by Jenny Colgan
‘The thing is,’ said Howard. ‘The paper’s out to get you.’
‘Really?’ said Arthur. He’d just picked up this week’s edition. On the front page it said,
SCANDANAVIAN ROMP FOR EVIL
‘CULTURE CITY’ PROPOSERS
After unveiling plans to spend millions of pounds on a second ice rink for Conventry, planners from the city office have been off on their latest hairbrained scheme – to Denmark!
‘What were they there for?’ said random passer-by Miles Sampson. ‘To see Santa Claus?’
‘A random passer-by?’ said Arthur.
‘Yeah,’ said Howard. ‘It was late.’
‘But why?’ said Arthur. ‘We’re only trying to do something cool for the people – sorry, did I just sound really Tony Blair?’
‘That’s okay,’ said Howard, rubbing his scaly head.
‘So, what’s the problem?’
‘I dunno. Someone at the top’s got it in for you. Maybe they reckon you’re pulling Coventry down into the dirt or something.’
Arthur looked around at the hopeless expanse of grey concrete blocks.
‘How could I possibly do that?’
Howard shrugged. ‘Look, mate. You’re the one who thinks you’re going to beat Slough. You’re making some dangerous enemies.’
‘You’re telling me – what, that municipal council officers make dangerous enemies?’ said Arthur, trying to sound braver than he felt.
‘You see a lot in this job, mate.’
Arthur wandered on, as ever, to the park.
‘So, just give me the inside story and I’ll leave you alone.’
‘Yeah, you said that. And you also said you were going to twist it around and make it horrible.’
Howard sighed at the terrible contradictions his own life’s work had led him to.
They entered the park.
‘I mean,’ Arthur was going on, ‘the money won’t even have to come from round here, anyway. Brussels will supply a lot of it. And look at all the jobs and visitors it’ll create.’
‘Yeah,’ said Howard, unimpressed.
‘We’ll be the major tourist attraction of the West Midlands!’
‘Yeah, you probably would be, if you got it. Unfortunately, I’m only allowed to slag you off.’
‘Ah!’ said Arthur in frustration. ‘This is awful.’
Howard shrugged noncommitally. They neared the place where the maze was going to go.
‘Is that …’ Arthur squinted his eyes through an unlikely ray of December sunshine that had poked through the sky. Sure enough, Rafe was there again, the same place he’d been that other early morning, walking across the green, surrounded by …
‘What the hell is going on!’
‘Arthur! ARTHUR!’ Rafe was yelling. ‘Come and see this!’
Arthur took a sidelong look at Howard.
‘Has something gone horribly wrong?’ said Howard optimistically.
‘Yeah! Arthur!’
‘Gwyneth?’ Arthur screwed up his eyes. Rafe and Gwyneth were running about the park in an uncharacteristically joyful manner for Coventry.
‘G-W-I- …’ said Howard laboriously, pouring over a notebook with a sticky pencil.
‘Stop that,’ said Arthur as they drew closer. Then he just stood back, shaking his head in disbelief.
Gwyneth and Rafe were surrounded by children, running around in the frosty sunshine. The children were dancing in strange, formulaic patterns. Arthur wondered why, until he noticed Rafe gesticulating wildly at his feet.
‘What is that?’
‘It’s cress!’ said Rafe proudly.
‘It’s what?’
‘Don’t you see?’ said Gwyneth. ‘Rafe’s traced out the shape the maze is going to be with cress.’
‘To make soup?’
‘To see how it would look, and whether it would be fun.’
Arthur looked over to where Rafe had started a conga line with a crowd of children, all screaming merrily.
‘And is it?’
Gwyneth nodded. ‘They’re loving it. I wonder where Rafe’s put his camera?’
A six-inch hedge of the seed coiled in little lines for as far as the eye could see. Already, clumsy children were falling over it and – occasionally – hopping for good luck, but on the whole the lines were clean, and the shape a beautiful mish-mash of curlicues, elaborate curves and dead ends.
