Eleni’s talking Greek to the woman behind the desk. I’m biting my nails and flicking them on the floor, feeling a bit sad to see them lying there, gone from me, on the dirty airport floor.
We watch her suitcase disappear into a rubber hole and I take her by the hand.
It was a horrible drive out here. Eleni put on the tape of her score so far. She despises every single note of it. This morning she telephoned the production company and told them to look elsewhere. When they started to whinge about contracts and deadlines she screamed at them that her mother was dying and how dare they pressure her to come up with a soundtrack for a comedy about death. They said something about her fee and she tore the phone out of the wall and threw it against my big black canvas with two converging red lines. I shuffled off to the toilet to piss and think. I’ve never heard Eleni shout before. Then she cried. I’ve never seen her cry either, apart from the last few days. God, Eleni, I’m sorry about life. How dare it. How dare it make a woman like you cry.
We buy me some socks in Sock Shop and some toothpaste for Eleni and a few magazines and a Big Ben snow globe to give to her mum.
‘I’ll go straight through,’ she says.
‘OK,’ I say.
‘I hate to say goodbye in airports.’
I walk her to the departures lounge and put my arms around her. We kiss for a while and she starts to cry. I sniff, though I don’t really need to. We kiss a bit more and then I hug her again. Behind her is another billboard showing a woman with a diamond clenched in her eye socket, like a monocle. Her lips are apart like it’s supposed to be erotic, but it just looks like she’s saying ‘Err . . .’
We’re standing apart now. Our arms are outstretched but our hands are still touching.
‘Hector,’ she says, ‘I will miss you.’
‘Well, maybe I’ll come out soon,’ I say.
‘Well, maybe I won’t be gone that long.’
‘Eleni, don’t say that.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, cos that’s a terrible thing to say.’
Eleni lets go of my hand and frowns. ‘I meant that it might not take long for her to recover.’
‘I know,’ I say.
‘No!’ snaps Eleni. ‘You thought that I meant it might not take long for her to die.’
‘No,’ I say, appalled, ‘I meant that it won’t take long for it all to be OK, for her to recover.’
‘So why is it a terrible thing to say?’ she says, bashing her bag against my bad knee.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. I say, ‘I don’t really know,’ and say very little else. Nothing else at all.
Eleni looks at me for a long time. Eleni’s never looked at me like this.
Silence. Airport silence.
‘Hector, do you want my mother to die?’
Silence. Solar wind.
I pull her to me and press her head against my chest. ‘Eleni, I can’t believe you’re saying this.’ I press her tighter against my chest and look down. Her face is all crushed by my hands and she looks a bit ridiculous, her lips pushed out, like a fish.
‘Yes, you can,’ she says. ‘What you can’t believe is your answer.’
She pulls away and I let her. I let her cos there must be something inside me that wants that to be the last thing she says to me before she goes.
Eleni puts her rucksack into the X-ray and I wonder if she’ll turn around. Should I turn around? Should I turn to walk away and then turn around? Or should I just turn the once and have done with it? And if I do turn around, will Eleni turn around at the same time? Or will she already have turned around and then be turned back again? Or will she be just about to turn around when I turn back? Or will neither of us turn around?
I turn around.
She’s gone.
I turn around.
My skin feels all wrong. The air around my skin feels all wrong. The space between the clouds in the sky over the building surrounding the air around my skin feels all wrong. I don’t want Eleni’s mother to die. How could that be the last thing she said to me?
I set off limping across the concourse. Right above the main doors I see two more enormous billboards. The first shows a black, rather sinister car poised in the centre of a spider’s web. The web’s up in some tree. There’s a spider on its way over. Big fat serious spider. ‘When the moment arrives,’ it says, in big fat serious letters, ‘you’ll need a vehicle you can rely on.’ It’s no joke.
