The Zoo Page 9

  The pub is old-fashioned, traditionally English: a fire in the corner, Johnny Cash on the juke box. Baxter is telling the old joke about the man jumping from the Empire State building, as he’s falling repeating ‘so far so good, so far so good’ and Jessica is laughing a laugh like wind chimes. Ben is opposite me with a big drunken smile on his face.

  ‘I’ve got to go to work first thing,’ he says, ‘probably didn’t ought to have any more.’

  We scoff and tease him, order another round, organic lager, strong, yeasty. Surrounded by the wood and the red leather, the thud of darts into a board, the crackle of the fire, the rasp of Johnny Cash’s voice and the lager sitting on top of it all, I’m starting to feel very drunk. Before I can stop myself I have turned to Hilary and asked, ‘Do you ever question it, you know, what we do?’ and he looks at me as if I’ve spat into his face.

  ‘Bloody hell, no. Why would I?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was just thinking. Do you never ask whether we’re doing a good thing?’

  ‘What’s good got to do with anything? People are going to buy things whatever we say. They’re going to spend money they don’t have on cars and clothes and get fat from food and booze. They’re going to go on holidays and fill their credit cards until they can fill them no more. We can’t affect that. We don’t affect that. What on earth has got into you?’

  ‘God knows, must be the drink talking.’

  ‘Well for heaven’s sake tell it to keep its bloody mouth shut. You’re putting me off the evening.’

  He studies me over his pint, glasses falling down his nose, glazed eyes struggling to focus.

  ‘For pity’s sake, man up. You’re not going all commie on me now are you?’

  I’m laughing, trying to make out I’m joking and he seems to be buying it.

  Sometime later and I’m at the jukebox with Jessica and she’s scrolling through the tracks, flipping the CD covers. Baxter joins us, putting his arms around our necks.

  ‘I’m going to get going. Got to start being responsible now,’ he says.

  He hugs Jessica, looks like he is going to hug me, thinks better of it and shakes my hand instead.

  ‘Good work today,’ I tell him and he grins at me.

  We turn our attention back to the jukebox and I look at Jessica’s profile, at her neck, her nose with the hint of a bump in the middle, at the small silver hoops in her ears, the way she holds her tongue between her teeth as she reads the labels, at those furrows either side of her nose, at the hair fallen out of her pony tail. She catches me looking and smiles, so I turn away, suddenly bashful. Then she shouts ‘Got it’, thumps the glass and whirls away from the jukebox as ‘You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling’ begins and she’s singing, moving her hips, looking at me and singing and I’m saying ‘Tom Fucking Cruise’ and watching her hips, watching her hips, watching her hips.

  At a different bar somewhere deep in the centre of the city, polished, crisp and modern. Three of us looking down the jaws of a line of shots. Multicoloured jewels of shots in a wooden plank. There’s a reflection of us in the mirror behind the bar, too far away to see anything other than misty pink shapes. Drink the shots down, peppermint, chilli, apple, toffee, pure vodka, something else.

  In a booth and Jessica is in the toilet and I’m making a lechy comment I know I shouldn’t. Ben shows no sign of hearing it, then he says something about the campaign, something about whether we should be saying what we’re saying and I mean to ask him what he means, mean to pin him down to it, but Jessica is back and we’re in the street, hailing cabs, saying goodnight to Ben, then we’re in a cab, just the two of us, and the glass is cold against my face, the world spinning, looking at her legs, her beautiful legs, close to mine, feel the heat from them and we’re outside her house, she’s looking at me and we hold eye contact too long, then I kiss her on the cheek and she gets out and we pull off and I’m drifting off to sleep in the lullaby of the motion and the last thing in my head is ‘so far so good, so far so good, so far so good, so far . . .’.

  26.

  The office is soggy with hangover. Hilary hasn’t turned up yet, Baxter is at his desk, head down. I’ve avoided Jessica. Alan takes pleasure in slapping me on the back of my skull. I pour glasses of water down my throat one after another and eat too many Nurofen. I phone our IT department and ask them to check if anyone could have broken into my email account, they tell me no, no-one has been in it, so I check my sent items and see only the stream of business mails I sent yesterday. The email is no longer in my inbox either.

  Mid-morning Sally texts me and reminds me that we’re going out for Harry’s birthday at the weekend and asks if we can have a nice family day. I reply ‘yes, of course’, then after a second add a kiss to the end of it. She doesn’t reply.

  The director of the ad phones and tells me the rushes of the shoot are on our FTP. I spend the next couple of hours in a darkened room watching hours of silent footage with Baxter. It’s good, if not inspired, and I hope it can be enriched by a well-chosen soundtrack and the rest of the footage.

  Hilary arrives after lunch, a pair of sunglasses on and a trilby pulled over his face. He goes straight into his office and closes the door. I don’t see him for the rest of the afternoon.

