X20

by Richard Beard

  ‘Inevitable,’ I said. ‘But we haven’t even had the main course yet.’

  ‘Oh we’re still a long way from the main course.’

  I poured more wine, and she complimented me on the way I’d arranged the slices of avocado at right angles to the smoked chicken.

  Between 1945 and 1980 there were 423 publicly recorded atmospheric nuclear tests. There are thought to have been at least the same number again which were never announced. Radioactive fallout from these explosions is mostly in the form of Carbon-14 and Plutonium-329. Carbon-14 converts to carbon dioxide and is taken up by plants and then incorporated into organic material and the food chain. It has a half-life of 5,730 years. Plutonium-329 has a half-life of 24,400 years. Between them these two isotopes are expected to cause 2.4 million deaths from cancer, 670,000 of them before the end of the century.

  In July 1962, the US exploded a 1.4 megaton bomb in space, 400 kilometres above Johnston Atoll. As a result of this explosion nitrogen oxides were injected into the stratosphere, where they continue to catalyse ozone destruction. The breakdown of the ozone layer is a primary factor in the increase of skin cancers in the southern hemisphere.

  Statistically, by comparison to the effects of nuclear testing, cancers caused by known carcinogens such as asbestos or the polycyclic hydrocarbons in used engine oil are negligible. Between 1945 and 1980 there were also 1,400 nuclear tests conducted underground, the full consequences of which have yet to be calculated.

  The Estates confirmed most of the conclusions I’d reached in Paris. It was better to have money than not. Don’t involve yourself because the worst will always happen. And if the worst doesn’t happen then you can still be run over by a bus.

  Since de-regulation there had been no bus service to or from the Estates. There were still fights and broken-bottles and sometimes even petrol-bombs. But worst of all was the sheer bus-crushing tedium of the repeats of underfunded days and the kids crying their eyes out and the other one hundred and ninety-nine people in exactly the same position as you and all of them after the job you wanted, which you only wanted because it was the only one on offer. Have a fag. Calm down.

  Once, Theo sent me down to the Estates on my own. He had a cold.

  ‘You should see a doctor if you’re ill.’

  ‘I’m not ill. Never been ill in my life.’

  I went down to flat No. 47 by taxi and handed out the familiar advice and the cartons of 200 cigarettes. I acted like a doctor and kept my mind on the great mercy of the thin white tube which could communicate the idea of what it meant to want something and also be able to have it. It offered a small proof that desire wasn’t exclusively a source of pain. Theo had taught me this.

  There was a new girl I hadn’t seen before. She looked very tired and her thin brown hair hung stranded over her face. She was younger than me and she was carrying a small child wrapped in a V-neck sweater. She looked over my head when she spoke.

  ‘I was meant to be with her dad, but he left me when she was one day old.’

  ‘Here,’ I said, ‘take as many of these as you like. Do not exceed the recommended dose.’

  Her eyes met mine for the first time.

  ‘I don’t even smoke,’ she said.

  It was as if what we’d done was exactly what she’d wanted to do. I remember her bones and everything else I mostly speculate because I can never remember it clearly enough. Her hair, her shoulders, her bones. Her legs, I think. I think it was over very quickly and it was never over. It was too soon and too late and she was unhappy and never happier.

  After the dessert, a creme brulee I bought at the Co-op, she went and made a show of collapsing well-fed and content into the bean-bag. She had the ashtray with her and she lifted up the magic cigarette. There was a little kink where the twenty-pence piece had been. It was time to fall in love with the next person I saw and live happily ever after. I said:

  ‘You once said the situation had to be right.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but it’s a little late to go looking for a cinema queue. Now is now.’

  ‘No, I mean another situation you said.’

  ’Sport?’

  ‘Lucy.’

  ‘Cigarette first, my darling.’

  ‘After, you said. You said it was better after.’

  I knelt down beside the bean-bag and kissed her. The literature was right. She tasted like an ashtray.

