by Tom Fletcher
‘I’m running low too,’ he says. ‘But.’
‘But?’
‘But. I’ve decided. I’m going with them.’
‘OK.’
He sweeps past me and on up the stairs to the next floor. Amélie smiles down at me from her poster on the landing. I look up at her for a moment. Then, suddenly, I realise that Graham’s face is present. In the corner of my field of vision. To my left. Motionless, like it’s pinned to the wall. It’s poking around the edge of his doorway. He shakes it.
‘Francis,’ he says. ‘Francis, Francis, Francis.’
‘I’m tired,’ I say. ‘I have no money. I’m getting up early. I just don’t feel like it. I’m busy.’
‘You know what I’m going to say.’ He raises an eyebrow.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re only young once, Francis.’
You’re only young once. That’s what Graham shouts through the house if he’s trying to persuade me to join him in going out on a Friday night. Or Saturday night. Or Thursday night. Or Monday night. Or any night of the week for that matter. Come on, Francis. You’re only young once. This is the only life you’ll ever have. Have fun while you still can. Before you get some incurable disease. Before your fears rise up and gut you. Lock you up in some godforsaken suburban flat. With no company.
I don’t say anything.
‘Francis?’
‘OK.’ I hang my head.
‘OK?’
‘I’m coming.’
He comes out of his bedroom and stands next to me. He looks like a Viking. He claps me on the back. ‘Good man, Francis.’ A wolfish smile. ‘Good man.’
I smile back at him.
I am never sure of myself.
Fear is always there in my head. There is always the one big fear that lies over my life like soot: cancer. And then there are other fears that rise and fall like waves. Two fears in my head right now.
Cancer.
And – like a thick worm in the gut – Jennifer. Not Jennifer herself. But myself. Around her.
JACK
Something tall and thin was leaning against the wall, and it was hard to tell what it was because it was still just a hard edge to a patch of shadow but it looked like it was too thin and its head was too big. My throat closed up as I saw that its head was turned towards us, and the head was ugly and wedge-shaped against the wall.
‘Jack?’ Jennifer said. ‘Jack, what’s wrong?’
‘What’s that?’ I tried to ask, but nothing escaped my lips other than a dry, throaty croak.
‘What?’
I nodded over her shoulder towards the corner of the barn, and the thing stared back at us unblinkingly, unmoving, as if we’d shocked it into stillness. It was a cold hard face sticking out of the darkness, but as soon as she turned around I knew it would duck back into the corner, out of sight, and she’d start to doubt my sanity, and maybe that was how it would start. Small cracks between one person and another, slight differences in experience or perception, and then sooner or later one or the other would end up mad.
She turned around to look and the thing didn’t move.
‘Oh Jack,’ she said. ‘It’s just an axe.‘
‘What?’ I said. ‘No. Oh. Wait … oh yeah.’
Giggling, she patted me on the chest and walked over to the wall with the axe resting against it. I followed her, and even though I knew what it was now and I was standing right next to it and could see that it was just an inanimate object, I was still not entirely comfortable, or even comfortable at all. It was huge and heavy-looking, and rainwater or something had dripped through the roof on to one particular patch for I didn’t know how long and left a rusty spot, like a knot in wood, like a bloody eye. I hated it.
‘I don’t like it,’ I said, not letting myself use the word hate out loud, for some reason even I didn’t understand.
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Jennifer.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Just. Nothing.’
From the kitchen, I could see into the living-room through the open door, and I watched Jennifer without her knowing I was there. She was touching the back of her neck. She ran her fingers up through her hair, then turned around and looked behind her. She looked confused. She turned around again, so that she was facing the way she was facing originally, and she put her hand to the back of her neck again and I realised that she was feeling that presence behind her. That girl her mother used to see touching Jennifer’s hair. And I watched her, alone in the room, turning around and around and around.
