Now That You're Back Read online

  The people around me had stopped being together and the day looked the way it normally did. Nothing was special. There was a metallic feeling about where my liver would be and, more than anything, I felt angry.

  ‘No, I don’t understand. It’s not like that.’

  ‘Like what, exactly?’

  ‘Like the way you make it sound – as if we all just ran about doing all that we liked. No one can do that. There are consequences, diseases, people are dying of that.’

  ‘Pleasure isn’t fatal. I’ve been in the same relationship for more than a decade now, we simply happen to be unconventional. I thought I’d made myself clear – this is a part of me and what I am and nobody else’s hysteria will stop me from being who I am. We are careful because we care and we are happy. You have any objections to that?’

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Do you really not know what it’s like when you want to make that call – to see him, to see her, whoever is important for you? Are you saying you’d just give it up if somebody told you to?’ There was an ugly little pause. ‘Surely you do that? You do call?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I don’t make calls, I just answer them.’

  We didn’t say anything else after that. There was a polite silence; as if something about what I said had been obscene. By the time my taxi came I didn’t want it, but I took it anyway. I was going to be late and in the wrong mood and I couldn’t help looking for other taxis to see who was inside and if they were happy.

  That afternoon, it wasn’t very good. I couldn’t say what was wrong about it and we made no fuss at the time, but the atmosphere was odd. I strained somewhere in my neck.

  It took several weeks before whatever difference we had developed was dispersed and for all of that time at the back of my mind there was a little fleet of taxis full of people I didn’t know. They were all being special without me.

  Perhaps it was that slight mental disturbance which made me keep thinking it was strange that I never made the call. I was always the one that got the taxi. Never the caller, always the called. Yet, it seemed more than likely the process could work in reverse. There was a pleasant logic in it. The only component transferred would be the element of surprise. Who would begrudge that? There would still be an expectant journey, a tension, a reward for waiting. No problem. So I made a call.

  ‘Right now.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘You know who it is. I have to see you. Come now.’

  ‘I can’t now.’

  ‘I want you to.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  I waited at home for three hours and nobody came. I stayed in all that evening and nobody came.

  Some time later, a matter of months, I found I was waiting at the stance for a taxi. It was going to be an innocent taxi and I felt a little embarrassed at catching it there. In fact, the whole situation was uncomfortable because I hadn’t caught a taxi in hot blood since that unfortunate call and I didn’t want to be doing it now. Everything was reminding me that I didn’t know how to fall any more. I couldn’t do it on my own.

  ‘Hello, I thought it was you.’

  It was, unmistakably, that voice. That mouth. The steady eyes.

  ‘Here we are again. Not speaking?’

  ‘We’re not here again. I’m catching a taxi because I’m late.’

  ‘That’s a shame. Trouble at work?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Excessive absenteeism?’

  I didn’t have to look, I knew the mouth would be smiling.

  ‘If it’s any of your business, it was trouble at home. No more taxis. Full stop. Not needed.’

  ‘Now that is a shame. That’s terrible news. Look, I’ll write this down. Call me, will you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Call me. On the telephone. That’s my number.’

  ‘Why the fuck would I do that?’

  ‘Call me and see.’

  I can only say I was shocked and, because my journey was less important than those I had been used to, I walked away without saying another word. I didn’t need the stance; I could flag down a cab in the street; it didn’t matter.

  I don’t know if you are familiar with the story of the guru who told his pupil that the meditative life was simple, as long as you never, ever, once thought of a monkey. Naturally, after this, the pupil’s meditations were filled with monkeys of every colour and description, arranged in a series of faintly mocking tableaux.

  I was reading to try and improve my condition of mind and I had come across this story. Every time I walked down the street I would think of the pupil, the guru, even the monkey and none of them would help me because my particular problem was the taxis. They were everywhere. I didn’t want to wonder where they were going and why. I didn’t want to lie on my back in the night and hope that the phone might ring and there would be a journey and hands I could hold with my hands. I didn’t want to wish for dreams of falling. But I wondered and hoped and wished almost all the time. Everything I did was something that wasn’t wanted.

  You can guess what came next. What else could I do but another thing I’d never intended? Who else did I know who had even the slightest experience in this field? I found I had no choice.

  I hadn’t thrown the stranger’s number away, I had hidden it right at the back of a drawer in the hope I’d forget where I put it or that it might spontaneously combust: just disappear and go away.

  I took under a minute to find it – a corner of paper torn from something more important with seven numbers printed on one side. I had a coffee and called. Engaged. The next time there was no answer; an hour later, the same. I gave the number one final try on two or three other occasions, the last of them late on a Sunday afternoon.

  ‘Hello.’

  I couldn’t think what to say.

  ‘Hello?’

  We had never introduced ourselves and, even if we had, I wasn’t precisely certain of what I was calling for. Perhaps help.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Look, I’m going to hang up now.’

  ‘No. I mean I – Hello.’

  ‘Well, well, well. We met at the taxi rank, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry, we did.’

