The Zoo Read online

  ‘And this, I think, is supposed to suggest that we, the viewers, are responsible for the consequences shown in the painting. This here is a nod to the fourth wall.’

  I think he’s right again.

  ‘You really get these?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. Seems fairly obvious. You not?’

  ‘No. And I know the artist.’

  I go back to the bar. They’re out of red so I grab a glass of white. This time it’s too warm and cheap. Work my way around the paintings. The Aussie could be right. They appear to be about noise. There is lots of reference to white noise. Some satellites. One looks like the inside of an ear. One has a childlike drawing of someone holding their hands over their ear to block out sound. A loudhailer. Two paintings are connected by a telephone cord. They are created using lots of media, some virtually collages. I find one with a picture of us all at university. ‘Bitch,’ I say under my breath. I look young and happy with my arm around Sally. I move closer and see that she has drawn little stitch marks across all of our mouths. I’m wearing a Levellers t-shirt.

  Another glass of wine and I meet up with Sally at the dog whistle picture.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asks. I steal a Twiglet off her paper plate.

  ‘Don’t tell Lou this, but they’re actually pretty good.’

  ‘Fucking hell. Are you going all soft in your old age?’

  ‘I think I’m a bit drunk.’

  ‘They’ve invited us back to their house for a party. That okay?’

  ‘Is there going to be more drink there?’

  ‘I would expect so.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Fair possibility.’

  ‘Can we make out in the kitchen?’

  ‘Depends how drunk I get.’

  I hand her my glass of wine.

  The party turns out to be about 20 or so people that I don’t know. We are in the lounge, the lights are low, the room is full of the sweet smell of incense. I keep looking at the bongos in the corner and wondering whether I should hide them. A group of people are talking about how the government is cutting funding and how artists are having to pay the price for capitalist greed and I know they’re right, I know it’s true, but I’m still having to bite my tongue.

  My glass is empty. I push myself up from the floor, slightly light-headed, and stroll into the kitchen. Pour myself a generous measure of vodka. Add some lemonade. And then some more vodka. I’m scrabbling in my pocket for cigarettes when Lou and Sally join me. Sally is drunk, her cheeks flushed. When I pull the crushed pack of fags out I feel a lump in my lighter pocket.

  ‘No way,’ I wave the bag of coke in front of Sally’s face, ‘I forgot about this. Shall we?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do.’

  ‘Still on the yuppie drug of choice then, James?’ says Lou.

  ‘You won’t be wanting any then?’

  ‘Ah, I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Didn’t think so.’

  I curve three big lines on the work surface.

  ‘Where’s Dan?’

  ‘He’s about somewhere. He won’t want any.’

  ‘Anyway, Lou. I’m doing this to help the poor Colombian farmers. Think of it as an act of benevolence.’

  ‘Helping the people who make baby laxative more like.’

  I hand a rolled up twenty to Sally. It takes her two snorts to get the whole line up her nose. She grimaces and rubs at her nostril.

  ‘Speaking of poor farmers, Sally tells me you’ve got a new client.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You do know what they’re doing in Nghosa, don’t you?’ says Lou, taking the note from Sally and doing her line. Up in one.

  ‘Fuck off, Lou. They’re from Holland. The Dutch don’t do anything bad.’

  ‘Look it up,’ she replies.

  Sometime later I’ve plugged my iPod into the stereo in the kitchen and it’s John Lennon, ‘How do you sleep’. I’m talking to a tall dreadlocked man, who has tattoos on his hands, about films that are better than the books they’re based on. I can’t think of any. He asks me if I want some Ket. I can already hear Sally saying ‘don’t do it. Don’t take that. You know what it does to you.’ And she’s right. I do know what it does to me, it sends me mental. So I say yes.

