Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  At a stroke, it seemed, he had become Yasser’s shadow.

  6.

  The new working week began, and on Tuesday evening, when he arrived home in the middle of the afternoon, Yasser sensed change in the air: something hard to define; a tension. Trying to remain as optimistic as possible, Yasser held tight to the possibility that his parents’ bad mood was down to a rapid deterioration in Shyleen’s uterine health. Not that he wanted his cousin to suffer, of course; it was more that he disliked being the focus of their negative attention. Maybe she’d died in her sleep. Though it shamed him to consider this alternative, briefly he hoped it was so. It did not take long, however, for that fag end of possible good fortune to be pissed away along the long urinal trough of an already bad morning.

  ‘We’ve had a visitor,’ his father told him, shortly after he’d sloughed off his coat.

  Yasser sighed. ‘I better sit down innit.’

  ‘Don’t you innit me, boy.’

  Yasser sat down anyway: the settee cushion pumped out a farty acknowledgement of his tensed body mass. Then he saw his name in bold type: a headline in a Sunday tabloid, perhaps. Banged to rights. Guilty. I feel so ashamed, purrs Bury Park’s Paki D’Amour. The lounge’s dark and treacly shades had rarely felt so oppressive. It was the like the walls had inched in over decades, only now the film had been speeded up.

  ‘Did you play it?’ Yasser asked.

  Although his father had remained standing, his eyeline was not much higher than his son’s. In the past he had used this resultant eyeball stare to his advantage; indeed, he did so now.

  ‘Play what?’ he demanded, goggled.

  ‘The film, man!’ Yasser shouted back.

  ‘And don’t you man me either! What the dickens are you discussing, boy?’

  Yasser frowned; his belly gave a quick squeeze. ‘She didn’t give you a memory stick?’ Yasser knew that his father knew how to use one: the man had taken Barnfield College up on its offer of free computer training for the over-50s, a few years earlier.

  ‘Now what nincompoopery? What she?’

  Yasser took a breath. With an effort he was able to keep his eyes open.

  ‘Who was the visitor?’ he asked softly.

  ‘A boy! He says his name’s Fonehacka. He even spelt it to me, like I don’t know my ruddy English!’

  And who the dickens is Fonehacka when he’s at home? Yasser wondered.

  ‘He wants you to help him find his brother! You! Apparently you’ve got a reputation in High Town for finding people, Yasser. You found a stolen baby.’

  ‘I did,’ Yasser admitted.

  ‘So why didn’t I know nothing about this?’

  ‘About what? It was a college project I caught on film. It was a fluke, Dad. I’m not a detective; I got no talent.’

  His father’s eyebrows writhed. At length.

  ‘Well he thinks you have, and it transpires half of bloody Luton thinks you have! So what you gonna do?’

  Yasser repeated, ‘About what?’

  ‘About finding the bloody boy, boy! His name is Nero – or Neil in real money. He’s fifteen and he’s trotting out with a white girl, the child reckons. I want him found by the end of the week.’

  Yasser waited for a different interpretation of the mini-speech to emerge, but no different interpretation was forthcoming.

  ‘You want me to what?’

  ‘Find the missing Nero! And don’t shilly-shally about it, fart-arseing on your bloody laptop!

  Throughout this direction, Yasser had shaken his head. Now he tongued his lips damp, the better to produce his flat refusal.

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said.

  ‘Joking? You’ve got a new reputation for something useful, finally! And all the Fanny Adams with your college –‘

  ‘Dad. I’m not about to start a business locating missing people. Period.’

  His father wiggled a finger. ‘Don’t you period me, boy. You’ll establish a profitable sideline by the time I say Jack Robinson or you’ll regret the day you were born! How else are you buying your expensive shoes?’

  ‘The stall.’

