Spanky

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Darling, this is a surprise.’

  She held out her cheek to be kissed. My mother was old before her years, with tired blue eyes that must have once been very attractive. Her hair had greyed, but my father would not allow her to tint it, warning her of the dire consequences of looking like a tart. It was blurred about her head, in need of a perm. ‘I wish you’d have told me you were coming down. The house is in a dreadful mess.’

  As I walked through the spotless, gleaming lounge where a TV game show played without an audience I looked back at Spanky, who shrugged. ‘I don’t see a mess. Maybe she saw us coming and quickly shovelled it under the couch.’

  ‘Your father is at work,’ she continued, heading into the kitchen and filling a kettle with water. ‘I’ve barely seen him at all this week.’

  ‘Where’s Laura?’ I caught Spanky’s eye again. He had removed his wet overcoat and was hanging it on the back of a chair.

  ‘In her room.’ The careful matter-of-factness in her voice failed to disguise her concern.

  ‘She still doesn’t come downstairs much, then?’

  ‘Well, she has her own television, and she prefers to eat alone.’

  She left school in the middle of term when she was diagnosed as suffering from agoraphobia, I explained to Spanky. Still think you can help us?

  ‘I’ve certainly got my work cut out, I agree.’ He glanced over at my mother, who was briskly rubbing a spot on the sink with a dishcloth. ‘I see a lot of suburban families like this. They paper over the cracks by filling their days with little ceremonies. I think we should start by taking a look at your sister.’

  ‘Can I go up and see Laura?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s a good idea, darling,’ replied Joyce distractedly. ‘I have to put the dinner on. Your father will be back soon.’

  ‘These wall ornaments have no dust on them,’ said Spanky as we climbed the stairs to my sister’s room. ‘She must get up in the middle of the night to wipe them down.’

  I knocked gently on the bedroom door. ‘Laura? It’s Martyn.’

  ‘Go away, Martyn.’

  ‘Please open the door.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t want to see you today.’

  ‘What’s her problem?’ asked Spanky.

  You’ll soon find out.

  ‘Laura, please let me in. I’ve come all the way down from London, especially to visit you.’

  There was a moment of silence, then the lock snicked off and I was able to open the bedroom door. She’d put on even more weight since I last saw her. Her neck, torso and thighs were insulated with rolls of pallid fat.

  ‘Jesus Christ, she’s the size of a fucking house!’ Spanky’s jaw fell open. ‘No wonder she doesn’t go out. She can’t get through the door. I haven’t seen anything this enormous since Jurassic Park.’

  Don’t be so damned rude. She’s my sister.

  ‘I can’t wait to meet your father. Are you familiar with the term dysfunctional?’

  ‘Hello, Martyn,’ she said shyly, looking away from the television. She didn’t rise to greet me. I wondered if she was capable of standing without help. ‘How have you been?’

  Her shoulder-length blonde hair fell in greasy ropes on either side of her ears. It was late afternoon, and she was wearing Bugs Bunny pyjamas. Behind her on the floor was a plastic Safeway bag full of what looked like empty chocolate bar wrappers.

  ‘I’m fine. Mum’s cooking dinner. Will you come down and have something with us?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I already ate.’ A TV commercial for breakfast cereal caught her eye and she watched it as she spoke. ‘I don’t like to go downstairs too often.’ The room was decorated with bilious pink and yellow flowered wallpaper. There were teddy bears, magazines and stuffed dolls everywhere. My sister, at the age of almost seventeen, was sitting on the floor with a comic called Let’s Pretend in one meaty fist.

  ‘Why not? You must get bored being up here all the time.’

  ‘If I go down to eat, Dad always starts picking on me. Then Mum tells him to leave me alone, and they end up arguing. Some things never change.’

  ‘I wish you’d stick up for yourself when Dad starts.’

  ‘Why? You never did.’

  ‘I tried to,’ I insisted.

