The non-linear system is unimaginably sensitive to initial conditions – to the smallest, the manifold and the least discernible of inputs. The devil, as they say, is in the detail.
Nick stands at his North London window and watches passing trains, bright vertebrae of light in the midwinter dark. It is not yet dinner time and already he finds himself worrying about the insomnia of the night to come. At three, maybe four in the morning, he’ll give up on sleep, switch on the desk lamp by the cracked lounge window, and try as usual to turn his attention to his tentative master’s thesis.
It has yet to take on the critical mass it needs to survive. His field is cultural anthropology; his subject, the female fertility figure. The survey begins, unsurprisingly, with the prehistoric Venus of Willendorf in all her corpulent abundance. Nick goes on to explore the Celtic Sheela-na-gig, she of the splayed vulva. Procreative icon or cautionary crone? He will go on to ask what happened to the female fertility figure in the industrial age. He will examine Jacob Epstein’s sculpture Maternity in all its elemental force, and Picasso’s ample Nude Woman with a Necklace, from between whose parted legs a river surges.
The dissertation will offer, Nick feels sure, a new slant on the fertility dolls of Ghana. It will examine the ostensibly biological foundations for the Western cult of the Barbie body, using new research which suggests that levels of two hormones vital to fertility are indeed higher in women with big breasts and narrow waists – Nick has read the early papers out of Romso University. Finally, he will consider the role of the latest robot sex doll, which features large breasts and nipples as standard, and extra-large breasts and nipples for an extra-large price. She breathes fast and encouragingly during sex. Her body temperature rises. With the use of a remote control, she will wiggle her hips as she straddles you. You can even press your ear to her warm, silicon chest and hear the urgent beat of an electronic heart.
Tonight, for Nick, there is no solace. The advert he read on the tube earlier today repeats on him like a bad takeaway. ‘Join us for Unbeatable Discounts at the Midnight Opening of our New Flagship Store. We have Dream Designs for Your Every Waking Moment.’
Nick has many waking moments. It feels as if he hasn’t slept in a week. His eyes are cavernous. His skin is pasty. He worries his hair is falling out. By night, his only company are the trains that hurtle past like destiny at the dead-end of his road.
The truth is, he wouldn’t mind a midnight opening. The company of other nocturnal wanderers. A bit of fanfare. Besides, he can’t help but recall: there are more pregnant women per square foot in Ikea than in your average city hospital.
It is this final thought – and the subsequent dopamine rush to his brain – that dispels Nick’s inertia, propelling him out the door and down the road in the direction of the next train departing from Tottenham Hale.
Allan, on the other hand, is already on the Number 192 bus. With any luck it should drop him within walking distance of the new yellow-and-blue, 300,000-square-foot blight on the North London horizon. McFurniture, he calls it. The only reason it’s environmentally friendly, he tells himself, is because no trees go into the making of it. He read in the local paper that Ikea stores take up 3,979,600 square metres across the planet. He did the maths. That’s the equivalent of 577 Premiership football pitches – minus the jubilation.
He toyed, briefly, with the idea of something he saw on the web. Furniture kits for divorced men. For £1,350 you were equipped with a living room, a complete bedroom, a dining room and a television set, including a DVD. Not bad, he’d thought. After all, three months had passed and he was still sleeping on an air mattress. He was still cooking on his old two-burner camp stove and eating off tin plates. In the end, he conceded Ikea would be easier. He used to accompany Julia, his ex, under duress, to the store in Brent Park, escaping to the food hall while she deliberated over swivel chairs, armchairs and swivel armchairs, as if their domestic equilibrium depended on it.
Maybe it did.
He’s not sure about anything any more.
Except geography. Allan teaches geography at Aylward Comprehensive. Today, he gave up on the exports of the fifty American states and tried to teach the kids about geomagnetism instead. He explained that the earth itself is a magnet. No one knows, he said, exactly why, though the molten iron and nickel at its core have a lot to do with it. But unlike, say, your ordinary fridge magnet, the earth’s magnetic fields aren’t constant. There are fluctuations and surprises, especially when you factor in the sun’s magnetic field. Because, on our favourite star, thermonuclear reactions bubble up from its core, showering us with streams of charged particles. So our local magnetic field interacts with these sun-charged particles to produce an even more sensitive electro-magnetism. ‘Which means this lump of rock we call Earth,’ he concluded, ‘is anything but inanimate. You got me? It buzzes and it hums and it crackles.’