  ‘Billy Bollocks. You take me for just off the banana boat.’ His father stretched up to his full height, adding an inch or two to the total: he was preparing to leave the room, Yasser guessed, his words delivered as a fait accompli – and lo, it shall come to pass…

  ‘And one more thing,’ the man added. ‘You’ll marry Shyleen too if you’re so keen on plugging her weak spots with your little man’s didgeridoo! And if she’s pregnant… you’ll name your son after me.’

  7.

  Naturally, Shyleen was the only person with whom Yasser felt comfortable discussing the matter and these latest developments. As usual, she suggested a drive: she thought better when she drove, or so she claimed.

  ‘When you drive,’ Yasser answered, ‘you don’t think at all.’

  ‘Then you drive. I’ll pout and look pretty as your Asian babe. Maybe tickle your didgeridoo if you’re lucky. You can always go back to the Pikeys tomorrow.

  Yasser smiled into the mouthpiece. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘We’re going to see those students – the ones Tommy played poker with,’ Yasser replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he might’ve said something. People say all sorts of things to strangers.’

  ‘How do you know they’re strangers?’

  ‘Well I don’t. But I don’t have any better ideas.’

  ‘And what makes you think they’ll talk to you?’

  ‘I don’t. But I don’t have any better ideas. And I have to get out of my room.’

  They met outside the Galaxy Centre, and had a coffee in the work-dodgers’ pub before heading up the High Street on foot, with the smell of that establishment – disinfectant, hops and curdled hope – scorching their nostrils.

  Ten minutes, and they were standing outside the student Halls of Residence.

  ‘And now you’re King Kong,’ said Shyleen.

  ‘Do one,’ Yasser told her reflectively, staring up at the oxtail-coloured brick. Then he turned to her and added: ‘Do what?’

  ‘Climb the walls? Or do you surprise me with the announcement of a plan?’

  ‘No, no plan. Heaven forbid! I could pretend to be pizza – a pizza delivery.’

  ‘Like in a porn film!’ Shyleen was beaming. ‘Then I share you with all them eighteen year-old Nursing undergrads from Hull. Ooh, you know how to turn a girl on, Yass. I’m like the Grand Coulee Dam in me thong!’

  ‘Shut it, Shy, I’m thinking. Or dare I ask you what you suggest?’ said Yasser.

  The beam on Shyleen’s face burned brighter.

  ‘You suggest, dear boy, what abuses of my position in car insurance I might’ve committed since our phone call, and what evidence of those abuses I might’ve printed out using work time and work ink.’

  ‘…The fuck?’

  ‘Well, students have cars too, you know.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So. I can do address searches, and I did.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So a student in this very Hall of Residence owns a Mini with oh-nine plates. Her name is Melissa Claybridge – and I’m just about to tell her I saw a black guy tying to steal it. And not just because she’s an overprivileged bag of foxshit either, driving a car her daddy paid for when I had to pay for my own. No. In order, my Yasser, to get in your pants.’

  ‘You’ve got her number?’

  ‘Well, I have. But how would a passing member of the public have her number? No. It’s the intercom blackjack for us, Sunny Jim. Then when I panic her into coming out… you go in.’

  Yasser grinned. ‘Not bad. For that,’ he said, ‘my didgeridoo is yours for the blowing.’

 
‘Always was. Come on. I’m feeling like that bird off The Killing. Don’t want to lose my mojo.’

  8.

  Shyleen had seen Tommy pressing a button less than halfway up the panel, and this at least gave Yasser a clue where to start. The building was eight storeys high, after all.

  Third floor. By the time he’d stepped out of the lift he’d rehearsed his door-knocking speech, truncated though it was.

  The fifth door that he tried was already ajar, and heavy metal throbbed within. A tangy incense of hash smoke snaked out into the corridor. The gland problem who opened the door wider – twenty stone in his khaki beach shorts and faded Fields of the Nephilim t-shirt, his features foetal and his scribble of beard less philosopher than mouse turds on a Welcome mat – appeared to have partaken of more than his fair share of the latter. His eyes were like the Roadrunner’s.

  ‘Buenos noches,’ he piped, ‘amigo.’

