The Zoo (6 page)

‘It's about dignity,' she is saying again, ‘it's dignity that is taken from us, I'm an intelligent person.'

She is. I can tell she is, though she too is dulled by the medication, and she struggles to make coherent sentences. They are a jumble of big words, trying so hard to form themselves into phrases that mean something, but falling woefully short.

She used to be a teacher like Sally. She talks about the children. About letting them down. About what they must think. She bursts into tears and I can't watch her. I can't watch her cry.

I think instead of the day my boy was born. Him lying in Sally's arms in the hospital, his face screwed up, his fingers clenching. How everything had to change there and how from there everything was to be different. How I looked at them both and said, ‘Harry'.

She said, 'Harry?' All the tiredness in her voice, in her eyes, in the way her head rolled back on the pillow, made me want to protect her. Protect him. Them.

‘After my Grandfather. I want to name him after my Grandfather.'

She looked at him, considering it, trying the name on him.

‘Harry,' she said and that was his name.

I pick him up from school. He sees me waiting at the gate and his face is crafted from happiness. I pop the door for him to clamber in. All the way home he chatters and chirrups, telling me of his day, of his friends and teachers and I reach over and tousle his hair and he shows me his teeth.

At home I spread paper over the dining room table, get out poster paint and we make prints with our hands. I smear paint on my lips and kiss the paper and he laughs, calls me ‘stupid Daddy' and my heart somersaults.

When Sally comes in from work I point at a glass of wine on the sideboard and return to the painting.

‘What's that?' I ask my son.

‘Mummy, Daddy, me.' Pudgy fingers moving over the images.

Sally comes up behind me, hand on the back of my neck, rubbing the top of my head.

‘This is what I want,' she says.

‘I know,' I reply.

‘We still okay for later?'

She takes a sip of her wine, rests her head on my shoulder, her eyelashes tickling my neck. I know she expects me to say no, find an excuse, try to wriggle out of it.

‘Yep,' I say instead.

She kisses me on the neck, blows a raspberry on my skin and then sticks her tongue out at Harry. He giggles and covers his mouth with his hand, eyes wide in mock horror.

‘Not long until his B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y,' she says.

I count in my head.

‘No, not long.'

‘Any ideas?' she asks.

‘I c-c-can spell you know,' he says, looking up from his painting, ‘I'm not a b-b-baby.'

‘Go on then, clever clogs, what did I just spell?' Sally cocks her head to the side, hand on hip, matronly and sexy at the same time.

He makes a show of screwing his face up, rolls his eyes back until I can only see the whites and then shrugs.

‘That's what I thought,' she says, then to me, ‘get your thinking cap on. I'm going to have a shower. Can you ring us a taxi for about 8?'

I hear the water running and her muted singing and for a little while I think everything is going to be alright.

 

In the background Bob Dylan sings about trying hard but not understanding. Sally passes me the joint and I take a big toke, jump as the hot rock falls onto my shirt, curse as it bounces onto my knee, onto the floor. Sally giggles and cuffs me with the back of her hand. She tucks her feet beneath herself and leans on me. Lights are low. Dan and Lou sit on the floor at our feet. They could be from 1965, all loose hair and hippy smiles, flowing clothes and gentle voices. Earnest.

‘Have you seen them in real life, though?' Lou's talking to me.

‘No,' I reply handing the spliff to Dan.

‘Makes all the difference.'

I realise I'm stoned and have forgotten what we're talking about. Sally shakes an empty wine glass at Lou who gets up and takes it through to the kitchen, talking all the while.

‘I was like you. I thought they were art prints for students. All pretty colours and no substance.'

I whisper to Sally, ‘Who are we talking about again?' and she replies, ‘Rothko.'

‘I don't think that's quite what I said, Lou,' I shout through to the kitchen.

She returns and hands Sally a glass.

‘Sorry, did anyone else want one? Maybe you didn't quite say that, Jay, but same lines. I know where you're coming from. What those prints don't show you though is the sheer size of the things. I mean, they are fucking vast. And the texture. They look all smooth and sanitised in the piccies, but in real life they've got texture. They're ugly and lumpy. They move too. No, fuck off, Dan, don't pull that face at me. Seriously, they move. They vibrate. Honestly, I'm not joking.'

‘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.'

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 body. 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.

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.