Wildlife (23 page)

Joe can't even smell the smell. I'm no longer sixteen, he's thinking.

‘Come on, you white-haired freak,' shouts Sean. ‘I can't take it. Throw the fucking nappy out the window!' Sean has grabbed Dolly from the travel seat and he's using her to hit some sense into Joe. ‘Oh my God! What the fuck is this? This fucking doll's got a fucking skeleton. I can fucking feel it.' The small white flannel becomes untucked and falls off Dolly's body. ‘Fuck's sake, Dad. This doll's got a fucking minge!'

‘Put the doll down, Sean,' shouts Alan, making the people carrier accelerate. ‘We'll sort all this out at the next service station. Please put that disgusting doll down!'

Joe regains some form of consciousness. ‘Do you want to see something really disgusting, Sean?'

‘What are you on about, mate? I can't get over your fucking hair. When I get the TT I'll never pick no one up.'

Joe pulls down the canvas roof of the travel seat and Beak lets out an ear-splitting scream, all her fur stands on end and her back arches extremely. The smell of death is worse than ever. Someone should seriously consider winding down a window.

‘What the fuck is that?' exclaims Sean.

‘What is what, Sean? Tell me. What can you see?' says Alan, hyperactive in the front seat.

‘The baby's mouth,' shouts Sean. ‘There's something coming out the baby's mouth.'

Sally is once again in labour and in pain. Her windpipe has once again been blocked by a small corpse, a doll, a minute and dead human; her face is becoming red and her black eyes are wide and watery. Joe can sense the loud sound that will accompany the passing of this new object building
up inside Sally. He begins to twist the little body and try to ease it out of Sally's mouth. Sean looks on, horrified, silent, watched carefully by Beak. Alan is twisting in the front seat, trying to figure out what's happening.

‘This one's still alive,' says Joe, noticing that the naked yellow body he's pulling from the baby's mouth is flinching slightly like a caught fish. ‘And it's a man.'

This time the birth is painless. Sally groans as the little body is pulled from her throat. She starts crying but quickly loses interest in the idea and instead begins to dribble black residue over her chin and tries to reach out and seize Beak with her outstretched hand.

Joe, meanwhile, has laid the minuscule man out on his lap. The creature is breathing. Though he looks just as old and haggard as Dolly, he is clearly still breathing. The crumpled yellow skin that covers his lungs is moving up and down so quickly. Joe uses his sleeve to clean the creature's face. His eyes are similar to Dolly's – weathered, worn out, full of sadness. The little creature is petrified. His tiny eyes look up at Joe with an expression so full of fear that Joe can barely hold it. The little man watches as the blue sky scrolls in the windows of the people carrier. He looks across to where Sean is shaking, the back of his haircut squashed against the window.

‘Can you hear me?' whispers Joe, bringing his lips up close to one of the little creature's ears, which is no bigger than one of Joe's fingernails.

The little man nods his head, his eyes still wide with fear. He's gripping the upholstery of the car seat very tightly. The ancient skin of his face develops more and more lines as his cheeks clench and his jaw locks with white anxiety. He is trying to speak.

‘What is it?' asks Joe, turning so his ear is above the man's cracked and blackening lips.

‘My wife,' mutters the man, his voice barely audible due to the age and weakness of his lungs. ‘Have you seen my wife?'

Instinctively, Joe reaches into the travel seat and grabs Dolly. He holds her up for the little man to see, forgetting that Dolly is dead, is not quite the little lady that the little man recalls. The little man stares with ever narrowing eyes at Dolly's fixed, dead expression, at her withered and naked body. Only when the man begins to weep does Joe realise his mistake. He sees the pinprick tears falling from the little man's eyes and realises he should have made up an excuse, a story. He should have said that Dolly was waiting for him somewhere. But he did not think.

‘I'm sorry,' Joe whispers.

The little man nods. He's trying to say something through the tears. His lips attempt to make a word but they're quivering too much, they lack the strength and they give in. For a few seconds, the man just nods his little head, his eyes looking into Joe's wearing a sad expression, but an understanding one. His ribcage rises and falls in an ever more laboured way, until, after a short time, Joe notices that it has stopped moving altogether and that the little man's eyes have turned to look through the window at the vast winter sky, and have completely drained of life.