  Uncle Gregory was hospitalized in Adelaide after the first British atomic test at Maralinga in South Australia. He was the navigator in the Canberra bomber detailed to take reconnaissance photographs of the atomic cloud. The crew of the Canberra on 27 September 1956 had been issued with special protective goggles, which were ordinary goggles fitted with smoked glass.

  When the bomb detonated, the Canberra was at five thousand feet and one mile from ground zero, as planned. Uncle Gregory, who was responsible for the photographic equipment, and Captain Ralph Lane, the pilot, were both blinded instantly. Lane was subsequently awarded his DSO for flying the Canberra back to Woomera rocket station following only the instructions radioed through by the control tower.

  After three weeks in the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Uncle Gregory recovered limited vision in both eyes, thanks largely to the skill of the Australian doctors. Captain Lane never recovered his sight. Both men were honourably discharged from the RAF with full disability pensions and a copy of the Official Secrets Act.

  For the rest of his life Uncle Gregory would blink excessively. This made him look as if he never believed a word anyone said. As if constantly, day after day, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  I miss Bananas like vitamins. I miss him terribly. There is still Haemoglobin, for what a dog’s worth. When Walter lights up his pipe Haemoglobin lurches towards him, salivating. ‘Good dog,’ Walter says, patting him on the head, ‘good Pavlov’s dog.’

  Bananas had an addiction to nicotine which was altogether more intense. It made me proud of him, as if it was equivalent to fetching my slippers or jumping through hoops. I haven’t filled an ashtray for nearly six days: he’d probably have left me by now.

  I’ve watered the plant. Before nodding off, Walter spent some time explaining to me how life was better when he was younger because there were no statistics. He’d just read in the National Geographic that more people had now died this century than in both World Wars, thus proving that peace was a terrible and dangerous thing.

  The National Geographic didn’t say that, Walter did.

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ she said, ‘and I’ve never smoked, so don’t bother asking. I don’t intend to beat around the bush. Are you a real doctor?’

  She was very different to the women who usually came to Theo’s clinics, if only because she was wearing extraordinary make-up. She had spectacular black crow’s feet and dark lines either side of her mouth. Her hair was in a tight bun whited with talc, but her grey eyes were bright and defiant.

  ‘I’m a real doctor,’ Theo said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s my assistant.’

  She examined us both very closely. ‘Have you ever given any cigarettes to an old man?’

  ‘I have never given cigarettes to an old man,’ Theo said.

  ‘I shall be brief. I live with my father, who is increasingly frail. Despite my protests, he insists on continuing to smoke, ignoring the harm it has done to his health. I personally consider smoking an illogical, irrational and stupid habit, as do most reasonably intelligent people. However, it has come to my attention that you and your assistant have been giving out free cigarettes to the inhabitants of these estates and this area generally. I have no idea why you are doing this, and I can find no sympathy in my heart for either of you. I shall be straight-forward. My father is the only person I have left and I object to him killing himself.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Theo said. ‘I didn’t mean to offend anybody.’

  ‘I am not yet offended. However, if I catch you giving cigarettes to my father I shall personal
ly put an end to all this.’

  She looked derisively at Theo, at me, and then at the various posters Theo had pinned to the walls. ‘You should take this warning seriously,’ she said. ‘I have a great many friends. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ Theo said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  We made love on the black corduroy bean-bag with the triangular label saying NON-FLAMMABLE. I remember her bones. Candle-shadows. At some stage, in its real life version, it came to an end. And there were no tricks. At the last moment she didn’t transform into a cackling hag, laughing at my presumption to desire her. She didn’t fool me. She wore no disguise, under her clothes.

  She smiled, as if we’d done exactly what she’d wanted to do. The bean-bag rustled as she relaxed back into it. Her face was flushed, and so was her neck. She blew some hair from her cheek. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, making me raise myself up on my anus. She stretched over for the magic cigarette and came back again.

  ‘Let’s both smoke it,’ she said. ‘Let’s smoke it between us. I’ll show you how.’

