Trading Futures (17 page)

Judy was always more likely to do the opposite, to smother the fire with the foam of softness and concern. Or, if I want to be bitchy, to disguise her self-interest as mine. She hasn’t
called me ‘darling’ in years; we use our first names.

I light another cigarette, take another swig of whisky. For four months, Judy has known I’ve been out of work. When I’ve left the house each morning, in the fresh shirt she has
ironed for me, with a briefcase supposedly filled with work papers, and she has wished me a good day in the office, she has known. She has concealed her knowledge like a spy, giving no hint that
she knew, waiting for me to tell her.

And she’s done it all in collaboration with that shit Rupert Loxley. Can you believe it? My wife. My loyal partner ha-ha. In collusion with the enemy. I don’t spy on her. I
don’t know what she’s been doing this weekend. Perhaps she never went to see Aunt Lucy. Perhaps she’s been bunked up with Rupert fucking Loxley. Fucking Rupert fucking Loxley.

But there’s a difficult question in all this, and I’d better think about it. Am I ill? Is it possible that I’m having some sort of a breakdown?

It’s not as if I haven’t had the same thought myself. As always, when someone else states as a fact something one has suspected oneself, it lends status to the declaration. It has
crossed my mind that my thoughts have been sufficiently strange, my behaviour sufficiently erratic, that I may not be altogether sane at the moment. But then lots of things cross my mind that
aren’t true. It proves nothing. And just because the same thought has crossed Judy’s mind, it doesn’t mean that either of us is right.

I will admit that at one point, a few weeks ago, or maybe a few months ago, I went to see a psychiatrist. It was on a Tuesday, that’s when it was. I went of my own volition. No one forced
me to go. I should have thought that was pretty good proof there was nothing much wrong with me. If I’d been ill, I wouldn’t have known I was ill, would I? So I can’t have been
ill. I went of my own accord.

Did the psychiatrist say I was ill? I don’t remember. He may have done. I don’t believe what psychiatrists say, so when he said that he wanted to see me again soon, I smelt a rat,
and a very nasty pong it was too, and it was clear that he was only saying it because he wanted more money, and I was buggered if I was going to give him any more of mine, because that first
session had cost me an arm and a leg, which is quite a lot to lose if you think about it, not to mention the cost of the pills he prescribed for me, which I should have thought I could get for
nothing on the NHS now I’m sixty. Apparently not.

Perhaps I should get a second opinion. No need. I’ve got one already. That bloke I met in the pub was a sort of psychiatrist. A psychologist, anyway. Ernest: that was his name. Ernest by
name and earnest by nature. I spent, what, several minutes with him. He didn’t think I was ill. I asked him directly and he said I wasn’t. He couldn’t have said that if it
wasn’t true. Professional ethics. He didn’t think I was ill at all.

It must have been this last Tuesday that I saw the other shrink, now I think of it, or maybe several Tuesdays ago. I was feeling a bit tense. I got a week’s supply of pills, or a
month’s. Who knows? I trebled the dose, like you do with aspirin and things. And whisky. They always tell you to take too few, in case you turn out to be an anaemic baby. That’s why I
finished them on Friday. Unless there are still some in the glove compartment.

What he did say, this shrink, was that I was stressed. He told me that! I went to see him because I was stressed, and he told me I was stressed. Brilliant. Of course I’m fucking well
stressed.

But that isn’t exactly mental illness, is it? Not by a long chalk. Two completely different things. I’ve spent a few hours with Anna being completely normal. Without pills. You
couldn’t have told there was anything the matter with me, not that there is. That proves it. At some moments, I feel stressed; at others I don’t. When I’m with Anna, I
don’t. All perfectly normal. That proves I’m sane.

I can’t light this cigarette. What’s the matter with it? I’m trying to light the filter. Idiot. That’s better. Where was I? Yes. Why is Judy suggesting a psychiatrist,
when I’ve already seen one? Because it’s her psychiatrist, that’s why. She’s managed to find a psychiatrist who thinks I’m ill. She probably had to call fifty of them
to find one. Perhaps he’s been unfrocked or whatever they do to them.

Anyway, that’s totally over the top. She’ll be trying to have me sectioned next. Or dosed into docility. That would suit her very well.

I bet that’s what she wants.

I WON’T LET HER.

I seem to be screaming. Why am I screaming?

All right. It’s all right. Calm down.

