The Wrong Story

by James Ellis

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember anything about yesterday. Have I been run over? Hit by a meteorite?’

  ‘You fell off a multi-storey car park roof.’

  That was a surprise.

  You fell off a multi-storey car park roof.

  There seemed to be too many syllables in that sentence. He tried it out himself. ‘I fell off a multi-story car park roof.’ It was difficult to say with his swollen lip and bristly moustache and missing tooth.

  ‘Do you remember that?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’ She looked at him for a little longer as if she were waiting for him to say something more.

  ‘That’s not good, is it?’ he said.

  She smiled again and said, ‘It’s not surprising. You’ve just woken up. Can you touch your nose with your finger, please?’

  He touched his nose with his finger. The tube that curled under the sheets towards his groin had particles of sediment floating in it. He could feel the bag’s weight tugging it. He drank some more water.

  ‘Did you say I fell off a car park roof?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t like heights.’

  ‘I can see why.’

  ‘I mean I really don’t like heights. And I don’t drive.’

  Maggie stopped writing in her folder and sat down on the side of his bed and spoke as if she was explaining a great truth. Her eyes were large behind her thick lenses and close up her face was rounder and smoother than it had looked when she was farther away. There was a tiny blemish on her cheek: a mark so small it was hardly visible; a minuscule shallow crater that, were her face a planet, would be apparent only through the most powerful of telescopes.

  ‘I don’t know why you were up there. All I know is that yesterday you fell off a car park roof and landed on a market stall and a big pile of bananas, and ended up on a flower-bed full of wet earth. You are very lucky. If you’re thinking of buying a lottery ticket, I’d do it now.’

  ‘I landed on a market stall?’

  ‘On the canvas roof.’

  Tom thought about that, about his body falling like a stone and hitting the canvas roof. For some reason he imagined himself asleep as he fell, wafting to the ground like a leaf. But perhaps he’d been awake and screaming. ‘That was lucky.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘And then… bananas?’

  ‘Crates of bananas. All piled up.’

  Of course, the canvas roof wouldn’t have withstood his colossal weight. He was no leaf. He would have smashed through everything between him and the ground.

  ‘How high?’

  ‘I don’t know. Six feet?’

  ‘I mean, how high was the car park roof?’

  ‘Oh, much higher. About sixty feet.’

  Tom tried to imagine how high 60 feet was. He thought of a tower block and counted six windows up. He pictured nine Toms standing on each other’s shoulders leaning against the building, and then he found himself imagining that all those Toms were a circus troupe wearing tights and leotards, each running on with their moustaches bouncing up and down and taking a bow before climbing up and becoming the next rung on the human ladder.

  ‘Sixty feet. Was anyone else hurt?’

  ‘Well, the bananas might need counselling.’ Maggie smiled. ‘That was a joke. No one was hurt except you. And you got off lightly. Seriously, you’re so lucky. You’ve hurt your hand and lost a tooth. No damage at all to your back. You have a bruise on your head but the neurologist took a look at you and there’s no sign of anything to worry about, which is good. You had some pain in your lower back area so we gave you painkillers and something to help you sleep.’ She stood up again. ‘Follow my finger with your eyes.’

  Tom followed her finger with his eyes. She wore no rings.

  ‘My lower back area?’ he said.

  ‘The paramedics think you hit the crates with your buttocks but landed face-first in the flower-bed. There was a lot of mud in your mouth.’

  He ran his tongue around his gums. Mud in his mouth; mud and blood and a broken tooth.

  ‘Why does my throat hurt so much?’

  ‘It’s just dry. The painkillers. I’ll get you more water.’

  It was a lot to take in. He felt like a witness to a train wreck standing at the mouth of the tunnel. Something had happened in there but there was still too much smoke and debris to see what. He thought about his dry throat and sticky mouth. It was a familiar feeling. This was not the first time he’d woken up with a headache and a large gap where the day before had been.

  ‘Was I… was there alcohol involved?’ he said.

