by Byers, Sam
‘Where’s Nathan?’ he asked Katherine, who was slouched moodily at one end of the dining table flicking her cigarette lighter on and off. ‘And what’s burning?’
‘Nathan’s gone,’ she said flatly. ‘Nothing’s burning.’
‘Gone where?’ Daniel felt a quick, hot wave of panic as he realised it was all over, followed by what would have been relief had it not been tempered by the niggling sense that he had, in some adult and therefore critical way, failed.
Katherine shrugged. ‘Just gone. Had enough. Said to tell you he was sorry, thanks and everything, but he had to go.’
Daniel sat down at the opposite end of the table and pulled Nathan’s half-finished beer towards him. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Shit.’
‘Yeah,’ said Katherine.
‘Maybe I should call him,’ said Daniel, patting his pockets for his phone.
‘I’d maybe give that a few days,’ said Katherine.
‘Right,’ said Daniel. ‘Yes, of course.’
They sat in silence, Daniel continuing the work Nathan had begun on the label of the beer bottle, Katherine continuing to click her lighter on and off. Now that the evening was essentially over, Daniel found he just wanted it to be completely over.
‘That’ll be Angelica,’ he said pointlessly as footsteps sounded on the stairs.
‘Really?’ said Katherine.
‘Oh,’ said Angelica, perching herself on Daniel’s lap and looking around. ‘Where’s Nathan?’
‘Gone, apparently,’ said Daniel.
‘That’s such a shame.’ Angelica sighed, giving the statement an appropriate moment of concern, then deliberately brightened with a show-must-go-on smile. ‘Katherine. What can we get you to drink?’
‘I’m OK – I’m waiting for a lift,’ said Katherine. She mustered what might have passed for a smile, but seemed to give up on it the moment it arose, letting her face drop back in defeat.
‘OK,’ said Angelica gently. ‘Well, I’m going to have another cup of tea. So I’ll put the kettle on, and if your friend hasn’t arrived then …’ She made a vague gesture and wandered into the kitchen.
Katherine stared at Daniel.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Do, er, do you need any help with that tea, dear?’ Daniel called through to the kitchen.
‘No, no,’ said Angelica.
‘Right,’ said Daniel.
‘You two chat,’ said Angelica.
‘Yes Daniel,’ said Katherine. ‘Let’s chat.’
The doorbell rang. Daniel was out of his seat before the chime had even faded. Angelica came out from the kitchen.
‘That’ll be Sebastian,’ she said. ‘I’ll …’
‘No,’ said Daniel, already half-running for the door. ‘You make the tea. I’ll, er … I’ll just …’
He opened the front door. He had never in his life greeted Sebastian with anything even approaching the relief he felt now. All he had to do, he thought, was set Sebastian going. Lead him through, introduce him to Katherine, ask him about the protest, and he’d be off. Katherine’s lift would arrive before Sebastian had even made it through his central ideological precepts.
Opening the door, however, Daniel quickly felt his plan turn to tatters. Sebastian looked wild-eyed and filmed with sweat. He was shifting from foot to foot in a manner that was more than a little unnerving.
‘Sebastian,’ said Daniel. ‘Come in.’
‘No time for that,’ said Sebastian. ‘Come out here.’
‘Why?’
‘I need to show you something. You’re cool, right?’
‘Well, ah, I think so but … Are you sure you don’t want to …’ He was about to suggest that Sebastian show whatever it was to Angelica, but then he remembered the vertigo-inducing silence and general bad energies of the room behind him.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course. Which way?’
‘So,’ said Angelica brightly. ‘This is funny, isn’t it?’
Katherine, who had drifted into the kitchen, eyed Angelica as she made the tea, watching her facility with everything. Her manner, Katherine thought, was irritating. She almost certainly subscribed to the philosophy that being kind to others led to them being kind to you – the exact antithesis of Katherine’s philosophy. This is what you turned into if you bought into all that stuff, Katherine thought. All that crap about love and kindness and vegetarianism.
‘Hilarious,’ said Katherine.
Angelica blinked but didn’t respond.
‘Daniel’s told me a lot about you,’ said Angelica.
