by Glenn Myers
The snake
‘Morning,’ said Leopold, as we assembled in the clearing again. Keziah had brought a cup of coffee with a lid on it. Scowling at the morning sun, she settled herself next to a tree trunk.
I’d already been for a jog along the beach and watched the sun come up twice, at different speeds. I’d caught the maglev back, and then had a balanced breakfast at Osama’s that contained all five important food groups: carbs, trans fats, sugar, salt and MSG.
Leopold was wearing a kilt and he stood on the brow of a hill, with sunlight suffusing the mist around him. ‘Do you like it?’ he asked. ‘A momento of past triumphs. I was involved in the re-invention of Scottishness. It was a kind of bet. Find the coldest, gloomiest, wettest, most midge-infested place on earth and get grown men to bare their thighs. Nobody thought we could pull it off.’
‘You invented Scottishness?’
‘Not just me. Big team. Puritan traditions gave us a good start. It just needed a nudge. Anyhow,’ said Leopold, ‘can’t talk about that now. It all fell apart, infighting. Got to look forward. You can summarize what I’m trying to say as Three Spiritual Laws. Very simple. Totally foundational. Here they are:
‘The Three Spiritual Laws:
‘1. Happiness is out there, and you sometimes meet it.
‘2. There is no meaning, just useful models.
‘3. Spirit powers will help.
‘Isn’t that simple? Isn’t that brilliant? Isn’t that life-changing? Isn’t that a foundation for all your lives with us?’
Keziah took a long drink of her coffee, with the air of a garden being watered after a long drought, or a girl being kissed after half a lonely lifetime. ‘You see how it explains everything,’ Leopold went on.
‘Er, yes,’ I said. ‘I think.’
‘It explains your human condition. Alienation. Moments of happiness. Spirit guides needed to fill the gap. So do you believe it? Jamie?’
I was on the spot.
‘I suppose.’
‘Absolutely. Absolutely.’ Leopold was quite animated this morning, almost hopping. ‘And Keziah. Keziah do you believe it?’
Keziah took another long draw on her coffee, then looked up and blinked.
‘Whatever. Just don’t talk so loud. It’s the crack of dawn.’
‘This is life and death…’
‘But, she’s thinking about it,’ I said hurriedly. ‘You’re thinking about it, aren’t you Keziah?’ I was looking at her with what Paddington Bear would have called his ‘hard stare’. Keziah grunted.
‘See!’ I said.
‘I suppose you have worked out what this all means,’ said Leopold. ‘It means you follow me. It means you follow me, like a good shepherd.’ He was striding around now. ‘I find you the green grass. I find you the still waters. I give rest for your souls. Plenty of fakes around, but I’m the real deal. Gaston and I, that is. The real deals.’
He was beaming. And, in truth, almost slavering too. ‘Questions?’
‘Love,’ I said, somewhat to my surprise. I think Caroline would have been surprised too. Fortunately she wasn’t there. ‘Doesn’t that come into it somewhere?’
Leopold looked weary for a moment.
‘What do you mean by love?’ he asked.
‘I dunno… Love. You know. Love.’
‘What,’ asked Leopold patiently, ‘is love?’
‘Well it’s… everyone knows what love is. It makes the world go round.’
‘Define it then.’
‘I can’t off the top of my head.’
‘The place of love,’ said Leopold, ‘is overblown. That’s one of the deep things wrong in your culture.’
‘That seems a bit harsh.’
‘Well listen up. This is important. Love is OK for getting two people to breed. Unfortunately, your society has raised it to some kind of Great Universal Principle. And that’s asking too much of love. Look. Boy meets girl—they fall in love—epic love story, Darcy and Lizzie, Romeo and Juliet. With me so far?’
‘Yes.’
‘They drool over each other, they drip with powerful chemicals, they go through a pre-breeding ritual. Whatever. They are “in love”. They can’t bear to be apart. Obstacles arise—no matter. They move mountains, cross deserts, mortgage their futures. Anything to be together. Finally they succeed. They breed. A baby comes, the darling of their hearts.
‘So far so loving?
‘Fast-forward fifteen years. I’ve seen this so many times. They can’t keep it up. Their teenage son—the little baby they “loved to bits”—can’t bear the sight of them. On a Saturday, Romeo goes to the football. Juliet goes shopping. Romeo may once have moved mountains for Juliet, now he won’t move his socks to the laundry basket.
