Damascus (20 page)

'That chapter of our life is over.'

He was wrong. In fact Mr Kelly spends most evenings re-living episodes from the past and cursing the injustice of it all. He now suspects that Spencer's real talent was for something to do with horses. He's an untried champion jockey or a potential Gold Cup showjumper, but how is someone on Mr Kelly's salary ever supposed to afford a horse? His son's talent will therefore remain latent simply because it's for a sport outside his father's social bracket. Because if it isn't horses then it's probably world championship bridge, or windsurfing, or chess. To alleviate his despair, and with any money left over after buying beer, Mr Kelly takes up gambling. He tells Spencer that apart from sporting success a big win on a game of chance is the only other way out of the ghetto.

‘We're not in a ghetto, Dad. We never were.'

‘Always were, always will be.'

Spencer still considers himself the only sane member of the family, but in real life, right now, he isn't the surgeon or private secretary or actor he wants to be. He works in the warehouse with his father. Each day is taken up with the barely sane activity of shifting boxes of furniture which belong to famous people.

His Dad asks what's for tea, then settles back in his armchair while Spencer goes to look in the kitchen cupboard. As usual all they have is packet soups. He asks his father anyway what he wants.

‘What flavours are there?'

‘Chicken.'

‘What flavours?'

So Spencer tells him they have Crosse and Blackwell or Heinz or Batchelors or Knorr, and his father says fine, I'll have one of those then.

Spencer boils the kettle and empties powder into a mug, thinking about his surprise phone call and wondering whether he's done anything seriously wrong. He'd like to say that he always puts the money he steals back into the phone-boxes, using it to call Hazel. But in the early days he kept some of it to lose on fruit machines or to conquer arcade games like
Aladdin's Lamp
or
TOC A Shoot-Out Touring Cars
or
Racing Demon
. He spent some of it through turnstiles (Merthyr 5 Northwich 0 or Yeovil 0 Gateshead 2 or Workington 74 Wigan St Patrick's 6), and he half-remembered renting some videos
(Much Ado About Nothing
or
Mr Wonderful
or
My Own Private Idaho)
. But apart from these occasional lapses and his daily quality newspaper, it's true that he puts most of the money back into phone-boxes, even if he doesn't repair the locks. He does it to speak to Hazel, which is a way of bettering himself. She used to go to private school. She's a good and improving influence, and Spencer's life undoubtedly has significant room for improvement.

Because Right Now, if Hazel's asking, his life is all about making an instant chicken soup for his drunken father while worrying about Operation Clean Hands and what they'll do to him if they catch up with him. He decides to ask Hazel for an immediate opinion, and creeps to the phone in the hall with the idea of phoning her. His Dad, however, lurches out from the lounge and gives him a cuff round the ear, though not very hard, not like a professional boxer ($7 million a fight).

The likes of us can't afford to chit-chat,' he says, and without arguing Spencer walks out on his father and the instant chicken soup, slamming the door behind him.

Then he has to go back inside and upstairs to get his sports bag, before he can walk out all over again (slamming the door), climb onto his bike, head it into the wind and ride out of town like a hero. At the first suitable public phone, in the middle of nowhere, he swiftly applies the special tool.

Pop
.

The phone rings. Spencer picks it up.

‘You hurt all sorts of people,' Robert Walker says. He sounds at the younger end of middle-aged, and Spencer guesses that at college he enjoyed a contact sport to a decent level, Courage League 5 or the first round of the Regal trophy or the Neville Ovenden Combination League. He likes his job.

‘Especially poor people who need to make urgent calls because they've been attacked, stabbed, shot, stoned. We'll catch you in the end. Public phones are everybody's miracle, and they don't only exist to get robbed by idiot criminals like you.'

Spencer drops the phone and lets it swing on its wire. He sits down on his sports bag. He rests his chin in his hands and listens to the tinny voice-sound coming from the telephone, wishing devoutly that he was living another life in which he'd never stolen from a phone-box. His Dad sells the television. Father and son spend the evenings browsing respectable newspapers like
The Times
or the
Telegraph
or the
Independent
, while amiably discussing classic novels by George Orwell or Jane Austen or Jack London. Ah for such a soft sweet life, for the dolce vita. Spencer then easily passes the audition to drama school and in London is quickly identified as one of the greats of his generation, standing-room only at the Adelphi or the Old Vic or the Shaftesbury. The critics say he has a
compelling gaze and a good RP accent
or
the skill to handle sharp individual swings of mood
or refer to him as
a particular success
or
a refreshing change
or
truly rounded
.

Robert Walker is still talking, and Spencer flicks the handset to keep him swinging. He stays where he is, sitting, watching his breath condense, thinking that life owes him a miracle to make up for Rachel. He is calling it in now. His time without miracles is up.

11/1/93 M
ONDAY
12:22

Back in the shed, William could look round in some comfort without having to ignore anything. Maybe Hazel was right when she said you had to block things out, simply to go on living, but that was outside. Here in the shed William could take his time, and he realised it wasn't a question of quantity because he could deal with any number of things, as long as they all conformed to a system.

