by Luke Kennard
‘I think there’s something wrong which The Transition isn’t going to fix,’ said Karl. ‘Giving a few dropouts a chance to become DJs or sculptors or whatever, trying to convince us to engage with the system which cut us off in the first place, thinking you can make us into stakeholders again when it’s just broken. It’s just fucked. Me and Genevieve lived for three years in a taped-up conservatory, Janna. Maybe I don’t even want to be on the tiny winning side so I can start bleeding my contemporaries dry, so I can rent out my airing cupboard to a couple of young professionals.’
Janna was smiling.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe there is something wrong. Something wrong with you which The Transition can’t fix. Your parents could take some responsibility there. They could have given you more of a sense of enterprise and self-reliance instead of coddling you into believing that the world owes you a living. They could have set you up with the basics in life, but then I suppose they were the sort of people to have five kids without thinking about it.’
Karl picked up his cup and, with a single flick of the wrist, threw the rest of his coffee into Janna’s face.
33
KARL LOOKED AT his grubby velvet trainers, trying to avoid making eye contact with Genevieve. She was sitting opposite him, in between Janna and Stu. Janna wore a black cashmere jumper and her blouse, covered in coffee stains, was laid out on the occasional table.
‘This is the situation,’ said Stu, twisting the point of one of his hair spikes. ‘Karl, you’ve committed three infractions. The last of which was tantamount to assault.’
‘It was lukewarm,’ said Karl.
‘Tantamount,’ said Stu. ‘We’re willing to see it as a symbolic act of violence.’
‘I won’t be pressing charges,’ said Janna.
‘Against one of your mentors,’ said Stu.
Karl thought of Janna’s face, the coffee running down her neck, some onto the table, how she breathed in and stopped, almost smiling at him, and maintained eye contact until he handed her a napkin and quietly said that he was very sorry.
‘It was rather embarrassing,’ said Janna, sweetly.
‘He’s an idiot,’ said Genevieve.
‘We’d like you to think about your anger,’ said Stu. ‘But there’ll be a chance to look into that later on. For now we need to follow temporary disciplinary procedure.’
‘Which is what?’
‘The B-stream,’ said Stu. ‘You’re suspended from seminars and lectures at the Transition headquarters.’
‘Oh right,’ said Karl, hoping he sounded disappointed.
‘You’re suspended from the programme; all Transition-related activity, including the social and domestic situation.’
‘I have to live somewhere else?’ said Karl. ‘I’m being banished?’
‘You’ll temporarily reside in the basement,’ said Stu.
‘I’ve packed your bag,’ said Genevieve.
‘We’ll leave you two alone for a moment,’ said Janna. ‘I’ll just get the key.’
‘G,’ said Karl, once Stu had followed Janna out of the room. ‘How can you possibly be in favour of this?’
Genevieve leaned forward and rested her chin on her hands. ‘I’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘If you need to go through a disciplinary procedure to realise how ridiculously you’ve been behaving, so be it.’
‘They’re breaking us up; they’re playing mind games. It’s deliberate.’
‘Maybe I could believe that,’ said Genevieve, ‘but every single thing that’s gone wrong has been your fault, your decision.’
‘They’re gaslighting.’
‘They’re what?’
‘It’s from a … you change the … I can’t remember. They’re messing with our heads.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘You’re letting them separate us.’
‘Karl,’ said Genevieve. ‘This isn’t a break-up. I’m seriously pissed off with you and I think you’re a fucking idiot, but this isn’t a break-up.’
‘But it literally is a break-up,’ Karl complained. ‘We’re being broken up.’
‘What, you think we won’t even see each other? Don’t be silly. You’ll be in the basement.’
‘I think you’ll do whatever they tell you.’
‘I think it’s time you let me make a decision and see how it goes,’ said Genevieve. ‘I’ll take my new job with The Transition, which I want. You can bide your time underground reviewing travel toothbrushes and then before half a year is up we’ll have a place of our own to live. We can get your chip removed and then have children.’
