The Zoo Read online

  ‘I w-w-w-want a go, Daddy. Let me drive the car.’

  ‘There’s more to it than driving the car, Harry. It’s not for little boys, this is an adults’ game.’

  ‘It’s a computer g-g-game. Computers are for children.’

  I can’t fault his logic. Every wife and girlfriend in England will agree with him.

  The cat joins us, paws at my leg and then, resting its front paws on me, settles down.

  I’m tired from the night before. My body is a maze of aches. The inside of my head feels like it’s full of wire wool. I want to be left alone.

  I realise Sally has come in from work when I hear her tut behind me. She goes through into the kitchen and clatters around, then comes back into the lounge.

  ‘Can I have a word with you please?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ I reply without looking around.

  ‘Out here.’

  I look around now. Hands on hips, pulling off the angry school teacher look perfectly. I pick Harry up and dump him down on the carpet, shooing the cat away. I follow her through into the kitchen. She leans her elbows on the surface and talks in a hushed insistent tone that she is battling to keep down, because she wants to scream at me.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Letting him play that filth?’

  I roll my eyes and lean back against the work surface.

  ‘Fucking hell Sally it’s a computer game.’

  Her fists clench and unclench.

  ‘It’s a disgusting computer game. We agreed. We’ve got rules. There are things he can and can’t do. We agreed. We’re supposed to be a team.’

  ‘Get a grip. It’s a game. It’s just a game. He’s not hurting anyone.’

  ‘It’s a game where you can drive around indiscriminately killing people, running children over and raping prostitutes. It’s not something I want our son to see. We’ve discussed this,’ she is rigid with anger.

  ‘He doesn’t know what it means.’

  ‘Of course he fucking does.’ The fucking is a hiss between her teeth.

  ‘Okay. Okay. I’ve had a hard day. I don’t need this right now. I’ll go and turn it off.’

  ‘You’ve had a hard day? You’ve had a hard day? You’ve struggled to get through work because of fucking hangover. That’s not a hard day. Working in A & E is a hard day. You don’t even know the meaning of a hard day,’ she leans back, runs her hands through her hair. Breathing out heavily through her nose, almost a snort, she appears to be counting under her breath, her expression a flickering montage. Hatred. Anger. Disappointment. Love. I understand them all. Because I feel them for myself too.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I’ll go and turn it off and I won’t let him near it again. It’s not like he can’t see all this on TV anyway.’

  ‘Good God. I can’t believe that just came out of your mouth. You of all people. There’s a difference between watching a news report and glamourising it in a fucking game. You know this. Why am I having to tell you?’

  I just want this over. I just want to have peace. I haven’t got the energy to argue with her and inside I know she’s right. But there’s stubbornness too. A sense of injustice that she’s talking to me like a child. I am petulant and stupid and hungover and I want this to stop.

  ‘I’m going in there now and I’m going to turn it off and sit him in front of Teletubbies or something fluffy and nice. I’ll never play the game in front of him again. Happy?’

  She swallows heavily.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘no, James, I’m not happy.’

  I know she means more than this. I leave the kitchen before she has a chance to vocalise it.

  After work the next day. Everyone already shuffled out at 5.30. Just Collins and I huddled around the MacBook Pro. We run through the credentials pitch. He is nodding as I show each slide, saying okay to prompt me to move forward. I let him control it, can see that he likes it, see the earnestness in each nod of his coiffed head. I scroll though examples of past work and, while a video of some PR we got for an energy company is running, I slip away to the toilets. I lock the main door behind me, then go into the cubicle and take out a plastic sealy bag of chop and trace a lumpy line on the cistern. I’d called for it earlier. Feeling tired and weak and not knowing how I was going to make it through the rest of the day, I’d nipped out and met my man in a local car park. He pulled up in a brand new Audi RS3 and I started to take the piss out of him for being conspicuous, then saw the growl behind his smirking lips, paid him the money and fucked off. A couple of lines off my car owner’s manual and the day didn’t seem too bad. Now, huddled in a cubicle at work, I hold the bag up and shake it. More than half gone. Still, no problem, just got to get me home. I check my face in the mirror, hold open a bloodshot eye with my index finger and the world blurs.

