Damascus

by Richard Beard

  She decided to take a peek under the tea towel.

  William made it to the bottom of the stone staircase leading up to the terrace, bent double, his tongue hanging out, the lavender-coloured sandcastle-mould inches off the ground.

  Nobody would poison an animal, or even a fish, for no reason.

  He dragged at the stone railing with his free hand, pulling himself up towards the terrace, one step, and then another step.

  She touched the edge of the cloth, and started to lift it.

  William rounded the comer of the terrace on his knees. He saw Grace about to look inside the bowl, but was too busy breathing to be able to speak. He watched her lift away the cloth.

  There was no fish at all in the bowl. So what lesson was that supposed to teach her?

  William put down the sandcastle-mould, suddenly unable to focus. He had the impression that Grace was coming towards him. He stood up, waved her away, and vomited his kippers over the balustrade.

  Henry had the billiard cue in one hand and his mug in the other.

  ‘You’re going to have to let go of the mug,’ Hazel said. ‘You’re not going to pot the red and win the game one-handed. Unless God overdoes it, of course.’

  Henry wasn’t sure. He didn’t know. Would he place a bet on it? Only to make it happen. Obviously he believed that he and Hazel were destined to be together, or he’d never have punched his father or found his way to the house or felt so jealous about Hazel and Spencer Kelly (in a coma, brain-damaged, stretched across a railway track). It was therefore only logical to conclude that if he hit the red ball with the white ball, the red ball would fall into a pocket. It would be cowardice to think otherwise, and offend his sense of destiny. It also demeaned him to consider acting any less courageously than his rival. Spencer had already tried and missed, but still Henry was reluctant to loosen his grip on the poisoned soup. He said:

  ‘How do I know you’ll do what you said?’

  ‘You love me, Henry. You couldn’t fall in love with someone who didn’t tell you the truth. Give me the mug.’

  ‘And if I hit the red into the pocket you’ll marry me?’

  ‘Yes, I will, if the red goes into the pocket.’ Henry couldn’t afford not to believe her. He had an idea that theirs wasn’t a conventional British courtship, but then

  Hazel Burns the woman he loved and intended to marry (quietly, in Barbourne, Worcester) was no ordinary woman.

  ‘How can I be sure?’

  ‘Sure of what?’

  ‘That you’ll marry me.’

  ‘Because we’ll have had a sign. Look, Henry. Nobody knows how to play billiards so it’s all in the hands of the gods.’

  ‘But why billiards?’ Spencer asked, still trying to work out how he could have missed. And what if Henry Mitsui was secretly the Japanese champion? ‘Billiards has nothing to do with anything.’

  ‘Nothing has got anything to do with anything,’ Hazel said. ‘Or everything with everything. Depends how you look at it.’

  ‘And how are you looking at it?’

  ‘Everything with everything. Even billiards. It’s Henry’s turn.’

  ‘And you promise to marry him?’

  ‘I’ll have no choice.’

  ‘You promise you promise?’ Henry said.

  ‘Look,’ Hazel said, ‘if you pot the red and then I don’t, then whenever I’m unhappy later in life I’ll automatically think it was because of that. I’ll regret not taking the sign seriously for what it was. I’m taking it seriously. I’ve decided to believe that we connect with something bigger than ourselves, and that sometimes we’re offered signs for guidance. If you pot this red and I marry you, then when things are difficult I can always be consoled by the thought that we were given a sign. I’ll think it’s worth persevering.’

  ‘And you really believe?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  'I love you. I believe we’re destined to be together.’

  ‘Then give me the mug. Take the shot.’

  It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in London, in Tower Hamlets or Shepherd’s Bush or Hampstead or Battersea, in Camden or Kensington or Chiswick or Knights-bridge, Spencer has an unexpected and horrifying insight into what rich people must think: life is fair. He’s twenty-three years old and wondering what he’s ever done not to deserve this.

