Egg Dancing (31 page)

     ‘The phrase “Why not?” should be your catchword,’ writes Klaus G. Armstrong in his conclusion. ‘So ready, steady, go for it!’

     Later, at the bank, it turned out to be surprisingly easy to withdraw all the money in the ‘Dr and Mrs Stevenson’ account and put it in another bank account in the name of Hazel Sugden. So that was another ten thousand pounds. Well, you need money to start a new life, don’t you.

     Kidnapping my son was no problem, either. I did it by taxi, mid-morning, when I was sure Gregory would be out. The street was quiet. The flowering cherries were in bloom and fallen petals covered the pavement, so that when I stepped out of the taxi my feet sank into a mish-mash of pink snowflakes. There is always something poignant about late spring: it’s the time of year when you may accidentally step on a newly hatched baby bird, toppled from its nest by a cuckoo or kamikazed on its virgin flight. I told the Zippikab driver to wait there while I fetched my son. It had been raining, and the smell of the Cheeseways had been rinsed from the air and replaced by a smell I love: wet tarmac.

     I opened the side gate and trod as quietly as I could down the narrow gravel passageway that leads round the side of the house to the garden. Halfway along, I heard Billy talking to himself in his little piping voice. I couldn’t make out all the words. Then suddenly I clapped eyes on him: a curly-haired, stumpy little shape in muddy yellow wellington boots with frog faces on them. I caught my breath. He was bigger. The sight of his hooded anorak brought a painful lump to my throat. He was trying to stuff an earthworm into the cabin of a toy bulldozer. His face showed deep concentration. I heard him say, ‘You be the driver.’

     Then I caught sight of someone else: behind a line of flapping clothes, an auntyish-looking woman in her fifties was hanging out washing. Briefly distracted, I screwed up my eyes to inspect it, but saw no sign of the satin red knickers with fancy bows and huge whaleboned peek-a-boo bras I imagined Ruby Gonzalez wearing; just Greg’s slightly worn Y-fronts. The nanny-woman stepped out to reach for another pillowcase and I dodged behind a forsythia. Neither Billy nor the nanny-woman, who later turned out to have the absurd name of Mrs Goody, had seen me.

     I waited till she ran out of pegs and as soon as she went off to get more I plunged out through the dwarf conifers and grabbed my little lad by the scruff. He dropped his bulldozer but kept a tight hold of the worm. He started to scream but I slapped my hand over his mouth and kept it there until we were in the street and he recognised me and forced it off to fling his arms round me and cover me in a mixture of saliva and snot. Then we jumped in the Zippikab and whooshed off into town, hugging each other until we nearly choked.

     Over a Big Mac, I got my breath back and sobbed with relief. How he’d grown. He was talking now, proper words.

     ‘I love you, Mummy,’ he said. ‘Mummy, I’m a big boy now. Bigger than a lobster but smaller than a cupboard. Aren’t I?’

     ‘Have you swallowed a junior dictionary?’ I asked through my tears. He was sitting on my lap eating a huge burger, posting french fries into my mouth, and smearing ketchup on his face, and needing his nose wiped, and wanting apple pie, all at once. I loved him so much my heart hurt.

     ‘Ruby’s in an aeroplane. Ruby’s a silly bum-bum, and I’m making her mud soup. Baby too. Daddy went all funny. Chips, Mummy, I want chips as well. Mrs Goody’s a smelly lady. She’s a silly bum-bum as well, but I can kill flies now. I just want my mummy. And chips. One for you and hundreds for Billy.’

     ‘You’re staying with me from now on,’ I told him. ‘You’re going to live with Mummy.’

     ‘For ever and ever?’

     ‘Until you’re about eighteen, I should think.’

     ‘I’m two.’

     ‘Well then. We’ve got plenty of time.’

     ‘Mum.’

     ‘Yes, Billy?’

     ‘D’you know something?’

     ‘What?’

     ‘I only wear nappies at night now. Not in daytime.’

     So Mrs Goody can’t have been all bad.

     At the post office, we discovered that Billy’s worm had died in his pocket. It smelt bad, and had dried somewhat. After a moment’s hesitation I agreed to let him put it in the envelope before I sealed it. Billy posted the letter to Root Hooper. I lifted him up to the mouth of the letterbox and we watched the envelope slide down its throat.

