The Fish Kisser

by James Hawkins

  “DEAR MUM,” she typed, paused, considered, and deleted the “Dear.”

  “Too formal,” she mused, and tears welled as she realised she’d never written to her mother before.

  “MUM,” she continued. “I’VE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY ROGER.”

  The phrase absorbed her for several minutes as she mulled over its ramifications and, although concluding it wasn’t strictly true, could think of no better way to adequately express what had happened.

  “Marg,” she had said, excitedly, a couple of weeks earlier, “Roger wants to meet me—what do you reckon?” They had bumped into each other in Quickmart on their way to school. Trudy, buying lunch—a couple packets of crisps and a can of coke; Margery—conscious of her waist—choosing twenty Benson & Hedges.

  “Dunno,” answered Margery, with mock disinterest. “You still ain’t shown me his photo.”

  “Came this morning,” lied Trudy, who had been sleeping on it for nearly two weeks.

  “Let me see,” said Margery, delving uninvited into Trudy’s schoolbag.

  “Get out,” she cried snatching it away.

  “One pound eighty, Miss,” demanded the storekeeper tetchily, wise to the possibility that the squabble over the bag might be cover for the half dozen teenagers loitering near the candy display.

  “Blimey, you should get done for overcharging mate. I’m only a kid,” And they giggled as they slipped out of the store.

  “Come on Trude, let’s see it,” nagged Margery, pinning her against a bus shelter.

  “I left it home,” she said nonchalantly, clutching the bag to her chest in case Margery should see it stuck into her Math book. “I’ll fetch it at lunchtime.”

  “When are you going to meet him?”

  “I dunno. He wants to take me for a ride in his Jag. Reckons if I get the train up to his place he’ll bring me back in it.”

  “Yeah, as long as he gets inside your pants,” Margery laughed, “otherwise he’ll leave you stranded. I’ve met blokes like him before.”

  “You don’t know nothing about him. He ain’t nothing like that. In fact, he doesn’t agree with sex before marriage.”

  Margery threw her head back, “Humph—say’s who?” But didn’t expect a reply.

  The photograph smouldered in Trudy’s bag all morning. Not that she wasn’t dying to flourish it in Margery’s face. But what would Margery say? “What’s a hunk like him see in a girl like you?”

  Finally, too hot to hold on to, she flipped the picture under Margery’s nose in the photocopy room at lunchtime.

  “Streuth,” the girl exclaimed enviously. “ What a looker.”

  “Yeah—he’s pretty gorgeous.”

  Grabbing the photograph on the pretext of holding it up to the light, Margery slipped it into the copier and pushed 10 before Trudy could stop her.

  “Here I don’t want everyone after him,” screeched Trudy, whipping it from under the lid as the machine spat out the first print.

  Margery caught the single copy and tried to run. Trudy slammed the door and stood guard. “Give it back.”

  “It ain’t yours. It’s a photocopy.”

  “Marg,” she implored, “Please don’t show it to no one.”

  “What’s it worth?” she teased, holding it high, out of reach.

  “I won’t tell your mum about the condoms I saw in your purse.”

  “Silly cow. Me mum gave ’em to me. Hasn’t your mum given you any?”

  “Please, please don’t show it Marg,” Trudy begged, but her concern waned as her mind shifted to other thoughts. How come Mum never gave me condoms? How come she never told me about sex?

  “O.K.,” said Margery, giving in as if it were of no consequence, “I won’t show no one.” But she kept the photocopy.

  Trudy dragged herself back to the present and re-read the phrase, “Mum. Roger kidnapped me.” It’s not right, she thought, it’s not fair, and the little curser scooted back across the screen at the touch of her finger as she deleted “kidnapped” one painful letter at a time. The effort required her total concentration and, as she considered what to type in its place, her mind wandered back to her meeting with Roger.

  It was a Friday, the same day Margery left for France with her parents. Trudy saw them off. “Looks like you’re goin’ on safari,” she laughed as Margery packed herself into the hired campervan next to the kitchen sink, under a box of emergency rations: Kellog’s Cornflakes—cost a bomb in France; All Bran—gotta keep everyone regular, says her mother; a hunk of Cheddar cheese—can’t stand that stinky French muck, says her father, complaining simultaneously about the French, the language, the toilets, the prices, the beer, gnat’s piss; and the Germans?— “Bloody jerries think they own the beaches.”

