Damascus

by Richard Beard

  He therefore continues to educate himself, adding the Bible to his reading list of newspapers and English literature. This is partly to please his mother, who’s now been invited to the Woman of the Year lunch for her work with political refugees and local churches, an event which Mr Kelly falls on as justification for the divorce. His ex-wife would rather go to the Woman of the Year lunch than stay at home with her family.

  ‘I think that’s the point of these things, Dad. You get the invitation because you’re the kind of woman who says yes.’

  ‘At the expense of your family?’

  It’s too tiring to explain, and Spencer sometimes wishes he hadn’t read so many improving newspapers. This is another reason he’s moved on to the Bible, which he reads like a history book to discover whether in other centuries they had the same impatience for miracles, and single moments which changed everything. Occasionally, late at night, it occurs to him that in another seven years he’ll find out for himself, without even having to read anything.

  ‘Stop that and listen!’

  Spencer stops humming. His father has pushed up very close, and Spencer wants to retreat but he’s already backed up against the bunched curtains. His father is losing control of his voice, from trying so hard to be reasonable.

  ‘You read too many newspapers,’ he says. 'It’s about time you got a grip on reality. You can’t leave now, where would you go?’

  ‘I’m twenty-one years old. A man’s gotta do.’

  ‘What about me? Why do you think I’ve always worked so hard?’

  ‘So I could play football for Tottenham Hotspur.’

  ‘Or Manchester United or Southampton or QPR.’

  ‘Let’s face it, Dad. I'm not even going to play for Wimbledon.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how much money I’ve spent? The sacrifices I’ve made? What about all those cheap-rate holidays in November?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m not going to make it as a great sportsman.’

  ‘In the prime of your life, look at you. I should be living next to a golf course by now, putting my feet up.’

  ‘I’m going to try something else instead. And I don’t mean a warehouseman.’

  Spencer isn’t just thinking of London and its lists of cinema hits. He’s also thinking about Hazel and running out of coins and their shorter conversations now that neither of them steals any more. When he meets her, preferably as an international star, he imagines they’ll fall straight into bed. It’s the natural next step, because they’ve already done all the talking.

  ‘Time moves on, Dad,’ he says. 'I want to make something of myself before it’s too late.’

  Mr Kelly holds up his hands, palms outward and fingers splayed as if he’s heard enough. Then he suddenly straightens his arms and pushes Spencer in the chest, clattering him back into the curtains. He says,

  This is the fourth dimension, son. There is no time. To me you’ll always be a snotty ten-year-old in a replica football shirt falling on your arse in the mud. You useless beggar.’

  He pushes Spencer again, and as a newly-declared free and independent Republic Spencer ought not to be standing for this. Using only the tips of his fingers he pushes his father back in the chest, but it doesn’t move him anywhere.

  ‘What would Rachel think?’ Mr Kelly says. ‘What would your sister Rachel think if she were alive today and she could see you now?’

  Mr Kelly hits Spencer with a clean uppercut to the jaw, jarring his teeth together and jerking his head backwards. Before Spencer can react he is hit again, twice, two left hooks to the face before he can get his arms up covering his head and his elbows sticking out to protect himself. Mr Kelly starts punching and slapping at Spencer’s arms, and behind his elbows Spencer takes quick shallow breaths and tries to recover. His father is leaning his face forward to see where best to hit him next, to finish it, and Spencer instinctively makes a fist and punches him, hard and straight on the nose.

  His father, his Dad, Mr Kelly, looking amazed, astounded even, and then he falls over backwards to the carpet. Oh my god, Spencer thinks. He helps his Dad up onto the sofa, where they both try to rub at his face, getting their hands all mixed up. Spencer’s Dad shakes his head. He seems dazed.

  'It’s alright, Dad. It’s fine.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ his Dad says. ‘Boxing.’

  'It could have gone either way. Really.’

