Lurking in the Bushes

LURKING in the shadow of some bushes, Jim peered through the net curtains. He broke cover and crouched under the slightly ajar window, straining to hear what they were saying inside. Harry, facing inwards, was gesticulating, speaking just below the level of the TV. The subject was Isabelle, judging by the use of her name. Ellen was listening intently, fidgeting a little, and Jim fixed his eyes on her. Then she moved to one side and was hidden by a vase of flowers. The lights were low, cosy.

Briony came in, put down her book and asked to watch ‘The Simpletons’.

‘You can watch it tomorrow,’ said Harry. ‘Ellen and I are talking. Please go back to bed.’

Briony held out the book. ‘I want Aunty Ellen to read to me.’

Ellen offered a hug and Briony ran to her with a squeal. ‘Yeah!’

‘Not tonight,’ Harry insisted. ‘She’ll read to you tomorrow. Two stories.’

Briony went stomping off. ‘It’s always tomorrow, never today.’

Harry resumed his conversation, but the door reopened and Briony stepped back in. ‘But Ellen will be at Granddad Miles’s tomorrow.’

Jim stood up, but thought better of it. That last piece of news interested him.

‘Go to bed, please darling,’ Harry pleaded, more tenderly than usual because Ellen was there. Ellen shifted from one foot to the other in a kind of childish dance, shrugging at Briony, who pointed to her book.

‘I’ll come and tuck you in in ten,’ said Harry. ‘Mummy’ll be home soon and give you a big kiss.’

‘She said I can use her iPod so I’m taking it,’ said Briony and left.

Harry turned up the lights and went to the drinks cabinet. While Harry’s back was turned, Jim found a better position to spy on Ellen. In her office clothes she was not the tomboy he’d always known: now he was losing her to womanhood and the world. Stylish, yes; sweet, always; unattainable, of course. It was imperative to renew contact before the special link was lost.

Suddenly she crossed the room and pushed open the window. Jim ducked sideways and his knee sank in the rosebed. Instinctively, he grasped a stem and had to stifle a yelp.

‘What is it?’ asked Harry, handing a drink to Ellen.

Ellen sniffed at the air. ‘It’s a lovely evening. I feel like going for a walk.’

‘Oh Ellen, please, can’t we talk? You know I can’t go out until Izzy gets back.’

Ellen slouched across the sofa and put her bare feet on one of the arms. ‘The Simpletons’ came on and she turned the volume up. Harry brought over a chair and sat on it back to front. Unable to gain her attention, he began to massage the joints of her toes, applying pressure here and there with the careful demeanour of a chiropodist. Jim boiled with rage to see the man he hated touch the girl he loved.

‘He’s getting off on it, the dirty swine.’

To read Ellen’s distracted face was difficult and he wondered how he could signal her. She laughed with the TV, while Harry clasped her ankles. Then he bent to kiss her feet and she retracted them with a stern look.

Harry picked up the remote control. ‘Ellen, we must talk.’

A ridiculous sound trumpeted out, then repeated. Harry answered his mobile phone. ‘Can’t it wait? … No, I suppose I best come over. Give me twenty mins … All right, fifteen.’

Jim heart sank as he skulked back to the safety of the rhododendron bush, shaking his head. ‘It figures it would be something like this.’

A light went off in next door’s living room and someone appeared upstairs, closing curtains. Jim breathed deeply. A sense of having been there before, or always, ran through him, and he readjusted his eyes to the pinky orange glow of the streetlamps. It was a lovely evening: Ellen was right about things like that. For a moment he thought of walking off, with no memories, to the woods, or to the most rundown part of the city, where he could feel at home, lost again.

Harry went to retrieve his briefcase from the back of the room, snapped it shut and tried to look Ellen in the eye. But she was now sulky. Standing over her he said, ‘Won’t be very long. A problem at the site … I must speak to you tonight. Don’t leave.’

At the door he added: ‘I’m sorry, please. You will keep an eye on Briony?’ He blew a kiss and exited the house in great haste, hardly giving Jim time to hide; leapt in the open top Mercedes parked nearby and squealed off.

An overpowering smell aroused Jim: he had forced himself into a lavender bush. Brushing off his coat, he approached the open window and crouched beneath it. The TV was still on at low volume. Ellen was staring into space and appeared to melt into a different person. After a minute or two she took a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket and began to read.

Casting for her attention, Jim murmured like a ghost. ‘An insolent serenity played on her lips.’

Ellen started, then looked at the window and thought she’d imagined it. She muted the TV and read for a minute more, turning the paper over and back again. Jim heard the dearest, most intimate sound known to him, through heightened sensing: the sound of Ellen crying. Now he spoke clearly and she jumped.

‘Harry wants both my sisters.’

Ellen swept aside the net curtain and looked down at Jim.

‘You gave me the fright of my life. How on earth did you get there?’

Jim entered the room in a single bound and gave an all-encompassing cuddle to Ellen. ‘Yes, I wouldn’t mind a beer.’

Ellen scanned her mind for likely consequences of this unexpected visitation. ‘A beer. I’ll see if Harry’s …’ She hesitated before going to the kitchen. ‘How long were you there? You can’t stay here.’

‘Don’t I deserve more of a welcome that that?’

Ellen rifled distractedly through a stack of envelopes and papers on the lower rungs of the coffee table. ‘They’re not there,’ she said, upset. ‘I called by after work. Harry said there were more letters for me.’

Jim pulled her into another hug and kissed her forehead. ‘You mustn’t frown.’

She broke free and snuffled down the last of her tears. ‘I’ll get you that …’ As she left the room, Jim called after her —

‘Didn’t you even wonder what had become of me?’

Ellen returned with a bottle of beer and handed it to Jim, along with an opener. He took the top off with his teeth.

‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said Ellen, wiping her eyes on her sleeves.

A joyous smile spread across Jim. ‘You care about me! That’s all I need to know.’ He took a huge gulp from the bottle, spilling froth on the carpet. ‘What’s that note say? Can’t I put it right? Huh? I can’t bear to see you cry.’

‘It’s a suicide note, seeing as you ask. And no, not mine, and not Stu’s, not Lucy … not anyone you know.’

‘Perhaps I know more than you imagine.’

‘Well, it’s a love letter, actually, not a suicide note. He says he loves me more than life itself … But I’m not the person he thinks I am, and I’m not used to feeling like this. I don’t know what to do.’

‘Are you sure about that?’

1. Swirl

Greg always seemed a bit of a nasty bloke at heart. He would turn sarcastic and try to tell bleak jokes, which no one got. This developed into a liking for showing people up to themselves. At school once, when the English teacher was out of class a while, getting books or something, a discussion sprang up as to what it must have been like to be the one who actually dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima. Everyone pretended to be outraged at the thought, even the bullies. Greg surfaced from his brown study and stunned them all with: ‘I’d have enjoyed it.’

A shocked silence ensued, then a great clamour, with the most popular girls in particular damning Greg forever as a sick and rogue male. But Greg was already aware of the difference between what people say and what they do. They so often ‘cared’ about hypothetical situations, instead of real ones. The extroverts who acted the most offended were unconvincing. Greg kept his real feelings to himself, even when picked on for ridicule. He was impatient when people failed to grasp complexity, and sensitive to being misunderstood – yet he contributed to that difficulty by hiding his feelings: thereby failing to grasp his own context.

When push came to shove, and the chance to bully someone presented itself, his instincts always led him towards being noble and taking the side of the underdog. Or to be more precise, he learned within seconds of starting to bully that he didn’t like the person that was. In his final year at university he became a pacifist and vegetarian. At the age of almost 23 he was still sulky and quiet on the outside, a daydreamer just like at school, and with the same old sudden leaps in volume that gave the lie to anyone’s description of him as shy.

It was a spring morning, fresh but damp outside, and Greg was stuck in an office in Piccadilly, where he had worked for several weeks. Ellen had told him of the vacancy and talked him into applying, after inquiring of her sister’s fiancé Harry, one of the directors. Greg’s job title, which would once have been ‘Clerk’, now was something baffling, and he had already forgotten it. His fairly incomprehensible task involved what they called ‘BLOT Sampling’, and varied little from day to day. Basically, it was fiddling about on a computer keyboard, using lots of function keys, while alternately staring at the screen and looking down at a powder blue form from a never-ending pile to his right.

He sat stiffly at his desk in a black charity shop suit, white shirt with ill-fitting collar, too big, and a thin creased tie that made him feel twelve years old and caught in a noose. Tensely he savoured a rare luxury: a few minutes with no one watching, just peace and quiet. With a blue sheet in front of him, his eyes focussed in and out on the firm’s name printed at the top: ‘Launder & Rash PLC’. Beyond knowing that his job was something to do with land value and conveyancing, Greg took no further interest in it, finding it utterly tedious – a kind of punishment for lost youth.

— Cor, I don’t arf identerfy wiv every last fing it embodieth … Yer could say, if yer cud be bovvered: ‘I am at one wiv it.’ Her her.
He peered at his watch and idly followed the second hand ticking round. Precious time. His thoughts returned to their home perch: a snapshot of Ellen, one of a collection of cherished images – her cheeky face, imp of the trees, and her sexy ankles and … yes – the wind in the leaves.

The great lumbering yuppie-like Data Collector known as ‘BJ’ burst in and announced loudly: ‘I hate women.’

‘We hate you too,’ replied prim young Angela, bringing in her coffee.

Sandra Perkins called over from the photocopier, ‘Can’t take our superior intelligence!’

‘So poke me with a stick and put me in filing,’ rejoined BJ.

Suddenly everyone was back. Thirty-two year old Mrs Hornrimmel entered and spoke about the office party that evening, which was to celebrate the successful merger of ‘Launder’ and ‘Rash’. Greg gathered that Harry Launder — that is, Ellen’s older sister Isabelle’s fiancé — had been in the land-surveying business (or something); and that Colin Rash had been involved with geological sampling (or something). And now they were joined as one firm. Launder had already been based in these offices, and now Rash was moving in too … Or was it the other way round? Anyway, the important thing was that they were now together and new frontiers were being opened up and the world was to be their oyster.