  Maggie smiled. ‘No. Why? Do you feel hung over?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think there was any alcohol involved. I want you to tell me if you have any headaches or problems with your vision. Or your hearing.’

  Tom thought about the barking dog but then remembered: that had been real.

  ‘I feel washed out,’ he said.

  Maggie stepped back from the bed and surveyed him. ‘The consultant will see you soon,’ she said. ‘No food until then. We took some details from your wallet and I think the police have been to your house. Is there anyone you’d like me to call? Anyone who will be worried about you?’

  The police have been to your house.

  Is there anyo ne who will be worried about you?

  Is there anyone you’ d like me to call?

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There is. My wife. My wife will be worried about me.’

  ‘I’ll call her.’

  ‘Her name is Karen.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Can I call her?’

  ‘Of course. We can set you up with a phone. Would she have been at home when the police called yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry. You can call her soon if you want, or we’ll contact her.’

  Tom took a deep breath and felt the cool air pass across the serrated edges of his sore throat. ‘I don’t remember being on a roof at all,’ he said.

  ‘What do you remember?’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘Concrete. Shimmering white concrete.’

  2

  http://www.tashfanz.com/academic%1009Kieckenotes.htm

  Extracts from a visiting lecture given by Germaine Kiecke at Charles University in Prague, 1 April 2011.

  … The thing, the most important thing, to bear in mind when considering the Tash canon of cartoons is his adherence to the art of ligne claire. There is no clutter. Life is reduced to as few pen-strokes as possible; a dot, a dash and little more. But within those few pen-strokes an entire universe can be conjured…

  … Tash expunges the grimy reality of our world and creates a clean, minimal, sanitised canvas on which his characters can thrive – Plenty the Cat, Billy the Hedgehog, the Pelican, the always-angry restaurant owner and, of course, Scraps himself: the ecologically-motivated fox and hero of all the adventures…

  … They are pure, defined, untouchable, immortal. The art lies in what we don’t see: in the spaces that surround the characters; in their world beyond the frames. And through this combination of seen and unseen we might catch a glimpse of the mind of the artist, the mind of the creator…

  … And as for his creations, it is intriguing to imagine life from their side of the page, how they see the world that has been laid out for them, and what they might say on the subject were they ever to meet their maker… (Kiecke).

  3

  One of the first things I’d say is that it wasn’t shimmering white concrete at all. It was ordinary grey concrete, the warm air rising from a patch of dried oil making it shimmer, the bright morning sun making it look lighter than it actually was.

  I walked across the concrete and passed through the warm air and I wondered whether or not I was shimmering too. I hoped so. It would look good for whoever was watching me, as someone certainly was. I could usually t
ell when hidden eyes were on me.

  ‘I know you’re somewhere,’ I said.

  In front of me was a big brick building. I walked over to it and sat on a low flight of concrete steps and looked around. Opposite, beyond the heat haze, was a grassy slope with a wire perimeter fence running along its top, and a cluster of small industrial units beyond. I didn’t know why I’d come to this place or how I’d got there either. But that was all right because that happened a lot of the time. My life wasn’t a sequence of events, merely a collection of moments.

  I opened a tin of tobacco and started rolling cigarettes, looking around in a furtive manner. I was naturally furtive. I made five cigarettes, put four in the tin and the fifth in my mouth. I lit it with my Zippo and took a long, deep drag, blowing the smoke back into the air in a faint stream.

  ‘Filthy habit,’ I said, as I always did.

  I sat back and closed my eyes, enjoying the sun and the warm breeze and the peace and quiet of a Sunday morning. No doubt it would become apparent why I was there. It usually did. Meanwhile, I was comfortable simply to be, to let life come to me, to exist.

  A shape darkened the light. I opened my eyes and saw that the blockage was Plenty, silhouetted in front of me with the sun behind her head like a solar eclipse. A solar eclipse with wide, pink eyes. How did she get there so silently and so suddenly, I wondered? It bothered me. Everything about her bothered me.

