The Third Person

by Steve Mosby

  Steph headed over to a solitary man in the far corner. He looked old, although he was leaning over the table in front of him, staring into a thick tumbler of greasy booze, and so it was difficult to make out his face. From what I could see, his hair was blacky-grey and unwashed – two thirds of the way to being the wet, hard curls of tramp’s hair. The skin on the back of his hands was brown and knotted, but there was thin hair there, too, like swirls of copper wire. His shoulders were weak: stooped and trembling slightly. I got the impression that his drink was telling him a secret which was breaking his heart.

  ‘Jim.’

  His reactions were so slow that Steph was putting the tray down on the table before he’d even managed to look up. Pink, glossy eyes told me that Jim Thornton was pissed as a wretch. The face around them was sad and drawn, telling tall tales of missed sleep, exposure and bad times. His skin was the colour of nicotine.

  A stretched voice:

  ‘Hey Steph.’

  ‘Hey.’

  She sat down opposite him and motioned for me to do the same.

  Jim Thornton ended up staring somewhere in between us.

  ‘How a, how are…’ – his head nodded forwards a little with each attempt at speech – ‘how are dyo ouing?’

  I stared at this paralytic monster in horror, but Steph didn’t miss a beat. She was already pouring us all a slug from the bottle she’d brought over.

  ‘I’m doing just fine, Jim. Just fine. And I have someone to see you.’

  Thornton – who I think was as fundamentally shit-faced as I’d ever seen a man – turned to look at me, and missed. He had a slack smile, though, which gave me the impression he figured he’d scored a bullseye. It gave me the opportunity to notice another weird thing about the man: his teeth were absolutely perfect.

  ‘Hai.’

  Steph passed me a half full tumbler of whisky. ‘He says hi.’

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ I said and then took a mouthful of booze, realising it would probably take sixty or more to level this particular playing field.

  Thornton swung his head round to Steph, frowning.

  ‘Whizz this ga? Ta.’

  He took the glass that Steph was offering him and attempted to put it down on the table.

  ‘He’s a man who wants to speak to you about some things.’

  Clunk. The glass made an awkward touch-down, with a jolt of whisky escaping onto the table.

  ‘Sat right?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She looked at me after she’d finally poured herself a drink, and then passed me the piece of paper that I’d stolen from Hughes. ‘Why don’t you tell Jim what you want to talk to him about? Go on. Show him what you brought.’

  I took the paper from her and passed it to Thornton. His hand was trembling as he picked it from me, and then he held it up for inspection.

  ‘Look at the one in the middle,’ I said.

  Steph glared at me, and then looked back at him and said, ‘You know what that is, Jim?’

  He shook his head violently.

  ‘Naw. Naw.’

  Bullshit, I thought.

  ‘You sent it to a man named Walter Hughes.’ I leaned forward. His hands were now trembling even worse than before, and he was still shaking his head, as though trying to deny something fundamental. Like gravity.

  ‘You send them to him, and he pays you for them.’

  ‘Naw.’

  Thornton closed his eyes.

  ‘Where do you get them from? Who sends these to you?’

  ‘Naw!’

  It was a centimetre from being a shout, and he stood up. Upright, his body looked thinner and more whittled away than ever: like somebody who’d been in a coma.

  ‘Okay, Jim.’

  Steph had stood up with him. She placed a calming hand on his shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Naw.’ He was whispering it again and again, and was starting to cry. His face barely seemed to have the strength to contort into tears. ‘Naw.’

  ‘It’s okay. Shhh.’

  Steph kneaded his bony shoulder once and then took the piece of paper away from him.

  ‘Shhh. Don’t you worry now.’

  His hands now free, they went automatically to his face.

  ‘Sit down, Jim.’ Her palm pressed him back into his seat. It was a barely controlled descent, and he just about managed it. ‘You enjoy your drink and forget all about this fella.’

  She glared at me again.

  ‘Come with me.’

  I took my glass and followed her over to a table in the far corner, where Jim Thornton wouldn’t be able to hear us.

  ‘Sit.’

  She placed the paper in front of me.

  ‘You saw that, right?’

  ‘Saw what? Saw how he reacted?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yeah, I saw.’

  Steph lit a cigarette and leaned back in her armchair.

  ‘That was for your benefit,’ she said. ‘You little shit. Not his. I wanted you to see what this thing can do to him, and why you need to leave him alone. You’ve seen the state of him. Doesn’t he look like he’s been through enough to you?’

  I thought about it.

  ‘Yeah. He does.’

  ‘Well then.’ Steph looked exasperated, like she’d proved something obvious which I was still trying to deny. Ash fell on the table as she leaned forwards and jabbed a finger at me.

  ‘You and me – we’re gonna talk. And afterwards, you’re gonna leave well enough alone. Okay? Jim spends a lot of his time here, but not all his time. I don’t want you bothering the old man out on the street and breaking his heart. That’s one thing’s been broken ten times too many.’

  ‘Okay – we’ll talk, then. I need to find the man who wrote this.’

