by David Mathew
3.
But Dorota did.
She swore in Polish, and eiderdowned in a thick night-dress, she swung her legs out of bed and shuffled along the corridor to a spare room that housed one of the property’s phones.
‘It’s Phyllie Reydman.’
‘…Do you know what time it is, Phyl?’
‘Yes. Do you know where your husband is?’
‘No,’ Dorota admitted. ‘What about him?’
‘Roger’s on his way over to you. I’m about to follow in the other car.’
‘Why?’
‘You might not be safe, that’s why. Not in the long run: reputations and all that…’
Dorota shook her head. Maybe she remained gluey with slumber; maybe this was really making sense after all.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
And Phyllie told her.
4.
When the Berlin Wall splintered and cracked, Vig had been thirteen. He was old enough to remember hatred and forgiveness, easily, and knew more than he wanted to know about the spastic death throes of Communism, about witch hunts…
Much of it came back to him now.
Having finished shooting the breeze with the birdkeeper, Vig had been crossing the lawn in a gloomy slouch when Dorota burst out onto the patio, actually waving her arms as if she’d expected to have to use semaphore to attract his attention from a distance. Running out to meet him, she had called: ‘Roger’s coming!’
‘Roger who?’ Vig had called back.
‘Roger Moore! Who-do-you-think Roger!’
‘Sorry! What’s he doing?’
In the space of this interlocution, their strides had brought them closer, almost to a collision point. Then Dorota had swept him up in her aura of energy and purpose, now striding blokeishly, and had collected Vig along with her, like a relay baton.
‘I’ve opened the front gate,’ she said, not answering her partner’s question.
‘Dorota. What’s going on?’
‘We’re going to see Don.’
‘I just saw him. What about?’
‘You just saw him?’
‘By the birds. We had a chat.’
‘Roger swears he saw baby milk in his hut.’
‘Slow down, will you? So what if he did?’
‘Why would he have it?’
‘I don’t know. For the birds?’
‘For the birds now!’
‘I don’t know. What are you suggesting?’
‘It’s what Roger’s suggesting.’
‘Then what’s Roger suggesting?’
‘You know what he’s suggesting!’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for him?’
‘Surprise is the best form of attack, Vig.’
And it felt like a witch hunt. It was hateful, creative in its cruelty – and to Vig it resembled a witch hunt. He didn’t know whether to feel guilty or appeased.
Delivery
1.
How do you know when it’s time to stop work for the day, Tim?
Well, Victoria (or was it Virginia?) it’s like asking a high-jumper why he doesn’t try for his personal best for the eighth time that afternoon. You always want to be doing your best work, whatever you do. In life, I mean. And just like the high-jumper won’t get his magic
What?
Three metres?
How high could an athlete jump?
…two metres sixty, or whatever his best happens to be, I know instinctively – it’s like an instinct – that whatever I do at that point is likely to need to be redone in the morning. So it’s time to put down the pen.
That was a laugh. A pen now! Since when, Tim? I ply the scrivener’s trade, eh son? And all that wind.
Branston was interviewing himself again (old habits died hard; he had tried to quit but self-interest had proved too heavy an anchor to ignore); but for this particular interview, on the compositional process of film scripts, the subject had brought along with him an annoying punitive superego of an interruptive smartarse. Who would not keep it zipped. Who wanted its own thoughts on the record. Who wanted in.
It had come to something when a man could not conduct a conversation with himself without fearing an interruption by a third party!
Branston lowered the weights. A monologue interieur was one way of sublimating the dread and rage that he directed towards physical exercise, but he could taste rust on his lips and this was his usual sign that he’d benched enough.
Rising to his feet, Branston performed a tight boxer’s two-step in the full-length reflection. As ever he had exercised nude. Exertion had drawn his penis into itself: it was all but smothered in a nest of auburn curlies. If the whim took him, he could reverse that situation in the bath in two minutes flat; but he knew he must wait. Work before pleasure, Victoria. (Or was it Virginia?) Having reached for a towel, which he used to mop his shoulders, Branston crossed the landing and settled down at his desk to mark some of his students’ work.
It was Saturday morning. Branston could not recall the last time that he had not marked students’ work on a Saturday morning.
The task he had set was to write between one and two thousand words on an inspirational film- or documentary-maker of their choice, paying attention not to the artist’s oeuvre but more to the qualities that made that person inspirational and what the contemporary budding filmmaker could learn from them. The low word limit had been intentional: Branston had imagined that without it he would see novella-length hagiographies about Lynch or Tarantino. What he’d wanted was for his students to analyse, not to gush.
By the third essay in, the tactic seemed to have worked. These were better than he’d expected. So far, so good: even if he had needed Google’s help with the identity of a Finnish epidemiologist that Sammy had chosen to concentrate on, for reasons of her own.
Midway through a minefield of exploded punctuation on the first page of an essay on Jim Jarmusch, Branston jumped when the letterbox flapped shut downstairs. For decency’s sake (and just in case) he pulled on a pair of jogging shorts and skipped down to collect his mail, thinking: Early for a Saturday.