‘Come on in and try it!’ shouted Rafe. ‘I’m going to take some photos to show people how much fun it is!’
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Arthur. ‘By a lucky coincidence …’
Howard sweated and mopped his brow.
‘Who’s this?’ said Gwyneth, reaching them.
‘Um, I’m Howard Phillips …’ said Howard, staring at the ground.
Gwyneth advanced. ‘You mean that snivelling little …’
Howard snivelled and attempted to make himself look small.
‘Gwyn –’ said Arthur.
‘You know who this is? The guy that stitched us up in the paper!’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But look. I’m showing him some of the cool stuff we’re doing now, like how the maze is going to work.’
Gwyneth narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you going to write something decent, shithead?’
‘Um, not sure,’ said Howard.
‘It’s probably more likely if you stop calling him shithead,’ said Arthur.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Howard.
‘Huh. Right!’ said Gwyneth. She was in an exceptionally capricious mood – happy from the trip, and happy to see the maze. ‘Come on, we have to give it a try!’
Arthur followed her to the start of the maze. In his memory, from the beautiful model, he remembered there being a gate here, encrusted with roses. But of course there was just a space now. Rafe was somewhere in the distance, still playing Pied Piper, but Arthur was pleased to see other people – not just children – threading their way around in strange directions, staring hard at their feet.
‘The trick is,’ said Gwyneth, ‘you have to stare at your feet and not look up. Otherwise you’ll see other people and step over the walls and you’ll be cheating.’
She looked so serious saying this Arthur wanted to kiss her immediately, but counted on this not being ideal in front of a journalist.
‘Okay? Right, count to twenty after each person that goes and then set off.’
Arthur smiled, feeling happy nonetheless. Even Howard seemed to have perked up. Arthur put his head down and Gwyneth counted him off first.
He’d thought that it would be ridiculous – a maze with invisible walls was no game at all – and that it would finish briefly. Instead, the size of the maze meant he soon felt far away from the others, connected only to the toes of the brown brogues below, on his feet. He was cursing as he followed one promising path after another, only to end up at a dead end, or in a cunning spiral. He could begin to visualize what it was going to be like when the hawthorn had grown, and smelled deeply of the summertime. Almost closing his eyes, he could imagine the sun on his face, as the sounds around him faded away and he felt his way through the high green.
Gwyneth grinned as she watched the others head off. Well, they pretended to be grown-ups and not concerned, but really, they were just little boys who wanted to play.
And so did she, she thought, counting in her head to twenty.
As she made her way delicately through the streets of cress her thoughts turned to what she would meet at the centre of the maze. Perhaps someone would be waiting there … She smiled to herself and hit another dead end – she only just remembered that this maze wasn’t real yet, even as she danced along.
From above, the maze would have looked real, even though the walls were only six inches high (and edible). On the ground, however, people were twisting and turning endlessly through the bright winter sun, the cress glinting green and white with hoarfrost. Howard was enjoying himself. The fresh air was something of a novelty.
He hadn’t come up against a dead end for a while. Arthur was confident he was nearing the middle. Nor had he clapped eyes on a soul for some time. Truly, the maze was enormous. It would work wonderfully, it would. He wondered what would be waiting for him in the middle. He drifted for a second and imagined Gwyneth naked, conveniently forgetting that it was freezing cold and the space was completely open to public view. He spurred himself on.
I must be getting near, thought Gwyneth. She could feel herself closer to the heart of the maze and began to get excited as to what she might find there. She started to move more quickly, too.
Rafe had loved building the maze. He’d traced it out endlessly, early in the morning, and couldn’t wait to watch the maze man’s dream take shape. He’d watered the cress and hoped it wouldn’t freeze too much to grow, and here it was. It had taken him a while to decide what to place in the centre, but he’d managed it. Everything was going to be fine.
Gwyneth’s heart was sparkling and her pulse rate high as she realized she had entered the inner sanctum of the maze. It looked like a long room. At the end of it was a figure, turned away.
