by Jonathan Lee
Thomas Griffin. 1899. Labourer. In a boiler explosion fatally scalded searching for his friend.
John Cambridge. 1901. Clerk in the London County Council. Drowned saving a stranger.
John Clinton. 1894. Drowned aged ten trying to save a friend.
There is a pond in the park that makes me think about swimming. Jack is doing a triathlon but I stick to running because although I once tried I cannot swim. And in the shrubbery behind the pond I found a damp place with plenty of leaves. I opened the cage to let the lizard escape. At first he did not move but then he did. He moved so fast I did not see him go.
And that is it you see.
That is what I did.
And do you not see?
Please try and see. Try and see and ask yourself.
Is it because I did not choose the lizard that Miss Stephens was chosen? Is it because I set the lizard free that Miss Stephens had her fall?
Jack says he misses the spacewoman tights…
And even if these ideas are from the nonsense parts of my mind I know my job is over I fear it is over after this mistake.
Because someone important bought a lizard for some reason. Because I took it from them. Because in a law firm crimes have what is the word? Repercussions.
4.15 p.m.
IT IS an unusual problem, unique in her years at Hanger, Slyde & Stein (though they have had rodent difficulties in the past, and on one occasion an issue with flying ants) to find in the corner of your office, sitting at the round conference table, chewing on a Mars bar, chocolate detritus raining down on the Starfish Speakerphone, a giant lizard.
‘Never in all my life,’ says Barbara, her walking stick held high in self-defence.
‘Calm down,’ says Peter, abandoning his chocolate bar to stand. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten.’
With misdirected adrenalin ringing through Joy’s veins she overlooks the obvious costume-related questions and asks instead why he’s been sitting in the dark.
‘You expect me to sit under a spotlight, Joy? Sell tickets? I’m an eight-year-qualified Senior Associate dressed as a Smith’s Dwarf Chameleon.’
‘Funny,’ Barbara mumbles. ‘Always thought of you more as a snake.’
‘Barbara,’ Joy says, ‘you’ve had a tough day. Why don’t you get me that document I need to look at.’
‘It’s on your desk,’ she replies, voice fading as she exits. ‘Whole place a whatschacall. Viper pit.’
As the door closes a line of shadow shudders across Joy’s practising certificate and a framed print of an Ansel Adams photo: Ice on Ellery Lake. She inherited the picture from a friend who left Hanger’s to pursue cheese-making in 2004. You hope to keep these people in your life but nearly all of them go missing. To Joy’s younger self the glacial landscape seemed evil, some nebulous terror lurking in the black-and-white terrain, but of late it has looked quite different, a thing of bleak beauty, candid and pure.
Peter clears his throat in an exaggerated fashion, as if the room holds a spell of sadness he wants to break. ‘Joy, I need to talk to you, it can’t wait.’
‘Why? Why are you dressed like that?’
He exhales with a great deal of cheerlessness. ‘It’s for the Make Law Fun Day. You know I worked on that Madagascan mining case with Brian? UK subsid entered a process and we were called in by the administrators.’
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Project Chameleon. Madagascar is home to half the world’s chameleons, you see. Used to be, anyway, before the mining company got overexcited. Brian thought it might be a fun case to tell the kids about.’
‘Laugh a minute, I’m sure. Must be why you volunteer so much time on this scheme each year – for the sheer unbridled fun of it.’
‘He wanted me to crawl around the floor and pretend to eat stuff. I told him straight: no fucking way.’
‘What an incredibly tough negotiator you are.’
‘Lawyers dressed up as animals, it’s obscene.’
‘Like that team-building thing,’ she says.
‘I mean dressed up as animals and crawling round the floor…What team-building thing?’
‘Team-building exercise.’
‘Wasn’t there.’
‘When we started.’
‘Wasn’t there.’
‘You were,’ she says. ‘Awful HR woman. Dirty-bathmat skin.’
‘Wasn’t there.’
