Alison Wonderland

by Helen Smith

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Come Fly with Me

  The keeper walks in the fields with the shig. He’s singing very softly to soothe her because she’s pregnant. The shig has become more sheep-like and docile since conceiving. The keeper, who has just finished grooming her fleece, has picked a long-stemmed wild flower and tucked it into her fleece near her ear.

  The keeper feels very tender towards the shig but he has never been tempted to make love to her again. He did what was necessary for the continuation of the species. Sometimes he even wonders if he dreamed the events on Cerne Abbas hill; the moonlight and the fertility symbol filled him with madness that night. But when he’s grooming the shig, the gentle grunting sounds she makes remind him of their secret act of love, and he stands very close to her with his groin pressed against her until his erection subsides. He didn’t actually ejaculate inside the creature, of course. Such a union would have been obscene, and his wife would never have understood. At the crucial moment, he withdrew and squirted synthesized shig semen from a turkey baster into his lover’s receptive body. Still, he’s proud of the part he played in enabling her to get pregnant.

  ‘Come fly with me,’ he sings. As he sings to her, the shig grazes among the flowers. With a cracking, booming explosion that can be heard for up to a mile away, their roasting pork/lamb and man flesh mingles together for eternity, spraying a final resting place across a very wide area as the shig chews on live ammunition left behind by soldiers who failed their target practice because of their dismal aim.

  When the news breaks, Miss Lester begins to clear her desk without being asked, metaphorically bundling her ruined professional reputation with her ruined personal reputation. The death of the shig reflects on the failure of Miss Lester’s management style. People are whispering about a suicide pact between the keeper and the shig. Miss Lester will leave it to the professionals to hush up. A couple of weeks ago, Miss Lester wouldn’t have believed a word of it. A man in love with a sheep/pig? A sheep/pig in love with a man? But she has been to hell and back in second-hand Salvation Army clothes, and it has made her a wiser person.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: The Duel

  Clive, in the nation’s capital, duels with Taron’s mother in Kent. Separated by physical distance, connected by psychic ability, each stands quietly and concentrates on mental combat.

  If they were actors in an early episode of Star Trek they would be bathed in a greenish aura, the agony of the battle contorting their faces, hands raised to their temples, knees sagging with physical fatigue. The signs of their conflict, though subtle, are there. Energy turns inwards, blood pressure falls, breathing shallows, body temperature lowers. Ashen-faced, chilly, each fights for supremacy. It is a fight Taron’s mother has long been preparing for.

  Drawing on the strength she needs to protect her only daughter from a servant of the forces of evil, she summons support from around the country from other mothers. Taron’s mother sends a stream of images to Clive, forming a rainbow arc across the English countryside; spiders, carefree children with brightly coloured fishing nets, chiming silver bells, assembled characters from the cryptic feel-good tampon ads on TV.

  Slowly, slowly, slowly Clive retreats.

  Chapter Thirty-Six: The Database

  Taron and I have to find a way of removing her friends’ names from the database in Bird’s organization so they’ll be safe. Jeff has been abducted and slapped, Alvin has been kicked. Not one of our friends is safe as long as Bird has evidence of their connection to us. The removal of the names will be our last project together because Taron is so wrapped up in the club promotion. We plan it very carefully.

  We wait for the Sunday evening of the August bank holiday so that the office will be deserted. Most invasions and wars are started during weekends or national holidays because the generals and politicians go to their country houses to get pissed and squabble over the barbecue. Drawing from the lessons of history, our attack has been planned and is to be executed with similar logic and military precision, except that we have to bring Phoebe along with us as we can’t get a babysitter.

