‘Make no mistake, I realize all this sounds relatively untoward, I realize that, but stay with me. We had a connection, this man and I. Granted, not one he knew about, but that doesn’t mean a connection isn’t there. One cat doesn’t have to know it’s related to another cat to drink from the same bowl. So I would watch him, and I would see in him what I had. Except here was a guy who kept his head up, who kept his eyes on the eyes of others, who was present. He was living in the moment, and in those moments I would see what I hadn’t done. I wanted to know him, because of course I wanted to be him. Him, with his beautiful wife. Him, still talking to his beautiful daughter, the kind of daughter whose eyes could light up the sky.’
My eyes found the pictures once more for just a second. He notices but moves on.
‘So one day I engineered a meeting. I made sure I was wearing a suit just like the suit he always wore on the days he was going to the meetings that had to go well. I remember it, it was an Anthony Sinclair, a Conduit Cut I bought one frisky afternoon I was feeling flush in Mayfair. And I stood next to him on the Kurfürstendamm, and I said, “My God, we could be family!”’
He slaps the table, delighted, and there is a moment of true joy in his eyes. He has spilled a slick of coffee and he wipes it with one hand, sweeping across the plastic tablecloth with its fields and flowers and kittens so its presence might not distract us any further.
‘And he laughed, this guy who would actually become like a young brother to me, and we talked about where we got our suits and I remember I took an umbrella just like his too, and the next day we met up again at the same place and now we were talking.’
His eyes soften.
‘And so it was, for a few years,’ he says. ‘Just wonderful.’
‘And then?’ I say, curious.
‘Well, and then …’ he says, his smile fading to nothing. ‘I’m afraid to say that was when I royally fucked it up.’
twenty-one
‘That was pretty bloody weird,’ I said, staring straight ahead as we rode the bus over Westminster Bridge.
‘Well, you’re the one walking around calling yourself Tom Ditto.’
‘I have literally never called myself that,’ I said, briefly checking behind me. ‘But the philosophy of this whole thing … the history …’
She breathed on the window, rubbed out the breath with her hand.
‘History doesn’t matter. That’s just stuff that happened. It’s all about the present. And it’s not like CC is this huge thing – though they said it could have been, once. The important thing is to find a different way of subscribing to life.’
I fell silent. I was building up to something and she knew it.
‘So can I ask you a question?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re going to ask who Jeremy is. And I don’t want to talk to you about Jeremy.’
‘Why don’t you want to talk about Jeremy?’
‘I just don’t.’
‘It seems important to you, you and Jeremy,’ I said, quickly turning again.
‘There is no me and Jeremy. Why do you keep turning around?’
‘In case Felix is suddenly sitting right behind me. He freaks me out a bit.’
She turned to me.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yes?’
‘Right now, Felix and Andy and Tim and Jackie are probably talking about what a cute couple we make. Just because we’ve been spending time with each other. Just because I’m helping you.’
‘Helping me? That’s how you see it?’
‘People always say that men and women can’t be friends, like it’s a fact.’
‘Isn’t it a fact?’
‘No. Men and women can be friends, it just depends on how important friendship is to you.’
‘That specific friendship?’
‘Friendship in general. Why can’t they be a friend, if having a friend is the most important thing? If having a friend is what you need?’
‘Who are your friends?’ I asked, because I hadn’t really thought about it before.
‘Stay on topic,’ she said. ‘Of course men and women can be friends. Why does no one say to gay guys, oh, well, you like men so you can no longer have any male friends? It’s ludicrous.’
She turned to me.
‘Are we friends?’
‘Of course we’re friends,’ I said, more out of instinct than anything.
‘What makes us friends?’
‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘We like each other?’
She smiled, nodded to herself.
‘And we don’t have to be anything but friends,’ she said.
‘Well … that’s good to know.’
‘Do you know what I mean, though? There’ll be people who think we want to be together, or who think we should be together, or who think that one day we’ll get together, but we won’t, will we?’
I shook my head.
‘I’ve got no plans to,’ I said.
She hugged me, tight.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
I didn’t know how to feel. I’d been rebuffed. I hadn’t even been trying to buff.
The bus slowed.
‘Who’s Jeremy?’ I asked.
London Zoo needs to survive like any other institution. Gift shops and cafés and ice creams just don’t cut it. Now you can rent suites there to celebrate your twenty-first. You can get married there, swapping rings while an alpaca slathers by. And now it had extended its ‘Zoo Lates’. The zoo closes, the kids go, it quietly opens up again for the city’s singles, marrieds and others to mix, drink and point at animals. You know immediately who to avoid – anyone dressed up as an animal. Girls with tiger ears, that sort of thing. But the rest of it … pop-up bars, street food, animal talks … I mean, why didn’t I go out more?
‘Why did everyone think it was such a big deal for you to bring me here?’ I said.
‘You’re full of questions, aren’t you? Can I remind you of our deal?’
‘What deal?’
‘I can ask you anything. You can ask me nothing.’
I didn’t remember specifically agreeing to this deal. She whipped out what looked like an ID card.
‘So you do work here?’