Greg stifled a yawn and let it drop down. It was hard to get working again when you let it slack. He felt so tired. His eyes. Always late nights, trying to reclaim time lost at work; and a nightmare getting up, alarm on snooze and snooze and snooze again, delaying to the last possible minute, just a little bit more, to stall the inevitable, the unavoidable, the excruciating …

An office party was something Greg would normally avoid at all costs, but for one thing: Ellen had promised to be there, she’d cheered up, she said, and wanted to see him. She sent a very friendly text message saying he was ‘a good boy’ for sticking with the job, and she was going to wear the silk stockings he gave her on Valentine’s Day. Greg’s heart raced to picture her in her new elegance, outshining everyone.

Greg chose a new batch of BLOT Sample forms for typing and stood them on the sheet holder by the computer monitor, to make it look more like he was working. They could tell how much you’d done because the computer logged it, but what the hell, other people were chatting …

In his fancy he was holding Ellen’s hand as they strolled by the wire gates into Glaze Farm animal enclosure in the middle of Bluegate Forest, the other side of Wavertree Hill. His heart was thumping its head off: a first date atmosphere of self-conscious fondling, gauche and childish, his mind captured by the little goddess. Saturday kids went sliding by in the wake of their mothers, with pushchaired others who squawked, adding to the sense of jubilation. Crows and frosty breath and an old man cleaning his shoe in a puddle … Ellen got excited at the sight of the cackling hens and the gobbling turkeys, the rabbits that nudged against tufts of grass, the old devil goat with wispy beard. She tickled Gregory under the chin.

‘You!’ she giggled, pointing at the goat. ‘I’d love to see you as an old man. I can’t wait! You’ll be so sweet!’

Greg wasn’t sure if he liked that, but he did love her so. She ran up to greet the bull, who came to the fence; she patted him on the nose and gazed in his eye. Greg took some photos. The sign said: ‘Beware of the Bull’. Ellen called Gregory to her and asked, ‘Which animal would you be, if you could choose?’

‘Umm, I’d be the one who can be with you,’ he replied, planting a kiss firmly on her cheekbone, and on her little round forehead. She received each kiss as an honour, with mischievous pout and faraway look.

‘You’re happy then!’ she laughed and pulled Greg into a hug, tightly, for fear of slipping away.

She ran into the pine wood, sleigh bells tinkling on her haversack. They sat on a fallen tree and Ellen smoked a cigarette while Greg sketched in his notebook —

 

     Ellen’s bells,

her absolute lack of worry on heaven face

     half-disappeared in a world of liquid.

     She slaps each foot down lightly,

with nowhere particular to go,

yet glad to go there if it’s important to me.

(I end up finding it important only because

she honours it.)

 

She tried to grab the notebook. ‘Come on, show me!’

Greg wouldn’t let her see it and she pretended to sulk. Then she led the way to the kiddy playground, looking like a delicate little naughty tough hippy street urchin. On the other end of the seesaw she was just like a child. They slid the slides and swung the swings, and climbed aboard the shuttlecock roundabout, facing each other on opposite sides, blowing kisses while it spun. The world blurred and screamed away. Ellen had a laugh that hooted and and chimed and sprayed finely onto Greg’s ears, before settling on the ground, and sending his eyes to the sky —

 

     Life is a swirl and a big toothy grin,

     an eyes closed wonder to behold

     Oh yes it is, oh yes it is

     eyes they close as the wonders unfold

 

Her legs stretched towards him — ‘Ankles!’ — Ellen lay back, hair streaming out: an impish laugh and dipping eyes, melting in the moment, leaving all else an eternity behind …

The slam of a filing cabinet brought Gregory back with a jolt. He immediately pretended to study a yellow triplicate form, and suppressed a sigh as he slithered its itch-dry carbonless coating through his fingers. There was a lump in his throat and he desperately swallowed back tears not to flood his eyes. It’s hard to look like you’re working while daydreaming – and that was all he could do today. He consulted his watch again: another fifty minutes until lunch.

He spent four minutes replacing the thickly folded wodge of forms someone had wedged under the desk leg to stop it wobbling. And someone had put a leaky Araldite glue tube in his grey plastic desk tidy and it had made the paperclips all sticky and disgusting, with most of them gummed hard together in the tray. He spent six minutes cleaning it with a scrap of paper, and separated out the clean paperclips; then spent a further three minutes wiping his fingers. Now it was long enough since his last visit to go to the loo again.

When he came back, Mrs Hornrimmel turned to him, bearing ‘Isn’t he sweet?’ on her brow. Greg was ‘Walter Mitty’ to her, his lapses in attention easily excused with a nice ha-ha-ness — ‘Oh dear, he’s gone again!’ — plus she knew that Greg always got more work done than the others because he never gossiped. She told him that a wrong carbon, dated so and so, according to their numbering system, had been sent to so and so in Imaging, so could Gregory please go and retrieve it.

Greg plunged up the stairs, two steps at a time, happy with this type of carbon retrieval errand. He stopped at the narrow stairway window between the third and fourth floors and gawped down at the traffic in Piccadilly. The sun was out — amazing — and the streets were almost dry. Playing to his reflection, Greg pulled grotesque splodgy faces, mimicking ‘The wrong carbon, the wrong carbon’ like a parakeet devoid of meaning.

— Oh God, please give me a sign, like you used to …

On the way back down, he visited the posh executive toilets and locked himself in a cubicle for ten minutes, emptying his entrails of anything that would come out. He loosened his tie and collar. Time to space out …

Home, early that morning, before leaving for work, it was raining … Talking to his cat Wickie as he fed her: ‘You could go out now, but then I wouldn’t be able to let you in again, and it’s wet outside. But don’t worry, you’ll be out all day soon. We both will. This dump we won’t be in much longer, I promise.’ She thanked him by nudging her head into his hand …

As Greg washed his hands, the bigwig Harry Launder entered and slicked back his hair, quickly admiring himself in the mirror … He sniffed the pungent aroma left by Greg and immediately exclaimed, ‘My God!’ — turned tail and fled.

Greg blushed with embarrassment — or was it excitement at being unpalatable to the smoothy boss?

— How you can reinterpret yourself, and not know who you are!

Best not to be noticed, though; to be invisible, behind a cloak, is most desirable.

Back at his desk with collar tightened, blood in head and thoughts on ultra-speed, Greg managed to transfer five more telephone summaries onto the BLOT Sample System in record time. Then it really was almost lunch.

Angela asked if he was going to join them in the Artemis Sun pub. ‘We’re allowed an extra hour for lunch today, to get in the mood for the party later!’

‘Oh, I’d forgotten about that,’ Greg replied, uncomfortable with armpits sweating (his shirt was too tight under the arms and he felt like ripping it). An extra hour would be nice to spend wandering, or in the park now it had stopped raining; but he added, ‘Yeah, maybe see you there.’

2. For No One to Notice

Five minutes later Greg sauntered into Green Park with his khaki haversack containing two banana and peanut butter sandwiches, pens and an exercise book, plus a nasty little novel to help keep his mind elsewhere: Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars. Rows of office workers sat in deck chairs tracking the sun, and three joggers were approaching with dogs, obedient and humble. Greg dropped onto a tuft by a young tree and wrote —

 

Dogs run for sticks

     I couldn’t find mine

     If you ask me why I’m happy

     It’s cos I couldn’t find the time

 

Daydream fragments arrived all mixed up. In the distance, across the ferns, an image of Ellen flickered …

‘Greg-ory!’ she yelled, swinging a big windmill wave, and sprinted into Bluegate Forest like a springtime doe, following her new-found hippy friends from Greenhorn Commune, who were carrying great plastic bottles of cider. The sound of her giggles echoed back, innocent and cruel, leaving Greg to walk away in a fog, like a chump, expelled from nature’s trail, which once welcomed him. Suddenly there was something wrong with him — ‘Nasty little lonely, get off our patch’ — a return to the worst days at school, the unfair ganging up.

A brown dog with floppy ears ran to him and licked his face. He pushed it away and sneezed, looking up in dizziness, as its owner made haste. After eating his sandwiches, Greg walked down Piccadilly, crossed to the Mayfair side and searched for a leafy square to sit in. A sticker in the window of a Mercedes said, ‘I heart my heart’; a betting shop had its door wide open. Greg pulled out his notebook and jotted messily while walking, ‘People earnest at gambling.’ Flipping back a page he read: ‘I dread/long for all at once.’ The square he came to had its gates locked, so he walked on, his nose still in his notebook. ‘Granting the wish of a strange woman’ – that’s from something, a book, not his own; though the next one was: ‘Sniggering under your breath while you kiss.’

Outside the Museum of Mankind he hesitated; then strode in and went directly to the cabinets of shrunken heads: a whole row of them. They leered fascinatingly, like outsized golfballs, strung tied inside. Commuters sitting on the tube. This had to be his fifth visit.

Feeling faint with the sickly smells and low lighting, and on the verge of hallucinating fish-tank worlds, he left the museum and too soon arrived at the pub, The Artemis Sun, which buzzed with the clatter and chatter of drinking.

— All chaps and chapesses together, eh? Chappy chaps and seccy secs … Hmm, plenty of yummy cigarettes too. Lots of lung lashings, gulp ’em down, yellow ochre. And ye olde pubbe grubbe, with mince and puffed up pudding. Must we? Bring me Mortgage and 2 Veg.

A round of chuckles swept the saloon and semicoloned Greg’s snivel-drivel. He took a little bow, for no one to notice, and bought a pint of Guinness. The men continued their waffle, making jokes at office women, who tucked jovially into their beverages. Harry Launder was there with his fiancée Isabelle, talking highly important tittle-tattle, and Greg sat tentatively on the inside edge of their very smart group. An after-snigger of the toilet incident passed through the drawn curtains of his mind. His deflector shields on full, because he was in danger of being spoken to, in his notebook he began to scratch something to hang onto, with an air of ‘Mind your own business, just mundane things …’ —

 

The Great Defence Forcefield

     Writing down notes in a roomful of boring people

     separates you from the all-absorbing mind sponges.

     Your blood is in your head, and it’s all your own ~

     that is to say, up to you.

 

— Maybe I’m narrow minded. If I don’t want this job, get out and make something of yourself, maan. I mean myself. Herself. You dirty commie rat. You blistering … But I need the money, I’m nailed in. Not forever, though. I won’t be with these people much longer, I’m sure of it. I’m making my mind up … It’s a pity I despise the people I work with. But how do I get money if I think I need it, to get away from all this it makes me do?

