The Transition

by Luke Kennard

  ‘Okay,’ said Karl. ‘I’m glad you got it out of your system.’

  ‘I mean what are we doing, really? Why does drinking feel like a new adventure every time?’

  ‘A lot of things never get dull,’ said Karl. ‘Breathing, eating, Schubert.’

  ‘Sex,’ said Genevieve. ‘But with drinking it’s never a new adventure. It’s always exactly the same old adventure every time.’

  ‘That’s narrative,’ said Karl. ‘Also, it makes you feel terrible afterwards. That’s a factor.’

  ‘Do you want to … you know?’

  ‘Of course I do. I always do.’

  ‘I was rude to you yesterday. I know you were just worried about me. But there’s really nothing to worry about. I feel great. Actually I feel like … Never mind.’

  ‘You feel like what?’ said Karl, starting to unbutton the shirt he was halfway through buttoning. Genevieve threw her book at his chest.

  ‘Ow.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘Don’t throw books at me.’

  She lay back and kicked her legs in the air as if pedalling.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, ‘about Janna’s suggestion.’

  ‘What have you been thinking?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  Genevieve rolled off the bed and started putting on a pair of leggings – the ones with a black-and-white street scene print.

  ‘Was that a joke, about sex?’ said Karl.

  ‘Oh. No – I just forgot. I’m feeling pretty hungover.’

  ‘Girls hate hangover sex,’ said Karl. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Well,’ said Genevieve, ‘I can’t speak for all womankind. Maybe some women like sex when they have a head cold or severe back pain. Do boys like it? Hangover sex?’

  ‘Boys would like nothing more.’

  ‘That’s weird.’

  ‘I think because you feel like you’re going to die, so you’re biologically compelled to continue your lineage.’

  ‘Ooh, biological determinism. Turns me on.’

  ‘It’s my theory.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to continue your lineage by yourself.’

  ‘I’m not hungover.’

  ‘Can you pass the book – don’t throw it!’

  Karl lowered his hand and tossed the book onto the bed so that it landed just out of her reach.

  ‘Quest’uomo è fastidioso.’

  17

  THE TEXT FROM KESTON arrived later that afternoon while Karl was finishing his twelfth article about an ecological hand-drying system.

  – Kelly and Barnaby Reddick; Maria Reynolds and Lottie Friedlander; Jonathan and Alice Jonke. That’s as far back as I can trace.

  – Cheers.

  – CHEERS?! IS THAT IT, K-FED?! IS THAT ALL I GET?!

  – I’m grateful. If I wasn’t on a government scheme that places strict sanctions on my financial activity I’d buy you dinner.

  – Well, you can let me buy you dinner, you crummy one-eyed lush.

  – One-eyed?

  – Don’t say you’re busy.

  – Can’t do tonight.

  – Boring.

  With the automated shopping delivery there was very little reason for Karl to leave Stu and Janna’s house and he felt the need for some air. Thankfully, the cupboard had failed to materialise a tin of coconut milk, which Genevieve needed for the Thai curry she was preparing, so he had an excuse to go to town. Karl remembered the web address when he passed a shop that appeared to be a cross between a shisha bar, a phone accessory store and an internet cafe. He paid the clerk £4.50 for thirty minutes. not_all_transition.com took him straight to a promotional page for a band. He snorted. So it was a band, the band of a former protégé. Bands were so silly. There were black-and-white photos of three easy-on-the-eye youngish people in a forest, doing fake-earnest expressions or captured in an unguarded moment of horsing around, or posing in trees. There were links to discography and merchandise, and a description:

  not_all_transition is a three-piece post-rock instrumental outfit featuring Alice Jonke, Barnaby Reddick and Sebastian Francis, emerging from the ashes of PAY ATTENTION in Brighton. Their debut album TAKE WHATEVER MONEY YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS ON AND GET OUT RIGHT NOW was released on Honey Badger in the UK and Metaxas in the US. Their sophomore effort, YOU ARE BEING LIED TO, was self-released and the band are currently seeking new management. BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE, CHECK OUT THE T-SHIRTS!

