The Breezes (8 page)

‘Thank you very much, Mr Breeze,' the policewoman said gently. ‘Your father's still in a state of shock,' she said to me.

The policeman whispered something in her ear. In response, she too began breathing in sharply.

‘It's the dog,' I said with embarrassment. I pointed to the stain in the hallway. ‘We have a dog. I haven't had time to clean all of it up yet.'

They looked at each other, then examined the traces ingrained in the carpet. Then they looked at each other again.

‘You sure, sir?' the policewoman asked. ‘You sure it's the dog?'

‘Well, yes. I mean, what else …'

‘You see, sir,' the policewoman said, looking me in the eye for the first time, ‘it's, well, it's becoming something of a thing for burglars to, well, defecate in the house they've robbed. It's like their signature.'

Their signature?

The policeman, meanwhile, kneeled down and snipped a few of the darkened threads and placed them in a little plastic bag. ‘Exhibit A,' he said.

I washed the carpet as soon as they left. Then I ran Pa a fresh bath and made sure he undressed and got into it. I went to the kitchen and made us some sandwiches and tea. When, quarter of an hour later, Pa, an in-and-out bather, had not yet come down, I went up to see what was going on.

He was still in the bath, lying hip-deep in the shallow, lukewarm water, his torso completely dry. He did not turn when I came in.

‘Are you OK?' I said.

He turned his eyes – one pointed at me, one at the shower-curtain – and blinked: in the affirmative, I thought.

‘I've made some tea and sandwiches,' I said.

He stirred, his knees sploshily displacing water, but he did not get up. The movement sent red and green and white trails of dissolved soap smoking up through the bathwater. Pa has this habit of gumming together the slivers of used soap into a multicoloured bar, like an Italian ice-cream.

He raised his elbows and took hold of the rim of the tub, perfect, shiny particles of water starrily clustered on the silver and black hairs of his armpits. Then he let go and slid back down the slope of the tub, the skin of his bottom making a squeak.

‘Come on,' I said softly, my hands under his armpits, smelling for the first time in a long time the tang of my father. I hauled up his dripping, aged form – the tender pectorals, the diminished penis, the gleaming, brittle shinbones. It was palpable, the terrible vicinity of death.

I dropped a large towel over his shoulders. ‘You go on ahead,' I said.

I pulled the plug and the water began to sluice away, stranding green and red nuggets of soap on the white floor of the bath.

If Whelan, of Whelan Lock & Key, 24-hour Service, had done his job properly – if he had repaid the faith which Pa had shown in him – that burglary would probably never have taken place. All it needed was a half-decent lock on those french windows and an alarm that actually worked. But Whelan messed up. It doesn't surprise me. The man is hopeless. For seven days now I have been imploring him on the phone to come round and fit new locks on the front door of the flat, and for seven days – and in spite of three appointments – he has failed to show. The last time I spoke to him was on Friday, immediately after Pa's anxious call. Although Whelan had let me down twice already, I decided to have another crack at it. Third time lucky, I figured. Besides, I wanted an explanation for his conduct.

‘Mr Whelan, I waited for you all morning yesterday,' I said.

‘Yesterday morning, was it?' Whelan enquired. There was genuine curiosity in his voice.

‘We'd made an appointment,' I said.

‘Number 47, was it?'

It was. I did not say anything.

‘I remember now,' Whelan said. ‘It's all coming back to me now. Yes, that's right. I came round in the afternoon, but there was no reply when I rang. Yes, I remember now,' Whelan said.

‘Mr Whelan,' I said tiredly, ‘I was in all afternoon.'

Whelan said, ‘Were you? Well, isn't that a strange thing?'

Desperately, I said, ‘How about this afternoon? Can you come this afternoon?'

Whelan sucked in air. ‘This afternoon is hard, Mr Breeze. Very hard. It would have to be tomorrow, Saturday. It would have to be Saturday.'

I had to get the door fixed. Saturday, I agreed. Ten o'clock.'

‘I'll be there, Mr Breeze,' Whelan guaranteed. ‘Count on it.'

Today is Sunday. Still no sign of Whelan.

Yesterday morning, while waiting for that joker, I forced myself to go down into the basement workshop. As usual, it was so gloomy that I had to switch on the light, weakly diffused by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. I sat down on a box and lit a cigarette and stared at the lifeless shapes of my works in progress. This lasted about a minute. Then I looked up at the barred, dirt-smudged window: dustbins and, looming behind and blotting out the sky, the hedge, dark with new leaves. I groggily bolted back upstairs.

I went to the kitchen and made myself a double-strength cup of coffee. I flicked another cigarette out of the packet. A thin sweat started filming my upper lip. Just a month previously, this telephone conversation had taken place with the gallery owner.

‘How's it going, John?' Simon Devonshire said.

‘Great,' I said. ‘Just great.'

‘So, when do we get to see your stuff? We're all very excited, you know.'

‘You'll get it soon,' I said. ‘Don't worry, it's all under control.'