—   Of course, all you have to do is, um …

He blushed. They were talking about him.

—   What? They can’t be talking about … that?

Greg carried on scribbling, on the verge of a real solution … but he lost the thread.

‘Oh yes, so they are!’ cried Gloria Rowe, followed by a tittering.

Everyone was staring at Greg, who flushed, his face locked in throbbing red.

‘His ears are moving!’ declaimed black-bearded Dave Garfield, charmed.

‘Good Lord, so they are,’ director Harry Launder affirmed with genuine surprise, prompting everyone to peer more closely.

Greg monitored the scene from very far off, swallowing a low growl, while his neck started thumping. His ears suddenly had a life of their own, crunching in slow time, rhythmically back and forth like radars, spurred on by the embarrassment potential of his predicament, and the desire to gallop out of there.

The well-groomed Data Collector known as BJ reached out and touched the top of Greg’s ear, making a sizzling sound.

His colleagues were in stitches.

3. The Rubbish of Everyday Life

‘I HEAR you’re our artist,’ Harry Launder said to Greg, interrupting him further. While Greg scoured for a reply, Harry resumed talking to his fiancée, showing her a wad of estate agent particulars for houses.

For a few minutes, Greg wondered what good might come of staying, but went anyway to buy another pint; then dithered by the fruit machine on the way back, pretending to be interested when the barman came over and quickly shoved lots of coins into it.

That was too boring, so he sat at an empty table and spent a minute demonising the eyes of the ‘page two girl’ in a drink-stained copy of ‘The People’s Mimic’. Then he wrote in his exercise book for a few minutes, seeming to get annoyed at something; he tore out a couple of pages and put the exercise book back in his bag, reassembled the newspaper and stood up. The Launder and Rash chatter had increased considerably, so he thought it safe to return to his former position; but took the newspaper with him, in case protection from questioning was needed.

Harry immediately collared him.

‘They say it’s good to have a creative or two in the office. Keeps morale up or something. It can even boost productivity in the long run apparently. I once fancied myself a writer, even wrote a few pages. Got as far as chapter eight. Or nine. Anyway, long chapters, lots of ideas and … far too many I expect. A very elaborate plot about the Great Pyramid and wormholes in outer space and time travel and … tons of stuff. I’ve forgotten it now, of course. Bloody rubbish! All these bloody aliens running about everywhere, causing havoc. Eventually it felt ridiculous inventing names for all the characters. D’you know what I mean? Thank heaven I saw sense and let it go at that. Isabelle would never of put up with me if I was some lurid science fiction writer. What are your themes, Gregory?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘In your paintings.’

Greg laughed and flipped back a diffident mumble, with a devilish grin. He gave up pretending to read the newspaper and put it on a stool. He was now quietly sozzled. Sunlight flickered through the bevelled windows as a bus and then a slow lorry passed, and the squares of red glass were like rubies, and the blue like sapphires. An idea came to him, and he started to write it down in his pocket notebook, but noticed Harry watching him. So he stopped writing and swigged his Guinness.

‘What do you keep writing in your notebook?’ asked Harry.

‘Just, um … The rubbish of everyday life.’

‘Will our conversation get a look in?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Have you met my fiancée?’

Greg smiled at Isabelle, expecting her to be a snooty cow. She looked inquisitively back, with the tiniest hint of something opening up like a trapdoor, which snapped shut. What was it? Almost like sympathy. Greg gave her a powerful startled look, which excited him, and she saw it. Perhaps Harry did too. But what did it mean? There was some mystery there, something that may even be a clue as to why Ellen had gone weird.

There was certainly a family resemblance between Isabelle and Ellen — they were sisters, after all; although Isabelle was maybe ten years older, and her hair long and black and Ellen’s short and fair. Their eyes were different too: Ellen’s being green with a hint of brown, and Isabelle’s a misty grey blue. What they shared was the same cheekbones and aspects of some haughty elegance – and a slender neck. Their noses bore some resemblance, but Ellen’s was somehow a bit cheeky and more childish, with a little turn-up on the end.

As the conversations continued, Greg, with peripheral vision, tried to discover more about Isabelle from her poise, her silence and body language; or the vibe coming off her breathing or something.

Ellen had always been rude about her older sister, dismissing her as prudish, unadventurous, a party-pooper. Yet he was sure he could glimpse in Isabelle some of what Ellen was now trying to become.

— She thinks she has to grow up, that’s it. Her role model will be her older sister — she hasn’t seen her mother in years. And her friends are mostly younger or the same age. Is Ellen really that obvious? Lately she’s been spending a lot of time at Isabelle’s, not just babysitting Briony. She can’t be there for Harry Launder, so presumably she must want to be around Isabelle, for some reason. Isabelle’s a ballet teacher after all, and Ellen has always been a natural at ballet.

Greg suddenly became scared of Isabelle’s older sophistication, panicking that she may be reading him, without him realising; seeing right through to his thoughts. Was that not her scrutiny he felt, like electro-static? Ellen had perhaps told her all about him … Surely they were not that close, thought — no, not at all. But females always talked, at some point, about their love lives …

He dared not look down at Isabelle’s black-stockinged ankles, even surreptitiously; yet he felt irresistibly drawn to do so. Gluing his gaze to the edge of the table, he tried to see Isabelle’s legs without using his eyes, summoning extra perception. He opened his eyes …

— Oh my God, don’t look again.

He blushed and jerkily caught Isabelle’s eye just as she passed a twenty pound note to Harry. She returned a warm smile, somewhat maternal, and Greg’s heart flapped nervously in its socket. He turned and almost knocked his drink over, rapidly catching it in time; then ruffled his hair to disguise his fluster. They must think him a child.

— She’s gorgeous, like a fairy tale queen. Black hair and white skin. I always thought she was a nasty bitch. Maybe she is, but she seems to suddenly fancy me, and she’s not even trying to hide it. Is it a trick? … Perhaps she does it to all men, perhaps it’s my turn. Doesn’t she realise Harry is watching?

‘Yes,’ confirmed Harry, handing the twenty pound note on to Dave Garfield who was about to go to the bar.

Slurring his words a little, Harry resumed his earlier attempt to talk to Greg —

‘Come on Gregory, don’t be shy. Let’s hear what you’re made of. Show us the cut of your jib.’ He jabbed Greg in the ribcage with a finger.

Everyone at the table tuned in. Greg balanced his notebook on the arm of his chair before his hands began to shake; he interleaved his fingers and stared at them, praying for the loud chatter to begin again. Isabelle shifted self-consciously and checked her posture, reawakening Greg’s awareness of her. She was like a pale moody Ellen, and he was now sure she was on exactly the same wavelength he was, tapping directly into his mind — and his loins. She knew he was unhappy, she could sense it.

‘Let’s see what we can make of it,’ said Harry, grabbing Greg’s notebook. ‘Isabelle tells me you went out with her younger sister. Strange she never brought you round.’

Looking up at Greg with a peculiar glower, he swivelled his head for Isabelle to catch the short-lived expression; then smiled ingratiatingly at Greg, who shuddered slightly as if he was receiving a warning.

‘I hear you’re a poet as well as a painter,’ Harry continued. ‘Or am I mixing you up with Jim?’

‘I’ve done some painting,’ said Greg, wondering how best to get his notebook back. ‘But I’ve never said to anyone I’m a painter. Nor has Jim, as far as I know.’

‘That brother of yours, Isabelle, is a prize one,’ Harry scoffed to his fiancée. Seeing he had everyone’s attention, he elaborated: ‘I’m talking about Jim. He’s a colourful character all right — but that James Joycey gobbledygook he writes, I haven’t any time for that. That’s never going to inform anyone, it’s too personal. He used to want to show me things like, I don’t know, erm … erm — “And he went down a-mullagaroo for slither” or some such twaddle — “The hoary toads did perspire and wimple” or something … I’m sorry, it doesn’t cut it with me.’

Harry slid his new pint of lager closer, licked his wet fingers and flipped casually through Greg’s notebook. But he was already too caught up in his speechmaking, so he handed the notebook back to Greg — ‘Oh I’m sorry, I expect you’re a friend of Jim’s, aren’t you Gregory? That’s a new thing, Jim having a friend.’

Isabelle gave Greg a glance as if to say that Harry had to be humoured and not to feel afraid of him. Harry, cottoning onto this secret communication, turned to Isabelle and blew her a kiss. He dug out his wallet and sent BJ to buy another round of drinks; yelled to bring him back and augmented the order with a selection of snacks, which took a few minutes to organise — with lots of noise in the process.

‘Come on, read us something you’ve just written,’ Harry urged Greg, in his most sincere voice. ‘Today or yesterday. Hot off the press, so to speak.’

Greg’s heart beat in his ears as he jumped inside himself and slipped into the loud counterbalance of his shyness, surprising himself with confidence.

‘Actually, what you made up sounds more like something out of Alice in Wonderland than James Joyce. Okay, I’ll read you something I wrote on the tube this morning, squashed up against the doors, when no one would dare look at anyone else.’ He coughed and everyone perked up to hear. Mrs Hornrimmel looked slightly embarrassed; others were bemused, mildly admiring even, but Greg didn’t notice.

‘It’s called “Glued-up Animal” —

 

Flannel suit and ironed shirt,

glued-up armpits.

 

     In spite of your efforts

you have the arsehole of an animal,

     your genitals and pubes

     hang like a bull’s …’

 

His listeners mainly kept straight faces, though two half winced halfway through. Dave Garfield chuckled and started a conversation with Gloria Rowe about what different people would do if they won the lottery. This led to Dave asking for the drink-stained copy of ‘The People’s Mimic’ to be passed over to him so he could look up the week’s lottery ‘rollover’ prize.

4. Poor Cow

AS DAVE Garfield leafed through the pages of ‘The People’s Mimic’, out fell a letter, which his elbow knocked down the side of his armchair. One of the temps quickly picked up one of the sheets and straightened it out. Everyone else became curious too.

‘What is it Stella?’ asked Gloria, leaning sideways. ‘Let us know. Somehow make us less bored!’

The temp, Stella, held it out. ‘You read it, Dave.’

