Spanky

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘But Mr Presley,’ pleaded one of them, ‘everything’s been prepared. The camera crew . . .’

  ‘I never agreed to no TV appearance,’ Presley shouted back, ‘you can tell the Colonel that. I’ve just done a two-hour show, for Chrissakes. Don’t I get any damned privacy?’

  ‘No, no, no.’ Spanky jumped to his feet and clapped his hands together hard. The figures before us shattered and vanished like particles of glass, dispersing into the night.

  ‘I wanted the other one, the Big Bopper, not him. Forgive me—I wasn’t concentrating. They’re just illusions, anyway,’ he pointed out, ‘but not without their uses.’ For the first time I saw something in my companion that I understood. Spanky was showing off, waiting for me to compliment him.

  ‘As you say,’ I remarked drily, ‘they’re just illusions. They wouldn’t be of much use if you were planning to sort out my life for me.’ I wanted him to tell me what he had planned, what I would get out of it. Greed is an underestimated motive.

  ‘Oh, I never said I’d do it for you.’ He stuck his hands in his pockets and kicked petulantly at a flower bed. ‘If I decide to take your case, I’d just give you a helping hand. Improve your personality, that sort of thing.’

  Spanky’s parlour tricks were already a fading memory in my mind. Nothing had really happened. My cynicism quickly returned. ‘So your powers aren’t that far-reaching after all. How long does the personality-improvement process take?’

  His temper suddenly flared. ‘Christ, I don’t know. It takes as long as it takes. It’s not a fucking Spanish course.’

  “Would I have to sign a contract? Because I wouldn’t sign anything legally binding.’

  ‘No, Martyn, I don’t get people to open their veins and sign documents in blood.’ He spoke as if dealing with an awkward child. ‘I’m not about to give you riches beyond your wildest dreams, then send you off to hell. I am not the Devil. There is no such person, capisce? Hell doesn’t exist. The only souls most people have are on the bottoms of their shoes. What does it take to get the daemonological concept through your thick head?’

  A little more than this, I thought. It still felt like I was the victim of a trick, an elaborate ruse for a purpose I couldn’t begin to fathom. ‘Listen, I don’t need your help. I really think you should go and impress someone else.’

  Torn between a natural avarice and the fear of being duped, I settled on the latter. There was safety in staying with what you knew. I could handle my own life. Hell, I was young. I was independent. So my career hadn’t come together yet. So I had no one to share my problems, no one to fall in love with. So what? At least I wasn’t like Zack, who treated his girlfriend like dirt and ran to his parents every time there was a financial crisis. I could recognize my faults and deal with them.

  ‘Fine. I guess I made a mistake, Martyn. I saw you in the club and instantly sensed a bond. Obviously I shouldn’t have picked you. You’re perfect. You don’t need anyone. To think of all the other people I could have chosen instead. Desperate, grateful people. You’ll wake up tomorrow, and you’ll kick yourself.’ He seemed to reach a decision of his own, and suddenly walked off along the avenue, whistling tunelessly. An uncomfortable sensation still nagged at me, that perhaps I really was throwing away the chance of a lifetime, as Spanky had warned. Once again, I found myself setting off after him.

  Decisive is another of the things I’m not.

  ‘Give me one honest answer,’ I shouted. Spanky slowed his stride, but refused to turn around and face me. ‘If I was prepared to let you help me, what do you expect to get in return?’

  ‘Always the same question with humans.’ He raised his voice. ‘I’d like your comradeship, Martyn James Ross. I thought perhaps we could be friends. I’ve never confided in anyone, and to tell the truth I’m beginning to wish I had.’

  I couldn’t leave it there. ‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘Why should I be the one to benefit from your wisdom?’

  Spanky shrugged. ‘One of those things. It could have happened to anyone. You were in the right place at the right time. Like winning the pools. Or being mugged. You looked lost. You reminded me of me. I felt that you would want me to help you.’ He stopped for a moment and looked back. Even from this distance, I could see an angry light in the emerald eyes. ‘You’re not the only one. This has happened to people throughout history. You’re just not aware of it.’

