‘Don’t know,’ I told her. ‘Jack says she’s lovely.’
‘He’d know.’
‘He’d be biased. She won’t be as lovely as you.’
‘I’m not lovely.’
‘Of course you are,’ I said, watched by my team. Judy and I played a few more rounds of that game, and then she rang off undecided.
Half an hour before I was going to Jack’s house, she decided not to come. She didn’t know Lisa and didn’t know whether she’d like her. She had some things she could be getting on with.
She was looking at the new shelves when she said that.
‘You’re staying here?’ I asked.
‘Where else?’ she asked, challengingly.
‘Well, you usually stay at your mother’s in the week. I thought you’d be staying there.’
‘I thought I’d come round here instead. I’ve never been here when you’ve been out. I can get to know the place properly. You haven’t got anything you don’t want me to see, have you? Anything naughty hidden away?’
Christ, yes, of course I had. I had things that I could only look at myself when my stomach was at its strongest. What if she went through the videos? What if she looked behind the wardrobe? I didn’t know what was back there but it made the spare room smell in the summer.
‘No,’ I said. ‘See you later.’
Because I was worried about what she might uncover I left immediately. I called at the off-licence and got the bottle of disturbingly timberish wine, and then I got to Jack’s too early. I didn’t want to interrupt Emmerdale, other than by bombing the television company, and so I was hanging around, holding a bottle, trying not to look suspicious.
I didn’t know Lisa. I’d met her, apparently. It had been after a few drinks and I didn’t remember it well. I didn’t remember her at all. It had been one of those nights that you can’t recall without prompting. There would be gaps in my memory, and then Jack would tell me things I’d done. Slowly the missing time would come into focus, a black mass of terrible things and people I’d need to avoid for a week or two or forever.
I’d been wondering whether Jack was a reliable witness. I was wondering whether he might not be giving me memories I didn’t have. He’d told me I was a murderer when I was drunk. He had a vested interest in getting me to remember things that he thought he remembered.
Perhaps, whenever I’d been drunk, he told me that I’d done things I hadn’t done. Would I know? I wasn’t sure. I remembered them, sort of. In an unclear way.
A small dog barked at me from behind a large gate. I told it to piss off, and that was the moment Lisa chose to open the door.
‘There,’ she said. ‘I said there was someone hanging about.’
‘That’s not a pervert,’ said Jack from behind her. ‘Well, it is, but it’s one we know. Hello Sammy boy. Coming in, then?’
V
Lisa and Jack were at a different stage in their relationship than Judy and I. Judy and I were going out together. Judy often came to my house, and sometimes stayed for the night or a few days, but she left most of her things with her parents. Sometimes she left her sense of humour with them, and visited me without it. We were a couple but there was nothing a lawyer could fleece you for. We went on holidays together, and that was the longest we managed.
Jack and Lisa had advanced to the living together stage. Lisa had given up the comforts of home for the discomforts of Jack. I knew what it would be like. There’d be empty cans in pyramids, plates that hadn’t been washed hiding under chairs, fewer chairs than gadgets. There’d be a single bed with an ominous mushroomy smell and a stiff blanket. There’d be something in the fridge that had evolved from cheese and that moved stealthily every now and then. The freezer would never have been defrosted. There would be rumours of a hoover in a cupboard somewhere upstairs. Only the video recorder, the stereo, and the games console would be clean.
Something had happened, however. It was as though someone had removed the inside of Jack’s house and replaced it with a new one. I knew that Judy had sneaked cushions into my house, and the odd throw or rug. Lisa had replaced everything. The last time I’d been there, after the party in Stourbridge, I’d been too drunk to notice.
‘Where’s your house?’ I asked him.
‘This is what it looked like. Underneath.’
I imagined the clean-up: skips laden with chunks of matted hair wrenched from plugholes, clotted lumps of waxy material gouged from under the microwave, shedding dried peas and fingernail cuttings as they went. I remembered clots of fur rolling under the bed like mad puppies. Had all of that gone? Where to? Who would have taken it?
‘How long did it take?’
