by Jonathan Lee
Secrets, secrets, secrets. If you knew the stuff that people hide you’d run a bloody mile. She adjusts the mike on its stand with a clammy drowned hand. She starts to talk. Thank you all for coming; so many friends down there. How odd is it that among this lot only she knows where she was this afternoon, trying to take her life on the Heath, God the wilful fucker unzipping His thing and pissing down on her parade, angel-sent squirrels scuppering the plan. If it really was her plan. If she was ever really serious. Another thing her dad said: Tell God your five-year plan, He’ll wet Himself laughing. The more serious the thing you do, the more you are alone. Nobody has a clue that she was on the verge of death. Inches from death, maybe, all about the exact tilt of the bottle that toppled, the pills that spilled, but it’s a world where inches matter: heels, bullets, lovers. She is talking, but her faltering voice is an impersonator’s and her spine arcs more, microphone catching less sound as its stand drops down a notch, head full of tingle and throb, it is so very hot. Really is a pleasure to become part of. She is stuffed, on a baking tray, glazed and seasoned, skin crisping up. Charles is too canned, toucan, too kind. Leaning further, seeing more of reception, she makes out a policeman’s helmet cradled in thick arms, and Samir waving cheerfully, his skin inexplicably glistening, oily-wet like he’s just been born. Her mouth is full of clumsy bubbles that shouldn’t be there, secret lemonade spittle, popping plastic, the stuff fresh furnishings arrived in when she and Dennis did the house, cellophane sadness rolled around her tongue. Something is wrong. Something is really wrong. Been here for tame years. She cannot speak. She cannot think. Her brain has become a place of mischievous play, disobedient in its every direction, and she’s standing here, dumbstruck, with more and more coloured dots in her vision, blurry blobs of paint from every shop under the sun, realising that if she had her time again she’d pause things after the car crash, see if anyone needed help, give the police their report, go to hospital and get her selfish head checked.
Main thing? Get through this, downstairs, speak to sister.
People below grow impatient with her stuttering and so must Charles Jestingford because through a lucid coiling wave of pain – up her neck, around her ear – she senses him moving towards her back, a man’s bulk slinking through a dream, and her knees seem to be going soft, so it is good that he is coming for her, he can catch her if she sinks back into the sing-song of whispers from the row of chairs behind. But in her eerie suspended state, having nothing more to say, she cannot stand still and wait, cannot hear him calling, can only hear her own breathing, a distant sorry sea, kissing coast and retreating, kissing coast and retreating, amplified by the mike, made more total and consoling, the deep rhythm of her being. Rocking back and forth on fragile heels she thinks not of boats but of cars, the Ford Sierra in which Dad drove them to Worthing every August, Mum asking if her hair looked dislodged by the draught, little carsick Joy needing air back there, Annie blank and pretty with her Walkman on, and him saying Looks good, knowing that in unmanly matters brevity is his best defence, knowing the route so well that he leans before the bend is there, and the four of them travel pristinely past Cissbury Ring, around Highdown Hill, sunglasses hiding the eyes of passers-by, the sun sliding shadows into their laps, Dad asking What do you want to do today?, the question making whole worlds spin on her lashes – ice-cream parlours, pebble piles, games arcades, the doll’s-house shop with the funny-faced lady, the mini-golf man with a cabin full of lollies, always lollies if you ask, Dad argues with Mum about whether it’s rude to ask.
She feels herself falling backwards. Charles’s shadow expanding at her side. She’s heard six feet is the width, fingertip to fingertip, of a pair of outstretched arms. He feels nearer than six feet when her body overcompensates. Jolts her forward. Fights against the sense of sinking back. Jolts her forward by inches, surely, only inches, but enough to see her sister beyond the ledge, seeming to cry, and Joy knows all control over her own senses has – must have – disappeared, for her sister never cries, is not the crying type.
Metal spikes her legs. Seems to be – is – toppling over. Charles, his fingertips, missing her sleeve.
