The Three Button Trick and Other Stories

by Nicola Barker

  He tried not to panic. Nick’s mother, propped up on four pillows, whipped and battered, noticed in an instant.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘If you’ll just quieten down for a moment . . .’

  The young doctor held his breath until his eyes began to water. Still that rattling noise, and very indistinct. But the child was as fresh and ripe as a little cherry, a boy, breathing and gurgling and thinking about squealing.

  ‘I’m just going to take him off with me for a minute,’ the doctor muttered, grabbing Nick’s legs and righting him. The midwife caught the doctor’s eye. Nick’s mother caught the midwife catching the doctor’s eye. As Nick was carried from the delivery room, she struggled to count the number of his fingers and the number of his toes. Ten of each. Before he was gone.

  And so it was. Nick was set apart. He was different. Outwardly, not a sign, but inside, everything back to front.

  ‘Everything,’ the doctor told the midwife, five minutes later, full of wonder, ‘the opposite way around from how it should be. I couldn’t hear his heart at first but it’s beating well enough, except it’s on the right-hand side of his body instead of on the left. And all his other organs too. Topsy-turvy. There’s a name for it.’ But he didn’t know the name because Nick was his first.

  Nick’s mother, Grace, told all the other mothers how her Nick was back to front. ‘I called him Nick,’ she said, ‘because he came along in just the Nick of time.’

  The other mothers cackled. Although, in truth, there was nothing medically dangerous about Nick’s condition, and time, or the lack of it, was of no consequence whatsoever.

  Nevertheless, every day she counted his fingers and his toes just to make sure. Ten. Ten. She was a pernickety mother. As Nick grew older, if he complained about her coddling she’d tell him how he was taken from her on the day he was born, set aside, examined, and all the while she hadn’t known what was wrong, had only imagined. And there’s nothing worse than imagining. Not a thing.

  So Nick was set aside and he was special, but only on the inside, and that kind of difference, the invisible kind, can be very hard to live with.

  At school, his teachers found him to be a small, sharp peak; slippery and unassailable. He was so convinced of his own superiority. And the other children had no interest in anatomy, or where exactly the heart was located. It would be a long time until that particular juncture—third form biology, maybe, but certainly not yet.

  It was hard for Nick to understand his own apparent insignificance. At first he’d emphasized his difference and this had made the other children hate him. So he wouldn’t fit. Didn’t want to either. And then they teased, insulted and derided him. So then he couldn’t fit, even if he’d cared to. But finally they began to ignore him. He became a blank. A nil. A nothing.

  When Nick was aged fifteen, Grace remarried. His stepfather, Thomas Siswele, was Nigerian by birth. Grace thought Thomas was different, not ordinary like she and Nick were but, oh so special. He taught Grace how to cook groundnut stew with plantain.

  And so it started. Each day Thomas would bring home the local paper and read out titbits to Grace as she prepared their dinner. He’d read out news about fêtes and fairs and infestations, an award-winning garden on the eighth storey of a tower-block, a fight, a rape, arson, theft.

  You’d almost believe, Nick thought, standing in the doorway, unheeded, that he’d gone and written that paper himself, with all the fuss she makes over it.

  One Friday afternoon, Nick turned himself in at the police station for shoplifting.

  ‘What did you steal?’ they asked. He told them.

  ‘Where did you put the stolen goods?’

  ‘In my bedroom.’

  They searched Nick’s house and found nothing. So he had to tell them how he’d stolen a car.

  ‘What’s the registration? The car type? The colour?’

  He told them, details he’d seen in the paper. But then they found the missing car in a lock-up in Walthamstow and covered in someone else’s prints.

  Nick told them how he’d set fire to a factory in High Barnet. ‘Why? What fuel did you use? Whereabouts and how much?’

  ‘Petrol. Everywhere.’

  But the specialists told the police that the fire had started because of an electrical fault. There were no traces of petrol.