  Through a world of mist I see the cubicle door begin to move. So slowly at first that I don’t think anything of it. Then it slams, my body jolts with shock and I poke my finger into my eyeball. Inside the cubicle I hear the window being opened. I inch over to the door and with a shaking hand try to open it. Can’t budge it. Locked from inside.

  ‘Collins?’ I ask, ‘Who’s in there?’

  No-one replies. I try the door again.

  I’m ice cold. The airs on my arms are stood straight up. Crackling electricity in the air.

  I’m frozen. I know that I need to do something.

  My breath fogs in the air in front of me as thick as cigarette smoke.

  I half-heartedly ram my shoulder into the door. Then the window inside slams shut and the door swings open. There’s no-one inside. I clamber onto the seat of the toilet and push the window open. It’s only about 40 cm deep, certainly too small for anyone to fit through, but as I peer out the boy breaks from the shadows and runs across the car park. In the dusk he looks back up at me, his face is all smile in the murk, and he raises his left hand, index finger extended, then is gone. I shout after him. Words spat into the growing night.

  This can’t be real. This can’t be real. Working too hard. Not sleeping enough. But, this cannot be real.

  I slump back and sit on the toilet seat. Hold my hands up. They’re shaking. Partly from the gak, partly from fear. I squeeze them together, compose myself and return to Collins.

  ‘This is looking good,’ he says.

  ‘Should do. It’s tried and tested. Is there anything you want to add to it?’

  My words are lies, trying to hide what I’ve just seen.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. She knows us. It’s more of an introduction to the others there.’

  ‘Okay. Set then?’

  ‘Set.’

  ‘I might nip over the road for a swift half. Do you fancy one?’ I can’t believe I’m choosing to spend my leisure time with him, but I’m pretty shaken up and can’t face going home, even though that’s exactly where I should be and I know it.

  ‘Nah. Thanks though. Going round to a friend’s for dinner.’

  ‘Okay. I’m going to stick around for a little while and answer some emails.’

  He says goodnight and leaves. Now I’m in the office alone, it suddenly seems dark and cold and I find myself shivering.

  In my private office I take the bottle of JD and a tumbler from the shelf and pour myself a heavy glass. Already the effect of the line is dissipating. Cocaine. Such a teasing bitch of a drug. She grips you so quickly, promises so much then leaves you just as quickly. A one-night stand of a drug. I tap another line out onto to my desk. Roll a business card and hoover it up, run my finger over the residue and rub it on my teeth. Chemical taste – the numbness of novocaine a petty insult at the end of it.

  ‘Time to go home,’ I say under my breath. Steel myself. Gulp the JD down. Squeeze my eyes against the aftertaste.

  The main office is lit by the glow of the MacBook Pro screen. I turn on the corridor light and then make my way over to the laptop.

  The
laptop is still showing the presentation. But in the centre of the last slide the words read ‘Your real life is at home and you’re here jumping at shadows. Fucking joke.’ I angrily delete them. Collins wouldn’t, would he? Probably would. But I’d have heard him coming back in. I hold down the power button and the screen turns blue. The fan whirrs. Without the glow of the screen the office is sharper, the shadows deeper, the windows gaping possibilities. I shudder. Run to the corridor, pull the door behind me, struggling to get the key in the lock. I have a sense of something behind me and can’t help but look over my shoulder. Nothing there but the canyon of the stairwell. I take the stairs two at a time. I’m out of the fire door, not even waiting for it to shut and when it does the clunk makes me start, stumble, then I’m opening the car door, falling into the seat, clicking the central locking shut. I laugh. Ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. I start the engine and make my way home on roads which are slick with rain and speckled with the spit of reflections.

  46.

