by Byers, Sam
‘Well,’ he said. ‘OK.’
There was another long pause.
‘You cunt,’ she said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Excuse me? Excuse me?’ She mocked his voice. ‘You actually think I’d ring you up to apologise? You actually think that I think that any of this is my fault?’
‘Any of what?’
‘Any of ANYTHING, you moron. Of course I don’t think it’s my fault. You know why? Because it’s NOT my fault, it’s YOUR fault, and even worse than all of this being your fault, I now know that not only do you NOT think it’s your fault, you actually think it’s MY fault or why else would you let me take full responsibility for it?’
‘I don’t even know what I’m supposed to …’
Then she’d hung up, and it had been the hang-up that had tipped him, perfectly, into utter impotent rage, shaped and fine-tuned over the rest of the day as he’d called and called, as he’d shouted at her voicemail and kicked his desk in frustration and pictured her calmly watching her phone as it rang, or reading back his abusive texts with that little smile of hers.
Sebastian and four or five of his cronies were installed in the car park. As Daniel pulled into his reserved parking space he found himself briefly flirting with the idea of simply reversing back out; not even going home but absconding, skipping town. What with Angelica, Katherine, work, and now Sebastian and his imbecilic retinue, a fugitive existence seemed increasingly attractive.
They were huddled in a little group, sharing coffee from a thermos and blowing on their hands, which were bound to be cold given what appeared to have been a group decision to wear fingerless gloves. Daniel locked the car and walked towards them, suddenly self-conscious in his well-shined black Oxfords and charcoal overcoat. He didn’t have a briefcase, though, having chosen instead to carry his papers in a battered canvas satchel. He liked the way it undercut both style and status; the way it hinted at an anti-authoritarian seam beneath the suave rock face of aspiration.
‘In the old days the generals used to meet on the battlefield,’ said Sebastian by way of greeting. Phrases like the old days annoyed Daniel. At what precise point in history did the old days end and the new days begin?
‘I try not to think of it as a battlefield,’ said Daniel, mustering a smile and at least a semblance of cheer. ‘It’s all a matter of interpretation.’
‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ said one of Sebastian’s leering retinue. No one seemed sure what he meant. His grin hung briefly, like a ball reaching the apex of its flight, then dropped.
‘How’s the flu?’ said Sebastian.
‘Not too bad, thank you.’
Daniel’s flu had, in fact, almost wholly abated, which, in much the same way as his boiler always sprang miraculously to life the moment he summoned a plumber, was what always happened whenever he went gratuitously public with an illness. So many things in life, it seemed, were cured by simple recognition.
‘Do thank Angelica for a lovely meal,’ beamed Sebastian.
‘I will,’ said Daniel, his annoyance operating on several tiers. Sebastian always thanked Angelica, then whenever he saw Daniel he asked him to thank Angelica too. Beyond his irritation that Sebastian pointedly never seemed to thank him for having them over for dinner, Daniel also got the sense that it was designed to imply, like much of what Sebastian said, that Daniel was somehow inattentive towards Angelica. On top of all this was the further annoyance that Sebastian only ever made these comments in the present situation, when there were onlookers; when the notion of them having dinner together seemed both odd and faintly inappropriate. He loved it, Daniel thought, this sense of moving between classes and agencies, of having a tentacle-like reach to all the major players. He probably pictured himself as some sort of Scarlet Pimpernel.
Briefly, Daniel entertained a fantasy of kicking him in the balls, or strangling him with his own ponytail. He imagined Sebastian slowly winding down like a broken toy. You’ve got a lot of hostility, he’d croak. You really need to work on your …
‘Busy day ahead?’
‘Yes,’ Daniel smiled. ‘And you?’
‘Oh, you know,’ said Sebastian, ‘same old same old. Not for much longer, though.’
‘Really? Are you giving up?’
Sebastian laughed. ‘I take it you’ve been following the news?’
‘Mmmhmm.’
‘An escalating situation necessitates an escalation in action.’
‘Is that Sun Tzu?’
