Authors: Nicola Barker
‘An’ this is my Sony,’ Harvey took out his Sony, grinning, ‘I
know
what you’re thinking,’ he chuckled, ‘you’re thinking, “Things have certainly come on a-way since then, Harve,” and you’d be right. But that’s me all over – a great, big softy…’
He was beaming at the phone. ‘She’s an old girl, but she’s a goldie…’
Then he abruptly stopped smiling and slipped it away again.
‘An’ last, but by no means least…’
Harvey put a devoted hand to his heart (also, coincidentally, the location of his neatly buttoned shirt pocket) ‘…is the Motorola C350…’
He removed it and inspected it, almost tearfully. ‘But only my mistress and my lawyer have the digits for
this
baby…’
Elen gently placed Harvey’s mug down on to the table. She grabbed the milk bottle, her serious brown eyes not shifting – even an inch – from his face.
‘But then
you’re
on the Nokia,’ Harvey sighed, carefully slipping the Motorola away again, ‘and I ain’t saying – God forbid – that it isn’t a
good
phone…’
Elen poured the milk. ‘But it’s not…’ she interjected, helpfully, ‘it’s not the
best
phone?’
Harvey smiled and grabbed a hold of the mug’s handle. ‘
Good girl.
I think we’re finally gettin’ somewhere…’
He sat down and toasted her with his tea, still smiling. Then his smile faltered for a second. ‘Unfortunately, though, your
hubby…
’ He rolled his eyes.
Elen frowned, panicked. ‘Has…has Dory…?’
‘Upset me?
Nah.
’
Harvey shook his head, gazing down into his steaming mug with a look of profound anguish.
‘Well that’s…’ She was confused. She bit her lip.
‘Let’s just say,’ Harvey volunteered, ‘that your husband was…
uh
…a little “inappropriate” with me when I first came around.’
Elen’s neat nostrils flared slightly. This was three weeks ago. A whole
life
-time of dripping and misery and scaffolding. An agonising infinity of Fleet on the sofa-bed and Lester at the delicatessen counter. She pulled out a chair. Whatever else happened, this simply
had
to be made better.
‘I mean I ain’t gonna sit here at
his
table, drink
his
tea, speak with
his
lovely wife, eat
his
funny-lookin’ German biscuits…’ Harvey reached out for a biscuit ‘…an’ rip into the man. But the fact is that he made it very clear – during our initial meeting – that I wasn’t
his first choice for the job. He effectively
told
me – to my
face
, Helen – that I was second best. And nobody – no
body
– who takes pride in what they do, enjoys hearin’ that.’
‘But are you sure?’
Elen was appalled.
‘He made no bones about it, my love.’
She was silent for a moment.
‘
Damn
,’ she eventually murmured.
‘I mean,’ Harvey bit into the biscuit, ‘I’m perfectly willing to believe that
I
might’ve contributed to the problem in some way – without actually realisin’. Because I’m a sensitive man, Helen, an
emotional
man. I feel things very deeply…’
He sighed (as if greatly moved by the thought of his own impetuosity). ‘Perhaps I didn’t get him
down
quite right, perhaps it’s a
German
thing…’
Elen lunged for this straw. ‘Dory
can
seem a little abrupt sometimes…’
Harvey acknowledged this declaration with a slight (almost indifferent) shrug of his shoulder.
‘…a little…a little
abrasive
, even…’
She stalled, then drew a deep breath. ‘…But Abacus were definitely our first choice. Dory was dead-set on it. In fact he had to convice
me.
He thought you were an amazing find. He even said that. He said, “Harvey’s an amazing find.” He really did.’
‘Bull
shit
.’
Harvey was implacable. ‘Dory wanted Garry Spivey. He
wanted
A Priori.’
A Priori?
Elen blinked.
‘No.
No
, I don’t remember that at all…’
‘First in the book, he said.’
Elen blinked again –
Which book?
Harvey’s voice suddenly grew strident. ‘I mean to actually
say
that, Helen – to
me
of all people.
First
in the bloody book!’
‘A Priori?’ Elen frowned, trying desperately to catch up. ‘
First?
Are you sure?’
‘
Sure?
Am I
sure
?’ Harvey inadvertently spat out his mouthful of biscuit across the table-top. ‘Of
course
I’m bloody sure! Of
course
I am! Garry Spivey is a
cancer
, Helen! He’s a
disgrace
, a shit-heel, a
bird-turd.
I mean you don’t know the
half
of it. You
couldn’t.
The man is pure
vermin.
He has single-handedly dragged the East Kent building industry through the bloody
sewers.