‘You’re still asking questions,’ she said. ‘I used to volunteer here. This is just a membership card. I know about animals, it’s like a thing. I once followed a cat.’
Something in my pocket vibrated. I could only hope it was my phone.
‘Sorry, you once followed a cat?’ I said, bringing the phone out and glancing at the screen.
Pippy.
‘It was a lean night. No one around. I saw this cat and it just seemed so calm and in control, you know? Serene. Spellbinding. So I followed it for a few minutes and we ended up on this bench and we just sat there – being.’
Jesus.
‘Hey, Pippy,’ I said, answering my phone, moving off to one side, still glancing at the woman who’d followed a cat. Maybe my shift had been cancelled. Please say my shift had been cancelled.
‘Just FYI,’ she said. ‘Leslie is out of hospital.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
‘He broke both his arms.’
‘Right …’
‘Now they’re in plaster, which means he can’t operate his own faders.’
I put my hand to my mouth in horror.
‘He is absolutely furious. He says you’re to blame. He called you his curse.’
‘I’m not to blame!’
‘He’s supposed to get his official pictures taken tomorrow for Sunrise and wanted to do his thumbs-up pose. He says he’s done his thumbs-up pose at every radio station he’s worked at for twenty years and now he won’t be able to.’
‘Are his thumbs still visible?’ I said, and Pia scrunched up her nose in confusion.
‘Well, he’s got permanent thumbs-up now, hasn’t he?’ said Pippy. ‘They’re the only things you can see! Anyway, he says you’ve ruined his life and you’ll
rue the day. Where are you, by the way?’
‘I’m just at the shops,’ I lied.
Somewhere, an elephant trumpeted.
A pause.
‘’Kay then, bye.’
Poor Leslie.
‘Come on – this way,’ said Pia, making her decision. ‘We need to go round here …’
She led me away from the crowds, and round a corner. A man with his face painted like a walrus zipped up his flies and walked away from the bushes sheepishly. We ignored this.
‘We need to find Ash,’ she said. ‘He should be working tonight …’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘You owe me,’ said Pia, with a quiet aggression I found unnerving, like she was a tiny Mafioso thuggishly demanding protection money.
‘Who’s this guy?’ said Ash.
‘Tom. He’s a newsreader.’
He shrugged, not understanding the relevance.
Ash was tall and gaunt with a thin mouth and sideburns that didn’t quite know what they were there for. He was carrying a bucket and stank of God knows what, his green overalls patchy and dark round the ankles. He’d been a volunteer around the same time as Pia – which I guessed from their conversation was maybe three years ago – but now he was full-time at the zoo.
‘I never asked you for anything,’ she said. ‘I’m just asking for this. Just five minutes.’
Ash thought about it.
‘I will be sacked.’
‘You won’t be sacked. No one will know. Please. You know why I haven’t been back.’
Ash’s eyes softened.
‘What the hell are we doing?’ I said, with what I thought was quite a light delivery.
‘Shush your lips up!’ she said, suddenly very northern.
We crept in, the door creaking behind me, Pia leaving the keys and electronic fob at the entrance as promised.
This was insane. This was illegal. Surely it was illegal.
‘Careful it doesn’t lock behind us,’ she said, low voice, and I nodded my understanding, feeling around in my pocket for a coin or something to stop the lock clicking shut. ‘This is where I used to come …’
‘Won’t Ash say anything?’ trying to find a way out of this.
‘Ash owes me. Ash knows what I saw.’
She said it with quite some conviction.
She unlocked another door, a high one, and we stepped up and onto the platform behind it – the keepers’ entrance.
‘Tom … meet the gang.’
Inside, a dozen tiny marmosets slept. The sound of small breaths, squeaks of air through nostrils like pin pricks.
It was … amazing.
‘So these are …’
‘Geoffroy’s marmosets,’ she said. ‘We used to call them our babies.’
‘That doesn’t seem healthy to me,’ I said, and she dug me in the ribs.
She looked different, now. Like she was at peace.
‘So was this where you met … you and …?’ I tried, hoping she’d finish the sentence, break down a wall, let me in, but she didn’t.
But I knew this was why coming here was such a big deal. She hadn’t been back. She couldn’t. She’d met Jeremy here. Worked with him, perhaps. Or maybe split up with him here. Whatever it was, it was hard for her. But she’d brought me anyway.
‘Pia – thank you for this,’ I said, and as I kneeled down, two small, wet black eyes blinked open as a marmoset registered me for the first time. ‘It feels like a privilege.’
Pia grabbed my arm.
‘Things have been … unusual lately. I’ve had no one to—’
‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘Ssssh!’
‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘They’re sleeping, and—’
‘Sssssh! for Christ’s sake!’
The grip tightened. Was someone coming? Someone must be coming.
But total silence.
What was this girl’s problem?
And then, behind us, I heard the noise of a wastepaper basket suddenly rocking on its base.
‘Pia!’ I whispered.
‘What was that?’
I turned around. I couldn’t see anything to worry about.
‘The wind?’ I tried.
‘FUCK!’ she hush-shouted, now crouching, eyes darting.
Marmosets began to stir.
‘SHIT!’