  Later still and I’m sitting on a log trying to explain to someone how everything is a square, literally a square and someone says, ‘I just want to understand time,’ and I want to write this down, the way everything happens, but the way everything happens makes it too hard to write things down and I’m right, everything is a square, along up, back, down, to the beginning, and I try to explain this to the person who was asking about time because this is the answer, but I’m talking to the wrong person then I realise I’m not talking to anyone. Then I’m standing in the back garden by the fire pit with Dan and he tells me that a log looks like a crocodile and I look and I see it. I see it, I say to him and point and he says, no, no, that’s the wrong end and I say, Swopodile and splutter laughter into the flames and he says Flipodile, Switchodile, then I’m in the alley puking onto a bin, then I’m back in the garden, by the fire, cross-legged, one side of my face is red hot and I’m digging my feet into the gravel and I’ve lost my shoes and the man with the dreads says ‘Apocalypse Now is better than the book’ and I ask someone where Sally is and they say ‘she’s gone, man’, and I am too.

  I’m gone.

  20.

  When I wake the atmosphere in the house fills the gaps in my memory. Sally doesn’t look at me when I stagger into the kitchen.

  ‘I need to pick Harry up from my Mum’s,’ she says, addressing the sideboard.

  I try to get a mug out of the cupboard and drop it onto the sideboard. It reverberates around inside my head and I squeeze my eyes shut.

  As Sally leaves, she says, ‘I think you need to apologise to Lou.’ I can’t think why and I can’t think how I got home. Upstairs I search through my clothes for my phone, find it in my shirt pocket, go through it for photos or texts, any clues, but there either aren’t any or I deleted them last night, so I climb back into bed.

  I can’t sleep. I try to phone Dan. He rejects my call. I try again. And again. Leave a whingy message. Eventually he takes my call.

  ‘Mate, if Lou knew I was talking to you she’d fucking flip.’

  He goes quiet. I don’t know what to say. My head pounds.

  ‘Sally says I should apologise to Lou.’

  ‘Well, yeah. Maybe not just yet though.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You smashed one of her sculptures.’ There is a sigh in his voice, like it pains him to say this. Like he experienced the aftermath.

  ‘Accidentally?’ I ask, although I know the answer.

  ‘You said so.’

  ‘But she doesn’t think so?’

  ‘No.’

  I scrunch my face up. Feel blood hot in my cheeks.

  ‘Is Sally okay with you?’

  ‘Not really. Why?’

  ‘You were a bit of a twat to her.’

  ‘Oh Christ.’

  ‘Tell me if this is none of my business. But you might think about calming it down a bit.’

  When he hangs up I pull the duvet over my head. I am sweaty and sticky and my eyelids scratch my eyeballs. I give up. Grab my phone, open the browser and Google ‘Nghosa’. It doesn’t make me feel any better and I can’t see the connection.

  21.

  I’m streetwise. Or as streetwise as someone who works in advertising can be, but I’ve learned some new terms for female genitalia in the last few days. Turns out Newbie can’t refer to women as anything other than slang for their bits. I found it funny to start with. Particularly when he was shouting ‘gash’ at one of the nurses. Gash. Gash. Gash. Most words are funny if you say them long enough, words for genitals especially.

  Cunt. Snatch. Twat. Pissflaps. Beef Curtains. Slit. Muff. Lady Garden. Vadge. Fanny. Poontang. Front Bottom. Punanyi. Bearded Clam. Minge. Beaver. Box. Camel Toe. Pussy. Cunny. Flange.
Fuck Hole. Fur Burger. Quim. Box.

  You can see him trying to stop it. Trying to hold them in. Trying to find a name or a term of endearment. He says ‘minge’ like someone else would say honey or darling or love.

  I don’t know what he’s got, don’t think it’s Tourette’s, it grips him though, squeezes him. You can see him inside it looking out. It’s like a python of vagina slang.

  Up close he smells of soap. A women’s soap maybe, perfumed and flowery. The taint of female vanity. He clasps his briefcase still, tight to his chest. I want to know what is in there. I need to know.

  I remember my Gran’s house. There was a box on a shelf up high, too high for me to reach. My Gran leaning down, her face big in mine, saying, ‘Don’t touch that box. That box isn’t for you.’ I spent years wondering what was in that box. As I grew taller the box got closer, until I was at eye level and I could study it. Leather with metal corners, a gold lock and her initials engraved into the leather of its front. All I wanted to do was to crack the lid and see what was inside. One day I waited until she was in the kitchen and opened it. Inside was a dried rose. When I heard her coming I struggled to push it back inside and it crumbled in my hand. I later found out it was from her father’s coffin.

