1998 - Armadillo

by William Boyd

  Turning into Lupus Crescent, Lorimer saw a small group of people gathered around Marlobe’s flower trolley. He checked his collar was as high as possible, hunched his head down into his shoulders and crossed the street to the other side.

  “Oi,” Marlobe beckoned him over imperiously. Wearily, he went.

  “I undercharged you on them tulips,” Marlobe said. “You owe me two quid.”

  Great, wonderful, have a nice day, Lorimer thought, and searched his pockets for change. He finally gave Marlobe a ten pound note and waited while he fetched out and re-opened his cash box, idly taking in the others gathered under the battery-powered electric light clipped to the awning. There was a young man and young woman whom he did not recognize and Marlobe’s regular crony with the slushing voice. To his minor surprise—nothing was ever going to surprise him in a major way again—they were all looking at the pages of a pornographic magazine, all sprawling, spatchcocked flesh tones on a double spread, debating some point about one of the models. Marlobe, Lorimer’s change in his hand, paused to chip in, jabbing his finger at one particular photograph.

  “It’s you,” he said to the young woman. “It’s you, plain as day. Look at it.”

  The girl—she was eighteen, twenty, forty-five—slapped his arm and laughed.

  “Get away,” she said. “Dirty bastard.”

  “Wages not enough for you?” Marlobe leered. “Taken up a bit of modelling, eh? Have you? Eh?” Lorimer recognized her now as someone who worked in their local post office; she had a thin, lively face spoilt by a small mouth.

  “It’s you,” Marlobe persisted. “Spitting image. You’re moonlighting.”

  “Horrible bush,” Slushing-Voice opined.

  “You’re terrible,” she said, giggling, administering another weak slap to Marlobe’s forearm. “Come on, Malcolm,” she said to her beau. “He’s terrible, isn’t he?” They walked away, laughing, with many an over-the-shoulder rejoinder.

  “That’s one horrible bush,” said Slushing-Voice.

  “Let me see,” Marlobe said, poring over the glossy pages. “That’s her, or it’s her twin sister, or I’m a monkey’s arsehole. She’s got a sort of mole on her thigh, look.”

  “She didn’t deny it, eh?” said Slushing-Voice, knowingly. “Bit of a give-away, that.”

  Marlobe finally held out Lorimer’s change, still scrutinizing the pictures. “What I should’ve done is asked her to drop her knickers so’s I could’ve checked on the mole.”

  “If she’s got a mole on her thigh…” Slushing-Voice deduced.

  “Could I have my change please?”

  “I should’ve asked her if she had a mole.”

  “Look at the minge on that one.”

  “God. What a horrible cunt.”

  “You’re disgusting,” Lorimer said.

  “Say again?”

  “You’re disgusting, shameful. I’m ashamed to think we’re both human beings.”

  “Just a bit of fun, mate,” Marlobe said, with his aggressive smile breaking across his face. “Bit of chat. You fuck off out of it if you don’t like it. No one asked you to eavesdrop, did they?”

  “Yeah,” said Slushing-Voice. “Just a bit of fun.”

  “You’re filth. To talk like that in front of her. To talk like that.”

  “She weren’t complaining.”

  “Yeah. Fuck off. Poncey wanker.”

  Lorimer, later, did not know what made him do it, indeed he did not know how he even managed to do it but, strengthened by the cumulative power bestowed on him by the day’s trials and humiliations, he stepped forward and took a grip of the lower rim of Marlobe’s flower shack and heaved. Whether it was because the rear flaps were still hinged out, making the edifice top-heavy, or whether it was simple good timing, of the sort weightlifters experience when they go for that final jerk and press, Lorimer did not know, nor could ever evaluate, but—in the event—the whole trolley went over with a dull but satisfyingly heavy bang and a great rushing of water as the metal vases and buckets voided themselves.

  Marlobe and Slushing-Voice looked on in shock and some fear.

  “Fuck me,” said Slushing-Voice.

  Marlobe looked suddenly unmanned at this display of strength, all his confidence gone. He took half a step towards Lorimer, then stepped back. Lorimer realized he had his fists raised, his face locked in a grimace, full of hate.

