Authors: Kim Newman
It must be the shake.
‘Not yet, Mon,’ Cazie’s Hackney-via-Roedean voice came, ‘wait until we’re inside. I’m sure you understand.’
‘Yeah, quite. Let’s get inside before I walk into something, okay?’
‘Okay.’
She was helped up a few steps, and reached out to steady herself. She felt curved stone. A pillar. This must be one of those mock-grand porches a lot of terraced hovels in town have. She could not hear or smell the sea, so they must be quite a way from the front. Someone fumbled with keys, and a door opened. Monica could see light through the scarf, and human-shaped figures moving. She was eased over the doorstep and into a hall. The door closed behind her, and, before anyone could give yea or nay, Monica had yanked the blindfold off her eyes.
The light hurt a bit. Spots danced at the edge of her vision.
The hall was entirely conventional. Ragged carpet with a long-lost pattern. Walls in need of massive redecoration and a spot of replastering, covered as best they could be with posters. No pop stars or cult movies, just fliers for demonstrations, glossy pin-ups of endangered species, and stinging indictments of fox-hunting and animal research.
Monica’s eyes were caught by a picture of a kitten with an exposed brain, trailing electrodes. That poster did not need a slogan, although it had one, telling you who to blame. Dotted between the big pictures were professional-looking snapshots of red-coated huntsmen brandishing bloody fox portions or white-coated scientists cringing over tortured beagles.
‘Through here,’ said Cazie.
Monica ducked under a low beam, and felt her way down a flight of narrow stairs into what had been the basement. Now, it was an Operations Room for Cazie’s splinter group.
Monica could never remember the acronym. It lacked the elegance and pronounceability of the best factions. There it was, printed in white letters at the top of a cork notice board. STWAA. Stop The War Against Animals.
‘Sit down anywhere, Mon.’
Cazie took an armchair in front of the cork board. Everyone else had to make do with scatter cushions, stools or straight-backed dining chairs. Monica took one of the chairs, and crossed her legs.
‘Right, Corinne. Could you please explain this George Smiley stuff?’
The girl looked almost hurt. Someone else had to start for her.
‘Monica,’ began Derm, the big-shouldered black guy, ‘you’ve got to go easy on the demo tomorrow.’
‘What
!?’
‘Hold on, Mon, it’s not so simple…’
‘Corinne, you’ve spent weeks lobbying the union, packing meetings, getting near to mangling our constitution. All to get us alerted to UCC presence on campus. You finally manage to prove that animal experiments are being carried out in the Chem Building. And now you want us to backpedal on the protest you’ve practically organized? What are you people playing at?’
Cazie looked uncomfortable, whiter than usual. Monica began to notice unfamiliar faces at the meeting. Slightly older than she had expected. Not mature students, but outsiders. There was something a little creepy about them, as if they came along with all the spy shenanigans.
‘There’ve been some changes in our strategy, Mon. We’ve talked to some people, and…’
The girl looked around, looked to the new faces for support. All at once, Monica realized Cazie was frightened. It was not a game for girls any more. A cat slid into the room, and weaved its way through everyone before finding its niche in Cazie’s lap, nuzzling her denim groin. She stroked it automatically. She really was good with animals.
Finally, someone stepped forward. A man in his late thirties, with a sandblasted outdoors face, wearing a black donkey jacket unmarked by any patches, badges or messages.
‘I’m Rex Rote. You’ve heard of me?’
‘Yes,’ said Monica. ‘You nearly killed a minor member of the Royal Family, right?’
Rote smiled. ‘It was war. He wouldn’t have got hurt if he hadn’t pointed that shotgun at a bird.’
On the first day of the grouse-shooting season, Rote’s group had plugged up the gun-barrels of a party of VIPs who were setting out to stride through the heather for a BBC documentary.
The filmed explosion had been reasonably spectacular, and still got repeated on news programmes. It had apparently been a highly professional job of sabotage.
‘Animals can’t fight back for themselves,’ said Cazie.
‘No,’ said Rote, ‘so we have to prove that not all human beings are bastards.’
‘Fine,’ said Monica, ‘I assume you’re the reason for all this security?’
‘I’m still “underground”. But I go where I’m needed. And what Ms Bruckner has shown me suggests that I’m needed right here, right now.’
