by Alexei Sayle
During all the things she had been through, all the wasted, sorry, bitter years of her fatness, it had always been a massive consolation to Harriet that at no point had she been dumb or desperate enough to turn to religion. No matter what comfort other people took from their idiotic illusions at no time had she sought to believe angels were looking after Mum and Dad, not for one second had she trusted that everything happens, for a reason and God was smiling down on his creations. Harriet swallowed none of that shit. Nuns with their silly smiles, Christian politicians with their simpering certainty, mullahs with their stupid hats and their absurd conviction that they were going to some sort of theme park in the sky because they avoided eating pork sausages and got up and down five times a day pointing east (‘Excellent aerobic exercise, being a Muslim,’ Patrick had said), to her these and any other religious believers were simply cowards, trembling curs terrified to look into the black void that awaited all of us.
She’d found it really moving when Patrick had told her about his despair, she’d thought, Here’s a person like me. Now to discover that he believed this crap about his spirit leaving through the top of his head and not spilling his fluids made her feel furious towards him. Harriet had trusted him, let him make her jump out of a tree, turned to him for advice and all the time he’d been someone who’d put his faith in the existence of ghosts.
She told herself to calm down, that whatever nonsense Patrick had in his head at least Li Kuan Yu had wrought a huge change in her and she should be grateful for that. In turn this idea cast her down again as the thought struck her that she was stuck doing it now forever, knowing for certain that without her constant training the fat and the fear would be back within hours.
‘So, slut, you were going to dump us, were you?’ Rose said.
‘I might not have done it.’
‘Throw us out like a used dishcloth,’ Lulu said.
‘Well, I didn’t do it, did I? So everything’s fine. Except I’m stuck with a loony for the rest of my life.’
Lulu said, ‘It’s not just the religion shit though, is it, darling?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, nobody gets as angry and hurt as you’re getting over somebody turning out to be not quite what they thought or believing something they don’t agree with. The truth is you’re all bent out of shape because Patrick was telling you that he was definitely unavailable.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I’ve never fancied him.’
‘I don’t know how much fancying has to do with why we fuck anybody. We’ve all done it out of politeness, loneliness, power, because he told you he had a KitKat in his pocket that he said he’d let you have half of. It had been one thing for you to choose not to do anything with him but for him to say he can’t have sex with you or he’ll lose his magical powers — well, I’m thinking that might have been all right for some big fat bird but that isn’t you any more, is it, darling? You’re beautiful, Harriet, now and nobody tells you they can’t fuck you or they’ll die.’
Harriet wasn’t prepared to grapple right now with the truth or not of what she was being told so instead asked, ‘Do you think it’s easy for him?’
‘Not doing it?’
‘Yeah. I mean we spend a huge amount of time at the dojo grappling with each other and I have to admit that’s making me horny such a lot, all the healthiness and the constant touching and that.
‘I mean that’s another difference between the average civilian and the martial artist, as if they weren’t weird enough already: your ordinary person gets touched maybe by their partner in just a few places a couple of times a week but at the dojo we spend such a lot of the time with our noses in each other’s armpits and our legs wrapped round each other’s heads.’
‘And don’t forget the danger,’ Lulu said, ‘that always makes people want to fuck, to reproduce before they die.’
. When Patrick told her about not spilling his fluids she had actually asked him, ‘Don’t you find it a strain? You know, being certain that you’ll never—’
‘No, no, no,’ he replied a bit too quickly, ‘after all, when the prize is immortality it’s easy to bear.’
But she didn’t care what Patrick said, she was certain he found it a strain. She knew she did and at least she was able to attend to her own needs when the pressure became too much. He couldn’t even do that.
8
Though it was early April north-westerly winds blew and they generally brought sleet with them. The skies remained cold and grey and Azerbaijan Fried Chicken became Kennedy Fried Chicken. When Harriet practised in the park the air above her remained as featureless and mute as a switched-off television screen.
