Spencer's List

by Lissa Evans

‘Bill.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Pigs eat paper. Pigs eat bloody anything.’ The perforated walkway of the Palm House clanged beneath their feet, and through the holes a verdant blur was visible. The air was warm, damp and earthy, and Fran savoured it, snuffing the bouquet like a sommelier.

  ‘This is lovely,’ she said. ‘It’s ages since I’ve been to Kew. I’m sure they didn’t used to have parrots.’ There was one just a few feet in front of them, swinging upside down from a custard apple, sweeping its tail to keep balance as it stripped the flesh from the seeds.

  ‘I give him all sorts of treats,’ said Spencer, as if she’d never spoken, ‘Kiwi fruit. Sorrel. Those funny little orange berries in paper lanterns –’

  ‘Physalis.’

  ‘– and he just ignores them. He’s eaten the whole of the back cover now.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a study about rats eating –’

  ‘Cornflake packets, yes. Probably apocryphal, and anyway they’re made of cardboard. This has got that thick shiny paper, very toxic-looking.’ He pulled at his lower lip. ‘Maybe he’s missing some vital nutrient. Maybe he’s a Greek tortoise, and I’m subjecting him to an African diet. The only manual I could find was written for seven-year-olds; it’s got cartoons of people holding out carrots, and tortoises saying “thank you”.’

  There was a fretful note in Spencer’s voice that was quite new to Fran; she glanced at him, covertly. He was looking tired and pasty, his hair was sticking up at the back, and he seemed to exude an air of watchful anxiety, like a guard with no one to report to. These days she saw only occasional glimpses of the amused detachment which she’d always regarded as part of his nature and which had sometimes made her feel like a performing flea by comparison, hopping wrathfully around his knees.

  ‘So what did Mark feed him on?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, any old rubbish I think.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I know, I know, I’m not being logical,’ said Spencer, ‘but he’s had a change of environment. Maybe he’s disturbed.’

  Fran gave him a look. ‘You are kidding.’

  ‘Well, how would we know? He could be going psychotic.’ He mooched a couple of paces. ‘Very, very slowly.’

  Fran cackled, slightly relieved, and then leaned over the rail, her attention caught by a school party thirty feet below. Although she could only see the tops of their heads, the body language of the group was horribly familiar – the still, small central core of attentive students, notebooks poised, eyes fixed on the teacher; the restive nature of the next couple of rows, whispering amongst themselves, sharing crisps, leashed to the nucleus only by a lack of bravado; then the fraying edge of the party, the drifting outer layer of serious inattention and potential vandalism; finally the free radicals, already out of voice range, and hidden from horizontal view by the vast leaves of a banana tree. As Fran watched, the free radicals darted to the door of the Palm House and ran outside with an audible crunch of gravel.

  ‘How do you cope?’ asked Spencer, nodding in the direction of the escapees. ‘You must get this kind of stuff all the time.’

  ‘I don’t do what gingernut there’s doing, for a start.’

  Spencer peered at the red-haired teacher, who was pointing limply at the soaring trunk beside him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, he’s ignoring the troublemakers and only speaking to the swots. The back row’s never going to be spontaneously interested in –’ she groped for an example ‘– osmosis versus capillary action, or whatever he’s talking about, so he ought to be dragging them in to the subject – asking them direct questions, using analogies, making them swap places with the front row.’ She paused for breath.

  ‘Getting a bit passionate?’ suggested Spencer.

  ‘Yeah. And purposeful. He’s just hoping that if he doesn’t look at the problem, it’ll go away. He’s not addressing the issue.’ Her voice was firm with conviction.

  Spencer straightened up and stretched. ‘The first time we met –’ he began.

  Fran swung round with the start of a grin. ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘– I was watering my window box, happy in my own little way –’

  ‘I know. That was the funniest thing about it.’

  ‘– nurturing my own little patch of green, when this severe voice from the next window along –’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘– informs me that everything in my window box is a weed –’

  ‘Not just a weed.’

  ‘– and that I should bin the whole lot and start again.’

  ‘A particularly malicious and rampant and non-native, wind-dispersed weed that was liable to spring up in every window box within a forty-mile radius if you didn’t destroy it.’

  ‘As you conveyed to me in a passionate and yet deeply purposeful way.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘No, it was impressive. And slightly intimidating’.