Monica looked at Rote, trying to gauge him. Most of the people she had to deal with on a day-to-day basis were students or faculty. It was not pretend politics, but it was insular, sealed-off from the rest of the world. The gloves rarely had to come off. But Rote probably did not even own a pair of gloves. He was either committed to his cause, or ought to be committed because of it. For a man who spent his life crusading against cruelty, he struck her as a bit of a sadist. He might not hurt a mouse, but he would have no difficulty garrotting a fellow human being.
‘Tomorrow,’ began Rote, ‘you people are going to fuck up everything I’ve been working for.’
‘How?’
‘Your piss-little demo, Ms Flint. You’ll get a crowd together and shout slogans and maybe get a bit out of hand and break a plate-glass door or two. The local papers will come down…’
‘Isn’t that what you want? The Unwin Chemical Corporation won’t like the publicity, and the University certainly won’t like being linked to animal experiments. There’s a good chance we can force UCC to pull out.’
‘Maybe. But a lot of animals will be dead or worse by then. In the short term, all you’ll do is make UCC security-conscious. They’ll tighten up. Make sure the campus cops spend more time there. They’ll know trouble will be brewing.’
‘Trouble?’
‘Uh-huh. Tomorrow night, there’ll be trouble. But better trouble than your placard-waving and slogan-shouting. Effective trouble.’
Monica looked around. Cazie was posed anxiously, her fingers stuck in the cat’s fur, seeking approval. Only Rote, and his people, were relaxed.
‘What kind of trouble exactly, Mr Rote?’
The man cracked a grin, not a pleasant one, and took a breath.
‘Ah well, it’s like this…’
* * *
He had a seminar on the Spanish Civil War to prepare, and Jason was being a pain in the arse.
‘Find me a video, Daddy, please.’
The ‘please’ tailed off into a whine. Brian Connors pushed his chair back from the desk in his study and got up to pay attention to his sometime son.
‘Okay, Jase. Give me a moment.’
The eight-year-old vanished from the doorway and was tumbling down the stairs in his inimitable stuntman fashion. Brian followed, realizing for perhaps the tenth time that his body was prepping for the Big Four-Oh next year but one. He had quit cigarettes, but he would never get his young man’s lungs back.
With Jean and her new boyfriend in Lanzarote, he could not have refused to take Jason for the week. Even if Jean
had
tried to block his access at the time of the divorce, citing him as an evil and corrupting influence. That was a while back, though. These days, she seemed to be able to stand being in the same room as him without reaching for a breadknife.
Everyone had to mellow, as he knew only too well.
If it were not for Jason, he would have had Debbie around tonight. Then again, though the demands would have been different, the nineteen-year-old was just as capable of distracting him from his work, wearing him down emotionally, leaving his body aching and drained. He had kicked cigarettes into touch, was holding off on the Jamieson’s, and had not played his Jimi Hendrix albums in over six months, but he was still sleeping with his students.
It would probably kill him in the end.
Jason was scrabbling through the cabinet in which Brian kept his tapes. His pyjama bottoms hung low on chubby hips.
‘What’s this, Daddy, what’s this?’
Jason held up a tape, label outwards.
Ways of Seeing, Ways of Being.
‘University stuff, Jase.’
The boy was disappointed and distressed. He stuck out his lower lip, and threw the cassette back. Then he had another one out. He made a pretence of examining the spine, then held it out to Brian.
Eight years old, and the kid still could not read. Not even
Janet and John.
Jean said he was just a slow learner, but Brian had already checked out a couple of books on dyslexia, and made a few tentative stabs at getting Mike Prickett, his friend from SocSci, together with the kid. In the pub after their weekly badminton binges, Mike had tried to damp Brian’s fears, but there was no getting round it. Jason was a thicko in other ways too. He still could not dress himself properly, as Brian had found out two mornings ago.
Brian looked at the tape. It was one of his under-the-counter jobs, slipped him by an assistant in the Communications Department,
Sixth Form Girls in Chains.
Debbie liked that kind of thing.
‘Boring, Jase,’ he explained. ‘University stuff.’
‘Why do you have a boring job, Daddy?’
Sometimes Daddy asks himself that, Jase, he thought. ‘It’s not boring when you’re a grown-up. You’ll see.’