He’s a thorn in our side, Helen. A blight, a
pest.
He’s a
total
fuckin’ liability…’
During the second half of Harvey’s impassioned declaration, Lester drifted past the open doorway. He was holding a small dog under his right arm – a dopey-looking spaniel. Elen had absolutely no idea where it had come from or what he was doing with it. Lester paused for a moment at the sound of Harvey’s raised voice, half-smiling (seeming to effortlessly gauge the complex, emotional scene as it unfolded before him), then he shook his head, pityingly, and wandered off.
‘The thing is, what your husband
doesn’t
know,’ Harvey was speaking again, and with great intensity (having taken a few quiet seconds to gather himself together), ‘is that Garry Spivey and me go way back. We have what you might call “history”. I had AAA in the yellow pages for twelve years. He was Alisdair Spivey and Sons. Worked with his dad – also, coincidentally, a tragic, fuckin’
arse
-wipe – an’ everythin’ was hunky-dory. But then, when his dad finally passes – lung cancer, may he rest in peace – he gets all
up
himself. He changes the company name. An’ he bribes the twat who compiles the local Pages to give him first dibs.
A Priori.
Two words. Just out of spite. Sheer spite. And that’s
exactly
the kind of grubby, petty,
stupid
little twat…’
Elen pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘Maybe I’m being a little slow here,’ she murmured, ‘but AAA would come
before
A Priori, surely?’
Harvey sprang up (as if perched on the other end of a time-delayed see-saw). ‘That’s what
I
say. That’s my
whole point
, Helen. Of
course
it bloody does!’
‘So it’s just…’ Elen gradually worked it all out, ‘it’s just…just
wrong
, then?’
‘It
is
wrong,’ Harvey bellowed, ‘it’s
bloody
wrong!’
‘Well…’ Elen frowned, trying desperately to keep a lid on things, ‘have you perhaps
spoken
to them about it?’
Harvey took a step back, blinking rapidly, as if in total astonishment at the naivety of this question. ‘Have I…? Have I
spoken
? Who the hell do you think I
am
?! I’m Harvey fuckin’
Broad
, woman! I have two bloody
restrainin’ orders
out on me!’
‘Oh…’
Elen tried not to appear even remotely alarmed by this information…‘I see.’
‘I mean this is my
livelihood
, Helen. It’s my life. My reputation. My
passion.
’
He gazed at her, panting slightly. Elen carefully knitted her hands together. ‘So…so what
they’re
saying, effectively, is that a single “a” comes before everything else?’
Harvey nodded. ‘But the killer punch is the Latin. The
Latin’s
the key. Latin always comes
first
, they say.’
‘It does?’
Elen frowned.
Harvey sat down again. ‘In the
Oxford English
, yes, okay, I can
accept
that. In the
old
version. Fair enough. But these are modern times, Helen. In the
Collins
I got at home they don’t even
mention
any of that Latin stuff. In the
Collins
, AAA gets its own
listin
’: Amateur Athletics Association. It comes straight after AA: Alcoholics Anonymous. An’ this ain’t just no piece of old shite. This is the
Collins Modern Dictionary of the English Language.
’
Elen nodded. ‘I do believe it’s a very…a very
respectable
dictionary.’
Harvey suddenly leaned across the table, conspiratorially. ‘I mean
you’re
a doctor, aren’t you?’
She flinched, somewhat taken aback by his unexpected change of tack. ‘Well, uh…
no
, not…’
‘But you’re
familiar
with all that Latin shit?’
Elen paused. ‘Well,
yes.
I know a little. But I’m just a podiatrist, Harvey.
I’m a
foot
doctor. It isn’t quite…’
‘
Exactly!
’ Harvey slapped his large, clean palm down hard on to the table-top. ‘Podiatrist! That’s Latin, right there!’
Elen tried to dissuade him. ‘It’s actually Ancient Greek. Podiatry is an American term. In Britain we tend to call ourselves chiropodists, but strictly speaking,
Cheir
means hand and
Pod
means…’
Harvey flapped a dismissive paw at her. ‘Greeks, Latins, same fuckin’
difference
, mate. The point is this: it don’t matter what kind of a doctor you are. You’re a
doctor.
You’re educated. You’re
professional
…’
Elen flinched slightly.
‘I mean don’t get me wrong,’ Harvey continued, ‘we Broads have been in the buildin’ trade for
years
– generations. We’ve been knockin’ things up an’ pullin’ ‘em down again for so long that it’s
like
a profession to us. Point of fact, my great-great…’ he flapped his hand impatiently, ‘
etcetera
grandad once wrote a very famous
book
about the most healthy way to build a house. This same man was a surgeon, too. A physician, and to
royalty
, no less. Also wrote what they call a “pamphlet” about astrology…’
‘That’s amazing,’ Elen said.