The whole party went quiet, all fifteen souls. Greg fixed his gaze on Dave Garfield’s lumpy nose, visualising black hair sprouting up around it and flowing to cover the entire face. When Dave put the newspaper down, Greg grabbed it and scanned the lead story about a mad gunman who ran amok, killing two people and injuring more than ten in a shopping centre somewhere in the Midlands. Then he returned to his notebook and leafed backwards through it, looking to see if there were any happy thoughts, or if life had really taken a nosedive these past couple of months.

Dave Garfield squidged on his plastic seat and cleared his throat. ‘Hhm. Okay.’ Unaccustomed to public speaking, he played nervously with the folded sheet before starting, and twice sipped some of his lager. ‘This is what it … hu-humm —

‘“I urge to spend more time alone, as if forever that way is desirable. But still I do not know nothing …”’ He stopped and nodded at the note, as if apologising for the poor grammar. Then went on, in a less stilted, but more silly, voice. ‘Err … “Sometimes all I want is people, but then they doesn’t exist.”’

‘Odd mix of literacy,’ slurred Stella. ‘What’s the handwriting like?’

‘It’s in capitals.’

‘Go on,’ said Gloria Rowe. ‘Let’s hear the rest.’

‘That’s it.’

Disappointed, everyone looked to pluck a wet sentence out of the blue.

Harry made to grab the note. ‘There’s more on the other side, you idiot!’

‘All right, if you like,’ said Dave Garfield, smoothing out the paper, ‘I’ll read the other side.’

‘It’s quite exciting this, like a ghost story at Christmas,’ said Gloria, cosily.

‘Let’s have a look, um,’ Dave Garfield sighed, showing a portly neck. ‘Ready? Humm … “This is not really addressed to anyone, but what is? It is not for me that I wrote it. I tries to talk to them that makes me unhappy, but they drift off not caring and I might well be the dead one here. I got no speck …”’

‘I wonder if she’s Czech,’ Stella interrupted. ‘It is a woman, isn’t it? And she’s young, isn’t she?’

‘How do you know that? It might be some fat bricklayer from Peckham, having a laugh,’ said BJ.

‘A woman can tell,’ said Stella, reaching for her cigarettes.

‘Trust BJ to come out with that,’ said Gloria. ‘Go on, Dave.’

‘Do we really … All right — “I got no speck of money, no hope of getting it, if I scraped my barrel bottom …”’ No one laughed, so Dave pulled his shirt back over his belly button and continued. ‘“I got no conferdence and I am grown ugly now …”’

‘The poor cow,’ said Stella, quickly silencing BJ before he butted in.

‘“… I cannot keep down job not even a cleaner. I am fallen to pieces, like old crisp packet in street. No home to live in and today the people where I stay are sick of me, even if they do not come out to say it in my face. I hear they want me go by next weekend …”’ A slight quiver had appeared in Dave’s voice, and he hastened his way to the end — ‘“I will go before that ’cos I hate my hole life and I want soon to die. No one likes me. I know how they call me Misery Guts when I not in, and in there mind when I am with them.”’

Dave Garfield put the sheet on the table and rubbed his eyes, then his beard. A tiny fart escaped him and he looked uncomfortably at his knees. Gloria pushed the table back and got up to go to the toilet. Isabelle took up the note, entranced, saying, ‘How astonishing. It’s like something Jim would do, write something like that, as a prank.’ Her eyes quickly scanned round the pub, pausing on one or two customers.

Silence fell over the group, and traffic noise roared in loudly when someone opened the pub door. People drank and crunched snacks, looked at their watches and at the levels of their drinks, trying to decide whether to have one more or make them last.

‘There’s a second page,’ said Gloria excitedly, having returned from the loo and pointing under the neighbouring table. ‘Look.’

Using Stella’s umbrella, BJ almost managed to get the sheet first, but Gloria trapped it under her shoe and BJ had to give up. ‘Go on then, jammy cow,’ he said camply.

Dave’s face suddenly flushed and he ran to the toilets, bashing into a pillar on the way. Gloria hurled herself into the vacated armchair and sank into it with a grin, putting on her glasses as it slowly exhaled. The mood of everyone was subdued now, receptive to Gloria’s sympathetic voice as she read out page two of the letter —

‘“My dog Sandy is my only friend in the hole world but he got sick and pooed on there carpet four days and I cannot pay the vet to get pills. They hate Sandy and say he should die, he is too old. When it was bad last time, there was a man Paul who take me in a car with Sandy. When Sandy dies I will go up with him, for now in truth there is nothing and no one and church does not help, though I bless Pat for her …” — it’s rather small writing — “… kindness. I am sorry Pat. The last thing I pray for, will someone truly come?? No one at all. That is all I want to say. I am sorry to some people, yes you Simon, that I am ending. You just bury me in a wheely bin, I do not mind. I forgive and will beg forgiveness Please Please God forgive me before I am finished … Paula.”’

There was a general throat clearing and Gloria wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. ‘You were right, it was a woman, Stell.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs Hornrimmel.

‘Poor thing. I wonder who she was?’ said Sandra Perkins.

‘Paula,’ said Dave Garfield, moving Gloria’s former chair.

‘She didn’t mean that,’ said Gloria. ‘She means, which one was she at that table over there – that’s where the newspaper was before. Two women and a man with a green coat brought it in with them. It was the woman sitting on the left, I’m sure.’

‘I can almost picture the woman who was reading it,’ said Mrs Hornrimmel. ‘I think she had …’

‘Yes,’ said Stella. ‘There was something about her, now I think of it. She had her head down and wouldn’t look at the others. She must have left the letter by mistake, poor thing. Maybe it was … I hope she’s … It’s a cruel old world when you hear about someone in that condition.’

‘She didn’t look that miserable,’ said BJ.

‘You’re a man, what would you know?’ said Stella.

‘Anyway, if she’s planning to top herself before the weekend, before she’s kicked out, how does she know the dog will be dead by then?’ asked BJ.

‘Good point,’ said Dave Garfield, with Guinness on his lip.

‘What’s BJ going on about now?’ asked Mrs Hornrimmel.

‘If only I’d thought to ask her how she was,’ said Gloria. ‘We’re all responsible you know,’ she added by way of advice, turning to Greg.

‘Perhaps she intends to kill the dog,’ said Harry.

‘How?’ asked BJ, indignantly. ‘Like, both jump under a train or something?’

‘They don’t have to die together,’ said Dave, ‘but it is self-evident that the dog has to die first, if …’

‘It’s not Cluedo, you know,’ said Gloria. ‘This is real life and a real person who’s suffering. Trust men to make a joke and a game of it.’

After another bout of time checking, and a few stares at boots or whatever — Paula’s fifteen seconds of respect — a new round of drinks was ordered to wipe the slate clean. Plus some peanuts, and pork scratchings for Dave.

‘What is it they say? …’ said Dave Garfield, lighting one of Stella’s cigarettes. ‘Women are the rubbish bins that take all the, um … somethings of the world.’

‘Something like that,’ said Isabelle. ‘Sorrows I expect.’

BJ asked if anyone wanted the letter and both parts were briefly handed round, with ‘kid gloves’, until Harry put them in an ashtray. When no one was paying attention, Greg took them, folded the two sheets together into a paper dart, and glided it across the pub into the cosy corner near the toilets. It landed on someone’s coat.

‘That’s not very nice,’ said Gloria. ‘I’ll be thinking about that poor soul all afternoon. Like a leaf from a tree, all forgotten and curled up and brown.’

Harry and Isabelle began to discuss some hold-up over planning permission; BJ tried to make fun of Greg’s scuffed and worn out shoes; and Sandra recapped last night’s episode of The Empties for Stella. Greg decided it was time to leave, while time still remained of the specially lengthened lunchtime.

5. Urchin Girl

AS GREG emerged onto Burlington Street, a woman walking by said to her companion, ‘I suppose it’ll be quite interesting to go on this handwriting course, it’s always fascinated me.’

— People don’t have a clue what they want from life. They fumble, they harm for nothing.

— I want a new girlfriend, if Ellen won’t have me. I’ve been getting way too serious for the kind of girls I like: fun-loving ones. They don’t want Misery Guts pointing out what’s wrong all the time. I need to get out and find some strong new blood.

— No I don’t, I want Ellen back. There’s no one remotely like her. I’ve been thinking too much about my failings, always thinking that nothing can be put right. I’m going to get her back.

He glanced around, taking in the street life of this opulent district. Mayfair. The pubs were spilling out with well-heeled strangers, people he would never know. Refined ladies in blue stockings slipping in and out of jewellery shops. Men who earned huge livings in unknown, unknown ways. Where were they going to or coming from? It was like a conveyor belt. To think he was in his own country, yet it seemed more alien than an alien planet. At least there you could ask what was going on. Here you couldn’t do that, despite no shortage of people. These people seemed to be in control — but in control of what? As long as you didn’t touch them, or anger them in some way, then they were kind of were invisible.

— And so am I. But I already know that.

— And yet you have to work in places where they lurk above you. How strange.

Greg wondered if he could mimic their confident stances and achieve a measure of their apparent contentment.

— If only someone could take me out of my life, to another one, so I could try it at least. I don’t care if she is older and posh.

— Oh stop it, you just want someone to run away to.

— Somewhere would do.

— I don’t think I could ever really go for one of those types, not even if she presented herself to me. There’s too much acting. They are the part, but I’d have to pretend to be it: I don’t know which is sadder. The thought of a twenty year old one or a fifty year old one is pretty much the same. Intriguing for a day, then just elegant and vacuous. The kind of crap I’d have to listen to . . .

— Maybe I would get used to it if she was nice to me.

— But she wouldn’t be. She’d just whine on all the time.

A sports shop passed by and the voice of a video promotion made Greg turn his head.

‘All you boys and girls – yes you!’

He narrowed his eyes and attempted to form an alien view of the town. The streets became dim and muddy, belying an absent confusion. The floodgates opened and hordes of strangely shaped natives bobbed and tilted at him . . . he would have to put off asking what it was all for.

Something called his eye back to the waking street. In front of him a girl was tripping along in her own world, quietly singing. Her hair was long and tousled, her arms and legs thin. Whenever she approached a kerb she skipped in time with whatever she was singing, like an Irish dancer. Her certainty about where she was going made Greg forget what was on his mind, and wondered what was on hers. In her pale blue crumpled dress she was like a street urchin. Impossible to tell if she was a child or in her twenties. Greg followed behind, trying to glimpse her face, fascinated with the roughness of her free roaming, and the way she cut through. Approaching the bustle of Regent Street, she sped up and he caught a quick sight of her very determined forehead. The other people in the street seemed shrivelled by comparison. Yet she was quite ugly.

