Subjects, p.24
Subjects, page 24
Thirty-Two
Friday, 3 June 2016
Florence pushed open the abandoned back door with her foot. It swung open to reveal an evidence-based history of the last hour’s events, rendered in deposits of discarded clothing, exploded school bags and sticky still lifes of half-eaten food and drink. She could see the ghosts of the chroniclers hurtling buffalo-like up the stairs, released from their captivity until the next school week.
She was hardly ever home last, but someone had dropped out of badminton, and they needed her to stay. Tim had been trusted to walk home with Isaac, as Mum was now almost always here these days, and Dad would be back between 5pm and 6pm. Parental proximity appeared not to have placed, as she had hoped, a natural limit on the level of destruction they could wreak. Crossly, she emptied out a cup filled with soggy biscuit pieces and tossed Isaac’s muddy school shorts towards the washing machine. The cereal bowls were still in the sink, their leavings of milk warm now, lapping at wheat flakes which clung like barnacles to the ceramic glaze, and there was no sign of food preparation, or the necessary pre-purchasing of raw ingredients, even though her mother had said airily that morning that it was all in hand.
Florence took off her shoes and lined them up on the mat, then picked up her own school bag and carried it up the stairs. Dropping it more carelessly than normal through her bedroom door, she continued on up to the loft, wondering again if there was any form of culinary plan, or whether her mother had, as usual, become sidetracked, busy with her all-important project, withdrawn from the outside world and the unbearable fuss of having to carry out basic practicalities enabling them all to exist within it.
Cautiously, Florence stepped into the dark alcove off the landing and listened at the attic door. She knocked less gently than usual and pushed it open. Her mother was asleep, head resting heavily on her folded arms, hair tumbling up the keyboard as far as K and G and S. Florence couldn’t see the expression she had been wearing when she submitted to this exhaustion, and was filled with irritation rather than concern. She had her chance now, to find out what it was all about – to evaporate the screensaver with one touch of the mouse. But she didn’t. She didn’t touch it. She was too well brought up for that.
Florence dropped grumpily down the attic stairs and back down to the kitchen, past the boys lying on their stomachs in Tim’s bedroom, playing computer games. She reached around a pile of margarine tubs on the middle shelf of the fridge for the chilli she’d defrosted the night before, then hidden to avoid confusion or offence. Then she switched on the oven and started scrubbing at five thick-skinned, mud-clad potatoes, before brushing them violently with oil and, with a wrench of the wooden mill, pelting them with salt.
She slid them onto the rack and shut the door with a bang. The oven still wasn’t properly hot, as it hadn’t occurred to anyone to flick it on in advance. She emptied the mound of greasy mince and purple beans into a saucepan. There was no point in microwaving it now. The potatoes would take an hour at least.
Florence could hear her father unlocking the front door. He always came in that way, as if he was living in a completely different house or had simply forgotten altogether they had a back entrance. She heard him put down his briefcase and hang his gangling summer raincoat with a rustle on a peg, then muffled shrieks and jumping up and down sounds as he passed the boys’ rooms, setting off a wave of recognition that displaced the quiet.
‘Oh, hello, Flo,’ he said with surprise, coming back down two minutes later to make himself a cup of tea. ‘Thought you weren’t back ’til late.’
‘I wasn’t,’ she said, always pleased to see him but today hardly looking up. ‘I wasn’t back ’til late. But not quite as late as I thought I might have been. Good job as it happens.’
Hugo was immune to pointed meaningfulness. He looked around the kitchen and saw everything was in hand.
‘Mum all right?’ he said.
‘Why wouldn’t she be?’ said Florence, a novel feeling of faint belligerence rising in her voice. ‘When I last checked on her, she was fast asleep.’
‘OK.’ Hugo went back up to his office with a biscuit and his tea, not thinking to go into their bedroom or poke an enquiring head around the attic door. He didn’t fuss about those sorts of things. If Florence said that things were fine, he took it that they were.
*
I couldn’t believe it. As I scrolled up the stupid story, right up to the top, past the manic cucumber slicer and the electronic dogs, I saw the title and the author’s name, in Times New Roman, bold.
SERFS
A history
By Hugo M. Gardner
Christ Almighty. He’d written it himself. Invented it. Drawn it from his mind. All except his anti-heroine, a merciless caricature of yours truly: the half-woman, half-robot, with the mad and wiry hair. The quest for knowledge, my year-long pilgrimage of learning and self-improvement, had been compacted into a mere subplot in his intergalactic adventure, and I had been cruelly diminished into an ignorant figure of fun: one of his sorry subjects, written into oblivion.
No wonder he’d sought solace in communion with her. I knew now how ridiculous he thought me, how worthless and dim-witted. I was never on a par with him, just as alongside Inika I’d failed to make the grade with Jim. It all made perfect sense now. Why wouldn’t he hook up again with his childhood sweetheart when his marriage had degenerated into a pitiful farce?
I thought all that. I thought it as my guts churned in my chest. And just as I was reading, an email popped right up for him, an air miles offer, nothing scandalous, showing me his inbox had been left unlocked.