Next to this is the second billboard. There’s a good-looking bald man lying down on a white settee in nothing but a pair of scanty white underpants. It’s in black and white and the soft edge of his belly button’s been given a bit of a shine. There’s a bottle of mineral water by his thigh. He appears to be very relaxed, lying back, with his hands behind his head. The man is obviously content. The man, as it happens, is Leonard Raymond Snook, and he’s got his specs on. ‘Sometimes You Need Some Clarity’ it says.
I’m not sure. I’m not sure what I think about all this. I’m really in two minds about all this. I really am. I’m not sure whether to run out and buy the water, the underpants, or the fucking settee.
I get onto the M4, move out into the fast lane and put my foot down. I think of my mum’s slippers at the sewing machine, pressing the pedal to the floor, the needle going up and down in a blur. I straighten my leg and push all the weight of my fat onto the accelerator, 80-85-90-95. And then I take it off.
After ten giddy minutes of abandon and resolve, it turns out that there’s a long tailback coming up to the Hogarth roundabout, and everything has come to a standstill. So there you go, Hector. You can’t even be fucking reckless. Pathetic. You’d be rubbish in a film.
What’s so fucking special about Hogarth that he gets a roundabout named after him?
I’m sitting here in the traffic staring straight ahead. Cold blue eyes I’ve got, like cheap cufflinks. In the car in front there’s a small boy waving at me from the back window. He’s fucked if he thinks I’m gonna wave back. He doesn’t know who he’s waving at. Someone should tell him who he’s waving at. But then there’s hope for the little fella cos suddenly he produces a gun and aims it straight at me for a long time. Then, in a flash of brilliance, he shoots me. Once, twice, three times. And because I just stay fixed, staring at him, impassive, he goes on shooting me, pulling the trigger and blowing across the barrel, pulling and blowing, as many as fifteen times. My brain bursts out from the back of my head, my skull cracks in two and my eyes fall into the ashtray. Now there’s a kid who knows what he’s doing.
I don’t want Eleni’s mother to die. She’s got it all wrong. What does she take me for? Why would I want Sofia to die? Where would that get me? If Sofia died all the attention would be on Eleni, everyone would be rooting for Eleni. I’m sure I could play it up for Lenny and Kirk, I’m sure I could squeeze some mileage out of it, cos I love Sofia and Sofia loves me and I think I could pick it up and run with the situation, but for fuck’s sake, Eleni, what do you take me for? A cripple?
He’s still shooting me, I notice. Good on him. Ever since he grew out of that waving stage I’ve grown quite fond of him – good luck to the little fucker.
Did Lenny think I wasn’t going to find out? Did he think that he could just loll around in his underpants on a white settee and make no mention of it? Does he imagine that I lead such a cloistered life that I might never come to witness such a thing? I mean it was thirty foot across, fifteen foot high. The pants alone were the size of a small marquee. Are we blind? And then there was his head. His big bald handsome head, just like the one leaning against the wall of the Doodlebug. Except this head – the head on the billboard – didn’t look like the head in the Doodlebug. This head – the head on the billboard – looked like a man inspired, whereas my head – the head in the Doodlebug – looks like a constipated pedant. But you know what they say – and in this case they say two things – first, they say that ‘the camera never lies’, and then they say that ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. S
ometimes those thousand words are the same word. And sometimes – like now, stuck on the A4, being shot at by a shrunken assassin – that word is ‘idiot’.
The phone rings and it’s Mum.
‘Have I got you on your mobile?’ she says.
‘Mum,’ I say, ‘what is it in your brain that dials the number for my mobile and then makes you ask whether or not you’ve got me on my mobile?’
‘Ooh, Hector love, don’t. Don’t start having a go at me.’
‘Mum,’ I say, ‘I’m not having a go at you, I’m asking how you are. The last time I spoke to you, you hung up on me.’
‘Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t know where I was.’
‘You didn’t know where you were?’
‘Or what I was doing.’
‘Mum, what’s going on?’
‘Hector,’ she says, ‘Hector,’ she says again, ‘Hector, your dad’s in a right state.’
