by Ben Jeapes
Now he could sense himself starting to react to the picture, so he carefully put it back in the drawer, and closed his eyes again, and breathed deep, and reclaimed mastery of himself. And with that done, he scooted himself into a more comfortable position on the bed, head propped up by the pillow and laptop perched on his stomach, and was soon lost again in the depths of STOOPID.
WEDNESDAY
Chapter 7
The cluster of emails dropped into the Agora Bookshop’s inbox with a proud little chime. They were followed by a shower of smaller messages that had been waiting to get through.
“Finally!” Ted muttered. The shop had very limited bandwidth and the computer had been grinding away, trying to download them, for the last ten minutes. They all had attachments and they all came with blank subject headings. Ted’s anti-spam instincts made him highlight them and press ‘delete’ without thinking. It was almost as satisfying as squeezing spots, until he caught a glimpse of the opening words in the preview pane before the last message disappeared.
“Dear Malcolm–”
“Eek!”
Spam usually started with general phrases like ‘Dear Loyal Customer’. He dived into the deleted files folder and breathed a sigh of relief to see them still sitting there. They were all from The Dempsters, whoever they were. He clicked on the first, just to be sure.
“Dear Malcolm, Diana and Louise. For the ‘web site’ of our ‘book club’ …”
Ted pushed back his chair and went out to the front of the shop. Malcolm and Zoe were stacking shelves and Diana was at the desk. Zoe gave him a friendly smile which was easy to return, but it was Malcolm he had come to talk to and it was still a little hard to look his employer in the eye.
“Um ... do you know anyone called the Dempsters?”
“Oh, Dennis!” said Malcolm, in what Ted’s mum called the UFO watcher voice: pedantic and nerdy.
“Yes we do, dear,” Diana told him, with a sideways glance at her husband. “Why?”
“Excuse me,” said Malcolm in the same tone, “I fancy I feel the commencement of a bowel movement. Oops! Better not put that in the notes, hur hur hur!”
Ted felt himself starting to laugh.
“You’re a terrible snob, Malcolm,” Diana scolded.
“Darling, please! I’m a damn good one.”
“He’s sent a mahoosive email for the book club,” Ted said. “Do I just put it on the wiki?”
Malcolm and Diana glanced at each other. Ted and Zoe exchanged their own looks, sensing a silent conversation going on that they weren’t involved in.
“The man’s an idiot,” Malcolm muttered.
“We gave him the shop’s web address, didn’t we?” said Diana. “He must think this is our email. Could you forward it to our home address, Ted? Malcolm may want to edit it first. Hang on–” She scribbled on a Post-it and gave it to Ted. “Then just delete the message here.”
“And for future reference,” Malcolm said, “anything from Dennis or Jane Dempster, or from Louise– Oh, what does she call herself on email, darling? The Knitting Nazi.”
Ted started to laugh again and Zoe joined in.
“The Knitting Lady,” Diana corrected. Malcolm pulled a face that suggested either worked just fine for him.
“The Knitting Lady. Anything from the Dempsters, anything from the Knitting Lady, do the same. Thanks, Ted.”
Back at the computer, he clicked on the first of the Dempster messages and, just out of habit, scrolled through the text.
“Dear Malcolm, Diana and Louise. For the ‘web site’ of our ‘book club’ I enclose, the proceedings of our latest ‘confabulation’ the other night. Trusting these will help us fight our ‘common foe’! Sincerely, Dennis K. Dempster.”
“... and you’ll be glad to know no one was hurt by the explosion in the apostrophe factory,” Ted muttered. One of the few things he had in common with his stepfather was a loathing of bad punctuation. It increased the noise-to-signal ratio of the message and it could render a line of code unusable. Why did anyone do that?
He couldn’t help noticing that Dennis K. Dempster spelled ‘book club’ the way Malcolm pronounced it, but then the presence of ‘web site’, ‘confabulation’ and ‘common foe’ suggested it was just habit more than anything sinister. (And what was the common foe of a book club? Illiteracy?)