I’m not well. Let’s accept that. I’m not myself.

But I’m not ill. Not seriously ill. Just not well.

Well, what? What do I need? I need a rest.

I need a bit of TLC. And a few other initials probably. DSO and bar. Did somebody mention bar? And perhaps some . . . some . . . some of that. And some of the other. That would be good.
That’s what I need.

I could go back to Barnet. Barnet Fair. Nothing fair about it. Fucking Barnet. I could go back to fucking Barnet and become a vegetable. Hello, Mr Cucumber, isn’t it a pleasant day today?
Very pleasant, thank you, Mr Marrow.

This is no good.

Why did the lights go off?

Mr Cucumber is on his way to Barnet Fair with Bill Marrow, Jan Carrot, Peter Lettuce, Peter Broadbean, Dan’l Beetroot, Harry Chard, old Uncle Tom Cobnut and all, and all, old Uncle Tom
Cobnut and all.

What time is it? Nearly midnight.

How can it be nearly midnight? I called Judy only five minutes ago. How can it be nearly fucking midnight? The whisky bottle’s almost full.

I must turn the car round. The roads will be empty now. It shouldn’t take me long. I shouldn’t think Anna goes to bed that early. I could get there before she does. I could sleep in
the car, of course, or find a motel. Did I pass one on this road? I don’t remember. I wasn’t looking for one at the time. I probably did pass one. Maybe I should ring her. No, I
don’t think I will. No reception where she lives. Besides, it would be hard to explain everything on the phone. Better to do it face to face, man to man. Man to woman, that is.

What I’m going to do now is to concentrate very hard. I realize I am not quite myself. It’s going to be all right, because Anna will make it all right. I’ll be fine once
I’m there.

I will drive very slowly. Drive quite slowly and concentrate very hard. I will concentrate on being normal. I will arrive at her front door, perfectly normally, and say hello in a normal voice.
And if she’s surprised, which I suppose she will be, I will act as if my return is perfectly normal.

I will remind her that she wanted to know what was on offer. I am now able to give her an answer, so she will be pleased about that. I am on offer. And then. Well, I don’t know ‘and
then’. And then something will happen. It’ll be all right, because everything’s going to be all right, so it doesn’t really matter what it is. This is a bit nebulous, I
know. But I’m not worried about it. There’s nothing to worry about now.

I think the future always feels like this.

In the early hours of sometime, I reach Anna’s cottage. I’ve no idea how I’ve managed to find it. I think Gate must have guided me here, like the one
I’ve just driven through, up the track.

The engine of my car is quiet. In this vast silence it sounds like the roar of a hippopotamus. Tyres tiptoe over rutted mud to her door as if they are sugar-plum fairies. There are no lights on
in the house. No lights. No moon. No stars. This night has the blackest of hearts. Very strange. I could swear the sun was shining only a few minutes ago. What time is it? Nearly something or
other. I must have driven slowly, crawled like a slug through the darkness. I’ve been thinking about something. I can’t remember what it was now.

Anna appears to have gone to bed. You’d think she would have waited up. I would have done. You don’t go to bed when someone’s coming to visit you. I am momentarily confused.
Now I come to think of it, bed’s a reasonable place to be at three in the morning.

I’m not going to turn around and go back again, back to, well back to somewhere. I’m not going back to anywhere. That is non-negotiable. That is not an agenda item. I’m sure I
have an agenda here somewhere. I can’t remember where I put it now. It’s probably in the glove compartment with my pills.

If I were a burglar, what would I do? I would try the windows. That’s what I’d do. So I try them all, and all of them are locked. How else do people get into houses? Ah yes, doors.
And Anna leaves her front door unlocked. I’ll walk in through the front door as if it were my house, which maybe it is now, so that would be appropriate. Except that tonight the door is
locked. Am I sure? Yes, I’m sure. The front door is definitely locked. So is the back door.

I will have to wake Anna. I’d hoped to avoid that. But if you think about it, I’d have had to wake her anyway, had I come in by the door, or a window, or the chimney. No, not the
chimney, because only Santa Claus comes down the chimney and he doesn’t exist. I had to go to Tokyo one December. One of the department stores was running a European week and they had images
of Santa Claus hanging on a cross in the window. So the Japanese think Santa Claus exists, which is why he has capital letters. What does that prove? Where was I?

Yes. If I’d come in by the door, I would have had to wake her anyway. I couldn’t lie on the sofa and wait for her to find me in the morning. That would be rude.

