by Stuart Evers
For years, Jaq worked beside him, day by day, night by night, until Bob was thunderstruck by her. Until his eyes were suddenly opened to her. He could not, could never, have thought this was possible, but yes, under his nose, all this time, all the time he had been embarking on futile affairs and diversions, been a bad boy, his angel was there all along. When he tells the story of their courtship, Jaq is struck by the grandness of his imagination. She does not recall it in any other way than his marriage ending and him casting around for a new wife. He bought her dinner. She was not the only one so treated. He does not recall this.
He remembers the cat-and-mouse game of her refusing to marry him. He does not remember her reticence at taking on the children, at becoming the new wife. It is a gloriously male, gloriously self-important narrative: the winning of her love, the finding of true happiness. Even between the two of them, when there is no one else to hear the story, he tells it the same way. Jaq does not correct him. There can be no correcting Bob’s recall.
In the annexe, in the lamplight, Bob shuffles to the bathroom. He kneels beside the toilet bowl, its chemical stink, and tastes the whisky in his mouth. He is not going to vomit. He does not vomit. But he remains on the bathroom floor, his thin trouser seat on the carpet, his back against the wall. Simon is standing in the annexe. Simon, tumbler in hand, those stupid Lennon-glasses on, Bob sitting at the desk, listening. Simon has just come from the bathroom, a sherbet dab of powder on his unshaven top lip. Simon in the leather jacket and black denims, running a finger along the tapes on the wall unit.
This should have been a bust-up over money. This should have been a long rally of anger and resentment, the two men right up against each other, shouting. This should have been the words just under the surface, close up like veins, until a final, shuddering slam of the door. But instead it was a short, stilted conversation, barely remarkable. Barely something to recall.
‘So how are you?’ Bob watches himself ask his son the question.
‘Fine. You?’
‘Never better.’ Bob watches himself shift. Weight from one leg to another.
‘Anya?’ he hears himself say. ‘Is that her name?—’
Simon scratches his chin, wide smile that starts clenched in his jaw.
‘Long story. For the best.’
‘For the best, of course, yes. But, a shame, though. I know you were—’
‘How’s Gary?’
‘He’s wonderfully well. Doing better than ever.’
Bob remembers wanting Simon gone. The slight spin of the chair, the carelessness of his talk. Simon holding the tumbler of whisky and Bob having already finished his. A quick glance at the clock. Simon smiling, asking another question and Bob not hearing.
Bob watches the two of them talk. He sees himself looking at his watch and saying something about it being late, or last trains or something, Bob can’t quite make out what is said. Simon is smiling, clenched again, and Simon is draining the glass. Simon is walking to the annexe door, where he pauses.
‘Goodnight, God bless,’ Bob says. It is a formal, stagey goodbye. Simon shakes his head and disappears.
A couple of days later the letter arrived. Long, tiny handwriting. The furies were in every line and every grievance.
. . . You sent me to the shrinks . . . boarding school, like Colditz it was . . . You called it a surprise . . . Way you treated Mum . . . months you were away and not even a phone call . . . a film more important . . . knew more about your contestants than me . . . can remember a script from a hundred years ago, but not my graduation . . . the only time your eyes widened was when I said I was going to go into entertainment . . . one word to the papers . . . the way you treat Gary . . . the way you use him . . . you are not there, are you? . . . The man who wasn’t there, that’s you . . . you hoard everything, but no one can hoard love . . . I AM NOT LIKE YOU.
Bob did not tell Jaq about the letter. He burned it a few months later. In the hearth, a murderer destroying evidence.
Gary died four years later, handsome, even more so laid out straight in the casket, peaceful and no strain in his face. Bob and his ex-wife had planned the funeral long in advance. Simon was to sit between Bob and his mother. There was hope there, the handsome son’s death bringing the errant son back into the fold. In the church, father and son grieving together, arm in each other’s arm, strength for the other’s strength. A father and son, silently making peace.
At church, Bob greeted everyone graciously, but there was a space between him and his ex-wife. Bob refused to accept this as punishment. Bob cried for his dead, handsome son: gave thanks for a life almost lived. He did not look in the church for his youngest, though he saw him in every pew.
He and Jaq wintered in Barbados as usual. They ate lunch at their favourite restaurant. The two of them sitting at their table on the terrace; its rake and elevation perfect for looking out over the water’s blue. Bob dressed like the off-duty captain of an ocean-liner: boat shoes and white trousers; something strangely commanding about his gait and bonhomie. A blue blazer, an Englishman abroad. Bob seeing Gary everywhere. Still missing Gary. Not a day. No. Not a day.
In the pall of Gary’s death and in the hum of Simon’s silence, there was a shift. A readjustment of culture: a searching back for something less complicated. Jokes that were just jokes. Gags that were just gags: no politics, no seriousness, no harangues. The national mood had turned nostalgic. Bob’s act had not changed, nor his face, nor the oily, car-salesman smoothness his critics despised. None of it had changed, but the audiences swelled, and the plaudits and re-evaluations meant he was back on television, back telling jokes rather than filling time between rounds in a game show. He went on tour. Same gags. Exactly the same. About his wife. About airline food. About his sex life. One liners and stories. Songs even. Now a treasure. A young woman, dolled up like Dusty Springfield, a dress like those Jaq had worn when they’d first met, even made a pass at him. He’d laughed at the very idea.