‘No, it’s Sebastian Freud.’
‘Ah. So you’re escalating?’
‘Onwards and upwards,’ said Sebastian.
‘When you say onwards, does that mean …’
Sebastian tapped the side of his nose and smiled in what he clearly hoped was a knowing and inscrutable manner. ‘There’s an ancient Sanskrit expression,’ he said.
‘Well, work beckons,’ said Daniel.
‘Back to the grindstone,’ said Sebastian.
‘I didn’t know that was Sanskrit.’
‘No, it’s not. I was … The Sanskrit expression is …’
‘Don’t catch a chill,’ said Daniel, walking away.
He felt the casual waft of disdain in the air, heard chuckling behind him, and then, just as the green-tinged glass doors hissed aside at the touch of his swipe card, the sound of Sebastian mimicking his voice, rendering it as a privileged whine. ‘Work beckons …’
He was, he thought, angry. Was he angry? It was becoming difficult to tell these days. In a lot of ways, his relationship to anger was rather similar to his relationship with smoking. Having come to the conclusion that neither were good for him, he had given up both. Now, feeling as he did that his life was becoming dull, he pined for both. Yet where he was able to resist the pull of smoking with comparative ease, anger appeared increasingly seductive. At least with fags you could re-steel your resolve with the images of diseased lungs and blackened, crazy-pavement teeth that now adorned the packets. What was offered to people trying daily to tamp down their tempers? Pictures of broken plates? Mugshots of the domestically abused? There seemed to be no real motivating factors in staying calm, particularly, he thought, when so many people around him seemed to become angry so frequently and productively.
It wasn’t that he actually was angry, of course. That would have been simple. It was more that he missed its release, pined for it at times, and so found himself in the odd position of wishing he could be angry without actually, as he wished it, feeling particularly angry. This had now reached the point where he found himself fantasising about anger. In the lift, his mind sought out possible scenarios in which it would be not only acceptable to be angry but downright admirable. He dreamed of a heroic, righteous rage. I’ve never seen him like that, people would say with awe. I’ve never seen him so angry. Men would be intimidated by him; women would find him attractive. He’d develop the sense of having a whole other side.
Safely ensconced in his office, he sank into his leather armchair, dropped his canvas bag on the floor beside the desk, and turned on his computer. He had fifty-three high-priority emails. Recently, he’d enforced a new three-step priority matrix to help determine which emails needed to be read first. Sadly, everyone now marked their emails as high priority for fear they wouldn’t get read.
He looked out of the window at the rag-tag gaggle of proudly dishevelled demonstrators. He had to maintain a certain depth of focus to avoid his own semi-transparent image being overlaid on theirs. He was reluctant to see himself, a sad little man in a nicely furnished box, with nothing really to defend or attack, dreaming, like every sad little middle-class white man in the world, of a good old-fashioned fight that wouldn’t make him look bad.
He buzzed Clara, his secretary.
‘Morning Clara.’
‘Morning.’
‘How are you?’
‘Can’t complain.’
Clara was actually very gifted at complaining, so this statement, with which she started each new da
y, was something of a falsehood.
‘Great,’ said Daniel. ‘Could you bring me some coffee?’
‘Suppose.’
He leaned back in his chair, digging his mobile out of his pocket when it jabbed uncomfortably into his thigh. He scrolled the numbers idly, A through E; F through K. Katherine was the only person in his contacts listed solely by her first name.
‘Clara,’ he said into the buzzer.
‘I’m making it now. Give me a chance.’
‘Could you make a call for me?’
‘Before I make the coffee?’
‘Yes please.’
Clara called Katherine and put Daniel through.
‘Katherine?’
As he said it he realised he’d rehearsed this in his head more times than he could comfortably acknowledge. It would all, he knew, stem from his opening sounds. Katherine believed in beginnings, and her interpretation of his greeting would set the tone. He thought he’d done well: not too bright, not too flat; somehow both at ease and respectful of the wider context …
‘It’s um … It’s a bad line. I’ll call you back.’