  ‘Come on, Joey fought all your battles for you.’ She watched the television steadily. ‘I can’t blame you for running off after he died.’

  ‘Christ, no wonder you left home, Martyn.’ Spanky was walking around the room, picking up each of the dolls in turn, checking to see if they were wearing knickers. ‘Is she always this aggressive?’

  Most of the time. She hit my mother once and nearly knocked her out.

  ‘All right, leave me alone with her. I need to get inside Laura’s mind for a few minutes. This shouldn’t be as difficult as it looks.’

  You think so?

  ‘Sure. Physical changes start up here.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘It’s just a matter of knowing what to look for. Go and give your mother a hand. I’ll be down shortly.’

  Reluctantly, I left the bedroom and closed the door behind me. I stood on the landing for a moment, listening, but heard nothing unusual. Heading downstairs, I watched my mother moving around the kitchen. She took comfort in order, removing a spoon from a neat row of cutlery, arranging the dinner plates with their edges touching. I tried to think back to when Joey was still with us. We were set in our ways even then. Everyone had their own little routines to follow. After his death we stopped sharing anything at all.

  I laid the table, then watched some television. We were just getting ready to serve the food when my father came in. He didn’t seem too pleased to see me, and nodded a curt hello before heading for his study to dump his raincoat and briefcase. He re-emerged still wearing a jacket and tie, and made straight for the table, seating himself as if in a restaurant. Nothing had changed here, that was for sure. I had now managed to limit my trips home to around three a year, and every time I saw my father I considered reducing their frequency.

  ‘I suppose you’ve already spoken to your sister,’ said Gordon, unfolding a napkin in his lap and waiting for someone to serve him. He never called her Laura anymore, only your sister to me and your daughter to his wife.

  ‘Does she ever come out of her room?’

  ‘You’d know if you came here more often, wouldn’t you?’ He looked toward the kitchen. In the last few years his eyes had grown beady and hard, like a rat’s, and it was no longer possible to tell what he was thinking. I decided not to engage him in conversation during the meal. He was capable of finding the negative side of anything we might discuss.

  I was wondering if Spanky would manage to get Laura down for dinner when he appeared alone at the top of the stairs.

  How did it go? I asked, watching as my father sat back, allowing Joyce to place a pair of dry-looking lamb chops on his plate.

  ‘Fine. Her problem is nothing to do with agoraphobia. She’s just terrified of boys, because she knows that they laugh about her size behind her back. She remembers them liking her before she started putting on weight. I assume that was just after her brother died.’

  When she started eating heavily we took her to the doctor, but he thought more emotional damage would be caused by forcing her on to a diet. After that, no one told her to stop because she said it made her feel better. Can you do anything to help her?

  ‘I already did.’ He seated himself at the end of the table, in a spare chair.

  Hey, that’s Joey’s seat.

  ‘He’s long dead, Martyn. You said so yourself. What did he die of?’

  A cold, I replied.

  ‘Must have been a pretty bad one. I don’t know why you won’t let me—’

  What did you do to help her?

  ‘I won’t tell you just yet. I don’t want to alarm you.’ He watched as Joyce ladled thick gravy on to my father’s plate. ‘My God, those chops look disgusting. What did she
cook them in, a nuclear reactor?’

  What do you mean, you don’t want to tell me? Can you help my sister or not? I can’t reach her anymore.

  ‘I took care of that. I gave her a time-release medication that will stop her from worrying too much about what I’ve done. You won’t believe the change you’ll see in her during the next few weeks. I’m not concerned about Laura now. Her problem will gradually take care of itself. It’s your father who bothers me most.’

  ‘You’re quiet, Martyn,’ said my mother. ‘Is that enough for you?’ I looked down at the burned chop and the mound of squashy, overcooked vegetables on my plate.

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  He’s just a workaholic. All he ever thinks about is his job. What about Joyce? Can you do anything for her?

