Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon?

by Simon Okotie

  42

  Marguerite heard music, as his left foot approached the sixth step down, also known as the second step up, in his on-going movement towards the lower deck of the bus. In fact he realised that he’d been hearing music for some little while, but it was only now that it fully entered his – and for that reason, our – consciousness. At the same time a pair of shapely female legs appeared within his field of vision from the right, enabling him to take his eyes from what he had taken to be the freckled tops of Isobel Absalon’s lovely breasts23, almost directly below him. He could not prevent himself from putting the two new pieces of evidence together: he wondered, given the music, whether the legs, which were approaching his projected landing point at the bottom of the stairs, belonged to a person known as a busker.

  Buskers were people who played music or engaged in other performances publicly with a view to being paid for those performances by other passengers, in the case of those buskers travelling on public transport, or by passers-by, in the case of those buskers who were not on any form of transport, at least not any moving form of transport. This situation was different, note, to the scenario in which someone was just whistling to themselves or listening to a personal or other sort of stereo, say, however loudly, regardless of whether the person engaged in those private acts defined themselves, under somewhat different circumstances, as a busker. That was to say that there was more to the musical busker than music publicly expressed. The busker had to want to busk at that moment and must be open to the possibility that those hearing their music would want to give money to them for hearing that music; in fact, the busker would actively encourage the giving of money by making available, for example, a hat or other headpiece proffered in an inverse position to that employed when actually wearing the hat or other headpiece, with this proffering occurring either in the hand of the busker, a hand, that is, holding the hat (etc) in the direction of the person or people from whom he or she expected to receive funds, or through placing the hat (etc) in that inverse position on the ground between themselves and their potential donors. This latter means of proffering the hat was not generally used by buskers busking on public transport. The reason for this was that the busker in question would, despite the fact that they were already travelling via the propulsion of the public transport vehicle in question, have to walk around within that vehicle in order to collect funds, perhaps even moving from that vehicle to the next, where those vehicles were coupled, as it were, to each other, as in the case of train carriages, whether on an under- or overground railway, whereas in the case of the busker busking on the pavement or sidewalk, say, they wouldn’t necessarily need to move towards their potential funders in this way, the assumption being, Marguerite thought, that the potential funders in this scenario would move towards them: they would, for example, be walking past the busker in this case, especially if the busker had chosen their position carefully, that is, provided that the busker had chosen a position that was a busy pedestrian thoroughfare and one in which the pedestrians: a) could not easily avoid hearing the music that the busker was performing with a view to receiving money for this performance and b) could not easily avoid walking past the inverted hat placed on the ground for the purpose of receiving the funds alluded to in a) above.

  Non-buskers requesting funds whilst travelling on public transport were a different category entirely, at least in relation to the means of fund-collection: this latter group did not tend to use the upturned hat or other headpiece as a means of securing such funds; much more often, in Marguerite’s experience, they used a bare or, granted, partially clad hand (the latter in the case of the fingerless glove) outstretched in the direction of the potential funder. Alternatively a dirty, rim-chewed polystyrene cup proffered in a similar fashion to the busker’s inverted hat would be employed, although note, here, that the cup, in this case, could not be taken to be in an inverted position for what Marguerite hoped were obvious reasons.

  The reason for the existence of this difference between the busker and the majority, at least, of beggars, as that portion of the non-busking, street- or public transport-based fundraising population was known, was to do with the different styles employed by these different groups. Musicians, in summary, tended to wear hats not just for the purpose of garnering funds but because hats were often associated with a sense of style that adhered to the ideal of musicianship, at least in the ‘popular’ and especially in the ‘jazz’ genre. The hat, in short, was an effervescence, as it were, of the natural sense of style often associated with musicians. A different sense of style was generally associated with the non-busking vagrant, one that, whilst it didn’t rule out the donning or, indeed, doffing of a hat, was not naturally associated with that group of individuals in the way it was with musicians in the popular, jazz, blues and some other genres. Therein, quite simply, lay the difference, to Marguerite’s mind.

  Two further pieces of evidence offered themselves to him, as his left foot attained the sixth step down the stairway at the rear of the bus upon which he was travelling: firstly, that the top of the legs in question was covered in blue pinstriped cloth in the form of a short skirt and, secondly, that the music was coming from what is known as a ghetto blaster held in the lap of someone sitting in the seat diagonally across the platform from his projected landing point at the base of the stairs. This expansion to his evidence base enabled him to disassociate the delightful legs in question, which had now stopped moving towards him, from the music, as it were: he concluded that they belonged, in fact, to the woman in the pinstriped suit who was, once again, helping him. She was helping him in this case by blocking the exit from the main part of the lower deck to the platform at the rear of the bus. And the reason that she was doing this, Marguerite surmised, was to prevent the conductress from apprehending him, thereby leaving him at liberty to continue his investigation into the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, provided, of course, that he could find a way of slipping past the scintillating Isobel Absalon24 at the base of the stairs.

