by Mark Yarwood
Janet smiles at the policeman as she speaks. ‘I’ve inherited a lot from my mother already. My own self-importance and my need for constant attention. Two more things won’t really make any difference.’
‘Just tell us what happened to her, Janet.’ The policeman looses his smirk. ‘Just tell us where she is and maybe we won’t send you to prison for distribution of pornography. Lurid acts in a public place. You’d be amazed how many charges we can think up.’
When Janet’s taken away for a full body cavity search, the policeman stands up and places a hand on my shoulder. Then he takes a towel from somewhere and wraps it around me.
Janet’s little art project that I thought might help fund my new life, was acting like a wrecking ball. When I was a kid, my folks would take me out to the canal that ran along by our house. Out there, right by a field, we’d watch some nearby factory chimneys being blown up. You’d hear distant voices calling out and within a couple of minutes, a rumbling would swallow your feet, and then a cloud of yellow dust would swallow the first chimney. My mum, dad and I, would spend the afternoon watching controlled destruction. They didn’t know it, but my family were showing me that with careful preparation, you could destroy everything you’d strived so hard to build.
The detective undoes a button on his shirt and breathes deeply. ‘That girl is nothing but trouble. You should be careful with women like that. Look what she’s got you doing. I know it’s not your idea this… this art shit. You can help yourself.’
I just look down at the spatters of emulsion that have welded my leg hair to my pubic hair. I shrug. I’m thinking right then about Billy Wallis and Maggie Parks and their crazy plan to con the insurance company. Right then, I’m remembering that I’m a salesman. It’s what I was good at. All you have to do is sell yourself and the product will self itself. They want me to sell boat accident to the insurance company. So, it’s me they’re going to have to buy. Me as a crazy boat driving nut who hates Maggie Parks.
‘I don’t know what happened to her mother,’ I say. ‘I don’t where she is and I really couldn’t give a shit. But I want to tell you about Margaret Parks.’
The policeman squints at me. ‘Margaret Parks? The film star?’
I nod and lean forward. The towel slips from my shoulders. ‘She drugged me and had some guy do stuff to me.’
The detective coughs, then rubs his eyes a little. ‘You want to make a complaint about Margaret Parks?’
I nod wildly. ‘Yes, she used a date rape drug on me and she and some fucker abused me.’
His eyes bulge and he raises his eyebrows. ‘What do you want me to do, go and arrest her? She’s an old lady.’
‘If you don’t, I’ll kill her.’ I let him see my crazy eyes.
I would make a stick of rock for this policeman and it would read: I swear to tell lies and nothing but lies so help me God.
Janet tells me later that she was taken away into another clinical looking room where an overweight nurse slapped on some surgical gloves and got her to lie down on a bed. Every time the nurse prodded Janet’s vagina, she came back up with a different colour paint on her fingers.
Sunset Orange, Janet would call out.
Evening Blue.
Pepper Grey.
The nurse wiped the paint onto a paper towel and Janet told her that soon that towel would be worth thousands of pounds. She should keep hold of it, she really should, Janet told her.
The nurse didn’t find her mother stuffed up there, so she put a gown round Janet’s shoulders and smiled kindly at her. Janet said she saw the nurse fold the piece of paper towel up and put it in her pocket.
Another policeman, this time a uniformed one, takes my statement. I tell him how I woke up in bed next to a faded movie star and her toy boy lover. In any other circumstances, this would be embarrassing, but I know later this will be important stuff. These are plot points. In a movie, these statements will be forgotten until after a murder, and then it all makes sense. Of course, they’ll find no evidence of my accusation. Anyway, I hope not or that’ll mess things up.
‘When I woke up, I couldn’t remember anything,’ I say to the policeman and he nods. ‘But I realised what they had done to me. I felt disgusted and used.’
They have counsellors for this sort of thing, the younger and friendlier policeman says and gains my eye contact. Would I like to speak to someone?
‘I feel so angry,’ I tell him and show him my teeth as well as my gums.