The package was the size of an electrical plug. It had not been delivered by Royal Mail: there was no stamp on the packaging; there wasn’t room for one.
Branston tore it open. A memory stick was inside. Intrigued, he bounded upstairs and turned on the computer.
2.
Half an hour later, and Branston perched on the chubby wing of his old-fashioned sofa, thinking back to the class in which Yasser had shown the film he’d made about the kidnapping. That film had been hard enough to watch. But this new one – delivered by hand to his house, he reminded himself – had been even worse… Branston’s arms felt tired, though not because of his workout. Anaesthetic-like tiredness had closed in on him. What to do?
Branston knew. And because of that first film he also knew where Yasser worked for his Saturday job.
High Town Market.
Branston got dressed quickly and left his house.
3.
Yasser was changing a twenty-pound note for a customer when he saw his teacher approach on foot. So surprised was he that it took him two glances before he’d confirmed that it was indeed Branston coming his way.
Transaction completed, the customer pocketed his change and sloped off, clutching a pair of hedgetrimmers to his considerable chest.
‘What do you do for lunch?’ Branston asked. ‘Usually.’
‘Go to the bacon van, Tim. Usually.’
‘I’ll treat you.’
Yasser cocked his head. ‘What’s the occasion? Is this about college?’
‘I wish it was. Can you leave your post?’
‘In a minute I can. My uncle’s gone for a coffee. When he gets back.’
In due course they walked away, Yass
er and Branston, but they did not tarry at the former’s favourite stop for breakfast and lunch. They carried on walking along High Town Road, saying little after Yasser had earned from Branston a brisk nod of the head with the question: Is this about Maggie?
They repaired to an alehouse called The Green Child. In the workman-clotted back garden, Yasser waited for his large chilled orange juice, wishing that he had a paper to read, while Branston ordered at the bar. But Branston wasn’t long. He emerged back out into the lunchtime sunlight, blinking, with an orange juice, a pint of bitter and a thin cigar. As Yasser sipped his drink, Branston tore the cellophane from his smoke and lit up.
With his other hand he slapped the memory stick on the table.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s you, Yasser,’ Branston told him, reaching for his beer. ‘And your ladyfriend Maggie.’
‘…I don’t understand.’
‘I deliberately didn’t bring my laptop to show you, and it wasn’t something I wished to discuss at Barnfield.’
‘What wasn’t? I’m confused, Tim.’
Branston rinsed his mouth with bitter. ‘You may or may not know that you are on digital record – you and Maggie, sitting in a tree. It’s all there, Yasser. And while it’s none of my business, of course, what you get up to with whomever…’
‘You mean sex?’
Branston nodded. ‘…what I do have to ask myself is why someone – Maggie presumably – thinks it’s a good idea to take a copy to my house, for me to see.’
‘You mean she filmed us?’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. Or someone did, anyway. And then she – or someone – thought it was a good idea, it seems, to show me your performance.’
‘Christ. But how does she know your address?’
‘That was one of the questions I had for you.’
‘Well I didn’t tell her. Why would I? And I don’t know where you live anyway.’
Branston took a long swig. ‘I had a feeling you’d say something along those lines.’
‘It’s true!’
‘I believe you. Which means someone’s followed me home.’
Nothing to argue with there. ‘But why?’
Branston shrugged. ‘Keine Ahnung. That’s why I’m here.’
Noisily Yasser exhaled. He could not conceive that Maggie might have done this to hurt him – not deliberately. No. It had not been Maggie’s idea. It had either been her father’s or it had been the brainchild of Tommy the Brazilian.
And one of them was going to pay.
4.
Having brooded for the rest of Saturday, and having slept through storms of difficult dreams, Yasser showered and got dressed on Sunday morning and walked out to the car. With the engine running and the wipers moving, he took a few minutes before he engaged first gear and pulled away. This was it: the last time. He could not imagine that this trip to Maggie’s could be anything but the final visit. Done. Finito. How could it be anything else, now? All the same, it surprised him to note that the understandable emotions of anger and disappointment had been joined by that of regret. As he calmly drove through Dunstable, he regretted the fact that he had been unable to handle the commissioned task. He had failed. And if the signs had been clear for weeks – the signs that he was going to fail – they had not prepared Yasser fully for the reality of the bust that had followed the boom. He had failed to locate the missing child. And he felt lousy. If this was the last time that he’d see Maggie, this morning was their break up. Something had shifted, not only in the universe, but also in Yasser’s heart: he had had no choice but to come to realise that he cared for the woman… and he had never been good at transforming a girlfriend into an ex.
Not that he’d shout her down, of course: that wasn’t Yasser’s style. She would be allowed to explain herself. (That’s big of you, Yass, Shyleen had told him sarcastically when he’d confessed his plan to her in a postcoital moment of their own, last night. Oh the women you use and discard! She had laughed. The comment had left Yasser reeling. Urgently he had asked himself: Is it me doing something wrong?) Yasser found that he was looking forward to hearing Maggie’s reasoning. And then, afterwards, perhaps she would blow him – an apology fuck, non? Just a quick one for the road – then adios, sweetheart, it’s been as much fun as an anal pimple, but I can’t say it hasn’t been an experience.
