by Alan Goodwin
‘Jo?’
‘You said to come along to the party, Jack, so here I am.’ She held out her arms as though offering me her body in sacrifice. Her eyes failed to focus on anything and slowly her gaze fell to the floor. ‘Can we go to your room? I just want last night to come again.’
‘Who’s the friend?’ Claudia sniffed the air as though Jo was a foreign body and there was a risk of contamination.
I introduced them and there was an uneasy silence as Bebe hovered on the outside of the group, ready to bring the meeting to an end. Claudia touched my arm. ‘I’m sure there’s enough of everything to go around.’ Jo was too drunk to care, Claudia looked more than comfortable with her idea and I was almost halfway up the stairs with my trousers down.
Even before I’d fumbled the cork free of the first champagne bottle, Claudia was into the coke. She divided three lines on the glass coffee tabletop and we took one each in turn. Between us, Claudia and I had enough to keep the hotel going for the night, but it was Jo who greedily consumed the most. As for the rest of the evening, though, the memory is hazy, or perhaps better to say corrupted. I know the broad brushstrokes of drink, drugs and sex, but the more precise details are lost. Everything just kind of rolled into one experience of head spinning, saliva spreading, grunting, sweating, and sniffing as though it was all one. Finally the cocaine-induced energy waned and we slept.
Never before had Bebe entered my bedroom when I still had a woman with me, but we had slept through his various attempts to rouse us—the phone had been knocked to the floor by some contorted limb. He pulled the curtains and shook my shoulder to wake me.
‘Come on, Jack, we have to do the Holmes show,’ he whined. He was dressed in an immaculate blue suit and I could smell his expensive aftershave as he leant over the bed. I opened an aching eye and saw the look of disgust on his face. ‘My God, Jack, what has been going on in here? It’s like a scene from Caligula. Come on, get up—we have to go. I never thought it would come to this.’ He shook his head.
I half sat up, trying to ignore the heavy hangover, which I had already assessed as a grade one with bells on—loud bells that echoed throughout my head the way a house alarm does when you’re inside. Claudia appeared from under a tangle of bedclothes, looked around, yawned and got out of bed. She still wore her stockings, one of which had slipped to below the knee. Bebe held up a towel, which she ignored as she collected her clothes and took them to the bathroom. Determined to use his scorned towel he held it to me, shaking it like a matador in the hope it would entice me from the bed. I obliged and wrapped the towel around my waist. Jo remained asleep, her back to us. Bebe circled the bed to her side. ‘Come on, young lady,’ he called but she refused to respond.
‘Jo,’ I croaked, my voice rebounding in my head like a bullet in a lead room, ‘her name is Jo.’
‘Come on, Jo, time to get going.’ She remained silent. Bebe touched her arm. ‘Jo. Jo? Jack, I think there’s something wrong here.’
Hearing the panic in his voice, I scrambled around the bed. My poorly secured towel fell from my body at the sudden movement. I rolled Jo onto her back. Her arm swung and fell lifelessly. She was pale but warm and although her body was limp, I could see the shallow rise of her chest as she breathed what must have been no more than an eggcup full of air. I closed my eyes and there was Caroline again and not just her feet this time, but her entire body, her head to one side, mocking that once vital, questioning pose of hers.
‘Oh fuck, Jack.’ Bebe was leaning over Jo, peering into her eyes, his finger delicately holding up an eyelid smeared with old shadow. It was the first time I’d heard him swear. ‘I think she’s in a coma.’
‘What are we going to do, Bebe?’
Claudia slid silently from the bathroom. She moved like a stalking cat, but when she saw the panic in our eyes and Jo’s apparently lifeless body, she stopped her slow walk.
‘Shit,’ continued Bebe as he experimented with his new vocabulary. ‘You two need to go to my room.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Claudia was already near the door.
Bebe composed himself, dropped his hands to the side of his body and in a low whisper that carried a menace I’d never heard before said, ‘You two go to my room, wait there for me and do not leave until I say you can leave.’ I took his key and like two chastised schoolchildren we went to Bebe’s room. Claudia’s defiance was clearly all show and Bebe’s resoluteness had for the moment silenced her objections. Bebe’s room, as always, was in the same corridor, but not next to mine as might be expected—perhaps he thought I might keep him awake at night. The room was fastidiously tidy and even though no maid had yet visited, the bed was made. I sat down and watched Claudia continue her stalking cat routine. She lit a cigarette and flicked ash into a glass.
‘Do you always do what he tells you?’
‘Pretty much,’ I replied.
‘I’m not staying here.’
‘I think you should, we need to sort some things out.’
‘That’s why I’m not staying here.’
I clenched my teeth. This was my first moment of reflection on what had happened and the reflection was shit ugly. I felt sick. ‘You have to stay, Claudia.’ Fighting the nausea was going to be pointless. Deprivations of the body from the night before, mixed with the shock of Jo’s condition, were irresistible forces. I ran to the bathroom to vomit. There were no warm-up coughs to acclimatise the body to what was to come. Oh no, I sprayed the sink immediately with a high-octane mixture of old alcohol, remnants of food, bile and the not so humble smell of fear. At the end there were also some tears, but I could not be sure if they came from the experience of vomiting or from the shit piling up around me. After the last shocks finally abated I washed away the remnants of my stomach before splashing water on my face. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Was this really me?