  ‘Then how do I know you’re who you say you are? The things you’ve shown me could be just—special effects.’

  ‘That’s what you really think? Well, forget it. Forget I ever spoke to you. Go back to your ghastly furniture store, mortal. Return to your grim little dead-end of a life. And tell no one of our meeting, or there’ll be trouble for you.’

  He diverted from the path and began to speed up. There was a roar of closing air and he became a sparking streak of light, a comet passing away through the rasping trees. I stood alone in the middle of the park, watching the darkened grassy spot where Spanky had blasted from view, until the rain began to patter on the leaves once more.

  Chapter 4

  Confirmation

  When I returned to the flat, I found the kitchen on fire. Zack was making toast, but had forgotten to remove the bread from the grill. Dropping the burning steel tray into the sink, I called to my flatmate but received no reply. I discovered him in the lounge, sitting cross-legged on the floor smoking dope. He was watching a heavy metal concert on television with the sound turned off.

  ‘I bloody hate this band.’ Zack coughed and held up the joint. ‘You want some of this?’

  ‘No, I’m going to have something to eat.’ I wearily pulled off my jacket and threw it on to the couch. It had been an unusual evening, to say the least.

  ‘That’s a good idea. Have some toast. I’m just doing some.’

  ‘Really? How long has it been on?’

  ‘Fuck.’ Zack attempted to climb to his feet, but had to be helped up.

  ‘You’re going to burn this place down one day,’ I complained. ‘Where’s Debbie?’

  ‘She went home. We had another row. She wants me to get a job.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’ I returned to the kitchen and began scraping the toast-tray clean.

  ‘And she still won’t consider an abortion. I told her I’m not ready for the commitment of children.’ He shambled into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge, watching as I prepared fresh toast. ‘I don’t think it’s right to bring a child into a world that can’t even keep its rivers clean. The butterflies are disappearing from our hedgerows, did you know that?’

  ‘When was the last time you saw a hedgerow?’

  ‘You don’t have to see something to know that it’s there.’

  There was no point in arguing. Zack was twenty-eight, hardly too young to consider raising a child, but he was like a child himself; unformed and ill-prepared for responsible living. Debbie, his girlfriend, at least possessed the virtue of knowing what she wanted even if she had no means of achieving it.

  I brought toast and tea into the lounge. Most of the furniture belonged to Zack’s parents, and reflected the taste of fifty-year-old suburbanites. There was one exception: a huge primary-coloured mandala hung on the wall behind the television. Zack had made the Buddhist universe from thick, dusty strands of wool, most of which were now becoming unravelled. The process of repairing it occupied a large proportion of his waking hours.

  ‘By the way,’ said Zack, ‘part of the ceiling fell in earlier. Debbie cleared it up.’ In a corner above the stereo, the spectacularly mildewed patch of damp I had grown used to seeing on the ceiling was now broken by a large hole. The landlord had refused to sort out the problem, saying that Zack had caused it by leaving the attic window open for six months, which he had. The wood had expanded and the window could no longer be closed, causing the rain to soak through the boards to the plaster. A virulent black fungus had started appearing around the room as the wetness spread.

  ‘You let a pregnant woman clear the
mess up?’

  ‘She knew where all the stuff was kept. I offered to help.’ He was trying to work something through in his head. ‘You don’t think I pull my weight. You think you’re more capable than me, with the job and everything.’

  ‘Listen, you can have my job anytime.’

  ‘And even if I tried my best, how long do you think I’d last?’

  I looked at his shaking fingers scissored around the joint and knew he was right. There was nothing holding him up. I crunched through a slice of Marmite-smeared toast and studied the overloaded shelves behind the couch. After a few minutes, I decided to ask him. ‘Have you got anything up there on daemons?’

  ‘Demons?’

  ‘No, with an “a”. Spirit muses. Aristotle had one, or Socrates, I forget which.’

