Tell me, she’d said, on her quiz form, which you would prefer if given the choice: a well-crafted gun or a beautiful poem?
Tell me, she said, just underneath, in your own words, what was the best thing that happened to you last weekend?
Parker Swells was not his real name. He’d done things he’d regretted in the past thirty-three years, and he had a child in Norfolk that he didn’t want to answer for to the CSA. No way.
It was a desk job he was after at one of the four big banks. He’d passed three lots of accountancy exams. He’d walked the first interview and this was his second. Filling in a quiz form full of patronizing psychological pish.
After inspecting the form for the third time, Parker wondered whether to write what he really thought or whether to write the kinds of answers he knew they’d like to hear. But how in-depth were these things? Could they tell he was lying if he did lie? Could they ascertain by the way you dotted your is and crossed your ts that you weren’t being wholly sincere? What exactly were they capable of, nowadays? His pen wavered.
Bethan had withdrawn to her office, through a door to the left. The door was ajar though and Parker could see her ankle and the toe of her black patent leather shoe. She had dark hair and brown eyes and she was going somewhere. No wedding ring. A lambswool polo-neck which clung at her throat as tight and sure as the skin of a banana. She was slim. She was untroubled. She could afford to think about why people behaved as they did. To judge. Her life had been exemplary. She needed no excuses.
Tell me, the paper read, which you would prefer if given the choice: a well-crafted gun or a beautiful poem?
He’d been a builder. He liked tools and a gun was a practical thing. He had no moral objection to firearms. But his hand, his right hand, had been badly damaged in an accident, and so, realistically, unless he could learn to aim and shoot with his left hand – as he’d learned to write, and that had been a battle – then it would be of no real use to him.
He was shy about his right hand. It was fingerless, supporting only a thumb. He kept it in his pocket or behind his back. People rarely noticed.
Parker picked up his pen with his left hand. He reappraised the sheet of questions. What did they want him to write? In a company this big and this brutal, he supposed the gun, really. And the way the place had been built, out of steel and glass, all smooth edged and modern. A gun.
Even so, he was only one person in this whole corporation, one piece, one part. And he had a gammy hand. And he had no real use for a firearm. He wasn’t afraid of anything. He had no scores to settle. He didn’t like loud noises, nor did his neighbours. Maybe the poem.
But Parker couldn’t remember ever reading a poem. He’d read limericks. He listened to songs and memorized the words.
My old hen, she’s a good old hen
She lays eggs for the railway men.
Sometimes one, sometimes two,
Sometimes enough for the whole darn crew.
He liked that.
Bethan picked up Parker’s quiz form. In the gap under the question about the gun and the poem he had written:
Depends on what the company wants. If they want a troubleshooter, I can do that. Give me the gun. If they want someone with flair and sensitivity, I can do that too. Pass me the poem. I can be both of these things. I can be all of these things. I want everything. I want nothing. I am adaptable.
She pushed her hair behind her ear. He was evasive, she decided, and yet assertive. He was confident. But at the same time, he didn’t feel sure enough of himself to opt for one thing or the other. Maybe he didn’t like making choices. Maybe he didn’t enjoy making decisions. He was slippery.
Her eye travelled lower. She sighed at the way he’d mixed upper case and lower case letters. She started reading again.
What was the best thing that happened to you last weekend?
Here he had written:
Good things often come out of bad. Last weekend I got a message from a friend of mine. His name is Josh and we met at night school. During the day he works for a tool-hire company. Josh is friendly with another mate of mine, Sam, and sometimes we kick a ball around together in the park on a Saturday.
Three weeks ago we were playing and I accidentally fouled Sam. I kicked his shin with my spikes and grazed it. It bled a little. We parted on bad terms, but worse things have happened, so I didn’t think anything of it and waited with Josh down at the park for him the week after.
But Sam didn’t show. The week after that, either. It started to bug me. Maybe he was angry with me. Maybe he thinks I’m too bullish on the field. Maybe he really hates me. All stupid thoughts, but I was so cut up about it, this falling out, I even tried to ring once but he wasn’t in. I didn’t have the balls to try again.
Anyhow, Saturday morning, Josh phones me. He tells me Sam’s dead. They found his body in his flat. He’d been dead for almost three weeks. He’d had a brain clot or something, a massive haemorrhage. And sure, I was cut up about it, but at the same time I was happy because I knew, in my gut, that Sam hadn’t been angry with me about the penalty after all, not really. We hadn’t fallen out in the end. He bore me no grudge.
Afterwards, though, when I went to his flat with Josh to help sort through some of his stuff, I couldn’t help imagining how the phone must have rung that time I’d wanted to speak to him, and Sam, sitting close by, on the sofa, dead, the TV still on, the phone ringing.
Actually before I run out of space . . .
Parker had drawn an arrow and had continued this answer on to an extra piece of paper.
‘Tea or coffee?’ Bethan asked, strolling into the room.
Parker looked up. ‘Tea, white, two sugars. Thanks.’
When Bethan returned with his tea, she placed the cup on the desk to his right. She had small hands, he noticed, and on her wrist was a little charm bracelet. The ornaments hanging on it were all connected with animals – fish, mainly, but a ladybird and a robin, too.
