Love Your Enemies
Love Your Enemies
Nicola Barker
From the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker, the short stories in ‘Love Your Enemies’ present a loving depiction of the beautiful, the grotesque and the utterly bizarre in the lives of overlooked suburban Britons.Layla Carter, 16, from North London, is utterly overwhelmed by her plus-size nose. Rosemary, recently widowed and the ambivalent owner of a bipolar tomcat, meets a satyr in her kitchen and asks, ‘Can I feel your fur?’In these ten enticingly strange short stories, a series of marginalised characters seek truth in the obsession and oppression of everyday existence, via a canine custody battle, sex in John Lewis and some strangely expressive desserts.
NICOLA BARKER
Love Your Enemies
Dedication
For my sister, Tania
Contents
Cover (#litres_trial_promo)
Title page
Dedication
Layla’s Nose Job
A Necessary Truth
The Butcher’s Apprentice
Skin
Food with Feeling
Symbiosis: Class Cestoda
The Afghan War
Dual Balls
John’s Box
Country Matters
Praise
Other books by the same author
Copyright
About the publisher
Layla’s Nose Job
Layla Carter was just about as happy as it was possible for a sixteen-year-old North London girl to be who possessed a nose at least two centimetres longer than any nose among those of her contemporaries. As with all subjects of a sensitive nature, the length of Layla’s nose was an issue of great topicality and contention. Common clichés such as ‘Don’t be nosy’ or ‘You’re getting up my nose’, even everyday phrases like ‘Who knows?’ – especially when uttered by an errant younger brother with a meaningful glance at the relevant part of Layla’s physiognomy – would cause an atmosphere of hysterical teenage uproar in the Carters’ semi-detached in the leafy suburbs of Winchmore Hill.
Layla sensed that the source of her problem was genetic, but neither of her parents, Rose and Larry Carter, possessed noses of any note. Her three siblings were blessed with lovely, truffling pink snouts with snub ends and tiny nostrils. They had nothing to complain about.
Her nose had always been big. On family occasions like Christmas or Easter when her grandparents and great aunts descended on the Carter household for a roast lunch and a glass of Safeways own-brand port, the family photo albums would be dragged out of the cabinet under the television and all tied by blood and name would pore over them and sigh.
No one sighed louder than Layla. Her odyssey of agony and self-consciousness began with her christening snaps and continued well after the visitors had gone home, the washing-up had been done and the living-room carpet hoovered.
As far as she could tell, her nose had always been disproportionate. She had often had recourse to see other people’s christening photographs, and in none of them that she could remember had so many profile shots been taken to so much ill effect. Her nose emerged like a shark’s fin from between the delicate folds of her fine, pearly-white shawl, and the sight of it cut into her stomach like a blade.
She struggled to remember a time when the size of her nose hadn’t been a full-time preoccupation. As a young child in her first weeks at school, after a particularly violent spate of playground jousting – little boys shouting ‘big nose’ at her for a period in excess of fifteen minutes – her class teacher had bustled her, howling, into the staff-room and had dried her eyes, saying softly, ‘When you grow older you’ll study the Romans. They were the people who built all the best, long, straight roads in Britain, many, many years ago. Now just you guess what all of the Romans had in common? They all had fine aquiline noses. Long, straight, proud noses like yours. One day you’ll learn to be proud of your nose too. You’ll learn that all the best people have strong, bold, expressive faces and strong, proud, dignified noses.’ She offered Layla a tissue and said, ‘Now go on, blow.’ Layla pushed her face forward and then felt a pang of intense misery as her nose poked a hole through the centre of the tissue; like a dog jumping through a paper hoop. Nothing could console her.
People are so cruel, children are so cruel. In the school playground as she grew older, worse humiliations were in store. Her nose became her central signifier. Whenever her best friend Marcy was deputized to approach a handsome young buck for whom Layla had developed a girlish passion, she would always see him turn to Marcy with a frown and say, ‘Layla? Who’s she?’
By way of explanation Marcy would invariably point her out as she stood skulking in the corner of the playground closest to the girls’ toilets and say, ‘That’s her there. You know, the one with the big nose.’
Marcy always apologized for her indiscretions. She was a sympathetic girl, but she came from a big family where sensitivity and tact often had to be abandoned in the arena of attention-grabbing. She would say to Layla, ‘I’d much rather have a big nose than no nose at all.’
Neither of them had ever seen anyone without a nose before, but as the years dragged by Layla regularly stood in front of her bedroom mirror with her hand covering this offending part of her face in an attempt to perceive herself, and her other features, without its overwhelming presence. The result was often quite gratifying. Whenever she tried moaning to her mother, Rose would say, ‘Just be grateful for what you have got. You’ve got pretty blue eyes and lovely soft, brown, curly hair. You’ve got a good figure too. Be grateful. Try not to be so negative.’ In return, Layla would grimace and shout, ‘God! It’s bad enough having a nose like Mount Everest – I’d hardly tolerate being fat as well. I have to make the best of myself, but that doesn’t make things any better. In some ways that makes things worse. If I was truly ugly, what would I care if I had a big nose?’
She wished she could chop it off. When she was twelve, a short burst of appointments with the school therapist brought more light to this preoccupation. The therapist told Rose and Larry that Layla’s regular association in her conscious and unconscious mind with chopping and removal implied a rather unusual and boyish adherence to what is commonly called the castration complex. He said, ‘Layla wants to be a man. She wants to rival her father, Larry, for Rose’s love and attention. Unfortunately she has no penis. This makes the penis a hate object. She wants to castrate Larry’s penis because she is jealous of it. She feels guilty about her aggressive impulses towards Larry and so turns these feelings of violence on to herself. To Layla, her nose is a penis. Her hatred of her nose is symbolic of her hatred of her own sexuality. When she comes to terms with that, she’ll be a happier and more complete person.’
After their appointment the Carters took Layla for a hamburger at the McDonald’s in Enfield’s town centre as a treat. She sipped her milkshake and frowned. She said, ‘What difference does all this make to me? Talking won’t change the size of my nose, will it? Why does everyone have to pretend that my nose isn’t the problem but that I am? It’s as if everyone who wants to help me is determined to believe that my nose isn’t all that big at all. But it is. It is!’
She had made her point. The family paid no heed to the therapist’s recommendations. Except Larry, who took to locking the bedroom and the bathroom doors whenever he happened to undress; especially when shaving. He must have felt guilty about something.
By the time that she was fifteen, Layla knew everything conceivable about dealing with an outsize nose. She knew how to react when boys got on to the school bus in the afternoons and laughed at her and gesticulated, she knew how to comb and style her hair in a way that helped to accentuate her better features as opposed to her worse, she knew how to avoid having her photograph taken on family occasions (on holiday and at home), she knew how to spend hours every morning with a make-up brush and facial foundation, shading the sides of her nose and lightening its centre in a way she’d seen depicted in hundreds of teenage girls’ magazines. Most of all she knew how to focus on this one, single thing. She made herself into a nose on legs.
She could not read a magazine without studying the nose of every model on its waxy, paper pages. If a model had a slightly larger nose than usual she would tear out the picture and put it into a scrapbook or stuff it in the drawer of her desk. At night she would list in her mind successful people who had big noses. She counted them like sheep in her pre-dream state; Chryssie Hynde, Margaret Thatcher, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Dustin Hoffman, Rowan Atkinson, Cher. She thought about Cher quite a bit, because Cher had had her nose fixed.
In her dreams she visualized a scalpel, and its sharp edge touched her face like a kiss. It sliced her nose away so that her face felt light and radiant. But when she tried to bring her hand to her face to feel her new nose, her arms felt terribly heavy and could not be lifted. She used all her energy and willpower to attempt to lift them but they would not move. At this point she would awake from her dream and discover that she was actually trying to lift her arms, her real arms. In an instant she could then lift them to her face, and feel her face, and feel that everything was still the same. Even in her dreams, wish-fulfilment had its limits. Nothing ever went all the way.
Layla’s problems were more than just cosmetic when she was fifteen. At this time Marcy began going out with her first serious boyfriend. Although they remained best friends this meant that Marcy grew less supportive towards Layla and increasingly preoccupied with her new relationship. She also became enthusiastic about the idea of Layla becoming involved in a relationship herself. Layla had very high standards. All the boys who supposedly found her attractive did so (she firmly believed, and with some grounds), because they were universally unattractive themselves.
But the pressure was on. Marcy visualized the ‘double date’ as the height of teenage sophistication and sociability. ‘Imagine how much fun we could have if you and someone else could come out with me and Craig,’ she’d say.
One warm summer Wednesday afternoon after school, Layla and Marcy went for a brisk stroll around the precinct in the town centre, looking at clothes, talking about teachers and drinking root beer. They ended up at Waitrose, where they bought a packet of Yum-Yum doughnut twists. Marcy suggested that they eat them on a bench in the park.
It was a set-up. Layla had barely taken the first bite of her doughnut when Craig turned up with one of his friends, Elvis. Her heart plummeted. After mumbling hello she walked a short distance to feed the rest of her Yum-Yum to a wayward duck. After a minute or so Marcy came over to her. She took her arm and said, ‘Don’t you like Elvis? Craig and I thought you’d get along.’
Layla baulked at this. She said, ‘You thought we’d get along because we both have big noses, is that it?’
Marcy laughed nervously. ‘Of course not. He’s Jewish. Lots of Jewish men have big noses, it’s natural.’
Layla forgot herself and wiped her sticky hands on her school dress. When she spoke again, her voice was dangerously calm. ‘Of all the boys in the school you choose the one with the biggest nose to match me up with. You’re supposed to be my best friend.’
‘Lots of women think that Jewish men are very sexy, that their big noses are sexy,’ Marcy interrupted.
Layla exploded, ‘I hate big noses. I hate my nose. Why the hell should I want to go out with someone with an enormous nose?’
The two boys had turned to face them from their position by the bench. Elvis looked flushed and irritated. Craig was laughing. He called over, ‘You know what they say about men with big noses, don’t you, Layla? They’ve got the biggest pricks.’ He turned to Elvis. ‘You’ll vouch for that, won’t you?’
Elvis was extremely angry. He said, ‘You know what they say about girls with big noses, don’t you, Layla? They say that they’re very, very, very ugly, and that no one wants to go out with them.’ He showed her one finger.
Her face went crimson. Marcy tried to defuse the situation. She rubbed Layla’s arm apologetically. ‘He’s normally quite nice. I think he overheard us. He was upset, he didn’t mean what he said.’
Layla pulled her arm away with great violence, the force of which pushed her a step backwards and sent the duck skittering off. ‘Thanks a lot. Thanks for really humiliating me. I thought you were my friend. I suppose you and Craig had a real laugh planning this.’
Elvis had marched off in disgust, but Craig had made his way over to Marcy’s side and put his arm protectively around her shoulders. ‘Marcy was only trying to be nice. You make a mistake in thinking that everyone else is as interested in your stupid nose as you are. Elvis would’ve been a fool to want to go out with you, anyway. You’re too self-obsessed.’
Layla strode over to the bench where she had left her school bag, and picked it up by its strap. Then she turned and said, ‘Just because I have a big nose you all feel you’ve got the right to look down on me. I can just imagine Elvis and I going out on a date. Everyone who saw us would say, “Isn’t it nice that two such strangely deformed people have found each other.” I suppose it’s like two dwarves going out together or two blind people, or two people with terrible speech impediments who could spit and stutter at each other over Wimpy milk-shakes. Well, I want better than that. I’m more than just a big nose. I thought I was your best friend, Marcy, but in fact I’m just your big-nosed friend. That’s all I am.’
Marcy said nothing as Layla sped away across the park.
That night when she got home Layla went straight to her bedroom. She locked the door and wouldn’t come out. Rose left her a dinner-tray outside the door. She was concerned for Layla. The previous week she had seen a programme on teenage suicide. Layla was so volatile. Larry told her not to worry.
Layla sat alone and did a lot of thinking. She tried to analyse her world view. She tried to get outside herself and to see her situation from all angles. One central problem faced her: had other people made her self-conscious about her nose, or was she just vain, as Craig had implied? Had she created the problem for herself, or had society made her nose into a monster? Obviously her nose had always been in the centre of her face and it had always been big, but was that in itself enough to destroy her life?
She thought about Elvis and wondered how much consideration he gave to the size of his nose. But his was a Jewish nose. Hers was just a big nose. She knew that the size of Elvis’s nose fitted into a larger scheme of things. It had a cultural space. It meant something. She thought, ‘If you’re Jewish and have a big nose it’s like being Barbra Streisand or Mel Brooks. It means that you have a history, that you belong. The shape of my nose is just a mistake. My problem is stuck right bang in the centre of my face, and it has no wider implications than that. My problem is my nose. I didn’t make the problem, the problem made me.’
It was so simple. It had to come off.
Late that evening she went downstairs into the living room and switched off the television. She stood in front of the screen – like a wonderful character from a film or a soap – and she announced firmly, ‘Either I have a nose job or I kill myself. I can’t go on like this any longer. I’ve heard that you can have one on the National Health. If you both love me you will help me.’ She swayed gently as though she were about to swoon, then gathered herself up and strode from the room like Boadicea approaching her chariot: a woman with swords on her wheels.
Rose made an appointment with their local GP the following afternoon. Layla took an hour off school. She explained her problem to the GP and he agreed to book her in with a specialist.
Five months later Layla met the specialist. He was called Dr Chris Shaben and was a small, vivacious, balding man with a crooked face and yellowy teeth. Apparently he had a very beautiful wife. His surgery was on Harley Street and the gold plaque on his door said, ‘Dr Chris Shaben, Plastic Surgeon’ in a beautiful flowing script.
Layla sat in his office and discussed her nose at great length. For the first time ever she felt as though she was actually talking to someone who cared, someone who understood, and best of all, someone who could do something. It was as a dream to her. Entering his surgery had been like a scene of recognition in a book or a film; that moment when everything falls into place. It was an ecstatic moment. Layla was like a newborn child finding its mother’s milky nipple for the first time.
It took a while to convince Dr Shaben that she was desperate and sincere. He said, ‘Normally we only do plastic surgery treatments on the National Health if the problem involved is more than just cosmetic, but I’m willing to make an exception in this instance, Layla. Although you’re young, you’re very articulate and intelligent. I realize that your concerns go deeper than mere vanity.’
Layla nodded. She said slowly, ‘For a while I tried to make myself believe that I had made the size of my nose into an issue, that the problem was to do with me, on the inside, not the out. My parents encouraged this line of thought, although my Mum has always been supportive, and my analysis did the same thing. But now I know that the problem is on the outside too. People judge one another visually; I should know, I do it myself. I want to be normal. I want to stop being on the outside, the periphery.’
Dr Shaben nodded and smiled at Layla. His bald head and short stature made him look like a tiny, benign, laughing Buddah as he sat hunched and serene in his big, leather, office chair.
Before the operation Layla abandoned her GCSE course work and concentrated instead on the leaflets, diagrams and information surrounding the surgery that she was about to undertake. She read how modern technology now meant that some nose operations could be undertaken entirely through the nostrils without any recourse to external incisions and unsightly scarring. The nose was chiefly made up out of bone and gristle, but was also extremely sensitive because of the large number of nerve endings at its tip. She tested this theory by smacking her nose with a pencil and then smacking other parts of her face like her cheeks and eyebrows. The nose was much more delicate. After the operation, a certain amount of swelling and bruising was to be expected.
Four days after her sixteenth birthday Layla awoke in a large and unfamiliar room. Her duvet was tightly stretched across her chest and felt unusually harsh and full of static. She was dopey. Her throat felt weird and dry. Her nose was numb but ached. She thought for an instant that she was dreaming her nose dream, that she wanted to put her hands to her face but her hands were restricted, yet after a few minutes she realized that she was in a strange bed in a strange environment. It was no dream, but her arms were restricted by the tightness of her sheets and blankets. She wriggled her body gently to create some room and worked her hands free. She placed them on her face. Her nose hurt. Her hands touched soft, filmy bandage and Band-Aid. It was done.
For the next five days her head felt light. Dr Shaben said that it was simply psychological, but she felt the lightness of a person who once had long hair and then cut it short, the roomy strangeness of someone who has had their arm broken and set in plaster and then has the plaster removed so that their arm floats up into the air because it feels so odd and weightless and light.
At first her face looked swollen and ugly. In hospital she wore no make-up and was blue with bruises. But she could see the difference. In the mirror her nose looked further away. Dr Shaben was pleased for her. He was well satisfied.
Throughout her stay in hospital, Rose had been in to see her every day. Larry preferred to stay away. Before she had gone in on her first night he had said to her, ‘Remember how when you were small I would sit you on my knee and bounce you up and down and call you my little elephant girl? You always laughed and giggled. It’s not like that any more. Now you’ve grown up into someone I don’t recognize. I can’t approve of what you are doing. God made you as you are. That should be enough.’
This came as a great shock to Layla. She had completely forgotten Larry’s pet name for her. When she heard him say it again it was like a blow to her face, a blow to her nose, making it ache, making her numb. It was a kind of violent anaesthetic.
She was being pulled in so many directions. Everyone had a different opinion as to the whys and wherefores. Rose simply said, ‘Do whatever will make you happy.’
After five days she came home. Although she was still slightly bruised, the mirror was her friend. Her three brothers greeted her at the front door with euphoric whoopings. Larry sat in the living room, watching the cricket. He turned after a minute or so and saw her, standing nervously by the door, her hands touching the bookcase for support. First he smiled, then he laughed, ‘Five days away, all that money spent, and look at you. No difference! You look no different.’ He laughed on long after she had left the room, but when he’d finished his stomach felt bitter.
Later Marcy visited. She smiled widely and hugged Layla like a real friend. Then she looked closely at her nose and said, ‘Maybe your nose looks slightly different, but to me you are still the same old Layla. In my mind’s eye you are exactly the same person. Nothing has changed.’ She thought that she was saying the right thing.
Layla sat alone upstairs in her room, staring into the mirror. She felt sure that she looked different. She felt sure that she was now a different person, inside. But the worry now consumed her that other people would not be able to see how different she looked. It felt like a conspiracy. She thought, ‘Maybe I’ve become the ugly person I was outside, inside. Perhaps that can never be changed.’ She felt like Pinocchio.
That night she had a dream. In her dream she was a tiny little elephant, but she was without a trunk. She had four legs and thick grey skin, big flapping ears and a thin end-tassled tail. But she had no nose. Because she had no nose she couldn’t pick things up – to eat, to wash, to have fun – all these things were now impossible. It was like being without arms. She kept asking for help. Her mother smiled and stroked her, but everyone else just laughed and pointed.
She slept late. When she awoke she felt battered and exhausted. When she looked into the mirror, her old face looked back at her. Nothing had changed. She felt utterly helpless. Her mind rambled and a thousand different images moved through the space behind her eyes. Her head was full of colour. She saw different people too, pointing their fingers, wiping her nose, holding her arm, bouncing her up and down on their knee, up and down, up and down.