  He has a Shark’s Fin Soup Special with Commanderia wine to deliver to a table of men or women or both who are still hungry after the East Lanes Annual ATC dinner or The Woman of the Year Lunch or the annual get-together of the Naval 8/208 Squadron Association. He body-swerves between tightly-packed tables, leaving them standing, bamboozled even, reminding himself of Rachel. He finds a big smile for the group at the table, and although he desires every woman he sees, he feels much purer for wanting to marry them all. This is London, however, and he’s already discovered that it’s mostly the not nice girls who do, who are, not nice.

  He flounces his empty tray between occupied tables as he swerves stylishly back to the kitchen, because this is not a restaurant or a café or a wine bar, it’s a brasserie. And when it’s full of important and influential people, as it is today, it doesn’t seem so foolish to rely on the possibility of sharp divisions between today and tomorrow. Anybody could come in. Anything could happen.

  Spencer is beckoned to a corner table by Lord O’Brien Welsby, who invests in films and sits alone.

  ‘Sit down,’ Welsby says, indicating the empty seat opposite.

  ‘I can’t. I’m working.’

  ‘Be a good boy and sit down. If the manager comes back I’ll vouch for you.’

  Spencer sits down. Welsby pushes some spare cutlery to one side and leans forward across the table, making a square dam of his hands by interlocking his fingers.

  ‘I have a proposition to make,’ he says.

  As an actor, Spencer naturally feels superior to all businessmen, whether they’re the director general of Ofgas or Sega Europe’s financial director or the Governor of the Bank of England. Lord O’Brien Welsby has made his fortune speculating in property, predicting gilt yields, and rescuing businesses which manufacture leisure products. More importantly, he invests in films, and Spencer has been waiting for this moment ever since he arrived in London. It is now more welcome than ever because he urgently needs to restructure his banking arrangements, meaning he’s desperately short of money. Originally he’d phoned to share a garden flat in Wimbledon Village for £85 a week, but he was rejected in favour of a female professional. He now lives instead in a studio in Marble Arch or Wandsworth or Lambeth, paying £110 a week and far too much for his waiter’s wages.

  Because despite countless auditions where he places himself deliberately in the aim of the gods, Spencer has failed to land the role of tonight’s overnight sensation. He hasn’t been offered a part in any number of films which signal the re-emergence of the British film industry. He is not in Howard’s End or The Remains of the Day or Raining Stones or Truly Madly Deeply. Television treats him with equal indifference, and he is yet to feature even in the background of Cracker or Casualty or House of Cards. Even children’s TV seems beyond him, and he isn’t hiding away making a perfectly decent living on Wizadora or Star Pets or Bodger and Badger. In fact, it looks increasingly unlikely that he’ll ever return to every place he’s ever lived, rich and famous and therefore beyond reproach.

  He is therefore more than ready to listen to any proposition made by Lord O’Brien Welsby, who invests in films.

  ‘I have a property which is standing empty,’ he says. 'I want somebody to look after it for a while.’

  One of Spencer’s colleagues, also absent from adult television but once famously fired for artistic differences from Bodger and Badger, stares at him angrily. Spencer raises an eyebrow, as if to say: Tt’s only a full-length feature film.’

  ‘It’s not in a film, is it?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s not really what I’m looking for,’ Spencer says.

 
‘I’ve been watching you,’ Welsby says. ‘You strike me as someone who’d appreciate a bit of peace and quiet.’

  Spencer toys with a fork, thinking this is exactly what he has to resist. He doesn’t want peace and quiet. He wants a tomorrow full of everything he wants today which he still hasn’t got, because it’s always tomorrow that it turns out fine because otherwise all those adverts would be wrong. Every day, in some form or other, he’s promised that tomorrow is a Peugeot 405 or a Simpson suit or an original artwork, no problem, leaving him like everyone else stranded in a today which repeats this habitual ritual state of never enough.

  ‘You wouldn’t have to pay rent,’ O’Brien Welsby says. ‘You’d have to look in on my brother, but only until I find a buyer.’

