Deep Fried: A Novel

by Beckett, Bernard

  I get up, move slowly into the shower. The flow is strong, the water instantly hot. I undress, relax, feel the warmth washing over me, and then, without warning or reason, The Sadness is back.

  How to describe it? It’s like trying to explain how it feels to stand at the edge of the ocean. If you’ve been there, you don’t need the explanation. The Sadness is not a feeling, but a numbness. Feelings losing shape, so there is nothing for a thought to cling to, nothing for a sensation to brace against. It is a slow, unstoppable slide away from myself. Pissed Off has energy and direction, it takes you with it; but with The Sadness, you are simply slipping away. I am in the shower still, but I’m not in the shower. The feeling of water is now so distant that it is surely another Pete it is falling on.

  I sink against the floor; wet, naked, absent. It will pass. This always passes. There will be a moment, an opportunity, when I can stand, shake it off, walk away. This will always be true. I’m not frightened. I let it do what it must for me, and then I let it pass.

  There are patterns. The Sadness comes for a reason. Our minds are not our own. We hold conversations, my mind and me. Sometimes. Other times, it doesn’t feel the need to keep me informed. But it notices things. And when it thinks I need it, it warns me. Sometimes just with tiredness, or a tightening in the head. Sometimes with the Pissed Off. Mornings like this, it sends The Sadness. And I know now, sitting here, waiting for the moment when I will be allowed to stand, that this thing is not simple after all. This story, the fabulous rise of Pete to his rightful place, isn’t over.

  The day is easy and uneventful. The Sadness retreats and I am able to forget its visit. A man comes from an advertising agency. He takes photos and measurements. Lucinda teaches me how to hit a golf drive; the balls sail clear over the cliff and out into the water below. The sun is shining, apologetic after the storm. We are happy, all three. They talk into cellphones, make arrangements, tell me that tomorrow we will head back into town. Promise that after dinner they will take me through the best way of explaining this to my family. Money, success, prospects. I’m not sure I need the help.

  And then, dinner still settling in our stomachs, Marcus on the keyboard, trying to bring up some bootleg concert footage he has downloaded, there is knocking on the door. It happens.

  It is an abrupt sound. Not a quiet, respectful knocking. Not a lodge employee with a message, a friend or a colleague, sorry to be intruding. Three knocks, beating out a steady, confident rhythm. The first is loud, the second stronger still, the third will not be ignored. The sound of trouble. You will come now, it says. I am here, and now your life must change.

  Marcus looks to Lucinda. I watch them closely.

  ‘Expecting someone?’ Marcus asks. Lucinda shrugs. They look to me. I shake my head. They don’t believe me. Marcus stands, walks over to the door. Lucinda is beside me, on the couch. She doesn’t move.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pete. Who do you think?’

  She barges past him, strides into the room. I hear Lucinda’s sharp, involuntary in-breath, ‘Jesus,’ whispered to herself, as the air leaks back out.

  Lucinda stands slowly, confronts the stranger. The two of them know each other. I have never seen her before in my life, although she looks to me and smiles, as if we are old friends, asks –

  ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘Sure,’ I reply, totally fascinated, missing everything.

  ‘What are you doing here, Sophie?’ Lucinda demands. A slow smile breaks over Sophie’s face. She walks forward until she and Lucinda are face to face.

  ‘I’m here for Pete.’

  Sophie and Lucinda. Opposite and alike. Sophie is shorter, by at least 20 centimetres, younger, by at least ten years. My age. Her hair is dark, dyed black in the way of those who like the certainty. It is long enough to cover her eyes, and carefully unkempt. She is thin; a body shaped by bones, emptied by nervous energy. Her skirt is long and black as her hair, its lace brushes over green leather boots. The top is woollen, short sleeves worn defiantly against the weather. Her mouth, tightly locked down and ready for battle, is still full. There is no makeup. I see small nostrils flare slightly in concentration, and I see her eyes.

  Opposite and alike. Alike in the eyes. I have no choice but to watch her eyes. In this they are twins. I stare, and feel the charge building between them. Wait for it to crackle free. On the opposite side of the room, Marcus is watching too. Sophie speaks first.

