The Zoo Page 5

  ‘Actually, I’ll go with her on that one,’ says Dan. ‘There is something a bit weird about them when you see them all together.’

  ‘I can’t imagine them in a restaurant. No way are they conducive to a nice relaxing meal. We didn’t speak to each other for at least an hour after we left.’

  ‘Jesus, Dan, I’m amazed you don’t take her every day,’ I say, then laugh to show I’m joking. Lou makes a point of melodramatically punching me on the knee.

  ‘You used to know about Art, didn’t you, James? Before you sold out to the Man,’ she says.

  ‘Everything’s for sale, Lou. You know that. Even creativity.’

  ‘It’s not your creativity I’m worried about.’

  ‘What then? My soul?’ I ask.

  ‘Your soul,’ she confirms.

  ‘Gone years ago. A tiny blackened peanut is all I’ve got left.’

  ‘If that,’ says Sally and kisses me on the cheek.

  Later, in the taxi on the way home I’m warmly drunk. Sally has her head in my lap, big eyes gazing up at me. I stroke her hair.

  ‘They’re such dicks, your friends,’ I say.

  ‘They’re your friends too.’

  ‘Only by proxy,’ I say, ‘Friends by association.’

  ‘Come on, they’re alright. You like them really.’

  ‘They’re pretentious.’

  ‘They’re arty.’

  ‘My taxes pay for them to do fuck all.’

  ‘You’re just sour because they took the piss out of you.’

  We stop at some traffic lights. I look out at an angular city shrouded in mist. Hard frost on all surfaces.

  ‘Tossers,’ I slur.

  ‘Are you trying to pick an argument with me, mister?’

  ‘Yes, so we can have angry make-up sex when we get home.’

  ‘Oh really? I can think of loads of things to be angry with you about if that’s the case.’

  ‘Yes please.’ I lean forward and knock on the glass between us and the driver, ‘can you hurry up please, mate, the missus has got the horn.’

  ‘Oi,’ shouts Sally and tries to sit up. I hold her still, her head in my groin.

  ‘That’s it,’ I say, ‘Make yourself angry.’

  14.

  Beard is praying. Or at least it looks like he is. Hands clasped together, eyes screwed up, his mouth working quickly, pink lips moving rapidly and silently.

  I sit next to Beth at the table. She is reading a paperback, the pages folded back on the table so I can’t see the cover. She smells of soap. When she speaks, her voice is too small, like a child’s.

  ‘I don’t know how he can do that.’

  It takes me a moment to realise who she is talking to because she doesn’t raise her eyes from the book.

  ‘Pray?’ I ask.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she says, her voice so quiet that I have to lean in to hear her.

  ‘Whatever gets you through, surely?’

  She studies me, then closes the book. It’s a copy of ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’. ‘I would think that this place would be a recruiting ground for Atheism.’ she says.

  ‘I don’t think you can recruit for Atheism, can you?’

  ‘How so?’ Her eyes are clearer. Now they are brown and intense.

  ‘Isn’t it a reaction to something rather than a philosophy?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, it’s a negative response to having belief and not a set of beliefs itself, so I don’t think you can recruit for it, can you? It’s a not having something rather than a having something.’

  The way she looks at me I’m doubting myself.

  ‘What do you think the default position of a human being is then?’ she asks me.

  I try to think of something, something clever, something pithy, but I can’t. Shrug my shoulders instead.

  ‘You’ve not really thought this through, have you?’ Her voice has a laugh in it now, teasing.

  ‘No. I’ve not. Just came out with it.’

  I smile at her, a proper smile. Beth is reading me again. Her eyes narrow, as if she is trying to work something out about me.

  ‘Do you find that about being in here? That you can’t think things through properly. Like there’s something that stops it.’

  ‘The medication?’ I ask.

  ‘No. Well, yes. But more than that. Even now, when I’ve not been given anything, my thoughts aren’t quite all there.’

  I consider it. Beth’s hand hovers over her book. I don’t want her to start reading again.

