by Byers, Sam
‘Clara.’ He liked to line up his chin over his extended index finger when he pressed the button and spoke into the intercom, as if taking aim.
‘Hello.’
‘What’s my schedule?’
‘You have it there.’
‘Come in and tell me my schedule.’
She came in and read him his schedule. It helped.
The day passed in its usual gyroscopic way. He circled his office: a meeting here; a tour of this or that department there; back to the office; an interview; the office; a press release; a walk; the office. It was the circling that kept him upright.
He called it a day at six and switched off the lights behind him. Sebastian and his friends had already vacated the car park. It gave him a sense of satisfaction to think he’d put in more hours. He got in his car and drove slowly home, blinking in the glow of the streetlights across his frosted windows. He felt disassociated, dislocated. He kept thinking of Nathan at that last party: motionless, not even swaying to the music as however many hundred others danced around him. He remembered marvelling at the stillness, yet also feeling a pervasive sense of loss. Nathan had always brought motion; kinesis. It’s what Daniel looked to him for. Speed. The pulse of change. Seeing him so still, lost in all the motion he’d created, Daniel had known that something was over. He felt it again now as he drove. That sense of spinning to stand still. He wondered if it was merely a coincidence that, mere months after Nathan had vanished, he’d met Angelica. Without Nathan, it seemed, he and Katherine had unravelled all the more rapidly.
Arriving home, walking in the door, he found Sebastian sitting at the dining table.
‘Putting in the hours, eh?’ said Sebastian.
‘I think most people finish around six, don’t they?’ said Daniel, easing slightly awkwardly behind Sebastian’s chair in order to get to Angelica and kiss her.
‘Most people,’ said Sebastian tartly. ‘They do all sorts of things.’
‘Hello darling,’ said Daniel to Angelica. ‘How are you?’
‘Sebastian’s going national with his protest,’ said Angelica. ‘Love you my sweet.’
‘Love you too,’ said Daniel, kissing her again and stealing a glance at Sebastian. He felt a surge of satisfaction. Sebastian could go as national as he liked, so long as he was no longer camped out in the car park.
‘Daniel’s really been getting in touch with his affectionate side,’ said Angelica to Sebastian.
‘Great,’ said Sebastian, a little thrown. ‘Although of course I question the word affection.’
‘Oh that’s just Angelica being euphemistic,’ said Daniel, beaming at Sebastian. ‘I think it’s only natural, sadly natural you might say, the urge to downplay a passion as relentless and thoroughgoing as ours. Don’t you think, dear?’
Angelica was looking at him with her mouth slightly open. ‘Well, yes,’ she said, widening her eyes a little.
‘But you must feel the same, Sebastian, no? I mean such is your love for Plum that you must just fall on your knees daily and tell her that you worship her and adore her and that you’re basically her slave. Right?’
‘Right,’ said Sebastian.
‘So,’ said Daniel, pulling a chair out from the table and sinking back into it with a satisfied sigh. ‘The cows.’
‘Um, yeah,’ said Sebastian, faltering slightly before rallying. ‘We’re going on the road to defend the cows.’
‘This cull has got completely out of hand,’ said Angelica. ‘Sebastian was just explaining that in Thailand for example they actually nurse their livestock back to health.’
‘There hasn’t been any BIE in Thailand,’ said Daniel flatly. ‘It’s just the UK.’
‘No, but it’s the principle,’ said Sebastian.
‘Not really. They’re dealing with different diseases. The difference in response reflects that.’
‘You can’t just kill a whole race of creatures,’ said Sebastian, sucking his lips briefly over his teeth as if to imply barely contained emotion. ‘I mean, have we learnt nothing from Auschwitz?’
‘Cattle aren’t a race,’ said Daniel. ‘They’re a species.’
‘Still,’ said Sebastian. ‘It’s an essentially fascist response.’
‘So who’s Hitler?’
