The Wrong Story

by James Ellis

  ‘Hi Dad,’ said Dan. He was sprawled on the floor, absorbed with his phone. Holly was lying on the sofa eating garlic bread. Tom could see the crumbs falling from her mouth when she spoke, like hailstones bouncing off her clothes and onto the floor. On the coffee table were boxes and cartons of food, bottles of soft drinks and bottles of wine. The curtains were closed and the room was hot and filled with the smell of food and warm packaging, and the noise and flickering lights from the television.

  ‘We’ve got a takeaway,’ Holly said.

  ‘Come and watch some television,’ said Karen. She was curled up in an armchair. ‘We’ve got curries and pizza.’

  ‘We’ve put cushions out and everything,’ said Dan. ‘Look at all the food Mum’s ordered. That will sort you out.’

  Tom sat in the armchair opposite Karen’s.

  ‘Do I need sorting out?’ he said.

  ‘Everyone needs sorting out, Dad. We’re watching a blooper show. You’ll love it. Even Holly likes it, although she’s pretending she doesn’t. Wouldn’t it be good if they had a video of you falling off the roof? Have you checked the internet? Maybe someone filmed you.’

  ‘Dad doesn’t do the internet, do you, Tom?’ said Karen. ‘Too social.’

  ‘I bet Dad’s got some secret stalking accounts, though. Probably calls himself “The Masked Cartoonist”.’

  ‘Mum’s got you some wine,’ said Holly. ‘You like wine, don’t you?’

  Tom felt lost amongst the hot fumes of family life. The television was too loud and the floor was littered with empty boxes and trays. Everywhere seemed cluttered and chaotic. Karen handed him a glass of wine. ‘That will sort you out,’ she said, and smiled. She had dirty teeth too, Tom noticed, like Lawrence’s. ‘A Monday night treat.’

  ‘Is that like a Friday night special?’ said Dan. ‘Wink wink.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Holly. ‘Gross.’

  Tom looked at the glass in his hand and wondered what had happened to the time between him walking home and arriving at the house. It seemed like a moment. Perhaps that was all it had been. A moment between a full stop and a capital letter. A moment between frames.

  ‘You’re not eating much,’ said Karen.

  Tom looked at his plate. It was true. The tiny portion he’d selected was untouched.

  ‘What’s the matter, Dad?’ said Dan. ‘Are you missing Scraps?’

  ‘Who do you like best,’ said Holly. ‘Scraps or us?’

  ‘Maggie or Mum?’ said Dan.

  ‘What?’ said Tom. ‘What did you say?’ His voice sounded unnaturally loud and large against the electronic voices coming from the television.

  ‘I remember when there was just Scraps,’ said Karen. ‘No other characters… no wait, there was the Pelican. Just Scraps and the Pelican.’

  ‘No Billy the Hedgehog? Impossible,’ said Dan. ‘He’s me, isn’t he? Billy’s me. And Plenty is Holly, and the horrible, always-angry restaurant owner is Mum. Because you hate Mum, don’t you Dad? And you’re Scraps. Right?’

  ‘I don’t hate Mum.’

  ‘Idiot,’ said Holly to Dan. ‘Who’s the Pelican, then?’

  ‘The Pelican’s nobody,’ Dan said. ‘He’s just the butt of everybody’s joke. He’s a big useless nothing.’

  They all laughed and Tom could see them as if they were in a picture on a page in a book.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’ve got that all wrong. You’re not Billy and Plenty is not Holly. And Mum isn’t the –’ He found it difficult to talk. ‘You should think who you are,’ he managed before his voice tightened.

  ‘How did the roof trip go?’ Holly said.

  ‘He didn’t go through with it,’ said Karen.

  ‘You should have gone onto the roof. Mustn’t be a chicken,’ said Dan.

  ‘You have to do it. It’s the law. Police Officer Ann Lasley will come and arrest you.’

  ‘Lawrence said you acted weirdly and wanted to come down.’

  ‘Dad’s always acting weirdly.’

  ‘Dad’s a bit odd.’

  ‘It must be all the drinking.’

  ‘You shouldn’t drink so much, Dad. Not if you don’t want to be odd.’

