Really, it’s not. It’s gone too far. He may be in need of a shrink, but he doesn’t need mothering; he’s not a cry-baby, a broken reed or a basket case. ‘Everything’s dandy!’ Raising his head, summoning the shreds of his strength, he darts back to the desk and grabs up the catalogue. ‘Get the Remote-Controlled Massage Chair for your fiancé.’ He shoves page 52 under Dr Mallory’s nose. ‘It’s much sexier than the Reclining Lounger, don’t you agree?’
Geoffrey looks enquiring, Dr Mallory looks flustered, Admin looks between the two in an agony of split loyalties.
His legs are trembling; he’s got to get out before he falls. ‘The news is big,’ he assures Geoffrey. He manages to get to the door with the hint of a swagger. ‘Don’t even consider the microwaveable slippers,’ he says over his shoulder.
WHILE GIBBY SHINES, THE WORLD WATCHES
AS LACE FADES, GIBBY is getting stronger.
They’ve always run on parallel tracks, close but never intersecting. But now one is waning and the other waxing. And Gibby would give up all his newfound energy if it would restore Lace to health.
‘I’m worried about her. She spends so much time in her room. Are you sure you’ve got it under control?’ How much easier it is to be forthright! At last he’s escaped that muffled carpeted existence with the static buzz of resignation in his ears.
‘Try not to worry.’ Geoffrey tugs his left ear as if it’s a rudder, skilfully steering the conversation in a different direction. ‘Let’s just say we’re not unaware.’
It’s not much of an answer, though it’s meant to reassure. Gibby spends a good deal of time tiptoeing to Lace’s door and listening, hoping not to hear crying, nor the exhausted twang of bedsprings meaning she’s gone to bed in the afternoon.
As the air gets colder and the skies turn white-grey, he feels invigorated. He writes regular postcards to his parents without his usual feeling of anxiety and duty.
‘The stars here are as bright as top-of-the-range Lux de Luxe spotlights!’ he enthuses for his father’s benefit.
And to his mother: ‘The European ski jump championships will be held not far from here next winter. P.S. I’m feeling very well.’
Each time he writes the last four words, they become truer. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy! His participation in group sessions becomes almost charismatic, which confuses the Twins. They waver, their foreheads identically furrowed. Is it time to change allegiance?
‘Bright is suffering from writer’s block,’ says Rosalind remindingly.
‘So he is.’ Mirabelle sounds compassionate but also regretful.
Gibby watches them hurry away down the corridor to reattach themselves. If things were different, he might feel sorry for Bright, who’s beginning to look slightly hunted. ‘Can’t you go and read a book?’ he says loudly, walking quickly away from his fans. ‘Or better yet, one book each?’
In sessions with Geoffrey, Gibby puffs guilty air from his lungs. ‘I’m ashamed to say that I feel Schadenfreude. It seems that Bright can’t work at all, whereas I’m unable to stop.’ It’s true. When he gets back to his room and opens his spiral-bound notebook, in an instant he’ll be surrounded by whirling theories, diagrams and equations.
Geoffrey munches on an alfalfa sandwich. ‘Schadenfreude is a waste of time. It usually leads to guilt. And guilt is a waste of time.’ When it comes to emotions, he’s capable of such ruthlessness that Gibby is astonished, particularly when he looks at Geoffrey’s mild, frayed exterior.
‘Perhaps it simply comes down to inherent male competitiveness?’ he says hopefully.
‘I don’t see evidence of that in your interactions with any other person here. Which leads me to ask —’ Geoffrey speaks through a mouthful of buttery sprouts — ‘why do you think you’re competing solely with Mr O’Connor?’
‘I’m not sure about that. I really couldn’t say. Would you like a tissue? I’ve got some in my satchel.’
For someone with bulging cheeks and greasy lips, Geoffrey is surprisingly quick to recognise this as an evasion. ‘No thank you, no tissue. Let’s stick to the subject, shall we?’ He pulls out a vast handkerchief and wipes his mouth. ‘You and Bright are such different people, yet you seem to view him as a threat. Does that mean that you both have your sights set on the same thing?’
Just in time, with a loud clattering of hands, the clock reaches the hour. ‘Sorry, got to go!’ says Gibby, gathering up his satchel. ‘Have to make it to the post office before the village goes to sleep.’
