by Geoff Ryman
155
MISS IRIS KRAUSHAAR
Outward appearance
Elongated thirteen-year-old, brown hair pulled back, wrap-around tartan skirt, powder-blue stockings with socks rolled down around ankles on top of spongy brown loafers. Braces on teeth. The whole effect is curiously 1940s. Listens warily to the girl next to her.
Inside information
A ballet student who gets two mornings a week off from St Paul’s girls’ school to attend dancing classes held in the Merely College studio. Grandparents are German refugees who escaped Hitler’s Germany. Father is Financial Director of a large pharmaceutical company.
What she is doing or thinking
That Sonali is trying to tell her she’s got a big bum. They were supposed to have a truce. Neither one of them is exactly a dancer yet. Iris tries to talk instead about a favourite teacher.
Sonali keeps up the attack. ‘Well, she’s got the reverse problem. Tiny legs.’
Iris delicately rubs the tip of her nose. Sonali is the nearest thing Iris has to a friend. This new jealousy, if that’s what it is, is some kind of last straw.
Maybe Sonali is put off by the big house in Bishops Drive. Iris is. She wants out from under her family. Above all else she wants to be a dancer. She knows she is shy, slow to make friends. And dedicated.
She decides, very quietly. She’ll leave, go to a boarding school with a proper dance programme. To begin work in earnest. To grow up.
‘Tiny legs or not, she’s a good teacher,’ Iris chuckles. ‘She’s just a bit demanding for people who are too young.’
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156
MISS SONALI SHETTY
Outward appearance
Thirteen years old. Raw silk top, white slacks, green cloth coat with fake fur collar. Short hair, which she keeps tossing out her face. Gold earrings, and make-up. Strains upward to talk to her taller companion.
Inside information
Ballet student given time off from St Paul’s to practise in studio at Merely College. In love with the girl next to her.
What she is doing or thinking
Everyone knows that she, Sonali, is prettier than Iris and looks are important if you’re a dancer, so why is Iris so superior all the time? Is it money? Well Sonali’s family have money too.
She’s trying to help Iris. ‘You have to have a good silhouette. A large bottom needs long legs. You can get away with it if you have a high waist and a good carriage.’
Maybe this sounds a bit personal, Sonali thinks. But you have to be objective about such things.
Suddenly, Iris is talking about their teacher Miss Boniface, who Sonali is sure fancies them both, and that makes Sonali sad, angry.
‘But she has the reverse problem, tiny legs,’ Sonali says. It’s her problem, too. She thinks her own legs are small, bandy, nearly misshapen.
Iris wipes her nose in that prissy way. Iris! Notice me, not your bloody teacher!
‘Also, the legs are thick, just here in front,’ Sonali says, continuing, sensing that something has veered out of control. She hates Miss Boniface.
It’s not like that when the music plays, and they strip down to work and they are like horses, running. Running together.
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157
DR PAUL BINYON
Outward appearance
Ageing art student? Facial stubble, pony tail, black corduroys. Desert boots, ethnic waistcoat, white jacket. Looks disgruntled, hands shoved into armpits.
Inside information
Young Turk of the gardening establishment, those authors and presenters who provide advice and inspiration to a nation of gardeners.
Dr Binyon is the author of The Exploded Garden, which advanced a radical approach to garden design. Forget Man advocated a non-anthrocentric approach to gardening, putting the needs of wildlife and fungi above people. The BBC are talking to him about presenting a final episode of Arena on the radical gardening movement.
What he is doing or thinking
Dr Binyon is contemplating ecological catastrophe. The New Zealand flatworm has finally appeared in the heartland of British gardening—the rich southeast who buy his books.
The flatworm encoils the domestic earthworm, liquefies and then drinks it. Like one gardener to another.
No one seems to be recognizing the scale of the disaster. It’s on a par with grey squirrels. The extinction of the soil-draining earthworm would mean a return of low pastures to marshland. There needs to be a national day of action. Out of the lounges, onto the lawns. Seize specimens now! His lecture today at USB is devoted to it. Is it the kind of thing that will mobilize young people?
More important, will it make good television? Can a non-anthrocentric radical gardener be seen to be campaigning against a worm? Dr Binyon considers. In fact, the imported flatworm is a prime example of human interference. Radical! He’d better talk to the Beeb fast.
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158
MISS TINA RAVON
Outward appearance
About 24. Red jacket, jeans, a skimpy white T-shirt, showing pale, limp tummy. Explosion of curly hair, Irish-fresh face and merry eyes.
Inside information
Student at RADA, club organizer, and business woman. Visiting a temp agency for tips. Her real name is Monica.
Got into this car to avoid Mind the Gap, with whom she used to work. Tube theatre was fun but was never going to make any money. Tina took the basic idea and came up with a few scams of her own.
