Alison Wonderland

by Helen Smith

  ‘What about John Cusack?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Well, I quite fancy him.’

  ‘Well, I quite fancy Robert Downey Jr., but what’s that got to do with anything, Alison?’

  ‘I don’t think you’d want Robert Downey Jr. around, he drove through Hollywood stark naked with a gun in his car.’

  ‘You’re completely missing the point. He’s not ever going to be around. He lives in America and I live in England.’ Also, he’s a movie star and she’s unemployed.

  As soon as we stop talking, I feel quite frightened again. Perhaps the people at MI6 will imprison us under the Thames, our screams masked by the bilgey waters above us and by the music from the dodgy nightclubs in the surrounding Vauxhall area. How long would they torture us before they realized we truly didn’t know anything and weren’t just being brave? How many of Taron’s stories would they believe before they killed us for being mad liars?

  Luckily, I have some chocolate-covered Rich Tea biscuits, so we have half a packet of those each with our tea and talk about the burglary. We call it ‘The Raid.’

  ‘OK,’ says Taron, who likes to think she has a keen analytical mind, ‘OK, so what are the motives for The Raid? Either Ewan McGregor is working alone, he’s a disgruntled, unfaithful husband—’

  ‘—or been hired by one.’

  ‘—or been hired by one. In which case he’s got what he wanted and he’ll leave you alone. Or he’s a spy and he has the backup of a huge, powerful organization and he won’t stop till he’s crushed you.’

  ‘Right. Well, talking things through with you has made me feel much better. I think it could be linked to a new project I’m working on; I’m investigating a company with a dodgy animal rights record that’s making a big investment in a secret project in the southwest of England.’

  I feel powerless and unhappy. We decide not to call the police in case the break-in does have something to do with Emphglott. Then we realize we have to call them so I can claim on the insurance for the computer. We call them and they’re sympathetic but say there isn’t anything they can do to help. We don’t mention The X Files, MI6 or Taron’s drugs, so they don’t come round. ‘In the film,’ I say to Taron, ‘we might get off with one of the policemen.’

  ‘No.’ She’s tired and quite snappy by now. ‘Because we’re anti-establishment and we don’t do it with anyone who is the establishment, except George Clooney, who isn’t counted because although he’s played a doctor he’s not the marrying kind. The sort of people who play policemen are Clint Eastwood or the Bridges brothers, and you don’t want one of them.’ She’s right, of course, I’m not with it at all. We decide to call it a night and she goes home. Before she leaves, she advises me to put cactuses in each window to guard the house.

  As I brush my teeth, I check the horseshoe she left in my bathroom cabinet on her first visit. Still there, exuding its too-weak magic. Perhaps I’m being unfair and we owe the fact we weren’t hurt in either of the attacks to Taron’s lucky charms, the way Sleeping Beauty owed her long sleep to the last fairy at the christening.

  I lie awake, unable to sleep even though I lie very still and try to retreat inside myself, visualizing somewhere calm and relaxing. I keep getting put off by the picture of the Virgin Mary I bought recently to go with my Jesus. Mary is about the same age as Jesus the way the artist has drawn them, so they look more like lovers than mother and son. Her face, with its aching sympathy and gentle understanding, has begun to irk me because for some reason I think of the patent office girl whenever I look at her. There they are, side by side on my wall, Jesus and the patent office girl, all loving and suffering. Even when my eyes are closed, theirs are open, eternally vigilant. As I retreat inside myself I find them there with their blazing hearts and halos.

  I awake with a start in the middle of the night, heart jumping because of some noise inside or outside the house, too frightened to get out of bed for a pee in case someone has broken in again or didn’t ever leave and a murderer is waiting in the shadows. Darkness brings back my childhood fears and makes me irrational. A murderer wouldn’t be playing a waiting game, triggered into harming me by my visit to the toilet. Only monsters behave like that. It isn’t until dawn comes that I work this out, and so I pass an uncomfortable bladderful few hours waiting for the darkness to ease.