He shouldn’t read any more – this was other people’s private correspondence. Presumably the important stuff was in the attachments, which he wasn’t going to read, but there was a certain mesmeric fascination in reading the cover notes.
“Oops, I clicked on the next one,” he murmured, and did so.
“Dear Malcolm, Diana and Louise. I thought that as we have all had a ‘common experience’, maybe the site should have, a section we could call ‘what have you lost?’ I enclose ‘contributions’ from, myself and Jane. Your own stories would also make ‘interesting reading’. Sincerely–”
Next was the Knitting Lady.
“Dennis. Reference your idea for ‘what have you lost’. I have told this once to the group and have no intention of doing so again. If you must, reconstruct from what I have previously said. I am sure you have it in your notes. L.”
“Well, excu-u-u-se me!” Ted laughed. But the snappy tone helped break the lure of reading the messages and he spent the rest of the afternoon designing an order form for the shop’s website.
“Time to go, Ted!” Diana poked her head around the door and summoned him with a bright smile. He hadn’t noticed the time pass.
“Oh, right. Uh – I couldn’t forward that email. It was too big for the shop’s connection. So I uploaded it and I sent you an email of where to get it from.”
“Are you saying–” She looked shocked, exaggerated for comic effect. “–our shop’s IT system could be a little better?”
“Well,” he said, and dared a shy, complicit grin. “Only a little.”
“That’s two of us, then–” she murmured. “If we can get Zoe on our side then Malcolm might actually spend some money. Anyway, we’re locking up.”
“I’ll just shut things down here–”
Ted picked up his bag and headed for the front of the shop. Suddenly Malcolm was blocking the doorway.
“Today’s news?” he asked softly, so that no one else could hear. Ted knew immediately what he meant. He made a mental note: just because Malcolm is in a good mood does not mean he’s forgotten stuff ...
“Uh ... I’ve got an appointment with a counsellor on Friday.”
He hadn’t. He still hadn’t done any of the things Malcolm had told him to do and he kicked himself for telling a lie that could so easily be found out. But, hey, he thought at Malcolm, you keep secrets too, right? I mean, like bollocks that’s a book club … It was a flimsy justification but it was the one he was sticking with.
He would cross Friday’s bridge when he came to it. The fictitious counsellor didn’t know it but he was about to come down with flu.
But Malcolm looked pleased, with a tight-lipped smile of approval.
“Well done, Ted. I know you can beat this. Your reward is you can set the burglar alarm for being such a good boy.”
Ted had to smile, while at the same time tiny needles of guilt stabbed him from all directions. He entered the code and followed Malcolm to join the others out on the street. The other three were all agreeing on something when he stepped out of the shop and pulled the door to behind him.
“What do you think, Ted, dear?” Diana said. “Malcolm was just saying we should all go for a quick drink. Get to know each other a bit better.”
“Orange juice for the children, of course,” Malcolm said, patting Ted on the shoulder.
“Or are you going to dash straight off again?” Zoe asked. Ted flushed a little. He did not dash straight off after work. He went to see Robert – who, it suddenly occurred to him, none of the others knew about. Maybe they did think his sudden departure at the end of each day was a little antisocial.
So, he
could either tell them about Robert, who was none of anyone’s business, or ... Suddenly, it struck him what the invitation meant. He was an accepted part of a group, and the group was people he liked and got on with. So there was really only one answer he wanted to give.
“Yeah, thanks. I could manage a quick one–”
*
He didn’t have an orange juice, he had an orange and mango J20. Malcolm was paying so Ted didn’t try to push his luck and order alcohol. They sat around a table in one corner of the pub, a happy, laughing group in boy-girl-boy-girl order.
“Now we just need someone to phone up and ask for Malcolm, and the barman can call Malcolm over,” Diana commented.
“Why?” Malcolm asked, a fraction of a second before getting it.
“Because then you’ll be called to the bar!” Zoe jumped in ahead of him, to groans all round. “Okay. A termite goes into a pub and asks, ‘is the bar tender here?’”
More groans.
“Come on, Malcolm, dear. Bar jokes. Your turn,” Diana said.
