by Helen Smith
‘Why the Albert Memorial?’ Sheila asks.
The members of the group are delighted with the question. They smile big, genuine smiles. ‘You’ll see, Sheila.’
‘Is there any evidence that metal improves the reception of messages from aliens?’ asks Sheila. The group is staring. ‘I know metal is a conductor,’ she continues hurriedly. ‘I wondered if that had anything to do with it.’
‘Have you had a message, Sheila?’ Rosy asks her gently. She bends her head forward into the start of an encouraging nod and extends one hand towards Sheila, as if she is trying to entice a skittish animal to come closer. Everyone is still staring. Sheila is aware that they think she’s weird. Weird, among a group of people who meet to discuss the best way of contacting aliens.
‘Yes.’
Everyone is suddenly friendly. There are smiles all round. Friend catches the eye of friend. Enemy is reconciled to enemy. They all take one step forward, nearer to Sheila.
‘My greatest success,’ begins Sheila shyly, like a housewife describing her baking technique to a group of Michelin-starred chefs, ‘has been with tinfoil.’
Roy has his hands in the sink, doing the washing up. It is late in the evening. He has the comfortable feeling that comes when it is nearly time for bed and he has been fed, and he has been out in the fresh air all day. There is a gentle ‘tik, tik’ sound of knitting needles as Sylvia scrapes them together, winding the wool around the needle in her right hand to form a neat stitch, flicking at the stitch with the needle in her left hand. Over and over, rhythmically. Sylvia has the yarn wound around the fingers of her right hand, her littlest finger extended as if she is a labourer drinking for the first time from a bone china cup in an audience with the Queen.
Roy dries his hands on a tea towel and turns to watch Sylvia. She is knitting a delicate pink garment on fine gauge needles. The colour she has chosen would be suitable for a newborn baby girl but as the knitting grows too large for anything other than a giant’s child, Roy sees that it must be something for Sylvia herself. She has a very faraway look in her eyes as she works carefully up and down the rows. If she makes a mistake, she painstakingly traces and reworks each dropped stitch as if it represents a mistake in the fabric of time.
Sylvia is thinking about Jeremy.
Chapter Thirty-Three ~ The Postman’s Dog
The psychic postman has been sacked for over-sensitivity. If it was the post office’s intention to improve the efficiency of the delivery service by doing this, their intention has back-fired. Now Alison’s post comes every two or three days, at some time between 1.00 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. The post is delivered in a bundle held together by an elastic band, some of it addressed to Alison but much of it addressed to other houses in the surrounding area. The bundling may be part of an unheralded post office initiative to promote neighbourliness. When the post arrives, Alison puts Phoebe in the stroller and spends the afternoon delivering it. She never sees any of her neighbours putting misdelivered post through her letterbox. Perhaps they open it up and keep it, their kitchen notice boards plastered with poems from Jeff that were meant for her eyes.
‘I got a note through my door from the post office this morning saying they tried to deliver a parcel,’ Alison tells Harvey at the door to their house as she returns from one of her postal rounds. ‘They didn’t even ring the door bell, so they didn’t try very hard. It’s so annoying. Why do they do that?’
‘Most people round here are at work when the postman comes. Parcels are heavy and if they can’t deliver them they have to carry them all the way back to the sorting office. They probably write the ‘can’t deliver’ notes before they set off and leave the parcels behind.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘It’s what I’d do if I were a postman. If I get my camera will you come and take a photo of me in front of the new double billboard car advert that’s gone up at Clapham Common? I wrote the copy for it.’
‘What does it say?’
‘Three little words. You’ll have to wait and see. It’s supposed to appeal to hetero men.’
‘I hope they don’t pay you by the word. No wonder you’re so poor all the time.’
‘It isn’t the number of words. They pay me to deliver a concept. As you say, no wonder I’m so poor.’
