by Adam Thorpe
There was something so intimate about the gesture. Did Bathsheba ever do such a thing?
‘I will definitely come for books on the nature, Mr Watkins,’ she’s saying, as she smooths out the coverlet and switches on the telly with an overwhelmingly attractive twist at the waist. He can’t bear the telly blaring out, and now it’s killed the moment, but his mother is half deaf. She ogles it uncomprehendingly, yet they think it does her good. The telly itself is hers, a small but bulky cathode-ray model from home. He reckons the object comforts her as much as the crap it shows. She has the electric bed-height control in her hand and is pointing it at the screen, jabbing the buttons. The staff took the batteries out long ago: they use a foot pump and manual lever to adjust the height and position. He was shown how.
The screen is now full of snow.
‘Call me Mike,’ he says, fiddling with the rabbit-ears aerial. He knows this telly well. ‘Mike the T V repairer. We call this phenomenon snow, for obvious reasons. I like it. It’s a relic of the Big Bang. The founding of the universe. What you’re actually seeing here is fossil radiation, Cosmina, thirteen billion years old. The telly’s struggling to turn it into an image. So I used to think that I could see the Big Bang itself. As a kid. Although we’ve changed the telly since then. It’s not that old.’ He turns round. She’s dabbing his mother’s brow with a wet wipe, but is she listening to him?
She looks up. ‘In our country we say, Oh, look, the T V has fleas! Again!’
Mike finds this genuinely funny, mainly because she became, in a brilliant flash, a comic elderly Romanian frustrated by her country’s endless hassles. She is clearly gifted, highly intelligent, with a wonderful sense of humour. An actress! Maybe a dancer, with that lithe waist! He feels he has broken through to new territory, as golden with possibilities as his heart is right now. Then, as if swept forward by the impetus of this breakthrough, he says he knows someone who can mend anything, anything at all. ‘Let me try him with your broken phone,’ he says. ‘He’s a good friend. Name’s Alex. He has a workshop on Totter Hill. Name of my hill. Nothing to do with tottering.’
A few minutes later he has the gadget in his hand, its screen a starburst, unlit and (apparently) unlightable, the case behind cracked. She has left it with him. She has held this white object many times in her moist palm, held it up to the beautiful shell of her ear, brushed it with the soft pulp of her lips. The T V’s game-show inanities are pin-sharp now but swirling about his ankles like waste matter: everything belonging to his old life. This is the first moment of the new universe. ‘What a load of rubbish,’ says Mum in an apparent moment of clear judgement. It’s A Year in the Life again, once her favourite programme. A repeat. But her head’s on one side, pressed into the pillow, and she’s looking out of the window at the garden, the dusk revealing her own reflection floating in between like a moon in water.
As his favourite philosopher wrote, ‘You always kill yourself too late.’
Children are the number-one enemy, damp is number two, customers in general come in at three, especially when their mobiles go off. Mike shows the iPhone to Alex in his workshop. Sitting in his shirtsleeves crouched over flexible tubes, electrical bits and two halves of an old-fashioned red-and-cream vacuum cleaner of the sausage-dog type, Alex has an eyepiece screwed into one eye, like a watchmaker, and a tiny screwdriver in his hand. He doesn’t look up but says in a cod-American voice, ‘Nothing sucks like an Electrolux. Forty years old and still sucking strong.’
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘The tread. A waft of old books and tired shirt. Very tired shirt.’
‘Clothes bore me.’
‘Snap. But I do buy new ones now and again. And iron them. It’s great when you get the hang.’
There are two reactions to the iPhone: the first, what the heck is the man who still thinks offset printing is newfangled doing with the future at his fingertips, and the second; youch, this particular future is now the past.
‘Seriously?’
‘Unless one of the art students at the uni can recycle it as a degree-winning piece of found sculpture. Title: Child Miner, Congo.’
‘What to do?’
‘I presume you, or the rightful owner, got in a right strop with Apple and stamped on it repeatedly.’
‘Run over.’
‘Nice one. HGV in this case. Whose is it?’
‘Can the contents be saved?’
Alex laughs. ‘Mike, we call it data. All depends on whether she did a back-up. If she didn’t, start from zero and get a replacement phone. A bottom-range smartphone won’t cost you much.’
‘How do you know the owner’s a she?’
‘Dearie me, the blush has still not died. And I don’t think it’s your mum’s, somehow.’
Mum pulling and pushing the exact same model of vacuum cleaner and saying, It’s never done. His childhood. Jesus wept.
‘Still going strong,’ Mike comments drily, patting the handle, ‘but, um, kaput.’
‘A minor hiccup on the circuit board. No built-in obsolescence in the 1960s. The engineers were in charge, not the accountants. Professional pride. I can make even modern bobbins, made to last a couple of years in obedience to the profit motive, last thirty. I’m a danger to the entire liberal-capitalist enterprise, cock.’
Mike nods. ‘As someone who believes the greatest catastrophe in human history was the Industrial Revolution, I can but wish you good fortune, friend.’
‘Is that Shakespeare, then?’
After a lot of incomprehensible patter in the downtown phone shop, Mike walks out over £500 poorer, which is a shock but he’ll ride it. This is the golden ring. He walks down the street feeling twenty years younger, virile and in love, Pierre to Cosmina’s Natasha. A swift screeches overhead, having spent the winter above the Congo. Now there’s a subject he could enthral her with: the miracle of swifts. Perhaps they nest in Romania as well as here. The lazier ones.
All she has to do is activate the new phone. He’ll write a little note to explain, slip it in.
He wraps up the clean white box in his special Shakespeare wrapping paper and feels solemn, almost holy. His chest expands with pride. These are unknown sensations. He’s never been very good with gifts, let alone technology.
He takes the iPhone to the home on the following Sunday, when he knows she’s on night shift and they’ll not coincide. She’ll find it, press it to her heart, and the next time he’ll invite her for a coffee near the cathedral … He places the jiffy marked FOR COSMINA, double underlined, carefully on the claw-footed table. His mother can’t remember who Cosmina is.
The book has stayed put, meanwhile. The new MISSING poster! The only incident during the last week was a gust of wind barrelling down the lane that sucked open and then slammed shut the front door, cracking a pane and sending his yellowed typewritten notices tumbling onto the mat: DO PARK RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE WINDOW AS WE LOVE THE DARK … COMPLETE SET OF DICKENS NEEDS TO FIND LOVING OWNER WITH DECENT LIFE EXPECTANCY … The wind came out of nowhere. Nothing between him and the North Sea but fields the size of Lichtenstein, the steep and narrow lane like a chute, a funnel. It all but gave him a coronary.
The fact is, as he explained to a long-suffering Alex one day, he’s relieved the book is not moving, but the anticipation of the contrary is killing. First thing each morning he unlocks and shoves open the door and glances straight away at the precise spot on the Animals, Pets shelf. Complacent, he’s getting. It’s building up and up. The suspense. Listening to Your Dog looks completely innocent, the one character you never suspect.
The drag is, he imagines that the slightly bumped condition of its front board has suddenly become a serious buckle, the inner spine cracked, the corners gnawed. As if someone – or something – has been handling the book clumsily. Or he discovers a serious, slightly discoloured water stain in the middle. Or, somehow the worst, he pulls it out and sees the cover photo faded by sun and the pages within dark and brittle. ‘This was when?’ ask
s Alex, frowning. ‘No no, I imagine it. Because then I’ll know that years and years have gone by, maybe as much as my lifespan, and I’ll turn round and outside will be a dry wasteland.’ Dust barrelling over the same old cobbles and flagstones but the houses deserted, their windows shattered, their roofs collapsed, and the only sign of life those wild, famished, big-toothed dogs, as large and as clever as wolves.
‘Mike, you’ve been at that poetry again. Who’s the one?’
‘T. S. Eliot. Coming back late from the hyacinth garden, arms full and hair wet … And so on.’
How is he supposed to respond when she thanks him profusely for the phone, which she’s bound to? My pleasure entirely. What are you doing tonight? As in the telly soaps? Sounds like verbal rape, almost. It’s a dilemma.
Fay surveys the shop, meanwhile. Helping him out. It’s a combined ops.
On Monday he expects a phone call. Nothing. All day nothing. He knows she’s off tomorrow, when he’s due to visit Mum in the evening, and that she’s back on Wednesday from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Never before in the fuzz of his life has he bothered much about timetables, agendas. He’ll close the shop and drive down to see Mum again for Wednesday lunchtime, whether Cosmina’s called or not. Why should she call? She has yet to activate the iPhone, no doubt. But he’s secretly disappointed. A crack. A fissure in his happiness.
Tuesday comes and Alex pops by in a daft Ho Lee Chit T-shirt. The weather has abruptly, without warning, over a matter of twenty-four hours, gone from bloody cold to summer hot. It is fairly bewildering. ‘Fancy a pint, chuck? It’s almost beer o’clock and I am beyond parched.’ Mike tells him he is knackered, sleeping badly, has to visit Mum. ‘Squeeze one in,’ Alex suggests. ‘Happy hour starts at six.’ Then as Mike is locking up, feeling a quiet contentment at the thought of idling in the pub with his friend for an hour, the phone rings. He leaps on it with a pounding heart.
Alex has to pull out. Forgot a dentist’s appointment. Suspected abscess. Already had to wait weeks. Squeezed me in at the end. Sorry!
Mike says not to worry. He’s surprised at his own disappointment. He’ll go anyway. He can already taste the ale . . . A quickie before hitting the road for Purgatory. Or Hell. Or Heaven, if Cosmina is there by some freak occurrence: you never know. He will hold his mum’s chilly hand and read her some Housman. Of course, she won’t remember what happened to the envelope. A microwaved tikka masala after. Everything in abeyance.
Strange, being trapped in one body, one mind. Who chose him to inhabit Mike Watkins? Pub thoughts. Lone-wolf musings. The Royal Society of Loners. What are days for? Ah, solving that question … He’s sitting in a corner of the Short Straw, a pint of Black Sheep, a bowl of peanuts. The three tables in the yard are already taken. He dreads one of his customers snaring him in talk: how Kindle’s great to take on holiday, how useful Amazon is and so much more efficient these days and the starred reviews really help and (naming some best-selling international feculence) how it’s really gripping if you don’t mind the writing. And so on and on. He refreshes his glass with half a Yella Belly Gold (he’s driving, after all) and restocks on smoked almonds. He used to come here much more regularly. Brian Ashton’s still propping up the corner of the bar as he would every night but Sunday, hardly talking, anything to get away from the wife. Ageing gracefully. Mike puts on his universal bonhomie accent, chipping the edges off his intellect. Hello, Brian, a’right? A’right mate, yourself? Forty going on sixty. There’s always been one in every pub he’s known. Stalwart. Hollow-legged. Silent.
Companionship.
He feels pleasantly floaty. He could always skip the home, nest down in this corner seat on a quiet Tuesday evening until closing time. Not even many students, thank God. Just sit here and anticipate tomorrow. Hoping Cosmina isn’t rushed off her feet by the mean bastards who own the place. One of a chain. Snowdrops Care Homes. Snowdrops being winter flowers. Or very early spring. Better suited to a maternity home.
The beer’s going down too fast. Some ales are like that. Hoppy and quite dry, quite light, this Yella Belly Gold. Not a lot to shout about, but slips down harmlessly enough. An edge of bitterness which he likes. He might manage another, drive very carefully. It only gets dark now around nine o’clock. He could do the road blindfold. An hour with Mum and he’ll still be at home by dusk, have supper on the lawn. He feels a mild ripple of warm anticipation. Put on a Siouxsie vinyl just for the Hell of it. See if he can remember the lyrics. Usually Mendelssohn or Mozart when he comes in, but … He must have been the same person. Kohl around the eyes once or twice. Look at him now. The original old codger.
Everyone else seems to be studying their mobiles, thumbs whirring. iPhones probably. He went to a jazz concert at the arts centre recently and it was the same there. Coltrane ignored. He’s never really taken to gadgets, but now he checks the Nokia, just in case. Turn for the worse, or worse. The latter would mean no more trips to the home. No Cosmina.
Nothing. At least he’s remembered to charge the thing up.
The car’s tucked into the tiny yard at the back of the shop. It’s stopped raining and he should drain his glass and go. He sees her anorexic wrists above the blanket. He sees Cosmina’s wrists too. Slender but pulsing with life. Tomorrow!
Things have a habit of turning out for the best, in the end. He’s never seen this before but now he does, he really does. He’s abruptly suffused with optimism, a wild love for his fellow creatures. The pub’s filling. All these happy folk. In T-shirts and short sleeves, at last. Some in shorts. Heedless. Yap yap. Guffaw after guffaw. Too loud. Doesn’t make you dread loneliness the less. Ending up like Brian there, a permanent fixture. The bar girl changes the music to non-music. Thrash and boom. Savage screaming. That’s what his mum thought of Siouxsie, mind you. Even The Cure. It all comes round.
He has to keep suffused. Don’t let that feeling go.
He took a walk on the beach near Mablethorpe day before yesterday, after leaving the iPhone in Mum’s room. Strong wind. Such a strong wind, flicking the waves back so they whipped up into a froth. O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being. That was such a strong wind, Sunday. But it never goes anywhere. That’s the point. You don’t have to go anywhere. You can be taken by the moment. The wind clean on your face. The swirl and crash of the sea. Herring gulls. The odd dipper. Beyond windswept.
‘Great book,’ comes a voice.
Jarred out of his reverie, Mike squints up at the face, in silhouette against the window’s blaze of westerly light.
‘Cute kitties,’ comes out of the silhouette. ‘Every one a bundle of fun.’
Mike then remembers with a kind of inner seizure of dismay.
‘Glad to be of service,’ he says. Wasn’t it for a younger relative?
‘Mind if I …?’
‘No no, go ahead,’ he says quickly. ‘I have to be off somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere I’m late for.’
‘I’m chill. As a cucumber on ice. Cheers.’
The youth sits down and raises his pint, and Mike has to respond by raising his and taking a generous mouthful to finish it quicker.
‘Shit, they’re playing The Prodigy. Can’t get better. How’s tricks and trade, Mike?’
‘Brisk as ever.’ He doesn’t like that Mike. Intrusive.
‘Name’s Gavin, by the way. Blame me mum. You can’t blame me dad because he’s moved on to the real world. I was six. Coronary. Wham bang thank you, Sam.’
The eyes are still as black as Marmite, with the same glassy shine. ‘Sorry to hear that. I was fifteen when mine … Very slow-moving war wound.’ He gestures emptily. Stop the tape machine, pull the plug out of the socket.
‘Have you altered your beard, Mike?’
‘Oh, a little shaping.’
The lad doesn’t smile, he frowns. ‘Gotta look smart for your customers. Know how I started? Stock replenishment assistant at Asda. Now I’m a store manager up in the Ermine. Why do they call it the Ermine to rhyme with
fine? Because it ain’t. Scores high on the Multiple Deprivation Index. Like multiple injuries. Multiple sclerosis.’
‘Right,’ says Mike. ‘I assumed you were in higher education.’ Or possibly the sixth form.
‘I am. Computer science at the college. Part time. Taking a break at present. Too much pressure.’
‘Good to take a break now and again.’ He looks at his watch.
‘Crikey, is that the time?’ laughs the youngster in a sort of falsetto.
Knowing, playful, everything a lark. One step ahead. He still has that big pimple on his nose. Otherwise what Mum would call a pretty boy. Now in a white shirt and collar, though, sleeves rolled up. Work outfit. He’s placed his shiny black smartphone on the table between them. It reminds Mike of the white iPhone, and his chest flutters. ‘You don’t have to pretend,’ the boy goes on. ‘There’s too much pretending. I always knew I was different. Well, I knew at fourteen. I’ve known for twelve years, like.’
Fourteen plus twelve … Twenty-four, twenty-six … Twenty-six! Mike reckoned the youth was barely out of his teens. There you go. You can’t tell. He tries not to look at the pimple, or maybe boil, on the thin nose, pulling his gaze away to the middle distance, where the guffaws and gabble are thickening, competing with the heartbeat-infiltrating music. The intruder is leaning forward and goes on talking. ‘I have six people under me, lots of responsibility. By the way, you’re a sensitive, right?’
Mike nods mindlessly as he works at the last quarter of his pint, then registers the interrogative lilt of the last few words. ‘A what, sorry?’