“Pink teddy bears are not what you would call common fixtures in gentlemen’s public conveniences.”
“There aren’t any chairs in the restaurant,” I explained, “They are fixed to the tables.”
He grunted. “I fail to see the relevance. I’ll ignore the teddy bear for now, but if you try to put one over on me again I may not be so forgiving.”
I stepped out into the foyer and the man in the duffel coat followed me.
“Nice weather we’re having,” he said.
The weather was, as a matter of fact, not at all bad. It was one of those mild, sunny early spring days when the sky seems to have painted itself in a shade of steely incandescent blue. Not that you could see much of that from where we were standing, in the gloomy, rubbish-strewn foyer with the gents to one side and the wrecked remains of Martha’s Coffee & Muffins to the other side.
Suddenly the old man put out his right hand, which was wearing a dirty blue woollen glove. “Smith, art historian, MA, PhD etcetera, etcetera, at your service.”
Trying not to show any obvious reluctance, I shook the filthy outstretched hand, “Jonathan Richards.”
He looked at me quizzically, raising one of his shaggy eyebrows to indicate that he was expecting something more. “Guitar teacher,” I added.
“Musician? Hmm. That’s something, I suppose.”
“Are you really an art historian, MA, PhD etcetera, etcetera?” I asked.
“What d’you mean? Are you suggesting that I am living under false pretences?”
“No… But…” I glanced at the gentleman’s toilet with what I hoped was a meaningful stare.
He coughed gently into his hand. I got the impression that this was his way of showing that I had raised a topic of some delicacy.
“The fact of the matter is that I am living in reduced circumstances at the moment. My stipend has been cut.”
“Your stipend?”
“My remunerations. From the university.”
“You teach at a university?”
“Taught. Work seems to have dried up a bit lately.”
“How did you end up here?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“I like to preserve my privacy. You haven’t got any sardines, have you? Did I ask you that before?”
“You did.”
“Pilchards would do at a pinch.”
“What sort of thing did you teach?” I asked.
“Did I mention I was an art historian?”
“You did.”
“Would it surprise you, then, to learn that I taught art? The history of art, to be specific.”
“I suppose not.”
“What do you think of Velázquez?”
“The painter?”
“You’ve heard of him, then?”
“Is he the one who paints butlers on beaches dancing under umbrellas?”
“Butlers on beaches? I think you might be getting him, confused, son. With someone else.”
“Then, sorry, I don’t have an opinion.”
“You play the guitar, you say? I like a bit of guitar music every once in a while. Soothing.”
“Why did you leave?”
“Leave?”
“The university.”
“Other opportunities presented themselves.”
“You’ll have had rooms in college, I suppose?”
“I had a suite of rooms. Very nice they were. Flock wallpaper. Rugs. The lot.”
“And now you are here?”
“I value my freedom. Besides which, there was a bit of a nasty business, you see. The undergraduates, they developed some very antisocial habits. Which is why I took my leave, departed, got away, scarpered, skedaddled and ended up here. I took a room in the motel at the back of this place. TV, minibar, air conditioning. None of it works but it’s better than nothing.”
“You don’t live in the gentlemen’s toilets, then?”
“What! Me! Live in a public convenience! What do you take me for? I like my creature comforts. I am, as you might say, used to comfortable living. I had my own rooms, as I may have mentioned, when I was a fellow. All mod cons. Fridge, bathroom, cocktail cabinet. You wouldn’t believe the luxury we fellows live in.”
“Then why were you…?”
“In the gentleman’s convenience?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think I was in there for? Do I have to spell it out? I happened to be passing and I was caught short. So I popped in. The flush is a bit haphazard, the water supply being not what it once was, and the soap’s gone hard. But it’s better than using the facilities in the motel. Keeps the odours away. At a remote distance, as you might say. You haven’t got a Mars bar about your person, I suppose? No, I didn’t think you would. What with the distance you’ve travelled. It would have melted. How far have you travelled? You didn’t mention.”