‘Yeah,’ Harvey agreed.
‘So we ain’t
stupid
by any means. But when it comes to this whole A Priori issue I’m what you might call an “interested party”. Nobody’ll take me seriously. But
you
…’
Harvey appraised her, tenderly. ‘You’re just a member of the public. A professional female. An intellectual. So if you just happened to write them a letter…I dunno, sayin’, for example, how you’re educated and speak Ancient Greek, and when you went to the phone book you was
disappointed
…no,
no…shocked
to see A Priori in the wrong place…’
Elen allowed this all to sink in for a second. As it sank, Harvey continued to gaze at her, determinedly.
‘Just a short letter,’ he re-emphasised, ‘stating how you’re a doctor.’ Elen carefully cleared her throat. ‘So you really…you actually
want
me to do that?’
Harvey leaned back, sniffed, inspected his nails. ‘Well it’s up to you, obviously…’
He glanced down at his buddy, at his neat line of phones, then up again, pointedly.
Elen blinked. ‘You actually want me to do that
now
?’
Harvey shrugged, as if he couldn’t care less.
Elen slowly stood up and began looking around her – numbly – for a piece of paper. When she’d finally located a scrap, Harvey kindly loaned her his pen. It was a Parker.
Isidore was not German. He was English. But being German seemed to work for him, so he stuck with it, he cultivated it. In fact he’d honed it to such a pitch now that he rarely even thought about it. It just fitted him, somehow, was comfortable, like a well-cut jacket (the maker’s mark – the discreet tag – neatly located on the inside flap, but then gently scratched out –
A thumb-nail?
A flattened blade?
– until the embroidery had snagged and become unreadable).
Both of his parents had been teachers. His father, Laurie (second-generation London Irish – a lapsed Catholic, whose ancestors hailed from County Waterford, originally), was a huge, flame-haired, pale-skinned man – sandblasted in freckles – who specialised in the sciences. His mother, Clare (darker, much smaller; her grandparents, on her mother’s side, exiled Jews, from Czechoslovakia), specialised in languages (Ancient Greek, Latin, French and German). They were enthusiastic travellers, and had toured extensively – throughout Europe, the Far East and Australia – during the early years of their marriage.
Laurie had suffered – man and boy – from both asthma and eczema, and had gradually evolved – through trial and error – into a keen proponent of alternative methods of healthcare. His favourite quote was by Father Sebastian Kneipp, founder of The Wellness Movement, who said, ‘Those who do not find some time every day for health must sacrifice a lot of time one day for illness.’
He quoted it often, but always – like Pfarrer Kneipp himself – in a gently accented Bavarian-German (it was just too bad if the person he was quoting at was unfamiliar with this particular idiom).
Teaching could not hold them. In 1976, when Isidore was still quite young, they’d emigrated to Germany, intent upon establishing a Wellness School, or ‘Kurhaus’ – aimed principally at attracting English
holiday-makers during the summer season; an evangelical establishment, brimming with health, good sense and cheerful discipline.
They spent two years in ‘Kneipptown’ (Bad Worishofen), learning the business of Wellness in all its configurations, then toured for a further six months, finally electing upon Bad Munstereifel – in the Northern Rhine Westphalia region – as the place to settle. It had much to recommend it: was a picturesque medieval spa-town (already steeped in the Wellness Tradition), full of neat, timber-framed houses, surrounded by an infinity of rolling, densely forested hills, clear streams and small mountains.
For ‘Wellness’, location was everything. The Kneipp Kur System was established upon The Five Pillars of Kneipp. These were Hydro (water therapy), Phyto (plant therapy), Kinesi (exercise), Dietetic (less meat, more cereal) and Regulative (early to bed, early to rise).
They bought – and renovated – an oldish (but not ancient) timber mill on the outskirts of town. It was big, but never – to Laurie’s mind – big enough (which structure
could
be? His ambitions knew no bounds).
Only a small portion of the whole was to be their home. The rest, a labyrinth of tiny ‘cells’ (bed, sink, cupboard) and treatment rooms (pine-panelled, stone-floored, white-tiled).
The entire structure was circumscribed by an endless proliferation of copper piping, which fed into a seeming infinity of deep, ceramic baths, huge showers and wide basins (with gulping-hungry plugholes and giant, brass shower-heads, which hung from the ceilings – bent and top-heavy – like sinister, metal sunflowers).