Which is when the bubble of pink chewing gum being blown by Kylie Nickerson (or ‘Knickers-off’, as the graffiti in the boys’ toilet would have it) reached its maximum circumference and exploded with a resounding crack.
‘Result,’ declared ‘Genghis Kahn’ Kaleel from beneath his parka hood.
‘Ta,’ said Kylie.
Allan works out his frustrations playing five-a-side football with a community group twice a week. He’s a strong voice behind their fund-raising efforts for a local youth centre and a strong voice against the group’s decision to move to a field with astro-turf. He talks about the rate of injuries. He talks about the effects on ball control. He doesn’t talk about the deep-in-his-gut feeling that contact with the ground is somehow important; that we have to keep our feet firmly planted; that maybe there’s a line or current of energy we shouldn’t be without.
As Allan alights from the bus, he wonders again about the mysteries of magnetism. It is not yet eight and already he can see a blinking tailback of cars on the North Circular Road. In the freshly paved car park, the queue of shoppers is already many, many rows deep.
He draws breath. Is he up to this? Julia always said he was colour blind. He is afraid he doesn’t know how to put things together. Short of buying everything in one colour, he doesn’t know how to make things match. Deep down, he is afraid he will never be able to make his new flat feel like a home. Deep down, he is afraid he will keep waking in the middle of the night – heart banging, spine rigid – not knowing where the hell he is.
Rachel and Aisling are exactly where they want to be. They’ve been queuing since seven. They missed the free hot drinks, but they’re close enough to the front to enjoy the flame-throwers, stilt-walkers and the a-cappella group. Rachel is a registered community midwife who’s waiting for the call from one of her overdue ladies. ‘It’ll be tonight. Mark my words.’ She trusts her instincts as much as her training; has done ever since she was a girl, elbow-deep in ewes on her family’s Wiltshire farm. There’s no creature born with a greater will to die than a sheep,’ she once told Aisling. ‘Whereas babies’ – she waved her hand – ‘babies practically haul themselves into the world.’ She tells Aisling she’d might as well be awake when the call comes, and what better way to pass the time than twenty-four-hour shopping?
Aisling is a senior staff oncology nurse, with special training in pain management. In her hospice, that means not only your standard opioid analgesics, but also, she makes sure, good beer and boxes of wine in the communal fridge, an abundance of chocolates, occasional packs of ciggies and a few top-shelf magazines for those in need. They’re ill,’ she declared at one staff meeting. ‘They’re not dead.’ When Aisling speaks, people tend to listen.
She met Rachel at a Cuban salsa class at the local leisure centre. Typically, there weren’t enough men, so they were paired up. Aisling agreed to lead; Rachel provided the rhythm. More than a year later, they still move as one. So when Rachel first saw the advert for discounted mattresses and the Noresund lacquered-steel double-bed frame, complete with metalwork motifs, she knew nothing else would do. When Aislin
g saw the price – thirty quid to the first 500 – she got the flask and the fold-up chairs.
There is every promise in a new double bed: warmth to be had, wine to be spilled, crumbs to be slept upon, and the ghosts of old lovers banished. Tonight, as the thousands gather, a fire-breather stops near Aisling and Rachel. He throws back his head, opens his mouth wide to the February night and exhales a sudden fury of flames. Yet Aisling turns not to him but to Rachel, for in the wild and smoking light, her face is bright, arresting, magnificent.
Not far behind, Bob and Imelda hold hands against the night. They’re not used to being outside, under the sulphurous glow of the North London sky, among strangers as it nears midnight. Imelda feels unusually awake, as you do when you find yourself at night in another country. It’s like that somehow, the Ikea car park. The familiarity of the moon and the stars takes her by surprise, as it did that first time they sat on the darkened terrace of their time-share in Spain all those years ago. In the morning, she remembers, the outdoor table and chairs were covered in a fine, red dust, and when a neighbour explained it was sand blown over from the Sahara, Imelda marvelled that a bit of Africa could be right there on her terrace; that the world could be so connected.