  Zack was lying on the floor trying to figure out how to operate the TV remote, something he’d been working on for nearly a year. Now he pulled himself upright. For the first time since we’d agreed to share the flat, I was talking about something he understood.

  ‘Hang on, I was reading an article just last month.’ Confidence had returned to his voice. He rose to the shelves and clawed through a stack of magazines. ‘They’re not always evil, you know. There are all kinds. An incubus is one that comes to earth for the specific purpose of shagging women, a bit like Club 18-30, and a succubus is a demon in female form, a bit like Debbie.’ He pulled out a dog-eared periodical and passed it over. ‘Take a look at the page I marked. They list the most common kinds.’

  I opened the magazine and studied the editor’s photograph. The man in the picture had the same haircut and beard as Zack. They obviously went to the same school of thought. I located the appropriate page and began to read: Terrestrial daemons include Lares, Fauns, Foliots, Nymphs and Trulli . . . I flicked over the page. Daemons are ethereal animals endowed with acute intelligence, and although they feel the lust that incites them to copulate with women, they cannot do so. I looked up from the magazine. ‘This is all old stuff. Aren’t there any recent examples?’

  Zack stopped scratching his exposed stomach and thought for a moment. ‘All the first-hand reports I’ve read about them are hundreds of years old, mostly from nuns who got caught shagging stableboys. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, though.’

  ‘I know. I was talking to one only this evening.’

  Zack’s attention redoubled. ‘What do you mean?’

  I described the events of the night as my flatmate grew increasingly animated. I was forced to recall in exact detail the illusions I’d witnessed in the park, and the offer that had been made to me. If I’d been hoping for a display of healthy scepticism, I’d obviously taken the wrong person into my confidence.

  ‘Did he have horns? He must have had horns, they always do according to my Encyclopedia of Supernatural Netherworlds.’

  ‘He looked human. More than human. Superhuman. But no horns.’

  ‘He must have had them somewhere. They’re not always on the head, you know. He could have had them on his back, running down the spine. Of course, you have to be careful that you’ve got a decent one. They can be tricky. Some of them are shape-shifters. They can appear as your heart’s desire and fool you into parting with your soul.’

  ‘According to this one I haven’t got a soul,’ I muttered.

  ‘The trouble with spiritual daemons,’ Zack pointed out, sucking down a final lungful from another emaciated joint, ‘the trouble with those guys is, you have to take them on trust. All the Greek philosophers trusted theirs, and were rewarded with, like, great insight into the human condition. But these days there’s a lot of trash about, some right unscrupulous bastards, out to ensnare unsuspecting humans.’

  The hour was late, and I was growing exasperated. ‘How do you know?’ I asked. ‘Have you ever seen a real one?’

  ‘No, but you have, by the sound of it. And I’ve been reading about them for years.’

  ‘But if they’re as common as half these books say they are, there must be hundreds of them wandering about. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that no one ever sees the things you’re most asked to believe in?’

  ‘No one sees God.’

  ‘You know what I mean. It’s like UFOs. Why do they only ever kidnap crazy people?’

  ‘The government just tells us they’re crazy to discredit them, everyone knows that.’

  I was getting a headache. ‘Zack, it’s late. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘You should have taken his offer,’ called Zack as he wandered off to his bedroom. ‘You’ll never get another chance.’

  Perhaps that’s a good thing after what I saw tonight, I thought, dropping gratefully into bed. I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of an overdosed rock star hanging around giving me advice.

  Wednesday dawned to clear skies and warm winds that removed the grey lid from the city, freeing it to the world. Three weeks earlier my bicycle had been stolen from the ground floor hallway, so now I walked across Vauxhall Bridge to work. Still, my buoyant mood lasted right until I reached the entrance of the store, twenty minutes late.

  Darryl was already out on the floor selling hard, determined to surpass his monthly quota. His enthusiasm for furniture of all kinds was extreme, but his knowledge of bathroom equipment bordered on the fetishistic. I couldn’t tell a three-quarter-inch double-ply nylon shower grommet from a banana trifle but Darryl could, and was proud to tell me so.

