Killing the Beasts (11 page)

'OK, OK,' he answered irritably. 'Just shutting down.'

She came in and looked at the untouched sandwiches a staff member had brought into him an hour earlier. 'You've missed lunch again?'

'What? Oh yeah, I'm not hungry. It's this heat,' he said, even though the room was air-conditioned.

At the pool they stripped down to their swimsuits and climbed in the shallow end. 'Right,' said Sean. 'Tom, let's get yours on first.' He hoisted the single tank on to Tom's back and then pointed out how to tighten the straps. Turning to Charlotte he did the same for her. Tom noticed him gently reposition her shoulder straps, letting his hand brush against the outside of her breast as he did so. She glanced up, but Sean's eyes were hidden behind his mirror shades.

Once his own gear was on, Sean said, 'So, the way the regulator works is simple. You put the entire thing inside your lips and up against your teeth. When you want air you bite down on it and breathe in slowly. Of course, opening up your lungs goes completely against your instincts once your head is underwater, so take your time.'

Looking suspiciously at the black mouthpiece, Tom sniffed it then slipped it into his mouth. Immediately he found the size of it intrusive, the rubbery surface nauseating. It felt similar to the type of gum shield rugby players wore. He could never face using one of those during his playing career. Slowly he tried to bite down on the inner part, but the sensation was unpleasant – like chewing on especially tough gristle. His tongue made contact with it and he realized that it tasted the same as it smelled. Suddenly the presence of it under his lips and against his teeth was too much. He began to retch and pulled it out.

'Made you feel sick, yeah?' asked Sean.

'Yes. 'Tom wiped his lips, looking at the glistening object.

'Don't worry mate, plenty of people spit their dummy out to begin with. Just try again; there's no rush.'

Tom looked at him, wondering if the reference to dummies was part of some diving lingo or an attempt to belittle him. Gingerly he tested the mouthpiece in his hand, feeling its pliability and imagining all the other mouths it had been in before, picturing their saliva coating its surface, particles of food catching in its crevices. Meanwhile Charlotte, used to snorkelling, had sunk slowly below the surface. Aware of Sean watching him, Tom tried again. But as soon his lips stretched round the rubbery object, the retching returned, this time with some burning liquid at the back of his throat. He had to swallow quickly before its acrid taste flooded his entire mouth. 'I can't do it. I'll puke.'

Sean waded slightly closer to him. 'It's called a gag reaction. Plenty of people experience it. You want to give it another try?'

Tom looked down at the sun-dappled form of his wife beneath the water. Every so often a stream of bubbles rose to the surface. 'Can she continue the course without me? You know ... the buddy system you described.'

Sean flicked a strand of sun-bleached hair from his face. 'I can buddy for her; that's not a problem.'

No, thought Tom, I bet it isn't. But he couldn't insert that disgusting thing in his mouth again. Old memories began to stir, ones he tried to suppress: the days of struggling with physics and chemistry, lying awake in the early hours of the morning wracked with worry. The dream still recurred now whenever he was under pressure: him looking at the timetable in the corridor at school and realizing there was an exam that afternoon for which he had completely forgotten to revise. The dread sense of impending, and completely unavoidable, failure.

Full of trepidation, he raised the mouthpiece to his lips once again. Immediately his stomach constricted and, as he felt the bile rising at the back of his throat, his mouth formed into an 'o' in readiness to vomit. He dropped the regulator into the water. Attached to his tank by a long black tube, it snaked lazily off to the side.

Not looking at Sean, Tom moved over towards his wife, bent down and held a hand beneath the water to touch her. She got to her feet, breaking out into the air, water cascading off her. Plucking the regulator from her mouth, she swept back her streaming hair. 'Everything OK?'

Tom tried to mask his sense of humiliation with humour. 'It's bizarre, but I can't do it, babe. There's something about the rubberiness of the regulator. All slippery and bouncing off my teeth.' He shuddered in disgust. 'It makes me want to puke more than a shot of tequila. Listen, Sean here can buddy you, so carry on without me. I need to try and sort out this work stuff anyway.'

Charlotte placed a hand on his arm, 'Are you sure? You really can't stand the feel of it in your mouth?'

'No.' He shook his head, grinning. 'But hey – the only fish I like to see come served with a lemon wedge. You enjoy yourself.' Before she could object further he began shrugging off the canister.