  ‘Oh rubbish.’

  ‘You’d be surprised. After all, I’ve never forgotten it.’

  ‘Well I’m glad,’ she said, rather primly, ‘otherwise North London would now be a sea of waist-deep Himalayan balsam and it would all be your fault. Shall we go and get a cup of tea?’

  They passed the school party on the way out and had to push their way between blazers as if through dense undergrowth.

  ‘If you compare the porous surface of this leaf with the thick waxy covering that we saw on the succulents in the previous –’ the door clanged on the teacher’s earnest, ineffectual voice.

  ‘He was quite cute,’ said Spencer.

  ‘Oh, I’ve never really gone for ginger.’

  ‘He was one of mine anyway.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Spencer shook his head mysteriously, declining to pass on the secret. It was a long-standing grievance of Fran’s, this purported ability of Spencer’s to instantly gauge the sexuality of any male within fifty yards.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Fran, ‘we’ve got no way of proving it.’

  ‘I don’t need proof. I know.’

  From the Palm House, avenues of trees radiated like the ribs of a fan, a carefully planned vista at the end of each. They set off toward the Orangery, walking beside a row of vast horse chestnuts that flickered with squirrels.

  ‘So what’s this about Dalston?’ There was a lighter note in Spencer’s voice, as if he knew he was about to be diverted.

  ‘Oh bloody hell. Well we’ve just had the house valued.’

  ‘And it’s bad, is it?’

  ‘It’s worth thirty thousand less than we paid for it. Thirty thousand. So that’s that, we’ll never sell it. We’ll be there for ever – I’ll be dragging my Zimmer frame to collect my pension in bloody E8.’ She turned a gimlet eye on Spencer. ‘Please, please don’t say “I told you so” – though you did, obviously.’

  ‘I just said I thought it wasn’t a good idea buying with someone you didn’t know all that well. In your case, your brother.’

  ‘I know,’ she said glumly.

  ‘I wasn’t sure what you’d find to talk about.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I didn’t know why you wanted to live in Dalston.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Sorry. What I was trying to say was, I didn’t predict the market was going to crash. Anyway, go on.’

  She shrugged her shoulders, as if settling a burden. ‘Well, you were right of course. As usual. Infuriatingly. We don’t have anything to talk about – it’s not that we fight or anything, it’s just that we can’t…’ She paused, mentally reviewing their stiff little conversations about work or films or newspapers, none of which ever seemed to flow into anything easier or more profound.

  ‘You can’t banter?’

  ‘Yes, that’s part of it. We can’t be trivial, we can’t have a laugh. It all has to be topics.’ She booted an early conker several yards, and it rebounded off a tree trunk and split apart.

  ‘Go
od shot.’

  ‘It’s as if we’re working through a list of subjects. And he’s so slow. I don’t mean dim, he’s obviously not dim, just… steady. One-paced. He has to think through everything. When I’m talking to him I sometimes feel like one of those dogs that runs three hundred yards for every ten feet the owner walks. They both get to the same place but they never cover the same ground. And he broods over things. Brings them up weeks later when I’ve forgotten all about them.’ She paused before her final accusation. ‘And you can’t take the piss out of him.’

  ‘No,’ said Spencer, ‘I can see that.’ He always felt a bit sorry for Peter, whose social life seemed to consist solely of visits to B&Q and whose large, round, rather troubled face always reminded him of a radar dish, swivelling ponderously to follow the conversation.

  ‘I mean, he’s a nice man,’ amended Fran, struggling to be fair. ‘He is, isn’t he?’

  ‘Very nice,’ agreed Spencer gravely.

  ‘And I know he works terribly hard on the house and he never complains. And apart from the gargling…’

  ‘And nose-blowing,’ added Spencer, who had stayed over a couple of times.

  ‘And nose-blowing, thank you Spence, he’s quite easy to live with. It’s just that now I know that we can’t move…’

  ‘He’s not the cell mate you would have chosen.’

  ‘No.’

