The Right Man (29 page)

‘Well,
Big Jim, go slowly, my man.’ I gave her my line 3 number, my personal one. She
popped it in her bag with a suggestive flash of the eyes and got up.

‘Jas,
time to go, love.’ And then, more quietly to me, with a knowing wink, ‘Big Jim.
Do you like it?’

‘What?’

‘Your
new name.

‘Oh,
yes, thank you. Jim was my father’s name, actually.’

‘Yes,
but was he big? Was he Big Jim?’

‘You
know, I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I said.

‘You
mean you never looked?’ She laughed again. Jasmine joined us with Grace
trailing behind.

‘OK, we’ll
talk then.’ Stella took Jasmine’s hand and left the churchyard. Grace came up
and sat on my lap. It made it worse having her for the afternoon in Soho, away
from everything that was familiar to her. Just the two of us stranded together
on a strange and hostile planet called Contact, where there was no bathtime, no
familiar monsters or chips and ice-cream for tea. Surely abandonment, or at
least absence, would be better for her than to have to comprehend this adult
complexity. No, I know that’s just a cop—out.

After
delivering Grace through a gap in the front door no wider than Susan Planter
had opened hers for fear of press intrusion, I returned to Soho via Hamleys and
bought a duplicate musical dinosaur, pop-up spider book and Rosie and Jim rag
dolls to keep at Meard Street. I would have to make the office home. I fell
asleep on the cane sofa with the toys on my lap and a fag on the go. That was
mature, wasn’t it?

It was
in my first week as an accredited absent parent — the week after that first
shaky Saturday with Grace — that my recurrent dream took a turn for the nasty.
The noise wasn’t like the roaring of waves or thunder, it didn’t have gaps in
it, no bits that were louder or softer than others. Nor was it like a digital
tone, it was too ragged and raucous for that. It was like an explosion extended
beyond the seconds of impact. An eternal car crash. It was dark subterranean
night. There was water, dark water. Grace was sinking fast. I was there to save
her, but when I reached her at last we were pushed together into the turbulence,
and I held her down under the water. I held Grace down, she struggled, I couldn’t
look in her eyes. I was pushing her under with all my force. Neither of us
could believe that I was doing it. I could only just breathe myself, but I made
sure that she couldn’t. There was black splash over us both, I held her under
the rage. There was wind, and in the dream I was weeping with guilt. I held her
down until I woke up, fully clothed and shivering in full daylight. The window
was open and the phone was ringing.

‘Hello,
this is Muffin and Ketts. I’m sorry, we’re all busy at the moment, but if you
would like to leave your name and number and the time you called, we’ll get
back to you as soon as possible. Please speak after the tone.’

Tilda’s
voice. I would have to change the outgoing message soon, but in the meantime I
had a few days’ grace in which to find out who was still in and who had flown.
Naomi wouldn’t have bothered to have taken everybody with her. She’d have left
behind the more boring ones. Simon Eggleston, no doubt. Joy Trainer, Amy
Battle, Simon N’quarbo and anyone who hadn’t worked for a while. I was trying
to blink away the dream, but its dark, treacly taste remained. This wasn’t
meant to be my dream. Not drowning my own child. The images from it would not
disappear back down the horrid hole of my subconscious whence they had come.
There was no one to blame for them: no uncensored video, no foul American movie
about infanticide which I could claim had influenced me. It was all mine, but I
still could not own the dream.
I
made myself think about the day and
work.

I
wondered about Barbara Stenner, dear old bat. Hadn’t managed to get through to
her yet. Would she have fluttered across to Regent Street with the others? Probably.
Been in the business too long not to know where bread gets buttered. She was
the only one who gave me a tad of the sads. A voice came on the answer-phone.
It was Neil. I got up to catch him before he rang off I needed jolting into the
day.

‘Where
are you?’

‘I’m
not going to say.

‘Oh,
come on, that’s stupid, Neil.’

‘I’ve
taken three bottles of something. I don’t know what.’

‘What
do you mean; taken?’ The sound of the dark rushing water was still in my head.
The fear in the dream had been let out like a genie from a bottle, and was
treading its dirty footprints all over the office.

