The Transition

by Luke Kennard

  He was stirring one sugar into Genevieve’s tea when he heard her give a long, low howl. Not quite a howl, he thought, as he tapped the spoon on the side of the mug and threw it into the sink. It was too flat and unemotional to be called a howl. It was more like the cry of an animal in the jaws of a predator when it resigns itself to its fate. Karl pictured himself driving along a suburban road … He walked towards the sound.

  Genevieve was lying on her side, like a shop-window dummy knocked over.

  ‘I’m so angry,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘I know it’s …’ said Karl.

  ‘It sounds absolutely bloody awful,’ she said, sitting upright and closing the booklet. ‘Couldn’t you have just gone to prison?’ Karl put the cups of tea on the floor next to Genevieve, sloshing a little over the side so that it scalded his hand. ‘I’m joking,’ she said. ‘It does sound dire, though. So don’t try to pretend we have any choice.’

  ‘The way I see it is it’s like a speeding course – you take the points on your licence or you give up a day for re-education.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Genevieve. ‘Except your wife has to go with you and it’s six months.’

  ‘No rent,’ said Karl, shuffling down to the floorboards next to her.

  ‘So we get to live rent-free in a loft apartment – that’s great, Karl. Maybe I’ll start painting again.’

  ‘It’s more like lodging.’

  ‘I can see it’s more like lodging,’ said Genevieve. ‘Except the landlords don’t get paid. So they resent us. Even more than normal landlords.’

  ‘Well, the programme pays them,’ said Karl, taking a sip from his tea, which was still too hot, ‘but they’re not really doing it for the money. The notary said it was more like jury service.’

  ‘You know I don’t take sugar,’ said Genevieve.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My tea.’

  ‘I thought you—’

  ‘Only in coffee. It calls them “mentors”. I don’t like the idea of having mentors.’

  ‘So we put up with it,’ said Karl. ‘It’s supposed to help us and, you never know. It’s a pilot scheme; they haven’t ironed out the kinks yet, so it might actually be more helpful than they mean it to be.’

  ‘It’s patronising.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘It says it’s a “fully holistic approach to getting our lives back on track”. It says they give us advice on being married. As well as the financial stuff. We’ve been married four years! It’s enormously patronising. And what about privacy?’

  ‘I’m not trying to argue that this is a good thing, G.’

  ‘It’s humiliating.’

  Karl looked at her. Saying he was sorry seemed redundant.

  ‘You’ve read this?’ said Genevieve, flicking to the fifth page. ‘There’s a section on healthy eating. There’s a section on how to vote. A generation suffering from an unholy trinity of cynicism, ignorance and apathy,’ she read. ‘That’s you and me, honey.’

  ‘It’s certainly me,’ said Karl. ‘You’re just getting dragged down by the rest of us.’

  ‘And who are they, anyway? Are we randomly assigned? Is it like a dating website?’

  Karl looked at his feet. They had already been allocated mentors. Once he’d agreed to the terms and signed and dated two documents, the process had been seven mouse clicks on the other side of the notary public’s desk.

  ‘Do they pick us out like puppies?’

  ‘We meet them tomorrow,’ said Karl.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Genevieve. ‘What are their names?’

  ‘Stu. Stuart Carson. And Janna Ridland.’

  ‘Janna,’ said Genevieve. ‘Janna. The name sounds half empty.’

  ‘You’re doing this to keep me out of prison. Do you need to hear me say how much I appreciate it?’

  Genevieve turned and kicked her legs over his. She shuffled closer.

  ‘This is what I don’t like, Karly, we’re –’ she put her head on his shoulder – ‘we’re going through the same ups and downs young couples have always gone through, and they’re treating us like we’re an aberration.’

  Karl took a sip of his tea.

  ‘I’m thirty-four,’ he said. ‘When my father was thirty-four he and Mum already had my two sisters. And a Ford Escort. They owned a house. They went on holidays.’

  ‘When my father was thirty-four,’ said Genevieve, ‘he had my mother sectioned, dropped me and Nina at Granny’s and drank himself to death in Madrid.’

  ‘Madrid?’ said Karl.