‘WHAT?’ I replied, eyes widening in the dark, still adjusting, panic rising though I couldn’t work out why yet. ‘What?’
She punched my arm, hard.
‘BINKY!’ she shouted.
‘What? What does that mean?’
‘Binky’s out! Binky’s out!’
‘What’s a Binky?’
She slapped the walls – brick walls painted green to look nothing like the jungle – until she found the switch … the blink-blink-blink of fluorescent lights above … then the slam of the enclosure door as she panicked and moved.
‘Shit!’ she said, pointing at the door we’d come through. I’d propped it open with the fire extinguisher. She’d said it could lock behind us. I was trying to be helpful!
She leaned down, counted the marmosets she could see.
‘NO!’
‘What?’
She punched my arm again as she stood.
‘Gone!’
‘What is?’ I said, playing dumb, hoping if I just kept asking questions like this I’d never get an answer I didn’t want to hear.
‘A marmoset!’ hissed Pia.
‘What – because of us?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘He’s probably been planning it for years. He’d probably made himself a tiny ladder out of toothpicks. Yes, because of us.’
‘When we opened the door?’
‘Are you the thickest man in Britain? Yes – when we opened the door! More specifically, when you propped it open instead of sticking it on the latch!’
Better solution, right there. Wow. You read about these things happening. But usually they happen for good reason … animal activists, anti-vivisectionists. Not just a girl wanting to show a boy some marmosets she used to know. Her eyes shot up to the security camera. The slow, judgmental blink of a green light underneath.
‘Right, what do we do?’ I said.
‘We call Ash,’ she said. ‘Then we look for him.’
‘Binky’s a boy?’
‘Yes?’
‘Binky’s a weird name for a boy.’
‘Oh God, Binky’s out.’
‘Well – at least Binky’s in a zoo.’
‘Yes, he’s in a zoo, where they keep wild hunting dogs and lions. They all get on so well, it’s like Madagascar 3 in here.’
Maybe we should call someone. Security. Or the police. We need to lock down the zoo. You can’t have marmosets running about. What if it attacked someone? Who would they sue? Us, or the zoo? Hopefully the zoo.
Oh good God, we’re going to be sued.
‘Call Ash!’ I said. ‘Call Ash!’
‘Ash is on his final warning. Oh, God, Ash’ll get sacked for this!’
‘Maybe it’s not so bad!’
‘We’ve released an animal into London. That’s what has happened here. It’s 9.55pm on a Wednesday night and we’ve released an animal into London.’
‘Should we—’
‘We should go, yes.’
We looked for Binky as we skulked through the shadows. We kept our heads down to avoid the cameras, though it was a bit late now. We’d just have to hope they wouldn’t notice. Or that Binky would make his own way back out of some kind of loyalty to London Zoo’s corporate brand. Or that he’d get hungry and faint somewhere safe.
‘Ash,’ Pia whispered into her phone. ‘Binky’s out!’
I could hear Ash screaming, all distant, tinny rage.
Pia shrugged and hung up.
We headed south, two green London Zoo caps we’d found in the enclosure pulled low over our heads, and we padded on, away from the Rainforest Life area, past the reindeers and otters, under the b
ridge, the lovebirds to our left, and through a weak point in the gates where a late 274 to Baker Street sped over Prince Albert Road.
‘This is the worst night ever,’ I said, as she sank onto a bench. ‘Thanks a lot. You said it was going to be magical.’
‘You left a door open in a feeding enclosure. Any loss in magic is your doing. I’m not sure I can take all the blame here.’
‘Oh, no. Of course not. I’d probably have just done this anyway tonight.’
She smiled. I’d punctured the clouds.
‘Are marmosets dangerous?’ I said, genuinely curious.
‘They’re about six inches tall,’ she said. ‘So yes, to you, they probably are.’
A pause.
‘It’s just a marmoset,’ I said, bewildered. ‘At least he’s harmless.’
And she started to laugh.
‘Like Leslie,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Armless.’
And now I was laughing.
‘That is honestly the worst joke I have ever heard,’ I said.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking for a way to work that in for ages …’
And we kept laughing, as the relief of escaping hit us, and the remaining and terrible ramifications started to come at us.
‘Could we get arrested?!’ I tried to say, a moment of horror suddenly upon me.
‘We could get arrested!’ she spluttered back, realising along with me but finding it funnier somehow.
‘We must be on about sixty cameras!’ I said. ‘Me, you and a marmoset called Binky.’
And that’s when she really lost it, right there on that pavement, under the moonlight, and as I looked at her laughing, she looked so pretty, like something had lifted from her, some great weight, and I knew that I had helped her somehow, and something made me want to hold her close, and made me want to kiss her.
I suppose the best way of putting it is that the night felt like ours. It felt like we owned it, like more and more these days the night didn’t own me, like the darkness had lifted, and the laughter continued as we grabbed some wine from the wine shop and bickered over what flavour crisps to buy and headed back to mine, but the laughter soon stopped as I opened the door and stared, slack-jawed, at the suitcase sitting right in the centre of the hallway.
twenty-two
Who is Tom Ditto? Page 18