  ‘If I’m honest I would say that I haven’t been thinking straight for quite a while.’ I gesture for her to come closer, as if I’m going to tell her a secret. I look around with theatrically wide eyes. ‘To tell you the truth I’m pretty sure everyone in here is guilty of not seeing things quite right.’

  I throw myself back in my chair and wiggle my eyebrows up and down. She snorts with laughter. The whole room turns to us. It feels naughty. For a second it feels like us and them.

  ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’ I ask her.

  ‘Yes please.’

  We don’t speak as the kettle boils. We’re a facsimile of domesticity. I can hear the TV from the other room. I make sure my body is turned away from her all the time so she can’t see my left hand. I don’t want to draw attention to it. I pass her a mug and we take our drinks out into the courtyard.

  ‘Wish this was something stronger,’ I say and squeeze out a thin smile at her.

  The air is cold and wet and a childhood break in my arm aches. I remember the feeling, how I couldn’t understand how something inside me was breakable. That I wasn’t solid. That there were parts inside me and these parts were fallible.

  Out here the size of the world is threatening me. The closeness that I felt with her inside now is awkward and false. We are small. It should pull us tight but it doesn’t. Need to speak. Need to say something. The tea is warm between my hands and I can feel my face getting warm too. Something close to panic. My gaze is on the space between my feet, the dimpled concrete of the slabs, the glistening track of a snail trail. I focus on a light green moss clinging to the gap between two of the slabs. When I dare I sneak a glance at Beth and she looks comfortable and is rotating her head to take in the sky. It calms me.

  ‘I love this time of year,’ she says. ‘Or I did love this time of year. It’s hard to tell. I’m not sure what I love any more. Or even if I can love. Do you know what I mean? Love is about dignity and respect and they don’t allow you to have either of those things in here. You take away a person’s choices and their dignity follows. I’m not even sure who I am.’

  I want to touch her.

  ‘Fuck. I sound like some horrible teenage cliché.’

  I want to tell her she doesn’t.

  The door opens and Beaker sticks his head through.

  ‘Newbie,’ he says. His voice is all excitement and smugness and pride that he is the one telling us.

  Beth looks at me for guidance, again I shrug.

  ‘Come on,’ says Beaker, ‘We’ve got a Newbie.’

  He turns to go, then stops and raises his hand like a traffic policeman.

  ‘Wait there,’ he says, points his invisible camera at us and says ‘beautiful’.

  He squints an eye at an invisible viewfinder, turns an invisible focus ring and mimes a clunk click. With a satisfied grunt he goes back inside. Beth follows him. I sip my tea for a moment. Waiting for the door to close behind her I remember when I was brought here: the commotion and the crowd, the way it felt.

  Then I go inside.

  The Newbie is a middle-aged man. He looks like Accountant or Solicitor or Doctor. His dark hair is greying at the temples. The rest looks dyed, like he’s left these bits to appear sophisticated, thinking it looks like Clooney. His suit is slightly too big as if he’s lost weight recently. Boat shoes. I hate boat shoes. His eyes are frightened, darting between us. He’s carrying a battered leather briefcase, holding it tight to his b
ody. His mouth is a snarl. He looks like he’ll attack. There is murmuring amongst the group. Someone sniggers behind a hand. They stop short of pointing and laughing, but not by much.

  ‘This is sick,’ I whisper to Beth.

  ‘It’s all they’ve got,’ she says and she’s right.

  15.

  I take Baxter to the first meeting. When I tell him he’s got the account he thinks I’m joking. I wish I was. It occurs to me that Hilary is laughing and it’s at my expense. I suppress the thought and spout some nonsense to Baxter about deserving it and the board having noticed him and all the time imagine Collins’ poisonous eyes on my back.