  Chapter Eleven: The Psychic Postcard

  The next day, a little too late to be of any use, the psychic postman writes a message on one of a stack of cheap postcards with views of London he carries with him and he pushes it through Alison’s letterbox. DANGER, he writes, BEWARE. Taron’s mother has taken the precaution of communicating through him in case Taron was listening to loud music yesterday, mistook the words her mother was sending for a subliminal message from the musicians, and ignored them.

  As no other post office employees have been involved, the psychic postman does not put a stamp on the postcard before putting it in through Alison’s front door. He doesn’t regularly deprive his employers of revenue in this way; nevertheless it is not something they would encourage if they knew about it.

  Taron’s handbag presents an interesting puzzle for the people who wanted it stolen. The man they engaged for the task was a poor choice. He was supposed to take Alison’s bag but he took Taron’s, believing it to be close enough. It isn’t.

  Two men sort through the contents of Taron’s bag, exchanging grunting noises that pass for conversation as they work. Perhaps they have sinus problems or perhaps, after all, their past lives in the Metropolitan Police have injected an oink into their vocabulary. Their fingers pass over the usual women’s junk things that they can reasonably ignore, like peppermint lip gloss and chewing gum and very small screwed-up pieces of paper. It’s a myth that women’s handbags are always full of tampons. There’s no point in carrying them around unless you need them because if you leave them at the bottom of your handbag they get scuffed, covered in lipstick and pen, and finally unravel so that they are useless. Taron carries thirty-five or forty keys with her. She believes that keys bring extreme good fortune to the carrier, but only if they don’t fit any of the doors in that person’s house. It’s as well that Bird’s men recognize that patience is a virtue, because they will need it in sifting through Taron’s bag for clues. The address book, at least, will be of use, most of the entries adorned with symbols that look as if they could bear decoding. The boys in Waterloo can input all the names and addresses to cross-refer with the others on the database. Perhaps it’s worth having someone pay one or two of the people in the address book a visit to find out whether they know if Alison Temple is onto something.

  Flower sits handsomely at his desk and skims through the weekly updates on current activity in his agency. For security reasons, agents usually dial in remotely to a computer system for lists of people they’ve been assigned to investigate. Managers brief them face-to-face on the objectives of surveillance projects without knowing the names of individuals who are being targeted. Operatives submit weekly or even daily reports direct to Flower. Sometimes their activities yield nothing, usually because the integrity of the data cannot be relied on. Bird, still searching in vain for information about the genetic experimentation sites being targeted by terrorists, passed him some names for investigation, but so far the leads have been useless. Flower reads through the latest report with a sigh.

  Date:

  June 27th

  Objective:

  Determine subject’s terrorist status and access to sensitive information.

  Gained entry to subject’s flat. Evidence suggests that the place had previously been searched by amateur—clothing tipped out of drawers & lying in piles on floor.

  Subject does not appear to have been in residence for many days—dirty cups in sink, no food in fridge, no toilet paper. May have disappeared in hurry—to undertake terrorist activity?

  Suspect is male and appears to live alone but there are quantities of female apparel and maquillage in flat.
Pantomime horse costume in wardrobe.

  No data found on premises. No evidence of intelligence gathering. No evidence of links to subversive organizations.

  Recommend further action.

  They always recommend further action. It keeps them busy and in gainful employment. There are three main steps the operatives follow in obtaining information about each subject: step 1) suss ‘em out, step 2) shake ‘em down, step 3) rough ‘em up. They rarely get to stage 3 but they always recommend it. Even though he’s handsome and even though he isn’t the top man in his organization, Flower has been in the business long enough to recognize a report without information of any value. He recommends no further action. It’s the fifth or sixth useless lead in as many days. He hopes Bird draws a similar conclusion. There’s a saying in the corporate world that like recruits like, and Bird has recruited men in his image, dangerous men. Someone’s going to get hurt one of these days.