Parker thanked her for the tea, watched the curve of her hip pushing against the black fabric that contained it as she walked from the room, picked up his pen, smiled to himself and then started writing.
I must just get to the point. I was helping to sort through some of Sam’s things. Me and Josh and Sam’s mother. We were all cleaning and packing and clearing out his flat. This was Sunday. I was in the kitchen, mainly, and the first thing I came across was a bag of shopping which had been dumped, on the floor, next to the fridge, still not unpacked. Stuff Sam had bought at Spitalfields market the day after our last match together. The day he died. Some sourdough bread, mouldy now, some beetroots, raw, a lettuce – slimed up – and a box of free-range duck eggs. White eggs, like hens’ only bigger.
I was about to throw the eggs into the bin with the other food but then Josh came through and said, don’t chuck them, take them home if they’re still fresh. And they were. So I did. Imagine that. A dead man’s eggs.
I took them home and I was unpacking them from their box and into my refrigerator. For the most part they came easily, but then one of them had cracked and the juice that had escaped had dried like adhesive and stuck part of the shell to the box. I yanked it up but when it pulled free the egg was heavier than the others had been and felt odd in my hand. I looked at it, closer. I held it on my open palm and it was shaking. That little egg. Jerking and warm on my palm.
I sat down and I watched it. For two, three hours. And slowly, very gradually, it hatched.
Bethan turned over the sheet, ready to find something on the other side but the other side was blank. She had become quite engrossed. What an odd man, she thought, and stared fixedly at the sheets before her while using her free hand to fiddle, unconsciously, with the little charm bracelet on her wrist.
She tried to work out what the answer Parker Swells had given her meant. What did it say about him? His friend had died. He was sensitive – worried about the possibility of having injured or offended him – but how did that relate to a work context? Could
it relate?
She bit her lip. Parker’s reaction to Sam’s death had been curious, kind of dispassionate. But he went along to clean his flat, to help out, so he was handy. Good in an emergency? And then finally . . . the eggs. That was strange.
Bethan reread the additional material Parker had added on the second page about the duck hatching. This was the part of his story she found most interesting. Again, she messed with the bracelet on her wrist, looked down at it for a moment: fish, fish, robin, shark, fish.
Sometimes Bethan felt she had to be like a private detective in her line of business. To discover things, to unearth people’s secrets, to pluck at threads and see what she could unravel. To read significant signs and signals into the apparently superficial.
Parker Swells had confused her. She felt all fogged up. She inspected his writing again, the slope, the mis-links, the way he didn’t close his as and his os. She delved into her bag and took out her college notes. She checked back on a couple of references. There were signs here, definite signs. Below the line, sloping left, the os . . . He was a liar.
Parker didn’t get his third interview. The letter they sent him – the people from personnel – said very little, only that they’d had plenty of applicants and they hoped he’d find success elsewhere.
By a strange coincidence, a week to the day after Bethan had dispatched her rejection letter to Parker Swells, she met him on the platform at Canary Wharf, waiting for a train. It was five thirty. She was on her way home to Bow. As she walked past him he said hello.
‘Hello,’ she said, and looked at him askance.
‘Sorry, you probably don’t remember me.’
‘I remember you.’ She smiled. ‘The duck.’
He chuckled at this but added nothing. ‘I was here,’ he said, by way of explanation, ‘on another interview. With another bank.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes.’
He was handsome, she thought, in his own way. He had gappy teeth and green eyes and skin which had seen the sun. Leathery. But he was a liar.
The train arrived. The doors opened. Parker was actually in front of Bethan, but he stepped back and held out his arm. ‘After you.’
She thanked him and moved forward and then she saw it. His right hand, completely mangled. He caught her expression. ‘An accident,’ he said, ‘at work.’
She nodded. They climbed on to the train. ‘It’s ugly,’ he said, with apparent unselfconsciousness.
‘Were you left-handed originally?’ Bethan asked, shocked and momentarily stuck for something to say.
‘No. Right-handed, always. I had to learn to use my left hand. To write, to eat and everything. After the accident I found I couldn’t work so effectively in a manual capacity. That’s why I decided to go to college. To qualify for something else.’
Bethan nodded. ‘I get it.’
She felt guilty. She was normally so perceptive. That was what she was trained for and paid for, after all. That was her job. To notice things. But she hadn’t noticed this. It was down to her, finally, that Parker hadn’t got the third interview. Down to her, reading too much into things. But was that it? Maybe the problem had actually been a lack of information.
He should have told her about his hand. This was the kind of detail the company needed to be acquainted with. Doubtless, she told herself, stroking and smoothing her own ruffled feathers, too little information and not too much had been her stumbling block.
‘Are you still working as a builder?’ Bethan asked, eventually, praying for the affirmative.
‘When I can.’
‘What kind of things do you do?’
‘Laying patios, retiling, making paths, that sort of work. And building ponds.’
Bethan blinked. ‘I’ve got some ponds,’ she said, ‘a big one and a little one. Two ponds.’
‘I know. You keep fish.’
Bethan was beguiled. ‘How could you know that?’