Devonshire laughed and said, ‘It had better be. I'd like the chairs within the next week or two. We need to photograph them for the catalogue.'

The catalogue? ‘The catalogue?'

‘We're going to have to have a meeting about that,' Devonshire said, ‘to discuss the philosophy that underpins your work. People will want to know what they're looking at.'

‘My philosophy.' I swallowed. ‘Yes, of course,' I said.

Devonshire laughed again – as far as I could tell, Devonshire was always laughing. He said, ‘Don't worry, John, we'll think of something. Leave the theorizing to us. You just concentrate on finishing those pieces and we'll look after the rest.'

Then, two weeks later, we met for lunch. We sat on a grassy slope by a fountain in a small park in the city centre. I had made up my mind to break the news to him with these words: Simon, there's something I have to tell you. I have no chairs. I'm sorry, I've tried, but there it is: it hasn't worked out.

It was a hot spring day, nineteen or twenty degrees, and Devonshire was elated. ‘Just look at that,' he said, gesturing
grandly at the sun. ‘And look at those bastards,' he said, pointing at a brilliant gathering of trees in flower. ‘Extraordinary. Absolutely bloody extraordinary.'

I dutifully looked at the magnolias. There was a forceful charm about Devonshire which made him difficult to resist. Although in his mid-forties and, as a gallery owner of real influence, possessed of a certain amount of absolute power, with his enthusiasm, straw-coloured hair and animated expression he still had an uncorrupted, boyish demeanour. His gold-buttoned blazer discarded on the grass and his cotton shirt flapping out of his jeans, he sat down insouciantly in the sunlight and with a groan of comfort unwrapped a smoked salmon sandwich. He took a giant bite and half of the sandwich disappeared. ‘So, Johnny, I take it that we can pick up the stools this afternoon.'

‘Well, not quite,' I said. I paused. ‘Simon, there's something I have to tell you.' I looked at the tips of my shoes.

‘What is it?' he said, his mouth still full. ‘What's the matter?'

I thought I detected a note of personal concern in his voice. I raised my head to speak and looked him in the face. I had made a mistake. There was nothing solicitous in those eyes. There was only pure threat.

Shocked, I fell momentarily silent; nevertheless, looking again at the ground, I forced out what I had to say.

Devonshire said, ‘What do you mean, you won't be ready for another two to three weeks? The show's four weeks away. The catalogue needs to be ready next week.'

I was silent. I made a feckless gesture with my hands.

Crumpling wrapping paper in his fist, Devonshire stood up and sat on the ledge of the fountain. Momentarily he just regarded me, wiping his mouth with a paper tissue. Behind him, a team of rusty fishes spurted loops of glistening water into the air. Then he said, ‘One week, Johnny. That's all I'm giving you.' He stood up and turned his back to me and tilted up to the sun. ‘Otherwise, my boy, you're going to compensate me for my loss. Do you understand?'

I did not like the sound of that word –
compensate.

Devonshire turned unhurriedly and picked up his jacket. ‘One week,' he said. ‘Don't let yourself down, Johnny,' he said.

That week expired last Monday, the day when I left this message with his assistant: Tell Mr Devonshire the chairs will be ready by next Monday. Guaranteed.

Next Monday is tomorrow; which is why, yesterday morning, after I had finished my coffee and cigarette, I forced myself down the stairs into the basement for a second time. There they were, in the gloom, the five unfinished stools I had started making six months ago –
5
Tripods
, they were named. Superficially, they looked fine: five stools, each with wooden seats of a slightly different design, each supported by the same three curved metallic legs. But those legs were the problem. They were unbalanced – so unbalanced that the stools would not stand up. The moment you removed them from the supporting wall, that was it: crash, over they went, in a slow, certain topple. My blunder, of course, was that in my impetuosity I had assembled the chairs without first checking their stability. Stability I had taken for granted.

My task was clear. I had to redesign the legs while nevertheless leaving the chairs' present structure intact, since it was too late to start wholly afresh. Then I had to drive the chairs over to Devonshire's. All this within forty-eight hours. That deadline was my trump card. I was counting on time to spur me to action.

Using a model, I desperately experimented with the addition of a fourth leg – a wooden leg, it had to be, because I had run out of stainless steel. Not only did it look terrible, but the glue I used to secure the leg to the seat simply did not hold. Every time I tried to place a weight upon the seat, off came the leg. Never mind, Johnny, I said to myself after the third failure, try again. Stick at it. Persevere. Never say die. I cleaned the wood, reapplied the glue and pressed the parts together once more. I stayed frozen there for minutes, my face reddening with determination. This time it was going to work. This time …

I gently released my grip. After giving the adhesive time to take, I turned the stool up and gingerly stood it on its four legs. So far so good. It stayed up. Then came the moment of truth. I took a thick cabinet-making manual and gently placed it on
the seat. I waited. Nothing happened. The chair remained upright. It worked.