This was when Toby’s behaviour usually began to calm down a bit because they had come to the end of the time of year he hated most, what he referred to as ‘Static Season’. None of his friends and family had ever gone into the meteorological reasons for it, only that from late December to the end of March people would hear him yelling, ‘Christ! Shit! Cripes! Bugger!’ as he touched virtually any object and got a vicious belt of static electricity from it: balls of blue sparks would leap across the gap between the lock and Toby’s key as he tried to get into his house; stroking a cat could result in him being jolted like a suspect in a South American prison and he told Harriet that he’d once managed to get a very nasty electrical shock from a loaf of bread. From Christmas until Easter Toby approached handshakes with a strange limp-wristed, mincing skip and a hop which convinced those who didn’t already think it that he was gay. In the many restaurants and bars of the new chromed metallic sort that he and Helen frequented he always tried to open the doors using only his shoulders, causing many angry exclamations, buffeting aside creative directors, publishers and commissioning editors. Luckily these were not the sort of people who started fights simply because they were hit in the face and quite badly injured by a swinging door barged by a big mad-looking man’s shoulder. Large department stores, with their nylon carpets and central heating, were Toby’s particular Abu Ghraib prison; shop assistants were constantly jarred from their daydreams by his yelps of pain as the metal racks and the nylon clothes threw jagged shards of lightning at him. Harriet had once heard him plead with Helen not to force him to accompany her when she was buying clothes during the early months of the year but she couldn’t understand what he was going on about. ‘I get shocks too, Toby,’ she said, ‘I just don’t make a fuss about it.’
This year although the balls of blue lightning had gone away there still seemed to be some other thing deranging him. Harriet wondered what it was. She thought that she’d read somewhere that when medieval peasants got static electric shocks they thought that they were being stung by invisible bees, but she didn’t think that was what was bothering Toby.
The green plastic pitch next to the community centre in Pointless Park on which Toby was playing football could at the wrong time of the year be particularly bad for static. Under the hot white floodlights, every time he made a tackle in the winter months there would be a flash of electricity between him and the other player and he would feel the familiar sharp stab of acidic pain. Fortunately that period was now over and he was able to play with his usual giraffe-like abandon. Over the years his team mates had come to realise that Toby’s form improved dramatically in the later part of the football season though they didn’t know the reason why. Suddenly as the game went up to the other end of the field he noticed Harriet watching him play. Her fingers were laced through the chain link fence that surrounded the pitch and her body pressed against the sagging barrier so that the plastic-coated wire cut a diamond pattern into her breasts and stomach.
Toby became so confused at the sight of his sister-in-law that his play became erratic and finally he got given a yellow card and had a penalty awarded against him by the referee for fouling two players on his own ream.
‘Toby, you twat!’ his team captain shouted at him. ‘You’re playing as if it’s February!’
Harriet was waiting
for him at the gate after he’d showered and changed out of his football kit and into his street clothes.
As he walked towards her with a team mate Toby said, ‘See that girl over there on the other side of the pitch waving to me?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t you think she’s the most fantastically, unbelievably beautiful creature that you’ve ever seen in your entire life?’
The other guy took his team mate’s question as a serious enquiry between men so he stopped and, staring hard at Harriet, looked her up and down. Finally he responded meditatively, saying, ‘Well, she’s got a nice body, obviously fit, decent-sized, shapely tits and all that, nice face, but I’d have to say on balance no, Toby. I mean she’s very pretty, I’ll give you that, but to me a woman’s got to have …‘
‘Why was that bloke staring at me like that?’ Harriet asked when he reached her.
‘He thought he knew you from a camping holiday he went on in Cornwall last year.’
‘By the look he was giving me it was a Turkish brothel he thought he knew me from.’
‘Well, he did say it had been a very nice holiday.’ As Harriet embraced Toby he gave her a kiss on the cheek and there was the feared crackle of static on his lips.
‘Ow, bastard!’ he shouted.
‘Sorry, Tobes,’ she said, ‘static?’
‘Yeah. Should have stopped by now.’
‘But you’re shivering as well. Why are you shivering?’ she asked, rubbing his arm. ‘It’s not cold.’
‘I’m OK, maybe a bit of a chill, that’s all.’
