‘I thought it best to find out the details before I set about blackmailing her. I phoned the Department of Transport.’
Saleem smirked. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. If you check out the damage on the truck and the receipts for the repairs on the other accidents she’s had, it turns out that all the smashes were on the left hand side of the truck.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘She’s over-compensating, stupid. Her eye isn’t the problem at all. The problem is that she’s so het-up about the eye that she’s driving badly by trying to overcompensate for it. She’s so paranoid about the possibility of losing her job that she didn’t even think to find out whether it was ever a problem in the first place.’
‘So it isn’t?’
‘Nope.’
‘But you blackmailed her anyway.’
‘Yep . I needed her to help me carry Doug’s body upstairs, and as a decoy.’ She stared at me, unrepentant. ‘I told her we’ d all lose everything if Doug wasn’t stopped from going to the meeting. I also threatened to tell you about her eye and how she’d deceived you. I convinced her and I convinced Ray that you were a man of integrity. I told them you’d stand by Doug come hell or high water, if you believed he was in the right. Even if he was mad.’
I passed her a mug of coffee. She took the mug. ‘Thanks.’
‘So all of this,’ I said nervously, ‘has been for my benefit.’
‘Yep. To prove to you that Doug was mad; you needed irrefutable proof. To corner you, to bully you, to beguile you. ‘
She took a gulp of her coffee and then hopped over to the oven to remove her egg. She put it on to a saucer and then hopped back to the table. She knocked it on the saucer and then started to peel it.
‘I realized, though,’ she said, preoccupied with the egg, ‘when I left you this afternoon, that you had no intention of going to the meeting.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because you don’t really love Doug. You don’t understand Doug.’
‘How can you say that?’
The egg was peeled now. ‘How? Because if you loved Doug you’d want to go to the meeting. You’d want to help him. You wouldn’t think that all the things I’d done to him were bad. You’d understand that I’m Doug’s friend and so I want to protect him.’
I almost laughed at this. Saleem ignored me and took a bite of her egg.
‘You think you’re different,’ she said, chewing and swallowing, ‘but you aren’t different at all, you only feel different on the inside. But me and Doug, we just can’t help it. People think we’re different because we are, physically. We’re a different colour. Doesn’t matter how much you do. It doesn’t fucking matter how much you care. You won’t fit. People won’t let you. Even if you find the most perfect landscape and it’s yours. Even then.’
I stared at her, flummoxed.
‘You’re a part of this place,’ she said. ‘No one doubts it.’
‘Doug’s a part of it too. So are you.’
She carried on eating her egg in silence. Eventually she said, ‘How you feel and fact, Phil. Two entirely different matters.’
I tried to work out which was worse: feeling different but fitting in or being different but feeling in your heart like you should fit but not quite fitting. Which was worse? Stupid question.
Saleem finished her egg. She sucked her fingers clean. Istared at her. ‘Would you have told on Nancy?’ I asked, eventually.
She shrugged. ‘Dunno. I like to think I’m capable of anything.’ She licked her lips and added, ‘We’re back to Nancy again, I see.’
‘No, ‘ I said, ‘I was only thinking about what you were saying earlier, before you drugged me.’
‘What was I saying?’
‘About how you have a responsibility to someone once you know their secrets.’
She sighed, ‘Screw it. We’re going to lose everything anyway.’
‘You really think so?’
‘I know it.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Who cares? This is the only place I fit.’
‘And Doug?’
‘He’s everything, he’s everywhere. Poor fucker.’
We sat in silence for a while. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll go to the meeting. I don’t know why I made such a fuss about going in the first place.’
I thought of my funeral suit, hanging up in my wardrobe. My heart contracted.
‘We’ve got nothing to lose,’ I added, thinking, at the same time, about the herb garden and the ornamental pond, the ducks, the geese.
‘I’ll wait and see,’ Saleem said, showing a laudable lack of faith in me. ‘I’ll believe you’ve actually gone only when I see it with these two eyes.’
She pointed. We were both silent for a while. Upstairs I could hear Cog walking down the passageway. Saleem looked up at the ceiling.