‘Now aren’t you taking this retro thing a little too far, my dear?’ he said as he saw Jaq walk into the bar.
With help from the toilet bowl Bob picks himself up from the floor. He finishes his Scotch and pours some more, settles himself again at the desk. The notebooks. The fucking notebooks. Everything from first to last. His true legacy. A shadow history of the world. What people laugh at, what they find funny. Is this not something to preserve, to cast in amber? The jokes working men tell each other, the jokes made at weddings, the jokes told to break the ice. How our bodies cause the most amusement, our shit and piss and cum. In these jokes, a whole history of how we live. Puns on advertising jingles, allusions to obsolete catchphrases, references to people no longer recognized. A history of everything. His life, yes, but everyone else’s too, yes? A history not just of him, but of everyone else, of how we stay alive.
He puts both hands down on the notebooks. Cool and smooth. He opens them both. One page is almost unreadable, so small is the writing. He puts on his spectacles. There are lines spanning four decades. Lines written in three different continents. Lines written vertically and horizontally. Hands on the pages, where his hands had been before, different hands belonging to him.
He was putting the notebooks into his briefcase, late and waiting for the car. At their mews flat, cool and quiet, cooking smells from the oven. A bake of some kind. Later: good wine, music. Sinatra. Work now.
‘I wish you hadn’t gone,’ Jaq said.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But what else could I do?’
She sipped her wine.
‘I know you had to see him,’ she said. ‘I know that, I just wish you hadn’t. All those years. All those years and then . . .’
‘It was the filth,’ he said. ‘The filth of the place. It was disgusting. Dinner plates and papers everywhere. Bottles of milk. And he was just sitting there. Sitting there with those stupid bloody glasses on. Sitting there and smoking one after another. My son. Music so loud it was like it was playing in my chest.’
‘I know,’ Bob said. ‘I know, but you didn’t see—’
‘He wants to hurt you, love,’ she said. ‘You said it yourself.’
The car’s lights caught in the panes of the kitchen window. Two quick blasts from the horn.
‘I should go,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk later.’
‘Try not to think too much on it,’ Jaq said.
A kiss and then the car through the streets, rain ditz on the windows, on the street. The buses, the cars, the orange-lamped cabs, all heading for Lambeth, for Simon. He took out the script, consulted the notebooks for comfort rather than inspiration. He knew the gags already; they were there. And then he was at the television studio, the lights full on and the cameras rolling and the first joke of the evening, polite laughter, a slight wave of the arm and on to the next. The stage doctor. The best palliative.
In the annexe, he turns the page of the notebook. Tight scrawl, a cartoon of a schoolboy. Hands that drew it, hands that wrote them. So many hands.
The floor manager and the producer, a few runners and a cameraman. The special guest and assorted uniformed people, looking at Bob. Everyone on the show looking. He remembers it well. A security guard in front of him.
‘Overreacting? You fucking shit. I’ll get you sacked for this. Overreacting? I never let them out of my fucking sight, you fucking little shit.’
And then in the greenroom, third Scotch and two policemen, there on his insistence. Telling them all he knew: the last time he could be certain he had the notebooks was in the taxi. Did they not see? A life had been taken from him, his life, a counter-life of the century. Did they not see what this was worth?
The next day, in all the papers, Bob. The next day, Bob offered a reward of £10,000 for the notebooks’ safe and speedy return. The day after, a younger comedian offered a reward of £20,000 for them not to be returned. These, jokes.
4
He gets money, he goes to the bar, he has a beer and scores. This day, every day. Anya was in the bar. His mother. The parent who complained about him. The head teacher who fired him.
The school investigated, kept it quiet for all concerned. They found the kid was lying, but the reports on Simon were not good. The committee highlighted issues with his appearance and body odour, commented on his erratic moods. The way he worked with those who did not understand English and the way he worked with those who did.
‘I am a good teacher,’ he said at his hearing. ‘Ask the kids. Ask them. Ask them whether I’m a good teacher or not.’
The three looked at him. The board of governors’ committee. They talked amongst themselves. The decision was final. There was no pay-off. The following day they sent him his belongings, all of them in a red plastic crate. He was made to sign for them, a man with a chit shaking his head as he walked away. In the flat, Simon cooked up and took to his bed, the crate left beside the door.
There was money left. Money enough to get away. Not enough. When he was straight he checked the passbook. He went to the bank and they totalled up the interest. A few pounds, nothing more. An accumulation of pence on his £7,000 deposit. He went back to the flat, scoring on the way. He did the calculations. Enough for a year perhaps. Probably less.
In the small room, the clanking and the loud voices from the cafeteria next door, he thinks of shame. Those moments of shame.
His father’s face on seeing the flat in Lambeth. This is where I live, this is who I am. Newspapers stacked. Paper plates. The living room overheated. Takeaway boxes, mouldy books.