There was no stopping me then. My moral compass was swinging about so much it pointed me straight towards damnation. I clicked down on every email I saw, turning them all to “mark as read”, unburying the further evidence I thought I knew was there.
There was nothing much at first – emails from colleagues about methane and types of lichen; calls for conference papers. Nothing from her either, at least, thank God. I couldn’t have stood that.
Then I found it. Confirmation of his entry.
Confirmation of his entry for the Broseworth Prize.
For crying out loud.
He was in this competition too, determined to defeat me, right to the end.
At first, I couldn’t think how he knew about it. He never went to the local library, only academic ones. And then I remembered – a little bit came back to me. That time in the hospital, when he came in with the post, and I gave it back for the recycling, because it made no sense.
He must have seen it, that advert, that jaundice-yellow advert, and thought he’d have a go. Have a go at me as well, by trying out his new skill. That would have been early April, after the deadline had gone. That’s when the accident happened, or so they’ve said. He must have paid for late entry, to secure his success.
But wait a minute. April? I was truly sickened then. I’d been writing three months longer, counting the research and everything. His story was already over ten thousand words.
Mine was under half of that.
And as for the content? It was stupid, that was for sure. But funny, quirky and edgy for those who weren’t the butt of the joke – with far more crowd appeal than my epistemological narrative. Even writing that sounded pretentious, stolid, stuffy. I couldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t let him win.
I resolved to write him into a corner.
Before 1 October.
But I had to sharpen up my game.
There were only four months left.
*
Hugo checked over his latest work with the same diligence he applied to his conference papers, this time wearing a smile he couldn’t quite keep off his face. He was pleased with it. More pleased than he’d anticipated. He relished a challenge of any kind, especially an intellectual one, and having a go at his favourite genre had been a lot of fun. Usually, the competitions he entered involved macrophotography, rubber band planes or solar-powered gadgetry with Mark. It was rare he allowed himself to be creative without a practical end.
The children would like the story, he was sure, especially the exploding Washserfs and the scatological slant. Isaac would appreciate the electric dog, and Annabel, if she ever read it, would see it for what it was: a homage to his heroes, humbly emulated. The teaspoon joke was a little hackneyed, that was for sure, and the basic premise somewhat less sophisticated than How to Survive or The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but he thought it worked all right and would, by the time he completed it in a few weeks, adequately fulfil the brief.
He’d been surprised how easy it had been in the end. Normally, he selected his vocabulary so carefully from the restrictive biochemical register, to capture precisely the behaviours of lichens, manure or hops, but he’d found out he could churn out three thousand words a week of this rambling space comedy, uninhibited by scholarly readership or existing scientific fact. He couldn’t see it being a problem, meeting the competition deadline. He was used to working with tight schedules. He wasn’t worried about that. There might even be time for Mark to illustrate it too.
*
Hugo was humming as he came down to the table. Sofia, more sensitive to the ambiance, remained outwardly grateful and effusive and masked her newly deepened hatred for the sake of her offspring.
‘Oh gosh, that looks absolutely lovely darling,’ she praised the cloven spuds, spilling out their steaming guts of purplish red-brown stew. They could all feel the heat still burning outwards from within.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Sofia continued, treading carefully, aware of what she’d done this night and many others too, and putting her arm around her daughter to give her a tentative squeeze. ‘Just couldn’t keep my eyes open. Shattered for some reason. Must be the meds.’
‘What’s that?’ said Isaac, eyeing another dish laid out on the side.
‘Hot,’ barked Florence. She leaped away from her mother, standing between him and it to defend them both.
‘Is it—’
‘Macaroni, yes. Cos I thought the chilli would be too strong for you, and you’d want something else.’
‘Is it with bacon?’ said Isaac, trying to peer around her to get a proper look.
‘I thought you didn’t like bacon, Isaac,’ said Sofia with surprise.
‘I like it now,’ Isaac explained. ‘I’ve reliked it since… when I was at Ben’s house his mum did it with bacon and it was really nice. Crispy, not like rubbery. Florence makes it specially crispy, just the way I like.’
Sofia pulled a chair out carefully and sat down in her place, wondering what he was going on about and whether she should help serve. Hugo was already at the head of the table, helping everyone to salad with a pair of wooden tongs.
‘Well, I hope you didn’t burn it if there is bacon in there,’ he joked. ‘You know my views on the carcinogenic properties of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and heterocyclic amines.’
The comment, which might usually have raised an exasperated smile on his daughter’s face, was tonight ill-judged. She bashed a spoonful of macaroni onto Isaac’s plate.
‘Can I do anything, Florence?’ asked Sofia, in an agony of guilty helplessness.
Her daughter did not respond but sat down between Tim and Isaac and began to eat. They all began obediently to start then, not daring to halt, even when they discovered the food was still searingly hot. A painful minute or two passed, while they juggled the molten lumps from side to side within their mouths.
‘So how was the first maths paper, Flo?’ said Hugo eventually, lisping slightly as the top layer of skin had been sheared off his tongue.
‘That was two days ago, Dad,’ said Florence, her voice resigned and flat.
‘And when’s the other one – paper two – remind me?’
‘Thursday.’
‘Thursday, OK. I’m sure you’ll do fantastically on that.’
