The shadowing of combfoo.., p.27
The Shadowing of Combfoot Chase, page 27
Ava grabs a pen and paper from the desk and starts to draw. A few lines flick across the page. She shapes the outline of a structure, a crumpled tower of her own. “It was like this,” she says, “d’you remember?” though she’s punctured when her picture makes Grace laugh again.
“It looks like mud and twigs and straw!” says Grace.
“It was bamboo,” says Ava. Although her drawing’s not been good enough for Grace to recognise, Ava is determined. To fail is not to make mistakes. The real mistake is when you give up trying. She crumples up the picture, throws the ball into the bin, begins again. Again. Again.
The spider also chooses this exact moment to make its second bid for freedom. It makes a run for it and this time chooses different tactics. It scuttles down the door towards the floor and starts a systematic search for exits, beginning with the skirting board.
Ava draws and Grace watches the spider, tries to think what it was like when she could go through doors. The only day she can recall with any clarity is the day of her arrival at the tower. “I was full of hope,” she thinks, although it was very cold and wet and winter. “I remember how I clutched the letter to my chest, Dear Ms Coppe, Following our recent meeting, we are delighted to offer you the position of… I couldn’t wait to get out of the sprawling mess of streets down there. I wore my green coat, I remember… I wonder where that coat is now?” She looks in puzzlement at a row of empty hooks behind the door.
The robot vacuum cleaner stirs again, remembering it’s got the job of mapping everything, the whole shebang. If it’s not charted every detail it might as well give in and not exist.
Its movement throws the spider into a blind panic. It has a go at sliding underneath the skirting, but no, the crack’s too small and forces a retreat. The spider rushes in the opposite direction, is desperate to dodge the vacuum cleaner, is almost – not quite yet – convinced that it will have to quit its quest.
“It had a plaid lining and a large buckle,” Grace says, pleased to rediscover these particulars. She thinks it means the memory must be true.
“I know the one you mean,” says Ava, “but you won’t need it, Grace. It’s warm, so no one needs coats in Australia.”
“I’m pretty sure I hung it on a peg,” says Grace, “but that was long ago and I’d have had to share those pegs with other people…” A mental picture of her colleagues, glossed, like pages in a magazine. As soon as her mind turns to it she notices the picture has an edge, a border which she cannot cross. The memory is posed and Insta-perfect, artificial, unconvincing, a wish of how her life has been, not how it really was. “That must’ve been a few floors lower down…” she says, and wonders why she feels the coat’s loss quite so keenly.
The spider, having run the gauntlet of the floor, has been delighted to defeat the vacuum cleaner by straggling ungainly on the window.
The robot vacuum cleaner sees a distant smudge and bumps against the skirting in frustrated repetition of an unsuccessful pattern. It doesn’t like a blemish drawn on what should be completely clean and clear. It likes the glass uninterrupted, windows, walls and all. Its work should be invisible so even birds don’t notice anything, are made to crash and plummet. But this spider makes it see the fucking glass again.
“Say you’ll come with me, Grace, please,” Ava says.
Again a holding out of hands.
Beneath the spider’s feet the tower flows away towards the tumbling geometry of streets that makes up Combfoot Chase. The park is too far off for seasons to be visible. There’s no way anyone up here could hear the splashing of the water in the fountain, or see the colours of the tulips or the daffodils, or smell the fragrance of the new-cut grass. A passing car is just a toy and all the people on the streets are only specks of dust so small that even spider feet could step on them and crush them.
Nor does the spider look up either. It’s not ambitious, doesn’t need to see the summit, can’t count the storeys rising up above. The tower simply stretches smooth on every side, is bleached by light, reflects a view of nowhere. Any passion that the spider might have had for heights is now extinguished and it’s only interested in getting down. It slips a centimetre then another down the glass. Even hairy feet can’t grip on something this smooth very long. Leg by leg it makes its way towards the floor. It skirts the carpet, finds the tufts unstable and determines that they’re too much of a barrier, so makes a swift diversion. It tells itself it must be brave and reasons even robot hoovers can be side-stepped if it’s very crafty.