‘About the settee?’ I say.
‘Yes about the settee.’
‘Why, what’s it done now?’
‘It’s done nothing,’ she says, ‘it’s just sat there like a . . . it’s like sitting on a million old fags.’
‘So what’s happening with Dad?’ I say.
‘Your dad’s taken his teeth out and he’s spending four, five hours a day in the bath. He’s not spoken one word to me, apart from the other night when he knocked a fly out of the air with the Gazette and shouted, “You see? You see?”’
The traffic starts to move a bit. The little boy is now shooting his mother and I’ve made it up into second gear.
‘He’ll get over it,’ I say.
Mum lets out a loud shriek. I hold the phone away from my ear. It’s not like Mum to let out a loud shriek.
‘You’ve no idea, Hector,’ says Mum. ‘Yesterday he kicked lovely little Sparky a good fifteen feet across the kitchen. I had to take him to the vet. Your dad’s all sweaty in the night. Never still and sweating. I wake up in the morning and I feel like we’ve slept at the bottom of a river.’
‘And how are you, Mum?’ I say, moving up into third.
‘I’m a mess, Hector,’ she says. ‘I’ve done this to him. Me. It’s me who’s done it to him, me, buying that huge ugly stinking settee. Eight hundred and forty pounds! Eight hundred and forty pounds for a giant upholstered dog end.’
I love Mum. I love the way she makes an effort.
‘Mum, let me pay for it,’ I say, ‘I know you and Dad are against it and I understand why you’re against it, but it’s only eight hundred and forty pounds. I can make eight hundred and forty pounds by wiping my arse on an old scrap of burlap.’
‘There’s no need for that, Hector,’ says Mum.
And she’s right – there isn’t.
She’s sorry to hear that Eleni’s gone away, and she’s sorry to hear about Eleni’s mother. She’s never met Eleni’s mother, nor Eleni’s father. Nor has my dad ever met Eleni’s mother and father. Of course they haven’t. Mum and Dad live in Blackpool and Sofia and Yiorgos live in a tiny village in Crete. And even if they did meet, what the fuck would they talk about? Turkish oppression? The litter in Preston?
She asks me how things are going with the show, and the traffic slows down again.
‘It’s all going fine,’ I say.
‘Tuesday, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re showing the paintings of me and your dad?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re showing your self-portrait?’ she says, a little bit excited.
‘Yes,’ I say.
‘And how’s Lenny getting along with the Prize? Not gone to his head, has it?’
‘No, Mum,’ I say, ‘it’s not gone to his head at all.’
‘Not long to go now, is it? When is it?’
‘It opens on the ninth. Couple of weeks.’
‘Not long to go, then.’
‘No, Mum, not long to go.’
‘Eee, I wish his dad was alive to see it. How’s his mum? Still in the home?’
‘Yes, Mum, still in the home.’
The traffic slows right down and I’m back into first, creeping along.
There’s a police car and three ambulances. Everyone’s got their heads craned to see. Up ahead there’s a green florist’s van upside down. Inside there’s a man – the florist, presumably – bleeding his mind all over the steering wheel and two delicate hands that won’t let go. There’s a gold and bloody ring on his finger, one of those Irish rings with two tiny hands holding a tiny crowned heart.
‘And how’s Kirk?’ says Mum.
I take a deep breath and look into the florist’s eyes. ‘Kirk’s not too good, Mum.’
‘Why, what’s the matter with him?’
His head’s all broken over the wheel and he’s looking out to the side. Right into my eyes. ‘He’s got a brain tumour,’ I say.
‘No, don’t say that, Hector.’
‘He has, Mum,’ I say, my voice getting a bit shaky, ‘he’s got a brain tumour.’
The florist’s eyes follow me as I creep past.
‘Oh my God! Little Kirk.’
‘I know, Mum, it’s horrible.’
‘Oh, Hector,’ says Mum, all gentle, ‘you sound all upset, love.’