  Welsby is offering him the chance to want less, wanting only what is necessary and possible like food, a roof, a library card, until eventually the world begins to diminish. It shrinks to the size of a small hard disc (circles not spheres) of fulfilled desire, just perfect. Small. But perfect. But small.

  ‘You could still do auditions.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Why not you?’

  ‘You don’t think I’m going to make it as an actor, do you?’

  ‘It’s up to you, Spencer.’

  ‘You don’t even think I’m making it as a waiter.’

  After children’s TV, as a very last resort, Spencer auditions for the theatre. He gets it wrong for The Mandrake Theatre Company or Chicken Shed or the RSC, even though his voice is now almost perfectly neutral, betraying nothing of his past.

  'I’ll have to think about it,’ Spencer says.

  'I’d like your answer today, if at all possible.’

  In a region of his mind barricaded against common sense, Spencer thinks he could maybe ask his Dad for some money. But then he remembers his Dad has been told by the warehouse that he has to be adaptable, which means he’s about to be sacked. As for his Mum, Spencer knows as a fact that she splits her maintenance payments between the St Oswald’s orphan fund and the Princess of Wales, to show support for all the selfless work Diana manages over lunch at the London Hilton or Chequers or Kensington Palace.

  ‘I need to make a phone call,’ Spencer says, and pushes himself away from the table. He ignores customers who try to flag him down and heads for the pay-phone on the counter at the bar, wondering if his lucky break is ever going to come. He wears a pointed metal hat beneath trees during storms and lightning refuses to strike. He shakes his fist at God and gets nothing in return, not even the common courtesy of retaliation.

  ‘We’re not being very calm about this, are we?’ Hazel says.

  ‘What should I do?’

  She could suggest they meet up, fall in love, instantly erase his other failures in the triumphs of requited passion. If it works like that.

  Silence from Hazel.

  ‘You never feel like this? You never feel like all the paths you can take lead in the wrong direction?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Hazel says. ‘Sometimes I sit in bed in the middle of the day with my coat on. I mean when it’s not even very cold.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘If I’m feeling a bit mad and depressed.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then I get up again and take my coat off.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because sooner or later I have to get up and get on with it’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Real life.’

  Spencer’s money runs out, and O’Brien Welsby is leaning back in his chair, arms folded, waiting. He isn’t going to offer Spencer a part in tomorrow’s consolidation of the British film industry, and it suddenly seems a little foolish ever to have hoped that tomorrow could be all that different from today.

  11/1/93 MONDAY 15:48

  The second goldfish was now in the fruit bowl, full of fresh water, and it had pride of place in the centre of the dining room table. The water curved elegant shapes from the varnished table-top, and also from the lavender plastic of the sandcastle-mould. Grace had put her face close to the bowl so that Trigger II had something to look at. He flicked from one side of the bowl to the other, living a brand new now every three seconds, every discovery both dramatic and familiar. William had tidied himself up, though his white shirt was splashed with water. His hair was wet and plastered flat on his head, and he sat opposite Grace, the bowl and the fish between them. He looked deathly serious, and not very well.

  ‘You knew Trigger was dead, didn’t you?’ he said.

  'Fish don’t backstroke.’

  ‘Perhaps the first fish wasn’t Trigger at all. This fish is Trigger. The other fish was Trigger’s evil twin.’

  ‘I don’t need cheering up,’ Grace said. 'I understand that Trigger’s dead. We can’t turn the clock back and pretend it never happened.’

  'I wasn’t trying to trick you,’ William said. 'I just didn’t want you to think the world was that kind of place.’

  ‘What kind of place?’

  'I didn’t want you to be frightened. I wanted everything to be alright, especially on your birthday.’

  'I know,’ Grace said. ‘But it’s not as though fish are the same as people, is it? Fish live forever, and then they die. No, that’s not right. Fish live forever before they die.’

  The telephone rang, and William let it ring until it stopped. Nothing could be important enough to make him stand up again so soon.

