by Ken McClure
The Trojan boy
Ken Mcclure
Ken McClure
The Trojan boy
ONE
1987
Avedissian lay in bed and looked up at the chink of light that appeared in the vee of the curtains. Another day was dawning, another pointless, mindless day when he would go out and try to persuade people to buy products that they did not want and that he did not believe in anyway. What was the point of it all? he wondered, but he had wondered that every morning for the past two years. His next thought was to consider how many gins he had downed the previous evening, and then to feel depressed when he remembered. He got up and padded to the bathroom.
The milk he poured over his cornflakes was a little sour but he pretended not to notice until his palate threatened action if he were to go on with the charade. He emptied the contents of the plate into the bin and settled for coffee. Why didn't he have a system, he asked himself, a system for buying groceries? It wouldn't take much effort to compose a shopping list; after all, he lived alone and his tastes were simple enough.
Apathy was the problem, he admitted, but how did you escape from that? Didn't you have to care first? And what had he got to care about? His career had gone, his wife had gone, so why should he care about mere details? If the milk went sour he would buy more. If the bread ran out he would buy more. The system was adequate. He donned his overcoat, picked up his brief-case and left for the office.
The woman looked up from her desk as he entered and glanced at her watch before saying, 'Mr Firbush wants to see you.'
'When?'
'Right away,’ she replied with some satisfaction.
Avedissian hesitated before knocking on the door but knew that he was only delaying the inevitable. He rapped softly with one knuckle.
'Come.'
'You wanted to see me?'
'I did indeed,’ said Firbush. 'Come in. Sit down.’
Avedissian felt rankled at being spoken to like a schoolboy but his face remained impassive. He sat down.
Firbush adjusted his metal-framed, blue-tinted glasses and said, 'I want you to tell me why sales in your area have dropped by fifteen per cent in the past two months.’
Avedissian shrugged his shoulders and admitted to himself that the question was not entirely unexpected, but coming from a little toad like Firbush it was hard to take. He said, 'Maxim Health Products have introduced a new range. They compete directly with ours.'
'So… what?'
‘Their stuff is better.’
There was a deathly silence in the room before Firbush snapped the pencil that he had been holding.
Avedissian realised that Firbush had broken it deliberately for effect and had probably seen it done in a film once. He wondered if the man practised his interrogation techniques in front of the mirror.
Firbush spoke in a hoarse whisper, 'Avedissian, don't you realise it is your job to convince the medical profession otherwise?' His voice rose as he added, 'It's your sole function in life!'
The thought appealed to Avedissian like horizontal sleet but he controlled himself and said, 'Of course.’
‘Then why don't you do it? You are a doctor, damn it, at least, you were once, so why can't you do it? You must know how.’
'As a doctor…’
'Ex-doctor!'
'As an ex-doctor, as you’ve so kindly pointed out, I find it impossible to recommend something that I know to be inferior.'
The calmness of Avedissian's reply seemed to annoy Firbush even more than the answer. Firbush lost his temper and his face went deathly pale behind the blue-tinted glasses. He leaned over the desk and clenched his fingers into tight fists. 'Now let me tell you something, Avedissian,’ he hissed. ‘The real trouble with you is that you think you're too good for this job. You're just a toffee-nosed medic who doesn't want to soil his hands with a bit of honest work!'
'I'd question the honest.'
'You're not a doctor any more, Avedissian!' gloated Firbush. ‘They took your name off that magic list and there is no way that you're ever going to get back on. They don't forget about murder after a couple of years!'
'It wasn't murder!' said Avedissian, more forcibly than he had meant to and immediately regretting it, knowing that he had swallowed the bait that Firbush had put out for him.
Firbush smelled blood. 'Oh yes it was,’ he said slowly. ‘That's what the court called it. That's what it was.’
Avedissian had no defence to offer. He remained silent.
Firbush moved in for the kill. He said, 'You're all washed up as a doctor and you're all washed up with this company. You're sacked!' He waited for some kind of appeal but none was forthcoming.
Avedissian shrugged and got up to go to the door. He was about to open it when he heard Firbush mutter, 'Your wife had the right idea, poor sod.’
The comment pushed him over the edge. He turned and crossed the floor in three strides to grip Firbush by the lapels.
Panic appeared on the smaller man's face as he realised that he had gone too far. This had never been in the plan. Avedissian should have left with his tail between his legs and he, Cyril Firbush, should have gone home to tell his wife how he had been forced to sack a doctor… most unfortunate, but someone in the company had to make the tough decisions and, after all, he was the man at the top… But now, as he was transported from executive leather, like a missile leaving its silo, to be dragged across his own desk, scattering papers with his trailing Oxfords, something had gone desperately wrong.
Avedissian pinned Firbush to the wall like a butterfly. 'How dare you!' he hissed.
'She killed herself, didn't she?' squealed Firbush in a desperate attempt to salvage dignity but the look on Avedissian's face turned his bowels to water.
