LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL

by Ronan Hession

  Leonard had worked on enough books to know that he now had sufficient detail to put together a pitch. His only problem was that he had never actually pitched anything by himself before. He usually handed that bit over to the overseeing author and only heard back when the book had been commissioned. After a few moments’ reflection, he decided to take a chance and send his pitch and an extract to the only person he could think of:

  To: himark@markbaxterbed.com

  ‘Hi Mark,

  I hope you’re keeping well. I hear you’re in demand on the conference circuit these days, so I’m sorry to trouble you, but there’s this project I have been working on that I thought you might be interested in…’

  Leonard did his best to pitch it to Mark Baxter, BEd, with all due deference, hoping to get his help to break through from backroom anonymity to full authorship credits. He had to handle this with some sensitivity, as he was in effect asking for Mark’s help in bypassing him altogether, but he figured that Mark had been around long enough and would still negotiate a cut and a cover credit for himself, even if all he did was pass on the email. Leonard wasn’t in a mood to drive a hard bargain. He signed off the message in conformity with the new company policy on email signatures:

  ‘You may wish to note the above.

  Leonard’

  He pressed ‘send’ and felt as though he had just thrown a water balloon over a privet hedge. Now that he’d submitted the pitch he would have to go into overdrive to finish the book in case Mark Baxter, BEd, took an interest and asked to see a full draft. But first, he noticed that the four clocks in view—his watch, mobile, computer, and desk phone—all displayed different times, meaning he was either slightly early, on time or a little late for his lunch date with Shelley. Leonard had arranged to meet her out by the bike rack, to avoid any unwelcome office banter from Helpdesk Greg. He couldn’t wait to tell her about his idea of writing the book for and about Patrick, and about how she had inspired him to send it to the famous Mark Baxter, BEd. She had brought nothing but goodness to his life ever since she entered it.

  When he reached the bike rack, Shelley was already waiting for him. As usual she was loaded like a packhorse with all her cycling gear.

  ‘Hey, how are things?’ he said, ‘Let me carry that for you. How was your morning, and your weekend, come to think of it?’

  ‘Okay, I suppose. Just hanging out with Patrick. He was a bit bored from being inside, but didn’t want to go out. He gets like that sometimes. Kids get tired after a week at school, but I couldn’t just let him sit indoors playing Lego all day, so I promised him a trip to the cinema.’

  ‘Anything good? Did you go see the film from the Happy Meal?’

  ‘No, actually. I never thought of that. We went to see the latest Fart of Darkness movie. You know, the usual format with loads of jokes aimed over the kids’ heads at the parents. I was a bit snoozy in the cinema and he sort of wanted to leave once he had finished his treats. He was just in one of those hard-to-please moods. How about you—how did your friend get on at the prize-giving?’

  ‘Great, yeah, really good. He won actually. Got a trophy of a severed hand and a giant cheque for ten grand. We could hardly fit it in the boot.’

  ‘Wow, what a prize! Can you cash those giant cheques?’

  ‘Nope. They give you a real cheque too. He’s getting the giant one framed.’

  ‘What’s he going to do with the money?’

  ‘Hard to know. He’s never really had any money and he’s not hugely interested in it. His sister is getting married on Easter Monday, so he was talking about maybe helping her with that. She’s booked the reception at Whitethorn Castle, which can’t have been cheap. They’ve had to keep the numbers tight, so I’ve had to surrender my plus one, I’m afraid.’

  They walked on a bit but the conversation petered out. With Hungry Paul, Leonard was able to surf over any silences, but things were different with Shelley. Getting the conversation going sometimes felt a bit like a hill start.

  ‘So, where are we going by the way? Any ideas?’ she asked.

  ‘How about the bog bodies?’ suggested Leonard.

  ‘Okay. I haven’t been to see them before. Are they scary?’

  ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t think so. It’s just these leathery old bodies in bits and pieces. You can see all of their features perfectly though; some even have hair.’

  ‘Okay. It sounds interesting, though I’ll hold off scoring it for romantic potential until I see them,’ she said, trying to raise a smile but not quite managing it.

  The conversation went quiet again. He noticed how Shelley was often the pace setter between them. When she was bubbly and positive, everything was great, but when she was quiet, they struggled.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he asked as they approached the exhibition.

  ‘Hmmm. Sort of. Well, not really. There’s something I wanted to ask you. But it’s kind of awkward.’

  There was a feeling of a ghost walking across his abdomen. ‘Ask away,’ he said.

  ‘It’s about Patrick. Me and Patrick anyway. I’m really enjoying our time together, you and me I mean, and I like the way we are taking things slowly, but I was just wondering about what you said in your message about meeting Patrick. It kind of took me by surprise. I wasn’t sure what you meant really. So, I dunno, I just wanted to ask you about it.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I hadn’t really thought about it to be honest. I just wondered whether you might like join us and, if you were minding Patrick, he could come too. Nothing more than that. All at face value, et cetera, et cetera.’

  They were standing at the door of the exhibition. Leonard felt he was being tested but didn’t understand the question.

  ‘Patrick is my world, Leonard. I have put my life into looking after him. I don’t want to mess him around.’