‘Couple of days, really. Did it one weekend. Lisa came round, did the upstairs. I did down here. Swine of a job but it needed to be done. Coffee?’
‘Have you cleaned the kettle?’
‘Binned it. It had limescale. Looked like it had fucking Windscale in it. Spoons had to go as well. So, do you want a coffee?’
‘Do you have decaf?’
‘No, we have coffee. Decaf. What do you need that for? You need waking up, is what you need.’
‘Leave him alone,’ said Lisa, moving between us and taking the bottle of wine. She gave it an enquiring look. ‘He’s just joking, he’s like this with everybody.’
‘I know. He’s always been unpleasant.’
‘I don’t know what I see in him.’ She looked up at him, making me think of mad puppies for the second time in five minutes. She was little and perky, blond and curly. She seemed to be made of bundled energy, all fizz and attitude. They gave each other a long look. They were obviously delighted with one another. I wondered whether Judy and I looked like that. I was fairly sure I gave Judy the puppy look, but she gave me something far more businesslike. Lisa skipped past me to the kitchen, and her breasts did the same. They were little and perky, like her. I tried not to notice them. I thought of Jack getting his hands on them. It seemed unfair. I bet he has pet names for them, I thought. Judy’s breasts didn’t have pet names, and access to them was on a strictly limited basis.
‘I thought you didn’t like short women,’ I remembered.
‘What?’ asked Jack, looking towards the kitchen, which was where Lisa had skipped to. ‘Short? She is, really. Hadn’t noticed. Kettle on, then?’
‘Kettle on!’ said Lisa, bubbling out of the kitchen. She hugged him and then vanished again. There was a lot of clattering.
‘Dunno how she cooks,’ said Jack, leading the way to the front room. ‘Seems to do it by banging things together. All noise and swearing and then, bingo! there’s your tea.’
‘Does she use the microwave?’
I had fond memories of Jack’s microwave. He’d got it cheap off someone in a pub. It had taken two of us to carry it home. It had been one of the first ones made, and it had lasted because it was very solidly built. Even then, the modern ones were compact things with panels that you touched to set them to defrost or incinerate. This one looked like a wardrobe on its side. There was a tiny door set into the front. It looked like the sort of door you’d expect to see in a submarine. The door was opened by operating two catches, which gave satisfying clunks. Then the door could be jemmied open without much effort, revealing a space the size of a shoebox.
‘What’s in the rest of it?’ I had asked.
‘Fucking lathes, by the weight of it,’ Jack had said.
Under the door there was a dial, with a pointer. There was no scale for it to point to. Next to it was a switch. It looked like the switch that Dr Frankenstein regretted throwing five minutes after throwing it. Above it was a word in Cyrillic. Below it was a longer one. Plugged in, the microwave hummed ominously. You’d seal some unlucky foodstuff inside the tiny compartment, twirl the dial for the sake of appearances, and push the switch down.
Jack never pushed the switch. By this stage of the operation he would be in another room.
The switch would click into place, and that would seem t
o be it. Then, taking you by surprise no matter how often you used it, the machine would suddenly give a long fizzing hum on an unsteadily falling note, like a mechanical sigh. The light inside the compartment would flicker on and off, settling on a gloomy white glow. The kitchen lights would dim. The foodstuff would revolve, and microwaves that you could almost see would fill the air around the microwave. The air would hiss and light up. I was sure that if you stood in the right place you’d be x-rayed, revealed as bones. Jack was sure that if you stood in the wrong place you’d be cooked, reduced to bones. The air would crackle like the air under high-tension wires. Your hair began to move, all by itself, in waves. Your nose would dry up. A bell would ring and startle you, and the microwave would slowly wind down, the crackling air settling, the almost visible microwaves folding back inside the machine, the tiny light going out.
You’d approach it with some trepidation. You’d unplug the microwave for safety’s sake and open the door. Whatever you had put in there would have become a wizened black thing the size and shape of a walnut. We tried all sorts of things – small loaves, eggs, fish, books, shoes, whatever would fit in there. We’d fire it up, the microwave would give out its Russian sigh – zhhhhuuum – and Jack would go to another room until it was all over.
