Sparks (7 page)

This argument (not the one about the baby) was becoming more and more convincing to Sparks. Since he had received Alison’s postcard, his routine had consisted less and less of waking up, leaping out of bed nuts a-dangle, whistling at the shaving mirror and working on new ideas for T-shirts, and more and more of waking up, suddenly noticing a new and extremely powerful hangover, staying in bed, and later wandering into another room in search of last night’s stale lager.

Lots of people do this kind of thing; some of them never stop; a few go to alcoholic support groups; but many take the Sparks approach, namely be utterly miserable and drunk for months until, if the pain is that sort of pain, it fades to a bearable degree and life can continue in a sober state once more. And this is what happened; after six months or so, Sparks stopped being drunk nearly all the time and started being sober nearly all the time. He even began going back to work again, although he wasn’t up to having any ideas for successful retro T-shirts, or indeed any ideas at all.

But while Sparks
was
drunk, he was very drunk indeed; drunk enough to not entirely believe that something very strange involving two slight men and a fight had actually happened. And as for his apparent trip into a world where things were slightly different, well, during his drunk six months, alcohol took Sparks to several worlds where things were slightly different anyway.

So when one morning Sparks woke up with the unfamiliar urge to find the kettle and make some tea, rather than throw up into it, a lot of things had a distinct air of unreality about them, and therefore were pretty much gearing up to slip his mind.

Now that he felt better, and now also that it was late December, Sparks went home for Christmas, to see his mum and dad. Sparks’ dad was called Jim and had been a polytechnic lecturer. He lectured in English Literature and his one ambition – to turn down the sexual advances of a pretty young student – had never been realised, because Sparks’ dad was such a nice man that even the most corrupt and profligate of his students couldn’t bring themselves to be seduced by him. After 30 years lecturing, during which time his poly had become a uni and his students had gone from being mad for magic realism to being slightly disappointed by books they had got into after seeing the video version of the movie, Sparks’ dad took one farewell look at his class, said, perhaps too loudly, “Bloody hell, I wouldn’t go to bed with any of this lot,” and retired.

Sparks’ mum, Patricia, had been a reporter. This had been quite exciting to Sparks when he was young, and he had lived in hope that the whole family might have to relocate to Florida or Latvia after his mum had exposed the Mafia’s links with local businesses. In fact, Sparks’ mum had devoted her life to writing about nothing very exciting. This was because she had a husband and son, and wasn’t keen to get relocated to Florida or Latvia after accidentally writing a hard-hitting story. She had even been known to turn down reporting on flower shows in case there might just be a Mafia connection. Sparks’ mum had met Sparks dad in headier times, when she was young and single, and couldn’t give a fig for the dangers inherent in covering the opening of the local poly’s new English Department building, having a glass of wine with the new young junior lecturer (“I expect my students will come to fancy me in time”) and then getting married six months later, on account of Sparks, but still pleased about getting married.

Sparks’ mum still covered the odd WI event, which was easy for her as she was a member these days, and Sparks’ dad still subscribed to some fairly esoteric critical journals, some of which he now saw that his old students were writing for. They had a nice quiet life and they missed Sparks when he wasn’t there and were always happy when he left and their nice quiet life could resume. Sparks was deeply fond of them and almost always remembered to buy them presents or send them the relevant cards.

Today, six months after Sparks had been attacked by beanpole men for travelling into another dimension, and a few weeks after he had retired from self-pitying lushness, he sat down to Christmas dinner at his parents’ house. Everyone was wearing paper hats, except for Sparks who had taken his off but found it still felt like he was wearing it. Crackers had been pulled (Sparks got a whistle and a puzzle so obscure he didn’t even understand what he wasn’t supposed to do) and a quantity of Blue Nun consumed. Conversation had been light – when your son has had the same dog-end job for 10 years and his long-term girlfriend has left him for an Australian, you tend to fall into silence a lot – and Sparks’ dad was just about to clear the much-ravaged (by Sparks) turkey when Sparks looked up from the potato he was making, inappropriately, into a little brown Halloween lamp, and said:

“Dad, do you believe in alternate worlds?”

“No,” his dad was about to say, when Sparks’ mum interrupted.

“Don’t bother your father when he’s taking out the dishes.”