  ‘How’s the old memory box today?’

  Tom looked at his hands and they seemed too large. Dan was wrong. The Pelican and the always-angry restaurant owner mattered. They mattered a lot. He picked up his glass of wine but his fingers felt lumpy and unresponsive, and the glass fell and rolled across the floor, spilling red wine onto the carpet. Tom saw Holly rock backwards and forwards, her hands locked together, her face laughing with glee. He couldn’t hear any sounds at all. Karen stood up and walked towards him and her leg knocked against a tray of food and it all fell slowly onto the floor. Everyone looked very tall but that was probably because Tom was lying on the floor. And then the sound came back and he heard Dan saying, ‘What are you doing down there, Dad?’

  He tried to get up. ‘I’m okay, Bailey,’ he said. ‘It’s hot, isn’t it?’ He looked at Holly. ‘You set my root ball on fire.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Have you gone cuckoo, Dad?’

  Tom hauled himself onto his knees and then stood up, swaying from side to side as he tried to maintain his balance.

  ‘You off?’ said Karen.

  ‘I have to do some work.’

  His head hurt. The lights were too bright. He didn’t want to be in that room anymore. Bouncing off the door frame, he left the room, and feeling sick, he went upstairs to the landing and climbed the ladder to his study.

  In the clean, clear, quiet air of his eyrie, against the backdrop of white walls, white floor and white ceiling, Tom sat quietly and allowed his thoughts to reorganise themselves. Looking up at the skylights, he could see that it was dark outside. Night-time. He wondered if Karen, Holly and Dan would stay in the house. He hoped not.

  He turned to his filing cabinets and the drawers that contained his old Scraps cartoons – almost a thousand A3 pages, each one layered in tissue paper. He opened a drawer at random and leafed through them, letting each page fall forwards, making the tissue paper waft in a puff of air. They were all in date order, most published, a few still work-in-progress, kept back until he could re-work them and make them perfect. The life and times of Scraps, Plenty, Billy, the Pelican and the always-angry restaurant owner immortalised in pen and ink. Scraps had hardly changed since the beginning but Tom could see how he’d developed the others, using less lines over time, yet creating more personality.

  He thought he knew them as intimately as he knew his own family. He thought he would be able to hold them up to the light and recognise each facet and flaw of their construction as if he were a diamond-merchant inspecting his hoard of jewels. But now he was beginning to wonder if he knew them at all, if he knew anyone at all. He leafed through them one by one and then, abruptly, he sat up and took notice.

  It was a drawing of a dog.

  He pulled out the drawing and laid it on his desk. Part of his working method was to draw his cartoon strips four times as large as they would appear in the newspapers, and in front of him lay three clean frames precisely drawn in black ink.

  It was a continuation strip: it had its own punchline but it was part of a longer story line. Not all the characters were present, only Scraps, Plenty, the always-angry restaurant owner and…

  Bullet.

  Bullet was a savage-looking dog, all jaws and teeth and crazy eyes with a small muscular body. A proper cartoon dog. And she was a she.

  And the violent characters are the females: the always-angry restaurant owner and Plenty the Cat… Why is that?

  Tom remembered her now. She had appeared in only a few strips. Tom had drawn her for the always-angry restaurant owner to help her keep order outside the restaurant. He had thought it might be fun to have an animal on her side of the storyline. But it didn’t work. Bullet had unbalanced the strip.

  Five’ s a nice number. You can always have an outsider with a
n odd number.

  In the end, Tom had cut Bullet loose and had drawn her slipping her lead and running away.

  ‘Are you coming back?’ Tom said, his voice sounding flat against the white silence in the attic. ‘Are you coming back because I abandoned you?’ He put the drawing back in the drawer and closed it. Then something caught his eye and he looked up. It looked like a large bird flying past the skylight.

  He thought he heard a stair creak. He got up quietly and closed the trapdoor that led down to the landing. He felt sure he could smell cigarette smoke. Although he had no mobile phone, he had a landline extension. He picked it up, listened and then dialled. He waited until a familiar gruff voice said, ‘Borkmann.’

  ‘Gerard. It’s Tom. I’m in trouble.’

