The Secret Life of the Panda

by Nick Jackson

  She kicked as he dragged her out of the hutch but crouched still in his arms when he held her tight against him. He could feel the throbbing of her heart and the bones of her legs, and the fur on her belly was warm and damp.

  He stroked the long floppy ears and watched the network of pulsating veins.

  In the dim dark back of the hutch something stirred. There was a feeble rustling in the straw. The doe stiffened in his arms. Someone was rattling the garage door.

  How do you get in there? came a man’s voice from the driveway.

  There’s a key to the padlock, see? It was Carol’s voice.

  There was a brief struggle on the other side of the doors. They shook backwards and forwards as though two people were locked in an embrace and one of them was fighting for possession of a key.

  Alexander bundled the doe back into her hutch and flung himself under the workbench where he crouched among the wood shavings and old tins of paint.

  Got it!

  Don’t shout! You’ll scare the rabbit. She’s got young ones.

  I won’t shout, I won’t… as long as you come quiet.

  Carol laughed, a kind of giggle that Alexander hadn’t heard before.

  The doors of the garage swung open and in the brief blinding flash of daylight, Alex saw them: Carol was wearing a new dress in lime green with pink stripes down the front. Her hair had been curled and her lips looked very red in the shocked white of her face.

  If my Dad catches us here, he’ll kill us.

  Well, he won’t, will he? He’s tucked up in bed feeling poorly. And him a doctor.

  Doctors can get ill too, you know.

  It was Vic, in a pair of pin-striped trousers and a white shirt with a thin black strip of a tie knotted tight at the neck. His hair was combed forward into a stiff quiff.

  Your old man really should get someone to have a look at the stuff in here. He could flog some of it. Vic picked up a tall vase with gilt handles.

  Put that down for Christ’s sake. We’ll get into real trouble if he knows we’ve been in here.

  Better be quick then.

  Alexander’s knees were being pricked by the woodshavings and his neck was stiff with crouching down and trying to peer past the paint tins to see what was going on.

  They were standing against an old kitchen cupboard against the opposite wall. Carol was sitting on the worktop. Vic’s buttocks appeared, pale in the gloom. A single beam of sunlight pierced the darkness. It illuminated Vic’s right hand as he gripped the smooth brown knee that began to quiver and spasm.

  Carol whimpered and Alexander wondered whether he should do something. He gripped a rusty chisel that he found in the sawdust but somehow he knew that he would do nothing, that he would wait, crouching under the workbench with the stench of motor oil in his nostrils, until they had finished whatever it was they were doing that seemed to involve so much agony and straining.

  Finally they were still, gulping and groaning into each other’s necks.

  Alexander shifted his position and knelt on a nail sticking up through a piece of wood.

  What was that?

  What?

  A cry. There’s someone in here. Under that workbench.

  It’s the rabbit. She gets anxious. I said we should keep quiet. We should get out of here quick. I think I can hear my dad calling.

  What does he want? Stupid old fart.

  I should get him his tea. Will you come round tomorrow?

  I may.

  Do come. Her pleading tones faded as they stepped out, brushing down their clothes and patting their hair.

  The garage door banged shut behind them.

  Alexander crept out from his hiding place. He opened the door of the hutch and stretched his hand into the mound of hay at the back of the box. The doe hopped to one side to avoid his exploring hand and he found, with trembling fingers, the squirming bundles of fur. He stroked them gently while the rabbit scrabbled against the plywood wall. Then he latched the hutch door and left silently.

  *

  In the grey dusk he looked out of his bedroom window and saw Carol standing in the middle of the lawn. She wore a dress on which strange red flowers bloomed and she was carrying something which Alexander couldn’t quite see. She knelt and dug a hole in the flower bed with a trowel and placed four small parcels in the hole, covering them with the sandy soil.