  “Shut up and drive,” says her mother, sliding into the navigator’s seat, her hair rollers turning her headscarf into a porcupine. “But wait ’til we get to Paris and I show them poncy boulevardiers a proper hair-do.”

  Trudy waved goodbye with a tinge of jealousy, although Margery had confided in her the previous day that it would be disastrous. “D’ye think my dad’ll let me get within a mile of any decent French bloke?” she’d scoffed. “Not likely.” Anyway, Trudy had her own plans. She had a date with Roger.

  School officially finished at 4:30 p.m. but she left an hour early, telling the office secretary she’d “come on” unexpectedly. Dressed in her new denim skirt, with a white cotton top, she checked herself in the mirror. “I should have had the ciggies,” she mused, pummelling a few surplus inches into her bra.

  The note for her mother was simple, and truthful, as far as she knew. “Going out with a friend. Back late. Got my key. Love Trude.”

  She arrived in Watford early, very early, but decided she might as well wait in the railway refreshment room where they had agreed to meet at seven. For nearly an hour her eyes were glued to the door, terrified she might not recognize him, and every few minutes she refreshed her memory from his photograph even though she knew each feature by heart: Mediterranean tan, chestnut eyes, toothpaste advertisement grin, stylishly short hair, and the unmistakable dimple in the left cheek.

  Time clicked by in unison with a huge clock—a curio salvaged from the platform of an abandoned railway station—a tick so intrusive that everything else appeared to be keeping time with its measured pace, including the dumpy waitress whose far-from-sensible stiletto heels tapped in perfect rhythm as she plodded back and forth on the wooden floor. Diners chewed in time to the beat and the timer on the microwave “beeped” synchronously, signifying the successful “zapping” of a limp pasty or sausage roll.

  Awareness of someone behind her started as a feeling of unease which she put down to nervousness as she waited for … what? Excitement, pleasure, romance. Love? There’s no one there, she told herself, scratching the back of her neck, unwilling to take her eyes off the door lest Roger should arrive. There’s no one there, she insisted to herself when the feeling intensified, and found herself fighting the desire to turn around.

  As the minute hand on the railway clock clunked to 6:55 p.m. she made up her mind and turned suddenly, giving no warning, catching a man at the table behind her. “What are you staring at weirdo?” she spat, nastily.

  His head dropped, and concentration puckered his features as he fidgeted with some crumbs on the tablecloth, then he pinched them between thumb and forefinger and arranged them on the rim of his plate.

  Trudy, turning the tables, stared at him until his cheeks were as livid as port-wine birth marks, then backed off, thinking: Loser! It was his hair mainly— spiky translucent threads sticking straight out of his scalp without concept of direction or fashion. By the time he looked up Trudy was carefully examining the clock: 6:58 turned into 6:59 with a clunk as she peered anxiously at the door, beginning to wonder if there were perhaps two railway stations in Watford.

  “Excuse me,” a voice was saying in her ear. “Are you Trudy?”

  Her head shot round and she found herself peer
ing straight into the eyes of the strange-looking man. Her face was twisting into a mask of horror as the door opened and her head whipped back praying it to be Roger. Four people came in, three smartly dressed women in business suits and an older man in a blazer, none of them remotely resembling the five-foot ten, twenty-seven year old she was expecting.

  “Who are you?” she enquired, careful not to look.

  “Um … Um … I’m Matt. Um … short for Matthew,” he explained slowly, adding nervously, “I’m Roger’s friend.”

  “Oh,” was all she managed, thinking there was no diplomatic way of saying, “Sorry about your face.”

  “He … um … Roger asked me to meet you ’cos he’s going to be late,” he continued, warming to his story and moving around so he was now almost opposite her.

  “Where is he?”

  “Um … At work. He’s got an important job to do. He’ll be home soon and he said I should take you straight to his house.”

  Trudy woke with a start and realized she had drowsed off in front of the computer. Damn, she thought, I must concentrate or no one will ever know what happened to me, then she re-read the start of the letter to her mother.