  I catch my foot as I haul myself through the hole. Part fall, part roll through it and land on my back, wind knocked from me and eyes closed. When I open them I can only see white light and feel a burning heat on my face. My eyes adjust themselves and I can make out the shape of a chain mail fence stretching off in both directions. Slowly my vision returns and I am looking at an uninterrupted blue sky. I sit up.

  Dusty ground, a rectangular space bigger than a football field, surrounded with 20 foot high metal chain mail fencing. Baking hot. My skin is burning, literally burning. I scan the area for shade. There is none. A bleached rectangle with the sun burning down on it. I am a bug under a magnifying glass.

  Pull myself to my feet. Already my throat is dry. I am coated with a sheen of sweat. I make my way over to the fence, test my weight against it. It bends then pushes back against me so I jump up and grasp it with my fingers. The metal is red hot. It takes all my willpower to hold onto it as I heave myself up. About six feet from the ground, I can’t bear it anymore and let go, drop down to the ground again. The palms of my hands are branded with the hexagons of the fence.

  On the other side of the metal enclosure is thick brush, a plant I don’t recognise, too high to see over.

  I begin to work my way around the perimeter, inching along it, all the time one hand brushing the scalding metal. My feet kick clouds in the dust. The sun is a constant above me, draining me. Regularly I have to stop and sit, back to the fence, gasping for my breath, sweat in my eyes. I crave water, just a drop on my tongue, on my lips. I work my way all around the three sides. My tongue is thick, my throat swollen.

  About half way round my legs are too weak to continue. I allow myself to slide down the fence and rest there again, the metal hot on my back even through my clothes. My eyes drift shut and I can feel the heat on the back of my eyelids welding them shut.

  My body sinks down to a horizontal and I put my hands behind my head, lie back in the dust.

  I’m in the garden at home on a summer’s day, the sound of the hose filling the paddling pool, somewhere in the background Harry is chuntering away. Sally is laughing, beautiful, like a waterfall. A bee buzzes over my face disturbing the hairs. I’m in the hammock. The air is disturbed by the slightest of winds, which lifts the heat from everything and I am light in the hammock, the air beneath me weighs nothing and I’m floating. I could be hundreds of feet in the air. I have the impression that if I put my feet down I would find the earth had dropped away from me. This should fill me with fear and I am touched by the ghost of vertigo, but it is only momentary and I am at peace again. The hose has been turned off and Harry is stomping with monster feet in the water. I sense Sally next to me. Her lips touch my forehead like a butterfly.

  ‘Keep your eyes closed,’ she says. So I do, then she says, ‘put your hand out,’ so I do. She places a bottle of beer in it and the glass is so cold I nearly drop it. When I raise the beer to my lips it tastes golden and some spills from my mouth, runs down my chin onto my neck and I leave it there, the sun drying it in seconds.

  I roll my eyes under my still closed eyelids and the shadows of the trees above me are purple blotches on the inside of them. I peel my eyes open and the light is dappled though the leaves, a chessboard on my t-shirt. Harry laughs and I smile with him. Close my eyes and the summer afternoon strokes my forehead until I am half asleep.

  I jerk awake to the sensation of falling. Suddenly unsure of where I am and grasped by panic. Then I see the fence and the bone white dust and know I am far from home.

  Already my arms are burning red. Knowing I need to find shade I continue to follow the fence, convinced there must be a door, a gateway, another way out. Then I come back to the wall through which I climbed. The hole I came through is circled with blue spray paint, a rusty sign hanging next to it. I think the language is French. Spray paint stencils underneath, a rough approximation of a Cowboy, a Knight, a Pirate, a Soldier, a Lion and a Rhino. Then three large dots, making up a . . .

  To the right of the hole is a pile of breeze blocks, sheets of corrugated iron on the top. I lift the edge of one and roll under it. The shade is such a relief. A slight wind picks the dust up and tosses it around the space. Above me the iron crinkles and moans.

  The temperature begins to drop. I push my head out from under the shade and watch day descend the sky above me. The heat leaves as quickly as the light and soon I am shivering beneath stars.