‘We’re all Hitler,’ said Sebastian meaningfully.
‘Then who are you demonstrating against? Yourself?’
‘I think you’re using a very limited definition of protest.’
‘What’s your definition?’
‘I possibly wouldn’t use the word protest at all.’
‘What word would you use?’
Sebastian thought for several seconds. ‘Action,’ he said finally.
‘That’s a great word,’ said Angelica.
‘So who are you taking action against?’ said Daniel.
‘Why does action have to be against anyone? Why can’t it just … be?’
‘OK. So what’s the nature of your action, and what is it motivated by?’
‘The nature of our action is essentially pacifist and ecological and it’s motivated by a deep concern for and …’ Sebastian raised a finger in the air and leaned forward, punctuating his point, ‘empathy with every living creature on this planet.’
‘You empathise with every living creature on this planet?’
‘We are all one creature.’
‘So we’re putting ourselves into Auschwitz?’
‘Yes, but we don’t realise it.’
‘So, you’re taking action against ourselves to stop ourselves putting ourselves into a death camp?’
Sebastian looked at Daniel a very long time.
‘Daniel’s in one of those moods,’ said Angelica. Then, as a sort of PS: ‘Love you crumpet.’
‘Love you sweetie pie,’ said Daniel. ‘Do you think you can fit all that on a banner, Sebastian?’
Sebastian was still looking at Daniel with what seemed to be a mixture of disgust and trepidation. After a while he smiled, leaned back, and folded his hands.
‘You’ll have to ask Angelica,’ he said smugly. ‘She’s coming along to help.’
Daniel did his best not to look shaken, but sensed it was a losing battle from which he almost certainly emerged looking shaken.
‘Love you, dear,’ said Angelica, with a distinct lack of confidence. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
Daniel looked over at Sebastian, who was busying himself retying his ponytail.
‘Don’t worry, Dan,’ he said, sickly-sweet. ‘I’ll take very good care of her.’
‘Is Plum going?’ said Daniel.
‘Sadly not,’ said Sebastian. ‘She’s really tied up with the internet side of things right now.’
‘Oh,’ said Angelica. ‘I thought she was going too.’
There was a long pause. Daniel looked at Sebastian and Angelica in turn. Sebastian and Angelica looked at Daniel. Daniel waited to see if they would look at each other. They didn’t. He wondered if he was being lied to. Then he wondered if he was only wondering that because he’d done no small amount of lying himself. It struck him, briefly, that now might be an opportune time, tactically speaking, to announce certain pieces of news of his own.
‘Is that something I should have mentioned?’ said Sebastian. ‘It honestly didn’t occur to me at all.’
‘Oh,’ said Angelica. ‘I mean, obviously it’s fine, I was just surprised, that’s all. She’ll be so sorry not to be there.’
‘When are you off?’ said Daniel, in whom Sebastian’s three-second distraction of a statement had caused an almost total reversal of intention.
‘Soon as,’ said Sebastian. ‘Or maybe tomorrow.’
Angelica was looking at Daniel slightly oddly, the way a particularly difficult sudoku puzzle might be regarded by someone who was very good at sudoku: briefly, mildly, happily thrown.
‘Are you sure you’re OK with this?’ she said.
‘Absolutely,’ said Daniel, meaning absolutely not. ‘Love you dear.’
/> ‘Ahh,’ she said. ‘I am such a lucky woman.’
‘Hey,’ said Daniel, winking. ‘I’m the lucky one around here.’
‘This is, um …’ said Sebastian.
It was indeed um, thought Daniel. It was as if he’d pushed through some sort of barrier, on the other side of which all polarities of sincerity were reversed. His voice was changing. His very physicality was becoming cheesy. He’d just winked, for fuck’s sake.
As if sensing the mounting surrealism of the situation, and perhaps keen to lend his dispassionate eye, Giggles came lumbering into the room, his backside nonchalantly swaying; folds of flesh rippling under his fur.