  “MUM. ROGER …ME.”

  I know, she thought, and painstakingly inserted the words “lied to.”

  “There,” she said contentedly, “that’s right.”

  Now the little screen read, “MUM. ROGER LIED TO ME,” and she wrote the rest in a frenzy.

  “ROGER LIED. I DON’T KNOW WHY I BELIEVED HIM. YOU SAID MEN WERE LIARS. DAD LIED. HE SAID HE WOULDNT LEAVE ME. WHY DID HE LEAVE? I DIDNT WANT HIM TO GO. IT WERENT MY FAULT MUM, HONEST, IT WERENT MY FAULT. PLEASE DONT BE CROSS WITH ME. PLEASE DONT LEAVE ME AS WELL, DONT LEAVE ME HERE.”

  Gasping, breathless again, she fought desperately for air. Confused and disorientated by the lack of oxygen in her brain, she willed her fingers to keep in touch with her mother, almost believing her mother was linked to her by the Internet. And a hazy reflection of her own face in the computer screen momentarily deceived her, “MUM—I CAN SEE YOU,” she typed furiously, then stared intently, shaping her mother’s features out of nothing, with the certainty of a believer chancing on an image of the Virgin Mary or Mother Theresa in a dusty window.

  “MUM,” she typed, “I DONT WANT TO DIE,” THEN PAUSED, TAKING SIX OR SEVEN SHARP BREATHS, before adding. “I MUST GET AIR. WHERE IS ROGER?”

  Roger was about thirty miles from the nearest land, alone and dejected. Although now mid-afternoon, fourteen hours after his disappearance, no search had commenced and he was still not officially missing; nevertheless his situation appeared to be brightening. Globs of black cloud still hung out of the sky, but the rain was infrequent, and the wind no longer tore the tops off the waves. The waterlogged clothing next to his skin had picked up some body heat and was acting as a wetsuit, insulating him against the cold seawater. He sat up from time to time, gazing around the horizon for signs of rescue, but had seen no ships all day. Some he missed while asleep, some were concealed by the steep waves and most were simply too distant.

  Trudy was still uppermost in his mind and he kept thinking to himself: Why did I do it? But he knew why. Deep down he knew the simple inescapable truth, knew he loved her, would have done anything for her. Yet everything had gone wrong the day he met her. The railway station refreshment room had been almost empty when he arrived at five o’clock. He knew he was two hours early but, after four months of dreaming, what was a couple of hours? He had no photograph, only her description and his own imagination and, when Trudy arrived a little after six, he dismissed her as too early, too short, and not slim enough to fit the verbal portrait she had painted of herself.

  By ten minutes to seven his nervous anxiety was at fever pitch. He could actually feel the blood pumping through his veins and hear his heart beating, fast and hard. The blood vessels in his cheeks were on fire and his whole body tingled with anticipation. He looked again at the neat little head of the girl in front of him almost wishing she were Trudy.

  As seven o’clock approached, with no sign of Trudy, anxiety finally overcame reticence and he decided to approach the girl, but then she turned with disgust on her face and venom in her voice and his world crashed—it is Trudy!

  As Roger’s front door loomed, a small voice warned her that something was amiss, but the lure of the real Roger drew her on until she found herself pinioned against the faded yellow woodwork by his huge belly. Reaching over, Roger’s pudgy hand inserted the key, and his bulk propelled her forward into the dismal hallway.

  The light faded as the door slammed behind them and the nightmare began. “I’m Roger,” he pronounced, without explanation, apology, or opportunity for her to get used to the idea.

  She screamed.

  “Stop,” he cried in panic.

  She screamed louder.

  “Please stop,” he implored, at a loss.

  She kept screaming.

  “Stop,” he ordered.

  She didn’t stop; one high pitched, hair-raising scream after another. He clasped his hand over her mouth—she bit deeply. He cried out in pain and the screaming started again. He clasped his hand tighter. Screaming through his fingers, biting and kicking, she jerked her head free and smashed a fist into his podgy face. But he held on, squeezing harder and harder—and she was still screaming. A fistful of fat fingers wound tightly around her throat and she let go. Sagging to her knees she went limp, fooled him into loosening his grip, then turned, slamming a knee into his groin, and started screaming again. He grabbed her, more roughly now, forcing her face against his huge belly, holding tightly, his puffy palms covering her ears. She couldn’t breathe; couldn’t hear. Suffocating in a soft pillow of flesh, she lost consciousness.