  Last time it was Berlin and, now that he thought of it, he was certain that Genevieve never mentioned the same city twice.

  4

  IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, every room looked like a waiting room, lined with low oblong benches and school chairs, one strip light flickering. It was hard to get up from the deep spongy bench when their mentors came through the double doors of 151.

  Karl’s first thought was that they didn’t look any older than him or Genevieve, but then maybe there was only a decade or so in it. He had expected an aura of age and experience: authority figures, the way teachers looked when he was a pupil. Janna was angular and pretty, a white blouse tucked into a black leather pencil skirt. Her mouth was very small, like a china doll’s. Stu at least looked weathered. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt with a lightning bolt on it. He had a black and purple Mohican, four inches tall, five spikes.

  ‘God, this place is depressing,’ said Stu. ‘Sorry they made you come here.’

  ‘Don’t get up,’ said Janna, once they were up. They exchanged air kisses.

  ‘You probably weren’t expecting us to look like this,’ said Stu.

  ‘Oh, what, the Mohawk?’ said Karl.

  ‘The Mohawk actually wore a patch at the base of the skull and a patch at the forehead,’ said Stu. ‘This is closer to an Iro.’

  ‘Do you have any …’ said Genevieve. ‘Indian blood, I mean?’

  ‘Genevieve,’ said Stu, ‘I am merely an enthusiast.’

  Stu busied himself collecting four flimsy cups of coffee from the machine in the corner. The two couples sat opposite one another over a pine and clapboard table too low for the seats.

  ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘It’s terrible, but, you know, ritual. Everything feels better when you’re holding something warm. You’re a primary school teacher, I’m told?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Genevieve.

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ said Stu. ‘You’re one of the most important people in the country. And Karl?’

  ‘You know those fliers you see stuck to lamp posts that say make £1,000 a week online without leaving your house?’ said Karl.

  ‘You stick those up?’ said Stu.

  ‘No,’ said Karl. ‘I make a thousand pounds a week online without leaving my house. Except it’s not really a thousand pounds a week. I suppose it could be if you never went to sleep.’

  ‘So you’re self-employed,’ said Janna. ‘But what’s the work?’

  ‘Search-engine evaluation, product reviews,’ said Karl. ‘Literature essays for rich students. It’s actually duller than it sounds.’

  ‘A fellow middle-class underachiever,’ said Stu.

  ‘You know the type.’

  ‘I was the type. Look, you don’t need to rush into anything, but this is a chance to do something with your life. The Transition isn’t a punishment, it’s an opportunity.’

  He took two thick, stapled forms out of his shoulder bag, and a blue pen.

  ‘You’ll be living with us as equals – we eat together, talk together, leave the house for work together. Or, well, Karl, in your case you’ll be staying in the house to work, but you get the point.’

  Genevieve and Karl, who had never read a contract in their lives, both turned to the final page of their forms, wrote their names in block capitals, signed.

  ‘The thing is, with the hair, it’s a lightning conductor,’ said Stu. ‘People think, oh, the guy with the hair. Or they thi
nk, in spite of the hair, he’s quite a nice guy. Any opinion that anyone ever holds about me is in the context of my hair. It’s the equivalent of being a beautiful woman.’

  ‘To be fair, it is the most interesting thing about him,’ said Janna, giving Stu a friendly but very hard punch on the shoulder, which he rubbed, pouting. ‘The removal team are picking up your stuff now, so that’s taken care of. We’ll see you for the general meeting in the morning, okay?’

  Stu folded up their contracts and slipped them back into his shoulder bag.

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he said. ‘The Transition will send a car. Eight thirty.’

  They stood.

  ‘We want you to know that we don’t judge you,’ said Janna.

  ‘Oh,’ said Genevieve. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘What she means,’ said Stu, ‘is that we don’t expect you to be grateful for this … situation. But we hope you’ll be nicely surprised by the set-up tomorrow. We hope you have as brief, as useful and as mutually pleasant an experience as possible.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Genevieve. ‘Thank you for … Thanks.’

  ‘What made you sign up to this as mentors?’ said Karl. ‘If you don’t mind my asking. What’s in it for you?’