Florence didn’t answer still.
‘And you’re all done with French?’ he pressed on.
‘Absolument,’ she said rudely. ‘C’est fini.’
Hugo tried to catch his wife’s eye, to see if she might raise a mutual eyebrow at the display of sulkiness. But when she looked at him, the veneer of grateful compliance dropped away, and he could see that, with him at least, she was sulky too.
He sensed it would be better just to drop the small talk now, but as so often happened, his output overshot the point where others might have stopped, just as his gangly limbs overreached their cuffs, and his answers in the pub quiz fired out before the questions had been put.
He came right out with it.
‘Good day?’ he said, hopefully, a fledgling perched on the jaws of a crocodile.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, with a small mouth that she snapped shut again.
It was difficult to resume when the respondent withheld the expected cue. She didn’t ask him about his day. There was no, ‘And you?’
‘So, what are you getting up to these days,’ he bumbled on, ‘now you’re feeling a bit better?’
Hugo could see it wasn’t housework. He was not observant where domestic matters were concerned, but he detected, now Luna was gone, and despite Florence’s efforts in the main areas of the house, a thin but growing film of grease and dust, and bins just beginning to overreach their capacity.
‘Sleeping,’ grinned Tim, almost as insensitive to the situation as his father, waggling his head from side to side and imitating a gawping yawn.
‘Yeah, she just sleeps all the time again now, don’t you, Mummy?’ giggled Isaac, pretending to be a zombie snoring and staggering round the room, before coming back to place her in a loving, stiff-limbed hug.
Sofia smiled in a painful paroxysm of cognitive dissonance, endeavouring to convey fond and good-humoured dismissal to Isaac, indignant denial to Tim, empathy and maternal aptitude to Florence, and… as for what she wished to express to Hugo, the dinner table was not the place.
‘Stop being so silly, boys,’ she came out with eventually, her twisted smile unsupported by the emotions within. She reformed it gradually into something more convincing, as if she had drawn herself together inside, making a supreme effort to be brisk and positive.
‘Actually,’ she said, suddenly using her silvery bright and cutting voice, ‘I’ve been catching up with things. Going through old stuff. Trying to make sense of exactly what’s happened.’
She looked at Hugo. Stared him levelly in the eyes. ‘But I do find I’m really, really tired. Tired of everything. Tired of searching for any more missing bits.’
Hugo was disconcerted. Was she becoming obsessive again?
‘But you had your check-up, darling. They seemed pretty happy all the cogs and springs were still there.’ It was an affirmation not a question. He needed to persuade her it was true. ‘Apart from the actual fall, that is,’ he continued, ‘and we agree we’d expect you to blank that out. I’m just glad you didn’t do any permanent damage to my desk!’
Her lips flickered up once into a forced and fleeting smile. Florence started to clear the plates and take them to the sink.
‘Forgot to tell you actually, but that nice doctor even phoned us afterwards,’ Hugo said, pulling at his fringe. ‘Wanted to reassure me, ten-thirty at night. Tremendously positive about the whole thing. Thought there’d be no further problems. Said we were on the home stretch. Surely you don’t feel you’ve still got any major gaps?’
Sofia thought he must be referring to Dr Lough and suddenly felt a little warmer towards the clinician, having previously found him somewhat brusque and irritating. He hadn’t seemed the type to call his patients out of hours. But she didn’t actually need any medical reassurance. In her mind, everything was now absolutely clear. She looked at him intensely, defying him to notice the black bags under her eyes, wondering how he would render them in chrome and plexiglass.
‘You’re right. I should stop worrying. I’ve got all the pieces now.’
Thirty-Three
Tuesday, 14 June 2016
It was good to be finished. In fact, it had been good to be in the exam. She had at least been guaranteed an hour and a half of fluttering silence in there. Florence had just had time to flash a pre-agreed wave of general satisfaction before Isobel disappeared in the flow of unleashed candidates with surnames N to Z. Then she’d looked around for Benjamin. She had no idea what his last name was, but it must come after “Gar”. Once she’d finished all the questions, and checked everything carefully, she’d allowed herself to look for his blue-black curls along rows A to G.
She put her new wasp-coloured pencils and black ballpoint pens into her plastic case and, for the last time that summer, zipped it firmly up. Then she walked with the crowds, mingling, lingering, down to the entrance gate. She should have felt relieved, elated, careless even, free. But the longer the time went on as she strolled down the gentle hill, the more her emotional capital, boosted by two hours of individual existence away from home, began to drain away. As the rolling wave of white shirts separated then amassed again to pass through the gate, she realised she couldn’t have missed him.
He wasn’t there.
She could see why he wouldn’t have waited. He seemed the spontaneous type, caught up in the moment but not committed to it hence. A teenage Mr Toad, perhaps, off to his next adventure. She’d misinterpreted their parting, she realised now. He was the type to flirt with all and sundry, from nice girls to dinner ladies and other people’s mums, unaware of the ruffled sensitivities he might leave in his wake. He was like that with everyone no doubt, including stolid, sensible Florence, who had dared to feel a stirring of silly romance in her stolid, sensible chest.