‘The cat,’ I said.
She shook her head, ‘He’s on my lap.’
‘Doug!’ I exclaimed, feeling something slither down my spine.
We both listened. Doug was dragging himself up the corridor and into the bathroom.
‘What time is it?’
Saleem knocked the cat off her lap, leaned back on her chair and stared at the clock on the cooker. ‘Six fifteen.’
‘When’s the meeting?’
‘Nine sharp.’
Upstairs I heard the taps turning.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Having a wash. Maybe a bath. He usually gets up at about this time. Just shows you. He was comatose an hour ago. He’s so bloody determined. That’s what happens when your mind starts to turn.’
I was suddenly frightened. I said, guiltily, ‘I don’t suppose you could give him some more tea?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not risking it.’ She smiled at me. ‘So Now what, Phil? An y suggestions?’
My head was empty.
‘There’s a heavy chest of drawers,’ she said, softly, ‘in my bedroom. You could push it up against the bathroom door. Jam him in.’
My heart began beating. ‘I’m very weak,’ I said, nervously. ‘My hand and my foot.’
‘It’s u p to you.’
‘He’ll go mad.’
‘He’s mad already. It’ll only be like more of the same. And anyway, ‘ she added, ‘he’ll still be kind of slow and fuzzy, like you were when you first woke up.’
I remembered and began blushing. ‘Fine,’ I said.
The drawers were heavy. I couldn’t get any grip with my bad hand and I couldn’t get any thrust with my bad foot. After five minutes I’d got them to the doorway of Saleem’s room. I paused a moment to get my breath back. While I paused the bathroom door - directly opposite - opened and out came Doug, still steaming from his bath and wrapped in a towel. He looked lidded and dopy. He paused in the hallway and appraised me.
‘Phil,’ he said, eventually, groping for my name. Feel.
I froze. My heart stopped and then it started up again. ‘Hi Doug.’
He stared at the chest of drawers. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing. I’m helping Saleem move some furniture.’
‘You look different,’ he mumbled and scratched his head, like he couldn’t quite believe he wasn’t just imagining me. I took a deep breath.
‘Actually,’ I said, thinking on my feet, speaking quickly, ‘I think you cut yourself shaving. On your cheek. It’s bleeding.’
‘Yeah?’ Doug put his hand to his cheek, blinking with the effort this afforded him.
‘You’d better go and check in the mirror.’
Doug slowly turned and went back into the bathroom.
‘Is it bad?’ I asked, ‘It might’ve just been a nick.’
Doug didn’t reply straight off. I bounded over the drawers, pushed the bathroom door to, bounced back again and gave them a mighty shove. A deep breath and then another shove. During the second shove Doug tried to open the door but the door only pushed ajar by five inches before I gave the drawers a thi
rd great heave and knocked it shut.
I waited for a minute, in silence, breathing heavily, sweating. After a minute, Doug said, ‘Phil, I have a beard. I haven’t shaved with a razor in fifteen years.’ His voice sounded muffled through the wood. Thick-grained and oaky. He tried the door. Another minute. ‘Phil,’ he said, ‘what’s the problem?’ I felt my heart swoop. Doug tried the door again, more aggressively this time.
With impeccable timing, Saleem appeared at the end of the corridor. She put her finger to her lips. I realized my mouth was open. What had I been intending to say? I closed it. She slid past me and into her room then came out dragging an old camp bed. She put her lips next to my ear and whispered, ‘If we prop this between the drawers and the wall there’s Noway he’ll be able to get the door open.’
I took hold of the bed and did as she’d said. Doug was silent for a moment. I guessed he was intent on listening for any noises outside. Then I heard him curse under his breath before he launched a full-blown attack on the door. The door shook. I stepped back, shocked by his sudden vigour.
‘It’ll hold,’ Saleem whispered, apparently unfazed. ‘It’s an old house. The doors are solid and so are the frames.’
She grabbed my hand and pulled me away to the top of the stairs. Doug was still raging in that small, square room with all the conviction of a wild boar in a balsa-wood crate.
