The script was, after all, exactly the type of straight-to-TV, martial arts bunfight that would be turned into a Steven Segal movie and shown in the late hours on Channel 5. And all those films had scripts, and at some point someone must have written it and someone else must have read it and thought it was worth producing.
Nevertheless, I couldn't help thinking that the script stank up the plane. I got halfway through, my insides curling up in embarrassment, before I slotted the thick wadge of paper into the pocket beside me and rested my head.
I was listening to The White Album. It's my favourite. Having said that, if they'd asked me – and nobody did, partly because I hadn't been born yet – I would have taken John to one side, said, 'Good work on "Revolution 9", mate, but seriously? No...' and filled in that part of the album with "Hey Jude" – which was released the same day as a single – and "Not Guilty", a Harrison song of which there were many Beatles versions, none of which officially saw the light of day until the Anthology.
My version of the album – which I was listening to now as I had arranged my iPod accordingly – would have been rightfully acknowledged as the greatest album of all time.
I stopped thinking about the Jigsaw Man with Steven Segal or Jason Statham. I opened up some distant compartment of my brain, filed it away, closed the door and determined that I wouldn't open it again until I was sitting in an office with Marion Hightower and he was telling me how wonderful it was.
Shortly afterwards I felt a tap on my shoulder. I woke up, and Jade was standing over me armed with a First Class afternoon, mid-Atlantic meal.
7
Once the gang of five had split up I found myself talking to the Jigsaw Man quite often. It was always, however, at his invitation. In that sense, he controlled the conversations. We talked when he felt like it, not when I felt like it. Strangely, however, I quickly realised that he had a knack for knowing when I was happy to sit on my own, and never once suggested that I join him when I didn't want to.
'How's Jones getting on?' he asked one day. 'You hear from her at all?'
He was working on a large Turner painting. I could tell it wasn't the Hay Wain, because there wasn't a hay wain in it. But if there had been a hay wain in it, then it could have been. You get the picture.
He had almost finished and was so close to the end that there was no more searching to be done, just the dotting the i's and crossing the t's part of the wrap up, like playing out the last few minutes of a match that you're winning 5-0. Accordingly, he was paying less attention to the puzzle, and more to me. Taking his eye off the ball. If it had been football, he was likely to lose a couple of late goals, but it was unlikely that the puzzle would suddenly start undoing itself.
'Not in a while. She was working on some small play in Wales, I think. Said she'd write...'
'It's better that she's not,' he said. 'People who go away and spend all their time writing home... it's not healthy.'
Perhaps not, I thought, but a couple of minutes to pick up the phone wouldn't exactly have been the equivalent of smoking sixty a day. I'd known she'd never pick up the phone.
'How about you?' he asked. 'Managed to move on yet?'
'Oh, you know, getting there. Had a brief thing with a girl at work, but it didn't last too long. Wasn't right.'
'Sex?'
'Pretty good, not perfect.'
He nodded, seemed pleased that at least I'd managed to sleep with someone.
'What about you?' I suddenly found myself asking, which was odd. I rarely asked him anything, and if I did, it would be some polite and incredibly dull question about the economics of running a café. He did not seem surprised by the question, however. Perhaps he'd been sitting there for years, waiting to talk.
And so it proved.
'My wife's in Laos,' he said. 'Haven't seen her for a couple of years.'
He looked like he was about to say more, then his thoughts drifted off and his eyes followed them, as he looked out over the river. A dull day, heavy rain on the way, the sky the colour of school trousers. Other days I think I might have let the conversation move on, despite the peculiarly shocking revelation that the Jigsaw Man was married. Today, however, I was feeling flat, one of those moods where I didn't mind poking around, as a rebuff wouldn't have had any effect on me. The Jigsaw Man, however, seemed happy to talk.
'Your wife's in Laos?'
'She works for an NGO clearing landmines. A lot of landmines in Laos.'
'I didn't know.'
'After the war.'