‘You know,
pills.’

‘Oh,
Hinge and Bracket, Neil! Why?’

‘I can’t
do it, Guy. I can’t write it. I’m just a cheap light— entertainment turn. I’m
not a writer, I’m not anything. I’m not a man. I haven’t even got any kids like
you. I can’t do it.’ The murderous aftertaste of my dream settled on the
telephone receiver and projected itself down the line at Neil. At that moment,
I would have liked to kill him.

‘Where
are you, Neil? Where are you?’

‘What’s
it matter?’

‘Well,
it matters to me, Neil. You’re my client, for God’s sake. How do you think this
makes me feel?’ I was working hard now. I extemporized. ‘How dare you go and
take some bottles of pills without telling me first? Have you made a will or
anything? Well, have you? What if it turns out that what you’ve written so far
becomes a classic and gets made into a big Hollywood film and I can’t get my
hands on the rights because you didn’t sign all the relevant bumf? Neil… Neil?…
Are you still there?’

He gave
a sort of resigned half-laugh, half-cough. ‘Yeah, I’m still here.’

‘Well,
where is that?’

‘Aha,
trying to trick me, eh? In Sussex somewhere, Edinburgh. What does it matter?’

‘Whereabouts
in Sussex?’ With my free hand, I switched line 2 off the answer-phone and
picked up the receiver. I dialled his home number in West Hampstead with the
thumb of my left hand.

‘And
who’s going to play you in the film, you silly old bugger? Or when it goes to
series?’, I said.

‘You
know, Guy? I don’t give a monkey’s,’ he said, and chortled quietly. ‘Noel
bloody Edmonds for all I care.’

I got
through to West Hampstead but it was engaged and had that irritating Call
Holding voice on: ‘The person you are calling knows you are waiting,’ etc. I
hung up. I held the line 2 receiver away from line 3 into which I was speaking
so that Neil wouldn’t hear it. I dialled the operator with my left-hand thumb.

‘Neil,
listen, hang on a second. I’ve just got to switch off a tap but I’m still here,
I want to talk to you. You hold on, OK?’

‘Yeah,
all right, Guy, but there’s no point in ringing Karen, you know.’

‘You
still there?’

‘Yeah.
Guy?’ He was slurring now.

‘Yes?’
I replied.

‘You
know what? You’re a bastard, Guy. You’re a complete shit.’

‘Yes, I
know that, Neil, tell me something new. That’s what I take my ten per cent for.
Someone’s got to do it. It’s what you pay me for.’

‘Listen,
you old shit, I’m upstairs at home. That was you trying to call just now, wasn’t
it? I wish I was in Sussex, or anywhere, that’d be nice, that’d be . .’ He went
silent.

‘Neil?
Neil?’ God, I was angry with him. A day at the hospital I did not need. There
was clicking down the line, and another voice joined us.

‘Hello?
Who is this?’ It was American, a woman. Karen, I presumed. ‘Neil? Are you using
this phone, honey?’

‘He
says he’s taken some bottles of pills. He doesn’t sound very well. I’m Guy, his
agent, by the way. Hello.’

‘Oh,
not again,’ she sighed, and then, shouting to him, ‘Neil baby, I’ve had enough
of this already, do you hear? You put down the phone and get downstairs now!’

‘Is he
alright?’ I asked.

‘Of
course he’s alright. The ones who say they’re going to do it never do it.’ She
shouted at him again, this time away from the phone. ‘And have you tidied your
room yet?’

I
couldn’t imagine what sort of relationship they had, how on earth it worked,
but who am I to comment? I haven’t exactly found the key, have I? She spoke to
me again.

‘Are
you still there, Guy? Listen, don’t you worry, you go on and have a nice day. I’m
sorry about all this. Really.’

I couldn’t
leave it like that, I had to double-check. Despite wishing him drowned, I said,
‘Only if you’re sure he’s alright.’

‘No, he’s
not alright. He’s driving me mad, if you really want to know. But physically
speaking, yeah, he’s fine. You can relax. Really. I’ll take care of this.’

