by Lissa Evans
As the ambulance drew away, Spencer could see the fifth member of their party, the English one, sitting on the steps of St Martin’s beside the nun. Taken in isolation he was clearly not as glossy as the others, and sported a bristly black crew-cut and a Nivenesque moustache. He caught Spencer’s eye and waved, then was obscured for a moment as a yellow-and-purple bus drove between them, venting a huge cloud of exhaust from its rear end. It took Spencer a second or two to realize it was the London Pride.
‘Hey!’ he said, feebly, but the bus had already swung round the corner and headed off towards Pall Mall, the lit upper deck completely empty.
‘I believe the tour-bus driver can be dragged through the courts on a number of counts,’ said Greg conversationally, his personalized ballpoint poised above a notebook. The party was wedged in the corner of a smoky pub on the Strand, all swirly carpets and chipped glass ashtrays, a couple of hundred yards from the site of the accident. With much the same speed and efficiency as the ambulance men had displayed, Spencer had been scooped up by the American party, introduced to each of them, congratulated on his role as Good Samaritan and bought a double vodka.
‘Count one, failure to give a statement to the police after an accident. Count two, theft of property – that is, the burnt-orange scarf which my aged maternal grandmother knitted for me with her own, arthritic hands and which I left draped over the back of the seat. And count three, failure under the trades descriptions act – is that the correct name for it, Miles? – ’ the Niven-moustache man nodded ‘– failure under the trades descriptions act to deliver the stated promise of sixty sights in sixty minutes.’
‘We saw one sight in one minute,’ said Miles, ‘so I suppose the ratio was correct.’ He had an occasional twitch, Spencer noticed, a tendency to screw up his eyes and then blink rapidly.
‘I always hated that scarf,’ said Greg’s partner Reuben, a spectacularly handsome blond. ‘I’d say it was worth paying five pounds never to see that scarf again. I might even have paid twenty.’
‘You never told me.’
‘I didn’t want to hurt you, Greg, because I know how sensitive you are about your grandmother’s presents. Besides, if you got rid of it she might have knitted you another one in an even uglier colour.’
‘Oh it all comes tumbling out now…’
Under the laughter, Miles leaned across to Spencer. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, quietly.
‘Yes, fine.’ He’d started to think about how long it was since he’d been in a pub, just sitting and chatting. Months, probably. Maybe as long ago as Easter. ‘Just drifting off a bit.’
‘Doing long hours at the moment?’ Seen in close-up, the moustache was more George Orwell than David Niven.
‘Peculiar hours, really.’ Miles raised his eyebrows interrogatively. ‘I’m working in Casualty, so it’s a shift system – we do a whole day, then a morning, then a whole night, then an afternoon. It’s a clever way of ensuring that we’re all tired, all the time.’
‘So you’re a surgeon?’
‘No, no, thank God,’ said Spencer, horrified at the suggestion. ‘A G P trainee – I start in General Practice in February. This’ll be my last hospital job ever, I hope.’
‘I heard that “thank God”,’ said Reuben accusingly. ‘You realize that if it wasn’t for surgery we wouldn’t be here? We actually met Miles at a surgical conference in Carmel. Admittedly he thought it was just a casual acquaintanceship and didn’t realize that three months later we’d arrive on his doorstep demanding entertainment.’
‘But he’s such a gentleman,’ said the one with the beard, whose name Spencer had forgotten. ‘Never a word of complaint. Not even when he realized we were staying the extra month. And bringing the maid.’
They all laughed and Miles twitched modestly.
‘What sort of surgeon are you?’ asked Spencer.
‘Eyes,’ said Miles. ‘I don’t know anything about legs, so I stayed clear of the accident.’
Spencer stared. Blinky Blaine. It had to be.
‘We’re walking in London at night,’ said Reuben excitedly, as they left the pub. ‘Everyone told us not to do it because it’s supposed to be too dangerous. But look, here we are!’ He waved his hands in mock terror.
‘You’re a bunch of fucking poofs,’ said a passing man.
‘Thanks for the info, Mr Ugly,’ replied Reuben.