  One of the designers asks me to look at some work he has been doing for another of my clients. It’s based around semaphore. A series of flags arranged to make up the name of the company. I tell him it’s too complicated and that the consumer just won’t get it. He argues we shouldn’t be pandering to the lowest common denominator and I inform him that that is exactly what we should be doing. I can tell he is annoyed, that I’ve offended his artistic pride. He argues with me for a while longer and I can feel myself getting angry with him. I bite my tongue and in the end I walk away from him mid-sentence.

  I hide in the kitchen for a while, write offensive messages with the fridge magnet letters, sit on the sofa and make a cup of coffee. Jessica comes in. Tight black trousers. White vest top. Grey cardigan. She looks like she had a full eight hours and a session at a beauty spa.

  ‘Heavy night last night eh?’ she says, leaning against the work surface.

  ‘Not compared to the old days,’ I reply and press my coffee cup on my cheek.

  ‘Don’t think I would have been able to handle them then.’

  She looks like she could handle just about anything.

  I struggle through a conference call by making grunts in all the right places, in the process filling an A4 sheet with doodles I can’t decipher and don’t remember making. I leave the office early, signing out in a hand that no-one will be able to read, and turn my phone off.

  At home I play a game of Hungry Hippo with Harry, spend half the time chasing plastic balls around on the wooden floor as he laughs like a harpy and throws them at me.

  Sally goes to bed early so I read Harry a story and kiss him goodnight. I sit by the bed as he falls asleep then listen to his soft breathing for a while, watching his chest rise and fall, and my heart is breaking.

  I climb into bed with my wife, next to the forbidding wall of her back and pull a duvet over me that feels like a shroud.

  27.

  In a room.

  Being asked questions.

  Lots of questions.

  Questions I don’t know the answers to.

  While I’m thinking about the missing piece of The Zoo.

  Thinking back trying to remember what it was or whether it was, thinking back and trying to answer questions I don’t know the answer to and not to answer questions I do know the answer to.

  Questions about Newbie and the briefcase and the stacks of his life.

  Head Psychiatrist. Janet Armitage. Female, 45-50, paid between thirty and fifty grand, homeowner, about to become an empty nester, interested in gardening, reads Elle Decoration and the free aspirational magazine, luxury saloon bought on HP.

  Interested in Newbie and what I know and what I don’t know.

  ‘We’re not accusing yo
u of anything,’ she says, ‘we’re asking everybody the same thing.’

  I say nothing about the briefcase and the sock and the bruises and the little piles of his life.

  ‘It’s important we all trust each other here. We’re all committed to well-being, but we can only achieve that through total honesty.’

  I say nothing about The Zoo and what it showed me.

  Janet is earnest and smiling and not accusing me of anything. She just wants to find out what happened.

  I’m saying I don’t know what happened, asking where he is now and she’s saying it doesn’t matter.

  I don’t know, I really don’t know, but she seems to think I do, seems to think I know exactly what happened.

  She looks at me patronisingly, as if she’s waiting for me to tell her something she already knows. That she knows but wants to hear it from my mouth.

  So I search my memory and only find the ward and the light and the man on the bed with the briefcase on his head and the piles of his stuff arranged on the floor like a ritual.

  I’m asking her what she wants me to say and she’s saying, ‘The truth, just the truth. Somebody got hurt and somebody needs help and we can’t help if we don’t know the truth. We just want to know the truth.’

  Janet is all smiles that hide her age and her pay, the fact she’s a homeowner, that she’s about to become an empty nester, is interested in gardening, reads Elle Decoration and the free aspirational magazine, and her luxury saloon was bought on HP.

  All hidden behind the smile and the questions and the lack of accusation that feels like it is one anyway.

  Outside the room I hear a clatter, metal against tiles, something heavy dropped. I look at Janet Armitage. She doesn’t flinch, shows no sign of hearing it, or if she does she doesn’t want me to see that she has.

  Something mechanical starting up, metal grinding against ceramic. A circular saw or a grinder. Workmen shouting. It drowns out her words. I have to really focus on what she is saying, something about how we are a community and we rely on each other and I cup my hand to my ear, her words lost in the din until I can just watch her mouth move. It’s hurting my ears. I flinch, shy away from it, press my palms against my ears and see the disappointment on her face, so I say, ‘no, not you, I’m trying to listen, I can’t hear you because of all the noise, all the noise out there. What are they doing?’

  She is getting cross, I can see her trying to suppress it, not hiding it well and I want to explain, I don’t want her to think I was ignoring her or being rude, I wanted to listen to what she is saying, but she is getting up to leave, saying, ‘I’m glad we talked,’ and I’m saying, ‘Yes, me too’ but it sounds sarcastic and she’s gone and the sound goes with her until I’m left in the room on my own with an echo.

  Back on the ward the noise is there again. Down the corridor by Newbie’s room. Getting louder and louder as I pad towards it. The end of the corridor is blocked with opaque plastic hung from the ceiling. From behind it I can see movement, the shadow of bodies passing from left to right. The grinding is there too, but quieter now. I go closer. The plastic is attached to the walls on either side with yellow and black tape. The plastic breathes rhythmically. In and out.