  The building we have to break into is a glass-fronted structure near Waterloo that was featured on Tomorrow’s World in the seventies as the office of the future, with electronically controlled heating and blinds that roll up and down at the windows in response to light from the sun. The reflected clouds that drift across the building’s oily blue glass most days are metaphors for the practicalities that cloud all dreams of the future. The blinds at the windows raise and lower infuriatingly as the sun threads in and out behind the clouds. The recycled air in the building is never quite the right temperature for everyone working there and smells of cabbage, even though there is no canteen on the premises. Bird’s records clerks are housed cheaply in a suite of offices in the building leased from the council. They moved here from the indignity of the shocking pink Elephant and Castle shopping centre so they rarely complain. I know this because I’ve been in the building working undercover as a cleaner and I listen to their conversations as I empty the bins and refresh the ladies’ toilets. I’m struggling to hold on to the difference between working as a cleaner and being a detective working as a cleaner. At least I don’t have to deal with the disposal of sanitary waste; that’s a job for the specialists.

  We arrive at the building in darkness. Phoebe, seemingly accustomed to these night sorties, dozes between Taron’s breasts as usual. We don’t actually have to break the door down to get in as I nicked a spare key from the cleaning supervisor. I hate not being able to turn the lights on once we get inside. Taron doesn’t seem frightened on our missions, but I am. I tell myself it’s OK because fear stimulates my adrenaline and this keeps me alert and sharp, which is what I used to say to myself when I took exams at school, to little effect.

  Shadows distort the interior as we walk past the sleeping computers and empty chairs until we reach the place we’re looking for. The computer terminal is protected by a password, but the young man who uses it conveniently keeps a note of it on his desk near his Dilbert calendar, along with the passwords of his colleagues. If only he were so meticulous about not throwing his yogurt pots into the paper-only recycling bin.

  I log on to the computer. ‘This is very important, Taron,’ I say momentously. ‘We have the future of all these people in our hands. I hope I can do what it takes.’ I start scrolling through the names and addresses on the screen. Mine is there, so is Taron’s, so are her friends’. We’re in a file entitled ‘high risk’. There are lots of categories: ‘homos’, ‘nuisances’, ‘terrorists’, etc.

  Taron is frowning. ‘This is one of the most important things we’ll ever do, isn’t it? Only I’ve just thought of something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Something my mother gave me. The spell. She said when the time came I’d know when to use it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘D E L star dot star.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Try typing it in. D E L star dot star.’

  So I type, and all the files start to disappear. I switch off the machine and switch it on again, type in the password. No files. Nothing. We have saved the world, or our bit of it.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Records Clerk

  The young record clerk comes into work on Tuesday a little hungover from the bank holiday excesses. Something has wiped all the files from his machine. Perhaps it’s a virus, like the Friday 13th virus, except that it’s activated by a bank holiday. It seems unlikely, which is a pity as it would have been something to talk about in the pub.

  Checking his reflection in the lifeless screen of the computer terminal, the records clerk tries to assess whether the weekend’s growth of goatee beard suits him. Possibly not. He strokes the scratchy skin reflectively as he calls the systems people to ask them to get him a new machine. They’ll have to pull all the backed-up files from the mainframe computer and download them onto the new terminal, which will be time consuming.

  On the plus side, i
t gives him a chance to swap all the names marked with rune symbols from ‘high risk’ to ‘nuisance’. The order came from the top to do it a while ago, but he’s been feeling too rough lately to get going on the task. High risks are passed remotely to someone for action, which probably means regular harassment. ‘Nuisances’ just stay on the database in case anyone ever asks for information about them.

  He shouldn’t go out and get so wasted when he has to go to work the next morning; someone could get hurt one of these days.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: You’ll Never Know

  I’m back at my house now. It’s easier for me to look after Phoebe here while Taron’s working at the club. It’s the end of summer. There are long shadows on the grass in my garden in the afternoons, and the bluish darkness comes sooner each evening. There are blackberries in the hedges when I take Phoebe for a walk and although I’d like to taste them, I don’t pick them in case dogs have pissed on them. Soon there will be that metallic smell in the air as the seasons change and people only go into their gardens for bonfires or fireworks, as if summer was never here.