‘I don’t have a chip.’
‘Karl.’
‘Okay, I do have a chip,’ said Karl. ‘Two years ago. I wanted to tell you. You were on a lot of meds – it would have been catastrophic if you got pregnant.’
‘You didn’t even talk to me about it.’ Genevieve looked more amused than sad. ‘I had to find out from Janna. And before you start accusing her of plotting against you, it just came up in conversation – you know they have access to our medical files, right? Our health is a key part of the programme. And she mentioned that Stu had a chip, too, and I was like too? And she was horrified because she naturally assumed that you might have discussed it with me. You think you’re not like other men, but the only real difference is you’re more passive.’
‘That’s nasty. G, the houses are terrible, they’re tiny – there’s no room to have kids,’ he said. ‘I tracked down one of the estates. It’s by a motorway. They look like they’re made of Lego bricks.’
Stu leaned into the room. ‘If you’re ready, Karl?’
34
THE DOOR TO the understairs cupboard was wide open and a bare light bulb illuminated the plaster walls, the little shelf with its torch and jar of screws where he had first found the picture of Genevieve. In the floor a trapdoor had been opened and a thin spiral staircase with metal steps led down to the basement. Karl balefully followed behind Stu, his feet rapping the steps, the metal creaking under their combined weight. Stu hit a light switch and dropped Karl’s vast camping rucksack in the corner.
The basement was two rooms knocked together, covered in large yellow tiles. A ‘wet room’, bigger than the bedroom or living space, had been partitioned and consisted of a toilet, a sink and a wall-mounted changing-room shower head over a plughole in the same yellow tiles as the rest of the complex. Next door a small single bed was dressed in a floral cotton spread. A brown plastic school chair and Formica desk. It reminded Karl of shaky footage of a CIA torture chamber, only one that had been given a bit of a clean, a new coat of paint, and reassigned to paperwork. A mildewed set of French windows gave out onto a wet grey stairwell leading up to street level. Each room was lit by a single-bar fluorescent tube, speckled with dead bugs: the glowing effulgence Karl had seen between the black floorboards a few weeks ago. Karl hated strip lighting, and Genevieve used to say it was because he was part fly. Your eyes are hypersensitive to the flickering because you’re part fly. You know flies have compound eyes so to them strip lights appear to be pulsing steadily, like a beacon? Of course you do. The yellow tiles felt cold through his socks. One of them was shattered, and Karl had the bizarre thought of a previous tenant saying, Hey guys, look at my new bowling ball! Oops!
‘It’s not meant to be pleasant,’ said Stu.
‘I’ve rented worse.’
‘Honestly,’ said Stu, ‘no one wants this less than I do.’
‘Fairly confident I can match you.’
‘No,’ said Stu, ‘believe me. Janna and I get audited every five years for how well our protégés have done. It’s the only performance review that really matters if you want to get anywhere in The Transition. And they take underperformance very seriously.’
‘They’d fire you?’
‘Well … I’ve known them to change contracts, remove you from mentorship altogether, which is the only reason you’re doing the job, you know?’
‘Right.’
&nb
sp; ‘So we can agree that we all want you out of the basement as soon as possible. Your wife does, Janna does, I do. And you?’
‘This feels like false imprisonment,’ said Karl. ‘Is this technically false imprisonment? I’m fairly sure I used to know someone who became a lawyer.’
Stu went through his jacket pocket and produced a squat leaden key on a twisted loop of garden wire. He handed it to Karl and nodded at the French windows.
‘You’re free to come and go as you please. What you won’t have access to is …’ He pointed at the ceiling.
‘Women, wine and song,’ said Karl.
‘You get one hour with Genevieve every other day.’
‘Seriously?’
‘She’ll come down and visit you.’
‘Bringing provisions?’
Stu gave him a white plastic credit card with a T on the front and a magnetic strip on the back. The card was grimy and the plastic coating peeled at the edges. It was as if everything had been meticulously crudded up by an art director.