‘I can get you an appointment with someone, if you wish.’ The policeman smiles sympathetically, and then looks down at his report, my statement.
‘I feel like I could kill someone,’ I tell him and grip the desk so hard you can hear the table legs scrap against the lino.
The policeman looks towards the door and then at me. ‘Well, you really should talk to someone about the anger you’re feeling…’
‘I want to walk out of here and find Margaret Parks and put my hands around her throat and squeeze.’ I stretch my hands out in front of me and mime the action.
The young policeman watches my hands, then slowly gets up and heads for the door. He smiles at me as he vanishes and says, ‘I’ll get someone you can talk to.’
Bingo.
Later on Janet tells me about her interview with the detective and a policewoman, where they kept asking about her mother. Where was she? What had she done to her? They didn’t ask exactly, but she knew they wanted to know where she had buried the body.
‘Did you get tired of looking after her?’ the detective asked, and clasped his hands together. ‘It can be tiresome having a dependent.’
‘My mother has gone to a better place,’ is all Janet said.
The female police officer and the detective looked at each other for a second, before he continued. ‘So, she is dead?’
Janet smiled. ‘No, Florida. You get those all you can eat buffets there.’
The detective sighed and rubbed his hair. ‘So, she’s gone away? We checked and she hasn’t left the country. There’s no record of it.’
‘She’s pretty thin these days,’ Janet said and peeled some paint from her hair. ‘She probably slipped right pass them or mailed herself.’
Right then the door opened and a suited man with orange-tanned skin and neatly combed brown hair stormed in. He looked around at the scene and gasped out a breath. ‘I’m Miss Coleman’s solicitor. She’s not answering anymore of your questions.’
The police drag the rest of the lost property bin and dress me like a blind man in a fancy dress shop. I’m escorted towards the door, past the reception. Then a policeman tells me that my solicitor has got me out of here. I don’t have a solicitor, I tell them, but they just shrug and point me towards the exit.
As luck would have it, as I’m going out, Margaret Parks is being brought in on the arm of a female police officer. She looks dressed for an awards ceremony, her slender, stringy, body wrapped in what I hope is fake fur. She sees me and waves like she’s the Queen of England. Before my escorts can react, I launch myself onto a nearby chair and spring through the air at her, my mouth opening and insults blurting out along with globs of saliva. Maggie stands still, paused, her red lips, that have been greatly over painted, fall open. Inches from her, a large police sergeant rugby tackles me to the ground.
There, underneath a couple of uniformed bodies, I begin to laugh. I can feel them being peeled off me and fresh air rushing to my face, but I’m still laughing at it all. They look down at me and scratch their heads. I hear someone call me a lunatic, but I just laugh even harder.
Chapter Fifteen
I watch the local news reporting about the big pornographic art bust in the city, the police spokesman saying how they made several arrests as they swooped on the gallery showing the offending art. Naked figures covered in paint, with blankets over their heads, are escorted to police vans.
I almost smile as I see Kevin break away from the police and start half running, half staggering off with a blanket
over his head as he bounces off parked cars, making his desperate escape. Someone must have tipped off the news team the same time they tipped off the police.
Janet knows that this type of art needs plenty of publicity. What’s the point of rebelling if no one’s trying to keep you in line? What would anarchy be if the authorities just stood around and shrugged their shoulders?
The cameras approach Janet’s blanket as she pulls a stick of rock from God knows where and pushes it towards the screen. The words running through it read: Next show is on Friday.
I told Billy Wallis about what I did in the police station and he began to laugh like a barrel full of pebbles rolling down a hill. He gripped his knees and called me a genius, said he could have done with me back in the days. His meaty hand grips my shoulder and for a moment I think he’s going to hug me and, well, I feel sort of proud. Why I am I happy that I made him proud? Why do I feel like I need a fatherly hug?
The next item on the local news is a short piece about a speedboat going missing for several hours before being mysteriously returned.