In the kitchen she looked for a small knife to cut the top off her boiled egg. Instead she found that she had a chopping knife in her hand and it was as long as her arm. She cut the egg in half and its yolk hit the wall. She placed the blade near to her nose and felt tempted to move it closer. She stopped. For hours she remained stationary.
Larry had forgotten his sandwiches. He drove home in his lunch hour and let himself into the quiet house. He went upstairs for a quick pee. For once he neglected to shut and lock the door. He whistled contentedly.
Downstairs in the kitchen Layla’s mind started to turn again. She considered her options.
A Necessary Truth
Sammy Jo burped the baby and then lay her down on her pink, rubber changing mat and began to unpin her nappy. The baby puffed a gentle tongueful of spew out of her tiny mouth and down the side of her chin. Sammy Jo undid the nappy and then, almost without thought, used one of its Terry corners to mop up the sick. She lifted the baby’s head up, gently supporting its weight in her free hand, to make sure that her mouth was now empty. She didn’t want her to choke accidentally.
The baby was called Charlie, short for Charlotte. She was four months old. Sammy Jo tossed the nappy into the (thankfully close) washing basket and carefully laid Charlie’s head down again. She picked up a clean nappy and formed it into the requisite shape. The baby wheezed quietly.
Sammy Jo stared out of the window for a moment and caught sight of her husband Jason hanging out some nappies on the line. She rolled her tongue around the long nappy pin with its baby pink tip which she had stuck in the corner of her mouth – like a metal cigarette – while she felt around sightlessly on the table for some baby-wipes and talc.
The telephone rang. She grimaced to herself, let go of the tin of talc and then reached over to pick it up. Charlie screwed up her face at the sudden sharpness of the ringing – she couldn’t decide whether to cry or not – and then relaxed again when it stopped. Sammy Jo carried on staring out of the window. ‘Yes?’
She never said anything but ‘yes’ when she answered the telephone. Her biggest mistake in the past had been repeating her name and number on answering. She now knew that if you say your name and number some strange people copy this information down when they hear a woman’s voice. Then they telephone you again and again and turn your life into a living hell.
Sammy Jo’s telephone number was ex-directory. All the people who now had her number were people that she definitely trusted; a mere handful. This system had hitherto proved virtually foolproof.
A voice said, ‘What can we be sure of in our life? What two things can we infer – almost immediately – without needing to resort to empirical information?’
Sammy Jo’s eyes snapped away from the window and focused, somewhat pointlessly, on the telephone receiver in her hand. The voice continued, ‘By empirical I mean “information derived from experience”. Does all this sound rather confusing? Don’t let it confuse you. I’ve already confused myself. Bringing in the notion of empirical experience – Locke, Hume, remember those names – has confused things already. Let’s start again.’
Sammy Jo slammed down the receiver. She stood up and searched around for some paper and a pen. She found a thick telephone pad with slightly sticky adhesive edges which she had been given (months before) by her local independent pizza restaurant and takeaway. Each piece of paper was shaped like a red and yellow pizza, intermittently round, with the address and telephone number of the restaurant in small print at the top.
She placed the pad on the table in between the telephone and the baby and began to write: Man, Thirty/forty, deep but weak voice – muffled? Breathy.
She paused and thought for a moment and then wrote: Rubbish, not offensive. She crossed out the word offensive and then wrote sexual instead. She bit her lip. The telephone rang again. She stared out of the window towards Jason (who still seemed rather preoccupied) and then slowly, hesitantly, picked up the receiver. A voice said, ‘Hi! Sammy Jo?’ Sammy Jo breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed visibly. She smiled. ‘Hello. Yes?’
‘Hi Sammy, it’s Lucy here, Lucy Cosbie. How are things?’
Sammy Jo pinched the receiver between her shoulder and her ear while using her two free hands to grab a tissue and wipe Charlie’s bottom. Charlie let out a small whimper, but Lucy Cosbie heard it. ‘Is that Charlie there?’
Sammy Jo grinned. ‘Yeah. I’m changing her. I haven’t seen you for a couple of months, Lucy. You must pop around when you’re free. Jason mentioned you only the other day …’
Lucy’s laughter echoed down the telephone line. ‘Wow! I must be making progress if Jason’s asking about me!’
Sammy Jo clucked her tongue and picked up the talc. ‘Don’t be stupid. In a way I think he kind of misses you.’
Lucy stopped laughing and said, ‘Well, this is just a semi-professional informal call. I wanted to make sure that things are fine, that everything is going well, you know …’
Sammy Jo finished talcing the baby’s bottom and put the talc bottle down on the table. She stared guiltily at the pizza pad in front of her and touched what she had written on the pad with her index finger. She then said, ‘Honestly, Lucy, everything’s great. I already have my midwife coming around every other week to check up on Charlie’s progress. She’s doing just fine. I think enough of the council’s resources have been spent on me already without you worrying too …’
Lucy was sensitive to Sammy Jo’s tone. She said lightly, ‘Sammy Jo, relax. I’m not checking up on you. I know how sensitive young mums can be. I’m honestly not intruding, just interested.’
Sammy Jo interrupted, breathless with embarrassment. ‘Lucy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that, honestly. I’m just a bit uptight today. You’re more than welcome here any time. In fact, why don’t we make a date for a visit right now? How about Thursday afternoon?’
Sammy Jo could hear the busy noises of an office and a typewriter behind Lucy’s voice. Lucy said, ‘Hey! I’m quite a busy person, Sammy Jo. I’m afraid Thursday’s a bit tight for me. I tell you what, why don’t I ring in a couple of weeks’ time and we can make an evening arrangement? Something purely social. That way the neighbours can’t possibly have anything to gossip about, especially if I arrive on your doorstep after six-thirty with a bottle of wine. How about it? Purely informal. I’m desperate to see that gorgeous baby again.’
Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks, Lucy. I’d love to see you, any time of day. Telephone soon, OK?’
They exchanged their farewells.
Sammy Jo put down her receiver and reached out to pick up Charlie’s legs, lifted them up a few inches and slid the nappy underneath her whitely talced bottom. Before she could complete her nappy-tying, Jason had strolled into the room with the bag of remaining clothes pegs tucked under his arm. He said, ‘Did I hear the telephone ring?’
Sammy Jo nodded. ‘Yes. It was Lucy Cosbie.’
He raised his eyebrows, rather cynically. ‘Checking up? I didn’t think you were her department any more.’
Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I’m not. Just a social call, that’s all.’ She pushed the nappy pin into Charlie’s nappy and, picking her up, said, ‘Look, Jason, Charlie’s left you a little present in the washing basket.’
Jason looked down at the basket and let out a howl of horror. ‘Bloody hell! You’d think we had a production line of babies in here, not just one, with the amount of waste she produces. I’m sure that when she eventually gets around to speaking, her first coherent words will be “More washing, Daddy.”’
Sammy Jo was looking around for one of Charlie’s clean romper suits. Before she could say anything Jason said, ‘In the pile on the sofa. Would you mind putting on some rubber knickers this time so it doesn’t get soaked in twenty seconds?’
She winked. ‘Oh, Jason, you never said you liked me in rubber before!’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘I know that I agreed to take responsibility for the washing of nappies and stuff if we had a baby, Sammy Jo, but tomorrow I have a lot of work on so I might just pop out and buy a packet or two of disposables, all right? Just for one day.’
Sammy Jo shrugged, unmoved, ‘I don’t care, Jason, go ahead. You’re the one who’s so bothered about the environmental angle concerning disposables, not me. Buy them if you want to, feel free.’
Jason picked up his jacket, which was slung over the back of the sofa. He said, ‘I’ll pop out now. Do you want anything else?’
Sammy Jo smiled obsequiously. ‘I’ll write you a list.’
She looked around her and then saw the pizza pad on the table. Jason was watching her as he pulled his jacket on. She saw the few words that she had scribbled on to the top of the pad and, trying not to frown, ripped the page away and screwed it up in her hand. Jason said, ‘What’s that? Beginning of your thesis?’
She grimaced. ‘Very funny. Actually it was a trial shopping list, but I’ve now thought of several items extra, including five years’ subscription to Parenting magazine.’
She wrote down a couple of things and then handed him the piece of paper. He took it and perused it for a second. ‘For a frightening moment there I thought you were serious.’
She shrugged, ‘You know me, Jason, happy with sterilizing liquid and rosehip syrup. I don’t need anything else in my life.’
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, chucked Charlie gently under her chin and said, ‘I’ll only be gone ten minutes or so, enjoy yourself.’ Sammy Jo smiled.
When he had gone, she found a pair of rubber knickers, put them over Charlie’s nappy and then manoeuvred the baby’s tiny body into a yellow lambswool romper suit. She pulled a small, soft blanket from her cot by the window and wrapped her up in it, then lay her down inside the cot. Charlie squawked her disapproval as soon as Sammy Jo set her down. Sammy Jo steeled herself to ignore these noises and strolled into the kitchen to make a mug of tea. As she switched the kettle on the telephone started ringing. She paused for a moment and then went to answer it.
‘Yes?’
A voice said, ‘Forget all that crap about empirical information. I don’t want to alarm you with big words before you’ve even got a grip on the basic ideas.’
Sammy Jo bit her lip, and then said violently, ‘What makes you think that I don’t understand what that word means? What the hell makes you presume that?’
Her heart sank. She hadn’t intended to participate in this conversation at all. She knew that participation was half of the trouble with anonymous callers. It meant that you were condoning the act. Implicitly. She felt ashamed and stupid and thought, ‘After all I’ve been through, I’m still a silly, stupid novice. I haven’t learned anything. I don’t deserve people’s help and advice.’
The voice continued, ‘Let’s go back to what I said first, Sammy Jo. That question about two things in life that we can be sure of. Two basic things.’
Sammy Jo’s heart plummeted. She thought, ‘My God, he knows my name. Did I say my name when I answered this time? Why did I answer him in the first place?’
She said, ‘I guess I can be sure that you are telephoning me, irritating me, involving yourself in my life when all I really wish is that you were dead in a room somewhere or dying of a terrible disease, or at the very least in some fundamental physical discomfort.’
The voice cackled, ‘Well done! That’s part of the answer, Sammy Jo, very well done. To put it simply, the two things that we can really be sure of in life are (a) that we exist. We can be sure of ourselves. Are you in any doubt that you exist, Sammy Jo, any doubt at all?’
Sammy Jo sighed. ‘The only thing I don’t doubt is that you are a pain in the fanny. That’s all.’
The voice paused for a moment and then said, ‘I get your point. We know that we exist because we can feel pain. Our bodies feel pain. I can be sure of two things, to quote Russell: “We are acquainted with our sense-data and, probably, with ourselves. These we know to exist.” Sense-data is a silly technical word which I’ll explain to you later.’
Sammy Jo was biting her nails and looking around for the pen she’d used earlier to write her shopping list. To pass the time she said, ‘Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.’
The voice said, ‘Imagine yourself in any situation, any situation at all. It doesn’t matter what you imagine yourself doing.’
He paused. ‘I knew it would come to this, he’s going to talk dirty. I knew it,’ Sammy Jo thought instantaneously. She felt familiar feelings of outraged passivity seeping into her chest. ‘Go on, say it, you dirty bastard. Don’t pretend that this is about anything else,’ she said.
But the voice continued, ‘No matter what you think, do or imagine, the only constant element is you. You can’t get away from yourself. You can imagine that the world is a figment of your imagination, that the sky is yellow but just seems blue, that your body doesn’t really exist and that you are just imagining that it does, that you are in fact asleep and dreaming and not awake at all. Close your eyes.’
Automatically Sammy Jo closed her eyes and quickly opened them again. She hung up. The phone rang immediately. She let it ring about ten times until the repetitive noise it made began to upset Charlie and she began to splutter and howl. Sammy Jo felt guilty about letting it upset her and also couldn’t help thinking that perhaps it was someone else. Eventually she picked it up. ‘Yes?’
The voice continued, ‘If you close your eyes it’s possible to reject almost everything that seems predictable in everyday life.’
She sighed and then said bitterly, ‘I can’t deny the fact that you exist, though, can I? You exist, don’t you?’
The voice was urgent and persuasive. ‘No way. Think about it. Nothing exterior to your mind and your thought is necessary. Don’t be confused by my use of the word “necessary” here. I used it in its philosophical context. By it I mean a Necessary Truth, something that cannot be denied. For all you know my voice could be just a figment of your imagination.’
Sammy Jo laughed, a guttural, cynical laugh. ‘Oh, so now you’re going to tell me that this telephone call, this infuriating interruption in my life, is my own fault. Is that it?’
‘Could be.’
Sammy Jo sighed loudly. ‘Well, if I made you up, how come you won’t go away?’
There was a short silence. During this silence Sammy Jo picked up her pen and wrote the words NECESSARY TRUTH on the pizza pad in large capitals. The voice then said, ‘Try and remember this phrase: I Think Therefore I Am. In Latin it goes Cogito Ergo Sum. I think is “cogito”, c-o-g-i-t-o. Therefore is ergo, e-r-g-o. I am is sum, s-u-m. Got that?’
Sammy Jo finished writing down the last letter, then slammed her pen down on the table. ‘What on earth makes you think I give a damn? You’re boring me. Go and bore someone else.’
The voice said calmly, ‘I want you to read something by a guy called Descartes tonight. He was the founder of modern philosophy – circa 1600. He invented something called “The Method of Systematic Doubt”. If you can get hold of his Meditations I’d recommend the first chapter. It’s only short.’
Sammy Jo said quickly, ‘Forget it. I’ll be much too busy this evening committing sodomy with my household pet and watching Emmerdale Farm.’
This time he rang off.
She picked up her pen again and wrote down the name Descartes (although she spelled it Deycart), then threw the pen down, tore off the top page of the pad, crumpled it up and threw it at the paper bin in the corner of the room. The paper missed the bin and hit the wall. She got up and went into the kitchen to finish making her cup of tea. While she was pouring in the milk Jason returned carrying a couple of bags of Pampers. He pinched her arm, ‘Tea! Yes please!’ She grimaced and bent down to get out another cup.
That night when they were both lying in bed waiting to go to sleep and listening out for Charlie’s whimpers from her cot nearby, Sammy Jo took hold of Jason’s arm and said, ‘Jason, have you ever heard of Descartes?’
Jason yawned and turned over on to his back, ‘I don’t know, Sammy Jo. I have some vague ideas about him. Probably read him at college at some point. Why?’
Sammy Jo shrugged. ‘Is it rude?’
Jason laughed. ‘Not so far as I know. He was French, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was a kinky writer.’
Sammy Jo sighed. ‘Oh.’
Jason paused for a moment, then said, ‘Sammy Jo, I didn’t mean to be off-putting. If you’re interested I might have a book on ancient philosophy downstairs that features him, but I can’t be sure.’ Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I don’t think so, Jason. Apparently Descartes was the founder of modern philosophical thought.’
Jason opened his eyes and stared at her in the dark.
The following afternoon Sammy Jo had just returned from taking Charlie out for a walk in her pram and was taking off her coat and combing a hand through her rather windswept short, red hair, when the telephone started ringing. She picked Charlie up and went to answer it. It was the man again. She pulled the telephone over towards the sofa and sat down, balancing Charlie on her knees, supporting her with one hand. The man said, ‘Hello, Sammy Jo. I suppose it would be optimistic of me to expect you to have read that chunk of Descartes’ Meditations that I recommended to you last night? The first chapter, remember?’
Sammy Jo snorted. ‘Why don’t you just sod off?’
The man continued, ‘After I rang off yesterday it occurred to me that I hadn’t been particularly encouraging towards you, and that was very wrong of me. I think you did extremely well, all things considered. You are obviously an intelligent woman. I think you just need stretching.’
Sammy Jo shook her head, ‘No, I don’t need stretching. The only person who needs stretching around here is you, and by that I mean stretching on the rack. Ancient forms of torture. I like that idea.’
The man said quietly, ‘Try not to be so combative, Sammy Jo. Let’s just get back to Descartes and his Method of Systematic Doubt.’
Sammy Jo hung up. As she tucked Charlie up in her cot a good fifty seconds or so later, the telephone started to ring again. Sammy Jo finished arranging Charlie’s covers and then, grabbing hold of her pizza pad and pen, went to answer it.
‘Yes?’
The man said, ‘Do you understand the word ‘scepticism’, Sammy Jo? Try and give me a working definition.’
Sammy Jo was writing on her pad in untidy capitals. She wrote: I WILL NOT GIVE IN. I CANNOT GIVE IN. I SHALL NOT GIVE IN. I MUST TAKE POSITIVE ACTION … TELEPHONE JASON? TELEPHONE LUCY COSBIE? WHISTLE DOWN THE TELEPHONE?
The voice said, somewhat more harshly, ‘Sammy Jo? Do you understand the meaning of the word scepticism?’
Sammy Jo threw down her pen and ripped the top page away from her pad. She shouted, ‘Of course I do. Don’t patronize me. Of course I do.’
‘Well, give me a working definition, then.’
‘Why should I? Why?’
He sighed, ‘Just to prove that you know.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t need to prove anything to you.’
‘Well, prove it to yourself then.’
Sammy Jo hesitated for a moment, then picked up her pen again. She said quietly, ‘All right then, I don’t really understand what it means, properly. Tell me and I’ll write it down.’
That night during dinner Sammy Jo asked Jason if he could get her a proper lined writing pad from work and a couple of spare biros. Jason was cutting up his fish fingers with one eye on the television, watching Wogan. Wogan was interviewing Candice Bergen. Jason put a mouthful of the battered fish into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully without replying. Sammy Jo glared at him. ‘Jason, do you mind paying me some attention? I’m talking to you!’
He turned towards her. ‘Something about paper and pens, right?’
She nodded. ‘Would you get me some from work? They supply you free don’t they?’
He frowned. ‘What do you want them for?’
Sammy Jo turned her eyes towards the television screen and focused on Wogan’s tie. ‘Nothing in particular. Telephone messages, addresses, sometimes on daytime television they have interesting babycare tips and recipes and stuff. They’d just come in handy.’
Jason carried on eating, ‘OK, I’ll try and remember.’
The following day Sammy Jo left the house at eleven o’clock with Charlie tucked up in her pram, and went out shopping. She collected Charlie’s child benefit money from the post office, then caught a bus into the centre of Milton Keynes. In her pocket was a piece of the pizza pad with the address of a bookshop scribbled on it. She found the bookshop and pushed her way clumsily inside. The short, dark man standing behind his desk in the shop came forward to help her. He said, ‘These places aren’t designed with prams in mind.’
Sammy Jo smiled. ‘Next time I’ll remember that and leave the baby on the bus.’
He grinned. ‘I didn’t mean any offence. Leave the pram here by the till and I’ll keep an eye on the baby while you browse.’
Sammy Jo let go of the pram and strolled around the shop. After several minutes she returned to the assistant and said, ‘If I keep an eye on the baby, would you mind finding copies of these books for me?’