  Chapter Twelve: The Dogs

  ‘Alison.’ Taron is on the phone. She says my name urgently, breathily, so I know she’s upset. She pauses so I can take it in. Should have been an actress. ‘Something really strange is happening. Something’s happening to all my friends. Alison?’

  ‘What time is it?’ I’m asleep and disoriented. I’ve been having a dream about the newspaper report Jeff and I read today, about two dogs who dialled 999 while their owner was out. The emergency services suspected their frantic, panting breath on the phone was a nuisance call, but when they investigated they found the dogs had ransacked their own home. A police spokesman was quoted as saying that it was quite possible that one or both of the dogs had dialled the numbers using their paws or their noses. Jeff and I disagreed, thinking it unlikely the dogs would have felt guilty and wanted to give themselves up. The only explanation that worked for us was that the dogs had fallen out and one of them had dobbed the other in to the coppers.

  ‘It’s just after midnight. Wake up, Alison. Something really strange is happening. You know Aani’s flat was turned over but they didn’t take anything? Well, the same thing’s happened to more of my friends but GET THIS—it’s happening in alphabetical order, exactly the order I’ve listed them in my address book. Aani, Aaron, Alexis.’

  Who’d alphabetize by first names except Taron? At first, I’m struck more by how irritating this is than by the danger to her friends. Then I start to see the connection she’s making—that whoever went through my flat, the same person stole her bag with the address book in it, is targeting everyone in it, painstakingly working their way through the transvestites, performance artistes, drug dealers and club kids listed in her book.

  ‘I think we’re all in danger. This has got to be something to do with your work. I bet whoever stole that bag thought it belonged to you.’

  ‘Have you got a copy of your address book so we can contact your friends?’

  ‘No.’

  Her friends are the sort of people who don’t just externalize their feelings, they externalize all aspects of their lives, including their domestic arrangements. They’ll have an untidy cupboard-sized room they call home but I’d be more inclined to call a dressing-up box, spilling with wings and false eyelashes, drugs, cheap alcohol and chewing gum. They eat out, sleep over and bathe with friends, where possible. They only return to change and check the answer machine. It’s a surprise any of them can even tell someone’s broken in and been through their things.

  ‘What about in old diaries or on your mobile phone?’

  ‘They’ve got the moby, it was in my bag. Wait. I’ve just thought of something. I have got a copy of my address book but it’s in my bank vault.’

  ‘You’ve got a bank vault?’

  ‘It’s in Barclays Bank in Piccadilly, do you want to come and see tomorrow?’

  Chapter Thirteen: Alvin

  Like most fat people’s hands, Alvin’s hands are beautifully kept. Children playing hide-and-seek think that if they can’t see you, you can’t see them. As fat people only see their own hands for most of the day, do they think that’s all the rest of the world sees and so let their bodies go to rack and ruin?

  Alvin is on the point of leaving his flat. He turns off the TV with the remote control, glancing down at his hands as he does so. They’re the last clear, normal image he has before the horror begins.

  He looks up to see two men in his flat. They, like he, are fashionably dressed in black. There the resemblance ends. Alvin is one of those straight men who has cultivated the art of camp as a way of being entertaining. His mixture of wit and wobble is highly valued on the party circuit and makes him popular with women looking for a nonthreatening, non-sexual relationship. The men in his flat are villainous thugs. They advertise the fact with their haircuts and scratchy stubble. Also, one carries a hunting knife unsheathed in front of him.

  Alvin focuses on the weapon there in the man’s hands, dangerous, sharp. To avoid antagonizing them, he doesn’t look directly into the men’s faces. They haven’t moved or spoken since he first saw them. Absurdly, Alvin wonders whether they’ve seen him. Perhaps if he stays really still…?