‘So anyway,’ Harriet said, ‘I just thought I’d come and say hello, see how you’re doing and take you for a drink, maybe have something to eat at the Cod. I don’t seem to have seen so much of you lately You used always to be dropping into the shop with tears you’d made in your clothes. What’s happened? Judging by those flying tackles you made, your physical coordination hasn’t improved any Aren’t the players wearing the same shirts as you supposed to be on the same side?’
‘That’s it,’ he replied, ‘you women never understand the rules of football.’ Then Toby said, ‘Look, can we go somewhere else, not the Admiral Cod?’
‘I suppose so,’ she replied. ‘Are there other places?’
‘One or two. Let’s walk for a bit.’
She linked her arm through his and they strolled out of the neighbourhood of the park. Crossing over the bridge that spanned the railway line they walked up a hill lined with Turkish greengrocers and bakeries, their open shopfronts strung with light bulbs throwing their light on to high piles of colourful fruit and vegetables. To Toby it seemed strange to be able to buy a melon this late into the night. Next they passed through an area of dark and silent Edwardian villas until finally they came to another parade of shops facing another park almost identical to their own neighbourhood amongst which there remained an old-fashioned Italian restaurant: a restaurant that served food that was authentically Italian in the same way that a Swiss roll was authentically Swiss.
The restaurant’s manager had written some samples from its menu on a chalk board outside on the pavement and had put a little circle before each of the dishes, making it appear as if the board was singing the praises of the food in a Puccini opera: ‘O Seafood Salad,’ it sang, ‘O Spaghetti Pomodoro, O Veal, O Tiramisu.’
Normally a restaurant of this type would be completely invisible to people such as Toby and Harriet, their senses being tuned to stripped floorboards, metal lamps and exotic floral displays — that said ‘food’ to them. It was only perhaps because his perceptions were in a heightened, disturbed state that the pink tablecloths and breadsticks of this place were visible. ‘Let’s go in here!’ Toby shouted.
‘Where?’ asked Harriet, looking around.
‘Here, this place, here,’ he said, indicating the Italian restaurant.
‘S’pose so,’ replied his sister-in-law. Then, deciding to treat it as a lark, she said, ‘Yeah, why not?’
A waiter who’d been standing in the doorway looking mournfully up and down the street darted inside as they approached.
‘Have you booked?’ the manager asked as they came through the door though the place was almost completely empty except for some elderly couples and two old men in blazers eating alone.
‘No, but if you could fit us in …’ Harriet asked, smiling winningly at the man.
He simpered back at her and the couple were shown to what Toby imagined was the best table, in the window overlooking this other park, where they ordered pâté from a tin and then pasta with sauce that came from a big jar while they drank nasty red wine.
‘This should really be in a flask wrapped in straw,’ he said of their drink.
‘I think the straw’s on the inside, in the wine,’ Harriet replied. Then she asked, ‘You drinking again then, Tobes?’
‘Oh yeah,’ he said casually, ‘I can take the odd drink, you know, it’s not a problem for me or anything.’
‘Really?’ she asked, sounding unconvinced.
‘No, I don’t think drink was my main problem.’
‘I dunno — you were pretty mental when you drank.’
‘What, more mental than I am now?’
‘Differently mental, it was like you drank to dissolve yourself.’
‘Well, I’ve got it under control now.’
‘OK, if you say so.
‘Yeah.’ Then he suddenly said, ‘Hat?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been thinking about being tested.’
‘What, like doing your GCSEs again or a degree from the Open University?’
‘No, not that. See … last week I was at one of those dinner parties we go to all the bloody time and found myself staring one by one at the people there and wondering who the hell they were. Do you ever get that?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Everybody I know seems a bit too real if anything.’
‘No, right … So anyway, I dunno, before I married Helen I’d had my own gang of mates, great mates like Tom Tom Culshaw.’
‘The one who’s now the life and soul of a Zimbabwean prison?’
