A spark in the wires

Even at the age of nine, I knew there was something inexplicably different about Eugene Westcote.

To all intents and purposes, he was a typical boy of our generation. Grubby knees, snotty nose, with a particular fondness for semolina pudding and lead-painted soldiers. But all that aside, a peculiar air would sometimes sweep over the boy, seemingly out of nowhere.

His nature would take on a disturbing sort of other-worldliness. He would become ridiculously perpendicular, gaining inches in height, or it would appear so at least, and he would assume a monolithic stillness, affecting everyone in his company.

We were hurling marbles down the cobbles of Wellington Street, not the best surface for the game, but the bumps added a certain challenge. I had just won Eugene’s favourite marble, a large green one flecked with orange.

“Marshy!” That is my name, Stephen Marsh. “You’re not playing fair!” Eugene visibly sulked as he eyed his ever-reducing collection of little glass spheres, gathered next to a shoot of pineapple-weed in a crack between the cobbles.

“All’s fair!” I called, my back to him as I lobbed a yellow and blue swirled marble.

As I swivelled round to watch Eugene take his turn, I noticed the odd change in my friend. Something in him became larger. He was on his feet, his glassy eyes transfixed on the far end of the street where a man was delivering a box of groceries. The man glanced at us, and then seemingly catching Eugene’s vacant stare, hurried back to his van and drove away. Eugene’s right hand twitched at his side, marbles slipping through his fingers and cracking against the cobbles, a cascade of glass catching the late afternoon light. And all the while, his looming presence remained, and nothing moved.

***

After high school, I never saw Eugene Westcote again. Like most boys in my year, I started an apprenticeship, making doors, windows and coffins at the local joinery. Eugene however, went away to university. No one knew what he had gone to study. He had never shown any particular aptitude for one specific subject but had quietly achieved his way through school.

Years went by. I married, had a family, got divorced and fell into the predictable routine of a single older man. It was one wet Tuesday evening when I was nursing a lonely pint in the Duke of York pub, that my attention was turned from the beer-mat that I'd been slowly ripping to pieces, to a voice at the bar.

It was Eugene, or rather, a version of Eugene I had never quite imagined. His hair, once so dark and clipped, was now longer, flecked with grey, and he was dressed in well tailored clothes with an air of someone who’d done well in life. He simply ordered a drink from the barman and thanked him, but his voice, though older and a little more life-worn, was exactly the same, wrapped in the rounded northern accent of our town.

I watched him, trying to reconcile the figure at the bar with the boy I’d last seen some thirty years ago. He turned, scanning the pub, then he caught my eye. His mouth twitched slightly, eyebrows knitted together with a question which he then answered himself.

“Marshy?” he said, as if it wasn't a surprise to find me here after all these years.

“Eugene Westcote! How are you?” I stood up, my hand outstretched. He took it, shaking it in his large hand. Much softer than mine. He hadn’t been sawing wood for the last thirty years, that much was obvious.

He pulled up the stool beside me, setting down his pint. His eyes appeared darker than I remembered, a little sunken. But he smiled and said how good it was to see me after all this time.

“And how’s life been treating you?” he asked, sipping his pint.

“Oh, you know. I married Selina Greenwood. Remember her? Blonde, good at hockey.”

“I remember… a bit wild if I recall…” Eugene paused. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Don’t worry. You’re right. She was. Still is. Ran off with Jezzer Shaw.” I glanced around the pub. It’s a small town and I’m always mindful of walls with ears. “Been divorced over ten years. Kids are in their twenties now. Don’t see them much…” and then changing the subject I asked him what he’d been doing, and why he was back.

Eugene looked out of the window. His gaze held for longer than felt comfortable and I was reminded of those childhood moments, but then, his head snapped back, as though suddenly remembering I was there and he told me in a matter of fact kind of way, as if describing something quite inconsequential, that he was back because his mother was dead.

I extended my condolences, and offered to buy him another drink. He accepted and we spent the rest of the evening discussing old school friends, the state of the government, and the England cricket team. Eventually, the conversation turned again to Eugene’s mother.

“So, after all that, I’ve to clear out mother’s house. The agents are going to take care of the sale and I’ll head back down south.” Eugene gave a grim smile. “You wouldn’t believe how much stuff there is. My father’s things too, and he passed away years ago.”

Despite the little that I knew of the older and greyer version of my friend, I felt that the least I could do was offer Eugene some help. And so we agreed that I’d call at the house the following evening when I’d finished work, to give him a hand.

***

Eugene’s childhood home looked almost the same as I’d remembered, except the rowan tree in the front garden now obscured most of the living room window and the shrubbery was so dense that it seemed it was strangling itself. I knocked and after a few thuds and scuffles, Eugene, dressed in dark blue overalls, still creased from the packaging, opened the door.