By the light of a torch, Billy Wallis shows me the controls of the stolen boat, his colossus frame filling out a grey old man’s cardigan and brown trousers. I look down at his feet, just to be sure, just to see if he’s wearing slippers. With him beside me, his hand occasionally gripping my shoulder, his head nodding, we spray sheets of black tea like water at the rocks round the bay, my hands turning the steering wheel. As we pass the cliff side home of Maggie Parks, a vibration of enthusiasm starts at my feet and travels up my spine. My mouth begins to open as my teeth grit together, a grin appearing as saltwater flickers across my cheeks.
Through the roar of the engine and the howl of the broken water, I hear a fragile voice telling me how proud he is of me. There are sobs between the words, hardly heard over the continuous bark of the engine.
I take a look again at Maggie Parks’ home as I spin the boat round, dipping sideways and holding onto the wheel for dear life. My eyes focus through the wall of salty rain, and I see a silvery ghost of a film star watching us through a split in the curtain.
Janet says that now the heat is on us, now that they are desperate to find out what happened to her mother, people will sit up and take notice. This is our time to make plenty of dough, she says. Think of all those books underneath the motorways. All those ideas and pieces of imagination gone to waste, used as backfill. This is our chance to make history, she tells me and Cyrus, Lisa, Jenny and a few others that stand in the shack on the harbour. I look over to Kevin and see paint behind his ears, underneath his nails and wonder where else it has got. I wonder if Janet has matching paint marks and I feel something new, something monstrous tearing at my insides. I remember the piece of rock that read: I Want To Kill You.
The other day, just to make conversation with this born again Kevin that I no longer know or understand, I asked him what did happen to Janet’s mother. Where is she? I asked. He shrugged and said, ‘She’s in a better place.’
When I’m standing on the boat, moving slightly to my side as it bobs in the rippled water, Billy tells me that the police will accept the story of my obsessive madness, like he knows the future. I expect him to grab my palm and run a finger along it, pointing out my lifeline or some rubbish like that.
Then I ask him what I should have asked him at the beginning. What will become of me, I ask, after all this is over?
‘Don’t worry, son, I won’t let anything happen to you,’ he says. ‘I can get you away from here. You’ll be safe. You’ll be in a better place than here.’
With the words ‘A better place’ echoing round my continually tightening skull, Billy tells me to do some more laps of the bay. He says it won’t be long before the sun will be coming up and we need to get the boat back to its unsuspecting owner.
In the local newspaper that I picked up on my way to visit Janet, I see a photograph of Margaret Parks on page two. She’s stepping out of the police station with Billy Wallis behind her, only his bulky shoulders making it into the picture. She smiles and poses with her hands on her hips. Her eyes reflect the image a posh schoolgirl whose dream turned into a nightmare so many years ago.
The journalist who wrote the article talks about her early films and the exclusive parties she gives throughout the summer months. He also comments on her completely alien looks, pointing out that she hardly looks like she did when she made her more adult films in the seventies. What became of the fine young actress Margaret Parks? the Journalist asked at the end.
Tonight, right now, in a disused cinema on the very edge of the fishing village, we stand behind a curtain with only robes wrapped around our nakedness. Cyrus peers out into the theatre’s auditorium and looks at the huddled mass of suits and dresses. The perfumes and colognes rise up towards us, while the sound of wine glasses bouncing off each other flavours the air. Cyrus turns to us and makes a worried looking face. This is the man who likes to hang from rock faces by one stringy arm at the weekends. Lisa uses a small compact mirror to try and look at her bubble of a pink body. I catch a glimpse of her dark brown pubic hair that hasn’t been trimmed in quite a while and see the traces of last week’s art.
I’m not thinking about the suits and dresses below us; what’s keeping my mind floating across the ceiling, is the memory of Billy Wallis on the boat after we moored it back in it’s expensively rented dock. He looked at me as he wiped saltwater from his face and said, ‘It’s not really about the money. Not for Margaret, anyway.’
I don’t know what to say, so just shrug.