  ‘That depends. I already had a little poke about in her skull, hope you don’t mind. She’s not terribly responsive. She feels she doesn’t please your dad any more. They stopped having sex quite a while ago. She can’t understand what she’s doing wrong. If I can put him right, it’ll help your mother out. She needs to have her self-esteem restored. You must have noticed how your father hardly even bothers to look at her. I presume you realize he’s having an affair.’

  Gordon? I stared at him. My old dad? You have got to be joking.

  ‘He’s seeing a woman in his accounts department. It’s been going on for quite a while as far as I can tell. Sometimes they stay late and do it in his office.’

  That’s disgusting.

  ‘You’re telling me. I only probed his psyche for a little background information. I didn’t expect to stumble across his smutty fantasies. It was quite a shock. At least now I have some material to work with. I think I can help him out.’

  That leaves my mother.

  When he had finished, Gordon stared at the ceiling and sucked his teeth noisily. We both turned to watch as Joyce checked my father’s plate, watching him for a sign of approval.

  ‘She’ll mostly change when he does, but I can probably get rid of this cleaning fetish she’s developed. Let me think about it. I’ll leave you to enjoy your dessert in peace.’

  He rose sharply from the table. ‘Thanks for the day out. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.’

  ‘We’re having strawberry mousse,’ announced my mother, sounding disconcertingly as if she was addressing Spanky.

  Wait, where are you going?

  ‘To check out the foundations of the house. There’s something I must do before I go. I can set the changes in motion, but it’ll be about six weeks before you notice any real difference in your family.’

  Spanky leaned against the door-jamb, studying the ceiling. He seemed to be looking for something. ‘Do you know who they’re insured with?’

  I can’t remember offhand. Why?

  ‘Oh, no matter. I can find out easily enough.’

  My father ran his tongue over his teeth and probed his gums with a finger. My mother watched him carefully, her fork poised over her untouched meal. If she was waiting to be complimented on the food, it was going to be a long evening. Neither of them noticed my eyeline constantly straying to the door.

  You really think they’ll change?

  ‘Oh, I can guarantee it.’

  You won’t hurt them in any way, will you? I mean, with Laura being the way she is and everything—

  ‘Nothing I do will really harm them physically, I promise you. Sudden changes are bound to cause a certain amount of emotional pain in the process. You can’t make an omelette without—’

  I love them, Spanky. I know they don’t seem much to you. They’re all the family I have.

  ‘I know you care. Changing them will help you too. You’ll just need to have a little courage. Now, I need one favour from you in order to make it work.’

  Tell me. I’ll try my best.

  ‘Whatever happens, I don’t want you to have any communication with them for six weeks.’

  What if they call me and it’s urgent?

  ‘I’m sure they’ll make it sound urgent, very urgent indeed, but you have to resist the temptation to see them. No matter how often they call you, no matter how many messages they leave, it’s imperative that you ignore them. If you don’t, your interference will only complicate matters further and adversely affect the outcome of my plans. Will you promise for me? We need a little trust around here, Martyn.’

  I watched as his eyes studied mine. He was certainly changing my world, and it hadn’t hurt me so far—but this was different. This was fooling with someone else’s life. But I had failed to trust him before, and he had left. I couldn’t risk that happening again, not when my life was finally getting back on course.

  All right, I finally agreed, I promise not to interfere.

  ‘That’s a good boy,’ grinned Spanky, materializing a long-handled shovel in his hands and raising it to his shoulder. ‘Now I can get to work.’

  Chapter 13

  Socialization

  I needed to believe that Spanky could do what he’d promised.

  I’d awoken one day to find myself sinking in quicksand, and here was someone standing by with a rope, offering to pull me out. I wasn’t in a position to question his motives, because he had no known precedent. To whom could I compare him? How could I know if he was real? I could hardly discuss the problem with friends. I recently met this daemon muse. You know, like the one who appeared to Socrates. Only we went shopping and he gave me a haircut . . .

  Spanky had me at a disadvantage, and I was sure that he knew it.

