The End Of Mr. Y (6 page)

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy hanging around with the other kids, playing chicken in the main road, stealing rich children’s bikes, setting fire to things and letting the older boys grope me for fifty pence a go. In fact, I got pretty rich on the money and was eventually able to buy a bike that didn’t have to be given back or dumped in the river. After that I gave up sex and rode to the library every day. That was when I got into the habit of binge-reading. It’s easy to do when you spend hours of every day surrounded by more books than you can ever read. You start one, but you’re distracted by the idea that you could, equally, have started a different one. By the end of the day you’ve skimmed two and started four and read the ends of about seven. You can read your way through a library like that without ever properly finishing any of the books. I did finish novels, though. But I wasn’t one of those kids who read Tolstoy. I read the kinds of adult books that they didn’t let you actually borrow. The grammar school started off feeling sorry for me, with my secondhand uniform and my weird hair. But (thanks, Mum; thanks, Dad) I wasn’t allowed to attend assembly and never believed anything I was taught, which made me stand out as one of the ‘difficult’ children. I also had to do my own laundry after I was about thirteen, and usually I didn’t bother. The other kids didn’t care that my shirt collars were grubby, or that my too-short skirt hadn’t been ironed in weeks. But the teachers would occasionally take me to one side and say things like, ‘Maybe you could mention to your mother that school uniform should be … ?’ My mother? You could communicate with her, in theory, but only if you had a CB radio and could do a convincing impression of something from outer space.

So I did what you’d expect and ran away to university as soon as I could. But I couldn’t even do that properly. I expect that someone in my position should have sat on a coach quietly reading
Jane Eyre
and occasionally sobbing into a handkerchief as she considered the nasty stains on her life. I drove down the M4 to Oxford in a car with no tax disc, stopping on the way to have a torrid weekend affair with a biker, get a tattoo, and have my broken tooth replaced with a silver one.

I sit up in bed slowly, feeling the disappointment trickle away like puddles after a rain shower. I have an old coffee-making alarm clock that I got from a jumble sale, so I’m able to lie in bed sipping thick black coffee while this happens and the fog of sleep and slivovitz hangover slowly thins out. I think it’s fair to say I hate mornings. I hate the honesty of the morning; the time before your consciousness switches on the light and gets rid of all the nasty shadows. Yuck. But my coffee’s OK.
The End of Mr. Y
. I take it out from under my pillow and slowly start reading from the beginning of the main narrative. I read the first line several times: ‘By the end I would be nobody, but in the beginning I was known as Mr. Y.’ Then I read on. The story begins with the protagonist, a respectable draper, on his way to Nottingham on the train. He has some business there the following morning. Once there, he can’t help but notice that the annual Goose Fair has taken over the town, and, the following day, after his business is concluded, he happens to wander past it.

There was a persistent drizzle hanging over the town, as if it were being gently smothered by a damp veil. Having no previous experience of anything like the Goose Fair, I nevertheless willed myself to avoid what I felt certain would be the most diabolical sort of entertainment, and instead resolved to find a respectable establishment in which to take tea. However, I soon found myself drawn into the fair, as if by mesmerism. It comprised side-shows and stalls with several mechanical attractions, and, fringed by the ramshackle vehicles of its considerable staff of animal trainers, performers and penny-showmen, extended to the edges of the Market Square. Once within its perimeter, it felt somewhat as though I had entered another world, one perceptibly warmer, and, once under cover of the various tents and stalls, certainly drier than the one I had just left. Curiosity’s crooked finger beckoned me further. A hand-bill, tacked to a post and flapping in the breeze, informed me of the appearance at the fair of Wombwell’s Menagerie, and assured me that this was the Queen’s favourite exhibition. Other gaudy posters alerted me to such spectacles as the Strange Girl, the Indian Snake Charmer, the Wonderful Talking Horse, a Beautiful Serpentine Dancer on a Rolling Globe with Lime-light Effects and Professor England’s Performing Fleas, including an ‘entirely new and original novelty’: the Funeral of the Flea.

