Spanky

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I understand you’re taking over from Max’s son,’ she said softly. ‘I hope you’re planning to celebrate your new position.’

  As I attempted to formulate a sentence, she reached over and rested her hand on my thigh, dusting away a smear of chalk.

  This was too much. Unable to catch my breath, I jumped to my feet. Spanky had promised me he wouldn’t tamper with her mind. He’d told me that she was ambitious. Perhaps she was always like this around men she liked, but her reaction seemed a little overblown.

  ‘We can go to dinner if you’d like,’ I said sharply.

  ‘Oh, I’d like that very much.’ She drifted towards me, walking her painted nails along the edge of my desk.

  ‘How did you find out about my—promotion?’ I asked. I had to know if Spanky had visited her.

  ‘Max just told me about it. I won’t let anyone else know, if you still want it to be a secret.’

  ‘It’s not that—’

  ‘Good. Then we can have dinner tomorrow night. Can’t we?’

  I nodded dumbly in agreement. It didn’t feel right. Nothing felt right. This was the Sarah I didn’t know.

  But I had to admit there was a certain symmetry. After all, no one had changed as much as I had in the past two months. If I didn’t know her, at least I didn’t know myself anymore, either.

  We were clearly both ripe for a modern relationship.

  Sarah and I ate in a noisy Belgian restaurant in Camden Town. Before the main course had arrived, she’d removed her shoes and was running her toes up my calves. She packed away an incredible amount of food. It didn’t seem possible that she could stay so slim. Her ferocious appetite clearly extended beyond nutritional requirements.

  For all my newly discovered expertise with women, I suddenly felt awkward and inexperienced. This wasn’t what I had expected. But when she asked to come home with me, I readily agreed.

  ‘Are you still seeing Roger?’ I asked, searching the street for a cab.

  ‘Sure I’m seeing him. We had dinner together last night.’

  ‘Then how come—?’

  ‘I didn’t say I was sleeping with him.’

  ‘I just assumed—’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t. Roger’s not interested in girls. I’m his date when he takes out clients. It’s a business arrangement.’

  We started making love long before we reached the apartment. She had her hand inside my flies during the taxi ride home. After stalling the lift between floors she lowered herself to her knees, tore open my pants and buried her face in my groin. In the corridor outside my apartment she removed her panties and pushed me against the wall, raised her torso and eased herself on to my erection, wrapping her ankles around the backs of my legs. While I was thus inside her, I managed to fumble open the front door lock, deactivate the alarm system and walk her into the lounge with a strength and dexterity that would have qualified me for the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.

  To say that we made love through the night is inaccurate; we fought with each other, using sex as our weapons. Our actions, accompanied by gasps and grunts, were the thrusts and recoveries of military manoeuvres. Ground was gained and lost in equal measure. But when morning came I felt the ravages of war in every vein and muscle of my body. I lay staring at the ceiling like a bayonetted corpse, unable to think or move.

  Sarah, on the other hand, had survived the night well and was rallying her troops for a fresh onslaught.

  Depleted but not defeated, my army regrouped.

  I was very late for work.

  I finally arrived at the showroom; my daemonic accomplice was waiting for me. The first chill winds of winter were coursing between the office blocks, and he was appropriately wrapped in a long black military overcoat with solid silver epaulettes and buckles. The store was filled with carpenters and plasterers and electricians, so I had to watch my behaviour carefully.

  ‘Did you have fun last night?’ Spanky asked, casually examining his nails as he walked behind me. ‘You look awful.’

  I think she’s damaged my genitals, I admitted. They were as sore as hell. My dick felt as if it had been pulled out by the roots. Did you have anything to do with her—athletic—behaviour?

  ‘Not at all, as it happens. Turns out she’s always had a soft spot for you, but you’ve been too dumb to see it. Sometimes my job is made easier by circumstance. All I did was make you both aware of the attraction.’

  How come Max talked to her about me?

  ‘He didn’t. I did, but she doesn’t know it. She’ll be very keen to see you again.’

  The feeling’s mutual; I just have to relocate my nuts first. She’s wonderful, but I don’t think there’s going to be much romantic involvement between us.

  ‘Why not?’

  C’mon, Spanky—like the song says, it’s too hot not to cool down. She’s never going to settle. She’s not the type.

  ‘Did you ever notice how much you complain, Martyn? You’re so English in that respect, finding fault with everything. Moan, moan, moan.’

  Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. On the contrary, I’ve never been happier.

  ‘Then I can say goodbye.’

  Wait, I thought you were leaving at the end of the week?

  ‘I don’t need to hang around any longer. Tell me something, Martyn. Be absolutely honest.’

  Ask me anything, Spanks. Fire away.

  ‘The night we first met. I asked if you believed in the supernatural, and you said no. Do you feel differently now?’

  Of course I do, I replied. None of this would have happened without your help, and you’re not real. I mean, you are real—but you exist somewhere else, in a different way to me. So I have to accept that there are more things on earth than I’ll ever be able to understand.

