Authors: Jonathan Gash
“It’s been a month since we spoke,” Pop told Doctor.
“It’s almost time to take your boy.”
Doctor preferred speaking with the man. No patience, women, with their insulting reluctance to accept a medical process. Purchases had to come like baked beans from a shelf. No such thing as a system leading inexorably to perfection. See them in Miami sales. Herds behaved better.
This man too was impatient. Correction: this
multimillionaire
client
was impatient. “Tell Doctor to get a move on,” she must have brayed.
Their insolence was beyond belief. Doctor controlled his contempt. They were supplicants. He was in power here. The boy was his to hand over, when he alone decided.
“Almost?” Pop said. He was frozen in his chair, yet more determination instilled into him by his querulous mate.
“Let me define it for you, Pop,” Doctor said. “The boy is showing total acceptance. Moving step by step into total adaptation. He watches television, every programme meticulously, huh-huh-huh, screened for content. He thinks he’s switching programmes. He isn’t of course. He’s orchestrated.”
“For how long?”
“I invited you here this morning,” Doctor said comfortably, smiling, appeasing, certain of his authority, “to give you a precise date, Pop. Two weeks from today, he’s all yours.”
“Two weeks!”
Doctor watched Pop wipe his forehead with a folded handkerchief. The multimillionnaire had the insolence to return the linen to his pocket carefully folded. Was it any wonder the oaf remained a serf? Commercial emperor he might be, but his inadequacies were ingrained.
Doctor’s smiles comforted the rich buffoon.
“The priceless work I do here at Rehabilitation Par Excellence, Pop, is its own pleasure when delivering a successful transferee.” He steepled his fingers. “People,” he intoned, now on a roll and talking over Pop’s disgusting display of emotion, “are just about every single thing in life.”
“Thank you.” Pop blew his nose. Even then the cretin folded the handkerchief away. “Doctor, we’re eternally grateful.”
“Mine is the most valuable undertaking ever accomplished for humanity,” Doctor said portentously, knowing it did no harm to remind the wealthy dolts just what they were getting for their miserable dollar. “Take away people,” he announced with the trace of melancholy they all went for, “and there’s nothing left.”
“That’s so true.”
Doctor agreed. “And you know what? The people out there forget that.”
Bray revised the drawings.
They looked so clumsy in print. He wanted a perfect job, to match up to what he dreamt Davey might recognise. Truth to tell, he’d often been wrong in that. Like this purple thing. Purple trees abounded in Davey’s world. Fish were mostly purple. The ubiquitous kites had any amount of purpling. Cars were powered by purple stones. The balloons used for the Great Balloon Finals against Prussia were, paradoxically, anything but purple.
For a week Bray laboured on revisions of the second slim volume. His limitations were an embarrassment, the only consolation he wasn’t trying to embellish, merely reproduce. Match Davey’s imaginings exactly, and he’d be right. It was the one weapon this lone hunter possessed.
Kylee called.
“This’ll cost you eighty fags, Owd Un,” she told him, bringing Buster to deliriously noisy life by her sudden arrival. “I got you four more. They’ll coon in any time, fags extra.”
Coon? “Er, is that good, Kylee?”
He refused to bring beer, she being under age, but she accepted cola. He kept a stock under the bench for her and Porky.
“You wanted a team, right?” She displaced him at the keyboard by simply shoving him with her hip.
“Er, team, Kylee?” He hadn’t said anything about a team.
“Off your pulley, are yer?” She worked her way into the logos, cursing. It began to speak. Bray hated the voice, but Kylee needed it. “A fucking dozen. Take any longer, they’ll forget.”
He guessed, “Electronic mail?”
“Time you got on wiv it, mate.”
“I’ve done it, actually, Kylee.”
Modestly he placed a folder beside the console. She looked quizzically.
“You’re really a cunt, know that?”
He read it aloud for her. It had seemed too easy, the computer, a summary of Sharlene Trayer’s biography.
“What you write it fer?”
“Well, I want it on the, er, advert.”
“Then whyn’t yer just put it on? It’s your fucking address, innit?”
Impatiently she clicked the keys and sat back. The double speakers began to speak stored messages, his words, her voice checking back.
“I was afraid,” he admitted.