I nodded, and then said, 'Which war?'
'Vietnam,' he said, smiling. 'Laos and Cambodia got dragged into it. A lot of landmines and unexploded ordnance still lying around. Kids get their legs blown off all the time.'
'Jesus.'
He nodded.
'Yep, Jesus. So, she's out there. She said she'd be back one day, but you know... she's pretty involved in what she's doing.'
I thought about how long Two Feet, Fanque, Jones, Henderson and I had been coming here, because it felt like a long time, but then I realised that it had only been a couple of years. We'd missed the fact that the Jigsaw Man was married.
'Sorry it didn't work out,' I said.
He shrugged and placed another half-hearted piece of the puzzle.
'Used to it,' he said.
'What d'you mean?'
'She's not my first wife,' he said, and he gave one of those shrugs that people do when they don't really move their shoulders.
This time I wasn't sure about asking, but he talked on anyway. I noticed Janine looking over from the counter and wondered if she was standing back there thinking, how come he's talking to him, why doesn't he talk to me? Maybe Janine knew all this stuff.
'Was married when I was nineteen,' he began. 'It only lasted a few years. Youthful folly. Course, she died in a car accident on the A9, so otherwise it might have had more legs.'
'Jesus... sorry, that's awful.'
He looked away for a second, and I briefly imagined the Jigsaw Man standing at a desolate spot near Drumochter, laying flowers at a lonely, melancholic lay-by, as the rain came down in horizontal sheets.
'Well,' he said, 'she was rather miserable. Not sure what I'd been thinking. One small death for her, one giant escape for me, one of my friends called it.'
'OK,' I said. 'Odd. Why did you marry her? If you don't mind...'
'Not sure. It just happened.'
He made a small gesture with his hand and looked away again, as if trying to conjure up the feelings that had led him to marry someone whose death on the A9 would be a source of relief rather than sadness.
'Number Two didn't go well,' he continued.
Number Two. His wives were catalogued.
'What happened?' I asked, feeling a strange kind of trepidation as I walked unaided and unprotected into the Jigsaw Man's past.
He let out a long slow breath and then smiled at a memory.
'She was a model. We'd only known each other a few weeks before the wedding. We'd had sex, of course, but not a lot. We hadn't done... too much. We hadn't done everything. Then, the second night of the marriage – we were at a small hotel in the Lakes – she...'
He hesitated, looked at me curiously, then said, 'You don't mind if I'm vulgar?'
'Of course not.'
'I came in her mouth. For the first time. She let the semen dribble onto my thigh, and then walked straight into the bathroom. She left the door open, quite intentionally so I could see what she was doing. She drank mouthwash straight from the bottle, gargled with it for quite some time, and then snorted it back up her nostrils and blew it out her nose, in order to fully cleanse herself. A quite effective procedure, I imagine.'
'She snorted it back up her nostrils?'
'Yes.'
'How do you even do that?'
'I'm not entirely sure, but it did produce rather a lot of noise.'
'OK.'
'She came back to bed, lay her head on my chest, and explained that we should have no
secrets from each other. She was happy that I should come in her mouth on occasion, but that I should know that she found it utterly disgusting and that she would be immediately purifying her entire olfactory canal in the aftermath of the orgasm incident.'
There was a brief pause. We stared at each other across the jigsaw puzzle without the hay wain.
'Those were her words? Olfactory canal... orgasm incident?'
'Yes.'
'You insisted that she do it? I mean, you know...'
'Not at all. I completely understand any woman who cares not for oral sex on a man. One of my wives wouldn't do it and I was content with that state of affairs. Number Two, however, could be a most peculiar fish. It lasted a year or two beyond the honeymoon, but eventually she left me for my girlfriend. My fault I suppose.'
I was staring at him. If I'd been listening to this coming from some guy in a bar somewhere, my scepticism would have been bordering on incredulity and disdain. But this was the Jigsaw Man.
'One night, one weekend or whatever, I persuaded them to have a threesome,' he continued.