  ‘I hate you. You know that. I hate you and I hate everything you stand for. But that’s not why I’m doing this.’

  Not a bad way of breaking the silence.

  ‘Go home, Sophie.’

  ‘When I’ve got what I came for.’

  ‘What’s he told you, Sophie?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your father. Your stupid father. It’s not true. He doesn’t know what’s going on. Whatever you think he told you, it isn’t true.’

  ‘If he’s so stupid, why did you fuck him?’ Sophie spits the question straight up, into her face. Lucinda doesn’t flinch. I watch as a stranger watches, ignorant and compelled. I know that somehow I must be involved, the prickling at the back of my neck tells me this much, but I can’t even guess how. The tension winds tighter between them and I edge forward on my seat, sucked in by their gravity.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t regret it.’

  ‘I know what you’re doing here. I know what you’re trying to do to Pete.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about Pete.’

  ‘I know him better than you think.’

  At this Lucinda pauses and turns to me accusingly, which is unfair, but not unusual.

  ‘Pete, do you know this girl?’

  ‘No,’ I answer, which is honest and yet, I’m sure, in some impossibly complicated way, quite wrong.

  ‘You’ve never met her before?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘We’ve talked though,’ Sophie interrupts. ‘By computer.’

  She looks directly at me, tries to straighten out my thinking with her eyes.

  ‘Pete, this isn’t how I wanted to explain it to you, but I’m Rob.’

  I’m Rob. Two words for a life to pivot on. I look at her. Stare at her. See nothing new, nothing but this tiny girl, with huge eyes. Who isn’t Rob. Can’t be Rob. Rob inside my head, who at this very moment is breaking up and threatening to float away. I try to grab hold of him, remember who it was I talked to. Rob is older than me. He dresses badly, spends too many hours in front of his computer, is shy in public. He doesn’t barge in on a place like this. He doesn’t know Lucinda. His father doesn’t sleep with Lucinda. Rob is mysterious, political, radical, connected. He knows things, and people. He is unshaven, now that I think about it; smells of coffee and cigarettes. He has a little bedsit beneath the shadow of the motorway. He could make big money if he wanted, designing websites or consulting in computer security, but he chooses to remain on the outside. A deluded romantic with big ideas. And he isn’t real. He is words on a screen that arrived, provoked, melted away.

  And she, Sophie, standing before me, young, angry, beautiful (admit it Pete, beautiful) says she is Rob. It can’t be true, and it has to be true, and my brain is not equipped to plot a path between the two, so I sit, and I stare, and wait for life to do its worst.

  ‘So, aren’t you going to say something?’ she asks.

  ‘Hi,’ I say. Lame. Useless, exposed. The Sadness knew what it was doing, visiting this morning.

  ‘Pete.’ It is Marcus, still standing guard at the door. ‘Who’s Rob? What’s this all about?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. Anything you say will be taken down, and may be used in evidence. I don’t want to talk, I want to watch. Marcus turns his attention to Lucinda. So this is what he looks like flustered; it only adds to the dry excitement building in this air-conditioned room.

  ‘Who is this? What’s she doing here?’

  ‘This
is Sophie Wade,’ Lucinda tells him, not taking her eyes off the girl. There is a special sound the voice makes, high in the throat, a vibration of uncertainty, when you regret the words you are forced to say. I hear it now. ‘Phil’s daughter.’

  Phil Wade’s daughter? Rob is Phil Wade’s daughter? I was in her house. I drag my eyes back to Marcus. His face is dark and his mouth is twisting, no matter how hard he is trying to control the reaction.

  ‘You slept with Phil?’ Marcus as little-boy-hurt. It’s like at the end of The Wizard of Oz, when they pull back the curtain. ‘When?’

  ‘What does it matter when?’ She dismisses his concern with her hand.

  ‘Last summer.’ Sophie fills in the gap.

  ‘And that doesn’t matter?’ Marcus is furious now. His world, our world, is unravelling.

