He inhales. He tries to phone Jen again.
‘What do the children think?’
They are standing by the little, hallway cupboard, inspecting the broken meter.
‘Almost set fire to the fence,’ she’s saying, ‘but I burned them all. Noel went mad – said he was negotiating a deal with a museum. I don’t know if I even believe him. Will you tell her for me, though? Please?’
He nods. His phone rings.
‘Jen?’
‘Gene?’
‘Toby? Where are you?’
‘In a cab, heading back to the hotel. Ransom just phoned. Seems Del Renzio’s on the warpath. Management’s dead set against the tattoo happening on the premises.’
‘So what now?’
‘Well you know Ransom – he’s so pig-headed that if anything it’s made him more determined. Del Renzio’s hiked up Security, but the photographer’s already on site. Nimrod’s worked out a cunning back route into the room. I’ve given him your number. You’ll need to convene in the car park …’
‘We’re still at the house. Jen’s a no-show. The electricity’s off. We can’t leave until …’
‘D’you need a hand? I’m a trained engineer. Want me to turn the cab around and head on over?’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘It’s early days,’ Toby confides (a smile in his voice), ‘but if I’m hoping to win over Esther then I suppose I could do worse than getting some baby-sitting practice under my belt.’
She’s sitting on the stairs, her ankles apart, her thighs pressed together, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. He stands before her like a humble penitent waiting anxiously before an altar – the glorious altar-cloth – the holy scent – her voice a prayer.
He feels so angry – so disappointed – so betrayed – that he could tear himself apart with his own hands – rip himself to pieces. He feels at once potent and worthless – he is a spoiled meal – an unwanted gift – a river that has overrun its bank.
‘… halfway through lunch, just relaxing under the tree when these three boys turn up with a ball …’
He tries Jen again.
‘… And I swear they did it on purpose! There was juice everywhere – all over the blanket, the food. I was just so … so angry! I grabbed the ball and I threw it at him but I couldn’t … I mean because of the hijab I wasn’t able to …’
He tries Jen again.
‘… just spat. Didn’t say a word, just spat. I felt sick. I honestly couldn’t believe …’
He tries Jen again.
‘… And I suddenly thought: Here I am, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to defend, but so terrified of everything, so ashamed inside, so compromised, and here they are, so much to defend, so unafraid. I was just … I was in awe. And like Aamilah said …’
He starts counting backwards, from a hundred, in his head …
38, 37, 36 …
‘… I focused on the grass. Felt it under my fingers. I thought, There’s a message here – in the detail, if only I could …’
He places a tiny, smooth pebble into the shallow basin of her belly-button, then runs his finger in a lazy ring around it.
‘I never felt afraid,’ he confesses, ‘I always dreamed of being a soldier – like my grandad. I wasn’t ever afraid to die. I wanted to live, but I was never afraid to die. I don’t deserve any credit for it. It’s just what I am. I don’t know why I’ve always felt that way. It wasn’t resignation, more like … I can’t even think …’
‘When I talk to you it’s like’ – she frowns – ‘like my words aren’t just sounds. It’s like they’re tiny pieces of my soul which you hold in your palm and you stroke.’
Even as she speaks, a gong sounds in his head. Its vibrations set his teeth on edge. Is it the gong they sound just moments before they pull a performer from the stage? Is it a saucepan in the face? Is it the gentle resonation of an eternal truth? The tinny howl of a mystic singing bowl?
Toby finally arrives, borrows Valentine’s torch, fiddles around for five minutes, reconnects the electricity, and is then settled down on the sofa, beaming – quite the hero – with a bottle of cola, a sandwich and the TV remote. They head outside to the car. The moon is hidden behind a cloud. Gene stores her equipment in the boot.
‘Not the Hummer, then?’ she asks, placing her lean, neat feet in her fine, red heels where Sheila usually stores a clutch of empty water bottles, two, old prayer books and her favourite string shopping bag.
How much for a double room at the Leaside? Sorry, how much?
She slips down in the seat, slightly curled up, knees pressed together – just millimetres away from the gearstick – a perfect, terrified, scarlet mouse, and gazes at him, unblinking, like a child hypnotized by the wonders of Christmas, for the entire duration of the drive.