‘Couldn’t you be a fireman?’
Brian laughed and picked his son up.
‘Throw me against the roof, Daddy.’
Brian tossed Jason out of his arms, not hard enough to throw him against the ceiling. Jason reached up, and his fingers brushed plaster before gravity pulled him down to his father’s grasp.
‘On-Cor! On-Cor!’
Brian threw again, the heaviness going out of his chest. Jason could be a lot worse kid really. When his arms got tired, he would dig out the
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
episodes he had taped especially, and get back to news coverage of the Spanish Civil War.
The doorbell rang. Debbie?
When they had moved into the campus cottage, Jean had teased Brian about the doorbell. Its double chime was so conventional, so middle-class. With his reputation, he ought to have one that played the North Vietnamese National Anthem. That was when he had known he was finally grown up. Three weeks later, he had shaved his beard, and seen a responsible member of society in the mirror.
The bell rang again, and again. Urgently. It did not feel like Debbie.
He caught Jason, and put him down. In two strides, he was in the hall. A female shape stood behind the frosted glass. He smiled, ready to pull Debbie over the threshold into an embrace. Raphael and Shredder would keep Jason distracted, and the Spanish Civil War could wait…
He opened the door, and reached for the girl.
‘Brian!’
His hands found a shoulder and a waist, and he pulled. He bent towards her, to kiss… and saw red hair.
Debbie was blonde, with occasional purple tints.
‘Brian.’
Monica was laughing. She struggled free from him.
‘Who were you expecting?’
‘Uh… well… hello, Monica, come in. I’ve just got some coffee going.’
Monica eased past him in the narrow hall. Her body briefly shared airspace with his, and he felt a twinge of arousal. Monica had been after Jean, but before the students. Actually she had been a student, but not like the others. Not like Debbie. Not like
a
Debbie.
She knew her way about the house. In the front room, she collided with Jason. From the doorway, he saw the boy hug her.
‘Monneemonneemonneemonnee!’
‘Jaysunnjaysunnjaysunn!’
It took a moment for him to realize he was not calling her ‘mummy’. He had nearly done so, for a while. Jason had his fingers in her masses of hair, stroking and pulling.
‘Ouch. Jason, the wedding’s off!’
Suddenly, the child’s hands were behind his back. Brian knew his son had a crush – he was not backwards in
everything
– on Monica Flint, and had pestered her to marry him for over six months three years ago. He thought the kid would have grown out of that by now, been embarrassed by it, even. Jason might not have inherited his father’s academic bent, but he was well equipped with Brian’s other quirks.
As Monica played with Jason, pinching his cheeks and saying how much he had grown, Brian tried to remember the exact words she had used the last time they had met in his house.
He thought aloud, ‘…reprehensible… juvenile… satyriasis-suffering… intellectually-overreaching… louse…’
She turned towards him, not playing any more.
‘You’re a bastard, too, for cherishing the hurt, Brian. You just paid me back, we’re even. Now, can we start from scratch?’
Well, Debbie
had
been getting on his nerves. That relationship was reaching its critical mass about now. And Monica was still Something Special.
‘It’s not that easy, Monica. I’m kind of involved, but I’m sure we could…’
For an instant, her face was a Japanese dragon mask of anger.
‘Not like
that
, Brian! Not ever again in a million years like
that
! I need help.’
His twinge went away.
He had called her a couple of things too, ‘ball-breaking bitch’ chief among them. After Jean, that had been the worst of the break-ups, perhaps because both of them had wanted to cling on even after it was obvious nothing would work out. Still, he did not get to meet damsels in distress every day of the week.
‘Help? You’ve got it. Get that coffee from the kitchen while I settle Jason in front of the video, would you?’
Without argument, she was gone. Jason jumped up and down, shouting, ‘Cowabunga, cowabunga!’
‘Yes, the Turtles, although it’ll rot your brain out. You ought to be graduating to
Star Trek
pretty soon.’
He found the tape, and slotted it in the machine. The television winked on, and cartoons filled the screen. He had told Debbie he was thinking of doing a paper on the marketing phenomenon of the
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles
, but the truth of it was that he liked crap too. There were nearly three hours’ worth of episodes on the tape. That would give him time for Monica.