This suggested to Sparks’ dad that his wife thought he was a man who couldn’t handle more than two tasks simultaneously (he had been at the Blue Nun for an hour or so). As Sparks’ dad considered himself the kind of person who was quite capable of taking the dishes out and discussing alternate worlds, he decided not to say no and instead said:

“I find the topic very interesting.”

“No you don’t, you daft old man,” said Sparks’ mum, affectionately but rudely. “You just don’t want to look senile.”

Sparks’ dad came back from the kitchen and sat next to his wife in a way that he hoped suggested he was ignoring her. A small dog leapt up and began sniffing his pockets.

“Get down, Robert,” said Sparks’ dad who fortunately knew the dog, in fact had paid for it. “I’m having a serious conversation.”

“Robert,” said Sparks’ mum. “What a silly name for a dog. If that dog was human, he’d be furious if he knew you’d given him a name like that.”

“If he was human, he wouldn’t mind.” said Sparks’ dad.

“Robert’s a silly name,” Sparks’ mum said to the dog, “isn’t it, Boofles?”

Robert, who couldn’t have cared less if he’d been named Brave Lord Filth so long as he was fed and looked after, wandered off to sniff Sparks’ exotic urban groin.

“Alternate worlds,” said Sparks’ dad, who had no idea what he was talking about, “feature in much fiction.”

“I don’t care… I mean, I don’t mean fiction,” said Sparks. “I just wondered if there was any information about them outside fiction. I mean, in, er, non, er, fiction.”

“Well,” said Sparks’ dad, “there is of course JW Dunne’s extraordinary book, An Experiment In Time.”

“What’s that about?” said Sparks.

“I don’t know,” said Sparks’ dad, “I haven’t read it.”

“He has no idea what he’s talking about,” explained Sparks’ mum, affectionately. “He rarely does these days.”

“Are you saying I’m going gaga?” asked Sparks’ dad.

“No, dear, it’s more that… well, when you were a lecturer you were always reading the newspapers and listening to the news and keeping up with things and now… you don’t.”

“I do! I get my journals.”

“Yes, but you don’t actually read them. You turn to the back and look at pictures of sheds.”

“I like sheds.”

Sparks didn’t wonder why abstruse academic journals had pictures of sheds in the back. Nor did he wonder why, given that his parents hadn’t had a civil conversation since their wedding (and even their “I dos” were said with a tone of disbelief), they were still together. He was Sparks, and he tended not to wonder about things. Except, now, with alternate worlds.

“So you don’t know anything about alternate worlds?” he said, a little doggedly.

“Um,” said Sparks’ dad. “Not per se.”

Sparks’ mum looked at him in an I-was-right faced kind of way.

“But,” said Sparks’ dad, “I have got a tape.”

“Ah ha!” said Sparks’ mum, in a voice that she thought was bitingly sarcastic but was in fact only slightly ironical. “The famous tape collection comes into its own at last! I knew it was worth buying that video recorder.”

“Exactly,” said Sparks’ dad, missing even the ironical tone, never mind the imagined sarcasm.

“Since 19-whenever we got that video machine, we have taped, I don’t know, every single documentary that has been on television, I believe…”

“Oh, surely not,” said Sparks’ dad. “For a start, I hate wildlife.”

“We have an entire room full of videos,” said Sparks’ mum. “I could have used that room. I could have learned to paint. The light is excellent in that room.”

“It hasn’t got any windows,” said Sparks’ dad.

“The electric light,” said Sparks’ mum. “I planned to paint still lifes by electric light. But instead all I do in that room is dust videos.”

“You exaggerate,” said Sparks’ dad, huffily.

“Some of those videos,” said Sparks’ mum, pointedly, “are on Betamax.”

“What’s Betamax?” said Sparks.

“Exactly,” said Sparks’ mum.

Fortunately, the video that Sparks’ dad believed to be about alternate worlds was not on Betamax. And, while it was very old, and contained several hours of golf in which now-dead light entertainment stars tried to keep up with equally now-dead proper golfers, there was a documentary on the end of the tape, and it was about alternate worlds.

