“I don’t need any,” said Sparks. He left the shop, feeling uncomfortable. What a rude man, he thought. Then he saw the newspapers, and had to go back in again.
“I never short-changed you,” said the newsagent, seeing him coming. “And if you take me to court, I’ll say you touched me.”
Sparks was finding everything a bit bizarre now. “I just want to buy these papers,” he said.
The newsagent took his money. “What are you on?” he said to Sparks. “What’s your game? Because it’s not clever. It’s not funny, know what I mean? I could have you crippled.”
Sparks took the papers and left the shop in a hurry.
Sitting on the bus to his house (the driver called him a tit and several of the passengers blatantly tried to trip him up in the aisle), Sparks went through the newspapers with a rising sense of puzzlement.
He had bought two tabloids and two broadsheets. The tabloids had chosen to cover the departure of an actress from a soap opera. Sparks, not being mad, was used to tabloids failing to contain any news, because that was what they were for. He also had no problem with subjectivity, because the opinions in the tabloids always sounded more interesting than his own, if nutsier. But these tabloids shied away from any kind of objectivity at all, and as for the news aspect, well, there was some, but it was a bit shaky.
Both papers had focussed on the fact that the actress had left the soap under a cloud; one had decided to speculate on the reasons for her departure, while the other had simply opted to look towards the future. More specifically, one paper had the headline FAT DRUNK ANNETTE GETS THE SACK, while the other went for the even snappier HEY BLOBBO! NOW YOU CAN DRINK YOURSELF TO DEATH! It appeared to Sparks that these headlines lacked charity.
The broadsheets, naturally, did not concern themselves with such trivia; they probably had a snidey story inside, Sparks thought. Their front page stories were of a loftier nature; one paper was following an ongoing war, while the other, which was a bit more liberal, had elected to cover the fact that the ozone layer was having another bad day. This time the headlines were MORE WAR AND ORPHANS PLANNED FOR FOREIGNERS and BUY SOME POLAR BEARS WHILE YOU STILL CAN, ZOOS ADVISED.
He got off the bus at his tube station and was immediately approached by a small boy, who thrust a piece of paper at him.
“I don’t want one,” said Sparks.
The boy looked mortified. “You have to take it,” he said, “or my dad will break my arm.”
“Bloody hell,” said Sparks. “Give it here then.”
He took the paper and walked off, shaking his head. Sparks found children weird, but didn’t believe in hurting them; he felt the same way about cats, apart from the hurting part. Sparks unfolded the piece of paper. It looked to be a flyer for some forthcoming event, a rave or a concert. Then he felt a finger prod him low in the thigh. He turned round; it was the boy again.
“What?” said Sparks.
“You took my flyer,” said the boy.
“I know I did,” said Sparks. “You wanted me to.”
“You have to give me a pound now,” said the boy.
“No I don’t!” said Sparks. “I didn’t want it in the first place. Here, you can have it back.”
The boy looked confused. “You have to give me a pound,” he said. “Else my dad will break my arm.”
“He sounds very keen on breaking your arm,” said Sparks.
A couple of people had stopped now, and were looking at Sparks and the boy.
“Go on,” said the boy. “It’s worth having.”
“I don’t want it,” said Sparks. The couple of people had increased to five or six and Sparks was very conscious of being stared at.
“I can’t go home without my pound,” said the boy. His face creased up like a chamois leather about to cry.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Sparks, and gave the boy a pound. The boy’s face uncreased, like a chamois leather that had forgotten about crying, and he looked up at Sparks.
“Wanker,” he said and ran off.
Sparks was disconcerted to find that the small crowd were applauding. He strode off, feeling stupid and embarrassed. As he left the station concourse, he heard a small old woman with enormous ankles say to her friend, “Smart kid.”
Sparks felt like all the idiots in the world at once. He stopped once he felt he was safely out of mocking distance, and looked at the flyer, fully expecting it to be blank. It wasn’t; it was for a real event. The boy hadn’t been lying about that, as the event looked to be a dramatic and important one. Stars of TV and cinema were promised to be in attendance, and some royals that Sparks had heard of would also be there. The event was free to the public, too.
