Various Pets Alive and Dead

by Lewycka, Marina

  DORO: The letter

  Doro trundles the Hoover around upstairs, cursing the rain that has kept her in all day. Since she retired from her part-time lecturing job at the end of last year, and Oolie started working at Edenthorpe’s, she has free hours at her disposal, hundreds of them. If she strung them all together, she could write a book, like Marcus, or learn a language or take up golf. Instead, she fills them with housework, which she loathes because it’s endless, and cups of tea, which she often leaves undrunk. Cleaning must be some primeval female instinct, for Marcus took retirement three years ago without feeling any increased urge to hoover. So much for ‘new man’.

  She can’t understand why he’s suddenly so keen to get married, but Oolie-Anna seems to have taken the idea in her stride. In fact, Oolie’s far more excited about being a bridesmaid than about being adopted, since the latter doesn’t involve dressing up, and neither Marcus nor she could suggest any other advantages. When they’ve fixed a date, she’ll have to start making preparations, which no doubt will be left up to her.

  In the study, Serge’s former bedroom, the Hoover bumps against a box of papers sealed with sticky tape that hasn’t been opened since they moved from Solidarity Hall in 1995. Maybe it’s time to dump some of this old irrelevant junk? She opens it for inspection and a piece of paper flutters to the ground.

  Dear Everybody,

  By the time you get this, I will be far away.

  I had a chance of happiness, and I had to take it.

  Look after little Julie-Anna.

  She was always more your than mine, and now she is all yours.

  If we ever meet again, I hope you will understand.

  Yours sincearly,

  Megan Cromer

  The writing is small and round, like a child’s, with circles for dots above the ‘i’s, and that single spelling mistake near the end. She reads it through twice, and is so bowled over by the rush of emotion it brings, she stuffs it back quickly into the box. But the questions persist in her mind as she trails around the house with the Hoover.

  Where is ‘far away’?

  What ‘chance of happiness’?

  The first time she read it, twenty years ago, she’d dismissed it without a thought. Now it seems ludicrous and melodramatic. ‘If we ever meet again, I hope you will understand.’ Straight out of Mills & Boon. She’s suddenly filled with fury at Megan, which political correctness wouldn’t let her feel at the time. As if her happiness was what mattered. What about Oolie’s happiness?

  Even the names are a question.

  Why Megan Cromer? What was she hiding? Or did she already know that she would run away one day?

  Why Julie-Anna? Was it a simple mistake, or a refusal to accept the name they’d given her?

  She recalls the scene in the sitting room at Solidarity Hall, Chris Watt trying to get her to breastfeed the baby, Megan’s sullen exhaustion, and Chris Howe and Fred bounding in, so pleased with the name they’d come up with. Megan had nodded blankly, staring at the fretful, unresponsive baby. Doro feels a stab of guilt. ‘She was always more your than mine.’ Maybe there was some truth in that. But the commune had been able to give Oolie so much more than Megan could have done on her own – why should she feel guilty? ‘Now she is all yours,’ Megan wrote, and Doro’s life was set on a different course, like a planet that shifts its axis of orbit.

  The older kids also adapted to Oolie’s arrival in their family. Clara became more responsible. Serge and Otto withdrew into their own geekish world. It would be nice to talk to them about those days, to explain what it was all about. But why burden them with that old forgotten stuff? Clara’s doing a great job with those difficult kids, not just thinking of me-me-me all the time, as many of the young do today. And Serge hasn’t gone down the easy money road, as he could have, with his brains, but is toiling at the frontiers of knowledge. And little Oolie is so resolutely cheerful, despite all the setbacks she faces. Her kids have done her proud.

  She switches off the Hoover, and heaves the old box of papers on to the landing – tomorrow, she’ll get Marcus to help her take it to the recycling dump. On the way back, she’ll stop off at the Oxfam shop, and sign on as a volunteer.

  ‘Shall I make something for supper?’ he calls up from the kitchen.

  Yes, the winds of change are really blowing through her life.

  SERGE: You naughty boy, you

  Tomorrow. Mx

  In other words, today: 07.45, 14th November 2008, according to the Bloomberg TV channel suspended from the high ceiling of the trading hall.