  ‘You’re sorry we did?’

  ‘No, I’m not sorry we did, at all. I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘So why are you calling? I gave you my number for a reason – not for a casual chat. Why are you calling?’

  ‘I . . . because I . . . am afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of what I might do.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘I don’t know. Mainly to me. I can’t get this out of my head, the taxis, the journeys . . . the whole thing. I seem to have nowhere to go now. I thought, because you knew about it . . . You gave me your number.’

  ‘Alright, alright. Don’t worry. Now . . .’

  I could hear a small disturbance at the other end of the line. Imagine that, the same noise, far away in a stranger’s room and inside my head. Telephones are wonderful.

  ‘Yes, here we are. Are you listening? Are you there?’

  ‘I am, I am.’

  ‘I want you to catch a taxi at the stance. I want you to tell it to go to the Odeon cinema. When you get there buy a ticket for the next screening in Cinema Three. Go in and take a seat in the fourth row from the back. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes –’

  Far away in that other room, the receiver was replaced and I couldn’t even say thank you, or goodbye.

  And outside, the half moon risen, people were moving together again, the music was back and we were special. I stepped inside the taxi, rested my hands in my lap and let the world dip away to leave me somewhere altogether better. Even in the half dark, I knew my fingers were jumping a little with every heart beat, and we were in hot blood again.

  Cinema Three was almost empty, pleasantly cool, and I tipped
back my head while the trailers reeled by, feeling my breath going all the way in and then all the way out again.

  ‘Good film, wasn’t it?’

  I held the receiver in both hands to stop it from shaking.

  ‘You never came.’

  ‘I’d already seen it.’

  ‘I thought you would be there.’

  ‘You thought wrong. Did you enjoy the film?’

  ‘I . . . Well, yes, I enjoyed the film, but I was waiting for you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have been. I didn’t say I would be there. You don’t know what you’re calling for, do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s alright, I do. Give me your number at home and your number at work. Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then give me the numbers. You do want this to continue, don’t you?’

  And, even if I had no idea what we were doing, I did want it to go on, so I passed over the numbers and that was that.

  I don’t think I lack pride; do you think I lack pride? In my position, you might have fed those numbers down the line and not considered it humiliating. I hadn’t known why I was going to the Odeon and, yes, I had expected company, but at least something was happening now. I felt so much better, so much more special again. That isn’t something you come by every day. Perhaps a month or two in the Seychelles would do it for you: a fridge full of cocaine: a night-sighted rifle and two hundred rounds. These things would be of no interest to me, but I never would blame anybody for making the best of whatever they’d got. I had a voice on the telephone.

  So I do believe I kept a little of my pride, while admitting that I waited for the next call with something less than dignity. When it came, I was invited to wait by the Sunlight Cottages in the park. Call three sent me to the sea front; call four, the necropolis and on every outing, I met no one, spoke to no one, saw no one I recognised.

  ‘I’m sorry, but what’s going on?’

  ‘Two o’clock, the Abbey. Be there.’

  ‘But you won’t be.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So why am I going?’

  ‘Because I’m telling you to. Or don’t you want to do this any more?’

  ‘Please, I don’t want to stop. I don’t want that. I just want to understand what the fuck I’m doing. Please.’

  There was a sigh. It came slipping all the way down miles of wire to me, soft but unmistakable.

  ‘You still don’t understand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then there’s no point in our continuing.’

  ‘No. Please.’

  I winced against the clatter of the receiver going down, but nothing happened.

  ‘Please, don’t hang up. If you explained I would understand, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘What do you enjoy?’

  ‘I . . . how do you mean?’

  ‘What do you enjoy? What makes you take the taxis? What do they do to you? You must know, it’s you it happens to. Your heart fists up and quivers, doesn’t it? The call starts and your blood is suddenly pushed high, round your ears. You can hear it sing. There are pulses setting up all over you, ones you can’t stop, and your stomach is swinging and then convulsing and then turning into a hole punched through to your back. Right?’

  ‘Ye –’

  ‘Right. All your senses shine – it’s as if someone pulled a carrier bag off your head and life is very good and you feel special. Yes?’

  ‘Mmm hmm.’

  ‘And now you can remind me – did you enjoy that film?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘You were there because you chose to go there – no one but you. You were happy. You were there and nowhere else, not even in your mind.’

  ‘I think –’

  ‘Don’t think, we haven’t got the time, just do it. Be there.’

  ‘At the cinema again?’

  ‘Do you still have my number?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You’ll find that I’ve changed it and I won’t be ringing you again. This has already gone on too long. Good-bye.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Take care of yourself. Good-bye.’

  I didn’t find this a very helpful conversation. I remember it very clearly, because, of course, it was the last. I imagined I might be angry, but the anger never came; there was only a numbness which would sometimes wake me in the early dawn, or lose my concentration when I worked. For a long time I thought I would just keep on that way, but the numbness faded and then I felt sad.