  23. What I found in the nightly footage was increasingly shocking to me, to the extent that I thought that I must be losing my mind.

  24. Night after night, as I rewound and replayed the tapes, I found her going to bed, generally between 2200 and 2230 hours and, not long after, a male figure slipping into bed beside her.

  43

  Marguerite realised, as his right foot approached the seventh step down the curved stairwell at the rear of the bus, that this step represented both the final step and, in a different sense, the penultimate step. What he meant by this, he thought, was, quite simply, that the step that he, in the form, in particular, of his right foot, was approaching was, when taking a top-down approach, as it were, the final step in that stairwell, in that he would come across no more of these three-dimensional right angles, if one can call them that, in his descent of that particular stairwell on that occasion. Once, in other words, his foot – the right – had attained this step, there would be no more of these vertiginous elevatory devices to be encountered. At the same time, however, there would, of course, still be a step for him to take in reaching the open platform at the rear of the bus upon which he was travelling, and this step could, quite reasonably and uncontroversially, also be called the final step. It was in this sense, then, that he had maintained, as his right foot had commenced its approach to the seventh step down, that the impending step represented both the final step and, in a different sense, the penultimate step. It depended, in essence, on one’s viewpoint: from the stairwell’s point of view, as it were, this seventh step down was the final step that it had to offer the person descending; however, the person descending still had to take this step, as it was known, and, in so doing, make a step, somehow. To take Marguerite’s own situation, once again, as an example: the action of his right foot, in moving from the fifth, past his left foot on the sixth, to the seventh step down resulted in him both attaining the final s
tep in that stairwell whilst still, somehow, having to make that final step. Given, then, that there remained a step to be made once he had attained the final step in that stairwell, Marguerite was maintaining that the step that had resulted, or would result, in his attainment of this final step was, in fact, but in a somewhat different sense, the penultimate step. How, after all, could it be the final step when there was one step still left to be taken? And if this was because this final step was somehow to be made then why couldn’t one continue making these so-called final steps indefinitely, making, in the process, a nonsense of the whole concept of finality in relation, at least, to steps?

  He realised, as his right foot continued to approach the seventh step down the stairwell at the rear of the bus upon which he was travelling, that he would have to take a step back – not literally – in this branch of his inquiry in an attempt to make it sufficiently clear for him to proceed with the main part of his investigation. The way that he took this metaphorical step backwards was by examining, more closely, the terms that he had been using in his approach to the assertion that the final step also somehow represented the penultimate step in that stairwell. He was keen to examine, in particular, how it was, when one had attained what was, from the stairwell’s point of view, as it were, the final step, that this step still remained to be taken or made. In what sense, in short, could one take something that one already had? Equally, or thereabouts, how could one make something that one had already attained? If, more specifically, one had attained the final step whilst still having to take it, then where, exactly, did one stand? It was, at first sight, deeply perplexing to Marguerite.

  One area that he thought worthy of further investigation as a means of helping him to get out of the tight spot that he now found himself in, as he approached the final or the penultimate step, depending on one’s viewpoint, related to what he thought of as consumables; in particular he wondered, as his foot continued its mid-stair flight, whether a comparison between stepping and eating might prove fruitful. Could it be said that one attained a step in the same way that one attained, say, a candy bar; just as in the case of the candy bar, the attainment of the step and its consumption, as it were, were quite different things. One attained it and then one ate it, in the case of the candy bar; in the case of the step, one attained it and then one ate it up, perhaps. A classical usage came into Marguerite’s mind at that moment: that of eating up the ground, in his case, between himself and Harold Absalon; he was satisfied, partially, with that.

  A further, potentially helpful analogy yielded itself to Marguerite’s mind at that moment: that of sexual conquest. Perhaps, in a similar way to the candy bar, one attained a mate, in the sexual sense, and then one had them, again, in the sexual sense. In that instance, the attainment and the possession were, again, quite different things; one got someone and then one took them, as it were, even if that person belonged to someone else25, so to speak. Again, Marguerite felt partially satisfied with this and felt, further, that it was taking him closer, once again, to the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor.