As Harvey goes inside to retrieve his camera, the psychic postman arrives on Alison’s doorstep with a crossbreed dog on a lead. The postman looks sheepish. The dog looks trusting and hungry. But then all dogs look hungry, in order to gain the sympathy of people with spare food. The postman hands over the lead to Alison. ‘Will you take care of him for me? I’m going away to look for a job. I would take him to my parents’ house in the West Country but a lot of the mink that were released by animal protesters are still on the loose. I’m worried that he would get attacked.’
The dog has fine, very fluffy fur on his paws that makes them look out of proportion to the rest of him, like a puppy who has yet to grow into his body.
‘He looks like a teddy bear. What’s his name?’
‘Boy.’
The dog lies on the door mat and Alison strokes his ribs and belly.
‘That’s sweet. How old is he?’
‘He’s sixteen. He’s an old man. He’s completely deaf. In human years he’s 102’
Alison withdraws her hand, suddenly uncomfortable about stroking an old man’s tender parts. The dog stands again with difficulty and Alison sees his age. A recent stroke has hitched the dog’s face into a permanent Roger Moore impression. The smell of smoky bacon that emanates from him, far from being off-putting, is making Alison rather hungry.
‘Come on Boy. Boy. BOY,’ shouts Alison. As she takes him inside to get used to his temporary home, Boy leaves a trail of silky fur. Phoebe follows unsteadily behind him, swiping at his tail.
‘This?’ asks Phoebe, pointing to the dog.
‘There’s enough here to weave you a jacket,’ Alison tells Phoebe as she collects the fur from the carpet. ‘They should have called him Rumpelstiltskin.’
‘Alison,’ Mrs Fitzgerald is on the phone. ‘How are you doing for money, my dear?’
‘Not very well.’
‘I thought you might be struggling with that wee baby to support. You haven’t been working much, lately. I’ve got a nice easy job for you with a big bonus at the end of it. You have to find a missing person but it should be easy enough. I’ve got some ideas about how you can find her. In fact I’ve already started making some enquiries. All you have to do is have sight of her, make sure she’s the right person, bash out a quick 500 word ‘health, wealth and happiness’ report and the fee and the bonus are yours. I should warn you that I have accepted the assignment on your behalf with some misgivings.’
‘What misgivings?’
‘There are some elements of Mrs Latimer’s operation that I must turn over to be investigated by the police. Do you have a moment to talk about it? She says she wants to breed men as pets.’
‘That’s insane.’
‘Yes. I have an old friend from the Met. Let me talk to him and find out how to handle this. In the mean time, I suggest you find this missing person quickly and earn yourself some money, before Mrs Latimer gets herself arrested.’
Alison thinks as she puts down the phone, as she always does when she talks to Mrs Fitzgerald, that her boss is wise and kind. There is something else that Alison picked up in the tone of her voice today, some lightness in her mood that hasn’t been there before.
‘I am not mad,’ Mrs Fitzgerald is thinking, the phone still in her hand. ‘I have stared into the face of publicity-seeking Venetia Latimer and I have seen madness. I am not mad. If I continue to avoid any kind of publicity I will be safe.’
Jeremy’s hands are very tanned. Deep in thought, he traces his forefinger over the architectural drawings. The fine hairs on his arm catch sunlight with the movement. He looks up at his friends, watching him silently.
‘This will be the performance of a lifetime. We’ll be cre
ating art, we’ll be making a political protest, we’ll be investing in the future of the planet.’
‘Couldn’t we do something at the Millennium Dome? We could paint a message there so it could be seen from space.’
‘Why? No-one will see it except a handful of astronauts. Everyone is trying to stage a protest at the Dome. Besides there are circus performers there as part of the exhibition. It wouldn’t be much of a protest if we got mixed up with them. My plan is much better. We’re going to hold to ransom one of the most easily recognisable images in the world.’
‘Will we wear black? Black clothes and balaclavas?’
‘No. Let’s dress up in our brightest costumes. It’s gonna be the biggest circus in town.’
