Paradise Read online

  Actually, he wasn’t responding as if he was being seduced—he was barely responding as if he was still alive. “You don’t want to buy it.” He was, in all respects, monotone.

  “No. I have no desire to make a purchase.” And I removed myself before I could say something else.

  Or.

  I really said, “I wouldn’t buy that DVD if it was the last one on earth.”

  And then he said, “You know what you can do.”

  And then I said, “Fuck myself and make a video of it called Fucking Myself.”

  I can remember both endings, which is tricky. But I think I’m more convinced by the first. I think I told him I had no desire to make a purchase and then left. However it played out, there were no children anywhere near me at that stage—I would never have used offensive language and referred to sexual acts had there been any young folk present. I have standards.

  “Amelia?” I try not to look like someone who is thinking of bad words and begin to make amends with the daughter, which is good of me because I will have done her no genuine wrong. She had thought of me as a friend, perhaps, and I’ve seemed to be slightly non-friendly, forgetful, nothing more. That’s the sort of behaviour my brother detested when he was her age. Me, too. It’s nothing serious, but even so, “Amelia, I hope you have a pleasant journey home. Are you looking forward to it?”

  “Mummy likes it better at home.”

  “Oh.” Thank God, they have a mother: they’re not wholly dependent on Wispy Dad. “Well, that’s good then.”

  At this, Wispy Dad can’t resist butting in to slow the conversation. “Their mother is still in our room. Tired.”

  Well, that’s understandable, I’d be eternally bloody exhausted if I was married to you. “Travelling is a strain.”

  At the food cart, a woman is shovelling out what could be eggs. Even from here, I can see them shudder and slide. They unnerve me in a way they should not—because eggs ought to have no particular power over me—and I realise that I’m about to have a feeling, something unpleasant, an episode. What I can only imagine as a huge, grey lid is threatening to close on top of me. This means that, far too soon, I may cry, or become unsteady, or find myself vomiting. Without doubt my head is, once again, about to let me down. There will be pain involved: there always is: and it will be bad unpredictable pain: it always is. After so many years, I can recognise the signs.

  I softly stand and the boy glances at me, definitely glum to see me up and off. “Goodbye, you.” No idea what his name is. “Goodbye, Amelia.” Amelia kicks at nothing and ignores me. “Goodbye . . .” I move forward and brush against a restraining hand—who else but Dad, standing, wriggling from foot to foot. He ought to know he shouldn’t do this, not now. I am becoming urgent and so is my head. Wispy adjusts his gesture into one half of a handshake, faintly pleading, and, courteous to the last, I clasp his soggy fingers and soggier palm. “Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Hannah.”

  “Yes.” We exchanged names across the board, then, how extremely chummy and civilised. “That’s me away then, bye.”

  “Great to have met you. Sorry about the ah . . . children.” He licks his lips with an odd, little grating sound, as if he is made of something peculiar.

  “Yes.”

  “The way they are, ha?” He seems not to grasp the essential intention of saying goodbye. “Well. Hm. Goodness . . . Blow me.”

  Not in a million years. “Yes.”

  “Safe home.”

  “Yes,” I nod—which sparks up a layering sensation, the impression of being loosely, poorly stacked—the head is growing delicate and I don’t move it again, but pause—wring out a grin—and finally he does first loosen his grip, and then abandon it.

  “Good-uh . . . bye.”

  Although I fear he may snatch in again.

  I withdraw as smoothly as I can. “Goodbye . . . all of you. Really.” Trying to balance myself at the top of my neck, not picturing my personality starting to slop out over my sides, running down to my chin.

  Which carries me past a last view of Wispy’s vaguely stricken offspring and off on a wavery march for the doorway, then out, a passageway (passageways lead to staircases and lifts, they are my friends), through a fire door and into a foyer complicated with several queues—not helpful—but, yes, here is a lift.

  When I stop, the momentum of my thoughts sends them rushing forward, pressing and wetting the backs of my eyes. I raise my key to aid steadier inspection—it is attached by a chain to leaf number 536: fifth floor, then.

