12

Up in the office at Dunquenchin, Gordon was having a breakthrough. He might have shouted ‘Eureka!’ if his classical education had been better; as it was, he shouted ‘Dad!’ Twelve months of terribly advanced electronic remote-contact wizardry with teams of Californian graphics experts, combined with neurological analysis of such amazing complexity and sophistication that quite honestly you or I would never understand it – even (ahem) if it could be described in words – had finally culminated in that virtual reality program he had called, provisionally, Phototropism.

It was Thursday morning, and breakfast was finished. It seemed the perfect opportunity for a test run. Hearing the footsteps of his dad coming up the stairs, Gordon strapped a custom-built Fly-Mo unit to his bonce (or that’s what it looked like), thrust his hand into a wired-up glove, adjusted quickly to the intense consuming dark, and for the very first time surrendered himself to the entirety of the finished game. Though he was a pioneer, he felt safe and confident. Earlier, his dad had commented kindly, ‘You need taking out of yourself, son’; and Gordon had promptly decided that a ‘proto-photo-trip’ was precisely the thing required. In theory, the program would trigger receptors in his brain to convince him – little by little, and depending on the level of skill – that his entire body was growing and reaching out like a plant in sunlight. It would take him out of himself, exactly.

What Gordon seemed to have seriously miscalculated, however, was the rate of acceleration. As it now transpired, being taken out of yourself from nought to infinity in fifteen seconds is pretty terrifying, and slightly more than the normal human constitution can withstand. From the evidence of his earlier partial test runs, Gordon had expected a slow but perceptible unfurling sensation, like an exquisite lily opening gracefully on the surface of a tranquil Japanese pond: starting with warm earlobes and a tingling sensation under the skin, it would then progress to something delicate around the eyelids. Instead, however, as his whole body instantly convulsed and whiplashed in his chair, the main sensations were of being violently drawn, wrung, pushed, dragged and wrenched. It was horrific. He screamed as his fingers spread and stretched, creaking and splitting, as his arms and legs tugged fiercely at their sockets, as even his hair yanked painfully at his head.

The large Victorian bedroom he could see around him (a virtual reality black-and-white 3D drawing, based on the Tenniel illustrations from Alice) shrank in on him, foop!, like that; in two seconds flat, Gordon had his foot up the chimney, and his arm out of the window, and was just about to swell up fatally against the ceiling when – beep!, the machine apparently switched itself off. As the picture dimmed and Gordon felt himself dwindle to normal size, he noticed a little tray of cakes marked EAT ME, which were presumably part of his Californian designer’s homage to Lewis Carroll. Even in the throes of his peculiar ecstasy, and even at only nineteen years old, Gordon’s detumescent brain thought, Hang on, that’s a bit suggestive, I’d better work on that.

He removed the lawn-mower helmet in a state of utter shock and disbelief. His head was hot, his eyes saw patterns in the air and his ears throbbed. When he tried to speak (just to exclaim ‘Lumme’), he vomited and started sobbing. No wonder he was upset: if this was its usual physiological effect, Phototropism obviously had a very limited future in the penny arcades. Gordon’s proto-photo-trip had lasted exactly six seconds and had taken about ten years off his life. If his dad had not burst into the room and taken the initiative of unplugging the machine, he might shortly have gone insane.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ his dad said later, when Gordon had stopped shaking and was sipping from a large mug of hot sugared tea.

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘Sure you can. What did it feel like? Was it anything like growing?’

Gordon yowled, nodded and suppressed a snivel.

‘Why do I get the impression that growing isn’t a pleasant experience?’ Gordon’s dad said warmly, to no one in particular, and then hugged his son again. ‘What else is worrying you, eh? Tell your old dad. What’s been going on in that brilliant loaf of yours? I suppose it’s that hand?’ (His tone suggested the hand was to blame, as if to say, ‘Just wait till I catch that hand, I’ll show it the back of my – er, hand.’)

But at the mention of the hand, Gordon, usually such an equable lad, let go of everything he’d been bottling up, with an explosive outburst rather like an accident in a compressed-air factory.