I had done it. The stool may have been ugly, but it was a stool; it was better than nothing. All that remained was to affix this fourth leg to the actual chairs, and then I'd be home and dry. Blankly, I lit a cigarette. I couldn't believe it. After so many fruitless months, the nightmare was over. The show would bomb, of course, but at least it would go on. From a legal point of view, if nothing else, I was in the clear.

I heard a creaking noise. I turned around. It was the model chair, and like a foal doing its unsteady splits, it was slowly collapsing as the wooden leg gave way underneath it. With a thick report the book thudded to the ground, followed by the seat, with a crash. Shit, I shouted. Fucking, bloody, fucking
shit.

I flung my cigarette at the wall and heeled it to a crumbling butt. Sweating with anger, an idea occurred to me. I would cut the legs in half and use the extra metal tubing to provide a triangular lateral base. Yes, that was it! I'd chop the suckers in half! Let's see how they'd like that! But just as I was poised to ignite the blue flame of the blowtorch, I envisaged the end product: crippled, squat, ugly seats that were neither one thing nor the other; stools that fell between two bloody stools. I removed my safety goggles and dropped the cutter. I looked up at the window's dark rectangle and said out loud, That's it. To hell with it. I give up.

Strengthlessly, I sat down on the box again. The day of the exhibition, 16 May, was approaching with every passing second and there was nothing I could do about it. Inevitability had snared me, bagged and unstruggling. I was caught.

And there is another irony – another twist apparent in retrospect: the very reason I started making chairs in the first place was precisely to evade this – the trap of certainty. It was not accountancy I wanted to escape from, it was the guaranteed future it offered. Even from where I stood, halfway through my traineeship, I could see the whole of the way ahead – a road without corners, straight and relentless as a highway through wheatfields, one that took you cleanly through bright and glassy distances, through exams, years in junior and
middle management, a partnership in a small firm, through a mortgage and kids and retirement and through, finally and blindingly, to the end. The end! It hit me night after night. No matter how tired or drowsy I was and no matter how many sheep I counted, inevitably it flapped down towards me as I lay there in the distractionless dark; and then it suddenly arrived, all claws –
that
realization. The repercussions were physical. My entire organism was thrown into confoundment: something catapulted in my gut, my face flushed with heat, my brain dispatched furious signals to my extremities. Most strongly of all, though, in the midst of this panic, I felt hoodwinked. Most of all I felt like a man stung by a terrible con.

I would leap out of bed in horror. I would hit all of the lights, grab a cigarette and begin walking around in my bare feet, trying to clear my mind. I would switch on the radio and, if things were really bad, the television, trying to find a late-night movie or game show, anything. Only when Angela lay with me, when, the warm freight of her breasts in my hands, I glued her to me for the long duration of the night, were things any better. But it was not enough – a man cannot lead the life of a limpet. So I turned my hobby into my career. The make-or-break, one-day-at-a-time life of a chair-maker, I reasoned, would be a life of corners, of hairpin twists and turns. There would be no long view. There would be nothing in sight but the job in hand.

Fat chance. I was like the prisoner who lowers himself down on a rope of bedsheets only to discover that he has escaped into the punishment wing. That is to say, for a while, my extrication looked like coming off. I worked hard, ideas came, I worked hard at the ideas. I made chairs, sold them all and made a small name for myself. But as soon as things started to go right, things started to go wrong. ‘Your struggling days are over,' Pa said, hugging me like a goalscorer when he heard the good news about the exhibition. ‘You're getting there, son. Now you've got some light at the end of the tunnel.' This immediately made me feel uneasy: the whole point of the exercise was to stay in the tunnel, in my burrow of activity. A day or two later, I received an enigmatic telephone call. ‘Put on
a jacket and tie,' my father said. ‘I'm picking you up in fifteen minutes.'

‘What for?'

‘Just get dressed,' Pa said.

I did as I was told and put on the outfit Merv's tailor had made for me. It didn't fit, but it was the only suit I had.

In the car, Pa said, ‘Johnny, I'm taking you to see a friend of mine – an adviser. I'd like you to listen to what he has got to say. Just hear him out, that's all I'm asking.'

‘Who is this guy?' I said.

‘Mr O'Reilly,' Pa said.

‘Who's Mr O'Reilly?'

The pensions and insurance man, that was who. The last person in the world I needed to see. But fifteen minutes later, there I was with my father at the office of the man to whom he had entrusted the best part of his income. O'Reilly worked high up in the Wilson Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the city, its transcendent bulk edged with blinking lights to warn off aircraft. Those beacons were redundant when Pa and I arrived there when the huge dusk sun reflected on the Tower's steel-and-glass flanks lighting the building like a blaze. Inside, though, all was cool and regulated, and when the
bing
of the elevator sounded and we were delivered into the air-conditioned chill of the thirty-first floor, it felt like we were aboard a jet plane, as though the Tower gathered momentum as it gained altitude until, at a crisis in its ascent, it took flight.