— I will follow her example, learn her secret by assimilating it and apply it to myself . . . Oh to be cool, aristocratic and knowing like that! I must stop sifting through guilt and doubt tests: having seen how easy it is.

1. The Green Lion

IN THE Green Lion pub in Sandcastle-on-Sea some young rascals were causing a stir at the bar with the loudness of their talk.

‘Wha’d’ya mean? I ain’t changed me socks for three months, let alone three weeks,’ said Manky Man, with a snigger.

‘You’ll have to shave them off with clippers,’ said Toadus, on early lunchbreak.

‘I fear it could be worse. When I last took a butcher’s – just after the main crustacean period – me socks had merged wiv me feet, kinda absorbed like unholy relics. Sorely tempted to carbon date ’em, I was. Only ’ope they ain’t plannin’ to digest me boots wiv ’em, ’cos I owe ’em to this geezer for some pills.’

‘How d’you cut your toenails anyway?’ inquired Jack, the tall beefy lad at the end of the bar. Finding himself ignored, he glanced about and waved a twenty pound note ineffectually at the barman.

Manky Man leant against Toadus and whispered something. Toadus guffawed maniacally and hollered, ‘Line ’em up, put ’em in a skip and burn their remains!’

The barman told him to keep it down, though it was barely noon and no one was really in yet ­­- just an old regular with a betting newspaper at the far end of the pub, and by the fruit machine a gawky man of thirty with a face like the ‘canals’ of Mars, and a gigantic Irish wolfhound like a donkey beside him. The dog seemed the master, the man the pet.

Manky Man nipped outside and the ‘dog handler’ went to the loo.

‘That dog’s bigger than he is,’ chortled Jack.

‘Geezer’s in here every lunchtime,’ said Toadus, pausing for a deep heartburn burp. ‘And most evenings. He really is quite a prat … But he’s friendly if you want to talk about his dog, or, to a lesser extent, dogs in general. Have you seen the size of the thing’s balls? Look: they’re massive, big as your fist. Geezer works forty hours a week just to keep it in cases of dog food, and to pay for visits to expensive dog-tors who remove lumps of cartilage from its hind legs. He always talks about it, and desperately tries to extend any conversation that starts up, to bring in other dog owners – so they can all yak on about their beloved hounds. But even they get bored after a while and want to get back to their pints. Just imagine it – his frustration must be immense: never enough dog talk!’

A cruel visualisation had Toadus choking on his beer. ‘Someone should sneak in when the guy’s buying a pint and quietly chop the dog’s head off.’

Jack grinned. ‘Chop both their heads off and swap ’em over.’

‘Mmm.’

Manky Man returned smiling and nodded to Toadus. ‘Sorted.’

The barman put on a CD and a wild drinking song pounded out: Streams of Whiskey by The Pogues.

Jack’s face lit up. ‘Yeah!’

The barman finally noticed Jack and his twenty pound note. ‘Oh right, sorry mate. What can I get you?’

‘I’ll get a round in. Whatever these guys want, and I’ll have a bottle of Nukey Brown, no glass, cheers.’

‘Nice one Jack,’ said Toadus, yawning, a run of late nights catching up.

‘Yeah, thanks mate,’ followed Manky Man.

To Jack, that ‘mate’ was worth having, because he respected Manky Man for being highly unrespectable and offensive in society’s eyes. Jack’s gauche personality engaged little with people he encountered. He was a nineteen-year-old orphan who considered himself ‘naturally paranoid’. Half the time he hardly knew whether to stand or sit.

‘Come on geezers, drink up, I’ll get another in,’ he called across the bar, already having finished his new pint while the others had barely started theirs.

‘Not for me, ta mate,’ said Manky Man.

‘Yeah, you’re all right,’ said Toadus, feeling subdued. ‘I’ve got to get back to the workshop, cheers.’

Jack ordered another bottle of Newcastle Brown and called the barman back to order a whiskey chaser. ‘Get these guys one as well,’ he added in a murmur. ‘Paddy’s.’

As the barman disappeared to get a new bottle of Paddy’s, a gaggle of students came to the bar and left Jack sidelined in the corner. He tried to catch moral support from Toadus and Manky Man, but they were occupied, so he nodded ‘All right?’ to one of the students, who ignored him.

Manky Man and Toadus took delivery of their whiskies.

‘Cheers, man,’ assented Manky Man, raising his glass to Jack as soon as the bar was clear. ‘You should have!’

Toadus merely shrugged his forehead, and was just about to thank Jack, when the pub doors were kicked open with a thud, as in some Wild West saloon.

On the threshold stood a sorry sight for sore eyes: a greasy-haired, unshaven loon in horrible ragged clothes, with zit-pocked chin and furball eyes. He caught the rebounding doors with left foot and left hand, then booted even more brutally the door to his right. It slammed against the doorstop and bashed violently back, smacking him on the nose, which he instantly grabbed. He staggered in and dropped face-down on the carpet and kissed it. With huge intake of breath and eyes flooding with tears, his nose pounding, he rose, slobbering —

‘Jesus!’

Shaking out his legs and straightening down his huge flapping coat, he strutted over to greet the barman.

‘Halleluya!’

‘Get me a pint of heavy,’ he ordered, slapping a handful of change on the bar.

‘We don’t have “heavy”,’ the barman snapped. ‘We’ve got bitter or lager.’

‘Lager.’

The character pulled two packets of cigarettes from his pockets, flicked one cigarette out of each, then lit two at once, retaining one in his mouth to take a drag from, then swapping to the other and sucking on that. With the air of a connoisseur, he carefully balanced one on an ashtray and savoured the flavour of the other, while exhaling an enormous lungful.

‘I’d buy you one, but I’m down on my luck today,’ he said to the barman.

‘Two pounds and twenty new pence,’ said the barman, reluctantly counting the mess of coins on the bar. ‘That leaves you with eleven new pence to play around with.’

‘A comedian!’ said the newcomer, turning towards Toadus and Manky Man.

He took his drink and cigarettes to a table in the corner, extracted two music discs from his coat pocket and put them on the table, then swaggered back to the middle of the saloon like a gunslinger, stopping to scrutinise the design on the back of Toadus’s ‘carnage jacket’.

‘Hmm.’

The blood red leather jacket, mottled with black spray paint, had the resemblance of mangled flesh. Painted on it was a debauched-looking brown toad reaching through a lightning ‘S’ symbol; the name ‘Toad Squad’ was bannered across the shoulders; and in gothic letters at the bottom, ‘Freak out and die!’

The newcomer, who may as well be called Spotty Muldoon for now, moved off sideways like a hyena, eyeing up the ‘Toad Squad’. He wandered to the far end of the bar and casually slapped his arm round the old betting gent’s shoulders. Startled, the man looked up from his newspaper. Spotty Muldoon gazed into the man’s eyes and asked, ‘You know who you remind me of?’

Everyone’s ears tuned in, even the students’, but no response followed. Just a pregnant pause.

‘It’s Matthew …’

No response.

Muldoon continued. ‘Matthew, that’s who. Matthew, the only one of any consequence - today at least. He who set down: “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” I presume you had schooling?’

No response.

‘Shall I spell it out? “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?” … Still not twigged it? … “How long shall I suffer you?” ..?’

No response but staring.

‘Hmm. He recorded immortal words; but they evidently didn’t make it through your ears.’

He put his pint on the bar, extracted two new cigarettes and lit them, and proffered one pack, then the other, to the old man, whose mouth now hung agog.

‘New Testament, Holy Bible,’ Muldoon went on. ‘Ring any bells? No? … I despair, really I do. Matthew the apostle, that’s who.’

Locking his hands on the man’s shoulders, he planted a suction pad kiss on his forehead. ‘Jesus’s mate.’

The man yanked himself from the embrace, muttering unintelligibly, gathered his pint and newspaper and moved away with disgust. Spotty Muldoon flitted around the corner to the group of students, who were ensconced in lively chatter and laughing a lot.

‘See that?’ he said by way of introduction, as if they should comprehend.

But there was nothing doing there: they were too numerous and averagely constituted for his purposes. So he retreated nonchalantly, carefully lit two more cigarettes and sauntered back to the bar; retrieved his pint and swigged it; and installed himself on a bar stool between Manky Man and Jack.

‘Who are you lot then, when you’re at home?’ he asked, after a minute.

‘What’s it to you?’ Toadus snarled.

His back against the bar, Spotty Muldoon sucked alternately on his two cigarettes and contemplated the ‘vibe’ emanating from the ‘Toad Squad’. He had a feeling they might feature somehow or other in the day’s events, perhaps linking him to someone or something. His thoughts curled and drifted with the smoke as it poured from both nostrils as from a dragon’s. His acrylic brown trousers were too short for his spindly legs and billowed round his waist as he hoicked them up. From his coat pocket he pulled a pair of newly-purchased charity shop trouser braces, red; but they got caught inside - so he wrenched them so hard it ripped out the lining.

‘Nice shoes,’ laughed Jack, watching.

Muldoon self-importantly attached the braces and adjusted them; slicked back his hair; vigorously inhaled a chestful of smoke from two cigarettes at once; let it swill around like coal dust; savoured the dull knocking inside his chest; then coughed as if about to retch.

He adored feeling unhealthy, believing it made him alive and real, on edge like a warrior, or ‘up against it’ like an ascetic - with the magnificent illusion that it pushed him to creativity, while he suffered like an artist. Only his mind mattered, only what went in and came out, or what he perceived. His body was mere trash.

A soulful song came on and while it lowered the drinkers’ resistance, Muldoon began to strike poses: The ‘noble thinker’ … the ‘bewildered baby’ … the ‘fearless explorer’ … the ‘absurd hunter’ … the, er … ‘martyred seer’. Suddenly he grew hot and angry, with bulging eyes, and his thoughts took the form of a vivid speech. He should leave it all behind: withdraw even his withered corpse from profane gazing. Oh! the great tome he could write, yet chose not to, thereby punishing the philistine world.

With a great rush and pop, he resurfaced from his dank pond of thoughts and shivered like a wet dog, dropping his eyes onto Toadus’s quizzical expression.