  ‘Super middle-weight,’ he mumbles, ‘a spot of running makes you a light-weight, even super bantam-weight. Spencer, my boy.’

  The fight has probably lasted no more than ninety seconds, but both Spencer and his Dad register that something fundamental has changed. At last, Spencer the Republican thinks, I may have lived to see the moment it all began.

  11/1/93 MONDAY 15:12

  With the exception of the magnificent Miss Burns, today had confirmed Henry Mitsui in his long-held belief that other people were mostly banal. Spencer and William Welsby, both grown men, had failed to intervene and save Miss Bums until it was too late. Now they seemed shocked by his threatened suicide, and he wondered if either of them had any idea of what was meant by commitment. Henry couldn’t live without Miss Bums. He meant it.

  ‘You can’t poison yourself,’ Spencer said. ‘There are people coming to look at the house. Italians.’

  Spencer could have added that there was a child in the room and he still had his library books to take back, but he didn’t. He’d moved towards Henry once, planning to force the mug from his hand. Henry raised it closer to his lips. Spencer backed away. On a points-scoring system Henry judged that this skirmish, in the mind of Miss Burns, could plausibly be scored as a victory in his favour. This being the case, he couldn’t understand why she should shake her head, pick up her own untouched mug of soup, and leave the room.

  ‘Where’s Trigger?’

  ‘He’s in the water in the bowl,’ William said, blocking Grace’s view with his body. She was insistent, trying to squirm a view round either side of his back. ‘He’s in the bowl, I said.’

  ‘You’re lying. He’s been poisoned.’

  William grabbed a tea towel and covered the top of the bowl. ‘Alright,’ he said. He turned with it, lifting it higher than Grace’s reach, his fingers spread out over the base. ‘He’s been poisoned. But he’s not dead. He’s just feeling a bit poorly.’

  ‘Let me see him.’

  ‘He needs to be kept in the dark, like an ill person. He’s resting.’

  ‘Really?’

  Trigger the goldfish was dead. In fact he wasn’t even in the bowl any more. William had managed to pull him out without Grace seeing anything, and Trigger the fish was now stiffening up in William’s trouser pocket. This sudden emergency had inspired William. It was like a revelation, and he knew instinctively what to do next. The most important thing in the entire world, outside not excluded, was to fetch one of the other goldfish from the shed and get it into the bowl before Grace suspected the truth. Otherwise, from here on in, she’d live the rest of her life thinking that the world was a terrifying place where psycho nutcases could stroll off the street into all her best birthdays to kill her favourite presents.

  ‘What he needs is some fresh air,’ William said.

  ‘I saw him on his back.’

  ‘He was relaxing. He was doing backstroke. Let’s go outside.’

  Still carrying the fruit bowl, full of water and now covered in a tea towel explaining the rules of cricket, William fumbled his way out through the double-doors in the dining room. At least it wasn’t raining. Grace followed close behind him. He put the bowl down at the base of the balustrade, and checked it was completely covered. He told Grace sternly that Trigger was not to be disturbed for any reason while he went to fetch some fish-medicine from the shed. He’d be back as soon as he could but she had to promise not to look. If she lifted the tea towel, even just a little bit, that might be all it took to kill him.

  ‘What if that man comes back?’

  ‘Run away.’r />
  The man was completely mad. He was standing at the top of the steps which led down into the shallow end of the empty swimming pool. Hazel was already in there, sitting in a corner behind the billiard table with her mug in both hands, knees up to her chin.

  ‘You let me into the house,’ Henry said, climbing backwards down the steps. ‘You wanted me to be here.’

  Spencer looked into the swimming pool, wishing he could stop Henry from doing this. Why hadn’t he already stopped him? He’d never have believed things could change so quickly, but today he kept on being taken by surprise. He wished he’d acted differently, more positively, and suddenly realised how much he didn’t want to grow old regretting all the things he’d never done. There was no point waiting for outside intervention. This wasn’t even a case where the police (Damascus!) could be expected to intervene, because Spencer wouldn’t know how to explain about being held hostage by a man armed with a lethal chicken cup-a-soup. No, officer, he’s not trying to force anyone to drink it.