  But in what sense could one make something that one already had? More specifically, how, once one had attained the final step could one make it? If that or any other step was akin to the consumable then how could one, in the very same act, both consume and somehow fabricate it? Equally, approximately, in the arena of sexual conquest, how could one both have and make one’s mate? Granted, in the case of the female conquest of the male it could be said, in Marguerite’s experience, that ‘she made him into the man he is today’; this ‘made man’, as he would, perhaps, be referred to, may well have been made, in large part, so to speak, through the act of sexual conquest, in which case the having and the making could, perhaps, be taken to be coterminous. But the reverse position, so to speak, could not be held, to Marguerite’s mind: that of the man having the woman, as was much more usual to his mind, whilst also somehow making her. It just made no sense, to his mind.

  Perhaps nobody actually, in practice, referred to making a step, aside, of course, from the actual physical construction of such items in a factory. Perhaps he had simply confused the making of with the taking of a step because of the rhyme. Even if this were the case, meaning that he could be wholly rather than just partially satisfied with the analogy between steps and consumables, on the one hand, and between steps and sexual conquest, on the other (and in rare, delicious cases, both hands at once, as it were), it would, he now realised, as his right foot came even closer to actually attaining the seventh step down, still leave him with a difficulty. Even when, to return once again to Marguerite’s case, one attained the final step and one started to take that step, still another step would remain after one had touched down on the lower deck – this final final step, as it were, being, in Marguerite’s situation, that of the right foot moving from the final step to join the left foot on the lower deck. In other words, his right foot would attain the seventh step down, which was the final step from the stairwell’s point of view; his left would then take off, as it were, from the sixth step down, en route to the lower deck itself, and this step was one that could be taken, also, to represent the final step; finally, his right foot would leave the seventh step down, the final step from the stairwell’s point of view, as before, to commence its journey towards the left foot which was, remember, resting, momentarily, on the lower deck, having made what Marguerite had hitherto taken to be the final step and, in making this journey, would make what Marguerite now referred to as the final final step but which he could, he now realised, choose, for what he hoped were now obvious reasons, to refer to as the final final final step.

  He had hoped, through the foregoing, to have shown to his subordinates, and others following his investigation through whatever mysterious means, that one could not make indefinite final steps when descending a staircase at the rear of a bus. That he had failed in this task shook his confidence somewhat, as his right foot failed, in fact, to land on the seventh step down but instead proceeded directly towards the lower deck in what could surely, now, be taken to represent the final or penultimate step down the stairwell of the bus upon which he was travelling in pursuit of Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, who was missing.

  25. Nothing so funny about that, you might think. After all, Harold must have suspected that she was up to something, otherwise he wouldn’t have put me on her tail.

  44

  Why, Marguerite wondered, as he saw something ahead of him that represented a major leap forwards in his investigation, had he chosen, suddenly, to take two steps at once, as it is known, in his descent of the stairwell at the rear of the bus upon which he was travelling, such that his right foot was now directly approaching the lower deck rather than the stairwell’s final step? The answer to that question was, for once, quite straightforward, he thought, as he took in more of the scene beyond the open platform in front of him in an attempt to confirm what he had seen: he had realised that he needed, quite simply, to stay one step ahead of Isobel Absalon, who was still waiting for him at the foot of the stairs in the position where the conductor would often ordinarily stand. Rather, he had realised, suddenly, that he needed to stay at least one step ahead of Isobel Absalon, whose perfumed presence he could sense just behind his right shoulder, or thereabouts; by feigning to attain the stairwell’s final step and then, during his right foot’s final approach towards that step, suddenly applying thrust, as it were, he was able to re-elevate his foot such that it was able to clear that step and move directly for the lower deck of the bus upon which it – and he – was travelling, thereby enabling him to stay that necessary minimum number of steps ahead of Isobel Absalon. Not that he wanted to stay one step ahead of Isobel Absalon, as a minimum; he wanted, in fact, for the minimum distance between them to be much less than one step and, furthermore, for them to be facing each other at the moment of nearest approach, as it were; however, for reaso
ns of professional etiquette and procedure he felt unable to bring this about at that moment, focused, as he remained, on the pursuit of her husband, Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, who was still missing. He could not, of course, rule out the possibility of Isobel Absalon responding to his attempt to stay at least one step ahead of her by extending her stride to gain on him once again26; the thought of this thrilled Marguerite, but he did not dwell upon it, knowing that he needed to turn his mind, finally, to the decisive scene that had opened up in front of him just a few moments before, to bring some sort of satisfaction to his numerous followers, at least. It had only been a moment, but he was certain, in short, that he had actually seen Harold Absalon, the Mayor’s transport advisor, in one of the showrooms lining the avenue along which the bus was travelling. Not only did this confirm that Harold Absalon was still, in fact, alive, of course, it also confirmed to Marguerite that he had, indeed, been on the trail of Harold Absalon all along.