  Goodnight, Alexander. His mother kissed him, a smooth dry peck on the cheek. She stood for a moment under the raffia lampshade on the landing and smoothed the front of her dress, touching the large buttons, just before she switched off the light he saw her turn towards him and smile into the darkness.

  When he closed his eyes, the four little headless bodies were there, ranged on the straw. The disembodied heads were twitching and he leaned close to hear that they were singing in their thin voices. Their voices seemed to come from a great distance like the light of the stars and the words were sad and full of a meaning which he sensed it would take him years to unravel. He snuggled into the blankets and nestled his head in the pillows and it was not long before his breathing was slow and regular. The high voices died away softly and the stars burned.

  Flaubert’s Poison

  The tragic heroine cramming the arsenic powder into her mouth by the handful and then waiting for death haunted him, as he lay on the sofa. The pages of the book were mottled, the edges curling. He even thought he caught a whiff of nineteenth century adultery in the peppery smell of old paperbacks. He went for long winter walks on the deserted beach, over the hills of shingle, beyond the shooting range to the eroded cliffs and the remnants of concrete bunkers that had been used to keep a look out for the Germans but now reeked of stale urine. During these walks he looked out over the turbid North Sea and thought of darkness and death.

  He was lying on the lounge carpet and watching Pan’s People dancing to “My Sweet Lord” when his mother came in. “You should go out and meet people,” she said, sliding back the smoked glass of the cocktail cabinet, “It’s no good sitting around here moping.”

  Next door’s cat appeared outside on the window sill and reached up to scratch the pane of glass with its claws, setting his teeth on edge.

  “If you go to the youth club or a disco you’ll meet people and make friends,” she said with a bright smile; Mrs Robson was fond of believing that she’d arrived at the solution to a problem. She poured a measure of Cinzano Bianco and smoothed the shag-pile with her foot. “You’ll enjoy it once you’re there.” The cat reached up again, pressing its belly against the window pane to put all its force into the front claws.

  The A level grades he’d got were mediocre, except for biology, and it seemed that his hopes of going to university to study French literature were going to be disappointed. Through a friend of his mother’s he got a job in a fish research laboratory. His main duty was cleaning, but he was also responsible for feeding the cod that swam around in the big cold tanks under a low ceiling bisected by iron girders. He also had to make a record of the temperature in a bound log book. He did this with a green-ink pen and when he forgot he would fill the log in with made-up temperatures. Sometimes the fish swam to the surface to look at him with their mournful eyes. They seemed to be mouthing tales of longing—their dreams of the glass-green sea.

  There was a girl working in the canteen called Martina who had a similar expression to the misty-eyed cod. And she’d brown crinkly hair—which he thought very Biblical.

  “Yes?” she snapped, when he went to the canteen on his first day. “Can I help you?”

  “Cup of tea, please.”

  She pushed hair back off her forehead: “You’re new,” she said critically. “What’s your name?”

  At school, boys had called him ‘pin-head’ because his head was too small for his long body and broad shoulders. He was glad, at such times, that there was no one to stick their oar in and contradict him when he mumbled, “Kelvin.”

  “Would you like a doughnut, Kelvin?” She offered it because
he had a hungry look. “These are stale. They were to going to be chucked out.”

  “Ta,” he said.

  While he was drinking the tea, she went round the tables with a cloth and soapy water in an old margarine container and wiped the formica, leaning across and smearing the tea stains with her bosom.

  “How’s the tea?” she asked as she cleared the crumbs.

  “Lukewarm.”

  “Well?” she opened her mouth, showing the gum she was chewing. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “Nothing, I suppose.”

  “Where are you working this afternoon?” she said and sucked a strand of hair that had come loose from the white cap.

  “In the annex, cleaning the study room,” he lied.

  “Only I finish at three and I can come and bring you any of the sandwiches we don’t sell.”