Something like that, anyway. This was what Yasser had planned for his parting shot, and Shyleen had even dared him to go through with it. She claimed that Yasser’s lovemaking style improved when he was in a state of anxiety. I’ll give you an anxiety in a minute, Yasser had replied, wiping himself off with the wanksock that he kept behind the chest of drawers – the sock that resembled a Womble’s toboggan.
It was only as he pulled onto the camp’s driveway that Yasser experienced the full force of his nervousness – its rich extent and pull. Excalibur’s manic barking was nostalgically welcome (if not welcoming): Yasser went so far as to imagine that he might miss the vicious wanker when all of this was over. Was there even something valedictory in the fact that the dog had been allowed off its leash for a change? It chased Yasser’s car, yapping all the while, until it grew tired or bored.
Yasser pulled up outside Maggie’s home.
Frantically inflating a rear tyre on his vehicle – his foot pumping up and down with real welly – was Tommy the Brazilian. On seeing Yasser get out of the car, the man smirked with a matchstick between his lips. The smirk appeared spiteful.
‘She ain’t home,’ Tommy called.
Yasser took the half-dozen necessary steps to Maggie’s door.
‘She’s out over the doctor,’ Tommy added. ‘Getting the morning-after pill.’
Yasser turned to face him. ‘Morning after what?’ he demanded. ‘I wasn’t here last night!’
‘What cont said you were?’ Still smirking, Tommy took a break from inflating the tyre in order to make his point. ‘You think you’re the only blade in Maggie’s life, do you, boy? The only one she shares her sheets with?’
‘I have no idea.’ Yasser felt queasy.
‘No, well get an idea.’ Tommy laughed. ‘Quite an adventuress, our Maggie. Even her pa agrees.’
Yasser grimaced. ‘You’re disgusting,’ was the best he could manage.
Tommy held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Don’t beat me no harder, sir!’
Yasser returned to his car. He was about to get in when Tommy said: ‘And compared to the others, boy, by the way…’
What others?
‘…your performance was languorous.’
Languorous? Yasser had encountered the word before but he could not define it now. The meaning was probably irrelevant. What Tommy was saying was that he’d viewed the sex tape.
Or more.
‘You filmed us, didn’t you?’ Yasser demanded.
‘That’s between me and my conscience.’
‘You haven’t got a conscience.’
‘Between me and this slow puncture then,’ Tommy answered, kicking the tyre in question.
‘…Where is she really?’
‘Well, pardon me but I’ve misplaced her focken social diary.’ Tommy was growing bored with the conflict; he was drifting away – his energy ebbing like that of a ghost.
Maggie had once told Yasser that she only travelled on the 61 bus, but that didn’t help him much. In what direction had she headed? He couldn’t spend the morning scoping out all points on the Luton-Aylesbury continuum!
Maybe she’s gone to see me, Yasser imagined with a sudden panic. She’s taken a copy of the sex tape to show to my parents!
5.
Tim Branston, meanwhile, had made a decision of his own.
He had smelled a story on Yasser’s clothes from the moment the student had brought the film assignment of the kidnapping to class. Instinct had told the tutor t
hat the end of the film was unlikely to represent the end of the story; that more would play out; that the sum total of what had been recorded marked no finale.
Overall this impression had been confirmed on Branston’s receipt of Yasser’s sex tape… although Branston had perhaps not seen this bigger picture at that time. Not quite: at the time he had been frightened and furious that someone would have followed him home from work in order to deliver the memory stick by hand. It had made him feel violated; he had gone through a period of post-trauma depression (one which he soon regarded as ludicrous), simply because a would-be pornographer or two had proved themselves cleverer than one of his students. Oh, and cleverer than Branston himself, as well: let’s not forget that he had been shafted along with Yasser.
The ramifications being what?
This was one that Branston had demanded of himself, time after time. In fact, it had grown into his favourite puzzle to solve while working out; the sort of conundrum that he had long since stopped regarding as an odd thing to work though while performing one’s physical jerks. (It was what got you through the sweaty session that counted. Some delved no more deeply than adding up repetitions; some grunted and thought of nothing at all; some claimed to visualise sexual encounters; and Branston even knew a guy who recited the value of pi under his breath while benching his one-twenties and holding for the strain and burn.) And it was during a workout, a few days after he’d viewed the sex tape the first time that Branston had experienced his epiphany.
By watching the film of Yasser with Maggie, he was part of the story himself. Up to that juncture, true, he had been no more than a bit-player, a victim; his ascension up the ladder of closing credits would depend on what he did next. Participation was the passport to a starring role: for this reason, he had vowed, he would strive to learn the backstory and to introduce a few twists of his own. Why, by the time he had completed his session, his shins aching, a dull throb shining in the small of his back, Branston was halfway convinced that he could smell the polishing lacquer on the statuette that he’d win for Best Short Picture at the next Cannes Festival.
Branston had begun two activities simultaneously. The first was a journal – a Word file that he simply called Yasser and Maggie – and the second was to follow Yasser wherever the young man went, within the obvious boundaries dictated by the laws of temporal, physical and ethical discretion.