‘But he’s dead, Dad,’ he yelled, ‘that Makepeace is. Died in the fire on Tuesday night. Lying there all charred and it’s my fault, because I got scared of him and you locked him in and I feel so guilty now –’

‘But hang on,’ his dad interrupted, ‘I’m sure he was in here yesterday again. I –’

‘No, he’s dead. Definitely. I saw the hand, and now I’m worried because Angela let the other one go, and that creep Trent Carmichael is here, and I know there’s something horrible going on between him and Margaret, always has been, something really nasty, and Margaret’s a cow, Dad, she’s really horrible to that ex-boyfriend, and he’s looking really worried, and now my program doesn’t work properly –’

‘Could anyone have tampered with it?’

‘What? No. I mean, well yes, but who would? Anyway, that’s not all. Now I’ve sacked a lot of innocent people I don’t even know, and what else, right, the tall woman in the pink coat keeps trying to make friends with me on the landing by talking baby talk as though I were three – years – old!’

He paused. He wiped a tear. There was no more.

‘You’re right about Margaret, you know,’ said his dad after a bit. ‘My own brother’s daughter, God rest him, but such a rotten cow that you can hardly credit it. She had a great pile of notes on that boyfriend, you know. Loads of it. Brought it with her. Tapes as well, photos, samples of shopping lists, everything. She’s writing a book.’

‘No. What, on Tim? What’s he done?’

‘Just been himself, that’s all. But as far as Margaret’s concerned, he’s a fruitcake. All that guff about those daffodil bulbs. You know.’

‘Poor bloke, that’s awful. What a cow.’

‘Yes. Anyway, I found it this morning when I was making her bed, so I took it straight round to his room, poor bloke, and said take a butcher’s at this.’

Gordon gasped. ‘You didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘No, I mean, it’s brilliant. I think that’s brilliant, Dad. But you realize she’ll go berserk?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Gordon dropped his voice, as if to raise something delicate.

‘So she hasn’t, sort of, got anything on you? No secrets, you know, no nasty buried stuff?’

‘Of course not.’

Gordon was relieved. ‘It’s just she always gives the impression she knows something to your disadvantage.’

‘I know. But that’s because she’s a cow.’

‘Right.’

‘Which she is.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘What a cow!’ exclaimed Tim.

Ten minutes ago he had been lying in bed, miserable, listening with distant interest to a rather combative programme on Radio 4 called Face the Facts, and worrying heavily about nothing whatsoever. The things he faced were not facts, but they loomed larger than reality, and that was the trouble. This morning he had been particularly preoccupied by the vivid mental picture of his next-door neighbour in London, Mrs Lewis, carelessly leaving the front door wide open after feeding Lester. He simply knew it was true; he could see it, for goodness’ sake – open, flapping, people wandering in for a look round, while Mrs Lewis blithely packed her bags and embarked on a fortnight’s holiday without a backward glance.

When he tried to suppress this unfounded anxiety, perversely it only grew and stretched in his mind so that by the end it entailed Mrs Lewis (Oh no, was this trustless woman Welsh? It explained a lot) absent-mindedly placing a magnifying mirror next to a net curtain, and the low November sun reflecting off it and starting a huge fire, and then Lester rushing frantically into the street and being almost knocked down by a fire engine, which swerved to avoid him and instead ploughed into a bus shelter packed with schoolchildren, exploding with enormous loss of life.

Tim winced miserably and wondered whether to phone his own number, just to check that the line was not ‘unobtainable’, but he had done this lots of times before, from the office, and knew it didn’t prove much. In the old days, when he and Margaret lived together, they would sometimes come out of the tube station and, walking home, address his fears in sequential order, with Margaret’s natural sarcasm reined in as tightly as it would go. ‘Phew, the neighbourhood is still here,’ Tim would say, amazed, as they emerged in the daylight. ‘All right so far, then,’ said Margaret. They turned a corner. ‘Wow, our road is still here,’ said Tim. ‘A very good sign,’ she agreed. They held their breath until the trees cleared to reveal in the distance their own abode still standing, and not a blackened shell surrounded by ambulances. ‘The house is still there. Look, the house.’ ‘Hallelujah.’ They moved closer, not running, but walking more urgently. ‘And thank God, I don’t believe it, I think the flat’s still there!’ ‘Oh yes,’ said Margaret. ‘It’s a miracle.’