Grace looks down at Ava’s open hands then glances at the telephone.
The telephone stays resolutely silent.
The robot vacuum trundles off and plugs itself into its charger once again. It’s home.
Slowly – leaning heavily on Ava – Grace stands. She’s gangly. Feet feel too far off to be reliable, but she takes a step, first one and then another and another. Step by step, with lots of help, encouragement from Ava, she begins to shift her weight towards the door.
*
It makes me nervous when I have to take the lead. I clutch her fingers tight in mine and say, “Just keep your eyes on me.”
Arak makes a funnel with his arms so Grace keeps heading to the door and doesn’t get distracted. We’re so caught up in this procedure, one of us – I won’t say who – steps on the spider, mashes it into the floor. The crunch is slight but it’s a horrifying moment and it brings us both up short. We look down. Eight legs sticking out from underneath the sole of one unfortunate shoe. We silently agree it’s best if we say nothing and hope that Grace won’t notice.
*
In the lobby Ava grabs a coat from off a peg and drapes it around Grace’s shoulders. “It isn’t stealing,” she says. “We can post it back. I bet no one will even miss it.”
I shrug. “No skin off my nose,” I say, and step into the swirling of revolving doors that lead out of the tower. We all make sure before we go to wipe our feet off on the mat. The spider’s limbs – what’s left of them – stick up between the coir. “Tomorrow then?” I say. “You’ll meet me at the airport?”
Ava nods.
You’d think that after days of stagnant silence in the tower, Grace would flinch away from all the squawking life out on the streets, but no, she doesn’t. She stands numb, as though there’s nothing worth her notice here, her hands still idling in Ava’s.
But Then Face to Face
Call me Obic. I’m the Only Bitch In Charge.
If you’re seeking out a perfect painting then you’d better stick to Eve. I work outside and never soften anything with beeswax, oil or honey. I won’t be bled just to achieve the right degree of statutory paleness. I’ve never once been seventeen or innocent or virginal, and I don’t care if you catch whiffs of sour towel from in between my legs. It’s taken me a whole lifetime of trouble and desire to earn my wrinkles. I’ll take a blousy peony over lilies every time.
I’m not your poor relation even when I haven’t got a penny to my name and I’ll cut my cloth in ways that you can ill afford. I won’t sell out and couple-up to save the family fortune. I’m not accomplished at piano and – believe me – you don’t want to hear me sing. You’d rather skulk backstage and wish the audience would go away. I’ll never bake a cake for you, nor set the table for your dinner, nor mop your floor, nor scrub the skid marks from your toilet. I’ll spurn all of my admirers and I’ll pin their hearts like butterflies. In spite of this they’ll never want to leave me as my hold is more than fleshy.
I’ll make sure I eat my way to greatness and I’ll thrust my fat deposits in your face. I’ve a belly and a lot of dimpled ass and though I’m hardly packing in the breast department, I’ll neither maximise nor minimise. I’ll never listen when you tell me I would benefit from rhinoplasty because my voice is more important than my nose. I’ll be mutton dressed as lamb with all my sins and dissolution on my chest. I’ll only accept fasteners if they’re possible to close all by myself. I’ll never squash my toes into a high-heeled shoe. I value pain too much to waste it.
I predict you’ll find me difficult and meddlesome and gobby though I don’t think these are really my worst flaws. I’ll never stumble backwards and avert my eyes. I’ll steal your seat and not say thank you and it won’t be long before you wish you’d called me witch and had me burned, or had at least declared I was insane.
I’ll never be another person’s refuge.
I’ll like everything and nothing. I’ll be your hell of other people. Or their absence. Take your pick according to your preference.
When there’s nothing left to hide, then I’ll be nothing.
Until then it’s one on one, just you and me against the other.
Till extinction.