  “Oh my God! She’s dead,” he breathed, his voice echoing hollowly in the empty hallway, and he buried his face in his hands and burst into tears. Everything he had ever loved—dead. His pet rabbit had died, only a few weeks old. His favourite uncle had died—even the pallbearer carrying him had dropped dead with a heart attack. Mrs. Merryweather’s Alsatian had died, and he was only teasing it. And now Trudy. Sliding apart his fingers he peeked at the crumpled figure in disbelief, willing the clock to turn back just two minutes, hoping the dishevelled pile of laundry would simply rise up and walk back out of the door.

  Anguish, distress, grief, and utter misery coalesced into a single emotion and was replaced within seconds by sheer terror. What would his mother do if she found out? He couldn’t let her find out. She didn’t know about Trudy or the house, and certainly didn’t know about the secret room: his room; his secret.

  His tears dripped onto Trudy’s limp body as he bore her to his secret room, then he tenderly placed her on his bed and knelt on the floor, praying by her side as she slowly came to, hearing him saying, “Please God help me. I didn’t mean to …” then he stopped, transfixed. “You’re alive,” he breathed, and she coughed and spluttered as her asphyxiated windpipe fought to recover.

  “I love you Trudy,” he wept, squeezing her hand and stroking her face. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, honestly.”

  A laser beam of sunlight, the first and only that day, sought out the life raft and startled Roger from his daydream. It flashed on and off as quickly as a lightning streak as it skipped over his face and, by the time he had opened his eyes, it was gone. The laceration in the cloud had patched itself and Roger had no idea what had disturbed him. Struggling to heave his body higher in the raft, he quickly explored the horizon, but couldn’t keep his stinging eyes focussed, so he slid back down and re-lived happier times—the discovery of his house and the secret room of which he was so proud.

  It was early one Friday evening. The spring sunshine had heated the interior of his car, which he had left all day in Junction Road to save fighting for a space in the station car park. He was just opening the window to let out the baked-plastic smell when someone tapped.

  “Excuse me mate,” said the young man, more a boy really, his spotty
fresh face peering down into the car, “do you live here?”

  “No,” he replied. “But can I help?”

  “Well,” continued the youth, “I need someone to …” His words faded as he re-evaluated his idea. “No. It’s O.K. mate.” But then he started again. “I just thought … if you lived here …” He stopped, another sentence unfinished.

  Roger eased his bulk back out of the car, grateful for an opportunity to talk to someone—anyone. “What do you need?” he offered helpfully.

  “It’s just that I have to put up this sign and I want someone to hold the ladder.”

  “Sure, no problem. What’s the sign?”

  Flipping around an estate agent’s “For Sale” sign, he quoted, “For sale,” quite unnecessarily, and continued confidentially. “It’s my first one. I only started this week,” then fished in his pocket. “Here’s my card.”

  “Jefferson & Partners, Estate Agents,” the card announced, “Michael Watson. Associate Salesperson.”

  “How much?” enquired Roger, scanning the scruffy terraced house. “Forty, two thou—” Michael hesitated, failing to finish yet another sentence. “I’m supposed to tell you about it first, before I give you the price. That’s what they taught me at Jefferson’s.”

  “That’s O.K.,” responded Roger, “I can see what it looks like. How much did you say?”

  “Forty two thousand … but I might be able to get them down a bit.”

  “Don’t bother,” said Roger, “I’ll take it.”

  Michael’s laugh turned into a nervous giggle. “Are you having me on?” he enquired, hardly able to conceal his delight—Wait ’til I tell my mum.

  “No,” said Roger, retrieving a chequebook from under the mat in the front of his car. “Who do I make it out to?” he asked, never having bought a house before.

  “I … I … I don’t know,” stammered Michael, never having sold one. “But if you’re serious, maybe we should go back to the office.”