  Part Three

  Bang

  16

  The Pelican tucked its scabby head into the crook of its neck and let the weight of its beak press its face into the oily comfort of its chest. It shifted position slightly and then with the slightest of sighs, it fell asleep.

  Below, the dog had stopped barking and ceased trying to eat the alleyway. It lay among st the dustbins, its head on its paws, and it too slept, its heavy, laboured breathing sounding like an idlfing engine, only a snort and an occasional grunt punctuating the rumbling rhythmic rise and fall of breath.

  Nothing happened while they slept…

  … until the night sky began to lighten, as if a greater consciousness was awakening, and the Pelican, high above the alleyway, perched on the top of the wall with its webbed feet gripping the white concrete cap that ran its length, became visible as a dark s ilhouette against the horizon, a gargoyle guarding its friends who slept in the restaurant below.

  It had dreamed of shapes: strange, geometric shapes that appeared and disappeared. Blue circles and lines like unformed faces drifted through the Pelican ’ s ti ny mind. Triangles and squares, corners and edges were drawn and rubbed out, recast and abandoned.

  The Pelican realised that it was no longer asleep, that it had awoken without knowing. A light breeze ruffled its feathers and it sensed that dawn had arrive d. It could feel the newness, the freshness, the light in the air.

  Slowly the Pelican lifted its head. Its neck cracked and sent a bolt of lightning across its eyes, making them cross momentarily behind its lids. It opened its beak and inhaled cool air and released by way of trade a cloud of musty, stagnant gas. It stretched its wings and felt the breeze rise beneath them, the hint of upward movement, the light sensation of burgeoning flight. Then it opened its eyes and looked around.

  All the other building s had gone.

  Bacon drives me wild. It’s as simple as that. Don’t get me wrong, insects, earthworms, rotting fruit and rancid meat are all fine foods, and if I see them on the menu then I’m the first to pull up my chair and tie on a napkin. Nor am I discounting the distinct attraction of pouncing on a clucking hen rooting for feed amongst its wood chips. That will certainly bring out the animal in me. But pound for pound, ten times out of ten, and here I apologise to any pig friends, the food that’s going to draw me into your kitchen and risk a beating with a broomstick is a pan of frying, popping, smoking bacon.

  I mention this because that’s what I awoke to – not a beating with a broomstick, but the smell of bacon and the sizzling sounds of food being fried. A slight fine-tuning of my nostrils further revealed the preparation of sausages, fried bread, egg, mushrooms, tomatoes and, I was fairly certain, baked beans. I scented toast, too, and coffee. What’s a hungry fox meant to do when taunted with such smells other than curl up into a ball and whimper and gaze hungrily at the closed kitchen door?

  Daylight was coming in through the front windows. I was lying on the floor beneath a tablecloth. I stopped whimpering, stood up, stretched and yawned, and scratched my belly, which made a loud rasping sound where my stubby claws massaged the dry fur. It was morning and I was in the always-angry restaurant owner’s restaurant.

  Apart from the Pelican, we had spent the night downstairs. None of us had felt confident enough to stay upstairs in one of those vague, dusty, neglected rooms that lined the landing corridor. It was strange, although the essentials were there – walls, ceiling, floor, a window and a door – they lacked substance. When I had looked at the carpets in those rooms, I couldn’t clearly see the patterns. They seemed to drift and change in front of my eyes. I didn’t like it. Even the always-angry restaurant owner was uneasy.

  ‘I’ll sleep down here with you,’ she had said.

  ‘Don’t you want to be in your bedroom?’

  ‘I need to keep an eye on you lot. A pack of mangy gutter animals in a restaurant isn’t healthy. I need to make sure you don’t raid the kitchen.’ But no one had believed her. ‘And don’t think you can slip into my bedroom when my back’s turned,’ she had said to Plenty.

  ‘I’ll do what I want.’

  But Plenty had stayed downstairs too.

  So we had settled down in front of the fire at the back of the restaurant and slept amongst the tables and chairs, using tablecloths as covers to keep ourselves warm with cushions and seat-backs to lie on. I took stock of the room. Billy was still asleep, curled up in a ball of quills, but Plenty was awake. She sat neatly by the fire watching me.

