by D. B. Thorne
‘Ah. A critic.’
‘I wish,’ she said.
‘I sometimes think,’ said Cato, ‘that dating, the way we do it now, it’s like an audition. You ever think that?’
Sarah opened her eyes and struggled up on to her elbows. The sun was very bright and she blinked against it. ‘Say again?’
Cato sighed, and for a moment Sarah thought it was a sigh of impatience, but then he smiled his smile and everything was okay. ‘I was thinking, that’s all,’ he said. ‘How we see a picture of somebody, maybe their name, and that’s it. That’s all you get. And you have to say yes or no. Or swipe right or left, or whatever. And it’s a bit like an audition, what an audition must be like.’
‘I guess,’ said Sarah.
‘Unfair, basically,’ Cato said. He was sitting cross-legged on the grass and he picked a daisy, pulled the petals off it.
‘Well, it worked for us,’ Sarah said. ‘So it can’t be all bad.’
‘True,’ said Cato thoughtfully, and dropped the daisy and looked at her, smiled. ‘That’s a good point.’ And for some reason, she didn’t know why but she was happy to go with it, Cato telling her that she’d made a good point made her almost ineffably happy, which was weird, because, well, basically because she wasn’t often happy. Yep, she thought. He’s brilliant.
*
They’d arranged to meet at a pub in town, but when she’d got there, Cato had been outside, called out her name, and when he’d caught up with her he’d asked her if she minded a change of plan.
‘Like what?’ she said. He looked better than his picture online, somehow more graceful in real life, but with the same crazy tangle of brown curls and amazing blue eyes.
‘Like, basically,’ he said, a half-smile on his face as if he was both super-confident and very unsure, ‘a picnic. Well, even better, a barbecue.’ He lifted both arms into the warm blue sky and turned slowly. ‘On a day like this.’
Sarah watched him, not sure what to make of him, but it was hot and she didn’t fancy sitting inside a pub all day, and if he was boring, or weird, or a nutter, then it made it all the easier for her to run away. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
‘Thank Jesus our Lord for that,’ said Cato, nodding for her to follow him, back to where he’d run from when he’d called her name. On the pavement was a cool box, two disposable barbecues on top of it. ‘I planned it as a surprise, but then thought you might say no. Which would have been damned inconvenient.’ The way he said damned inconvenient, like he was an upper-class Second World War fighter pilot, made Sarah laugh out loud.
‘And that wouldn’t do,’ she said, trying for the same accent.
‘Hey,’ Cato said, as if he hadn’t heard, ‘you’re not a vegetarian, are you?’
‘No.’
He wove his fingers together and shook them gratefully at the sky. ‘In that case, I’ll call a cab and we’ll head for a little place I know called Victoria Park.’
*
Sarah thought she might have dozed off, or drifted off, or just followed a train of thought somewhere over the rainbow of ordinary existence, when Cato asked her, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Good.’
‘You want anything else to eat?’
‘I couldn’t.’ What had they eaten? Couscous and aubergine salad and artichokes in oil and merguez done on the barbecue, halloumi too, and flatbread and hummus and olives, wine … God. She felt like she was sinking through the earth just from the mass of it all, yet weightless too, floating upwards, which was a contradiction she couldn’t quite get her head around, but hey. It was all good.
‘Because there’s still plenty left.’
‘Seriously.’ She laughed. ‘I’d pop, and I’m already floating above this green planet.’ She giggled at this, the image of her, huge and inflated, small people hauling on ropes, trying to keep her from floating away into the ether.
‘One more thing,’ Cato said. ‘For me?’
‘Oh Cato,’ she sighed, and breathed out, emptied her lungs, wondering whether that might bring her closer to earth, cause her to descend. No dice. Up and up she drifted.
‘You said you were floating,’ said Cato, some miles below her.
‘I am,’ Sarah said proudly. From a long way away she could hear the sounds of children playing, laughter, a dog’s bark.
‘It’s the heat,’ Cato said. ‘That’s what makes us float. Look, I’ve caught up with you, and it’s getting …’ He laughed. ‘We’re getting high up.’
‘Mmm,’ said Sarah, words beyond her now, even higher above, impossible to reach, to marshal.
‘Like hot-air balloons,’ Cato said. ‘That’s what we are. Warm air, up we go. Up, up, up.’
