The Zoo (24 page)

I begin to follow the footprints.

Everything is quiet as I follow them around the huts. Inside each hut there is only blackness. I follow the prints around the edge of the enclosure. Almost the same path I took on my first visit. The sun is burning my neck, crisping the hairs there. The prints take me around the perimeter once, then again in a slightly smaller circle. I swear the inner ring of prints wasn't there on the first circuit. They look fresher. I pick up my pace and complete the circuit.

The sun is lower in the sky now. Thin clouds stretch across it in delicate wisps. The orange of the sun bleeds into them, then leaches out across the blue, like watercolour on wet paper.

The prints begin the loop again. I kneel at the point they cross the first loop and look at the prints – inside the first of the second loop is a tracing of a sword. I'm getting annoyed now, starting to feel like someone is taking the piss out of me. It occurs to me that if I stay put then whoever is making them should come up behind me in a couple of minutes, so I turn around, sit on the floor and wait. Nothing happens. No child. No more footprints. Just me sitting in the dust under a massive African sky, knowing that I need to get to my feet and play out whatever it is that I'm supposed to do.

So I pull myself up and set out on another circuit. This one begins with a tracing of a skull and crossbones. I want to get this over and done with, I'm not stupid, know that I will end up doing this again, getting smaller, so I begin to trot. By the time I'm back at the beginning I can touch the nearest hut if I stretch out my arm. Getting closer. Don't need to look at the ground to know the prints begin again, but I do. Put my foot next to one of them, next to a drawing of a machine gun. The print looks so small. I can make out each toe, the light print of the heel, the heavier pressure of the front of the foot, suggesting running, so I do the same, even though I'm struggling for breath, struggling against the build-up of acid in my calves and the stabbing pains in my shins.

Sketch of a Lion.

Run around once more, as the light slides out of the day and the temperature drops, making the sweat dry cold on my back.

Sketch of a Rhino. One more circuit.

I reach the hole in the wall. The prints turn in, turn into the cluster of huts, up to a spray-painted image of a monkey on the wall, arms pointing into the seventh circle. I follow them between the buildings, which lean into me, conspiratorial, seeming to grow in height and close in above me until the darkening sky is just visible as a sliver of blue between the iron and pallets and plastic sheets.

I'm shepherded along to a shadowy entrance at the end of an alley way.

I am held in thrall of childhood fears. I am rooted. It takes everything I have left to step into the darkness, to duck my head under the threshold and enter the hut. Inside there is just one room with wicker mats on the floor and a pile of coloured cushions against one wall. The only light is from the door behind me and a jagged hole in the ceiling and the embers of a fire in the centre. Stepping closer I see a pan of still boiling water resting on a metal grate over the fire. Something is inside it. A glimpse of bone breaks the surface of the water. I lean closer. It's a rat or a rodent of some kind. All the fur stripped from its body apart from the head and through the bubbles I can see two blank eyes staring up at me. Then one of them blinks. I scream, jump up, catching the pan as I do and the water spills out of it, into the fire, which hisses and extinguishes and all the light in the hut is gone.

I freeze. Wait for my eyes to adjust. The rat is lying on the dead coals not moving, not blinking, just a dead rat. I laugh at myself, turn to leave and walk straight into someone. Again terror washes over me, I stumble back into the hut, catch my foot on one of the mats and fall onto my back, pull myself across the floor like a crab as the figure follows me. I put both hands over my face expecting a blow. Nothing comes. I remove my hands. The boy from the road, the boy from the zoo, is sitting cross-legged at my feet.

He smiles. I smile back.

‘You,' I say.

‘Yes,' his voice is heavily accented, deeper than I expected it to be.

He is holding something out to me. A bit of paper. I don't move. He shakes it.

‘Take it. It's yours.'

I lean forward and snatch it from him.

‘I shouldn't have to tell you this,' he says, ‘you already know.'

Then he unwinds himself and stands.

‘Wait,' I say.

He looks at me, expectation in big brown eyes. I don't know what I wanted to say, so ask him his name instead.