INTERESTINGLY, HIS NEW CHARISMA isn’t Palace-based. It seems to surround him even when he’s off the premises. As he walks along the river path the willow branches spring to attention, while the gravel rises in small salutes behind his white feet.
The post woman with the trout mouth is alone, reading a magazine featuring saggy bronzed Italian men and leggy blonde models. She used to scare the hell out of him but today —
‘Guten Tag!’ He speaks loudly, approaching the counter. ‘Wie geht’s?’
‘Gut, danke!’ Looking surprised, she puts down her magazine smartly: a first. ‘What can I do for you?’ Speaking to him in English is another first. The Old Gibby would thankfully revert to his mother tongue, but the New Gibby manages to order stamps in German, and even attempts a joke about the weather. Checking in twice daily with the Met Office in two languages has paid off. The woman’s face is contorting. Creeeeak! A corner of her mouth begins to mobilise. It’s like rusty machinery cranking into life, and Gibby watches in alarmed fascination. After a minute, the suspense is over. The Trout is smiling.
‘Auf Wiedersehen!’ they say in unison. And when he steps back out into the bright cold day, the bell on the door rings as triumphantly as church bells on a wedding day. Across the square, the sloe-eyed Bakery Girl is locking her own shop door for the compulsory two-hour break, during which bread rolls will harden, and flies will feast uninterruptedly on uncovered cheesecake, and the girl will kill time in the internet cafe that has a special exemption from trading laws as cyberspace never sleeps.
He hesitates only a minute, and then he’s beside her, uttering the unbelievable. ‘Would you like to get a coffee?’
‘With you?’ She stares. The kohl circles around her eyes seem to spread outwards, stone-ripples in a blank face.
It isn’t a promising start to a date — though let’s not call it a date, as that implies some measure of premeditated planning, and some agreement reached. The look on the girl’s face suggests she hasn’t even thought of Gibby since the day he’d stood at the back of the bakery, blushing.
‘Yes, with me. That’s right! A coffee with me.’ However undefinable the next two hours might be, at least he’s signed out for them, and he needs company that’s not connected to the hothouse atmosphere of The Palace.
‘I guess so.’ Then, a little more certainly, ‘Why the hell not!’
The internet cafe is dirty, battered, empty. Even the owner is absent, which means that Gibby is able to click, quite unselfconsciously, on a few websites featuring his most popular inventions. The Bakery Girl’s reaction is nothing short of spectacular for one who works hard at suppressing all emotion. Her mouth hangs open, she stares at the screen and then at Gibby; and then she starts clicking at top speed. Her cheeks and ears have turned deep pink. This, combined with black-rimmed eyes, magenta lips and midnight-blue nails, make her a more colourful companion than he’d expected. ‘You’re famous!’ she says repeatedly. She drinks lukewarm coffee from a greasy thermos and listens to Gibby stating that his goal isn’t fame, he just wants to go on inventing things to make life easier or more interesting.
Outside the wind is rising and the shadows are lengthening. Finally the Bakery Girl extracts a key from her camouflage-patterned hoodie. ‘I have to work again. Come on.’ She strides ahead across the square, not looking to see if Gibby’s following, and lets herself into the bakery. Taking up her position behind the counter like a soldier, she nods at him. ‘You can pick something. Anything you
like. What about one of those?’
He eyes up the huge pastry triangles with white icing squiggles. ‘I’m trying to keep my weight down. I shouldn’t.’
‘Huh.’ Almost crossly, she looks around for something non-calorific to repay Gibby for sharing his fame. Her brain gives a visible click. She’ll bestow a confidence on him.
‘You know what? I heard you were all sicko, up at the old hotel.’ She eyes him provocatively, knotting her apron around her waist. ‘But you — you’re really quite okay.’
‘Sicko?’ echoes Gibby. ‘Oh, you mean psycho.’
‘PSYCHO?’ Now it’s the girl’s turn to parrot. ‘Like that movie where the girl gets stabbed in the shower?’ Her hand wavers towards the counter. Spatula, cake slice, slatted wooden spoon — nothing much to protect herself against a knife-wielding Norman Bates or a crazed inventor named Gibby Lux.