The sensation, going down, doesn’t feel like falling. Her hair hangs below, but that is all: it hangs. One shoe comes off and the other stays on. It is the floor below that is moving, semi-liquid, coming back to her with its steady greedy glare. Her head is full of such pulsing pressure, a magnet tearing up the bright tangle of champagne flutes and eyes. As the floor with all its luminous things moves closer she feels she remains suspended, dilated, high. This feeling: it’s grotesquely agreeable for the swollen moment it lasts; the heady clarity of your first line of coke, cutting it with plastic money, breathing it with paper money. The floor comes up and up, but slowly. People make no sound. Funny how free she feels, surrendering to gravity and luck, falling through holes in her own control. The final swivelling sight is dark cape-shapes and a canapé tray. One of Dennis’s tricks is to wander through the house reciting lines from Lear, leaving cups, saucers, wine glasses on whatever surfaces occur to him – windowsills, bookcases, speaker system – and hanging here she feels a hitherto hidden rush of love at that frustrating habit, a sense that this is what love is, that one of you grows sarcastic and the other leaves cups on the sill, and now the tiles bobbing up contain her own face, closer, closer still, the air singing many different songs, Joy’s reflected features getting bigger as, impatient, rising, rising, the floor finally attacks.
Barbara
LIFE. LIFE. Everyone’s got their own slant on it, haven’t they? Whichever angle makes them happy. Whichever throws light on their favoured side. Would you care for a Hobnob?
One of the hazards of your occupation, I suppose. To work out when people are telling you lies about things. To see through their disguises.
Give it some more volume. The whistling from your nostrils – everyone’s got something, haven’t they, this time of year? – it’s drowning you out.
Well, how can it not matter? What kind of profession puts no emphasis on whether a thing’s true or not?
If you say so.
Anyway.
It’s none of my concern.
Hey not wishing to stop you in full flow but who’s in therapy here, you or me?
Alfredo? Oh, fine, I expect. He’ll be covering for me while I’m away. Might even send him a postcard if he’s lucky. Empire State, probably. Best building they have left.
Did you hear that? It’s mine, hold on, I’ve got a thing, a textual message.
Ah! Here we are! It’s Jackie. Look at this message here, lean a little, it’s my cousin Jackie telling me she’s going round with a duster, see that – she’s still the same, Jackie – in preparation for my visit. But, to answer your question honestly, I really think sometimes you wilfully whatschacall, misinterpret. I’ve never had anything against Alfredo. Against is not in my nature. I mean, he could do with pulling his finger out once in a while, but everyone’s different, aren’t they? He’s Italian. There’s no cure for that.
My gift presentation went ahead on Monday as planned. But it was all a touch overshadowed. Monday morning was when we finally heard about Christine, you see. By then everyone knew something must have happened. Surprising, very surprising. I hardly knew her, she sat in the Employment team, but she came round regularly to see Joy. Became part of the scenery. The Half…her husband, Peter, he’s not dealing with it so well. That Monday, some of the partners were in a meeting discussing what to do about him. So attendance at the bath-oil-gift debacle – is that how you say it? – was confined mostly to the girls in my section.
Come again?
Well it’s none of my concern. I try not to intrude. But – are you going to eat that? – it seems there was a series of strange events. That’s all a life is anyway, I’ve had my fair share, but this series starts with Christine and Peter having some big argument, maybe on the Thursday night before Joy’s fall �
�� personally I could not live with that man, he’s lewd, aggressive, insulting – and Christine says she’s going to stay with her parents. That’s just what I’ve heard. Needs some space to think or whatnot and calls the office to arrange days off at short notice. So Peter goes to work the next day, leaving her there in the apartment, packing. He gets back from work. He sees her suitcase has gone. He assumes she’s travelled to her parents as promised. But, of course, she hasn’t gone to her parents.