I sat behind my desk, in my new favourite chair, which was one that Jennifer had stolen from her design studios when she was a student. It was an old leather spinny one with no arms, just like a round stool with a back. I was wearing a coat because even with the fire and central heating on it was still pretty cold in there. I found myself looking at all of the boxes stacked up in my office, or what would be my office, once I started working in it. We were also using it as a storeroom for all of the boxes that we hadn’t yet unpacked. I had three big framed pictures up, which were presents from Taylor – a beautiful photograph of Stonehenge, one of Brian Froud’s faery paintings and a Kieslowski poster. This was the only room that I could put my pictures in, as Jennifer had plans for the other walls in the house: family photos here, empty spaces there, artwork by a friend in this other room. I didn’t mind – it was her house, really, and I was lucky to be there. Besides, I liked having them with me, as it were, there in that one place, and she was right – they wouldn’t fit with anything anywhere else. They didn’t even fit with each other, really, but this room was my room, and it didn’t matter if things fitted together or not. If I was only going to have one little space in which to honestly show myself, then I’d have it however I wanted. I realised that I was shivering.
Even there, though, even surrounded by my pictures and books and objects (stones with holes through them, dream-catchers, little models of faeries in jars), I couldn’t help thinking about that axe when I should have been thinking about work. About the lake, specifically, because that was what I wanted to write about. Only that was just going to be a starting-point, really, and then I was planning to move on to why the idea of the bottomless lake has persisted across the country despite the protestations of geography and physics. Really, the durability of folk tales was the point. If I ever finished the blasted thing – if I ever started it, even – then I could send it off to a few magazines, see how it went. But I couldn‘t shake that damned axe from my mind. I played with a lump of Blutack until it was a perfect sphere rolling around between my hands, a thinker’s hands, Jennifer always said, and she said it like it was a compliment. I couldn’t help taking offence though, although only internally, of course – I didn’t show that it bothered me. I looked at my pale, soft fingers and squeezed the ball into a worm. That axe.
A thinker’s hands, she’d sometimes say.
Thank you, I’d reply.
Would they carry on their Mario Kart league table without me, back in Manchester? Was I gradually going to move further and further down it, until I just fell off? I walked downstairs to see the back door wide open, and the grey air and brown earth just lay flat outside like they were dead things. Why couldn’t I stop thinking like that? I knew why – because there was something wrong, with me, with Jennifer, or with both of us, or with the house, or with all four, and I didn’t know what.
I got to the bottom of the stairs and Jennifer appeared, framed by the doorway as she came in from outside. Behind her the sky was darkening. In her hands she held the axe. It was as long as she was tall.
‘Jennifer,’ I said. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I thought we could make a feature of it,’ she grinned. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ She hefted the thing up into my face. The head was bigger than I’d realised: sharp-edged, solid, heavy, totally uncompromising. Thin tears
of rust ran down the metal and into the shaft, which was wholly carved from one dark-brown piece of wood, and the grain was a dark web of contours. There was an ingrained ring of dirt around the middle of the shaft where I imagined two thick-skinned muddy hands gripping the thing, lifting and swinging it, time and time again. I imagined it silhouetted against the white-grey sky, weighted with potential energy, as it hung stationary in that split-second before it fell.
‘I was going to say we could throw it away,’ I said. ‘Could use the handle for firewood.’
‘What? Why?’
I shrugged. ‘We’re not going to use it, are we?’
‘No, but I thought we could varnish it and things, and hang it up on the wall. Look at the grain. At the patterns in the rust.’ She rested the axe on the floor and pointed at the spot that looked like an eye. ‘Look at this.’ She smiled. ‘Come on, Jack.’
‘I just don’t like it, Jennifer. I’m not sure—’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Jack. What’s wrong with you? You should free up a little. You’re so – I guess scared is the word. A little bit uptight.’
‘I’m not scared! I’m just – well. What’s wrong with being scared? Why can’t you just accept me being scared? Normal people would say, you know, so you’re scared.’