‘They naturally think they have failed. But they haven’t failed. Love has failed. Love always fails in the end. The Grand Idea has let them down because too much was asked of it.
‘Even so, they can still live happily—and for ever after. How? By investing in things that—unlike love—are designed for a lifetime of heavy use. Football. Shopping. In the case of the son, heavy metal. The football and the shopping and the heavy metal are what they turn to when love fails.’
‘But you want us to build an ideal home together, Keziah and I. Isn’t that love?’
‘No. It’s an algorithm. It’s a widget.’
‘I’m sorry?’
Leopold sighed. ‘Over the years, humans have found the least worst option for co-existing is to breed in pairs. But you mustn’t take that biologically-determined convenience and extend it to a grand unified theory of everything. Love isn’t the secret of happiness. Things are the secret to happiness, and breeding successfully—love, if you like—is one of the “things”.
‘The only thing that can be said about “love” (or let’s say for clarity “companionship and breeding”) is that it’s one of the staples. Like food or sleep. That’s why it was so important for you and Keziah to “fall in love” and get set up together.
‘Do you see? Now look, I’ve got to go. Other duties. But do as I urged yesterday. Build your ideal home. Build it together. See if I’m right!’
He streaked into the sky and out of sight.
I looked over at Keziah.
‘Well that doesn’t seem too bad.’
‘Jamie. It’s still the morning.’
‘You’d rather I just built a house while you finished waking up?’
‘So long as you can do it quietly.’
So a little distance away I built a house: whitewashed walls, thatched roof, picket fence, rambling roses bestriding the front door, chocolate Labrador sniffing round, children’s toys scattered on the lawn, a jumble of boots outside the door, woodsmoke curling from the chimney. I was busy planting up the cottage garden at the front when Keziah wandered over.
‘Ms Mordant,’ I said. ‘How nice of you to turn up. I’ll show you round the property. You’ll notice the original oak front door opening onto a flagged hallway. Note the boots, various sizes and colours, scattered round flagged hallway in homely fashion. The property benefits from a large kitchen off the right (26ft x 28ft), also flagged and with many original and unusual features: oak table, large fireplace, utensils hanging from ceiling on butcher’s hooks along with onions and dried herbs. Walk-in pantry. In here we have the dining room, seats 12 comfortably, for those nice county-set dinner parties and bridge evenings. Over here a cosy little living room… 42-inch panel TV and a sound system… and next to it, here, a library-cum-study with a fine view of… what would you like a fine view of?’
‘Now I know what hell is like,’ said Keziah, looking round.
‘I thought it was quite nice,’ I said.
‘You would.’
‘I take it you don’t want to see how the first floor benefits from four good-sized bedrooms, including a magnificent master bedroom with ensuite and dressing room and fireplace—remember this is for Leopold. Not for us.’
We returned to the 26x28ft flagged kitch
en with many original features. I took a kettle off the Rayburn, found some coffee, filled a cafetière. ‘Pain aux chocolat in that breadbin there,’ I said. ‘Just out of interest, what would your ideal house be?’
She fetched some chocolate-bread, put it on a plate and sat at the oak table, breaking the bread absent-mindedly. ‘My ideal house… Nobody’s ever asked me that. I had a little top-floor flat in Arbury… No, I know what I’d have. A pub. I’d rent out the rooms to homeless old men. They’d buy heavy furniture and velvet curtains and thick rugs. Downstairs we’d have a pool table and darts. Smoking would be compulsory. During the day we’d have chiropodists and social services and a doctor and probation coming in. A big screen TV for the football. We’d serve pub food, greasy as you like. I’d be behind the bar helping them to keep to a couple of pints a night. It would be the first home for some of them.’
‘So Keziah’s idea of paradise is long nights on her own with a roomful of grizzled old criminals?’
‘Lovely.’
‘But sadly not Leopold’s stereotype of the domestic ideal.’
‘I think I’ll go out and do the vegetable garden,’ said Keziah, popping in the last piece of chocolate bread. ‘We used to grow vegetables. We had chickens, too. My dad wanted to demonstrate sustainable living.’
‘Er… there is one other thing. Do you think we should offer Leopold lunch?’ I poured the coffee.
‘Me and you, entertain him for lunch?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes.