  Jeff has moved away, perhaps because I’ve neglected him, perhaps because he’s too embarrassed to see me again. I can’t contact him to find out which it is because I don’t know where he’s living. I’ve been too paralysed wondering how he’s feeling to think about how I feel, but now that it’s too late I know I miss him. I’m not sure how long it will be before I get weevils in the porridge but I’m taking the risk that time is still on my side. I can’t bear to throw my cereals away, as it would be an admission that he’s not coming back.

  The psychic postman brought some post for Jeff this morning as I was leaving the house to take Phoebe for a walk.

  ‘I don’t know where he is,’ I said, taking the letters.

  ‘That’s a pity, you’ll miss him,’ said the postman, tapping the ash from his cigarette. ‘It’s a lovely day for autumn, isn’t it? Have you heard of a park near Bart’s Hospital called the Postman’s Park? It was bought by an artist at the turn of the century. He made his money with the painting of Hope blindfolded on the top of the world. He put ceramic plaques round the walls of the park dedicated to unsung heroes: people who saved children from fire, rescued foundlings, that sort of thing.’ He looked at me very carefully as he mentioned foundlings. ‘You should take the nipper there one day while the weather holds. You might find it interesting.’

  He handed me a postcard from Jeff with a poem written on it:

  PEACE

  Heart beating like a drum

  It doesn’t bring me peace

  I can’t catch the sunlight

  On your kitchen floor

  Perhaps it means he’s gone off to join the monks. If I search the whole world over, I’ll never find anyone who loves me as much as he does. I’m not sure when it happened, perhaps it was when I was staying with Taron, but I seem to have made a choice and chosen Phoebe instead of him. Next time Phoebe and I go to pat the statue of the Brown Dog in Battersea Park, I’ll have a look out for him.

  We often visit the Brown Dog, even though it takes some finding, stuck away from the glamour of the Peace Pagoda and the fountains on a gloomy path near the Old English Garden. The statue, unveiled in 1985 by the Greater London Council, who seem to have been terribly busy with monuments in the park that year, replaces the original monument to the suffering brown terrier that was erected in 1906.

  ‘Men and women of England

  How long shall these things be?’

  asks the plaque.

  Phoebe is beside me on the bed as I look out into the garden, watching as the light changes and deepens the green of the foliage in the borders. Like all newborn babies, Phoebe came into the world without possessions, and we quickly amassed them for her. Unlike most newborns, by the time she reached us she had a pink blanket and a cardboard box. Taron and I wanted to keep the box to show her her heritage when she grows up, but it’s already disintegrating. I reach out my hand so Phoebe can make a fist round one of my fingers. The CD player stirs into life. It’s Hi Gloss, ‘You’ll Never Know.’

  Sometimes, when Phoebe and I are alone late in the afternoon like this, a feeling steals up on me that I recognize because I have always feared it. It’s a feeling like melancholy, like realizing at last that I’m grown up because I’m accountable for someone else. I have Phoebe but I miss Taron. I miss Jeff. I love him. If I went out into the garden now I could show you the exact shade of green that matches the colour of his eyes.

  The feeling is regret.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Alex Carr, my editor, and the team at AmazonEncore who brought this book to life: Brian Zimmerman, who designed the cover and the interior of the book; Katherine Giles, who wrote the jacket cover and other promotional text; Jessica Smith, who copyedited the book; and Jennifer Williams, who proofread it. Thanks also to Sarah Tomashek and the sales and marketing team who will help to get the book into readers’ hands. Thanks, as always, to Caroline Dawnay and everyone at United Agents.

  About the Author

  Photograph by Marta Literska, 2011

  Helen Smith is a novelist and playwright and the recipient of an Arts Council of England Award. In addition to Alison Wonderland, she is the author of Being Light, The Miracle Inspector, and two children’s books. Her plays have been produced to critical acclaim in the United Kingdom. She has traveled all over the world, and currently lives in London.