But Tim now had an additional worry, and a pleasingly circular one at that. Possibly he was really bonkers – and anxiety about being bonkers was the first sign that you were mad. Certainly Margaret’s purse-lipped, arms-folded, tut-tut attitude to his repeated sightings of work colleagues in Honiton would suggest that she thought he was barking, but was too polite to say. Last night he had actually seen Osborne, by the way, which brought the running total to four. Looking out of the window, he thought he saw the ‘Me and My Shed’ man being ferried, trussed up, through the quiet streets of Honiton on the front of a push-bike pedalled by a small, black, hairy figure in a frock with a trident, like Britannia – possibly a child, or possibly a clever, cycling, costumed chimp escaped from a patriotic circus. Tim had accepted it, at the time. Now it seemed pretty sick.

The radio didn’t help, this Face the Facts stuff, especially since the reporter seemed so certain of everything. Not a flicker of doubt was present in his mind. ‘So we confronted Mr Chimneypot at his new premises in Gloucester Road,’ he announced. The soundtrack cut from the studio to the outdoor swish of passing traffic, the panting huff-puff of the reporter chasing someone up to their front door and sticking his foot in it. ‘What about your investors, Mr Chimneypot? Is Chimneypot your real name? Are there any little Chimneypots? Can you tell us anything about Kiss Me Quick PLC –’

‘Why don’t they leave him alone?’ thought Tim, as he switched it off. ‘In any case, where do they get the moral energy?’ But then Margaret’s uncle knocked on his own door and offered him this great pile of stuff about how he was a case-book nutcase; and amazingly (paradoxically, you might call it), ten minutes later he wasn’t mad any more. Except, of course, in the sense of absolutely hopping. ‘What a rotten cow,’ he exclaimed again, leaping out of bed, and pulling on some clothes. He switched the radio back on. ‘That was Face the Facts,’ said the announcer. Yes, thought Tim, it certainly was.

‘I’m going to kill her,’ he said. ‘Look, she’s got my Post-it stickers and everything. She’s set me up.’ He read the latest notes again, scanning for the bits that annoyed him most – ’personality implodes … inevitable breakdown … nudge him off into the abyss … traumatized by displays of sexuality … hates the sight of cream’ – and let out a very uncharacteristic bellow of rage. ‘WOOOOORH!’ he went, feeling surprisingly good about it. ‘WOOOOORH!’ He had come down here to this godforsaken town to find the bastard who’d taken his job away, and been sidetracked into acting the invalid, just because of that cow Margaret. ‘WOORH!’ he went (slightly shorter this time). He didn’t even know what he was doing in this bloody B&B. ‘WORH!’ he went, kicking some files.

He felt quite exhausted. He needed to sit down. And the very last ‘WRH’ he made – just before Gordon tapped on the door and came in, and they somehow got on to the subject of who’d bought Come Into the Garden – was actually quite quiet.

‘The thing you’ve got to remember about Margaret,’ said Trent Carmichael to Michelle, as they watched her walk past their coffee-shop window, smiling privately to herself about something, ‘is that she is an absolute cow.’

Michelle nodded. She knew the type.

‘I mean it. Whatever you do,’ he warned her, showing his teeth, ‘don’t tell her anything personal.’

‘I won’t.’ Michelle thought about it. ‘You mean the rubberized gardening-glove fetish sort of thing?’

‘Exactly. She’d make something of it.’

‘I understand. She resembles that sinister patricidal girl in S is for … Secateurs!, then?’

‘Yes. In fact you might say she’s the very model.’

They continued to stare out of the window, until Michelle broke the silence.

‘She knows something about you, does she?’

‘Alas, yes.’

‘Pillow talk, was it?’