‘Yes. Make him happy.’
Keziah wrapped her fingers round the coffee mug. ‘You mean me cooking it, don’t you? And you choosing the wine.’
I coughed. ‘Anything to get him off our backs. I keep trying to remember, we need to survive here.’
Keziah sighed. ‘Doesn’t have to be anything special,’ I added. ‘Game pie? Maybe with mange-tout and a little—’
‘I suppose I can do soup. Soup can’t be hard.’
‘There are nice soups. I think I’ve got a bouquet garni hung up here somewhere. Caroline’s mum’s big into those, but they’re not too bad.’
‘I meant, like, from a can.’
‘Oh.’
‘Or a cup of soup.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll make lunch. And you can—some vegetables maybe, from the garden? How did you survive college and law school?’
‘Subways, Starbucks, cigarettes and chocolate,’ she said simply, counting them off on her stubby fingers. ‘A few illegal substances. Red wine for breakfast.’
‘I’ll make some bread,’ I said. ‘You ever made bread?’
‘You make bread?’
So Keziah went out into the garden and I started baking. Oh, I’d missed this. I used to start early and put in a couple of hours’ work. Then, when I was fed up with lining up words and pictures, mix the flour, yeast, fat, water. Knead it. Smash it against my worktop. Punch it, squeeze it, feel it live. Go back to work refreshed, while the smell filled my little house.
With my bread sprawled in a polythene bag on the top of the Rayburn, I took Keziah some more coffee.
She was sitting on a sunlit patch of lawn where the grass ended and the vegetable patch began. Her back was turned to me. She never sat straight, slouching like a gambler rather than shoulders-back like a supermodel. On one side of her was an empty cane trug (a sort of basket) to carry the vegetables. On the other was what looked like a coil of greenish-white rope, which she was talking to. A couple of steps closer and my mind suddenly issued a recall notice. That’s not a coil of rope. It’s a snake.
‘That’s a snake!’ I said.
‘Coffee!’ Keziah said, shuffling round. ‘Thank you.’
‘And pecan and maple plait.’ I was a little lost for words. ‘Is this one of your memories?’ I sat down, keeping a distance between both Keziah and the snake.
‘No,’ said Keziah. ‘I found him here. He’s been telling me some interesting things.’
The snake looked directly at me.
‘Good morning, sir. I hope you are well.’
He blinked twice. The tilt of his head spoke of somebody with a cap in his hands.
‘Did you just say something?’ I asked.
‘Yessir.’
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Stub, sir. I am one of the damned.’
‘The damned… not the band?’
‘No, not the band,’ said Keziah. ‘Of course not the band.’
‘Ah.’
‘Damned, sir,’ explained the snake calmly, ‘as in condemned to eternal destruction in the Lake of Fire.’
‘Ah,’ I said again. ‘That kind of damned.’
‘Yessir.’
I was still holding the tray of coffee and bakes, so I set it down on the smooth lawn.
‘Bit of a conversation stopper,’ I said.
‘Yessir.’
I told Keziah to help herself. She took her cup and a plate. I asked the snake,‘would you like…’
‘A kind thought, but not for me, sir. Thank you. Food turns to ashes in my mouth.’
‘I see. Do you… is it… must be a bit of a problem. Being… being—’
‘Damned. Yes.’
‘Like being nine wickets down with 400 still to get on the last day of a Test Match.’
‘With all due respect, sir,’ said the snake patiently. ‘It isn’t anything like that.’
‘Fine. Well I mean not fine, obviously… Is it something you get used to, being… damned?’
‘No not really sir. I find I can maintain composure for intervals but then at unpredictable moments I plunge into long periods of despairing introspection and self-harm, sir.’
‘Jamie,’ interrupted Keziah, ‘Stub here was telling me about Gaston and Leopold.’
‘Are you a friend of theirs?’ I asked.
‘No sir,’ said Stub. ‘We are immortal enemies.’
‘Tell him what you told me,’ said Keziah.
‘Well sir,’ said the snake. ‘You may not be aware of this, but your accident caused a stir in the heavenly places. Normally, departed human spirits disappear from the scene quickly after death. Your spirits are still tethered to your bodies—’
‘I knew—’ I said.
