by Will Davis
The first thing he will see when he opens the door will be the badge. Instinctively he will feel a rush of alarm, for he has never opened the door to a policeman before. But the feelings will quickly diminish, because it will only be Gordon, the local constable, standing there in his uniform with a patient smile creasing up his amiable old face.
‘Some of your neighbours were a bit concerned,’ Gordon will say. ‘Asked if I’d stick my beak in and make sure everything was all right.’
‘Everything’s fine,’ he will reply, too fast so that it sounds as if really everything isn’t. ‘I mean – thanks.’
Gordon will shift his weight from his right foot to his left as if trying to convey the message that he wants to believe him, but can’t reasonably be expected to given the circumstances.
‘I was very sorry to hear about your ma,’ Gordon will say. ‘A good lady. Can’t be easy for you now, all shut up in this big house on your own.’
He will feel the muscles in his jaw tightening and he will struggle not to let his anger show. Who is this man? he will suddenly wonder, and since when did being a policeman give you the right to say such things? It is complacence, he will think to himself, the result of doing the same job for years and years, and being relied on by people who don’t realise they don’t need to rely on you. That will be what gives a person such self-certainty.
‘Well, I’d better get on,’ he will say coldly. ‘Thanks again for stopping by.’
‘Hold on just a second,’ Gordon will say as he goes to close the door. ‘Look, there’ve been some complaints of noise coming from your house. Hammering and that. You building something?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ he will reply. ‘I’ve knocked down the ceiling in the kitchen in order to insert a truss so I can hang a trapeze from it.’
After a few seconds of digesting this information Gordon will sigh deeply as if he had hoped for much better. Then the policeman will wearily collect the lines of his face back into a smile, and he will have the sense it is the same expression he has used to deal with people like him – troublesome, emotional people – since he first embarked on his career in the force.
‘Look,’ Gordon will say, adopting an avuncular tone that contains the faintest hint of warning, ‘you’re going through a rough patch and everyone knows it. They all want to help. But what you’re doing is shutting yourself away and making them worry about you. Pretty selfish, don’t you think?’
The anger will flash like a stab wound, hot and violent. He will choke it back and grip the door, digging his nails into the paintwork.
‘If people want to help me they’ll leave me alone,’ he will say, his voice shaking. ‘And so will you.’
Gordon will let out another weary sigh, but this time he will cut him short before he can speak again.
‘So unless you’re planning to arrest me I’m going to get on,’ he will say, and with this he will close the door, letting it slam and taking enormous satisfaction in the sound that it makes.
He will stand there for a long moment, his back against the door, tingling all over. In the past he would never have dared to slam a door on a police officer, especially not someone like Gordon, so well known and respected.
Slowly but surely a smile will creep across his lips.
It is late afternoon when the company turns off down a winding country lane so small they tear chunks of foliage from the overhanging trees, sending clouds of fluttering ovals to dash against his windscreen as he follows behind. Every so often they encounter a car coming the other way, and there is a great burst of honking, as though the trailers were a herd of oversized cattle trying to intimidate a smaller creature. Eventually the lane becomes so small movement slows to a trickle. But just as he is starting to worry they will have to turn round, the road opens out, and a short while later the caravans and trailers turn, one by one, into a large empty meadow. Cautiously he drives on past and pulls up on a muddy bank a little further up, under the shade of a large oak tree.
He sits for a long while, wondering what his next move should be. He is incredibly tired – so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. The sun is drifting towards the horizon, touching the tips of the tree above the car and gilding its leaves with a golden sheen. Without thinking he shuts his eyes, and a moment later he is asleep.
He wakes to the sound of a guitar and laughter. It is dark now and he can see nothing except the velvety sky above, pitted with stars. Stiffly he opens the door, creating a burst of harsh yellow as the inside light comes on, and thrusts his legs out one after the other so that he can stretch them. The music is coming from the field, and through gaps in the hedgerow he can now make out a flickering orange light. Groggily he staggers out and relieves himself noisily against the roots of the oak.
Moments later he is treading across the field towards the light and sound. Someone has started to sing – a woman with a soulful yet playful voice. She sings of being controlled by dark magic and cursed to spend her life tragically alone, and creates laughter with a refrain praising the wonder of online dating. As he gets closer he can make out the trailers, which have been parked in a circle to create space for a sort of enclosure, at the centre of which a bonfire crackles. The coloured lights of the big top have been strung between the trailers and illuminate the space around the bonfire, about which shapes sit, stand or sway to the music. The air is suffused with the smell of barbecued meat and thick with the heavy scent of marijuana. He feels a lurch in his stomach and realises he is almost faint with hunger.
But as he gets closer he starts to feel frightened and wonders if he should turn back. The image of his mother alone at the house flashes into his mind and suddenly he is paralysed by doubt, unable to take the necessary remaining steps that will announce his presence to the company. He leans against one of the trailers and puts his head in his hands, fighting the urge to start weeping.
‘Excuse me, this is a private party,’ says a voice coldly from the dark, making him jump and spin round with a gasp, so that he stumbles backwards over a rut in the ground and almost falls. He screws up his face as the beam of a torch strikes it.