Well, I despise gossiping, so let’s leave it there. Let’s leave it there except to say that it turns out Peter wasn’t the only one in that marriage who liked a flirtation. If you want more than that you’ll have to ask the one with the big tie knots they call Tiny Tony. Because he likes a flirtation too. Which is all I’m saying. I’m just reporting facts. The fact Tony comes up to me on the Monday morning of my presentation and gives me Joy’s tennis racket with the fluorescent grip, the one she took to play with Christine every Friday. The fact everything in their lives needs a meeting request, even tennis. The fact if it’s not in the Outlook Calendar, if I don’t put it in their calendar, it doesn’t exist. I know Joy cancelled her match that Friday because she’d lost her racket. I remember her getting me to book a gym session in lieu – she used these kinds of terms, debacle, in lieu – of the tennis. And now, after all this time, hours before my gift presentation, her racket turns up in Tony Oakley’s hands. Explain that! Some things are forever mysteries, you can’t explain them. And Tony says to me, he says, Christine asked me to give you this for safe keeping, and quick as anything Peter charges out of his office, his fist in the air, and he snatches the racket just as I’m taking it, and he breaks Tony’s nose with a forehand whatschacall, smash. Blood all over Janey’s glare-free screen! Tony’s nose swollen bigger than yours.
Anyway, you’ll have to make your own enquiries, but it seems Christine’s had a clear-out – got rid of both Peter and her job. Monica, her PA, got a call. Resigned. Not so much as a leaving drink or a thank-you for Mon’s help over the years! And Peter, after the tennis attack and an earlier incident involving bananas, hasn’t been in the office much either.
For a while, before the truth came to light, we feared Christine might have got caught up in that taxi accident on New Change. Unidentifiable state, the papers say. The driver, I mean. All burnt up. Took dental records before they could tell his wife and little ones for sure, tell them it was him. Information from teeth! The world we live in! Police are investigating the car crash but not the fall Joy had. The car crash they’re investigating, but as for what happened in this very building on that Friday they’re not treating the incident as suspicious. The paper had those actual words! Not suspicious. Like TV. Just like TV.
Hmm?
It is, of course, it is. It’s always sad when someone nice leaves. Though most of us don’t go round breaking noses with sports equipment.
After all that drama my little forty years at the firm presentation was a little subdued, is the point. But it goes ahead. The odd surprise attendee. That Samir turned up. Muttering about cat costumes and the fact his father has a date with Mrs Hasan. I don’t even know a Mrs Hasan! There’s applause. Big card full of messages. You give people complete freedom and they all write the same thing. Everyone wrote Congratulations! or Can It Really Be Forty Years? or Here’s To Another Forty. I open the card and pretend to read all the messages, even though I don’t have my glasses or an inclination. And then – look! – surprise! – the bath oils come out. Scallop-and-strawberry flavour, something like that. Might give them to Jackie’s little grandson at bathtime. Make the little bugger smell like a fancy milkshake. Forget your newfangled medicines; children are the best antidepressants. And I accept the oils and the applause and don’t give them any of the sarcastic lines I’ve got stored up. I’m still thinking this is a big disgrace, to give someone bath oils after forty years of uncomplaining service, but I hold my sarcastic lines back because it would seem like bad taste – you know, with everyone shocked about seeing Tony’s nose smashed in, and Joy still near enough dead. I have an acute sensitivity to what might be bad taste. I just take the oils and tell them all thank you, it’s been a long four decades but I’m still just about breathing.
Well, this is the thing. After most of them trundle off, and I’m about to go up to my team supervisor Debs to discuss a work matter with her, give her some papers I’ve pulled together from Alfredo’s workspace, which I won’t trouble you with –
Really? Did we? Did we discuss those?
Showed them to you? Well, that I don’t recall…That I do not recall.
Memory, eh? It’s like Jackie’s George after a couple of drinks: unpredictable.