  Spencer had to provide his own intervention. He had to take responsibility. He ought to be devising ingenious ways to lure Henry into a fight, or at least make him put down the mug, but Spencer had no secret Damascan skills. He wasn’t a covert MI6 agent or an itchy ex-serviceman equipped to turn everything around, like in a different type of story. He had to think of something else, because heroism was all about doing something. Otherwise this could go on indefinitely, not knowing what he thought or who he loved or what was worth defending.

  Hazel stood up and kept the billiard table between herself and Henry Mitsui. She looked angry as well as frightened but Spencer feared the worst for her, for them, seeing for the first time with absolute clarity that his mother was wrong. Rachel his sister didn’t live on each time he remembered her. Rachel was dead, and memory did nothing to revive her. She was stuck forever in the same remembered episodes, jamming exactly where she was each time he tried to make her come forward. He couldn’t help her, she couldn’t help him, and she receded a little with each day and every week that passed. And the same thing could happen without warning to anybody, wherever. Spencer realised it was imperative that at least once in his life, and he was thinking of now, he should concentrate on the present tense. The vivid green cloth of the billiard table. The dark blue tiles, the dry white floor. Hazel, her dress, her pale bare feet and her angry eyes. Henry Mitsui, his sweater and his unpattemed mug.

  Now is now, he told himself, looking from Hazel to Henry and back again. He absolutely mustn’t let anyone die, because when you die you’re dead.

  William would have to hurry. Here was his chance to be a hero. He’d have to run. He’d left Grace on the terrace where it was cold and probably boring for a ten-year-old, and if he didn’t get a move on she was going to find out for herself that the fruit bowl was empty. He shambled forwards across the grass, clenched his fists and started to run. After five uneven paces he was already telling himself he had to keep going, appealing to his legs and lungs to remember the movement called running because running was necessary for this heroic act, in which he would defy the odds to make the world seem a better place. That was what heroism was all about.

  By the time he reached the path he was breathing hoarsely and his head was giddy with rushing blood, feeding his brain, nourishing strange connections. His brain wanted some of Ma Junren’s magic potion (half a marathon in sixty minutes was truly a miracle). Or it cast William back to Prince’s Park, or Leazes Park or the People’s Park, living destitute and free. By the boat-house he had his own statue, the running man, erected in honour of this heroic moment. He stood face to face with it, to check he was still himself, and these hallucinations were either too much oxygen rushing the brain or his life flashing before his eyes before cardio-respiratory failure and a stroke. He kept on running, past the mulberry tree and a brief nod in the direction of Georgi Markov, the rare Bulgarian Siberian blue-tailed red-flanked robin, or whatever he was. He was William’s friend. Through the rustling chestnut trees past the lemon hornbeams and at last he was there, at the door to the shed. He could stop running now.

  Inside the shed he grabbed a lavender-coloured sandcastle mould to scoop both unsuspecting fish from the top yellow bucket. He then used up time but also recovered some breath by pouring one of them back, before gritting his teeth for the return journey. Did he really have to run all the way back as well? No sign told him he had to. He thought of mountain rescue, unpaid medics in war zones, the marriage of school-leavers, recruiting to the UDR, and many other heroisms he’d never attempted because there was never a sign telling him it was the right thing to do. He shouldn’t have been so frightened.

  Holding the sandcastle-mould with the fish in it well out in front of him, he left the shed and lumbered into a jog.