‘If you’re going to Piccadilly then the theatre’s on your way, isn’t it?’ asked Miles. He and Spencer were slightly ahead of the others.
‘Mmm,’ said Spencer, distracted. He knew he had to do it. ‘Can I ask you something? You’re not… your surname’s not Blaine, is it?’
‘That’s right,’ said Miles, surprised. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because you used to treat a friend of mine.’ And he used to do impressions of you for days afterwards, he didn’t add. ‘I don’t know if you remember him – Mark Avery?’
‘Mark? Oh, of course I remember him.’ Miles blinked, and gave his moustache a stroke. ‘He wasn’t the forgettable sort.’
‘I know,’ said Spencer.
‘I heard he’d died. I was very sorry.’
Spencer felt his eyes begin to fill, as usual. ‘Yeah,’ he said lamely, ‘me too.’
‘How long ago was it?’
‘Four months.’
‘Not long.’
‘No.’
There was a pause, during which his nose began to run in sympathy. He searched ineffectually for a tissue, and was rescued by Miles, who wordlessly passed across a handkerchief. It was the ironed, monogrammed kind, on which it seems sacrilegious to wipe one’s snot, and Spencer dabbed tentatively rather than blew.
‘Thanks.’ He wondered what to do with it; he could hardly give it back.
‘You’re welcome. My mother gives me twelve every Christmas.’
‘Oh, OK. Thanks.’ He tucked it into his pocket and smiled awkwardly. ‘It was the double vodka, I think.’
‘Nothing wrong with a good weep.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I tell myself. About eight times a day.’
‘So how long had you known Mark?’
‘Oh – about ten years now.’ He found himself sighing involuntarily – a deep, almost theatrical exhalation – something he did so often lately that last week he’d spent a fruitless couple of hours rooting through the hospital library trying to find a physiological explanation for the habit.
‘And where did you meet?’
‘An ABBA concert. Such a cliché, I know. I was standing behind him in the choc-ice queue and he needed some change. He was wearing an Agnetha wig and a badge that played the first line of “Fernando”.’
Miles nodded in recognition. ‘I had one of those.’
‘And we were lovers for a while but that didn’t really work out. And then we were friends, and that… lasted.’ He nodded, too many times.
They walked in silence for a while, retracing their steps past Trafalgar Square. Behind them Greg and Reuben were struggling with the harmonization of ‘Feed the Birds’.
‘Mark wasn’t a doctor, was he?’ asked Miles, suddenly.
‘No, a civil servant. Why?’
‘I was just remembering – he always came to see me with a typed list of questions, with the medical terminology absolutely correct, all very well researched. Was that you?’
‘Well, I helped. But he was a great list man. Never happy without a ruled page in front of him. You know the type.’
Miles nodded.
‘In fact…’ Spencer hesitated. Mark was his specialist subject, his favourite topic; given the slightest encouragement, he could talk about him all day, every day, any aspect, any amount of detail. Yet sometimes, mid-monologue, he would detach himself, draw back and wonder whether the listener was actually listening, or whether they were simply indulging a grieving friend, letting him yammer on therapeutically.
‘What?’
He realized that Miles was still waiting for him to continue.
> ‘Oh, well… he’s the reason I was on that bus at all. He organized this year for me. He said he didn’t want me moping round, so he made out a list of all the things I’d never done in London. I promised to tick them off within twelve months.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Oh, touristy things… Madame Tussaud’s… Harrods Food Harrods the Tower of London… Pie and Mash shop –’
‘You’re kidding!’ Laughter increased the twitch.
‘Oh, I’m barely scraping the surface here. It’s two pages long: Changing of the Guard… Billingsgate fish market… Lord Mayor’s Show… Cockney Pub –’
‘What’s that?’
‘Fake pearly kings playing the old Joanna.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘He said he wanted to break me of my middle-class gay cultural snobbery. And get me out of my flat.’
‘And how many have you done so far?’
‘About half a page.’
‘Any recommendations?’
‘Yes, don’t go and see The Mousetrap. It’s shit.’