‘Of course not!’ For a disconcerting moment he’s right back in his living room, trying to reassure his mother. ‘Nothing weird goes on at The Palace. We just talk a lot.’
‘About what?’
‘You know. Problems.’
It’s clear she doesn’t know. She straightens errant ham in rolls, fiddles with the edges of lettuce garnishes, flicks imaginary crumbs off her cuffs in an uncertain way.
Gibby watches her closely. ‘Problems that lots of people have. Emotional stuff, family stuff.’ He feels as if he’s explaining this not only to the faintly flirtatious girl but also to his mother, his father and half the bloody world.
Her faces clears. ‘Oh, right! Like my father getting my brother’s girlfriend pregnant?’
Gibby winces. ‘Shit. Did he?’
‘My mother freaked out after that.’ She starts to slice cheese. ‘For a while she put cannabis in our dinner every night so we’d go to sleep early and give her some peace. Is that the sort of problem you mean?’
‘Jesus Christ.’ He resists the urge to leap the counter, sweep her up and bundle her off to another, safer, place. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Oh sure, it’s just family shit.’ She slaps the cheese onto bread, then slaps bread over cheese. ‘As soon as I’ve earned enough money,’ she says, flattening the sandwiches with stubby violet-tipped fingers, ‘I’m going to go away. Probably to Berlin. I want to open a nail salon.’
‘Good plan,’ says Gibby heartily.
‘Anyway, I just wanted to say that you’re really normal. Especially for a famous person.’ She marches to the door and turns around the sign. ‘You staying?’ It sounds like an invitation.
‘I’ve got to get back.’ Beside her, he pauses: hears her breath coming in tiny smoky rasps, the faint crackling of artificial fibres in her sweatshirt, the thudding of — but no, this is what he’s working to overcome. He pushes through the extraneous noise and turns in the open doorway to look at her.
‘I’d kiss you,’ she says suddenly, ‘but I sort of have a boyfriend.’ Close up, her panda eyes are bright and soft in their all-round blackness.
‘I’m in love myself,’ he admits, ‘so it’s probably better if we don’t.’
HE RUNS MOST OF the way back to The Palace because his sign-out time is long over, and he doesn’t want to add any more anxiety to Admin’s narrow shoulders. The gravel crunches underfoot; the frost is settling already, the evening is just a few hours away.
Lace is sitting on a plastic chair inside the gate, long damp grass shrouding her ankles. She’s leaning forward, elbows on the wall, and staring intently across the road to the web of trees. ‘Hi!’ She speaks without looking at Gibby.
‘What are you doing out here in the shadows?’ He perches on the arm of the chair, almost topples it, keeps them upright by planting his feet firmly on the ground. ‘It’s freezing. Too cold for trainspotting.’
‘I like the cold.’ She sounds distracted. ‘Where did you go? I missed you.’
‘Did you?’ He looks down at her shrunken, pinched face. Her hair hangs into her eyes. She seems to be looking through several veils — but at what?
He takes a breath. ‘Lace, there’s something I have to tell you. I should have done, a long time ago.’
Suddenly she pitches forward out of the chair, sending Gibby sprawling. ‘See that?’ She leans over the wall, pointing through the trees. ‘See that smoke? Something’s on fire.’
He disentangles himself from the chair and gets to his feet. ‘I can’t see any smoke.’ He climbs onto the wall for a better view, looks through half-bare trees to bluish fields and a clear sky. ‘No, there’s nothing.’
‘I can smell it.’ She’s up on the wall beside him, her face completely white. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Maybe it was…’ He thinks quickly. ‘Low-lying mist from the river?’
For the first time, she looks directly at him. ‘That’s kind of you,’ she says, wry, half-smiling, almost her old self.
He helps her down. ‘Your hands are numb. Here, have this.’ He puts his jacket around her shoulders. ‘So, what’s going on?’ It sounds like a casual question but they both know it’s not.
She turns the collar up. For a tall person who’s spent most of her life commanding widespread attention she almost effects a disappearing act. ‘I can’t —’ Her voice is barely audible, rising out of the coat like a tiny smoke signal. ‘I can’t describe it.’