‘Because you are all but dead, sir, but not quite dead. There are two of you, male and female, and you are young. It turns out you are a rare prize. Sir, there was a considerable fight over who should have ownership of you, which Gaston won, but at some cost to himself.
‘Gaston and Leopold now have to spend the majority of their time flattering other evil spirits as payment. (The only currencies that work here are bullying and grovelling.) For example, several times a week, sir, they have to worship the beings who collected you, which is a strain on their mental welfare, since they regard these collectors as far below them in the social hierarchy. That is what they are doing at this moment, which is why it is safe for me to visit.
‘They also have to spend time, sir, grovelling to their line manager, a powerful evil spirit called the “Almighty Toad”.
‘These particular heavy burdens are of course in addition to the social debts they have accumulated over the past 13.8 billion years, which are severe, sir.’
‘And why would they—’
‘Sorry, didn’t mention that. They want to experiment on you, sir. It’s clearly something very important, given the level of social debts they have incurred. We just haven’t found out what it is yet.’
‘Great,’ I said.
‘You said, “we”,’ said Keziah. ‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Therapists, miss,’ said Stub. ‘Part of a regional structure. I belong to the Cambridge Area Neighbourhood Soul Repair Team. Known internally as the CANSORT, miss.’
‘Wild,’ I said.
‘Inevitable if you think about it, sir. In this part of the Omniverse—which includes your earth, of course—everything is mixed and nothing is settled. Nothing final like perfect happiness or endless death, sir. Not till the Lake of Fire.’ He looked
moody for a moment, so far as a snake can. ‘No place of desolation without any hope at all; no place of exaltation without any sorrow at all. Every garden, if you like, has a snake. Every snake has its garden, for that matter. Inevitably, the heavenly realms need therapists, sir.’
‘So, you’ve come to rescue us. Tell me you’ve come to return us to our bodies,’ I said, hope rising.
‘Not so simple, sir. My goal is to tip things in a healing direction.’
‘Oh.’
‘I can illustrate… Perhaps you’d both like to move back for a moment. Just if you could clear a bit of space.’ We shuffled backwards. The snake shrunk and slithered in on itself. Momentarily it was just a dim fuzz of dancing green-and-white light. Then, rapidly, it expanded out again, big and white. A person—skinny, white-skinned, lank hair, red welts. Seven feet tall. Raincoat. Feet the wrong way round.
‘You!’ I said.
‘Yessir,’ said Stub.
‘You were trying to break in. In my dreams.’
‘Yessir.’
‘How can you be in my dreams and also not in them?’
‘Welcome to the heavens, sir. The distinction between sleep and wakefulness is less marked, as indeed is the distinction between reality, dream and metaphor, sir. Living in your world of matter forces these distinctions to have a sharpness they do not have elsewhere.’
‘But you were trying to break up my Dome.’
‘Certainly, sir. It’s not healthy.’
‘In your opinion.’
‘We will have to differ there, sir.’
‘Forgive me for saying so, but you’re not exactly the picture of well-being yourself.’
‘Sir, I fully accept I am not the best advertisement—’
’Exactly.’ I said. ‘Look, that Dome, that’s like my subconscious saying that’s all I’ve got left. So nobody gets in, and nobody changes it, because it’s all I’ve got.’
‘Even if it means your healing, sir.’
‘It’s nothing to do with my healing. My healing is all about the people in Intensive Care getting my body back in working order. You’re not trampling over the few shreds of myself that I have left. If I let you in… it feels like I will die.’
‘You will not surely die, sir,’ said Stub, with irritation. ‘With the greatest respect, I don’t think you know what death is.’
‘I seem to have been on a learning curve recently.’
‘A crash course, perhaps sir?’ Stub suggested.
‘Not actually all that funny.’
‘I apologize,’ said the ghoul, with the same humble nod of his head as when he’d been a snake. ‘I made the judgement that you communicate in silly jokes when you are feeling insecure, sir.’ Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Keziah wince.
I felt angry all of sudden. ‘Oh, I’m insecure am I? Need to be treated in a special way because I’m insecure—’
‘Jamie,’ said Keziah.
‘What?’ I snapped. ‘What is it now?’
‘Shut up.’
I stared into her green eyes, which were angry. ‘He’s trying to help.’
‘I don’t appreciate being told to shut up—’
‘Stop saying stupid, idiotic, fatheaded things then. That might cut it right out.’ She looked at the ghoul. ‘In my dream I saw you going around with a wheelbarrow and some building materials.’