Miles laughed and then stopped suddenly, as if bitten. ‘Oh. I just got it.’
‘What?’
‘Mark and Spencer.’ He caught Spencer’s eye. ‘Sorry.’
‘Good to meet you, and many thanks for the display of traditional nun-wrestling,’ said Greg, shaking his hand as they stood amidst the crowd outside Phantom of the Opera.
‘And are you two going to stay in touch?’ asked the bearded one, archly. Spencer glanced at Miles, a bit embarrassed, and then looked away.
‘Spencer knows where I work,’ said Miles, with dignity. ‘And if he wants company when he watches the Changing of the Guard, he can ring me there.’
‘Guards? Changing?’ said Reuben, looking round wildly. ‘Where? And why wasn’t I invited?’
Spencer could hear the phone ringing as he approached the outer door of the thirties mansion block in which he lived. His flat was on the ground floor but by the time he’d fiddled with two sets of keys, the answerphone had clicked on and he entered the living room to the sound of his god-daughter’s piercing voice: ‘Helloo! Spence-a!’ then, aside, ‘There’s no one there,’ and Niall’s voice hissing in the background, ‘Leave a message then.’
Spencer picked up the phone. ‘Hello, Nina, I’m here.’ There was breathing at the other end. ‘It’s really me,’ he said, ‘not the answerphone.’ There was a further pause, and then Niall took the phone.
‘Well you’ve really puzzled her now. Not there/there; she’s completely thrown. (Do you want to say hello to Spencer? No?) She’s off, I’m afraid, no stopping her, straight to the kitchen to see what Nick’s doing. Anyway –’ he took a pause for breath ‘– how are you?’
‘All right.’
‘Only all right?’
‘Well,’ said Spencer cautiously, ‘all right’s quite good on the scale of things, I think.’
‘How’s that list going?’
‘I’ve fed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square and… well, just the pigeons really, since I last saw you.’
‘Are you up for a bash on Saturday? We thought we’d go to a salsa club. The sitter’s booked. You could stay over, see Nina at breakfast.’
Spencer paused. ‘Can I think about it?’
‘Ah no, that means you won’t come, I know you. Go on, it’ll do you good. It’s only the Cally Road – two stops on the tube and you’re there. Bit of a dance, tip a few beers down you, see those Brazilian boys in their little shorts.’
‘Well I’m not –’
‘And Nina was only saying yesterday that she wanted to show you her new backpack with the teddies on that she currently only takes off to get into the bath, and to be honest the bloody thing’s going to disintegrate before too long so you should take your chance while you can.’
Niall was like a tidal wave, and Spencer gave up. ‘All right then.’
‘Yes! Result, Nick!’ He heard a distant cheer. ‘Right, well I’ll give you a ring on Saturday, make the arrangements.’
‘OK.’ He wondered if he’d be able to fake a last-minute cold. Or a bout of gastroenteritis.
‘See you then.’
‘Bye.’
Spencer put the phone down, and stood for a moment, listening to the chirrup of the crickets. He’d grown so used to the sound that these days he only noticed it after the cessation of something loud, like Niall, or when it ceased altogether, signalling a visit to Pet World. He roused himself to inspect his inheritance, which took up most of the wall space in the living room: a series of glass tanks containing, respectively, a spider, a small green lizard (together with three as yet uneaten crickets), five African landsnails, and a very expensive chameleon that remained resolutely the same colour despite the wide variety of attractive backgrounds that Spencer had provided. On the wall above them was a colour-coded chart, detailing in Mark’s four-square handwriting their hygiene requirements and dietary whims.
None of them seemed to have died or deteriorated since the morning, but it was rather hard to tell. As pets went, he had to admit they were pretty dull; he looked after them conscientiously and, in return, they stayed in exactly the same place, twenty-four hours a day. The chameleon sometimes swivelled its eyes, and Spencer had once seen the spider apparently biting its fingernails, but that was it. The only one to whom he’d become attached was the tortoise, who lived not in a tank, but behind the magazine rack. He was also the only one to have a name: Bill, after Mark’s grandfather, reputedly the slowest driver in the world. On first moving into Spencer’s flat, Bill had roamed widely, often taking up a hopeful position just beside the fridge, and occasionally venturing as far as the bedroom where he had lurked among the shoes. After Spencer had stepped on him, one bleary contact lens-less morning, Bill’s chosen territory had narrowed, and now he was seen only rarely, a wrinkled head peering round the edge of Reptile Monthly, checking that Spencer’s feet were nowhere in sight. This evening he was invisible, though the pages of one of the magazines were moving slightly.