     Then we went back to the hotel room and pretended to be stegosauruses until Billy was so exhausted he fell asleep in my arms. I settled him in the cot, dialled Linda’s number, and left a message on her answerphone telling her I was out of Manxheath and off the drugs. She could reach me at the Hopeworth in Room 308, double with cot.

     ‘Give me a call when you’ve accomplished your mission,’ I said. ‘And we’ll celebrate.’

     Linda was cooking something, too.

Linda was boarding a train bound for the West. She was wearing a loudly patterned scarf fastened by a giant buckle brooch, and carrying a Moses basket containing a sleeping baby. She entered a second-class smoking carriage, and settled herself down as if she wasn’t planning to move from her seat during the three-hour journey. From a large striped nylon bag she hauled the
Daily Mail
, some anchovy sandwiches, a thermos of Nescafé, and a bottle of formula milk for the baby. Departure had been delayed slightly, and the man who was seeing her off at the platform hung about near the window, looking gangly and foolish.

     ‘Go away!’ she mouthed, her lips so close to the glass that her breath formed an oval patch of condensation. ‘I’ll see you when I get back.’

     And she gave a small, annoyed wave. Duncan was wearing his dark-blue blazer bearing the British Telecom logo. His arms were too long for its sleeves. He reached on tiptoe to take another look at the baby, and blew it a sad kiss as though it was the last he’d see of her. Which, if all went according to plan, it would be.

     Linda sank back in her seat, lit a cigarette, and heaved out her reading matter. Linda had never shared Ma’s dangerously omnivorous taste in books; she was always strictly a spy thriller and management handbook reader. But today’s reading matter was different. This was more like a work project. Projects have always been Linda’s forte. We are talking about the woman who dreamed up a new kind of Arctic iceberg, clad in shark-proof plastic. We are talking about the woman who decided that a pulverised locust product be incorporated in margarine as a thickening and proteinising agent. We are talking about someone who takes her projects seriously.

     Today’s project is less of a challenge, perhaps, than Fatberg or Protomarg, but it’s fascinating nonetheless. And it begins with some basic research, in the form of a thick brochure and a collection of articles and photo-features organised in a cardboard file, each with text highlighted and colour-coded in marker pen. She lays them neatly on the table in front of her and starts to read methodically. Duncan shrugs his shoulders and begins to shuffle his way up the platform to the exit. Just then the train starts to move, and he turns to wave, but as the carriage slides off, Linda has already entered the extravagant and bizarre new territory of her glossy brochure, and left Gridiron far behind.

     She is in the House of God. The building she once saw in maquette form on the fateful day of her visit to the
Holy Hour
production offices is now a gleaming reality, thanks to Ron’s wizardry and the tireless voluntary work of born-again carpenters, electricians, engineers and painter-decorators. Certain weddings, those that celebrate a marriage doomed to fail, always feature an extravagantly optimistic multi-tiered wedding-cake, next to which the then-happy couple are photographed. Hazel had one, with ribbons and knobs on. The House of God, reflects Linda, resembles such a cake. It is built largely of a white cement and granite-chip composite called ‘reconstituted stone’. Linda polishes off her sandwiches and unleashes a belch whose odour permeates the carriage. Then she lifts her head to glare accusingly at her fellow-passengers.

     The House of God is, say the background articles, a triumph of market research, thanks to interactive computer technology. Witness the platforms and revolving doors, the laminated glass floors, the mirrored walls, the
trompe-l’oeil
ceilings, and the impressive central stage which boasts a host of ingeniously devised and cunningly crafted design features. Witness the state-of-the-art gymnasium, the two-, three-, and five-star restaurant facilities, the Terrestrial Communications Centre with its bank of telephones and faxes for the busy executive worshipper, and the Fantasy Garden for the kiddies. Witness a miracle.

     Pilgrims have been flocking to the House of God in their thousands. It’s cheaper than a theme park, and better for the waistline. To mention nothing of the soul.

     Linda puts the brochure down, inhales smoke deep into her lungs, and gazes out of the window at the red-brick of Gridiron suburbia streaking past.