  ‘We love this company,’ said Janna. ‘We’re proud to work for The Transition.’

  ‘A few years ago my generation kicked the ladder away behind us,’ said Stu. ‘This is our chance to teach you to free-climb.’

  ‘Oh, God, always with the analogies,’ said Janna. ‘It’s so embarrassing.’

  ‘Besides which, and I’m going to be honest with you,’ said Stu, ‘only crazy people lie; we never wanted children—’

  ‘We never wanted babies,’ said Janna.

  ‘Right, babies,’ said Stu. ‘Or children, really. Or teenagers. Plenty of our friends did and I can’t say it appealed.’

  ‘But sometimes we’d be talking and Stu would say, what if we’d had kids?’

  ‘What if we’d met each other at, say, twenty, and had kids?’

  ‘What would they be doing now? And it just got me thinking, what would my grown-up kids be doing now?’

  ‘What kind of advice would we give them?’ said Stu.

  ‘But you can’t adopt a thirty-year-old,’ said Janna.

  ‘Until now,’ said Genevieve. ‘Well, if it’s the only way out of the fine mess my husband’s landed us in, consider yourselves in loco parentis.’

  And Karl was surprised to see his wife put her arms around Janna who, a little disconcerted, patted her on the back, lightly and rapidly as if tapping out a code.

  5

  THEY SPENT THE NIGHT painting over Blu-Tack stains with Tipp-Ex. Then Genevieve scrubbed the floor with a hard brush and a cartoonish bucket of soap suds and Karl asked her why she was bothering.

  The next morning a black 4x4 was waiting for them outside their eviscerated bedsit.

  The driver leaned out.

  ‘Transition?’ he said.

  It felt like they were gliding over the potholed roads. It was an auto-drive, so for the most part the driver sat with his hands behind his head, watching the blue orb move up the map. Now and then he took the little steering column to fine-tune the car’s decisions, or put his foot down to override its obedience so that a stern female voice said speed limit exceeded. They were driven through urban clearways and bypasses, across double roundabouts and out-of-town shopping centres which had been absorbed into the town, past the football ground.

  They were entering a rougher part of the city, but the high-rises had been freshly painted porcelain white. They looked at them and thought of a tropical island hotel rather than Findus Crispy Pancakes and canned cider; although Karl disliked neither, now that he thought of it. A building site promised a forthcoming swimming pool and multi-gym.

  ‘All that,’ said the driver, ‘that renovation – paid for by The Transition. I grew up around here.’

  The car turned before a railway bridge and crunched over a gravel drive before entering an industrial estate. Corrugated-metal warehouses with big numbers and little signs. They passed a car mechanic’s, a boxing gym, a company called Rubberplasp whose name bounced around Karl’s auditory centre. Further in, the lots turned hipster: a craft brewery, a Japanese pottery, a vanity recording studio. Karl expected The Transition’s headquarters to be another identical shack, but when they rounded the last corner they were at the foot of a hill from which emerged four shiny black obelisks connected by footbridges, a letter H at every rotation. Each obelisk was roughly as tall as an electricity pylon, but only broad enough to contain a couple of rooms.

  As they stepped out of the taxi the shiny black surface of the four towers turned blue, and brightened until it almost matched the sky. A film of a flock of birds flew across it, disappearing between the towers, which faded to black again.

  ‘This is …’ said Karl. ‘Wow.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Genevieve.

  A young woman was standing at the door of the first tower they came to. An earpiece stood out against her short, fair hair. They gave their names.

  ‘You’re married – that’s so sweet!’ she said. ‘Everyone is on the mezzanine. Floor 8. Here are your tablets.’

  She gave them each what looked like a giant After Eight mint: a very thin square touchscreen computer in a protective sleeve.

  ‘Pretty,’ said Genevieve.

  ‘I was told this was a pilot scheme,’ said Karl. ‘It looks …’

  The towers went through the sky sequence again.

  ‘… fairly well established. We’ve been going for eleven years,’ said the woman with the earpiece. ‘We try to stay under the radar.’