  They walked a while in silence together. Spencer remembered that when he had voiced his initial fears, Fran had confidently – even loftily – assured him that it was a business proposition and that she would treat it as such. ‘Like going to work in Saudi Arabia, Spence, but with looser alcohol laws.’ She had never, as far as he was aware, ever taken the slightest notice of anyone else’s advice, but had thrown herself headlong into problems, mastering them through sheer force of personality. He aimed a kick at a conker, missed and took an awkward extra step forward, shooting out his elbows to keep balance. Fran’s mouth twitched.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Spencer, ‘that your usual response to difficulties is to pick up your pitchfork and go wading in, whereas this is a situation that requires retrenchment and calm. As far as I can see, it’s not immediately soluble. It may even require a change of government –’ Fran snorted ‘ – but in the meantime you need…’ he hesitated over the apposite phrase, ‘a modus operandum. It’s quite a big house, there’s only two of you. If you regard Peter as a reasonably quiet lodger with one or two irritating habits then it might seem quite bearable. After all, what would you be doing if the price hadn’t dropped? You’d have held out for a bit longer, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Suppose so.’

  ‘Unless, say…’ he paused, as if searching for a random example, ‘you’d decided to move in with Duncan.’

  ‘Oh very funny. Anyway, he’s living in a tent at the moment. In Denmark.’

  ‘Poor Duncan, used for sex and then flung aside like an old shoe.’ He shook his head and gazed wistfully into the distance. ‘Lying in a Danish bog, his heart broken.’

  ‘Pity his biro isn’t broken as well,’ she said, sourly.

  He looked at her with affection. ‘It’s amazing. The woman who complains about being sent love letters. Bet you read them all, though.’ It was impossible to make Fran blush, but she looked discomfited.

  ‘Most of them,’ she muttered, and Spencer laughed.

  They sat outside with their teas, at a plastic table, one of a cluster. Most were unoccupied, the flyblown tops dotted with sparrows, but at the one furthest from the Orangery door sat the two escapees from the Palm House, hands clasped, foreheads almost touching, eyes intertwined. Fran nudged Spencer to make sure he’d seen. He looked at them, ruminatively, and then turned back to her.

  ‘Have you ever fancied someone with a twitch?’

  She laughed and then stopped. ‘Oh, you’re serious?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of twitch?’

  ‘Quite minor – bursts of blinking.’

  ‘Well… that sounds OK. If he looked like a Greek God and was tremendous in the sack I could probably cope. Who is he, then?’

  Spencer fiddled with the plastic spoon. He had thought about Blinky – Miles – a couple of times since yesterday, rather in the way that one lifts a plaster and checks a wound to see whether it’s started to heal. ‘Oh no one really,’ he said. ‘It’s all hypothetical at the moment.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m just…’ What could he say? That his emotional life currently felt as rich and vivid as an empty cardboard box? That his libido was taking an open-ended sabbatical? That his tortoise was the only Hung and Heavy fan still living in the flat? ‘I’m just not interested.’ He downed his tea like medicine and set the cup back on the saucer with a clunk.

  Fran looked at him narrowly. ‘You can’t just drop this bloke into the conversation and then run away.’

  ‘Which bloke?’

  ‘The Hypothetical Blinking Man.’

  ‘Oh him.’ He waved a hand dismissively, wishing he hadn’t brought up the subject; Fran’s terrier instincts had been roused.

  ‘Who is he, then?’

  ‘Oh he’s a… fictional character.’

  ‘Really? Do tell me.’ She folded her arms and leaned forward.

  ‘He’s the hero of a little-known fifties sci-fi film. Cult viewing. A gay scientist walks through a radioactive cloud while out shopping.’

  ‘Shopping for what?’

  ‘Table mats.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Selfridges.’

  ‘Right.’ She nodded with well-faked understanding. ‘Well, that all hangs together nicely. Thanks for explaining.’

  ‘No problem.’ He stood and straightened his jacket. ‘Shall we go?’

  By the lake, a Burberry-clad elderly lady was feeding tiny cubes of sponge cake to a yelling, stamping mob of Canada Geese. Spencer, reminded of the pigeons, stopped to watch.

  ‘Look how leathery their feet are,’ said Fran.

  ‘Yeah, they look like they’re wearing biker boots.’ Behind the squabbling ranks, two dark leggy birds were mincing around, radiating disapproval. ‘And those ones –’ he said.

  ‘Moorhens,’ supplied Fran.

  ‘– they look like they’re wearing high-heeled mules. And they’re hanging around, waiting for the Philippino maid –’

  ‘That’s a mandarin duck.’

