Chapter Twenty
Damien walked until he was sure she would not follow, until his breath sawed in his chest and he was forced to stop, pressing himself into the cool alleyway between two sandstone buildings.
He reached blindly for the brick wall beside him, almost missing entirely as his knees buckled.
A rash of clammy sweat prickled his face and he felt last night’s scotch race up his throat.
‘Vile,’ said a lady as she passed him, and Damien knew that she was right.
He was vile. He was a vile, awful person, and he needn’t have asked Ava to remind him of it.
He’d known it all his life. He’d known it ever since he was a small boy, writing endless pages to his father – only to receive a short note from the butler by way of reply.
The problem was, sometimes he forgot. Sometimes, he would meet someone, and for a moment he imagined he was a different person.
The type who was worthy of a friendship, or a kind smile, or a secretive look.
That was how it’d felt when he’d sat with Ava, in that room.
In her house. As though perhaps there was a version of himself that deserved to feel at peace – even if was only for a moment.
What happened to ‘no ripples’? said the curling voice inside his own mind, the one that sounded like him, or his father, or both. What happened to your rules?
He retched again, and heard a woman drag her child to the other side of the street, muttering: ‘Don’t look, darling, that man is very sick.
’ He almost wanted to apologize, for he knew that he should feel ashamed to be so indisposed, but then he gagged again, and it was all he could do to press his forehead to the brick and squeeze his eyes shut, until all he could see was darkness.
Where are you Damien, Ava had asked. And his mind had shot there, like an arrow to its mark: to the lake.
How it’d dappled in the summer, and how he’d liked to sit at the edge, and watch the ducks ruffle water through their feathers.
And a voice in his mind had shouted, yanking him back as though from a precipice.
No!
And yet as soon as he closed his eyes, that was all that he could see – the shadow of the boat bobbing above him. How quiet it’d been down there – how dark.
He wiped at his mouth with his sleeve, the cold wind kissing the sweat upon his face, when he felt a hand upon his shoulder.
‘You all right there, son?’
Damien shook his head, spitting the sour taste from his mouth. ‘Don’t bother yourself with the likes of me,’ he grunted.
He expected to hear heavy footsteps pad away, but instead he felt a hand come underneath his elbow, and someone help him surprisingly gently to his feet.
‘Thank you,’ he muttered, turning to find a mountain of a man staring back at him. His grey-brown hair was shorn close to his skull, highlighting the criss-cross of silver scars that ran from his ear to his collarbone, as though someone had pressed a molten fishing net to his skin.
‘You steadied?’ he asked, his bear paw of a hand tightening around Damien’s elbow.
Damien nodded, his gaze shifting to the apron the man was wearing. Because for all he looked as though he’d just stepped off the meanest ship in the navy, the apron straining across his midriff was bright yellow, and covered in what looked like daisies.
‘I’m steadied,’ Damien agreed.
The man appraised him in the same manner a farmer might appraise a limping cow. ‘You sick?’ he asked.
‘No,’ said Damien.
‘Drunk?’
‘No,’ he said, trying to give the man a smile and finding he could only grimace. ‘Just my mind and my body having an argument about who’s right, I think.’ He could feel the burn in his throat once more, and had to fight to resist the urge to turn and spit onto the street once more.
The man merely frowned. ‘Here,’ he said, handing him a scrap of linen from his apron pocket that was also yellow. ‘Wipe your face. Then come with me.’
‘Oh, really, it’s no trouble—’
‘Wipe your face,’ the man repeated. ‘Then come with me. I’ll make you a tea that’ll set your stomach to rights.’
The man’s tone suggested it was not an invitation, but a command. And for once, Damien found himself nodding, feeling the sloshing sensation in his stomach rear up again as he said: ‘I suppose tea does not sound so bad.’
The man led Damien to a tiny little teashop, sandwiched between the grand, sandstone structures of the salt merchants on the left, and the Commerce Chambers on the right.