  Karl clicked on a diagonal link to merchandising. There were three black T-shirts, one with NOT ALL TRANSITION in white sans-serif letters, one with a little Jack Russell looking back over its shoulder and a third dense with small text. Karl clicked this one for a close-up. The T-shirt text comprised a couple of lengthy quotations from Gramsci, and Karl was about to give up when it resolved into a series of zeros and ones and the following in the same font:

  These are instructions on how to hack the rudimentary stock-exchange program on your tablet and redirect the funds to the following account which can be used online.

  A string of digits appeared which Karl recognised as complete credit card details. This was followed by a series of numbered systems instructions which Karl saw to be fairly straightforward. He took a photograph of the screen on his tablet. The text continued:

  Any system of profit depends on winners and losers. You need to get hold of their book, The Trapeze. By T. Piven. You need to read this book if you want to understand what they’re about. Our advice is to run, right now, and don’t look back. We’ve given you every opportunity to do this in the next quarter of an hour, so don’t say we didn’t warn you. If you need convincing maybe you could try breaking a few of the rules and see how long you last. If you want to know more why not catch us on our tour?

  Karl clicked on the TOUR DATES tab, but the last date was almost two years ago at a venue called 52 Pritchatts Road. He looked it up on the map. Other side of town. He received a message from Genevieve wondering where the coconut milk was.

  AFTER DINNER GENEVIEVE went upstairs to mark. Karl left her to it for half an hour. He prepared notes for the Henry James dissertation. When he went to check on her he found her sitting in the middle of the bed reading a crumpled photocopy.

  ‘This would have been Dad’s birthday,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Karl. ‘You never mentioned before.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘Do you want to do something?’

  ‘Like what?’ said Genevieve. ‘Get blind drunk? This is the only thing I have of his. He used to write these sarcastic round robins.’ She handed Karl the sheet.

  Salutations and a happy new year! It’s been some time since I penned one of these newsletters and I apologise for keeping you all in the dark. Unfortunately my drinking has been ‘out of control’ (my youngest’s words; from the mouths of babes, etc.) and it’s not always easy to gather the stray events and misadventures into a coherent story. But what a year it’s been for our family! Matilda remains quite mad and claims not to know who I am during visiting hours, which is fairly galling after thirteen years of marriage. Genevieve and Nina continue to defy medical science by refusing to be cured of their anxiety and eating disorders – I forget who has which and suspect they occasionally swap just to try their old man’s patience. We lost a lot of very valuable possessions in the floods and the ground floor remains toxic, but sadly we still have each other. Listen to me – I’m like the little Buddhist who wouldn’t accept that life is suffering! Work is fairly abysmal so I’ve been developing a new raindance. We plan to take our annual holiday to Brigadoon as soon as the monsoons cease. Wishing you and yours a life of peaceful repentance.

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘He sent them to literally everyone,’ said Genevieve. ‘It was the only thing that made him happy.’

  Karl took Genevieve’s hand.

  ‘Oh, I’m not sad,’ she said.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m just taking your hand. It makes me feel useful.’

  She lean
ed into him.

  18

  KARL DRANK HIS cup of tea in the blue light of his tablet screen. It was early Wednesday morning and Genevieve was still in bed. Thanks to her, their stock profile had risen to £202. Karl had already hacked the program, but stopped short of siphoning off the money. He had no reason to believe it would work, besides which playing the stock market was making her happy. If he was going to light that fire he needed to be sure it would actually smoke out something useful. He searched for information on the names Keston had sent him. In spite of those which appeared on not_all_transition’s website and the fact that someone had clearly scratched the address into the bed, all three of the couples had pretty coherent success stories which seemed to check out, as far as Karl could tell by triangulating his stories with interviews, network profiles and client reviews. Alice Jonke ran Graceful Apology, a public relations firm ‘specialising in total disasters’; Maria ran a private music college and Barnaby Reddick was a dealer in Chinese woodwork, with some items dating back to the twelfth century BC. Karl whistled. He searched for Jonathan Jonke, Alice’s husband, but could find no mention of him attached to Graceful Apology or any other start-up venture. Lottie Friedlander, Maria’s partner, turned up nothing, and neither did Kelly Reddick. Silent partners, perhaps, or looking after the kids. He could find out nothing pertinent about the four Sebastian Francises he tracked down. Maybe it was all just a scam to steal the stock money from Transition participants. Maybe not_all_transition was engraved into all of the protégés’ beds. An elaborate test.