Till the end.
*
We’re at the airport of a city not too far away from Combfoot Chase. You’d think from all the business in the concourse that everyone we’ve ever met has gathered here. There’s not a seat untaken, though a row of three is occupied by one man lying down, hands folded on his chest, looking for all the world as though explosions wouldn’t penetrate his secret meditations.
We’ve thought about disturbing him. “Excuse us, mate,” we’d say, “but it’s quite busy and there’s other folk that need to find a seat here, not just you.” But in the end we thought it better to say nothing. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves and he’s the only person here who’s managing to look peaceful. Though it’s possible he’s already stone dead.
Most passengers are frantic in the manner of their waiting. They distract themselves by looking at their phones. They do glance up occasionally to check the boards, to see if further information has come up about today’s departures. Has our gate number been listed yet? Christ in heaven, please don’t let that screeching baby be on our flight… We’ve not met any of these people yet, but they won’t be so different from the ones that we do know. We all leave similar traces everywhere we go and as you’ve gathered we don’t mean smiles, a kind word or heroic actions.
However we have spotted one or two familiar faces. Over there is Philip, who is looking pretty shady. It took us time to realise it was him because he thought that he could hide from us behind a pair of sunglasses. We clocked him, though, when his friends turned up, Jason and Mark, who came to see him off, a last-minute surprise. We hadn’t realised they were friends with him as well.
“Hey, Phil! We’ve come to wave yer off, yer dickwad,” Mark called out.
They both rushed over and they gave him manly hugs and clapped him soundly on the back.
“Me and Mark are gonna miss yer, mate,” said Jason.
We watched Phil shake them off and check his baggage, then he hurried through security. We thought it might be fun to follow him if only with our eyes and our binoculars. He stopped beside a rack of books outside a stationer’s concession. We’re pleased he only went that far because it meant we didn’t have to move from where we’d hidden and we had a brilliant view of everything he did.
He started leafing through the paperbacks, had seemed distracted, kept on pausing, looking at his phone. We know that last night he deleted all the texts he’d stored from both his wife and from the mother of his youngest child, so we were interested to note he was still checking. Our best guess is he’d hoped to get a word from Ava, but we can assume he didn’t get it because he tucked the phone away again into the inside pocket of his jacket. Seconds later he thought better of it, took the phone out, threw it in a bin. We made a note for one of us to saunter by and pick that up a little later. Then he disappeared into the stationer’s and came out with a brand-new boxed-up mobile. Pay-as-you-go, a burner, we’d lay bets. He then went back to flicking through the novels. Well, he’ll need something to entertain him in the long and lonely hours of the flight.
It’s pretty clear that Ava isn’t coming. Phil’s making up his mind to do his best to catch the eye of someone in the cabin crew – although there isn’t any guarantee that any will be pretty. He picks himself a book that is generic and predictable, though even this far off we see the cover’s very striking. There’s lots of black and red and yellow, and it stands out, that’s for sure. The author’s name is macho and implies he’s hardened, rough around the edges, but for all the twists and turns of plot we know the story will resolve. When Philip reads it he’ll be satisfied that everything is still in order, though he won’t expect its concepts of rough justice and morality to be applied to him. When he gets to Australia, he thinks, nobody will be able to catch up with him, nor make him pay for anything he’s done.
Except he hasn’t banked on Obic, who arrives here at the airport bang on cue. She’s just caused consternation as she’s ambled through security because she’s sporting a new T-shirt which is printed on the front with a large and recent picture of her colleague, Mr Arak. The facial-recognition tech got quite confused and someone stopped her, double-checked her travel documents and passport. Luckily she only found this very funny. She’s well worth watching, that one. We know from past experience she’s a character who won’t give up, can be relied upon to chase her subject till the very end, so keep your eyes well-peeled.
