The Secret Life of the Panda

by Nick Jackson

  The headmaster had shown him a scrupulous politeness that, now he thought of it, stuck in his craw: “Thank you so much, Mr Bradley, for sparing the time to come and see me.” Mr Kelly had said he was “a valued member of staff; one of our greatest assets.” But he’d gone on about a certificate. And as he was leaving: “Oh, there’s some graffiti, Mr Bradley, by the front gate. Would you be able to deal with it tonight? It’s late, I know and I don’t want to keep you behind but it’s in a very visible area and makes such a bad impression on visitors. Would you be able to? That’s excellent. Thank you so much.”

  Vernon realised now that he’d been fucked over, well and truly. “Yes Mr Kelly, no Mr Kelly. I’ll clean your fucking graffiti off your fucking wall even though I’m working overtime for no pay!”

  For thirty years, Vernon Bradley had been the caretaker at Hawksmoor Middle School. For thirty years he’d scrubbed, swept, polished and fixed; unblocked drains, gutters and downpipes; moved furniture, set out chairs, stacked chairs and cleared up after the Christmas party, kept vigil, endured… No one knew what he’d done.

  Two large, unexpected tears formed; he dashed them from his eyes and began to curse everyone he could think of. When he was tired of cursing he thought he would have a drink to calm his nerves and found a bottle of rum in a cupboard that he’d been saving. He poured himself a large glass: “Congratulations on your retirement,” he said to his reflection in the mirror and tossed back the rum, which burned his throat.

  After the third glass he sat down on the settee and let out a resounding fart. Then he began to giggle. Old Mr Bradley, his father, was looking down from the alcove. He wore a crisp white shirt and a straw boater. He’d just arrived in England. In the photograph his black skin shone and his plump cheeks expanded to fill the frame.

  “What you grinning at?” Bradley junior made a rude gesture at Bradley senior. “This fucking country you’re so proud of… Never done nothing for me.”

  He raised his glass. “You stupid old bugger!” He knocked the bottle of rum and it emptied onto the hearthrug. Never mind, he thought, there was a case of beer in the fridge and always the off-licence.

  *

  Tap, tap, tap…

  Vernon Bradley was bent over the low brick wall of a garden; it was the leaves of privet that he noticed, tinged orange in the streetlights. It was night. The dull yellow light made him want to howl. Someone was touching his arm. It was a slight, irritating touch.

  “Bugger off!” he said in a thick voice.

  Tap, tap, tap…

  “Leave me alone!” He would have lashed out but had no strength. He was dimly recalling his journey back from the off-licence with the bottle of bacardi. He remembered sitting down to crack the metal seal on the bottle and taking a few large gulps. He was sweating now as he slumped over the wall feeling a powerful urge to vomit.

  There it was again: that feather-light touch on the elbow.

  “Don’t!” He raised his arm. “Leave me alone.” Because he was remembering, from long ago, the three white men.

  He tried to focus on the face that wavered in front of him. It was a young face—one of the boys from the school. The blond kid who smelt of wee. What was he doing, wandering around at this time of night? The boy might have spoken but if he did the words were too thin and papery for Vernon to hear. Anyway he soon went and Vernon, using the tops of walls and the splintered rails of fences, clawed his way home.

  *

  She was odd, the girl in the mini-market. Vernon found her stare unsettling as he banged down the cartons of juice and milk, the loaf of sliced bread and the three slabs of cheese in their plastic wrappers.

  “That all?” And she raised her eyebrows and looked so hard that he felt as though she was trying to peel back the skin of his thoughts.

  “What else?”

  “I don’t know, do I? You don’t want no fruit or nothing?”

  “No.”

  “This all you eat?”

  “Mainly.”

  Vernon remembered that she’d been one of the pupils at Hawksmoor School, ten or fifteen years ago. She’d had a mouth on her then and still had, by the looks of it. With her hair pulled back and the sliver of chewing gum that poked out between her lips as she spoke, the girl was making him want to rush out of the shop and back to his house. He was relieved when she began scanning his items with sulky movements, her breasts moving inside her sparkly top.