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Is that it? Have you finished your sentence? Is that your argument? Normal people? What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Jack? Normal people. Fuck’s sake.’ She leant the axe against the wall and stormed into the kitchen and through from there into the living-room. The living-room light came on and the door slammed shut. Her raised voice carried back through the door. ‘I know you’re trying to say that I’m not normal, but I don’t care, and if you don’t like me this way then you can always leave!’
I stared at the axe for a moment, unthinkingly, and then grabbed it and threw it out the back door, but it was heavy and didn’t go very far. It landed near some small white plants that looked pretty dead, actually, pretty withered, and they looked quite strange because they were so regularly spaced. I followed the axe outside to see what they were.
They were bones, not dead plants at all, but the ribs of some animal sticking up out of the ground, like a cat, or maybe they were big enough to belong to a lamb if I were to dig them out, which I was not about to do. I picked the axe up again and hurled it further away.
FRANCIS
Graham is sitting on the living-room floor. He is planning the party. He has several A4 sheets of paper taped together. A handful of different-coloured ballpoint pens. He is mapping the thing out. He has lists of people all over the paper. Lists of names. He has connected up various names to indicate who has whose telephone numbers. To check that the invites will cascade as intended. The names are also grouped by association – those who know each other through school, or university, or work. And location, so that he can suggest car shares or railway routes. He indicates these groups by ticking those included with the coloured pens. He uses the pens to draw connecting lines as well. He connects lines between various people. Green for friendship. Blue for long-term couples. Red for broken relationships. Yellow for mutual dislike. Purple for unrequited love. Orange for casual sex. There are numbers in amongst the lines too. ‘It’s a recipe,’ he says. ‘You need the right number of people who have never met each other, the right number of old friends, the right number of single people. Old grudges, to bring in an edge. Some people need to have some things in common. Others, nothing.’ There are digits that he’s scribbled down as he’s worked out how many people Jack and Jennifer can expect to arrive. ‘You want people to experience as many different positive emotions as they can. They need to be amused, aroused, excited, stimulated, hopeful, made to think, infatuated. Also, sad and scared at the thought of the whole thing ending. That’s how you keep a party going indefinitely. The idea that it is keeping a worse and more real world at bay.’
‘Graham,’ I say, looking at his work, ‘we should hang this thing on our wall. It’s a work of art.’
‘Fuck off,’ Graham says. ‘It’s not art. I don’t know anything about art. Better things to think about.’
I sit back down.
‘There is one problem,’ Graham says. ‘The same problem any good, proper party faces. There is no way of chav-proofing it.’
‘Don’t use that word around me,’ I say. ‘Please.’
‘What?’ he says. ‘Chav?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Chav chav chav chav chav?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s classism,’ I say. ‘Snobbery. Bigotry.’
‘What’s wrong with classism? They’re not called the lower classes for nothing.’
‘You’re such a prick,’ I say. ‘An utter dick. The whole chav thing is just a weird backwards prejudice. Legitimised and perpetuated by, you know. Certain awful newspapers.’
‘Get off your high fucking horse.’
The curtains are drawn against the winter dark. The standard lamp is lit, giving the room that orange warmth. I’m sitting on the sofa with my knees up. I’m wearing jeans and stripy socks. My jeans and stripy socks take up much of my attention. The socks are blue and yellow. The TV is on – it’s some music channel, but I don’t know which. There’s a woman on screen. She wears a bikini, and squashes one end of a long cream éclair into her cleavage. The other into her mouth. She gyrates to the beat of whatever tinny dance track this is the video for. She is beautiful. With wavy brown hair down to the middle of her back. And thick lips. White teeth. A long tongue. How much of her is real I don’t know. These videos are included on single CDs now along with the music. So young boys and maybe older boys buy them for the soft porn, not the tracks. Their sales go up. I mean, she is, you know. Beautiful. But she’s not Jennifer. I don’t even get an erection looking at her. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I should get checked out.