  And, thankfully, no one else is with me when the doors whump shut and seal me in the queasily rising box. The surrounding walls are mirrored from waist height up which suggests an illusion of space and must be a comfort to claustrophobics, but which also—due to the laws of physics—does have one truly horrible consequence: I can see myself. Not only one’s self, naturally: from a few especially disastrous angles my right selves and my left selves reflect each other unrelentingly. On both sides, I can watch my head diminish along an undulating corridor of shrinking repetitions until I finally coalesce into one last, pinkish drop of light. This aches.

  It isn’t fair. All I wanted to do was find 536 and take care of my head, but instead I’m trapped inside this 3-D memento mori—staring at eternity while it howls graphically away, before and after (as if I were an extra in some truly sadistic, educational short), and all that I’m fond of as me is cupped up in this single, staring instant—which isn’t enough. Look at me—this is the only point where I’m recognisable, where I make sense— beyond it, I’m nothing but distortion and then I completely disappear. What is this—a Jesuit lift? I am not at an appropriate moment to be metaphysical. For Christ’s sake, I was only trying to cut out the stairs. I didn’t ask to be forcibly reminded that I don’t want to die, not ever, no thank you very much. I am not well and terrified and I don’t have the room to be either properly.

  So I am not in quite perfect condition when the lift shunts open and gives a gloating little ding. Meanwhile, my sweat gets a chance to chill in the passageway where small metal plaques with arrows are waiting for me, all set to suggest hypothetical directions.

  543–589, this way: 502–527, that way; 518 over there.

  I’m taking little runs to blind ends, finding corridors that loop round on themselves, cupboards, fire escapes, while the floor starts to pitch down quietly beneath my feet, as if I were aboard some ghastly submarine.

  The world cannot be as this is, I refuse to accept it.

  543–589 this way. But they were that way before.

  I deny the existence of this hotel in its current form. I deny the existence of this hotel in its current form.

  528, 529, 530 . . . which is encouraging, fairly, I should be okay, it can’t be far—

  500.

  Bastards.

  I deny the existence—

  I’m not going to be sick.

  I deny the existence of this hotel—

  533, 534—

  in its current form.

  I deny—

  535 . . . 536.

  536.

  Well, well.

  Slowly. Approach it slowly, it may move. Don’t let the key chain rattle, make no sudden cries, but, as soon as I’m ready . . . hold the bloody handle, grab it, key in the lock, key in the lock, right in, in, okay. And. Turn. Turn everything.

  The room agrees to be opened and it is, indeed, my room—here is my holdall on its floor, lolling open, and this is my own, my personal alarm clock, ticking primly by the raddled bed: the soft, the horizontal, the wanted bed. There is nothing better than being bewildered and unhappy and very tired and then discovering you have a bed.

  “Could I, uh . . . I’m in Room Five Three Six, I wonder could you tell me if I’m checking out today . . . five . . . thirty . . . six . . . That’s right, three six. Five three six.”

  I will admit that I had expected someone who worked in a hotel might be able to keep a grip of perhaps one room number, now
and then, but I won’t be snappy, that would be unconstructive and would not reflect my mood. I have slept for two blank hours—nearly two and a half—slept through, I can only assume, the whole of my head-related distress and every threatened intimation of death and doom. I am quite fine now, and had I been calmer, I would have known—the whole source of my earlier trouble was tiredness.

  As I let myself be comforted, there comes a dull clunking on the line— perhaps the receptionist playing with loose teeth. She mutters a name.

  “I’m sorry, who? . . . Oh. And I’d have to check out at twelve? . . . Eleven?”

  Why do they do that?—Twelve is bad enough, but now everybody wants you outside in the snow by eleven. Try checking in before five and see what it gets you: a bloody lecture: your bags in a cupboard somewhere until it’s dark: that’s what. “In that case, could you be very kind and give me the room for another day? . . . Well, no, not give. Just . . . the usual arrangement. You have my credit card? . . . You do?”

  Good. That’s a good sign. Cash is a bad sign—credit is good. “Then that’s all very fine then, isn’t it? That’s all extremely fine.”

  Above the window comes a laboured thunder, like a broad stone being rolled in overhead. I get up gently, examine my view.