The breeze reduced as I proceeded further into the fair, although the air seemed to darken and thicken despite the freshly illuminated naphtha lamps which hung from the openings to the tents, and which decorated the frontispieces of the various stalls. A glance upward confirmed the appearance of the darkest rain-cloud I had ever seen. Eager to escape a thorough drenching, I looked for a covered diversion. I soon came upon a wax-work exhibition, outside which stood figures of the most unhealthy complexion I have ever seen. This seemed singularly unappealing, as did the promise of the ‘living skeleton’ just beyond, so I continued onwards towards a tent in which there were taking place, a young woman promised me as I walked past, marionette shows of the very highest quality. She was playing an organ; an old, battered thing from which emanated the most harrowing bombilations. I was informed that the next show was about to start and, mostly out of pity for the girl, I paid my penny and went in. The show turned out to be a trivial moral spectacle involving a pair of village idiots who are stuck on a country road with a donkey that will not move. At some point the devil appears and offers to help the idiots. Needless to say, the story did not end well. The tent in which this took place was made from canvas, and included a small proscenium of a somewhat mouldy appearance, made of what seemed to be packing boxes draped with two pieces of worn black velvet. The closed space soon overwhelmed me with its peculiar olfactory mixture of old snuff, tobacco, treacle, sour milk and pomade and I was pleased when the show was complete.

I left the marionette show to find that the rain-cloud was, as I had feared, spilling its contents with an alarming intensity. In my attempt to keep dry, I found myself part of a crowd that had gathered under a dirty white canopy to the left of the marionette tent. There a man was offering an entertainment which he called ‘Pik-a-Straw’. He had, he claimed, various envelopes containing a secret so grave that the authorities would not let him sell them. Instead, he was selling – quite legitimately, he assured us – lengths of straw. The person to choose a long length of straw would win one of the envelopes. He who had the ill-fortune to pick a short straw would win nothing. The straws were a penny each. I observed several gentlemen and one lady approach him. Of these, the lady and two of the gentlemen drew the longer straws and were handed an envelope each. All eyes were on them as they drew out the paper from within and, after considering the contents for a few moments, made startled exclamations. I wasn’t about to be fooled by such an old trick, and I felt pleased when my suspicions were confirmed by a more thorough examination of the lady in question. The mud on her shoes,

combined with the redness and strength of her hands, suggested that she was either engaged in service, or she was a fair-ground girl. A wink from her accomplice soon confirmed the latter. Having turned away from this spectacle, my eyes were soon drawn to a far more intriguing advertisement outside a large marquee. It told of something called a Spectral Opera, featuring Pepper’s Ghost and Gompertz’s Spectrescope, and boasted royal patronage. It was a ghost show, the sort of entertainment I had heard men talk of in my club, but which I myself had never attended. Bowing my head under the pounding rain, I ventured out from under the canopy and towards the tent, which, after climbing several steps, I entered.

The make-shift theatre was half full and the lights dimmed as soon as I had alighted on the hard wooden bench. Shortly thereafter, the beginning of the performance was heralded by the most singularly spectral and dissonant music I have ever heard. I was reminded of a music box from my childhood, a small, silver contraption, used primarily by one of my sisters as a church organ for the extravagant funerals of broken dolls and dead mice. Soon, still bathed in this eerie music, I was able to behold a truly intriguing spectacle, as, by some ingenious science, transparent phantoms did indeed appear on the stage. There were three of them, each the height and breadth of a living man, but with flesh as pale and insubstantial as a dandelion clock. At first I half believed these to be actors in particularly perlaceous costumes; they were of human form and did not jerk about like marionettes. Indeed, they appeared to float across the stage, with their feet never touching the board beneath them. Then, quite suddenly, a solid actor strode onto the stage and put a sword through the nearest phantom with neither resistance, nor blood. I confess that I, along with the other members of the audience, let out a gasp of horror as the sword penetrated the frail and pitiable body of the ghost. It was at this moment that my reason must have deserted me. After the show was complete, I confess I dawdled, hoping for some indication of the construction of this elaborate hoax. I did not then believe in ghosts, and I had no doubt that science and reason were behind this display of phantasmagoria, but I became frustrated that I could not deduce the method for myself.

