by Tim Parks
‘Why?’ he faltered.
The policeman was ironic: ‘If I ask for your father’s number, perhaps it’s because I want to speak to him.’
‘But you just spoke to him,’ Mark protested.
‘And now I want to speak to him again. If you don’t want to give me the number, I’ll find it elsewhere.’
Mark gave the policeman the number and immediately phoned his father. He explained that the police would soon be calling him, and why.
‘How was the scooter?’
‘Fine.’
His father asked Mark if he wanted him to come and pick him up and bring him home and Mark said he would much rather his father went and picked up Yasmin later. He didn’t want to make him run about too much.
His father said, ‘Okay, if I have time. I think I’d better have a word with Yasmin about all this.’
Now Mark texted Yasmin about what had happened with the phone. But it was too complicated for a text. He phoned her, but she was with friends. There was laughter, in the background. Male laughter, it sounded like. He tried to explain. Yasmin didn’t seem worried at all. But for some reason this didn’t cheer Mark up. ‘I’m making life so difficult for you,’ he texted.
Climbing the slow hill home he felt sick. Mother had put up a For Sale sign outside the house before leaving. There was an estate agent’s number to call. His father thought Yasmin was a criminal. Yasmin didn’t understand how upset he was. Now he would have to wait another week to have his bike back. The pleasure he’d felt riding out of town an hour before was forgotten. In the empty house he tried to follow the instructions his mother had left and prepare something proper to eat, but then couldn’t be bothered. He ate cheese on toast and thought about the fat woman sitting on the white towel to protect herself from the dirty floor. The woman didn’t seem worried about being fat, nor about the miserable job she had. She always had a sort of Cheshire Cat smile on her face, as if she were proud that all the students were there drawing her. Mark realised he envied her.
Her father picked up Yasmin from the bus station at four. Mark sat in the back with her while his father drove. On the radio, two presenters were taking phone calls about the World Cup in Brazil and his father made a comment to Yasmin about this being a big moment for her country but Yasmin said she didn’t follow football at all. Then Mark’s father asked her about the bike saga. Those were the words he used. The bike saga. Yasmin laughed and said as soon as she’d heard what happened she had just put the word around. That it was her boyfriend’s bike. She’d been a bit surprised herself when the motor reappeared. ‘I guess I must be popular,’ she laughed. The only problem would be if the police came to talk to her parents again. Then her dad would be mad even if she hadn’t done anything wrong.
‘Again?’ Mark’s father asked.
Quickly Mark explained about Yasmin having some dope in a roll-up once. The police had gone to her house.
His father was silent. When they got back home he suggested they all have a beer together in the garden since the weather was fine, but Mark just wanted to take Yasmin to his bedroom. A couple of hours later his father called upstairs. He wanted to talk to him. Mark was grateful to him for not coming up and knocking. He pulled on his jeans and went out on to the stairs, conscious of looking tousled. ‘Since I won’t be seeing much of you now Yasmin’s here, I’m going to head back to my place,’ his dad said. Mark let him hug him, but he didn’t feel the relief he normally felt when his parents went away. When he went back to the bedroom, Yasmin was in her panties at the window, smoking. Mark lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
‘Couldn’t you have told them your mother had complained to the headmaster, or something?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He didn’t seem to say anything else these days.
‘They’ll keep me in Saturdays again and I won’t be able to come over, even when you do get the Vespa back.’
Mark stared at the ceiling.
‘I wish they’d call right away,’ she said.
The smoke from her cigarette drifted back into the room. It was a good job his mother was away, since she could smell the smoking even when she went out in the garden. She insisted guests went right down to the road to smoke.
‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,’ Yasmin said.
Later they went downstairs, drank his father’s beers and watched TV, but both of them knew they were just waiting for that phone call from the police. Mark was supposed to read a book on the phenomenology of art for Monday afternoon’s seminar, but he couldn’t concentrate.
‘You’ll leave me because of this, won’t you?’ he said.
Yasmin looked puzzled. She had a small, sly mouth and stained teeth, lush frizzy hair, a puppy’s body. ‘Why?’ she asked.