‘No need to get like that,’ he replied to Toadus’s ‘What’s it to you?’ … and lit another cigarette, just one this time; and pointed at his stomach. ‘Nothing in there. Three days. Not a sausage. Don’t care.’

He extended his hand to Toadus. ‘The name’s Jim, by the way. Could say more, but …’

Manky Man finished his drink, whispered something in Toadus’s ear, said ‘See you later’ and nodded to Jack and left. Toadus had been weighing up his afternoon quota of work, thinking to make up the hours later in the week; but not so as to squander the time with another Sandcastle-on-Sea loony, however different and amusing this one might turn out to be.

Jim’s hand wavered before him.

Toadus puckered up his forehead at Jack, as if to say ‘what the hell’, and shook Jim’s hand. Neither Toadus nor Jack had yet encountered this particular ‘character’.

‘In a mood, was he?’ asked Jim, nodding after Manky Man.

The song now playing was slow and sultry blues and Toadus drowsed to it with slitted eyes. Jim sensed an opportunity and moved swiftly to talk.

‘All right, if you insist, I’ll tell.’

‘Whaat?’ Toadus spun out of a pleasant reverie.

Jim collected his music discs from the table where he left them and brought them to the bar. ‘There’s information here. But first, let me get the next round of drinks.’ He swept the eleven pence on the bar into his hand and looked at his watch. ‘Hold your horses, gotta pick up some funds. Wait here and … don’t do anything until I return.’ He closed his packets of cigarettes, placed them on the bar on top of the discs and ran to the door; but returned breathlessly to grab the cigarettes and leave again, shouting back, ‘You’re in grave danger: I’ll explain everything.’

As the bar doors flapped, Toadus and Jack exchanged glances incredulously with the barman, who examined the music CDs left on the bar.

‘What are they?’ asked Toadus.

‘Duran Duran and … Pet Shop Boys.’

‘Burn their remains,’ said Toadus, and ordered two more bottles of Newcastle Brown.

2. Where’s my Giro?

IT WAS late morning in the dole office and there was a queue at the kiosk for personal issue subsistence cheques, known as Girocheques or ‘Giros’. When the person in front collected his and left, Jim moved forward, handed his dole card to the Sustenance Enabler and expected a Giro to be given back with it. Instead, the girl went off and whispered to a colleague.

Jim attempted to elicit sympathy from the gruff faces behind him in the queue.

‘Funny!’

He shuffled impatiently as he heard the girl say, ‘It’s that bloke …’ He slouched against the counter, read the girl’s name from her badge — ‘Clara Renfield’ — and leant over, trying to see what she was doing. Her pleasant, round face and large breasts were familiar to him, but she was too snootily efficient for his entire approval. A man with glasses and bald pate, with curtains of grey hair running down the sides, and a small moustache, quickly poked his head out from behind a partition to identify Jim.

‘What’s going on in there?’ demanded Jim, rapping on the perpex shield. ‘What they saying about me? Someone telling lies?’

To the right of the kiosk, a door clicked open and the balding man emerged, a hand shot out to give him a bulging black file, and he said to Jim, ‘Would you like to come round? This way …’ Without looking up, he led Jim to a vacant desk.

‘Where’s my Giro?’ Jim asked, reading the man’s badge with a measure of distaste. ‘Supervisor J. M. Dent.’

Clara quickly served the remaining ‘customers’, closed up the kiosk and came over to the Supervisor, who whispered a few words in her ear. She pouted with annoyance and scowled and plodded off to the toilet; she was ready to go for lunch but had been told to wait.

‘Sit down,’ said Dent, scanning the contents of Jim’s file.

Jim held out his hand. ‘Can’t you hear my stomach? I can.’

‘First things first,’ said Dent, paying attention to a couple of scribbled notes. He struggled to slot back forms of various sizes, shapes and colours into the file.

‘What’s ..?’ He shook his head with a grimace. ‘Doesn’t need to be there, for a start.’ He extracted a long slip and threw it in the bin. ‘No good.’

Pulling out the sheets again, he leafed through them all with a frown, choosing several more to screw up and uncertainly replacing others. Unconsciously he fiddled with a wing of his moustache, which resembled a scrubbing brush. Then he tapped the file with his finger. ‘I’ve never seen some of these!’

Finally he looked up, with a shrug. ‘But then, I’ve only worked here eight years.’

Jim felt flattered and eyed Dent trustingly.

‘It’s positively bristling,’ said Dent, scratching above one ear.

Jim eagerly surveyed Dent’s remaining tufts of hair. ‘Oh it’s not too bad, you’ve still got some … Though it must be awful if you get in a loop of panic, I realise. You just keep losing more with the stress … I suppose you tried combing it over the top?’

Clara sat cross-legged on the adjacent desk with a beaker of coffee, and coughed briefly to announce her presence.

Venom rose in Dent. ‘I’m going to hand you over to my colleague.’

Jim suddenly felt almost happy and wondered at the strangeness of his emotions. ‘You going to try washing it again? I should be careful!’

Clara moved up behind Dent with folded arms. She was clean and quite new looking, with fair skin and a stylish curl of a bob of hair.

‘Is she your hairdresser?’ asked Jim.

‘She’s been assigned to your case,’ Dent snapped, ‘which is now critical. That is to say, discretionary.’ He murmured instructions to Clara and left. Jim called after him —

‘Thanks for cleaning up my file, Supervisor J. M. Dent. It was considerate.’

Clara dropped a bunch of keys into a desk tidy and sat in the main chair, ignoring Jim and impatiently rifled through his file. While she summarised items onto a purple form, he imagined what it must be like to have her as a girlfriend. He cleared his throat.

‘Are you going to … ?’ He mimed writing a cheque. But there was no reaction, so he looked around him with an abstracted air. Most of the staff were out to lunch, most of the unemployed had either gone home or to a greasy café somewhere, or a pub nearby. The Four Square or the Green Lion even, where Jim should now be buying a round. He stretched, pulled off one of his loafers, looked inside and refitted it.

At the far end of the office, an effeminate looking young man was playing an electronic game, while pretending to work, with a headset on. Momentarily, he looked up and appeared to wink at Jim, before continuing his game.

Jim brought his fist down on the table. But Clara carried on regardlessly, copying letters and numbers onto a second purple form. Then she looked up, pleased.

‘Finito. Why did you bang?’ Her accent was vaguely Californian, perhaps learned from the TV.

‘You were meant to bring me … my Giro,’ said Jim, sensing for the first time that something could be wrong.

Clara ticked a box with a flourish. ‘Yes, I’ve got something else nice for you instead.’ She took a rubber stamp, inked it, tested it on her finger, then pounded it on the second purple form, which she slid across to Jim. He picked it up with distaste, blinking.

‘For me?’ He scrutinised it and held it up to the light. It was boldly stamped in red with: ‘CLAIM TERMINATED’.

Clara hurriedly but neatly packed up the file and prepared to depart. Jim twitched into life, with a whimper.

‘Wait, wait, you can’t do that! You know that and I know that.’

There was a kerfuffle at the door: an unusual woman bustled in, wearing an orange woolly hat and lime green scarf and huge flapping turquoise rubber boots. With the appearance of having stumbled out of one of Wagner’s operas - mascara-d like a bumble bee and with thick fawn-coloured Looby Loo pigtails, her once pretty face scorched into red sandpaper — she lurched round searching for pals. Though she was quite thin, and with the prematurely aged aura of an alcoholic – the shape of her belly, when her coat opened, indicated she was heavily pregnant. Clara and Jim watched with fascination as she circuited the office.

Then Clara started for the exit, calling back to Jim, tossing her hair: ‘Too late.’

Jim hollered. ‘Treachery!’

Clara stops in her tracks.

‘What?’

‘The game is afoot! I challenge you …’ Jim smiled. ‘I want my phone call.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘What’s it called … you know — to put my case?’

Clara slowly shook her head, as if Jim was ‘soooo unfashionable’. ‘You want to invoke your final right of appeal?’ Her eyes shuddered. ‘No one does that.’

‘He wants his Discretionary Plea,’ she declared, arms akimbo, mindful of her increasingly delayed lunch, and of her friend waiting to meet her in the Igloo Café above Slurpsliders.

Jim stood up. Clara sighed and looked him over with disgust. He was haggard and ratty, with lank, greasy hair; his unshaven face anaemic and blotchy, like mouldy dough; his soiled old man’s trousers dangled from his waist, too short for his spindly legs … yet there was a twinkle in his eye, and a naughty boy grin. If he wasn’t so very unhealthy and unwholesome, he might, perhaps, almost be … handsome. Appalled at the thought, Clara dismissed it immediately. She despised all losers like Jim, in their long flapping overcoats.

‘My plea, that’s it!’ cried Jim. ‘Let’s do it.’

Clara pondered, and a cruel smile soon began to form. ‘Right, you asked for it.’

She returned to the main chair, slumped cockily into it and picked up the phone, quickly dialed. ‘Yuh. Is Neville there? … No, this is not Red speaking, it’s Clara, ground floor … Well, could you just get him? Thank you.’

She covered the mouthpiece. ‘Dickweed.’ She examined a couple of hangnails. ‘Ah, hi Neville, got a DP for you.’ She swung her chair away from Jim and raised her voice. ‘Yes, I know Red Stewart is supposed to, but he’s gone AWOL as usual. And now this … No! We’ve got to get it done during lunch, don’t want him hanging …’ Lowering her voice, she confided, ‘It’s that … You know, that one … Merrr, ’fraid so … Oh radical, I owe you.’

She cut off the call with her finger, lifted the phone and dangled the handset to let the wire untangle, then slammed both parts together with a crack, beaming with delight. A pen rolled onto the floor.

‘Right, that’s me for lunch. Neville will be down in zwei Minuten to hear your Plea.’ She gathered some papers, rose, then added — ‘Take my advice: don’t go making any personal remarks. He’s sensitive … I may as well tell you that Neville is “straight gay”. That is, he’s heterosexual, but believes it’s gay to be so; and straight to be gay.’

Jim yawned, showing his teeth, which were like plywood, to Clara. ‘I’m not interested in any of that stuff. I just want my money.’ Feeling weak with hunger, he resigned himself to more waiting, and more hoops to jump through.