‘Sadly, you’re right.’

Michelle stiffened. She hated the thought of sharing Trent with another woman, especially a cow like Margaret.

‘Actually, my little dung beetle (if I may),’ Trent continued, ‘it does occur to me that you still haven’t told me anything personal, either, yet, except that you’ve got a mother you have to phone twice a day who loves my books almost to the point of obsession, and who can’t wait to meet me.’

He put a hand on her thigh. It thrilled her.

‘Haven’t I?’ she said, attempting an airy manner, but feeling her face redden.

‘No.’

‘Mm.’ He moved his hand. He was awfully good at this.

‘I’ve guessed a lot, though. I can’t help looking for clues, you know, being a crime writer. I think I’ve, you know, ratiocinated quite a lot about you.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, you are clever, obviously. But you’re pale, you stay indoors a lot, and you don’t have a boyfriend, and you do your nails, but not very well.’ He smiled apologetically. She smiled back, allowed him to continue.

‘Now, your clothes are a bit old-fashioned, and you obviously don’t know how to communicate with people, and you have a devotional air and know about gardening, and you’ve got this big gap in your life going back, ooh, fifteen years.’

‘So?’

‘So I reckon you’re a lapsed nun.’

Michelle said nothing. She felt like laughing, but thought it would be rude.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ said Trent.

She took a long, thoughtful drink of coffee.

‘Well, put it this way,’ she said, at last. ‘You’re not exactly wrong.’

She looked out of the window and smiled to herself. Two days ago she’d been in the office, doing usual Tuesday things. A mere forty-eight hours later she was in a Devon teashop with a famous lover with sympathetic kinky ideas, a plate of free cream buns, and a mysterious past involving wimples. What did she usually do at 11 a.m. on a Thursday morning? Good heavens, she’d forgotten. She’d almost forgotten about Osborne, too; but not quite.

‘Trent, you know, I’m a twinge angry with you, my darling Green Thumb (if I may). You still haven’t told me what happened yesterday, at your friend Angela’s. Did you find out what was wrong with this – who was it, um, I forget – this shed journalist? Storm in a teacup, was it? I don’t suppose he had a hatchet, did he? Just some silly mistake.’

‘Well, actually, no.’ Carmichael looked around, and moved his chair closer to hers. ‘If you can keep a secret,’ he virtually whispered. ‘Actually, he’s dead. The shed burned down with him – and the hatchet – inside it. Dreadful business.’

Michelle went white. Dead? Her lovely Osborne? Dead? Dead, in a shed?

‘Where is this place? I want to see it,’ she cried, getting up suddenly and knocking over a trolley of cakes.

Carmichael stared at her with surprise and admiration. This woman was a real dark horse.

‘It’s down the lane from the guesthouse,’ he said. ‘Past the Chimneypot Garden Centre. You can’t miss it, it’s got a burned-out shed in the garden.’

Angela had been mortified to find Osborne gone. Not only had he scarpered without saying goodbye, he had also taken the blankets, the cakes, the book and the rabbit. Jesus, men were such lousy scumbags. She slung an empty gin bottle into the rubbish, where it clanked against all the other bottles she’d emptied since yesterday. Vodka, Bailey’s, sangria, Tizer, Worcester sauce – it had been a very long night, and she had invented some deeply unusual cocktails. And now she was giddily propping herself up at the kitchen window, all the weight on her forearms, frowning against a swirling mental fog, and barking down the phone to Gordon (‘Ah, a proto-scumbag,’ she thought, viciously), who had innocently rung her, to ask to come round.

‘Jesus’ sakes, Gordon, sure she’s a cow.’ Staggering, she looked around for a stool to sit on, but there wasn’t one, so she just collapsed on the kitchen vinyl, pulling the phone down on top of her with a crash. ‘You still there? OK. No, I’m fine. But don’t sound so shocked about whatsername, yeah, Margaret. I’ve told you a million times she’s a cow. I wouldn’t trust her further than I can throw my own pancreas.’