‘Yeah, we’re celebrating.’
‘Yeah, we’re gonna stop the traffic. Listen, I’m serious now, the only thing that matters more than looking good for the performance is our personal safety. I’ll climb to the top first, then I’ll run lines down for the rest of you. Not one of you climbs until your line is secure, understood?
‘When are we going to do it?’
‘Soon. Before the end of July. The light at the top of the tower only shines at night when the Commons is sitting so we have to strike before their summer recess, to ensure we can see what we’re doing. I think we also need to choose a night when the moon is full so we’ll improve visibility even more.’
The meeting disbands and Jeremy is left alone with Jane. Jane sometimes finds Jeremy’s naivety irritating. He is always protesting about something, either standing in the road in everyone’s way or making nuisance phone calls. His head is so filled with principles that he doesn’t even seem interested in her. No wonder he drips with pheromones, his sexuality leaking out through his pores as it has no other outlet.
Jeremy is pulling at a locket on a chain around his neck, sawing it left and right, left and right. It looks like the kind of medallion with a picture of a saint on it that a religious or southern European person would wear. Jane is very tall. She stands face to face with Jeremy, very close, as she prises open the locket and inspects the faded photo of Sylvia glued inside it.
‘My sister. She’s the one who made me leave the circus. She’s spent her life savings on a run down farm. She said it will come to me when she dies but it doesn’t really compensate for the loss of a life that I loved. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t left the circus.’
‘What if you die first?’
‘Why should I die?’
‘Because you take risks. You lost your security when you were young. No wonder you’re trying to control something as impossible as the traffic. You may as well try and command the waves.’ When Jane gains some kind of insight into other people’s psychological motivations, it always puts her in a better mood.
‘Alison? It’s Sheila. I’ve had another message. It came to me while I was reading this report in the paper that Rosy gave to me. Listen to this: “Dolphins have been sighted up and down one of the most unspoiled stretches of the south coast of England for the first time in fifty years, taking advantage of the unseasonal warmth of the seas caused by the recent hot weather.” The dolphins have been coming right up to the shore and playing. I’d like to make my picture of Roy somewhere on that coastline. Rosy says that it will be the perfect location to try and get in touch with extra terrestrials, with the dolphins nearby to help us.’
‘Well, I’ve got to head off in that direction some time soon anyway, on a missing elephant enquiry. I can take you with me, if you like. I’ll bring my daughter if I can’t get a babysitter, if you don’t mind. When were you thinking of going?’
‘When there’s a full moon because the tides are high and also there will be plenty of light on the picture at night so it can be seen from the sky.’
‘Don’t they have those very powerful beams of light from space ships? I wouldn’t think it would make much difference whether there was a full moon or not for people in, um, inter-planetary craft. I take your point about the high tides, though, I suppose it will enable the dolphins to float closer in to the shore.’
Chapter Thirty-Four ~ The Bridges
Jane Memory is on the phone to a features editor. Whenever Jane telephone this editor from her house, he always has the impression that she’s doing something else while she’s talking to him. He pulls at the hairs on his leg just above the line of his sock and visualises her depilating her legs in the bathroom, ladling on hot wax with a spatula.
‘I want to write about people who are yummy and attractive on the outside but who are empty inside.’ Jane is lying on her bedroom floor, a blue and green checked pillow under her head. The Editor imagines her leaning forward at her bathroom mirror, tweezering away stray eyebrow hairs. ‘What do you think? The research would be easy. I’ve got a friend chasing all over town looking for something to give his life meaning so I could write that up, thinly disguised. It would be quite amusing.’
‘I was hoping to get you to do us an evaluation of the first salon in London to offer a Brazilian bikini wax.’
‘Is that where they pull all the hairs out of your bum?’
‘Every last one, apparently.’
‘Let me write my piece about empty people and I’ll do it.’
‘We’re on a suicide watch,’ announces Taron.
‘Are we?’ Joey and Hugo are dressed for the pub.
