by Luke Kennard
‘Mum. You’re drunk already?’ said Samphire. Samphire’s mother had her eyes half closed. ‘This is Karl. He knows his seaweed. Karl, this is my mother, Lorna.’
‘How do you know Janna and Stu?’ said Karl.
‘You have a good voice,’ said Lorna. Hers was a little dry. She could even have been Samphire’s grandmother.
‘Thank you.’
‘You can tell a lot by timbre. You’re … concerned. You’re thoughtful. Careful. Too careful. Afraid to tell anyone who you are or what you think. You’d be a terrible liar.’
‘Lorna,’ said Samphire. ‘Don’t. The voice reading. It’s creepy.’ She turned to Karl. ‘We’ve known them since for ever – Mum was Janna’s violin teacher about a century ago.’
‘I didn’t know Janna played the violin,’ said Karl.
‘Ah,’ said the old woman. ‘Say her name again.’
‘Janna.’
‘You like her, don’t you? But I expect you have crushes on a lot of women. A voice like yours falls in love almost instantly.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Karl, smiling.
‘You’re an embarrassment,’ said Samphire, and let go of her mother’s hand – Karl realised she had been holding it up until now – and made a kind of rat-like face at her. Then she smiled in resignation at Karl. ‘It was nice to meet you.’ He watched her leave the room, her white hair down to her waist, and almost reached after her.
‘Likewise.’
‘There’s a particularly interesting flaw,’ said Lorna. ‘In your voice, I mean. Everyone’s got one. You’re very angry. It’s laid low. Almost out of my range. But, well, that’s not exactly a revelation, is it? You’re a man.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Karl. ‘I’m a little high. I don’t see myself as angry.’
‘Do you see yourself as a man? You should be especially watchful,’ said Lorna. The music stopped and there was a pause as the track changed. ‘The same life, looked back on, can be heaven or hell,’ said Lorna, quietly, leaning towards him. She smelled of damp forest. ‘The same memory can be heaven or hell.’ A lilting, melodic piano started. ‘I know I can trust you with my daughter, even after the way you stared at her just now.’
Karl felt a pulse in his head, as if it was putting up a force field.
‘You don’t act on very much, do you?’ said Lorna. ‘Your impulses – they might as well be dreams. That’s a virtue.’ She handed him a little pink card. ‘Community Chest,’ she said. ‘It’s her number.’
Karl tucked it into his pocket.
‘I can tell she likes you, and I want her to talk to more men like you,’ said Lorna.
‘Angry men who don’t tell anybody what they really think?’ said Karl.
‘Men who use their gross insecurity for good rather than evil,’ said Lorna. ‘Besides, she’s seventeen. She’s been talking about studying English at university – maybe you can put her off?’
‘Did I mention I studied English?’
‘No. Why?’
‘You guessed. It’s that obvious?’
‘Everything you say is in quote marks,’ said Lorna.
‘Why did you name your daughter after a seaweed?’
‘“Said Karl, irritably changing the subject”. It may do you well to act on your misgivings once in a while,’ said Lorna. ‘Some thoughts belong in the attic, some belong in the basement.’
‘What belongs in the basement?’
‘You, perhaps,’ said Lorna.
He hadn’t seen Janna or Stu all night – they must have been circulating on a different rhythm. On the other side of the living room Genevieve was sitting on the floor next to a young vicar. His black tunic made him look High Church. Genevieve looked wonderful, he decided, wearing her long brown dress with one leg folded underneath her, leaning on the couch. How was it possible to look so natural? His breathing, as he looked at her, felt somewhere between pleasure and pain – like before you cry. Trying to feel that he was entitled to do so, he walked across the room and sat next to Genevieve.
‘Check it out,’ said Genevieve. ‘Dude doesn’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ.’
‘Oh God, Genevieve, straight to big talk,’ said Karl.
‘It’s fine,’ said the vicar, smiling. ‘Usually people just ask me if I’m in fancy dress.’
‘Hmm, in a sense I suppose that’s what I’m asking too,’ muttered Genevieve.
