‘Your health, Spanky.’
‘And yours, Martyn.’
We drank deep. ‘What’s in this?’ I asked, already woozy.
‘Just a little something to sharpen up your sensory perception.’
I stared at the half-drained glass. There were tiny flecks of crimson in the green residue, like drops of blood. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s time for something special,’ he replied. ‘The final part of your education.’
Chapter 16
Sensitivity
The hillside was a tilting field of black emerald. Below us, the city flared up into the night. Pairs of amber jewels snaked from country to town, the lights of the motorway. I sat in the tall damp grass watching Spanky. He was standing before me, half-submerged in the rustling fronds with his arms held out at right-angles, delivering a lecture that sounded as if he’d made it many times before. His pupils glowed faintly green in the dark, like cats’ eyes.
‘Poetry exists within the most impoverished soul, Martyn. Some manage to rediscover it for themselves, but for most people the muse remains buried and forgotten. Ninety percent of the world is asleep, and those who are awake exist in a state of perpetual amazement. To cope with the demands of your new life, you need to be one of the woken ones. I have to open your senses a little.’
‘To the level of yours?’
‘I could never do that. The sensory onslaught would cause irrevocable damage. I can cope with a broader spectrum of perception because I’m not subject to human frailty. With you, I have to be a lot more careful, but it’ll be all right for a short period. I want to take you on a trip across the nightland.’
He knelt before me and cupped warm hands over my ears for about a minute. Then he slowly removed them. There was a sharp pain in my eardrums and then a release, as though water had been cleared from them after a swim.
‘Listen carefully, then tell me what you hear.’
I listened. At first all I could make out was the continuous dull roar of traffic on the highway behind us, but as I concentrated harder the sounds began to change. It was as if the range of my hearing was ballooning outwards to include other sounds of the night.
First came the millions of minute sounds from the bushes, the meadows and hedgerows of the hillside; branches scraping together, leaves tapping and flicking across each other, insects burrowing into the foliage, the slow, steady munching of caterpillars, the furry fluttering of moth wings beating in darkness.
I listened harder.
Further away I could hear the deep, vibrating hum of electricity pylons, the arcing sparks that crackled across the ceramic and steel generators of the power station. Beyond that, the chopping throb of car engines, the thrumming tyres of vehicles shooting past like angry wasps in aural patterns that formed an undulating skein of noise leading toward the city, the centre of the web.
From above came the low whine of an airplane, wind through the jets, passengers talking softly inside the dimly lit cabin. And beyond all these sounds there stood a massively deep block of discord, impossible to break down into millions of separate voices, the beating heart of a city that lived a collective life as diverse and rich as any single one of its human inhabitants.
But now the cacophony was receding back, not to the level it had maintained before but to a point somewhere above it.
I became aware of Spanky’s hands on my head, the sensation of his fingers tracing whorls across my face, my nostrils and cheeks, inside my mouth.
Fresh senses.
Suddenly I could taste and smell a thousand flavours in the air. The acrid bite of petrol fumes tainted everything, but beneath this inquination there was the bitter chlorophyll of grass and plant stems, the musty soil, the powerful pheromones of plants and bees, the perfumed stench of nectared pistils and stamens, the chlorinated charge of electricity falling from streetlights. This overwhelming array of incoming tastes forced the bile to rise in my throat, and I was sick on to the grass.
‘Sorry,’ said Spanky, clawing a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping my chin with it. ‘I forgot about the effect it sometimes has on people. Smell is the most evocative of the human senses, and must not be underestimated. You won’t retain that depth of sensation; it would be too much for you. But you’ll be a little more attuned than you were before. We’ll resume when you’re feeling more settled.’
The night was cool, but there was no breeze to chill us. We sat beside each other on the grassy slope, in silent awe of the glittering sky. The augmentation of my perceptions had temporarily removed the need for speech. I was pleased to know that I would not retain such sensory depth. It would be terrifying to know so much of the world.