Since Mark had started at college and spent the week in Liverpool a sort of routine had developed whereby every Tuesday or Wednesday evening Mark’s father took him out to eat, or to the pub for a pint. Mark had been drawing the fat woman again. This time the woman was lying on her side with her head propped on her elbow. She had brought three red cushions to lie on. His father took him to a Thai restaurant. ‘Have the police phoned Yasmin yet?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Mark said.
‘Is she worried?’
‘She’s beginning to hope they won’t call.’
Mark’s father said he liked Yasmin. He hesitated. ‘But there’s no real future for you two, is there? I mean, you’re from different worlds.’
Mark didn’t look up from his curry.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised in the end if she did know the guys who took your motor,’ he said.
‘She doesn’t.’
‘In the end it wouldn’t be her fault if she did, would it? She seems the kind of girl who might move in circles like that.’
‘But she doesn’t! Why don’t you believe me?’
Mark’s father asked when he would be getting the Vespa back.
‘Friday afternoon.’
The waitress brought another helping of rice. Mark’s father kept trying to make conversation, asking questions about the art college, about his future plans, living in the dorm, about Mum, about the restaurant, trying to be friendly, or to show he was being friendly, but Mark didn’t feel like talking. The older man became impatient; he really wanted the two of them to have a nice time together, eating out in a nice Thai restaurant. Mark was very aware of this, but he couldn’t have helped his father, even if he wanted to.
‘Are you sure you don’t want some noodles?’ his father asked. ‘They’re so good here.’
Now he was pouring himself wine. Mark propped his chin on his elbows and watched. ‘Maybe my future is turning into a flat slob,’ he said. ‘Covered in gross rolls of fat.’
His father looked perplexed. ‘You hardly eat anything,’ he said. ‘You just need to do a bit of sport.’
The police called Yasmin on Tuesday to say she was invited to go to a police station near her home on the Friday morning. With both parents.
‘Good luck,’ Mark texted. He felt convinced it was his fault. And his parents’, too. If he hadn’t told Yasmin where he had parked the day the Vespa disappeared, if he had said he’d left the bike at the bus station for example, she wouldn’t have tried to help by getting the motor put back on and none of this would have happened. And if his parents hadn’t split up, the Vespa wouldn’t have mattered so much and he wouldn’t have needed Yasmin so much, and all this had made Yasmin get involved because even if she had never seemed worried about the bike, she loved him and knew he needed her, needed the Vespa so he could be with her, and so even without knowing the vandals who’d done it she had somehow made them put the motor back on and now she was paying the price for that. Maybe the police would even put her in gaol, or give her a warning so that she would be too scared to buy dope any more, which would actually be a good thing but she would blame him for it and leave him. What a bore I am, he knew. I should be like the fat woman who doesn’t give a damn about
her big buttocks and oceans of cellulite. His mother’s Facebook page was now full of pictures of her in groups of bony black children. She said it was impossible to go running where she was staying because it didn’t feel safe. On the train home on Friday morning, Mark bought a turkey and mayonnaise sandwich from the refreshment trolley and then crisps and a Coke. At this very moment Yasmin is at the police station, he thought, because of me.
Mark took the train from Liverpool, then a bus out to Pendlebury. After which it was a long walk to the mechanic’s. He had texted Yasmin three times but she hadn’t replied. Perhaps they had taken her phone because it wasn’t in her name. Why did my parents even have me, he wondered, if they were so unhappy? His father was always saying he had been unhappy for years. How could a man who had been unhappy for years talk to anyone about their future? I wish the fat woman were my mother, he decided. We would eat fish and chips and ice cream together on the sofa every evening. The thought made him feel oddly excited and slightly sick. The mechanic said the vandals had done a great job putting the motor back. The bike was working fine. He had put on a new mirror, a new brake light, changed the filters and checked the brakes. As he spoke, Mark was looking at a calendar above his head in which a girl crouching behind a motorbike wearing only a black jacket had propped two pointed breasts on the seat. She had the same frizzy hair as Yasmin. He would never be able to keep such a girlfriend, he thought. ‘£78.50,’ the mechanic said.