  I remember how kindly she said that. It was a beautiful thing to say. She lit the cigarette and drew in deeply, instantly falling in love. And I remember what I did next. I slowly withdrew from her. I looked at the cigarette. I wiped my eyebrow. I asked her if she wanted some coffee.

  ‘You just put it between your lips and breathe. You’ll like if

  I said I also had tea.

  ‘Not too deeply at first.’

  English Breakfast.

  ‘Come on, Gregory, don’t be a bastard. Take the cigarette.’

  Lapsang Souchong. Earl Grey. ! turned away from her and fumbled with cups and various tea-bags. One of them broke, spraying my hand with tea-dust. Darjeeling. I knew she didn’t want any tea.

  ‘You total total bastard.’

  DAY

  7

  Even the weather hates me. The wind is furious and the rain bends the windows. Sometimes, there are hailstones. A hurricane is not out of the question. A typhoon, a tidal-wave, a flood, a deluge, an end of the world or worse. Probably worse.

  I have no idea where Walter is. It is mid-morning and nearly one week since I stopped smoking and I’m alone in the middle of the weather with only an empty house around me. A dog for company. Haemoglobin keeps turning a figure of eight, one loop on the seat of Walter’s chair and the other on the carpet. He misses his morning pipe and I consider throwing him out into the rain, because I miss tobacco too and what has he ever done for me?

  Calm down. Write some words. Substitute.

  Walter is like a Carmen No 6, and so is my old black bean-bag. Theo is like cigarettes, and so is Lucy and so is Bananas, and so are all the ashtrays Bananas would have hoarded. All of them are absent, all gone. I am left deserted, abandoned, blameless, and I feel deeply sorry for the person I am now, my knee drumming the underside of the table, foolishly trying to exist without hourly satisfaction.

  Reduce the craving to its basics: I do not want a cigarette. I do not want. I do not. I do.

  He never used to be scared of the weather. Haemoglobin, while circling, has started to whine and I wonder how it would look if I smoked a cigarette out of kindness to an animal. I wish Walter was here. Just the one. If Walter was here I promise I’d even listen to his Firing Squad story.

  Everyone sympathizes with kindness to animals.

  Theo inhaled his first cigarette the day he was born, though only passively, and he claimed this as the reason he loved the morning smell of tobacco smoke on clothes. It reminded him of his mother. He didn’t smoke a cigarette of his own until he was twenty-six.

  His mother’s side of the family was dominated by nonconformist Scottish Calvinists, none of whom ever doubted their pre-destined place in heaven. It was a family of preachers and missionaries and martyrs, strangers to doubt, and Theo’s mother was no exception. She smoked forty Black Cats a day and sometimes drank excessively while smoking. Frequently, she crossed the road without looking either to the left or the right.

  Theo’s father ran away while Theo was still a child. Complaining of smoke in the curtains and ash in the butter, he took a steam-train to Edinburgh and was last heard of living in Morningside with a non-denominational croupier.

  This last detail might have been a joke. Theo often joked about his mother. He told her life as a story and withheld the secret of how she acted and how she felt in the quiet moments when her story wasn’t happening to her. For all I know they were never still, the two of them, together and unhurried, with nothing particular on their minds.

  She called me a bastard several more times and refused to look at me while she dressed. She turned away. The bean-bag had impressed her back and her buttocks with thinly-spliced parallels of corduroy. I asked her to stay. I asked her why she was leaving.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said.

  She slammed the door on her way out and I heard her go into Julian’s room. I heard the word bastard again, through the thin wall. I pulled on my shirt and trousers thinking, I mean, it was only a matter of a little cigarette. Compared to her decision to be naked in my bean-bag. It was only a cigarette. I just needed to follow her and talk to her, and even though I didn’t really understand why she was upset I considered this my first lesson (as a man) in understanding that women were impossible to understand. Of course she’d come back, or she wouldn’t have slept with me in the first place. Obviously. It was only a little cigarette, a tube of paper full of dead leaves. For God’s sake.

  I didn’t knock. She was sitting on the edge of Julian’s bean-bag, which was a kind of khaki colour and didn’t match her hair. She inhaled deeply from a cigarette and hugged her knees.