Graham is not transfixed by the screen like he normally is when semi-naked women appear on it. He’s scribbling away at his plan.
‘Graham,’ I say. ‘Have you seen what’s on TV?’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘This video’s fucking amazing. But I’m getting into the zone now. See, if I get this plan right then I’m certain to pull and get at least a lap-dance. Probably more. Better than any ten-a-penny wank video, anyway.’
‘I really don’t know how you reach that conclusion.’
‘That’s because you’re not the King, like I am.’
I turn the TV off. The room falls silent. The girl disappears. I feel a momentary sadness. Like she was the ghost of somebody important to me. Seen and then straight away lost.
It’s about ten o’clock. The front door opens and closes. It must be Erin getting in. When I hear a knock at the living-room door I know it’s her. When she opens the door slightly and sticks her head around it I see that it’s her. ‘Hi!’ she says. ‘You organising the party, Graham?’
‘Yep,’ he says. ‘Sure am, Erinnio.’
‘We need to talk about it,’ she says. ‘I’ll just sort myself out and come back. Anybody want a drink?’
‘I’ll just have some milk, please,’ I say.
‘Any beer there is left,’ Graham says. ‘Please.’
Later. Graham, Erin, Taylor and I are huddled around the blue glowing screen of Erin’s laptop, which Graham holds on his knees. Graham has the most Facebook friends. The past few days he has been systematically looking through the friends lists of all his friends. And sending out friend requests to any and everybody he might possibly know. And quite a lot that he doesn’t.
‘I just contact people based on what they look like,’ he says. ‘There’s not much else to go on here.’
‘You could look at their likes and dislikes,’ I say. ‘Favourite films. Books. Music. All that stuff.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘None of that necessarily means anything. Especially because people fill those details in when they first register, and then forget about it for months. Years.
’
‘But how do you know the photos are real?’ Taylor says.
‘I don’t,’ Graham says. ‘But what people want you to think they look like is as important as anything. The right mix of indie kids, Goths, hardcore freaks, whatever – it’s not as important as the mix of people who want to be indie kids, Goths, etc.’
‘What about her?’ Erin asks, pointing to a picture of Jodie Marsh. The glamour model. The name next to the photo is Quick Lips. ‘What does it mean when they put a photo of someone they’re not?’
‘Depends,’ Graham says. ‘Hopefully, low self-esteem.’ He looks up and grins. ‘Easy pickings, maybe.’
‘Oh you’re disgusting,’ Erin says, standing up. ‘I knew you were going to say something like that.’
‘Well,’ Graham says, ‘I’m a single man. What do you expect?’
‘You’re not a man,’ she says. But leaves it at that.
‘What about Miss Lynch?’ Taylor says.
‘Well, yeah, sure, I see her most nights,’ Graham says. ‘But I’m still single in essence.’
‘Whatever that means,’ Erin says.
‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘Let’s get the actual party invites out.’
‘On it,’ he says. ‘Just setting it up as an event on here. We should give it a name. Like, how old is he?’
‘Twenty-six,’ Erin says.
‘Cross the Threshold!’ Graham says, immediately.
‘I’m not sure I see the connection,’ Taylor says.
‘Nothing to do with his age,’ Graham says. ‘To do with moving in with your love. Like after a wedding. Also – penetration.’
‘Then why did you ask how old he is?’ Taylor asks.
‘Just curious.’ Graham sits up. Pulls away from the screen. ‘I’m thinking,’ he says. ‘Won’t Jack see this?’
‘You know as well as all of us that Jack hates Facebook, Graham,’ I say. ‘He only uses the Internet for research and stuff.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Graham says. ‘I forgot.’ He pulls a face and attempts to change his voice – making it softer and putting on a posh accent. Doing an impression of Jack, I guess. ‘Too much surface! Too modern! Buh-buh blah blah blah. Yeah. I remember now.‘