  ‘We know you are an associate of Alison Temple,’ says the man, menacingly. ‘What do you have to say to that?’ Alvin is relieved. He’s never heard of her. Obviously this can all be sorted out. He’s almost calm. He acts the way he would in a restaurant when he sees they have put one too many bottles of wine on the bill. It’s probably just as well Alvin doesn’t get cocky and also that he’s straight. So many overweight homosexuals have come to believe they are imbued with the spirit of Oscar Wilde. There is no place for epigrams in a situation like this.

  ‘Oh, I think there’s been a mistake.’

  ‘There is no mistake,’ says the menacing man. ‘Do you see this knife? What do you think I could do with this?’ Alvin considers the response carefully. He does not want to suggest something so ghastly or original that they’re inspired to carry it out. But, in case they are bullying psychopaths waiting for him to break the rules of a game only they understand, he wants to appear to be entering into the spirit of things. ‘Cut my hair’ sounds a little too tame, even though it has many resonances through history as a way of curtailing power or bringing shame. Alvin eventually settles on ‘You might stab me’ as being fairly noncommittal but respectful of the power of the blade.

  ‘What else?’ The restraint of his maybe-torturers is menacing. So far they have done nothing violent, and yet the air in the flat is oppressive with threat.

  Alvin is silent. Power always makes people act the same way—sneering, knowing, over-reliant on rhetorical questions, wanting you to acknowledge the power. The lack of elegance in their manner would offend him if he weren’t genuinely frightened. He thinks of an article he read in the paper where they asked celebrities what they would do if they saw a fight outside a pub. Some said they’d try to break it up, others said they’d telephone the police. Performance artist Leigh Bowery said he’d judge the fight on artistic merit.

  ‘Don’t you think we know how to make you squeal? How do you think we get people to talk?’

  In spite of himself, Alvin visualizes some of the options. He thinks they might make men talk by stabbing them in the balls, jabbing them in the eye or heating the blade of the knife over a naked flame and searing their shrinking flesh.

  He’d like to have an easy, clubbable way about him. Come on, fellas. What’s this all about? One of Alvin’s strengths is that he knows his own limitations: ‘I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. What do you want to know? Perhaps I do know this Alison but under another name?’

  ‘Let me make this easy, Alvin.’ It’s the first time he’s said the name and Alvin’s stomach turns over. The man moves the knife a little, deliberately, to draw attention to its power. ‘I’ll tell you what we know and you tell me what you know. We know Alison has connections with eco-activists. We know you know her. We’d like to know how much she knows about these criminals. And we’d like to be sure she knows the risks involved.’

/>   ‘I don’t know anything. No activism. No eco-warring. I don’t know any Alisons. I belong to the world of entertainment.’

  ‘Entertain us, then,’ says the knife man. His accomplice moves quickly, kicking Alvin very hard and punching him in the head as he goes down. His fist connects with teeth and makes a cracking sound. Alvin, gym-muscular under the fat, is fit enough to remain conscious while the shit is kicked out of him. He curls up to protect his belly and his balls and puts his hands over his head. The silent man kicks his arse, his kidneys and his hands where they grip his head. Alvin feels nauseous and afraid. He didn’t ask, and perhaps they wouldn’t have told him, but he has no idea who they are. They could be anyone. They could kick him until he dies. When he thinks they won’t stop, they stop. ‘We’ll be watching you. Tell Alison,’ says the menacing man.

  Chapter Fourteen: The Bank

  I meet Taron at the bank. It’s very grand and old, situated just along from the Ritz. It has a domed roof and wrought iron gates with a leaf motif picked out in gold. There is a mosaic in the floor and the counter is cool enough to the touch to be real marble. Despite the splendour of their surroundings, the staff here, as in every other branch of Barclays, are kitted out in aquamarine suits as if they are flying on a charter aircraft. Taron and I tiptoe down a marble staircase grand enough to suggest we will find more staff dancing in aquamarine formation below us, but instead of a ballroom we reach the bank where Taron keeps her treasures.