She swung to gape. “You silly bugger. What would you’ve done if I hadn’t turned up tonight? Sweet fuck all?”
“No!” he cried, on the defensive. “I’d have carved, done some drawings. I’ve not enough hours in the day.”
“You take my fucking breath, straight up.” She worked herself up to real anger. “I’ve two blokes tellt me to fuckin stuff it while you’re tarting about. How the fuck d’you think it makes me look?”
He didn’t know why she was so angry, or what about. “I’m sorry, Kylee. But what if the computer didn’t work for me?”
After all, he was paying her. Surely he was entitled?
“Fucking moron.
You
tell
it
. Not the other way about.”
Miserably he stood there while she berated him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, mate,” she said, unexpectedly bright. “Here they come!”
He stared at the screen in bewilderment. “Here who come?”
“Your team!” She crowed, clapped her hands. “Just watch! Know what?”
“No.” It sounded surly, ungracious. He tried again. “What, Kylee?”
“I bet the fuckers’ve bet who comes in first!” She laughed, fizzed a tin and swilled it back, gulping.
Bray felt daunted. She rattled the keys, exclaiming. Messages arrived, the computer reading the words aloud. Two of them were abusive though the criticism seemed aimed at other mailers. Was this cooning? He didn’t ask.
The messages were a torrent, then slowed to an occasional query. Most of them ended, “Rep SSS.”
“Answer soon,” Kylee told him when he asked. “That first one’s a fucking nerk, but he’s a laugh. He’s a Trumpet Windsock freak, can you imagine?”
He didn’t undertand that, either. “Kylee,” he observed. “They all read the same, don’t they?”
“Don’t get on your shitty horse with me, mate. You tellt me what they had to say.” She narrowed her eyes, bargaining for better terms. He called it her money squint. “You said you’d pay.”
“Fine, yes, okay.” He stared at the screen. “Can you print them out?”
And as they watched the typed pages emerge, “I didn’t realise they’d all read the same.” It was true. Apart from misspellings and odd phraseology, her friends had reproduced his request verbatim. “I know I
wanted
people to ask for more information about my story book, but —”
“So?” She was unfazed, sat swinging her legs. “You’ve a sackful.”
“I wanted them to sound spontaneous.”
“When more come in, change what they say. Don’t use letter programmes. They’re a giveaway in the music charts.”
“You mean others do it too?” He was shocked, his fraud shared by others.
“All the fucking time.” She returned to the computer. “You don’t think thousands vote?”
“Well, yes.”
“Know what, Bray?” she said, falling about, “I like you, even if you are a pathetic prat. What you want them to ask, and they’ll do it, okay?”
In the next hour he learned that to coon in meant to send a message by way of this e-mail. A message completed was a hand. At the end of the session he felt really depressed. He paid her.
“I’m really grateful, Kylee. Sorry if I irritate.”
She thought that was hilarious. “People all over electrics’ll soon want news of your KV book. Gimme a frigging rest.”
“I’m out of my depth.”
“It’ll look good. You’ve set up, sacks coming in. That’s what you wanted, innit?”
“Well, yes.”
“You’ve a proper place instead of that rotten old dump.” She indicated Davey’s hut. “A month, you’ll be all round the fucking world.” At the door, she saw his illuminated sign,
Hunt Shed
. “What’s it say?”
He avoided her eye. “Tell you later.”
Buster and he watched her go, Porky sounding his horn in his rickety van. The neighbours would have complained, in different times. Now they said nothing.
“Kylee?” he called as she climbed into the vehicle. “Thanks.”
The pickup moved off with a jerk that almost slammed the door on her. He went inside. What she said was true. He had come a distance. He just couldn’t judge how far.
Officer Stazio rang at an unusual time. It was not, thank God, the worst news, but sad enough. His retirement papers.
“Are you happy, Officer Stazio?”
The policeman heaved a sigh. “Jim, please. I hate the whole effing notion, God’s truth. Here, unemployed means you’re nobody.”
“What will you do?” Bray avoided the question that mattered.
“Security work, I guess. You know the sort of thing, shine a light in all them nooks, make out reports. I’ve a sister in Miami, but who wants Miami?”