‘I’m worried about this man who’s going to jump off a bridge into the Thames. We have to go and stop him.’
‘OK. Which bridge is he on?’ Hugo jingles his car keys in his trouser pocket, ready for action. He was in the rugby team at school and has lost none of his strength or speed.
‘That’s just it. I don’t know. It’s a vision my mother keeps having. If we patrol the bridges we’re bound to find him.’
In practice, the three don’t patrol all the bridges, just the more scenic and convenient ones. They like Waterloo bridge because it leads directly to the South Bank with its choice of coffee shops and clean toilets among the complex of theatres and recital halls. They become a familiar sight to the beggars lining the footbridge, who say nothing and look preoccupied when they pass, having learnt that Taron prefers to dispense advice rather than cash.
‘We three work,’ says Taron, plucking a pound coin from Hugo’s fingers as he crosses to a youth in a sleeping bag and thrusting it deeply and intimately back into Hugo's pocket. ‘There is no point sharing the profits from it. We should share the insights. If you belonged to a really cool drinking club, would your friends thank you for smuggling out some of the Japanese rice crackers that had been put out on the bar, or would they prefer you to tell them how to get in and snack for free for themselves?’
‘But the money markets?’
‘It’s about empowerment. I’m not saying they should sit at a desk across from you at the bank. They need to know how to tap into their talents and get some money and some self respect.’
‘A spell in the army might sort them out,’ says Joey, laughing nervously and winking at Hugo, who is trying to mouth ‘fascist’ without Taron seeing.
There is no sign of anyone trying to jump. When the drizzle of passers-by stops altogether in the evenings, they catch a cab to Chelsea Bridge. Taron looks west along the Thames while Joey and Hugo look east. While Taron is turned away, Joey and Hugo like to play ‘Titanic’, climbing on to a parapet along the structure of the bridge and taking it in turns to be Kate Winslett.
‘I’ve got a bit of a strange request, Taron,’ Joey says one night. ‘My mother needs to get hold of twenty grammes of speed. Do you know where she could get it?’
‘I’m sorry Joey, I’ve given up doing drugs. I’m just living on my memories.’
‘Yes, but do you know where I could get hold of it? If she can’t have speed, she said she’ll take thirty or forty tabs of LSD. She just wants something cheap, she’s not bothered about the effects.’
‘Joey, have you thought this through? Why are you doing this?’
‘Because s
he asked me to.’
‘Wouldn’t it be simpler just to tell her about Hugo, rather than trying to do everything she asks as a way of storing up her approval?’
‘It isn’t like that.’
‘When there’s something that’s worrying you, you should write it on a small piece of paper, fold the paper and put it in a matchbox on a piece of cotton wool, as if you were making a bed for a doll. Then throw it into the Thames and watch it float away.’
‘Do you think your mother is wrong?’ Joey asks Taron after a week. He knows there is something troubling her because when he was supposed to be watching the river he saw her casting a matchbox into the river from Westminster bridge. ‘We’ve spent every night looking and we haven’t seen one person who has given any indication that they are going to jump.’
‘No. Maybe. But maybe we’ve been sending out such good energy that we’ve diverted someone from feeling like jumping. At any rate I think we’ve earned ourselves a holiday, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ says Hugo. He jumps up and swings on every lamp post on the short walk to the nearest late night bar.
Chapter Thirty-Five ~ The Circus
‘Why are you here?’ the clairvoyant asks.
‘I was hoping you could tell me that,’ Harvey replies, casting an eye around the flat in Josephine Avenue. The decoration is a little tired. ‘I’m constantly afraid. I feel that I’m missing out on something but I don’t know what. I don’t know how to tackle it.’
‘There is a cause that you should champion.’ The clairvoyant holds her hand up, palm forward, as if to signify a Native American peace greeting. Harvey takes it as an instruction not to speak. ‘I can’t tell you what it is. Once you identify it, you will find fulfilment.’