As well as the stack of yellow buckets, the top one containing water and the two remaining fish, there was a wire bird-cage stuffed with yesterday's newspaper, and three televisions of decreasing size balanced one on top of the other. There were several colourful plastic sandcastle moulds, and a split carrier-bag full of bargain-basement videos: 17
Balcone, Hellfire Corner, Hell of a Ride, So You Want to Be a Surgeon?
Somewhere there was a box of Manoplax, the discontinued heart drag, and a miniature Statue of Liberty, and a chess set, and a folding ladder, and a collection of completed
Times
crossword books
(The Times Book of Jumbo Crosswords, The Times Jumho Concise Crosswords Book
and
The Times Jubilee Puzzles 1932-1987)
. He thought he could remember some cancelled novels from the Bern British Council Library, and a pair of real leather PVC Charles and Di oven gloves. And somewhere not too far back there was a booklet of caricatures of people in the news, including John Major, Federico Fellini, Barbara Mills, River Phoenix, Malcolm Reilly, Maradona, Emma Thompson and the Queen.

William never threw anything away: that was his system. And as well as the buckets and the caricatures, the videos and books and things, there were as many objects again which he couldn't remember or couldn't recognise or couldn't name. The shed was full, so what was the point in going outside when he didn't have the room to bring anything back?

He got down on his knees and looked under the bed and then behind the television sets until he found his black rabbit, who was nibbling at the rind of a kiwi fruit. Animals were good chaps. You knew where you stood with them. He picked up the rabbit and showed him the tomento beside the bed, which seemed to have perked up during the day. The leaves seemed shinier, more likely to partner the best-selling tomento fruit which would make William his fortune. All he needed was the one lucky break, and everything would be different. He would catch up with his brother, who thought that all luck was good. It was his brother who'd inherited well, been outrageously lucky with his investments, gone on to buy a knighthood, eventually meeting the Queen to accept the honour of his changed name. From a common Welsby to Lord O'Brien Welsby, changed overnight. He speculated in the property market and secretly sold arms to the Irish, and his luck never ran out. He openly invested in films without losing money. He'd gradually turned himself into a standard, acceptable, end-of-the-eentury capitalist. He was a charming, cultivated, well-mannered villain.

William put down the rabbit. Believing he was a better man than his brother, he wished he hadn't been so unfair to Hazel. He shouldn't have gone on so much about Jessica, even when his future with Spencer felt threatened. It was, anyway, a poor retreat to live every day untested by the reality of women and outside life. Hazel had offered a glimpse of another possibility, where William stepped outside and discovered what was restricted but true. She'd taken him seriously. She thought he could be cured.

And she did look lovely in that dress.

Grace, looking very small, gave William, who seemed to have grown, an enormous hug. He wished her a Happy Birthday while at the same time beckoning Hazel into the shed. Hazel's feet were freezing. She'd taken off Spencer's socks to walk barefoot across the damp grass, and now she gratefully stepped inside, shivered, leant against a folding ladder and pulled the socks back on again. Straightening up, she had her first good look at the inside of William's shed.

‘My,' she said, ‘you have a lot of stuff.'

Her eyes came to rest on the tomento beside the bed and she was puzzled at seeing a plant she didn't recognise.

'It's a tomento,' William said. 'I invented it myself.'

'It doesn't look very happy,' Hazel said.

‘Neither do you.'

As a place to sit, William was offering the shed's raised doorway, where there was just about room for the two of them. Behind them, apparently as usual, Grace was busy exploring. She'd already squeezed behind the televisions and the buckets, and only one of her legs was still visible. Hazel sat next to William, looked out into the garden, hugged her knees to her chest. Her feet were warming up nicely. She heard a truck braking somewhere, but it seemed a long way away.

‘It's like a parallel universe out here,' she said. 'It's hard to believe what's just over the wall.'

‘It's out there,' William said.

‘I know. I saw what happened when you went to take a look.'

‘I had to give it a go,' William said. ‘It's not every day that's the end of Britain.'

‘It's not the end of Britain.'

‘You know what I mean. The Maastricht thing.'

From somewhere behind them Grace shouted: ‘Treaty of Maastricht European Union! Everything changes today!' Her head popped out from behind the wire bird-cage. ‘We learnt that in school.'

Hazel looked back over her shoulder. ‘You really think everything changes today?'

‘Of course it does. I'm
ten.'

Grace disappeared behind the buckets and then immediately re-surfaced. She wanted to know the date of Hazel's birthday.

‘Soon,' Hazel said. ‘Or maybe it's just been, I'm not sure.'

‘Tell me the date. You must know the date. Everyone knows their own birthday.'

‘Not after twenty-one, they don't. It's not polite to talk about it. You shouldn't even mention it.'

‘When's your birthday, though?'

‘I'm not going to mention it.'

It was only then, looking round to smile and reassure her, that Hazel noticed Grace was holding a black rabbit. She sat cross-legged on the floor of the shed and stroked him nicely, making Hazel suddenly nostalgic for how contented contentment could be made to look.

‘I want to stay here for ever,' Grace said.

‘You can't,' William said.

‘Why not?'

‘You know why not.'

‘I could run away.'

And send your parents mad with worry, William reminded her, thinking their only daughter had been dragged into fields and left for dead, not to be found for years and years until she was completely rotten except for her teeth. Was that what she wanted?

‘Does that type of thing really happen?'

‘Yes it does, but probably not to any of us.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because we're lucky.'

‘How are we lucky?'

‘We get to have birthdays which are special days with presents and cakes. And you're lucky because you have good parents who worry about you.'

‘Then why do they make me leam German?'

Grace let the black rabbit hop back into his warren beneath all the junk, and then she wriggled in behind him. William put his hand on Hazel's shoulder, and gave it a little squeeze.

‘Don't give up on him yet.'

‘I'm running out of patience,' Hazel said. ‘He won't make up his mind about anything.'

‘Doubt is the strongest fear, and therefore the most eloquent emotion.'