‘For invited guests only . . .?’ The voice takes on a note of surprise – ‘What the fuck are you doing here?!’
Although he can’t see him he knows it is the clown.
‘I’m sorry!’ he says quickly. ‘I wanted to see Vlad. Do you know where he is?’
‘You mean you followed us?’ says the clown incredulously, keeping the torch trained on his face. ‘What are you? Some kind of a psycho?’
‘I just want to see him,’ he says with a tremble. ‘Could you possibly tell him I’m here?’
‘Fuck off!’ spits the clown.
‘Please . . .’
There’s a long pause, as if the clown is considering his next move. Abruptly he switches off the torch. There’s the sound of a click and a tiny flame flares up, and for a couple of seconds he has a glimpse of the clown’s angular face, smirking as he lights a cigarette. Then the image is gone, sucked into the night and replaced by the smell of smoke and the sound of a deep exhalation.
‘What d’you want with him anyway?’ says the clown in an unexpectedly conversational tone, as if toying with the idea of granting his request just for the hell of it. ‘That good a lay, was he?’
‘I . . .’ He stumbles for the right words and realises there aren’t any, or that if there are he doesn’t know them. Besides, he has the feeling that no matter what he says to the clown it will come out sounding daft. ‘I want to see him again. That’s all.’
‘Thought you’d continue your romantic little shagathon, did you?’ muses the clown. ‘Well, let me tell you something about our star aerialist before you go getting too lovey-dovey, my friend. Round here we call him the universal unicycle – do you know why? Cos anyone who wants to have a go, gets to. And they all have too. Every town we’ve been. Should count yourself lucky if you haven’t caught herpes. Or worse.’
The clown lets out a long str
eam of smoke that hits him full in the face and he knows he is still smirking at him. Then he watches as the glowing end of his cigarette moves past him to the side of the trailer where the clown’s face is illuminated by orange as he yells out, ‘Hey, Vladdy! Got an old friend of yours over here!’
There is a shout back, but only the word ‘fuck’, heavily accented, is distinguishable.
‘Just you come have a little see!’ the clown yells and turns back to face him.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
The clown does not reply, but in the glinting from the fire he can see that his eyes are aglow with malevolent enjoyment.
‘What have you got?’ says the aerialist, appearing a few seconds later. He sounds childish and petulant. He is carrying a lamp, and illuminates the whole space behind the trailer. He waits with bated breath for the aerialist to notice him, but Vlad simply stands beside him looking expectantly at the clown. ‘I told you I’m not interested!’
Smirking, the clown points at him and the aerialist turns.
Vlad stares. At first he cannot meet his eyes but then he remembers that this is it, that he has nothing to lose and everything to gain, and that he does not need to be shy or afraid any more. He looks back at those two brown orbs with the full force of his own stare, waiting for the inevitable disgust and repulsion he knows is his due, preparing to be spat at, reviled, told to leave and never come back. And even though in a second it will all be over, and he will be trudging back to his car scarred from the rejection and failure, he feels alive again, a thousand minute shivers prickling across his skin.
‘I don’t understand,’ says the aerialist. He does not sound horrified exactly, but rather astounded, as though he cannot believe his eyes.
‘I followed your circus,’ he says, hearing the words and feeling a wonderful sense of relief in their simple truth. ‘I got in my car and drove after it. I’m parked on the edge of this field.’
‘He’s a stalker,’ supplies the clown.
The aerialist continues to stare, his eyebrows dipping and one side of his mouth rising, as if two alternate reactions are competing for control of his face. Then, abruptly, the aerialist lets out a giggle. He glances back at the clown and says, ‘My friend and I have some things to discuss, if you don’t mind.’ And then the aerialist’s arm is around his shoulder and he is smelling that same smell as from last night, deodorant and the underlying scent of body odour. Both are overpowered by the aerialist’s breath, which is hot and thick with the smell of whisky. The aerialist guides him away, across the grass and towards the bonfire and the singer. Behind them he hears the clown muttering, angry at Vlad’s reaction. But he doesn’t care because his spirits are soaring with triumph, so much so that he fails to notice how the aerialist is leaning on him, stumbling over the ground, hardly able to walk in a straight line.
‘Attention, everybody!’ the aerialist shouts over the singer, who stops mid-verse. In the partial light from the strung lamps and the glinting of the bonfire, he makes out the company all turning in their direction, the whites of numerous pairs of eyes twinkling against the dark.
‘Everybody,’ Vlad announces, slurring a little, ‘I want you to meet my stalker. My stalker – this is everybody.’
Edward’s house was large and old, with a big front garden that had a throng of short skeletal apple trees at the centre twisting up out of the grass like a giant spider. It lay on the other side of town, where the city folk tended to live, the ones who bought weekend houses, who the locals always sighed about because they disapproved of people owning two perfectly decent houses and then leaving one uninhabited for long stretches of time.