'How was that?' I stupidly heard myself ask.
'Oh, you know, fantastic. The more we did it, the better it got.'
'Nice.'
'Eventually, and I mean, we're talking like the tenth or fifteenth time, something like that, I realised that I was the spare prick. Then she left me for her and they moved to London.'
He smiled ruefully, an inclusive smile, as though this was the kind of thing that had happened to all of us.
'How many wives have you had?' I asked, for some reason feeling strangely nervous about the answer.
'Just the four,' he said.
'OK. That's quite a lot, though.'
'Yes. Three too many, some might say.'
'And number three?'
'Annette. Swiss girl. She was nice. Liked her. Only lasted a month.'
'We are talking about marriage here?' I asked. 'Not just women you met in the elevator?'
'Number Four has been fifteen years so far,' he said, without any hint of self-satisfaction. 'That's a reasonable stab at it. But, you know... I guess we were getting bored.'
He looked across the puzzle at me, and this time there was a more definite movement of the shoulders.
'Sometimes it works out, if only for a specific length of time... sometimes it doesn't.'
'And now she's in Laos,' I said.
'She's...' he began, and then made another small movement of his right hand. 'Well, I thought maybe I'd got it right at last, but... We all make choices.'
'Until now you've just been the guy who owns the café and does jigsaws,' I said. 'It's kind of weird to find out you've had a life.'
He smiled at that and looked back out at the river. He didn't turn to me as he spoke.
'They all had one thing in common. It was magical to start with. Lying awake at night, that exquisite feeling you get when they touch your hair. Hundreds of little orgasms all over your body.'
I was beginning to get that weird feeling I'd sometimes get when I watched him do a jigsaw, but this time I didn't mind.
'It never lasts?' I said.
'It's like a really good éclair,' he replied. 'Cream, chocolate, the first bite is delicious. But you eat them every day, you become bloated and fat. You end up wanting a plain biscuit... The magic never lasts. How can it? All you can hope for is that you marry a straightforward digestive that's comforting to have with your tea every night.'
He turned back to me.
'You've never married a digestive?' I said.
'I think she's in Laos,' he replied.
8
We were flying west, chased by the afternoon. Seemingly unending daylight, even though it would now be dark back in the UK. I slept again for a long time after the meal, and after watching The Hobbit all the way through. I've seen the whole thing four times now, and odd scenes here and there while Baggins has been watching, countless times. It felt comforting to watch it again. Despite the luxury of flying first class at someone else's expense, I suddenly found myself feeling incredibly lonely, and wishing I'd said to the film company that I'd only come if they would fly my wife and daughter out too. They might well have done it, they seemed happy to throw money around. I should have put my foot down.
I couldn't sleep with the bed stretched out. That seemed unnecessarily indulgent. A quick twenty minutes with my head resting on the side of the seat, I thought. Not sure how long I slept, but it must have been a couple of hours or so. Then there was knocking. Someone was knocking. A frantic knock at a distant door. A door that was moving away from me all the time.
I woke with a jolt. Snapped awake with a feeling of fear. Turbulence. This wasn't any turbulence. This wasn't the turbulence of a bumpy take off in high winds, or the turbulence of flying through cloud cover.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' the captain's voice came over the tannoy, as if he'd been waiting for me to wake up, 'things look like they might be a bit hairy for a while.'
Hairy? Did he actually use the word hairy? What about putting your passengers at ease? I pulled my earphones out so I could hear him properly.
'Something of a storm up ahead. We had hoped to get around it, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen. If you could just buckle yourselves in and prepare for the worst. We'll try to be through it in the next half hour.'
The plane gave another bump. I hadn't ever removed my seatbelt, now I reached down and tightened it. I closed my eyes and gripped the armrests. Every muscle tensed, as though that might make a difference.
Prepare for the worst? How can you say that? Surely a pilot shouldn't be saying prepare for the worst?
Another sharp judder. I drew a quick breath.