Claudia was gone. It was no surprise, and who could blame her. Christ, given half the chance I’d join her. There was something undeniably attractive about just walking from this room and leaving everything behind. Bebe would do all he could, but I knew the company would lose their collective minds over this escapade. If any of this reached the papers I’d be sunk and my drowning would leave a very dirty mark on my very clean masters. Oh yes, this was bad; this was fucking bad.
‘Just one thing, Jack, just one thing, that’s all I asked of you.’ Bebe had returned. ‘And you couldn’t even do that. Why did you let her go?’ He strode around the room flapping the air with a towel to clear the smoke. He’d yet to find the glass full of ash. He was sweating and his shirt had dark marks under the arms and down the back.
‘How is Jo?’ I was almost too afraid to ask.
‘In a coma, Jack, she’s in a bloody coma.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Hospital.’
‘Will she live?’
‘That’s in God’s hands now.’
He noticed the glass and picked it up with the tip of his finger and thumb as though it contained a dog turd. ‘What an earth were you doing last night?’
‘Just having some fun.’
‘Going fishing with a friend is having fun, going to a sports game with your son is having fun, listening to music and having a dance is having fun, but an orgy with a Russian hooker and an old school friend while taking enough cocaine to keep Napoleon’s army going isn’t having fun. It’s called destroying your life, and it’s bloody senseless. You’ve gone too far this time, Jack. She might die.’
‘I know and I feel awful.’
‘Awful? Awful? Is that all you can say? I’ll tell you something, Jack—you’re coming apart at the seams. Paranoid stories about being followed, sex, drugs and drink out of control…’ He was crying as he spoke. ‘You have so many gifts. I’d cut off my left leg for a fraction of your talent, but what do you do with it all? You give up work and slowly destroy yourself and everything you’ve worked for.’
‘I can’t work, Bebe, there’s nothing left for me.
I’ve achieved my peak and I know I’ll never come close again. Even if I work for a hundred years I can’t touch what I’ve done. Everything seems so bloody mundane in comparison. There’s nothing left for me, Bebe, nothing.’
‘The company has to know about this. You have no idea what I’ve had to do to sort this out.’ He pulled a tissue from the box beside his bed and dabbed his eyes. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, Jack.’
‘Thank you, Bebe. Thank you for helping.’
‘I did it for the girl, I did it for myself,’ he lied.
‘I know—thank you for helping her. I’m sure she’ll pull through and she’ll owe her life to you. That is something to really be proud of, Bebe, a real achievement that matters, not some fantasy like mine.’
He stopped crying. ‘I’ve cancelled today’s press meetings—I said you were unwell. Jack, will you promise me something? Will you promise to get some help when we get back to England? Will you see someone about what troubles you so much?’
I dropped my head and sat silently.
‘You can’t even do that, can you? At such a desperate moment as this you can’t seek help.’
‘There’s something that just drives me to it, Bebe, and I don’t know that I want it to stop.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because without it there would just be this fucking huge ugly void and I’m scared of it. At least I know about the drink and the sex.’
‘How ironic that you’re afraid of the unknown when your work takes everyone else there.’
‘Can I go back to my room now, please?’
No one would have imagined what had happened in the room just hours before. The bed was made, the room tidied and cleaned, and all previously scattered possessions in their rightful place. I avoided asking Bebe how he’d sorted this problem, how he’d turned the clock back and manufactured a different outcome to protect me. How much had Claudia’s disappearance upset his plans? It was best I didn’t know. It didn’t stop me speculating, though. I bet he engineered the finding of Jo’s body in another room. The hotel would have been compliant: after all, they wouldn’t want any bad publicity and there would have been the offer of some future Taikon conference to smooth the changed records required to cover up the story and sever any connection with Jo. Everything would be taken care of, everything except Claudia, of course. Thanks to me, Claudia was still free.
Slowly late afternoon invaded the room, casting shadows on the furniture. I tried sleeping, but it was impossible. Jo’s lifeless face and fragments of the night before forced themselves on me. Somehow I had to get away. I dressed and walked the waterfront for an hour. The evening was cool and thick cloud pressed down on the horizon. A guard walked with me and I pulled my hat low to avoid recognition. I felt hunted, as though everyone on the street knew what I’d done. It might not be long before they actually did know. Could one of them be my stalker? The thought made me angry.
When I returned to the hotel, the manager passed me an envelope. In my room I sat on a chair I was sure Jo had never used and read the letter at least six or seven times. The night was almost on me and I let the room darken until I could no longer read.
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
A Star So Bright
* * *
So finally Jack Mitchell has returned home to New Zealand—and what a homecoming. His show at the Aotea Centre last night was a stunning experience. Part rock star, part bar lounge crooner, part sex symbol and total genius, Mitchell had it all. And he held the audience spellbound for nearly ninety minutes.