‘Yes, miss. In the months before you crashed you’d been flooding yourself with memories. You broke the walls down yourself.’
‘I did?’
‘Driven by self-loathing you tend to smash down the barriers that normal people erect. I’m doing a little rebuilding.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
‘It’s my job.’
‘Why did you now appear to me as a snake?’
‘I made the judgement, Miss Mordant, that in a garden full of birdsong and fruitfulness, you’d warm most to the snakes. It was only a guess, miss.’
‘Good call,’ said Keziah.
‘Thank you.’ He bowed. ‘I have to go in a moment —Gaston and Leopold may return—but I need to give you some advice. Miss Mordant. You have realized that being on earth or being here in the heavens hasn’t really, down at the roots, made any difference to your basic problems?’
‘Yes,’ said Keziah. ‘Same me.’
‘That’s because it isn’t changed circumstances you need, none of us do. It’s a changed paradigm.’
‘“Make a heaven of hell”,’ I said.
‘You’ve read Milton?’ said Stub, looking at me. ‘I thought you were a computer engineer, sir.’
‘I’m a web designer,’ I said sniffily. ‘Anyway, I used to go out with a librarian who’d read Milton. Or at least shelved him. Before she shelved me.’
‘I knew him.’
‘Milton? John Milton? Seventeenth century English epic poet? Author of Paradise Lost?’
‘Before he was famous. When he was at Christ’s College. Had a big interest in our world. Sir, I must, must go. Miss Mordant, people are like stories. You’re not at the end of yours yet. That thing you’re building in your spare time, keep going. It’s vital.’
‘Yes, yes. But what about Gaston and Leopold?’ I asked. ‘Should we fight them? Or go along with them? Keziah here—’
‘I haven’t any advice for the short-term. I’m so sorry, sir. There is a case for passive acquiescence to your captors and an equal case for militant opposition. I could be wrong advising either course of action.’
‘So we just have to—’ I said.
‘Also, Miss Mordant’ said Stub firmly, ‘it probably is therapeutic not to cut yourself off completely from Mr Smith here. An irritant is another word for a stimulant.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘So what should I do?’
‘I’m afraid, sir, there’s not a lot I can do for you at the moment,’ said Stub. ‘With respect you wouldn’t take my advice if I gave it.’
‘I might. You never know.’
Stub sighed. ‘My advice sir, is to take your head out of the sand.’
‘Shan’t.’
‘You might find more than the pain you fear.’
‘Touchy-feely hoopla.’
‘Quite so, sir.’
He turned back to Keziah. ‘Another thing you could try, Miss Mordant. Look out for things that seem unnecessary or wasteful or pointless. They’re probably not part of Leopold’s original garden. Mushrooms, for example.’ He pointed into the wood. ‘You don’t know which are poisonous. They don’t look particularly nice. You have to tramp through dark forests to find them. What’s the point?’
‘And Leopold likes everything nice.’
‘Chocolate-box nice. You might like to discreetly try eating one. I will come back when I can safely do so. Goodbye.’
He spiralled in on himself again, turning into the dancing blob of pale light, which shot rapidly into the sky, and out of sight.
‘You are such a total prat,’ said Keziah.
‘He’s a snake,’ I said wearily. ‘He’s a condemned criminal. He looks like a heroin addict who’s been injecting his own eyeballs. And he’s recommending we eat magic mushrooms.’
‘I liked him,’ said Keziah.
‘Which is why I don’t.’
Keziah walked off. ‘I’m going back to do the bread so that it’s ready for when Leopold gets back.’ I continued, a little lamely. ‘I’ll magic up some vegetables since you haven’t managed to collect any.’
‘I’m going to find some dark places,’ said Keziah, over her shoulder, ‘and root around.’
Both Gaston and Leopold showed up at lunchtime. I ushered them into the lounge, stoked up a fire and sat down. They looked a little drawn and tired.
‘We’re happier without the fire,’ said Leopold, blowing it out. ‘It’s quite warm already. But this looks OK.’ Leopold looked around. ‘I think you’ve made a great start. What do you think, Gaston?’
Gaston grunted. ‘Where’s Keziah?’
‘She said she might be l
ate,’ I said. ‘Because she was going to pick some things fresh for lunch.’