Bob suggested they come out tonight. ‘We can just look,’ he said. ‘No harm looking, is there?’ Last month, on his final cheque, he brought home a breadmaker and had refused to take it back. Not that she wasn’t enjoying it; she was running the gamut. White bloomers. Wholewheat loaves. Malt bread. Raisin bread. Pesto-and-pine-nut bread. But both she knew and Bob knew. No amount of bread was going to fill the hole, the hole left when the boys moved out, all three within a year; the hole into which a large part of Imelda had slipped.
So the timing of Bob’s redundancy could hardly have been worse. Not only were there university fees to pay, but the prospect of retirement in Spain was also looking ever more distant. And these days, Imelda couldn’t think beyond the morning telly listings. Hadn’t Bob always managed things? Hadn’t he worked for over thirty years as a logistics manager for a major airline? In his time, he’d overseen shipments of everything: racing cars, racing horses, small yachts, a rare Asian elephant, paintings by Degas, Dutch flowers, De Beers diamonds, a polar bear, a prehistoric alpine man, twenty thousand kilos of asparagus, zoo animals, live lobsters, and lead-lined coffins. ‘Life,’ he once told Imelda with a laugh, ‘is cargo. It’s all in the handling.’
‘Why not?’ he said to her, grinning.
She shrugged.
‘We’re free agents, aren’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Imelda, ‘we’re certainly that.’
So it was wordlessly agreed. From textiles to kitchens, from dining interiors to children’s furniture, they could make believe they were starting all over again.
Katie is starting over. Her boyfriend left her when he found out she became pregnant by retrieving the just-used condom from the bin and inseminating herself with the help of a Johnson & Johnson’s cotton bud. She had never expected it to work but now she’s eight months gone and desperate for a late-night plate of Ikea’s Swedish meatballs.
What she couldn’t tell Oli is that it wasn’t just some crazy impulse. The truth is, she’d been dreaming of sperm for months. She saw their urgent heads and tails in the quivering seeds of the tomatoes she sliced in the KFC kitchen. She saw them every evening in the paisley scarf of the businesswoman at her bus stop. She saw them in the Arsenal strikers who propelled themselves towards the goal as Oli shouted at the telly. She saw them in the spray of fireworks that lit up the night sky over the common on New Year’s Eve. She’d even pointed heavenwards to the white, wriggling tails of light and whispered in OlI’s ear over the crackle of static. ‘Remind you of anything?’
‘Yeah,’ said Oli. ‘Stickleback.’
Later Simone would say, ‘What did I tell you, K? He’s pond life.’ Simone has been Katie’s best friend since primary school. Katie persuaded her to come tonight to help her decide on a cot and changing table. Then they’ll hit the food hall. Simone is not eating for two. Simone will be eating for Simone, and then some, as usual. It’s only four days to Valentine’s and there isn’t a man in sight. She never told Katie she fancied Oli. It went without saying. She always fancies Katie’s boyfriends. It is a dogged form of loyalty. Simone admires Katie. Simone lives through Katie. And, at times, though she doesn’t know it, Simone envies Katie. She envies her her fullness – now more than ever of course. Because Simone never feels full in any sense of the word.
‘Ten minutes to meatballs,’ she announces.
Tonight, she too is suffering Katie’s abandonment by Oli. Tonight she also rubs her lower back as the night wears on in the Ikea car park. And when the two lesbians in the queue ahead mistake her for being pregnant as well, she, along with Katie, accepts the offer of a fold-up chair and settles into it with the ancient gravitas of a matriarch-to-be.
In a state of chaos, change is not controlled by a source outside the system. On the contrary, it is determined by the myriad interactions of the elements within the system. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Under the floodlights of the store, the ceremonial log is lowered into place, Swedish style. John Monaghan picks up the axe and begins to chop, wishing not only that he could loosen his belt, but also that he could simply snip a ribbon like any other retail manager. The effect, however, is not lost on those who wait. As the axe strikes its final blow, midnight arrives. The doors swing open and the crowd surges forward.