Arak, on the other hand, has lost all sense of humour. He’s over there behind that pillar, engulfed by the gripes and grizzles of his stomach. Since he too realised Ava isn’t on her way he’s looked a little pale and has developed a disarming tick of clutching at his sides. He made some gurgling noises too which quite disturbed the other passengers. They cast an anxious glance towards him, though no one thought to be kind or to offer him assistance. They all avoided eye contact and hoped they’d not be sitting next to him when they got on the plane.
Oh, good. It seems that Obic’s spotted him.
“What’s up?” she says, and crouches down in front of him.
He doesn’t answer.
“D’you know this man then?” Arak’s neighbour asks. He would be willing to give up his seat, would rather stand than have to sit beside an individual who’s clearly very ill. Nor would he mind securing the attention of the gorgeous woman who quite by chance has come and squatted near his feet. He’s ready to show off a row of perfect and expensive teeth.
Obic shakes her head and waves away the neighbour, who is disappointed when she doesn’t even look at him. He presses his lips back together, gets up and goes away. There’s time for one more glass of beer before his flight is called, he thinks.
“I think it’s something that I ate,” says Arak. His mouth is full of bile and grievances.
“Yeah. Well, no. Actually it’s not,” says Obic. She slumps down in the chair beside him, does her best to look apologetic. She doesn’t list the range of options she considered before she set her sights on this one. It doesn’t matter as the outcome would’ve only been the same. She could have spiked his tea – too dull, too easy – or had him strangled with a dog leash – though she doesn’t have a dog. A blunt-force trauma to the head would do it – messy – or she could have shot him in the lift as he was exiting the tower – too troublesome with Grace and Ava there as witnesses. And it would’ve meant she’d have to wear a mask. She hates those things because they mess her hair up and play havoc with her lippy. She did plan to abduct him and to dump his body in the woods beside the reservoir, but he might not have been found for weeks, or maybe even months. Obic wants the credit while she’s still around to savour it. So in the end she plumped on smearing something in his underpants. You’ve probably gathered she’s a fine taste for absurdity and this solution was the one that made her laugh. The substance chosen was both odourless and clear and must have worked its way into his nerves by now. The sounds he makes are countless. Almost all of them are vowels, with consonants too few to transform sound to words or give them any structure. Soon his eyes will roll and froth will gurgle from the corners of his mouth.
It’s possible that Arak in his final throes will do his best to lay the blame on Obic. If he’s got strength enough he’ll point a finger, cast aspersions, kick himself for having been so stupid. Obic’s not concerned about potential accusations because she knows we’re still at the beginning, not the end. She simply has to stonewall, or to say it’s fake news, or a witch-hunt and to issue a robust denial. If someone really starts to probe she’ll say she’d only meant it as a warning. She’ll bat her lashes, claim that everything got out of her control. The rich and beautiful are easily forgiven in this world and details can be blanked out, or redacted, or overruled by bank accounts, or the fine features of a face.
Consequently Arak’s death won’t make the slightest difference and there isn’t much that anyone can do. All those who happen to be near will close their eyes and look away, for empathy is risky. No one’s prepared to make a fuss these days, to take the first and costly step of raising the alarm. Besides, to do so would delay their flights and everyone has waited here for ages. So Arak will chase spasms on his own and hide his gusts and groans inside a toilet cubicle that reeks of yellow eggs.
Well then, you think, if that’s the case then this can’t be the end. You’ve reached this point before and more than once, enough to know there must be one more chapter, or an epilogue, a line, a word, a something more in any case. There must be! Perhaps, you think, you’ll find the answers slipped into the complimentary magazine that airlines ping onto the backs of chairs? You’ll slip it out of its elasticated pocket and you’ll flick through thickened pages filled with fashion plates and promos for a far-flung destination that – they claim – is very different from what you’d expect from Combfoot Chase. You won’t waste time considering this place for very long. You’ll keep on flicking. It might be that you’ve travelled there before, or maybe it’s got nothing that can tempt you, or the prices quoted are extortionate, or perhaps you think that everywhere is really much the same.