‘You know we won’t be eating,’ said Leopold. ‘Doesn’t agree with us, food.’
‘No, shame,’ I said.
‘But we’ll enjoy watching you.’
The fire crackled. In my flagstoned hall, a long-case clock sounded out the half-hour with a dither of clanks and whirrings, like an Aunt woken.
‘Don’t you think it’s so very homely?’ said Leopold to Gaston.
‘I can think of a few improvements,’ muttered Gaston. I heard the rattle of the back door latch and Gaston and Leopold followed me into the kitchen. Gaston took a long look at Keziah, like a race-horse owner running his eyes over a likely filly. Keziah ignored him and hoisted the trug onto the table. I introduced them and they said a brief hello.
‘Mushrooms,’ she said.
Leopold gave a light laugh. ‘Oh my dear girl,’ he said. ‘You’ve picked the one thing you really can’t eat!’
‘Really?’ she said.
‘You didn’t tell them before?’ asked Gaston.
‘It may have slipped my mind,’ hissed Leopold back. ‘I’ve been a bit busy… Unfortunately,’ he added smoothly to Keziah and me, ‘you can eat anything that grows in this habitat. Everything except the mushrooms. I was going to mention it. They’re mind-altering. We try to keep the habitat clean but you know how it is. Stuff blows in.’
‘Well,’ I said breezily, ‘it wouldn’t go with the soup anyway. Er, if you guys want to sit at the table I’ll bring it over. I’ve baked some bread. I thought since it was only lunch we can eat in the kitchen.’
I served a bowl for Keziah and another for me. We started eating. She was a bit distracted.
‘I didn’t need to give them much guidance,’ Leopold was saying to Gaston. ‘Just the “three spiritual laws” and then I let them do what comes naturally. But these little wisps of truth get completely intermingled in their lives. It’s organic development. Slow but steady. You see Jamie,’ he said to me, ‘in setting up this home, you and Keziah are just doing what comes naturally, aren’t you?’
I avoided Keziah’s gaze, but she looked a bit out of it anyway.
‘Yes, in a way,’ I said.
‘And what we’ve got to do now is just keep adding to it, beautifying it, extending it, peopling it. Building a whole world, founded on the light-handed guidance of Gaston and Leopold.’
‘Not enough,’ spat Gaston suddenly.
‘I thought we’d discussed this before,’ hissed Leopold in a low voice. ‘Gaston, dear, we’d discussed it.’
‘I am not prostrating myself any more in front of those spotty Collectors without getting something back,’ Gaston muttered. ‘I am just not.’
Leopold looked across the table at us. ‘Gaston and I have to sort a couple of things out, don’t mind us. You carry on with your soup. It’s a project thing we’re involved with. Terribly high-level. Nothing for you to worry about.’ He turned to Gaston, ‘Gaston, darling, we agreed, this is building for the long-term. The time will come. I want them to want it, I want them to beg for it.’
‘I want something now,’ insisted Gaston. ‘Now.’
‘You just don’t have any idea,’ Leopold paused in his hissing to say across to us in a light voice, ‘Don’t worry about us! Creative tension you know!’ Then carried on: ‘You’ve got to let it ripen.’
‘Leopold! Sort it. We don’t know how much time we’ve got. We’ve got to be ready.’
‘Do you want it thorough? Or quick? Darling, please, let’s talk about it later.’
‘I want both.’
The rest of the meal passed in silence. Gaston left first, with a taut nod. After he’d gone, Leopold said, ‘You’re doing very well. Both of you. Yes. Well done.’
He left.
Keziah and I looked across the table at each other.
‘Well, I think we did OK,’ I said. ‘Not sure what Gaston was going on about.’
‘Whatever,’ said Keziah. She looked a little uncertain. ‘I ate a mushroom.’
‘What?’
‘It frightened me.’
‘I didn’t think anything frightened you.’
‘This did.’
‘I said you shouldn’t have eaten it.’
‘I didn’t say I shouldn’t have eaten it. I just said it frightened me.’
‘What was it like?’
She thought.
‘Does music ever make you cry?’
‘All the time,’ I answered. ‘You wouldn’t believe the schlocky stuff that gets me going. Abba has been known to.’
‘It was like that.’
‘Like Abba?’
‘No, you dork. Like… awe. Like standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon.’