Inside was turmoil. The house was stuffed full with at least fifty years of Eugene’s parents’ lives. Dark furniture filled every room, books and magazines stood in piles on the floor, heavy old pictures and black and white faded photographs lined the walls where paper peeled and grimy light switches offered a little illumination through yellowed bulbs.

“This is going to take more than a few evenings to sort out,” I said, scratching my head like the proverbial tradesman. “How about I bring some packing-crates from work tomorrow and help over the weekend too?”

Eugene had shuffled down the hallway into the kitchen. He called back. “That would be great if it’s okay with you. There’s a lot more here than I first realised.”

I followed into the kitchen where Eugene stood looking out of the window.

“I’ve not been the best son. Been away so long. Haven’t been back for years. I phoned… but I should have made more effort. Things just get in the way.”

“You never said what it was that you do,” I said carefully.

“No, I didn't, did I…” He turned around. “They found her here you know, just here by the sink. Heart attack.” Eugene stared at the floor by his feet. I felt a little awkward and moved into the living room to start wrapping ornaments in newspaper, ready for the charity shops.

When I returned to the kitchen to get more newspaper, I found Eugene just as I’d left him. Oddly tall and large, his frame filling the small room, hands hanging at his sides, his gaze fixed on the spot at his feet.

“Eugene?” Nothing. “Eugene? Hey, are you okay?” I approached carefully, wondering how the man really was dealing with the grief of losing his mother. There seemed to be no other family. I knew he was an only child, and there had never been mention of anyone else. Since he’d been back I realised that I knew no more about him than I had done when we were eighteen years old.

I carefully touched his arm, and quietly spoke his name again.

***

By Friday evening, things at the house were beginning to look better. We’d got through most of the paraphernalia in the downstairs rooms and had spent much of the evening sorting through years of paperwork from the dining room sideboard. It was nine o’clock when I suggested we call it a day, go to the Duke of York for a drink and get some fish and chips on the way. Eugene was closing the sideboard drawers as we prepared to leave, when he spotted something at the back.

I’d gone into the hallway to put on my coat when I heard him mutter. “Well, I can’t believe she kept it…”

“Kept what?”

“Oh… nothing…”

“Nothing what?” I wandered back into the dining room. Eugene had his back to me, looking at something under the standard lamp. He turned slowly. In his hand was a book. A paperback, cream and orange, like an old Penguin.

“Special book?” I asked.

Eugene looked as though he needed to escape but couldn’t find a way out. Sensing something was off, I decided it was best to leave it.

“Hey, no bother. It’s obviously none of my business.” I went back into the hallway and finished buttoning my coat. There was silence from the dining room. I waited.

After what might have been a couple of minutes I decided to leave Eugene to it, but then, as I was about to go, he reappeared in the hallway. The book still in his hand, a black and white photograph of the author on the back cover. Eugene handed it to me.

“It’s only fair that I tell you. You’ve been such a help.”

There on the back cover was Eugene. A younger, artistically posed side portrait, but unmistakably him.

“This is you.” I stated the obvious, then turned the book over.

‘A Mother’s Bond’ by Gerard D Holmwood.

A moment went by as my sawdust-constricted mind worked it out.

“You’re Gerard D Holmwood?”

“Afraid so.” Eugene took the book back from me. “This was my first published novel, my big break. It didn’t go down well with mother and father though.”

“I’ve heard of you…” I felt a little embarrassed, “but I’m sorry, I’ve never read anything of yours. Not much of a reader.”

“It’s perhaps as well.”

In the pub, Eugene explained, quite humbly, that the novels of Gerard D Holmwood were pretty explosive and far too close to the bone for readers who knew who the author really was, namely his parents. His hard-hitting stories of life in a northern town were raw, gritty and well received, applauded by literary critics and subsequently, he’d had over twenty books published.

I told Eugene that I’d like to read one of his books, to see what the fuss was about, but he looked uncomfortable. Told me everything was out of print. Hadn’t published anything new for over eight years and was managing on the money he’d already made. And there the conversation ended.

***

I turned up that Saturday with more bin bags and boxes. Eugene didn’t mention anything more about his writerly alter-ego and I didn’t ask. We worked mostly in silence. Eugene told me to take anything that I wanted, though that was limited and I mainly hauled bags of rubbish and chipped crockery to the skip while he shuffled through drawers, occasionally slipping something small into his pocket.

It was just after lunchtime when it happened. I heard the crash first, a succession of bangs, and then a sickening thud that turned my stomach.