‘Twenty quid a week on that,’ said Stu. ‘You need to budget.’
‘Bud … jet?’
‘Part of your task here,’ said Stu. ‘By setting foot in these lodgings you’re temporarily forfeiting your place on the A-stream of The Transition with immediate effect. That means you no longer attend meetings and seminars and you’re not involved in the tasks associated with progression through the levels.’
‘Great,’ said Karl, brightly. ‘Okay. What else?’
‘What else do you want to do?’
‘While I’m down here? Prayer and contemplation?’
‘We’re not affiliated to any major religion,’ said Stu, ‘but if it gets you through the day.’
‘So nothing, then?’
‘It depends.’
‘I prepare simple meals and I get to see my wife for an hour every two days,’ said Karl. ‘It feels a little easy. And boring.’
Stu shrugged. ‘What does anyone do with their time?’
‘And if I want to get out of the basement?’
‘There’s the door.’ Stu indicated the French windows. It was getting dark outside.
‘No, I mean …’
‘Go on,’ Stu smiled.
‘If I want to get back onto The Transition.’
Stu clapped him on the shoulders and beamed. ‘That’s it, Karl. That’s good. I had to wait for you to ask – it’s the first step. Shows a sincere desire to make amends and improve their situation. Didn’t know if you’d make it today.’
Stu scraped the school chair across the tiles and sat down. He motioned for Karl to sit on the bed.
‘I held out for three nights,’ said Stu, slowly. ‘That’s right,’ he held up his hand, ‘I was put on the B-stream nine years ago. We’re not so different, Karl. We’re not joiners. We have a healthy suspicion of authority and institutions. I recognise a kindred spirit.’
‘I didn’t even know you’d been on The Transition.’
‘Oh, almost all of the mentors came through the programme themselves,’ said Stu. ‘Some of us kicking and screaming. So let’s talk process, okay? We’ll have you back on The Transition within a month or two. You have some time to get your bearings—’
‘Done.’
‘– then you enrol on one of several available work placements. I was apprenticed to a blacksmith, if you can believe that.’
‘There are still blacksmiths?’
‘Placements vary in length from five to eight weeks, so I’ll make some calls and give you your options in a couple of days. Alongside the practical element, you have a 10,000-word essay to write. Title hasn’t changed since I was on it: “Why I Hate The Transition”.’
‘Ten thousand words?’
‘It’s not just a punishment,’ said Stu. ‘We’re actually very interested in what our rebel element has to say. The dissertations have been responsible for –’ he checked his phone – ‘no less than seventy-one alterations to Transition policy in the last decade. We’re not looking for a mass of secondary citations – just an honest appraisal of why you felt the need to commit your infractions; what, specifically, about The Transition you find objectionable. Once the practical element and the critical element are complete you submit your report and it gets assessed. And then you’re back upstairs. Okay? Proud of you, Karl.’
He stood up, offered his hand, which Karl squeezed as hard as he could.
‘Last thing.’ Stu took Karl’s tablet out of the front pocket of the rucksack and made some adjustments to its settings. ‘You’re not allowed online or to use any of the devices or privileges – they’re all part of the A-stream.’
‘Wow,’ said Karl. ‘That sucks.’
‘No phone calls,’ said Stu. ‘But you can send three messages a day – basically if you need to contact me or Janna in an emergency, so don’t waste them.’ He handed Karl the tablet. ‘Don’t get lonely. Your wife will be down in two days.’
35
KARL WOKE UP with cold feet and put on two pairs of socks. He had used drawing pins to attach a towel to the basement’s only window, but the top right pin had fallen out during the night and the dog-ear of window filled the room with the grey light of a chilled-food aisle. He had been reading at 10 p.m. when the lights suddenly went out. At the time he assumed it was a power cut, but in the chill of the morning he remembered meeting the electrician some weeks ago, and his comment about the central control for lights and electricity. Prison rules. A tomcat had sprayed the stairwell and the smell was so strong it filtered through the door. Cat pee: the espresso of pee.
When he was dressed, Karl left via the French windows, which didn’t close right, and walked to the high street. He bought a doughnut and got £10 cashback then caught a bus to the library, its itchy-jumper seats rubbing his back. In the library he tried to read a literary periodical, but couldn’t concentrate. At the counter he found that he couldn’t take out any books because he didn’t have proof of address.
Karl walked through the abandoned warehouses behind the library. One hangar-sized structure of brick and corrugated iron had been painted yellow with the word TRAMPOLINE spray-painted in red over the door. Karl knew from the journals that they were a project founded by an ex-Transition protégé. Trampoline was a charitable organisation that renovated urban spaces. It had turned the old factory into a drop-in centre and a community vegetable garden. Karl walked around and helped himself to a paper cup of water. There were even twelve dorm-style bunk beds in one corner, a porridge cafe and pop-up gallery space which was currently showing large canvases of extreme close-ups on human fingernails.
In the rough patch of land around the building an anarchist movement called Class Ceiling were picketing the factory. A group of twenty, variously aged, some in balaclavas, clustered around a black banner decorated with graphic bloodstains and the legend TRUSTAFARIANS OUT.
A woman with a purple metal ring in her lip stood to the left, drinking from a flask.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ she said to him. ‘I don’t even know what a trust fund is. I’ve tried talking to them, but whatever.’
The day spread out ahead of him with an emptiness that made him frightened. He went to the cinema. A sequel to an action comedy Karl hadn’t seen was starting in fifteen minutes. He checked the running time and bought a ticket.
When he left the cinema it was dark. He started to walk home, then realised he wasn’t far from Keston’s neighbourhood. Keston’s flat looked similar to his office at Edson Hinks – blue wallpaper, dark wood. Keston loved furniture – he was always saving for something. He spent his days off trawling the intoxicating bricolage of antiques centres. By the window he had a Hepplewhite chair of which he was particularly proud. He also had some old leather armchairs and a big floor-standing globe-shaped liquor cabinet – something he always used to talk about. Tell you what I want, he would say, once or twice a week, one of those globes that opens out into a liquor cabinet. If I ever get one of those I’ll die happy. Sometimes it w
as a donkey, but mostly it was a globe-shaped liquor cabinet. Karl sat down next to the globe.
‘I feel partly responsible for all this, K-mart,’ said Keston.
‘Oh, right, rather than solely?’
‘Yep. Partly. Take it or leave it.’ He poured Karl a gin and tonic which was mostly gin. ‘Because you have to. I’m not being generous –’ he added a drop more gin. ‘I’m trying to use it up because it’s terrible. What do you want?’ said Keston.
‘Gin and tonic’s fine.’
‘No,’ said Keston. ‘What do you want?’
‘Oh. This.’ Karl shivered. ‘I need to be with Genevieve.’
‘Right.’
‘They’ve separated us, they’ve persuaded her to come off her medication. I’m going out of my mind with worry. She does whatever they tell her. Or, you know, she seems to. I mean it’s like they’ve found the weak spot in our marriage: the fact that I have to look out for her, and the fact that it makes me kind of overbearing sometimes. And they’re using that to … I need to, like, kidnap her …’
‘That’s not a good idea.’
‘Kidnap her and drive into the sunset.’ Karl drained half his glass and started pacing around the globe-shaped liquor cabinet.
‘Then what?’
‘Flee the country?’
‘With your £20 allowance?’
‘Can you lend me some money?’
‘Gosh no,’ said Keston.
‘Whose side are you on?’
‘Nobody’s. It’s an institution. Institutions have their flaws, Karl, but ultimately they’re just tools and structures. There’s no right or wrong, there’s no morality whatsoever; it’s irrelevant. Genevieve isn’t in anyone’s clutches, she’s enrolled on a self-improvement programme and doing rather well at it.’