  ‘Marcus.’ She stops him with a word. If it came down to it, a fight between the two of them, Lucinda would win. She is too vicious for him. Sophie smiles to herself.

  There are four people in the room, 81 different ways of looking at one another; all of us are looking around, trying to cover the possibilities.

  ‘So why’s she here?’ Marcus asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lucinda tells him. ‘Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘I don’t care who tells me, I just want someone to explain what the fuck’s going on here.’

  ‘Like you told Pete what was going on?’ Sophie challenges, matching the fight in his voice.

  ‘Pete knows exactly what’s going on,’ Lucinda counters, which must be a joke, because I’m totally bewildered.

  ‘Is that right?’ Sophie’s eyes light up at the possibility of victory. ‘So Pete, tell me, who do think these people here are working for?’

  She looks at the two of them, so very pleased with herself.

  ‘PBs,’ I answer, not meaning to hurt, but seeing the words puncture her.

  Silence, while she takes that in.

  ‘So why are you still here? What are you doing with them?’ she demands.

  I shrug. I’m not ready, I want to tell her. Get back to me. My answer isn’t ready.

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, Sophie,’ Lucinda says. ‘But what he’s doing is arranging a contract with us, for an advertising campaign we’re about to undertake. So you see, there’s nothing for you to do here. Why don’t you leave?’

  ‘Are you crazy, Lucinda?’ Marcus again. I follow the voices with my head, like a spectator at the tennis. I’m the only one not standing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘Why not?’ asks Lucinda.

  ‘Why do you think?’ He stares at Lucinda desperately, but for once their telepathy is letting them down. Marcus turns to me instead.

  ‘Who’s Rob?’ he demands.

  ‘This is, apparently,’ I tell him, nodding towards Sophie. I know it’s not what he means by the question, but seeing him like this, seeing him and Lucinda like this, suddenly I don’t like them so much. He advances towards me, and it’s Lucinda who moves to block his way.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demands, urgent, quiet. Marcus looks at her, and I think it is a flash of loathing I see in his face. How could this be possible? Lucinda and Marcus, each perfect in themselves, together the ultimate team, not getting along. Falling apart.

  ‘Pete, listen to me.’ Marcus looks past her, fixes his eyes on me. ‘This is vitally important. Is Rob how you got onto the PBs site? Is this how you did it?’

  Lucinda, clever Lucinda, hasn’t thought this through. I see realisation wipe across her face. I hear the silent ‘fuck’, as she turns her eyes to me. I look past both of them. Sophie is still smiling.

  ‘Is it, Pete? Is that what happened? Of course it is. How much does she know? How much of this have you discussed?’

  I don’t know why I’m smiling, but I am. They’re in some sort of trouble, and I’m not. And there’s hints of what that trouble might be, and what it means about everything that’s gone before. Hints that they’ve been lying to me.

  My silence is the only thing they care about, it’s the only thing they’re paid to care about. They don’t care about who I am or what I might be. When I jumped up on that counter, it was them I was treading all over. Them, this beautiful, clever twosome, whom I so much wanted to be with, be like. They are the scum that floats to the top of the stagnant pool while the rest of us desperately tread water. Everything that’s so right about them, the confidence, the certainty, the answer to every question before it’s asked, is everything that’s wrong.

  Yes, I can believe it. This is why The Sadness visited, and this is why I’m smiling now. I’m smiling because the Pissed Off is back, and it’s armed and it’s dangerous. There are things in my head that can bring them to their knees. Not just them, but their whole stupid corporation. They see my smile and they get it too. They’re fucked now. Finished. Broken. Deep Fried.

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ I say. ‘I’ve never met her before.’

  ‘She gave you the password didn’t she? She gave you the password to her father’s account?’

  I look to Sophie/Rob. Give her a smile. She smiles back. It’s a real smile. She wasn’t paid to make it. I like her. Lucinda is desperate now. She leans over me, speaks quickly. Her words are flecked with spit and venom.