The show is all about unity. Unity lies at the heart of Mitchell’s work as a scientist. Superforce unites deep and disparate forces and provides a unifying theory to underpin our science. Clearly his need to bring things together is a much deeper craving than just in science and that is what the show is all about. Pink Floyd rubs shoulders with Eminem; there is even a dash of ELO (if anyone remembers them). There are lasers and lights, a speech from Martin Luther King and poetry from Auden and Owen. All of this and a history of science from Galileo to the present and connections made about how science affects our daily lives.
I learnt a great deal by going to this show. I learnt more about science than I ever did at school and I learnt about the connections between ideas and music and literature. Above all, though, I learnt that Mitchell is selling something a bit different to the world. He is not an ivory tower science nerd and he is more than a mere scientist. He is bringing science out of the cupboard and putting it front of mind and helping us to be less afraid of it on the way. Science is cool—that’s his message.
It is a shame that he only has two shows here, but schedules dictate Mitchell now. I hope he returns soon. I guess at least there will be the DVD in the meantime.
Dear Jack,
I saw your show last night. It certainly was dazzling; you were certainly dazzling. I look at you from the crowd, sometimes I get close and I know you know I’m there and I think how special you’ve become.
You love your science, I know that, but what’s with the show and all those connections? What are you searching for, Jack, because you’re searching for something, aren’t you? Is it to be more famous than Einstein, is that why you talk so much about him? Always straining to be compared with him.
If you really thought you had all the answers with that theory of yours you wouldn’t be out there still searching.
Science doesn’t explain why your wife killed herself, does it? Science doesn’t explain why you loved your lover’s sister. Science doesn’t explain why you gasp at the poetry of Owen, or cry at the art of Michelangelo.
Science doesn’t explain what looks back at you from the mirror in the morning.
The thing is, Jack, I have the answer. Are you willing to find out?
If you’re willing, I’ll be outside your hotel at 11 tomorrow morning.
I hope to see you, Jack.
NINE
Dad was in the back garden digging the border at the bottom of the slope. It was cold and I pulled my jacket tight around my body. He was more stooped than I remembered and he appeared to have shrunk. Finally he turned, saw me, drove his spade into the soft earth and waved. How our roles had reversed since he stood where I now was to tell me that Mum was gone. That day I was the one in the garden responding with an innocent wave.
I sat at the kitchen table and watched him potter from cupboard to drawer as he went about the rudiments of making a cup of tea. How many times had I sat at this table and watched his ritual? The teabags, spoon, cup and sugar were all in their unchanged places, but then everything about the kitchen, about the house, was unchanged. It was like a caricature of itself, a sitcom set. ‘My word, that kitchen was so well done, the eye for detail, the formica and browns—oh, and that table.’ At the centre of the table was the wooden fruit bowl I’d made in woodwork the year before Mum left. As usual it contained a couple of spotted bananas and two or three mandarins wrinkled with age. Perhaps the fruit had been there since the day he told me Mum was gone. How he fought himself, trying so hard to keep face, but inside he crumbled. It was like watching an inner-city building being demolished. There’s that moment when all its strength is suddenly gone and it starts its drop. For a fleeting moment it’s still a building, but that’s just an illusion and in seconds it’s nothing more than dust.
I knew every inch of this house. Blindfold me, give me a list of ten items and I’d find them within five minutes. There was a time when this ability confused me, but I’ve worked it all out now: this is the only real home I’ve ever known. There hasn’t been another to interfere with my memory of this one. Sure, I’ve lived in other places, but there’s never been another home. I have a flat in London, but it’s nothing more than a base: it doesn’t even have a television or a sofa. Instead I’ve lived in a steady stream of hotel rooms. I never make a cup of tea and know instinctively where to find the bloody spoon. Sitting at my old kitchen table, where I’d sat all my childhood and youth eating chops, mashed potato
and peas, I suddenly realised just how much I’d missed having a home. This was strange because the thought had never crossed my mind before and now in a heartbeat I wanted to change this nomadic life. I wanted a home. I wanted a table with old meal stains and I wanted a drawer with teaspoons.
‘So when are you off?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Finally got round to your dad then?’
‘Come on, Dad, no need for that.’
‘I was beginning to wonder if you’d actually make a visit.’
Perhaps he was right. There was a chance I’d never have come here, but then the Jo debacle happened. All morning I’d battled myself about visiting her in hospital. I simply couldn’t drive poor Jo from my thoughts. I just wanted to know how she was, if she had survived the night. This could have been good old self-preservation. After all, if she died my mess got a whole lot messier, but I think there was some genuine compassion in there as well. But if I went there Bebe would have the right to cut off my balls, roast them and cast them into the sea. I owed Bebe too much to fuck him off again by going to visit Jo.
After Caroline’s death I’d returned home in just the same way as I’d done now. I remember sitting at this same table, unshaven, hungry and thirsty, my head spinning from the germ of spiral maths and the suicide. Dad’s concern extended to his making me a cup of tea with ‘two sugars to keep you going’. After a five-minute silence he pulled out the whisky and we shared two stiff drinks.
‘First Mum, now Caroline,’ I’d said.
‘Don’t blame yourself, son, your mum did what she did for a reason.’ I gave him credit for leaving out speculation about Caroline.