‘That’s the fellow. But I let them go, my good mates, and allowed Helen to drift me towards this crowd. Do you know, over dinner they spent nearly three hours moaning about the number of parking tickets, speeding points and fines for driving in bus lanes that they’d picked up in the last week or so?’
‘You’d think they’d stop doing it seeing as they get fined all the time.’
‘No, that never occurs to them. But all this moaning, Hat! They acted like getting a parking ticket was the worst thing that had ever happened to them. Then I realised — it was! The shock of getting their car towed away after they’d parked it outside the American Embassy was the worst thing that had ever happened to them! How can you have a sense of proportion if that’s true? It made me think how people in the past had such tough lives: wars, disease, strikes, those stiff celluloid collars.
‘These days we aren’t tested … well, men mostly I’m thinking about. I suppose women still have childbirth, but in the past men grew up through being proven in conflict. Hundreds of years ago, right? Life was really short. A man’s life expectancy was something like fifteen. There were admirals in the navy who were nine years old yet they still thought nothing of setting off on a trip to Australia that took four years just to look for a particularly interesting kind of grapefruit. Four years which was maybe a fifth of their life! Nowadays we expect to live until we’re a hundred and yet we go mental because the tube train stops in a tunnel for five minutes — and we try and sue the authorities for compensation for the emotional distress they’ve caused us. In times of conflict a man can find out exactly who he is. So I got to wondering whether there might not be some way in which I can test myself, find out what I’d do if faced with a crisis. Is there some war or something I could go to? There must be some sort of adventure …’
‘Like what?’ Harriet asked. ‘I mean all that stuff like roll
erblading along the Great Wall of China for charity is a major cause of third world debt, you know.’
‘Er, right,’ Toby said. Really, he had only told her all this stuff to make himself seem more exciting. He had perhaps had a distant sense that some day he might go off on an adventure but not any time soon, yet her taking it seriously made it seem real.
Harriet reached out and took his hand. ‘I think that’s great, Toby,’ she said. ‘You find your adventure.’
‘Well, you’ve been an inspiration to me, Hat, you’ve turned your life around so why shouldn’t I do the same?’
‘Yeah, you go for it, Tobes,’ and she reached out and embraced him, getting tomato sauce on her breasts as she leant over their food. Toby would have liked to order another bottle of wine but decided he couldn’t in front of Harriet. Looking across the empty tables to ask for another bottle of mineral water instead, he saw the entire waiting staff of the restaurant clustered in a greasy-jacketed clump in an alcove by the dumb waiter smiling fondly at him and his date. In the 1960s when it had first opened, a new and exciting venue of previously unimaginable sophistication, this restaurant had regularly been the location for such scenes, agitated handsome men and beautiful women holding hands, suddenly embracing and talking wildly about important things. It gladdened the hearts of the elderly Portuguese who ran the restaurant to see a young couple re-enacting such a romantic scene now, making them wonder whether their doomed restaurant might not be coming back into fashion.
In the last couple of years a plague of street furniture had broken out around the park: there were at least four pedestrian crossings around the boundary road each with its own set of flashing, beeping traffic lights, zigzag lines either side of the traffic lights, black and white stripes traversing the road, nasty little fences around the crossing and uneven red pimpled tiles for blind people to trip over on the pavement facing the crossings. There were speed bumps of random height down the centre of the road with white triangles painted on their lumpy surfaces, on poles at the roadside there were signs saying the many things you weren’t allowed to do and the times when you weren’t allowed to do them and there were so many more lines, yellow lines, double yellow lines, red lines and more white zigzags painted on the road surface. The disruption in Harriet’s field of vision was such that sometimes, like now, it made her feel as though she was in the first stages of a. migraine, there was a foggy pressure in her head and a fuzziness around the edges of her vision. She’d walked Toby back to his house and was now heading home herself. Reflecting on their conversation, she reckoned it had been safe to encourage him to seek adventure even though the idea of Toby going on any sort of expedition would be catastrophic. Luckily there was no chance of him giving up his easy comfortable life and looking for any kind of dangerous test that would stretch him: she loved Toby but had no illusions that he was the kind of man to go on an adventure and, more than that, her sister would never let him.