‘Oh?’ said Katherine near-automatically. ‘He hasn’t mentioned you much.’
‘No,’ said Angelica, apparently unfazed. ‘He’s not really like that. Do you take sugar? Since your lift hasn’t arrived yet I thought I’d do you a tea.’
‘Like what?’ said Katherine, lighting a cigarette. ‘Two please.’
‘Forthcoming,’ said Angelica with a smile, spooning sugar into Katherine’s tea and taking it back through to the dining table. ‘Here you go.’
‘Thanks,’ said Katherine, sitting down opposite her.
‘I think it’s great you two can get along like this,’ said Angelica.
Katherine laughed despite herself. ‘Get along like what?’
Angelica smiled. ‘Oh, I think you get along,’ she said. ‘In your own way.’
Katherine wasn’t sure what this meant but found it annoying nonetheless. The thought of someone else knowing Daniel, as in knowing him well, was surprisingly upsetting. After all, one of the things they’d clung to through their time together had been the notion that each knew the other better than it would ever be possible for anyone else to know them. She realised that she’d always assumed, after they’d broken up, that Daniel would simply stop existing, not just as far as she or even others were concerned, but as far as he was concerned, that he would no longer leave a tangible trace in the world. She thought of those twins, separated at birth, reunited in later life to find themselves with matching jobs and houses and partners. There was an element of that in meeting Angelica, she thought. In knowing the same person, they somehow were the same person, and it wasn’t a person Katherine wanted to be.
She wondered what, specifically, Daniel saw in this pretty little void, and then wondered if any of the things he saw in Angelica were things he’d also seen in her, Katherine. Because people had types, did they not? Men, in particular, were unimaginative; fixed of border. There had to be similarities.
‘So how did you two meet?’ said Katherine.
‘In a bar,’ said Angelica, rolling her eyes. ‘Predictable or what?’
Katherine managed a smile. She tried to picture Daniel chatting someone up. When she’d met him she’d had to do everything: approach him, seduce him, ensure he didn’t startle. I know you want to ask me out for coffee. She’d felt like Dian Fossey, camped out in the jungle with her hand extended while Daniel roamed the thicket and cast her the occasional cautious glance. Whatever he’d seen in Angelica, it had clearly been something he wanted, unlike whatever it was he’d seen in Katherine. Or had he just evolved? If he had, Katherine thought, then it was surely as a result of being with her. Christ, she’d been the fucking making of him. She’d made something of him and then he’d left her, and he had, quite clearly, ended up better off, too. How was that possible? She used to pity him, for Christ’s sake. And now look. What did she have? Who did she have? Keith?
‘I guess it’s all worked out, hasn’t it?’ said Katherine.
Angelica nodded. ‘Touch and go for a while, though, wasn’t it?’
Katherine smirked. ‘When isn’t it?’
‘Are you always so cynical?’ said Angelica.
‘No,’ said Katherine. ‘Sometimes I’m asleep.’
Angelica laughed.
‘He must have changed,’ said Katherine. ‘When I knew him he’d never have chatted anyone up in a bar.’
‘Oh,’ said Angelica. ‘W
e’d both had a few by then.’ She made a queasy face. ‘Christmas spirit and all that.’
Katherine felt a kind of distant nausea; a far-off rumbling that spoke of storms to come.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so you haven’t been together long at all, then?’
‘Over a year,’ said Angelica. Before she even got to the word year her face seemed to falter under the pressure of what she’d said. Her mouth flapped for a moment, her eyes suddenly panicked. ‘Oh God,’ she said.
Katherine put her mug of tea back down on the table and dropped what was left of her fag into the dregs, where it hissed quickly and was gone. She felt cold; imagined herself in tattered clothes.
‘We were still together that Christmas,’ she said.
‘I know,’ said Angelica.
Katherine lit another cigarette.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘That is very predictable.’
‘Katherine,’ said Angelica.