But anyway I’m at Debs’s elbow about to have a word in private but then I notice that the girls in my section, plus Alfredo, are loitering and looking at me with these funny smiles. So I say, What’s with you lot, you look like you’ve just discovered Christmas. And they say, We’ve got an extra little something for you, Barbara, just from us. And Liz comes up and gives me an envelope that sparkles like a glitterwhatsit. Ball. So I take it and say all the usual banalities about Oh you shouldn’t have et cetera and But you bought me the lovely bath oils and How exciting what is it. But you can tell what I’m thinking. If oils is all I get for the main prize, this is a slither of soap for the hard-to-reach places.
I don’t mind admitting I was wrong. With good cause, but I was wrong. Because when I open the envelope there’s not soap, there’s just paper. And when I unfold the paper it’s not a voucher for a scrub-down, or anything like that. It’s what they call an e-ticket. Have you heard of those? And, though it takes me a minute, I see after some staring that it’s an e-ticket to New York. To travel what they call first class.
It was Alfredo’s idea, Liz said. He had all these air miles saved up, and Joy put in the money to upgrade you. We emailed your cousin Jackie to check the dates worked.
You went into my contacts folder? I said.
Sorry, they said.
And I looked at it, this ticket in my hands, this ticket that otherwise I would have been saving up for, saving up to buy, for a long time. And despite the intrusion into my privacy I was pleased.
Kind? Yes. It was kind.
Now don’t get carried away. I mean, the timing could have been better. It’s cold in February, really it is. But the last thing I am is ungrateful, so I’ll probably only mention how cold New York winters are once or twice – little asides in the postcards, so they know for next time.
You’re grinning.
Why are you grinning?
Well of course I’m grinning! I’m going to New York!
I gave that young joker Alfredo a bit of a hug. He hugged me back. In fact he really went for it, so I said Next on your list am I, Alfredo? And because they find me funny all the girls laughed. And the Italian laughed too. And eventually I thought why not, and joined them in the laughing. And I’m really looking forward to seeing Jackie and the family, I have to say. Excited about getting in a plane again. I fly next week. Excited about wandering around the city, ice permitting. But I’m glad it’s only a five-day trip. More than five days would have been too much. Because I’ll need to get back. Not just for work reasons but because I do like it here, I have to say. Holiday’s a holiday, but London’s where I live. There’s kind people here, in London. Kind in their own weird little ways.
5.12 p.m.
THEY APPROACH Joy from different directions: Dennis, Peter, Barbara, Samir. Something unexpected about the way the four of them move and breathe. Harsh little stops in the flow of their limbs and lungs. Heads down or nearly down, pushing through colleagues to get close.
Joy does not see this. She has no sense of how, rushing towards her at varying angles, these four people seem linked. As they draw closer to the centre of the event, their faces begin to exchange expressions. For several seconds at a time Dennis wears Peter’s anger, or Barb
ara wears Samir’s panic, or Samir wears Dennis’s fear. It’s like some weird law of physics: feelings flow between them until the maximum level of emotional chaos has been reached. And only at that tipping point do the outsiders arranged around and between these four linked souls come to life. Someone says ‘Dead’ and another says ‘Dead!’ and the word keeps coming in great spurts, effortful bursts, as if the crowd has overcome a collective stutter.
Joy can absorb none of this. Even her sister, standing still in the corner, fingers wrapped around her own throat, goes unnoticed.
Champagne glasses shatter. Associates gasp. Trainees squeal. They spend half their days wishing upon their bosses nasty unnatural deaths involving exotic stationery products found in the fifth-floor reprographics room, and now here is one such boss – Hanger’s star litigator – in a staple-free version of their ugliest visions. They barge forward. They take a better look. Dozens, hundreds, too many to count. Grouped in twos and threes, a mass of fluttering ties and reeling legs and handbags spilling secret things. No one wants to miss the moment.
Anger, panic, fear.
Joy feels none of it, lying here, all the rigidity blown out of her body.
Before order is established by the police, the police who have been here all along, the four linked witnesses see Joy’s left ear. They see the whorl is plugged with blood.
Probably. This is probably what they see. These four were the first to move towards her, we can be sure of that, and a glass of some kind shattered, we know that much. But it is just possible that none of them got close enough to see something like blood in the ear.