  When he’d finished sweeping out the laboratories, he slipped away to the tank room. The tank room was kept dim and cool. There was only the fizzing hum of the aerating pumps and the flicker of the water shadows on the ceiling. The place felt calm. He was able to squeeze behind one of the concrete pillars without anyone knowing he was there. He sat with his long legs tucked up against his chest, rested his chin on his knees and concentrated on the hum of the machinery.

  As he walked home later, he wondered why he had felt compelled to lie to the girl in the canteen. The eyes rimmed with mascara had given him an uncomfortable feeling. “Well, I didn’t want any stale sandwiches anyway,” he said to himself.

  The next morning at coffee time, Martina stared at him out of aggressively black-ringed eyes. “Where were you?” she said. “I looked for you in the annex. You weren’t there, were you?”

  “I had to work in the labs instead, sorry.” He couldn’t say why her eyes were so disturbing or why he had a sudden urge to run out of the canteen.

  She slopped the tea in the saucer when she banged it down on the counter.

  “What’s wrong,” she said, “don’t you like me?”

  He could feel the tips of his ears beginning to burn. “Sorry.”

  “Oh, shut up,” she said.

  When he was sweeping out the tank room that afternoon he heard the door open and saw a head of crinkly brown hair making its way round the side of the room.

  “Thought I’d find you here, she said. She pushed him back against one of the tanks and reached up to kiss him. She laughed at his surprise, the look of startled bewilderment in his eyes.

  “You didn’t expect that, did you?”

  “No.”

  When she’d gone, he looked down on the fish gliding around in their tanks. They weaved between each other, never touching except when he dropped the pellets of food in. Then, they churned the water, nosing above the surface in an effort to snatch the stuff from his fingers with their greedy silver lips.

  After she’d finished her shift in the canteen, Martina would meet Kelvin in the tank room. They kissed behind the cold aquariums and smoked cigarettes under the refrigeration unit looking through a narrow dirty window at a concrete promenade, deserted and wind-swept even though it was late June.

  “We could have a house of our own,” she’d say, “wouldn’t you like that?”

  “And a doughnut stall, we could run a doughnut stall.”

  “There’d always be something to eat.”

  Or they dreamed of the books they’d read. She’d be a painter and they’d go abroad and rent garrets and live a hand-to-mouth existence.

  *

  It was Dr Williams who’d got Kelvin the job in the fish labs. Kelvin came across him one afternoon sitting at his desk in the laboratory. The older man beckoned him over as he was sweeping under the benches.

  “Have a look,” he said.

  Kelvin peered into the top of the microscope but all he saw were blurred patterns of light.

  “Yes,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “It’s best to keep both eyes open and then the image is clearer.” The older man gestured back to the apparatus.

  This time there were silvery corrugations shot through with violet and blue.

  “What is it?” he mumbled in spite of himself.

  “A fish scale, magnified 100 times.” The corrugations wavered almost as though the thing were living and breathing beneath the lens.

  “I thought you’d be interested. I can see you’re the kind of lad who’d understand.”

  Kelvin was hot, his hands felt cloddish and thick.

  “What we’re looking for, you see, are any imperfections in the shape of the scales, any deformities.” He held down a sheaf of papers with his thumb, pressing so hard that the thumb joint went white.

  “Here’s one,” he lifted a thin glass plate, “from the Baltic. You can see those dark lines.”

  “They look red to me,” or crimson, he thought, like crests of blood on each scalloped wave.

  “You’ve a good eye for detail; my colour vision is failing.”

  Kelvin glanced for the first time at the man’s eyes. From the side, they were visible behind the thick lenses of his glasses. The lids seemed swollen above the pale grey pupils. Kelvin remembered seeing Dr Williams once or twice on his cliff-top rambles with his head down into the wind, the collar of his coat turned up, an expression of intense concentration on his face as he marched along.

  “What happens to the fish in the tanks here in the laboratory?”

  “We keep them for a few years to monitor their growth and development. We dissect them at various stages to examine skeletal features and internal organs.”