  As we drive to the meeting the rain lashes the windscreen so heavily the wipers can’t keep up and I find myself hunched over the steering wheel, face against the glass, squinting and following the scrape of plastic against glass and the millisecond of clear vision that follows it. I feel shit and cheap and try to make friendly conversation in the car. I can’t suppress the sensation I’m cheating Collins even though I don’t like the prick and I struggle to find myself in the politics. On the radio there is an advert for a homebuilder, based around an old 50s hit, I sing along and admire the artistry, wishing I’d thought of it and feeling manipulated all at the same time.

  Baxter looks at me and I realise I’d laughed. I shrug at him.

  ‘What’s the plan for today?’ he asks.

  ‘Immersion. We meet them. They talk and we listen. We take it all in. We introduce you. We let them know how we’re going to run things. Agree some timescales. Come on, Baxter, you know how these things go.’

  I am starting to worry that he’s out of his depth. He nods. Tries to look thoughtful and says, ’This is turning out to be quite a good month all in all.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Melissa’s pregnant.’

  His face is all smiles and schoolboy charm.

  ‘Congratulations.’ I reach across the car to shake his hand.

  Sally’s face, slick with sweat, exhausted, but so happy. My son in her arms.

  ‘Congratulations, Baxter, I’m really pleased for you,’ I say and mean it. I stop the car, turn the engine off, reach into the back and grab my Moleskine, my pen and the iPad. I undo the top button of my shirt and loosen my tie just the right amount.

  ‘Ready?’

  Baxter is checking his business cards are in his wallet. ‘Yep,’ he says.

  I wrap a scarf about my neck and turn the collar of my jacket up. Outside, the wind howls about the car, hurling rain against the windscreen in loud slaps. As we run across the car park the sound of the car alarm arming is lost in the hurricane.

  The receptionist shows no signs of recognising me. I tell her my name again and add Baxter’s. She waves at the visitors’ book, her attention already somewhere else. When she calls up to Berkshire she asks me my name again. While we wait I check my emails. One from Alan – J, let me know how Baxter gets on, A.

  Berkshire arrives, clasps me on the shoulder and shakes Baxter’s hand. At the reception desk he leans over and asks the girl what room we’re in.

  ‘Tanzania,’ she says.

  ‘All our meeting rooms are named after countries,’ Berkshire says as the lift silently makes its way up and up and up. ‘Reminds everyone that we’re global. That they’re part of something bigger.’

  ‘Good idea,’ says Baxter.

  ‘No, not really. Just makes everyone want to go on holiday. Amazing how many people actually go on holiday to the same place as the meeting room they spend most of their time in. Would love to know what Freud would say about that. No, if it was up to me I’d just number the things. But some dozy marketing consultant came up with it sometime in the nineties and they’ve just stayed. No offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ I say.

  Tanzania looks nothing like Tanzania, or what I imagine Tanzania to look like. It’s a room with no windows, a table that takes up most of the space and leather-backed chairs too close to the walls to be comfortable.

  ‘Coffee?’

  I nod. ‘White and one.’

  ‘Same please,’ says Baxter.

  Berkshire turns on a laptop, plugs a cable into a socket in the table and an overhead projector throws the bank’s logo onto the rear wall.

  ‘Back in a moment with your drinks, gentlemen. The others should be with us shortly,’ he says.

  The picture behind me is a waterfall, taken with a long exposure so the water is a misty blur. Tropical. Warm. Aspirational. Horrible. I tap Baxter on the shoulder and point at it. He scowls.

  Berkshire returns to the room with a tray of drinks, some Marks and Spencer’s biscuits and a group of men who do nothing to reduce the banker stereotype. Faceless suits. Good haircuts. Tans. Dull. Dull. Dull. Within seconds of being introduced I’ve forgotten their names.

  He sleepwalks us through a presentation about the bank, where they came from, their board of directors, a couple of whom are the faceless suits, their financial history, most of which we already know, blah, blah, blah. It’s hot in the room and there’s no sugar in my coffee. Baxter is scribbling notes, his hand a blur, so I don’t bother. Mentally I pat him on the shoulder. It finishes, they file out apart from Berkshire and a young man.