‘It’s gone,’ Jack said.
‘What is?’
‘The microwave. Useless thing. Used to make all me rings hot. Prince Albert, nipples, the lot. With Lisa being done as well, it had to go. Too risky.’
‘Where did you take it?’
‘Skip.’
‘Two skips,’ said Lisa, frothing past with steaming mugs. ‘Took two skips and then we still had to go to the tip. Two skips and a trip to the tip.’
The last was called over her shoulder, as she was already on her way to another part of the house. She left the mugs next to us.
‘Does she ever sit down?’
‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Jack. ‘Full of beans. Full of go. Perky, though. You think she’s short?’
He looked worried. I told him she was fine.
I looked around the room. It had been decorated, I noticed. The walls had been done in some sort of textured paint and finished in a dull red. It reminded me of flowerpots. There was a new carpet, too. It was slightly too small for the room, which seemed strange. Everything else seemed to have been done with care and attention. There were new shelves, too.
They looked better than my shelves.
Lisa arrived from everywhere and sat next to him on the sofa. Even sitting still she gave the impression of motion. She seemed to be made of rubber bands and springs.
‘So what do you do then?’ she asked me.
‘I just work in an office.’
‘There,’ she said, turning her attention back to Jack. ‘Not everyone works in a factory.’
‘Printers.’
‘Printers, factory, whatever. The point is, you could get a job in an office.’
‘Boring,’ said Jack, who had never been in an office as far as I knew.
‘Ignore him,’ said Lisa, shuffling across the cushions. ‘The last time he was in an office was when he was stopped by customs.’
‘Customs? Where?’
‘Airport, where’d you fucking think?’ said Jack.
‘I didn’t know you’d been away.’
‘Been a few places. You’ve been on holiday with Jude, yeah?’
We’d been to the Lake District.
‘The Lake District,’ I said. ‘Walking.’
‘There,’ said Lisa, bouncing up from the sofa. ‘I said so. All Jack wants to do is sit on beaches. I like to walk.’
I was sure she did. I imagined her hurtling off, only occasionally to be glimpsed as she made her way to the top of each of the nearby mountains before running back to see what was keeping you.
I realized that I was thinking about her quite a lot. I was imagining her decorating, walking, naked. I didn’t think about Judy like that. I wasn’t sure whether I ever had. I supposed that I must have done. Judy was something different, an ornament or a picture. She looked exactly right. She looked finished, but Lisa seemed more complete. She picked up the empty mugs and took them clattering to the kitchen. She returned with a large round tin.
‘Biscuits!’ she said, opening the tin and presenting it to us. It was full of those Rich Tea biscuits that are outlawed outside England on the grounds that they’re too dull to eat. I took one and nibbled at it. It was like eating plywood. I thought of the woodlice at home, chewing their way through the joists. Perhaps if I got them some Rich Tea biscuits they’d leave the house alone.
I took another bite. Joists would have more flavour.
‘I reckon he could do with piercings,’ said Jack. ‘Make him less boring. Liven up the office.’
‘He might like it,’ said Lisa. ‘We could do him one tonight. Have we got anything sharp?’
‘There must be something we could use. Hatpin?’
I hoped they were joking.
‘Quick piercing to wake him up,’ said Jack. ‘Might help him with his memory problems.’
‘I don’t have memory problems,’ I said.
‘Must be me then,’ said Jack. A silence settled.
‘Do us a coffee,’ said Lisa, and Jack went to the kitchen. I’d never seen him following orders before. I carried on gnawing my way through the biscuit.
‘Have another!’ cried Lisa, flying across the room and settling on most of the sofa. ‘Go on, if you want one. We’ve got another packet.’
‘Lovely,’ I said, taking one. ‘Another packet?’
‘In the kitchen. He’s probably eating them now. We probably won’t get one. He’s a little nibbler. Was he like that when you were at school?’