Sparks took the video cosy off the video recorder. Sparks’ dad owned the world’s only video cosy, which was like a tea cosy only oblong. Sparks’ mum hated the video cosy, but it did mean that she and Sparks’ dad owned the world’s only functioning 1978 vintage VCR. Sparks plugged in the 17-foot lead connecting the remote control to the recorder, removed the polythene bag the remote was wrapped in, and pressed “play”.

A BBC logo as timeless and as dated as a heraldic blazon fuzzed up onto the screen, a cartoon globe of a long-lost world spun idly, and a long-sacked continuity announcer told the people of 20 years ago that they were about to watch the first programme in a new series about the far frontiers of science, and that this, which was as he said the first programme, was about the possibility of there being alternate worlds. He went on to essentially tell nervous people and anyone with a dog or a cat to go and watch ITV, and the programme lurched into action. The whole thing took about two days and all but killed Sparks’ desire to watch the tape.
Things were more leisurely then
, he thought, despondently.

After some film of stars and what may have been all of Holst’s The Planets, Sparks resisted the urge to lash the remote control lead like a whip and flick the whole damn thing out of the window, and settled back to try and concentrate.

The programme was introduced by a plummy man, aided by some cheap green lines on a blue cartoon background, and appeared to be saying two important things about alternate worlds. One, they didn’t exist and two, if they did, they shouldn’t. But the plummy man did reluctantly acknowledge that people had talked about these things, while managing to suggest that such speculation was a bit vulgar, unless of course it was done in a documentary presented by a plummy man. There was a montage of photos of scientists, pundits and philosophers, who Sparks thought all looked a bit mental. He was beginning to get really bored and long for some violence (“Take that, Sir Isaac!”) when an engraving of some 18th century men waving rolled-up paper at each other appeared and the plummy man said: “Most devoted to the theory of worlds outside our own was the so-called Society of God’s Perfect World.”

Sparks sat up on the sofa, electrified by his own standards.

“The Society, as it was known for short, was founded by eminent men of the day. Scientists, philosophers and polymaths were all entranced by the fanciful notion that our world is, as it were, random…”

Then the door opened.

“Cup of tea, dear?” said his mum, coming in with one anyway.

“Um,” said Sparks, frantically trying to find the PAUSE button on the aged remote. It didn’t have one.

“Naturally there were dissenters,” the commentator was saying, “These men felt that…”

Sparks couldn’t hear what these men felt as his mum was now opening the noisiest drawer in the world. She finally wrenched the drawer open, took out a coaster, put the coaster on the table and put the cup of tea on it. Sparks tried to crane his ears around her as she moved, but all the tea and table action was pretty obscuring and, by the time his mother had gone, the plummy man had moved on to the early fiction of Jules Verne, which wasn’t relevant at all but did provide an opportunity to show a painting of a huge squid holding a steamship like a ciggie.

“Don’t say thank you, will you?” said Sparks’ mum cheerfully as she left the room.

Sparks stopped the tape and rewound it, prodding madly at the remote. It creaked into action and suddenly the tape leapt back four minutes. Sparks tried to hit PLAY, jabbed RECORD instead and spent the next few seconds trying to get the machine to stop recording. By the time he had had the smart idea of abandoning the remote, leaping across the room and turning the recorder off at the wall, it was too late; they were halfway through the huge squid.

Sparks sat down and disconsolately watched the rest of the documentary, which was highly vague and factless, and then turned into an hour of golf again. He put the tape in a box marked KRAMER VS KRAMER and took his cooling tea out into the hall.

He had learned nothing about alternate worlds. But he did have an idea.

Sparks’ mum knocked on Sparks’ bedroom door, a habit she had learned the hard way during Sparks’ teenage years.

“Cup of tea, dear?” she said, a cup of tea already in her hand.

“Yeah, thanks,” said Sparks’s voice absently through the wood.

Sparks’ mum opened the door, moved a gonk on the chest of drawers, took a coaster from her pocket, set it down and put the cup of tea on it.

“We’re going over to the Morgans in a while,” she said. “Will you be all right on your own?”

Sparks looked round the room at the children’s books, model airplanes, pop star posters and assorted buttons that decorated it. “I’ll be fine,” he said, wondering as he did sometimes if in fact he had died and his mum was keeping his room just the way it used to be. Then he dismissed the thought as uncharitable and smiled at his mum.