  I involuntarily reach for the briefcase. He pulls it tighter and utters ‘snatch’ at the Asian Radio Lady as she passes.

  I realise I have subconsciously categorised him. He is ‘Corporate Leader’. Returning late at night to his big house in extensive grounds. Type A. Aspirational. Premium. Will pay more for the correct product. Extensive investments. Private education. Corporate career. I know him. I know you, Newbie. You play golf. Drive a marque. Your wife has weekly therapy to hide from the cold distance your work has put between you. I could run through a roster of clients whose products I have targeted you for.

  Quite a fall.

  Beth sits next to me. She smells of rain and grass and open air.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  I smile at her. Sincere.

  Newbie glares at her. His fingers knead the leather of his briefcase like a kitten kneading at something it thinks is its mother. Hungry. Nervous. His mouth is moving.

  I hear a noise I recognise coming from my room. A click and a whirr like the pilot light on a boiler starting up. A whumpf of air and flame. The Zoo is awake. Its gaze has turned to me again. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  Newbie glares at Beth. Silently I will him not to.

  Don’t do it. Not now.

  ‘Cunt,’ he says.

  Beth looks at me, then at him. Confused.

  ‘You. Cunt,’ he says again.

  Beth raises her finger to her chest, as if to say ‘me?’.

  ‘Axe wound.’

  I register the hurt and confusion on Beth’s face, see her eyes glaze with tears.

  He says it again. Slams the briefcase on the table.

  ‘Axe wound.’

  She jumps up, hand over her mouth. Her chair topples backwards, clattering across the floor. She bursts into tears, spins and runs into the corridor.

  Click. Whir. My fists clench. I’m on my feet, jabbing him in the chest with my finger, all the while knowing it’s not his fault, not really, that he can’t help it. I’m calling him a prick and he’s taking it, taking each prod of my finger. ‘Keep your fucking names to yourself,’ I’m telling him. Prodding. Then I’m in the corridor, arms around Beth and she’s crying on my shoulder, I’m asking her if she’s okay and behind her I can see my room and the gap under the door is red and it’s rattling my teeth. I can feel it in my legs. In my head. So I hold her tight. It’s awake now and she’s hugging me and I’m hugging her and after a while it’s hard to tell who is consoling who.

  22.

  By the time Sally returns with Harry I am somewhere near decent. Sober at least. She leads him into the lounge and he plonks himself in front of the TV. I sit down next to him. Put my arm around him and he wriggles away, moaning ‘D-d-d-d-daaaaaaaad’. Sally’s eyes are red and puffy.

  ‘Do you want a drink, Harry?’ she asks.

  ‘P-please,’ he replies, eyes always on the TV.

  As she passes me she whispers, ‘We need to talk.’ I turn my head and raise a questioning eyebrow and she mouths ‘Later’.

  ‘What are we watching?’ I ask Harry.

  ‘Ceebeebies.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say and allow myself to be zoned out by the colours and the noise and try to forget the mess that is all around me.

  In our room, voices hushed, we argue with the volume turned down.

  ‘It has to stop,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re just saying it, James. I know you’re just saying it. Agreeing with me so I stop talking and it’ll be fine for a couple of weeks. For a couple of weeks you’ll be great. You’ll be my husband again. And then it’ll slowly go back to this.’

  She is propped up on pillows. Her hair is a wall that divides us. I see the anger knotted in clenched fists and the tendons in her arms and neck. She means it.

  ‘I can’t take it anymore. I really can’t. I’m sick of being both adults in this relationship.’

  ‘That phrase has come straight from your mother,’ I say and regret it as she turns to me with real hatred in her eyes.

  ‘Fuck you. Fuck you. This is not about my mother. Don’t try and score points. I’m not playing. I am at my wits’ end. I can’t bring Harry up and look after you. It’s like having two children. And I’m just so tired.’

  She’s crying now. I reach for her arm and she shrugs me off, aggression in her movements. I let her talk. Let it all come out. All the hurtful words. Allow them to ricochet off me.