  ‘I knew you were somewhere,’ I said. ‘I knew you were watching me.’

  She stood there, blocking the sun, staring, until she said, ‘Where’s my ball?’

  I blew smoke into the air. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you stolen it?’

  I studied the end of my cigarette. ‘No, I haven’t stolen your ball. Have you looked? You know you have to look first.’

  She continued to stare at me, no doubt thinking I couldn’t see her moving closer, bit by bit, her tail thickening.

  ‘It’s your ball,’ I said. ‘You have to look after it. I don’t have it. See?’ I spread my arms wide in a gesture of openness and noticed that her claws were out; thin slivers of razor-sharp malice.

  ‘You know the rule,’ I said.

  ‘What rule?’

  ‘The no-claws rule.’

  She was very close now and she had become still, staring at me. I looked away. I had read somewhere that it’s a non-threatening gesture. Cats don’t like being stared at. I don’t know why I bothered because that sort of stuff never made any difference with Plenty.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘I think about a sack full of rocks and an empty stretch of water.’

  ‘That’s not nice.’

  She was standing right over me, just a wiggle and a pounce away. And then a voice from above said, ‘I’ve got it. No, I haven’t. Yes, I have.’

  A large decrepit Pelican dropped out of the sky. It was a rough landing. It hit the ground and bounced, its eyes crossing briefly as its feathers lifted in different directions before it collapsed near the steps in a heap of bones and beak and mottled grey feathers. Its body was moving with fleas and tics and those little rice-like yellow eggs. It was dirty, ragged and diseased, and much bigger and bonier than it looked when it was in the air. It stank of fish – long dead and rotting fish.

  ‘Ouch. That hurt. Did it? It did.’

  I opened my tin and offered it a cigarette. ‘Even though you’re a bird, I don’t think you’re cut out for flying. Are you all right?’ I held out my lighter.

  ‘It’s not the flying, it’s the landing.’

  The Pelican took the light and then spat out a large lump of brown phlegm that hit the ground with a squelch and a muffled tinkle. The Pelican’s eyes crossed again as it looked down its own beak and then righted themselves. ‘There’s your ball,’ it said. ‘Is it? Well, it’s someone’s.’ It lay on the ground wheezing, looking like a big pile of feathery twigs.

  Plenty stared at the phlegm-coated ball and then at me. The heat caused steam to rise from it.

  ‘No way,’ I said.

  She waited.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ I picked up the ball and rubbed the spit on my arm, leaving a patch of slime on my fur that glistened in the sun. ‘There.’ I tossed it to her. ‘There’s your ball.’ It was pink and had a bell in it. ‘Try to keep hold of it. You lose it every day. Don’t bat it around so hard.’ I relit my cigarette and tried to find my mellow mood again, but Plenty sat down beside me, knees together, head upright.

  ‘Why are you so grumpy?’ she said. ‘You’re no fun anymore. You used to be fun when we had our adventures. Why don’t we have our adventures anymore?’

  ‘I am fun. Look at this face. This is a fun face.’

  She looked at me, leaned in and wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Very funny,’ I said.

  That was their joke: that I smelled bad. Sometimes at night when I sat in our alleyway minding my own business, smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine, the others would say to each other that a skunk must be hiding nearby or that somebody was burning rubber. And then they’d look at me and laugh. But what do they know about how a fox should smell? What do they know about anything? Without me they’d starve. Without me they’d have no food, no warmth, no adventures. I let them laugh but sometimes I’d walk over to the wall and piss all over the brickwork just to give them a smell to talk about.

  But the thing was, they were right: recently my smell had been getting worse. I knew it because I could smell it too. I was very particular about my scent. And it wasn’t only me, the Pelican seemed to be decaying in front of us and even Plenty, not much older than a kitten, even she was looking threadbare.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Where’s Billy?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe some kids have gone off with him.’

  ‘Will they eat him?’

