‘Stop fighting, miss! We’ve got you!’
Oolie gazes into the deep African eyes of her saviour and goes limp. Between them, with Doro pulling at her legs, they heave her back into the punt. The young man swims back and retrieves their pole.
‘D’you want to come in our boat?’ asks Oolie, squinting flirtily with her eyes.
He shakes his head, laughing, flicking silver droplets off his tight wet curls, and clambers back into his own punt.
‘Is everybody all right?’ asks the young Asian woman in the yellow jacket.
Fifteen minutes later, they are disembarking at Scudamore’s pontoon, Oolie squeezing the water out of her Puffa, Serge dripping and shivering, Doro trying to wrap her dayglo pink jacket around him.
‘Let’s go back to your room and have a nice cup of tea and warm up.’
‘The thing is, Mum –’
‘Don’t tell me they’re still at it! We’ve been gone nearly two hours.’
‘I know, but you see –’
‘’E were reyt gorgeous, that nigger. I wouldn’t mind shaggin’ ’im,’ says Oolie.
‘Oolie, will you please stop using that word!’
‘I thought we could drop in on Otto,’ says Serge, improvising desperately. ‘He’s got a flat near here. I told him you were coming to Cambridge. He’ll be thrilled.’
He tries to remember where Otto said their flat was. Mill Road somewhere. It must be one of those flats above the shops.
‘Are you sure, darling? We’ll ruin his carpet.’
‘Put it this way, Mum, he’d be really upset if he knew you were in Cambridge and didn’t go and see him.’
‘Really?’
‘Otto! Otto! I want to see Otto!’ Oolie chants, clapping her hands.
‘His girlfriend’s pregnant. They’ll be having a baby soon.’
‘Babbie! I want to see t’ babbie!’
‘It’s not been born yet. At least, I don’t think so.’
When did Otto say it was due?
As they talk, he’s already leading them away from Queens’, up Silver Street, past Emmanuel, through Parker’s Piece, slimy with trodden leaves, and on to busy Mill Road. Did Otto say their flat was above a café or a travel agent? Mill Road is much longer than he remembers it. It’s almost five o’clock by now; the sky is clear and cold, the pavements are bustling and the street beginning to snarl up with traffic puffing out exhaust fumes that vaporise in the chilled air. There’s something missing, though. He had a carrier bag before. Shit, he must have left it under the seat of the punt. Hopefully it’ll still be there later.
What time do Scudamore’s close? Or should he turn back now?
‘Are we nearly there?’ Oolie’s teeth are chattering.
‘Nearly.’
They stop in front of the parade of shops near the turning to the cemetery. There’s no travel agent, but several cafés. Serge pulls his mobile phone out of his jeans pocket, but it’s wet through and won’t even switch on.
At that moment, a minicab draws up a little way ahead, and toots its horn.
Serge goes over to the driver and taps on the window. ‘Excuse me, mate …’
The cab driver ignores him, and gets out on the other side, to open the door for a couple who have just appeared on the pavement. The woman is heavily pregnant, clutching her belly. The man is Otto.
‘Hi, Otto!’ In an instant Doro has her arms around him. ‘How lovely to see you after all these years. You’re looking so well. So tall! What are you up to these days?’
‘Er …’ Otto’s eyes swivel.
Oolie has her arms around Molly, whom she’s never met before. ‘Can I see your babbie?’
Serge catches Otto’s eye. ‘I can explain. If we could just come up to your flat for a minute …?’
Otto looks like he’s on the edge of a serious panic.
‘Yeah, man, like we have to go to hospital right now?’
‘I thought you said six weeks …’
‘Yeah, but Molly’s waters have broken?’
‘I were in’t water!’ Oolie cries. ‘It were brilliant. I were saved by this ’unk!’
‘You’d better get going! How exciting for you!’ cries Doro as Otto and Molly extricate themselves and clamber into the taxi. ‘Good luck! Good luck!’ She blows kisses with two hands as the taxi pulls away and joins the crawl of rush-hour traffic.