It wasn’t a bad line, of course, meaning that somehow he had blown his opening. In the unnervingly long minutes while he waited for her to call back he examined the way he’d said her name from every possible angle and perspective. Katherine? Katherine? Katherine. Katherine. How should he have said it, for fuck’s sake? Maybe he shouldn’t have phrased it as a question. Maybe it came off as tentative. Was it redundant? After all, who else would have answered her phone? Katherine, he should have said. Full stop. It’s Daniel. Hi. No. Too cold. Should have just gone with Hey. Hey! Long time no speak. Christ.
His phone rang.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Hey yourself,’ said Katherine.
There was a difficult pause. Katherine tended not to break pauses, Daniel now remembered, often preferring to revel in the awkwardness of the moment. Comfort was cause for concern, even at a trivial, conversational level.
‘How, ah …’ He decided simply to start sentences in the hope that she would, as was her habit, finish them on his behalf.
‘How have I been?’
‘Yes.’
‘Great. Fantastic. Amazing.’
‘Great.’
‘You?’
‘Great, yeah. Really good.’
‘Great.’
‘Are you still, um …’
‘Yup. Same old same old.’
‘Mmmm.’
Another pause.
‘So God it’s been like, what …’ said Daniel.
‘A year? Something like that?’
‘Yeah. Must have been. Wow.’
‘Crazy.’
‘Anyway. It’s good to hear from you.’
‘Is it?’
He detected, immediately, the shift in tone. He felt like an insect negotiating the tines of a Venus flytrap.
‘Yes,’ he said quickly. ‘Of course it is.’
He could feel her weighing the sincerity of this statement.
‘So Nathan,’ he said, a little too hurriedly.
‘Yeah.’
‘How is he?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Katherine. ‘He left a message. I haven’t called back.’
‘Why haven’t you called him back?’
‘You know.’
‘Not really.’
‘Why should I take responsibility for this?’
‘Because he called you.’
‘Only because he doesn’t have your number.’
She meant, Daniel knew, that she was reluctant to deal with Nathan on her own and would welcome a degree of support from someone else who knew him. Not that she would say that.
Daniel swivelled gently in his chair so he could again look out the window. Clearly done with the thermos, the merry band outside was unfurling a gaudy new banner that said You Are What You Eat. Imaginative, he thought.
He realised he’d had a lingering sense of nameless dread, of something a-stink in the woodshed of his life, for months. Katherine, at least, was a dread he could name. There was something reassuring about that.
‘Look,’ he said.
A loud crunching came down the phone line.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘What are you eating? A car?’
‘Rice cake.’
‘Do you have to?’
‘No,’ she said, bearing down on what must have been at least half a rice cake at once. ‘Just want to.’
‘Right. So. Anyway.’
She sniffed.
‘Nathan,’ he said. ‘What about Nathan?’
‘Yup,’ she said flatly. ‘What about him?’
‘What,’ said Daniel, with pointed patience and precision, ‘shall we do … about Nathan?’
To his relief, she didn’t respond immediately. She seemed to be giving it genuine thought.
‘I’ve got a lot on,’ she said eventually.
‘Me too.’
‘But at the same time …’
‘Yeah. That’s what I think.’
‘It’s like … you know.’
‘I know.’
Neither of them said anything for a bit. Daniel had a sudden and slightly bizarre urge to remove one shoe and sock and pick at the sharp corner of his second toenail, which was digging into the flesh of the toe beside it. Wasn’t there a school of philosophy that encouraged the excision of that which caused you pain? Wasn’t it in the Bible? He rested his foot on the desk, unlaced his shoe, and peeled away his sock. He realised it was the first time the skin of his foot had met the air of his office. Funny, he thought, how certain parts of us never come into contact with things that other parts of us come into contact with every day. He tried to think of other examples, then realised that all the examples involved his feet, and that what he was actually realising was that he wore shoes all day which, now that he thought about it, wasn’t exactly a revelation.
‘What are you doing?’ said Katherine.
‘Thinking about my feet.’
‘Riiiiggghhhht.’