‘Look who’s here,’ said Daniel, by now acting so far out of character that he was actually scared to do anything remotely normal lest doubt should fog the heads of his audience. He bent down, grunting slightly as he seized Giggles around the torso and heaved the animal onto his lap. ‘Hey boy,’ he said. ‘Oooff. Who’s a big fella.’
‘Are you going to look after Daddy while Mummy’s away?’ said Angelica. ‘Are you going to take extra good care of him?’
‘Yes you are,’ said Daniel, manipulating Giggles’s flab in such a way as to suggest fondness. ‘Yes you are, aren’t you boy?’
Giggles looked at Daniel with what Daniel would have described, had he been in any way anthropomorphically inclined, as mute scepticism.
‘Well I suppose I should be getting on,’ said Sebastian.
‘Of course,’ said Daniel. ‘You must have God knows how many banners to furl.’
Sebastian gave him a withering look which by pure free association Daniel then saw transferred to the face of the hulking tabby on his lap.
‘There’s actually an awful lot to co-ordinate,’ said Sebastian.
‘How long do you think you’ll be away?’ said Daniel.
‘Just a few days,’ said Angelica.
‘Very difficult to tell,’ said Sebastian.
‘I could go and come back,’ said Angelica.
‘Where will you be based?’ said Daniel.
‘Not far,’ said Angelica. ‘Right, Sebastian?’
‘Very difficult to tell,’ said Sebastian.
Late in the evening Daniel’s father called to say he’d died. This was something he was periodically inclined to do.
‘I’ve been counting,’ he said. ‘My pulse is gone and I haven’t taken a breath since lunch.’
He was specific about the symptoms of his death. A whiteness; voices; the presence of other souls.
‘Dad,’ Daniel said.
‘I haven’t got a pulse. I’m not breathing. It sounds like I’m breathing but it’s not really air. I cut my finger and it didn’t bleed and when I went outside nobody could see me.’
‘You were outside?’
‘But it wasn’t outside. It couldn’t have been. They couldn’t see me.’
‘Dad,’ Daniel said. ‘If you were really dead, how could you call to tell me?’
A pause at the other end of the phone. A deep breath. Daniel could picture him – thin as a sparrow’s leg in frayed pyjamas; his skin soapy-pale; slightly hunched, as if he had to lean into the call to achieve maximum connection. His answer took several seconds to arrive, a space of time in which Daniel imagined he could hear his father’s thoughts as they ground against each other, as one struggled to beget another.
‘They let you,’ his father said at last. ‘They give you one phone call.’
At night, in bed, after they had either made love or, as was the case this evening, not, Daniel and Angelica would often pass the time between turning off the lights and falling asleep by talking about other people. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that discussion of themselves, of their life together, was not to be conducted in such an intimate space.
‘Sebastian’s funny, isn’t he?’ said Angelica.
‘Funny how?’
‘Just funny.’
They were lying side by side in the not-quite-dark of their bedroom, the glow of a nearby streetlight turning their thin blind into an amber screen.
‘I suppose,’ said Daniel.
‘Do you think things are alright between him and Plum?’
‘Hard to say,’ said Daniel. ‘They seemed happy at dinner.’
‘He always makes a show, though, doesn’t he? Like a big show of what a great couple they are. I suppose sometimes I wonder if he’d need to do that so much if …’
‘If they were actually happy.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hard to say.’
‘I mean, do you think Plum really gets him?’
‘Gets him how?’
‘Well,’ she thought for a moment. ‘He’s … I mean there’s so much going on with him, isn’t there? He’s well-read, he’s intelligent, he’s talented. I just wonder if sometimes he feels frustrated.’
‘I think he rather enjoys being with someone he feels superior to,’ said Daniel. ‘I can’t really imagine him being with anyone he found threatening.’
‘You don’t like him very much, do you?’
‘I don’t dislike him.’
‘You don’t have to like him.’