‘If there’s something I can do.’ Gibby feels like crying. He rubs her hands, yellow-white and chilled, between his palms. ‘If I can help in any way —’
‘You’ve always helped.’ She pushes back her hair, and her eyes water from the sudden exposure. ‘You help by being you. You’re such great company — clever, funny, sweet — and you’re one of the few men who’ve never asked me for anything. Never tried to get me, never tried…’ She mops her eyes. ‘To love me. At least, not in that way.’
He stares at the ground. Her hands are still in his; the white cold of her fingers seems to be spreading up his wrists.
She’s trying to smile. ‘I should name you Saint Gibby. Patron saint of every girl who needs a friend.’
The pain hits him in his stomach, nowhere near the region of his heart. It’s so unexpected, so sharp, that he drops her hands — a symbolic gesture? — and doubles over. That moment will stay forever: the blades of damp grass, the knife-pain inside, the evening falling like a blow, the earthy smell of defeat.
‘Gibby?’ She touches his arm. ‘Are you hearing something? Is it one of your fits?’
‘No, not that,’ he manages to say, while her words pound in his head, over and over, drumming out the end to something that has never even started.
OUR FATHER IN MAIDA VALE
‘THAT WAS SOME ROUGH weather yesterday,’ comments Geoffrey. ‘But now that the clouds of cross-purpose have cleared away, we may find that it’s plain sailing from here on in.’
Ordinarily Bright would enjoy parrying with a few sea-faring metaphors of his own, mixing it up to make the exchange less clichéd and more of a challenge. In the aye-aye of the storm flits through his head, but he’s too weary to net it. He’s been up most of the night, pacing, making whoever’s below him thump on the ceiling with what sounded like the handle of a broom. ‘Do you have to keep allotting me these early timeslots?’ he says plaintively. ‘Have you ever known a writer who’s at their best before 10 a.m.?’
Geoffrey pounces. ‘Does that mean you’re writing? Are the bags under your eyes caused by burning the midnight oil?’
‘Ouch. That’s rather blunt. Do I look that bad?’
‘Neatly avoided,’ comments Geoffrey without rancour. ‘So you’re not writing?’
Bright sighs. ‘I want to. I’m trying to. Tumultuous living may be good copy for a novel but it’s no good for the actual writing. It’s so busy here. I can’t even read without being interrupted.’
‘Yes, you certainly seem to be popular, for a self-confessed loner.’
‘A loner? I don’t think I would have used that word. A bit too Beat Poet for my liking.’
‘My apologies
. Paraphrasing is a hazard of the job. Let me find your exact words.’ Without hesitation, Geoffrey extracts a loose sheet of paper from the sliding mountain in front of him. ‘This, from one of our early sessions: “Recently, I’ve been isolating myself more and more, leading to a crescendo of disparagement from others and myself. The misery, solitude, apathy and sneers guaranteed a feeling of arrogant otherness, which felt right and natural.”’
‘Oh, that!’ Bright purses his lips. ‘Plagiarism, I’m afraid. A hazard of the job.’
Geoffrey leans back in his chair and narrows his eyes. Clearly he’s not going to go on until Bright does.
‘All right. I snatched it from a letter that Beckett wrote to a friend. I paraphrased a bit, but the basic sentiments are the same.’
‘I see.’ Geoffrey turns the paper over with a dramatic flourish. ‘I recognised only your conclusion: “I am a rock, I am an island.”’
‘Simon and Garfunkel,’ nods Bright, ‘referencing John Donne.’
‘I know all three,’ Geoffrey assures him, staring at the ceiling. Radiators gurgle, rain pats softly at the window. ‘Does it strike you as interesting,’ he says eventually, ‘that you have no difficulty remembering a lengthy passage from a book, yet you can’t recall a word your father says, even when it directly concerns your future?’
‘Not really.’ Bright picks at the tassels of his striped school scarf, swapped with a twelve-year-old boy at a bus stop for a pair of Italian-leather driving gloves. ‘Clearly you find it interesting, though. We can talk about it if you want to.’
‘You pick,’ says Geoffrey generously. ‘I loathe the role of conversational tyrant. We have before us a smorgasbord of possible topics, and we still have time up our sleeve — assuming you’re not leaving us after yesterday’s revelation. No? The fact that you’re still here is a positive sign.’ With messy aplomb he rips open a sachet and shakes sugar into his coffee, while Bright considers the options for discussion. None looks particularly appealing:
Suicide Club, The Page 27