Just next to her face on the floor she noticed a small drip of golden liquid (the last of the whisky, perhaps?) and realized that if she moved her body a couple of inches to the left, she could probably lick it.

She turned her attention to Gordon. ‘A cow is what she always was, Gordon baby. Barney left me because of her, I know it.’ Actually, she’d never thought of this before, but she was free-associating, and it sounded like sense. ‘Yeah, sure. I always knew it. Something they did together. Sometimes I’ve even wondered whether that S is for … Secateurs! was all about her and Barney and Trent. All that spooky burial stuff, you know.’

The proto-scumbag asked to come round. She said, ‘Sure’. He needed advice. He said he’d just discovered that the B&B was crawling with disaffected staff from Come Into the Garden, one of whom was the ex-boyfriend of Margaret.

‘Small world,’ said Angela bitterly, not very interested in Come Into the Garden any more. ‘Sure, come.’ She hung up the phone, and added glumly, ‘I’ve got nobody else here.’

She lay on her back. Scumbags, she thought. Manderley, what a joke. She made a decision and licked up the drip of whisky. It had some dirt in it, but it was OK. Then, with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes tightly closed, she surrendered herself to the familiar round-and-round out-of-body sensation she fondly called the helicopters, only this time it made her think of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, she didn’t know why.

Tim and Gordon walked along together to Angela’s house.

‘She’s a cow,’ muttered Tim.

‘You’re right,’ said Gordon.

‘I’m glad we burned it.’

‘Me too.’

Tim kicked a stone.

‘I still can’t believe you’re the bastard who’s closed down the mag.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I mean, it meant such a lot to me.’

‘I know.’

‘It was the thing I could count on, you know. A sort of shelter. I feel really exposed without it. I’m not sure I can survive in the outside world. I’m too weedy.’

‘But you can survive without Margaret?’

‘That’s true. She’s a cow.’

‘You’re right.’

‘I’m quite excited about meeting Angela Farmer. I’m a fan.’

‘Oh, she’s terrific, you’ll love her.’

It was only when they arrived at the gate that they heard a woman scream, from the vicinity of the burned-out shed. It was Michelle. She was standing in the ashes, holding a blackened hand (somebody else’s) up to her face and shrieking. But as they raced towards her, they realized she was shrieking with hysterical laughter, not fear. ‘It’s not a real one,’ she yelled to them, more loudly than was necessary, as they reached her, panting. She seemed exhilarated by relief. Tim was confused, he had never seen her so animated. ‘I’ve seen hundreds of these. Look, it’s just latex or something. My mother buys them in job lots. She’s obsessed with S is for … Secateurs! and the others; always trying to re-create great moments from it.’

They all looked at the hand.

‘So Makepeace isn’t dead, then?’ gasped Gordon.

‘Makepeace?’ said Tim and Michelle, with a single voice.

‘But what was a trick severed hand doing in Angela’s shed?’ asked Gordon, puzzled. ‘It wasn’t there before.’

Michelle shrugged. Now Trent Carmichael had appeared at the gate, as well as Gordon’s dad and, separately, Lillian. What the hell was Lillian doing here? ‘Hi, Lillian,’ said Tim, whom nothing surprised any more. ‘I thought it was you I saw. Everybody’s here, then. I even saw Osborne last night. Although, come to think of it, he didn’t look too happy in his role as the spoils of Britannia.’

But his voice faded on the air, and everyone looked at Michelle. Somehow it seemed like a moment of truth. The hand wanted to tell them something! As they all stood still in Angela’s garden, they surveyed the scene as though they had never seen it before (to be fair, some of them hadn’t), and tried to comprehend the full meaning of it all. Here, beside the shed, was the small area of recently dug earth where Makepeace had uncovered the hand. All around them, the autumnal garden held its breath, keeping its secrets, the very image of life suspended. Wordlessly they were gathering at the shed, to see the hand. It was a moment of deadly solemnity.

Angela, with her gumboots on the wrong feet, staggered across the lawn to join them.

‘I expect you’re wondering why I’ve asked you all here,’ she said, beaming. And then vomited copiously on Trent Carmichael’s shoes.