First she hired out student actors for parties. The actors insulted the hosts who had pre-arranged scripts with brilliant replies. But that required the hosts to perform. Some of them sounded like they were reading. Others forgot their lines. Some of them didn’t pay.
So Tina eliminated the host. Instead, her actors staged blazing rows in the middle of dinner parties, breaking sugar plates over each other’s heads. It was trendy for a while.
What she is doing or thinking
Tina looks at the faces around her, the strain and exhaustion. These sad people, she thinks. I should hire them friends.
The idea takes hold. No one to invite to your wedding? Hire some attractive guests. Rent a jolly best man who can deliver a genuinely funny speech. Embarrassed by your parents? Hire some others. Told the boss that you went to Oxford? Hire yourself some old classmates, every one guaranteed genuine Oxbridge.
Friends: the ultimate fashion accessory.
Chums R Us.
McPeople: fast & tasty.
In three years’ time, Tina will be a millionaire.
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159
MR CLIVE SIDDEN
Outward appearance
Grey and pink and creased, in a crumpled brown pinstripe suit. Scuffed old briefcase.
Inside information
Retired information officer of the General Education Funding Body, late of York Road.
The Funding Body was broken up into four separate organizations. Three moved to Carlisle, Norwich, and Okehampton. A rump body to be renamed the Office of Educational Finance moved to a vacated floor of the Civil Servants Union. There, for a month, the old GEFB flag flew.
What he is doing or thinking
Of how loyal he used to be. The Government Information Directory listed his home phone number in case he was needed. He commissioned a GEFB uniform for exhibitions. The GEFB flag and motto were his ideas.
He thinks about how he grovelled to his bosses, and how he boasted of his relationship with them. ‘And the Director said to me, “Clive,” he said, “I trust you to do the right thing.”’
He thinks what a fool they made of him. He supervised the move; briefed his successors; they suggested early retirement; he said goodbye to what was left of his staff.
And then in the winter darkness, he climbed up onto the roof and he cut the cords of the flagpole with a Stanley knife. They won’t be
able to pull down the GEFB flag. They’ll have to shimmy up the flagpole or build some scaffolding.
In the end, it’s the thing in his life he’s proudest of doing. No one knows. He’s going back now, to take a photograph. Then he’ll salute the GEFB, the old world, himself.
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160
MS SASHA BINGHAM
Outward appearance
Woman about 25, blonde hair, David Bowie face—pretty, angular, sardonic. Brown pinstripe trousers mismatched with a fluffy collared, slightly grubby sheepskin coat. A large handbag doubles as briefcase. She flicks through an issue of Inside Housing as if angry with it.
Inside information
One of many financial advisers for the Peebrane Trust, a housing association near Lambeth North. The Peebrane buys properties, acts as a landlord, works with the Prince’s Trust, and matches a £30 million government grant with private capital. It is now raising a further £70 million by debenture stock issue.
What she is doing or thinking
She thinks she is scanning the news. Her mind is blocked by unacknowledged anger. Her last two jobs were with merchant banks and it was made plain in each that her services were no longer required. She ended up working for a business that masquerades as a charity. It’s just not honest enough to admit it.
It’s happening again. The gossip, the politicking. Her boss is a nice old gent on his last legs. They liked each other, Sasha knew he saw her as new modern woman, a kind of progeny. One night drinking late, he told her he had cancer.
Wasn’t she supposed to tell anyone? Look, your main fundraiser is ill, just when you need him most? Wasn’t telling the Trust about him a kind of loyalty? Launching a debenture is not easy, do they want someone who’s on heavy medication?
So why is nobody talking to her?
They’ll think better of it when she’s given his job.
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161
MRS PRU WAVERLY
Outward appearance
About 40. Blue suit and black and white tweed overcoat. A firm, dour face, rumpled around the mouth. Untidy, dyed hair. Eyes watery, round.
Inside information
Switchboard operator at Buntleys Coachworks. She is posh to customers, robust with staff. Yesterday, over a crossed line, she heard a murder being planned.
What she is doing or thinking
She feels shaky inside, exactly as though she’d eaten something off. She’s been telling her friend Stef about it: the red light came on for Mr Gray’s extension. He was busy, so she picked it up. The line was dead. Then two women came on, nothing out of the way about them.
Except that one of them said straight off: ‘We’ll get her, then.’ She was talking from a payphone near traffic. You could hear it roar and hum.
There was a silence and the other woman said: ‘You mean what I think you mean?’
The other one sniffed. ‘You know what I mean. We talked enough about it.’
‘She is such a bitch,’ the other one agreed. A baby was screaming. She told it to shut up, then she said, ‘He’ll stop us doing it. He’s not up for that sort of thing.’
‘Him? Won’t be anything he can do. When she’s dead.’