‘Here we are,’ said his mum. She drove the car up the driveway and stopped, keeping the engine running. She had been quiet since he had told her he could do what he liked, and he knew that in those few hot seconds he had disappointed her in a way that would take a very long time to repair. He had shown himself to be unpredictable, capable not only of lashing out but of far worse – of lashing out at his mother. She was suddenly afraid of him, and, irony of ironies, instead of being glad he was sorry. Only the prospect of spending the day with Edward prevented him from telling his mum he would rather go to the old people’s home with her after all.
‘I’ll pick you up later,’ she said. ‘Give me a call at the home when you’re ready.’
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I can just walk back.’
He paused for a minute, not wanting to get out of the car without saying something more. But the silence was crushing him so he climbed out and with another glassy smile, just like she had given him the night before, his mum drove away.
He turned and made his way up to the front porch. The door opened before he could press the bell and Edward stood there, grinning from ear to ear, his head cocked to one side.
‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ he said and stood back, throwing open his arms with a grand gesture. He stepped past Edward and into the hall. It was three times the size of the hall in his own home and was painted a bright white. There was no furniture other than a little table and a coat stand, and on the walls hung three vast oil canvases, almost as large as he was, each a portrait of a naked woman holding some item of fruit and staring out at the observer with a feverish, angry expression. He was shocked. The only pictures they had in his house were of flowers or meadows, meticulously detailed and respectably proportioned.
‘The womb does them,’ Edward told him, sounding rueful. ‘We’ve got hundreds. They’re meant to be her – when she was younger.’
‘They’re really good,’ he said uncertainly.
‘They’re fucking embarrassing, that’s what they are,’ snapped Edward. ‘Just like she is.’
He jumped at the harshness in Edward’s voice, his shock added to by Edward’s use of the word ‘fucking’, so clean and casual. In his fantasies Edward had never sworn or spoken anything other than perfect English. Edward started up the stairs and gestured for him to follow. Before they had reached the landing one of the doors below opened and a woman with red-gold hair, in a long black dress decorated with seemingly random splodges of blue and green, poked her head out.
‘Ah,’ she called, ‘you must be the friend.’
‘Hi!’ he said self-consciously, wondering if he should go down the stairs to shake her hand. It had not occurred to him until now that it might be awkward to meet the mother of the person he daydreamed about. But she did not take another step, merely bobbed her head up and down a few times.
‘Good.’
With a final hearty nod she disappeared back through the door and it slammed behind her. He looked at Edward, unsure how to react. Edward merely rolled his eyes.
‘The womb,’ Edward said with a long-suffering sigh, and continued to lead the way up the stairs. He followed, thinking how glamorous it must be to have a mad artist for a mother. They passed an open door which Edward classified with the words ‘My room – private’, and continued up to the second-floor landing. It was lit only by a single circle-shaped window. A ladder stretched up to a dark square in the ceiling above.
‘What’s up there?’ he said, suddenly wary.
Edward smiled secretively.
‘You’ll see. If you can keep up.’
They climbed through the hatch and into the dark space beyond. He peered about, able to see nothing but large, looming, block-like shapes. Then Edward flipped a switch on the wall and a pool of weak orange light spread out from a single bulb overhead, illuminating a city of abandoned furniture and cardboard boxes, packed in so tight he couldn’t see the far wall.
‘This is where I come to chill,’ said Edward, leading him to the edge of a table and dropping to his knees. ‘Come on!’
Without waiting Edward disappeared under the table. He crouched and peered after him, dimly making out Edward’s shape as he squeezed his way through a small gap between a large bureau and a thick set of shelves. It looked dark, dusty and thrilling where Edward was going, and he knew his parents wouldn�
��t approve. He didn’t hesitate and crawled after Edward through a winding maze of chair and table legs, of displaced drawers precariously balanced atop rotting desks and of upturned bed frames with springs that jutted out, their coils tapering to sharp points like spearheads. Edward rocketed forward on his hands and knees, laughing his head off. It seemed to him he was supposed to catch him and so he reached out to grab his foot. But Edward was too fast and evidently knew the layout perfectly, for in a flash the foot was gone from his grasp, disappearing into the jungle of corners, angles and apertures. He did his best to follow, but the light source was now blotted out by towering sets of shelving, and when he paused to try and get his bearings Edward seemed to have vanished altogether. All he could hear now was his own heavy breathing as he made his way through the makeshift labyrinth. He caught his sleeve on a sharp edge and his left elbow jammed into the corner of an ornate box with metal ridges. Gasping at the pain, he tried to stand, and immediately banged his head against the surface of something hard and unforgiving. Without thinking he began to thrash. Suddenly he seemed to be struggling merely to breathe. He tried to call out Edward’s name but his voice caught in his throat and instead all that came out was a gurgle of fright.
Then he felt something taking hold of his wrist and for a minute he didn’t know what it was and fought against it with all his might. But it did not loosen and a second later he felt himself being yanked. He slid across the floor and out through a square-shaped opening.
‘Almost lost you there,’ grinned Edward.
All at once there was light again and he found he was lying in a small clearing, presumably at the centre of the attic. On the floor beside him lay two packets of cigarettes, an ashtray stuffed with cigarette butts, a bottle of red wine half empty and a small pile of magazines. He sat up, dazed.