Katherine felt as if the person hearing this news was not the person who’d once imagined hearing this news. She wanted very desperately to be angry, because that would obscure the hurt, but it seemed beyond her, edged out by pain. Already, her mind was at work with history, struggling to reshape it. She told herself she’d always suspected. She told herself there had been signs. But she hadn’t; there hadn’t. Lying, it turned out, had come surprisingly easy to Daniel. Or at least, lying to Katherine had. Perhaps with everyone else he’d been honest. Perhaps he’d saved all his duplicity for her.
‘Look at you,’ said Katherine, looking at Angelica.
Angelica’s eyes were filling up, but nothing was overflowing. ‘He would have left you anyway,’ she said.
‘That’s right,’ said Katherine. ‘He would. He’d have met some other sucker and run off with them. How lucky you must feel that timing was on your side and you got to be that sucker.’ She sneered. ‘You probably think he loves you. He probably tells you he loves you. He probably tells himself he loves you. Because Daniel would never do anything so immoral, right? There’ll be a reason. There’ll be a way he can still come out of this looking like the patron fucking saint of self-regard.’ She hauled deep enough on her cigarette to feel sick. ‘I bet you sit up at night,’ she said, ‘telling yourselves it was fate, that the planets conspired to bring you together. I bet you’ve got this whole narrative about how you overcame the odds and the universe, through its magnificent fucking beneficence, smiled on you and made it all cosmically OK, so now you can spend the rest of your lives just …’
She hadn’t meant to cry, but now she was crying she felt she might be able to overcome it through the sheer toxic force of what she felt.
‘Burn all the fucking joss sticks you like,’ she said. ‘You’ll still stink.’
Angelica leaned back in her seat and looked at Katherine. She sniffed; knuckled the tears out of her eyes.
‘Poor you,’ she said coldly.
‘There you go,’ said Katherine, collecting her shoes from the corner and wrestling with the straps. ‘That’s the real you shining through.’
‘I liberated it,’ said Sebastian proudly.
Daniel ignored him, and took a moment instead to contemplate the ‘it’ to which Sebastian referred: a cramped horsebox, containing a rather nonplussed cow. Strung from its neck, draping over its back and flank, was a large banner which read, in day-glo pink paint, What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
The cow looked dimly at Daniel. Daniel looked back at the cow, then at Sebastian, who was nodding slowly.
‘Yeah,’ Sebastian said. ‘Like, oh yeah.’
‘Sebastian.’
‘I always say, Daniel, as you know, that there’s talk, and then there’s action, and this is action. This is the ANC. This is Subcommandante Marcos. This is PETA on steroids. This is …’ He mimed a firework taking off, its rise, apex, slow descent and ultimate explosion. ‘Brrrccchhhhhhowwwww. You know?’
‘Sebastian.’
‘It’s like R. D. Laing throwing open the asylum. It’s the doors of perception. It’s Timothy Leary turning on in triplicate. It’s like, maybe you weren’t taking me seriously, you know? But now you are. Now you are. Because I’ve got a cow, motherfucker.’
‘Sebastian.’
‘Evolve and adapt. Change it up. Take it to the next level. Go bovine on the bastards.’
‘Sebastian.’
‘What?’
‘Stand still.’
‘Yeah.’
‘How did you get that cow, and what are you going to do with it, and why have you brought it here? And why for God’s sake has it got that ridiculous banner tied round its neck?’
Sebastian nodded, taking a moment to gather his thoughts, then held up the fingers of his left hand and counted off his answers in turn.
‘One, I was able to coax it into a horsebox by virtue of the fact that it understood me spiritually and sensed my desire to bring it to safety. Two, I’m going to liberate it. Three, I brought it here because I need a hand. Four, that’s our protest slogan. Where’s Angelica?’
‘Never you mind where Angelica is. You need to take your cow and get out of here.’
‘Right,’ said Sebastian, nodding seriously and taking a moment to cinch his ponytail a fraction tighter. ‘I get it. I get it. You’re threatened.’
‘I’m not threatened.’
‘You’re threatened by the fact that you’ve always … no, let me finish … you’ve always looked down on me. Let me finish. You’ve always looked down on me, and … Don’t try and deny it, OK? I know. I know how it is. You’re all Mr Superior. I’ve seen you. Looking out your window at us. Having a good old laugh. But now the boot’s on the other foot. You look at me and you think, hold on, he’s got a cow.’