‘It’s maybe just a matter of language,’ said the vicar. ‘What might sound sacrilegious to the laity is actually a necessity for any kind of theological discourse.’
‘But you, yourself, you agree with whatshisname?’
‘Grabes. Minor scholar. His point is that it really doesn’t matter. That this is where symbolism and fact converge. The Church is the body.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, accepting a cigarette and letting him light it, ‘is you believe in a telepathic Jew who was born to a virgin and can forgive your sins. Why not accept the whole caboodle?’
‘You don’t say “caboodle”,’ said Karl. ‘Since when did you say “caboodle”?’
‘If you believe in the quality of omniscience – if you can hold something like that in your head … I mean, presumably you believe in God, right?’
‘Well, that’s another question,’ said the vicar.
‘I think you’re both in need of a drink,’ said Karl.
The kitchen was crowded. The heavy, bearded man with the bow tie was playing bartender.
‘You are?’ said Karl.
‘Gregory,’ said Gregory. ‘Where’s the fucking gin gone?’
Behind a group of skinny men in lumberjack shirts who were playing some kind of ironic drinking game, Karl noticed Samphire and her mother by the oven. He realised they were remonstrating with one another, hissing. Samphire glanced in his direction. When she noticed he’d noticed she smiled at him, and then they both looked away. His head ached. He picked up three glasses of neat vodka.
‘Hey,’ said Gregory. ‘Those aren’t done. Hey!’
When Karl got back to the living room the vicar was alone and swigging from a bottle of champagne.
‘Here you go,’ said Karl. ‘Your health.’
They drank their vodka. The vicar coughed and then he drank Genevieve’s too.
‘Your wife,’ he said to Karl. ‘She’s very lovely.’
‘Where did she go?’ said Karl.
‘Sturdy fellow with a – what’s the word? Spiked hair. Took her by the arm and steered her out of the room.’
‘Stu,’ said Karl. ‘Wait a minute, you don’t know Stu?’
‘Stu?’
‘You’re a friend of Janna’s?’
‘Who’s Janna?’
‘This is their house,’ said Karl.
‘Oh, right,’ said the vicar. ‘Sorry, I thought it was yours. No, I’m just here with a friend. Henry?’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘We were at Magdalen together. I’m not sure how he knows … Stu.’
‘I’m going to look for Genevieve,’ said Karl.
‘Tell her hi from me,’ said the vicar. ‘Lovely girl.’
There were people sprawled on rugs under the cherry tree in the garden. Some of them were eating cherries – the tree was exceptionally fruitful. Karl picked one up off the ground and brushed off the dirt. He spat the stone at the house.
‘Have you seen Stu? Or Janna?’
A couple, who were wearing matching cherry-red hot pants and lime-green vests, just giggled at him. The boy went back to stroking a black-and-white cat which kept rolling onto its back and trying to grab his hand.
‘Easy,’ he said to it.
‘I’m looking for Janna or Stu,’ said Karl.
‘They’re around,’ said the girl. ‘Relax. Grab a kitty. I’m Alice.’
‘Alice Jonke?’ said Karl. She was the woman from the woodland photo of not_all_transition.
‘How do you know my name?’
‘I’m a fan of your band.’<
br />
‘What are you talking about?’ said Alice.
‘I recognised you,’ said Karl. ‘You were in not_all_transition. Sorry if I’ve got you confused with someone else.’
‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘Oh, I forgot that even happened. It was totally abandoned. Years ago.’ She frowned at him. ‘There’s no band. It was just a photo shoot – a mock-up.’
‘I found the site.’
‘You’re on The Transition?’
‘Yeah,’ said Karl. ‘I’m living here.’
‘It’s great, right? I’m one of Stu and Janna’s. What, five years ago now? Feels longer. I still love this house. Now I’m in PR.’
‘Public’s always going to need … relations, right?’
‘Well, that’s what we tell them,’ said Alice. ‘Plus I moonlight as an admissions officer for The Transition, but that’s pretty much voluntary.’
‘So you were in the band back when you were on the scheme?’