  ‘Mr Marlowe, Mr Baxter, this is Mr Ben Jones. He will be your day to day contact on the account, so I will leave you in his capable hands for a tour of the office. Gentleman, it’s good to have you on board.’

  He flows out of the room. Jones pours a glass of water, passes it to me.

  ‘Just Ben, please.’

  ‘Hi Ben, James and this is Michael.’

  ‘I’ll take you on the tour. Not a lot to see really. Not very exciting places, banks.’

  We follow Just Ben through floor after floor of people squashed into identical cubicles, gunmetal, glass, marble tiles, chrome handles. Very slick, very designed, very dead. Before we leave he grasps my arm and says in an urgent, clipped voice:

  ‘I’m so glad they’ve got someone new in. That singing piggy bank was just plain embarrassing.’

  I pause for just long enough and then tell him it’s a shame he feels that way because that’s the only thing we’re planning on keeping from the previous campaigns. I let him stare at me in horror for thirty long seconds.

  ‘Only kidding, Ben. Consider that gone. First thing out the window. There’ll be no gimmicks this time. Just honest communication.’

  The relief is palpable on his face. It occurs to me that if he is given any sort of authority then we might be alright.

  ‘Thank Christ for that. I thought you were serious for a moment.’

  Outside the wind has died down and the rain has refined into the tiny needle drops that feel like nothing but go right through your clothes. Baxter trots after me. As we slump into the car I turn on the heater and spark a cigarette.

  ‘That was okay, wasn’t it?’ asks Baxter.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘not bad at all.’

  16.

  In the hospital every day is pretty much the same. It’s a place of routine and rule. And for the most part this suits me just fine. Lack of routine is what caused most of my problems. Routine keeps away all prepossessing thoughts of drink and drugs. There are some rules you’re told when you get in and despite myself I try to follow them. Some come from the orderlies, some from doctors, some from other patients, but they build up into a collective whole and they seem to make some sense.

  Firstly, remember that everything you do in here is geared towards getting you back out there. It’s not ill and well, it’s here and there. No matter how much you want to, never beg them to let you go home, never plead and tell them you’re ready to be sent back out there, because this means you’re not. They decide and that’s that.

  Always tell the nurses the truth. I’ve learned this the hard way. It goes totally against my instincts. But I don’t want to end up as a Randall P McMurphy, so being facetious and argumentative has been toned down. Of course the constant medication helps with that
too. I’m aware of the irony about replacing self-medication with real medication, although it seems entirely lost on my keepers. Lying to them will get you nowhere, can get you stuck in here and certainly won’t help you to get back out there.

  Don’t stay in bed all day. It would be so easy. The oblivious embrace of sleep is always there, beckoning. Don’t do it. It only leads to isolation and isolation is not healthy.

  This leads straight onto the next rule. Get dressed. Dressing gown and pyjamas are the costume of the unwell. We are not unwell, we are just in here, working towards getting back out there. Getting dressed, being involved, will get you noticed by them and can help reduce your stay. Moping around in your nightwear will only help convince them you’re in here for the long haul.

  Do what you are told. Again, this is the McMurphy rule. You can’t win. They watch and mark everything down. Picking fights with the nurses and other patients will go against you and keep you in here longer. They like us placid. So placid we are. Not that they trust us to be placid of our own volition of course. They fill us full of pills and potions that turn us into the walking dead to ensure that we are placid. But there really is no use in fighting it.

  Remember there is a blame culture here, point scoring, stool pigeons, snitching. If you do something wrong and someone sees you doing it they will tell on you and it will be detrimental to your stay. So either don’t do anything wrong or don’t get caught.

  The aide is standing next to my bed. I open one eye. Think he is about to shake me. He sees my eye and takes a step back.

  ‘You need to get up,’ he says.

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well.’

  ‘You still need to get up.’

  ‘I dreamed I was being chased by a wolf, then I was the wolf and I was doing the chasing.’ I’m still shaking. My heart is hammering inside my chest.

  ‘You still need to get up. Hold onto the feeling you have now. It’s no use sharing it with me. Keep it for group.’