'Understand this! I did not murder that child. What I did do was to end his suffering in a world where the law dictated that he be allowed to go through hell for another month or so. I was struck off for it but I do not regret it. As for my wife…' Avedissian increased the tightness of his grip. 'Linda took her own life after what the newspapers and the poison pen letters and the myriads of sanctimonious little farts like you did to us in the name of… Christian values.'
'Now see here…'
'What gives you so much pleasure in other people's pain, Firbush?' demanded Avedissian.
'This is outrageous!'
'For two pins I'd…' Avedissian teetered on the brink of violence but kept his balance. He pushed Firbush away from him and sent him tumbling to the floor. Firbush scrambled to his knees and clawed at the buttons on his intercom. 'Miss Carlisle… Miss Carlisle!'
Avedissian brushed past Firbush's secretary on the way out. 'Coffee for one,' he said.
It was after eleven in the evening before Avedissian got home to the dreary flat that he had called home since Linda's death. He had had so much to drink that he encountered trouble with the lock and had to make three attempts before the tumblers were satisfied. The door swung back to let the musty cold of the hall engulf him and surround him with loneliness. This was the moment he dreaded most each day, the one when he would come home and know that he was totally alone in the world.
Avedissian snapped into his counter-measure routine. He switched on the lights, lit the electric fires, and turned on the television to provide the distraction of noise. He paused briefly to look at the screen and saw that a woman was jumping up and down in requited greed on a quiz show. The host was flashing his practised smile at the camera and pretending to share in her joy.
'Shit,’ muttered Avedissian but he did not switch it off. That would have meant silence, being alone with himself, and that was to be avoided at all costs. After a moment of contrived tension the woman decided to 'go for the big one' and Avedissian decided to go to the
kitchen.
A rectangular lump of Spam made a slow, constipated exit from the tin after much coaxing with a table knife; it slid out on to the plate in a trail of slime. The opener slipped from the lid of a tin of beans for the third time and Avedissian abandoned technology at two hundred and seventy degrees for brute strength and a knife. But, as the lid snapped back, it caught his thumb and ripped the skin over the knuckle. Blood began to flow.
Avedissian put his thumb in his mouth and kept it there as he went to the bathroom to search, one-handedly, through the cabinet above the basin for a plaster. He was rinsing the wound and cursing his luck when the doorbell rang.
Avedissian swathed his thumb temporarily in toilet tissue while he answered it. Two men stood there. One said, 'Mark Avedissian?'
'Yes.'
'May we come in?'
'Who are you?'
The man doing the talking flipped open a wallet and held it up. 'Police, sir.'
Avedissian closed his eyes briefly before opening them again and saying with resignation, 'Come in.'
Nightmares of the past had been rekindled in Avedissian's head by the sight of the warrant card. What could they possibly want this time?
The two men entered and looked about them like tourists in a stately home.
'Sit down.' Avedissian indicated chairs.
‘Trouble, sir?' The man was looking at the wad of tissue on Avedissian's hand that was now crimson.
'Just a cut,' murmured Avedissian. 'If you'll excuse me for a moment.' He turned to go back to the bathroom.
'Of course, sir, anything we can do to help?'
Avedissian declined and left the room. He closed the bathroom door and leaned his back on it muttering, Firbush, the little turd.'
He dressed his thumb and composed himself before returning to join the policemen.
Both men had stood up in his absence and were wandering about the room; one was holding the photograph of Linda that he kept on his desk. Avedissian stared at it and the man put it down.
'We have had a complaint from one Cyril Frederick Firbush, sir. Mr Firbush says that he was the victim of an unprovoked assault at your hands.'
‘1 wouldn't say that it was unprovoked,' said Avedissian quietly.
‘Then you admit the offence, sir?'
'It happened.'
'Would you care to give us your version of the incident?'
'I don't think so,' said Avedissian, feeling drained.
The policemen exchanged glances and shrugged. 'Are you quite sure, sir?' said one of them.
Avedissian smiled wanly at the man's attempt to help him and said, 'Quite.'
'Have you ever been in trouble before, sir?'
'Once.'
Another exchange of glances. 'Really, sir. What?'
'Murder.'
So it had come to this, thought Avedissian as he filled his glass. He was unemployed and due to appear in court on a petty assault charge. The discomfort of shame vied with the numbing effect of the gin and, for the first time in many years, he thought of his parents and was glad that they had not lived to see him in his present state. He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.
Despite his name, a legacy from an Armenian great-grandfather, Avedissian was English and had been brought up in a village near Canterbury, that most gentle of English towns. His childhood, as the only son of a prosperous businessman, had been a model of middle-class order and pride in achievement.
Having been a bright child Avedissian had had no difficulty in showing the academic success that his parents had valued so highly and, although they had been dead for many years now, they had lived to see him commissioned in the forces and had later supported him in his decision to leave the army and go through medical school.
His mother's pride had been the straightforward pride of a mother in her son and Avedissian smiled as he remembered with fondness the ridiculous floral hat that she had worn at his graduation ceremony. But his father's attitude had been different.