Damien might have missed it entirely were it not for the bright yellow paint upon the entryway and the mismatched scarlet windowpanes.
‘Normally we’re already open this time on a Tuesday,’ the man grunted, sliding a large key into the door and opening it with a click. ‘But the delivery boy didn’t show up this morning, so I had no flour. Can’t bake with no flour.’
‘You needn’t go to any trouble—’ Damien began, but was silenced by the warning-filled glare the man shot back.
‘Enough of that,’ he said, his voice kindly, though his gaze was hard. ‘Come in, and sit down.’
Damien stepped inside, and stopped.
He had never seen so much yellow in his life.
Yellow walls, yellow chairs. The only thing that was not yellow were the linen tablecloths, which were an off-white, and yet – as he drew closer – he saw they were each stitched with what looked like buttercups.
‘There’s … a theme,’ Damien said.
‘Yellow,’ agreed the man. ‘Everyone likes yellow.’
Damien pursed his lips. He didn’t. Yellow was warmth pressing against a window that he couldn’t feel. It was the soft flicker of a gas lamp while he stood upon a darkened street. It was the reminder of all the things he could not be a part of.
‘Sit,’ came the man’s gruff command. ‘You’re sick.’
‘I am not sick,’ said Damien, but he slid into the nearest chair nonetheless, cradling his head between his hands. In truth he still felt the sloshing nausea deep in the pit of his stomach, his mind circling the image of the door opening …
He gritted his teeth, desperate to slow his thudding heart. Then stop it, said the voice in his mind – the one that sounded like him, and not his father. Stop thinking of it. That’s what’s making you sick.
‘You like ginger?’ called the man from a back room.
‘No,’ he said softly, turning his focus to the small, yellow flowers stitched into the tablecloth.
Think of something else. Think of anything else.
The problem was, once you’d told yourself not to think about something, it was all you could think about.
And so he thought of Ava, instead.
The way listening to her voice had felt like standing in sunlight, feeling its warmth on your face. There’d been something about it that’d made the darkness feel safer at first. But there was something about her, too.
And it was that feeling that was dangerous.
‘Here,’ came a gruff voice, as two cups, a teapot, and a plate of oatcakes clattered onto the table. ‘Try and eat something.’
‘You don’t need to do all this,’ Damien said quietly. ‘Truly. I’m not—’
‘Don’t say “worth it”,’ said the man, cutting across him.
Damien startled, for that was exactly what he had been about to say. Instead he merely blinked. ‘What?’
The man reached for the teacup, pouring pale yellow liquid into cups. ‘Name’s Mr Jane,’ he said, sliding one of the saucers towards Damien. ‘And you are?’
‘Damien,’ he said.
Mr Jane eyed him carefully. ‘No last name?’
‘O’Brien,’ lied Damien.
Now Mr Jane’s eyebrows furrowed. ‘You don’t sound Irish,’ he said.
‘Family name,’ Damien shrugged.
‘You don’t look Irish, neither.’
‘And you don’t look like a “Mr Jane”,’ said Damien. ‘What is that, an old navy nickname?’
‘No,’ said Mr Jane. ‘Though I was at sea for a while. That’s how I know you need to drink up.’ He nodded down to the cup. ‘Ginger’s good for a roiling belly. Peppermint is best, but it doesn’t survive as well as ginger.’
Damien studied the man from behind his cup. His face reminded Damien of the topographical maps his father used to keep in his study – all lines and indentations, from the deep furrow of his brow, to the sharp crow’s feet that flanked his deep brown eyes. ‘How long were you in the navy for?’
‘I’ll tell you if you drink,’ said Mr Jane, nodding towards the cup. ‘You’re paler than a tuna’s underside.’
Damien took a sip. The ginger was sharp, and it stung the back of his throat, but the warmth of it was soothing. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Now then,’ said Mr Jane, sitting back a little, the chair creaking beneath him. ‘What brings you to Liverpool?’
‘What makes you think I’m not from here?’ Damien said.