‘I know.’
More silence, during which Daniel stared at a thin blade of streetlight creeping past the edge of the blind. He felt he knew what Angelica was saying better than she did.
‘You’re OK with this, aren’t you?’ she said, reaching for his leg under the covers and gripping him lightly by the thigh.
‘Of course,’ he said, giving her hand a little squeeze. ‘Love you sweetie.’
‘Love you Daniel,’ she said.
It struck him that she probably did; that he probably did; that Katherine had probably loved him too and that he might at one stage have loved her. He felt the differences between him and Angelica more acutely in bed than anywhere. Angelica’s softness; the basic decency of her fears. It made him sad in a way that was difficult to grasp. He was, he thought, rotting from the inside out. He was handling everything badly. He put himself in certain situations because he resented not being put in them by others, but then resented the situations when he was in them. He wanted to be leaned on. He was nothing if not needed; indeed, he was needy if not needed, but then …
He remembered bedtimes with Katherine, the way he’d tried and failed to fall asleep amidst the hum of tension from her side of the bed. It was like sleeping with a uranium fuel rod: you couldn’t see the mutation, the clumsy over-division of cells it set off inside you, but it was there, and it was permanent. And now he was the source, that same malignant glow under the covers. Had any progress been made? Had he learned anything at all? Yes, the register was different, but the basic approach – tactical, self-protecting, reflexively strategic – was essentially the same. He couched his disagreements in Angelica’s language of unconditional positive regard just as he had previously battled Katherine in her own language of hostility and aggression. He was kind to Angelica because it was easier than being honest. He had been unkind to Katherine because it was easier than being honest and safer than being kind.
Angelica squeezed his thigh; rolled slightly towards him; kissed him gently on the apex of his cheekbone. Everyone wants to be loved. He wanted to be loved. He wanted, he thought, to make people love him, to need him, and now he had. He’d wanted, from the earliest age he was able to recall, to grow up, to be an adult, and now he had, and now he was, and now he wanted to regress, and climb aboard a bus with blacked-out windows bound for some nameless green-belt field where someone would water-pistol chemicals onto his tongue and steer him into a fog of music so loud that it felt like a shoal of nibbling fish setting to work on the dead skin around his life.
‘I love you,’ said Angelica.
He thought about Nathan. He’d felt superior to him once. He’d predicted Nathan’s slip, had felt vindicated when it happened because it reminded Daniel that there was a reason he wasn’t Nathan. Daniel could dabble. He always dabbled. He was hands-clean. He could envy Nathan
and watch him fail and then go back to being the man he really was. And he had. And he’d cheated on Katherine because he could, and now Angelica could cheat on him and he could cheat on her, and in a way, he had.
‘I love you too,’ he said, and he did and he didn’t.
He felt Angelica soften into sleep beside him and wondered if she was dreaming of Sebastian. It struck him that, even as he lay awake and dreamed open-eyed about violence and anger and the things he wanted to do but couldn’t, he was circling closer towards loving her again, simply because she seemed to be circling away. He reached out and touched her shoulder. He wanted to tell her. By reflex, she rolled and wrapped her arms around him, and he could feel her breath against his cheek and ear, and could smell the hot scent of sleep across her neck and chest as he nestled his face closer, throwing his arm across her hip and squeezing until she exhaled, just slightly. He wouldn’t be able to sleep, he thought. Then he did.
Nathan’s parents, as became clear to him during the time he spent in their company, never mixed. They co-existed, interacted at times, but consistently fell short of cohesion. His mother was increasingly hot and blustery, moving at speed through the house, revelling in her ability to manage each small crisis. His father, meanwhile, trailed her like a lingering odour. Clearly so accustomed to not being listened to that the entire act of communication had now been reduced to a mere formality that allowed them, after the event, to say in all confidence that yes they certainly had told each other about this or that because they remembered it quite vividly, they now conversed almost entirely in the round.