“Will you be able to keep on with, er…?”
“No, Bray. Finish in the US of A means finish. There’s a woman officer here. I’ll fix to introduce her.”
Bray’s pause was too long. “Very well.”
So Stazio had been putting off telling him. Bray felt a spurt of anger, even as Jim said his keep-in-touch. Like the closing courtesies on a civil servant’s letter. You shuck off the really hopeless tasks onto some retiree. Like a pathetic little book, to some retired editor?
America had some federal system, hadn’t it, each state virtually a law unto itself? He rang off after a desultory remark. No progress anywhere, Bray thought in rage.
He went back to shuffling the e-mail enquiries he’d bribed Kylee to arrange. They were now quite a pile. He’d answered a few, those Kylee had picked, and received further queries back. He wondered how long they should go on collecting them. Maybe this publishing lady Lottie Vinson – another has-been – would say.
Calling Buster, he went to give Geoffrey the bad news about Officer Stazio. His son looked unbelievably tired, the long drive from work to see Shirley, then home for fresh linen. Bray used Shirley’s washing machine as a routine now. Christine Lumley’s Aunt Gladys did the ironing on Mondays.
“I already knew, Dad. I didn’t want to tell you, in case it upset you.”
As much as it did me
, Geoff meant.
“He promised to keep in touch. It’s what folk always say.”
“Maybe he will.” Geoffrey’s optimism had all but disappeared.
He thought a moment, then broached it. “He’s sending me a list of addresses, voluntary agencies that sometimes help.”
Tears showed in Geoff’s eyes. Wearily he stretched. For the first time, Bray really saw Geoff had given up.
“Shirley’s going to take a long time, Dad.”
“What about you, son? Would some time off help?”
“And do what? No, Dad. Work keeps me on the rails.” Geoffrey looked at his father, also as if for the first time. They looked at each other in surprise. “And you, Dad. What about you?” He blotted his face with his sleeve, as he had done when a boy. “You were close to Davey. I blame myself.”
“There’s no sense in that, son.”
“No, Dad. You don’t understand. All the things Davey would have liked, wanted to play at. Those lunatic stories he used to concoct.” Geoff almost laughed in his own weeping. “Quite barmy. What was it? Some crazy name you made up, all that purple, those odd bloody wooden hats.”
Geoffrey was laughing weakly now, a hateful sound of sobbing in the quiet guffaws, the noise of a baby being sick down a mother’s shoulder.
“And those carvings. God, but Shirl hated them, the hours daubing on the shed wall, you doing exactly what Davey said. Whatever will you do with them now Davey’s gone?” He appraised his father for an instant. “Is that new shed to preserve the old hut, like some shrine?”
“No, son. I need space for this computer lark. I’m compiling Gilson Mather’s reproductions, and antiques I’ve restored, some advert.” He lied on, to disarm his distraught son. “Mr Winsarls thinks it will be superb publicity. Foreign sales, I suppose. It could have come at a better time.”
They sat in embarrassed silence.
“The psychiatrist says fewer visits until she’s out of the wood, Dad.”
“Right, son.” Bray was relieved.
“I regret sounding off to you and Davey about those carving games, Dad. Me and Shirl were worried he’d get behind at school. It seems absurd now.”
“All parents think that, Geoff.” His son had accepted his tales. “And you did absolutely right.”
They watched a football match, neither caring which side won. When Geoff went to bed Bray returned to the computer shed and finished his sequel to
The KV Story
. If
that Lottie Vinson refused it, he would go ahead without her.
He slept for three hours that night, was on the train at seven o’clock, and left a message on Ms Vinson’s phone asking for an interview.
To his surprise he was put straight through to Mrs Vinson when he dialled again in the lunch hour. They agreed to meet after five-thirty at Liverpool Street station.
Lottie Vinson was seated just near the yoghurt stall, gazing expectantly at the milling concourse. He hesitated, annoyed with himself. As ever, no suavity. She smiled, the manuscript woman.
“Mr Charleston? Lottie Vinson.” She indicated a seat.
“How do you do?” he said formally. “Can I get —?”
She moved things on the table, revealing an extra cup of tea and a cheese roll. “After a day’s work. Best I could do.”
He made awkward work of gratitude.
