‘Neil, I know you can’t swim.’
‘Ya, but if I’d got ninety-one, I’d have to go out and learn, either in a swimming pool if it was open, or in a river if it wasn’t.’
‘That sounds very dangerous.’
‘Yes, it would be.’
‘And, uh, how often do you have to do this?’
‘Every three hours.’
‘And I suppose you’d have to stop at night, though.’
‘No, not at all. If I’m asleep an alarm wakes me up and I have to do the numbers. Then I can work out if I can go back to sleep or if I have to get up and do something.’
‘Neil,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘what’s the fucking point?’
‘Well, on a practical level, this is my piece for the degree show. I’ve been documenting it and I’ve filled a space with that. But if what you mean is, what’s the philosophical reasoning behind it, it’s this. I want to demonstrate the difference between a life lived and a life maintained. When I generate an even number, I have freedom to do whatever I choose, determined by what I genuinely believe to be moral and what I believe to have value. When I generate an odd number, however, I am a slave. I make the choice to give up the freedom to make further choices and hand it over to the System. I am not truly living, and am merely maintaining my existence, within the boundaries that the System dictates. And I would propose that in doing so, I am simulating the way in which many people in our society currently exist.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. I didn’t like the way this was going.
‘Well, take you as an example.’ I knew it. ‘I’m presuming you have a job, friends, maybe a girlfriend or a partner.’
‘Yeah, what’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing, if you can actually defend the reasons why you have these things. That’s in relation to values that really matter to you. For instance, why do you have a job?’
‘Because I have to pay bills, of course.’
‘Fair point,’ said Neil. ‘But why do you have the job you have? Do you enjoy it? Does it further any particular cause you strongly believe in?’
‘No, not at all, and I don’t enjoy it. It doesn’t even pay very well. But it’s just something to keep things tiddng over while we try and get the band off the ground.’
I resented being interrogated in this way, it was like a low-key version of the sort of stuff he inflicted on people in the old English class, but I needed someone to ask me these things. These were questions that I’d built my life around avoiding having to answer, but now was the time, I knew.
‘And is the band getting off the ground?’
‘Well, we’re gigging.’
‘Touring? Record contract?’
‘Well, no, but we’re not quite ready for that yet.’
‘But you’ve been playing for four years. Why aren’t you ready?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why are you doing the job you’re doing?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you like your friends?’
‘Yes. Some of them.’
‘Do you love your girlfriend?’
‘You can’t ask me that, Neil. Of course I do.’ I didn’t. Right then, I knew I didn’t. I just hadn’t found the energy to change her for a new one. Or deal with not having one at all. But it had not occurred to me to think about it until that moment. And then it was clear.
‘But you see what I mean, don’t you?’ said Neil. ‘We often do things without thinking about why we do them. Or choose not to think. Or pretend not to think. Anyway, that’s the point of the work.’
I felt as if I’d just been caught naked, like in a dream. Meanwhile, Neil seemed oblivious to the intensity of the violation he’d just committed. The room seemed to be moving. I thought for a second I was going to faint. Then I thought I was going to cry. Everything was over. None of it had been worthwhile.
‘I think I might be hungry,’ I said. ‘Can we order some food?’
‘Yeah, sure,’ said Neil, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone stuck on a train all day might reasonably want feeding.
I ordered a burger and chips. Neil went for the vegetarian option.
‘Back to the old tofu, then, Neil?’ I said. Neil had been a vegetarian for most of his teenage years. Then when he turned angry, he’d stopped. It had been quite a shock seeing him biting into a chicken drumstick in the college canteen.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘unless the System tells me otherwise.’
Over food we discussed mundane things, music mostly. I was surprised to find I’d actually heard of a lot of the things Neil was mentioning. Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, Dennis Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, Townes Van Zandt. He talked briefly about his mum dying, but only in a matter-of-fact way. Cancer. Same old story.
By the time we’d waited for and eaten our food, it had gone half five. We had to get moving for the exhibition. Neil led me through the old town, a grey place of creepy old buildings and depressing new ones, to the art school. The school was like a spaceship that had landed in the town. It was similar to our old college, but where that had been crazy, this was very sensible. Straight lines, everything white. Lots of glass.
There were already quite a few people gathering on the lawn. People’s parents mostly. Everybody was dressed up except us. I had no idea you were meant to. Neil obviously didn’t care. As we walked through the crowd, the odd student would nod at Neil, but no one really acted as if they knew him. Four years, and it seemed he hadn’t made that much of an impression on anybody.
The exhibition didn’t start until six, but Neil said we could walk on in anyway. I didn’t really understand a lot of the stuff. No idea if it was any good or not. There were paintings, some that were just splodges of paint, and some that were paintings of things, but painted really badly. Then there were sculptures that were just welded metal, or loads of foam painted brown. One thing I remember was that someone had got loads of Kleenex boxes and put the health warnings from cigarette packets on them, only they’d changed the word ‘smoking’ to ‘wanking’, so they now read things like ‘WANKING KILLS’, or ‘WANKING SERIOUSLY HARMS YOU AND OTHERS AROUND YOU’, or ‘WANKING CAUSES AGEING OF THE SKIN’. I knew what Thomas would say about it all: ‘What a load of wank.’ A few other things stick in my mind: a door wrapped in tinfoil, little models of people at a supermarket made out of dried fruit. Besides that it was just stuff like people taking photographs of their trainers and words on card and things.