  She’s not in yet. Serge hangs his jacket on the back of his chair and switches on his monitor. He didn’t sleep much last night. An exhausted tic pecks away at the lid of his right eye.

  But Green Shoots is doing well, and there are other signs of recovery in the housing market. In a show of confidence, Persimmon, the house builder, has reversed provisions it had taken against falls in house prices. The Icelandic banks have stabilised too, thanks to a $2 billion IMF loan.

  At Edenthorpe Engineering, however, things are not so rosy. A newsflash reveals that the shares have collapsed to 85p and there are rumours of receivership. Surely it can’t be just his own short selling that brought this about? Serge does a quick search on BBC Business. Seven hundred jobs at risk. Shit! He shuts his eyes and tries to block out the hum of his conscience. But even as he’s grappling with his scruples, another voice is whispering: ‘If you’d held on and bought back at 85p, you’d have made shedloads more.’

  While he’s reading the screen, he doesn’t notice that the room has fallen quiet around him. He looks up to see all eyes are turned towards the door. Chicken is standing there, with one of the American suits beside him – Craig Hampton or Max Vearling, he can’t remember which. They whisper together, surveying the scene.

  What are they looking at? Who are they looking for?

  Chicken’s Dobermann gaze rests on him. His guts lurch.

  That email: ‘Tomorrow. Mx.’ A carelessly omitted vowel. Yes, it’s Max Vearling. There he is, staring straight at Serge, with a sly half-smile. So this is it, the word in the ear, the quiet hustling away to a private room where Inspectors Birkett and Jackson or some goons from the FSA are lying in wait. What a fool he’d been to break the rules. What an utter fool to think he could get away with it.

  He tries to keep calm as he looks around for an escape route, though his pulses are hammering so hard he can barely think. There’s no exit from the trading floor – or at least, there is, but Chicken and Max Vearling are blocking it. Then they start to walk slowly forward between the desks. They are heading towards the Securitisation area – straight towards him.

  ‘Good news from Persimmon, hey?’ Toby O’Toole leans back in his chair as they pass.

  Bless you, keep them talking, brown-nose boy!

  Max Vearling pauses for a moment to exchange pleasantries, but Chicken is still advancing. He stops by Serge’s desk, and says in a low voice, ‘Interesting developments at Edenthorpe Engineering, hey, Freebie?’

  A flash of blinding panic strikes Serge’s visual cortex. For a second, the room goes black. Then light floods in, strobing as in a nightmare. He jumps to his feet and, dodging past Chicken, sprints in the opposite direction down to the end of his aisle without looking round, almost knocking the Hamburger out of his seat, takes a left, and then legs it up between the desks of the next aisle. People stare, but nobody tries to stop him. As he runs, the world around him seems to slow down, to collapse into slow motion. On the side, his colleagues are waving their arms like lazy swimmers, as though the huge hall is filled with water instead of air. Big glassy bubbles are rising to the surface, and he is drowning, drowning.

  When he reaches the door, he stops and glances over his shoulder. Everybody is staring at him, their faces distorted through the deep sea swell, their mewing voices unintelligible like seagulls. He shoves at the door and stumbles out into the lobby, gasping for breath. A stroke of luck – the lift is waiting t
here. He pushes the button and lets himself down, down through the rattling oesophagus of FATCA into the sunlit atrium of the reception – AUDACES FORTUNA IUVAT – past the chirpy girls at the desk, and out on to the pavement. Sunlight slants in broad beams between the lofty buildings. No one is around. He starts to run.

  At the end of the street, he bears right into a narrow alley which after a couple of blocks ejects him into Paternoster Square and he races across the bricky expanse – where did those bloody sheep come from? – towards St Paul’s. His breath comes in hoarse pants through his open mouth. His chest is bursting. His eyes are inexplicably wet and misted. He keeps on running, running.