She handed him her piece of paper which he took from her and perused. He smiled – ‘No problem’ – and quickly located the volumes in question. She held the three thin books in her hands and looked guiltily at the prices. The assistant noticed her concern. He said, ‘Specialist books are expensive on the whole, but I think you’ll find that those are quite reasonable. Russell was a bit of a popularist – excluding his works on mathematical logic, of course – so his more general works are very reasonably priced. The Descartes is a fraction more expensive, but the Sartre isn’t too bad. That’s fiction though, The Age of Reason, it’s a great book.’
Sammy Jo smiled at the assistant. He seemed enthusiastic and well read. She said, ‘One day I hope to be as well informed as you are. Which book do you think I should read first?’
He shrugged. ‘It depends on what you’re after. If I were you I’d read The Age of Reason first. It’s good to introduce yourself to ideas in an informal sort of way. Then the ideas just pop into your head and it’s no strain to pick them up.’
Sammy Jo looked at the synopsis on the back of the Penguin paperback. ‘It looks a bit heavy going.’
The assistant smiled sympathetically. ‘You haven’t bought it yet. You could always change your mind.’
Sammy Jo looked at him quizzically. ‘Do you think I should?’
He chuckled, ‘I’m playing the devil’s advocate. The story is about free will, about a man’s search for personal freedom. You should use your free will to decide whether you really want to buy it or not. If you choose to buy it then you will have made a commitment to the book. In fact you will have involved yourself in the book’s fundamental dilemmas.’
His face glowed as he explained this to her. His green eyes shone and he seemed excited. Sammy Jo handed him the three books and said, ‘All right, I’ll have them. I’ll read the …’ she paused. ‘Why are all these names so hard to pronounce?’
He took the books and put them into a bag. ‘Say the word “start”.’
Sammy Jo repeated after him, ‘Start.’
‘Then take out the first letter t so it’s “sart”.’
She copied him: ‘Sart.’
‘Then say the word “rough”.’
She smiled. ‘Rough.’
‘But forget about the “ugh” part and just say “ro”. Then altogether it’s “Sartre”. Obviously that’s the simple English pronunciation, but people will know who you mean.’
Sammy Jo said the name out loud to him a few times and then handed him some of her child benefit money. She said, ‘I’m going to start the Sartre on the bus home. I hope I enjoy it.’
He finished wrapping up her books and handed them over to her. ‘That’s entirely up to you.’
She grinned. ‘That’s a joke, right?’
When Sammy Jo got home she changed and fed the baby and then made herself a sandwich and sat down on the sofa to start Chapter Two of The Age of Reason. Her main thoughts about its central character, Mathieu, were that she was glad that he wasn’t looking after her baby. He didn’t seem responsible enough. When the telephone rang she told the man on the line these thoughts. She said, ‘Ideas are all right, but ideas can’t guide your life, it isn’t practical or realistic.’
He laughed. ‘So what do you think should be man’s main motivation? The acquisition of food? Making cups of tea?’
She raised her eyebrows – fully cognizant of his cynicism – and stared out of the window. ‘I wasn’t saying that. I’m not quite so stupid. All I mean is that people can’t afford to be so self-indulgent, so luxurious. You have to get on with things. My life would be in a fine mess if I suddenly decided that I wanted to be free, that I couldn’t be bothered to look after my young baby any more because she gets in the way of my freedom and independence.’
The man sounded irritated. ‘No, you’re trivializing the issue. You decided to have the baby, you made that decision freely many months ago. You could have aborted the child had you felt otherwise. The character Mathieu isn’t entirely unhindered in his decisions about whether he wants Marcelle’s baby … that’s silly, what I mean to say is that obviously he doesn’t want a baby but he has other considerations to take into account; Marcelle’s feelings, money, the illegality of abortions …’
Sammy Jo sighed, ‘Men are bastards. Really it’s her problem. He just worries about it to make himself feel good. He’s a shit.’
He interrupted her. ‘The character doesn’t matter, Sammy Jo. It’s his thoughts and actions that are our concern, not whether you happen to like him or not.’
Sammy Jo snorted. ‘If I don’t like the character how can I read and enjoy the book?’
His voice was sharp. ‘That’s stupid. Behave rationally. Since when do you have to like a character in order to be able to understand and sympathize with his dilemmas? You can’t go through life saying, “Oh, she doesn’t sound very nice so I’m not interested in her.” That’s ridiculous. Those sorts of comments are unworthy of you. You should think beyond your own standpoint. If you can’t do that, then a whole dimension is lost to you. Have you got a proper pad of paper now?’
Sammy Jo shrugged and didn’t answer, like a petulant schoolgirl. The voice said, ‘Sammy Jo, answer me.’
She hung up and stared at the telephone for several seconds, waiting for it to ring. It didn’t. She stared at it for a full five minutes, then began to feel stupid. She walked over to Charlie, who was sleeping in her crib, warm and cosy, smelling of milk. Out in the garden a small grey cat was scratching its claws on the thin trunk of a small apple tree. She felt frustrated. She thought, ‘What right does he have to manipulate me like this? He’s imposing on me. He’s a bully. It’s wrong for strangers to interfere like this, to impose like this, to telephone you when they want, to build up a relationship that depends solely on their goodwill …’
She scratched her head and said musingly to Charlie’s tiny body, which, disguised by layers of soft blankets, just rose and fell with the repetitive lull of sleepy breathing, ‘Charlie, people are strange. This man is strange. I suppose I should tell Jason really, but I know he’ll just get upset. I could telephone Lucy Cosbie … but do I really need to? This situation is quite different from before, altogether different. No one is threatening me. I don’t know.’
She went and sat down on the sofa and picked up her book again. She read until five and then went into the kitchen and started to prepare dinner. Jason came in while she was frying some courgettes and cutting mushrooms. He pecked her on the cheek and said, ‘Do I guess from this that Charlie will be enjoying ratatouille-flavoured milk this evening?’
She smiled broadly. ‘You’re welcome to enjoy ratatouille-flavoured milk yourself this evening if you prefer, so long as there’s enough to go around. I don’t know how well garlic and tomatoes translate into a calcium drink, though.’
He shook his head. ‘I think I’ll skip that one, if you don’t mind, Sammy Jo.’
The telephone rang. Jason immediately moved away from her as though to go and answer it. Sammy Jo grabbed hold of his arm and said hurriedly, ‘Jason, I know who that is. It’s for me. My mother said she’d ring this evening.’ She pushed past him as she spoke. ‘I’ll get it. Stir the vegetables, all right?’
He nodded. She picked up the telephone. ‘Hi, Mum. Jason’s home now so I can’t really talk for long.’
The man said, ‘I want you to think about this question very carefully, Sammy Jo. Write it down.’
Sammy Jo picked up a pen and copied down his question with great care on the pizza pad, which was now greatly diminished in size. Then they both said goodbye.
As she put down the telephone receiver she caught sight of her three new books slung carelessly on to the sofa, The Age of Reason open face downwards towards the middle of the text, like a ballerina clumsily doing the splits and unable to rise from that position. Quickly she picked them up and walked over to Charlie’s cot. Picking Charlie up she slid the books under the cot’s small mattress, then carried Charlie into the kitchen. Jason was stirring the courgettes and mushrooms around in the frying pan, staring at the wall in front of him in a tired, unfocused way. He seemed ill at ease. Sammy Jo offered Charlie’s sleepy body to him and said, ‘Give me the wooden spoon in exchange for the baby. You can change her if you like.’
He smiled. ‘What into? A well trained corgi?’
She frowned. ‘Don’t avoid the inevitable, Jason, she feels pretty wet to me.’
He sighed and took hold of Charlie’s tiny body, then carried her into the sitting room. Sammy Jo opened a tin of tomatoes while he lay the baby down on her changing mat and searched around for one of the remaining disposable nappies. He said loudly, so Sammy Jo could hear him above the noise of the frying pan, ‘How’s your mother? You didn’t chat for long.’
Sammy Jo added the tomatoes to the rest of the vegetables in the pan, then remembered she had forgotten to start with a chopped onion. She cursed under her breath, then said hastily, ‘She’s fine. She’s a bit busy actually. I think she had plans to go out tonight.’ Jason took off Charlie’s dirty nappy and said, ‘I’m so glad I don’t have any washing to do this evening. I’m knackered. There again, it still makes my skin crawl to imagine what I’m doing to the environment with just one day’s usage of these things.’
He turned Charlie over and cleaned her bottom with some tissues. Sammy Jo cleared her throat and appeared in the doorway. ‘Did you get that paper for me, Jason?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s in my case, by the door.’
He lay one of the nappies out on the table and lifted up Charlie’s legs so as to slide it under her bottom. As he performed this manoeuvre he stuck out one of his elbows and accidentally knocked the telephone with it. The telephone was balanced on the edge of the table and threatened to fall off. Quickly grabbing hold of it and pushing it a couple of inches away from the edge, he focused on the pad covered in small, neat print. He took hold of it with his free hand and perused it, initially with uninterest and then with some surprise. On the pad Sammy Jo had written: ‘ARE GOOD AND EVIL OF IMPORTANCE TO THE UNIVERSE OR JUST TO MAN?’ BERTRAND RUSSELL. THINK ABOUT THIS. He moved the pad closer to his face in order to reread these words. He frowned, put the pad down again and completed Charlie’s nappy.
Sammy Jo strolled into the room clutching her new pad as Jason finished putting on Charlie’s rubber knickers. She walked over and switched on the television, saying, ‘Dinner shouldn’t be long now. Pass her over, will you? I need to feed her.’
He picked up Charlie.
‘Sammy Jo?’
‘Yep?’
‘This may sound rather stupid, but I couldn’t help noticing what you have written down on the pad by the phone.’
She looked up guiltily and played for time. ‘I can’t remember writing anything. It can’t have been important …’ She put out her arms for Charlie. ‘Pass her over please.’
He handed the baby over and watched dispassionately as Sammy Jo began breast-feeding. He said, ‘Have you been watching the Open University while I’m out at work?’
Sammy Jo shrugged. ‘I might have caught a programme at some point, Jason. I can’t really remember. I don’t just sit around all day watching television, you know. Looking after a young baby isn’t just fun and games.’
He shook his head, bewildered. ‘I wasn’t suggesting that, Sammy Jo, not at all. Anyway, you wanted the baby, it was a decision you made freely, you were hardly under any pressure.’
Sammy Jo frowned. ‘Freedom’s not really like that, Jason. I’ve been giving it some thought lately. The way I see it, freedom is like a train journey. When you get on the train, everyone assures you that you are free to climb off whenever you choose, but as with all train journeys there doesn’t seem much point getting off at most of the stations. They just aren’t appropriate to your life. A lot of things dictate as to when and where you get off the train. It isn’t just a random decision. The past propels you forward, and all your future decisions have already been made well in advance, dictated by age, class, sex … anyway, your capacity is limited. Your choice is limited.’
Charlie sucked away at one of Sammy Jo’s robust pink nipples with energetic commitment. Jason tried to expel the random thought that had just entered his head, that often entered his head when he saw Sammy Jo breast-feeding, which was that she seemed like the Madonna when she performed this duty, like an icon, so innocent, uninvolved and natural. He said, ‘How long have you had this hang-up about not being free? I thought you were happy to be living with me. I thought you liked being married. I don’t think I ever put you under any unnecessary pressure …’
Sammy Jo exploded. ‘Why does everything have to be so bloody particular with you, Jason? I’m not talking about myself, I’m talking about an idea, a …’
She paused and grasped for a word that was brand new and floating around inside her mind, ready to be brought out like the best cutlery at a family celebration. ‘I’m talking about universals. A universal idea, freedom. Everything that I say doesn’t have to apply to my own miserable life. I can think beyond it, above it, you know. I am just about capable of that.’
He stared at her with his shoulders hunched and his arms crossed defensively, then he said, ‘Something’s going on, but I don’t know what. This isn’t like you … this isn’t you, Sammy Jo.’
She laughed, ‘God! Just because I make a slightly intelligent observation you make out something terrible is wrong. You don’t think I’m a very clever person, do you, Jason? You don’t think I’m particularly blessed with intelligence.’
He looked surprised. ‘Of course you’re intelligent. I love you, Sammy Jo, I love your mind, your conversation, your body, your beautiful pink nipples, our baby. I do respect you, and I like to think that I treat you as an equal …’
She snorted. ‘Well thanks a lot for that. I am your equal, I don’t think you deserve any special thanks for treating me as such.’
Jason leaned over the table and picked up the pizza pad. ‘What exactly does this mean, Sammy Jo? “ARE GOOD AND EVIL OF IMPORTANCE TO THE UNIVERSE OR ONLY TO MAN? BERTRAND RUSSELL. THINK ABOUT THIS.” What does it mean? Why have you written it down? Who told you to write it down?’ He ripped the page away from the pad and screwed it up in his hand.
Sammy Jo prised Charlie’s gums away from her nipple and pulled her shirt together to cover her breasts. Charlie yelled and then started to cry. Sammy Jo stood up, thrust Charlie into Jason’s arms and said, ‘You bloody feed her. How dare you screw up my notes like that? It’s none of your business what I do. I’m not affecting you in any way.’ She picked up the ball of crumpled paper from the floor and held it, clenched possessively in her hand. Jason was bouncing Charlie up and down in his arms, trying to calm her down. He stared at Sammy Jo but didn’t say anything. After a minute or so Charlie’s crying evaporated into breathy whimpers. Jason took her over to her cot and placed her gently into it. Sammy Jo felt like running upstairs to their bedroom in order to curtail this conversation, but she wanted to carry on reading her book, she didn’t want to just sit up there sulking, with nothing to do. Jason stood up straight and turned to face Sammy Jo. He crossed his arms. ‘This reminds me of something, Sammy Jo. This situation reminds me of something.’
She frowned. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
He shrugged. ‘Just a hunch. What would you say if I told you that I was going to telephone Lucy Cosbie right now? Maybe she could shed some light on this thing? You’ve been strange since she telephoned you the other day.’
Sammy Jo shook her head. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, Jason. Lucy Cosbie has nothing whatever to do with this.’
Jason walked over to the television and switched it off then sat down on the sofa where Sammy Jo had been sitting before. He looked up at her, ‘Can’t we talk about this sensibly, Sammy Jo? It’s no big deal. We don’t have to row about it.’
Sammy Jo leaned against the table and looked petulant. ‘You said it, Jason. I don’t know what your problem is all of a sudden.’
He patted the seat next to him on the sofa. ‘Sammy Jo, something is upsetting you or influencing you. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but you’ve said some strange things lately, you seem distant and preoccupied, like something’s upsetting you.’
She looked into his face as he spoke and saw that his brown eyes were weary and that his face was drawn. As she looked at him she felt as though she hadn’t seen him properly for a long time. She moved and sat down beside him. After a short silence she said, ‘I don’t want you to get upset, I want you to understand. I don’t want any overreactions, all right?’
He stared at her, frowning. She continued. ‘Someone’s been telephoning me over the past few days …’
Jason inhaled deeply. She saw his hands clench into fists.
‘Jason, don’t get upset. This man isn’t like the other one, he’s different. He doesn’t want to cause trouble, he isn’t rude or anything … it isn’t like that at all.’
Jason spoke, and his voice was low and quiet, ‘He telephoned earlier, right? That wasn’t your mother at all, was it? You lied to me, Sammy Jo.’
Sammy Jo shook her head. ‘It’s not like that. I didn’t want to upset you. I knew you’d overreact, I knew you’d blow it out of all proportion. It isn’t like how it was before, not at all.’
He stared at her. His face seemed very close and long and mean. ‘Well how exactly is it now, Sammy Jo? How is it possible for an anonymous caller to be anything other than offensive?’
She shrugged and fiddled momentarily with one of the buttons on her blouse. ‘He’s teaching me about philosophy. That’s all he talks about. Before he phoned I didn’t even know what philosophy was, but now he’s taught me about Descartes and Sartre and scepticism. I’m reading The Age of Reason at the moment and really enjoying it …’
Jason sprang up from the sofa and looked down at Sammy Jo from what seemed like a great height.
‘How long has this been going on, Sammy Jo? Does Cosbie know about it?’
Sammy Jo looked vulnerable and upset. ‘It has nothing at all to do with her, it has nothing to do with you either Jason. It’s between him and me. I quite like his calls. They interest me.’
Jason let out a sharp yell of frustration and raised his eyes and hands towards the ceiling as though pleading with an invisible God. ‘Sammy Jo don’t you understand anything? Don’t you see what’s happening here? Don’t you understand that it doesn’t matter what the hell it is that he says to you on the phone, it doesn’t matter whether he’s swearing at you are singing Gregorian chants, the issue here is power. Power, do you remember? Can’t you remember the endless conversations with Lucy and I about why it is that people telephone other people anonymously and abuse their time and their privacy? It’s a power thing. He’s making you passive. You don’t question him, he is in control, he is powerful and you are passive. He probably gets exactly the same kick out of it as if you were involved in some sort of direct, sick, sado-masochistic relationship. He’s dictating your life, Sammy Jo, can’t you see that? Can’t you?’
As he finished speaking he leaned towards her and snatched hold of her arm. She didn’t meet his gaze, her arm hung limp in his hand. After several seconds she said quietly, ‘You think I don’t know all this, don’t you? You think I’m so bloody stupid. Well you’re wrong. I know all about this shit. Maybe you think that I actually enjoy being dominated, that I actually go out of my way to get into situations where I can be dominated …’
Jason dropped her arm, ‘What do you expect me to think, Sammy Jo? Do you expect me to congratulate you on getting an education? Do you expect me to go to night classes to learn French so I can discuss Sartre with you in the original? What the hell do you expect me to feel? Pleased? Delighted? Grateful?’
Sammy Jo sprang up and pushed Jason in the chest with her flat hand. ‘Don’t you dare patronize me, you bastard. How dare you speak to me like this? I’ll do what the hell I like with my time and you can’t stop me. You just resent him because he is offering me something that you have never bothered offering me.’
Jason laughed. It sounded like the wail of an angry hyena. ‘So you think. I’m threatened by this pervert do you? You think I’m intimidated by some sick bastard who gets his kicks out of telephoning vulnerable women and talking about philosophy with them? Look at me, Sammy Jo, I’m not threatened, I’m angry. You should be angry too.’
Sammy Jo pushed past him and marched over to the cot. She lifted Charlie up with one hand and reached under the mattress with her other hand. She grabbed hold of her three new books and then replaced the baby on top of her blankets. Jason watched all of this in silence and then said harshly, ‘Well, that’s very mature, Sammy Jo, hiding books under the baby’s mattress, very adult. You thrive on this sort of deception, don’t you? You love your little secrets, your private collusions.’
Sammy Jo marched past him and towards the door. ‘I’m going upstairs for a while. I don’t want to be disturbed.’
Jason slammed his fist down hard on to the table, the force of which caused a coffee cup, the telephone and pizza pad to jump up into the air by almost an inch. The telephone made a little jangling, ringing noise as it landed. He yelled, ‘Give me those books Sammy Jo, give them to me now!’
She held her books against her chest and glared at him venomously. ‘You’ll have to kill me first, Jason. Be warned, I’m not quite as passive as you’d like to believe.’
They stared at each other venomously for several seconds and then Sammy Jo turned and left the room.