  “There was no call for that,” Marlobe said in a small voice. “No call at all. Bloody hell. Bastard.” He bent down and began to pick up scattered flowers. “Look at my flowers.”

  “The next time you see her,” Lorimer said, “apologize.”

  “We’ll get you, wanker! We’ll sort you, wanker!” Lorimer heard Slushing-Voice bravely shout after him as he walked down Lupus Crescent. He could feel the adrenalin tremors and shiverings still firing in his body, not sure if it were the residue of his anger or merely the after-effect of his astonishing physical exertion. He opened the door, crossed the dark hall (thinking suddenly of Lady Haigh) and plodded up his stairs, feeling gloom and remorse, self-pity and depression struggling to take possession of his soul.

  He stood in his hallway trying to calm himself, trying to bring his ragged breathing under control, and rested his palm talismanic-ally on the crown of his Greek helmet.

  An unfamiliar scratching noise on his carpet made him look round and he saw Jupiter nose open the door that led into the sitting room.

  “Hello, boy,” he said, his voice brimming with pleasure and welcome, suddenly understanding why people kept dogs as pets, as if it were a revelation. He crouched to scratch Jupiter’s neck, pound his ribs, play with his flapping ears. “I’ve had a stinking, rotten, vile, depressing, stinking, shitty, vile, rotten day,” he said, suddenly realizing also why people talked to their dogs as if they could be understood. He needed some comfort, some reassurance, some notion of protection, somewhere safe.

  He stood up, closed his eyes, opened them, saw his helmet there, picked it up, turned it in his hands and put it on.

  It fitted him perfectly, or rather fitted him too perfectly, slipping on as if it had been made for him; and the moment he slid it on, round the back of his head over the bump of his prominent occipital bone, and felt it fit snugly under, almost with an audible click, he knew, he knew at once, that it would not come off.

  He tried to take it off, of course, but it was the perfect curve round the back of the helmet, offsetting the small flare of the nape-guard, an elongated, inverted S-shape, a line he had often admired, that made removal impossible. It seemed as if the form of the helmet was designed for a head of exactly his phrenological configuration (perhaps, he suddenly thought, that was what he had subconsciously realized when he saw it? Sensed that recognition and so felt compelled to buy it?). His exact configuration but slightly smaller all round. The nose-guard lay parallel to the bridge of his nose, but not touching, ending the ideal one centimetre beyond his nose’s tip. The oval eye cut-outs followed exactly the margin of the bones around the orbital cavity, the jut of the cheek-plates mimicked precisely the forward thrust of his jaw-bone.

  He studied his reflection in the sitting-room mirror and liked what he saw. He looked good, he looked tremendous, in fact, exactly like a warrior, a Greek warrior, eyes gleaming behind the rigid metal features of the helmet, mouth firm between the corroded jade-coloured blades of the cheek-plates. The suit, the shirt and the tie looked incongruous but from the neck up he could have passed, he thought, for a minor classical deity.

  A minor classical deity with a major problem, he concluded, as he refilled Jupiter’s water bowl and, for want of anything else, provided him with some sustenance in the form of squares of bread soaked in milk which, he was glad to see, Jupiter ate with tongue-smacking gusto.

  He spent another ten fruitless minutes trying to ease the helmet off, but in vain. What to do ? What to do ? He paced about his flat—Jupiter dozing, sprawled indelicately on the sofa, cock and balls on show, quite at home—catching the
occasional satisfying glimpse of this helmeted figure as it strode past the mirror on the mantelpiece, to and fro, the metal head with its shadowed oval eyes, sternly expressionless.

  398. The Proof of Armour. The armed man could not afford to take chances, and so his equipment had to be ‘proved’, guaranteed that it could withstand the impact of a point blank thrust from a lance or shot from an arrow, and, later, from a pistol, arquebus, caliver and musket. In the Musee d’Artillerie the breastplate of the Due de Guise is of great thickness and there are three bullet marks on it, none of which has penetrated.

