident of Comely Bank and the proprietor of a successful business, I am extremely concerned about the rise in street crime.

  After listing various minor acts of vandalism—broken glass outside his shop, damage to his car—he implied that this was connected to the homeless.

  What no one seems willing to admit is that most of these unfortunate creatures need psychiatric care. Most are confused and angry, many prone to violence. Only yesterday I was threatened by a man selling things at the car-boot sale. Although they were of no great value, I was concerned that they might have been stolen. One of the items, a photograph album, clearly did not belong to him. Rather than confront him about his theft, I decided to purchase it then try to locate its rightful owner. Before I gave him the money I took a moment to check through it.

  This was when Alasdair saw the greed on Mr. Campbell’s face. There was something obscene about the way he moistened his lips as he turned the pages.

  I was shocked when he snatched the album from me then said it was not for sale. When I tried to reason with him, he began making offensive remarks. He berated me for wearing glasses and said I had eye cancer.

  During the following weeks Alasdair was frequently seen staring at the album, even under a streetlamp at night. The pictures made him content. For he must have had a mother and father, who must themselves have had parents. The fact that he couldn’t remember their names or faces didn’t change that they too had worked, gotten married, raised children, gaily danced in their garden.

  From then on, when he stood on the bridge, the water flowing fast beneath him, the iron pulsing in his blood, he no longer called out people’s diagnoses. Instead of telling them to eat more carrots or wash their faces with urine, he held out the album and said, “This is my family.”

  People who had previously ignored him now began to stop. They wanted to see where he had come from, whether what was wrong with him had started early on. When they realised the pictures were too old to be of his immediate family, most were not disappointed. They inspected the album as avidly as they did shop windows. They liked to see the past: It was proof of progress.

  Alasdair no longer questioned having the album. It wasn’t something he owned. He was just looking after it.

  He took care of it for two months. Then, on a warm night in May 2016, four men came under the bridge. All of them wore black masks. They did not speak when they pushed him to the ground, nor while they kicked him. They offered no explanation. It was as if he didn’t deserve to know why.

  Consciousness, when it returned, was like being slammed into the ground. First came an instant of numbness, then the impact of pain. He lay and listened to the river. He could open only one eye.

  Light was bleeding into the dark by the time he could move. When he sat up he saw the wreck of his bicycle. The frame was buckled, the cables ripped; both its wheels were bent.

  This was inconvenient, but it did not upset him. Unlike Sam, he didn’t care about the history of things. A book’s job was to give you knowledge. A knife was something you cut with. Objects were only a set of functions that could be replaced. If his bicycle could not be fixed, he would find another.

  But the album was different. It was unique. It was a piece that had broken off the giant blank of his past.

  And it was not on the path.

  Not in the long grass.

  Not further downstream.

  Not in the rubbish bins on the street.

  Not at the police station.

  Not at the library.

  Not in the paper recycling centre.

  Not on the shelf of books in the pub.

  Not in the rubbish bins by the park.

  Still not at the police station.

  Still not at the library.

  Still taken from him.

  3. The Lump

  FOR A SMALL CITY, EDINBURGH was extremely cosmopolitan. There were people from every country and ethnic group, either as residents or tourists. Edinburgh’s citizens did not usually stare at someone merely because they looked different. Something exceptional was required, such as the old man with an elderly dog he carried in a harness strapped to his back. The dog’s paws rested on the man’s shoulders; its snout nuzzled his neck. The sight of them inspired delight. People liked petting the dog.

  Another person who reliably attracted attention was the woman who always wore a bridal veil. In itself this was not strange; back then there were plenty of women who covered their faces for religious reasons. What made people stare was what they saw beneath the veil. The woman’s face was thickly covered with white paint. Whatever this concealed—some terrible skin condition or scars—was not the reason she wore the veil. The cause was a lump on her left cheek the size of a human eyeball. This lump was also painted white, perhaps in the hope of disguise. Unfortunately this had no effect: the bulge was obvious.

  Though there were many different theories about the woman—she had been bereaved or jilted or it was performance art—no one knew for sure. Alasdair thought she needed to drink more water, but he never got a chance to tell her this, because she was rarely seen in Comely Bank. If she had spent more time there, someone would have learned who she was and why she kept the
lump on her face when it could surely have been removed. As it was, she remained as elusive as a beast in a fable whose only function is to frighten a princess.