And then, but of course: the Refectory (the busy clatter of cutlery at those endless lines of rough-hewn wooden tables, punctuated, every so often, by the odd, shrill squeal of the ecclesiastical-style benches as some foolish hot-head tried to stand up too suddenly), the awe-filled
hush
of the Consultation Room, the efficient, aromatic
clink
of the Dispensary (with its beautiful, white marble pestle and mortar, its tiny spoons and its delicate tweezers, its old-fashioned, brass scales – which were polished, every week, without fail, by a dutiful Isidore – and the shelves, and shelves, and
shelves
of fascinating, antique, green-tinted glass bottles, crammed with herbs and salts and tinctures and unguents).
All this space, and yet Isidore had no room of his own. Retreat – at home – was never really an option. His father was everywhere,
inhabiting every corner. Isidore was only master of a small, cramped ‘cubby’, a slightly raised niche (or recess), moulded into the thick, old, stone wall of their living-room (by all accounts – his mother would opine proudly – an ‘original feature’), where he’d carefully wedge himself – like a coin in a slot machine – to sleep each evening.
‘Your playroom,’ his father would tell him, chin up, gesticulating grandly, ‘is the pine forest, the sweet meadow and the running stream. The whole
world
is your kingdom, Isidore. Was ever a child as blessed as you are?’
He knew that he was lucky.
Yet even in the midst of this apparent idyll – this lush, green Utopia – a shadow seemed to hang over the boy. Nothing too dramatic (at least, not to begin with); a slight veil – a
film
, almost – like an eye with a speck of grease in it, which blinks, then blinks again, and the grease spreads, and it thins, and the obfuscation is so slight, so minor, that it barely even impinges on the consciousness of the sufferer.
Its origins were – at least in part – linguistic. From the moment they’d arrived in Germany, Isidore was only ever permitted to communicate in German. Laurie’s commitment to their new culture was absolute, and he needed his son’s to be. If Dory dared to speak in English then he was not only ignored, but chastised (nothing too severe – a sharp word, a quick slap to the back of the knee – but these punishments seemed terrible to such a mild and timid boy).
As luck would have it, Dory picked up his new tongue rapidly; even growing (over time) to admire its merciless precision, its bite and cut, its fearless accuracy. But the transition hadn’t been seamless (few transitions ever are). There’d been trauma suffered – at some level, however slight – and a tiny lesion had formed – a cut, a snag, a
tear
– between Dory’s fragile sense of ‘past’ and his avowed – his
dedicated
– future.
This lesion didn’t heal. It stubbornly persisted. And with time – and wear – it gradually abraded.
Words were at the heart of it; as if Dory’s entire character was not only ‘articulated’ by Anglo-Saxon (in some obscure way – ie the rhythm of the diction, the complexity of the grammar, the elegance of the styling) so much as totally defined by it.
He’d sometimes complain of feeling ‘a kind of niggling’ deep inside of him – like a hunger, almost a
pining
– as if the old tongue still existed somewhere, still chattered away, uninhibitedly, like an underground stream, tirelessly searching for a fault at the surface – a crack,
a furrow, a weakness –
anything
– to allow it to flood through and overwhelm him.
He was rightly fearful of this babbling (it groaned and chuckled, in stops and starts, like the cranky Kurhaus plumbing), and yet in some strange way, this subterranean conflict also served to buffer him. It was a secret – a flow; a Dionysian
current
– which couldn’t be dammed, either by his own dogged conformity or his father’s proselytising.
He had no proper name for it, but even if he had, he wouldn’t’ve dared speak it. And there was actually no need (when all was finally said and done), because it spoke
itself
, constantly, creeping up on him – when he least expected it (while he was eating, sitting innocently in class, or out in the hills, walking) and blowing a sudden, icy blast of cold air on to the back of his neck; making him start and gasp, making the delicate hairs there stand stiff and erect.
Sometimes it would nudge him, furtively, whispering confidingly (grown-up things, secret things, things he couldn’t – or didn’t want to – understand). And sometimes it would just
pester
him, persistently – like a bad boy in class – elbowing him, nudging him, sideswiping and jostling him.
But it thrived – most of all – on ornate ambushes; lying low for hours – days, even – until he’d almost forgotten about it, then jabbing him, savagely, between the ribs, or shoving him, violently, from the back; sending him hurtling – hands out, eyes starting –
terrifying
him; making him roll up tight, into a ball, his arms over his head, his chin on his chest, his knees drawn in (like a spent fighter, receiving a kicking) until it finally emerged – powerful, victorious – from between his own lips, in the form of something which sounded suspiciously like…
But what?