  ‘Hi there,’ I said.

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Lucy, I don’t understand.’

  When she sneered, her face became heart-shaped.

  ‘You can’t even tell when a girl’s pregnant.’

  Julian was shuffling about, head down, patting his pockets, looking under his pillow, opening the drawer in his desk.

  He slammed the desk-drawer a little too hard and swore.

  ‘Here,’ Lucy said.

  She passed him her lit cigarette.

  ‘Lucy, please!’

  Julian took the cigarette and inhaled deeply, as if at last he had in his hands and his mouth and his lungs the only thing he’d ever wanted. He blew the smoke up to the ceiling in rings, then looked at Lucy to say thank you. She smiled blankly, reached out her hand, took back the cigarette, inhaled.

  And then I realized. Julian Carr and Lucy Hinton, right in front of me, in the room next to my own, with no regard whatsoever for my feelings, were sharing the magic cigarette.

  I kept to a kind of twenty-hour clock. The Carmens measured the hours which paced the days, and the Estates and Tomorrow’s World marked off the weeks and the months. I counted my birthdays past, 23, 24, 25, glad that Paris had cured me of caring.

  I played a lot of pinball, until I hardly ever lost by more than five million points, and then in flat No. 47 we listened to other smokers’ stories, often the same stories, and handed out cigarettes. There was never any sense of heightened experience about the transaction. Instead it had a kind of necessary English drabness to it, as if to disguise the fact that it was necessary.

  Sometimes there were other visitors. Every two months or so the small boy with the apple-eater’s face would try again for cigarettes. It was like watching him grow up, evolving different solutions to the same problem, and he once came with a girl who looked like his sister. He pushed her into the room in front of him.

  ‘This is Mary and she wants 20 Player’s Navy Cut for her mum.’ He looked at us hopefully. ‘Her mum’s in the Navy.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ the girl said, ‘and I don’t want any cigarettes.’

  ’Shut up you.’

  ‘Well I don’t. It’s a disgusting smelly habit and it kills people.’

  She pushed past him an
d left. He looked unhappy and dissatisfied for at least ten seconds, and then he was thinking about something else.

  ‘Can I look at the bubble-gum picture again?’

  Theo told the boy he could have a poster of Popeye, if he kept a lookout for an old woman with grey eyes.

  ‘My real name’s Jamie,’ the boy said.

  By nature, I worry. Today I worry that Walter has been blown into traffic. I worry he has been battered to death by a rogue squall of hail-stones. That the wind has tumbled him along the street like paper, breaking every brittle bone in his body. I just worry, because without cigarettes I am more natural.

  It was here in this room that we celebrated Walter’s one hundredth birthday with an EGM of the Suicide Club. Actually it was one day after his birthday because his family had claimed the day itself. Walter’s daughter Emmy baked three cakes in the shape of one zero zero, and to prove the continued strength of his lungs Walter insisted on blowing out all the candles by himself. Later, as they were leaving the party, three of his great-nephews and a cousin complained that the icing tasted of St Bruno.

  On behalf of the club, Theo had wanted to blend a hundred strains of tobacco into a special anniversary smoking mixture. However, there weren’t a hundred different strains of tobacco, so instead he compiled and bound in calf’s leather a collection of 100 interesting facts about smoking. He pinned a dark-brown tobacco-leaf, like the dry-veined wing of a giant moth, into the inside-back cover.

  Walter didn’t dare take the book home and I have it here on the desk. Inside, used as a bookmark, is Walter’s telegram of congratulations from the Queen. It smells of King Edward cigars.

  The last time I saw Uncle Gregory, in 1971, he was as brown as a varnished boomerang. He was so brown that his tan almost masked the dark moles on his shoulders and back. He’d spent the Australian summer travelling from city to city following the Ashes Test series and the Benson and Hedges one-day internationals. Whenever England were batting he made a point of taking off his shirt, closing his eyes and tipping his face up to the sun. In the second Test England occupied the crease for almost two days and Uncle Gregory didn’t see a single ball.