After a quick shower Tom hurried back over to the hotel's office, head bowed as he picked over the problem. He realized he was now barely noticing the beautiful scenery around him.

By the end of the afternoon they had located a printer in London who could, for a price, print two of the building wraps over that weekend. Once they'd negotiated a price for transporting the wraps and the printer crew up to Manchester to actually hang the things, that was two of the four jobs with the most imminent deadlines taken care of. Next Ges suggested looking for printers in Europe or even North America.

'Jesus,' answered Tom.' But what about the logistics? And do we know if they even use the same Vector and In Position software as us?'

'Well, unless you can come up with anything else, I suppose we're going to have to find out,' Ges answered, now sounding as stressed as Tom felt. That evening, as they ate red snapper cooked on a barbecue by the side of the main pool, Charlotte asked if everything had been sorted out yet.

'We're getting there, babe,' he replied. 'Two of the most urgent jobs are sorted, and we're now trying to find another printer for the remaining two. Problem is, we're talking twelve-floor-high images here, and that takes a specialist...'

Seeing her eyes beginning to wander, he cut off his reply, claiming he'd had enough of work. Instead he asked her how the diving was going.

Immediately Charlotte perked up. Taking a large gulp from the ice-cold bottle of Seybrew, she began telling him how great it had been gliding along the bottom of the pool, listening to the rumble of bubbles as they flooded over her ears. Even as Tom sat back, content just to watch his wife describe something that so obviously delighted her, office issues were pinging up in his head like emails arriving on a computer.

After a few more beers they ambled back along the softly lit path to their bungalow. Inside the air conditioning was gently humming and Charlotte headed straight for the bedroom. Tom paused at the desk in the dining room and sat down to write out some reminders for himself the next day. A few minutes later Charlotte called out, 'Are you coming to bed?'

'Yeah, in a second, 'Tom replied. But the stress he was under had obliterated any desire for sex and he knew he was deliberately delaying. Anxiety flickered in his stomach. The thought of slipping into bed next to her had only ever created a primal urge welling up inside him. Until now. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the desk in frustration. What was happening to him? By the time he wandered through to the bedroom his wife was already asleep.

While Sean took Charlotte out on her first open-water dive the next day, Tom carried out a fruitless search for a printer who could help them. 'What about America? What's the score over there?' Tom asked Ges.

'I've got an email back from a firm in San Francisco. They do wraps for a lot of film promotions round Hollywood. It looks promising – I'll forward it on to you. Thing is, with the time differences, they're opening up just as we're going home: and I've got to take my mum to hospital this evening.'

Tom didn't hesitate. 'Put everything on email, I'll contact them myself. So when can I ring them?'

There was silence as Ges worked out the time difference. 'Nine in the morning for them is nine in the evening for you.'

Great, thought Tom; there goes my night with Charlotte. 'OK,I'll call them as soon as they open. How's other stuff? Have we signed up any more merchandise promotions?'

'Julie's chasing Kellogg's. Oh, and there's something come through for Ian from X-treme, a chewing gum company. They're doing a special limited edition flavour for the Games. Free samples with a handout for a holiday competition at Piccadilly station. I'll put it in the crate on your desk.'

'Crate?'

'Yeah. Your inbox isn't big enough.'

Tom tried to laugh.

Charlotte got back after lunch, ecstatic about the dive. 'It was like being in a big aquarium, Tom. All those fish you see in pet shops – striped ones, luminous blue ones, they're all out there. Shoals of them. And there were Moray eels, poking their heads out of crevices in the coral, doing a weird opening and shutting thing with their lower jaw. Like that politician off the telly. You know, Gordon someone.'

Only hearing her last comment, Tom turned away from the sea and looked at her. 'Gordon Brown?'

'Yeah, that's him.'

'What's he got to do with your dive?'

'Nothing. It's the Moray...' her enthusiasm abruptly vanished. 'Oh, never mind, you've obviously got more important things on your mind. Office stuff, by any chance?'

Tom chose to ignore the mocking tone of her voice. 'We need to speak to a printer in San Francisco. Thing is, they only open when it's nighttime here, so we need to eat early this evening. I have to get on to them as soon as possible.'