“A fair way.”
“That’s what I thought. You look a bit… you know…”
“Dishevelled?”
“Unkempt.”
“It’s been a while since I had a haircut.”
“I can see that. What did you say your name was…?”
“Jonathan.”
“I had a dog once called Jonathan. Or was it a cat? One or the other. So what brings you to these parts, Jonathan?”
“Oh, I’m just passing through. En route to my final destination.”
“Going somewhere, are you? Good idea. Travel broadens the mind. I used to travel. Been all over the place. Scarborough, Bognor Regis, Grimsby. You got anywhere special in mind, son?”
“Cambridge.”
His eyebrows descended again, shrouding his eyes. “Cambridge. You don’t want to be going to Cambridge, boy.”
“Really? Why?”
“That’s where I came from. Things are bad. Very bad.”
“Things are bad everywhere. Which college were you at?”
“What?”
“In Cambridge. I wondered which college you were attached to?”
“I moved around.”
There was the sound of a foot scrunching on broken glass immediately behind us. Smith, art historian, MA, PhD etcetera, etcetera, spun around. It was Geoff, followed closely by Leila. Bobby woofed and ran up to them. Geoff hugged the dog – “So that’s where you got to, Bobby. We’ve been looking for you every…” The words choked away into silence when Geoff caught sight of the gun. It looked like a Glock semiautomatic and Smith, art historian, MA, PhD etcetera, etcetera, was holding it.
19
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Geoff staggered back. “Yow! That hurts!”
“Bang! Bang! Bang!” Smith shouted again, pulling the trigger with each “Bang!”
A cascade of tiny yellow plastic balls shot from the gun and gave every appearance of irritating Geoff more than they hurt him. Smith blew across the muzzle of the gun, the way cowboys do in films, then reached inside his duffel coat to put it back into the holster which was attached to his belt.
I didn’t say anything for a while. I was too shocked. I’d thought the old man had a real gun, with real bullets. It had certainly looked like a Glock. Though, on mature consideration, I had a feeling that Glock semiautomatics favoured a grey-to-black colour scheme rather than the shiny metallic sapphire-blue of the gun that Smith had used. “I was just checking,” he said.
“Checking what?”
“That you weren’t one of them. Nasty buggers, they can be.”
“I think he means red-eyes,” I said.
“Do I look like a red-eye?” said Geoff, sounding miffed.
“You’re young. It pays to be sure. They don’t like being shot, you see.”
“Yeah, well,” said Geoff, “I’m not so keen myself. And believe me, I’ve been shot by better than you.”
“You’ve shot some red-eyes with a toy gun?” – Leila looked impressed.
“If I’d had a real gun, I’d have shot them with that,” said Smith, “But
this was the only gun I could find. It was in the toy section of the newsagent.”
“You shot them with a toy gun – and your survived?” – Leila wasn’t just impressed; she was incredulous.
“They scare very easy. Toy gun, real gun, I don’t think they can tell the difference. Like children is what they are.”
“No,” said Leila, “Not like children. I’d say they are more like people tripping.”
“Ah…” Smith considered this for a moment – “Drugs, you mean? I’ve never had anything to do with drugs myself so I’ll have to take your word for that. I knew a student once, though, an undergrad, who wouldn’t go anywhere near a certain rose bush in the fellows’ garden. He said there were faces in the roses and they were watching him.”
“Acid?” I said.
“Mushrooms. That’s what I was told, anyway. Betty Miller, she was the bedder who cleaned his rooms, told me it was mushrooms. I don’t entirely see how that explains it though. I’ve had many mushrooms over the years and I’ve never seen faces in rose bushes.”
“Psilocybe semilanceata,” Leila said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Magic mushrooms. Hallucinogenic. Psilocybe semilanceata is the most common species. There are others, of course, but in all probability…”
“OK, OK,” I interrupted, “All very interesting, I’m sure. But getting back to the red-eyes. Are there any in the vicinity now?”