  Dove-blue clouds, a gold edge to them and spindles of light behind. Nearer, there is a fat concrete tower, topped with the scoop of a radar dish, revolving, and a runway and the slanting rise of a plane, charcoal-coloured. Another stone grinds by.

  Which is disturbing. I could swear that I’m on my way home, so why am I still at the airport? Reproachful on the felty, dun carpet, my holdall is waiting—it can usually explain.

  Dishevelled contents, the clothes have been worn. Still, they seem to be nobody’s clothes but my own and

  I need to be sick, immediately.

  Thank God the room is tiny—it means the en suite facilities are close.

  Shock will do that, unbalance the system, and it always unsettles to be less than clear about where you are. Or, in this case, where I am. Or, more precisely, why.

  A dash of cold water on the face, though, and I’m approaching some level of definition, feeling good.

  No. Not good. I was mistaken. That was a mistake.

  Because my forehead has started torquing—it’s a reaction to the cold, or the water, the force of the dash. I can see in the mirror that my bones are not actually moving, not visibly, not as such, but I can—even so—feel them buckle against my brain, suck in and down and squeeze above my tongue. Inside, there’s twisting, pulsing where I can’t reach, and once that’s started, it only gets worse. So I haven’t escaped my head: it was just waiting until I’d woken to make itself felt.

  All right, then—do what you like up there, run amok. It’s not as if we haven’t been introduced. But don’t think we’re friends or that you’re welcome. I still know exactly how to cut you short.

  So it’s back to the holdall and feel for those delicate items, the ones you wrap up in sweaters, the special things you need to take with you and have for company. It isn’t great to lean forward while I search, it doesn’t aid my equanimity, but this is a necessary evil and will be rewarding in the end.

  Yes. First out is something called Affentaler, tucked up snug in a tiny bottle, shaped like a flat, heavy tear—a map on its back to say where it comes from: the meander of a river, Strasbourg marked, the suggestion of fertile plains and peacefulness. It’s full, which is never a bad thing, but only 250 millilitres and only 11.5 per cent. What on earth was I thinking? It’s practically bloody fruit juice: what good did that ever do?

  But then, but then, God bless me—I love it when I leave myself prepared.

  ORIGINAL

  GRANT TO DISTIL

  1608

  And God bless metrication, because 700 millilitres is so much more roomy and cheerier than a pint.

  Bushmill’s, County Antrim, 700 millilitres, 40 per cent. I mean, what else do you need to know? Not that, as an additional courtesy, you don’t turn it in your hands and love the rounded corners and the dapper weight and the elegant cut of the label: the black with the white and the gold, all shaped around each other to mark out an arch: a long, slim doorway to somewhere else.

  And God bless the rectangular bottle, for it will not roll and harm itself.

  I pop the seal on the Affentaler and put it out of its misery. Then I move back to the Black Bush, open it and let it speak to me. It says that I have, until quite recently, owned more than a pint of delicate grain whisky and I now have a shake under half of it left, smelling clever and hot and masculine and jolting to the glass from the bottle with the sound of a little dog coughing: that wonderful bottle cough.

  matured in oloroso sherry casks—that’s nothing if not melodious: inside and out.

  And you’ll notice I go to the trouble of serving the whisky, although I don’t have to, there is no one here to see. The point is that I stay civilised, no matter what. The most reliable measure of a person lies in what they do when they’re alone, when they have no need to pretend— are they firm when solitary, or do they slide? I take the trouble to search about, check the bathroom and hunt down a single, cellophane-sealed plastic glass (more of a cup, really) and I tear it free and use it, as any human being with dignity surely would. I do not slide.

  After 100 millilitres I get the good sweat, the fine one that follows nourishing exercise, and my headache lifts off like a velvet hat and leaves without me. My stomach feels a trifle naked, unlined, and does give the odd twitch or two before it begins to mellow and buzz with that neat, medicinal sting. But I know I’ll be fine, nonetheless. In the absence of any further pain, the next 200 millilitres are all mine.

  I drift back to the bed, trapping warm little teases of whiskey against my gums: quarters of quarters of gills making my facial bones static again and smoothing my hair. Here I am, fixed and certain, lying on the mangled taupe and duck-egg coverlet with the day relaxed and clean ahead of me, beckoning. I need no more, or less, than this, I am balanced in my skin and whatever has gone before is unimportant and whatever has yet to come will make me smile.