In the kitchen the ratatouille was starting to burn. Jason switched off the oven and started to prepare a bottle for the baby. His hands were shaking.
After forty-five minutes Jason had fed the baby and watched half of Coronation Street. He kept listening out for any noises from upstairs, but the house was silent. He switched the television off, opened his briefcase and took out his address book. He found Lucy Cosbie’s number and dialled it. It rang several times before she answered it.
‘Hi, Lucy here.’
Her voice was depressingly familiar to him. He said, ‘Hello, Lucy, it’s Jason Wells here, Sammy Jo’s husband.’
This took Lucy Cosbie several seconds to register, then she responded warmly: ‘Oh, Jason, hi. Is something wrong? You’re the last person I expected to hear from.’
Jason cleared his throat. ‘Lucy, Sammy Jo’s in trouble again. She said you phoned her the other day. I wondered whether she’d told you about it. I’m somewhat concerned.’
Lucy Cosbie sounded mystified. ‘Jason, Sammy Jo said nothing to me about any problems. Is it the baby?’
Jason smiled. ‘No, nothing like that. I’m afraid she’s receiving anonymous calls again.’
Lucy responded sharply. ‘Who from? Same guy?’
Jason was surprised. ‘No, I don’t think so. She didn’t suggest to me that it could be the same person. I think she would’ve said that. I hope so anyway.’
Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’m glad to hear that, Jason. It’s all a bit complicated at this end because I’ve seen a fair bit of him lately. I was assigned to his case recently. I’m sure you can understand that it’s something of a conflict of interests.’
Jason nodded. ‘I can imagine. Anyway, Lucy, this new guy is really weird, they aren’t dirty calls as such. In fact Sammy Jo seems very happy with the arrangement. It seems that he’s teaching her philosophy, you know, “Philosophy the Anonymous Caller’s Way”.’
He tried to crack this joke light-heartedly but it fell somewhat flat. Lucy Cosbie was silent for a few seconds and then she said, rather slowly and hollowly, ‘Oh dear. I think this could all be slightly problematic.’
Jason scratched his head and then tightened his grip on the telephone receiver. ‘Why? I didn’t think what was said made any difference. He’s still pestering her. It’s the same thing isn’t it? The same as before?’
When Lucy next spoke she sounded a fraction testy. ‘Jason, I think maybe I should speak to Sammy Jo about this. Is she there? Can I have a word?’
Jason was irritated. ‘She’s upstairs at the moment. We’ve had a slight disagreement about the whole thing. She’s being a bit irrational.’
Lucy was persistent. ‘I’m sorry Jason, I’m afraid that I can’t talk to you any further about this without chatting to Sammy Jo. I’d prefer to deal with her personally. I’d appreciate it if I could speak with her privately.’
Jason frowned. After a short pause he said, ‘I’ll go and call her. I don’t know how responsive she’ll be though. Hang on.’
He put down the telephone and walked into the hallway. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and shouted up, ‘Sammy Jo? Lucy Cosbie’s on the phone, she wants to speak to you.’
Sammy Jo was lying on their bed engrossed in her book. She swore under her breath at Jason’s untimely interruption and turned over the corner of the page to mark her place. She got up and shouted back as she began to make her way towards the door. ‘I’m coming!’
As she walked down the stairs she glared at him. ‘I bet you phoned her.’ He shrugged as she brushed past him and decided that it was probably better to say nothing.
Sammy Jo picked up the telephone. ‘Hi Lucy, I’m sorry about this. I’m sure you’ve got more pressing matters to deal with. This isn’t at all important.’
Lucy’s voice was low and apologetic. ‘Sammy Jo, I’m sorry, but I do think that this is my business. I’m pretty sure that I know who it is that’s telephoning you and also how and why.’
Sammy Jo frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
Lucy sighed. ‘I think it’s my fault. I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake. Maybe I haven’t been careful enough. That man, Duncan Sands, who was telephoning you before, well, he was recently assigned to me …’
Sammy Jo interrupted nervously. ‘I thought he was in prison.’
‘No, he was in an open prison for several months but he’s been out for a while now. You were hardly the only person involved in the whole mess … well, you know all about it, anyway.’
Sammy Jo shook her head slowly while she listened to Lucy. ‘I’m sorry Lucy, but this person is different, they aren’t the same, they don’t sound the same.’
Lucy was insistent. ‘Sammy Jo, he may not sound the same because he’s saying different things, but I know it’s him. He often asks about you. He wanted to meet you a while back to talk things over. He sincerely believes that he’s better now, that he was sick and now he’s better. I somehow have my doubts about that. Anyway, he’s been heavily involved in community service work and maybe he thinks that he’s doing you some sort of a service. He started a sociology course in prison and he’s really into educating himself. I helped to get him a job a few weeks back, only part-time shop work, but with prospects. Next year, if they keep him on, he’ll probably be eligible for a day-release scheme to go to the polytechnic. He wants to get a degree in Communication Studies.’
Sammy Jo laughed. ‘I suppose that’s kind of ironic.’
Lucy wasn’t amused. ‘He must’ve managed to find out your number from me at some point. I don’t know, maybe he got a peek at my diary or something. Anyway Sammy Jo, I’m going to have to do something about this …’
Sammy Jo bit her lip. ‘Lucy, you aren’t going to tell the police are you? Or jeopardize his job?’
Lucy was silent for a moment and then she said, ‘He’s violated my trust, Sammy Jo. I have a responsibility to do something.’
Sammy Jo interrupted angrily. ‘That’s stupid! It’s none of your business. You’d never have known about this if Jason hadn’t told you. As far as I’m concerned, his involvement with me is with my full consent.’
Lucy tutted irritatingly. ‘Sammy Jo, you know it’s not as simple as that. This whole anonymous calling thing is about power, it doesn’t matter what he’s saying, it’s wrong. We both know that it’s wrong.’
Sammy Jo said slyly, ‘You let him get my number, Lucy, that was irresponsible, what if I wanted to make something of it?’
Lucy wasn’t impressed. ‘That makes no difference to me, Sammy Jo, I don’t intend to follow one piece of misconduct with another.’
Sammy Jo wound the telephone wire around her middle finger and tried to think of some sort of compromise. Eventually she said, ‘Lucy, I swear to you that if he telephones me again I’ll phone you and tell you, then you can contact whoever you like. Just leave it until the next time. Maybe you could phone him tonight and warn him off …’
Lucy sounded impatient. ‘I don’t know, Sammy Jo. I don’t think my telling him will change his modes of behaviour. I don’t know if I can trust you on this either. You haven’t been particularly co-operative up until this point.’
Sammy Jo raised her eyebrows and pulled an innocently sly expression. ‘I realize that, Lucy. I know that this isn’t just about me and that I have a wider responsibility, but I also know that he deserves a chance to make a go of his job in the bookshop, especially since his prospects seem to be looking up …’
Lucy sounded surprised. ‘Did I mention that he was working in a bookshop? I don’t think I said that, did I?’
Sammy Jo shrugged, but she was smiling to herself. ‘Forget it Lucy, I’m just a bit stressed out. I promise though, this time you can depend on me, really.’
They rang off. Jason had come into the room during the final stages of their conversation and was sitting on the sofa staring at Sammy Jo inquisitively. Sammy Jo sat down next to him and took hold of his hand. ‘It’s all right, I’m not angry. I’ve cleared it all up with Lucy. I don’t think he’ll be phoning me again.’
Jason squeezed her fingers and kissed her cheek. ‘Sammy Jo, if you want to go to college you could always go in the evenings and I’ll look after Charlie. I wouldn’t mind. Maybe we could give her to a babyminder a couple of days a week and you could go on a course part-time.’
Sammy Jo shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Jason, I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I don’t feel brave enough. I like being at home with Charlie at the moment, I just appreciate the occasional bit of stimulation. I’m really enjoying this book I’m reading, and there’s no pressure, you know, no need to take exams or to get along with a classful of strangers …’
Jason smiled. ‘You know that you can do anything that you want to do, Sammy Jo. I know that you’ll choose whatever is for the best.’
Sammy Jo smiled back.
The following morning at ten o’clock Sammy Jo picked up her copy of the Yellow Pages and hunted down a number. When she had located it she opened up her new pad and wrote the number down at the top of the first large, white page in big bold print. Then she picked up the telephone and dialled. When someone answered she smiled and said, ‘Hello, this is Sammy Jo, remember me? Yes, I know you’re at work, yes I know you’re busy, but I don’t care. Maybe you should give me your home number and then I wouldn’t have to pester you like this …’
The line went dead. She put down her receiver, picked it up again and then pressed the redial button. She waited for a moment and then continued. ‘Yes, it is me again. No, I don’t care what sort of a disruption this is. I want to carry on our conversations. Apparently you’re working part-time? That means you must have a lot of spare time on your hands during the afternoons, which is good, good for me at any rate. I want you to share that free time with me, on the phone of course, reverse charges. I’ve been thinking about that question you asked me yesterday, I’d like to discuss it at greater length …’
The line went dead. She put down her receiver and then picked it up and, once again, pressed redial. ‘You’re an old hand at this, Mr Sands, I have a redial button and it’s no effort to press it again and again …’
She listened for a moment, then picked up her pen and copied down another number in her white pad. Then she said, ‘Yes, I am enjoying it actually … No, I didn’t tell Lucy, someone else did … No, Lucy didn’t tell me either, it didn’t take much intelligence to realize though … Thank you. Is two o’clock all right? OK, I’ll phone you then. Goodbye.’
She hung up.
The Butcher’s Apprentice
If he had come from a family of butchers maybe his perspective would have been different. He would have been more experienced, hardened, less naïve. His mum had wanted him to work for Marks and Spencers or for British Rail. She said, ‘Why do you want to work in all that blood and mess? There’s something almost obscene about butchery.’
His dad was more phlegmatic. ‘It’s not like cutting the Sunday roast, Owen, it’s guts and gore and entrails. Just the same, it’s a real trade, a proper trade.’
Owen had thought it all through. At school one of his teachers had called him ‘deep’. She had said to his mother on Parents’ Evening, ‘Owen seems deep, but it’s hard to get any sort of real response from him. Maybe it’s just cosmetic.’
His mum had listened to the first statement but had then become preoccupied with a blister on the heel of her right foot. Consequently her grasp of the teacher’s wisdom had been somewhat undermined. When she finally got home that evening, her stomach brimming with sloshy coffee from the school canteen, she had said to Owen, ‘Everyone says that you’re too quiet at school, but your maths teacher thinks that you’re deep. She has modern ideas, that one.’ Owen had appreciated this compliment. It made him try harder at maths that final term before his exams, and leaving. At sixteen he had pass marks in mathematics, home economics and the whole world before him.
In the Careers Office his advisor had given him a leaflet about prospective employment opportunities to fill out. He ticked various boxes. He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with your hands?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with animals?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like using your imagination?’
When his careers guidance officer had analysed his preferences she declared that his options were quite limited. He seemed such a quiet boy to her, rather dour. She said, ‘Maybe you could be a postman. Postmen see a lot of animals during their rounds and use their hands to deliver letters.’ Owen appeared unimpressed. He stared down at his hands as though they had suddenly become a cause for embarrassment. So she continued, ‘Maybe you could think about working with food. How about training to be a chef or a butcher? Butchers work with animals. You have to use your imagination to make the right cut into a carcass.’ Because he had been in the careers office for well over half an hour, Owen began to feel obliged to make some sort of positive response. A contribution. So he looked up at her and said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I could give it a try.’ He didn’t want to appear stroppy or ungrateful. She smiled at him and gave him an address. The address was for J. Reilly and Sons, Quality Butchers, 103 Oldham Road.
Later that afternoon he phoned J. Reilly’s and spoke to someone called Ralph. Ralph explained how he had bought the business two years before, but that he hadn’t bothered changing the name. Owen said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t bother you then it doesn’t bother me.’
Ralph asked him a few questions about school and then enquired whether he had worked with meat before. Owen said that he hadn’t but that he really liked the sweet smell of a butcher’s shop and the scuffling sawdust on the floor, the false plastic parsley in the window displays and the bright, blue-tinged strip-lights. He said, ‘I think that I could be very happy in a butcher’s as a working environment.’
He remembered how as a child he had so much enjoyed seeing the arrays of different coloured rabbits hung up by their ankles in butcher shop windows, and the bright and golden-speckled pheasants. Ralph offered him a month’s probationary employment with a view to a full-time apprenticeship. Owen accepted readily.
His mum remained uncertain. Over dinner that night she said, ‘It’ll be nice to get cheap meat and good cuts from your new job, Owen, though I still don’t like the idea of a butcher in the family. I’ve nothing against them in principal, but it’s different when it’s so close to home.’
Owen thought carefully for a moment, then put aside his knife and fork and said, ‘I suppose so, but that’s only on the surface. I’m sure that there’s a lot of bloodletting and gore involved in most occupations. I like the idea of being honest and straightforward about things. A butcher is a butcher. There’s no falseness or pretence.’
His dad nodded his approval and then said, ‘Eat up now, don’t let your dinner get cold.’
Owen arrived at the shop at seven sharp the following morning. The window displays were whitely clean and empty. Above the windows the J. Reilly and Sons sign was painted in red with white lettering. The graphics were surprisingly clear and ornate. On the door was hung a sign which said ‘closed’. He knocked anyway. A man with arms like thin twigs opened the door. He looked tiny and consumptive with shrewd grey eyes and rusty hair. Owen noticed his hands, which were reddened with the cold, callused and porkish. The man nodded briskly, introduced himself as Ralph then took Owen through to the back of the shop and introduced him to his work-mate, Marty. Marty was older than Ralph – about fifty or so – with silvery hair and yellow skin. He smiled at Owen kindly and offered him a clean apron and a bag of sawdust. Owen took the apron and placed it over his head. Ralph helped him to tie at the back. Both Marty and Ralph wore overalls slightly more masculine in design. Owen took the bag of sawdust and said, ‘Is this a woman’s apron, or is it what the apprentice always wears?’
As Ralph walked back into the main part of the shop he answered, ‘It belongs to our Saturday girl, so don’t get it too messy. We’ll buy you a proper overall at the end of the week when we’re sure that you’re right for the job.’
As he finished speaking a large van drew up outside the shop. Ralph moved to the door, pulled it wide and stuck a chip of wood under it to keep it open. He turned to Owen and by way of explanation pointed and said, ‘Delivery. The meat’s brought twice a week. Scatter the sawdust, but not too thick.’
Owen put his hand into the bag of dust and drew out a full, dry, scratchy handful which he scattered like a benevolent farmer throwing corn to his geese. The delivery man humped in half of an enormous sow. She had a single greenish eye and a severed snout. He took it to the back of the shop through a door and into what Owen presumed to be the refrigerated store-room. Before he had returned Ralph had come in clutching a large armful of plucked chickens. As Owen moved out of his way he nodded towards the van and said, ‘I tell you what, why not go and grab some stuff yourself but don’t overestimate your strength and try not to drop anything.’
Owen balanced his packet of shavings against the bottom of the counter and walked out to the van. Inside were a multitude of skins, feathers, meats and flesh. He grabbed four white rabbits and a large piece of what he presumed to be pork, but later found out was lamb. The meat was fresh and raw to the touch. Raw and soft like risen dough. He lifted his selections out of the van and carried them into the shop, careful of the condition of his apron, and repeated this process back and forth for the next fifteen or so minutes. While everyone else moved the meat, Marty busied himself with cutting steaks from a large chunk of beef. When finally all of the meat had been moved Ralph went and had a cigarette outside with the delivery man and Owen picked up his bag of shavings and finished scattering them over the shop floor. On completing this he called over to Marty, ‘Do I have to spread this on the other side of the counter as well?’
Marty smiled at him. ‘I think that’s the idea. It should only take you a minute, so when you’ve finished come over here and see what I’m doing. You never know, you might even learn something.’
Owen quickly tipped out the rest of his bag over the floor at the back of the counter and scuffed the dust around with his foot. It covered the front of his trainer like a light, newgrown beard. Then he walked over to Marty and stood at his shoulder watching him complete his various insertions into the beef. Marty made his final cut and then half turned and showed Owen the blade he was using. He moved the tip of the blade adjacent to the tip of Owen’s nose. ‘A blade has to be sharp. That’s the first rule of butchery. Rule two, your hands must be clean.’ He moved the knife from side to side and Owen’s eyes followed its sharp edge. It was so close to his face that he could see his hot breath steaming up and evaporating on its steely surface. Marty said thickly, ‘This blade could slice your nose in half in the time it takes you to sneeze. Aaah-tish-yooouh!’
Then he whipped the knife away and placed it carefully on the cutting surface next to a small pool of congealing blood. He said, ‘Rule three, treat your tools with respect.’
Owen cleared his throat self-consciously. ‘Will I be allowed to cut up some meat myself today, or will I just be helping out around the shop?’ Marty frowned. ‘It takes a long time and a lot of skill to be able to prepare meat properly. You’ll have to learn everything from scratch. That’s what it means to be the new boy, the apprentice.’
Ralph came back into the shop and set Owen to work cleaning the insides of the windows and underneath the display trays. Old blood turned the water brown. Soon the first customers of the day started to straggle into the shop and he learned the art of pricing and weighing. The day moved on. At twelve he had half-an-hour for lunch.
After two o’clock the shop quietened down again and Owen was sent into the store-room to acquaint himself with the lay-out, refrigeration techniques and temperatures. As he looked around and smelt the heavy, heady smell of ripe meat, he overheard Ralph and Marty laughing at something in the shop. Ralph was saying, ‘Leave him be. You’re wicked Mart.’ Marty replied, ‘He won’t mind. Go on, it’ll be a laugh.’
A few seconds later Ralph called through to him. Owen walked into the shop from the cool darkness of the storeroom. The light made his eyes squint. The shop was empty apart from Ralph and Marty who were standing together in front of the large cutting board as though hiding something. Ralph said, ‘Have you ever seen flesh, dead flesh, return to life, Owen?’ Owen shook his head. Marty smiled at him. ‘Some meat is possessed, you know. If a live animal is used as part of a satanic ritual at any point during its life, when it dies its flesh lives on to do the devil’s work. After all, the devil’s work is never done.’
As he finished speaking he stepped sideways to reveal a large chunk of fleshy meat on the chopping board. It was about the size of a cabbage. Everyone stared at it. They were all silent. Slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the meat shuddered. Owen blinked to make sure that his eyes were clear and not deceiving him. After a couple of seconds it shuddered again, but this time more noticeably. It shivered as though it were too cold, and then slowly, painfully, began to crawl across the table. It moved like a heart that pumped under great duress, a struggling, battling, palpitating heart.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/nicola-barker/love-your-enemies/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Nicola Barker
From the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker, the short stories in ‘Love Your Enemies’ present a loving depiction of the beautiful, the grotesque and the utterly bizarre in the lives of overlooked suburban Britons.Layla Carter, 16, from North London, is utterly overwhelmed by her plus-size nose. Rosemary, recently widowed and the ambivalent owner of a bipolar tomcat, meets a satyr in her kitchen and asks, ‘Can I feel your fur?’In these ten enticingly strange short stories, a series of marginalised characters seek truth in the obsession and oppression of everyday existence, via a canine custody battle, sex in John Lewis and some strangely expressive desserts.