  ‘Pete, Pete. Don’t listen to her. Whatever she’s told you, don’t listen to her. It’s bullshit. Look, okay, I had an affair with her father, and that’s not something I’m proud of. She’s known, since last year. She hates me. That’s alright, she has a right to hate me. But what’s that got to do with you, Pete? How does that change anything for you? Come on. This morning you were perfectly happy to be here. Perfectly happy to be part of this. The campaign’s cool, you said so yourself. You get well paid. You get what you deserve. What’s so important that it’s worth giving that up for? What are you even fighting here?’

  She’s practically begging me. I haven’t said a thing to make her think I’ve changed my mind, but she knows. I’ll give her that much, she understands me. Understands I don’t have any choice. She waits for my answer but I don’t give it. Sophie speaks up on my behalf. Lucinda’s perfectly right, Sophie does hate her.

  ‘What do you think’s so important? How about the health of an entire generation? How about the workers you exploit? The customers you lie to, the environment you’re destroying? The health system that can’t cope with the fallout? I can think of a hundred good reasons to give it up.’

  Lucinda turns on her. Her rage is pure and loses nothing in the translation. I stand. There’s something about the whole up-close Discovery Channel thing that makes me. Fight, flight or commentate.

  ‘Oh spare me your fucking lectures, you self-righteous, ignorant little bitch.’ Marcus is watching too, as helpless as I am. In this thing, ours is the gentler sex. Lucinda is on her toes, towering over Sophie. I think she might mean to hit her. Sophie smiles and stands her ground. She doesn’t even blink.

  To be fair to Lucinda though, the counter-assault is relentless. I don’t think she even stops to take a breath.

  ‘What, you think we invented obesity and heart disease? So how come people are living longer than they ever have, smart arse? Answer me that. And even if they weren’t, how exactly would that be my fault, if people are so broken they choose to eat themselves to death? I didn’t break them. It wasn’t people like me who broke them. It was smug, patronising arseholes like you. And don’t start with me on the environment, because I have seen the figures and the environmental impact of a PBs meal is only forty percent of that of a home cooked dinner, that’s how economies of scale work. Minimising resource use is how we make our money. So hate profit, or hate wastefulness, but you can’t have both. If you want the whole world to sink into its own shit, then by all means follow your homespun undergraduate organic fairy tale, but don’t you dare come in here preaching to me about how I’m hurting the planet. Face it, Sophie, being angry doesn’t make you right. Yo
u’re young and you’re stupid, and that’s all you have to feed your certainty. Well, Pete isn’t like that. Pete is an exceptionally clever young man with a future to think about. So leave him alone and get the hell out of here.’

  It’s impressive, but only in the way of being so well-rehearsed that the anger almost sounds real. I don’t believe a word of it. Lucinda’s right about that much. I’m clever. Impressive, too, is the way Sophie’s still smiling. Sophie believes in me. Really believes in me. And I love that.

  Marcus moves forward, into the space carved out by our silence. He speaks quietly, softly. Back to the old team of two then. Good cop, bad cop.

  ‘She can stay a while, if she’d rather. We can talk about this some more, if that’s what you guys want.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Lucinda snaps at him. ‘She doesn’t know a thing. She would have told the world by now, if she did. Get her out of here.’

  Still Sophie is smiling.

  ‘That’s okay,’ she tells them. ‘I was about to leave anyway. Come on, Pete. You’ve seen what they’re like. We’ve got work to do.’

  She turns and walks back to the door and neither of them expect me to follow. But I do. It’s not complicated. It’s not something I have to think about. Silence follows us. A stunned, this can’t be happening, silence. We almost make it.

  Violence is always a surprise. I know it isn’t like that for everyone. Other people expect their peace to be punctuated by savage outbursts, but I’ve grown up in lucky times. I’ve lived in a quiet little suburb in a quiet little world where people die slowly, bit by bit. Where we sit on our hands and breathe in deeply, and save our rage for city driving and talkback radio. When someone hits out in my world, when the spittle and fists and grunts are flying, it’s a sign of a fault in the manufacture. The assailant is taken in for counselling and repairs. Apologies follow. I’m not good at violence. I just haven’t had the practice. I’m a hedgehog without spikes. I curl up into my little ball. I wait for it to stop. I wait for the pain to go away.