  After a while the police got sick of Nick. His timewasting. Nick was excited by this. He kept on wasting their time hoping it would lead somewhere, but instead of charging him for it they decided to ignore him. They told him he was the boy who cried wolf. And you know what happened to the boy who cried wolf, they said, don’t you? Nick prayed it would happen.

  Back to front, back to front, back to front. Had to mean something.

  Then he met Lyndon, in a police cell.

  ‘What you up for?’ Lyndon asked.

  Nick struggled to remember. ‘Armed robbery,’ he said. ‘Jewelers.’

  ‘H. Samuel’s?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Did you do it?’ Lyndon already knew the answer. His question was merely a matter of form.

  ‘Yes, I did it,’ Nick said.

  Lyndon eyeballed Nick while rubbing his chin. You see, this was his crime Nick was appropriating.

  ‘You didn’t do that job,’ Lyndon said eventually. ‘I did that job.’

  Nick merely shrugged.

  ‘I did that job,’ Lyndon reasserted. And this was the act he’d been denying and recanting, in his own mind, to the coppers, for hours now, for days now.

  ‘What you in for?’ Lyndon asked again.

  ‘Robbery,’ Nick said, ‘H. Samuel’s.’

  ‘Fuck you, man. I did that thing.’

  Nick shrugged.

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, man. I did that thing.’

  Lyndon was no great respecter of lies, except of his own. He squared up to Nick. Nick sighed and turned to the wall.

  ‘What you in for, man?’

  Nick said nothing. His mind was miles away, thinking about the distinction between being different and doing different. He didn’t have to be, only to do.

  Lyndon had no interest in distinctions of any kind. He had a small knife secreted in the sole of his trainer. He drew it out.

  ‘What you in for?’

  Nick was busy deciding in his own mind whether a plantain and a banana were the selfsame thing.

  Lyndon calculated that if he stuck his knife in, just so, in that place where nothing particularly important was stationed . . . He knew the distinction, it must be admitted, between grievous bodily harm and murder. Nick had his back to him. Lyndon’s knife was so sharp it slid in with ease.

  NICK HAD ARRIVED, FINALLY. This was his moment. He was so happy because everyone was shouting and looking and touching and pushing and staring. Finally the crowds cleared and a doctor stood before him.

  ‘Let’s see,’ he said, swabbing Nick’s wound with cotton wool, assessing its relative anatomical insignificance. This was Casualty. He was busy.

  Even so, Nick was losing an unusually large amount of blood. The doctor felt Nick’s pulse. It was weak. He used his stethoscope. He could hear almost nothing. The faintest of sounds.

  Nick stared up at the doctor, full of joy, and debated whether to tell him his secret. He opened his mouth, he breathed in, he was just about to, and then something wonderful occurred to him. Wouldn’t it be great, wouldn’t it be just the best thing ever, if he left the doctor to find out for himself? How exciting that would be. What a revelation!

  AFTER NICK DIED, the doctor spent a long while marvelling over his peculiar insides. And the coroner did, too. And the student working alongside the coroner. He’d never seen anything quite like Nick before. All back to front! Nick was his first. Nick was very special. Yes, he was. He was.

  Limpets

  Davy swore to himself, that day on the New Plaistow Road, that even if he lived to be one hundred y
ears old, he would never ask a woman out again. Not like that. Not cold. ‘Next time,’ he decided, ‘I’ll be in a disco. I’ll ask her to dance, I’ll offer to buy her a drink . . .’ A series of small questions. She could turn any single one of them down and he wouldn’t be irreparably injured. No matter how fine she was, how pretty.

  Inside the café on the New Plaistow Road, Jodi, the girl he had asked, was wiping down a table. There was only one other person in the café. He was a short, squat man, a heavy drinker. His name was Leonard.

  ‘You bitch!’ Leonard said. ‘You turned him down flat, just like that. Do you know how much pluck it takes for a man to ask out a girl?’

  Jodi had her back to him as he spoke. ‘Are you married, Leonard?’