  ‘No, they won’t eat him. They’ll play with him or take him to school or put him in an airing cupboard or something. They won’t eat him. Kids don’t eat hedgehogs.’

  I kept half an eye on her. Her claws were still out. She was looking at the Pelican, which had fallen asleep. Each time it breathed her ears twitched. She watched its narrow, bony ribs rise and fall. Without apparently noticing she kneaded her claws into my leg. I lifted her paw, taking care not to draw blood. She turned and watched my face, neither resisting nor helping.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  Still looking into my face she put her claws back on my leg.

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Well I don’t and it’s my leg.’

  ‘I’d like to pull all its feathers off,’ she said looking back at the Pelican. The good thing about Plenty was that she quickly lost interest in anything that she was doing. ‘Why is it an “it”? Why isn’t it a he or a she?’

  ‘It’s just the Pelican. It always has been. Why is anything anything?’

  ‘Where did it come from?’

  ‘I don’t know. The sky.’

  ‘But where in the sky?’

  ‘A Pelican cloud.’

  ‘It has a big beak.’

  ‘So what?’ I flicked my cigarette away and watched it land on the ground, a plume of smoke curling upwards. ‘You’re bored. Go and play with your ball.’

  ‘I like it here,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you try to bite me and I’ll rip out your eyes?’

  ‘Why are you always like this when Billy’s not around?’

  ‘Like what? Like this?’ She jabbed my leg with her claws again. I showed her my own stubby black nails, chipped and worn.

  ‘Ooh, scary,’ she laughed, skipping away.

  ‘Do you mind?’ said the Pelican. ‘I think I mind. You’re treading on my wings. Are you? Yes, you are.’

  ‘Come and sit down,’ I said. ‘Before the Pelican gets all broken. Or lie in the sun or lick your face or whatever it is that you do.’

  ‘Mister So-What,’ she said and laughed. Then her mood changed and she looke
d sad. ‘I should never have left Nanny’s. It was nice there. I had my own blanket,’ she said, rolling her ball backwards and forwards, ‘and my own toys. And my own bowl.’ Then she yawned and sat down. ‘Give me a cigarette.’

  I opened my tin and let her take one. I rolled the Zippo and she put her paw on my wrist – and one by one her needles reappeared from their fleshy sheaths. She looked at me and I looked at her, the flame reflecting in her eyes.

  ‘I will bite,’ I said.

  She sat back and blew smoke at the Pelican. ‘There were little rats at Nanny’s. I love little rats. If I see a little rat I’m going to stand on its tail and put its head in my mouth and bite it off. I’m going to shake it until all its insides come out and I’m going to keep it as a pet until it falls apart and then I’m going to watch all the flies eat it and the birds peck it to pieces and then I’m going to watch it dissolve into dust.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  I tried to shut her out of my thoughts and return to my peaceful, relaxing, Sunday-morning state of mind. Living in the moment, that was the secret. No past, no future.

  But instead a voice said, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’

  Chewing gum and leaning against the wall was Billy the Hedgehog. His bristles were greased back and held in place by a pair of sunglasses which he’d pushed up and onto his forehead.

  ‘Scraps said you were in an airing cupboard,’ Plenty said.

  ‘Scraps is confusing me with a bat,’ said Billy.

  ‘It was just a scenario,’ I said. ‘Come and sit down.’

  ‘I like bats,’ said Plenty with a dreamy look on her face. ‘I knew a bat that landed on a baby’s face once and it smothered her to death. The baby wriggled and wriggled but the bat held on with its claws and then the baby died and the bat went to sleep and it was really comfortable.’

  Billy looked at her. ‘Are you sure it was a bat that did that?’

  ‘Yes. No one saw, anyway.’

  Billy squeezed in on the steps. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I wish I had been in an airing cupboard. I’m beat. I could do with a few hours tucked up among the towels and linen. I feel like I’m fading away. How come we don’t do anything anymore? And what are we doing here?’ He looked around. ‘I’ve never seen this place before.’