  He heard Genevieve moving around in the bedroom. He heard her brushing her teeth for several minutes. They had their appointment with the dental hygienist later on. It felt odd, sharing the house with her during the day – the shape and atmosphere it took on once Stu and Janna had left for work had been his private domain for days now – but it also made him feel he was an expert in something Genevieve was new to. This made him oddly tentative, like when he found out G hadn’t watched anything by Tarkovsky; he was so anxious not to sound condescending that he made his favourite director sound dull, and Genevieve had never watched the DVDs he got her.

  But while he was studying the tech spec of a new kind of desk fan, she appeared behind him, put her hands over his eyes and said, ‘So what have you discovered while you’ve been here all by yourself?’

  After going through the records by solo artists they had heard of but never listened to, Genevieve said that the grey painting was a bit A-level and that she needed some coffee. On the way to the kitchen she pulled the handle of the understairs cupboard.

  ‘It’s the only thing that’s locked,’ said Karl. ‘I saw lights between the floorboards.’

  ‘What do you think’s down there? Sex dungeon?’

  Karl shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t that be kind of depressing?’

  ‘Are you joking? It would be amazing!’

  ‘I think the dullest thing about anyone is their sex dungeon,’ said Karl. Then he added, ‘You know, I nearly got in there last week.’

  ‘What?’ said Genevieve. ‘How?’

  She pretended to be horrified that Karl had been in their hosts’ bedroom, but was soon in there herself, sitting on the chrome trapeze and swinging as high as she could without kicking the ceiling.

  ‘Please be careful,’ said Karl.

  Then she went through Janna’s wardrobe and chest of drawers.

  ‘Oh my God, look at all the Agent Provocateur stuff,’ said Genevieve, stretching a translucent lilac thong with red ribbons at the sides. ‘Do you know what this costs? There must be like ten thousand pounds’ worth of underwear in the chest of drawers alone.’ She held a black swimsuit with three zips slashed into each side up to her chest.

  ‘Shall I borrow it?’

  ‘It’s quite Barbarella,’ said Karl.

  ‘Barbarellllla …’ sang Genevieve, turning.

  A small, heavy key fell out of the swimsuit and landed on Karl’s foot.

  ‘Wait,’ said Genevieve. Karl had turned the key in the understairs cupboard lock. ‘I just feel seedy now. I wish we hadn’t gone through her stuff.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Karl.

  ‘It’s clearly private. They trust us enough to leave us in their home. I think we should put the key back and go and visit your dad.’

  ‘Well, we can do that afterwards as penance,’ said Karl. His ten reviews of the WarpGate3000 personal air-conditioner could wait. He turned the handle, but Genevieve grabbed his hand.

  ‘I feel like a creep.’

  ‘You’re not curious?’

  ‘I went through her underwear,’ said Genevieve. ‘She’s someone I like and admire and I went through her underwear. Do you remember that guy at uni who was coming in people’s shampoo?’

  ‘Robbie?’ said Karl. ‘That was never proven.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re still defending him. Tash caught him. He was arrested. Anyway, I’m disgusted with myself.’

  Karl thought of the photo of Genevieve. Maybe it was still on the floor of the cupboard, or maybe up on the shelf again. Either way, it was possible that she’d see it, which would be weird because she didn’t know that he had taken a picture of her sleeping naked or that he’d kept it, or that it had been stolen. Besides which, he knew where the key was now so he could always check it out himself once Genevieve was teaching again. The most advantageous move here was for his wife to believe that he was honourable, and sensitive to her opinion. He turned the key clockwise, fake-sighed and handed it back to her. Genevieve nodded once and bounded up the stairs.