‘I am, Mum, I am. I don’t know what to do,’ I say, pulling away from the wreckage. ‘Listen, Mum, I’m gonna go, I’ve got to go, I don’t want to talk right now,’ and my voice trails off into a whisper.
‘Oh, Hector. Hector pet.’
I hang up.
It doesn’t seem right for a grown man to do a thing like that to his mother.
I can still see the bleeding florist in my wing mirror. Head like a sack of dog meat. ‘There’s a man,’ I think, moving up into third, ‘who’s sold his last flower.’
I put on the radio and there’s Fats Domino singing ‘Lulu’s Back In Town’. I whistle along.
7
BOX STREET, BOW, LONDON
Eleni’s been gone for three days now and we haven’t spoken. I’ve tried calling her but I have to call the hardware store in the village square cos Yiorgos’s taverna doesn’t have a phone. I’ve called six times but it’s either engaged or I can’t get a connection. I don’t know if Eleni’s tried to call me but there was a message on the answerphone last night that was just a lot of static, so that might have been her. I’d been out for a walk cos it’s strange to pass through all this room with her gone. The flat is so empty and the ceilings are so high. Sitting there in the dark, full moon outside, listening to all that static, it felt like sitting in the Mir space station, like a dead machine drifting through nothing.
I’ve just had four slices of toast and a jar of pickled beetroot with a small clod of horseradish on the side. And then I drank the juice from the beetroot. I haven’t had toast and beetroot for three years. Not since before Eleni. It’s still not bad.
Yesterday I stayed in all day and pulled the armchair up to the painting. I watched it for four hours, like I was watching a film. At one point I stood up and spent three minutes turning it round. Then I sat down, watched it for an hour and then spent four minutes turning it back, pausing for two minutes to see what it looked like on its side, in landscape.
But today I’m not gonna do that. I nearly did that. I did it for half an hour as I was scoffing my beetroot, but today I’m not gonna do that, because that sort of behaviour seems to suggest that I might have some sort of mental-health problem, and I don’t want that. God knows I don’t want some sort of mental-health problem. Not on top of everything else.
So I’m up on the roof, smoking a fag, thinking about everything else and thinking about what, therefore, I should do today. I’ve brought up my phone and a can of beer. I swig the beer, smoke the fag and lie back in the deckchair looking out over the rooftops of Bow. It’s pissing down but that doesn’t matter. I call it rain-bathing. It’s just good to be out of the house.
First I should call Mum and see how Dad is. No, first I should think
seriously about going back to Blackpool and sorting things out. No, I should call Mum and see how Dad is, and then think about going back to Blackpool and sorting things out. If Dad’s coming out of it then there’s no need for me to go back. But if there’s no improvement then I should definitely go back and help them get rid of that settee. And if they don’t let me give them the money for it I’ll lash it to the back of a horse and tow it around the streets ringing a big rusty bell till some cunt buys the fucker.
No, no, first I should call Kirk and see how he’s getting on. I should apologize for the other night; for being such a useless, embalmed mute. No, first I should just go round and see Kirk. If I ask him on the phone if he wants me to come round he’ll say no, and so I should just go round there anyway, leaving him no choice. I should ask him if he wants to stay in the flat with me and promise to be there every second of the day and night, waiting on him hand and foot.
No, no, no, first I should try to get through to Eleni again. Perhaps she can’t get through, or perhaps her mother’s dead and she can’t get it together to call me, given what was said when we parted. Perhaps Sofia’s dead and Yiorgos has crumbled. Perhaps Eleni’s too busy piecing Yiorgos back together to worry about me. Perhaps she’s just left me. But I should call her anyway, whatever. Whatever the circumstances I should just keep trying, every second of the day and night.
No, no, no, no. First I should just swig this beer and smoke this fag and let everything sink in a bit more.
So that’s what I do. Then I go and get another beer and light another fag and lie back in the rain, letting everything sink in a bit more.
The Late Hector Kipling Page 11