Spanky gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Ready to go again?’
My stomach had stabilized. ‘I guess so,’ I replied.
This time, he placed his hands over my eyes and pressed the tips of his fingers against the orbs until spinning flashes of colour appeared on my eyelids.
He removed his hands, and I looked out across the fields.
Slowly it seemed that the molecules of the darkened air were clearing to allow the path of my vision. The blurred outlines of the trees sharpened in relief against the sky, their branches and leaves separating to become distinct, the veins appearing in each leaf, the grain on every sepia flake of bark standing out in textural contrast to the blades of waving grass.
Gradually, I raised my head and looked toward the city. The dazzling barrage of light broke down at once into individual pinpoints of sulphur-yellow streetlamps. Larger rectangles of colour were revealed as the creamy exterior floodlights of public buildings. Sharp streaks of cyclamen and sapphire marked the jagged scaffolding of neon that filled the city’s theatre district. Soft, buttery squares shone from the interiors of private homes. All were connected with those searing, pulsing ribbons of luminosity, the motorways, arteries streaked with the crimson tail-lights of homebound vehicles, glowing like microfilm of the human bloodstream.
‘Concentrate your sight, Martyn. Find the areas you know best.’
Sorting through the visual ephemera was difficult at first, but grew easier as I established my bearings. Soon my vision cleared through each deliquescing obstacle to reveal the street of my old apartment, and then, straining further, I saw the building itself.
‘Now use your other senses.’
Suddenly everything Spanky had opened for me returned: taste, smell, sound. There, by the open window, looking out across the city, stood a woman. The apple-shampoo scent of her hair and the warm, milky musk of her breasts enveloped me, and I heard the double heartbeat within her.
‘Debbie.’
From somewhere behind her came another heartbeat, and a male odour of aftershave and cannabis smoke.
‘Zack.’
As my vision continued to clarify and deepen I began to blink, swamped by the sensory input that had become available to me. No wonder Spanky had taken me here at night, when the world was at least a little damped down. By day the augmented sights and sounds of the land would have overloaded my mind, and I would probably have blacked out.
As it was, I made the mistake of raising my head to the heavens, and at once a billion steel-sharp points of starlight filled my sight, shifting across the universe toward me. The sky was clearing, enriching itself by the second to reveal a panoply of galaxies, exploding stars and dying novas, so bright and detailed that when I shut my eyes they were still there, and disoriented I fell back on to the grass bank, pressing the heels of my hands over my eye sockets until my normal sight returned, and my head ceased to spin on the axes of a thousand celestial systems.
‘That’s what I see all the time,’ said Spanky quietly, ‘because I am neither living nor dead, neither man nor woman, but something separate, of itself.’
‘Can you see on to other planets?’ I asked, my eyes remaining firmly closed.
‘No. It’s enough for us to know that life exists in so many other parts of the universe. I find it a comforting thoug
ht, though I suppose others are terrified by the prospect.’
‘So do the four of you belong to the greater part, the universe—or are you confined to this planet?’ I realized it was an absurd, impossible question, one that could only be answered by providing proof of the existence of God.
‘I wish I knew, my friend, I really wish I knew. In some matters my personal darkness is every bit as deep as yours.’
We sat for a while longer, as the temperature fell and the rising breeze chilled our bones. I wasn’t cold, though. I felt disoriented and excited by what I had seen and tasted and heard.
‘What do you want to do now?’ asked Spanky. ‘We can go into town and meet some more wild women.’
‘I don’t know if I want to do that. I feel—unusual.’
I couldn’t see his face when he next spoke. ‘I’ve been thinking, Martyn. Perhaps it’s time for you to share your life with someone. But first I have to know who you want.’
‘What I want,’ I repeated dully.
‘Who you want.’
