Distortion

by Gautam Malkani

  Turns out his visit has fuck all to do with Naliah and her mother and fuck all to do with you and your start-up. Your daddy just needs your help lifting stuff. “I need to borrow your brawn,” he says – still talking to the carpet. “My back’s been giving me problems. I can’t believe I’m now having back issues.” Finally, his bloated eyeballs on you. “But we need to do it now, son.”

  Here’s the problem with the thin-walled student hall sounds of intercourse: you only ever hear the blokes – as if the guys turn it up and the girls turn it down. Your dad keeps pretending not to notice, which just makes the sounds even louder. “Actually, it isn’t just because of my back, Dylan. To be honest, right now I don’t trust anyone else enough to ask.”

  “But it’s nearly midnight,” you tell him. “What the hell do you need to lift at nearly midnight? A bed?”

  “Of course it’s not a bloody bed!” he shouts down someone’s breakbeat grunting. “Why the hell would I need to move a bed?”

  “I dunno, Daddy, sometimes a person just needs to move a bed. Say, from upstairs to downstairs. For assistive access.”

  “But, Dylan, I live in flat.”

  Your daddy didn’t even need to cut you a deal. All the same, the man almost bent his knee joints to offer the following sweetener: “If you do this for me, Dylan, then I promise I’ll explain things that until now I’ve been unable to explain.”

  Next thing, you’re in an underground car park near your student halls that you didn’t even know existed. Strip lighting and a line-up of luxury poser’s cars. “I didn’t know you had a car,” you call out as you try closing your dad’s ten-pace lead.

  “I don’t,” he says, not slowing down. “I used to – with a BMX rack and child locks. But it transpired that I didn’t need it.”

  You let that slide. But then, in a dumbass effort to make father–son convo, you ask your daddy what car he had.

  “A blue one, Dylan.”

  Jump-start of some big-ass ventilation fan muffles a revving engine. Your daddy ignores it, walks straight towards the ticket barrier, ducks underneath, then carries on up the exit ramp in the direction of outside. You catch up before he reaches outside and for a moment it’s like you’re both in a wind tunnel. His brand-new biker jacket flapping like a raincoat. His newspapers all fucked up like a broken umbrella. And then the real umbrella from his briefcase as he dumps the crumpled newspapers. And then the rain on your faces like a slap from your mum.

  “Come on, son, keep up.” He looks over his shoulder. And so you look over your own. Nothing – just rain and the realisation he’d led you out the car park entrance, not the exit. Exit must be on another road.

  “Daddy, you gonna tell me why we just randomly walked through a car-park?”

  “You’ll soon find out, son.”

  “Daddy, you gonna tell me where you’re taking me?”

  “You’ll soon find out, son.”

  “Daddy, you gonna tell me why you need my help lifting stuff at one o’clock in the morning?”

  “You’ll soon find out, son.”

  Daddy, why is the grass green?

  I don’t know, son.

  Daddy, why is the sky blue?

  I don’t know, son.

  Daddy, why are you and Mummy shouting at each other?

  I don’t know, son.

  Daddy, you don’t mind me asking you all these questions, do you?

  Of course not, son. If you don’t ask, then how will you ever learn anything.

  Soon as your shoulders are finally level, you realise he’s smoking a cigarette. Pass up politely when he offers you a hit. Ain’t a health thing – you’d be down for sharing a pain-relieving spliff with him. But sharing a cigarette would just feel weird, like you was indirectly kissing or something.

  Daddy, is it okay to get her stoned to signal-boost her morphine?

  Daddy, just to smooth out the screaming? Just one little toke of hashish?

  Daddy, do you think she could OD on caffeine? Do you think I could lace her pills with Pro-Plus, Red Bull, whatever, speed?

  Daddy, what the hellfuck did they mean? What did my three bearded aunties mean that night they prophesised that I would take my daddy’s place? And what the hell did Google mean?

  Daddy, please don’t tell me to just ask Google.