Pru slammed the phone down. What does she do now? Stef says: nothing, you don’t know who they are, who they’re talking about.
It was the noise that got her. It was just the noise of humming traffic, but at first it sounded like voices, thousands of them, singing. In hell.
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162
MISS STEFANIE PARASHAR
Outward appearance
Tiny, foreign woman, with a lively face, lipsticked mouth in a seemingly permanent smile. Volumes of spidery dressed hair piled up around a seashell grip. White shirt, black slacks, very stacked heels.
Inside information
Clerk at Buntleys Coachworks. Shares office and often lunch with the woman next to her. Shares drinks and often a lot more with the lads. More than anything else Stef likes a laugh.
What she is doing or thinking
Trying not to smile. It was a bit naughty of the lads, but Pru can be bossy at times, so to send her up they made this tape. Even Mr Gray was a sport about it, letting them play it through his extension.
They all thought Pru would make a fearful fuss, call the cops, demand action, all of that, make a right idiot of herself, and then they would tell her. Instead, she went all quiet. She sat and stared, hand over her mouth. The lads peeked in through the door window and she didn’t even see them.
They’d found a weak place in tough old Pru. She looks like she’s been kicked in the stomach and you can’t blame her.
Pru says, ‘It was horrible, Stef. It just made me feel sick.’ She’s really worried. She really thinks someone is going to die.
It’s not funny, Stef tells herself. And then she thinks of Andy and the boys with their tape recorder and wants to giggle.
‘And their voices, Stef. They were so mean. You know how horrible people can be.’
‘Yeah,’ says Stef, and smiles.
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163
MR SUNIL KURASH
Outward appearance
Tall, prim gentleman sitting upright in grey suit and overcoat. Another passenger, swaggering, deliberately kicks his briefcase. It is Sunil who apologizes.
Inside information
Works alongside his solicitor brother for a law firm that rejoices in the name of Kurash and Steal.
Sunil is the model of polite behaviour. His politeness annoys people. He apologizes for arriving late or early or dead on time. He apologizes for talking to people or not talking to people.
When he was a child, Sunil had a terrible temper. He would leave the table in a high dudgeon. His father warned: ‘If you smash your sister’s new fire engine I shall punish you,’ and Sunil did smash it. He would howl and rage and kick.
But now when Sunil loses his temper, something worse happens. He starts to talk like Donald Duck. Exactly like Donald Duck. Wharr wharr wharraraa. He finds this mortifying.
What he is doing or thinking
Sunil can’t believe that he apologized. The old man, red-faced and drunk, feints at the case again as if it were a football and drops into his seat. Sunil finds his soul prickled as if with a rising of feathers. He can almost feel them under his skin.
‘Scotland Forever,’ the drunk says.
Sunil struggles to suppress his inner Donald Duck. His soul is filled with wordless anger in a language from beyond childhood. He yearns to lisp and spray and throw things.
Instead Sunil clenches his paper into folds, picks up his case, and gets off at Waterloo.
Sunil cannot speak any Asian tongue.
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164
MR BILL McREADY
Outward appearance
Short, grey-haired man in red Adidas shirt, denim jacket and jeans, rubber-soled bovver boots. Makes a football kick at someone’s briefcase.
Inside information
A sailor in the merchant marine docked at Chatham for the last time. Drunk and lost in the underground system. Has a semi-derelict home in a Glasgow suburb. No wife or family.
What he is doing or thinking
Last night’s bender has induced a kind of euphoria. Bill hears all around him the roar of a football crowd, thousands of people singing: You’ll never walk alone!
Bill loves footie. He played a lot when he was younger. He couldn’t resist taking a swipe at the gentleman’s briefcase.
Bill feels friendly towards him. ‘Scotland Forever,’ he says, meaning, you and me, we’re not one of these English cunts. Bill spent six years of his life anchored off Ascension Island. He remembers the chief of police from St Helens. He was black, a great little striker.
His tanker never moved. It was filled regularly with oil to supply the Beeb, the Yanks, the RAF. Du
ring the Falklands War, the sky was filled with planes. At night on the beaches, giant turtles would lay their eggs. You’d take motorboats to go ashore, and you had to duck the flying fish. The island was blistering hot—red, black, and beige from different kinds of lava. But the top of the mountain was emerald, like a memory of the heaths of home.
How he wanted to be back home. Now he wants to be back on Ascension. The crowd roars.
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165
MRS MEL McKINNEY
Outward appearance
Late twenties, drifting off to sleep behind huge specs. Ill-assorted clothes: black leather jacket with a flimsy green dress bunching up behind her knees.
Inside information
Her husband Bill is the caretaker of St Michael’s RC school. Their flat is stuck on top of the scruffy, modern brick building. The roof terrace deserves tricycles and building blocks, but they have no children.