  KARL’S FATHER, a retired Religious Studies teacher, had suffered a pulmonary embolism two years ago and walked with a frame. With help from Tara, Karl’s eldest sister, he sold the family home and he moved to a chalet in a little cul-de-sac managed by a semi-private care firm. Frontier town, John called it. Some day all this will be culs-de-sac. Tara was pushing for round-the-clock care and maintained he showed the early signs of dementia, but she was a worrier. He seemed okay to Karl. When he put this to her she thought he was after money, which was only partly true. Divided between the four of us it would buy us each a used mid-range hatchback, she told him. Do you want one? You can have ours.

  Tara had no idea about Karl’s problems or The Transition and neither did his father. Why worry him? He had just sent him an email with Janna and Stu’s address, and said they were living in a shared house.

  John opened the door to his maisonette and said, Oh, when he saw Karl and Genevieve standing on the doorstep, as if puzzled by sudden weather or an unusual wild animal on his tiny patch of lawn.

  There was a framed print in John’s kitchenette, a painting which depicted the vast grey side of a mountain, replete with little Day-glo coloured blobs: climbers. Karl stood staring at the print he remembered from childhood – he used to find it unsettling and couldn’t remember why. Genevieve sat with his father, who took a noisy slurp of tea. He had been silent a while.

  ‘John?’ she said.

  ‘Vishnu tells him to jump into the pool,’ said Karl’s father, ‘and …’

  He was silent for five seconds then he slammed his hand on the table, causing the tea to lap over the sides of the brightly coloured cups.

  ‘You send a messenger,’ he said. ‘He gets lost so you send another one to find him, and then –’ he shrugged – ‘messenger party. What were we talking about?’

  ‘The Bhagavad Gita,’ said Genevieve. ‘The story of Narada.’

  ‘That’s it. Narada jumps into the pool,’ said Mr Temperley. ‘When he comes out the other side he’s … a princess, the daughter of a king. Years pass. He lives a long and tragic life. Marries for love. I don’t … I don’t … She marries and her husband dies horribly …’

  ‘There’s a disagreement which turns into a war between her husband and her father, the king,’ said Genevieve.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Her son is killed in the war, along with her husband. She takes their bodies and she throws
herself onto the funeral pyre with them and as she enters the flames …’

  ‘She, or rather he, steps back out of the water. Narada.’

  ‘And he’s crying.’

  ‘Of course he’s crying.’

  ‘And Vishnu, who’s been waiting by the pool for only a matter of seconds while Narada’s lived through a whole saga, says, who is this son you weep for? Something like that.’

  ‘Who is this son for whom you weep?’

  Karl pulled the lid off the biscuit tin and it clattered on the breakfast bar. He took out a malted milk biscuit, the familiar two-cow scene. It felt soft, so he put it back and closed the tin again. He could never concentrate when he was with his father. He felt like he was wearing earplugs.

  ‘Vishnu tells him that what he just experienced, a whole lifetime as a princess, was only the very surface,’ said John. ‘The gods themselves don’t know how deep it goes. And then I suppose Narada just walks away and has to get on with his life. Which must have felt sort of dull and sad at first.’

  ‘Have you ever had a dream,’ said Genevieve, ‘that you missed when you woke up?’

  ‘All the time,’ said John. ‘Karl?’

  ‘I dream about the old house,’ said Karl. ‘Every night. Sometimes it’s happy. Sometimes I’m being chased. Sometimes I’m looking for something and I feel like I wake up just as I’m about to find it.’

  ‘You’re looking for your childhood,’ said John.

  ‘Oh, he’s still very childish,’ said Genevieve and poured John another cup of tea from the patchwork teapot.

  ‘BETTER?’ SAID KARL.

  They were in the dentist’s waiting room sitting in front of a fish tank full of clownfish as brightly coloured as toy cars.

  ‘No,’ said Genevieve. ‘I feel we’ve reduced ourselves somehow.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Karl.

  Karl was up first. The dental hygienist was an intense little man with a long, monastic beard. Karl lay back in the chair, which tilted him and stretched his spine.