‘That doesn’t sound very frightening.’
‘You try then.’
‘I like to stay in control of my mental processes,’ I said. ‘No telling what they’d do if I let them off the leash.’
‘I’m going back to my side of the habitat. Do some more building.’
‘Would you like some chocolate tonight?’
‘I suppose I can fit it in,’ she said. She put the mushroom-filled trug over her arm.
That afternoon I built this amazing circular cinema underneath the lighthouse—you could distantly hear the waves pounding above the ceiling, but somehow, a film wasn’t quite hitting the spot. So next I built a gym underneath the cinema, and challenged Mel to a bout of kick-boxing. Bad idea. Only lasted one round. She’s strong, Mel. I forgot.
‘No, no, I’m fine,’ I told her. ‘I just lost interest after the first round.’ Lost a tooth as well. Toyed with the idea of creating some nubile Tooth Fairy to climb in through the lighthouse window and rummage lightly under my pillow at night in some floaty fairy-skirt, but couldn’t be bothered.
So instead I arranged a tropical storm—a knack to this, getting the clouds to roll, the banana trees to bend, the waves to roil. I walked arm-in-arm with Caroline along a promenade between the maglev and the beach. We’d put oilskins over our beach things.
‘I’m beginning to think,’ I said to her, ‘that I’m not being imaginative enough. The beach and Osama’s and even the maglev, they’re all very well, but it’s a bit unsatisfying. Shallow.’ I paused to pick up a flat stone and skimmed it across the sea—bounce, bounce, bounce. I counted seventy-two skips before it disappeared out of sight.
It was cosy walking with Caroline through the storm. I glanced across at her. She had beautiful clear skin and sweet, perfect lips. Pity about the I’ve-starched-my-knickers way she walked. But perhaps that was nerves. Which you can’t blame her for.
‘Have you ever thought shallow might be your problem?’ asked Caroline.
‘No I haven’t,’ I said patiently. ‘In case you haven’t noticed, being something like dead is my problem. Being captured by evil spirits is my problem. Being forced to share the sky and all eternity with a feral lawyer and a condemned therapist is my problem. Being shallow is the key to survival.
‘I’m just beginning to realize the power I have. Don’t you think there’s something in what Leopold has been saying? Think of what we can build!
‘You know what I’m thinking of doing? Warming up the North Sea.’
‘Jamie—’ she said, about to embark on a conversation that I knew would be about us and not good. She’d increasingly got this way over the months. Getting too involved in her Reading Club, I suspected.
‘What’s the worst thing about Cambridge?’ I asked hurriedly. ‘The way an East wind settles in about November and doesn’t stop blowing till April. You may have noticed this. Well, not this Cambridge. Think of a chain of fusion reactors under the sea. Pumping out hot water. Think of the sea life we’ll attract. Maybe we can install some coral reefs. Imagine putting your feet in the North Sea in January and it’s warm. It’ll be a whole new experience.’
‘Jamie.’
‘And the climate will change with the sea temperature
. Steamy winds from the East. Banana farming. You can redevelop the whole coastline. “The Lincolnshire Riveria”.’
‘Jamie—’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘You’re going to say it’s too mind-boggling.’
‘Never mind.’
We continued to walk, but it wasn’t the same. She didn’t have vision, Caroline. I began to wonder if she and I weren’t indeed incompatible. Had she not dumped me, I might have considered letting her go myself by now.
Keziah and I were both in a subdued mood when we met for our evening chocolate with our backs to the funfair, facing the sea.
‘Eaten any more mushrooms?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘And still building your thing?’
Keziah didn’t answer for a long time, looking out to sea. Eventually she said,
‘Do you think life passes more intensely here?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s so concentrated. Instead of thoughts being so shadowy, you can pin them down.’
‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘I’ve certainly had some good meals.’
‘Most of the people I worked for had things in common. Broken homes. Abuse. Self-hatred.’
I shifted uneasily. It would be much more fun to talk about how I was rearranging the constellations in the sky to some more modern configurations, such as The Christmas Tree and (my particular favourite) The Apple Logo. Much more fun than Orion the Mighty Hunter. Keziah said, ‘Please don’t make a stupid comment or change the subject.’
‘Nothing was further from my mind,’ I said quickly.
‘I had a rocky time at university.’ She sipped her chocolate.