She ran towards it.
Arthur almost ran into the middle of the maze, then stopped short as he realized two people were already there, heads bent together. With a sudden drop of his heart, he snapped out of his reverie and looked around him, realizing that he wasn’t in a proper maze at all: that he could see for miles around, that the walls weren’t real. And that Rafe and Gwyneth were standing very close together in its centre.
‘They’re lovely,’ Gwyneth stammered. She didn’t know why she felt so strange. It was as if she’d been dreaming of being in a real maze – like when she’d seen the model – then it had simply disappeared. But not before she’d seen Rafe. He was crouched down, his strong back towards her, tending the huge bunch of snowdrops he’d been growing in a hole he’d carefully dug right at the centre.
‘Thanks!’ said Rafe. ‘I just thought it would be … you know, a nice touch.’
He plucked one of the white flowers and gave it to her. It smelled of distant spring. She smiled at him and he smiled back.
‘Hi!’ said Arthur, recovering his composure. ‘Hey ho! Here we are!’
They looked around at him, just as Howard crashed through another entrance into the centre.
‘Wow!’ said Howard. ‘That was brilliant! It really felt like being in a real maze!’
‘So you’ll write a good story?’ said Gwyneth, smiling.
Howard shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
‘What do you think, Arthur?’
Rafe stepped up towards him. Arthur couldn’t help smiling at his friend. His own fantasies of Gwyneth in the maze were, of course, only that.
‘Okay, Jamie Oliver,’ he said. ‘It’s brilliant.’
‘It is brilliant,’ said Howard. ‘It even smells like – I don’t know, hawthorn or something in here.’
Rafe smiled shyly as the centre of the maze started filling up with excited children who’d made their way there too. ‘Well, I thought if people could see it, they’d understand what we were trying to do.’
Arthur nodded and glanced at Gwyneth, who was looking back at him, her face unreadable.
‘“Cress disaster in Local Park”?’
Sven held the paper up to the light. ‘This doesn’t seem much like news to me.’
‘Shut up,’ said Arthur brusquely. He was sitting with Rafe at one end of the conference table.
Sven read the piece out loud:
‘“Chapel Fields saw further bureaucratic encroaches yesterday when it was infested with a cress-like fungus. The park is the site of controversial possible development for the European City of Culture (funded from Brussels in Euros). Town planning spokesman Rafe Colemat said, ‘This will show them.’”’
‘That’s not what I said,’ said Rafe sulkily.
‘“However, park users are being reassured that the growth is ‘probably’ not poisonous to dogs or small children.”’
‘Why does everyone think that we’re on some big pilgrimage to kill small children?’ groaned Arthur. ‘Are we? Am I not reading the right memos?’
‘So,’ said Arthur to Marcus. ‘How’s it looking?’ He was staring at a pile of financial projections.
‘That depends,’ said Marcus cautiously.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it depends on whether or not you manage to throw off all the bad publicity and iron out all the logistics problems and manage to actually win the award.’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘I rather thought it might.’
‘Otherwise of course we’ll all lose our jobs and the whole department will probably be eradicated … homelessness … despair, all that stuff.’
‘Okay.’ Arthur rested his head on his hands.
‘But!’ said Sven, leaning over on the back of his chair. ‘Did you know we can, technically speaking, get a ferris wheel balanced on top of all this ice?’
‘Really?’ All the boys huddled round the projection.
‘Cool!’
Gwyneth tried to keep up with Rafe as he strode through the underpass.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I thought your maze was lovely.’
He turned to her. ‘I just – you know, I think this is important. This city needs beauty and loyalty and …’
‘You’re a regular knight in shining armour.’
Gwyneth was joking, but realized the double meaning in what she was saying. ‘I don’t mean … not in that way.’
He smiled. ‘No, no, It’s okay. But I do feel … you know,’ he kicked a discarded Coke can disconsolately, ‘that we should have a mission about this place. That we really have to do something. And you and me and Arthur are the only ones who get it.’