‘Jesus, Simon.’
‘What do you want?’ Simon said.
‘What do I want? You called me.’
‘I thought I was going to die,’ Simon said. ‘I wanted to see you before I died. But I didn’t die. I didn’t die, did I, Dad?’
And Simon rushed his father. Rushed him for an embrace. Bob faltered, stepped back.
‘Are you on drugs,’ Bob said. ‘Tell me, are you on drugs?’
‘I wanted to see you before you died. Or I died. Wanted to say see you in hell. Wanted to say fuck you, Bob. Wanted to tell you I hate you more than anyone else in this world.’
‘I’m leaving,’ Bob said. ‘I thought—’
Bob left and slammed the door. Simon went to the window and opened it fully out wide. Three kids were by Bob’s car.
Bob approached the car, the kids walked away. Something missed Bob’s head by a matter of inches.
‘You left your keys behind, Bob,’ Simon shouted.
He bought kerosene and matches and a ticket to Egham. He sat on the train behind his Lennon-glasses. Kids on the train. Loud with patois, loud with their girls and their low-slung denims and fat-tongued trainers. Back-turned baseballs caps and telling stories about fights and fucking up enemies. Talk of knives. Of spliff, the same kids he sees on the estate. The same kids he once taught, but unrecognizable. The kids who run errands for his dealer. The kids who would not recognize his father, just see another white man. Kids playing around, chin-ups on the handrails. One took an uneasy look at Simon. A quick glance. Whether it was worth fronting him. The kid went back to abusing his fat friend. Simon looked out of the window. Pimlico and the river.
In the shadows of summer, the long ones forming, the railway station. Did not hail a cab, walked to a pub and took a pint and sat in the garden. Smoked while people ate. Kerosene in his bag. He drank his pint and had a shot at the bar and another on the way out of the pub. The streets lined with trees, avenues you’d call them. He did not know this area well, just his father’s house. He walked and could smell himself. The smell of his armpits. He smoked and walked. The kerosene. The matches: long matches, cooks’ matches. Keys cut for the door, for the gates. Swiped from his father’s coat and pressed into clay. Old Bryan, no questions, handed them over with a nod and a puff on his pipe.
Outside, the house was impressive: stuccoed walls, wrought-iron gates, a driveway crazy-paved. Daimler and Rolls-Royce in the garages. Personalized number plates; as clichéd as you could hope. He let himself in through the back of the house, along the pathway. Were Bob and Jaq in they would be there to greet whoever he was; always a smile for a contractor, a workman, a caterer. Always a smile and a joke and kind word.
The first time he’d been to the new house – what he called new though they had lived there for over two decades – was for his father’s birthday. He cannot recall which. The whole family, save for Simon’s mum, Simon’s mum now replaced by Jaq, sitting in the dining room. Simon sitting down, looking at his brother. In silence, always silence, chair-bound and still blessed. Simon beside him, left hand on the tyre of the wheelchair. The handsome fucking spastic. The whole family – spastic Gary, unwanted Simon, the stepmother – gathered in the large dining room, the father and husband opening a package. A present from Simon, bought by Jaq, wrapped by Jaq.
Bob took an age, saving the paper. A pair of socks, racing green, silk.
‘Thank you, Simon,’ Bob said and shook Simon by the hand. ‘Is this your way of saying put a sock in it?’
Jaq laughed and Simon drank the last of the wine. The handsome spastic shifted in his chair.
‘What’s that, Gary?’ Bob said.
‘He says he wishes you’d put a sock in it,’ Simon said. ‘Even the deaf are sick of your voice.’
Bob laughed and picked up another present from the pile. It was a pair of leather gloves bought by Jaq, wrapped by Jaq, the tag saying with love from Gary.
‘Oh now these are perfect, Gary,’ Bob says. ‘Just the ticket for when I strangle your brother.’
His father opened the last present, the one from Jaq. It was a long, thick tube wrapped in brown paper, tied off with ribbon. He put it to his lips. ‘But, Jaq, I told you I was giving up.’
Bob struggled with the tape. Eventually the paper came away. An architect’s tube, metal and plastic. Bob raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to one side.
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Bob took the cap from the tube and shuffled out blueprints. They half unrolled and Jaq used ornaments as paperweights on the dining-room table. Simon joined them. He looked down as Bob hugged Jaq, hugged her tight and squeezed.
‘What is it?’ he asked Jaq.
‘It’s an annexe,’ she said. ‘Like an outhouse where he can watch all his films and things. A place where he can write. A place just for him.’
Simon looked down at the plans. Electricity and a flushing toilet. Shelves everywhere, an arched window looking out over the garden and pond.
‘Like a sanctuary?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Jaq said, surprised. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s what it is.’
Looking at it then, low and squat, too white in the garden, too modern beside the mock-Tudor of the main house, Simon imagined what it would be like to have such a place at one’s disposal. Such space, such quiet. A place only for you. His father took to calling it that, his sanctuary. Simon smoked a cigarette and watched the annexe. Strong door. Strong roof. The light was strong too, even at the last of the day, strong and almost purple.
