TITLE: Why Nineveh Is Still Standing

AUTHOR: Isabelle Kennedy

FEEDBACK: kennedyisabelle@hotmail.com

WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/retroeighties

ARCHIVE: Anywhere, just drop me a line first.

CATEGORY: Jackie/Robbie, AU

SPOILERS: Up to ‘The Friday Event’ & including ‘Death Trap’

RATING: PG-13

DISCLAIMER: All characters are the property of Glenn Chandler, ITV & SMG Productions. No copyright infringement intended. Summary is courtesy of Elvis Costello.

SUMMARY: “I know this world is killing you”

She started smoking on a Sunday, aged fourteen, behind the sprawling stone mass of an inner-city Catholic Church, in another lifetime. Another lifetime so long ago that, back then, she actually believed the Hail Mary’s she recited could solve anything. So she thinks that maybe she should quit on a Sunday; it might be some sort of poetic, divine, justice. If there really is a God, and if He has any sense of irony, He might appreciate it. But that doesn’t seem likely, all things considered. And, anyway, it isn’t going to be this Sunday.

Because this is what winter means to her: smoking, wrapped in her coat, on the tiny balcony off her bedroom, breathing out smoke and air and not being able to tell the difference. It reminds her of being fifteen, sixteen, on the roof of their Victorian townhouse, hoping her mother wouldn’t catch her with the cigarettes that she hid on her bookshelf behind unread Physics textbooks. The air is crisp and clear, all endless hues of white and grey, with the biting cold that Glasgow won’t lose for more months than she cares to imagine.

She doesn’t smoke often, but she’s found herself doing it more and more recently. Still, the first hit of nicotine is a visceral thing; it rings in her lungs and ears the way the force of the train does when you stand too close to the tracks. And she’s always been good at those kinds of games, the ones that require stubborn resolve and split-second timing. In fact, she doesn’t really like the taste of cigarettes, but first it was peer pressure and now it’s punishment that keeps her doing it. She told Robbie this once and he laughed at her and poured her another glass of expensive whisky before kissing her. Afterwards, she couldn’t taste anything but him on her lips.

Their thing, of course, was never going to succeed. Firstly, there is work to think about. And also her ex-husband and his ex-, well, his numerous ex-somethings scattered all the way from Glasgow to Gibraltar. The weight of all that history, all their baggage; they’d have to be crazy to even try. And so they haven’t, not really. She had fallen into him one night with her breath held and her eyes closed and after everything it’d been nice not to wake up alone again. Besides, the sex was pretty good and she thinks, at this age, with this job, that isn’t something to be taken lightly. But they have never consciously tried. So it had startled her, terrified her even, to wake up one morning and get ready for work and realise, halfway out of the door, with her hair still damp and her lipstick not yet on, that something was wrong, that something was missing. And later, going over witness reports, it had shocked her to realise that she missed the faint sprinkling of whiskers in her sink and the trace aroma of shaving foam in her bathroom. She had panicked, avoided him for the remainder of the day and the next day and so now it’s Sunday. The third day. It’s Sunday and she’s smoking on her balcony in the middle of winter.

She thinks that perhaps she should get a cat. Maybe a Persian, a Siamese. Something that would shed all the time, on every available surface and then she wouldn’t notice a small bit more or less of hair strewn around the place. And it would lie on her chest, just above the swell of her breasts, while she slept - in the same place that his arm always seemed to find.

The other reason she wasn’t picking up the phone or listening to her messages or opening her curtains had nothing to do with Friday. It was about Thursday. Thursday night, when she had watched Robbie crying on her faded blue, department store sofa. And she had no idea what to do about it because, in the four years that she’d known him, she had never seen Robbie cry. She had seen him put his fist through a wall and she had seen him try to put his fist through another man’s jaw. But she’d never, ever, seen him cry. She was the crier in the relationship. He was the puncher. She thought, he acted. These things had a certain balance, a kind of internal equilibrium that was crucial in maintaining any form of stability. His crying had shifted the world off its axis, as if gravity had suddenly decided to push rather than pull.

She knew how he felt, of course. Because Thursday had been a year since they’d buried Michael. And, in a way, she had appreciated his physical expression of the uncertainty in which they still found themselves, even if her grief was still too fresh for tears. She hadn’t thought that it would be this hard the second time. But it was, perhaps even worse, because the stretch of a year had done little to heal their pain. A year before, she’d at least had the comfort of thinking that it would get easier with time.