  ‘Oh, of course, of course.’

  ‘What I mean is that I can’t introduce him to just any man I have met for a few dates.’

  The characterisation was brutally clarifying for Leonard.

  ‘Oh, I see. Of course. I mean, I never meant to interfere with you and Patrick. I was just trying to be nice.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m not criticising you. It’s just that I can’t tell him who you are, that you write his favourite books, and then let him meet you and then if things don’t work out, he’ll just feel abandoned and rejected, and I don’t want that to happen. I can’t just bring him along without explaining who you are. Not just your name and that you write the books, but who you are to me, and specifically, who you are to him. Do you understand? Do you understand that that’s important to me? And why it’s so important?’

  A tour group of Italian students pushed between them, all wearing puff jackets and skinny jeans. It took a few minutes for the babbling line of teenagers to file past. Shelley looked at Leonard through the gaps in the crowd with a sad and gentle expression on her face. When they had all passed, Leonard might have said something, done something or otherwise conveyed to Shelley that he understood, truly understood, what she was getting at. She was sending a distress signal to him that was bouncing back to her unread. Leonard knew that something important was happening, but he was just too unsure, too inexperienced for the subtlety that was expected of him.

  ‘Right so, should we head inside then? These bog bodies will be getting impatient!’

  He could feel the echo of his own ridiculousness all around him. A big kid in an adult conversation. Found out.

  ‘I’m going to go, Leonard.’ Shelley gave him one last deep look with those sorry, sad, soulful eyes.

  ‘Oh, okay. Maybe another time then,’ said Leonard, panicked and paralysed. Out of his depth.

  Shelley took her cycling gear from him.

  ‘Bye Leonard.’

  He stood at the door of the exhibition, watching her go through the most uncinematic rigmarole of putting
on her cycling gear. She gave him a small, heroic smile that she would do her best to keep from turning tearful until she had faced around and was on her way. He stood still, dumbstruck with the significance of it all, watching her cycle off into the traffic and away from him.

  Feeling undone and in need of somewhere quiet to gather himself, Leonard drifted into the exhibition, where he sat alone in a dimly lit room. Alongside him, a two-thousand-year-old bog man lay prostrate in a display case, preserved in the pose he held at the very moment his life changed.

  Chapter 19: The Game of Life

  Later that evening, after dinner, Leonard hauled his heavy heart to Parley View for some uncomplicated friendship and board games. The good people at Milton Bradley were early pioneers of the kindergarten movement, and many of the classic games that bore the MB brand name over the years were designed with a gentle edifying purpose in mind. This was especially true of the Game of Life, a cheerfully competitive board game that sought to prepare its players for the boons and forfeits that Messrs Milton and Bradley saw as the reality of life. For Leonard the game had a new and special resonance. In recent weeks, he had lost his mother, inherited a house, embarked on a new career direction, and had met, and probably lost, the most special girl he had ever known. As he pushed his playing piece around the board—a car with an empty passenger seat and no blue or pink pegs in the rear—he could see a familiar pattern of ups and downs playing out before him.

  Hungry Paul, who respected the privacy of a man’s thoughts, and who ordinarily enjoyed extended calming silences with his friend, nevertheless became concerned at Leonard’s abject mood. At one point Leonard reached past the chocolate and fancy biscuits to take a ginger nut, a sure sign that all was not what it should be.

  ‘Anything up?’ ventured Hungry Paul.

  ‘Sorry?’ replied Leonard from amidst the fog.

  ‘Anything up, I said. It’s just that you don’t seem yourself. You’ve passed up two chances at buying a status symbol, as well as forgoing the opportunity to sue me for damages, and you seem content to fork out for an unsuccessful South Pole expedition and munch on ginger nuts which, to be honest, seem to me to be on the turn.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’m not quite myself this evening. I had hoped that I would perk up, but I’m sorry, I’ve had a difficult day.’

  ‘I see. Roman trouble?’ asked Hungry Paul.

  ‘No, the Romans are not doing any damage. That whole project is actually going quite well. It’s Shelley. We had a bit of… a bit of a problem and I think I may have lost her.’

  ‘Oh, I see. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘If you don’t know what happened, how do you know it has happened? I don’t understand,’ replied Hungry Paul. ‘And if you don’t know and I don’t understand, then neither of us is really up to speed on any of this. Should we try again? What did she say to you?’

  ‘She said that I didn’t understand,’ replied Leonard.

  ‘Well she’s right there.’

  ‘She said I didn’t understand about her and Patrick.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Do I what?’ answered Leonard.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘You see, at the weekend I suggested that she might come along to your prize-giving but she was minding Patrick, so I thought that she could bring him along. She didn’t want to do that because, for one thing, he would want to know who I am and all about the situation with Shelley and me. Between all the complications, I think Shelley wanted me to say or do the right thing at the right moment, but I just didn’t know what she wanted me to say, so I ended up making a mess of things and now she probably thinks I’m hopeless and that it was blessed relief that she found out when she did, even if it hurts her feelings in the short run.’

  ‘The short run can often be full of feelings,’ observed Hungry Paul, sagely.