“About a week ago was the last I saw any. I thought they’d come back again when I heard your truck. That’s what my assumption was. Which is why I hid in the gentlemen’s conveniences.”
“You told me you went in there for a…”
Smith blushed slightly. “Please. Not in front of a lady. The two activities are not what you’d call mutually exclusive. What began as a call of nature ended up as an act of self-preservation. The magic mushrooms you were discussing remind me of something someone said, a colleague as you might say, a professor of neuro-something, he happened to mention it at High Table one night.”
“High Table?” Leila raised an eyebrow. She’d missed out the old man’s account of his illustrious academic career. I filled in the details. Leila looked sceptical. Smith continued: “This was back when the troubles were beginning, you see. The undergrads weren’t as bad then as they got later on. My friend, the professor of neuro-wotsit, he thought it was some form of mental thing. Like they were going bonkers, as you might say.”
“Schizophrenia?” I suggested.
“No, the other thing. Going gaga.”
“Dementia?”
“That’s the thing. But I said, they’re teenagers. Well, so they are, mostly. Eighteen, nineteen, something like that. Too young to be going gaga. How’d you fancy a biscuit?”
“What?” Geoff and Leila exclaimed in unison. They were not as accustomed as I was to Smith’s grasshopper leaps from one topic to another.
“Chocolate digestives. Only milk chocolate. If dark chocolate is your craving it must remain unconsummated.”
We followed the old man back to the restaurant. He went into a storeroom at the back where he found some warm cans of Coke and a packet of McVitie’s chocolate digestive biscuits. We ate and drank as we sat at a table by a window overlooking the carpark and the empty motorway beyond.
“Teenagers. Two of them. Eighteen or nineteen years of age I’d say. The ones who came here, I mean. Let’s see. About a week ago, that was. Ten days maybe. A boy and a girl. A little lemon-yellow mini is what they were driving. I thought they can’t be wild ones, the red-eyes that is. Because red-eyes wouldn’t be able to drive a car. That’s what I thought. But I was wrong.”
“Quite a few of them can drive,” I said, “We’ve seen them.”
“It must be some sort of remembered behaviour,” Leila said, “Like walking or eating. Things that they’ve always done, they continue to do. But new or unexpected things, things that have to be thought about, problems that have to be worked out… that’s what baffles them.”
Smith, I noticed, had been staring intently into Leila’s eyes while she’d been speaking. “If you don’t mind my asking…” he slowly crumbled a piece of chocolate digestive biscuit and watched the crumbs fall into a little heap on the Formica table top, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, politeness is my watchword. Especially where ladies are concerned. But…”
“My eyes?” said Leila.
“Well…”
“Bloodshot. Which means I’m Infected?”
“Well…”
“There are other reasons for bloodshot eyes, you know.”
“And in your case…?”
“Lack of sleep,” Leila said, “Due to a bad case of haemorrhoids.”
“Ah. Say no more. You speak to a fellow martyr.”
“In fact,” Laila went on, “You were right the first time. I am infected. Or, anyway, I was. But I recovered. I think. Don’t ask me how. I just did.”
“The man and the woman who drove here. In the lime-green mini…”
He had said the mini was lemon-yellow before. I was about to point this out but I thought better of it.
“They had bloodshot eyes. Red and raw they looked. And they were thin. Very thin. Gaunt. There was dried blood around their noses. And their mouths. It made me wonder where it came from. It might have been their own blood or… well, I couldn’t say where the blood came from. It made them look like animals. Not that I have anything against animals. I’ve always liked dogs.” To prove the statement he popped a chocolate digestive biscuit into Bobby’s mouth and the dog gobbled it down in a moment.
“A slouching gait is what they had, those two. They didn’t say anything. Not at all talkative, they weren’t. I had the impression they had breathing problems. Like the coal miners used to have in the old days. Do you remember coal miners? No? Before your day, I suppose. Wheezy, chesty sounds, they made. I’m not sure if they even talked to each another. The red-eyes, I mean. Coal miners could, I believe, be quite loquacious. They grunted, though. The red-eyes, I mean. Is everyone that far gone now, I wonder?”