  “I don’t know what you want to eat this stuff for.” She prodded the loaf of bread. “It’s got no vitamins you know.”

  “It’s what I eat.”

  “I can cook a nice meal for you.” She gave a sly sideways glance as she totalled up. “I’m a good cook.”

  “No.” He piled the stuff into a blue carrier. “I can do for myself.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  As he unlatched his front door, Vernon caught sight of himself in the hall mirror: his shabby coat, the patchy beard, the yellowing eyes. He wondered why young girls flirted like that. He imagined her sitting on his sofa, peeling off the sparkly top, her heavy breasts. He looked down at himself, at the grey flannels and baggy pullover.

  “No,” he said, “No, no, no,” and shambled through to the kitchen. Through the back window he could see in his garden the piles of sand and cement, a trench he was labouring at, digging down through the layers of rubble into the heavy London clay. Already it was a deep trench.

  *

  When he was six or seven, his mother took Vernon to see the family backhome in the West Indies. He remembered how the heat crept into his clothes, glued them to his limbs and suffocated every breath; the fierce glittering sea; the sky filled with purple clouds like the bruised flesh of a prize-fighter.

  He was frightened by everything: by the huge moths that battered themselves to pieces against the lamps, by the unexpected scuffling of a small grey lizard and most of all by the swarms of cockroaches that his mother tried to ward off with a slipper. He clung to the shell that Uncle George had given him, pressing its cool hard spine against his chest. It was the one thing of beauty.

  And then the storm: rain falling in torrents, hammering on the tin roofs; the wind crashing into the sides of the house and things flying past: other people’s fences and roofs, clothing ripped from washing lines, a cascade of orange flowers torn from a vine, a blue plastic paddling pool… and all the while the wind roaring so that you couldn’t hear yourself think.

  Afterwards people said it was just a small storm, nothing like what they’d had just a few years back when whole houses were seized and flung into the air and even a cow, according to his grandmother, thrown, alive, into the top of a palm tree. No, this was nothing like a bad storm.

  *

  Vernon was breaking up some pieces of tile in his back garden when a small voice, as frail as a reed, said: “What are you doing?” He couldn’t see, at first, who was speaking and began to suspect a mental aberration when the voice came again: “What are you breaking those tiles for?” A pointed face was staring at him between the broken fence slats in one corner.

  His house backed onto the school playing fields. Since Vernon had previously been on the other side of the fence he didn’t realise how much of his life was visible from the school. He made a mental note to have the fence repaired and made higher.

  “What are you doing there? Hey?” Vernon felt exposed. “This is private property, private, hear? You’re trespassing.”

  “Looking isn’t trespassing.”

  “Breaking fences,” said Vernon, “is a criminal offence.”

  “It was already broken.”

  “You’re too lippy, by far.” Vernon began to feel more and more like his father who’d lecture boys who came round to retrieve footballs. He’d always resented his father’s meanness, the way he kept people at bay, and now here he was, turning into his father. As if it wasn’t enough to have got his bulbous nose, his swarthy skin, he had now to endure his father’s very words crawling out of his mouth.


  The small face was already withdrawing when Vernon said: “But since the fence is broken you may as well come on through.”

  It was the same boy he’d met that drunken night—his face still tinged, it seemed, with the glow of the street lamps. He looked at the piles of hard-core, the heaps of sand, the trench that Vernon was excavating.

  “What is it?”

  “A building.” Vernon could say nothing more. He was afraid to reveal, even to this boy, what it was he was creating. The broken tiles, the rubble, the pieces of scrap iron. Suddenly it all looked disorganised, childish, a muddle. He felt angry with the boy for intruding in his private world. “You shouldn’t be here. Don’t you have lessons?”

  Then he looked more closely: “What’s wrong with your face? How did you get those bruises? Who did that to you?”

  “I’ll go now,” whispered the boy.

  “Wait!”