Not so long ago, she had realised that she was angry at Michael. She was furious at him for dying, leaving her trying to catch the fallout. Breathing it in every moment of every day. She knows that it’s an irrational, unfounded emotion, for his death was certainly not his fault. Really, she’s angrier at herself for the realisation that, despite everything, she’d idolised him, worshipped him as a constant in her life. That she had put him on a pedestal, a position where his failings could hurt her so deeply. At the time, it had helped her do her job: following his orders and jumping to his defence. Now it just makes her feel incredibly empty, scooped out and hollowed like a pumpkin ready for carving. Her fault. His fault too, for being a good enough man to almost convince her he belonged up there. If he wasn’t such a good man, she thinks, this wouldn’t be so hard. They all knew it. If he wasn’t such a good man, Robbie wouldn’t have cried on her sofa.

The Greeks had the right idea: they set their gods up to fail from the start. They gave them human flaws and weaknesses - wrath, envy, greed - and nobody was surprised when they raped and pillaged and murdered. Nobody got angry about wars and death and suffering because it was never supposed to go right in the first place. Men failed and it wasn’t a surprise because even the gods weren’t perfect. When men failed, there were consequences, but no-one was shaken by the knowledge that men were human. They didn’t have to be reminded of that.

She looks for Orion, daubed clumsily in the cold night sky, while she lights her second cigarette. They argued here one night for two hours about how to find the North Star, triangulating from various points on the Dipper and getting lazily, gloriously drunk. She smokes quickly, drawing the flame relentlessly toward her mouth as if afraid it will burn out without her. She really doesn’t like the taste. What she likes is the physical act of it: inhale, hold, and exhale. The curve of her mouth as she pushes the smoke out. The stain of grey against the dark matte of low clouds. The shape her fingers make around the thin white cylinder. The hundred little rituals that can develop around a slow death.

She doesn’t need to smoke. It isn’t an addiction yet, just an occasional craving, like chocolate or bad films. And she doesn’t need Robbie. But she could. Especially now, with winter in the air and nothing on the horizon. She could need him. The thought makes her restless, makes her skin feel too small, stirs something at the base of her neck and in her belly. She could need him.

She half-expects to find him standing in her living room when she goes back in and sheds her coat. He has the ability to hide in almost any room simply by standing still, as though the rest of them had predator eyes, only sensitive to movement. He is not there, of course. But when he knocks, it isn’t much of a surprise. She opens the door without looking. He moves slowly through the entrance, over toward the sofa and coffee table. He stops to make sure that she’s following before proceeding to sit down.

"You weren’t answering your phone."

She shakes her head. No.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean, I know you need some time to yourself, but I wanted to make sure that you were-"

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay."

"I’m fine, Robbie. Really, I am. I just need to-sort through some things."

"Oh. All right, then."

When she doesn’t say anything further, he moves as if to leave.

"Robbie, wait."

He shifts back into his seat.

"I needed to be alone. To sort things out. But you don’t have to leave."

"Have you? Sorted things out?"

She shrugs. "Maybe. I don’t think I really expected to come up with any answers.”

“I don’t think there are any,” he says.

There is something deep, empathetic in his voice that she does not hear often enough. They sigh in unison and then look at each other, startled, the mood breaking, lightening.

“I didn’t think I’d put him on a pedestal, you know. It hurt to find out that I had.”

"I know," he says.

And he does. He knows and leans over, cupping his hand behind her head and kissing her forehead lightly. She does not feel patronised but comforted by the benediction of the gesture. She puts her hand on the side of his face, feeling the smoothness of his skin beneath the rasp of stubble.

"You’re tired."

She had not noticed, before, the circles smudged under his eyes. This close, they make his face look farther away.

Until he smiles. "I am tired. It’s been a long week."

"Yes, it has."

She stands and, taking his hand, pulls him up with her. Gently, she leads him towards her bedroom. Their thing, of course, is probably never going to succeed. Both the past and the future are against them. But she wants to try, to go in expecting to be disappointed because they are human and often tired and too old to start over. She wants to be surprised.

Finis.