‘Up,’ said Sarah, repeating Cato’s words all she could manage right now.
‘It’s simple!’ said Cato. ‘It’s physics. That’s what we’re encountering. But,’ he said, ‘I have an answer.’ He sounded shrewd, to Sarah’s ears. What he was about to say was worth hearing, she reckoned.
‘Mmm?’ she tried to say, though the noise she made sounded strange to her.
‘Do you mind?’ said Cato, and Sarah felt herself being hoisted up. She opened her eyes to see Cato’s face in front of hers, his crazy curls, those blue, blue eyes. He let her go and she came to rest sitting up, her back against something. The cool box? How could that be? Hadn’t she just been miles above earth?
She watched Cato hold up a plate with one hand, a metal flask in another. ‘Sorbet,’ he said. ‘With a very special sauce.’ He upended the flask and pressed a button and it sprayed smoke over the plate, wisps of it disappearing into the hot still air. He took a spoon and broke off a piece of sorbet. It was yellow, pastel, and it was still smoking. ‘Open wide, and we’ll get you back down to this green planet.’
Sarah watched the spoon get closer and felt the chill in her mouth, cold, too cold, much too cold. Freezing. She made a sound and Cato leant forward, Sarah could see that he was kneeling on the grass, leaning forward and putting his hand over her mouth.
‘This is supposed to happen off stage,’ he said. ‘People shouldn’t be able to hear.’
Her mouth felt cold, so cold it burned yet colder, and then it was just pain, not hot or cold, her teeth feeling like sharp wires were being pulled through them, slicing them, twisting them, pain and cold and then just pain, just pain.
‘Does it hurt?’ said Cato, but she couldn’t answer, could feel her heels beating the soft earth. Had she already landed, come down from the sky? ‘There’s only one solution. Do you want it to stop?’
It was all Sarah wanted, that this pain, this cheese-wire tearing of her teeth, the cold fire slicing her gums and tongue, that it would stop. She closed her eyes and nodded her head, felt Cato’s palm slip against her lips.
‘Head back,’ he said. ‘Head right back. You need to trust me here. I’m going to take my hand away. Now, do you trust me?’
Sarah didn’t know, didn’t even consider the question or its implications, only wanted the pain to go. Nothing worse could happen, nothing worse than what she was feeling now. Trust was irrelevant. She put her head back.
‘You need to open your mouth.’
Sarah opened her mouth.
‘You can scream if you like,’ Cato said.
Sarah thought she probably already was.
‘Open wide,’ said Cato.
Sarah opened her mouth, opened her eyes, and saw Cato with a spoon in his hand, and in the spoon, orange that seemed to fight the blue of the day, its brightness unnatural, outglowing the sun’s heat, and Cato said, ‘I’ll be gone in a moment,’ and he tilted the spoon, and if anything, though she would never have believed it seconds ago, the pain was even worse.
ten
IT WASN’T OFTEN THAT THE BRAIN POOL HAD A PROPER argument. Its modus operandi was more tetchy debate, particularly between Phil and Fran. But this time it had gone over, crossed the line from discussion to disagreement. Predictably, Solomon thought, Phil was at the middle of it. Less predictabl
y, it was the usually equable Masoud who was bringing it on. And over what? Over whether, in the new show they were preparing questions for, darts should be counted as a sport. Solomon knew that history was littered with examples of wars begun over trivialities, but he couldn’t help but think that this was taking it up a level. Or down.
‘It is irrelevant,’ said Masoud. ‘What you think does not matter, it is what the public think. They are going to be watching.’
‘And the public watch darts,’ said Phil, drinking quickly, agitated, lager disappearing down his neck like he was trying to put out a fire. ‘So there you are.’
Masoud shook his head. ‘The public watch the Queen’s speech,’ he said. ‘That does not make it a spectator sport.’
‘You know what I think?’ Phil stopped, eyed Masoud warily.
‘No,’ said Masoud. ‘What is it you think?’
‘Phil, maybe you’d like to consider not saying anything for a while,’ said Fran. ‘Seriously.’
‘What I think,’ said Phil, ponderously, setting his drink down unsteadily, ‘is that this is a cultural thing.’
‘Oh marvellous,’ said Fran.