‘She just wants to be in the limelight again,’ he tells me and points the way to the dock. ‘Sure, yes, she’ll end up with a big pay out, but for her, she’ll have survived an attempt on her life. Maybe they’ll be more films or maybe her old films will become popular again.’
‘I can’t leave this town,’ I say as I clamber onto the damp wood of the dock, listening to waves under us trying to lick our feet.
‘Of course you can,’ Billy says and stands smiling at me in the darkness. ‘I’ll get you away from here.’
‘If I leave here,’ I say, ‘then things will get bad. I’ll get bad.’
He laughs. ‘It’s all in your head.’
Billy holds out his hands suddenly, his fingertips beckoning me to him. There we are on the dock, two men hugging. Billy whispers fatherly words to me like my father never did. When I would try and hug my dad, he would jerk away and laugh. I grip Billy’s back and find myself wanting to do what he and Maggie want, but also trying to form a plan, a way in which to escape my fate.
Kevin burst through the side door and up to us as we stand in the wings, the big torn stretch of movie screen behind us. His left ear is covered in black emulsion and suddenly I want to dunk him into a bath and scrub him red raw.
Janet announces, from a piece of paper she pulls from I don’t want to know where, who will be performing with who. Without a glance up to me, she says that she and Kevin will be making art first. I look at Kevin and see a flicker of glee bounce across his eyebrows. My fist tightens at my side, taping against my leg, as I watch Kevin and Janet take centre stage in this theatre of pornography. When they see Janet and Kevin take to the stage like a couple of naked Shakespearian actors, the suits and dresses grab their seats. Some of them have those tiny opera binoculars held to their eyes, but every one of them stares up to the stage as the two naked figures lay on the enormous stretch of cream canvas.
Behind me, Cyrus is lifting cans of emulsion whilst holding a sheet of paper, trying to find the colours that Janet has specifically asked for. He holds up a can of Yellow Soap.
I hear a gasp of breath from Janet as Kevin’s butt cheeks tense. Cyrus throws the first can of paint at them and the audience gasp and then start to clap lightly. This is diet applauding, the sort you get at county cricket games on Sunday afternoons.
Seeing them in that perfect harmony, with Janet making all the right noises, her breath almost made visible by the stream
of paint Cyrus pours on them, I want to kill them both. I look at them and all I see is those two horny dogs out the front of my school, shagging because some chemical in their brain got released. At least with animals there are no excuses, no shame, nothing but a need to expand their species. Us and the monkeys, well, we’ll do anything that gets us enough pleasure. And when that stops giving us pleasure, we’ll do something a little more extreme, perhaps a little kinky. Maybe we’ll turn sex into an art form.
Cyrus throws Brake Light Red across their humping bodies.
Kevin doesn’t stop thrusting, not even when I fly at them, my fists hammering at his back, rolling him over the stage with the paint covering all three of us. This orgy of art and violence spreads to the edge of the stage, and through my angry bulging eyes I can see the audience slamming their hands together and shouting. Kevin elbows me in the face and begins to crawl away and I see the red snail trail he’s leaving behind. Gripping his legs and pulling him backwards, listening to squeak of his balls on the polished floor. He flips over and kicks out with his feet, while I feel Janet on my back, her arms wrapping around my body. For a second I feel she might be attacking me, but she pulls me back to the white board to make more art. Trying to punch Kevin in the face becomes incredibly difficult with Janet trying to straddle me, her paint covered hands gripping my chest hair and tearing at it. Her head dips down and I feel her teeth bite down on my nipple. My scream punches out at the ceiling as the audience applaud even louder.
Later, as I sit drying my hair in my kitchen and trying to pick paint from under my nails, Janet says that all the paintings were sold for the asking prices. They loved the sex fight, Janet says and kisses my cheek. Janet tells me I was inspired, a genius for thinking up such a thing. Everybody seems to be telling me I’m a genius these days, like I’m in control of the crazy thoughts that keep coming into my head.