‘There’s no band,’ said Alice. ‘My boyfriend, well, he was my boyfriend then, he was trying to get a music photography business off the ground. We were pretending. Then Stu was like, oh, I can use these. I’m surprised it still exists. It was a … what’s that term … A false-flag operation.’
‘For what?’ said Karl. ‘What do you mean a false-flag operation?’
‘You know,’ said Alice. The cat hopped off her lap and went to investigate the back of the garden. ‘Like a deliberate own goal. When your side plots against itself to frame its enemies.’
‘The Transition’s enemies?’
‘There was some negative publicity at the time. A handful of disgruntled protégés. Maybe they had rubbish mentors, I don’t know. Just conspiracy nonsense. They were making it out to be a secret society. Usual mixture of inferiority complex and good old-fashioned paranoia. But they were starting to get some media attention. So Stu had the idea that we could set up a fake resistance movement, make it just the right side of believable, then go public if necessary. God, how embarrassing it’s still online. Tell Stu I’ll kill him. Do you know where he is, actually?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s nice to meet the new generation,’ said Alice. She held out her hand and he helped her to her feet.
Upstairs he found Samphire sitting outside the bathroom with a glass of something greyish. She had put her long white hair in a ponytail which lay over her shoulder.
‘I can’t find Janna,’ he said.
‘Are you okay? You look really weird.’
Karl sat down next to her on the carpeted step.
‘I’m sorry about Mum. She thinks the voice thing makes her interesting. I literally wanted to die.’
‘You know ancient monks had this embroidered thing called a paraman?’ he said. ‘They wore it under their habit. One of the things on it is a big skull. To remind you of death. Although because of the embroidery pattern they looked sort of like an 8-bit computer game. Like Space Invaders or something. That’s probably all it would remind me of. If you play computer games you say I’m dead all the time. But I think it actually makes you less aware of your own mortality.’
‘O-kay,’ said Samphire.
‘Your hair,’ said Karl. ‘I think it’s wonderful. It would be my paraman.’ He sneezed, twice, and coated his hand with phlegm. ‘Yuck. Sorry.’
‘That’s her, at the door,’ said Samphire. ‘Your Janna.’
Karl craned his neck around the banister and saw a woman dressed in a long, blue dress – it looked shiny under the halogens, with a dusty coating; it almost looked rubber. She walked down the hallway. In the second it took her to leave his view she looked up and didn’t quite meet his gaze. She looked as if she’d been crying.
‘Janna?’
He ran down the stairs, but the corridor contained two men in dinner jackets, wrestling. He thought he saw the door to the understairs cupboard move slightly, although it was closed and he couldn’t be sure. He strode over the wrestlers.
‘Janna?’
The understairs cupboard was locked.
‘Did someone just go in there?’ he asked them.
‘That’s a pin,’ said the man on top.
HE LAY IN BED alone and half awake. It was 4 a.m., but the smell of cigarettes and the dogshit smell of hydroponic weed and the mixed voices still drifted up to the attic. People supposedly took drugs to escape, but Karl always found they had the opposite effect on him; he would obsess over grudges he thought he had forgiven and forgotten. He saw himself in a snow globe, standing in front of a plastic log cabin. He checked the window. It was a solid plastic log cabin. The ground was covered in phosphorescent pieces. Each one, he realised, was a well-worn memory, but when he tried to pick one up it disintegrated into filmy pieces. All he could do was wait for someone outside to shake the snow globe. Man is the plaything of his memory – who said that? He felt a lurching sensation. He remembered a night one year into their marriage. They had gone to visit his father for a long weekend. Some cooking, some wine, keep him company. Karl’s sister was there too, taking some time off from the kids. It’ll be fun, she assured them. We’ll make it fun. You know how much Dad loves Genevieve.