  Darryl was rotund and jolly and stale-smelling. He never seemed to wash his hair, and bounced perkily when he walked, and had a laugh like someone trying to jump-start a Ford Sierra, and was always sniffing the ends of his fingers. He was fond of making remarks like Rome wasn’t built in a day or Time and tide wait for no man. If he saw a black guy walking in the street with a white woman, he would sigh and say I suppose there’s a lid for every teapot. I longed to beat him to death with a length of shower tubing.

  During our mid-morning coffee break, by which time Darryl had served about a hundred customers and I had spoken brusquely to two, Max stopped by and asked for our thoughts on the forthcoming sale. In a rare moment of job enthusiasm I had drawn up some ideas, and showed them now, but Max quickly found fault with them, gleefully squiggling his biro across my proposed banners and stickers.

  ‘You know the trouble with you, Martyn?’ he asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘You’re a dreamer. Look at this wasted space. You could have a big sign there: SAVE POUNDS! Something like that.’ He tapped his pen on the meticulous drawing, dabbing random ink-marks all over it. ‘This won’t do at all. It’s not practical to our needs. Too clever by half. You have to remember that customers are basically stupid. They won’t understand any of this.’

  Naturally, Darryl’s ideas for the store displays were practical. They just weren’t very interesting. I thought the whole point of a sale was to draw attention to the store and create interest. As Max set about implementing his favourite employee’s posters, which included the aforementioned SAVE POUNDS! (something he’d presumably drawn up just to please Max), I decided to go out for lunch. Alone, naturally. First, though, I got a phone call from my mother.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling the office,’ she began. ‘At least with your job I know I’m not interrupting anything too important.’ She let that sink in and followed it with the Property Prices gambit. ‘If only we lived nearer we could see more of you, but property prices being what they are . . .’ A sour tone in the voice now. ‘Your sister’s worse than ever, and as for your father . . .’

  The usual exasperations emerged. My mother was supposed to enter hospital for a knee operation, but refused to make the appointment ‘until she was ready’, something she gave no indication of ever being. When I offered to speak to the doctor for her, she changed the subject. My father clearly needed a hand to do repairs around the house, but wouldn’t let me help him. They had taken care of me as a child, but were reluctant to let me do the same for them as an adult, as if it somehow diminished their role as parents. Joyc
e and Gordon would rather make an awkward scene than let me ‘put myself out’ for them.

  They would have been happy to let my big brother help, I was sure of that. As far as my folks were concerned every conversation led back to Joey, whether they had intended it to or not. Everything had changed when he died.

  As a kid I’d imagined that my brother would always be around to make things right. I did everything he ever told me to do. I would have done anything for him. He was twenty-four when he checked out. The way my father talks, you’d think the angel Gabriel came down and took him away in full view of the housing estate.

  The phone call lasted twenty-two minutes. Seconds longer and I would have slit my throat.

  The only bright spot in the day occurred when Sarah Brannigan came by. She worked for one of the companies that supplied Thanet Luxury Furniture with bedroom items. I watched as she sat with Max in his office, crossing her long legs and running an elegant index finger down the catalogue price list. The way she pursed her crimson lips when she accepted an order for Pompadour Dralon Boudoir Stools gave me a painful erection. She wore a black suit and glossy black stockings, and had long red hair that tumbled like fire to her shoulders. To me she looked like the physical personification of sin, depravity made flesh. Women like Sarah didn’t settle down. They broke men’s hearts and walked away laughing. I liked that in a woman. She never noticed me, of course. She noticed Darryl as she left the store, only in a scurrying-past-with-a-shudder-of-revulsion way, but at least she realized that he was alive. Depressed, I closed my order book and collected my jacket, which was still damp after Lottie had managed to knock tea over it.

  I knew it was time to get out of here and get a life.

  After the deadening reality of another working Wednesday, my conversation with Spanky had taken on an unreal air, as though the meeting itself had been part of his hallucinations. I had no plans for the evening, or the week ahead. Not much money, either. Enough for a movie and a burger.