  Then suddenly – pfwhat! The pavement leaps up and thumps him in the face. His arms flail but his legs are caught, entangled in a snare which on closer inspection turns out to be not a snare but a leather lead. At one end of the lead is a large disgruntled poodle, now yelping with annoyance. From his pavement-level view, all he sees at the other end is a pair of pink leggings tucked into shiny black high-heeled boots. A few inches away in front of his eyes is a steaming mound of freshly laid dog pooh. A trickle of blood, presumably from his nose, is leeching towards it. Even in this addled state, a lucid thought flashes into his mind: ‘Sheesh! This could have been so much worse!’

  The pink-leggings lady tugs at the lead, jerking it tight around his ankles, which makes the dog yelp again. Looking down with an inscrutable smile, she murmurs,

  ‘You naughty boy, you!’

  You naughty boy, you. In the depths of his brain, the phrase rings a bell.

  Could it be … Juliette?

  He closes his eyes and lets blackness descend.

  SERGE: Thwack!

  How much time has passed? Serge isn’t sure. He reaches up to touch his nose. Amazingly, it’s still there, but it’s sticky and much too big, and it’s sending out pulse-waves of pain into his forehead. His eyes are also not working properly. He blinks slowly, and when he opens them again the room swings back into focus – the bulky cream faux-leather sofa where he is lying propped up on an Indian mirror-work cushion, the TV blaring away in a corner. A blood-soaked hankie is swimming in a bowl of pink water on the floor beside him; a fat brown poodle is snuggled up against his thigh. Above the noise of the TV he hears the intermittent crack of a leather whip and the ecstatic groans of Juliette’s client in the next room. Crumbs, that woman must pack some strength.

  He tries to get back to sleep, but the noise is disturbing. On the television, there’s something about the G20 summit, world leaders congregating in Washington to sort out the global economic crisis. About time. If he wasn’t feeling so bad, he could probably come up with a few ideas himself. He knows times are hard, but you’d have thought the PM could have forked out for a better suit. A couple of studio guests are discussing the need for bank regulation – an earnest young woman in a chain-store jacket who keeps going on about a society based on shared prosperity (what shared prosperity? She’s living in Doro-Doro-land – nice legs, though) and a City guy who blames the Government (‘Ill-judged interest rate hike … property prices collapsed … only now starting to see green shoots of recovery …’). The camera pans in for a close-up. Crumbs! There’s Chicken in all his tailored glory, his sharp predator teeth snapping on the words as he talks.

  At five o’clock, he hears murmured goodbyes in the hallway, the click of a door, and a few minutes later Juliette enters carrying two cups of tea. Serge takes a gulp and feels better at once.

  She gives the poodle a slap on the rump. ‘Budge over, Beastie.’

  It sighs and snuffles as she squeezes on to the sofa beside it.

  She’s changed into a plain pale-blue dress, shaped around the bust and pulled in at the waist, which looks quite kinky, a bit like a nurse’s outfit. Some men get off on that sort of thing. She must be in her forties, too old for him. Tired lines around her eyes, but her face is nice.

  ‘How are you feeling, pet?’ She cups a hand under his chin, twists his head towards the light, and presses along the bridge of his nose with her thumb. Her hands are small and smell of soap.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Trust me – I’m a nurse.’

  ‘No kidding?’

  ‘Though now I’m a full-time See Eye practitioner. Some people find it embarrassing, but I think of it as a public service.’

  See Eye? Is this a euphemism for kinky whiplash activities?

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. But have you ever tried it, pet?’

  ‘No. I imagine it must be a bit painful.’

  ‘Not if it’s done properly.’

  He glances surreptitiously at her feet. They look quite small. Size eight, she said in the email.

  A question pushes itself up to the bruised surface of his brain. ‘Er … how did I get here?’

  ‘In a taxi. I was going to phone an ambulance but you begged me to give you another chance. I couldn’t just leave you bleeding on the pavement, could I?’

  ‘Wow. A Good Samaritan.’ His voice chokes with tears. ‘But … weren’t you scared? A strange man …?’

  ‘Beastie looks after me if any of my clients get frisky. He can be quite fierce, eh, you naughty boy?’

  Beastie woofs and thwacks Serge’s leg with his tail.

  The room is close and hot. His head is throbbing terribly, and flashes of light pop at the perimeter of his vision. There’s a faint smell of something disgusting, which he realises after a moment is the dog.