‘Who doesn’t? Some friends and I once decided to take the Eurostar to Ashford for a joke. Except they tied me to the seat and I couldn’t get out till Belgium. Cost me a hundred and fifty quid to get back.’
‘I had an abortion and six weeks in a psychiatric hospital in my first year.’
‘OK. That sort of rocky.’
‘What saved me was the night I volunteered at the night shelter. I was doing it to show off, an edgy studenty thing. Anyway. I found the people in the shelter were exactly like me. We’d all come to the same place, though by different routes. I was home, Jamie.’
Keziah was looking out over the sea. I opened my mouth. ‘Please don’t give a long talk about how you, too, found fulfilment from deep involvement with the needy,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ I said, abandoning a mention of how I did a street collection for Kidney Research each year. Actually, what I used to do was empty my small change into six of the envelopes and mail them back.
‘Really.’
‘No, I was going to make a sympathizing noise,’ I improvised. ‘I learnt that girls have to solve problems out loud and at length. Men are obliged to be present but mustn’t talk and aren’t allowed to read the paper.’
‘Good. Until then I’d hardly known anyone else like me. Here was a houseful.’ She sipped her chocolate. ‘Jamie if you make a stupid comment or a joke at this point I will give you reasons to believe that I did not go to Women’s Advanced Self Defence classes in vain.’
I felt my knees pressing themselves together.
Keziah continued: ‘Me and my sister were brought up in West Africa. My mother ran—still does run—a mission hospital. My dad built solar fruit dryers. We had a goat for a pet. Her name was Clarissa.’
‘Clarissa. Nice.’ I said.
‘My sister’s black. Jemima. They adopted her. Then three months later my mother fell pregnant with me. It was so obvious Jemima was adopted that my mother spent all my childhood overcompensating.’
I don’t do parental compensating, never mind overcompensating. ‘My mother is the most fearing and controlling figure I’ve ever met,’ went on Keziah. ‘And when I was seven my sister and I were sent to a boarding school. That’s the way you do it in Africa—that or come home. It was an abusive context.’
‘The man who you were burning on the bonfires.’
‘The head teacher. Yes. Abuse is the most destructive thing you can do to a person. My mother would not move us out. By then my dad was so broken with his depression that he didn’t stop her. My sister seemed to be in denial. She floated through school. I fought every day. Seven years.’
‘Quite surprising,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘That you fought. So out of character.’
‘So here, at college, I’m in the night shelter with guys with the same self-hatred as me, the same powerlessness and the same sense of being evil and of being victims. We were the same. Except I could turn the world round for them.
‘My life changed. I had been planning to be a city lawyer, really rich, breaking my mother’s heart as many times and in as many different ways as possible.’ Keziah spooned in a marshmallow quite calmly, a bit like a minor celebrity saying her life ambitions were to care for small animals and work towards world peace. ‘But now I wanted to fight for these guys for the rest of my life.’
I thought, but didn’t say, that a twenty-six-year-old talking about ‘the rest of her life’ was a little, well, teenage. I long ago stopped having a Purpose. Unless you count Consuming with Finesse. But mostly I was just wishing we could talk about something else.
‘You mind if I ask you a question?’ I said. ‘Of course, that itself is a question, so really I’m asking if I can ask you two questions… anyway… here’s the second question … why are you telling me all this?’
‘It’s called sharing. It’s what human beings do,’ said Keziah.
‘Not the ones I know,’ I snapped. What is it with girls, I thought, that they have this urge to hold serious, in-depth conversations? What have I done to deserve this? Do I not look like just the sort of person not to have serious, in-depth conversations with? Isn’t this what reality TV is for, so that girls can get it all out of their systems and we guys can watch the cricket without them interrupting at crucial moments to discuss somebody-at-work’s ectopic pregnancy?
‘One other thing,’ said Keziah. ‘When I crashed into you… I get these waves of depression sometimes. My head was in a mess.’
‘No, really,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t quite trying to kill myself, but I didn’t much care what happened.’
‘I already said it’s over,’ I said.
For a moment I felt a little stab of sympathy for her. So bleak, her life. But you can’t get dragged into these things. And please could we stop talking like we’re trapped in daytime TV.
‘That constellation up there,’ I said. ‘It’s called The Christmas Tree.’
She walked away into the night.