There is a race to Livingroom Interiors. Leather sofas, usually on sale for £325, are going for just £49 to the first 350 customers. Allan is among the sprinters. The finer points matter little to him. He stops only long enough to scribble the all-important code number before making a dash for Bedrooms. Good to be fit, he thinks.
He stops dead.
He knows the slender shoulders under the chunky cardigan. He knows the streaky blonde knot of hair. Julia.
Julia, his Julia, is standing with her back to him in Kitchens, opening and closing cupboard doors. She’s standing next to a man who is looking at colour chip cards and investigating the undersides of kitchen units. Julia is with a man who doesn’t mind shopping at Ikea.
Allan drops his code numbers and tries to flee. Only there’s no room for manoeuvre. The crowd is dense and impatient behind him. ‘I dare you to try, mate,’ says a strapping Australian in a Man U shirt. Across the aisle in Livingrooms, people are diving on to sofas and staking their claims like squatters. Two couples are pulling on either end of his chosen settee in a consumer tug-of-war. Whatever made him think he could do this?
‘Hello, Allan.’
Julia.
Julia.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ she says.
‘Likewise,’ he says.
‘Allan, this is Steve. Steve, Allan.
‘Steve works out.
‘Enjoying the bachelor pad?’ Julia says.
‘You bet.’
She pulls her cardi tight across her chest. Steve tactfully turns his attention to the spotlight-track set overhead. Allan grinds his teeth.
He wants to pull Julia into a quiet corner of the Tidaholm oak kitchen. He wants to say, What are you thinking? Will Steve stroke your back so you can sleep? Will Steve show you the secret lanes of Sussex by bike? Will Steve remember that, if you cry too much, your blepharitis flares up?
Shoppers shoulder past. ‘It’s crazy in here,’ she says, smiling weakly.
‘Crazy,’ he agrees. So crazy, in fact, he can’t stop himself. ‘So, Steve,’ he says, pulling his shoulders back, ‘always take your dates to Ikea?’
‘Come on,’ says Julia, grabbing Steve’s bicep. ‘We’re leaving.’
Steve doesn’t blink. ‘We’re not dating.’
And Allan feels the sweet flood of relief.
‘We’re moving in together.’
It’s one of those random puns of timing. As Allan mines his brain for an adequate response, someone in the amassi
ng crowd pushes hard from behind. Allan lurches forward, pushing Steve in turn, who is sent stumbling backwards into Julia’s dream kitchen range. As Steve gets to his feet, his large builder’s hand is already curling into a raw-knuckled fist, and it is the sudden impact of said fist on Allan’s right eye that marks the flagship store’s point of no return.
Bob sees the whole thing from Children’s Furniture, where Imelda is lingering by the bunk beds. Bob, ex-logistics manager, is a good man in an emergency. As the crowd turns ugly, he finds cover for Imelda under a starry bed-tent, then works his way back downstairs. By the time he reaches the front doors, he’s seen it all: female shoppers being pushed out of the way by male shoppers; security guards dazed by the growing stampede; a man with a mallet. ‘You have to close the doors,’ he breathes to the doormen. ‘It’s complete and utter chaos up there.’
‘We’ve only just opened,’ says one.
‘We don’t have the authority,’ says the other.
‘Either you close the doors or I do,’ says Bob.
Katie is the last person in the queue to be admitted before the doors are shut and locked. Simone is stranded outside, pressing her face to the glass, pudgy and wild eyed. ‘You have to let my friend in,’ Katie says to Bob. ‘We came together.’
‘Give it half an hour, love. When the place clears a bit, they’ll open the doors again.’
‘But we’ll never find each other by then,’ she pants. ‘I got no charge left in my phone.’
‘I can let you back outside to wait with her, but I can’t let anyone else in. They’re wall to wall upstairs.’
The need for Swedish meatballs is pushing on Katie’s brain. She can already taste the beef gravy and cream. She’s longing for the lingonberry preserve. But Simone’s nose is white, piggy and pleading against the glass.
Katie turns to Bob. ‘I’m eight months gone,’ she sobs. ‘Do you want me to drop here and now with the stress?’
Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction Page 12