“I only know lawyer jokes and they’re not very funny.”
“You know I know you know at least one.” She looked at the others. “Christmas cracker,” she explained in a mock whisper. “It cracked him up for hours.”
Malcolm sighed.
“A man walks into a bar,” he said in a monotone. “Ouch!” Then: “Oh dear, Ted’s off.”
Ted couldn’t help it. The giggles were heaving up out of him because the joke was so unfunny it was ... funny. Zoe and Diana both patted him on the back until it had passed.
“Your turn, Ted,” said Zoe. Ted felt all eyes on him.
“Okay,” he ventured. “Um. Charles Dickens goes into a bar and asks for a martini. The barman says – olive or twist?”
And as everyone’s faces contorted in appreciative pain, he felt he had never been happier.
“And on that thought, excuse me–” Malcolm stood up to get to the men’s room, which meant squeezing past Zoe. The other three carried on chatting, mercifully with no more jokes, until he came back. He had to squeeze past Zoe again and this time he stumbled a little. One foot knocked her handbag, which was on the floor beside her chair, and the contents spilled out onto the carpet between her feet and Ted’s. They both ducked down to pick it all up again with lots of muttered ‘sorries’ and ‘hang ons’.
Ted straightened up with her purse. He could feel the hard, round shapes of coins through the fabric, and the corner of a ten pound note stuck out through the clasp.
“Yours?” As he handed it over to Zoe he couldn’t resist a triumphant sideways glance at Malcolm that only Malcolm would notice. Malcolm twitched an impassive eyebrow back at him.
Conversation picked up again. Ted shifted in his seat to get more comfortable and his foot came down on something hidden below the table. It could only be something else from Zoe’s bag that she hadn’t noticed fall out.
Ted’s mind seemed to retreat into the back of his head. None of the others saw it – they just saw him continuing to sit and chat and laugh with them. The owner of Ted’s body observed himself with increasing disbelief and disgust as he didn’t bend down to see what it was.
Just pick the thing up! Whatever it is! Just say it! “Oh, this is yours too–” DO IT!
But he didn’t, because he wanted it.
Arse! Malcolm! MALCOLM! Over here! I’ve told you about this, haven’t I? Can’t you recognise it? Just ask me. “Ted, is there anything you’d like to say?” JUST ASK IT!
But Malcolm was deaf to telepathic cries for help.
He prodded the object with his foot. What was it, anyway? It wasn’t large. It was solid and flat. A mystery.
“I think my shoe’s undone,” he said, and ducked down beneath the table again. There it was – a powder compact. Ted watched himself quickly undo and retie his lace, and then straighten up with the compact in his hand. Smooth, flat metal caressed his palm. Why shouldn’t he keep it? He knew it wasn’t his but he couldn’t scrape up the tiniest bit of motivation to return it.
Oh, crap ...
Ted was able to slip it into his pocket without anyone noticing. If he shifted slightly then he could feel it there, pressing subtly against his thigh.
You’re sitting next to Zoe, for Christ’s sake! Your knees are touching! Doesn’t that excite you?
It didn’t. Nothing mattered except the thing in his pocket that was his.
The group carried on for another ten minutes or so before it eventually broke up. Ted’s face ached from keeping the smile going.
Outside the pub they headed off in different directions and Zoe and Ted were the last to part company. She gave a cheerful smile, said she would see him tomorrow and set off without a backwards glance. Her bag was slung over her shoulder.
Ted unlocked his bike and rode off in the opposite direction.
The spell finally broke halfway down Brown Street. The observing part of Ted’s mind suddenly returned to the front of his head and the self-loathing it brought with it hit him like a physical blow. In one smooth movement he braked to a halt and bellowed with rage and loathing and swung himself off the bike and flung it at the nearest building. Then he punched the stonework, hard, with both fists until he had broken the skin.
“What?” he howled at a passer-by. “What are you looking at?”
The man bustled quickly on. Ted sank into a crouch by the wall and buried his face in his knees, groaning, because if he didn’t make some kind of noise he was afraid he would just burst into tears.