‘You already know that too.'

‘I've forgotten.'

‘Bamidele.'

I repeat it back. Roll it around my mouth.

‘Yes. Bamidele. You know what it means too,' he says and then he is gone.

In the empty hut I look at the paper in my hand. A scrunched up bit of paper, stained with the dust of a foreign land. Half a page ripped out of a magazine. On one side a picture of a Panther and text too small for me to read in this light. I don't need light to know the words on the other side because I wrote them. Every single fucking one.

It's an advert for the bank.

Ben and I are in our meeting room, the ads spread out in front of us on the table and we've just watched the commercial again for the hundredth time. I'm bored of it now and so is he. This is always the danger in launching any campaign – the client is sick of it before the public even gets to see it. It's my job to get over this inertia, to make sure they don't try to change it before it goes live or within weeks of its launch. I seem to have the same telephone conversation over and over again with various clients as they try to fiddle with campaigns just weeks into launch, about how we've got to let them run their course, explaining opportunities to see or hear, that they're only sick of them because of the processes we go through, that we've got to give Joe Public a chance to at least see it before they butcher it. Sometimes I'm more successful than others. Hilary is the best at it. His arrogance, his unwavering conviction that he's right and the client doesn't know best is only really useful in these situations. God knows he doesn't listen to what the clients want anymore. When I get the call, the inevitable call, asking for us to increase the size of the price, or add more text, or put a flash or a fucking banner on, this is the only time I really feel comfortable putting the call through to him. Otherwise it's just a recipe for disaster.We've gone over the press ads. I've got Ben's scrawl on most of them as a final sign off. There's a knock at the door and Ruth comes in with printouts of the online ads. I hand them to Ben and, as he takes them, I sense a hesitation in him. An almost imperceptible pause, and a downturn of his eyes. I hope he's not going to ask me to change something, because we're past deadline on most of them and I asked Baxter to send them to the media house this morning. But Ben doesn't. He signs the top one. Then, barely looking at them, applies his moniker to each of the remaining printouts.

He's very twitchy today. I want to write it off as the fact that he's got final say on all this, all these millions of pounds worth of media bollocks arrayed in front of us like the plan of some mad Napoleonic general, but it's something more than that. He seems worn down.

‘All done?' I ask, trying to inject some enthusiasm into my voice, all too aware I sound forced.

‘Yes,' he replies without looking up, ‘too late to stop it now.'

I raise an eyebrow.

He gives a little shrug. Puts the lid back on his pen and tucks it inside his jacket.

‘Can I go?' he asks.

‘Of course. Whenever you want.'

He nods, shakes my hand without meeting my eye and leaves.

As I tidy the papers up into a pile, turn the monitor off and collect everything up, his attitude nags at me. I'd expect a sense of anti-climax at this stage, that's normal, we've been working towards this for months. I could understand it if he felt a little lost. But not this. I question myself briefly as to whether this is my ego talking, whether I was expecting a big thanks, a professional pat on the back, but no, I wouldn't have wanted it from Ben anyway. No disrespect to him, but he's just a foot soldier, my ego demands approval from up high, not from the rank and file.

I realise this bugs me enough to not let it slide, so I run out of the meeting room, through the office and down the stairs.

In the car park Ben is taking his jacket off and hanging it up in the back of the car.

‘Ben, wait,' I call out to him.

He is visibly shocked to see me running like this, then he buries it behind a deadpan expression.

‘Did I forget something?'

‘No. No. It's not that,' I don't know how to word this. I don't know him well enough. It occurs to me again that I could be being hugely oversensitive, that my lifestyle is playing tricks on me. ‘Are you okay?'

The merest hint of a smile on his lips. Then that too is stifled.

‘Yes, why?'

Everything I say is going to make me sound like a neurotic girlfriend.

‘You just don't seem right. There's something wrong. Look, I don't want to pry, I'm well aware I could be stepping over the client–agency boundaries here, but we've been working closely together for months now, and, well, I get the feeling that something is wrong. If it's private and I'm being invasive then please tell me to fuck off.'