  It was three forty-five in the afternoon.

  ‘Buenos noches,’ Yasser answered, and then offered his real name. ‘I’m a friend of Tommy’s. Here for the cards the other night?’

  ‘Sure, amigo.’ The glandjob nodded his head.

  ‘Says he might’ve left his phone here.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, come in and look, compadre. My igloo is your igloo.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Yasser stepped over the threshold, yanked by the dizzying silver fog. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s pungent, I grant you.’

  ‘It certainly is.’

  The apartment was filthy. Clothing and food competed for space on every surface. There was no sign of a carpet anymore: it was covered with newspapers.

  Making a show of looking for a mobile, Yasser spied eggshells on a bookcase; and such was the volume pounding from the music centre that a pizza – an entire cooked pizza – bounced and wriggled with the bassline, upside-down on a sofa cushion.

  Yasser expected to see a mouse. Or catch a throat infection.

  ‘Oh wait a minute, bro,’ said the glandjob. ‘It weren’t here – my mistake.’

  ‘What weren’t?’

  ‘The poker game? It was next door.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘My memory, eh? Too much voodoo. It were next door: Paul Physics.’

  ‘That’s his name?’

  ‘No, man, that’s his subject he’s studying – I don’t know his surname. Or maybe I do. To tell you the truth – I hide it well, I know – but I been doing a lot of Class C. I mean, like wheelbarrows of the fucking shit. I tend to live a lot in the American Sixties and Seventies. A speedball was –‘

  ‘I know what a speedball is,’ Yasser interrupted. ‘Heroin and coke.’

  ‘…You wouldn’t have one on your person you’d be good enough to sell, would you? My folks are well rich and money’s no object, compadre.’

  Yasser laughed: a bark. ‘I don’t tend to carry em around. The five-oh ain’t so copacetic round here, man. Street hassle, you dig?’ For the occasion of this satirical pisstake, Yasser had even adopted a chiffon-light American accent.

  ‘My brother. Ain’t that the truth.’

  So Yasser stepped out into the corridor and knocked on what he reasonably hoped was the relevant door. At least the student who answered it appeared student-normal: long, rodent-colour hair, parted in the middle; a lively culture of spots on an angular chin; John Lennon spectacles, darkened glass. He spoke with a Gallic burr, and listened in a manner that suggested a slight deafness, as Yasser explained his predicament.

  The man was hurting. On Cards Night he had lost heavily; he had taken, in fact, a thorough spanking, to the tune of three hundred quid. For this reason alone he was happy to talk – to analyse his play and his misfortune – in the loquacious manner of all breathing victims the world over.

  Yasser could not believe his luck. (It was about time.) Midway through a recital that was italicised by emotion, the student started framing thoughts on how he would report his lack of funds back to his father. And Yasser said, ‘I have a few pounds I could help you with.’

  The man’s face glowed softly. He couldn’t believe his luck either, but he was wary with it, not used to getting his own way, perhaps. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. Twenty pounds – and twenty pounds only – for the names and addresses of the people you played poker with the other night. Any information appreciated.’

  The student nodded.

  Goodbye to the Carnivores

  No more fire.

  These were the words that Connors repeated silently to himself.

  No more fire.

  A tattoo as he marched along, as best he could.

  Although he was now three days away from the village (and by his own reckoning, out of danger), there was to contend with the fact that his cigarette lighter had run out of gas the previous evening, and if he didn’t make it back to the harbour town where he’d landed on Toenail Island today, he would most likely freeze in the absence of a remarkable blaze.

  No more fire.

  Was he going the right way? To his eyes all the landscape looked the same, and he had long since grown to distrust his inbuilt instinctive compass. All he could hope for, as long as he wandered in a vaguely straight line, was that he’d encounter civilization sooner or later.

  And then what?