  You could’ve asked him all these questions by fone, you suppose. Just called him up and introduced yourself. Could’ve easily got a number for him, but you didn’t want to fone him, you wanted to bump into him; you wanted to know what he would want. Deffo nothing deep or emotional. No woe-is-me drama-queenery. Deffo no need to have heard him say, Together we’ll both get through this. Or the sound of the rhythm of the Tube to school. Whatever she needs, son, whatever it takes. Whatever she needs, son, whatever it takes.

  “Come on, Dad, if you ain’t gonna answer them other questions then at least just tell me where we’re headed.”

  “We’re going to a twenty-four-hour storage facility.”

  Then you shut up and stop asking stuff.

  As he hails a taxi, you tell him you know a direct bus to Stockwell.

  “Dylan, how did you know that the storage place is in Stockwell?”

  Then he shuts up and stops asking stuff.

  Windscreen wipers like another of them cure-for-cancer mantras. You didn’t want your daddy, you wanted Ramona. In her blue raincoat and randomly matching hardback and headphones – not footwear, headphones. Cos she’s more than just a pair of feet. Telling you that although she no longer gives a shit about Dillon, she might have time for this Dhilan person.

  “Incidentally, Dylan” – your dad staring out his backseat window as he speaks – “I wanted to thank you for finally being honest with Naliah. Things have become a lot easier with her now – and therefore also easier with her mother. Actually, I was thinking it would be good for you to meet her. And I want you to know that there are no hard feelings on my side. I understand why you told Naliah what you did – it makes sense that you didn’t want her to think badly of you and the way that you just washed your hands of me.”

  Allow it – maybe the best way for him to keep pushing his story is if he actually believes it to be true. Can’t just pretend to be all hurt and cut up, he needs to genuinely feel it.

  Your taxi pulls up at the Stockwell Deep-Level Shelter and you notice while paying the fare that your driver has been weeping through her mascara. At the entrance, another woman makes a note of the time and then hands your daddy a torch. She ain’t fronting like some security guard, though – more like them women who stand with the guest list outside places where fun-having people go to have fun. No bag check or nothing. Just lets your asses in.

  “You’d better lead the way,” your daddy says. Switches positions with you and hands you the flashlight. A sticker on the handle says, Only switch on if you cannot read this.

  The cage lift is now lined with some padded pink plastic – like yoga mats made of premasticated bubblegum. Soon as the doors close, you start scoping for the Door Open button. You didn’t want your daddy, you wanted Ramona. Nothing – not even an alarm. You lean against the sticky walls and start hitting him with more questions. “Daddy, why didn’t you just tell me we were coming to this place in the first place?”

  “Because then we’d talk about it and I’d probably lose my resolve, son.”

  “Daddy, how the hell did you get security clearance? I thought this place had been closed off.”

  “Not for the subcontractors working on strengthening and renovating the tunnels, son.”

  “Daddy, why the hell are we hauling out all the boxes of back issues when we don’t have a van to load them into?”

  “We’re not taking them away, son.”

  Daddy, I’ve fucked things up with her. So now what’s there for me to do? How will I cope every time I hear her laughing at some other guy’s jokes?

  This time, the lighting down in the tunnels looks different. Brighter but less white. Louder cos of portable p
ower generators. A draught and various assorted dead rodents. Daddy, do we really have to do this? Whatever the fuck this even is. Behind you, your dad’s breathing starts sounding more sad than anxious. Kinda sadness people turn into anger to make it easier to handle. He lays his hands on your shoulders as if he’s blind and you understand it’s now too late to back out.

  Along the tunnel, some of the metal bed-frames-cum-shelving-units have been cordoned off and wrapped in plastic. Hard to tell if the sheeting is clear or tinted because of reams of actual red tape. That evening your mummy looked up and swore down that it weren’t just a reflection – that even the rain from the clouds was pink. You look up at the tunnel’s ribbed steel walls and realise it ain’t just the lightning that’s different, it’s the glistening. Some water leak or sewage or something – special storage facility slime. The drone of portable generators is the sound of pumps and dehumidifiers.