The suggestion of a smile again, but the shoulders have sagged. I knew it. There is something.

‘Look. I'm fine. Don't worry about me. There's nothing bad. I've not split up from my girlfriend or anything. Everything is fine.'

Despite myself I'm relieved. At least I've not put my foot in it.

‘Then is it anything I can help with?' I ask.

He appears to be considering it. He closes the car door, leans his elbows on the roof and rests his chin on his fists. Takes a deep sigh and starts to say something. Stops.

‘Look,' he says eventually, 'there's nothing I can do about it, nothing you can do about it, so it's not even worth talking about.'

‘Talking about what?'

‘Nothing. It will do no good. You'll just feel as bad as I do and that's not fair.'

‘Bad about what? You're scaring me now, Ben. What's happened?'

He lowers his forehead onto his fist now. His shoulders shake. I think he's crying, but when he spins round I see that he is angry, really angry.

‘Nothing has happened. It just is. There's nothing any of us can do about it, so stop asking me questions. Don't worry about it, just turn round and get on with the rest of your day.'

‘Fucking hell, mate, I can't do that now. I need to know what's got you so wound up. Especially if it affects me.'

He's shouting now, flecks of his spit hit my face.

‘Oh, it affects you. It affects me. It affects all of us. It's not a matter of who it affects, it's a matter of whether you notice whether it does or not. I think you'll probably be alright.' He makes a play of looking me up and down, ‘Yes, I think you'll be just fine.'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about. But I'm worried about you now. You can talk to me. Come on, let's go over the road and have a chat over a pint. Better than here in the car park. Come on, mate. Let's go and set the world to rights.'

He snorts with laughter. An edge of derision to it. I've never seen him like this, never thought I would.

‘Too fucking late for that. Way too fucking late. We're on a path now. We've just got to follow it and see where it takes us . . .'

The shrill ring of his mobile cuts him short. He swears under his breath, pulls it from his pocket. As he looks at the display his face is engulfed with sheer panic, his skin suddenly as grey as the tarmac all about us.

‘I've got to go,' he says without answering.

‘Wait,' I say, reaching for his arm, but he slaps my hand away.

‘No. I've got to go. Forget this. Everything is fine. I'm just tired. We've been working too hard. It's done now though. We can all relax.'

He slams the car door shut behind him and guns the ignition. He looks at me once before he wheel-spins out of the car park.

I'm left with the image of his haunted face through the tinted glass etched on my mind.

The order goes: The Cowboy, The Knight, The Pirate, The Soldier, The Lion, The Rhino, The Ape, The Horse, then The Zebra.

The Horse is superior to The Zebra because of his usefulness to The Cowboy. There is an image filed in my head of The Cowboy and The Horse, silhouetted against a sky that is soaked in oranges and reds and they are so small against it, so small. The world fans out about them and they are just punctuation. This is before The Zoo, or maybe never at all. He is an Andalusian, purebred and Mediterranean, you can see the passion in the flare of his nostrils and the arrogant tilt of his head. I've never seen The Cowboy ride him of course, I believe though, that if he wanted to ride him then The Horse would allow it.

He has been our friend and our mount for 3000 years. He is the outmoded transport that we keep about for nostalgia and to race for our entertainment. He used to be the car, the tractor, the train, the combine harvester, the tank, now he is there for our pleasure only.

He is the bearer of the Apocalypse, bringing righteousness, war, famine and death to us all.

He is My Little Pony, with pink bows and plastic comb for his mane.

He was Dusty, then he became Silver.

He is Red Rum, which is also murder backwards on a mirror.

He is a hollow wooden horse let into an encampment so its occupants can surprise and slaughter their enemies, so he is trust and the betrayal of that trust.

He is beloved of all teenage girls as Black Beauty, but he is also a severed head in a bed.

He has always been with us, carrying us across the Earth, but just as The Cowboy stands on his own and abandons The Horse, so too do we and he is becoming forgotten and irrelevant.