  Particularly, I was sad because I thought I had really caught the idea of the thing. I’m not really so terribly stupid. I know about self-awareness and caring for the child within, I’ve read books. I figured out that it didn’t matter where I was going in the taxi, as long as I went. It didn’t matter who made the call. It didn’t matter if there was a call, I could catch a taxi anyway, decide where I was going and then take off. I need never feel confined by my own existence again.

  I took myself back to the cinema and it didn’t work. I went back to the park and it didn’t work. I took a taxi to cruise past that particular block of flats I had been so used to visiting and it didn’t work. I walked up and down the streets, very often in the night, looking for a way into life, a tiny space to fall through, and it didn’t work.

  The last thing I’ve done is to write this. It should be that laying out all of these words and recalling the way that it felt when I really was living will help me. I’ve been turning the problem around here. I have even had to put myself in the place of the stranger on the telephone and that must mean we are a little closer than we were when we knew each other. Perhaps we have knowledge in common now that we didn’t have then.

  I can say I feel more peaceful than I have in a while and quite tired. When I read this back, it may be that things will come clearer. I think what I hope is that the sum of all I have written will amount to a tiny piece more than I intended and that piece will be what I was looking for all this time. I think that’s what I hope.

  ARMAGEDDON BLUE OR POISED ON THE BRINK OF BECOMING A MAGNIFICENT SUCCESS

  IT WAS NICE having time to think. Probably you could paint a Mona Lisa and knock off a novel or two in all this time you had to think. Really, it was terrific having so much time and bugger all to do, except blinking and breathing. You could suddenly get creative while you were stuck here, just bouncing out from one coast and into another.

  The company even arranged for you to do nothing but the bouncing. They had tickets that only allowed you to be on the ferry, you couldn’t land. You could look at the sea from the windows or from the observation deck, or you could just skip it all entirely and go straight for the dutyfree. Whole piles of novelists and poets and composers could fix up a seat in the bar, or somewhere, and not get off until they were finished creating whatever it was they were driven to create. That was pretty likely to be happening all around her, only she wouldn’t know about it because she didn’t know what anyone famous looked like. She didn’t pay attention to people’s faces.

  The really big, celebrity types that she might have seen on a poster, a magazine cover, that kind of thing – a person like that would make alternative arrangements. They would all be in aeroplanes, skimming the globe, like enormous stones. That was funny, so many planes full of brains, fluttering into the clouds to get on with some retail thinking. It must affect the weather, a thing like that.

  She wondered if she would make it to a brain plane. You’d know you were safe, up there – celebrity planes never crashed nowadays. There were those footballers came down one time, but they weren’t really anyone. And that rugby team crashed as well, but they were only known for the accident, because after it they ate each other, all trapped up in the snow. That wasn’t like getting a gold disc or an Oscar; that was just staying alive. Why should people get prizes for staying alive?

  There ought to be a place where you could write and let them know, ‘Look, if you’re giving out awards for living then I
don’t intend to be pushy, but I actually very much find that my whole life is a fucking heroic struggle. On the good days, I wouldn’t wish living as me on any kind of animal. For the bad days, I would need a whole brain plane to tell you what happens. All this shit happens. I can’t describe it. I don’t want to think about it. I mean, did you ever want to crack your forehead full open and lift your mind out to give it some air? That’s what my life makes me want to do. So where’s my prize for putting up with this?’

  It would be like a big, soft walnut, your brain – there in your hands, all warm and grey. It made sense to her that the painful bits would be a slightly different colour and you could simply mark them for cutting out.

  She could send the papers photographs of herself with her brain posing out there beside her. That would get them both on TV, on the chat shows. She had a definite disadvantage, not being an American, though. If you did anything like that in the States, the Yanks would give you a show of your own. You could end up with a television series or a job in politics really easily. It often crossed her mind that she should go to America.

  It was good to think of America and places like that, because she was honestly still shaking after what happened at the dock. This huge noise like the biggest, deepest bell in the entire world had shattered out, completely without warning, nearly made her scream. Her position had been very calm until then – nobody had cast off, or out, whichever direction was relevant, and the whole boat felt very solid and secure. She didn’t feel she was going to plunge into certain death by drowning at any moment. She just felt as if she was standing on the roof of a little hotel.

  That noise, though, it had been like Death’s footstep, like a white, cold explosion inside and out. It was totally certain that when Death came walking towards her, with only her in mind, it would be with that sound. She would hear it ring from miles and days away.

  When she had started to think and notice things again, she was gripping the rail at the edge of the deck, bending to face the milky water and searching for something big enough to eat a ship. She was looking for Death’s smile, which sounded quite poetic but was how it had been. No one else seemed to have noticed a thing, there was no running or panic, except in her hands which would settle down fine if she kept them out of sight. She had forced herself to wonder if the white in the water had washed away from the White Cliffs. This was what you saw when you looked at a melted cliff. It was comforting to know that cliffs could be melted when she felt pretty liquid herself.