Sparks found, despite himself, that he was quite tempted to go. He had never been to an event where cats and Frenchmen fought each other naked in the dark before.
Sparks walked through his part of town, or the equivalent of it, and was not surprised to see that it, too, looked like it had come up in the world. All the beggars and mad people who would normally be hanging round at this time of day (and all the other times of day as well) appeared to be either missing or at some sort of beggars and mad people’s conference; there was no litter, and the buildings, while still bad Victorian and random council, were clean and well cared-for. The streets also had an air of corresponding to the ones in his own world, which was handy.
Sparks had a vague plan; he needed some sort of temporary base to make phone calls and so forth from. He had a feeling that going to his flat might be a bad idea, as he might meet himself and destroy the universe in some sort of anti-matter collision or whatever, so he decided to go to his office, reasoning that, since in his own world he never went there, he probably didn’t in this one either.
His office in this world was a bit nicer from the outside, in that it didn’t have swearing written all over it, and the steps weren’t a kind of informal dog toilet, but Sparks was reassured to see that his building was easily the tattiest one in the street, which might explain the FOR SALE sign outside. He was more reassured when his key opened the door on the first try; clearly this world was like his own in a lot of ways.
He opened the door and went in. His office door key worked, too, and Sparks went into the moderately scabrous room where he worked in his own world. This was different; it was completely empty. There were no upturned bins, coffee cup rings, swivel chairs with one wheel missing. Anyone looking at the lack of old music paper posters and CD boxes with the wrong CDs in would have assumed that Sparks had never had an office here.
Sparks himself was of the same mind, and felt slightly uneasy at some unconscious level at the whole neatness and spaciousness of the room, as though he was responsible for the mess and decline of his own room, which of course he was. He dismissed the thought with no difficulty and set about looking for phone books. Pulling open a spotless drawer in the clean desk, he found some paper clips and a yellowed corner of paper, which looked familiar. Sparks examined it; it was a bit of old music paper, and had the bottom of an old T-shirt mail order address on it.
He felt distinctly odd; this had been his office, and somewhere out there was another Sparks, who also sold T-shirt designs. There were two Sparks in this world, one of which was him and the other was like him, the same size and smell and everything, with similar thoughts, and lungs and teeth in identical locations. The idea was a lot more disconcerting than the one about not having a tidy office; and Sparks found it harder to dismiss. He wondered if the Sparks in this world knew the Alison in this world, and if they were still together and (he couldn’t stop the thought) if they were doing it right now. This thought made Sparks feel so weird that he had to sit down in the swivel chair which, not being broken, also felt utterly disconcerting, but did enable Sparks to notice a large pile of phone books under the desk just before he fell off the chair.
He pulled the phone books out. There was a totally useless directory for North London businesses, apparently produced under the illusion that people i
n North London only want to buy things in North London and have no interest in the produce of, say, the simple folk markets of the West End; and there was a proper phone book with the phone numbers of people who lived all over London. Sparks riffled through this one, found the pages he wanted and tore them out like a vandal.
He was just stuffing the pages into his pocket when he heard the outside door click. This caused two things to happen; first, nothing at all, as Sparks’ brain seized up rather than leap into action; and then, when his brain had stopped seizing up and starting being a brain again, Sparks had a thought. This was Sparks’ thought: If this office is my office in an alternative world then the person coming through the door must be… Then, filled with terror, Sparks’ brain seized up again. He had often wondered what it would be like to meet himself. Now that the opportunity had come up, come up the stairs in fact, Sparks found it would be horrible to meet himself. He vaguely remembered from comics that sometimes people exploded when they met themselves. At best, he would have a jazz beard. Sparks did not want to either explode or have a jazz beard, so he quickly opened a window and crawled out onto the low roof.
As he closed the window behind himself, Sparks heard voices entering the office.