John Avedissian had always been as concerned about his son's development as a person as about his academic achievement, although he too had been proud when Avedissian had graduated as a doctor. To be his 'own man' had always been the goal that John Avedissian had set his son. 'Make up your own mind what is right, then do it,' he had urged. 'Don't run with the herd. It's difficult, make no mistake about it, but resist! Be your own man.'
Difficult! Avedissian snorted at the memory. Just look at what being his own man had done for him! Had his father not realised that people who told the truth, people who did what was right, were an embarrassment to society? What society really wanted was people who played the game; people who knew the rules and played the game… or was that self-pity and gin-nurtured cynicism? Avedissian refilled his glass.
The magistrate was lenient. He saw in Avedissian a fellow professional who had fallen on hard times and, in the unspoken way of these things, he back-pedalled when it came to meting out punishment. That Firbush had come across as an ingratiating, slimy little Uriah Heep of a man had also helped Avedissian. The crumpled suit and the rather grubby, unironed shirt could not belie the fact that Avedissian belonged where Cyril Frederick Firbush, for all his golf club tie, did not. Justice might be blind but it would take more than a comfortable little homily to destroy Mr Giles Carrington-Smythe's eyesight.
Avedissian paid the fine and walked out into the afternoon, not reflecting too deeply on whether he had got off lightly or not. His immediate thought was to find a nearby pub and order up a large gin. He checked his watch. Ten minutes to closing time.
Two had passed by the time he reached The Earl of Essex and entered the cool, dark interior.
'Just in time, sir. What'll it be?'
Avedissian ordered a large gin and took it to a table after telling the barman to keep the change.
The barman was effusive in his thanks but that only annoyed Avedissian. Whatever happened to dignity, he wondered? Why didn't he tell me to stick my money? Because he was afraid to lose his job? No, that wasn't it. Someone was giving him money, therefore he was happy. A nice simple philosophy.
Avedissian took a large gulp of the gin. Maybe Firbush was right. Maybe he was too grand for the standards of the market-place, but that was hardly a consideration because he was no longer in the market-place. He saw the reality of his situation in the dregs of his empty glass and did not like what he saw. He was lost and alone. One thing Firbush had been right about was the fact that his career as a doctor was over for good. He would never practise again and that thought recurred to gnaw at his insides like an ulcer.
The idea of living without being able to work at what he loved had been bearable, though only just, when Linda had been alive. But with her death the sun had gone out. Not only could he not accept his wife's suicide, he could not understand it and that made it all the worse for they had been so perfectly matched. They had shared an intellectual harmony that had given them such pleasure; it seemed unthinkable that one of them could have had such secret thoughts of death. Did it mean that he had never really known her at all? Had it all been arrogant presumption on his part? Had Linda possessed a secret self, a frightened lonely self who had been unable to confide in him? The thought was unbearable.
'I'm sorry, sir, we're closing now.'
Avedissian did not hear the statement until it was repeated. He glanced at the man in the white jacket and nodded.
'Thank you, sir.'
Avedissian got up and smiled. 'Perhaps you are right and I am wrong,' he said.
'Yes, sir,’ said the barman without considering as he picked up the glass and wiped the table.
For Avedissian the days came and went. He was marking time in a meaningless void where the only regulation was that imposed by the liquor licensing laws. One Friday evening as he returned to the flat with his senses suitably numbed he was aware of two neighbours talking in the hallway as he entered the building. 'Disgusting,' said one. 'Absolutely,' said the other.
It was when he
was climbing the stairs that he suddenly realised that they had been talking about him and the thought soaked him like icy water. Disgusting? Him? His mind cleared but his feet still displayed unsteadiness as he unlocked the door and made for the bathroom. He switched on the light and stared at the dishevelled spectre in the long mirror, dark circles under his eyes, three days' stubble on his chin, the stain on the front of his shirt. 'God Almighty,' he whispered as he saw himself clearly for the first time in a long while.
Avedissian leaned heavily on one tap while he turned on the other one and began sluicing cold water up into his face. The act of bending over the basin forced some gin-flavoured bile up into his throat where it burned and disgusted him. Angrily he rammed two fingers into the back of his mouth and vomited the contents of his stomach into the basin. The smell made him retch again.
He searched for a disposable razor in the cabinet above the basin and threw aside everything that got in his way until he found one and started to shave zealously. He ran the bath until it was three-quarters full and immersed himself two or three times before scrubbing his body all over until his skin hurt.
Almost exhausted by the effort, he lay back in the bath and felt anger and frustration leave him, but only to be replaced by an apathy that sucked him down slowly like quicksand. Fighting against it, he got up and dried himself vigorously. At least, it started out with vigorous towelling but quickly degenerated into slow patting as his arms grew sore and tired. He looked at himself in the mirror again and blanched. He was still six feet tall and his hair was still black but these seemed to be the only similarities to the man who had strode the corridors of St Jude's. The man in the mirror had a sunken chest and a ring of flab round his middle. His shoulders drooped and he needed a haircut. The tan from two holidays a year had been replaced in this version by pallid white. The eyes that had been piercing blue were distinctly lack-lustre with whites that were yellow and flecked with veins. Avedissian put out his tongue and put it away again. He would feel better after a drink.