NICOLA BARKER
Love Your Enemies
Dedication
For my sister, Tania
Contents
Cover (#litres_trial_promo)
Title page
Dedication
Layla’s Nose Job
A Necessary Truth
The Butcher’s Apprentice
Skin
Food with Feeling
Symbiosis: Class Cestoda
The Afghan War
Dual Balls
John’s Box
Country Matters
Praise
Other books by the same author
Copyright
About the publisher
Layla’s Nose Job
Layla Carter was just about as happy as it was possible for a sixteen-year-old North London girl to be who possessed a nose at least two centimetres longer than any nose among those of her contemporaries. As with all subjects of a sensitive nature, the length of Layla’s nose was an issue of great topicality and contention. Common clichés such as ‘Don’t be nosy’ or ‘You’re getting up my nose’, even everyday phrases like ‘Who knows?’ – especially when uttered by an errant younger brother with a meaningful glance at the relevant part of Layla’s physiognomy – would cause an atmosphere of hysterical teenage uproar in the Carters’ semi-detached in the leafy suburbs of Winchmore Hill.
Layla sensed that the source of her problem was genetic, but neither of her parents, Rose and Larry Carter, possessed noses of any note. Her three siblings were blessed with lovely, truffling pink snouts with snub ends and tiny nostrils. They had nothing to complain about.
Her nose had always been big. On family occasions like Christmas or Easter when her grandparents and great aunts descended on the Carter household for a roast lunch and a glass of Safeways own-brand port, the family photo albums would be dragged out of the cabinet under the television and all tied by blood and name would pore over them and sigh.
No one sighed louder than Layla. Her odyssey of agony and self-consciousness began with her christening snaps and continued well after the visitors had gone home, the washing-up had been done and the living-room carpet hoovered.
As far as she could tell, her nose had always been disproportionate. She had often had recourse to see other people’s christening photographs, and in none of them that she could remember had so many profile shots been taken to so much ill effect. Her nose emerged like a shark’s fin from between the delicate folds of her fine, pearly-white shawl, and the sight of it cut into her stomach like a blade.
She struggled to remember a time when the size of her nose hadn’t been a full-time preoccupation. As a young child in her first weeks at school, after a particularly violent spate of playground jousting – little boys shouting ‘big nose’ at her for a period in excess of fifteen minutes – her class teacher had bustled her, howling, into the staff-room and had dried her eyes, saying softly, ‘When you grow older you’ll study the Romans. They were the people who built all the best, long, straight roads in Britain, many, many years ago. Now just you guess what all of the Romans had in common? They all had fine aquiline noses. Long, straight, proud noses like yours. One day you’ll learn to be proud of your nose too. You’ll learn that all the best people have strong, bold, expressive faces and strong, proud, dignified noses.’ She offered Layla a tissue and said, ‘Now go on, blow.’ Layla pushed her face forward and then felt a pang of intense misery as her nose poked a hole through the centre of the tissue; like a dog jumping through a paper hoop. Nothing could console her.
People are so cruel, children are so cruel. In the school playground as she grew older, worse humiliations were in store. Her nose became her central signifier. Whenever her best friend Marcy was deputized to approach a handsome young buck for whom Layla had developed a girlish passion, she would always see him turn to Marcy with a frown and say, ‘Layla? Who’s she?’
By way of explanation Marcy would invariably point her out as she stood skulking in the corner of the playground closest to the girls’ toilets and say, ‘That’s her there. You know, the one with the big nose.’
Marcy always apologized for her indiscretions. She was a sympathetic girl, but she came from a big family where sensitivity and tact often had to be abandoned in the arena of attention-grabbing. She would say to Layla, ‘I’d much rather have a big nose than no nose at all.’
Neither of them had ever seen anyone without a nose before, but as the years dragged by Layla regularly stood in front of her bedroom mirror with her hand covering this offending part of her face in an attempt to perceive herself, and her other features, without its overwhelming presence. The result was often quite gratifying. Whenever she tried moaning to her mother, Rose would say, ‘Just be grateful for what you have got. You’ve got pretty blue eyes and lovely soft, brown, curly hair. You’ve got a good figure too. Be grateful. Try not to be so negative.’ In return, Layla would grimace and shout, ‘God! It’s bad enough having a nose like Mount Everest – I’d hardly tolerate being fat as well. I have to make the best of myself, but that doesn’t make things any better. In some ways that makes things worse. If I was truly ugly, what would I care if I had a big nose?’
She wished she could chop it off. When she was twelve, a short burst of appointments with the school therapist brought more light to this preoccupation. The therapist told Rose and Larry that Layla’s regular association in her conscious and unconscious mind with chopping and removal implied a rather unusual and boyish adherence to what is commonly called the castration complex. He said, ‘Layla wants to be a man. She wants to rival her father, Larry, for Rose’s love and attention. Unfortunately she has no penis. This makes the penis a hate object. She wants to castrate Larry’s penis because she is jealous of it. She feels guilty about her aggressive impulses towards Larry and so turns these feelings of violence on to herself. To Layla, her nose is a penis. Her hatred of her nose is symbolic of her hatred of her own sexuality. When she comes to terms with that, she’ll be a happier and more complete person.’
After their appointment the Carters took Layla for a hamburger at the McDonald’s in Enfield’s town centre as a treat. She sipped her milkshake and frowned. She said, ‘What difference does all this make to me? Talking won’t change the size of my nose, will it? Why does everyone have to pretend that my nose isn’t the problem but that I am? It’s as if everyone who wants to help me is determined to believe that my nose isn’t all that big at all. But it is. It is!’
She had made her point. The family paid no heed to the therapist’s recommendations. Except Larry, who took to locking the bedroom and the bathroom doors whenever he happened to undress; especially when shaving. He must have felt guilty about something.
By the time that she was fifteen, Layla knew everything conceivable about dealing with an outsize nose. She knew how to react when boys got on to the school bus in the afternoons and laughed at her and gesticulated, she knew how to comb and style her hair in a way that helped to accentuate her better features as opposed to her worse, she knew how to avoid having her photograph taken on family occasions (on holiday and at home), she knew how to spend hours every morning with a make-up brush and facial foundation, shading the sides of her nose and lightening its centre in a way she’d seen depicted in hundreds of teenage girls’ magazines. Most of all she knew how to focus on this one, single thing. She made herself into a nose on legs.
She could not read a magazine without studying the nose of every model on its waxy, paper pages. If a model had a slightly larger nose than usual she would tear out the picture and put it into a scrapbook or stuff it in the drawer of her desk. At night she would list in her mind successful people who had big noses. She counted them like sheep in her pre-dream state; Chryssie Hynde, Margaret Thatcher, Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Dustin Hoffman, Rowan Atkinson, Cher. She thought about Cher quite a bit, because Cher had had her nose fixed.
In her dreams she visualized a scalpel, and its sharp edge touched her face like a kiss. It sliced her nose away so that her face felt light and radiant. But when she tried to bring her hand to her face to feel her new nose, her arms felt terribly heavy and could not be lifted. She used all her energy and willpower to attempt to lift them but they would not move. At this point she would awake from her dream and discover that she was actually trying to lift her arms, her real arms. In an instant she could then lift them to her face, and feel her face, and feel that everything was still the same. Even in her dreams, wish-fulfilment had its limits. Nothing ever went all the way.
Layla’s problems were more than just cosmetic when she was fifteen. At this time Marcy began going out with her first serious boyfriend. Although they remained best friends this meant that Marcy grew less supportive towards Layla and increasingly preoccupied with her new relationship. She also became enthusiastic about the idea of Layla becoming involved in a relationship herself. Layla had very high standards. All the boys who supposedly found her attractive did so (she firmly believed, and with some grounds), because they were universally unattractive themselves.
But the pressure was on. Marcy visualized the ‘double date’ as the height of teenage sophistication and sociability. ‘Imagine how much fun we could have if you and someone else could come out with me and Craig,’ she’d say.
One warm summer Wednesday afternoon after school, Layla and Marcy went for a brisk stroll around the precinct in the town centre, looking at clothes, talking about teachers and drinking root beer. They ended up at Waitrose, where they bought a packet of Yum-Yum doughnut twists. Marcy suggested that they eat them on a bench in the park.
It was a set-up. Layla had barely taken the first bite of her doughnut when Craig turned up with one of his friends, Elvis. Her heart plummeted. After mumbling hello she walked a short distance to feed the rest of her Yum-Yum to a wayward duck. After a minute or so Marcy came over to her. She took her arm and said, ‘Don’t you like Elvis? Craig and I thought you’d get along.’
Layla baulked at this. She said, ‘You thought we’d get along because we both have big noses, is that it?’
Marcy laughed nervously. ‘Of course not. He’s Jewish. Lots of Jewish men have big noses, it’s natural.’
Layla forgot herself and wiped her sticky hands on her school dress. When she spoke again, her voice was dangerously calm. ‘Of all the boys in the school you choose the one with the biggest nose to match me up with. You’re supposed to be my best friend.’
‘Lots of women think that Jewish men are very sexy, that their big noses are sexy,’ Marcy interrupted.
Layla exploded, ‘I hate big noses. I hate my nose. Why the hell should I want to go out with someone with an enormous nose?’
The two boys had turned to face them from their position by the bench. Elvis looked flushed and irritated. Craig was laughing. He called over, ‘You know what they say about men with big noses, don’t you, Layla? They’ve got the biggest pricks.’ He turned to Elvis. ‘You’ll vouch for that, won’t you?’
Elvis was extremely angry. He said, ‘You know what they say about girls with big noses, don’t you, Layla? They say that they’re very, very, very ugly, and that no one wants to go out with them.’ He showed her one finger.
Her face went crimson. Marcy tried to defuse the situation. She rubbed Layla’s arm apologetically. ‘He’s normally quite nice. I think he overheard us. He was upset, he didn’t mean what he said.’
Layla pulled her arm away with great violence, the force of which pushed her a step backwards and sent the duck skittering off. ‘Thanks a lot. Thanks for really humiliating me. I thought you were my friend. I suppose you and Craig had a real laugh planning this.’
Elvis had marched off in disgust, but Craig had made his way over to Marcy’s side and put his arm protectively around her shoulders. ‘Marcy was only trying to be nice. You make a mistake in thinking that everyone else is as interested in your stupid nose as you are. Elvis would’ve been a fool to want to go out with you, anyway. You’re too self-obsessed.’
Layla strode over to the bench where she had left her school bag, and picked it up by its strap. Then she turned and said, ‘Just because I have a big nose you all feel you’ve got the right to look down on me. I can just imagine Elvis and I going out on a date. Everyone who saw us would say, “Isn’t it nice that two such strangely deformed people have found each other.” I suppose it’s like two dwarves going out together or two blind people, or two people with terrible speech impediments who could spit and stutter at each other over Wimpy milk-shakes. Well, I want better than that. I’m more than just a big nose. I thought I was your best friend, Marcy, but in fact I’m just your big-nosed friend. That’s all I am.’
Marcy said nothing as Layla sped away across the park.
That night when she got home Layla went straight to her bedroom. She locked the door and wouldn’t come out. Rose left her a dinner-tray outside the door. She was concerned for Layla. The previous week she had seen a programme on teenage suicide. Layla was so volatile. Larry told her not to worry.
Layla sat alone and did a lot of thinking. She tried to analyse her world view. She tried to get outside herself and to see her situation from all angles. One central problem faced her: had other people made her self-conscious about her nose, or was she just vain, as Craig had implied? Had she created the problem for herself, or had society made her nose into a monster? Obviously her nose had always been in the centre of her face and it had always been big, but was that in itself enough to destroy her life?
She thought about Elvis and wondered how much consideration he gave to the size of his nose. But his was a Jewish nose. Hers was just a big nose. She knew that the size of Elvis’s nose fitted into a larger scheme of things. It had a cultural space. It meant something. She thought, ‘If you’re Jewish and have a big nose it’s like being Barbra Streisand or Mel Brooks. It means that you have a history, that you belong. The shape of my nose is just a mistake. My problem is stuck right bang in the centre of my face, and it has no wider implications than that. My problem is my nose. I didn’t make the problem, the problem made me.’
It was so simple. It had to come off.
Late that evening she went downstairs into the living room and switched off the television. She stood in front of the screen – like a wonderful character from a film or a soap – and she announced firmly, ‘Either I have a nose job or I kill myself. I can’t go on like this any longer. I’ve heard that you can have one on the National Health. If you both love me you will help me.’ She swayed gently as though she were about to swoon, then gathered herself up and strode from the room like Boadicea approaching her chariot: a woman with swords on her wheels.
Rose made an appointment with their local GP the following afternoon. Layla took an hour off school. She explained her problem to the GP and he agreed to book her in with a specialist.
Five months later Layla met the specialist. He was called Dr Chris Shaben and was a small, vivacious, balding man with a crooked face and yellowy teeth. Apparently he had a very beautiful wife. His surgery was on Harley Street and the gold plaque on his door said, ‘Dr Chris Shaben, Plastic Surgeon’ in a beautiful flowing script.
Layla sat in his office and discussed her nose at great length. For the first time ever she felt as though she was actually talking to someone who cared, someone who understood, and best of all, someone who could do something. It was as a dream to her. Entering his surgery had been like a scene of recognition in a book or a film; that moment when everything falls into place. It was an ecstatic moment. Layla was like a newborn child finding its mother’s milky nipple for the first time.
It took a while to convince Dr Shaben that she was desperate and sincere. He said, ‘Normally we only do plastic surgery treatments on the National Health if the problem involved is more than just cosmetic, but I’m willing to make an exception in this instance, Layla. Although you’re young, you’re very articulate and intelligent. I realize that your concerns go deeper than mere vanity.’
Layla nodded. She said slowly, ‘For a while I tried to make myself believe that I had made the size of my nose into an issue, that the problem was to do with me, on the inside, not the out. My parents encouraged this line of thought, although my Mum has always been supportive, and my analysis did the same thing. But now I know that the problem is on the outside too. People judge one another visually; I should know, I do it myself. I want to be normal. I want to stop being on the outside, the periphery.’
Dr Shaben nodded and smiled at Layla. His bald head and short stature made him look like a tiny, benign, laughing Buddah as he sat hunched and serene in his big, leather, office chair.
Before the operation Layla abandoned her GCSE course work and concentrated instead on the leaflets, diagrams and information surrounding the surgery that she was about to undertake. She read how modern technology now meant that some nose operations could be undertaken entirely through the nostrils without any recourse to external incisions and unsightly scarring. The nose was chiefly made up out of bone and gristle, but was also extremely sensitive because of the large number of nerve endings at its tip. She tested this theory by smacking her nose with a pencil and then smacking other parts of her face like her cheeks and eyebrows. The nose was much more delicate. After the operation, a certain amount of swelling and bruising was to be expected.
Four days after her sixteenth birthday Layla awoke in a large and unfamiliar room. Her duvet was tightly stretched across her chest and felt unusually harsh and full of static. She was dopey. Her throat felt weird and dry. Her nose was numb but ached. She thought for an instant that she was dreaming her nose dream, that she wanted to put her hands to her face but her hands were restricted, yet after a few minutes she realized that she was in a strange bed in a strange environment. It was no dream, but her arms were restricted by the tightness of her sheets and blankets. She wriggled her body gently to create some room and worked her hands free. She placed them on her face. Her nose hurt. Her hands touched soft, filmy bandage and Band-Aid. It was done.
For the next five days her head felt light. Dr Shaben said that it was simply psychological, but she felt the lightness of a person who once had long hair and then cut it short, the roomy strangeness of someone who has had their arm broken and set in plaster and then has the plaster removed so that their arm floats up into the air because it feels so odd and weightless and light.
At first her face looked swollen and ugly. In hospital she wore no make-up and was blue with bruises. But she could see the difference. In the mirror her nose looked further away. Dr Shaben was pleased for her. He was well satisfied.
Throughout her stay in hospital, Rose had been in to see her every day. Larry preferred to stay away. Before she had gone in on her first night he had said to her, ‘Remember how when you were small I would sit you on my knee and bounce you up and down and call you my little elephant girl? You always laughed and giggled. It’s not like that any more. Now you’ve grown up into someone I don’t recognize. I can’t approve of what you are doing. God made you as you are. That should be enough.’
This came as a great shock to Layla. She had completely forgotten Larry’s pet name for her. When she heard him say it again it was like a blow to her face, a blow to her nose, making it ache, making her numb. It was a kind of violent anaesthetic.
She was being pulled in so many directions. Everyone had a different opinion as to the whys and wherefores. Rose simply said, ‘Do whatever will make you happy.’
After five days she came home. Although she was still slightly bruised, the mirror was her friend. Her three brothers greeted her at the front door with euphoric whoopings. Larry sat in the living room, watching the cricket. He turned after a minute or so and saw her, standing nervously by the door, her hands touching the bookcase for support. First he smiled, then he laughed, ‘Five days away, all that money spent, and look at you. No difference! You look no different.’ He laughed on long after she had left the room, but when he’d finished his stomach felt bitter.
Later Marcy visited. She smiled widely and hugged Layla like a real friend. Then she looked closely at her nose and said, ‘Maybe your nose looks slightly different, but to me you are still the same old Layla. In my mind’s eye you are exactly the same person. Nothing has changed.’ She thought that she was saying the right thing.
Layla sat alone upstairs in her room, staring into the mirror. She felt sure that she looked different. She felt sure that she was now a different person, inside. But the worry now consumed her that other people would not be able to see how different she looked. It felt like a conspiracy. She thought, ‘Maybe I’ve become the ugly person I was outside, inside. Perhaps that can never be changed.’ She felt like Pinocchio.
That night she had a dream. In her dream she was a tiny little elephant, but she was without a trunk. She had four legs and thick grey skin, big flapping ears and a thin end-tassled tail. But she had no nose. Because she had no nose she couldn’t pick things up – to eat, to wash, to have fun – all these things were now impossible. It was like being without arms. She kept asking for help. Her mother smiled and stroked her, but everyone else just laughed and pointed.
She slept late. When she awoke she felt battered and exhausted. When she looked into the mirror, her old face looked back at her. Nothing had changed. She felt utterly helpless. Her mind rambled and a thousand different images moved through the space behind her eyes. Her head was full of colour. She saw different people too, pointing their fingers, wiping her nose, holding her arm, bouncing her up and down on their knee, up and down, up and down.
In the kitchen she looked for a small knife to cut the top off her boiled egg. Instead she found that she had a chopping knife in her hand and it was as long as her arm. She cut the egg in half and its yolk hit the wall. She placed the blade near to her nose and felt tempted to move it closer. She stopped. For hours she remained stationary.
Larry had forgotten his sandwiches. He drove home in his lunch hour and let himself into the quiet house. He went upstairs for a quick pee. For once he neglected to shut and lock the door. He whistled contentedly.
Downstairs in the kitchen Layla’s mind started to turn again. She considered her options.