Sheila is sitting on a chair in Stan’s bedroom, her forehead resting on the desk. An email has just been downloaded on to the computer.
Oh my God, Sheila! How long has it been? Twelve years? Thirteen? How the heck are you? What on earth are you doing with yourself nowadays? Okay – so I managed to glean from your email that you’re still with the Church (the phrase ‘one of my parishioners’ was a bit of a give-away …) but aside from that? How’s the gorgeous Marek? Are you still in contact? And the baby? Oh Lordy! All grown up by now, I suppose.
Are you well? We missed you at the big Keble reunion last year. Do you still receive the college magazine? I’ve been loosely involved with it over the past decade or so (although increasingly less since the girls arrived). If you’ve fallen off the mailing list then forward me your contact details and I’ll pop you back on again.
Yes, I’m fine. The arthritis is still a problem but I manage to keep it at bay with a special diet (No caffeine! No red meat! No fruit! No booze!) and a strenuous, daily Pilates workout. Hard yakka (as my Australian nanny might often be heard to mutinously intone), but mustn’t grumble!
Luella just turned four (on Tuesday – thanks for asking) and Phemie is a terrible two, but almost, almost three. Afraid I can’t agree with you re. the Telegraph article. The journalist was a bit of a shit, but I’m notoriously cagey about my private life (what tattered vestiges currently remain of it!).
We must meet up. Contact Vania (my benighted PR) with some dates and we’ll sort something out (might not be poss. till late October, my end – post Toronto International Art Fair where I’m meant to be delivering a series of lectures which I haven’t even started to get my head around yet).
Re. your artist/photographer. I had a quick peek at the website and the work certainly looks interesting – although I’m not sure what the wider, legal ramifications might be (you should probably have a quick word with her about this). A friend of mine (Gillie Maar – you may have heard of her) tried to exhibit some of the Win Delvoye Art-farm pieces recently and ended up in all kinds of hot water.
The work is very fresh, very visceral, very ‘real’ (as you say), although I’m not sure if it needs to be ‘worked into some kind of complete theoretical framework’ (?!). I do tend to feel that it’s generally best not to over-think these things (the way we did in the nineties, eh?) but to approach them holistically, enjoy their gradual development in a more tentative, more honest and organic way.
I’m definitely thinking Kat von D/Michael Hussar (which can’t be bad).
Off to Boston for a few days, but leave this with me and I’ll give it another ponder on the plane.
Do take care of yourself –
XX Pam
PS No more coffee, darling! Way too acidic!
PPS Vania thought your email was completely hilarious! Wonderful! Same old Sheila, I thought: breathless, volcanic, zealous, grandiloquent. All knees and elbows. Do or die. No half measures …
Bless you!
X
PPPS Remember OnTheRag, Sheila?! Oh God – what were we like?!
X
Sheila lifts her head and then bangs it back down again. She lifts
it and then bangs it. She lifts it and then bangs it.
‘This is why,’ she murmurs, ‘this is why I dropped out. This is why I fell pregnant. Because of smug idiots like you, Pammy Sullivan. With your spoilt, self-satisfied, fat-headed, lecture-giving, coffee-avoiding … Urgh!’
As she speaks, the vehemence of her words and the angle of her face cause a silken thread of drool to drip from the corner of her mouth and down on to the carpet. She straightens up, alarmed, patting her lips with the collar of her dressing gown.
Her eyes fix on the screen.
‘What on earth are you doing with yourself nowadays?’ she parrots, in withering tones.
‘How’s the gorgeous Marek?’
‘Do you still receive the college magazine?’
‘Urgh!’ she exclaims, reading on.
‘… more tentative, more honest and organic way!’ she witters.
‘Vania thought your email was completely hilarious!’
‘Oh ha! ha! ha!’ she trills, then, ‘Breathless? Volcanic?! I’ll give you volcanic!’
She grabs a mini-baseball sitting, innocuously, on Stan’s desk and throws it – with a strangled yell – on to the nearby bed.
She closes her eyes and inhales.