Gwyneth nodded. ‘But we’re right, though.’
He walked on, then stopped, turned round, picked up the Coke can and put it in the bin. Gwyneth smiled to herself.
‘Well, why is it so damn difficult?’
Ross smirked and tapped the newspaper.
‘You know, joining the Black Knights was the best thing I ever did,’ he mused. ‘Apart from you, of course, darling.’
Fay was sitting on his knee, carefully. She half-smiled in response. A couple of weeks in Ross’s office and he had finally worn down her resistance. There had been so much shouting, so many whispered threats down the phone to Ross’s carefully placed friends in town, so many closeted meetings and private chats with odd-looking men from amusement companies, chocolate concessions … She just didn’t care any more. She stared at Ross blankly.
‘Bloody brilliant, boss,’ said Dave. ‘We’ve got those cress-munching bastards.’
‘So, what now, darlings?’ Ross was wondering whether he could stick his hand up Fay’s shirt. Probably.
‘Christmas, innit?’ said Dave.
‘God, so it is. I think we need a celebration – to drink to our very lucrative new year. A proper party, huh, angel?’
‘Whatever,’ said Fay.
‘And see if we can’t think up a bit more fun and games for our rivals, eh?’ said Ross. ‘It’s all gone entirely too quiet. Let me see … Christmas party. What does he like, Fay-ona?’
Fay slumped her shoulders. ‘Well …’
‘Um, hi.’ Cathy peeped her head round the door.
‘Hey,’ said Arthur, smiling. ‘Come in.’
‘I just wondered …’ she began. Sandwiches came over to say hello. ‘Hello, you little sick doggie.’
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Marcus. ‘Worry about Nurse Gunterson here.’
‘Ha ha,’ said Sven, but it was clear he was still suffering from lack of sleep.
‘What is it?’ said Arthur.
‘Well, I was just speaking to the temp and – well, we usually organize the Christmas party.’
‘Really?’ said Arthur. ‘How long has the temp been here now?’
Everyone shrugged.
‘Fifteen years?’ said Ca
thy. ‘That’s as long as I’ve been here.’
‘Well,’ said Arthur. ‘Hmm. Christmas party.’
‘There’s always been a budget for it before.’
‘I think we need a party,’ said Marcus. ‘Although we can’t really afford it,’ he added rapidly.
‘You’ve got to have a Christmas party,’ said Cathy reprovingly.
Arthur thought back to the other Christmas parties he’d attended during his time there. They were normally pretty dreary affairs, held in the lobby where people either stood around sadly playing with glasses of warm white wine and wearing party hats in a pathetic manner, or got royally pissed up and started doing shadow boxing on an improvised dance floor. He winced. Fay used to prod him in the back and try and get him to talk to people higher up in the office, and she used to flirt with Ross. Yeugh. That gave him a sticky feeling even now. Then she’d drive him home, berating him for the fact that another year had gone by with … well, with nothing. He thought of it with sadness.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Cathy, you’re right. We have to have a Christmas party. But we’re not going to have a crappy one here like we normally do.’
Cathy’s face fell. ‘But I’ve got the comedy post-it garlands all ready.’
‘Sorry, but that doesn’t matter. This year we’re getting out of the foyer and we’re going to have fun. Things are different now.’
‘Ooh, can we all go to London’s West End?’ said Cathy hopefully.
‘Not that different. But book somewhere nice. Everyone’s worked really hard this year, and next year’s going to be really important, so …’
‘Shall I spike the punch again?’
‘Yes, I think so. What do you think, Sven? Sven, put that dog down.’
Sven was clinging onto Sandwiches and gently patting his scar. Sandwiches was writhing and snortling and making unappreciative noises.
‘You’re stifling that dog,’ said Cathy.
‘I know. But I nearly lost him,’ said Sven. ‘I don’t know what else to do.’