  The hell of it was… he didn’t know. After dining with Ruth and her extended family (but before he had learnt what he’d eaten) he had sought opinion on the subject of his proposed journey to God’s mouth. In no uncertain terms he had been told that the voyage was impossible: if it had ever been attempted, the reckless sailor or crew had not returned home to tell the tale. It was suicide. Thus, it was right up Connors’s alley: something suicidal sounded good, about now.

  Ruth’s father had fed Connors well, and had sold him provisions for his onward travels – something herbal and spicy, he had had to insist on it. It was filling but samey, and Connors couldn’t wait to find the butcher’s shop-cum-restaurant where he had dined with Elvis on their first night on the island. Couldn’t wait to blow the rest of his wages on a big pile of something bloody… as long as it had once owned more than two legs. A new golden rule.

  Several stories had been told that night, interspersed with the singing. The tribe consisted of cannibals, but as they were at pains to convey, this did not make them murderers: in a spirit of waste-not-want-not, they ate what died naturally. They ate the elderly deceased, tumours and warts and all; but they didn’t kill, and Connors was informed several times that he was in no danger of routine execution.

  So happy and tipsy had Connors become that he had almost believed them. And now he missed their company. Eventually hobbling into the outskirts of the harbour town was one of the loveliest activities that he’d ever taken part in. When he knew where he was, he sat for a rest on a bench near a yard where some children were playing basketball. The tears that flowed down his cheeks were copious… After Connors had rebuked himself for the outpouring, he told himself that he should have bottled what he’d shed. In this fucking nut-house, he had no way of knowing when he’d need to drink his own tears. He stood up.

  Connors headed back through town, towards the harbour, having pulled from his bag a small bouquet of plant life wrapped in grass – an analgesic that Ruth’s father had also sold him. As he walked he plucked a stalk free and popped it in his mouth. It tasted foul; but chewing it made him feel better almost on the instant. Some of the pain retreated; some merely dulled, ready for the next time that Connors was unprotected. Good shit they packed here, the man mused. He wondered if he could smuggle some back to the real world. Sell it in Marsh Farm or High Town. Make a killing. Despite everything, Connors smiled.

  Near the harbour where he’d first arrived, he sat again. Not once in his life had he been more depressed. He had nothing left. Thanks to the flies that had attacked him, he scarcely ha
d skin on his palms; a grand total of five or six coins jangled in his pocket – coins of a lousy denomination. All but worthless, Connors reasoned. And all that he’d done was circle an island, like a tourist with time on his hands, starving the flesh off his rump… and eating boy soup.

  This time, when he cried, he did not stop so easily. After a few minutes, in fact, it seemed as though he would never stop crying ever again. It didn’t feel good: but producing the tears felt marginally better than not producing the tears.

  It was all he had.

  Property Viewings

  1.

  Throughout the ordeal, Nero had endeavoured to stay physically fit, though he’d discovered, as the days ploughed on, that it wasn’t the case that he had less and less energy for his exercises: it was more that the thought of exercise crossed his mind less and less often. Things that had once been second nature to Nero were falling from him as the weeks passed: things like an awareness of the need to exercise; things like his (already limited) vocabulary. Indeed, there were times – notably in the hum of the long afternoons – when he had to grasp and make the effort to recall events before he and Jess had come to live in this bedroom. He had to chase his own memory – hunt it down and hold it – while reminding himself (occasionally, when he forgot) of the colour of his skin, or that the burgeoning blimp of activity about his lower body was a signal that he must defecate soon. It was only when he remembered to exercise – some lunges, some push-ups, some sit-ups, but he didn’t count his rounds or even his reps – that Nero also remembered the rage that went with them. And the reasons for the rage in the first place. It was only while gunning his body temperature higher that Nero pictured the faces and the penises of Eastlight and Massimo… and how he’d once believed that no man should ever see another man’s erection in real life (in porn was fine).

  It was only while engaged in callisthenics or aerobics that Nero recalled that he intended to kill them. And yet… even this urge was less pronounced; and less pronounced; and less pronounced… as time went on. Nero knew this for a fact because he was doing his exercises now. And very little in the way of revenge was playing in his head.