‘Ignore him,’ Saleem said, calmly, ‘Here’s the plan. You go home Now and get yourself something to eat and have a wash. Get changed into your suit. Catch the number 29 bus into Enfield. The Council offices are a short walk from the market place. You’ve been there before, haven’t you? You know the address?’
I nodded.
‘Good. Get there for nine and don’t be late. Tell them that Doug’s got flu and we didn’t want to cancel again. Tell them you’ve got a roundworm and that’s why you’ve lost some hair and your face is such a mess. Bullshit them about the privet. Don’t forget the files and the accounts.’
Doug was still banging against the door and yelling now.
‘What if I screw up?’
She grinned. ‘If you screw up, I’ll tell Doug that you locked him in there on purpose. When he gets out he’ll hunt you down and kill you.’
‘He knows I locked him in there,’ I said, trembling. ‘He came out while I was shifting the drawers and I had to speak to him. He knows I locked him in. Oh Christ,’ I said desperately, ‘why did I do it?’
Saleem’s grin slipped for a moment and then rose up again and regained control of her face. ‘We’ll tell him he dreamed it. I’ll say I was moving my room around and halfway through I went out to buy a bottle of furniture polish so I didn’t hear him yelling.’
‘D’you think that’ll work?’
‘No. Sod him, though. Keeping this place going is our top priority.’
I stared at her, sweating and frantic and suddenly suspicious. I said, ‘I thought we were doing this for Doug.’
Saleem scowled. ‘We have a whole series of priorities, Phil. Like a set of balls which you have to keep juggling. You can only keep a certain number in the air at any one time.’
Doug was baying at the bathroom door. It sounded like he was biting at the paintwork. I was frightened.
‘And afterwards,’ I said, terrified, ‘who’s going to let him out of there?’
Saleem sniffed, put her head to one side, thought for a moment. ‘We’ll toss for it. Now fuck off.’
BY RIGHTS I should have expected him, but it still came as a surprise to come across him standing on one small foot next to the giant yellow broom. Wu. I wished he’d stay in one place and then I could have been sure to avoid that area. A quiet corner where no one would see him and he, in turn, could see no one.
He was in his own world. I stood, out of sight, behind a silver birch, and I watched him. Just like Doug had. He was so beautiful. I couldn’t help myself. Doug was right, of course. He was so much a part of the landscape. Taking what he wanted from his surroundings. Digesting the good things, rejecting the bad things. A part of the universe and yet entirely himself. Flowing. Needing nothing, owning everything.
Was that what Doug craved? Was that what I wanted? And Saleem? I didn’t think so. We were all smaller. Wanted to hold something. A small space. A small holding. And the smaller the holding, the harder to hold. The smaller, the harder.
I slipped my arms around the tree and clung to it, until it was time to let go.
MY FUNERAL SUIT. The files. Enfield. An office. Four men and me.
It was hard, to start off with, so instead of evading and avoiding - my normal course of action - I embarrassed myself on purpose. Straight away. Up front. I gave myself a proper reason. I said, ‘Sorry about the way I look. I developed an allergy to a new type of weedkiller we’re using.’
They stared at me, smiled, and then they stopped staring.
‘I’m sorry Doug couldn’t make it,’ I added. ‘I’m a poor second best but he has the flu and didn’t want to risk spreading it.’
Two of them nodded, the third one stared out of the window (in a world of his own), the fourth was inspecting the files.
‘Things have been tight,’ I said, preparing to mention the deficit, to discuss the privet, the insurance.
‘Actually,’ the man with the folder looked up, ‘actually, Phil, there’s something we need to talk about.’
My heart sank and then, miraculously, it rallied. I resolved, that instant, in a flash of fizzy sweetness, of white-blindness, to tell them about Doug’s maze. To tell them. Was it insanity? Doug’s crazy plan. I owe d him, I decided.
I opened my mouth to speak but someone else spoke first.
‘We’ve had an idea,’ the second man said, ‘and we aren’t sure how you’ll take to it, or Doug either for that matter.’