  “They don’t go back to the sea, then?”

  Williams smiled. “That would be a waste of valuable research material.”

  There was a silence. Dr Williams fiddled with some of his equipment, their knees banged against each other under the desk.

  “I’d better get on,” said Kelvin lurching to his feet.

  “Yes, you have to finish off, I suppose.” He rested his hand, for a moment against Kelvin’s arm, tremulously. “I’ll let you go then.” He spoke faintly, as if from the end of a long tunnel. “It’ll be home time soon enough.”

  *

  They were snogging in the gloom, the wet sounds of their kisses smothered by the slow hum of the aeration pump, when a faint noise made Kelvin look up.

  “What’s that?”

  “A man, he’s watching, spying on us, look.”

  A man was crouching, peering between the concrete pillars. When Kelvin got to his feet, the man bolted for the door but Kelvin got there first and stood with his fists clenched. It was Dr Williams.

  “Leave him alone, Kelvin,” said Martina coming up behind him. “He’s always spying on me and trying to see down my bra when I’m cleaning the tables.”

  “There you are, Kelvin,” began Williams breathlessly. “I was looking for you.” He looked white and feeble. His hair, normally neatly combed, was sticking up in disordered tufts and his eyes flickered in the green dimness, unable to meet Kelvin’s. “You see, Kelvin, there’s something of the utmost importance I need you to help me with.”

  *

  “I’ll cook us a meal,” Martina had said, but there was no sign of any food when Kelvin arrived at her bed-sit.

  They sat together on her sofa bed, which was covered with a pilled orange blanket, and looked at a pile of discarded clothes in the middle of the floor. Martina lay back on the sofa and giggled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “You are.”

  “Why?” Kelvin sat up.

  “You just are.”

  Martina had put on a loose skirt which revealed her white legs. She was looking at him with a strange expression. Kelvin sat with his arms folded; after a while he picked up a magazine and began leafing through it.

  She threw a cushion at him. “What did that old fart Williams want that was so important?”

  “He just wanted me to move some boxes.”

  “It doesn’t sound as though it was that important to me.”
/>   “No, maybe not.”

  Canvases and drawings were stacked against the walls, creating the impression that the room was crowded. They were all nudes in oil or pastel, crudely daubed in yellow, black and vivid green; clashing and crashing as legs, arms, breasts and faces fought for attention.

  “Did you do all these?”

  “Yep, what do you think?” Martina put her hands up to her hair and stroked the heavy biblical ringlets.

  “Um...” Kelvin’s eye was caught by a yellow face with starkly drawn eyes and something indefinable protruding from its mouth. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what you think?”

  “No.” The paintings flashed on his retina when he blinked. It was as though they’d begun to seep in already through his pores to lodge in his mind permanently.

  “You think they’re bad. Most people loathe them. Sometimes I take a knife to them myself. It’s part of the creative process. You can say what you think, you know.” She lay back on the crumpled blanket. “Well?”

  Kelvin’s knee began to tremble and he had to grip it to stop it shaking. “I’m getting a headache,” he said. “Shall we get some fresh air?”

  *

  It was Martina’s idea to go to the pub. They stood outside for a few minutes to let Kelvin get his nerve up. Someone was guffawing just the other side of the fogged window. Inside, people crushed against the bar. The men all seemed to be shouting and a woman with an immaculate hairdo pulled the pints. In a corner two old ladies sat with their heads enveloped in a haze of cigarette smoke. Kelvin had the feeling they were watching him.

  The room was so crowded that they couldn’t get near the bar. Then Martina spotted someone she knew at the bar and pushed towards him, dragging Kelvin behind her.

  “This is Gary,” shouted Martina.

  “Drink?” Gary breathed beer in Kelvin’s face.

  “Lager and lime, for me,” yelled Martina.

  “And you?” Gary said to Kelvin. “What can I get you?”

  “Whisky?” Kelvin murmured.

  “Come again?”