Shouldn't he be saying things like, 'It'll be fine,' and, 'It's not as bad as it seems,' and, 'Call this turbulence? You should have been with us flying into Hong Kong in the middle of that typhoon last month.'
A sharp jolt, like someone pushing your chair quickly to the side. I looked out the window. It wasn't dark yet, but there was nothing to see. We were flying through cloud, rain streaked against the windows. In the distance there was a flash of lightning.
We were flying through a lightning storm. The fear insinuated itself deeper into my body.
Something of a storm up ahead. That's what he'd said. We were already in it! Did that mean it was going to get even worse?
I remember once when Baggins was young and we were flying to Italy. We hit a little spot of turbulence and I jokingly started bobbing about in my seat, trying to make out to her that turbulence was fun. The stupid thing was, of course, that she was three, she already thought that turbulence was fun. I was doing it for my own benefit, thinking that if I had to concentrate on protecting my daughter, I wouldn't be frightened myself. Maybe it would have worked if she hadn't been giggling so much.
The thing I discovered that day, however, was that if you move around in your seat as if there's extreme turbulence, you don't really notice the actual turbulence; or, at least, you lose some awareness of just how bad it is.
There are two problems with this, however. The first is that if you don't have a kid with you, and you start bobbing around in your seat, you look like a mentally unstable freak and are liable to be hospitalised when you reach your destination. The second problem, as I was just discovering, is that when the turbulence is supersized, as it was in that 747 flying over the US, the bobbling about in the seat doesn't work.
I tried it for a second. The plane gave a sudden lurch, and I immediately stopped.
The worst? The worst is the plane crash landing and everybody dying in a blazing fireball. Was that what he'd meant? Had he meant, get on your mobile and say goodbye to your family?
I looked around the cabin. There weren't many others in view. One or two were clinging on with white knuckles. There were a couple chatting. Some people were still watching in-flight entertainment. How could they concentrate? Perhaps that was their way.
A flight attendant s
taggered past me, knocking against my arm as the plane pitched to the right before straightening. She then quickened up and practically ran back to her seat and strapped herself in.
The plane dipped forward, buffeted by the wind, and then fell sharply. A sudden drop, stomach in mouth, anyone with a drink saw the liquid hit the ceiling. At least three people screamed. I don't think I was one of them.
I was sweating. Cold sweat. Gripping the armrest so hard it might break. They must be designed to withstand the terror of passengers. Another bump, another lurch to the side. Insides so tight. Consumed by the fear. No thoughts allowed, just blazing terror in the centre of my head.
I shifted in my seat, automatically resorting to what I used to do with Baggins. Didn't work, couldn't blank out the horrible movements of the plane. A 747, being tossed around like a leaf in the wind, like a tin can in the sea.
Baggins. I thought of Baggins.
'If things get bad you can always go to your happy place.'
Happy place. God, it would have to be some happy place.
I leant forward, my hands pressed firmly against my face. I tried to think of my happy place. The plane lurched down to the left, and my insides once again ended up in my mouth.
*
'Why didn't you get on the plane?'
The female agent kept asking. I had nothing else to say. I'd said that surely Heathrow or British Airways had some proof that I was on the plane. She said that the plane had gone down, killing everyone on board in a massive fireball visible many miles away. Whatever proof that Heathrow or BA had that I'd been on the flight was irrelevant, as obviously I hadn't been on the plane. If I had been, I would be dead.
'Why didn't you get on the plane?'
I didn't answer. I was dog-tired, but that presumably was part of their game. They had left me alone in the room for a length of time I had no real grasp of, but they had not allowed me to fall asleep. While there was nowhere in the room to get comfortable, I was so tired I would have been able to drop off with my head on the desk, or lying flat on the floor, my head on my outstretched arm. Which was what I'd tried to do, until they'd blasted a klaxon in the room and brought me juddering awake, just as I'd been drifting off. Again and again.
Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! Page 4