Spanky placed his palms on my chest, and I felt the warmth of his spreading fingers, only to watch in alarm as his hands sank inside me. It was as though the top half of his body was merging with mine. My natural fear of being touched by another male grew as I seemed to feel him within my body, brushing across the nerve-ends in my immobile form. Now he had completely merged with me, his arms resting into the shape of mine, his legs flexing and filling the space occupied by my own limbs. With the softest of snaps his vertebrae joined with my own, his ribs and liver and heart and lungs invading mine in a rush of blood and sinew so that we were duplex, his skull reaching out into my own head until we were two people holding one place in time.
Although I could not find the power of his thoughts or feel the strength of his will, I sensed that something else was happening in my body. And then I knew.
‘Remember, Martyn.’ Spanky’s voice, whispering inside my brain. ‘I am no man, woman or beast, only the very essence of sexual life itself.’
The tingling in my flesh became a scratching, then a burning, and continued to increase until my nervous system tightened into a blistering climax, a long-drawn, racking orgasm that discharged such rushing heat and anger into the outside world that I slipped quickly into a state of unconsciousness.
Before I passed out, I remember saying one thing. One word.
‘Sarah.’
‘Now we know,’ said Spanky, dissolving into darkness.
Chapter 17
Compatibility
My next meeting with Spanky, the following Monday in the office stockroom, was tempered with embarrassment over the bizarre intimacy of our last encounter. I felt uncomfortable about what had happened; he clearly did not. Still, there was a sense that the shared experience had brought us closer toward understanding each other. Not that this provided me with a reason why he was garbed in the gleaming braided gold, red and black uniform of a British Crimean cavalry officer. Finally my daemonic partner finished snapping a chamois cloth across his boots and rose, thumping me hard on the back.
‘Have you checked your mail this morning?’ He unsnapped an elastic band from the post. ‘Your problems are almost over. Take a look.’
A letter had arrived from Portugal. In accordance with his new-found sense of responsibility, Zack had forwarded it to me from the flat.
‘The reunification of the Family Ross is a fragile one,’ Spanky admitted, preempting the contents of the envelope, ‘but it does seem to be working.’
Despite having had the whole of the weekend to recover, I was still suffering from the worst hangover of all time; Spanky had warned me about the after-effects of my ‘sense-opening’. The usual remedies had failed; it felt like I’d been bashed in the head with a baseball bat.
Spanky picked up the thought and pulled a Mars bar from his pocket. ‘Try this. Eating chocolate is supposed to help.’
I bit into it and chewed, then tore open the airmail envelope and checked the tiny sloping script of my mother’s handwriting.
She verified Spanky’s story; explaining that fast action had been required to save the house from complete collapse. They had tried to reach me; where was I? So thoughtless of me not to call! The enforced vacation at the villa had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. What luck to have been offered it! Even Gordon was enjoying himself!
Enclosed was a Polaroid photograph of an already changing Laura. My sister had lost a considerable amount of weight. Another snap showed a sunbleached wall laced with bougainvillaea, and my parents with their arms around each other. Apparently, they were thinking of staying on for a period beyond their allotted time. Gordon had the holiday owing to him. My mother’s account of recent events ended with a wish, that Joey and I could have been there to share their new-found happiness.
Now I knew that their change was real; invocation of the Joey word had long been banned in the family. My mother had declared the subject taboo and yet here she was, casually reviving his memory. Spanky read the letter over my shoulder and periodically nodded his head, making sounds of affirmation, as if to say I told you so.
‘What happens when they return?’ I asked. ‘Won’t my father resume his affair?’
‘He can try, but he won’t have much luck. Mrs Elisabeth Edgemore has been transferred to an accounts department in Leeds. She moved without even leaving him a goodbye note. She wasn’t very happy about it.’
‘Your work, I suppose.’
‘The company files showed that personnel could be more cost-efficient if certain staff changes were made, that’s all. Naturally, my role as a muse requires me to be computer-literate, so it was a simple matter to rewrite a few documents. That was how I arranged your apartment. Did I tell you your sister has a date next Friday?’