  It was, paradoxically, this very fact—that armour was indeed proof against firearms (and not that the arrival of firearms made armour obsolete)—which led to it being abandoned. In the seventeenth century Sir John Ludlow noted that, “Where there was some reason to fear the violence of muskets and pistols they made their armour thicker than before and have now so far exceeded that, instead of armour, they have laden their bodies with anvils. The armour that they now carry is so heavy that its weight will benumb a gentleman’s shoulders of thirty-five years of age.”

  The armoured man had proved that his suit of tempered steel could withstand the most powerful weapons in use, but in so doing discovered that the increase in the heaviness of the metal in which he clad his body produced a weight that became burdensome in the extreme and, finally, insupportable.

  —The Book of Transfiguration

  “Hi, Slobodan, it’s Milo. Got a bit of a problem here.”

  “Talk to me, Milo.”

  “How do you fancy owning a dog?”

  Slobodan was over in half an hour and looked admiringly round Lorimer’s flat.

  “Nice place, Milo. Real smart, yeah?” He rapped his knuckles on the helmet. “Won’t budge, eh?”

  “No. This is Jupiter.”

  Slobodan knelt by the sofa and gave Jupiter a thorough scratching, patting, going over. “He’s a nice old fella. Ain’t you, boy? Going to come and live with Lobby, eh, old fella?” Jupiter put up with his ministrations uncomplainingly.

  “Why did you put that helmet on, you great berk?” Slobodan asked.

  “I felt like it.”

  “Not like you, Milo, do something so daft.”

  “Give me a minute to tidy some things away,” he said. While he had been waiting for his brother to arrive a vague plan of action had begun to establish itself in his mind. He collected crucial documents and his passport, threw some clothes, a few CDs and The Book of Transfiguration into a grip and was ready.

  “Where to, bro?” Slobodan asked.

  “Emergency. Kensington and Chelsea Hospital.”

  It was a strange moment leaving number 11 and walking down Lupus Crescent with Slobodan and Jupiter. The world he saw was confined by the edges of the eye-holes, and he was aware of the blackness beyond the metal edge defining his field of vision, though he could no longer feel the weight of the helmet, as if the beaten bronze had fused with the bones of his skull and had become one, man and helmet, helmed-man, manhelmet, helmetman. Helmetman, cartoon hero, minor deity, toppler of flower vans, scourge of the foul-mouthed and ungallant, eliciting apologies for insulted damsels. He was pleased to see that Marlobe and Slushing-Voice had clearly been unable to right the overturned flower trolley, still lying on its side amidst a fritter of petals and vegetation and a widening pool of flower water. The helmeted warrior passed by his fallen prey and climbed aboard his burnished chariot.

  “Going well ?” Lorimer asked as the Cortina accelerated up Lupus Street.

  “Like a dream. Built to last, these cars. Magic.”

  Slobodan came with him to the reception area, where he was logged in with no comment and directed to sit in a waiting room with a groaning child and his mother and a young whimpering woman holding her limp wrist like a dead fish. He told Slobodan there was no need to wait and he thanked him sincerely. “He’ll be in a good home, Milo, no worries.”

  “I know.”

  “Funny, always fancied a dog. Thanks, mate.”

  “He’ll be no trouble.”

  “Mercy can take him for walks.”

  Mercy and Jupiter, Lorimer thought, that will be nice.

  Slobodan left and Lorimer sat on, waiting. An ambulance arrived, sirens yelping, lights revolving, and a sheeted body on a trolley was rushed in and trundled through swinging double doors. The groaning child was seen, then the whimpering girl and finally it was his turn.

  The cubicle was dazzlingly bright and he was faced with a dark-faced, tiny woman doctor, with big, slipping spectacles and a mass of shiny black hair loosely coiled and pinned on her head. Her name-tag said ‘Dr Rathmanatathan’.

  “Are you from Ceylon?” Lorimer asked as she jotted down a few details.

  “Doncaster,” she said in a flat Northern accent. “And it’s currently known as Sri Lanka, these days, not Ceylon.”

  “It used to be called Serendip, you know.”

  She looked at him neutrally. “So, what happened.”

  “I put it on. I don’t know why. It’s a very valuable antique, almost three thousand years old.”

  “It belongs to you?”