  Because once you’ve begun to have blackouts, you’ll never stop and so before and after don’t exist—you’ve mastered the art of escaping from linear time. The jumps and jolts take a bit of getting used to—driving is particularly tricky, guessing what gear you’re in, or if you’re trying to overtake—but this keeps you bright and springy, alert. And there is nothing unnatural about it, nothing dreadful: some level of blacking out is what lets most people survive. If you asked them about their way to work, the colour of the bus seats, or the pattern of the office carpet, the name of the trainee who brings in the tea, the post, the wage slips, the number of strangers ahead of them in the evening supermarket queue: they couldn’t tell you a thing. They can’t make their minds remember and no one who wasn’t a monster would want them to try. Any person truly pausing to examine the miserable details of their life would at once choose a merciful dash to the nearest unattended well. You have to dissolve your bleak points and blur your edges: if you didn’t they would hurt. So continuous minor blackouts are fair enough.

  But not enough. Not once you realise that one minute unremittingly following another, and then taking sixty seconds to drag by in the customary order, is a totally unsupportable waste of time. Why not get the highlights, the hot spots, and skip the rest? Why not hugely enjoy a fine afternoon with quality people, while simultaneously recalling a splendid evening you’ve been keeping in reserve and now unveil to yourself in a bouncing rush that, in its turn, freshens your taste for the matters you have in hand? Why not surf between time and time, content in yourself as yourself and the only constant point?

  Not that it doesn’t take a lot of work to be this way, to free your personality from events. Most people exist through what they do, they have lost the clarity that once permitted them to be. Me?—I’m completely simplified, I am distilled. Washed down to nothing, I remain exactly who
I am, no matter where or when. I understand my fundamental sources, my provenance.

  For instance, I lived in the same house from the time I was born until I was seventeen—that’s the sort of stability you can’t buy. Such things build reinforcement into your whole identity. My parents both stay in that same home, even now. Or rather, if this is a weekday, my mother is out and working in the offices of Busby, MacDonald & Hume—a company of solicitors which, within living memory, has never been able to boast a Busby, or a MacDonald, or a Hume. But their premises are wholly unfanciful—I have visited my mother there often, heard her answer their telephone with her best, unquestionable voice—the one which anticipates no disagreement, but which is softened with a definite sympathy, an unlooked-for gentleness. Straight from school, I have sat and waited for six o’clock and our time to go home, reading old copies of Scottish Field and National Geographic until she relaxed into her typing and I could watch the marvellous economy of her hands, the assurance in her swing and rise as she stood and took some document she’d made and moved to file it in its proper place. There can’t be many years left until she will have to retire, but I won’t believe in the office once she leaves it. I will picture the walls turning porous and the furniture fading away and everything turning as fictional as Busby, MacDonald & Hume. My mother’s job exists through her.

  Still, I usually imagine her in the garden, working out the weekends or the few hours at the end of summer days. Where we come from it rains a good deal, but often our Augusts are fine, blaring with a sudden rush of flowers and other expansive preparations for vegetable breeding. In August my mother wears sandals, a loose skirt and a blouse, something quiet and light, the style has always been the same: a tiny hint behind it of the fifties and the girl she used to be: waved hair, thick-framed glasses, bobby socks. Sometimes, she’ll incline slightly by a shrub, as if it were whispering to her, confiding its state, and after that she’ll inhale above it and close her eyes, considering. She doesn’t just stroll in the garden, she is constantly intent. And pruning, digging, lopping, planting, edging the borders of beds: every act of cultivation becomes mysterious, because she can perform any task without apparent effort, or disorder, everything executed with this—well, the only word is grace. She has grace. When I was younger I’d try to help her: annoying the weeds on her behalf, but I never could manage much beyond a batter and mash about, ungainly, all scratches and mud. In time, I’ve developed degrees of assurance, naturally. I am a woman and not unwomanly, I suppose; but I realised years ago, before I was seven, that I won’t be a woman the way that my mother is, I’ll never do it right. She is a heartbreaker, really.