‘We’ll come back very soon to see the baby!’
CLARA: Scarper
On Sunday night, Clara phones Doro and tries to wheedle out the truth behind Oolie’s tale of sex on the allotment. But Doro at once hijacks the conversation with a rambling account of a visit to Cambridge, and it’s only after ten minutes that Clara realises something weird is going on: how could Doro visit Serge in Cambridge if, as Babs said, he was living in London?
‘Cambridge? You were in Cambridge?’
‘That’s what I said. Haven’t you been listening, Clara?’
‘So you visited Serge’s room?’
‘Not exactly. He said someone was using it, a girl. We called on Otto, but …’
‘Mhm,’ says Clara, thinking she must drop Babs another line, and see whether she has an address or phone number for Otto. ‘So did he say anything about getting a new job?’
‘For goodness’ sake, Clara. What is this? The Inquisition? He’s still trying to finish his PhD, darling. I know it’s been going on for ages, but I think he’s almost there.’
‘Mhm.’
Why has her mother been so grumpy recently? Surely she must be well past the menopause by now.
She could so easily, now, let slip casually into the conversation what Babs told her about Serge. But she holds back. It would be mean and snitchy, and against the spirit of Solidarity Hall. She doesn’t want to be that kind of person. And although Serge’s refusal to accept responsibility is annoying, he’s still her little brother, and she realises that in some weird way she still feels protective towards him.
A flash of memory brings back an image from long ago: they’re all standing in the garden, Serge in his pyjama bottoms, Otto wrapped in his crocheted blanket and baby Star in her saggy nappy, all whimpering and sobbing as they survey the bloodied and mangled corpses of their twenty-six rabbits.
‘It’s only a fox,’ she says, trying to sound calm and grown-up, trying to keep down the scream that is building up in her own throat. ‘C’mon. We mustn’t be late for school.’
Recalling the night of the rabbit massacre makes her shudder even after all these years – the dreadful feeling of responsibility compounded with helplessness still haunts her in moments of stress. She didn’t hear the commotion that night – she was sleeping in the front attic – but she came down first in the morning and saw the remains of the carnage all over the garden.
And buried in the back of her mind is another of the unresolved mysteries of her childhood, something Serge told her that day that stuck in her mind.
He said Megan was down there in the darkness of the garden, yelling at the fox, ‘Get away wi’ you!’
And someone else, a man, had shouted, ‘Scarper!’
That word – a familiar word, from her childhood.
An old-fashioned word, very English, not a word an Italian would know.
So who was it?
Because after Mrs Wiseman taught them the Facts of Life at school, she’d counted the weeks, and she worked out it was exactly nine months after the night of the rabbit massacre that Oolie-Anna was born.
SERGE: Vilification
Serge opens his eyes and tries to blank out the ghost rabbit, but it’s still there at the foot of his bed. He’s been dreaming that dream again. The ghost rabbit digs silently, tunnelling with its horrible sharp claws. What’s it looking for? Something lost. Then he remembers – the carrier bag of correspondence from his bank, which he left in the Scudamore’s punt on Saturday. He phoned, of course, but the dozy guy on the other end of the line knew nothing, and obviously wasn’t prepared to go and look.
‘Maybe it fell in the river.’
Maybe it did, but there’s no harm in checking, is there, wasteboy?
He frets as he pulls on his clothes, wondering what he should do now. Certainly, visiting his local bank branch, as advised in the one letter he opened, is not an option.
There are losses and losses. On the early radio news, someone from the Bank of England is announcing that the world’s financial institutions have lost $2.8 trillion since the summer of 2008. It leaves him cold.
As often, after that dream, he’s left feeling disoriented, as if the world is slightly off-kilter, but nobody’s noticed, or else they’re all pretending everything’s normal. Look at the politicians. Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown have been ratcheting up the anti-banker rhetoric, it’s the sort of thing that really gets Marcus and Doro going, but it’s completely meaningless. They talk as if they still have some power in relation to the City, when everybody in the City knows they’ve lost it. There was a point last year when they could have acted, put some regulations in place, enforced transparency, but they bottled out, and now the banks have got the bailout money, why should they behave any different? It’s the ultimate risk-free gamble. If they win, they keep the takings – and if they lose, Mr Taxpayer will pick up the tab. There’s no point moaning about it. It’s not their fault. It’s just what they do, like rabbits breeding.