‘He's dead,' says Joe, ‘We'll call him Sam, as in, Sam the Man.'

‘Who's dead?' shouts Alan, his face twisted towards Joe but his eyes fixed painfully on the motorway. ‘Sean, could you tell me who's dead?'

Sean doesn't hear his dad's question. He has put
headphones into his ears and he's staring out the window, his head turned away from Joe, from Sally and Beak, from the dead bodies of Dolly and Sam the Man. Sean does not hear his mother speak either. His mother who has never spoken once during his lifetime, who gave birth without making a sound and who, some years ago, failed to alert anyone when Sean fell from Brighton pier while under her supervision. But she speaks now. She brings a sledgehammer crashing down on nearly twenty years of silence.

‘It's quick,' she says, in a voice in need of repair. ‘And it doesn't matter.'

A silence follows. A newer, lighter, fresher-smelling silence. Sean stares out the window, oblivious to it all. Cradling the corpses of Dolly and Sam the Man, Joe shakes his head and wonders how he ended up in a car with a baby, with two little corpses, with a kitten. For once a Southerner is right, he decides, as the people carrier joins the A1.

It's quick. And it doesn't matter.

BY THE TIME
Life was brought on board to organise the launch party, those involved in the Wild World were rapidly losing faith and less willing to tell others what they did for a living. They spoke vaguely of corporate marketing, never mentioning the Wild World by name. They got drunk a lot instead of doing their work. They spent their days exchanging junk email or chatting on Facebook or fucking each other in Wow-Bang. Paper piled up on desks. Plans were left half made. Designs were rushed. Very little, if anything, got organised. In fact, as the date for the launch party grew closer, it became clear that no one was working at all. If ever employees of the Wild World bumped into each other in Soho or Shoreditch or Bethnal Green they would nervously say ‘hello' and then, having composed themselves a little they would say, ‘Dear me, you look fantastic, you've got genuine guts and your soul's elastic. And Jesus, that can't be an original Roxy Music T-shirt, surely?' And then silence would prevail and the sounds of London streets would amplify in the ears of both people
and in the eyes of the other each would suddenly recognise the same questions and thoughts:
What the fuck was Wild World? It was just hype, right? It was literally nothing. It was irony, yeah, I get it, it was pretty cool, pretty funny, pretty clever. But it didn't mean anything, did it?

Only Life, who had been taught as a child not to give up, continued to make any effort at all. For her, it didn't matter that she didn't know quite what the Wild World was. If she'd been hired and paid to help, then help she would. With a couple of days to go before the scheduled launch of the Wild World, it was Life who picked up the telephone and booked the banqueting suite at Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club.

Her efforts didn't end there. She spent whole nights in Wow-Bang, trying desperately but failing miserably to motivate people and gather advice. She spent hours glued to her mobile phone, calling caterers, celebrities, scientists, musicians, sword swallowers, politicians, athletes, billionaires, every latest sensation. Anyone who she thought might conceivably have something to do with the Wild World. She even called Asa Gunn's agent and offered Gunn the chance to quickly relaunch his pop career at the Wild World launch event. He accepted. A small victory. Mostly, though, Life became more and more nervous. She called the people who she had once considered her superiors in the organisation. She called Bossbitch. No answer. She called the bald guy who had asked her if she knew anyone in the North who could be entrusted with a very special child. He answered, he said he was out of the Wild World, ‘far too fucking vague'.

So Life Moberg got her wish, she found herself at the forefront of events management, and, as I say, rather than
give up, she got cracking. She had hoped to find a better venue than the banqueting suite that overlooks the pitch at Stamford Bridge. But she struggled. So it's all going to take place here. The Wild World will be launched in a football stadium.