“I thought I heard something,” said one voice, adenoidal and harsh. Do I sound like that? thought Sparks.
“Well, there’s no-one here, officer,” said the other voice, and Sparks thought, No, I sound like that. Wow. it’s like hearing yourself on the radio, except I’ve never been on the radio. He felt unpleasant goosebumps on his shoulders. It is one thing to hear your own voice on a tape or a video or, perhaps, singing a number one record, but it is quite another to hear your own voice coming from, as it were, you.
“You’ve got me out of bed for nothing,” said the man who must be the other Sparks, unless he was a voice impressionist with a stupidly obscure repertoire. “I shall report you to your superiors for this. And then sue you.”
Sparks was impressed despite himself, as it were, at this other Sparks, who stood up to police officers and even threatened them with pointless legal action. He was less impressed when, a second later, the sound of hitting ensued, followed by the sound of pleading and falling over.
Clutching his phone directory pages, Sparks sneaked off down the road to sleep in a park. He found the benches all occupied apart from one, so he pushed a weaker-looking tramp to one side, sat down next to him and fell immensely asleep.
Sparks woke as dawn broke. Rosy fingered dawn, he thought to himself, and wondered if that was the name of a film. London was a good place to be in at daybreak, and while Sparks had probably seen Halley’s Comet more times than he had been up at daybreak, he liked the time of day immensely. Cleaners and tube staff going to work, clubbers and drunks going home, the sun fighting its way over the clouds like a smoker climbing the stairs, strange shards of golden light illuminating estate agents’ signs and those high trolleys they move bread around on… Dawn in London was a wonderful thing.
Sparks had a plan. This was his plan, as written down on Sparks’ piece of paper:
ALISON HOUSE PARENT HOUSE
It was a simple plan. To accomplish it, he needed to get some money (MONEY????), a tube pass (PASS!!) and, most of all, to find Alison’s house, and if that was not possible, her parents’ house. This was why he had bought the A-Z and stolen the pages from the phone book.
But now Sparks had to get the money to buy the tube pass. And this is where he began to get ingenious.
If there is a me in this world who seems to be like me in that he doesn’t have two heads or, more pertinently, he is so like me that he has my office and my job, reasoned Sparks to himself as he walked along, trying not to be begged at, then he will surely have other things in common with me. Like a bank account with not much money in it. And if he has a bank account, it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have much money in it. All that matters is he has the same PIN number as me.
Sparks walked until he found a cashpoint. He stood a few feet away while he adjusted to local cashpoint etiquette – which, basically, consisted of people trying to shove each other out of the way and even grabbing their money off them – and, having waited until the cashpoint was clear, ran up, shoved his card in and tapped out his PIN.
The illuminated display began to flash. It said TAKING MONEY OUT? YOU’LL GO BROKE, YOU SPENDTHRIFT WASTER. IN FACT, IF YOU COME BACK HERE AGAIN, WE’LL CALL THE POLICE. Sparks found this unduly aggressive, but then he found everything in this world unduly aggressive. He tapped in a largish sum of money and waited for what seemed like (and actually was) a bit too long before the machine reluctantly slid out a tangled mass of crumpled and Sellotaped-up notes. Sparks was delighted. He knew he ought to feel guilty at robbing someone who was technically a stranger, but then again that stranger was also technically him. Also, thought Sparks, now I know why I’m always a bit short on my current account. Someone from an alternative universe had clearly been dipping into his money; at least, that’s what he would tell his bank next time he went into the red.
Sparks stuffed the raggedy notes into his wallet before a passing old man could shiv him for them, and hurried off to the tube station. He took out the sheet of phone book and looked for Alison’s address. It wasn’t there and nor was Alison’s number when he called directory enquiries (“Yes? Make it snappy, I haven’t got all day. No such number, bye”), but Alison’s parents’ address was.
Tiring of phone rudeness, Sparks decided to visit them.