Chicken has a good line on this.
‘You know what’s wrong with this country? The whole country depends on banking, but they don’t like bankers. Ha! It’s the politics of envy gone mad.’ Serge overhears him chuntering to Toby and Lucian at the next desk. ‘They think there’s a better way of banking. More ethical. Lower bonuses. What would happen if they tried to make us cut our bonuses? See, we’re just as trapped by the system as they are.’
‘Interesting point, Chief Ken,’ smarms Toby, ‘but will they actually do anything?’
‘No chance.’ Chicken flashes his predator teeth. ‘Because if they try, we’ll all up sticks and move to Singapore, won’t we?’
‘Course we will,’ Toby nods. ‘Or Liechtenstein.’
‘See, the boys at Barclays’ve got the right idea. Don’t accept the bloody bailout money. That way, the Government can’t stop their executive bonuses. They’ve raised the money they need in the Middle East at 14 per cent, no strings attached.’
‘Isn’t the Treasury deal only 10 per cent?’ asks Lucie naively.
‘It’s all tax deductible. Let the taxpayers take the hit. Let the pension funds take the hit. That’ll teach them to bloody interfere.’
‘Isn’t that a bit … sort of … unethical?’
Chicken throws back his head, clucking with delight.
‘Banks don’t have ethics, Lucie, they have cost centres. What do you think, Maroushka?’
Maroushka has just come in with a coffee from the cafeteria and is heading towards her desk. She’s wearing red today, not shouty London bus red, but a deep, subtle, rosy red that swirls around her knees as she walks.
‘What I think about what?’
‘The vilification of bankers in the media. Has it gone too far?’
‘What is mean vilifiction?’
‘You know, the way they run them down.’
‘Run down with car?’ A tremor of emotion crosses her face.
Chicken chortles. ‘No, just with words.’
‘Words!’ She shrugs. ‘In my country exist nothing only words! Car is better.’
As she logs into her computer, Chicken’s shiny predator eyes are fixed on her hungrily. Serge feels a lurch of despondency. So that’s it – Tootie the Terrible will be elevated to the swivel chair, and Maroushka will be elevated to the soft off-white aptly named shag-pile rug on Chicken’s office floor. They say Chicken has shagged most of the female staff at FATCA, so there’s a certain inevitability to it.
And what will happen to him? Yes, the visit to Cambridge did set him dreaming. All that silence and old stone. Golden light. His splashy afternoon with Doro and Oolie on the river. And Otto and Molly, with their new baby. Coochie-coochie-dribble-dribble-bluh-bluh-bluh. Maybe it’s time for him to settle down too. He must remember to give them a call. Buy them a nice present. Something expensive and useless that they’d never get for themselves.
He keeps his head down and musters some equations, waiting for Chicken to go away so he can sneak into the disabled loo with his phone, but next time he looks up, Maroushka and Chicken are in the glass-walled office poring over some printouts. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but he can see her giggle, and Chicken’s leery smile. Doesn’t she realise this guy is just after her body?
Hear the song of Serge!
This Chicken is a scourge …
He isn’t going to give her babies and lasting love. Or maybe she realises, but doesn’t know how to tactfully put him off. Girls are sometimes scared to assert themselves. Chivalrous thoughts spring into his head. For the first time, he feels a stab of something resembling hatred for Chicken, his inane opinions, his lack of irony, his sheer animal physicality.
Over in the Currencies corner there’s a sudden roar of voices. Something big has obviously happened on the markets. He glances up at the Bloomberg screen. The Icelandic government has just hiked interest rates to an incredible 18 per cent. Waves of frenzy roar around the hall as the traders race to cash in. The whole world’s gone mad. Even Chicken has come out on to the centre of the trading floor, and is standing there with his arms spread wide, his face lit up with inner joy, like a saint waiting to be whisked up into heaven.