  He felt sick, but tried to forget this and his straining, shrinking lungs by pretending it was him who was the fish, with a thankfully short memory of only three seconds. It worked, several times. After the trees he left the path and cut across the wet lawn wondering how long, in between each three seconds, the fish allowed themselves for the act of forgetting. How long did it take to forget something? The house and the raised terrace were in sight now, and William wasn’t a fish and he felt terrible and he couldn’t suddenly forget it. He wanted to stop, he had no choice, he had to stop. He stopped running and slowed to a fast walk, bending almost double to keep himself moving. His ankles hurt and he needed more air. He slowed to a slow walk. He started limping.

  Why was it always so difficult to do good things?

  11

  Is it to be evil and violence or dialogue and peace?

  THE TIMES 11/1/93

  11/1/93 MONDAY 15:24

  ‘It doesn’t matter what the game is,’ Hazel said. ‘The whole point of destiny is that it takes care of the details.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve never played before.’

  ‘If we’re destined to be together, then it doesn’t matter.’

  Henry had managed to follow Hazel on a complete tour of the gradients of the swimming pool, always looking at her, never once spilling any of his lethal soup.

  ‘Maybe you don’t believe I’ll actually drink it?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Hazel said. ‘Spencer can’t play either. It’s in the hands of the gods now.’

  Hazel had made a decision, and now life would have to follow on from it. This was how any decent decision worked. She told Spencer to stop prowling round the edge and to climb down into the pool, which he did. Then she put the red billiard ball on its spot at one end of the table, and a white ball behind the line at the other end. Because neither of the men knew how to play billiards Hazel had devised the simplest of contests. Whoever potted the red first would be the winner. If Spencer won, Henry had to leave. If Henry won, well then, Hazel would marry him.

  Spencer’s jaw dropped. Then he pushed his lips together until they went very thin.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We haven’t had much luck trying to decide rationally, have we? Instead of deciding anything useful you just build up defences, scared of what a decision might mean. It’s already a kind of miracle, after so long, that we’re here together at all, so maybe the answer is to trust in miracles. If you and me is the right thing to happen, Spencer, to the right people at the right time, then you’ll win.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘The same principle applies. He believes he’s destined to marry me. Perhaps he is. If destiny’s on his side, there’11-be a sign. He’ll win.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as destiny,’ Spencer said, but Hazel only had to look at him to see that neither of them really believed this, not really, not somewhere deep inside themselves untouched by the twentieth century.

  Hazel snapped a cue from its clip beneath the table and offered it to Henry Mitsui. He refused to let go of his mug. His hands were sweating, and he held the mug in both ha
nds. Spencer stepped forward and took the billiard cue. This would be the sign he’d been waiting for. He lined up the white with the red and closed one eye, telling himself that this was no time to panic. He pushed the cue forward, making good contact with the white. The white ball rolled down the table and hit the red. The red deflected neatly towards the bottom left-hand pocket, but then inexplicably missed it by some distance.

  William still wasn’t back from the shed, so Grace decided to take a peek under the tea towel. She hunkered down next to the bowl and took a corner of the cloth between her fingers. She didn’t believe she could kill Trigger just by looking at him. It didn’t sound like something that was true. But then earlier on today she’d have sworn it was impossible for a complete stranger to invade her birthday party and poison her best present. Come to think of it, she’d also have offered to fight anybody who called River Phoenix a drug addict.

  Maybe her parents were right, and it always made sense to be careful. She let go of the cloth. A telephone started ringing inside the house but she was too frightened to go inside and find it, even though it was cold outside. She stood up and flapped her arms and stamped her feet. Then she ran up and down the terrace, mostly to get warm but also to practise her running away. She ran on the spot next to the fruit bowl. Why would anybody want to poison a fish who’d done nothing wrong? People shouldn’t be made that way.

  She wanted to go to the bathroom, but the man with the funny sweater might be waiting inside to poison her. She crossed one leg over the other and spun herself round like a dancer. If Trigger died, she wondered if something else could happen just as suddenly which would make everything alright again. Or if he did die, there had to be a reason, making it an important sign of something important. If so, she should be able to learn something from it, and now she was ten she was old enough to leam the truth.