  The boy looked so sullen and lost that Vernon felt compelled, in spite of his revulsion, to comfort him. His shoulders were hunched as though he’d a great weight on them. Yet, the boy’s moon face left Vernon in the dark, because he could never tell what a white boy was thinking.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Carl.”

  “Why don’t you go back to school? You’ll be late for your class.”

  “I want to stay here with you.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  *

  First were the foundations of hard-core, then the armature of steel pipes wrapped with chicken wire and coated with mortar. It was a slow process to mould the wire and press in the mortar.

  The boy came to watch, hunched in a grubby t-shirt, which he pulled over his knees and down to his ankles. The bruises were more intense, a shiny purple-black against his bilious flesh. At first Vernon felt self-conscious, with those black eyes watching his every movement but, moving around, mixing the concrete and pounding pieces of hard-core he forgot about the boy. As he worked he grunted with effort—he enjoyed the blending of the sand and cement, turning the mixture with his spade and the slopping sound of the wet malleable stuff that would soon be hard and impenetrable, soon to be shaped according to his plans.

  And all the time the boy followed his movements, sitting silent and still as though he’d sprouted there like a mushroom.

  As the months passed, he began to assist in small ways: handing a cold-chisel or a lump hammer; the tools hung heavy from his wrists. Then he’d wander off into a corner of the garden to play some solitary game while Vernon worked on. Seeing him, Vernon was reminded of himself at a similar age…

  …crouching in the tall weeds. He’d taken his shell with him; its hardness comforted. The sun was hot on the back of his neck so that he felt their shadows rather than heard or saw the approach of the men.

  “It’s our little nigger friend,” said the tall one because he was the leader. They were smartly dressed men who wore ties. But the leader had taken his tie off. His neck was tanned above his collar. They gave him their sunny smiles, all three of them.

  Then, taking him by the arms, they led him to a corner of the field, under a hawthorn that had long since shed its white blossoms. And, smiling still, they made him kneel.

  “What’s this?” said one, and took the shell from Vernon and tried to smash it by hurling it against a rock but the shell was strong and bounced away into the nettles.

  “Get down,” they said. They forced him face down into the nettles.

  Some shells, according to his uncle, possess an operculum—Vernon remembered the scientific precision of the word—with which they stop up the entrance to their refuge when danger threatens. The creature could be inside, safe and enclosed. Nothing could enter in to disturb its inner peace.

  When Vernon came to, he saw his own face: his forehead caved in, the eyes and lips swollen, out of proportion to the narrow jaw. It was his reflection, he realised, distorted by the curve of the empty bottle that lay by his head; the bottle they had used to beat him with. Stiffly, he got to his feet and stumbled over something lying in the weeds—his shell. At home his mother, busy with the washing, said: “Are you OK, Vernon?” And Vernon said that he was, that he’d fallen in the nettles but was all right. “Those nettles,” said his mother, “you’re always in the nettles.”

  *

  One day the boy called him over. “Look.” Two snails were locked together, their shells jammed close as they fought to press their glistening bodies against each other. Between them was a pulsating thread of white, binding them. There was a tiny grinding sound as the shells moved.

  “What are they doing?” The boy squatted close to Vernon, his blond head almost touching.

  “Mating.” The snails were still. A white froth issued from between the sliding mantles. Man and boy peered close, fascinated.

  Vernon started; the boy had placed a hand on his thigh close to the crotch, a subtle pressure but cold. Vernon felt the sudden chill through his jeans. As he jerked his leg away, the boy’s hand drew back—a pale flash. Vernon raised his hand to strike then stopped: “You’d best go,” he said. “Go on, get lost.”

  *

  Vernon was having a peanut butter sandwich and taking thoughtful sips from a glass of milk that was slightly tainted when there was a soft knock at the door. He put down his sandwich; it was so unusual for there to be a knock at the door at this time of day that he felt a sense of unease in his stomach. He tasted the peanut butter that had glued itself to the roof of his mouth.

  “Who is it?” he bellowed, loud enough to be heard in the street.