‘Okay, okay … She likes the work,’ she murmurs, ‘she thinks it’s “interesting”. This is actually very positive. This is actually good news.’
She opens her eyes.
‘Is this a nervous breakdown?’ she wonders, startled, trying to encompass what that might consist of in her mind.
‘I don’t feel nervous,’ she eventually surmises, ‘and I don’t feel broken.’
She tips her head, speculatively. ‘A little chipped, maybe.’
She turns and inspects the ladder which still hangs, unfolded, in the hallway. She considers Mallory and her copious tears over dinner.
‘But I don’t want you to go to Jamaica, Mummy!’
Her mind turns to Gene – how quiet he’d been at tea, how wan and hollow-seeming and compliant, then to her earlier conversation with Valentine.
‘I mean if Gene isn’t religious. If you’ve never actually shared the same, core beliefs, doesn’t it make him feel almost …’
Sheila scowls.
‘Almost what?’ she wonders, spooked. She promptly recalls their pre-tea chat about the illicit palm reading – his feelings of guilt. Was there something odd in the way …? Something …?
‘No wonder you look ill!’ She re-enacts their conversation, remembering herself laughing, on edge, just wishing she could tell him, yes … her mind packed full of other stuff – her big escape – her sacrifice – her … Gene just standing there, same as always, at the edges of the page – Gene, the white surround – the frame – the margin.
She recalls the odd look on his face.
‘That’s not why I look ill.’
Is that what he’d …? Or was it …?
‘That’s not why I …’
Her heart momentarily freezes.
Is there something else? Something wrong? Was he about to …?
She stands up, panicked.
‘No.’
She sits down again.
The phone starts ringing.
She stands up again, turns, and limps out of Stan’s room, heading towards the sound. In the hallway is her old suitcase, pressed up against the wall. She pulls it out, places it down and opens it. She stares at it, frowning.
‘Really must check those messages,’ she sighs, but doesn’t move. Instead she kicks off her sandals and steps inside it. She sits down, then lies on one side, curling up, reaching out her arm to grab the lid.
‘Breathless! Volcanic! Zealous! Grandiloquent!’ she announces (perhaps somewhat grandiloquently), then lets it fall.
Five seconds later: ‘Just a little chipped,’ she mutters.
Ten seconds later: ‘For heaven’s sake, Sheila! This is completely ridiculous!’
Much to Gene’s evident discomfort, Valentine insists on clutching on to his hand from the moment they leave the car, throughout their clandestine journey to Ransom’s room, during the brief but detailed consultation (in dramatic whispers) between she and Ransom about the nature of the tattoo itself, on a short trip to the bathroom (where she stares into the mirror and emphatically whispers, ‘All will be well,’ then turns, with a gulp, ‘I’m doing this for Sheila. It’s for her. To make amends. You’ll tell her that, won’t you?’), right up until she finally commences unfolding her portable tattooing bench and unpacking various, exotic items of tattooing paraphernalia (and some less so – the rubber gloves, the sterile wipes) from a large and battered holdall.
In fact she barely shifts her eyes from his face, even (and this is a source of some confusion and embarrassment) during a series of formal introductions. There’s a thoroughly bedazzled Terence Nimrod, for starters (who flits around the room like an earthbound, media Tinkerbell, a trusty Bic his magic wand), a photographer called Kenny (a small, fine-boned, shaven-headed Spaniard – with cold, thick-black-lashed green eyes and an improbably perfect smile – to whom Gene takes an immediate dislike) and Kenny’s downtrodden assistant, Duke (a tall, powerful-looking, ginger-haired Glaswegian – with a surprisingly effete voice – who seems to have no real function except as the silent repository of intermittent abuse).
Kenny has a tiny, digital camera and he snaps away with it from the moment they enter, interspersing savage assaults on Duke (delivered in a whispered, rasping, guttural Spanish, which Duke doesn’t appear to understand) with a series of keening instructions and compliments (‘Chin up – God you’re so beautiful. I love it! I love you! You’re amazing! You’re dynamite! Now just … good … good … give me just a little bit more of the … Perfect! You’re a genius! You’re a natural! This is so easy! You’re making this so easy for me! I love it!’).