But curiosity had overcome Clara’s hunger and she withdrew to a desk some eighteen feet away, crossing her arms in anticipation. She got her mobile phone out and grinningly sent a text message to her friend. Jim picked up the pen from the floor and put it in his pocket, consoling himself with thoughts of the coming night when he would be alone again,

The dole office doors bounced open and a crusty single mother bumped in, went out again, then with trouble forced a triple pushchair loaded with young brats over the threshold.

‘Leave it!’ she yelled, and a smacking sound followed, and then a brat’s yelp. ‘Bradley, no!’

The tall woman’s long matted dreadlocks, swept aside her face, highlighted the huge ring through her nose. Jim wondered why someone so attractive would want to look like a bull.

‘I told yer,’ the woman continued to one of the brats; then she crossed the room with grim determination, the pushchair in front like the cowcatcher of a Wild West train.

After the fuss died down, the warmth of the office wafted Jim into a daydream, where all manner of satyrs slopped about in mud, and there was not a single scrap of food to be found.

3. Discretionary Plea

NEVILLE GRIFFIN sauntered to the interview desk with a large packet of crisps. Dressed in a dapper suit and with teeth to match, he was actually a mummy’s boy who considered himself thoroughly modern, ready to become a celebrity at the drop of a hat. He caught Jim swooning —

‘Boo! Hi there!’

With eyes drooped and slightly delirious, Jim muttered to himself, ‘Yet another one.’

‘What’s that?’ cried Neville, with cheerful cartoon smile.

Jim sat up, pointing to a desk in the distance. ‘You were there all the time.’

‘Sure, always! I like to fool them in here, you’ve no idea. Catch me if you can.’ He held his hand out and practically crushed Jim’s in it. ‘Neville Griffin. Your name is?’

‘Jim.’

‘Jim —?’

‘You are?’

‘Err, Neville. I’m here to take your Discretionary Plea. Did Clara explain ..?’

‘Pretty much.’

Neville gazed at Jim quizzically, looking like a giant woodpecker. ‘About me being …’

Jim breathed heavily into his overcoat. ‘Oh that. Yeah.’

‘Well, that’s a start.’

Neville wiped his front teeth with his finger. Jim felt he had leeway: ‘Um, just one thing …’

‘Fire away!’

‘How long till I get a cup of coffee?’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that … So? Oh yes.’ Neville was pleased to see that Jim was listening. ‘Well, my partner and I … our characters have moved on … evolved.’

Jim pulled out his two packets of cigarettes, put them back and instead rummages to find a pouch of pungent tobacco, with pre-rolled cigarettes in it. ‘You don’t mind if I do?’ About to light up, he flamboyantly offered the pouch to Neville, who drew back, appalled.

‘Not in here, no, please. Put them away. Besides, you’ll ruin your health. Ugh, look at your disgusting fingers, yeuch.’

He began to punctuate his sentences by popping a crisp into his mouth. ‘Where was I? Oh yes!’ (Crunch.) ‘My partner and I, well … I might look male and she female, but we’ve actually swapped over.’ He waved effetely at Clara with a glint in his eyes and chattered his denture-like teeth. Jim lunged forward, picturing himself plugging Neville’s nostrils with corks, as Neville continued —

‘It was the first great thing we did, during an amazing bout of lovemaking.’ (Crunch.) ‘You interested? I always make a quick speech, just in case.’

Jim stretched out in a shrug and eyed longingly the crisp packet. Then coughed and spluttered and sat back upright. The colourful wino woman rose and danced a waltz with herself, half shot away, then tried to almost sing. Jim’s stomach gurgled like a drain, and he slurred, ‘I really must get some food.’

Neville was dreaming of better things. ‘Perhaps you think we’re self-indulgent after all?’ He saw Jim eager to catch his attention. ‘But we’re not without irony. Our first March of Conceit is on Saturday. Bring a partner of your choice.’

He munched two more crisps, then stood Jim’s file upright. ‘Now to business. Your Plea. As you fall outside the normal brackets for exemption, it’s your last chance to show that your claim for support should continue. Put simply, you’re not a single mother or proper wino.’

‘How do I know when we’ve started?’

‘Don’t worry about whether we’ve started yet and all that. My partner and I …’

Jim leapt up in a half pirouette, drawing an imaginary sword. ‘Cut off in my prime, eh?’

Neville froze, crisp in hand, before replying, ‘We don’t pay you to be lazy.’

The dreadlocked single mother observed all this from a row of orange padded chairs, while trying discreetly to roll a joint under cover of a ‘Big Society’ leaflet.

Jim now presumed the Plea had started. ‘I’m a groovy guy with a groovy mind …’

Neville ate the crisp, intrigued.

‘You wish!’ spat the dreadlocked single mother, who then immediately got distracted trying to quieten one of her brats (possibly that irksome Bradley again) who had begun to bawl — without spilling the contents of her joint-in-progress.

Jim strutted from side to side, flapping his coat, to explain his point. ‘Look, I’m a gross prophet in the gloomy wilderness. I could be a tramp like that —’ (he pointed at the self-dancing wino woman) ‘or a trollop like that —’ (the dreadlocked single mother) ‘but we all know it’s pointless. They’re already doing it. So why don’t I work in a nice little office, doing something useful?’

Neville was about to say something, but Jim hastily flipped his tongue to clear the nicotine dryness, and continued, not to lose everyone’s attention —

‘Because it’s not useful, and because other people will do it anyway, and because … I feel the hand of destiny.’

A gangling lad in overalls entered with a swagger, feeling cocky at no longer being officially unemployed. He took a numbered ticket from the dispenser on a pillar and compared it with the display on the wall.

‘Like the lottery, innit?’

Moving the self-dancing woman’s shopping bag onto the floor, he nodded and squeezed up next to her, pulled a tatty magazine from his overalls and gawped at Jim, open-mouthed. Neville examined the paperwork in Jim’s file.

Clara swallowed the last of a sandwich and pitched in with a delayed response to Jim. ‘Shut up you goon. You’ve been signing on for more than three years!’

Jim lunged about, savouring Clara’s disapproval, snuffling and scooping his hair back. ‘Ignorant rabble should shut up. I’ve seen what’s going to happen.’

The self-dancing woman, having just realised, tore a numbered ticket from the dispenser. ‘What you seen, you turd?’ she inquired, lifting her pigtails at Jim.

Jim was in his element, and even his stomach failed to register the picnic now in progress on the orange seats. ‘Listen, fellow scroungers,’ he addressed his audience, ‘who think you’re so cool just because … you’re not me, ha ha! … If you’re not careful, I won’t dream up a better future.’

An exasperated sigh encircled him and he felt like a star. His gaze followed Clara’s bottom as she strutted out.

‘Bloody cheek,’ said the self-dancing woman, practically choking on a gulp of cider. ‘Can’t call me a scrounger. I gotta bring up me child, on its own — and that ain’t hardly a picnic.’

‘Pah! Who asked you to spawn? Aren’t there enough already, half of them turning into criminals?’

The dreadlocked single mother got up, heaved her brats towards the exit, but left them and returned to borrow a lighter from the annoying git, who had on very loud earphones, ramming hip-hop beats into his skull.

‘Look, sweetie —,’ said the dreadlocked mother, luring her pregnant pal to the door with an unlit joint; ‘we couldn’t care less if you get your money, it’s dirty whichever way it goes. But there’s no mistaking: you’re a prize twat!’

The two women disappeared outside for a smoke.

Meanwhile, Neville had completed his appraisal of Jim’s file and told him to sit down. He tipped some fragments of crisps into his hand and looked at them. ‘Ever heard the phrase, “Those who don’t work, don’t eat”?’

Jim was outraged at the injustice and pointed after the two female ‘fellow scroungers’.

‘But …’

He slumped back down, with head in hands. He dismissed the idea of pointing out that what Neville and his colleagues were up to is not ‘work’ either but simple bullying, on the grounds that it would delay things even more.

Neville flipped through Jim’s benefit claimant history. ‘According to your file you been on Working Links, New Deal, Restart, Job Club, Training for Work … erm, Job Plan Workshop … Enterprise Allowance …’ He paused to wonder at the quaintness of the old-fashioned forms. ‘Community Programme and … Youth Training Scheme.’ Now he sounded like a policeman. ‘Rather more than three years, then. I can even see traces of other …’

Jim made a grab for his file but Neville grasped it tightly with both hands.

‘… dead-end trails. Things like NVQs and … Looks like you always dropped out after two weeks but kept on getting extra benefit. What you been doing during all that time, anyway?’

Jim’s colourful life flashed before him. He recalled the night before, lying in the park, inside a ring of trees, conducting the solar wind past the stars, beating his ears to hear the Earth heartbeat drum, the ocean crashing like cymbals in the distance and the leaves sighing with the hiss of cars all meshed inside his breathing … a melting emergence of unified being.

‘Having sniggering thoughts about your system.’

Re-remembering what was at stake, he beamed a weak smile and hanged his cheeks like a puppy. ‘Ooh, sorry mate. Oh no, erm … sorry lass! … I am so hungry. A stale crust yesterday, the last wipe of my margarine, an apple the day before.’ He got up, ready to return to the stage if necessary. ‘I live off bits of black air. But what dreams may come …’

The self-dancing woman burst through the doors, waltzed slovenly towards Jim and curtsied like Stan Laurel; the bottom of her old bag’s frock split, and she bashed into Neville’s desk —

‘Pop Idol. Pah!’

She brought up a chair and looked directly into Jim’s eyes, trying to hold his gaze, recalling the advice her old dad used to say: ‘You need more liver and bacon.’

Jim coughed painfully and she grabbed his shoulder. ‘Liver and bacon … bacon and …’

She lolloped out to gain floor space and delivered a lopsided two-step with narrowed eyes.

‘… Jazzzzz!’

Jim coughed more seriously this time, with a lumpy aspect, and the gangling lad put down his magazine and pulled out his earphones.

‘You been wanking too much,’ he croaked. ‘It’s bad for your chest.’

Neville, with head down, drafting his report, barked, ‘Oi, watch your language, you squit.’

Clara returned and sat cross-legged on a desk again, this time with a bag of doughnuts, watching and winking occasionally at the annoying young git, who tried to look up her skirt. She used to sign him on and there was a bit of chemistry between them, so he played to her —

     ‘Squit? What’s that s’posed to mean?’