  Steph glanced down at the paper with disgust.

  ‘You want that man, huh?’

  ‘Yes. You know where I can find him?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Well, does Jim know?’

  ‘Does Jim look like he knows much of anything?’ She shook her head again, pulling a face. ‘If he does, you ain’t looking right. Jim doesn’t know anything about this.’

  She pointed vaguely at the paper. ‘These things.’

  ‘So what can you tell me about them?’

  ‘They’ve been coming regularly for a year or more, now.’ She shrugged. ‘We don’t let him see them no more. Damn near breaks my heart on top of his to see the look on his face when he does. I sorted out the arrangement with that fella Hughes. Every week, I package these things up, the day they arrive. And every week, near as anything, I send them out. The money changes accounts – and it’s good money – and Jim never needs to know about it.’

  ‘But they come here addressed to him?’

  She nodded.

  ‘They come to him here, sure. Regular as clockwork, give or take a few days. We rent an apartment for Jim a block away, and we give him all the booze he can drink. Feed him, too. Keeps the man happy.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He seems real happy.’

  Steph shrugged again. ‘He can be an empty shell out on the street. Or he can be an empty shell in here. Least here, we fill him with something, even if it ain’t much.’

  I looked her over more carefully: took in the tan, the hard eyes, the heavily aerobicised body. The way she looked, she should almost have been some executive’s bone-thin, middle-aged housewife: too many free hours whiled away on the exercise bike or down the salon, or gossiping about abortions in the hairdressers; too long spent sunning herself in Costa del somewhere, sipping cocktails and being too loud with her brash husband. Almost. But she looked tougher than that: like a muscle that had been built in a series of grubby streetfights rather than the air-conditioned comfort of a ladies-only gym. The same kind of woman, just a class size down. Sucking on her cigarettes as though someone might try to steal the smoke.

  It occurred to me that Hughes probably paid more than enough to keep Thornton wais
t-deep in liquor, even with his habit as tall as it was.

  ‘Doesn’t do you any harm, either, I bet.’ I looked around. ‘How long have you had this little extension?’

  ‘About a year now,’ she said. Glared at me. ‘And no. It doesn’t do us any harm. Your point being what?’

  It occurred to me that that particular conversation would be a dead end.

  ‘My point being the man who sends these things to you,’ I said. ‘I need to find him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because something bad has happened to somebody I love.’ The truth slipped out, but it felt okay. ‘And I think this man might be able to help me find her.’

  ‘Well, that is sweet.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  Steph studied me for a moment, supporting her cigarette elbow with her free hand while smoke listed leisurely into the misty air above us. Eventually, she moved it to her mouth and took a drag.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, leaning towards me. ‘Let me tell you what I know.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  The writing is always done by hand.

  There are a couple of things you need to know, and that’s the first.

  He’s gently flexing his wrist as they bring the girl in: warming himself up. It should take about half an hour from start to finish, and that’s a long time to write for, so you need to be prepared. Loose and relaxed. He gives his shoulders a roll and watches the girl. The bed, covered in straight sheets of glinting polythene, is on the other side of the studio. When she sees it, her step falters, but they push her from behind and she starts moving towards it.

  The door is locked behind them.

  ‘Fucking behave,’ Marley tells her. He’s the one that pushed her. She glances at him, scared, but he’s not even looking at her: just grinding out the remains of his cigarette on the floor. The smell of the smoke drifts over, catching his attention just as the girl sees him.

  He sees her right back.

  For a moment, it’s as though she’s standing on her own, with all the other figures in the room fading into the background: Marley disappears; Long Tall Jack, swinging his limp cock like a length of rope, melts out of view; even the bed seems dim and far away. It’s like the girl is spot-lit: a fragile, scared thing illuminated to the exclusion of everything else.

  He wants to smile at her and tell her that it will be okay, but it won’t. And he’s not here to make her feel comfortable, or help her.

  So instead, he picks up his pen.

  And without taking his eyes off her, he begins to write.

  You are looking at a girl.

  She is wearing a pale blue blouse and a white, cotton skirt: frail clothes that you can’t quite see through but which still manage to give you an idea of the slim but womanly figure beneath. Her skin is tanned and clear, and her hair is shoulder-length, brown and full of body. Not curly exactly, or frizzy, but a kind of pleasing combination of the two, streaked through with patches of blonde where the sun seems to have bleached it. Her face is pretty, but not exceptionally so – although you can tell that if she was smiling she’d be very attractive indeed: it’s just one of those faces that lights up when it smiles and makes everything else seem somehow less important.

  But she’s not smiling.

  In fact, she’s close to tears, but it’s as though she doesn’t quite dare cry: maybe she has done in the past and then been punished for it. She doesn’t need to anyway: it’s there in her stance and in the expression on her face. She’s hugging herself slightly, anticipating some kind of blow. And she’s looking at you as though you might be able to stop it from coming.

  It breaks your heart that you can’t do anything to help her, but the fact is that you just can’t. That’s not why you’re here.