  The lift opened on a wide balcony full of couples. Instantly shy, Karl stood to admire a giant hyperrealist painting of a pinball table, Vegas neons and chrome. He stared at the electric-pink 100 POINTS bumpers and the matte plastic of a single raised flipper. He felt Genevieve take his hand. She did this rarely.

  ‘What a waste of a wall,’ she said.

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘You like pinball? You like bright colours?’

  ‘I like the painting.’

  ‘You’re such a boy. Boys love bright colours. Like bulls,’ said Genevieve. ‘That’s why underwear is brightly coloured. Do you remember that bag I had, the one with the Tunisian tea advert with the sequins? Grown men stopped me on the street to say they liked my bag. I told Amy and she was like, what they mean is I like your vagina.’

  Karl paused to make sure Genevieve had finished her train of thought. She had barely said a word for the last two weeks, but today she had opinions, theories. It was like she had been recast. It had taken him three years of marriage to learn that it was best to let her recalibrate without too much comment. Get a little depressed, then a little high in inverse proportion. Balance the ship.

  He looked at the reflection of the pinball table’s garish surface in the painting of the large ball bearing that dominated the right-hand side of the canvas. It was so convincing he expected to see a reflection of his face peering into it. As you got closer you could almost make out the fine brushstrokes.

  ‘I just think it’s incredible anyone can paint something that looks so much like a photograph,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Genevieve, ‘but on the other hand so fucking what, you know?’

  A brushed-silver bar served free cappuccinos and muffins in three flavours: banoffee, apple and cinnamon or quadruple chocolate.

  ‘Quadruple? I can’t choose!’ said Genevieve.

  ‘Have one of each,’ said the barista.

  Handsome boy, thought Karl. Slightly wounded expression. An RSC bit-player face.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Three muffins, Genevieve?’ said Karl.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ said the barista.

  ‘I never do.’

  She sounded too grateful. But then everyone Karl could see wore the glazed, winsome expression of the all-clear, the last-minute reprieve. The hundred or so yo
ung couples, the other losers who had accepted The Transition in lieu of some unpayable fine or term of incarceration, looked up from checking the impressive spec of the free mint-thin tablets they’d been handed at the door to admire the sun-dappled view over the city from the 360-degree window: Really? And they looked at each other, too. A preponderance of attractive, well-adjusted young people of every creed and orientation. They were athletic or willowy, at worst a kind of doughy, puppy-jowled fat which spoke of donnish indolence rather than profligacy. Inconspicuously smart or very casual – torn jeans, neon T-shirts – because they were good-looking and could get away with it. The couples were casing the joint, talking, making one another laugh. You wanted them as trophy friends. Thirty-somethings who could pass for teenagers.

  Gradually, the lights dipped.

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ said Genevieve.

  The stage held a glossy black podium and a large glass screen. There were rows of designer chairs. The chairs were spindly, improbably supporting fleshy orange pads which, when you pressed them, took a while to reshape, like a stress toy. Karl sat down, expecting to feel hung on a strange apparatus, but it was more like a hug. As the orange pads cupped his buttocks, moulded to the small of his back and pressed his shoulder blades he realised he was sitting in a modern classic: Eames meets Brutalism in contemporary Norway, an alien catcher’s mitt. He drafted five-star reviews in his head; it was unusual to actually experience the product first.

  Genevieve sipped her coffee.

  The rows filled in around them. A man sat on the corner of Karl’s anorak and didn’t notice, pulling Karl slightly to the right. Karl leaned towards him, then back. His coat was still trapped. He cleared his throat. He tried to make eye contact with Genevieve, who was eating her apple and cinnamon muffin. He leaned in again. He couldn’t look at the man’s face without putting himself uncomfortably close to it. He looked at the man’s shoes. Brogues, a slight residue of shoe polish. He stared ahead at the empty stage. Now he had left it too long to do anything about it. If he pulled the corner of his anorak out, the man would wonder why he hadn’t done so immediately. You actually sat there for two minutes without telling me I was sitting on your coat? What’s wrong with you? Karl tensed his right shoulder and cricked his neck so that he appeared to be sitting more or less straight.