A Necessary Truth
Sammy Jo burped the baby and then lay her down on her pink, rubber changing mat and began to unpin her nappy. The baby puffed a gentle tongueful of spew out of her tiny mouth and down the side of her chin. Sammy Jo undid the nappy and then, almost without thought, used one of its Terry corners to mop up the sick. She lifted the baby’s head up, gently supporting its weight in her free hand, to make sure that her mouth was now empty. She didn’t want her to choke accidentally.
The baby was called Charlie, short for Charlotte. She was four months old. Sammy Jo tossed the nappy into the (thankfully close) washing basket and carefully laid Charlie’s head down again. She picked up a clean nappy and formed it into the requisite shape. The baby wheezed quietly.
Sammy Jo stared out of the window for a moment and caught sight of her husband Jason hanging out some nappies on the line. She rolled her tongue around the long nappy pin with its baby pink tip which she had stuck in the corner of her mouth – like a metal cigarette – while she felt around sightlessly on the table for some baby-wipes and talc.
The telephone rang. She grimaced to herself, let go of the tin of talc and then reached over to pick it up. Charlie screwed up her face at the sudden sharpness of the ringing – she couldn’t decide whether to cry or not – and then relaxed again when it stopped. Sammy Jo carried on staring out of the window. ‘Yes?’
She never said anything but ‘yes’ when she answered the telephone. Her biggest mistake in the past had been repeating her name and number on answering. She now knew that if you say your name and number some strange people copy this information down when they hear a woman’s voice. Then they telephone you again and again and turn your life into a living hell.
Sammy Jo’s telephone number was ex-directory. All the people who now had her number were people that she definitely trusted; a mere handful. This system had hitherto proved virtually foolproof.
A voice said, ‘What can we be sure of in our life? What two things can we infer – almost immediately – without needing to resort to empirical information?’
Sammy Jo’s eyes snapped away from the window and focused, somewhat pointlessly, on the telephone receiver in her hand. The voice continued, ‘By empirical I mean “information derived from experience”. Does all this sound rather confusing? Don’t let it confuse you. I’ve already confused myself. Bringing in the notion of empirical experience – Locke, Hume, remember those names – has confused things already. Let’s start again.’
Sammy Jo slammed down the receiver. She stood up and searched around for some paper and a pen. She found a thick telephone pad with slightly sticky adhesive edges which she had been given (months before) by her local independent pizza restaurant and takeaway. Each piece of paper was shaped like a red and yellow pizza, intermittently round, with the address and telephone number of the restaurant in small print at the top.
She placed the pad on the table in between the telephone and the baby and began to write: Man, Thirty/forty, deep but weak voice – muffled? Breathy.
She paused and thought for a moment and then wrote: Rubbish, not offensive. She crossed out the word offensive and then wrote sexual instead. She bit her lip. The telephone rang again. She stared out of the window towards Jason (who still seemed rather preoccupied) and then slowly, hesitantly, picked up the receiver. A voice said, ‘Hi! Sammy Jo?’ Sammy Jo breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed visibly. She smiled. ‘Hello. Yes?’
‘Hi Sammy, it’s Lucy here, Lucy Cosbie. How are things?’
Sammy Jo pinched the receiver between her shoulder and her ear while using her two free hands to grab a tissue and wipe Charlie’s bottom. Charlie let out a small whimper, but Lucy Cosbie heard it. ‘Is that Charlie there?’
Sammy Jo grinned. ‘Yeah. I’m changing her. I haven’t seen you for a couple of months, Lucy. You must pop around when you’re free. Jason mentioned you only the other day …’
Lucy’s laughter echoed down the telephone line. ‘Wow! I must be making progress if Jason’s asking about me!’
Sammy Jo clucked her tongue and picked up the talc. ‘Don’t be stupid. In a way I think he kind of misses you.’
Lucy stopped laughing and said, ‘Well, this is just a semi-professional informal call. I wanted to make sure that things are fine, that everything is going well, you know …’
Sammy Jo finished talcing the baby’s bottom and put the talc bottle down on the table. She stared guiltily at the pizza pad in front of her and touched what she had written on the pad with her index finger. She then said, ‘Honestly, Lucy, everything’s great. I already have my midwife coming around every other week to check up on Charlie’s progress. She’s doing just fine. I think enough of the council’s resources have been spent on me already without you worrying too …’
Lucy was sensitive to Sammy Jo’s tone. She said lightly, ‘Sammy Jo, relax. I’m not checking up on you. I know how sensitive young mums can be. I’m honestly not intruding, just interested.’
Sammy Jo interrupted, breathless with embarrassment. ‘Lucy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that, honestly. I’m just a bit uptight today. You’re more than welcome here any time. In fact, why don’t we make a date for a visit right now? How about Thursday afternoon?’
Sammy Jo could hear the busy noises of an office and a typewriter behind Lucy’s voice. Lucy said, ‘Hey! I’m quite a busy person, Sammy Jo. I’m afraid Thursday’s a bit tight for me. I tell you what, why don’t I ring in a couple of weeks’ time and we can make an evening arrangement? Something purely social. That way the neighbours can’t possibly have anything to gossip about, especially if I arrive on your doorstep after six-thirty with a bottle of wine. How about it? Purely informal. I’m desperate to see that gorgeous baby again.’
Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks, Lucy. I’d love to see you, any time of day. Telephone soon, OK?’
They exchanged their farewells.
Sammy Jo put down her receiver and reached out to pick up Charlie’s legs, lifted them up a few inches and slid the nappy underneath her whitely talced bottom. Before she could complete her nappy-tying, Jason had strolled into the room with the bag of remaining clothes pegs tucked under his arm. He said, ‘Did I hear the telephone ring?’
Sammy Jo nodded. ‘Yes. It was Lucy Cosbie.’
He raised his eyebrows, rather cynically. ‘Checking up? I didn’t think you were her department any more.’
Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I’m not. Just a social call, that’s all.’ She pushed the nappy pin into Charlie’s nappy and, picking her up, said, ‘Look, Jason, Charlie’s left you a little present in the washing basket.’
Jason looked down at the basket and let out a howl of horror. ‘Bloody hell! You’d think we had a production line of babies in here, not just one, with the amount of waste she produces. I’m sure that when she eventually gets around to speaking, her first coherent words will be “More washing, Daddy.”’
Sammy Jo was looking around for one of Charlie’s clean romper suits. Before she could say anything Jason said, ‘In the pile on the sofa. Would you mind putting on some rubber knickers this time so it doesn’t get soaked in twenty seconds?’
She winked. ‘Oh, Jason, you never said you liked me in rubber before!’
He smiled and shook his head. ‘I know that I agreed to take responsibility for the washing of nappies and stuff if we had a baby, Sammy Jo, but tomorrow I have a lot of work on so I might just pop out and buy a packet or two of disposables, all right? Just for one day.’
Sammy Jo shrugged, unmoved, ‘I don’t care, Jason, go ahead. You’re the one who’s so bothered about the environmental angle concerning disposables, not me. Buy them if you want to, feel free.’
Jason picked up his jacket, which was slung over the back of the sofa. He said, ‘I’ll pop out now. Do you want anything else?’
Sammy Jo smiled obsequiously. ‘I’ll write you a list.’
She looked around her and then saw the pizza pad on the table. Jason was watching her as he pulled his jacket on. She saw the few words that she had scribbled on to the top of the pad and, trying not to frown, ripped the page away and screwed it up in her hand. Jason said, ‘What’s that? Beginning of your thesis?’
She grimaced. ‘Very funny. Actually it was a trial shopping list, but I’ve now thought of several items extra, including five years’ subscription to Parenting magazine.’
She wrote down a couple of things and then handed him the piece of paper. He took it and perused it for a second. ‘For a frightening moment there I thought you were serious.’
She shrugged, ‘You know me, Jason, happy with sterilizing liquid and rosehip syrup. I don’t need anything else in my life.’
He raised his eyebrows in disbelief, chucked Charlie gently under her chin and said, ‘I’ll only be gone ten minutes or so, enjoy yourself.’ Sammy Jo smiled.
When he had gone, she found a pair of rubber knickers, put them over Charlie’s nappy and then manoeuvred the baby’s tiny body into a yellow lambswool romper suit. She pulled a small, soft blanket from her cot by the window and wrapped her up in it, then lay her down inside the cot. Charlie squawked her disapproval as soon as Sammy Jo set her down. Sammy Jo steeled herself to ignore these noises and strolled into the kitchen to make a mug of tea. As she switched the kettle on the telephone started ringing. She paused for a moment and then went to answer it.
‘Yes?’
A voice said, ‘Forget all that crap about empirical information. I don’t want to alarm you with big words before you’ve even got a grip on the basic ideas.’
Sammy Jo bit her lip, and then said violently, ‘What makes you think that I don’t understand what that word means? What the hell makes you presume that?’
Her heart sank. She hadn’t intended to participate in this conversation at all. She knew that participation was half of the trouble with anonymous callers. It meant that you were condoning the act. Implicitly. She felt ashamed and stupid and thought, ‘After all I’ve been through, I’m still a silly, stupid novice. I haven’t learned anything. I don’t deserve people’s help and advice.’
The voice continued, ‘Let’s go back to what I said first, Sammy Jo. That question about two things in life that we can be sure of. Two basic things.’
Sammy Jo’s heart plummeted. She thought, ‘My God, he knows my name. Did I say my name when I answered this time? Why did I answer him in the first place?’
She said, ‘I guess I can be sure that you are telephoning me, irritating me, involving yourself in my life when all I really wish is that you were dead in a room somewhere or dying of a terrible disease, or at the very least in some fundamental physical discomfort.’
The voice cackled, ‘Well done! That’s part of the answer, Sammy Jo, very well done. To put it simply, the two things that we can really be sure of in life are (a) that we exist. We can be sure of ourselves. Are you in any doubt that you exist, Sammy Jo, any doubt at all?’
Sammy Jo sighed. ‘The only thing I don’t doubt is that you are a pain in the fanny. That’s all.’
The voice paused for a moment and then said, ‘I get your point. We know that we exist because we can feel pain. Our bodies feel pain. I can be sure of two things, to quote Russell: “We are acquainted with our sense-data and, probably, with ourselves. These we know to exist.” Sense-data is a silly technical word which I’ll explain to you later.’
Sammy Jo was biting her nails and looking around for the pen she’d used earlier to write her shopping list. To pass the time she said, ‘Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.’
The voice said, ‘Imagine yourself in any situation, any situation at all. It doesn’t matter what you imagine yourself doing.’
He paused. ‘I knew it would come to this, he’s going to talk dirty. I knew it,’ Sammy Jo thought instantaneously. She felt familiar feelings of outraged passivity seeping into her chest. ‘Go on, say it, you dirty bastard. Don’t pretend that this is about anything else,’ she said.
But the voice continued, ‘No matter what you think, do or imagine, the only constant element is you. You can’t get away from yourself. You can imagine that the world is a figment of your imagination, that the sky is yellow but just seems blue, that your body doesn’t really exist and that you are just imagining that it does, that you are in fact asleep and dreaming and not awake at all. Close your eyes.’
Automatically Sammy Jo closed her eyes and quickly opened them again. She hung up. The phone rang immediately. She let it ring about ten times until the repetitive noise it made began to upset Charlie and she began to splutter and howl. Sammy Jo felt guilty about letting it upset her and also couldn’t help thinking that perhaps it was someone else. Eventually she picked it up. ‘Yes?’
The voice continued, ‘If you close your eyes it’s possible to reject almost everything that seems predictable in everyday life.’
She sighed and then said bitterly, ‘I can’t deny the fact that you exist, though, can I? You exist, don’t you?’
The voice was urgent and persuasive. ‘No way. Think about it. Nothing exterior to your mind and your thought is necessary. Don’t be confused by my use of the word “necessary” here. I used it in its philosophical context. By it I mean a Necessary Truth, something that cannot be denied. For all you know my voice could be just a figment of your imagination.’
Sammy Jo laughed, a guttural, cynical laugh. ‘Oh, so now you’re going to tell me that this telephone call, this infuriating interruption in my life, is my own fault. Is that it?’
‘Could be.’
Sammy Jo sighed loudly. ‘Well, if I made you up, how come you won’t go away?’
There was a short silence. During this silence Sammy Jo picked up her pen and wrote the words NECESSARY TRUTH on the pizza pad in large capitals. The voice then said, ‘Try and remember this phrase: I Think Therefore I Am. In Latin it goes Cogito Ergo Sum. I think is “cogito”, c-o-g-i-t-o. Therefore is ergo, e-r-g-o. I am is sum, s-u-m. Got that?’
Sammy Jo finished writing down the last letter, then slammed her pen down on the table. ‘What on earth makes you think I give a damn? You’re boring me. Go and bore someone else.’
The voice said calmly, ‘I want you to read something by a guy called Descartes tonight. He was the founder of modern philosophy – circa 1600. He invented something called “The Method of Systematic Doubt”. If you can get hold of his Meditations I’d recommend the first chapter. It’s only short.’
Sammy Jo said quickly, ‘Forget it. I’ll be much too busy this evening committing sodomy with my household pet and watching Emmerdale Farm.’
This time he rang off.
She picked up her pen again and wrote down the name Descartes (although she spelled it Deycart), then threw the pen down, tore off the top page of the pad, crumpled it up and threw it at the paper bin in the corner of the room. The paper missed the bin and hit the wall. She got up and went into the kitchen to finish making her cup of tea. While she was pouring in the milk Jason returned carrying a couple of bags of Pampers. He pinched her arm, ‘Tea! Yes please!’ She grimaced and bent down to get out another cup.
That night when they were both lying in bed waiting to go to sleep and listening out for Charlie’s whimpers from her cot nearby, Sammy Jo took hold of Jason’s arm and said, ‘Jason, have you ever heard of Descartes?’
Jason yawned and turned over on to his back, ‘I don’t know, Sammy Jo. I have some vague ideas about him. Probably read him at college at some point. Why?’
Sammy Jo shrugged. ‘Is it rude?’
Jason laughed. ‘Not so far as I know. He was French, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was a kinky writer.’
Sammy Jo sighed. ‘Oh.’
Jason paused for a moment, then said, ‘Sammy Jo, I didn’t mean to be off-putting. If you’re interested I might have a book on ancient philosophy downstairs that features him, but I can’t be sure.’ Sammy Jo smiled. ‘I don’t think so, Jason. Apparently Descartes was the founder of modern philosophical thought.’
Jason opened his eyes and stared at her in the dark.
The following afternoon Sammy Jo had just returned from taking Charlie out for a walk in her pram and was taking off her coat and combing a hand through her rather windswept short, red hair, when the telephone started ringing. She picked Charlie up and went to answer it. It was the man again. She pulled the telephone over towards the sofa and sat down, balancing Charlie on her knees, supporting her with one hand. The man said, ‘Hello, Sammy Jo. I suppose it would be optimistic of me to expect you to have read that chunk of Descartes’ Meditations that I recommended to you last night? The first chapter, remember?’
Sammy Jo snorted. ‘Why don’t you just sod off?’
The man continued, ‘After I rang off yesterday it occurred to me that I hadn’t been particularly encouraging towards you, and that was very wrong of me. I think you did extremely well, all things considered. You are obviously an intelligent woman. I think you just need stretching.’
Sammy Jo shook her head, ‘No, I don’t need stretching. The only person who needs stretching around here is you, and by that I mean stretching on the rack. Ancient forms of torture. I like that idea.’
The man said quietly, ‘Try not to be so combative, Sammy Jo. Let’s just get back to Descartes and his Method of Systematic Doubt.’
Sammy Jo hung up. As she tucked Charlie up in her cot a good fifty seconds or so later, the telephone started to ring again. Sammy Jo finished arranging Charlie’s covers and then, grabbing hold of her pizza pad and pen, went to answer it.
‘Yes?’
The man said, ‘Do you understand the word ‘scepticism’, Sammy Jo? Try and give me a working definition.’
Sammy Jo was writing on her pad in untidy capitals. She wrote: I WILL NOT GIVE IN. I CANNOT GIVE IN. I SHALL NOT GIVE IN. I MUST TAKE POSITIVE ACTION … TELEPHONE JASON? TELEPHONE LUCY COSBIE? WHISTLE DOWN THE TELEPHONE?
The voice said, somewhat more harshly, ‘Sammy Jo? Do you understand the meaning of the word scepticism?’
Sammy Jo threw down her pen and ripped the top page away from her pad. She shouted, ‘Of course I do. Don’t patronize me. Of course I do.’
‘Well, give me a working definition, then.’
‘Why should I? Why?’
He sighed, ‘Just to prove that you know.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t need to prove anything to you.’
‘Well, prove it to yourself then.’
Sammy Jo hesitated for a moment, then picked up her pen again. She said quietly, ‘All right then, I don’t really understand what it means, properly. Tell me and I’ll write it down.’
That night during dinner Sammy Jo asked Jason if he could get her a proper lined writing pad from work and a couple of spare biros. Jason was cutting up his fish fingers with one eye on the television, watching Wogan. Wogan was interviewing Candice Bergen. Jason put a mouthful of the battered fish into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully without replying. Sammy Jo glared at him. ‘Jason, do you mind paying me some attention? I’m talking to you!’
He turned towards her. ‘Something about paper and pens, right?’
She nodded. ‘Would you get me some from work? They supply you free don’t they?’
He frowned. ‘What do you want them for?’
Sammy Jo turned her eyes towards the television screen and focused on Wogan’s tie. ‘Nothing in particular. Telephone messages, addresses, sometimes on daytime television they have interesting babycare tips and recipes and stuff. They’d just come in handy.’
Jason carried on eating, ‘OK, I’ll try and remember.’
The following day Sammy Jo left the house at eleven o’clock with Charlie tucked up in her pram, and went out shopping. She collected Charlie’s child benefit money from the post office, then caught a bus into the centre of Milton Keynes. In her pocket was a piece of the pizza pad with the address of a bookshop scribbled on it. She found the bookshop and pushed her way clumsily inside. The short, dark man standing behind his desk in the shop came forward to help her. He said, ‘These places aren’t designed with prams in mind.’
Sammy Jo smiled. ‘Next time I’ll remember that and leave the baby on the bus.’
He grinned. ‘I didn’t mean any offence. Leave the pram here by the till and I’ll keep an eye on the baby while you browse.’
Sammy Jo let go of the pram and strolled around the shop. After several minutes she returned to the assistant and said, ‘If I keep an eye on the baby, would you mind finding copies of these books for me?’
She handed him her piece of paper which he took from her and perused. He smiled – ‘No problem’ – and quickly located the volumes in question. She held the three thin books in her hands and looked guiltily at the prices. The assistant noticed her concern. He said, ‘Specialist books are expensive on the whole, but I think you’ll find that those are quite reasonable. Russell was a bit of a popularist – excluding his works on mathematical logic, of course – so his more general works are very reasonably priced. The Descartes is a fraction more expensive, but the Sartre isn’t too bad. That’s fiction though, The Age of Reason, it’s a great book.’