‘What?’ said Masoud. ‘Because I’m Iranian?’
‘No,’ said Phil, ‘because you’re middle class. And the middle classes,’ turning to Fran with a hand held up to head off any objections, ‘don’t like darts because it’s incompatible with their conception of sport as a Graeco-Roman pursuit of the homoerotic athletic ideal.’ He closed his eyes and nodded to himself in approval.
‘You just do not like the middle classes,’ said Masoud. ‘They intimidate you.’
‘Ah,’ said Phil, picking his glass up with one hand and pointing at Masoud unsteadily with the other. ‘Now. That’s not true, not at all.’
‘I believe that it is,’ said Masoud.
‘Nope,’ said Phil. It appeared to Solomon that Phil had shot his bolt with his Graeco-Roman hypothesis, eloquence now just a memory. ‘Nope nope nope.’
‘I had the opportunity,’ said Kay, ‘to teach, rather than go into research. But I didn’t like the idea of dealing with squabbling children. I’m beginning to have the same feeling now.’
‘Solomon?’ said Fran, looking into their PC’s webcam, directly at Solomon in his living room. ‘Perhaps you could tell us what you think?’
Me? Solomon thought. ‘Um.’ He felt a sudden panic, not used to being the centre of attention. ‘We could …’ Could what? ‘Put it to a vote? You know, in the finest Graeco-Roman tradition.’
Kay clapped her hands quickly, quietly, giving Solomon a smile he tried not to read anything into.
‘Ah, now then,’ said Fran. ‘What is it they say about the wisdom of Solomon?’ She looked around the table. ‘So. Let’s see your hands. Who supports the inclusion of darts within the sporting category?’
Phil raised his hand, and so did Kay. Masoud looked at her. ‘What?’ said Kay. ‘I like darts.’
Fran sighed. ‘And those against?’
Masoud raised his hand, regarding Phil darkly. Fran raised hers. ‘And you, Solomon?’
‘Darts conforms to the hand-eye criteria,’ said Solomon. ‘But it is played in pubs. No darts,’ he concluded. ‘But Masoud, can I suggest that bridge is out too?’
Masoud smiled. ‘I can live with that.’
‘Phil?’
He shook his head in disgust. ‘The revolution can’t come soon enough.’ He stood up. ‘Excuse me. I’m about to piss myself.’
‘Well,’ said Fran, brightly. ‘Shall we move on to golf?’
When Solomon was with the Brain Pool, he didn’t answer his phone, which meant that Luke still hadn’t got through to him, which didn’t make his mood any better. Just someone else who’d vanished, disappeared off the radar. He was still looking for Robbie White and had got a call that morning from a distant acquaintance he’d met in Chelmsford prison, who’d told him that White had gone to Southend, where his sister lived.
Luke hated Southend, had once got in a fight outside a nightclub there that had violated his parole conditions, even though the fight had had nothing to do with him. Some guy had pushed another guy, everybody starts hitting each other, and the girl he’s with catches one right on the jaw, so of course Luke has to get involved, which he does, but it wasn’t his fight. He didn’t start it, all he was doing was standing up for the girl he was with, and guess what? He ends up doing another ninety days. Exactly, he reckoned, the kind of thing you expect if you’re stupid enough to go to Southend.
And anyway, it turned out that a, Robbie White’s sister was a junkie, and b, even if she had seen Robbie, she wouldn’t have been able to remember. Luke had had a look around her house, and found a two-year-old in a room at the back tetchily fighting its way out of its cot, but no Robbie White. He’d even considered calling social services, but this wasn’t his fight either. See? Southend. No good ever came of going there.
He tried Solomon again, listening to the ringtone in his Audi as he passed the exit for his two-barn-and-an-office lock-up on the A127.
‘Hello? Luke?’
‘Solomon. Thought you’d died or something.’
‘Not yet,’ said Solomon. ‘I’ve somehow still been spared.’
‘Yeah, well. I’ve been looking for Robbie. Wanted to know if you’d heard anything.’
‘No.’ There was silence from Solomon’s end, then he said, ‘You really think he did it?’
‘Course I do,’ said Luke. ‘So do you, if you’re honest.’
‘Maybe,’ said Solomon.
‘He’s a scumbag,’ said Luke. ‘Course it was him. It’s been coming. I should have done something about him years ago.’