It's a large room, as long as the football pitch is wide. It's incredibly beige. The walls are beige and so is the carpet and the tablecloths. Even the chairs are covered in thick beige fabric. When the guests arrive, few will have ever seen such a beige place in all their lives. Only Life breaks up the beigeness. She's walking between the tables in a red silk dress. Her golden hair is tied back with a red ribbon. She looks beautiful. She has made a special effort. She straightens pieces of cutlery and rearranges some of the flowers that decorate each of the large circular tables. She climbs up onto the stage and nervously tests the microphone. ‘One two,' she says, flinching as her voice echoes loudly around the room. ‘One two, Wild World, testing.' Above her, a large banner reads ‘WELCOME TO THE WILD WORLD'. Getting down from the stage, Life checks the place names on the table nearest the front. Everything is in place. ‘Janek Freeman' next to ‘Joe Aspen' next to ‘Anka Kudolski' next to ‘Roger Hart' next to ‘Life'. Life picks up her own place name and stares at it, reading it in her head, over and over again. ‘Life.' ‘Life.'

Satisfied that the room is ready, she decides she ought to go and check on the photographers outside. She places her name card back onto the table. She turns towards the door to find ten straight and fashionable faces staring right at her. She recoils in shock. She even gasps. For a second she can't think straight at all and can't make sense of this group of people who must have entered and gathered
around her without making a sound. They stand, these people, closed-mouthed and with trendy, blinkless eyes, staring at her. They are dressed, all of them, in crisp and muscularly ironic fluorescent shellsuits. They're in their mid-twenties with dyed and challenging hair but Life doesn't recognise any of them. Eventually she's able to compose herself and construct an ingratiating smile. These people must be here to help. Thank God, thinks Life. She's about to say hello and offer them each her hand when she notices that some of these bright and shellsuited young people have started to smirk. They are eyeing Life's pretty red dress, the ribbon in her hair, the special effort she has made, and they are laughing.

‘We'll take it from here, Life Moberg.'

ROGER AND ANKA
are first to arrive at Stamford Bridge. The only problem is, they're too nervous to go in. The entrance is surrounded by photographers. There's a red carpet. Every now and then, cars pull up and elderly men and women in formal dress get out, pause to be photographed, then enter the stadium. Anka and Roger are watching proceedings from an outdoor stall selling Chelsea FC memorabilia.

On the train down here, Anka had been forced to gag Roger with a spare pair of her knickers. He wouldn't stop describing things, banging on about the countryside, the various stations, the sound of the train, his feelings, his sitting position, his inability to make love, the technology inside him. He wouldn't shut up. When two incredibly fat ladies sat down opposite them at Stoke, Anka thought it best to gag him. He still mumbled, and tried to move the knickers with his tongue. But he couldn't really express himself.

‘What are we gonna do?' says Anka.

Roger looks up from his wheelchair, his jaw straining on the knickers, eyes pleading.

‘All right,' Anka says, ungagging him, ‘but try to keep the bullshit to a minimum, yeah, Roger?'

Roger splutters. A string of saliva clings to the knickers as they're pulled from his mouth. ‘Do you really think it's a good idea, this?' he says, pointing at the crowded entrance. ‘Maybe you're used to being photographed, Anka, but I'm not. And they'll probably ask loads of embarrassing questions about why my body's plastic and why I've got a mouse lodged in my head and wires in my ears. What if my belly starts beeping? I know what these kinds of people are like, Anka. They're vultures. They can be cruel.'

Anka doesn't reply. Roger watches as she stares over at the photographers, twisting the knickers tightly round an outstretched finger, deep in thought.

‘I don't want to be just another anorexic posing in a magazine,' Anka says finally, turning to Roger. ‘And what does the Wild World matter anyway? We've found each other. We want to help each other, right? We're sort of above culture, aren't we?'

Roger nods.

‘Why do you like me, Roger?' says Anka keenly, kneeling down beside Roger's chair and forcing him to hold her eyes.

Roger's not sure what to say. Why? he wonders. Why Anka? Because she's fit? Thin, but beautiful. Because she's weird? Because she beats herself up in eating disorder clinic toilets? Because she's on TV? Because when a bra pushes her tits together a pleasing shadow falls between them?

‘Because I'm desperate,' says Roger. ‘I'm desperate not to be alone. And you're the only person I've properly met in years.'

‘I hope you realise that's a bad answer.'