'Fine,' said Charlotte, picking up a magazine and walking off towards a sun lounger on the deserted beach.

Tom called the San Francisco printer the moment it reached nine. A receptionist dealt with him at first, before putting him through to the voicemail of the new business director. Reluctantly Tom left a message, then sat by the phone listening to guests come and go in the foyer outside. Just before midnight his mobile went and he eagerly picked it up.

'Tom Benwell? Al Nevitt here. I understand you got some urgent business to discuss. How can I help you?'

Tom sat back in the seat, relieved to be speaking with someone who sounded so friendly. Al worked quickly and efficiently, reporting back within the hour that, with payment in advance, they could take care of both jobs within days.

Tom held up a fist in silent triumph – at last the worst of their disaster was over. He put the phone down and wandered out into the reception. The area was lit by a small lamp behind the desk and another in the corner. A couple of moths were buzzing lazily around them, watched hungrily by a smattering of geckos on the walls. The elderly night porter was sitting behind the desk, a book open on his lap. Looking at the clock, Tom was surprised to see it was the early hours of the morning. He stepped round to the customer's side of the desk, a smile on his face. Lifting an imaginary bottle to his lips, Tom said, 'A beer, please?'

'Biere?' the man replied. 'Oui.' He unlocked the fridge to his right and took out a bottle of Seybrew then prised off the lid with the opener mounted on the wall.

'Merci,' answered Tom, before giving his bungalow number and walking through the open doors and into a night lit so brightly by the moon that he cast a dark shadow across the silvery lawn. He sat down on the grass, rotating his shoulders to ease the ache in his neck. Then, almost reverently, he shut his eyes and raised the chilled bottle to his lips. As he tilted his head back, he wished every sip could taste as magical as the first.

Opening his eyes, he saw the night sky above him shimmering with an immense spray of stars. They twinkled with such intensity it seemed strange to Tom they weren't making any noise. Instead the canopy just hung there, incredibly vibrant yet utterly quiet.

He lay back and stared upwards, making out layer upon layer of stars, misty washes of faint ones lying behind brighter clusters, mind-numbing distances between them. He had never, apart from a few vague memories of childhood camping holidays, seen a sky like it. A sense of profoundness filled him and he felt on the verge of some revelation: as if the heavens themselves were about to speak. But the sky just carried on sparkling, as it had done since the dawn of time and as it would do for long after he was reduced to mere particles of dust.

After a while he began to try and spot which clusters of stars might form signs of the zodiac or other constellations he had heard about. Thinking back to those camping holidays he recalled that the only thing he could ever spot was the saucepan-shaped grouping of seven stars known as The Plough.

After shuffling round through three hundred and sixty degrees he eventually located it. The constellation was much lower in the sky than he expected and standing on its end. Of course, thought Tom, reasoning that being far nearer to the equator must have a bearing on the constellation's relative position in the sky. He began walking across the lawn, taking a shortcut through the palm trees for his bungalow. As he stepped between the first two trunks a web enveloped his head. It felt strong enough to trap a large bird. He stopped in his tracks, realizing that the owner of the structure couldn't be far away. Carefully he stepped backwards, relieved to feel the sticky strands slowly springing away from his face. Only when he was fully clear did he dare to look up, slowly making out the spider's black silhouette hanging like a bad omen against the glittering sky.

Sucking his teeth, Sly leaned forward in the chair in front of his widescreen TV. 'Seriously, they were trying to ram me off the fucking road. One of those big Range Rovers you see on the motorways. Souped to fuck because it caught me in no time.'

Dan nodded away.

'So this pig is trying to slam me into the wall all the way along Wilmslow Road. We get to a sharp bend and I see that they've only got a stinger set up ahead. Two vans, filth everywhere. I take the gap between these two traffic islands at sixty, car nearly flips, just get it under control and shoot down the side of this pub. Now I'm on a little narrow road, dark as fuck. It's only a dead fucking end. This Range Rover is still coming at me, so I smash the Audi into a post, jump out, flick him a V and sprint off down the path. End up on the banks of this river, lungs bursting, this pig still after me. Like being chased by the fucking Terminator. I run halfway over the bridge, climb up and shout at him, “Fuck you and fuck your mum.” Then I jumped.' He sat back and crossed his arms.