  In this case, the princess was a young woman called Caitlin who worked in a charity clothes shop next to Sam’s bookshop. Caitlin also hid her face, though not behind a veil. Hers was hidden under makeup applied so thickly it was like a mask. She did this because the skin on her face was constantly flaking; occasionally it sloughed off in sheets. She could wash only in tepid water. She dried her face by dabbing it with an especially soft towel. After this she applied thick ointment from a tub whose label warned that it should not be used for more than three months.

  By spring 2016 she had been using the ointment for six years. Every morning her face drank it, but by evening it was thirsty again. Although the cream made her skin feel like wet paper, she couldn’t stop using it. She had only done so once before, after losing the container while on holiday in what was then Spain. Within two days her cheeks had developed cracks no makeup could hide. She spent the next four days in her hotel room reading, then rereading Tess of the d’Urbervilles. By the end of her third reading, Caitlin had no sympathy left for Tess. At least she was pretty.

  Caitlin’s skin was not her only source of unhappiness. Her job was low status and poorly paid, with no chance of promotion. Her main task was sorting through bags of dirty, unwanted clothes. The trouser crotches were spotted with urine, the shirt collars speckled with blood. Every time she received a donation, she wondered who had died.

  Her private life was no better. She had no boyfriend and never went on dates, but at least she was not a virgin. Her first sexual experience had been at university four years earlier. She had been at a party she hadn’t wanted to go to because she saw no point. Most boys paid her no attention. She’d stand on her own and drink too fast, and there would be a boy she’d like, a boy who was handsome, friendly, funny, and nice, but even if they somehow got talking—at the kitchen sink, in the queue for the toilet—his eyes would soon skip from hers.

  But she was no different from pretty, stupid Tess. She believed there had to be angels amongst the devils. And so when a girl from her tutorial group said she was having a party and Caitlin had to come, she could not resist. “I’d love to,” she said, and two evenings later she was drinking cider in a hallway. The only person she knew was Emma, who’d squealed her name when she arrived and then forgot her quickly. Emma was too busy laughing and drinking with athletic boys who kept touching her arms. This was only to be expected. Good-looking people were like a fire at night. Caitlin wanted to stand on the edge of Emma’s group, because if she was quiet and avoided eye contact, she might borrow their warmth. But she did not dare. She would laugh too loudly or, even worse, speak, and then they would fall silent. Their heads would turn; they’d coldly stare; she would be cast out.

  Caitlin hated them for being shallow and stupid, but it wasn’t entirely their fault. They had been taught to confuse beauty with virtue, as of course had she. For the rest of the evening she stood with groups of average-looking people, listening, sometimes risking a laugh, and nobody stared or looked disgusted, either because the lighting was dim or because they were too drunk to notice. One boy had terrible hair and crooked teeth and was certainly a virgin. His eyes followed the other girls. He didn’t look at her.

  By midnight he was drunk. By one o’clock, they were alone. Caitlin went up to him, and without speaking, kissed him on the mouth. This was a moment she often recalled. His half step back. His look of confusion. As his eyes focussed, his mouth got small. He was angry that someone so hideous had kissed him. He was going to push her away, spit in her face, hit her with a bottle.

  Instead he kissed her back passionately, as if it was something he had been wanting for hours. Caitlin pulled him into a dark bedroom and there, atop a pile of coats, he pushed against her, and she pushed back, and in her mind this moment had always had more dialogue: the boy saying how much he liked her, she saying it was her first time.

  They took off their trousers then pulled down their underwear. Soon he was moving and groaning, and it was fine but she could not relax. If someone turned on the light, he would see her face.

  But no one did, and soon, he finished. He put his arm round her. As they lay in the dark, she felt the slow rise of hope. They had done it. He seemed pleased. Perhaps this could continue.

  The next day they went to the cinema and watched a film about a man who could hear women’s thoughts. The lights in the auditorium seemed too bright. At no point did the boy take Caitlin’s hand or even lean against her. Instead he stared at the giant women onscreen who were all without blemish. Afterwards he kissed her cheek and said, “I’ll call you.” They never spoke again. She only saw him once more. Six months later she glimpsed him sitting in a café next to a Japanese girl who was so petite she seemed like a doll. Then the girl threw back her head and laughed so hard she appeared possessed. Perhaps the boy had told the story of how he’d been raped by a monster.