  ‘But if the first Trigger is dead,’ Grace said, ‘it means that Chinese man has real poison in his soup.’

  'It does indeed,’ William said.

  Grace looked solemnly across the top of the fruit bowl. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ William said.

  ‘We should do something, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘We’ll leave them alone long enough to make fools of themselves.’

  ‘But someone might get hurt. Someone might get poisoned.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ William said. ‘And remember he only wanted to kill himself.’

  ‘But we don’t want anyone to die, do we? Not even him?’

  ‘Of course we don’t, and no-one will. They’re all having a moment of madness. It’s only love. It doesn’t last forever.’

  'I still think we should do something,’ Grace said, so William, over the head of the new goldfish, tried to explain why nothing they could do would make any difference.

  All of them, Spencer and Hazel and the foreign man, they were all desperate to believe in the one moment which changed everything, the instant Damascus in which dreamers set such store. Nothing anybody else did could change this, because they’d all grown dependent on the Damascus-type promises made indiscriminately for love, or religion, or drugs, or art. Or just as often it was for something less grand but more urgent, like a cash windfall or a quick divorce or access to the latest craze, and there were as many different versions of Damascus as there were people. It could be getting the CSA off your back or selection for Wales or the first day of the school holidays so that then, and only then, is everything made better, instantly.

  Grace blinked at him, impressed and a little confused. ‘So we’re not going to do anything?’

  'They all know what they want. We shouldn’t interfere, just in case they get it.’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘What everybody wants. One moment which changes everything.’

  Grace thought about this. ‘It’s not everybody,’ she said. ‘I’m not like that.’

  ‘That’s because you’re too young. Everything you do is amazing and it does change you forever, because it’s always the first time you’ve done it.’

  ‘What about you? Are you like that?’

  ‘It’s different for me,’ William said. ‘I’m old enough to know that time sorts things out.’

  Henry had no choice. If he was a believer he had to bite the bullet, as they liked to say. He handed Hazel the cold mug. For a moment, before he let go, they were joined by it. She had
the mug now and she didn’t betray him. She didn’t pour the soup over his shoes, bragging victory. She put it calmly in the corner with her own mug of soup, also untouched. She replaced the red billiard ball on its spot, and then the white. Henry took the cue and lined up his shot, just like Spencer had. He fired the white ball at the red. It made good contact, and the red rolled diagonally towards the pocket. It missed.

  Spencer’s shot. Hazel picked up the red ball, wiped it on her dress like an apple, and replaced it. Spencer lined up the white and cursed himself for not paying more attention to his father. Those first missed steps towards £60,000 a tournament seemed a long time ago, and no matter how hard he tried to remember them, they weren’t among the moments which stayed with him as clearly as if they’d happened today. The only way the red ball was going to fall into a pocket was through an outrageous stroke of luck. Or, as Hazel would have it, if it was destined to go in, as a sign in itself that they were meant for each other.

  He slapped the cue down onto the table.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said.

  'It’s your shot, Spencer.’

  The mugs of soup were behind Hazel in the corner. They didn’t have to do this anymore because Henry had given up the poison. They could tip it down the drain and throw him out. Forget the gods. This was Spencer’s chance to make a change in things, and one of the memories always available to him was the left-right side-step perfected by Rachel. To reach the mugs, all he had to do was dodge round Hazel, so stopping this stupid game before somebody won and somebody lost, because love wasn’t a sport. It wasn’t about winning and losing. And then, after seeing off Henry Mitsui, he and Hazel could return to the more familiar torment of godless indecision.

  Hazel wouldn’t let him pass. He tried the side-step, and she easily moved in front of him, blocking his path to the mugs.

  ‘But it’s stupid,’ Spencer said, appealing for her agreement. ‘It is stupid.’

  ‘It won’t be stupid if you win.’

  There was no changing her mind. It was the gods or nothing. Spencer went back to the table and took his shot. He missed.