He pointed to her wrist. ‘Your bangle. Full of fish charms.’
She chuckled. ‘I gave myself away.’
‘Not at all. I’m simply interested,’ he said, ‘in details.’
‘Me too. Actually . . .’ She looked out of the window to check where they were. Three stops still to go. ‘Actually,’ she said, fiddling with her bracelet, ‘I wish I’d known about your bad hand. That might’ve affected the conclusions we reached on your second interview.’
‘What kind of fish do you keep?’ he asked, like he hadn’t really heard her.
‘Carp. Koi carp. Beautiful ornamental carp.’
‘And what was wrong with my second interview?’
‘Um . . .’ She paused. ‘We felt that your answers on the quiz were slightly unconventional. Like, uh, like, well, like my pond at home . . .’
‘Your pond?’
‘Yes. My main pond at home has my three best fish in it, but it’s hard to see them because it gets greened up a lot. Algae and plants and what-not. I bought a filter for it, to keep it cleaner, but I haven’t installed it yet.’
‘And my answers . . .’
‘Like the pond. There was something good in there, deep down, something interesting, but it was difficult to see, to decipher, and your writing . . .’
‘Scruffy.’
‘Yes.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s OK.’
She cleared her throat. ‘And the duck?’
‘The duck?’ he reiterated, looking surprised. ‘Oh, the duck. The duck. It’s doing fine.’
Parker lay on Bethan’s bed with his arms crossed behind his head. He stared up at her light fitment. A heavy, glass lamp, yellow, the wiring, he noticed, coming slightly away from the cornice and the ceiling. He made a fist out of his damaged hand. He’d lost count of the number of women who had taken him into their beds simply because of this one, small, gorgeous imperfection. Sympathy was a powerful emotion. Might not seem it, but it was. And guilt.
Bethan strolled back into her bedroom. She was carrying a packet of biscuits and a couple of apples. She was naked. She bit into one of the apples and handed Parker the other. She sat down on the bed.
‘We missed dinner,’ she said, and grinned.
‘How big is your garden?’ Parker asked.
‘It’s tiny, really.’
‘Do the ponds take up most of it?’
‘Come and look,’ Bethan said, and pulled on a T-shirt.
‘I didn’t build them, they were here when I bought the flat, so I thought I might as well put in some fish. Initially I just had goldfish and then one day I saw some carp at a garden centre and I thought they were so beautiful. So big. They come in every colour. See him? The gold one? Gold and white. He’s called Samson. He’s the oldest. The biggest too: I feed them by hand.’
Parker stared into the water. The ponds were antique and grand and well-established.
‘That’s a beautiful pond,’ he said. ‘Is it deep?’
‘Very deep. Too deep. Sometimes the fish swim under and I don’t get to see them for days. And see how murky it gets towards the bottom? That’s why I bought the filter.’
‘It’s good, though,’ Parker interjected, ‘not to see the bottom. The fish must like to dive and disappear.’
‘Only I haven’t been able to set it up myself,’ Bethan said, like she hadn’t heard him, ‘the filter. Too complicated. I’ll show you it, if you like. It’s in the shed. You might be able to give me some tips.’
She stood up.
It was late and Parker was pulling on his coat. She had given him the key to the side gate.
‘I’d give you the house keys,’ she said, ‘only I’ve not got an extra set.’
He smiled at her. He found it strange that she’d have sex with him, let him inside her, but the keys to her home she couldn’t quite trust him with.
‘I wish you could bring the duck along while you’re fixing up the filter,’ she said, out of the blue, as he was walking through her front doo
r.
‘What?’
‘The duck. He’d do well on my two ponds but I don’t think the fish would like it.’
Parker laughed. ‘There is no duck,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘No duck. I made it up.’
She stared at him, her mouth open, barely comprehending. Eventually she said, ‘But the duck . . . that was the best part of it.’
‘Of what?’
‘The story. The duck . . .’ She looked flabbergasted.
Parker put his head to one side, still smiling. ‘While I was filling out that quiz you brought me in a cup of tea, remember?’
She nodded.
‘And I saw the bangle you were wearing, full of fish and birds and stuff. I thought the duck story would appeal to you. That was all.’
‘So you lied on your application form?’
‘Doesn’t everybody? Didn’t you?’ Somehow, though, he thought he already knew the answer to this question. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’s only a question of telling the right kind of lies.’
‘Doesn’t matter? Of course it matters.’
‘You really want the full picture?’
His smile was strange, suddenly, and full of pain. ‘You don’t want the full picture,’ he said, answering his own question. ‘You wouldn’t recognize the full picture if someone sat down and painted every tiny stroke of it straight on to your pretty hands and your silly face.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You didn’t know I was disabled but you came to certain conclusions about me because of my writing, you read into what I’d written things I hadn’t said. It was kind of . . .’ he paused and considered for a moment, ‘kind of despicable.’
‘Was it all lies?’
‘Only the duck.’
‘So you are a liar. I was right. I was right about you.’
He ignored this. ‘Was I a liar,’ he asked, ‘before I filled in your stupid quiz form?’
She stared at him in silence for a while and then she put out her hand. ‘Can I have my key back?’
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