More silence from Solomon, then, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well Robbie fucking White does. And soon’s I find him, he’s going to tell me.’
‘I haven’t heard from him.’
‘No, well if you do, you tell me, yeah? Soon as.’
‘I will,’ said Solomon. ‘But promise me this. If you find him, let the police deal with it. Yes?’
This time Luke was silent for a moment, watching the road, the Audi’s bonnet swallowing up the white lines of the arterial road. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ he said eventually. ‘After all he’s done?’
Luke had done time inside and he’d met his share of sociopaths and psychopaths and nutters, but he’d never met anyone quite so … How could he put it? Irritatingly evil, was how he’d sum Robbie White up. He was as cruel and unpleasant a person as he’d ever met, but he was also, like, really really fucking annoying. Like a bug that wouldn’t die, no matter how much you squashed it. No, scratch that. More like a turd you couldn’t flush, you thought you’d seen the last of it and there it was again, bobbing back up, refusing to fuck off past the U-bend.
Take, what had it been, two years ago? More? He’s at home and Tiff calls him on his mobile, she’s crying, saying that Robbie’s lost it because she went out and left her mobile at home, so he couldn’t call her every half-hour to find out where she was who she was with when she’d be back how much she’d drunk, etc., etc. So now she’s sitting in her car, outside the flat, she’s locked herself in and she needs Luke to come round, because she thinks he might kill her, really might kill her this time.
When Luke arrives, Tiff’s still in the car and he buzzes her flat and Robbie answers, says, ‘All right, Luke?’
‘I’ve got Tiff outside, thinks you’re going to kill her.’
Robbie laughs through the intercom. ‘Think she might’ve had a bit too much to drink.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know women, right? Fucking mental.’
‘Tiff’s my sister,’ said Luke.
‘Well,’ said Robbie. ‘Can’t choose your family, right?’
Luke got Tiffany out of the car, told her it would be okay, he was there, and together they walked up to the first floor. Luke took Tiffany’s keys and opened the door, and before he had slid them out of the lock, Robbie White had come out, ta
ken Tiffany’s chin in one hand and spat in her face.
But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t. Okay, that was bad, but it was afterwards, when Luke had finished with Robbie, Tiffany screaming in the corner of the living room and Robbie on his back, Luke holding his shirt front with one hand, his other bunched into a fist, Robbie White’s blood all over the knuckles. Robbie had looked up at him, blood etching his teeth in dark lines, smiled, and said, ‘Next time, tell her not to forget her fucking mobile.’
It just didn’t make sense, none at all. For Christ’s sake, Tiff worked as a stripper. Or burlesque dancer, whatever, Luke didn’t care. But that was the thing, nor did Robbie. He never seemed to care at all. Like, Tiff’d spend the week showing her tits to strangers, but soon as she went out on a night on her own, he got all jealous and couldn’t take it. It didn’t make sense to Luke, really didn’t.
Anyway, it shouldn’t matter, should all have been in the past. Because three months ago Tiffany had finally thrown Robbie out, and when that hadn’t got rid of him, and Luke’s threats hadn’t worked, she’d had a restraining order taken out on him. And even though he’d park outside her flat now and then, and make shitty phone calls late at night, she’d moved on.
And now this. It was like Luke had always said. Robbie White. A turd you just couldn’t flush.
Solomon turned his mobile off just in case Luke started drinking and decided to call him back up, share with him just what he’d got planned for Robbie White, if he ever found him. It wasn’t that Solomon didn’t share his brother’s antipathy towards Robbie White. He did, but he’d also found him impossible to understand, or relate to. Like with Fox, Solomon had reduced Robbie White to a blunt metaphor, appearing in his mind as a Catherine wheel, spitting angry white-hot spiteful sparks, nothing more. This was what bothered him, the idea that this totem of depthless irritation could have done what he did to Tiffany. He wasn’t worthy. Plus, and this was something Solomon did have an instinct for, it didn’t seem Robbie White’s style. What he would do was beat her up, knock her about and take it too far. It would be obvious, loud, nasty, crass. It felt, though Solomon wasn’t much given to exercising his intuition, but it did feel as if something else was at play here, something more sinister, and more intelligent. Though after his first attempt at investigation, he couldn’t say that he felt confident in his theory.