  “Yes. I was feeling…feeling depressed and I just put it on. And obviously it won’t come off.”

  “Funnily enough that little boy had swallowed a tea-spoon. I asked him why and he said the same as you: he was feeling depressed so he swallowed a tea-spoon.” She stood up and came over to him. “Popped it in his mouth and down it went.”

  Standing, she was barely taller than he was, sitting. She gave the helmet a few tugs and saw how well it fitted. She peered into his eye-slits.

  “We’re going to have to cut it off, I’m afraid. Is it very expensive ?”

  “Yes. But never mind.”

  He did feel oddly careless—care-less, literally. He would never, in any circumstances, have put this helmet on but the travails of the day had forced him into this act and he felt oddly privileged to have worn it for an hour or two. Walking around his flat, waiting for Slobodan, his mind had seemed strangely lucid and calm—probably because there was nothing he could do about the helmet-problem—but, more fancifully, he now wondered if it were something to do with the helmet itself, its very antiquity, the thought of the ancient warrior for whom it had been designed, some sort of transference—

  He stopped himself: he was beginning to sound like David Watts. Sheer Achimota. There but for the grace of God.

  The staff nurse, male, who came in with powerful clippers, said it was like slicing through stiff leather. He cut the helmet up the back, halfway through the occipital bulge before, with a little easing, it came off.

  “You could solder it back together,” Doctor Rathmanatathan said, helpfully, handing the helmet to him.

  The world was a suddenly much wider, less shadowed place and his head did feel different, lighter, swaying slightly on his neck. He touched his hair, it was damp, soaked with sweat.

  “Perhaps I will,” Lorimer said, placing it in his bag, “or perhaps I’ll leave it, to remind me of this evening. A souvenir.”

  The staff nurse and Dr Rathmanatathan looked at him strangely, as if the thought had struck them that, actually, he might be mad.

  “It still has value for me,” Lorimer said.

  He thanked them both, shook their hands and asked reception to order him a mini-cab. There was much still left to do this evening. He told the driver to take him to the Institute of Lucid Dreams.

  Chapter 20

  I think I may have got to the bottom of your problem,” Alan said. “It’s fascinating, highly complex and still, in its special Blackian way, highly ambiguous.” Alan began to pace about his lab as he elaborated on the metaphysical roots of Lorimer’s sleep-disorder. “Sleep is, in a way, Nature’s preparation for death—a preparation which we experience every night. That’s the real ‘petit mart’—not orgasm. A preparation for death and yet essential for life. Which is why—”

  “Have you got a franking machine here ?”
>
  “No, but I’ve plenty of stamps.”

  “You were saying—”

  “Which is why your lucid dreams are so interesting, you see. In a non-Freudian, non-psychoanalytical sense. Lucid dreams are the human being’s attempt to negate the death element implicit in sleep. For you they’re a place where your dream-reality is controllable and anything nasty can be airbrushed away. The most frequent lucid dreamers are the worst sleepers light sleepers, like you, and insomniacs. It’s deep slumber, N R E M sleep, that you unconsciously fear.”

  “I just press ‘print’, do I?”

  “Yes. So, you see, Lorimer, for you, in a very profound sense, fear of deep sleep equals fear of death. But in the lucid dream you create a world where you hold sway, which you can control—the opposite of the real world, the waking world. The lucid dream is, in a way, a vision of a perfect life. I believe you light sleepers—and this may have been something you have biologically wrought upon yourself, you personally—have extra R E M sleep because, unconsciously, you want to lucid dream, more than anything. You want to enter that perfect world where everything can be controlled. That’s the key to your problem. Rid yourself of that desire and deep slumber will return. I can assure you.”

  “You’re very confident, Alan.”

  “I haven’t just been fooling around here, you know.”

  “I would swop all my lucid dreams for a good night’s sleep.”

  “Ah, you say that, but unconsciously you prefer the opposite. Your lucid dreams offer you a glimpse of an impossible, ideal world. It’s in your power to change it, but the lure of lucid dreams is hard to resist.”

  Hard to resist calling all this arrant nonsense, Lorimer thought, but Alan was clearly passionate about his project and he did not want to start a row.