Mark rode the Vespa home. It moaned pleasantly up the last slope. Riding it always induced a happy mood of freedom and competence that vanished the moment he shut away the helmet in the luggage compartment. As if the mood was inside the helmet. He should wear it all the time, perhaps. He went into the house which felt very empty without the dog, without his mother. His father wasn’t coming back this weekend. There were so many rooms. Sometimes it seemed there must be somebody there. Once or twice Mark had even managed to scare himself by imagining intruders behind doors. There were none. Yasmin shared a room with three younger sisters and her mother, while her two brothers slept with their father. Mark thought that might be worth being poor for.
He defrosted some soup his mother had left. Why hadn’t Yasmin replied to his messages? He lost patience and called her, though he knew she preferred him to text. The phone was off. Why? Didn’t she realise he was worried? He was supposed to be writing his first essay for the life class: his feelings about the drawings he had done. He wriggled the drawings out of their tube and spread them on the living-room table. In the first he had concentrated mainly on the bulk of the body. There was too much detail, lots of shading and cross-hatching. More recently he had been trying to get something about the face in relation to the body. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a nice face, a face happy with itself. The mouth was relaxed and soft, not like his parents’. If these things could be expressed in words, there would be no point in drawing, Mark thought. Faces are complicated things. Then he was so anxious he ran out of the house and got on his Vespa again. This time he took the spare helmet with him, strapped to the back.
He had reached the ring road when the phone rang. Mark had a strict rule that he would never answer the phone while on the bike. He broke it. In two lanes of heavy traffic he reached into his pocket. After all, if he hadn’t meant to break the rule, why would he have set the ringtone on max? With his right hand off the accelerator the bike slowed and wobbled. Holding the phone he grabbed the handlebar again and gave it a little burst of speed, conscious of a bus behind. He tried to see the screen, which was glowing, but there was bright sunlight. He had to hold it right in front of his visor. The bike clipped the kerb and wobbled. The bus hit its horn and swerved. Then he was over with the bike on top and his helmet clunking on the pavement.
Mark lay still a moment trying to take it in; then a girl his own age was next to him asking if he was okay. It seemed he was. His leg hurt, he thought, but he was definitely okay. Thank God. Two men had arrived. They righted the bike and pulled it out of the traffic. The spare helmet was still attached. Mark sat on the pavement and took his helmet off. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘I’d better take it easy for a few minutes.’ His knee was sore. When he had got over the shock, he couldn’t find his phone. It wasn’t in his pockets, it wasn’t on the pavement, it wasn’t in the gutter or on the road. Now he really hated himself.
When Yasmin came out of school at four, Mark had been waiting almost an hour. He had thought she finished at 3.30. Sitting on his bike outside the gate, it seemed impossible he would ever find the strength to get a new phone and put all the old numbers on it. His mother would think him pathetic. His father would try to be too generous. Mark felt desperate, but bored as well. The traffic crept by on the road beside him and the clouds marched overhead in the damp sky. There was a constant windy tug to the day that he just didn’t feel part of. He didn’t feel part of the world at all. All he had was the Vespa. Thank God he hadn’t damaged the Vespa. Then a bell drilled and almost at once kids started streaming out. He sat up. After a few minutes Yasmin appeared, but of course she was with her friends, Sandy, Mike, Ray and Georgina. Yasmin was the shortest of the group, small and petite, her hair all over the place. But she was dressed more smartly than usual today. She even had a skirt on, a jacket, a button-up blouse. To see the police, no doubt. A mill of others hurried past. They were laughing, slouching, sharing out cigarette papers. And Mark saw at once that Yasmin was happy. She was grinning. All five of them were happy together, lighting up cigarettes, at the end of the school week.
They came through the gate and saw him.
‘Hi, Marky,’ Yasmin said. She was always a little cool when there were others around. They stood beside the Vespa. ‘We’re going to the house, wanna come?’