  At some point I make the decision to clamber back through the hole and work my way back down the blind tunnel. Now I have a destination I’m not as scared by the fact I can’t see my own hands. I simply follow my shuffling feet as they drag me back to the ward, to the plastic sheet that is mercifully cool to the touch, that parts when I push it and gives birth to me into a world of fluorescent strip lights and tiles and dust and white coats, to a ward that hasn’t changed, to a group of people going through the same motions at the same time and repeating the same day.

  In my room I am mute. There are things I need to say now my voice is gone.

  I close my door. Sit on the floor in front of The Zoo.

  The skin on my arms is red and blistered. The hexagons on my hands charred black.

  When I find my words they are small, cracked and pulled from the darkness inside me.

  ‘Why did you show me that?’

  The Zoo says nothing.

  ‘What does it mean?’

  The Zoo says nothing.

  ‘Where have I been?’

  The Zoo says nothing.

  Frustrated, I climb onto the bed, not bothering to remove my clothing, and curl myself into a ball, hands tucked under my chin and knees against my chest. Shaking and gibbering and repeating the names of The Figurines as a mantra, while they ignore me and stare forward with their fixed gazes.

  47.

  The house smells of cooking and air freshener and home. Even through my cocaine-frosted nostrils it is enough to spark a cavalcade of pleasant memories. The hall lights are off, the dining room ones on, just a key line of yellow dissecting the corridor. I drop my briefcase onto the floor and hang my coat up. It immediately drops to the floor and as I stoop to pick it up I lose my balance and topple forward into the wall. Giggling to myself I hoist myself back up.

  The brightness in the dining room makes me aware of how fucked I am and how much I need to hide it from my family. I need to straighten my head up. Sally and Harry are sat at the table. Harry grins a gap toothed grin at me, Sally a barely perceptible smile, just a straightening of her lips. Something at least. Even more important now that she doesn’t realise I’ve been on the gear.

  ‘There’s a plate on the side for you, it’ll probably need heating,’ she says.

  ‘Thanks,’ I reply and stalk into the kitchen. The muscles in my legs are close to cramping. I am on my tiptoes. Grab a beer from the fridge and bolt it. Better if she thinks I’m drunk than high. Get another one out. I watch the blue digital seconds tick down as my lasagne heats. Taking a fork out of the drawer I join
my family at the table.

  ‘Hello mate,’ I say to Harry.

  ‘Hi D-d-d-ad, look at this,’ he’s holding up a teddy monkey. An ape of some sort.

  ‘Who’s that then?’

  ‘H-H-H-ector. He’s the same as the monkey we saw.’

  He passes it to me. I rub the fur on my face. Again a wash of memory.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one that s-s-s-s-spoke to me.’

  ‘It didn’t speak to you.’

  Sally grimaces at me.

  ‘You spoke to it, didn’t you?’ I say, conscious of softening my voice.

  ‘Y-y-yes, but it understood me, Dad. It knew what I was saying, didn’t it, Mum?’

  ‘Yes Harry. It certainly looked like it.’

  We eat in silence. Too quiet. I am aware of the sharpness of my jaw. I’m not in the least bit hungry. Every mouthful is an effort, huge in my mouth.

  ‘I’m going to put some music on,’ I say and leave the table. In the lounge I rummage about in the CDs and settle on Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left. His mournful voice follows me as I walk to the downstairs toilet. I take out the bag of coke and empty the remains of it onto the shelf above the sink. Snort it and rip the bag open, lick the residue. Wash my hands in the sink and try not to see my wild eyes in the mirror.

  Harry notices I’m not eating and stops eating his food too, pushing it about the plate with his fork.

  ‘Eat your dinner, Harry.’ Sally takes his hand, tries to cajole him into eating. He squeezes his mouth shut refusing to eat. She takes the fork from him.

  ‘Do you want me to have to feed you like when you were a baby?’

  He shakes his head, puts his hand over his mouth.

  ‘Come on, Harry, do as your mother says.’

  Shakes his head again.

  Sally asks for help with her eyes. I look down at my plate.