In the event Genevieve talked rapidly and mostly about things and situations that held no relevance to her audience – friends she hadn’t mentioned for years, people not even Karl knew, let alone his sister and father – and what started out as tedious but tolerable, after half a day and most of a night became as trying as a constant burglar alarm nobody was doing anything to shut down. Eventually, after preparing salmon and new potatoes against a constant monologue of secondary-school grievances, Karl’s older sister had said, Genevieve, sweetie, could you give it a rest? And Genevieve, disturbingly brisk, had said yes, fine, of course; she was feeling a little tense, that was all, and sometimes that made her talk too much, but if Tara could just be honest with her when she was talking too much, if she could just tell Genevieve instead of insinuating things, that would be great and Genevieve would know she was talking too much. Yes, Karl’s sister said, calm but testy, yes, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. Is it? Genevieve had wondered aloud. Tara had laughed. Genevieve had said right and dropped the empty teacup she was holding so that it cracked on the tiles.
They left soon after that and Karl was scowling at the middle lane of the motorway, barely responding to Genevieve, when she said,
‘I’m very disappointed in you.’
‘What?’ said Karl.
‘You let that supercilious bitch say whatever she wants to me.’
‘By supercilious bitch I assume you mean my sister,’ said Karl.
‘You don’t like it when I swear, do you?’ said Genevieve.
‘God, Genevieve,’ said Karl. ‘I don’t care.’
‘I wonder,’ said Genevieve, ‘what it would be like to be married to someone who ever took my side on anything.’
Karl turned the windscreen wipers up from intermittent. Don’t fan the flames, he said to himself. You see yourself as a patient and compassionate person. You’re not, but that’s by the by. You see yourself that way, so try to behave like it.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘What do you mean you don’t understand?’
‘I mean I don’t understand what you’re saying to me or why you’re saying it.’
‘Oh,’ said Genevieve, putting her left hand to her temple as if Karl had monumentally missed the point. ‘You’re picking on my words.’
‘I’m not trying to pick on your words.’
‘Everything is falling apart and you’re picking on my words.’
‘I’m sorry that you see it that way.’
‘That’s not an apology. You’re sorry that I’m wrong, you mean.’
‘I’m sorry that I’m coming across that way. It’s not how I want to come across. Can we start again?’
‘You see me as some kind of text to interpret.’
‘Words are what we talk with!’ said Karl.
‘Don’t shout a
t me.’
‘I mean what else have we got? Jesus, Genevieve, you’re like a forest of brambles.’
‘Uh-huh, and you’re the prince. Fuck you, Karl.’
‘It’s like somebody cross-bred brambles with a hydra.’
‘What’s a hydra, Karl? What’s a fucking hydra?’
‘What’s a hydra? You taught me what a hydra was,’ said Karl. ‘I hadn’t read The Odyssey, you were like, You haven’t read The Odyssey? What’s wrong with you? I mean, do you remember a single conversation we’ve ever had?’
‘You really don’t like it when I swear, do you? You swear at me all the time, but you don’t like it when I do it back.’
‘I’m sorry for swearing,’ said Karl. Then he felt cross and said, ‘Who are you? Where is Genevieve?’
‘I’m sorry?’ She sounded like a politician on the radio.
‘Why are you talking to me like this?’ said Karl. ‘What have I done? I’m not on your side? You create these situations: you, and then you don’t even have the grace to forgive the slights you imagine everyone gives you.’
‘I can’t believe this is happening to us,’ said Genevieve. ‘To us. I never thought we’d end up like … We’re going for counselling. As soon as you’ve parked the car we’re going for counselling.’
‘Stop talking,’ said Karl. ‘Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking.’
‘Everything you say it’s like you’re hitting me,’ said Genevieve. ‘You’d like to hit me, wouldn’t you? That’s what’s underneath all this. Ooh, you’re a nice boy, you’d never even countenance hitting a woman, but that’s the most dangerous kind of a man: my mother told me that. Nasty, weak little … Do you remember once you raised your hand to me? Concentrate on the road!’
Karl swerved back into his lane.
‘No,’ said Karl. ‘No, I do not remember that, Genevieve, because it never fucking happened. You’re gaslighting me.’
Genevieve screamed at him.
‘You are so awful to me, Genevieve.’
‘Pull over. Pull over pull over pull over.’
‘I can’t pull over: we’re on the fucking motorway.’
A sign informed them that the next service station contained more amenities than the average shopping centre, and that it was seventeen miles away. They drove without speaking.