‘Laura? She stopped dating—’
‘Well, she’s ready to start again. She’s seeing a local boy from the village, Carlo or Pedro, something like that. I have my fingers crossed for a holiday romance. Might go over there myself and give it a helping hand.’
‘Maybe you should just let it take its natural course.’ I wanted to thank Spanky, and barely knew where to begin. ‘I didn’t think anything could be done to help my family.’
‘It’s not over yet. They’ve been emotionally frozen since your brother died, and thawing them out isn’t as simple as it looks. Your parents are going to need a lot of emotional support from you in the coming months, but you’ll be busy here taking on all kinds of new responsibilities. You’ll have to learn to make more time for them, and I won’t be here to help you. You could start by being more patient with your father. He’s a good man at heart. And a steady relationship of your own wouldn’t be a bad idea. You don’t want to screw around for the rest of your life. It’s undignified.’
‘I thought of that. But the thing with Sarah would never work. It’s obvious we’re from different backgrounds. She outclasses me.’
‘There you go, putting her back on a pedestal. The problem can be resolved. But it’s the last time I’ll be able to help you, Martyn. From the end of the week, you’re on your own.’
He slid down from his usual perch on top of the filing cabinet and straightened his crimson breeches.
‘You mean you’re going?’ I had known that this time would come. I just hadn’t reckoned that it would be so soon.
‘Certainly. It’s later than I’d realized.’
‘Does that mean I’ll never see you again?’
He gave a careless shrug. ‘I can only spend a short period with each person I help, and I have no idea where I’ll be next. My time doesn’t run as sequentially as yours. And it’s important that I leave you now. People have noticed that you’ve been acting strange lately. I don’t want to undo all the good we’ve achieved. When is Sarah due for her next visit to the store?’
‘She has an appointment here at 4.00 p.m. tomorrow afternoon.’ I felt uncomfortable telling Spanky. I didn’t want him messing with her mind. If Sarah decided to stop
seeing Roger and go out with me, it would have to be because she wanted to, not because she’d been duped into it.
‘Relax, I wasn’t going to trick her,’ said Spanky, interrupting the thought. ‘But I read her mind last time she was here. She’s an ambitious woman. I think she ought to find out somehow that you’ve just received the first of several promotions. She might see you in an entirely different light.’
Those were the truest words Spanky ever spoke.
The next morning, I talked to Max about his son, and gave him the telephone number in Avignon. He took the news of Paul’s defection with incredibly bad grace. I got the feeling that he was very friendly with Beverly, the jilted fiancée, and had wanted the marriage to happen even if they hadn’t. A phone call to France only left him seething. More calls followed in the course of the morning. I could hear Max angrily voicing his opinions through the frosted glass door of his office. Piqued by the perceived disloyalty, he called me in and raged that he was surrounded by quislings, traitors and cowards. And at the most important moment in Thanet’s history, a time of great expansion! Paul had run off with a French whore. Darryl had refused to return to work. Only I had not deserted him. I was a saint, a godsend. I was officially promoted. I would be in charge from now on.
Spanky had forecast the result, right on the nose.
At 4.00 that afternoon, Sarah came on to me as if the earth’s oxygen had just given out and I was an iron lung.
I was finalizing arrangements for the refitting of the shopfront, when I looked up from the diagrams to see a pair of tick-tacking red high heels and long stockinged legs sliding toward me.
Max raised one eyebrow.
I raised both.
Sarah had brought new meaning to the phrase ‘dressed to kill’. Her beige silk blouse appeared to have been designed by snipping off half the buttons. Her brassière was too small or maybe her pale breasts were too large, or maybe both. A playful half-smile had settled on her sparkling lips. Loose curls of fiery red hair fell in burning disarray about her shoulders. Her grey eyes caught mine and held them as she spoke. She talked of orders for the new Arcadia range of dining chairs, but her surface conversation had nothing to do with what she was really saying. Max hurriedly excused himself and left us alone. My mouth had grown dry, and I found it hard to reply to Sarah’s enquiries.
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