I said
goodbye. Ketts Stanton-Walker had not bothered to take Neil with them to Regent
Street, as you can imagine. No, I was stuck with him. Muggins.

And so
the second week of non-contact went by. Christ! In Neil’s TV sitcom the idea of
every other weekend had been so amusing, the men so humorously hopeless —
particularly Neil, who usually got the dumber laughs. The kids had been cute
and knowing, the dads had been quaintly sentimental but completely incompetent,
hence lovable. Good telly. They didn’t dream nightly of slaughtering their own
offspring in a raging torrent of cold black water, and wake shivering with
sweat and admonishments. I had put the Rosie and Jim dolls and the wind-up
dinosaur into a filing cabinet now;’ I couldn’t bear the sight of them and what
they stirred.

By the
Wednesday morning I couldn’t take it any longer. I had become seriously worried
about Grace. Well, I’d become obsessed, to be sure. Liz hadn’t returned any of
my calls for a week and, frustrated and depressed with the sight of my empty
office and with the lonely toys calling me from inside the filing cabinet — ‘Let
us out! Let us out!’ — I packed the day in after lunch and went down to Fulham
by bus to see if I couldn’t find out what was going on. Man of action, love,
that’s me. A big boy with a mission: steely gaze, steadfast purpose, square
chin. This whole thing needed fixing and I was the soldier boy to sort it. It
had taken me ten days to file the horrible, murderous dream under ‘stress at
work’.

The
upstairs of the number 14 was completely overrun by a gang of thirteen-year-old
kids in semi school uniform, throwing insults, sweet papers and cigarettes at
each other. I was the only adult up there — the conductress having given up on
them — and I retreated into my inner thoughts: fantasies of a dramatic scene at
my front door in which Liz refused to let me in to see Grace and I kicked the
door down and, finding Hendo in my kitchen, stabbed him with one of the
chopping knives which had been given to us as a wedding present by her mum.
Then the police arrived and I was taken away with Grace screaming and Hendo
pumping blood from his neck wound. I couldn’t decide whether Ken Loach, Quentin
Tarantino or Martin Scorsese would have been the most suitable director for
this scenario. Or was I on my way to kill them all?

‘Cheer
up, mate, might never happen,’ said an untidy schoolgirl as half of the kids
piled off the bus and jumped out at the lights. It was true I was looking
deranged. I looked at my watch. If I got out here I could go round to the day
nursery first. It would be pick-up time in about twenty minutes. I followed the
school kids and hopped off dangerously, even though the bus was now going too
fast, arriving on the pavement at a trot. I felt like some SAS guy with weapons
in both socks.

It was
hot again, and my thin linen jacket wasn’t really strong enough to hold my
mobile, which was dragging a bulky lump out of the left-hand pocket. I took it
out and hooked it on to my belt. Whichever way you wear a mobile you look like
a prat, but it was appropriate today to sling mine like a holster. I bet Hendo
has one of those wafer-thin ones that fits in the top breast pocket easily and
tells the time in Los Angeles and Tokyo.

As I
walked along the Fulham Palace Road I rang Malcolm Viner and asked if he wanted
to meet later for a drink. His little terraced cottage in Shepherd’s Bush was
about fifteen minutes from here. I couldn’t get him off the phone as I
approached the Little Fledglings school in Harcourt Road, and so, since I was
early, I hung about outside still talking to him, feeling like a yuppie dad who
fits his children into business schedule windows. Well, I suppose that’s what I
am really, but then what’s in a label?

Malcolm’s
ex-partner Geraldine was evidently intending to move to Dublin, taking his
daughter Nerily with her, and Malcolm, unsurprisingly, was vociferous on the
implications. She had found a new boyfriend and claimed to want to start a new
life in Ireland. Malcolm was considering whether to go and live there too in
order to be near his daughter.

‘Trouble
is, Guy, mate, I think the whole Dublin thing is just a scam. She knows she
couldn’t move back to America legally speaking, well, not without a helluva
stink from me, so she’s using Dublin as an interim measure which takes her
outside English custodial waters, so to speak. And from there she could go to
America, and there’d be nowt I could do about it.’

‘What
about your work?’ I asked.