Collected Stories (25 page)

Before the birth, they’d been together for a few months, and then serious lovers for a year. Since the child their arguments have increased, which Baxter imagines is natural as so much has happened to them. But their disagreements have taken on a new tone. There was a moment recently when they looked at one another and said, simultaneously, that they wished they had never met.

He had wanted a baby because it was something to want; other people had them. She agreed because she was thirty-five. Perhaps they no longer believed they’d find the one person who would change everything.

Wanting to feel tidy, Baxter extracts a suit from his wardrobe. He holds it up to the light on its hanger. It seems complete, as it did the last time he looked, a couple of hours before. In the bathroom his wife is taking longer than ever to apply her make-up and curl her hair.

While removing his shoes, Baxter turns his back. When he looks again, only the hanger remains. Surely a thief has rushed into the room and filched his jacket and trousers? No; the suit is on the floor, a small pyramid of charred ash. His other suits disintegrate at one touch. Flies hurl themselves at his face before chasing into the air.

He collects the ash in his hands and piles it on the desk he’s arranged in the box-room, where he has intended to study something to broaden his understanding of life now that he goes out less. He has placed on the desk several sharpened but unused pencils. Now he sniffs the dirt and sifts it with the pencils. He even puts a little on his tongue. In it are several creamy ridged eggs. Within them something is alive, hoping for light. He crushes them. Soot and cocoon soup sticks to his fingers and gets under his nails.

Over dinner they drink wine, eat good food and look around, surprised to see so many people out and about, some of whom are smiling. He tells her about the flies. However, like him, she has become sarcastic and says she’s long thought it time he acquired a new wardrobe. She hopes the involuntary clear-out will lead to sartorial improvement. Her own clothes are invariably protected by various guaranteed ladies’ potions, like lavender, which he should try.

That night, tired by pettiness and their inability to amuse one another, she sits in the box-room and he walks the child up and down in the kitchen. He hears a cry and runs to her. She has unlocked her wardrobe to discover that her coats, dresses and knitwear have been replaced by a row of yellowish tatters. On the floor are piles of dead flies.

She starts to weep, saying she has nothing of her own left. She implies that it is his fault. He feels this too, and is ready to be blamed.

He helps her to bed, where the child sleeps between them. Just as they barely kiss now when they attempt love, he rarely looks into her eyes; but as he takes her arm, he notices a black fly emerge from her cornea and hop onto her eyelash.

Next morning he telephones a firm of exterminators. With unusual dispatch, they agree to send an Operative. ‘You need the service,’ they say before Baxter has described the symptoms. He and his wife obviously have a known condition.

They watch the van arrive; the Operative opens its rear doors and strides into their hall. He is a big and unkempt man, in green overalls, with thick glasses. Clearly not given to speaking, he listens keenly, examines the remains of their clothes, and is eager to see the pyramidal piles of ash which Baxter has arranged on newspaper. Baxter is grateful for the interest.

At last the Operative says, ‘You need the total service.’

‘I see,’ says Baxter. ‘Will that do it?’

In reply the man grunts.

Baxter’s wife and the baby are ordered out. Baxter runs to fetch a box in order to watch through the window.

The Operative dons a grey mask. A transparent bottle of greenish liquid is strapped to his side. From the bottle extends a rubber tube with a metal sieve on the end. Also feeding into the sieve is a flat-pack of greyish putty attached to a piece of string around the man’s neck. On one thigh is a small engine which he starts with a bootlace. While it runs, he strikes various practised poses and holds them like a strangely attired dancer. The rattling noise and force is terrific; not a living cretin could proceed through the curtains of sprayed venom.

The Operative leaves behind, in a corner, an illuminated electrified blue pole in a flower pot, for ‘protection’.

‘How long will we need that?’ Baxter enquires.

‘I’ll look at it the next couple of times. It’ll have to be recharged.’

‘We’ll need the full Operative service again?’

The Operative is offended. ‘We’re not called Operatives now. We’re Microbe Consultants. And we are normally invited back, when we are available. Better make an appointment.’ He adds, ‘We’re hoping to employ more qualified people. By the way, you’ll be needing a pack too.’

‘What is that?’

From the van he fetches a packet comprising of several sections, each containing different potions. Baxter glances over the interminable instructions.