Sammy Jo smiled at the assistant. He seemed enthusiastic and well read. She said, ‘One day I hope to be as well informed as you are. Which book do you think I should read first?’
He shrugged. ‘It depends on what you’re after. If I were you I’d read The Age of Reason first. It’s good to introduce yourself to ideas in an informal sort of way. Then the ideas just pop into your head and it’s no strain to pick them up.’
Sammy Jo looked at the synopsis on the back of the Penguin paperback. ‘It looks a bit heavy going.’
The assistant smiled sympathetically. ‘You haven’t bought it yet. You could always change your mind.’
Sammy Jo looked at him quizzically. ‘Do you think I should?’
He chuckled, ‘I’m playing the devil’s advocate. The story is about free will, about a man’s search for personal freedom. You should use your free will to decide whether you really want to buy it or not. If you choose to buy it then you will have made a commitment to the book. In fact you will have involved yourself in the book’s fundamental dilemmas.’
His face glowed as he explained this to her. His green eyes shone and he seemed excited. Sammy Jo handed him the three books and said, ‘All right, I’ll have them. I’ll read the …’ she paused. ‘Why are all these names so hard to pronounce?’
He took the books and put them into a bag. ‘Say the word “start”.’
Sammy Jo repeated after him, ‘Start.’
‘Then take out the first letter t so it’s “sart”.’
She copied him: ‘Sart.’
‘Then say the word “rough”.’
She smiled. ‘Rough.’
‘But forget about the “ugh” part and just say “ro”. Then altogether it’s “Sartre”. Obviously that’s the simple English pronunciation, but people will know who you mean.’
Sammy Jo said the name out loud to him a few times and then handed him some of her child benefit money. She said, ‘I’m going to start the Sartre on the bus home. I hope I enjoy it.’
He finished wrapping up her books and handed them over to her. ‘That’s entirely up to you.’
She grinned. ‘That’s a joke, right?’
When Sammy Jo got home she changed and fed the baby and then made herself a sandwich and sat down on the sofa to start Chapter Two of The Age of Reason. Her main thoughts about its central character, Mathieu, were that she was glad that he wasn’t looking after her baby. He didn’t seem responsible enough. When the telephone rang she told the man on the line these thoughts. She said, ‘Ideas are all right, but ideas can’t guide your life, it isn’t practical or realistic.’
He laughed. ‘So what do you think should be man’s main motivation? The acquisition of food? Making cups of tea?’
She raised her eyebrows – fully cognizant of his cynicism – and stared out of the window. ‘I wasn’t saying that. I’m not quite so stupid. All I mean is that people can’t afford to be so self-indulgent, so luxurious. You have to get on with things. My life would be in a fine mess if I suddenly decided that I wanted to be free, that I couldn’t be bothered to look after my young baby any more because she gets in the way of my freedom and independence.’
The man sounded irritated. ‘No, you’re trivializing the issue. You decided to have the baby, you made that decision freely many months ago. You could have aborted the child had you felt otherwise. The character Mathieu isn’t entirely unhindered in his decisions about whether he wants Marcelle’s baby … that’s silly, what I mean to say is that obviously he doesn’t want a baby but he has other considerations to take into account; Marcelle’s feelings, money, the illegality of abortions …’
Sammy Jo sighed, ‘Men are bastards. Really it’s her problem. He just worries about it to make himself feel good. He’s a shit.’
He interrupted her. ‘The character doesn’t matter, Sammy Jo. It’s his thoughts and actions that are our concern, not whether you happen to like him or not.’
Sammy Jo snorted. ‘If I don’t like the character how can I read and enjoy the book?’
His voice was sharp. ‘That’s stupid. Behave rationally. Since when do you have to like a character in order to be able to understand and sympathize with his dilemmas? You can’t go through life saying, “Oh, she doesn’t sound very nice so I’m not interested in her.” That’s ridiculous. Those sorts of comments are unworthy of you. You should think beyond your own standpoint. If you can’t do that, then a whole dimension is lost to you. Have you got a proper pad of paper now?’
Sammy Jo shrugged and didn’t answer, like a petulant schoolgirl. The voice said, ‘Sammy Jo, answer me.’
She hung up and stared at the telephone for several seconds, waiting for it to ring. It didn’t. She stared at it for a full five minutes, then began to feel stupid. She walked over to Charlie, who was sleeping in her crib, warm and cosy, smelling of milk. Out in the garden a small grey cat was scratching its claws on the thin trunk of a small apple tree. She felt frustrated. She thought, ‘What right does he have to manipulate me like this? He’s imposing on me. He’s a bully. It’s wrong for strangers to interfere like this, to impose like this, to telephone you when they want, to build up a relationship that depends solely on their goodwill …’
She scratched her head and said musingly to Charlie’s tiny body, which, disguised by layers of soft blankets, just rose and fell with the repetitive lull of sleepy breathing, ‘Charlie, people are strange. This man is strange. I suppose I should tell Jason really, but I know he’ll just get upset. I could telephone Lucy Cosbie … but do I really need to? This situation is quite different from before, altogether different. No one is threatening me. I don’t know.’
She went and sat down on the sofa and picked up her book again. She read until five and then went into the kitchen and started to prepare dinner. Jason came in while she was frying some courgettes and cutting mushrooms. He pecked her on the cheek and said, ‘Do I guess from this that Charlie will be enjoying ratatouille-flavoured milk this evening?’
She smiled broadly. ‘You’re welcome to enjoy ratatouille-flavoured milk yourself this evening if you prefer, so long as there’s enough to go around. I don’t know how well garlic and tomatoes translate into a calcium drink, though.’
He shook his head. ‘I think I’ll skip that one, if you don’t mind, Sammy Jo.’
The telephone rang. Jason immediately moved away from her as though to go and answer it. Sammy Jo grabbed hold of his arm and said hurriedly, ‘Jason, I know who that is. It’s for me. My mother said she’d ring this evening.’ She pushed past him as she spoke. ‘I’ll get it. Stir the vegetables, all right?’
He nodded. She picked up the telephone. ‘Hi, Mum. Jason’s home now so I can’t really talk for long.’
The man said, ‘I want you to think about this question very carefully, Sammy Jo. Write it down.’
Sammy Jo picked up a pen and copied down his question with great care on the pizza pad, which was now greatly diminished in size. Then they both said goodbye.
As she put down the telephone receiver she caught sight of her three new books slung carelessly on to the sofa, The Age of Reason open face downwards towards the middle of the text, like a ballerina clumsily doing the splits and unable to rise from that position. Quickly she picked them up and walked over to Charlie’s cot. Picking Charlie up she slid the books under the cot’s small mattress, then carried Charlie into the kitchen. Jason was stirring the courgettes and mushrooms around in the frying pan, staring at the wall in front of him in a tired, unfocused way. He seemed ill at ease. Sammy Jo offered Charlie’s sleepy body to him and said, ‘Give me the wooden spoon in exchange for the baby. You can change her if you like.’
He smiled. ‘What into? A well trained corgi?’
She frowned. ‘Don’t avoid the inevitable, Jason, she feels pretty wet to me.’
He sighed and took hold of Charlie’s tiny body, then carried her into the sitting room. Sammy Jo opened a tin of tomatoes while he lay the baby down on her changing mat and searched around for one of the remaining disposable nappies. He said loudly, so Sammy Jo could hear him above the noise of the frying pan, ‘How’s your mother? You didn’t chat for long.’
Sammy Jo added the tomatoes to the rest of the vegetables in the pan, then remembered she had forgotten to start with a chopped onion. She cursed under her breath, then said hastily, ‘She’s fine. She’s a bit busy actually. I think she had plans to go out tonight.’ Jason took off Charlie’s dirty nappy and said, ‘I’m so glad I don’t have any washing to do this evening. I’m knackered. There again, it still makes my skin crawl to imagine what I’m doing to the environment with just one day’s usage of these things.’
He turned Charlie over and cleaned her bottom with some tissues. Sammy Jo cleared her throat and appeared in the doorway. ‘Did you get that paper for me, Jason?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah. It’s in my case, by the door.’
He lay one of the nappies out on the table and lifted up Charlie’s legs so as to slide it under her bottom. As he performed this manoeuvre he stuck out one of his elbows and accidentally knocked the telephone with it. The telephone was balanced on the edge of the table and threatened to fall off. Quickly grabbing hold of it and pushing it a couple of inches away from the edge, he focused on the pad covered in small, neat print. He took hold of it with his free hand and perused it, initially with uninterest and then with some surprise. On the pad Sammy Jo had written: ‘ARE GOOD AND EVIL OF IMPORTANCE TO THE UNIVERSE OR JUST TO MAN?’ BERTRAND RUSSELL. THINK ABOUT THIS. He moved the pad closer to his face in order to reread these words. He frowned, put the pad down again and completed Charlie’s nappy.
Sammy Jo strolled into the room clutching her new pad as Jason finished putting on Charlie’s rubber knickers. She walked over and switched on the television, saying, ‘Dinner shouldn’t be long now. Pass her over, will you? I need to feed her.’
He picked up Charlie.
‘Sammy Jo?’
‘Yep?’
‘This may sound rather stupid, but I couldn’t help noticing what you have written down on the pad by the phone.’
She looked up guiltily and played for time. ‘I can’t remember writing anything. It can’t have been important …’ She put out her arms for Charlie. ‘Pass her over please.’
He handed the baby over and watched dispassionately as Sammy Jo began breast-feeding. He said, ‘Have you been watching the Open University while I’m out at work?’
Sammy Jo shrugged. ‘I might have caught a programme at some point, Jason. I can’t really remember. I don’t just sit around all day watching television, you know. Looking after a young baby isn’t just fun and games.’
He shook his head, bewildered. ‘I wasn’t suggesting that, Sammy Jo, not at all. Anyway, you wanted the baby, it was a decision you made freely, you were hardly under any pressure.’
Sammy Jo frowned. ‘Freedom’s not really like that, Jason. I’ve been giving it some thought lately. The way I see it, freedom is like a train journey. When you get on the train, everyone assures you that you are free to climb off whenever you choose, but as with all train journeys there doesn’t seem much point getting off at most of the stations. They just aren’t appropriate to your life. A lot of things dictate as to when and where you get off the train. It isn’t just a random decision. The past propels you forward, and all your future decisions have already been made well in advance, dictated by age, class, sex … anyway, your capacity is limited. Your choice is limited.’
Charlie sucked away at one of Sammy Jo’s robust pink nipples with energetic commitment. Jason tried to expel the random thought that had just entered his head, that often entered his head when he saw Sammy Jo breast-feeding, which was that she seemed like the Madonna when she performed this duty, like an icon, so innocent, uninvolved and natural. He said, ‘How long have you had this hang-up about not being free? I thought you were happy to be living with me. I thought you liked being married. I don’t think I ever put you under any unnecessary pressure …’
Sammy Jo exploded. ‘Why does everything have to be so bloody particular with you, Jason? I’m not talking about myself, I’m talking about an idea, a …’
She paused and grasped for a word that was brand new and floating around inside her mind, ready to be brought out like the best cutlery at a family celebration. ‘I’m talking about universals. A universal idea, freedom. Everything that I say doesn’t have to apply to my own miserable life. I can think beyond it, above it, you know. I am just about capable of that.’
He stared at her with his shoulders hunched and his arms crossed defensively, then he said, ‘Something’s going on, but I don’t know what. This isn’t like you … this isn’t you, Sammy Jo.’
She laughed, ‘God! Just because I make a slightly intelligent observation you make out something terrible is wrong. You don’t think I’m a very clever person, do you, Jason? You don’t think I’m particularly blessed with intelligence.’
He looked surprised. ‘Of course you’re intelligent. I love you, Sammy Jo, I love your mind, your conversation, your body, your beautiful pink nipples, our baby. I do respect you, and I like to think that I treat you as an equal …’
She snorted. ‘Well thanks a lot for that. I am your equal, I don’t think you deserve any special thanks for treating me as such.’
Jason leaned over the table and picked up the pizza pad. ‘What exactly does this mean, Sammy Jo? “ARE GOOD AND EVIL OF IMPORTANCE TO THE UNIVERSE OR ONLY TO MAN? BERTRAND RUSSELL. THINK ABOUT THIS.” What does it mean? Why have you written it down? Who told you to write it down?’ He ripped the page away from the pad and screwed it up in his hand.
Sammy Jo prised Charlie’s gums away from her nipple and pulled her shirt together to cover her breasts. Charlie yelled and then started to cry. Sammy Jo stood up, thrust Charlie into Jason’s arms and said, ‘You bloody feed her. How dare you screw up my notes like that? It’s none of your business what I do. I’m not affecting you in any way.’ She picked up the ball of crumpled paper from the floor and held it, clenched possessively in her hand. Jason was bouncing Charlie up and down in his arms, trying to calm her down. He stared at Sammy Jo but didn’t say anything. After a minute or so Charlie’s crying evaporated into breathy whimpers. Jason took her over to her cot and placed her gently into it. Sammy Jo felt like running upstairs to their bedroom in order to curtail this conversation, but she wanted to carry on reading her book, she didn’t want to just sit up there sulking, with nothing to do. Jason stood up straight and turned to face Sammy Jo. He crossed his arms. ‘This reminds me of something, Sammy Jo. This situation reminds me of something.’
She frowned. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
He shrugged. ‘Just a hunch. What would you say if I told you that I was going to telephone Lucy Cosbie right now? Maybe she could shed some light on this thing? You’ve been strange since she telephoned you the other day.’
Sammy Jo shook her head. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, Jason. Lucy Cosbie has nothing whatever to do with this.’
Jason walked over to the television and switched it off then sat down on the sofa where Sammy Jo had been sitting before. He looked up at her, ‘Can’t we talk about this sensibly, Sammy Jo? It’s no big deal. We don’t have to row about it.’
Sammy Jo leaned against the table and looked petulant. ‘You said it, Jason. I don’t know what your problem is all of a sudden.’
He patted the seat next to him on the sofa. ‘Sammy Jo, something is upsetting you or influencing you. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but you’ve said some strange things lately, you seem distant and preoccupied, like something’s upsetting you.’
She looked into his face as he spoke and saw that his brown eyes were weary and that his face was drawn. As she looked at him she felt as though she hadn’t seen him properly for a long time. She moved and sat down beside him. After a short silence she said, ‘I don’t want you to get upset, I want you to understand. I don’t want any overreactions, all right?’
He stared at her, frowning. She continued. ‘Someone’s been telephoning me over the past few days …’
Jason inhaled deeply. She saw his hands clench into fists.
‘Jason, don’t get upset. This man isn’t like the other one, he’s different. He doesn’t want to cause trouble, he isn’t rude or anything … it isn’t like that at all.’
Jason spoke, and his voice was low and quiet, ‘He telephoned earlier, right? That wasn’t your mother at all, was it? You lied to me, Sammy Jo.’
Sammy Jo shook her head. ‘It’s not like that. I didn’t want to upset you. I knew you’d overreact, I knew you’d blow it out of all proportion. It isn’t like how it was before, not at all.’
He stared at her. His face seemed very close and long and mean. ‘Well how exactly is it now, Sammy Jo? How is it possible for an anonymous caller to be anything other than offensive?’
She shrugged and fiddled momentarily with one of the buttons on her blouse. ‘He’s teaching me about philosophy. That’s all he talks about. Before he phoned I didn’t even know what philosophy was, but now he’s taught me about Descartes and Sartre and scepticism. I’m reading The Age of Reason at the moment and really enjoying it …’
Jason sprang up from the sofa and looked down at Sammy Jo from what seemed like a great height.
‘How long has this been going on, Sammy Jo? Does Cosbie know about it?’
Sammy Jo looked vulnerable and upset. ‘It has nothing at all to do with her, it has nothing to do with you either Jason. It’s between him and me. I quite like his calls. They interest me.’
Jason let out a sharp yell of frustration and raised his eyes and hands towards the ceiling as though pleading with an invisible God. ‘Sammy Jo don’t you understand anything? Don’t you see what’s happening here? Don’t you understand that it doesn’t matter what the hell it is that he says to you on the phone, it doesn’t matter whether he’s swearing at you are singing Gregorian chants, the issue here is power. Power, do you remember? Can’t you remember the endless conversations with Lucy and I about why it is that people telephone other people anonymously and abuse their time and their privacy? It’s a power thing. He’s making you passive. You don’t question him, he is in control, he is powerful and you are passive. He probably gets exactly the same kick out of it as if you were involved in some sort of direct, sick, sado-masochistic relationship. He’s dictating your life, Sammy Jo, can’t you see that? Can’t you?’
As he finished speaking he leaned towards her and snatched hold of her arm. She didn’t meet his gaze, her arm hung limp in his hand. After several seconds she said quietly, ‘You think I don’t know all this, don’t you? You think I’m so bloody stupid. Well you’re wrong. I know all about this shit. Maybe you think that I actually enjoy being dominated, that I actually go out of my way to get into situations where I can be dominated …’
Jason dropped her arm, ‘What do you expect me to think, Sammy Jo? Do you expect me to congratulate you on getting an education? Do you expect me to go to night classes to learn French so I can discuss Sartre with you in the original? What the hell do you expect me to feel? Pleased? Delighted? Grateful?’
Sammy Jo sprang up and pushed Jason in the chest with her flat hand. ‘Don’t you dare patronize me, you bastard. How dare you speak to me like this? I’ll do what the hell I like with my time and you can’t stop me. You just resent him because he is offering me something that you have never bothered offering me.’
Jason laughed. It sounded like the wail of an angry hyena. ‘So you think. I’m threatened by this pervert do you? You think I’m intimidated by some sick bastard who gets his kicks out of telephoning vulnerable women and talking about philosophy with them? Look at me, Sammy Jo, I’m not threatened, I’m angry. You should be angry too.’
Sammy Jo pushed past him and marched over to the cot. She lifted Charlie up with one hand and reached under the mattress with her other hand. She grabbed hold of her three new books and then replaced the baby on top of her blankets. Jason watched all of this in silence and then said harshly, ‘Well, that’s very mature, Sammy Jo, hiding books under the baby’s mattress, very adult. You thrive on this sort of deception, don’t you? You love your little secrets, your private collusions.’
Sammy Jo marched past him and towards the door. ‘I’m going upstairs for a while. I don’t want to be disturbed.’
Jason slammed his fist down hard on to the table, the force of which caused a coffee cup, the telephone and pizza pad to jump up into the air by almost an inch. The telephone made a little jangling, ringing noise as it landed. He yelled, ‘Give me those books Sammy Jo, give them to me now!’
She held her books against her chest and glared at him venomously. ‘You’ll have to kill me first, Jason. Be warned, I’m not quite as passive as you’d like to believe.’
They stared at each other venomously for several seconds and then Sammy Jo turned and left the room.
In the kitchen the ratatouille was starting to burn. Jason switched off the oven and started to prepare a bottle for the baby. His hands were shaking.
After forty-five minutes Jason had fed the baby and watched half of Coronation Street. He kept listening out for any noises from upstairs, but the house was silent. He switched the television off, opened his briefcase and took out his address book. He found Lucy Cosbie’s number and dialled it. It rang several times before she answered it.