She’s my friend, she trusts me, and I steal from her, and Malcolm trusts me and I do it right under his nose ... God, why am I so fucking pathetic?
Ted’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
“Oh, piss off …”
The name glowing on the screen was St Ossie’s and he pressed ‘receive’.
“Yeah?” he asked dully.
A woman’s voice spoke to him, managing to be brisk and professional and warm and friendly all at once. After four years, the chief doctor at St Ossie’s had the status of family friend.
“Ted, it’s Dr James–”
“Yeah,” Ted mumbled. “Hi.”
A pause.
“Ted, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Ted held the phone away while he rubbed a hand over his face, eyes, nose. “Yeah. Never better. How’s things?”
“Not good at this end, I’m afraid. Robert is having ... Well, you know, one of those days–”
Ted shut his eyes and groaned quietly. This was so what he didn’t need right now. ‘One of those days’ happened two or three times a year. Phantom nightmares would invade Robert’s empty head and he would scream and scream and wouldn’t settle until someone sedated him.
“Yeah. I know.”
“Ted, this is an awful liberty but I wondered– you know your mother does this sometimes and it usually helps, but I know she’s away– would you mind staying the night here? Just to be a friendly face for him?”
It was the tiniest glimmer of light in the dark depths of his world. He was the biggest, saddest loser on the planet but there was one small, good thing he could do.
“Sure. I’ll just get my things from home and I’ll be right over. Half an hour.”
“Fantastic! Ted, you know you don’t have to if you really don’t want to but–”
“I really do want.” Ted’s spirits were lifting higher by the minute. He stood up with the phone still pressed to his face. With the other hand he picked the bike up and set it straight on the road. He would get his stuff, and send a text to his mum to let her know where he was, and do this good thing. “No, I really do. See you. Yes, half an hour. Fine. Bye.”
*
The curtains were drawn and Robert’s room was dim, but the dying sunset through the fabric and the light from Ted’s laptop meant he could see perfectly well. He could easily make out the form of Robert in his bed, tossing and turning under his sedation. They had doped Robert up before he arrived but still s
omething was going on in his brother’s head.
Dr James had given him a light supper in the canteen, then brought him up to the room.
“You know where the alarm cord is, right here–”
Then she had left them alone.
The staff had made up a camp bed for him and he sat there, cross-legged, with his laptop, wearing just his bedtime boxers. The room was too warm and stuffy for anything else.
He yawned and checked the time. It was still stupidly early. Normally at this time of the evening he should be hanging with Stephen or watching a movie. St Ossie’s puny wireless internet couldn’t cope with downloading something good – not if Ted wanted to watch it tonight. Porn would just be rank, with Robert a couple of metres away and not even a curtain between them. So, he had chosen a small pile of the least anodyne offerings from the hospice’s DVD library. Maybe it was time to stick one of them in the laptop and waste brain cells. He had done a little work on the STOOPID interface, but had got as far as he could without talking to Stephen, and Stephen was obviously in über-creative mode because he wasn’t answering messages.
But, Ted thought, he could do some more Agora work and impress Malcolm with his productivity. So he opened up the shop’s inbox, though even that simple operation made the internet connection think a bit, and then the mouse pointer changed to a spinning hourglass.
“Oh, no–” Ted groaned. Unless he mistook the symptoms, Dennis K. Dempster had suffered another outbreak of helpfulness and was sharing it with the ‘book club’. A blue bar started to creep slowly across the screen, indicating how much of the file was still to download. When it hadn’t budged very far after a minute, Ted got up and went over to sit on his brother’s bed.
“Oh, mate.” He took Robert’s hand. “What’s the problem? What is it?”
Robert whimpered. His breath came out in huffs and puffs, and his head trembled from side to side on his pillow.
Didn’t this show there was still something inside Robert? How could he be afraid of something if there was nothing in there to feel it? Ted had tried that line of logic on Dr James more than once but he could tell from her answers that she didn’t know. All she did know was that Robert consistently failed every single test designed to show some kind of consciousness inside his head. And then this would happen.