There has been a lot about Sparks’ travelling in this chapter, despite various vague assurances that there wouldn’t be, so Sparks’ journey will be dealt with briefly. Sparks went from Finsbury Park to Streatham, via bus from Brixton. On the tube he saw a guitar-playing busker severely beaten up by passengers, and on the bus, some small boys clung to his ankles and tried to take his wallet as Sparks dragged them along.
Shaking the last small boy from his legs, Sparks got off the bus and took out his A-Z. He consulted the phone book sheet, got his bearings and walked off through Streatham which, although previously not deeply rundown, now resembled, say, Hitler’s idea of a perfect South London. Supermarkets were marble cornucopias that sprouted their own produce, cinemas were more like cathedrals dedicated to the work of American midgets, and even the pubs gleamed like galleons. On the flipside, mind, Sparks noted that things were quite expensive and the alleyways were frequently full of people hiding and coughing.
He found Alison’s parents house in a leafy, sloping avenue. Like everything else here apart from the tramps, it looked shinier and cleaner and also, if this is the right word for a mock Tudor semi, crueller. Sparks rang the doorbell. It chimed with the clarity of a freshly-sharpened razor’s edge. Good doorbell, thought Sparks, impressed.
The door opened, and a woman appeared. She was wan-faced, tired, wearing a greasy apron and had too many little plasters on the ends of her scarred and scabbed hands.
“Are you Mrs Irvine?” asked Sparks.
The woman sighed, rolled her eyes and closed the door. A few seconds later, there was the sound of a slap and the door was opened again, this time by a completely different woman. This woman was well-dressed, deeply clean, expensive-looking from her uneconomical hair to her glittering shoes. Sparks thought she was the most glamorous-looking woman he had ever seen, and it took him quite a few seconds to realise that she was Alison’s mother. This is because Alison’s mother was, as far as Sparks could remember, an old-school Guardian-reading mother who wore bifocals and cardigans and frowned at people who didn’t know about the minimum wage. This woman looked like she not only didn’t know about the minimum wage but, if you mentioned it, would make you eat it.
“I am Mrs Irvine,” she said. “You have ten seconds to state your business before I call the police.”
“Good morning,” said Sparks. “I was wondering…”
“Five seconds,” said Mrs Irvine. “I told you.”
“I haven’t said anything yet,” said
Sparks. “I was…”
“One second,” said Mrs Irvine. She held up a very small telephone and pressed a key. “Hello, police?”
“I know your daughter Alison!” shouted Sparks.
Mrs Irvine looked at him.
“We do not,” she said, “have a daughter. We considered it, a long time ago, but decided we could better spend our money on drugs and vases. I understand this is why there’s something of a decline in the population, but I couldn’t care less. Now I am calling the police.”
She pressed the key. Almost immediately the air was solid with screaming.
“That was quick,” said Sparks. He ran away, again.
Sparks made his way down back streets, past tramps, vagrants and people who were just dying in alleyways, up impressive Olympic boulevards that in his world were just streets, and with the aid of the rudest black cab driver he would ever meet, found Tisdall Road again. He ran into Conswardine House, and found flat 88. The door was still open. Sparks went in. A very large naked man was sitting on the floor, and as the large man gaped at Sparks, two women dressed as air hostesses came in. They too gaped at Sparks as he ran past them into the bedroom.
Sparks locked the bedroom door. As thumping ensued outside, he took a quick look around at the most unpleasant place he had been in his life.
“Goodbye, cruel world,” said Sparks, and sat down on the bed.
OW!
OW!
DOESN’T GET BETTER WHEN YOU GET USED TO IT THEN!
OWWW!
Sparks woke up. Judging by the smell he was in the Flat 88 in his world. He opened his eyes. A small, amazingly filthy boy was staring at him. Sparks stood up. He felt awful, and slowly tried to stand up.
“Are you my dad?” the boy said.
Sparks stopped trying to stand up. “No,” he said, “No, I’m not.”
“Good,” said the boy. “You’re a loony.”
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