A curse?
No…
A bellow?
No
…
A cackle?
Well
…
A laugh…?
Uh
…
Sometimes more of a…a
roar
, and sometimes just a titter. Sometimes a yuk-yuk-
yuk
or a hoarse guffaw or a tee-hee-
hee
, or a single, sharp
Ha!
(It was nothing if not variable).
Dory never really saw the joke, somehow.
In fact he’d swallow it back if he could –
bite
it back. The effort this took (the sheer force of will) made his eyes stream and his lips turn purple. It stropped his throat. It made him
burp.
His deeply bemused father began prescribing chalk.
‘
Mein Gott.
But how unbelievably
tedious
…’ – the ten-year-old Isidore sometimes thought – ‘to be the stranger everywhere…’: at school, where the other boys still mocked his accent and the girls found him ‘cute’ (because he was small for his age) and treated him like a plaything. Then at home, where there were always visitors, cheerfully – confidently – appropriating the vista (in that
immediate
way, that
English
way), the children especially, who arrived, choc-full of vicious territorial bravura.
And as much as he might yearn to, he could not –
Just can’t
– bring himself to speak with them (‘Not in
German.
Like a stranger?
Never!
But not in English, either. What if
Father
should hear?’), and so they quickly grew tired of him. They called him ‘dumb’ and ‘stupid’; ‘weird’, even. Sometimes they’d gang up on him (pelt him with pine
cones in the forest, dunk him in the river), or – more often – they’d simply ignore him (like he was invisible, as if his ‘difference’, his ‘foreignness’, rendered him so).
But oh! How he admired their different clothes! The tunes they hummed! Their casual mobility! Their fantastic tv! Sometimes he’d hear them performing skits, or repeating catch-phrases to each other, and he’d stop, and listen, and just
drink
it all in. Devouring, not exactly the ‘meaning’ (it was incomprehensible – ‘My parrot is sick…’ meant nothing to him) but the rhythm. And that wonderful sense of blithe containedness at the heart of all humour (bizarre but self-perpetuating, like an Escher painting).
How complete they all were! How unified, how
whole
! How desperately – how violently, how
pathetically
– he envied them!
Rebellion was never really an option. Isidore loved his parents and he believed in their philosophies (why shouldn’t he? They were all living, breathing proof of Kneipp’s peerless efficacy).
At dawn he would rise with his father and they would walk together, barefoot, in the dew-heavy grass. Summer or winter, it didn’t matter. It was a magical ritual, a ‘fundamental’.
They would talk about everything. His father would discuss the process of photosynthesis or the life-cycle of the stag beetle, he would curse the folly of the British Trade Union Movement (‘Thank God we are here, away from this indiscipline’), or question the motivation of Germany’s Green Party. He believed in biology, but not in Ecology. Politics, he held righteously, was how you held yourself, what you ate and how you lived. It was a series of apparently mundane decisions. It was ‘everyday’, ‘personal’, radiated ‘from within’. The other stuff? He’d snort, contemptuously: ‘Isidore, my boy, just
showing off.
’
Clare (she quickly modified her name to Clara) would quote whole pages, verbatim, from Homer’s
Odyssey
as she bustled, busily, around the Kurhaus kitchen. Isidore journeyed with her – sat quietly on a stool at the counter – weeping real tears for the unfortunate Odysseus (being hounded himself by vengeful Poseidon, appealing for help from the fleet-footed Athene, battling fearlessly with the Cyclops…
Take that, you…
Uh?
WAAAH!
).
He believed in God. He believed in Cruel Destiny…
But where was
his
Ithaca? Where was the home from which he’d strayed, and for which he yearned – more than anything –
Anything
– to finally return?
Was it here? There?
Everywhere?
It was definitely a puzzle.
And the answer to this riddle?
Closer, much closer, than he could ever have imagined…
Under his nose. In his mouth. On the
tip
of his tongue.
Three things:
He’d been emptying a wastepaper basket into the dustbin when he came across an early draft.
It was written in Elen’s neat hand –
Dear Mr Wrotham,
–
it said
–
I am writing, as a professional (
this was later crossed out
) as a doctor
*
and speaker of Latin
*
(
*
this had been clumsily inserted, in a different, scruffy, ill-formed script
) to draw your attention to the fact that there is a ‘slight’ (
replaced as
) ‘serious’ problem with the format of your current edition of the Ashford Region Phone Book…
That was it.
Underneath, in note form, and in that unfamiliar hand again
(presumably as a gentle reminder for the letter’s second version, which must’ve been more successful than the first, because there was no sign of it in the bin – he’d checked) was written: