Plume

by Will Wiles

  A silver thermal blanket was put over my shoulders, as if I had just run a marathon, and a light was shone in my eyes. I was asked questions. Bella hung nearby, talking into a rose-metal mobile phone, arms clutched in tightly. I thought about my own phone, and took it out of my pocket. Three missed calls. Text messages, too. From Eddie: Where are you? From Kay: GET HERE NOW.

  One of the paramedics came at me with a pair of shears.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said, shying away.

  ‘We’ve got to get those off,’ he said, gesturing at my trousers. ‘To treat your legs.’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ I said.

  ‘They’re ruined. This is easiest.’

  ‘No,’ I said, pushing away his hand and standing up. ‘I mean – I’ve got to get to work.’

  ‘Call your office then,’ he said, indicating my phone with the point of his shears.

  ‘I have to go, it’s important.’

  He stared at me with an expression of weary tolerance. ‘Mate, a building just fell on you. Call in. We’ve got to get you checked over.’

  A sensation surged within me, dark and sweet, rich and freeing. I knew it, I knew it by its chemical scent, a cocktail prepared by my own body that was more potent, more intoxicating, than anything I could drink. I had been microdosing on this amazing brew for years, I realised – every time a deadline was extended or I was let off the hook for something, I got a whiff of it. But this was more than a droplet, it was a bucket of it, a tidal wave that surpassed any alcoholic buzz or orgasm. I had only felt this way once, years earlier, in the Olympic summer. And when I remembered the circumstances, I realised it was all a mirage. It meant nothing. Worse, it was a trap. And the chemical tide rushed back out.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You don’t understand.’

  The paramedic sighed, and beckoned to a colleague, who busied themselves with my legs, rolling up the trousers and cleaning and dressing my wounds. I sat back down to help them. ‘You really should look in a mirror before going in,’ the first paramedic said. He had started filling out a form.

  I didn’t need a mirror. I could see my clothes, and I could see Bella – the dust in her hair, the dirt gathering in black lines on her face. She was off the phone and talking to a police officer, a wide-eyed, serious, short-sentence talk, the frugal conversation of emergency. A third figure approached them, in another shade of hi-vis, red this time, but my view of this newcomer was obstructed by their backs and the ambulance door.

  ‘I can go, then?’ I asked the paramedic.

  ‘You really shouldn’t, but I can’t stop you,’ he said, raising his eyebrows and scribbling on the form. It was held to a metal clipboard, and I thought of Polly, laying out the case against me while I was helplessly detained here by force majeure. ‘You’ll need to sign this. It says you’ve refused treatment.’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ I said. ‘Give it to me.’

  Bella and the police officer had turned in my direction – both were pointed at me. The man in red who had been talking with them walked towards where I sat. It was the postman.

  ‘James Bickerton? Basement flat?’ he asked.

  I nodded, although it seemed a trifle fraudulent to lay claim to an address that no longer existed.

  ‘There’s post for you,’ he said. ‘I suppose …’ He glanced towards the corner of my former street. ‘I suppose I should just give it to you.’

  He handed me a cockatoo.

  On the rear step of an ambulance, surrounded by professionals, within shouting distance of my cratered home, I was an object of sympathy. The disaster that had birthed my torn and filthy form was obvious and recent, and I was being taken care of, so I could be safely pitied.

  On the Tube, I was feared and hated. A bandaged ghoul, separated from my circumstances, I had become a contagious emissary from an underworld of anarchy and corruption. No one knew what had happened to me, but they knew they didn’t want a part of it. People put their bags on their laps and pulled their staring children a little closer as I appeared. Talk died away and eyes followed me. Breaths were held, in case I stank as bad as I looked. I was succeeded by a wake of relief as I did not stop or ask for money. I sat in the last seat of the carriage, causing the man next to me to shift and hitch. Don’t worry, mate, you’re not going to catch anything.

  I let out a curt laugh at this thought, and my neighbour shifted again. He was about my age. So I stared at him a while, watching the side of his eyeballs strain with the effort of not looking back at me, before turning my attention to the cockatoo in my lap.

  It was a handsome specimen, legs wide on a branch, yellow plumes radiating proudly, a cheeky glint in its eye. I flipped the postcard over to reread what was written on the back.

  Dearest James,

  We are in Prague again, and saw these splendid chaps at the Zoo. Do you remember Uncle Charles’s cockatoo? Such personality in a bird. I generally think them cruel & stupid creatures but it was neither. It kept us so entertained that time it came to visit. Returning Saturday week, via Bratislava and a night in Vienna. Love from us both.

  – Mum (& Dad) xxx

  For the tenth or twentieth time, I turned the postcard over and looked at the bird. Uncle Charles had a cockatoo. I had not been lying to my friends. It must have been so unlikely to my child-self that it always had the ingredients of invention. But the foundational lie of my lying life was not a lie, it was the truth.

  I was in no way redeemed by this realisation. It had not saved me. It merely showed me that the torrent of lies I had told in my time had eroded through to my core. Everything was a lie. I had forgotten the experience of truth.

  The postcard was the only thing I held. My bag had been inside the house, as had almost everything else I owned. (My first thought was not my laptop or family photographs or any of my books, but the fridge and its contents.) Almost everything: I had the contents of my pockets, which included my phone, my wallet and my Oyster card. The bedrock of my ability to function. Wasn’t that supposed to be all we needed – the premise of those adverts in which twenty-somethings in plaid shirts travel the world on their credit card and data plan? Adverts for credit cards and data plans, mostly. I didn’t have a charger or, in all likelihood, a job, so neither could last.

  As I walked up the ramp out of Old Street Station, Tamesis chimed. You should update your address information, it said.

  ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me,’ I said to it.

  The column of black smoke was above the obelisk tower of the Hawksmoor church on Old Street, very near the office. That was west of the station – there was no pretence that it might be in Barking. It wasn’t even trying to deceive. And if the cockatoo was real, what else might be?

  I was late, but maybe not too late. Even if the meeting had started on time, they could last a couple of hours, and I doubted it would be finished.

  But when I arrived in the office, the meeting had already broken up. Or it hadn’t even begun. The atmosphere in the room was all wrong, everything was out of place. My eyes were fixed on the aquarium when I came in, expecting it to be full of people, but only Polly and Freya were in there. Ilse was sitting in her little kingdom, and her posture was unlike anything I had seen from her before: she was sprawled back in her chair, as if very relaxed, but her face was tired and preoccupied. Neither of the Rays were in their own duchy – woman Ray was sitting with Mohit, like they were having a chat, but a bad chat. Eddie was on his own in his stockade, on the phone. Kay was standing at her desk, piling up copies of the magazine. Once she had gathered an armful, she carried them towards the main door, and there she saw me.

  ‘What happened to you?’ she asked unkindly, before she took in the state of my clothes and face and legs and asked a completely different question, one filled with concern: ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘My house fell down,’ I said, and the dreaded feeling flickered upwards, and I could not prevent myself from an expression that was almost a smirk. ‘I know that sounds … It’s
true.’

  ‘It just fell down?’ she said, eyes opaque, a faint sneer of disbelief on her lips.

  ‘There must have been a cause, but really the only important fact is that it fell down.’ Once I had said this, I became worried that perhaps glibness wasn’t quite the right tone, not with Kay. ‘There was building work going on next door. They must have undermined the foundations. I’m sorry, it’s come as a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Huh,’ Kay said. I expected more. She stepped past me, to the green wheelie bin against the wall. Into this she dropped the heavy load of magazines she had been carrying. They were recent copies, decorated with sticky bookmarks, each one of which represented one of Kay’s contributions.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said. ‘Don’t you need those?’

  ‘Not any more,’ she said, with a stiff smile.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Eddie that?’ Kay said.

  Eddie, yes. He had seen me, and his brown eyes, peering over the top of his fortifications, followed me as I crossed the office towards him. My terror of the awaiting possibilities was at last overcome by the need to know.

  ‘Jack. You’ve come to join us at last.’

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I said, although I didn’t put much contrition into my tone. ‘My house fell down.’

  He looked me over, and I saw him pass from the dust on my jacket to the tears in my trouser legs to the blood-spotted bandages on my legs.

  ‘It’s a better excuse than usual, I’ll give you that,’ he said. ‘You missed the meeting. The meeting I expressly said you had to attend.’

  ‘Well, I’m here now,’ I said. I no longer saw any harm in being blunt. ‘Or am I? I’m out, right? Redundancy? Or dismissal?’

  Eddie rolled his eyes, as if bored by these questions, and I felt the heat rise in my chest.

  ‘You need to speak with Polly.’ He nodded in the direction of the aquarium. I glanced over, and saw that Freya had hunched over, and Polly was leaning across, towards her, grim and concerned.

  ‘Why can’t you just tell me?’ I said to Eddie.

  ‘Polly,’ he said. ‘You need to speak with Polly.’ He lifted his phone receiver and began to punch in numbers, signalling an end to the conversation. I was momentarily seized by the urge to put my finger on the receiver switch, ending the call before it was dialled, like they do in TV dramas. But I did not.

  Both the women in the aquarium were standing. Polly had come around the conference table and was guiding Freya to the door, a gentle hand on her shoulder. Freya’s eyes were red and her posture shrunken. She sniffed and hurried past me once the door was open. All that time, even while still mouthing comforting final words to Freya, Polly’s eyes had been fixed on me. She ushered me into the meeting room.

  It was stuffy inside, spent emotion, like carbon monoxide, pushing out the breathable air.

  ‘I wish we had more privacy,’ Polly said with a weary exhalation.

  I avoided the seat Freya had occupied as if it were unlucky. Not that luck could have much influence over my situation any more; clearly decisions had already been made, and the roulette ball was lodged firmly on double zero, even if the wheel had not quite ceased to spin. Perhaps poor taste was what I was anxious to avoid: disrespect to the fallen.

  Polly had moved to sit where she sat before, but seeing me dodge Freya’s chair she changed to sit opposite, pulling all her papers with her. There were a lot of papers. The clipboard was fully loaded, and she had brought through a couple of the purple folders that her documents went into once they graduated from the clipboard.

  The Bick file would be in there, for sure.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘You’re all … beat up.’

  I sighed. ‘My house fell down.’

  Her frown deepened. ‘What? How did that happen?’

  I sighed, again – more a groan than a sigh. This was only the third time I had been asked about the house and I was already finding it a chore to explain. There was that initial hurdle of disbelief to surmount, and then all the repetitive details. I had the drunk’s desire to obliterate the past, where these tedious matters of context resided, and the future, where there lay further occasions on which I would have to explain them. I wanted to go to the sofa, to the fridge, and when I remembered that they were both buried beneath pulverised brick, I only wanted them more. I had watched my flat disintegrate around me, and it made this meeting, Eddie’s opinion of me, everything else, seem trivial. Especially as the chance to avert catastrophe was long past. I was calm. No, not calm – I roiled inwardly. But I was pointed forward, not locked in my usual grid of anxieties.

  ‘I’ve already been over that with Eddie,’ I said, ‘and Kay. Do you mind if we skip it, for now? I want to know what’s going on, with Kay, with Freya. With me.’

  ‘Sure,’ Polly said, smiling without pleasure. ‘Of course. You have a right to know. Short version: big changes. Eddie is stepping aside, I’m sad to say, and I will be taking over as editor from Monday.’

  She was looking at me, for my reaction. I didn’t have one. How could I react? My worst speculations had been exceeded. But at the same time it made little material difference to the expected outcome. I swallowed, and said, ‘Go on.’

  Polly tilted her head, as if she had expected more, and looked down at her notes. ‘As you know, the financial picture isn’t good. In fact, it’s very bad – existential. Eddie has done everything he can to avoid redundancies. But the urgency has become overwhelming. Ilse is taking voluntary redundancy, which’ – Polly let a hiss of air past her teeth – ‘is probably more expensive than keeping her on, because she’s on an Errol contract. We also have to lose Kay, and one of the Rays.’

  ‘Which Ray?’ I asked, lips numb.

