Damascus (28 page)

‘We know how it's made,' Hazel said.

‘How strong is it?' Grace wanted to know.

‘It's very, very strong.'

Hazel said: ‘Are you threatening us?'

‘How do we know it's real poison?' Grace insisted. ‘It could be fake.'

‘It's poison,' Henry said. 'I made it myself.'

‘But you might only be
saying
that.'

Henry tore off a strip at the top of the packet, and held it out defensively in front of him, his arm straight. To Hazel he looked like a small boy with a crucifix, playing at vampires,- hoping he'd made himself invincible. Spencer took a step towards him.

‘Come along now,' he said. ‘I think it's time you were going.'

‘It's real poison,' Henry said. ‘You better believe me.'

Spencer frowned, raised his eyebrows, pushed his chin forward and tried to look belligerent, all to little effect. None of it stopped Henry from leaning over the table, knocking the packet sharply with his index finger, and showering a tiny amount of powder across the top of the water in the fruit bowl. Trigger angled his body upwards, to where every disturbance meant food. William knocked his chair over as he gathered up the fruit bowl and rushed it to the sink. Grace ran after him.

‘What's happening?' she said, trying to look round William's back.

‘It's alright,' William said, clumsily trying to tip out the water without losing Trigger. ‘Everything's alright.'

‘Is he poisoned?'

‘He's fine.'

‘Well it doesn't work
immediately,
  Henry said.

Hazel started to laugh. In fact the more she thought about it the funnier it seemed. She sat herself down again, leant back in her chair and laughed some more. ‘You've done it wrong, haven't you?' she said. ‘If you want to threaten people you can't do it with poison, not like that. It's not like it's a gun or anything. You have to keep it a secret. It's supposed to be a secret way of getting to people.'

Henry poured all the powder still in the packet into his untouched mug of soup. He stirred it in with a spoon.
‘I
know it's not a gun. I don't want a gun.' He picked the mug up by the handle, as if he was about to drink it, and Hazel stopped laughing. He raised the mug most of the way to his lips.

‘It really is a poison,' he said. ‘And this is a fatal dose. Will you marry me?'

It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, in Nuneaton or Newcastle or Eastleigh or Hexham, in Meadowbank or Kendal or Loughborough or Hemel Hempstead, Spencer Kelly is twenty-one years old and despairing of all things provincial he declares himself a Republic. As of today he'll take no more orders from an unelected father whose only claim to authority is by birth. From now on Spencer will do only what he wants to do, beginning with not going to work at the warehouse. He shall then prove how serious he is about becoming an actor by going to London to look for work as a waiter.

His father, coming home early for lunch, finds Spencer packing his sports bag. He talks him down into the lounge, suspecting another false crisis changing nothing and soon forgotten. He points out to Spencer that he doesn't become a republic just by saying so. In this house he has certain obligations, not to mention binding attachments.

'The Republic is declared,' Spencer says. ‘And I am it.'

His father tries to appease him by conceding that he might just qualify as a disputed territory. It's another phase you're going through,' he says. ‘You'll get over it.' He then reminds Spencer of all those Mondays the warehouse let him take off for community service. He'd be crazy to leave now.

'They did the same for you.'

'I've been there forever. You're a young man, Spencer. You have prospects. You should settle down.'

It's all his Dad thinks he's good for. Spencer should get married and breed and with any luck (of the kind which Mr Kelly believes he's due) it's his
grandson
who'll have the spark and the golden sporting gene.

Spencer starts to hum
Born Under a Wandering Star
. Predictably, this infuriates his father, who asks him sharply what exactly it is he thinks he wants? In general terms, Spencer thinks, all that I have not got. He wants what the adverts tell him to want, holidays in Malta or Egypt or the Algarve, and a suit from Armani or Simpson's of Piccadilly, and a mail order embroidered cushion, and privileged entry to the latest minority-interest debates. That's why he has to go to London, and the legendary addresses where such miracles begin, in Bond Street or Portland Square or Brook Street or the King's Road. He'll be expecting to neutralise his accent of course, if he's going to make it as an actor, but it shouldn't be too difficult after all the different places he's lived. As soon as he sounds like he could have come from anywhere, and after a brief but glamorous period of undemanding struggle, he confidently expects to make rapid progress from waiter to actor to a life changed beyond all recognition.

He therefore continues to educate himself, adding the Bible to his reading list of newspapers and English literature. This is partly to please his mother, who's now been invited to the Woman of the Year lunch for her work with political refugees and local churches, an event which Mr Kelly falls on as justification for the divorce. His ex-wife would rather go to the Woman of the Year lunch than stay at home with her family.

‘I think that's the point of these things, Dad. You get the invitation because you're the kind of woman who says yes.'

‘At the expense of your family?'

It's too tiring to explain, and Spencer sometimes wishes he hadn't read so many improving newspapers. This is another reason he's moved on to the Bible, which he reads like a history book to discover whether in other centuries they had the same impatience for miracles, and single moments which changed everything. Occasionally, late at night, it occurs to him that in another seven years he'll find out for himself, without even having to read anything.

‘Stop that and listen!'

Spencer stops humming. His father has pushed up very close, and Spencer wants to retreat but he's already backed up against the bunched curtains. His father is losing control of his voice, from trying so hard to be reasonable.