Ransom seems subdued. He admits to having taken a fistful of benzodiazepines and has a bottomless glass of whisky virtually glued to his right hand. He and Valentine circle each other, warily (like two, tired dogs eyeing the same padded basket), but all exchanges – while cool – are profoundly courteous. Gene almost detects a quiet kind of bond there; an immediate, almost instinctual shorthand operating between them, like they’re members of two very different tribes (one disports itself, wildly, in rough hides and feathers, the other simply glistens, mysteriously, in hi-tech, silver fabrics) who have fought and been wounded in the same awful war.
Ransom appears to love the grass idea (‘So stupid!’ he raves. ‘So random! So obvious!’), and seems still more delighted when Valentine goes on to describe how she’d like to tattoo a ‘hole’ right in the middle of it. ‘Imagine …’ she whispers, eyes shining excitedly, ‘the messy, geometric textures of the grass, then that harsh, dark, cut into the compacted soil beneath; the man-made juxtaposing the arbitrary – the formal juxtaposing the natural – the surface juxtaposing the subterranean …’
Ransom wonders (with typical, golfing homo-centricity) whether there might even be the suggestion of a ball inside this posited ‘cup’ of hers. Valentine’s enthusiasm immediately diminishes. She shakes her head. ‘The tattoo is all about desire,’ she tells him (eyes still intermittently darting towards Gene’s), ‘not deliverance. Possibility is everything – the bud, the green shoot. Fulfilment – the flower – is death.’
‘Good point,’ Ransom concedes, doing an excellent job (Gene thinks) of looking like he knows what the hell she’s banging on about.
Del Renzio phones the room (on a series of spurious provisos) three times during the ten minutes subsequent to their arrival. Nimrod – in a state of acute paranoia – takes the precaution of putting on some music (finally settling – after a period of heated debate among the assembled parties – on Willie Nelson’s charming covers album Across the Borderline; the one CD from the small selection kindly provided by the hotel that nobody actively hates).
He tries to adjust the volume according to how much noise Valentine’s tattoo gun produces. She obligingly
plugs it in and hits the foot pump while Gene dashes outside to check how audible it is from the hallway. After several trips in and out, it’s decided that the volume necessary to disguise the resultant buzz will be so loud as to engender complaints from nearby residents. Nimrod – still thinking on his feet – dashes off to his room and returns – minutes later – holding an electric razor.
‘So here’s the deal,’ he explains. ‘We’ll keep playing the music at a reasonable volume for the duration of the tattoo. Meanwhile, someone needs to stand guard in the hallway. If Del Renzio – or one of his punks – approaches the room then this person needs to rap on the door – as if they’re waiting to gain access – at which point Ransom will wrap himself up in a towel and come to the door with this razor buzzing at his chin as a diversion while the rest of us make ourselves scarce – I dunno – maybe hide in the bathroom.’
‘But what about the bench,’ Gene wonders, ‘and the inks, and the gun?’
‘Ransom only needs to open the door by a few inches,’ Nimrod suggests, ‘be belligerent. Act like he’s pissed. Then the guard needs to lead the way – come up with some kind of urgent message to serve as a distraction – like – uh – Esther’s taken a turn for the worse in hospital … God forbid,’ he adds, with a wince, ‘or there’s been a call from American Nike about a sponsorship deal.’ He grins. ‘We’ll just befuddle them – distract them – blind them with science – then the next thing they know – after a measure of kerfuffle – the door will’ve slammed shut again. End of.’
Everybody nods.
‘So who stands guard?’ Ransom wonders, removing his shirt and rotating his shoulders (gingerly preparing his back for an imminent, physical assault).
‘Well I’m writing the piece so I’ll definitely need to hang about.’ Nimrod glances around him. ‘And Kenny’s taking the shots …’ His eyes fall on Duke. ‘Can we spare Duke for the job?’
‘Not possible.’ Kenny shakes his head. ‘Duke is my assistant. He’s on fifteen quid an hour. He really needs to assist me for that kind of money.’
A short, somewhat quizzical silence follows.
The Yips Page 48