“Some are worse,” I said.
“When I was in Cambridge, I could see it was getting bad. There were gangs roaming around town. Undergraduates. Town lads too. The things they got up to! I mean, undergrads are a bad lot at the best of times. But not like that. Dirty, they were. Like wild beasts. The beasts of the field that come to devour and, like dumb dogs, cannot bark. As it says somewhere in the Bible.”
“Isiah 56:9,” said Leila, annoyingly.
“But at least,” said Smith, “in the old days, even the most ignorant undergraduates talked, not just grunted.”
“You were telling us about the two red-eyes who came here,” I reminded him.
“Was I? Here? Oh yes. A little blue mini they were driving. Or it may have been a Volkswagen Beetle. Something of that sort. It wasn’t a Ferrari, that I do know. Terrible posture, they had. Slouched. I thought they were going to attack me. I was walking around outside at the time, taking the air, and when they saw me they started running towards me. Lucky for me, I had this,” – he indicated the imitation Glock in its belt holster – “I waved it at them. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ says I, ‘I’m armed and I’m not afraid to use it’. When they heard that, they started running towards me even faster.
“Then, when they were a few yards away, I shot them. Of course, this gun doesn’t fire proper bullets. Just yellow plastic balls. But from the fuss they made, you’d think I’d shot them with a machine gun. The young chap, from the screaming he made you’d think I’d shot him through the guts. Sounded like the squealing of a stuck pig – from descriptions I’ve read, at any rate, though I’ve never actually heard a pig being stuck so I cannot confirm the accuracy of that description. The woman ran up to him and flung her arms around him. She looked at me and there was pure hatred in her dead, fishy, blood-red eyes. Then the two of them turned tail, hotfooted it back to their car and drove off into the wild blue yonder.”
“You ha
d a lucky escape,” I said.
“Not lucky. I used my noddle. Asserted my authority is what I did.”
“Lucky even so. When you think how it might have turned out.”
“I tell you, they were like frightened children. What could they have done to me?”
“If they’d been minded to, they could have ripped you apart.”
Smith was silent for a while. Then he said: “Yes, you might be right. That’s why I laid some booby traps. Just in case they happened to come back.”
20
We stayed at the motel that night. Smith somehow managed to find three tins of baked beans, a tin of pears and a tin of evaporate milk. We feasted like royalty.
The motel itself was dark and damp and dirty. It was on two levels and we took rooms in the upper level. Many of the rooms had been wrecked, probably in the early days of the infection when people still inhabited the motel, but a few rooms were in good condition. Smith lived in the corner room at the far end. I took the room next to his. Leila and Geoff took rooms across the corridor from us. We had brought some bottles of whisky with us and we shared one of these with Smith that evening. We sat around in his room drinking from tooth glasses and telling tales of the old times.
I was by no means certain if Smith’s account of his academic life bore any resemblance to the truth. In his wrinkled pyjamas, grubby duffel coat and bobble hat, he looked (and smelled) like a tramp. But you never can tell with academics. The great universities are filled with people who, in other walks of life, would be considered unemployable. After a few glasses of whisky, he started waffling on at great length about the aesthetic failure of analytic cubism. So he was either telling the truth or he was one of the world’s great conmen. What did it really matter, anyway? Art was one of those things we used to have in the old world. People have too many other things to worry about these days.
The following day I woke up late – about ten o’clock. Bobby was lying on the bed snoring. I staggered across to the shower and turned the tap hopefully but nothing came out. At this rate I reckoned it wouldn’t be too long before I smelled as ripe as Smith. Maybe that would be all our fates in this dirty, unwashed world. We’d rot away like lumps of old Stilton.
The Exodus Plague | Book 1 | The Snow Page 20