Clara walked in with his coffee.
‘Just put it there thank you Clara,’ said Daniel, pointing at the free patch of desk next to his foot. She set down the tray with a frown and left. He pressed the plunger on the cafetière and poured himself a cup.
‘Just there thank you Clara,’ said Katherine. ‘That’s it. And just tongue my balls while you’re there, there’s a dear.’
‘Touch of jealousy, perhaps?’
‘Whatever.’
‘So,’ he said, taking a sip of his coffee. ‘Nathan.’
‘I know, I know.’
‘What does your gut say?’
‘That you or I or we should do something.’
‘Agreed. That something being what?’
‘Why am I making all the decisions here?’
‘OK, OK. Let’s think this through.’
‘What’s to think through? Do you ever do anything without thinking it through?’
This was a fair point, Daniel thought. Maybe he should be a bit more reckless. Maybe it would be good to see Nathan again and get back in touch with that part of himself.
It struck him that the phrase a bit more reckless was inherently absurd. He was glad he hadn’t said it aloud.
‘Well what have you achieved so far?’ he said, sounding more petulant than he’d intended. If it was possible to hear someone smile down a phone line, then that was what he experienced as he said it: Katherine’s wry, valedictory sneer.
‘Tetchy,’ she said, pushing another rice cake into her mouth. ‘Take it you’re not smoking.’
‘Take it you still are.’
‘Made you give up, did she?’
‘No. Who?’
‘You know. She.’
He felt a slight lurch at his core; a tectonic shift. He wondered if Katherine knew. If she’d known all along.
‘You mean Angelica.’
‘If that’s her name. What’s she like?’
&
nbsp; ‘She’s nice.’
‘Nice.’
‘I like nice.’
‘Of course you do.’
‘Not everyone equates difficulty with passion, you know.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Anyway, what about you?’
‘I’m off men.’
‘Were you ever on them?’
‘That’s one of those statements that initially sounds snappy and witty but which, when you pick around at it, actually turns out not to mean anything.’
‘You’d know.’
‘Again …’
He gave up. She was pushing him around and he couldn’t remember how to do anything about it. Perhaps he’d never known. Perhaps he’d never wanted to know.
‘Let’s go and see him,’ said Katherine.
‘What?’
‘Let’s just arrange to go and see him. Or are you not able? Or don’t you want to? Or won’t she let you?’
‘None of the above. Maybe we should go and see him.’
‘Great. When?’
He faltered. ‘I … Um … Well, when’s he free?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Can’t you call him and ask?’
‘Can’t you?’
‘Jesus. Is that what it’s going to take to achieve something?’
‘Probably, yeah.’
‘What’s his number?’
She told him and he took it down.
‘When are you free?’ he asked.
‘Oh,’ she said, an odd drift to her voice. ‘I’ll be free.’
‘OK. That’s decided then.’
‘Yeah.’
There was a flatness to her tone now, as if her energy were fading. She sniffed. Daniel put his sock back on, then his shoe. He tucked the phone under his chin while he tied his laces. He heard a rustling from Katherine’s end of the phone, followed by more silence, and gathered that she’d run out of rice cakes. Outside his window, the protestors started an off-key rendition of ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’, even though no one was attempting to move them. He’d received three more high-priority emails since he’d last looked.
‘Good to hear from you,’ he said.
‘You too.’
‘I’ll call. It’ll be after the weekend.’
‘Understood.’
She hung up. He took a deep swig of his coffee and stared a moment at the swirling, lightly oiled surface of the brew. He scrolled blankly through his emails. He checked his schedule. He liked saying that, even to himself. I’ll check my schedule. Half his life, he thought, he’d longed to be the sort of person who had to check their schedule. He thought about Katherine. He was unable to think about her in her entirety. He had to break her into manageable pieces. He used to think this was because Katherine was Katherine. Now he knew that to be untrue, because he thought of Angelica in the same way. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, know someone whole. He would guess at them in pieces and either love the hypothetical sum of their parts or weigh them and find them wanting.