‘Hi, Lucy here.’
Her voice was depressingly familiar to him. He said, ‘Hello, Lucy, it’s Jason Wells here, Sammy Jo’s husband.’
This took Lucy Cosbie several seconds to register, then she responded warmly: ‘Oh, Jason, hi. Is something wrong? You’re the last person I expected to hear from.’
Jason cleared his throat. ‘Lucy, Sammy Jo’s in trouble again. She said you phoned her the other day. I wondered whether she’d told you about it. I’m somewhat concerned.’
Lucy Cosbie sounded mystified. ‘Jason, Sammy Jo said nothing to me about any problems. Is it the baby?’
Jason smiled. ‘No, nothing like that. I’m afraid she’s receiving anonymous calls again.’
Lucy responded sharply. ‘Who from? Same guy?’
Jason was surprised. ‘No, I don’t think so. She didn’t suggest to me that it could be the same person. I think she would’ve said that. I hope so anyway.’
Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I’m glad to hear that, Jason. It’s all a bit complicated at this end because I’ve seen a fair bit of him lately. I was assigned to his case recently. I’m sure you can understand that it’s something of a conflict of interests.’
Jason nodded. ‘I can imagine. Anyway, Lucy, this new guy is really weird, they aren’t dirty calls as such. In fact Sammy Jo seems very happy with the arrangement. It seems that he’s teaching her philosophy, you know, “Philosophy the Anonymous Caller’s Way”.’
He tried to crack this joke light-heartedly but it fell somewhat flat. Lucy Cosbie was silent for a few seconds and then she said, rather slowly and hollowly, ‘Oh dear. I think this could all be slightly problematic.’
Jason scratched his head and then tightened his grip on the telephone receiver. ‘Why? I didn’t think what was said made any difference. He’s still pestering her. It’s the same thing isn’t it? The same as before?’
When Lucy next spoke she sounded a fraction testy. ‘Jason, I think maybe I should speak to Sammy Jo about this. Is she there? Can I have a word?’
Jason was irritated. ‘She’s upstairs at the moment. We’ve had a slight disagreement about the whole thing. She’s being a bit irrational.’
Lucy was persistent. ‘I’m sorry Jason, I’m afraid that I can’t talk to you any further about this without chatting to Sammy Jo. I’d prefer to deal with her personally. I’d appreciate it if I could speak with her privately.’
Jason frowned. After a short pause he said, ‘I’ll go and call her. I don’t know how responsive she’ll be though. Hang on.’
He put down the telephone and walked into the hallway. He stood at the bottom of the stairs and shouted up, ‘Sammy Jo? Lucy Cosbie’s on the phone, she wants to speak to you.’
Sammy Jo was lying on their bed engrossed in her book. She swore under her breath at Jason’s untimely interruption and turned over the corner of the page to mark her place. She got up and shouted back as she began to make her way towards the door. ‘I’m coming!’
As she walked down the stairs she glared at him. ‘I bet you phoned her.’ He shrugged as she brushed past him and decided that it was probably better to say nothing.
Sammy Jo picked up the telephone. ‘Hi Lucy, I’m sorry about this. I’m sure you’ve got more pressing matters to deal with. This isn’t at all important.’
Lucy’s voice was low and apologetic. ‘Sammy Jo, I’m sorry, but I do think that this is my business. I’m pretty sure that I know who it is that’s telephoning you and also how and why.’
Sammy Jo frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
Lucy sighed. ‘I think it’s my fault. I’ve been a bit slow on the uptake. Maybe I haven’t been careful enough. That man, Duncan Sands, who was telephoning you before, well, he was recently assigned to me …’
Sammy Jo interrupted nervously. ‘I thought he was in prison.’
‘No, he was in an open prison for several months but he’s been out for a while now. You were hardly the only person involved in the whole mess … well, you know all about it, anyway.’
Sammy Jo shook her head slowly while she listened to Lucy. ‘I’m sorry Lucy, but this person is different, they aren’t the same, they don’t sound the same.’
Lucy was insistent. ‘Sammy Jo, he may not sound the same because he’s saying different things, but I know it’s him. He often asks about you. He wanted to meet you a while back to talk things over. He sincerely believes that he’s better now, that he was sick and now he’s better. I somehow have my doubts about that. Anyway, he’s been heavily involved in community service work and maybe he thinks that he’s doing you some sort of a service. He started a sociology course in prison and he’s really into educating himself. I helped to get him a job a few weeks back, only part-time shop work, but with prospects. Next year, if they keep him on, he’ll probably be eligible for a day-release scheme to go to the polytechnic. He wants to get a degree in Communication Studies.’
Sammy Jo laughed. ‘I suppose that’s kind of ironic.’
Lucy wasn’t amused. ‘He must’ve managed to find out your number from me at some point. I don’t know, maybe he got a peek at my diary or something. Anyway Sammy Jo, I’m going to have to do something about this …’
Sammy Jo bit her lip. ‘Lucy, you aren’t going to tell the police are you? Or jeopardize his job?’
Lucy was silent for a moment and then she said, ‘He’s violated my trust, Sammy Jo. I have a responsibility to do something.’
Sammy Jo interrupted angrily. ‘That’s stupid! It’s none of your business. You’d never have known about this if Jason hadn’t told you. As far as I’m concerned, his involvement with me is with my full consent.’
Lucy tutted irritatingly. ‘Sammy Jo, you know it’s not as simple as that. This whole anonymous calling thing is about power, it doesn’t matter what he’s saying, it’s wrong. We both know that it’s wrong.’
Sammy Jo said slyly, ‘You let him get my number, Lucy, that was irresponsible, what if I wanted to make something of it?’
Lucy wasn’t impressed. ‘That makes no difference to me, Sammy Jo, I don’t intend to follow one piece of misconduct with another.’
Sammy Jo wound the telephone wire around her middle finger and tried to think of some sort of compromise. Eventually she said, ‘Lucy, I swear to you that if he telephones me again I’ll phone you and tell you, then you can contact whoever you like. Just leave it until the next time. Maybe you could phone him tonight and warn him off …’
Lucy sounded impatient. ‘I don’t know, Sammy Jo. I don’t think my telling him will change his modes of behaviour. I don’t know if I can trust you on this either. You haven’t been particularly co-operative up until this point.’
Sammy Jo raised her eyebrows and pulled an innocently sly expression. ‘I realize that, Lucy. I know that this isn’t just about me and that I have a wider responsibility, but I also know that he deserves a chance to make a go of his job in the bookshop, especially since his prospects seem to be looking up …’
Lucy sounded surprised. ‘Did I mention that he was working in a bookshop? I don’t think I said that, did I?’
Sammy Jo shrugged, but she was smiling to herself. ‘Forget it Lucy, I’m just a bit stressed out. I promise though, this time you can depend on me, really.’
They rang off. Jason had come into the room during the final stages of their conversation and was sitting on the sofa staring at Sammy Jo inquisitively. Sammy Jo sat down next to him and took hold of his hand. ‘It’s all right, I’m not angry. I’ve cleared it all up with Lucy. I don’t think he’ll be phoning me again.’
Jason squeezed her fingers and kissed her cheek. ‘Sammy Jo, if you want to go to college you could always go in the evenings and I’ll look after Charlie. I wouldn’t mind. Maybe we could give her to a babyminder a couple of days a week and you could go on a course part-time.’
Sammy Jo shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Jason, I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. I don’t feel brave enough. I like being at home with Charlie at the moment, I just appreciate the occasional bit of stimulation. I’m really enjoying this book I’m reading, and there’s no pressure, you know, no need to take exams or to get along with a classful of strangers …’
Jason smiled. ‘You know that you can do anything that you want to do, Sammy Jo. I know that you’ll choose whatever is for the best.’
Sammy Jo smiled back.
The following morning at ten o’clock Sammy Jo picked up her copy of the Yellow Pages and hunted down a number. When she had located it she opened up her new pad and wrote the number down at the top of the first large, white page in big bold print. Then she picked up the telephone and dialled. When someone answered she smiled and said, ‘Hello, this is Sammy Jo, remember me? Yes, I know you’re at work, yes I know you’re busy, but I don’t care. Maybe you should give me your home number and then I wouldn’t have to pester you like this …’
The line went dead. She put down her receiver, picked it up again and then pressed the redial button. She waited for a moment and then continued. ‘Yes, it is me again. No, I don’t care what sort of a disruption this is. I want to carry on our conversations. Apparently you’re working part-time? That means you must have a lot of spare time on your hands during the afternoons, which is good, good for me at any rate. I want you to share that free time with me, on the phone of course, reverse charges. I’ve been thinking about that question you asked me yesterday, I’d like to discuss it at greater length …’
The line went dead. She put down her receiver and then picked it up and, once again, pressed redial. ‘You’re an old hand at this, Mr Sands, I have a redial button and it’s no effort to press it again and again …’
She listened for a moment, then picked up her pen and copied down another number in her white pad. Then she said, ‘Yes, I am enjoying it actually … No, I didn’t tell Lucy, someone else did … No, Lucy didn’t tell me either, it didn’t take much intelligence to realize though … Thank you. Is two o’clock all right? OK, I’ll phone you then. Goodbye.’
She hung up.
The Butcher’s Apprentice
If he had come from a family of butchers maybe his perspective would have been different. He would have been more experienced, hardened, less naïve. His mum had wanted him to work for Marks and Spencers or for British Rail. She said, ‘Why do you want to work in all that blood and mess? There’s something almost obscene about butchery.’
His dad was more phlegmatic. ‘It’s not like cutting the Sunday roast, Owen, it’s guts and gore and entrails. Just the same, it’s a real trade, a proper trade.’
Owen had thought it all through. At school one of his teachers had called him ‘deep’. She had said to his mother on Parents’ Evening, ‘Owen seems deep, but it’s hard to get any sort of real response from him. Maybe it’s just cosmetic.’
His mum had listened to the first statement but had then become preoccupied with a blister on the heel of her right foot. Consequently her grasp of the teacher’s wisdom had been somewhat undermined. When she finally got home that evening, her stomach brimming with sloshy coffee from the school canteen, she had said to Owen, ‘Everyone says that you’re too quiet at school, but your maths teacher thinks that you’re deep. She has modern ideas, that one.’ Owen had appreciated this compliment. It made him try harder at maths that final term before his exams, and leaving. At sixteen he had pass marks in mathematics, home economics and the whole world before him.
In the Careers Office his advisor had given him a leaflet about prospective employment opportunities to fill out. He ticked various boxes. He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with your hands?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like working with animals?’ He ticked a yes for ‘Do you like using your imagination?’
When his careers guidance officer had analysed his preferences she declared that his options were quite limited. He seemed such a quiet boy to her, rather dour. She said, ‘Maybe you could be a postman. Postmen see a lot of animals during their rounds and use their hands to deliver letters.’ Owen appeared unimpressed. He stared down at his hands as though they had suddenly become a cause for embarrassment. So she continued, ‘Maybe you could think about working with food. How about training to be a chef or a butcher? Butchers work with animals. You have to use your imagination to make the right cut into a carcass.’ Because he had been in the careers office for well over half an hour, Owen began to feel obliged to make some sort of positive response. A contribution. So he looked up at her and said, ‘Yeah, I suppose I could give it a try.’ He didn’t want to appear stroppy or ungrateful. She smiled at him and gave him an address. The address was for J. Reilly and Sons, Quality Butchers, 103 Oldham Road.
Later that afternoon he phoned J. Reilly’s and spoke to someone called Ralph. Ralph explained how he had bought the business two years before, but that he hadn’t bothered changing the name. Owen said, ‘Well, if it doesn’t bother you then it doesn’t bother me.’
Ralph asked him a few questions about school and then enquired whether he had worked with meat before. Owen said that he hadn’t but that he really liked the sweet smell of a butcher’s shop and the scuffling sawdust on the floor, the false plastic parsley in the window displays and the bright, blue-tinged strip-lights. He said, ‘I think that I could be very happy in a butcher’s as a working environment.’
He remembered how as a child he had so much enjoyed seeing the arrays of different coloured rabbits hung up by their ankles in butcher shop windows, and the bright and golden-speckled pheasants. Ralph offered him a month’s probationary employment with a view to a full-time apprenticeship. Owen accepted readily.
His mum remained uncertain. Over dinner that night she said, ‘It’ll be nice to get cheap meat and good cuts from your new job, Owen, though I still don’t like the idea of a butcher in the family. I’ve nothing against them in principal, but it’s different when it’s so close to home.’
Owen thought carefully for a moment, then put aside his knife and fork and said, ‘I suppose so, but that’s only on the surface. I’m sure that there’s a lot of bloodletting and gore involved in most occupations. I like the idea of being honest and straightforward about things. A butcher is a butcher. There’s no falseness or pretence.’
His dad nodded his approval and then said, ‘Eat up now, don’t let your dinner get cold.’
Owen arrived at the shop at seven sharp the following morning. The window displays were whitely clean and empty. Above the windows the J. Reilly and Sons sign was painted in red with white lettering. The graphics were surprisingly clear and ornate. On the door was hung a sign which said ‘closed’. He knocked anyway. A man with arms like thin twigs opened the door. He looked tiny and consumptive with shrewd grey eyes and rusty hair. Owen noticed his hands, which were reddened with the cold, callused and porkish. The man nodded briskly, introduced himself as Ralph then took Owen through to the back of the shop and introduced him to his work-mate, Marty. Marty was older than Ralph – about fifty or so – with silvery hair and yellow skin. He smiled at Owen kindly and offered him a clean apron and a bag of sawdust. Owen took the apron and placed it over his head. Ralph helped him to tie at the back. Both Marty and Ralph wore overalls slightly more masculine in design. Owen took the bag of sawdust and said, ‘Is this a woman’s apron, or is it what the apprentice always wears?’
As Ralph walked back into the main part of the shop he answered, ‘It belongs to our Saturday girl, so don’t get it too messy. We’ll buy you a proper overall at the end of the week when we’re sure that you’re right for the job.’
As he finished speaking a large van drew up outside the shop. Ralph moved to the door, pulled it wide and stuck a chip of wood under it to keep it open. He turned to Owen and by way of explanation pointed and said, ‘Delivery. The meat’s brought twice a week. Scatter the sawdust, but not too thick.’
Owen put his hand into the bag of dust and drew out a full, dry, scratchy handful which he scattered like a benevolent farmer throwing corn to his geese. The delivery man humped in half of an enormous sow. She had a single greenish eye and a severed snout. He took it to the back of the shop through a door and into what Owen presumed to be the refrigerated store-room. Before he had returned Ralph had come in clutching a large armful of plucked chickens. As Owen moved out of his way he nodded towards the van and said, ‘I tell you what, why not go and grab some stuff yourself but don’t overestimate your strength and try not to drop anything.’
Owen balanced his packet of shavings against the bottom of the counter and walked out to the van. Inside were a multitude of skins, feathers, meats and flesh. He grabbed four white rabbits and a large piece of what he presumed to be pork, but later found out was lamb. The meat was fresh and raw to the touch. Raw and soft like risen dough. He lifted his selections out of the van and carried them into the shop, careful of the condition of his apron, and repeated this process back and forth for the next fifteen or so minutes. While everyone else moved the meat, Marty busied himself with cutting steaks from a large chunk of beef. When finally all of the meat had been moved Ralph went and had a cigarette outside with the delivery man and Owen picked up his bag of shavings and finished scattering them over the shop floor. On completing this he called over to Marty, ‘Do I have to spread this on the other side of the counter as well?’
Marty smiled at him. ‘I think that’s the idea. It should only take you a minute, so when you’ve finished come over here and see what I’m doing. You never know, you might even learn something.’
Owen quickly tipped out the rest of his bag over the floor at the back of the counter and scuffed the dust around with his foot. It covered the front of his trainer like a light, newgrown beard. Then he walked over to Marty and stood at his shoulder watching him complete his various insertions into the beef. Marty made his final cut and then half turned and showed Owen the blade he was using. He moved the tip of the blade adjacent to the tip of Owen’s nose. ‘A blade has to be sharp. That’s the first rule of butchery. Rule two, your hands must be clean.’ He moved the knife from side to side and Owen’s eyes followed its sharp edge. It was so close to his face that he could see his hot breath steaming up and evaporating on its steely surface. Marty said thickly, ‘This blade could slice your nose in half in the time it takes you to sneeze. Aaah-tish-yooouh!’
Then he whipped the knife away and placed it carefully on the cutting surface next to a small pool of congealing blood. He said, ‘Rule three, treat your tools with respect.’
Owen cleared his throat self-consciously. ‘Will I be allowed to cut up some meat myself today, or will I just be helping out around the shop?’ Marty frowned. ‘It takes a long time and a lot of skill to be able to prepare meat properly. You’ll have to learn everything from scratch. That’s what it means to be the new boy, the apprentice.’
Ralph came back into the shop and set Owen to work cleaning the insides of the windows and underneath the display trays. Old blood turned the water brown. Soon the first customers of the day started to straggle into the shop and he learned the art of pricing and weighing. The day moved on. At twelve he had half-an-hour for lunch.
After two o’clock the shop quietened down again and Owen was sent into the store-room to acquaint himself with the lay-out, refrigeration techniques and temperatures. As he looked around and smelt the heavy, heady smell of ripe meat, he overheard Ralph and Marty laughing at something in the shop. Ralph was saying, ‘Leave him be. You’re wicked Mart.’ Marty replied, ‘He won’t mind. Go on, it’ll be a laugh.’
A few seconds later Ralph called through to him. Owen walked into the shop from the cool darkness of the storeroom. The light made his eyes squint. The shop was empty apart from Ralph and Marty who were standing together in front of the large cutting board as though hiding something. Ralph said, ‘Have you ever seen flesh, dead flesh, return to life, Owen?’ Owen shook his head. Marty smiled at him. ‘Some meat is possessed, you know. If a live animal is used as part of a satanic ritual at any point during its life, when it dies its flesh lives on to do the devil’s work. After all, the devil’s work is never done.’
As he finished speaking he stepped sideways to reveal a large chunk of fleshy meat on the chopping board. It was about the size of a cabbage. Everyone stared at it. They were all silent. Slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly, the meat shuddered. Owen blinked to make sure that his eyes were clear and not deceiving him. After a couple of seconds it shuddered again, but this time more noticeably. It shivered as though it were too cold, and then slowly, painfully, began to crawl across the table. It moved like a heart that pumped under great duress, a struggling, battling, palpitating heart.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/nicola-barker/love-your-enemies/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Nicola Barker
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: From the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker, the short stories in ‘Love Your Enemies’ present a loving depiction of the beautiful, the grotesque and the utterly bizarre in the lives of overlooked suburban Britons.Layla Carter, 16, from North London, is utterly overwhelmed by her plus-size nose. Rosemary, recently widowed and the ambivalent owner of a bipolar tomcat, meets a satyr in her kitchen and asks, ‘Can I feel your fur?’In these ten enticingly strange short stories, a series of marginalised characters seek truth in the obsession and oppression of everyday existence, via a canine custody battle, sex in John Lewis and some strangely expressive desserts.