‘I’ll put it on the bill,’ says the Operative. ‘Along with the curtain atomiser, and this one for the carpet. Better take three packs, eh, just in case.’

‘Two will be fine, thanks.’

‘Sure?’ He puts on a confidential voice. ‘I’ve noticed, your wife looks nice. Surely you want to protect her?’

‘I do.’

‘You won’t want to run out at night.’

‘No. Three then.’

‘Good.’

The total is formidable. Baxter writes the cheque. His wife leans against the door jamb. He looks with vacillating confidence into her tense but hopeful eyes, wanting to impress on her that it will be worth it.

She puts out the potions. The caustic smell stings their eyes and makes them cough; the baby develops red sores on its belly. But they rub cream into the marks and he sleeps contentedly. Baxter goes to the shops; his wife cooks a meal. They eat together, cuddle, and observe with great pleasure the saucers in which the dying flies are writhing. The blue pole buzzes. In the morning they will clear out the corpses. They are almost looking forward to it, and even laugh when Baxter says, ‘Perhaps it would have been cheaper to play Bulgarian music at the flies. We should have thought of that!’

The next morning he clears the mess away and, as there are still flies in the air, puts out more saucers and other potions. Surely, though, they are through the worst. How brought down he has been!

Lately, particularly when the baby cries, he has been dawdling out on the street. A couple of the neighbours have suggested that the new couple stop by for a drink. He has noticed lighted windows and people moving across holding drinks. Leaving his wife and child in safety, he will go out more, that very night in fact, wearing whatever he can assemble, a suit of armour if need be.

His wife won’t join him and she gives Baxter the impression that he hasn’t brought them to the right sort of neighbourhood. But as he is only going to be five minutes away, she can’t object. He kisses her, and after checking that the blue pole is functioning correctly, he begins at the top of the street, wearing an acrylic cardigan purchased from the charity shop, inedible combat trousers and a coat.

The first couple Baxter visits have three young children. Both adults work, designing household objects of some kind. Kettles, Baxter presumes, but it could be chair legs. He can’t remember what his wife has said.

He rings the bell. After what seems a considerable amount of hurried movement inside, a bearded man opens the door, breathing heavily. Baxter introduces himself, offering, at the same time, to go away if his visit is inconvenient. The man demurs. In his armchair he is drinking. Baxter, celebrating that night, joins him, taking half a glass of whisky. They discuss sport. But it is a disconcerting conversation, since it is so dark in the room that Baxter can barely make out the other man.

The woman, harassed but eager to join in, comes to the foot of the stairs before the children’s yells interrupt. Then she stomps upstairs again, crying out, ‘Oh right, right, it must be my turn again!’

‘Will they never stop?’ shouts the man.

‘How can they sleep?’ she replies. ‘The atmosphere is suffocating them.’

‘All of us!’ says the man.

‘So you’ve noticed!’

‘How could I not?’

He drinks in silence. Baxter, growing accustomed to the gloom, notices a strange gesture he makes. Dipping his fingers into his glass, the bearded man flicks the liquid across his face, and in places rubs it in. He does the same with his arms, even as they talk, as if the alcohol is a lotion rather than an intoxicant.

The man stands up and thrusts his face towards his guest.

‘We’re getting out.’

‘Where?’

He is hustling Baxter by the arm of his black PVC coat towards the door. Immediately the woman flies down the stairs like a bat and begins to dispute with her husband. Baxter doesn’t attend to what they are saying, although other couples’ arguments now have the ability to fascinate him. He is captivated by something else. A fly detaches itself from the end of the man’s protuberant tongue, crawls up the side of his nose, and settles on his eyebrow, where it joins a companion, unnoticed until now, already grazing on the hairy ridge. It is time to move on.

Taking a wrong turn in the hall, Baxter passes through two rooms, following a smell he recognises but can’t identify. He opens a door and notices an object standing in the bath. It is a glowing blue pole, like the one in his flat, and it seems to be pulsating. He looks closer and realises that this effect is caused by the movement of flies. He is reaching out to touch the thing when he hears a voice behind him, and turns to see the bearded man and his wife.

‘Looking for something?’

‘No, sorry.’