The cow was chewing the cud, blinking gently, apparently unconcerned by her graceless arrival in an urban environment. Sebastian reached up and offered her his fist, which she sniffed, licked briefly, and then ignored.
‘Should you be doing that?’ said Daniel.
‘What?’ said Sebastian, wiping his hand on his jumper.
‘What if that cow’s infected?’
‘It’s a government conspiracy. Propaganda. There’s no infection.’
Daniel took a long breath. ‘Sebastian,’ he said. ‘You need to get that cow out of here.’
At this point, perhaps sensing that the conversation was likely to continue for some time, or perhaps simply wishing to stretch her legs, the cow stepped surprisingly gracefully from the horsebox and ambled out into the road to urinate.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Daniel. ‘Get that fucking cow out of the street.’
‘How?’ said Sebastian.
‘However you got it in there in the first place,’ said Daniel. ‘Do that again.’
‘Might be a bit of a problem there,’ said Sebastian.
‘Why?’
‘Well, I might have lied a bit about coaxing her in.’
‘I thought you had a bond.’
‘Oh, we do, but if I’m being really honest it was mainly forged during the drive up here.’
‘So how did you get this cow?’
‘Found it.’
‘You found it? Where did you find it?’
‘Well, I infiltrated the farm, and there she was, so I just hot-wired the car, and …’
‘Right, whatever. You need to get the cow back in the box.’
‘Yeah,’ said Sebastian vaguely. ‘Natch.’
Daniel stared at him. Sebastian sighed and held out his hand in a limp gesture towards the animal.
‘Here Mavis,’ he said. ‘Here girl.’
‘Mavis?’
‘After Mavis Staples. Here Mavis. Here girl.’
‘Look,’ said Daniel, mustering epic levels of patience. ‘It’s not a trained cow. You can’t just say come here and expect it to come here.’
‘So what are you proposing, Mr Omniscient Knowledge? That I pick her up and carry her over?’
‘You need to flick her gen
tly in order to encourage her back into the box.’
‘Flick her? What do you mean, flick her?’
‘Tap her on the flank.’
‘I don’t think I can do that.’
‘Why can’t you do that?’
‘Seems cruel.’
‘Whereas leaving a cow in the middle of a suburban street is the height of kindness?’
They were both quiet a moment. Mavis lowed softly, and began to move off up the road.
‘I can’t be involved in this,’ said Daniel. ‘I’m going inside. All the best.’
‘Hey,’ said Sebastian.
Daniel ignored him.
‘Oh there he is,’ came a familiar and oddly cheerful voice from the doorway. ‘Hello cunt.’
‘Katherine,’ said Daniel. ‘Hello.’
‘Don’t come near me, you cheating piece of shit,’ she snarled.
Daniel looked at her face, at her streaked makeup, at the bubble of snot from her nostril. For some time, he had not believed it would have been possible to dislike himself any more than he already did. He now saw he was wrong. It was possible. There were whole continents of self-hatred and shame waiting to be explored.
Fond though she was of confrontation, and better though she always felt after the first sting of anger had been transmogrified into the happy relief of open hostility, Katherine had not, on this particular occasion, been looking for a fight. Instead, perhaps slightly envious of Nathan’s exit, which seemed to neatly excuse him from any discomfort or recrimination, she had hoped simply to slip away. She found the fantasy of Daniel living with his guilt far more appealing than the reality of having to dilute it by screaming at him, which would, she thought, only reinforce all those buried, passive-aggressive ideas he had about her and which had, she suspected, basically caused him to cheat on her in the first place, because heaven forfend that Daniel would ever actually try and discuss anything difficult. No, for Daniel, it was always the slinking exit; the barb buried in a platitude. The only thing aggression would achieve now would be for Daniel to be left with a memory of a final outburst – the word he used to describe any moment she became angry, regardless of the reasons or justifications for her anger. For Daniel, she thought as she left the house, head high, hoping in a considerably less head-high way that Keith might be outside, life was an outburst. He drifted from here to there, seeking calm, and when he failed to find it, he railed against whatever he thought might have taken it or prevented it.