I found Eugene crumpled at the bottom of the cellar steps, his neck contorted at an impossible angle, one foot twisted the wrong way. His eyes were open, vacantly transfixed with that familiar far away stare.

The inquest ruled it as an accident. Loose footing, bad light. I wasn’t as sure. That gaze. But what did I know? The house still needed clearing and in the absence of any family and out of respect for my old friend, I agreed with the solicitors that I’d finish the task.

I returned in the evenings after work. The house became a place of empty rooms and bare floorboards, shadows on walls where photographs had hung, the scent of old Sunday lunches and Yardley perfume.

There was however, one room that Eugene and I had not even started to clear. His small bedroom at the back of the house. A time capsule of sorts, as though the eighteen year old Eugene had never left.

It was there, amidst the lead soldiers, marbles and ‘Boys Own’ annuals that I found a large black leather notebook, concealed under the drawer-liner in the bedside cabinet. Its location told me it was not intended for the eyes of anyone but Eugene.

The book was crammed with Eugene’s tiny, rigid handwriting. Some pages held diary entries, others, stories, wild in their content, landscapes stitched with feverish detail, a world away from our northern town. But something seemed oddly familiar, like an aroma that unlocks a memory, and what struck me most were the passages that broke from the stories altogether. Glimpses into something Eugene had never spoken of.

‘I wake sometimes with a taste of iron and a sense that I have been somewhere else. I see myself from above, a motionless shape captured in a single moment, gone from here, but then returning again. Mother says I must ignore it, that it is nothing, but I know that it is not. It is a shudder of the wires in my head, some sort of spark or bad connection that makes me large and detached from everything. How can this uncontrollable thing continue If I am to be anything in life?’

***

I took the book home and over the following days read its contents, Eugene’s teenage voice narrating in my head, telling me that those words had been his only escape, his only way of coping. And as the last pieces of furniture were about to be removed, I was compelled to return to his mother’s house to find the other book, the Penguin from the sideboard. As I opened the drawer, I drew a deep breath when I found ‘A Mother’s Bond’ was still there.

That evening the writing of Gerard D Holmwood filled unfathomable gaps and brought greater meaning to Eugene’s notebook. Eugene wasn’t some peculiar boy. He was a kid with a neurological condition whose parents had hidden what they considered a source of shame. His mother had wrapped him in silence. Eugene’s writing was his truth and Holmwood had written his freedom.

The estranged relationship now made sense. ‘A Mother’s Bond’ told the story of a woman obsessed with hiding her son’s condition, refusing to seek medical advice, telling him it’s ‘all in your mind,’ threatening him if he spoke about it. She was monstrous but ordinary, all her suffocating love knotted tight around a secret she refused to face, leaving her son to deal with the trauma himself. Eugene’s parents would have recognised themselves in the book instantly and no doubt, felt betrayed.

Even as a boy Eugene knew something was wrong. I understood, or at least, I thought I did. The boy with the vacant stare, the man with the faraway look. It was all there, between the lines and in the shadows.

I sat in my small living room long after midnight. Eugene’s words, Holmwood’s words, forming a picture of how it had been. I leafed through the pages again, the novel, then the notebook. I saw him on every page, the sparks in his head. The black silences that made him distant and terrible, even for a nine-year-old playing marbles in the street. How his mother hid it all behind net curtains. And I couldn’t stop seeing my friend’s eyes as he lay at the foot of the cellar steps.

All those broken wires in his mind had made him who he was. All those published stories. I had to get hold of copies of them and read them for myself. I had to. For Eugene.

But there was something else. I couldn’t just leave it there.

Eugene had hidden the notebook so well. Maybe he didn’t want anyone ever to see it. Perhaps he thought he’d go back for it one day. Maybe he’d even forgotten about it. But I knew that someone should read it. Someone besides me.

And so, I began.

I spoke to Jenny in the office at work. Offered her some extra money and asked if she could do some typing for me.

It took some time, but eventually it was done. I looked at the title page. There was my friend’s name, Eugene Westcote. But did it belong there? The boy with the notebook and the man with the popular paperbacks were the same, but only one name was ever known, ever listened to.

So I asked Jenny to change it.

‘The Lost Notebook’

By Gerard D Holmwood.

I took it to the library where they had a fancy photocopier and binding machine and got fifty copies made. The man at the little bookshop in our town was curious when I walked in one day like some sort of door-to-door salesman. The world of literature was completely alien to me. But when the man realised what I had, he wanted the whole lot. Later, he wanted more. We’re currently talking to a publisher. The one with the black and white bird on its covers.

***

Eugene’s story didn’t end in that dark cellar. His words are loose in the world again, waiting to be read. A shudder of light catching on glass. A spark in the wires.