There is no doorbell, but there is a large cast-iron knocker. I knock on it and nothing happens. I knock again, loudly. And again. Anna is a sound sleeper, obviously. I find that encouraging.
Not now, of course, not at this precise minute, but generally speaking. I can’t stand women who sleep lightly and who wake up in the middle of the night and say, ‘Are you awake?’,
when you’re not awake, but you are now because they’ve woken you, and they insist on telling you the dream they’ve just had, which is completely meaningless, so you just grunt,
hoping they’ll shut up and let you get back to your own dream, and they turn over and go to sleep immediately, and snore deliberately to annoy you, and you now feel wide awake and spend the
rest of the night tossing and turning, and doze off at about five, and feel crap when the alarm rings, while they feel great and say what a good night’s sleep they’ve had, and
can’t remember that they woke you in the middle of it to tell you their dream, or even that they had a dream that demanded an instant retelling, not that it did. You know the sort of woman I
mean. I can’t stand them. Thank god Anna isn’t one of them.

At least I know which is Anna’s bedroom and which is its window. It’s that one. Not the one with frosted glass, because that would be the bathroom window. Nor is it the small window
with a crack covered in passepartout, because that is the spare-room window. No. It’s this one. This is the window through which I saw two crows flap across a blue sky all those years ago. Or
was it this afternoon?

All I need now is something to throw at the window. A stone. A nice big stone. This one will do. No it won’t. That would be imbecilic. Let me find something else to throw. There’s
this sack here, propped against the side of the cottage. I can’t think what’s in it. Small pellety things. Rather like All-Bran. I don’t think it can be All-Bran. Far too much of
it, and there’s no milk or sugar. Chicken feed. That’s what it is. Chicken feed. Perfect. Couldn’t be better. Might have been made for the job. Perhaps Anna left it here
deliberately. Women do that sort of thing. I expect Anna realized I’d be coming back in the middle of the night. She probably debated whether to sit up and wait for me or whether to go to
bed, and, being a practical woman, decided to go to bed but to leave a sack of chicken feed by her bedroom window so that I could wake her up when I arrived.

Here I am, hurling chicken feed at Anna’s window. Nothing’s happening. Doesn’t matter. It will eventually. It’s a big sack. Plenty of chicken feed. And if I do use all of
it, which I won’t, but if I do, which I won’t, I can pick it up and start all over again. I’m in no hurry. The whole of the rest of my life stretches ahead of me, like, like
something or other.

I become aware of a hum. And of a light. Actually, I think it’s the other way around. A light first and then a hum. It’s not important. It doesn’t matter which came first, the
chicken or the chicken feed. I ask myself if I’m humming and I’m not. You’d think the light would be coming from Anna’s bedroom, but it isn’t. Perhaps she has changed
bedrooms and is sleeping out in the fields tonight. It’s a car, that’s what it is. That’s really peculiar. Who’d be coming to visit Anna in the middle of the night? Apart
from me, that is. Perhaps it’s Judy. She knows about Anna, doesn’t she? I’ve no idea. I mentioned her on the phone, didn’t I? Did I? Perhaps I did. Not that she knows where
Anna lives. Unless I mentioned that too. I can’t remember now. I could do without this. It will mean a scene. I had been hoping to avoid a scene. Can’t have Anna and Judy throwing
things at each other. Whatever it is they throw. Probably chocolates, I’d think.

The car reaches the cottage. I’m standing at the end wall, the wall that faces down the track, so the car will have seen me. Well, obviously the car won’t have seen me, but Judy
will, so she’ll know I’m here. The car stops, its lights pointing directly at me so I am transfixed in the beam. This is Stalag Luft III. It can’t be. The chickens are in Stalag
Luft III. It must be Stalag Luft II. Someone steps out of the car and calls my name in rather a strange way, as if it had a question mark on the end. It’s not Judy’s voice, but it
sounds familiar. Perhaps it’s an Australian. It’s Anna. That’s who it is. How bizarre. Why would Anna be coming to visit herself in the middle of the night?

It’s perfectly straightforward. Anna has been out somewhere. Wherever people go in the middle of the night. The Noah’s Ark at Lurgashall, perhaps. And because she’s been out,
she hasn’t been in her bedroom, so I haven’t been able to wake her by throwing chicken feed at her window. That makes sense.