  ‘You’re all as bad as each other. You, Hilary, Alan. You act like you’re rock stars, when you’re really just a bunch of boys playing, acting like you’re heroes to the younger ones, and the worst thing is they flatter you and play up to it. It’s pathetic watching them fawn over you and the lot of you lapping it up. It makes me sick. I mean who the fuck really wants to be Hilary? It’s not real. None of it. It’s make believe. There’s a boy next door who does worship you and you can’t even see it anymore.’

  ‘Now wait a minute . . .’

  ‘No. You listen. Listen to me for once. You can pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes, God knows that’s what you’re good at. What you do all day. All of you, you think you’re being so smart. What good have any of you ever done?’

  I stammer, stumbling over words. Try and get something out.

  ‘We work with charities,’ I manage, knowing it sounds pathetic.

  ‘Lip service and you know it. So you can appeal to the Corporate Social Responsibility of those wankers you work for. You know what you are? All of you? Corporate cocksuckers.’

  ‘Fuck’s sake.’ I sit bolt upright, spin my head around so that I am facing her, but she turns away again, still won’t look at me.

  ‘I think that’s why you all get so drunk all the time. You know what you’re doing is vacuous and selfish. You promote greed and it hurts you.’

  I am hurt. She’s hurting me.

  ‘Thank you Sigmund fucking Freud. Is it all my mother’s fault?’

  I know I sound childish and yet I can’t stop myself.

  ‘Don’t be facetious. I’m being honest with you. If I don’t tell you this now I don’t know how much longer . . .’

  ‘Sally, please . . .’

  ‘You know, that might be why you smashed Lou’s sculpture. Because it had some emotional truth and you don’t any more. You’re not the man I married. If I showed him the way you are now he’d be horrified. You were an artist. Now you’re a cliché.’

  ‘You’re not exactly following your artistic dream are you?’

  ‘I’m a teacher, James. I teach children to take joy in art. To learn how to express themselves. I make a difference. Maybe not to all of them, but some of them and that’s enough.’ Her voice is cracked and clipped with anger.

  ‘Have you finishe
d the character assassination?’

  ‘I’ve barely brushed the surface.’

  ‘Look. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about last night. I’m sorry about Lou’s sculpture.’

  I’ve got my hand on her arm. Her skin is cold. I can feel the shake of her muscles through my palm.

  ‘Forget Lou’s sculpture. That’s just you being a prick. You know what it reminded me of? One of Harry’s tantrums. When he thinks we’re not giving him enough attention.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a cry for help,’ I say and am filled with such a wave of self-pity that I think I’m about to burst into tears.

  ‘You do need help. But the only person who can help is you. You need to look at what you’ve got and make some very hard choices. You can carry on playing with the boys or you can be a father and husband. But you haven’t got long to decide.’

  She turns her light off and rolls over, her back to me.

  I sit there blinking into the dark, wondering how I got here.

  23.

  The floor of the corridor ripples like a carpet being shaken, as if someone has grabbed the other end and shaken it. When it passes us I struggle to keep my feet and pull Beth even tighter so she doesn’t lose her balance. I can feel the beat of her heart against me, small and fast as a bird’s. The light from under my door is growing, flickering, the light of flames. I can hear it too, a whirring and clunking of chains and gears and things moving. Something warming up. Static. The sound of voices. Fragments from an oratory. A place name I recognise and that fills me with dread. How can that place have followed me here? I look at Beth in my arms and shout, ‘No’. I grab her by the hand and lead her through the day room. Behind me I hear the door burst open and the noise is louder. Louder. Louder. The powerful rhythmic chunt of a stream train. The groan of metal on metal. The door to outside is getting smaller, the walls have changed so they meet in the centre, the ceiling gone, vaulted now. My feet are moving as if in treacle. Beth is looking at me, terrified. I hold her head so she doesn’t look back, look forwards, always forwards and keep her moving towards the door. The diminishing door. The noise behind is growing. A tsunami. Metal. Steam. Water. Waves. Building. Building. Building. I push Beth out through the door. See the fear on her face, tell her to wait there and turn to face it.