On his way towards the exit, he stops for a moment by Serge’s desk.
‘Can you pop up to my office at four o’clock, Freebie? Something we need to discuss.’
DORO: Woolies
On Tuesday afternoon, while Oolie is at college, Doro catches the bus into the city centre, and makes her way to Marks & Spencer. Despite the rain outside, the store is almost empty, and even the few people wandering around seem to be more browsing than buying. She hurries past the underwear display without so much as turning her head. In her bag is the new underwired cream bra, the one she hasn’t worn yet, and the receipt.
‘It isn’t very comfortable.’ She hands the bra to the shop assistant. ‘I’d like a refund.’
What she doesn’t say, because it would be too humiliating, is that she was wearing the black satin bra last night when she was undressing, and Marcus had stared at her long and thoughtfully and said, ‘Keynes believed that this latest stage of capitalism, characterised by financialisation of the economy, represents the domination of speculation over enterprise.’
In other words, he didn’t even bloody notice.
Afterwards, she makes her way to Woolworths to buy a new mop. She’s learned her lesson: housework is more appropriate for a woman of her age than flashy underwear.
‘Cash or card?’
The shop assistant is a middle-aged woman with stiff yellow hair standing up from her head like sprayed-on insulation foam. She takes the card and inserts it into the machine while Doro watches. Something about her is very familiar. She looks up and meets Doro’s eyes, stares, and breaks into a hesitant smile.
‘Aren’t you her that used to live in t’ old Coal Board offices?’
Doro nods, puzzled. ‘I know I know you, but …’
‘Janey Darkins. Askern soup kitchen. Remember?’
‘I remember!’ laughs Doro. ‘Such a long time ago. You must have thought we were all bonkers.’
‘Just a bit.’ Janey smiles. Her teeth are perfect, and far too white.
‘We thought there was going to be a revolution.’
‘Aye, so we gathered.’
‘And you embodied the revolutionary aspirations of the working class.’
‘By ’eck! We only wanted to keep the pits open, and save the lads’ jobs.’
She pauses, and her face shows its age beneath the yellow styrofoam hair.
‘But you were there when we needed you, duck. Remember when Maggi
e called us t’ enemy within?’
‘I remember that.’
‘It were only nutters like you that stuck up for us. There’s never no shortage of folks to shout for them wi’t money on their side.’
‘What happened to you after they shut the pit?’ asks Doro.
‘Jimmy and me split up. But it weren’t all bad. I went to college and got me O levels. It were because of that Italian bloke – Bruno. He lived at your place, didn’t he? He taught us a thing or two. Not just about spaghetti, neither.’
‘I didn’t know you and Bruno had a thing going.’
‘I still get a letter from him now and again. He’s married now.’
She fumbles beneath the counter and pulls out a photograph of a family: two girls, not yet in their teens, a pretty dark-haired woman in a pink dress, and Bruno, older, greyer, hairier, somehow sadder, but still heartbreakingly gorgeous. Seeing the photo she feels a stab of envy, not just towards the woman in the pink dress, but towards Janey, who at least got a photo from him. Against all reason and all experience, she had felt in her heart that he really belonged to her.
‘Did you know Megan? Megan Cromer?’
‘You mean Megan Risborough?’
‘She said she was called Megan Cromer.’
‘She were always a fibber. Her and her scab husband.’
‘Bruno said her husband used to beat her up.’
‘I’d have beat her up mysen if I could’ve got me hands on her.’
Doro laughs, wishing she could be as free of guilt and political correctness.
‘But there was always something a bit sad about her. The way she had all those cuddly toys on her bed. The way she left her son to be looked after by her mum. As if she’d never quite grown up. Even the way she lied about her name. Like she wanted to be someone else.’
‘She fibbed about a lot of things. She put it about that Bruno were the dad of that kid she had – the little mongol girl.’
Various Pets Alive and Dead Page 24