  Caitlin didn’t go to parties during her final year. When people asked her to the cinema, she said she had to study. As the final exams approached, she started noticing how her classmates had changed. Beautiful girls were now beautiful women; even the plainest, dullest girls had an air of maturity, a confidence that they would find jobs and boyfriends or girlfriends that were perfect for them.

  After graduation, she worked in a restaurant, then a bar. She got a job teaching French at an all-girls school. Though the girls were studious and called her Miss Matthews, she quit after a year. She hated their eyes on her face.

  In July 2015 Caitlin began working in the charity shop. She was twenty-four. Soon after this her grandmother died and left her thirty thousand pounds. Though they had not been close—Caitlin had dismissed her grandmother as a racist when she was eighteen—the money made her feel bad for not trying harder. She used her inheritance to put a deposit on a small flat that was in poor condition. It would take a lot of time and effort, but it could be fixed.

  For nine months she sanded, scrubbed, and painted. When she finished, in March 2016, every wall was cleanly painted; the wooden floors were smooth. She was pleased, but it was only a start. She would read more, eat better food, take regular exercise. Having terrible skin was no excuse for having a terrible life.

  She also changed the way she worked. If the person who donated clothes was badly dressed, she threw the bag away. This meant that on days when she had a volunteer, she could sit and read in the back room for hours while Dee (Mondays and Thursdays), Janet (Wednesdays), or Karen (Fridays) watched the till. She finished the novels of Jane Austen, then those of the Brontë sisters. The pretty girls in these books got married; the rest bore their lot with grace.

  She bought her books from Sam’s shop. Every time she went in he asked about the one she’d just finished. What did she think of Mr. Bennet? Had she enjoyed the scene at the ball? He listened to her answers with interest, but offered few of his own. He did not seem cool or aloof—just very contained. When he looked at her face he never seemed horrified.

  When did she fall in love with him? Perhaps it began then, but only partially, because there was something asexual about him. When Sam spoke to other girls, even beautiful girls, she never saw him flirt. She was also distracted by a man known as Charming Robert. In addition to being charming, Robert was clever, funny, handsome, and the boyfriend of one of her volunteers. He usually came to pick up Karen on Fridays, so naturally he and Caitlin talked, but never for long. She could not imagine being in bed with him, his flawless face near hers. It was too incredible to even be a fantasy.

  But on a warm afternoon in late April 2016 Charming Robert strolled into the back room and said hello although it wasn’t Friday. She said, “You’ve got the wrong day.”

  He laughed. “That depends.” He brought his hand to her face. His lips to her mouth. It was like being kissed by someone famous whom everyone wanted to kiss. But even as he locked the door, she knew h
e was not to be trusted. Three of his ex-girlfriends had attempted suicide. Karen believed this wasn’t his fault, just a case of lightning striking three times in the same place. Caitlin did not blame her for being so deluded. She would have believed anything in order to stay with him.

  And they were not going to have sex; that would be stretching what was already impossible. But his hands were between her legs. He was pulling her trousers down.

  He’d hurt her, or it was a trick, or Karen would walk in.

  Charming Robert turned her round; then everything seemed to pause. He was no longer touching her. He did not seem to be there. Either he had regained his sanity, or he was stopped by disgust.

  Then he was pushing hard into her without touching her anywhere else. This went on for several minutes, during which he made no sound. It was as if he had gone but left his penis to finish, and her body, for the first time in years, was not a lump of flesh. It permitted, it enjoyed. The sex was like falling—no, like running, the almost frantic heat that stopped her sounds from being words.

  Caitlin came, then he pulled out of her. He made a sound of such relief it was at least part laugh.

  When she turned and tried to kiss him, he was pulling up his trousers. “Sorry,” he said, then kissed her cheek. “I’ve got to meet Karen.”

  Afterwards she sat on the floor and waited to wake up. The sex had felt so intense, it still seemed to be happening. And so what if it was just this once? Such are miracles. The rhythms of daily life make us forget that anything can happen. The world could end tomorrow. Skin that had been sick for years could heal in a night.

  Caitlin needed to tell someone else so she could believe it. But it was hard to keep a secret in Comely Bank. There was so much gossip, so many eyes and ears. Even if you told only one person, that person could easily get drunk and tell someone else. And so Caitlin went home and did not shower and had incredible dreams. When Karen came into the shop next day, all she said was “Freak,” and then broke Caitlin’s jaw.