  “Dylan, what the hell is that noise?”

  You tell him pumps and dehumidifiers.

  “No, I mean the noise you’re making. You sound like you’re gargling.”

  You tell him it’s the echo. You tell him you’re just sucking the inside of your mouth.

  As of tonight, your total number of mouth ulcers is nine. Or eight, depending on how you count two that have merged into one. You reach into your pocket, make sure you got your self-made salt sachets – sealed up in Ziploc bags.

  “Well would you mind not doing that, son? It doesn’t sound nice.”

  “Sorry, Daddy, I have many mouth ulcers.” Man’s got a point, though. The more that you suck on mouth ulcers, the more you like sucking them – their fatty feel, the metallic taste – and, therefore, the more that you suck on them. You shoulda bought a medicated gel or a mouthwash. Did I mention you can cure ulcers with salt?

  “Apparently when all this renovating is finished, these tunnels will be turned into a nightclub.” Your daddy now whispering into the back of your neck like as if he’s your mum or something. “I can’t really understand how that will work, but I suppose you’d know better than me – do young people these days dance in single file?”

  When you don’t answer, your daddy tries again: “And do you youngsters still do all those student drinking society initiations? All those mind-altering substances and forcing yourselves to vomit?”

  Next, your daddy stops to check out a stack of leather-bound files. You tell him you ain’t there yet – that this ain’t your section of the tunnel. Then onwards through the largest filing cabinet in London. The tap of his handmade Italian shoes on the cold steel floor like Ramona in high heels in her shower cubicle. Allow it, whatever, fuck his footsteps – anycase, high heels were originally for men. To keep the feet of Ancient Egyptian butchers free from guts and brains and other throwaway organs. To help Persian horseback soldiers sit better in their stirrups so they could fire arrows with more force. Then white men started wearing them just to look more macho and cos of the general hipness of all things Persian. Then women started wearing them to look masculine. As if he knows you’re listening to his footsteps, your daddy stops making them.

  When you arrive at the right beds, your trousers are torn and you stink of sweat. One of your salt sachets has split and spilt all down your leg. Your dad starts checking out the boxes and stacks of back issues like as if he’d been expecting more of them. “These will all still exist online, right?”

  “You gonna tell me what we’re doing here then?”

  “Why are you even asking, Dylan? Surely you can smell it?”

  How the fuck is it that you failed to pick up on the scent? Either your mouth ulcers have jumped from your gums to your nostrils or something else has been blocking out the now-obvious odour of an underground bonfire.

  “One of the ventilation shafts has been rigged to double as a chimney for an incinerator,” your daddy explains. “It saves them having to needlessly carry things up that don’t need to be carried up. Though given that most of this stuff is paper, you’d think they’d at least have one of those big green recycling bins.”

  “Wait, what?” Then sniffing your hands, the sleeve of your jacket, your hood – all of it stinking like you been flipping burgers and newspapers on some plebby fun-having family barbecue. “How the fuck are we doing this, Dad? How do we even have access or permission?”

  “We’re doing it because it needs to be done.” He tries maxing out the mystery by leaving it at that, but he can’t. “You remember those ashes that were in my thermos flask? The ones I said were bank statements and bills that I’d burnt as an alternative to shredding them? Well, they weren’t really bank statements and bills.”

  I tell him I already know that was his cuttings book – that I ain’t a fucking idiot. “But, Dad, this is different. For starters, the back issues down here don’t belong to you; for another, all your stories in these editions have already been deleted with marker pen – which means there ain’t no need for this.” You start ripping at the newspaper stacks to show him. “See? Your stories are totally unreadable. Can’t even be skimmed or even semi-skimmed.”

  “Maybe they’re unreadable today,” he goes, “but who knows what technology will come out in the future. They might invent some chemical that removes marker pen without erasing the printed ink beneath it – like the way that cheque forgers use toenail-varnish remover. Or maybe they might invent some kind of highly discerning high-tech scanner. That’s why this needs to be done, Dylan. And it needs to be done tonight – while we have this whole place to ourselves.”