  ‘– to get the cake for them.’

  ‘What about the pigeons? What do they wear?’

  ‘Trainers,’ said Spencer, firmly. ‘Supermarket own brand.’

  ‘Sparrows?’

  ‘Barefoot.’ His eyes met Fran’s in unspoken acknowledgement; this was exactly the sort of conversation Mark had always enjoyed, though his suggestions would have been far ruder.

  They resumed walking towards the Victoria Gate, where the turnstile was a bottleneck of buggies.

  ‘So what’s next on the list, then?’ asked Fran, weaving between toddlers. ‘Mark’s list, I mean.’

  ‘I’m going to bite the bullet and do Madame Tussaud’s.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Are you volunteering?’

  She looked at him nobly. ‘Spence, if you want me I’ll be there.’

  ‘Thanks, friend.’ He gave her arm a squeeze. ‘I’ll try not to ask. Madame Tussaud’s and then the Lord Mayor’s Show. And then the Norwegian tree that goes up in Trafalgar Square at Christmas. Oh God, and the sloth, I must visit the sloth.’ He had a sudden vision of Mark propped up by pillows in his hospital bed, on the phone to London Zoo. He had wanted to sponsor an elephant for Spencer to visit, but was defeated by the price. ‘Have you got anything smaller and cheaper?’ he’d asked, as if to a greengrocer, and had finally settled on half a sloth – the other half had already been adopted – as an ironic comment on Spencer’s sleeping patterns. ‘I want you to treat that sloth like a brother,’ he’d said, quite sternly. ‘I
’ll be watching.’ ‘So Madame Tussaud’s, the zoo, the Lord Mayor’s Show and then the tree. I ought to make a list. I’ll buy a notebook at the station.’ He felt suddenly jittery, obligations rising out of the ground before him like mist.

  Uncharacteristically, Fran took his arm as they walked up the road to the tube, passing alongside the plane trees that cast shadows across the road like the stripes of a zebra crossing.

  ‘What happens at the end of that sci-fi film?’ she asked. ‘Does he get the boy?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t be bothered to sit through it,’ said Spencer.

  4

  The resolutions – a litany of failure – were recorded on successive pages at the back of her address book.

  1986

  Get up 15 minutes earlier

  Evening class

  Make boys eat more fruit

  Wash kitchen floor twice a week

  1987

  ?drop Friday visit to Dad

  Encourage boys to watch less TV

  ?Evening class

  1988

  ?Evening class

  talk to Dr Petty re raise

  Talk to boys re college options

  ?suggest 1 night a week no TV

  Make boys eat more fruit

  ?drop Friday visit to Dad

  Get up 10 minutes earlier

  ?new kitchen floor

  1989

  See 1988

  1990

  Iris turned over a page, wrote:

  at the top and then stared for a while at the blank space beneath it. She added:

  1

  and then decided, after a further pause, that she really ought to clean the flat. For an hour or so she gathered up items and dumped them in their correct places and surged round with a hoover and banged cupboard doors, secure in the knowledge that nothing that didn’t involve actual explosives was capable of waking the boys on a Saturday morning. She even removed a pillow from under Robin’s head, changed the pillowcase and then replaced it without any alteration in the rhythm of his breathing.

  Feeling self-indulgent, she paused for a moment and watched him sleeping, his expression placid, a couple of scabbed shaving cuts just under his chin. She sometimes tried to see the twins as others saw them – friends had told her that they were quite handsome – but it seemed to involve a trick of the eyes, a de-focusing equivalent to that of visualizing the 3D shape in a ‘Magic Eye’ picture, difficult to sustain for more than a second or two and resulting in an image much less recognizable than that of a leaping dolphin. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of two square-jawed almost-men, but most of the time she could see only Robin and Tom, enormous versions of the scarlet roarers who’d arrived seven minutes apart, seventeen years, three hundred and sixty-four days and fourteen hours ago – still hungry, still dependent; quantitatively but not qualitatively changed. As she watched, Robin sneezed in his sleep and turned over, dislodging an avalanche of dirty washing from the end of the bed. Iris scooped up the crumpled clothes and returned with them to the kitchen, stuffing them into an already overfull machine. Then, as the steady whirl and thump reverberated through the room she returned to the open address book.