  ‘Stout fellow. Don’t stop learning now; keep going. Change is good for you, the more the better. Well, I must be off.’ He stood framed in the broad glass doorway and checked his watch. Leave-taking obviously made him embarrassed.

  ‘It’s been fun, Martyn. Remember to use your increased sensory perception carefully, otherwise it’ll make you throw up. I hope everything works out for you. No reason why it shouldn’t, of course. I have a feeling your boss is about to give you a rather nice car. So, er, good luck for the future.’ He sounded like an employer seeing off a fired colleague.

  Hey, wait a second.

  Spanky walked forward and I reached for his arm, shaking a hand as cold and hard as marble. I didn’t care how it looked to the builders working behind me. I felt like I was losing part of myself.

  I really don’t know how to thank you for what you’ve done.

  ‘Oh, all in a day’s work, you know. Um, I’d better say cheerio now.’

  He waved his hand in an awkward gesture of farewell, grinned sheepishly and turned away, walking quickly off down the street.

  At the back of my mind, something nagged and worried like a tick in a mattress. Some tiny alarm was trying to make itself heard. But in the bathos of our farewell, the sound was silenced.

  Chapter 18

  Amelioration

  And so I prepared to settle into my new life.

  A few days later I collected my books from Zack and was surprised to find the old apartment freshly decorated, although he had simply thrown some paint across the damp patch, which was already starting to show through again. Over the worst spaghetti bolognese I had ever tasted, I listened to his plans for a future responsibly shared with Debbie.

  Zack had uncovered astrological evidence approving fatherhood, and the cosmic okay had given him a new sense of purpose. He’d found signs before, but they didn’t usually make sense. This plan had more going for it. He was going to swallow his pride and take a job in his father’s company, get some money together, hold Debbie’s hand and chant for her throughout the birth, buy the flat, sell it for a profit and put a deposit on a cottage in the Cotswolds where they could keep horses, build stables and raise their child within the natural harmony of t
he landscape.

  I toasted his dreams in warm Chianti.

  I finished some decorating of my own and spent an increasing amount of time with Sarah, who occasionally climbed off my lap long enough to eat something. Our relationship wasn’t ideal, but at least it was based on the staple human necessities of sex and food, something I figured should sustain us both for a while.

  In the hours between eating and going to bed she was happy to sit watching the lights of the city from the tall lounge windows, her forehead pressed against the cold glass, her strange grey eyes lazily surveying the street. At first I thought I’d done something wrong. I soon saw that it was her way of being comfortable with a man. Small talk bored her. She settled for more sensual pleasures. Sometimes she invited Roger over and they cooked complicated vegetarian dishes together. After, we would sit on the floor and play Scrabble.

  Max refused to have anything to do with his son, whose new relationship sounded increasingly serious. Presumably Stephane’s impromptu arrival at the store had been organized by Spanky to remove Paul from the picture. I wondered whether the daemon provided a sort of after-sales service, or if he just left them to get on with it.

  Beverly made a brief, grim appearance in Max’s office and together they rang France. The call degenerated into a shouting match, and that was the last we saw of her. Max went ahead and closed the deal with Neville Syms, so that work could begin on the expansion of the company. A healthy pay rise rewarded my company loyalty. I personally supervised the designs and interior fittings for the two new store sites, one in Bayswater and one in Chiswick, and together we planned the grand openings. With me uncomfortably wedged into place as Max’s surrogate son, we started interviewing new floor staff.

  Darryl sent me a letter, vaguely recriminatory in tone, in which he nevertheless absolved me from any blame in his accident, but announced that he would not be returning to Thanet. The loss of his eye had adversely affected his balance, and consequently he was planning to take a part-time job near his family in the Midlands.

  I began to appreciate just how hardworking and uncomplaining Lottie had remained through the store’s various upheavals. Nothing seemed to faze her. I told Max that I hoped he realized what a loyal employee he had, and asked him to consider promoting her in one of the new stores. Typically, he said he’d get back to me at a later date.

  It was now October, and for me life was settling itself into entirely new patterns. Sarah introduced me to her circle, and our social life suddenly expanded. Now that I had a girlfriend and could safely be presented at dinner as part of a couple, all kinds of invitations began to appear. Oddly enough, I felt closer to Sarah when we were in public than during the time we spent in each other’s company. Our relationship was convenient and our needs coincided, but there was no real depth to it. Friends damned us with faint praise by saying how well we looked together.

  Max agreed that it was important for me to reflect the right company image, and allowed me to purchase a smart sea-green Mercedes 350SL from his brother-in-law, who ran a secondhand dealership in South London. I drove through the sunset streets with my arm across the back of the passenger seat, breathing in the scent of old leather. It was the smell of success.

  My parents called several times, but had trouble operating the payphone correctly. They mailed me a series of insufferably cute postcards, and Laura sent a picture of her newly slimmed self embracing a leering local boy in gold chains and tight trousers.

  As time passed I started to forget the shy, inept person I had once been. With each new day I felt more sure of myself, more confident of my capabilities. And yet it was sometimes impossible to believe what had happened to me. On these occasions I felt unanchored and disturbed, and would stay in bed with the phone off the hook until the sensation had passed.