“Lindsay told me the details. It must be difficult for you, your stepsister and everything. That’s the sister you mentioned in Burger Thing, am I correct? You’ve been splendid, doing all that for her.” She wryly appraised him. “There isn’t much family feeling in publishing. Very cut throat, or shouldn’t I be saying that?”
She was plainly dressed, fawns and greys. Fading blonde hair, pleasant roundish face and level eyes. He liked her. His trickery embarrassed him.
“Sharlene Trayer,” she mused. “Can we change her name?”
“If you like.” He ought to have a lie about asking his stepsister first. “We spoke of it,” he added lamely. “It was her married name. She lives alone.”
“She’s ill, Lindsay said. No hope of her coming over?”
“The flight would be too hard.”
“I understand.” She brought out his book. “I’ve read it, Mr Charleston. It’s really rather…exotic.”
“What were you about to say?”
She laughed without embarrassment. “Caught! I meant strange. But the sales! How can you account for those?”
“That’s the problem.” He deliberately chose to misunderstand. “Folk got shirty when I’d no books left.”
“I spoke to Mr Corkhill,” she alarmed him by interjecting. “He said he’s just begun printing your repeat order.”
“Yes.” Bray knew he was stammering, going red. Had George played the game? “I couldn’t wait on help.”
“Help?” She toyed with her spoon. “An odd word, Mr Charleston.”
“Help me, I meant. I’m out of my depth, Mrs Vinson. I’ve got letters from the tax people.” He hadn’t.
He took the book back, felt a momentary pang at Davey’s copied drawing on the dust jacket. “Failure would have been easy. Success is a burden.”
She smiled at that. “Look, Mr Charleston. No illusions about where you stand in this. You’ve been shunted – we actually call it that – to somebody who’s past her sell-by. I’m no whizz-girl in her twenties.”
“Is this no?”
“I’m recommending we accept.” She reached for the book but he withheld it. “What’s KV mean?”
“That’s coming.” He felt himself redden. “I haven’t worked it out yet.”
“But Sharlene has?”
“Erm,” he said, taken aback, his imaginary stepsister here again. “I meant I don’t know what Sharlene’ll decide.”
“I presume it’s multiple sclerosis?” Lottie was concerned.
He felt an irrational annoyance. How on earth could he be expected to know what disease a mythical stepsister had? “It’s downhill, I’m afraid. She’s very brave. She uses a word processor.”
“How soon can I see the sequel?”
Leave it to me
, he almost blurted out. “I’ll phone her tonight.”
Lottie said, “I presume she’s your younger sister?”
“Yes.” Safe to eat, now he’d survived the awkwardness. “I’m famished. This’ll save my life.”
They spoke of journeys. Mrs Vinson lived along the coast, mercifully not close to his own village. She told him of her husband in Canada, no chance of reconciliation. Two offspring, both overseas.
“It’s the old question,” she sighed. “When you retire, do you park yourself on your children, a load of trouble, or become a pensioned seasider waiting for letters?” She laughed to make comic incongruity of her plight.
He told her of his work, then caught himself. “I talk too much about joinery.”
Guardedly she asked him. He told her he had one married son, and he had an ex-wife he never saw. This too made him redden. He wanted to like this lady.
“Better get onto first names, Mr Charleston,” she admonished eventually. “Lottie to you. Bray, isn’t it? In publishing, formality suggests something’s hidden,” she worried him by saying.
“Is it?” His remark brought on her laughter.
“No! Cynicism is publishing’s wit. I can see you and I are going to get along! I’ve never met innocence!”
He felt emboldened. “Is there any hope of, well, getting some advice?”
“I’ve already said we’ll go with it. You’re unique,
defining a total sell-out as a problem. We need to rationalise details. This printer might prove dicey.”
He gave her the phone number of his computer shed and lied, “I’m in the Dark Ages. No fax, no e-mail, none of that Web thing. Is that all right?”
“Thank heavens for that!”
She caught the coast express. He pretended he’d someone to see. He’d had enough personal chat. He watched her walk down Platform Nine, and felt stupid when she caught him looking. But where was the harm in liking someone? He felt exhausted. So far, he was pulling it off, but far too slow. He had to accelerate.