‘Told us: Pretend to be an animal.’
‘Wasn’t there.’
‘You were Peter the Sloth. King Penguin Christine? Leopards, Lions, Labradors prancing all around. Only me lying still. What animal are you? Awful asked me.’
‘Dead one, you said.’
In the silence she becomes aware of time passing: she needs to slip down the fire escape and find a rope, or blade, or precipice. If not today, when will the courage come? She has more pills in her drawer but associates them now with embarrassment, feels she needs to confront a more dramatic death – one with blood, with breakages – to win back some self-respect.
‘I think the lizard thing suits you,’ she says. ‘Makes you seem more human.’
‘Where’s Miss Perfect’s contribution to Fun Day? I don’t see you dressed as a chameleon.’
‘Maybe I’m just good at blending in.’
She’s barely seen him smile since 2006, this man she loved, this man who is never more comfortable than in costume. But now, causing his face paint to crack and his lipstick to shine, it comes, cautiously, the mouth making sure there’s something to smile at, crimping in one corner and enlivening his eyes, ridding them of the flatlined look all office workers get. He shifts awkwardly in his green body stocking. There’s a second pair of eyes above his forehead and he scratches absent-mindedly at one of the sockets. They seem to be made of fruit, glued strategically to –
‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking. They’re pears. Pears stuck to a cycling helmet. The crest at the back is cereal packet. Christine helped me make it. She’s very creative.’
‘She’s one of my best friends. I know she’s creative.’
‘Yes. Well. One can forget.’ There’s a cough in his voice and he lets it out. ‘At least we’re talking again, I suppose, after all this time. I think this counts as talking, don’t you? This morning, before Brian bowled up, was more like shouting. With a low word count.’
‘Usually you doing the shouting.’
‘I tend to project. It’s my natural mode.’
He goes to pick up the chocolate bar with one of his specially adjusted gardening gloves, simultaneously batting off the tail that wants to slide around his hip.
‘I had to break a tennis date with her today. Misplaced my racket. Tried to call, but dodgy line. Not in her office either.’
‘Yes, well. Christine’s gone to stay with her parents, so you couldn’t have played.’
‘Has she?’
‘She has. We had a falling-out.’
‘And?’
‘And – do you not talk to your husband? – I took your racket.’
Joy pauses, frowns, tells him to keep talking. In the tilt of his protruding upper lip she reads either shame or disdain.
‘I went round to your place, last night. I…I don’t know.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘Always,’ Peter says. ‘It’s the great tragedy of my life, people think I’m joking when I’m not.’
‘If you wanted to chat, how about a call, or an email, or walking ten yards to my office?’
‘Thought you’d left for the night. I needed to talk face to face. Which is also what I hoped to do this morning. When I saw you yesterday afternoon…what was I supposed to think? Was I supposed to leave the conversation like that, to let you charge off like that? Was I meant to not care what you were talking about?’
&
nbsp; ‘You backed me into a corner.’
‘I was congratulating you on the promotion announcement.’
‘You were being snide.’
‘Snide is just the way I sound! I have an adenoidal issue. My second tragic flaw.’
She replays yesterday’s conversation by the Coke machine. She is not sure why she said it, the comment about not sticking around for partnership, the stuff about how it was time to be honest with herself and everyone else. Her thoughts fizzed into words and before she knew it they were out there to be heard. She thinks he banged the machine with his hand as she walked away, but maybe it was the sound of a can falling. Angry or thirsty, angry or thirsty: as she moved through the corridor the question circled, stubborn and pointless, through her exhausted thoughts.
Peter licks his lips, a thing he always does under pressure. ‘You deliver this speech to me about honesty and goodness. You chat about a mystery holiday your husband seems to know nothing about. I mean, Joy, it’s been years. The beauty of what we had was its invisibility. It was perfect because it was secret, because it wasn’t altogether real. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t matter to me. When you ended it you broke my –’
‘Did I?’
‘Concentration, you broke my concentration for months. Why ruin what it was? I thought we’d reached an understanding.’
‘You make it sound like a contract. It’s not. It’s my life.’
She feels once more that steady hopeless sinking, nausea rising round her throat and up behind the eyes. It’s the feeling that comes when she contemplates falling short of perfection, a despair brought on by what is, nonetheless, her most consistently praised quality: a merciless need to adhere to her own high standards.
‘Honesty,’ he says. ‘It isn’t always the best policy. There’s a Russian saying my man in Moscow taught me: He lies like an eyewitness.’
‘So?’
‘So even if you told Christine about us, you might misrepresent certain key details. It would be irresponsible, and pointless, because I’ve…turned over a new leaf. Not so much a leaf as a tree. I’ve turned over a whole fucking forest.’
‘I see, I see it now, I get it. You take the racket so I can’t play tennis with your wife, in case – to put her off her serve? – I mention how her husband is a truly great screw. Oh, Christine, he fucked me so hard, we fucked all over your flat, he came all over my tits, does he like to do that with you?’
‘Christ, Joy, keep your voice down for Christ’s sake. You’re talking nonsense. I wanted to speak to you and when you weren’t there I needed to think up an excuse, the racket thing was the best I could do. You’re out of control.’
‘No, that’s where you’re wrong.’
‘Who’s shouting now?’
‘That’s where you’re wrong because I’m not out of control.’
‘Who’s shouting now do you see me shouting?’
‘I’m very, very in control, Peter. I’m not the Oh-I-hate-myself-for-what’s-happened type, I’m not Miss Weep Weep The World Is Better Without Me, waiting for Oprah to give me a hug. I’m not making little cuts in myself as a cry for help.’
‘What’s that mark on your hand?’
‘I’m not secretly hoping I’ll earn people’s pity and love. I don’t want to hear solemn unthinking advice like One Day at a Time and One Step at a Time. I own a calendar and I know how to walk. I didn’t get dumped by Mr Right or see my cat squashed by a giant tyre. I lost my sister’s child…I lost a child, and did that to Christine…how did I do that?…and to Dennis, betrayed him and everyone, there’s no precision to betrayal, if you betray one part you betray the whole, and even today I’ve caused all this pain. I don’t recognise myself, or like myself, or want to be me any more. I need to unzip my skin. I need to climb out.’
‘You’re depressed,’ he says. ‘We’ll get you help. It’s depression, that’s what this is.’
‘Depression’s not it. It’s not the right word. Depression makes me think of…the pressing down of something that wants to get up. I don’t want to get up. I’m not all quiet and acted upon, sighing and lying around, all vacant and peaceful and paralysed, waiting for feeling to come back. This is a feeling. A dark overlarge feeling that’s everywhere at once. It’s in my limbs and my throat, like a tumour in my throat so I can’t breathe. It goes away awhile and then I feel it come back and I fear the feeling so much. Not sadness, more like terror. Terror at it having happened, at it happening, coming back, until I make it stop, me, and people said give it time and I have and time hasn’t worked.’
‘So it sounds like maybe some pills are what you need. We’ll get you pills and maybe a counsellor. I mean, you have a great career.’
‘I want to feel nothing,’ she says.
She stretches her fingertips across the piece of paper Barbara has left for her to read, then drags them inward to make a clumsy ball. The veins on her hand look like underwater things, exotic and drowned, and the headache is back, worse than before.
‘So on balance you’d probably say, what, that you’re not planning on saying anything to Christine or Dennis? About us?’
She realises what she’s done to the paper and sits there pressing it flat, reading the wrinkled text for the first time, squinting through the little coloured dots that have been in the margins of her vision ever since the crash. An email from the CEO to the EMEA Head of Manufacturing. It starts normally enough – a comment on the economic necessity of bulking up meat with water and other additives, injecting it with needles, tumbling it in cement mixers to absorb the water, the standard stuff for chicken nuggets. But then, after reminding the EMEA Head that salted meat attracts only a fraction of the EU tariff for fresh meat, the CEO talks about a forthcoming Food Standards Agency sampling process. The breasts injected with pig and cattle protein, the – she has to smooth out one of the capillaries in the page to see the next word – pet-food recycles, the bovine stuff JT uses to make the flesh swell. All that’s got to come out for a week or so, or there’ll be all kinds of fuss.
‘Joy? Maybe you need to think about a new job. Banking, perhaps? Joy?’
‘Tell me,’ she says. ‘What do you think of the Meat Musketeers?’
‘The…uh, OK. I guess they have a point. It’s not really my…Stuff’s probably been concealed by the manufacturers? Animal cruelty’s become the norm. And there’s those pretty distasteful adverts they put out, convincing kids and their parents that Nana’s Nuggets will make them happy. But, you know, who cares? Chicken’s chicken.’
‘Dennis knows.’
‘Eh?’
‘Dennis knows, about our affair.’
Act Three
MISPERS
But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Peter
VARIOUS TEDIOUS developments, Doctor Odd. For a start my PA is having a sick day, as PAs are wont to do, so I’ve been stuck with Barbara.
Dry-cleaner got back to me, she said this morning.
And? I said.
Unsalvageable.
She pronounced the syllables slowly, each a tiny knowing blow to my testicles and time. The unsalvageable item in question was my suit. It was involved in an accident in the gym around the time I last spoke to Joy, in her office, me wearing a foolish outfit I’d rather not discuss.
His word not mine, she said. Expensive, was it?
Barbara, I said, do I look like a man who wears cheap suits?
Thought maybe you’d spent your budget on the tan and the teeth, she said.
Jessica laughed at a moderate to high volume and, fun being infectious, the fire alarm began hooting too. The test runs every Thursday at 11 a.m., for twenty-two seconds. With the noise deafening us all I made eyes at Jess and started silently mouthing random words. Then when the alarm stopped I
said: So, slipped my mind, but it’s highly urgent. You’ll need to draft me a note on the key aspects of a CVL.
As lunchtime approached I decided – feeling a slight sting of remorse about the invented CVL note – that I’d ask Jessica to join me for a bite to eat at the Icarus. I was not in the mood to lunch with my fellow Senior Associates today: Green, Brown, Black. Certainly not Michael Bland, the resident coke dealer. Hanger’s has a policy on coke – it’s OK – but I leave it to the polo-playing toffs, the Eton-types with more money than septum.
It was a late lunch – we ate only a few hours ago – and the Icarus was half empty. Jess and I were having a fine time at a corner table, eating pan-Asian in privacy, when suddenly – hey fucking presto! – Dennis emerged from behind an otherwise pleasing water feature. He sidled up to our table, the posture of a man with no gym membership, and when I offered my hand he gave it his characteristically bone-crushing shake, the only firm thing about him.
Always the gentleman, I told him, my teeth working on tidy glazed cubes of pork.
Gentle most of the time, he said, pulling up a chair and introducing himself to Jess. It’s his bubbly manner I can’t stand. Voice like a fart in the bath.
I explained it was a working lunch. Most people would take the hint, wouldn’t they? Not Dennis. He just said, Yes I thought I’d find you here, and stared at me as I ordered another bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. Then he asked if fine wines were one of my many fancies.
Grapes are within my scope of expertise, I said. Heard you like a drink yourself. I like to get into whatever you’re into.
There was a long lull. Jessica told an anecdote about her father and an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. You could tell she capitalised it.
Dennis said, It’s a shame, you know, that Christine isn’t here.
And Joy, I said. Could have had a double date, plus Jess here to share between us.
You! he shouted, dragging my plate towards him. You really are –
Sir, the waiter said, popping the cork and trickling me a taster.
Dennis sank back into his chair, his chins taking coloured light from my sweet and sour: the peppers, pineapple, rusty red sauce. Advantage Peter.