‘Squid then,’ said Neville, and the git refitted his earphones and popped some gum in his mouth.

Jim examined the git with snobbish fascination. ‘What happened to him?’

‘One of our Livelihood Advisors rang his bell,’ Clara explained. ‘He went on our “Reboot your Life” scheme and came out of his shell.’

The gangling lad waved at her. Neville completed the sketch —

‘He used to squander time at the launderette; now just pays for a service wash and picks it up after work.’

The git yanked his earphones out again — they blared out harshly — and Clara added with a grin: ‘He puts his feet up in the evening, and rushes to the bank at lunch … He was once like you. Now look at him go!’

She took a bite from a doughnut, licking jam, and Jim made a slow play for Neville’s discarded crisp packet.

‘How we going to get you back on your feet?’ said Neville, moving the crisp packet away.

‘You should talk ’bout getting ’im back on ’is tentacles!’ said the annoying git.

     Neville remembered it was the same lad he shifted onto a ‘youth project’ some months before. ‘What you doing back ’ere?’

‘Come to get me Back to Work Bonus, an’t I?’ said the lad, proud of his newfound status as working man. ‘I’m a Shed Erector now. Potting Sheds mainly. What a lark. Not.’

Neville turned back to Jim. ‘How old are you anyway, Jim?’

With a wild contemptuous stare, Jim picked a spot, licked his finger and pondered.

‘I’m not.’

A sudden choking fit took him and he greedily gulped back shag tobacco phlegm; then bellowed like an ox, trying to calm his breathing. The self-dancing woman squeezed liquid cheese onto a wodge of white bread, and nodded to let the annoying git have a swig of her cider.

4. Signing Off

THE DREADLOCKED single mother re-entered the dole office, minus pushchair and brats, and returned quietly to her seat as if it was is in a theatre. She was chewing something and her mouth was now unaccountably filthy.

Jim mimicked a West Country teacher ticking himself off, with raised forefinger —

‘Now, Master Jim, ’s no good letting thyself go to pieces. Look at thy downtrodden slip-ons on thy smelly feet. Thy soles are full of toe holes.’ He lifted his leg onto the desk to show Neville. ‘You’re in dire need of re-shoeing, my lad.’

‘You’re mentally ill, matey,’ retorted Neville. Then, in accordance with his training, he adopted a gentler tone. ‘Now listen to me: get yourself cleaned up and get a job. There are openings with GasTel if you have keyboard skills. Failing that, there are hundreds of basic computer courses, take your pick.’ He slid over a leaflet, then chose another from a stand on another desk.

The first leaflet had a smell that made Jim queasy and he slid it back to Neville. ‘I wasn’t born to grind myself on the treadmills of drudgery.’

Neville looked at his watch. ‘God has put a slug in your heart, am I right?’

Clara moved to the adjacent desk and sat in a near Lotus position, finishing her doughnut. Jim lusted unbearably and his eyes flashedas he replied to Neville —

‘The devil.’

He slicked his hair back round his ears. ‘But seriously … I’m a poet and I’m looking for work.’

‘As ..?’

‘As a poet, naturally. I accept being an outcast, but one’s got to live. The food they throw out is all very well, but some things —’ (he made shuddery eye contact with Clara) ‘need cash. You lot’ve got it all stitched up.’

Clara swallowed the last of her doughnut and licked sugar off her fingers. ‘Spare us, please. D’you honestly believe Neville hasn’t got you sussed?’

Jim was really enjoying himself now. ‘You’re sexy! Could we meet up?’

‘Yuck. He’s revolting! Like a grotesque flea.’

Jim blew her a kiss. ‘Only with you around, darling.’

‘Spew or what?’

‘Her face is like a gibbous moon, a little chubby under the chin. I don’t blame you for wanting to be her Neville. How soft her belly must be …’

Clara folded her arms in outrage and Neville thumped his fists on the desk. ‘Right, that’s it, you’re being personal. Out.’

‘Life is personal,’ said Jim.

The dreadlocked single mother gave a snigger and wafted over to check the queue-counter, nodding at Jim, having suddenly taken a shine to him.

‘She looks ridiculous,’ whined Jim. ‘What’s she been doing, eating mud?’

When she returned to her seat, swaying hips as she went, he called after her, ‘Where are your suckling babes?’

‘Please be quiet,’ said Neville. ‘You can’t be a complete lunatic. Let’s get down to one or two facts. What d’you want from life?’

‘What d’you want from life – what d’you want from life?’ Clara taunted, with rising insistence.

‘A machine gun!’

Clara picked up her keys, whispered in Neville’s ear and strode towards the exit, with a look of amusement. Jim started to follow, but she exited and he dropped back on his chair with a sigh. ‘I could kiss her feet. The lovely Clara.’

‘You been rumbled, Jim,’ Neville cut in, clasping his hands like a vicar. ‘You’ve evidently been a professional, and far from easy to get rid of. Today then is an historic occasion, worth a few moments to savour the aesthetics of it.’ He picked up a small recording device.

‘Testing, testing … The Case of Jim. Despite an outward lack of direction — in his diverse cluelessness, in his shamelessness — there is the unmistakable stamp of someone who knows himself, a certain rightness in the wrongness …’

Jim took off his coat and jumper and scratched under his armpit, then wiped his forehead. Neville resumed —

‘He’s a post-modern work of art. Though his records stretch back to roots lost in the mists of time — grown into a beanstalk of unremitting evasion, I might add — I believe I am better placed than anyone in the Service to see consistency in the chaos. I can’t help but smile … Signing off, Neville Griffin, Track Record Adjudicator.’ He switched off the recording device and emitted a relieved chuckle.

‘Well Jim, it’s the end of the affair. You’ve been cut off.’ He straightened Jim’s file with a tap and closed the flap.

Jim did not react, but swayed silently for a few seconds. ‘I like the way you sound all triumphant, like it’s a game at school.’ Rising calmly, he leant over Neville and with both hands ruffled his own hair, shaking out a cloud of dandruff. ‘Remind you of anyone? Someone as they were leaving town, with sandals? Am I the only one left who isn’t shallow?’

Just then, the self-dancing woman yelped and started to sing again, and came waltzing across the room. ‘Slip sliding away … slip sliding away …’

Jim’s head began to thump; he had a lump in his throat. ‘Listen man, it’s not your money.’

His temper let go a flood of adrenalin and he became short of breath. ‘See if I care. If my penance is to work —hfhhh hfhhh — in some American — hfhhh — beefburger — hh — concern, then I say prove it to me — that it’s God’s — hhm — will and — hffhhh — not …’

Neville stood up and to shake hands, but Jim was too dizzy and nothing seemed real. The people around him were like plastic puppets; he snatched at the flesh of his left hand to see if it was still there.

‘Ta-ra Jim,’ said Neville, tidying his chair under the desk. ‘No hard feelings. I’ve enjoyed our little chat.’ He returned to the far end of the office.

Bellowing like a stricken calf, Jim unhooked his braces, unbuttoned his shirt and with the dainty air of a stripper kicked off his shoes, keeping his long-term socks on. He pulled off his shirt, undid his zipper and began quoting from the Book of Job —

‘My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome. My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. O remember that my life is wind: mine eye shall —’ (he scanned the office, pointing his finger) ‘no more see good.’

He stepped out of his trousers.

‘Hey there’s a stripper in the dole!’ the shed erector announced gleefully into his mobile phone.

Jim’s eyes flooded with tears, he took a deep breath and recited from Jim Morrison’s poetry —

‘Jumped, humped, born to suffer, made to undress in the wilderness.’

‘Nice shreddies!’ quipped the dreadlocked single mother, and everyone laughed at Jim’s filthy long johns. A hush fell over the dole office. Jim scoured his word hoard, like one possessed —

‘And if you cut me, do I not BLEED?’

A cackling from the annoying git made his head spin; speeding up as the wino woman went into a mutated Celtic dance, beating her foot and gesticulating —

‘Ah I loves jazz … What with me liver and bacon.’ She flapped her knees in a jig, hooting and pretending to play saxophone. Neville rushed back over and Jim took him by the collar, imploring —

‘It’s worse than ITV. I’m outnumbered. Tell me what to do.’

‘What would you suggest?’ asked Neville.

Jim took off his watch and tried to give it away, but Neville wouldn’t take it; so Jim put it on the desk —

‘Do with me what you will.’

He squatted over his clothing and emptied his pockets, placing earthly belongings on the desk: eleven pennies, a key, his dole card, the pen he picked up, assorted food and sweet wrappers, cigarette packets, empty tobacco pouches, matches … then he stood up. ‘Oh God!’

The annoying git, self-dancing woman and dreadlocked single mother drew in and swirled about, as if Jim was a maypole; then as he rose, tottering and stretching his arms, he saw himself being prepared for crucifixion. Someone took his hands and he shut his eyes in submission, as if to be bound and gagged and blindfolded. A wave of nausea and cracking vertigo engulfed him, followed by a huge yawn which overtook everything like an aftershock. Then, like a sleepwalker, he appeared to wake up from one dream into another —

‘That’s not me.’

He bowed and thrusted his backside out, farting noisily, and collapsed on the floor, writhing and chewing his mouth. The dreadlocked single mother, with a certain sympathy for underdogs, rolled him onto his stomach with her big clodhopping boot. ‘Take a slow breath, long, deep — good, now that’s it, there’s a good boy.’

He folded his arms under his face and gradually calmseddown, like a child not entirely sobbing for real. When he spied Clara bearing down, proclaiming victory — ‘How are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle!’ — he smiled serenely —

‘Oh it’s you, whey face.’

Neville whispered something in the shed erector’s ear, and they both pushedforward like bouncers. Jim hunched his back and became his favourite outlaw —

‘So you’ve got me. Finally tracked down old Jim.’

He was manhandled towards the exit in long johns and socks. ‘But Jim won’t be beaten. Jim’s a rogue male and will go to earth. Bide his time.’

They threw him out in the street, amid guffaws and honks and cheers. Clara bundled his clothes and belongings and chucked them after him.

‘Wasn’t kidding was ’e?’ commented the dreadlocked single mother.

After a short interval of stunned silence, normality was set to return in the dole office.

The voice of Jim howled back in, prophet-like, from outside —

‘Fear the lords who are secret among us.’