  My time spent with Spanky now seemed dreamlike and unreal. I didn’t suppose I would ever be able to come to terms with my ‘daemonic’ experience. There was nobody I could really discuss it with except Zack, and talking to him was preaching to the converted. I wanted someone to convince me that Spanky had only existed because I’d needed to create him, that I had really made the changes by myself.

  But I knew I hadn’t.

  I would never have been able to do the things he had done.

  Spanky had shown me things no one else could see, done things no one else could do. And now, the truth of the matter was, I missed him.

  But not for long.

  Chapter 19

  Reparation

  It hurts to recall what happened next, just when things were going so well.

  It started on a Monday morning in the last week of October. Sarah had stayed at her own apartment the night before, and for once I had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. I slapped my alarm off at 7.40 a.m., slipped into a white towelling robe and headed downstairs to collect the milk. There was a letter on the doormat, a plain white envelope addressed to me in script. Fountain pen, violet ink. No stamp, which was odd.

  I unsealed the envelope and shook out a single sheet of thick white paper. It looked like a typed, itemized bill. No return address.

  It read as follows:

  For the Personal Attention of Martyn Ross

  INVOICE

  For Providing the Following Services:

  Improvement of Subject’s Career Prospects

  Blinding of Darryl Smart 170.00

  Removal of Paul Deakin 220.00

  Influencing Neville Syms 105.00

  Influencing Max Deakin 144.00

  Reconstruction of Subject’s Family Life

  Breakup of father’s extra-marital relationship 63.00

  Weight-loss of sister/improved social life 58.00

  Rejuvenation of parents’ marriage 218.00

  * Sundry expenses, accommodation, travel 274.00

  [Itemized receipts available on request]

  Personal Growth/Improvement of Subject’s life

  New wardrobe/dress sense 82.00

  Creation of sexual charisma 136.00

  Provision of new apartment 292.00

  Conversational ability/charm 45.00

  Personality enhancement 63.00

  Heightening of senses 34.00

  Improving general standard of life 70.00

  Spending money, sundries 124.00

  The following amount is now due: 2,098.00

  My first thought was that Spanky had left behind a kind of delayed-reaction joke. Then I wondered if someone was trying to blackmail me. But who would be so jealous of my new-found success? Darryl? Max’s son? The paper held no clue to the identity of the sender. It had to be from Spanky. Who else knew so much about the last few weeks?

  I examined the sheet again. Yes, that was it. It had to be a practical joke.

  ‘No joke, I’m afraid.’

  Spanky was leaning against the doorframe in a red T-shirt, black lounge suit and zip-boots, cleaning his nails with a toothpick. ‘Are you making coffee?’

  He picked up the milk bottle on the doormat and passed it to me. I was pleased to see him, but apprehensive. He followed me through to the kitchen and watched as I filled the kettle.

  ‘So what the hell is it?’ I asked.

  ‘What does it look like? My bill. For services rendered.’

  ‘Bill? You never mentioned any payment for what you did. What currency is this to be paid in, anyway? Pounds? Dollars? Yen?’

  ‘They’re not monetary units. I don’t accept cash. Don’t worry, you have twenty-four hours to pay in full.’

  Hadn’t Spanky told me he’d wanted to help just for the pleasure of doing so, or words to that effect? I wished I could remember the specific conversation. A sickness began swirling around in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘I don’t understand your attitude, Martyn.’

  Spanky was pacing back and forth by the kitchen table, his left eye screwed up in puzzlement. ‘Do you really think you can get something for nothing these days? Nobody gets something for nothing, surely common sense tells you tha
t.’

  ‘You wanted to help me,’ I said lamely.

  ‘That’s right, I did want to help you.’

  ‘Then why are you demanding payment now?’

  ‘Martyn, I sold you my services. I gave you my best sales pitch, certainly, but I genuinely wanted to help you. It’s possible for someone who rents apartments to want to help the homeless, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, come on! You’re telling me you’re a scam artist. You breeze into my life uninvited, give me all this bullshit about being a muse, change everything around and expect me to pay you?’

  ‘Well, you’ve run up a bit of a debt, but it’s nothing that can’t be cleared.’

  The bad feeling grew worse, a slow intestinal upending of a kind I hadn’t felt for years. I had trusted him and this, if it was for real, was going to hurt.

  As I stood there in my dressing gown arguing with someone who didn’t even exist in the real world, I convinced myself that Spanky had pulled off an even bigger stunt by getting me to believe that he was some kind of supernatural being in the first place. How had he done it? Sure, any decent hypnotist could create the illusions, but the rest . . . okay, so he was a con-artist, plain and simple. He’d picked me out as a susceptible mark and played me like a piano, working on my weaknesses until I was completely under his control. My gullibility was truly shameful.

  But if the whole thing was a trick, what did he stand to gain? Did he think I would sign over my bank account to him? He had put most of the money there in the first place. Until now, Spanky had never asked me for anything except trust.

  None of it made sense.

  ‘It makes sense, Martyn, so long as you rid yourself of your doubts about me.’