We finally got to Neil’s space. By this point the exhibition was officially open and there were various smartly dressed people milling around with glasses of red and white wine or orange juice in their hands. Neil’s room was absolutely full of stuff. Shelves with rows and rows of folders full of paper, detailing exactly what the System had told him to do every three hours. Some of the activities were documented with photographs or ticker stubs, or cuttings from the Radio Times of what he’d watched on television. Along one wall were giant-size versions of the tables from his ring binder, this time arranged in a big star formation, very tastefully coloured, and neatly printed and laminated. I think everybody presumed you weren’t meant to touch because no one was looking at the folders. Ignoramus that I am, it never occurred to me that might be the case, so I flicked through a whole load of them. Apparently Neil had tried his hand at various sports, such as hockey, paintballing and darts. Photos of him failing to play any of them competently accompanied the text. Also, he’d been to see most new releases in the cinema, but had rarely made it to the end of any of them. In fact, he’d obviously insisted on buying tickets for films that were only five minutes from the end. He’d been on train journeys to places he had no reason to go to, only to go back home as soon as he got there. He’d knitted. He’d licked a post box. For three hours. He’d bought a woman’s hat. On more than one occasion, he’d stayed up to half past four in the morning watching the test card. Most worryingly, he’d stood staring through the gates of a primary school. For three solid
hours. Perhaps the strangest of all were the photographs of him standing outside closed shops, churches and offices in the middle of the night, sometimes in the pouring rain, unable to get in to do whatever he was being commanded to do, but nevertheless going as far as he could.
‘Neil,’ I said, ‘exactly how long have you been doing this?’
He didn’t want to answer.
‘Neil, how long?’
‘Three years,’ he said quietly. ‘But this is the end of it all. At half past seven, I do the numbers for the last time. And then, at ten thirty, it’s all over.’
‘Well, thank fuck for that. Neil, this is insane.’
‘Yes, yes it is! But that’s the point! So’s everything else!’
I didn’t want to argue. I just wanted it to end so I could go home again. I’d agreed to stay at Neil’s that night, but I’d be gone first thing in the morning. I didn’t want to be around this at all.
Some of Neil’s classmates asked him what grade he’d got. He said he didn’t know.
‘How do you find out?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, there’s a board with it all posted up on it somewhere,’ he said.
‘Aren’t you curious?’
‘No, not really. I expect I’ll find out eventually.’
The place was heaving now. People were finally following my example and picking up the folders. Some of them looked puzzled, a few old posh ladies snorted with disapproval and went on about the way ‘anybody could do that’ and how ‘he was just trying to shock’. God knows what Neil must have been doing in some of the photos. Other people laughed, and some nodded their heads because they must have got it, whatever there was to get.
I looked at my watch. It was already nearly seven thirty. Neil got his calculator ready. Then, at half past seven precisely, he conjured up his last number. He walked over to his giant wall-mounted laminated chart. He ran his finger along and found the corresponding command.
‘Oh no,’ he said to himself. I couldn’t hear him but I could see that was the shape his mouth was making, over and over again. Then he stopped.
He closed his eyes and bowed his head, tapping no doubt into reserves of courage. He opened his eyes, and spun around.
‘Your art is shit!’ he shouted at some poor earnest-looking student.
‘You’ve slept with too many people for someone your age and you know it!’ he said, glaring at a girl in a slinky outfit.
‘You’re too old to be here!’ The target was some doddery old woman in tweed.
‘You’re too fat for your trousers!’ A plump red-faced man shuffled and looked down awkwardly.
‘Shut up, Neil,’ someone said.
I looked at the chart until I found the place where Neil had run his finger. It said, ‘Try to hurt the feelings of everybody you see.’
‘You smell funny!’
‘Your walk is effeminate, yet you’re not gay!’
‘The patches in your beard make you look pathetic!’
‘You’re a coward who doesn’t have the guts to do things properly!’
It took me a second to realise he was talking to me.
In the meantime everybody was telling him to be quiet, some people were swearing, and somebody had grabbed his shoulder in an attempt to motion him outside. A few of the girls were crying, and so was the old lady. A big burly man with a grey-flecked beard walked in.
‘Your teaching methods are self-indulgent and ultimately ineffective!’
‘Come on, Neil, calm down,’ said his tutor. He turned to a student and mumbled something about a man called Bob.
‘You’re not as popular as you think you are!’
‘The theory behind your work is pretentious!’
Bob arrived. He was wearing a security jumper with patches on the elbows.
‘You have undiagnosed learning difficulties!’
‘All right, you, out!’ said Bob.
As more and more people crowded in to see what was going on, Neil’s workload grew proportionately.
‘You’ll never get gallery representation!’
‘Your boyfriends leave you because you’re possessive!’
‘You’re simply not good enough. Give up!’