I wanted to tell them so badly. I needed to tell them. I wanted them to see how beautiful Doug’s vision was, how complete.
‘Crazy golf,’ the first man said, and then nudged the third man who was still looking out of the window.
‘Crazy golf,’ the third man parroted, ‘Nine holes. Nothing too big. Family fun and all that.’
The fourth man closed the folder. ‘Crazy golf,’ he said. ‘That’s what we’v e been planning.’
He unfolded a detailed map of the park and laid it out on the table in front of me. He opened up my heart on the table and performed careless surgery on it with the tip of his pencil. ‘Right there,’ he pointed, ‘in that little gap. What do you think?’
HERE’S THE STRANGE PART . I felt odd before, like I was weird and my weirdness was an awful secret just waiting to be discovered. And yet now that I was actually weird - shaved and hairless, bald and bare - now that I was actually weird I found that I didn’t really care. No point thinking about it. I was that thing I’d most dreaded being. I was that thing. And frankly, it didn’t matter. Not an iota.
I climbed off the bus and walked down Green Lanes, took a right turn on to Aldermans Hill, took a left through the park gates. I was home. I looked around me. What did I see?
I saw litter, I saw weeds, I saw dogshit. If I squinted, in the distance, I could see the crazy golf course. It was there already. Families putting, children dripping their cornets on to the artificial turf, the rubber flooring a bright synthetic colour. I could see it already, a clot in the centre of this little green heart.
I walked towards the house. On the way I passed Ray, securing some climbing roses on to their trellis. He didn’t see me. I walked on further and I saw Nancy. She was reversing her truck into the courtyard, her face drawn-up and hung-over. She didn’t see me. I turned and headed up the steps, pushed open the door, walked inside the house, into the kitchen.
Doug sat at the kitchen table cradling a mug of Lemsip between his two hands. We stared at each other. I shrivelled.
‘Don’t ask me,’ he said, finally, his voice as deep as the lowest note on a fine, French horn, ‘don’t ask me how I got here.’
I said nothing. I did
n’t dare ask.
‘So, Phil,’ he said, quite affable, ‘you went to my meeting.’
I gulped down some air. I nodded.
Doug gazed ruminatively into his mug of Lemsip. ‘I suppose,’ he said, slowly, ‘I suppose I let you down baldie.’
‘Pardon?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I suppose I let you down badly.’
I put my hand up to my bare face, to my forehead where the hair had been hacked.
‘No, ‘ I stuttered, ‘You didn’t let me down.’
Doug gritted his teeth, ‘I should’ve been there.’ He paused. ‘I appreciate you stepping in, though. Stepping into the breach. Because things are very tight at the moment.’ He paused for a second, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands. ‘Very tight,’ he repeated.
I nodded stupidly. I’d have agreed to anything. The truth. Lies. ‘I know,’ I said. Doug pulled his hands away and stared at me.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered, somewhat gratuitously, and carried on staring. My hackles rose. Than k you, ‘ he said again, his voice all honey. My hackles rose even higher. They were ridiculously high, so high I was almost floating, suspended and smarting up close to the ceiling. Doug, I knew, was at his most dangerous when he oozed.
He spread out his hands on to the table.
‘You know, life can be a bitch, Phil. And you find yourself tiptoeing through it, barely knowing where to put your feet down , and you hold on to these tiny little things, these tiny little places where you’v e rested your feet, these spaces. And then sometimes you start to look at these spaces, these places, to really look, and you see how tight they are. Really tight. And you begin to wonder . . .’
I gazed at him, hypnotized.
‘How’ d that meeting go, Phil?’
‘Uh . . . fine.’ I couldn’t bear to tell him how this space was getting smaller. I couldn’t bear to tell him about the nine holes and the artificial turf and the nominal charge and the soft-soled shoes.
‘How’ d it go, Phil? Did it go well or did it go baldie?’
My hand flew back to my face. ‘It went OK, I think.’ ‘We’ll talk about it later, huh?’
I nodded.
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