The Paradise Stain. Nick Glade-Wright

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СКАЧАТЬ holiday break hadn’t come too soon. But now, Vince already on the phone with the next contestant and his holiday almost over, it was all starting again. He had become uncertain about whether he still wanted to keep hosting, feeling dismay at society’s insatiable need to bask in other people’s misery.

      Rosie was stirring. Barry could hear Melinda in her bedroom, talking gently to her. ‘Yes, Grandpa’s here. No, he’s not going. Yes, you can have some raisins. I know you do, sweetheart. I love Grandpa too.’

      Barry rubbed at his eyes. Do I really want to keep breaching old wounds? Am I really making a difference, or am I just caught up in an endless cycle of popularising human suffering as if it’s a damn commodity? It was people’s casual apathy that really troubled him. He had seen it so often in the responses by the studio audience. He lay awake with it at night. Am I just as guilty?

      Barry narrowed his eyes to focus on the article again, unable to put it down.

      From the hillbilly back sticks of New Norfolk, “ … Ms Dono van had won a massive sum of money in a lottery … ” But it seemed that over a frenzied three years of buying, gambling, drug use and a naive generosity towards an endless stream of new ‘friends’, sprouting around her like malignant mush rooms, she had squandered the lot, leaving herself drowning in debt, homeless, and still illiterate.

      She’d hooked up with her first cousin, Shaun Donovan, become pregnant and chosen to abort the pregnancy when she was told the baby had Down syndrome. Her second pregnancy to Shaun produced another Down syndrome child, which she insisted on keeping. It being too much for her cousin, he took his own life shortly after the birth. Shaun’s drinking binge had put him five times over the alcohol limit but he’d still managed to drive his Cortina to the top of a quarry cliff halfway up Mount Dromedary, the place of his daughter’s conception, stop twenty metres from the edge before speeding off into oblivion.

      Minnie had been dossing at a friend’s squat and had caught hepatitis through sharing needles and sex with anyone whom she happened to find lying next to her.

      ‘Jesus. Who needs enemies with friends like that?’ Kant murmured, eying one of Rosie’s soft toys on the floor, and looking up to see if she was in the room.

      “The baby girl, who had not been given a name by her mother, had been placed into State care. Her mother, after an incident with a group of drug users and subsequent violent altercation with police, had been placed under State psychiatric supervision where she had committed suicide a week later, the details of her death have not been released yet”, the article stated.

      Barry felt little hands tugging at his trousers.

      ‘Gampa, Gampa, move the paper, I can’t do cuggling. Gampa!’

      Barry looked down. ‘Hello little one. There, how’s that?’

      He dropped the paper, a dark omen, onto the floor and rear ranged himself, opening his arms to receive his granddaughter, still sleepy and warm from her nap. She had a piece of peeled apple gripped tightly between chubby fingers. Rosie clambered up onto her grandfather’s expansive chest and began fidgeting as a cat does, nestling for perfect comfort. She was proudly two years old, ‘and a three corters’, as she reminded anyone who enquired. She lay her head down under her grandfather’s chin, her wispy fair hair so delicate next to his holiday stubble.

      Barry breathed with contentment. To him, Rosie, still untainted by a grimy humanity, counterbalanced the maelstrom of anguish in a world that seemed hell bent on destroying itself. But he feared for her, and prayed that her spirit would never become corrupted.

      He kissed her cheek.

      ‘Gampa.’

      ‘Mm.’

      Rosie began to giggle and wriggle.

      ‘What are you chuckling at young lady?’ he asked, tickling her on the back of her neck.

      Rosie reached up and took hold of her grandfather’s nose, which filled the child’s hand.

      ‘Gampa, why have you got a big nose with lots of hairs in it?’ She giggled again coyly burying her head deeper under his chin. Then she lifted her head out to peek at her grandfather, her eyes sparkling with impishness.

      Barry opened his eyes wide at her. ‘Hmm, let me see.’

      Rosie wriggled with delight.

      ‘I know,’ he said slowly, deeply. ‘It has to be big so all the spiders can sleep there!’

      ‘You being silly, Gampa. There’s no spiders.’

      ‘Oh yes, there are.’ And in an even slower and lowered whisper, ‘They are big ones too. You can see their legs sticking out.’ He wiggled his nose. ‘See?’

      This emergence of spiky, itching hairs protruding from his nostrils, observed since he had been on his break, was yet another irritation that fed Barry’s nagging unease about the progression of his age. He knew he should have snipped them back last night instead of defiantly refusing to accept their presence. Again.

      Rosie began to fidget, tucking her head in and closing her eyes so she couldn’t be seen. Her grandfather wrapped his sturdy arms around her and stood up, shaking her gently. ‘And this giant spider’s going to take you to his web where he’s going to eat you all up!’

      Rosie wriggled to get free as he lowered her to the ground. She scampered towards her mother who was drying the last of the pans and slotted herself between her mother’s legs for safety. The aroma of freshly baked bread wafted heavily in the air.

      ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy. The spider’s going to eat me … what’s for dinner, Mummy?’

      ‘What’s Grandpa scaring you with now? He’s such a Silly Billy.’

      ‘Yes, Gampa’s a Silly Billy.’

      Barry picked up the pink plastic scissors Rosie had been cutting coloured paper with earlier from the floor and cut out the article about Minnie Donovan, folded it and placed it in his shirt pocket. Back at the coalface tomorrow, where Rosie, with her child’s virtues would disappear completely from his mind. He settled himself on a red painted stool at the kitchen counter, breathing in the yeasty fragrance. Melinda was wiping her hands at the sink. Rosie was now ensconced in her high chair picking raisins, one at a time out of a packet and making patterns with them on the tray.

      Melinda whispered something in Rosie’s ear. She stopped fiddling with her raisins and clapped her hands. ‘Happy birth day Gampa. You’re very old now and here is your book that I made with Mummy. It’s a surpise!’

      Kant held the stapled stack of coloured papers, covered in scribbles and stickons. Of course, for Kant, the manuscript displayed the secret ingredients of eternal youth and happiness.

      ‘What a clever girl you are. Did you do this all by yourself?’

      ‘Yes. Mummy helped me.’

      She returned to her raisins which had become scattered on the tray.

      Melinda handed her father a bottle of Johnny Walker. ‘Happy birthday, Dad.’

      ‘Ooh, thanks sweetheart. I’ve run out of this particular medicine!’ He kissed his daughter on her cheek. ‘Very kind of you to СКАЧАТЬ