  ‘You been a naughty boy?’ she cajoles.

  ‘No. Honestly. Thanks, Juliette. It’s not my thing.’

  She rubs the dog’s belly and he grunts with pleasure and rolls on to his back, pawing the air with his huge hairy mitts.

  ‘You work in the City, do you?’ she says.

  ‘Yes. Well, I … I’m not sure any more.’

  ‘I have a lot of City gentlemen among my clients. I get rid of all the … congestion.’ She folds her hands together. ‘Think about it, pet. I’ll do it for free. Nothing to be frightened of. You’re in the hands of a professional. Bathroom’s through there if you want to clean up before we start.’ Her voice is flatly matter-of-fact, with a slight regional accent he can’t place.

  He staggers to his feet, wondering whether he should just make a run for it.

  ‘Hello, spud,’ he greets the wan battered face in the bathroom mirror. His nose is a crust of dried blood, still oozing slightly, and a purple bruise is spreading upwards, puffing out the skin around his eyes, making everything look blurred. He cleans his face up with tissues from a lacy tissue dispenser. For someone with such a strapping occupation, Juliette’s tastes seem surprisingly girly. The bathroom is cluttered with bottles and potions, brushes, scissors, tweezers, vitamins, lipsticks. Her perfume is Miss Dior Chérie – the same as Babs’s. He squirts a bit on to his wrist and sniffs for old times’ sake. Memories flood back. Dear Babs. She was a good woman. One of the best. He hopes she’s found happiness in her new life. Her new squishy lesbian life. His cock stirs. For some reason, his eyes are full of tears.

  Outside the bathroom door, Beastie growls.

  ‘Are you all right, pet?’ Juliette asks as he stumbles back into the sitting room and flops down on the sofa.

  ‘Fine, yes. Just a bit … weird.’

  He shivers, although the flat is sultry. His head is throbbing again and new arrows of pain are shooting outwards to his temples.

  ‘We don’t have to do it right away, George. Maybe later. After I’ve done with my clients.’

  George?

  ‘Right. Yeah. Or … maybe another time?’

  He tries to stand, but his legs give way. As he surrenders to gravity, another connection clicks in his brain: ‘Six o’clock Friday, you naughty boy, you.’ If he’s still here, he could witness the flagellation of Chicken, maybe even get some pics with his mobile phone camera – useful if Chicken needs encouragement to overlook the irregular transactions in the 1601 bank account.

  ‘Actually, I do feel a bit rough
. Could I just stay …?’

  Juliette looks concerned. ‘No rush. Stay as long as you like, pet. I’ve got a client coming at six.’

  She fetches a glass of water and hands him two small capsules. ‘Here, take these. They’ll help you sleep. You can stretch out on the sofa. Shift over, Beastie!’

  She gives the dog another slap. It lurches on to the ground, shakes itself morosely and yawns. Its breath smells of … actually, he prefers not to remember. Then the doorbell rings.

  ‘Excuse me, pet. Try to get some sleep.’

  Beastie follows her out.

  He hears a man’s voice in the hall. Is it …? He strains to hear but the voices are too low to make out above the burble of the television, where Xena: Warrior Princess has taken over from the news. The pills he took haven’t lessened the pain, but have made him feel woozy. A few moments later, he hears the crack of the whip and the terrible shuddering groans.

  A huge blanketing drowsiness descends on him.

  Strangely alert now, he jumps to his feet. How very peculiar: his legs seem to be working again – in fact, they’re working 110 per cent, making his steps long and bouncy, like he’s walking on the moon. Miraculously, his iPhone is still there in his jacket pocket. He’s not going to miss this chance. Switching on the camera function, he creeps out into the corridor.

  One door is slightly ajar. He puts his eye to the gap. As his vision adjusts to the darkness he sees two figures in the room: Juliette, in pink leggings and black stiletto boots, standing astride a man crouched on all fours – a chunky muscle-packed man, naked but for a leopard-skin posing pouch. She’s wearing a studded leather bra which squeezes her breasts into awesome pointy cones like a warrior princess. The crack of her whip splits the darkness, and the man lets out a long shuddering groan.