‘Right, that’s it,’ said Bob. He grabbed Neil in a bear hug from behind and lifted him off the ground and into the corridor.
‘Stand back, please,’ said Bob, as Neil’s legs flailed about. He struggled to keep up with the sheer number of people he needed to insult as he was led down the corridor and to the doorway. I followed on behind.
Bob carried him through the door and dumped him on the lawn.
‘And don’t think about coming back in tonight!’
Bob stamped off.
‘Have you finished, Neil?’ I said.
‘The lack of black or gay artists in your record collection says a lot about you!’
‘Neil, you’ve already hurt my feelings! You don’t need to do it again. Why can’t this just stop now, please?’
‘It can’t. Not until ten thirty.’
‘Christ. You’d better not live far from here.’
‘Not really.’
‘OK, we’re going home. Just … look at the ground, OK?’
‘I can’t do that. It’s against the System.’
I punched him hard in the back. ‘I think you’ll find you can,’ I said.
Neil led me down the road to the room he rented in some old lady’s house. We passed a few people on the way, but I grabbed the side of his head and forced it in the other direction. He managed to insult some poor man in shorts, telling him his knees were grotesque, but I just signalled that Neil had a screw loose. The man shook his head.
‘Your cleaning is substandard!’ Neil shouted at his landlady when she caught the corner of his eye. We were halfway up the stairs to his room at the time.
‘What did you say, Neil? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.’ Thank fuck, she was deaf.
I looked at my watch. It had gone half eight. Less than two hours to go of this weirdness.
Neil’s room was full of stuff, fantastically ordered. Everything had its place, the books, the records, tapes and CDs, his writing desk, his art things. It was all arranged alphabetically or thematically, and lined up with total precision. You’d think he’d used a spirit level or something. There were no posters or pictures on the wall. It was as if it hadn’t occurred to him that there ought to be.
‘You haven’t done anything good since Blackadder!’
At first I tried to kill the time by putting the telly on, but Neil started shouting insults at everybody who appeared on it, so after about five minutes, I turned it off.
‘Nobody loves you!’
I couldn’t think who Neil might have been trying to insult now, as he was just lying on the bed. Then I saw that he had caught himself in the mirror.
‘Nobody loves you,’ he said again quietly. He started to cry.
I put my arm round his shoulders and held him to me while he sobbed. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything.
After a while, he stopped. ‘Why don’t you put a record on?’ he said.
‘What do you want to hear?’ I said.
‘Don’t mind, you choose.’
I flicked through his collection. There was a Morrissey album. Bona Drag, it was called. It had that song he’d told me about, all those years ago outside the school gates, ‘Piccadilly Palare’.
I put it on. Wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Quite liked some of it. Nice guitars. His vocals weren’t my sort of thing, but not bad.
We listened to that, and then a few other things. Roxy Music, the New York Dolls, David Bowie. Neil pointed out things in the lyrics and made connections between the bands, and had lots of little facts about everything, like how one David Bowie song was about an artist who nailed himself to the back of a Volkswagen. Neil said that this guy was his biggest artistic influence. Had been for years apparently, since before the talent show and everything.
As I went to t
urn over the Bowie album, I saw that it was nearly half past ten. Neil began to get restless. At ten twenty-eight, I could see him reach for his satchel. I put my hand on its latch.
‘No, Neil, it’s over.’
I took the satchel away from him and emptied the contents on the floor in a big heap. Probably the first heap this room had seen. Then I jumped up and down on the calculator until it was just shards of plastic and circuit board.
Neil laughed. So did I. It really was over now.
6
I slept on the floor. Neil gave me a pillow and blanket, and even though we’d swept up, I’d occasionally feel a fragment of calculator digging into me. I woke up properly at half nine. The sun had been trying to get through the curtains for hours, and finally a white beam hit my face. Neil was fast asleep. He breathed heavily, in, out. The first decent sleep he’d had in three years. I quietly got up, folded my blanket, grabbed my bag and left.
I slept some more on the train, although I kept on waking up, afraid I was going to miss my connection. But I thought a lot as well. By the time I was back in Sholeham it was late Saturday afternoon and I had made many plans in my head. I was going to get things the way they needed to be. I started with Caroline.
I wanted so much to end it there and then that I nearly just phoned her up as soon as I came in my door. But I knew doing it by phone would be cruel and I’d regret it later. So I just said I’d like to come round if that was OK. She was going out with her mates at eight, she hadn’t thought I’d be back until much later, but I could pop round before if I liked. I got in my unreliable Vauxhall. I parked it outside the house she rented with two of her friends. I rang the doorbell, and she answered, and we went inside. She offered me a cup of tea and I said no and I had something to tell her. She asked what it was. I said it was over. She was silent. And then she cried. And she asked why.
I said I was going to go to London with the band and make it.
She said I was a fucking idiot and told me to get out.
I couldn’t raise the band that Saturday evening, so I had no choice but to wait until morning. I didn’t get much sleep that night, because voices telling me I’d made a terrible mistake kept on haranguing me, but the next morning I still felt that it was the right thing.
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll Page 22