  I watch it for a while. I can’t make out what is going on back there. There is some pattern in the movement. Definitely bodies. But too abstract, muffled by the plastic and dampened. On the floor in front of it a layer of dust coats the tiles. In it is a trail of footprints, small footprints, child’s, leading up to the plastic. The last cut in half by the drop. I kneel down and study the swirl and patterns in them. Bare feet . . . I put my ear to the plastic, feel it slap against my skin, now there is just the hint of work and enterprise behind it.

  I go back into the day room. Beaker approaches me.

  ‘Do you know what they’re doing down there?’ I ask him.

  He doesn’t acknowledge my question, instead raises his imaginary camera to his eye and pulls focus on me. I put my hand over the lens. He seems annoyed, shoves it away.

  ‘Stop taking my photo,’ I say, ‘what are you? Some sort of paparazzi?’

  ‘Evidence,’ he says.

  ‘Evidence of what?’

  He raises a finger to his lips, whispers ‘shush’. Says, ‘I can’t tell you, they can’t know, otherwise all my work is wasted.’

  On his way out of the day room he pauses in the doorway, takes my photo and grins as if he has got one over on me.

  I’m suddenly aware of how tired I am, so I return to my room and lie on my bed, hands behind my head. I reach for sleep even as it mocks me. Sometime later the door opens and an orderly puts his head round it. He says my name. I raise my head and grunt at him. He nods and leaves.

  I try again to sleep.

  Half an hour later the orderly is back. I realise that something has changed in the way I can lead my life here.

  28.

  In the car on the way to Harry’s appointment we listen to a CD of animal songs and in the back Harry happily sings along. I join in with the noises. A goat. A monkey. A cow. Struggle with a goat, causing Harry to guffaw with laughter and call me stupid Daddy. The roads are busy and I realise we’re going to be late. Before we left I had a muted argument with Sally. All in hushed voices and gritted teeth where she accused me of trying to play the fucking hero and only wanting to take Harry to his appointment to score points. I resisted the urge to say something about paying for it all and left the house in a temper, dragging the boy along behind me, his little arm stretched up and his hand warm, gripped too tight in my palm.

  When I see the time I swear and then flinch as he repeats the word. Telling him not to say it only makes him repeat it and laugh. So I try to distract with some monkey noises.

  When we get there I’m flustered, sweating and barely holding it together. The receptionist tuts at me and tells me we’ll have to check whether we can still be seen, then leaves us on uncomfortable plastic chairs to wait.

  We’re surrounded by stacks of out of date magazines, piles of games with the pieces missing, oh-so-fucking-happy posters on the walls.

  It’s hot in here.

  Harry is bored and fidgety. He knocks an avalanche of magazines onto the floor and, as I’m sweeping them back up, the receptionist returns to tell us the doctor will squeeze us in. I look around the empty waiting room, at the empty, uncomfortable plastic chairs, at the lonely oh-so-fucking-happy posters and say ‘I should think so too.’

  The doctor is a young girl, who looks too young to know anything about anything, a plain young girl in a white coat that hides a drab grey jumper and scruffy jeans. As she takes Harry through his exercises, la la la la, fa fa fa fa and helps him roll through tongue twisters, I sit on another uncomfortable chair and check my phone. There are two text messages, one from Sally which I scroll over without opening and another from a withheld number saying ‘It’ll catch up with you’. I stare at it for a while and roll possibilities through my mind before coming up blank. I consider deleting it, instead open Sally’s. ‘I’m going to be late back, going to Toys R Us’.

  I reply with a simple ‘okay’ and think back to a pub, ten years ago, twelve, maybe twenty. A Sunday afternoon in Nottingham, rain crashing against the windows, a table covered in graffiti. I was scratching at it with my nail and trying not to look at her, knowing we were there for her to put an end to it. Turning my pint glass around in my hand as the words stumble from her mouth. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this. We live together. I’m finishing my degree soon and I’m going back to Leicester.’

  I want to say, ‘no’, to tell her that we should try, we should carry on, that things will be all right, but I go to the bar instead and order us another couple of pints and when I look up she’s smiling and I know she doesn’t mean it, that she’s saying it because she thinks she should.

  ‘I don’t want to stop,’ I say and sound so childish and petulant that we both laugh. Then I reach across the table and take her hand, her chewed nails, the softness of her hand
s, the weight of a ring on her thumb. We’re both smiling now and I lean across the table to kiss her, she turns her head, then turns it back and her mouth is warm and my other hand is on the back of her head, pulling her close, our teeth clash and we laugh while we’re kissing, butterflies in my stomach, a thrill in my groin and I say, ‘shall we go back to the flat.’

  We fuck on an unmade bed with the curtains open and she bites my neck, sucking the skin into her mouth until it burnishes blue and later, when we lie there smoking, I run my fingers over it and she says, ‘I want people to know you’re mine’.

  I sit on the uncomfortable chair listening to my son repeat ‘the ragged rascal ran round the ragged rock’, listen to my son trying to find a way to bring together his mouth and his mind, and think about how everything else is unravelling, how I miss my wife, and know that it is not in me to stop it from happening.