  She knew that he wasn’t. He wore a gold ring, like a wedding ring, very plain, but he was not married. Never had been. Brown and bitter was his poison. His father was Greek, his mother Italian. Both dead now. He was sixty-two years old, unemployed.

  ‘I am not married.’

  She turned and faced him, one hand held aloft, clutching a moist cloth tightly so that no crumbs should fall from it, her other hand, open below, ready to catch.

  ‘Can you play chess, Leonard?’

  He rubbed his nose, which was puce and bulbous. She thought his nose looked as if it was riddled with woodworm. Pores both full and black or gaping.

  ‘No chess. Dominoes.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, having established her position in her own mind very comfortably with these two questions, having justified herself quite adequately, ‘butt out.’

  DAVY OPENED HIS PACKET OF CIGARETTES, removed one and stuck it between his lips. He squinted down at it as he fumbled in his pocket for his lighter. In his head her voice reverberated. She said, ‘D’you want a can of anything to take with you?’ She always said this to him when she totalled up his lunch on the till.

  ‘Not today,’ he said, breaking with tradition. ‘Actually . . .’

  ‘OK.’ She was about to tell him how much he owed her.

  ‘Actually I wanted to ask you something.’

  She looked up.

  ‘Yes?’

  It occurred to Davy, at this moment, that most people would have said what, but she had said yes. Why is that? he thought. What does it mean? And then: Ask her, you fool.

  ‘I wondered if you’d come out with me some time. I mean tonight, maybe. Or Saturday.’

  Jodi put her head to one side and stared at him. Her hair was carefully arranged in the strangest style. The first time he had gone to the café he had been confused by it, suspicious. Since then, however, quite spontaneously, he had decided that he liked it. Her hair was thick, straight, black, parted viciously, pulled into two fat plaits and these plaits curled into little, neat bundles on either side of her head; thick, black limpets. It was a weird, wretched, ridiculous, Germanic hairdo.

  He was fashionable himself, did his hair in a self-conscious quiff at the front, at the back, a duck’s-arse. Fashionable he could understand, but strange? Had her hair been loose and straight, he would have propositioned her two weeks earlier.

  Of course, Jodi hadn’t even noticed him. He was only another bloody customer.

  Eventually she said, ‘I honestly don’t think it’s worth it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put it this way . . .’ She paused. He waited for her to tell him that she had a husband (no ring), a boyfriend, a sick mother. He wanted to say, ‘I work as a runner for a film company up West. I’m twenty-two. I’m actually very interesting . . .’

  ‘Imagine,’ she said coldly, ‘if people were like . . . if their faces were like television screens, and when any one person looked at another person they could see everything they were thinking and everything they had ever thought or said about each other. Well, if that were the case, you’d be looking at my screen, and let me tell you, right off, my screen would be completely blank. Just empty.’

  Davy was silent for a moment and then he said, ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Two fifty.’

  He handed her the money.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She opened the till and put it inside, then picked up a damp cloth which she kept behind the counter to wipe down the tables.

  He said, ‘A simple yes or no would’ve been perfectly adequate.’

  Jodi ignored this, ducked under the counter, walked to the table that he’d used and began to wipe it down.

  She was too thin, he decided, and those stupid black plaits on either side of her head looked like Mickey Mouse ears.

  ‘See you.’

  He walked out, relieved that only one other person had been present in the café to witness his humiliation. An old geezer who was always there, sitting at the corner table, smoking, half-pissed. Sweaty.

  It was good and cool outside. He stopped next to the edge of the kerb and scrabbled around in the pockets of his jeans for his cigarettes. Screw her! he thought. Never-a-bloody-gain. No way.

  ‘YOU BITCH!’ LEONARD SAID.

  Jodi listened to Leonard’s comments and responded appropriately. She then returned to the till, picked up a copy of The Times, turned it to the correct page and then folded it down to a manageable size before lounging against the counter and studying it.

  Leonard stood up. She didn’t raise her eyes from the paper. He was an old bastard but a regular. She trusted him.

  He staggered to the door, pulled it open and then stepped outside.