  She mouths the word help at you, and you have to look away.

  ‘On the bed.’

  Marley has her by the arm.

  She actually says it to you this time. ‘Help me. Please.’

  ‘Sit down on the edge of the fucking bed.’

  He drags her back and shoves her down, and she starts to cry. Sits there and holds her face in her hands, sobbing. Marley doesn’t care; he’s not even looking at her anymore. Long Tall Jack just laughs.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Marley calls over.

  You nod.

  Of course you are – this is what you’re here for.

  His grandmother gave him the Ithaca pen. It was a present for his twelfth birthday, which was a little after he’d found out about his gift and talked it through with her. He always knew he could write well, but as he hit puberty his talent grew into something else altogether, and it scared him. Sometimes the things he’d write scared other people as well. When his grandmother was ill, towards the end, he went down to the beach and wrote a piece that she could barely even finish; she said it was just like being there, in the dunes where she’d played as a child. As real as a video or an audio recording. Maybe even as real as it actually happening. And while the scene he described for her was deliberately beautiful, he always knew the potential for harm was there, even before she warned him that he had to be careful.

  So his grandmother gave him the pen and told him to practise. By the time she died – when he was fourteen – he had his gift on a leash. She’d moved into his parents’ home some time before that – when the doctors realised there was nothing more they could do – and one night she called him in, just like they’d always planned. He sat writing with her for the next four hours, and by the time she finally died, his hand had cramped. He never told anyone that he’d been with her at the end, and he still has that notebook, stored away somewhere that nobody will ever find it. He takes it out and reads it sometimes, although his words are generally lost on him. Regardless of that, it’s a first edition he keeps for himself.

  And he kept his talent to himself, as well. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but he sensed it was for the best. The parade of harried teachers never knew; he turned in bland, uninspired fiction during all the Tests, making sure he was never streamed off to the Factory. His plan was non-existent, but he had the distinct impression that the Factory would seek to kill whatever it was he had inside him.

  They finally cornered him when he was sixteen: caught red-handed, passing a note he’d written to a girl on the table across from him. Her name was Kay, and he was very much in love with her. The note had no warning, but it contained explicit content. He hadn’t written it while he was making love to her, but he’d done it from memory almost immediately afterwards: it was certainly good enough to have made her come in the middle of History. But in fact – history records – that particular pleasure went to Mr Cremin, who intercepted the note, confiscated it, and then wished that he hadn’t. The boy’s locker was raided, his parents were called in and serious discussions were entered into regarding his future.

  And that was that. Within a week, he’d been transferred to the Factory. He remembered the principal talking to him on the day before he left, adding emphasis with his hands:

  ‘You’ve got talent, boy – raw ability. Nobody I’ve ever met can describe things like you. And now all you need is discipline and focus.’

  But as far as the boy was concerned, he had discipline – and he had focus, too. He’d kept up his practice. Sometimes he’d write for three or four hours a night, taking his pad and pen up into the woods, or catching these puff-a-billy trams out into the countryside with Kay. One weekend, he broke into the stairwell of a block of flats and managed to get onto the roof: thirty storeys above the street – just him and the pigeons, and the tv aerials humming away. He spent ten straight hours writing up there. He knew what he was doing. He was testing his gift and searching for limits, for a direction that was right for him. Of course, what the principal meant was that he needed their direction and their focus. He needed to learn things like plot and character, so that he could make some money.

  It was destined to end in tears.

  ‘Jim knew the boy was special to begin with,’ Steph
said, grinding out the end of her cigarette, blowing the last of the smoke out from the corner of her mouth.

  ‘But listen – he was just this fucked up kid with too many high ideals. He was a kid who could write, sure, but he wasn’t structured or disciplined. He had no work ethic. The way he was, he had no bestsellers in him.’

  I finished the end of my whisky and poured myself another.

  ‘Jim was a teacher there? At the Factory?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She glanced back at Thornton, who had collapsed over his glass again: a husk of a shell of a man. He was a meta-fuck-up.

  ‘You wouldn’t know it from looking at him now, but that man there used to be one of the best businessmen in the business.’

  The Factory’s where they teach you to write. It’s all they do, day in and day out: nearly five hundred children at any one time, all aged between eleven and eighteen, housed under one long roof and under the nine-to-five tutelage of those who have gone before them. Prospective students are picked out by the Tests at as early an age as possible and then taught the trappings of plot, character and sentence structure before graduating: turned loose into the world as novelists of potential note, standing and bank balance.

  He never stood a chance, of course. He couldn’t do plot and character: he just couldn’t abstract things in that way. Didn’t even want to. What he did was take a snapshot of an event and put it in your head. When he tried to put strings of events together, or create characters, it just didn’t work; the law of ever-decreasing returns applied, and each successive scene became duller and duller. The longer and longer he spent at the Factory, the emptier he felt. His time there was hollowing him out – turning him into a shell they could fill – and pointing him, by force, in a direction he just didn’t want to go.