‘You read too many newspapers,' he says. 'It's about time you got a grip on reality. You can't leave now, where would you go?'

‘I'm twenty-one years old. A man's gotta do.'

‘What about me? Why do you think I've always worked so hard?'

‘So I could play football for Tottenham Hotspur.'

‘Or Manchester United or Southampton or QPR.'

‘Let's face it, Dad. I'm not even going to play for Wimbledon.'

‘Do you have any idea how much
money
I've spent? The
sacrifices
I've made? What about all those cheap-rate holidays in November?'

‘I'm sorry, Dad. I'm not going to make it as a great sportsman.'

‘In the prime of your life, look at you. I should be living next to a golf course by now, putting my feet up.'

‘I'm going to try something else instead. And I don't mean a warehouseman.'

Spencer isn't just thinking of London and its lists of cinema hits. He's also thinking about Hazel and running out of coins and their shorter conversations now that neither of them steals any more. When he meets her, preferably as an international star, he imagines they'll fall straight into bed. It's the natural next step, because they've already done all the talking.

‘Time moves on, Dad,' he says. 'I want to make something of myself before it's too late.'

Mr Kelly holds up his hands, palms outward and fingers splayed as if he's heard enough. Then he suddenly straightens his arms and pushes Spencer in the chest, clattering him back into the curtains. He says,

This is the fourth dimension, son. There is no time. To me you'll always be a snotty ten-year-old in a replica football shirt falling on your arse in the mud. You useless beggar.'

He pushes Spencer again, and as a newly-declared free and independent Republic Spencer ought not to be standing for this. Using only the tips of his fingers he pushes his father back in the chest, but it doesn't move him anywhere.

‘What would Rachel think?' Mr Kelly says. ‘What would your sister Rachel think if she were alive today and she could see you now?'

Mr Kelly hits Spencer with a clean uppercut to the jaw, jarring his teeth together and jerking his head backwards. Before Spencer can react he is hit again, twice, two left hooks to the face before he can get his arms up covering his head and his elbows sticking out to protect himself. Mr Kelly starts punching and slapping at Spencer's arms, and behind his elbows Spencer takes quick shallow breaths and tries to recover. His father is leaning his face forward to see where best to hit him next, to finish it, and Spencer instinctively makes a fist and punches him, hard and straight on the nose.

His father, his Dad, Mr Kelly, looking amazed, astounded even, and then he falls over backwards to the carpet. Oh my god, Spencer thinks. He helps his Dad up onto the sofa, where they both try to rub at his face, getting their hands all mixed up. Spencer's Dad shakes his head. He seems dazed.

'It's alright, Dad. It's fine.'

‘I don't believe it,' his Dad says. ‘Boxing.'

'It could have gone either way. Really.'

‘Super middle-weight,' he mumbles, ‘a spot of running makes you a light-weight, even super bantam-weight. Spencer, my boy.'

The fight has probably lasted no more than ninety seconds, but both Spencer and his Dad register that something fundamental has changed. At last, Spencer the Republican thinks, I may have lived to see the moment it all began.

11/1/93 M
ONDAY
15:12

With the exception of the magnificent Miss Burns, today had confirmed Henry Mitsui in his long-held belief that other people were mostly banal. Spencer and William Welsby, both grown men, had failed to intervene and save Miss Bums until it was too late. Now they seemed shocked by his threatened suicide, and he wondered if either of them had any idea of what was meant by commitment. Henry couldn't live without Miss Bums. He meant it.

‘You can't poison yourself,' Spencer said. ‘There are people coming to look at the house. Italians.'

Spencer could have added that there was a child in the room and he still had his library books to take back, but he didn't. He'd moved towards Henry once, planning to force the mug from his hand. Henry raised it closer to his lips. Spencer backed away. On a points-scoring system Henry judged that this skirmish, in the mind of Miss Burns, could plausibly be scored as a victory in his favour. This being the case, he couldn't understand why she should shake her head, pick up her own untouched mug of soup, and leave the room.

‘Where's Trigger?'

‘He's in the water in the bowl,' William said, blocking Grace's view with his body. She was insistent, trying to squirm a view round either side of his back. ‘He's in the bowl, I said.'

‘You're lying. He's been poisoned.'

William grabbed a tea towel and covered the top of the bowl. ‘Alright,' he said. He turned with it, lifting it higher than Grace's reach, his fingers spread out over the base. ‘He's been poisoned. But he's not dead. He's just feeling a bit poorly.'

‘Let me see him.'

‘He needs to be kept in the dark, like an ill person. He's resting.'

‘Really?'

Trigger the goldfish was dead. In fact he wasn't even in the bowl any more. William had managed to pull him out without Grace seeing anything, and Trigger the fish was now stiffening up in William's trouser pocket. This sudden emergency had inspired William. It was like a revelation, and he knew instinctively what to do next. The most important thing in the entire world, outside not excluded, was to fetch one of the other goldfish from the shed and get it into the bowl before Grace suspected the truth. Otherwise, from here on in, she'd live the rest of her life thinking that the world was a terrifying place where psycho nutcases could stroll off the street into all her best birthdays to kill her favourite presents.