‘Well, your accent, for one,’ said Mr Jane. ‘Your clothes, for another. But mainly because a Liverpudlian would’ve known that the poorest place to be sick is right on the doorstep of the police headquarters.’
Damien felt a bolt of fear sizzle through him. ‘What?’
‘Don’t worry, I don’t think they saw anything,’ said Mr Jane, taking a languorous sip of his tea. ‘But it was pretty gutsy of you, to pick their alleyway over all the courts in the city.’
Damien grimaced, and took another gulp of his tea. ‘It wasn’t on purpose. I just picked a direction and ran.’
Mr Jane nodded. ‘I tried that once. Didn’t get very far, but I gave it a good go.’
‘Running from … the navy?’ Damien guessed.
‘In a way,’ said Mr Jane, leaning his enormous arms upon the table and making the whole thing list gently to one side. ‘Though the navy caught up with me quickly enough. Dishonourably discharged quicker than you could say “It was an accident, sir.”’
‘What was an accident?’ asked Damien.
The man raised his eyebrows and took another sip of tea. ‘That’s a question for another day,’ he said, flashing two golden teeth. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s chasing you?’
Damien looked up at the man, frowning. ‘I think that’s a question for another day as well,’ he said, placing his cup back down upon the saucer.
‘I see,’ said Mr Jane, giving him the cracked beginnings of a smile. ‘Well, do you want my advice?’
Damien had a feeling that saying no wouldn’t stop him from offering it, so instead he merely shrugged.
‘Running doesn’t help,’ Mr Jane said, tapping the table. ‘The only thing that makes whatever’s chasing you stop is to turn and face it.’
Damien looked down at the table, tracing a small, carefully embroidered flower with his finger. ‘What if I can’t do that?’ he asked.
‘Can’t? Or won’t?’
Damien glanced up, but Mr Jane wasn’t looking at him. He was scratching a fingernail against his apron, trying to remove what looked like a hardened speck of dough.
‘What do you mean?’ Damien asked.
Mr Jane shook his head. ‘Sometimes, we can’t stop running because it’s the only thing we know.
It’s a habit, and habits sink their hooks in deep.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t swim free of it.
Now … “won’t”? Won’t is a bit different.
Won’t means you know what’s after you, and you’ve judged it worse than whatever’s before you. ’
Now he lifted his gaze, eyes as dark as autumn mud. ‘So which is it for you, Mr O’Brien? Is it “can’t”, or “won’t”?’
Damien wrapped his hands around the warm cup before him, trying to draw the last of its heat into his palms. The truth was, it was a little of both.
‘You sound like you’ve some experience of it,’ he murmured.
‘Aye, I know what it’s like,’ said Mr Jane, his expression softening. ‘I’ve been in your boots before.’
‘You don’t know anything about me,’ Damien said, and there was more heat in his voice than he’d expected. But Mr Jane didn’t look offended – and though something was shifting in his expression, it wasn’t moving towards the places it usually did: disgust. Antipathy. Revulsion.
This was far worse.
This looked like … pity.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Mr Jane. ‘Just trying to help, is all.’
Damien stood. ‘I don’t need your help,’ he said roughly. ‘I don’t need anyone’s help.’
Not his. Not Miss Lillian’s. And certainly not Ava’s.
‘Oh, don’t take it personally. It’s just a principle of mine,’ Mr Jane said, giving Damien a reassuring smile that instead sent another wave of something – guilt? – spiking into his stomach. ‘Help where you can. And what’s a man without his principles, eh?’
Damien clutched up his coat, stuffing his hat back upon his head. ‘Thank you for the tea,’ he said gruffly. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mr Jane. ‘Not now, and not next time, either. You just knock on my door.’
Damien nodded. ‘A kind offer,’ he said stiltedly.
But a pointless one. Because he wouldn’t be coming back. Just like he wouldn’t be going back to Park Lane, or Ava Adams, or any of it.
God knew he had broken enough of his rules.