She meant the empty house with the broken window, beyond the canal. They were going to smoke dope.
‘How was it?’ Mark asked. ‘This morning? I lost my phone. I don’t know anything.’
Yasmin grinned. ‘Fine. No worries.’
‘But …’
‘Yazzy told ’em to go fuck ’emselves,’ Georgina laughed. She had a mocking smile.
‘Asked ’em if they needed any spare parts for their big blue bikes,’ Ray said. ‘Didn’t you, Yaz? Speaking of which …’ He crouched down to look at the Vespa’s motor.
‘Idiot,’ Mark said.
‘Are you coming?’ Yasmin repeated. ‘How’d you lose your phone?’
‘No,’ Mark said. He wasn’t coming.
‘Oh, come on!’ Sue and Jan would be there too, Georgina said. ‘And maybe Lisa. You know she has the hots for you.’
Mark sat on his Vespa. ‘No.’
Suddenly it was clear to him they all knew perfectly well who had taken the motor.
‘What are you going to do?’ Yasmin asked wryly. As if the thought that he might have something to do was funny.
Mark said nothing. He had worried so much about her.
‘Let’s go,’ Mike said. Sandy and Ray were already moving off.
‘How will I get back to your place,’ Yasmin asked, ‘if we don’t go together? Come on. Just one smoke then back to your place.’
‘Can we come too?’ Georgina asked. She put on an eager little girl’s voice. ‘Can we come too?’
‘No.’
Mark’s mind was set. He wasn’t going with them.
‘Are you okay?’ Yasmin asked. ‘Is the bike going okay?’
Mark tried a smile. ‘I’m really glad it was okay with the police.’
Yasmin laughed. ‘Oh, they didn’t know anything. Even Dad was on my side. They just wanted to scare me.’
Everybody was still for a moment. But Mike and Georgina were anxious to go.
‘The bike’s going great,’ Mark said. ‘See you later.’
‘But how will we get in touch, if you’ve lost your phone? I told my parents I was out tonight already. When shall we meet?’
Sitting on his Vespa, Mark was slightly above the others. It was breezy and there was sunshine in hi
s face. He didn’t reply. His knee was hurting. He was fed up. Mike and Georgina started to walk after the others. Yasmin turned to follow, then turned back. Her eyes looked for his. She pursed her lips slightly, maybe forming a kiss, maybe an impatient pout. What was she going to do? Mark settled his helmet and turned the key. The bike started. He twisted a little, patted the back seat and gestured to the helmet. It was unlike him.
Yasmin still hesitated. ‘Hey, dudes!’ she shouted. The others were crossing the road.
Mark revved the bike and pushed it off its forks. He turned it to the road. Yasmin came to stand next to him and was shouting something again about times and phones over the noise of the motor. He shook his head. He liked this feeling the helmet gave of being separate and protected. ‘Get on the back, stupid,’ he yelled. He was still shaking the helmet. ‘Come on, get on.’ He revved the bike. Yasmin grabbed the helmet and unclipped it.
As soon as her arms were round his waist Mark surged off. The traffic was intensifying with the rush hour, but he drove faster than he usually did. He wove between the cars. He accelerated and braked hard. It was good feeling the girl thrown against him, then away. Her arms held him tighter. Once he was off the ring road and in the country Mark wound it up to max. They were pushing fifty. Yasmin was shouting something. He didn’t even try to hear what. He weaved the bike from side to side a little on purpose. She was clutching him. Perhaps he was frightening her. He imagined riding with the fat model behind. The woman was naked, posing, completely relaxed while Mark forced the bike to go as fast as it could. That would be something to draw. Straining up the last hill, he was just about to move across to turn right into the drive when he saw a car close behind in the mirror. Damn. He braked to let it by, then changed his mind. Instead of stopping, he accelerated and drove straight on. He drove straight past the house, up the slope beyond the village, then on towards the wooded hills and the horizon. The sun was lower now and it was definitely colder here. Yasmin was shouting again. She couldn’t understand where the hell they were going. Mark drove the bike as fast as he could between two dark hedges.