  “It’s me, Shazia.”

  “What you want then?”

  “Speak with you.” Her voice was faint but determined.

  “I don’t want visitors.” Cold fingers of sweat were tickling Vernon’s armpits.

  “I got something for you.”

  “For God’s sake!” Vernon heaved himself out of his chair. As he yanked the door open, the girl from the minimarket stepped back a few feet. She looked ready to bolt.

  “What is it?”

  “I made this for you.” She pushed a package into his hands. He shuffled to one side to let her pass. Shazia dropped her gaze and stepped through Mr Bradley’s dilapidated front door, smoothing the sleeves of her shiny jacket.

  She looked round the room: “People say you’re building something.”

  “Who that?” Vernon put the package on the table frowning. “Who says I’m building anything?”

  Shazia ignored the question: “It’s a flat bread,” she said, as if it was her duty to bring the conversation back to the important issue in hand. “I made it myself. Aren’t you going to open it?” Shazia sat on one of the dining chairs and crossed her legs. Vernon’s eyes followed the line of the stockings.

  He peeled back the layers of paper to reveal the pale lumpy crust, dusted with flour. The room was filled with its slightly sweet fragrance.

  “You like flat bread?”

  “Uh huh.” He touched the soft, rounded dome of the loaf and it gave under his fingers.

  “What is it you’re building?” Shazia’s eyes were hard and shiny in the dimness.

  “That’s nothing for you to know.” Vernon began to gouge lumps from the bread, his fingers dug into the crust.

  “Why not? Why can’t I see?” She licked her lips and leaned back in the chair so that her jacket fell open. If you like, she seemed to be saying, you can kiss me.

  “Because it’s my private business.” Vernon was stuffing the lumps of sweet oily dough into his mouth. He realised that he was hungry, ravenously hungry. He couldn’t get the bread down fast enough.

  Shazia turned to him. Her bottom lip was thrust out.

  “I want to see,” she insisted. Her eyes flicked around the room, as if searching for a bargain.

  In his mind, Vernon saw it, rising in a perfect spiral, the sunlight glinting on its ridges—a great shining horn against the sky.

  “It’s not finished,” he said.

  “How, no
t finished?” She was growing irritable now. The painted nails curled and uncurled in her palms. “What’s so special about this stupid thing?” She moved towards the door that led into the back room but Vernon caught her by the arm as she reached for the door handle.

  “No.”

  Her hand was on the handle when he grabbed her. Her face had a startled look, as she found herself pinned to the wall, slightly winded by his abrupt force and the shock of his limbs that had the power to bend and crush her under the weight of his desire. She had no time even to close her mouth before he’d pressed his mouth into hers. He took his kiss with an angry gulping, feeling her lipstick greasy on his tongue. As he pressed back he felt the bones inside her face, behind the yielding flesh. Vernon finally stepped away and they stood panting and looking at each other.

  “Come on then,” she said. She shrugged off her jacket and began pulling Vernon towards the settee. She hung over him, her hair falling while he fumbled with his belt. He felt infuriated by this girl who’d forced her way in. She was unzipping him, reaching in, when he gasped as a dull pain struck him at the apex of his thighs.

  Shazia stopped kneading him: “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” but he was limp now and pulled away.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” She stood up and began to arrange herself. “I have to go to work,” she said winding her thick mass of hair into a coil and pinning it. “They don’t like it if I’m late.”

  Soon the front door slammed, the knocker rattled and silence settled in Vernon’s house.

  *

  Some molluscs feed by scraping at clinging plants with their jaws, others rasp at the rock itself, even burrowing in, tunnelling into the solid rock. His uncle had shown him where they’d eaten away at the stone piers of the house; soon they would start on the foundations. Other shells are parasitic, piercing the soft tissues of their host to drain out the life-blood in tiny sips. The cone shell is a predator, shooting a poisoned dart, a tiny sliver of calcium, so venomous it could kill a man. It then sucks the victim, a small fish or shrimp, into its stomach.