He doesn’t want to look at them but can’t help himself. As he moves past they drop their eyes. At that moment the woman blushes, for shame. They give off a sharp bleachy odour.

He isn’t ready to go home but can’t stay out on the street. Further down the road he sees figures in a window, before a hand drags the curtain across. He has barely knocked on the door before he is in the room with a glass in his hand.

It is a disparate crowd, comprising, he guesses, shy foreign students, the sorts of girls who would join cults, an oldish man in a tweed suit and rakish hat, people dancing with their shoes off, and others sitting in a row on the sofa. In the corner is a two-bar electric fire and a fish tank. Baxter has forgotten what exactly he is wearing and when he glimpses himself in a mirror and realises that no one minds, he is thankful.

His neighbour is drunk but oddly watchful. She puts her arms around his neck, which discomfits him, as if there is some need in him that she has noticed, though he can’t see what it is.

‘We didn’t think you’d come. Your wife barely speaks to any of us.’

‘Doesn’t she?’

‘Well, she’s charming to some people. How is the flat?’

‘It’s fine … Not too bad.’

Becoming aware of an itching on his forehead, he slaughters a fly between finger and thumb.

She says, ‘Sure?’

‘Why not?’

He feels another fly creeping across his cheek. She is looking at him curiously.

‘I’d like it if you would dance with me,’ she says.

He dislikes dancing but suspects that movement is preferable to stasis. And tonight – why not? – he will celebrate. She points out her husband, a tall man standing in the doorway, talking to a woman. Warm and fleshy, she shakes her arse, and he does what he can.

Then she takes the index finger of his right hand and leads him into a conservatory at the back. It is cold; there is no music. She shoves down her clothes, bends forward over the arm of a chair and he slides the finger she’s taken possession of, and two others, into her. It is a luxurious and well-deserved oblivion. Surely happiness is forgetting who you are! But too soon he notices a familiar caustic smell. He looks about and sees bowls of white powder placed on the floor; another contains a greenish-blue sticky substance. Injured specks move drowsily in the buckets.

He extracts his hand and holds it out. Up at the wrist it is alive with flies.

She looks round. ‘Oh dear, the little babies are hungry tonight.’ She flaps at them unconcernedly.

‘Isn’t there a remedy?’ he asks.

‘People live with it.’

‘They do?’

‘That is the best thing. It is also the worst. They work incessantly. Or drink. People all over the world endure different kinds of bacteria.’

‘But surely, surely there is a poison, brew or … blue light that will deter them for ever?’

‘There is,’ she says. ‘Of a kind.’

‘What is it?’

She smiles at his desperation. ‘The potions do work, for a period. But you have to replace them with different makes. Imported is best, but expensive. Try the Argentinian. Then the South African, in that order. I’m not sure what they put in that stuff, but … Course, the flies get used to it, and it only maddens and incites them. You might need to go on to the Madagascan.’ Baxter must be looking disheartened because she says, ‘In this street this is how we keep them away – passion!’

‘Passion?’

‘Where there is passion you don’t notice anything.’

He lies over her from behind. He says he can’t believe that these things are just inevitable; that there isn’t, somewhere, a solution.

‘We’ll see to it – later,’ she grunts.

After, in the living room, she whispers, ‘Most of them have got flies round here. Except the newly-weds and adulterers.’ She laughs. ‘They got other things. Eighteen months, it takes. If you’re lucky you get eighteen months and then you get the flies.’ She explains that the flies are the only secret that everyone keeps. Other problems can be paraded and boasted of, but this is an unacceptable shame. ‘We are poisoned by ourselves.’ She looks at him. ‘Do you hate her?’

‘What?’

‘Do you, yet? You can tell me.’

He whispers that it is dawning on him, as love dawns on people, that at times he does hate her; hates the way she cuts up an apple; hates her hands. He hates her tone of voice and the words he knows she’ll use; he hates her clothes, her eyelids, and everyone she knows; her perfume makes him nauseous. He hates the things he’s loved about her; hates the way he has put himself in thrall to her; hates the kindnesses she shows him, as if she is asking for something. He sees, too, that it doesn’t matter that you don’t love someone, until you have a child with them. And he understands, too, how important hatred is, what a strong sustaining feeling it is; a screen perhaps, to stop him pitying her, and himself, and falling into a pit of misery.