‘I don’t remember him eating, really. I remember him eating a weevil once. It was crawling across his desk, and he ate it.’
‘Why?’
‘To impress one of the girls. Laney Hansen, I think it was. Funny-looking girl. His taste’s improved.’
‘What did he mean about your memory? Never mind, he’s back.’
Jack had returned, carrying three mugs. Lisa had carried three mugs of coffee in a way suggesting that it was easy, even if you did happen to be moving in several directions at the time. Jack carried three mugs in a way that suggested that two was the upper limit. Coffee sprang out of a mug, dropped through the air in a brown lump, and burst onto the carpet.
‘Cloth!’ said Lisa, zooming to the kitchen and returning with a cloth, which she used to make the stain larger. ‘That’ll fade,’ she said, leaving the cloth where it was and landing on the sofa like a bomb.
I’d noticed that the carpet wasn’t the right size for the room. There was a gap between it and the skirting board. I wondered why they’d left it like that, after they’d gone to the trouble of putting carpet edgers all around the room.
It was probably a style thing. I don’t always get style things.
Lisa put the lid on the biscuits.
‘That’s enough of those,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to get fat. Fatter,’ she giggled, tweaking Jack’s midriff. She took the biscuits away.
‘Tell you what, mate,’ said Jack, ‘I’m not going to get fat on those fucking biscuits. Fucking horrible things.’
Lisa returned from the kitchen with my wine and three small glasses. She’d opened the wine, of course. She could have done it with her fingertips. Her hair curled and frothed and her little perky breasts trundled to and fro under her blouse. I realized that Lisa and Jack were both looking at me looking at her breasts.
‘He was flirting with me!’ Lisa said. ‘Before you came in he was saying you had good taste in girls. That sounds like flirting.’
‘He’s done worse,’ said Jack.
‘I’m sure,’ said Lisa. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I used to be a bit of a tearaway. You know. Nothing really. Not by today’s standards.’
Jack looked ready to disagree. I didn’t want him
to. I wasn’t sure how she’d take sitting in the same room as a murderer. Alleged murderer.
I thought of a way to divert her attention. I asked whether I could use the toilet.
‘I dunno,’ said Jack. ‘I’ve seen you after a drink. We’ll have to replace the carpet. And the wallpaper.’
Lisa said it would be fine, and I went upstairs. The unaccustomed tidiness went up with me. The landing had been something you passed through on your way to bed. Now it had pictures on the walls. Prints of landscapes. The light at the top of the stairs worked, and it had a shade.
The bathroom shone. My reflection looked baffled at me from chrome surfaces and polished mirrors. A wall of white tiles behind an iron bath glowed like daylight. I touched them, thinking my hand would slide across them. I didn’t think there’d be any friction. There wasn’t. My hand glided with a quiet squeak. I felt a sharp pain and pulled my hand back. Turning it, I saw a thin cut across the palm. The cut widened as I opened my hand and began to bleed.
I didn’t want to bleed on the clean carpet so I held my hand and turned the cold water on. A loose screw on the cold water tap gouged a little hole in my other hand, and that began to bleed too. I looked at the bright tiles and saw that their edges were raw and sharp.
All at once I saw a lot of sharp edges. There were loose screws poking from under shelves and out of the taps. There were splinters angling out of the shelves and cabinets. A careless razor blade lay on the bath, next to a wire brush.
I can’t swear to it, but the edge of the toilet seat looked like it had been sharpened.
I thought of the textured paint on the walls downstairs, the long blades all around the living room walls. In the kitchen the texture had been more like sandpaper. I thought about the exposed carpet edgers. They’d looked like something a fakir would sleep on.
A wire was bent out of a wicker bin.
‘Come on!’ shouted Jack from somewhere else in the house. ‘What are you doing up there? You’ll go blind mate.’
Light flared from a million bright edges. It was more a booby trap than a bathroom. The bleeding stopped after a long while, and I looked at my cold hands. They were white and wounded. I took them downstairs, noticing the splinters on the banisters and the places where the varnish had been teased into ridges.
Seeing the Wires Page 11