     The soul. Following her brief and bruising encounter with religion, my sister is scathing about the idea of the soul. In the aftermath of her betrayal by Vernon Carmichael, her problem-solving mind has wrestled valiantly with the old chestnut of the existence of God – this she confides to me later – but has reached an epistemological cul-de-sac. Being a Mensa member is no help.

     So fuck it all.

     And fuck the Reverend Carmichael in particular.

     She’d told me about her plan.

     ‘See it as a form of slow-release capsule,’ she’d said mysteriously. ‘By the time it all dawns on him, it’ll be too late.’

     Now she re-opens her research file and smiles over her anchovy sandwich crusts with so much glee that the ticket-inspector has to take a second look to make sure she isn’t suffering from colonic cramp, featured in the First Aid manual. There’s certainly a pungent smell in the vicinity. The countryside skitters past, and as Linda speeds towards the House of God with her bundle of perfection, she sings a thumping religious ditty, with tambourines, a light, Eurovision drum-beat, and soprano parts for the ladies.

Today’s the day

The time is now

Let Jesus in

It’s bollocks hour!

This is her own variation.

Manxheath Institute of Total Dysfunction

Dear departed Brendan,

     Holding up there OK? Treat you well, do they? Good. Well, that’s enough of your news. Here’s mine.

     Who’d have thought it: a new member. From the wrong side of the tracks, this time. An old face from days gone by. Remember Dr Ishmael Stern? Well, you wouldn’t recognise him now; his wardrobe’s taken quite a nosedive. Gone is Armani. The silk shirts, likewise,
disparus.
Goodbye, Fifth Avenue chic, hello, M & S leisure slax. Our cardiganed friend sits in a chair, most days, watching television. This seems to be the standard routine for newcomers. It’s what Hazel did, before she buggered off without so much as a wee hanky-wave. I asked our son-in-law Gregory where she was, when he dropped by like a grim reaper, but he said how should he know, he’d come looking for her himself, seeing as she’d ‘stolen’ Billy from a certain Mrs Goody when her back was turned.

     ‘Goody for her,’ I said, but Gregory didn’t get the joke.

     A fog of guilt seemed to cling to him, like that visible body odour you see on the TV in the anti-perspirant ad. He turned on his heel to slope off, but Dr Stern, who’d been sitting all morning with his eyes glazed over, nursing a cup of cold Horlicks, suddenly tuned in at the sound of his voice.

     ‘Colleague!’ he called out from the deep wing-sided armchair, the best one in the whole joint, which we clientele had agreed to let him have for old times’ sake.

     Greg didn’t recognise him at first, and when he did, the shock on his face (the cleanest shave in the North, I always thought, which all goes to show you should never trust a well-shaven man), the shock and the horror were a sight to see. His eyes had the look of sheep on the way to the abattoir. To Arabs, apparently, those thunderstruck eyes are a delicacy.

     ‘Good God!’

     That’s our son-in-law Greg, expostulating in Ishmael’s direction. Ishmael is what we’ve taken to calling Dr Stern, now he’s minus his dignity. It’s friendlier, and it makes him seem like someone else – not the man we all knew as Dr S., who wore a white coat, and had us all stored on floppy disc, and broke my daughter’s heart. This is Dr Stern normalised, pared down to the bone, the thing we laughingly call personality laid bare, a live, vulnerable specimen on the shiny lino of the Day Room.

     ‘What on earth happened to you?’ asked Greg stupidly. ‘Why aren’t you running the hospital?’

     Ishmael’s laugh was dry as a central-heating cough.

     ‘Don’t you read the newspapers? I’ve been
struck off.
Incompetence due to insanity. A patient of mine killed herself rather messily, and they found your
mother-in-law
here in possession of a whole arsenal of mind-altering medic
ation
. Enough to cook anyone’s goose. So now I’m a voluntary patient in my own hospital. It’s a sort of poetic reincarn
ation
. I’ve been relaxing. Watching television. A bit of
clay
work. Observing the new management flushing out the old, and learning to Think in New Ways.
Dr Apple Tree
, we call her. Quite the
green fascist
, but effective. I expect you’re worried about those incriminating
files
.’