  ‘The thing is, she’s a sensitive person, even though she’s quite positive in her outlook. She just has so much more at stake than I do. She has to think of Patrick and the future, whereas I only have to think about whether to bring her to a nice restaurant or to the bog bodies.’

  ‘Bog bodies?’ asked Hungry Paul, taking his turn.

  ‘Yes, we had this discussion on the way to the bog bodies. She went home before we got a chance to go in.’

  ‘That’s a pity—some of them still have hair, you know. So where do you stand on the whole Patrick business? Going from long-term bachelorhood to becoming the father figure in a ready-made family is not straightforward, I would imagine.’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far. I just wanted to get to know Shelley, find a place for myself in her life, and her in my life, and then deal with the rest whenever it came up.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ asked Hungry Paul, who landed on Jury Service and had to miss a turn.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Leonard, ‘But it turns out that it is wrong. It turns out that it’s actually quite a hurtful thing to do.’

  ‘I see. It’s true that it’s hard not to hurt people. Even doing nothing, you can end up hurting people. It seems that on the question of whether you are damned, there is an ‘x’ in both the ‘do’ and ‘don’t’ columns. Your turn.’

  ‘I don’t even know what I am supposed to do in the meantime,’ said Leonard, spinning the wheel. ‘I mean, is she waiting for me to ring her or send her a message or what? I wouldn’t even know what to say. But I sense that every minute I let it pass she is slipping further from my life. What would you do in my situation?’

  ‘This is not my area of expertise, I’m afraid. Although if you do decide to send her a text I could suggest a very handy sign-off phrase.’

  ‘Sorry to keep talking about myself. How are things going with the wedding? Did you get your suit cleaned after the prize-giving?’ asked Leonard.

  ‘The wedding plans are going fine I think. Some trouble with an organist driving a hard bargain, but all seems well. Grace is a little tense and judgemental these days but Mam’s trying to offer moral support. To her and to us. I’m not able to get my suit cleaned just yet: I need it for Wednesday, for an interview.’

  ‘What interview?’

  ‘Sorry, I never told you. Yes, I have an interview. I was talking to that mime artist at the prize-giving—he’s Dutch, his name is Arno—and he is involved with the National Mime Association. He mentioned that they are looking for a spokesman and he thought I might be suitable, so he asked if I would like to do an interview. He’s moving back to the Netherlands and they need someone to fill the job quickly before he goes. He thought I might bring a bit of profile to the post because of the competition, and that I might get along with the mime community.’

  ‘Well if it’s silence they are after, their talent scouts are to be commended for finding their man. How does the National Mime Association have a spokesperson? I thought they didn’t speak.’

  ‘That’s just the thing. They feel that mime is going out of fashion and that all anyone remembers is Marcel Marceau and his walking in the wind, good though it is. These days the guys who just stand as still as statues in the main street are much more popular.’

  ‘Is that not mime?’ asked Leonard innocently.

  ‘Good God, no!’ answered Hungry Paul, laughing. ‘The statue people are pretty much at war with the mime artists. There have been a few incidents and the whole thing could blow up any day. The problem for the mime artist is that life is so noisy now, they are being left behind. We live in an age of cacophony. Everyone talking and thinking out loud, with no space or oxygen left for quiet statements and silence. In a way, it’s not just about being a spokesman for the National Mime Association, but a spokesman for silence itself.’

  ‘What are you going to say at the interview?
’

  ‘I was thinking of asking them if I could still have Mondays off so that I can keep my promises at the post office.’

  ‘Will that be enough to secure the position?’

  ‘Possibly not. What kind of things do they usually ask? I’ve never had an interview before—I got the post office job through Dad.’

  ‘In general, they usually like to know if you’re a born leader, a visionary and a can-do sort of person.’

  ‘I suppose there are probably lots of things I could do if I were to try them, but generally I don’t try them, so maybe I’m more of a could-don’t person?’

  ‘I guess it’s a start. Don’t overthink it. These mime artists probably prefer someone a bit, you know, quiet.’

  ‘Indeed,’ pondered Hungry Paul. ‘Indeed.’

  Chapter 20: Father of the bride

  Peter hadn’t written anything down yet for his speech but he had allowed a healthy collection of ideas to build up over the preceding weeks. He had asked Grace to meet him for a walk just to run through a few things, but also to check in with her in case she was having a meltdown from the pre-wedding stress, which was certainly Helen’s view of the whole situation.

  Peter had spent his career as a peripatetic economist, starting out as a researcher, then lecturer, before trying a disastrous turn as the in-house economist for a bank and then, finally, on the off-ramp of his career, returning to an academic backwater doing what he had liked doing most all along: teaching economics to interested young people. He had seen the economics profession change over the years. When he started, they were all idealists who believed that they held the missing piece of the puzzle in solving societal problems. Over time, the job seemed to change from one of understanding and decoding the market, to advocating for it. It had become a job devoid of ideological diversity and ambivalent in its methods: distaining the soft centred humanity of the social sciences, but not quite committing to the disciplined empiricism of the physical sciences. Instead, it ended up as an add-on to arts and business courses, or else dominated by maths graduates who found it easier than real maths.