Spencer kicked off his shoes and went into the kitchen. He kept the London list pinned to the tea and coffee cupboard and he put a tick by ‘Feeding Pigeons’. His pencil hovered beside ‘Sight Seeing Bus’. Did this evening’s micro-journey count? He had a horrible feeling that it didn’t. After all, if he’d paid for his ticket for The Mousetrap and then the performance had been cancelled due to a bomb scare, he wouldn’t, in all conscience, have been able to claim he’d seen it. Though he’d still have been able to guess every single jackbooted nuance of its apology for a plot. ‘I could’ve sicked up a better play,’ as Fran had put it. No, it was the act of actually sitting through the experience that really counted. He compromised by appending a very small tick, and then put the pencil back in the drawer.
Next to the list was a photo of Mark, and he looked at it for a while. It had been taken only a couple of months before he died but it showed someone who appeared not ill, but introspective. A shadow pattern of leaves lay over his face, softening the sharp cheekbones, camouflaging the Kaposi’s that splotched the left side of his nose, and he looked at the camera with gravity. A beautiful look, full of self-knowledge and dignity. And yet… the leaves were those of St James’s Park, and Mark’s reason for going there was in the hope of seeing one of the resident pelicans swallow a pigeon whole, as they were rumoured occasionally to do. Spencer smiled faintly, and then it suddenly occurred to him that Miles was probably the last person, ever, who would make the Mark and Spencer joke.
He took half a lettuce from the fridge and, returning to the living room, dropped it into the snails’ tank. Horns weaving, they glided towards it and began a slow-motion feast, gummy mouths pasting the leaves with mucus. He peered closer. What had appeared at a casual glance to be tomato seeds scattered across the glass floor seemed, on closer inspection, to be clusters of glutinous eggs. The phone rang, and he reached for it without taking his eyes away from the tank.
‘Hi, Spence.’
&nbs
p; ‘Oh Fran, I’m glad it’s you. I think my snails are having snails.’
‘What, right now? Are you sending out for towels and hot water?’
‘No. They’re still at the egg stage. Hundreds of them.’
‘Kill them now.’
‘Do you think I should?’
‘Well they’re not going to be easy to find homes for. Maybe nearer Christmas…’
Spencer sighed. ‘How do you think I should kill them?’
‘A doctor asks me that.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘Pour boiling water over them. That’s what I do with slugs – they sort of dissolve.’
‘Oh God, how disgusting. Let’s change the subject.’ He sank onto the sofa.
‘You all right, Spence?’
‘Yeah. Just tired. What about you?’
‘Gotta have a talk. I’ve just found out I’m in Dalston for life.’
‘What?’
‘Can we meet up? I haven’t seen you since we went all the way to Poets’ Corner and it was closed.’
Spencer ignored this dig. ‘Daytime? I could do tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Yeah, all right, I can wangle that. They owe me at the moment. And Spence…’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I choose the venue?’
He sat limply on the sofa for a while after putting the phone down, listening to the soft crunch of snails eating lettuce. After a while, another sound penetrated his consciousness, a slow rustling. He concentrated hard, and tracked it down to the magazine rack; Bill was eating the back cover of Hung and Heavy, working his way up a chain of small ads. There seemed no enthusiasm in the task, no light in the boot-button eyes – it was as if he were at work, in a dull and relentless job with no holiday on the horizon. The cucumber and carrot which had been placed on a saucer beside him only that morning, lay limp and ignored. Was he missing Mark too? Did tortoises eat paper?
3
‘Do tortoises eat paper?’
‘Is this Bill we’re talking about, or some theoretical tortoise?’