  ‘Hey. You, boy. You still hanging around here? Still after something?’ He coughed quietly, drew a glob of phlegm from his throat, into his mouth and then swallowed it down. Davy was inhaling on his cigarette. He turned and looked over his shoulder at Leonard.

  ‘Who, me?’

  Leonard moved towards him. ‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘How come women are so fucking stupid?’ He tapped the side of his head with a plump, yellowy forefinger. ‘No logic.’

  ‘What?’ With my luck, Davy was thinking, this fat old git’ll turn out to be her father.

  ‘Ask me about her,’ Leonard said. ‘Anything you like. I know everything about her.’

  ‘How come?’

  Davy eyed Leonard side-on. His gut, his pate, his white stubble.

  ‘I’ve been going in this place for years. I know all the girls who ever worked in there.’

  Davy felt little inclination to have any kind of conversation with Leonard, least of all a conversation of a personal nature. He said, ‘I don’t think there’s much point in discussing it.’

  ‘OK,’ Leonard said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Women do not have logical minds. You hear me? No matter what they do, no matter how they try. That’s just the way it is. I mean, how many great thinkers do you know of that are women? Any?’

  Davy shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

  ‘None.’ Leonard folded his arms across his chest. His expansive gut bulged out under the weight of them. He continued. ‘This girl hates men. Why? Because nature has cursed her and given her a fanny. Because men can think in ways that she can only dream of. Ways that she can’t. So she hates men.’ He stabbed at Davy’s arm with his finger. ‘So we must all suffer.’ He paused and then added, ‘I see it every day.’

  ‘How’s that?’ Davy was interested, in spite of himself. But already Leonard’s mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Here is the picture I have.’ He drew a square, mid-air, with his hand. ‘Here is my information. She buys a paper every day. Does she read it? No. Only turns to the back and looks at the sports.’

  He swivelled around and peered in through the window of the café, towards Jodi, who, true to form, was still leaning against the counter and staring at her paper. Davy stared too. He noticed that she was reading a big paper, not a tabloid.

  ‘She has a large family. Four brothers. Hungarian. All older.’

  ‘What’s she reading?’

  Leonard rolled back on his heels.

  ‘Chess.’
>
  ‘In the paper? I’ve never seen chess in the paper.’ As he spoke, however, he had a vague recollection of having seen a black and white chess board on the back pages of proper papers.

  Leonard said, ‘See how she does her hair? See how her uniform is? All neat. Clean shoes?’

  Like a bloody Fascist, Davy thought, feeling ashamed of the impulse in himself that had caused him to find her attractive.

  ‘Everything is as it should be.’

  Davy interrupted. ‘She can’t hear us out here, can she?’

  Leonard shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t notice if I took out a gun and shot you. See her face.’

  Davy turned and peered in through the window again. Jodi stood by the counter, as before, reading, but her face, he noticed, was white, pointed, tensed, focused, bloodless.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘What?’

  Davy laughed sharply, with embarrassment. Leonard pummeled the palm of one hand with the fist of his other, a gesture that needed little interpretation.

  ‘Know what I mean? All those brothers. She wants to be like a man. All straight and neat and everything clear in her head. Silly bitch.’ He licked his lips before adding, ‘Ripe for the plucking.’

  Davy noticed that Leonard’s fringe, originally white, had been stained a sickly yellow from nicotine. Also a small funnel on his upper and lower lips, on the right hand side of his mouth where he characteristically held his cigarette. This man, he thought, is a bloody animal.

  JODI WAS STILL LEANING against the counter. She was memorizing several of the moves in the Short/Timman match. Originally she had believed that chess was a game that invited skill, wit, spontaneity. But now she knew that the only way to contend at a serious level was to learn, to revise, to memorize, to plan and to structure. Prepare as if for war.

  Jodi had three brothers. Her parents were Romanian. All had played chess from a very young age. Her father was an exceptional player. None of the other brothers had ever beaten him. Only she, Jodi, had managed this once, aged thirteen. It had been the best and the worst day of her life.