  On Tuesday morning I arrived at work to find a message on my desk from Lottie:

  Your mother phoned just after you left last night. Sounded upset. Wants you to call her—urgent!

  It took considerable willpower to screw the notepaper into a ball and toss it in the bin. Darryl still wasn’t back, so I had to open up the tills and sort through the rest of the week’s orders by myself. Max arrived in an absurdly cheerful mood, spreading bonhomie through the early morning customers like bubonic plague. At eleven he called me into his office to inform me of his successful meeting with Syms’s lawyers.

  ‘Neville is very impressed with you,’ he said, beaming creepily at me. ‘He’s keen on raising you to executive status. But I think it’s a little early for that.’ Max enjoyed wielding power. He had no other way of getting people to respect him. ‘Why don’t we see how you get on here for a while, running the showroom by yourself? We don’t know when your colleague will be returning to work.’

  So my promotion was largely by default. Max had an eager, irksome son, Paul, still in his early twenties. There was no doubt in my mind that he would draft the boy into the new setup at the first available opportunity. To achieve a position of real power, I would probably have to find some way of bettering—or forming an alliance with—his ambitious offspring.

  After lunch I called the hospital to speak with Darryl, but he refused to talk to me. The doctor apologized, and warned me that her patient had been more traumatized by the accident than she had hoped for. The surgeons had been unable to save his eye. At the moment Darryl was refusing to consider long-term plans to return to work, and was being treated for depression. I felt terrible; the doctor warned me not to blame myself. It had been a freak accident, a thousand to one chance. A minute piece of glass had been found embedded in the surface of the squash ball. Part of it had loosened on impact, entering the pupil and making the damage to Darryl’s eye more severe. There was the possibility of a court case against the manufacturers of the sports equipment. I begged her to let me speak with him, but she told me her patient was sleeping and rang off.

  Without Darryl my workload had suddenly increased. My colleague’s forte had been customer management; his weakness, form-filling. My talents, such as they were, had always lain in the reverse. But now, thanks to Spanky’s ‘charismatic osmosis’, I found it easier to persuade strangers to part with their money, while I proved to have a natural flair of my own for the deskwork.

  In additio
n to selling several complete bathroom and kitchen suites, I followed up a lead Spanky had given me, contacting someone who supplied a number of office buildings in the area, and gave him a hell of a sales pitch. I also offloaded a number of previously unsaleable items including a Duchess of Marlborough pedestal sink and a beige candlewick Mata Hari laundry hamper. By the end of the day we had taken record orders.

  My feelings of guilt over Darryl’s accident were forming a proper perspective. Max was happy. Even Dokie was walking about with an inane smile on his face, humming tunelessly. At the back of my mind, though, was a nagging doubt over the phone call from my mother. If something was wrong, I wanted to know what it was. But I had made a promise. If I didn’t keep it, Spanky would probably disappear forever.

  I arrived back at the flat to find Zack crawling around the lounge floor, papering it with pages from dozens of old magazines.

  ‘I’m doing you a favour, man,’ he explained. ‘Helping you come to terms with your spirit infestation.’

  ‘My what?’ I asked, heading for the kitchen and finding there was no milk. ‘You were supposed to pick up supplies today, Zack.’

  ‘Sorry, man, I’ve been busy. You confided in me about your daemon, right? So I’ve been checking it out for you.’

  ‘Listen, he was just a guy in a bar. I must have imagined the rest.’ I had to make light of it. There was no telling when Spanky might next appear, and he had told me not to mention his existence to anyone.

  ‘Come on, I know better than that. I heard you talking to someone in your bedroom the other morning, and there wasn’t anyone in there but you. You’ve been acting strange for a while now.’

  I returned to the lounge and helped Zack gather up the loose pages, which he placed in a cardboard file.

  ‘All right.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll wait until you’re ready to tell me what’s going on. I’ll keep the file. You’ll find some interesting stuff here on the subject of daemoniality. And it’s not all good,’ he added darkly.