  ‘You sleep with your mouth open,’ she said.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘And you snore.’

  ‘Good morning to you, too.’

  I wandered amongst the tables, picking up knives and forks, cups and plates, examining them and putting them down again. I licked the salt, sniffed the pepper, sneezed, and blew my nose on a napkin. I was a classy act.

  The restaurant seemed smaller in daylight than it had the previous night. I went over to the window to look out but it was too bright. I shielded my eyes and thought about the light I had seen at the end of the alleyway the previous night. Now I should have been looking onto the busy high street, but clearly the time of day or night made no difference. It would always be an impenetrable white wall. Why hadn’t I noticed that before? I felt as if I were seeing the world for the first time and finding that it wasn’t as I’d assumed it to be. Still scratching, I poked my head into the kitchen where the always-angry restaurant owner was cooking. ‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘That smells good. Is that bacon? I’ll just take—’

  ‘Get out.’

  I went back into the restaurant and pulled a chair to the fireplace.

  ‘And you were dribbling,’ Plenty said. ‘While you were asleep you were dribbling.’

  I looked at her. ‘Aren’t there some mice you can chase?’

  ‘I’ve looked.’

  We sat in silence. Plenty watched me with her ears twitching, trying to hear my thoughts. ‘Are you thinking about the dog?’ she said at last.

  I rolled a cigarette, tapped it on my knee and then lit it. I sucked down the smoke. The first puff of the day was always the best. Even more so if I was outside and it was a cold, bright morning. Cold air and grey smoke hitting my lungs like a stone: I loved that. And after a meal was good, too. I kept my eye on the kitchen door. I was beginning to tremble with the thought of food.

  ‘Well? Are you?’

  ‘Yes, Plenty. I am.’

  ‘Are you thinking that you recognised her?’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Bullet.’

  I stroked my muzzle as if I were a professor with a beard.

  ‘You know it’s her,’ said Plenty.

  ‘I couldn’t get a proper look.’

  ‘It is her. Who else would it be?’

  Who else indeed? Now that I thought about it, there weren’t that many individuals in our world that I could identify as being… individual. There had always been an impression of other people, of crowds, but I’d never actually taken notice of their specific components. Why should I? A crowd was a crowd; a collection of heads and faces. Who cared about the detail?

  ‘If it is her, why has she come back?’ I said.

  Plenty yawned. ‘I don’t kno
w.’ She looked at the closed kitchen door. ‘I’m bored talking about it. Is she cooking for us?’

  On cue, the kitchen doors slapped open and the always-angry restaurant owner appeared balancing four plates. She dropped them onto the nearest table, sat down and started eating. In mid-chew she looked up and said, ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’

  Cautiously, Plenty and I joined her at the table and Billy, sensing food, uncurled from his place on the floor and looked up with sleepy eyes. ‘I’m dreaming,’ he said. ‘I’m dreaming that the always-angry restaurant owner has just cooked us breakfast. Nobody wake me up.’

  ‘Very funny,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want it, I’ll give it away.’

  Still wrapped in his tablecloth, Billy quickly pulled up a chair. ‘What about the Pelican?’ he said.

  ‘I’m not having that bag of lice in here.’

  ‘But even so…’

  The always-angry restaurant owner glared. ‘Even so what?’

  ‘Well, it must be hungry too…’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

  She jumped up and slammed into the kitchen. We heard rattling, crashing, muttering, and then she reappeared with a plate of bread and cold meat. She pushed through the tables and thumped up the stairs.

  ‘This is a restaurant,’ we heard her shout. ‘Not a home for flea-bags.’

  ‘She loves us really,’ Billy whispered as the ceiling shook.

  We listened. Doors slammed and then we heard the thumping footsteps returning. The always-angry restaurant owner came into the restaurant and sat down again.

  ‘The bird is not there,’ she said. ‘Satisfied? Now eat.’

  We ate.

  The Pelican was airborne. Below, the restaurant building and the strip of alleyway that ran along one side of it were the only recognisable features. It s wooped and glided and flapped and criss-crossed the alien terrain. There was above and below; over there and over here; in front and behind. There was the Pelican and there were other things. There was dark and there was light.