  The sound of the storage facility creaking as if the tunnels are growing or spreading or growing. You sit on a stack of back issues. “Okay, well I ain’t barbecuing nothing until you tell me once and for all what the fuck this is really actually about.”

  “Dylan, don’t wuss out on me – we need to do this. And then afterwards, when we’re out of here, I’ll tell you what we’ve done.”

  “You know what, I wish I’d just leveraged this shit the other day – I shoulda demanded to know the truth about your stories in return for lying to Naliah for you.”

  “Oh for the hundredth bloody time, son, I never asked you to lie to Naliah, I simply asked you to speak the truth. And, please, stop moving your mouth like a deranged horse.” The sound of the underground Tube trains above you even though the trains stopped running two hours ago. “Let’s just do this, Dylan. Let’s just do this and leave. And then, after we’ve done this, I’ll tell you everything.”

  There’s a flat trolley for loading stuff onto. You get to work but then stop.

  “Now what’s wrong, son?”

  There are other people down here.

  Your sudden certainty of it.

  Dealing with other back issues in other parts of the tunnel.

  You can’t actually see any of them – guess they’re all just quietly lifting and hunching and lifting in the dark spaces between the different rows of bed frames. But you’re aware that they there, though – same way you can be aware of people popping up in your dreams even if you don’t actually dream their faces.

  “Dylan?” your daddy asks. “What’s wrong?”

  “You sure we got this place to ourselves?”

  “Trust me, I wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t.”

  “Well, there are definitely other people down here, Dad.”

  42

  FUCK KNOWS HOW you got there and fuck knows how you left. Tenth time your mum told you she had the C-bomb. Whether she knew by telepathy you wanted some one-on-one time with her or whether all your aunts and uncles and cousins were busy. Her voicemail like some kinda formal invite. Darth Gruffness, official summons. “Dhilan, I’m just phoning to let you know I’ll be alone tomorrow at one.”

  However the fuck you got there, on the way there you started pretending you’d be able to take her out to a restaurant. Both of you together again at a candlelit table for two. Obviously nowhere too swanky-and-knickers-off but also nowhere skanky like McDonald’s. How about a pub lunch,
Mum? By some posh stretch of the river near Hammersmith. Last time you’d taken her outta the house for lunch, it was to the Costa in Charing Cross Hospital.

  From the front gate to the front door, some satnav in your head said you were walking in the wrong direction. Turn around, turn around. Don’t wait for the next exit, just turn the fuck around. Pretend you got held up at uni or in a meeting with one of your clients. Maybe the reason your mum’s voicemail sounded proper forced and formal was cos she knew as well as you did that you should no longer be left alone together.

  Once inside, you realised that, technically, the two of you weren’t even alone. District nurse by her deathbed-to-be in the living room, Aunties Number Three and Four rearranging the cutlery drawer in the kitchen. All those part-time and full-time occupants probly didn’t even know they were preventing you from doing whatever it was you were gonna do … No, not you. Me.

  I did what happens next.

  Aunties Number Three and Four try and blank me but they’re too polite to pull it off. Forks and spoons all mixed up. Watery meat in the blender meant for beetroot juice. And since when did we have a set of steak knives? Anyway, forget the cutlery-fest in the kitchen, go to the living room. Go on – the living-room-cum-bedroom-cum-hospice. The tightly drawn curtains. The sunlight. Your shared-ownership bed but now with a brand-new mattress. The sunlight screaming behind the curtains. Your mum splayed on her brand-new mattress like as if her body might get upgraded with it instead of rotting on the old one. Snoring some morphine mantra babble. Like she’d just been assaulted by death itself – like the Grim Reaper had got busy with the wrong end of his scythe and afterwards decided to leave her living.

  “I’ll leave you two alone, then,” the district nurse said as she put on her coat and helped your mum sort of sit up. “Don’t worry, I’ll call back in a couple of hours.”

  Your entering the room flipped a switch that changed your mum from spaced-out to totally on it. “Dhilan, sweetheart – you’re staying for lunch?”