  ‘Man Ray. I’ll be taking a lower salary than Eddie was. A lot lower, in fact. You wouldn’t beli— another Errol contract.’ She paused, a strange, intense, faraway look in her eyes. ‘And Mohit will move up to be my deputy, but not for a while, six months or more … the freeze …’ She tailed off again. ‘If we can keep him. He’s not happy. No one is. No one likes doing the back. Sorry, I’ve lost my thread. I don’t know what that leaves.’

  ‘Me,’ I said. Get to the point. She wasn’t handling this well. What did I care about what Mohit would be doing in six months? I’d be gone.

  ‘Of course.’ She opened the clip on the clipboard and pulled loose some papers. ‘Listen, your work recently …’

  I lowered my head. I knew what was coming, I was prepared, but I wasn’t proud. ‘I know,’ I said, voice failing on me, almost a whisper.

  ‘Exceptional. Really. I can’t thank you enough. We gave you a tough week, I know, but you’ve excelled, you really have. It’s convinced me that I’ve made the right decision.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said.

  She was holding a sheaf of A4, fresh from the printer and paperclipped together. ‘I read this when you sent it over yesterday. It’s phenomenal work, really superb. And you say this is just a start? You’ve got more?’

  My lips felt dry, and I licked them. ‘I’m not … May I see that?’

  Polly pushed the document across the table. The cover was a printout of an email.

  Here’s the first part of the Oliver Pierce transcript.

  – Jack

  I had the distinct sense of having stumbled sideways into a different world. Could one of my blackouts have been … beneficial? A forgotten patch of preternatural organisation and productivity? There were dreams like that, nasty deadline dreams. You imagine it’s all done, all sorted, and you wake, and … Better than a sweat-soaked anxiety nightmare, maybe, but still horrible. The nightmare is the waking world, the dream the false respite. Maybe this was the subconscious trying to soothe a deeply troubled mind, but it always felt cruel, like a trick.

  There were tricks, too, that unscrupulous writers could play, trying to cheat an extra hour or two out of a strict deadline. You could send an email saying, ‘Here it is
!’, but with no attachment, having forgotten to include your copy; or you could attach a file with only a title or a couple of paragraphs on it, accidentally sending an unfinished version of the file rather than the (not-yet-existent) complete one. An honest mistake! Sincerest apologies. If you were really lucky, you might not get a reply pointing out your ‘error’ until hours later, or even the next day – or the subsequent Monday. By which time you might have actually achieved a draft. And I was forced to assume that this might be a case like that – Polly might be showing me a blank document or one filled with dummy copy, or a Q&A pulled off the internet and stripped of formatting to resemble a transcript – remembering my recent indiscretions, that seemed possible, or at least less impossible than having actually done the work.

  I flicked to a random page. It was all very neat, not like one of my transcripts at all.

  I had to ‘set the record straight’. As if everything is disordered now, crooked, and when I … If I go on the record it’ll all be properly arranged and neat and tidy. ‘The Record’! As if there’s a single, agreed text of the past somewhere, in a big ledger with metal clasps … Or in one of Quin’s servers, now, I suppose.

  That was it, the interview on Tuesday, word for word. All of it.

  My stomach twisted. All of it? I flicked back a few pages in the transcript.

  BICK: I don’t understand. You sounded very eager to talk to me when we got in touch, but now it sounds as if there’s not much you want to say.

  [inaudible]

  PIERCE: The thing about Night Traffic is that I made it up. None of it happened. None of it is true.

  I stared at that [inaudible]. The entirety of my outing as an alcoholic had been redacted, hidden behind a tiny note that looked as if it concealed no more than a couple of mumbled words. It was brazen, but it was probably what I would have done if I had sat down and transcribed the interview myself. Had I done that? It was all too orderly. To my knowledge, I have never produced a line of writing during a blackout. It was appealing to imagine myself living a whole, productive life during the alcohol-induced voids in my memory, calmly tapping away at my keyboard or running underground boxing clubs or whatever, but it was utter fantasy. Blackouts are not magical. In reality, I came out of them knowing that I was lucky not to have choked on my own tongue or drowned in my vomit.