Very soon I was left alone in the tent with a thin-framed man. He walked over to me slowly and pointed in the direction of the stage.

‘It is certainly an intriguing spectacle,’ he said.

‘Indeed it is,’ I concurred.

‘And it is my guess that you are trying to find an explanation for it.’ ‘Yes,’ I said.

The man was silent for a moment, as if he was making a calculation.

‘For two shillings I will show you.’

Before I had even had time to protest at the price, I was following the man towards the stage. At first I believed that he was going to show me the mechanics of the illusion, and explain it in that manner: by a simple demonstration. Instead, he led me through a flap in the tent into a smaller canvas structure in which there was a medicine chest balanced on a small table along with a large lamp, a more vulgar example of which I had never seen. Its ceramic base seemed to combine the deep variegated reds of an old wound, and on this base were painted sickly yellow flowers of a sort, I felt certain, not known to nature. From the rim of its ceramic shade dangled several glass beads, clearly intended to refract the light in the manner of a chandelier, but in fact only managing to create an eerie spattering of shadow on the back of the tent.

Beyond the table was a slab that looked like a closed coffin, but which I assumed was intended as some sort of bed.

‘I don’t believe I caught your name,’ I said.

‘You can think of me as the fair-ground doctor,’ said he. ‘And you?’

His manner made me reluctant to introduce myself in the proper way and so I simply suggested that he address me as Mr. Y.

I was suddenly overcome with the peculiar sensation that everyone else had gone home and that I was the only man left at the fair-ground. I could hear the many fists of rain beating on the top of the tent but fancied that I could not hear anything else from outside: no laughter or voices. Even the infernal drone of the organ would have been welcome. I suddenly felt vexed, and I did not trust this doctor. Yet, when he motioned for me to sit on the slab I did as he suggested.

‘You wish to know the nature of the illusion you just witnessed,’ said he. ‘I can show you this, and more. But –’ Here he faltered. ‘Perhaps you do not have the constitution for the illumination I am about to offer. Perhaps –’

‘I have two shillings,’ I said to him curtly, and withdrew the money. ‘Now, do as you promised.’ The doctor opened his medicine chest and drew from it a vial of clear fluid. From this vial he poured a small measure into a glass which he then passed to me. With his other hand, he motioned to me to wait. He then withdrew another object from his chest: a white card with a small black circle at its centre. He then instructed me to drink the mixture and lie down on the slab, holding the card above my face, concentrating as hard as I could on the black spot. As I did as he asked, I wondered to what kind of trickery I was being subjected. I suspected mesmerism of the crudest sort. Not for one second did I believe that the mixture would have any effect, nor was I aware that the rest of my life would be altered as a result of drinking it.

By eleven o’clock I have finished the first chapter of
The End of Mr. Y
. The winter sun is peeping meekly through the thin curtains and I decide to get up. It’s freezing. I pick up my jeans from the floor and quickly exchange them for my pyjama bottoms; then I put on a random jumper. As I trot down the concrete steps to get the mail, I am suddenly possessed with a feeling that I’ve forgotten something. Have I locked myself out again? No, it’s not that. My keys are in my hand. I note the take-away flyers and taxi cards without picking any of them up, and go back upstairs. What could I have forgotten?

Porridge. Coffee. A whole day of reading ahead of me. Things could be worse. I already have the sleepy feeling I get when I’m reading a good book: like I want to curl up in bed with it and forget about the non-fictional world. At some point I still have to try to work out how to survive for the next three weeks on five pounds, but that could even be fun. Once I’ve had breakfast, I dig out my packet of ginseng cigarettes and light one. In fact, I’m feeling pretty relaxed when the buzzing sound starts in my bag. It’s my mobile phone, which is broken and can no longer ring. At first I think the buzzing represents a call and so I ignore it. But the vibrating only goes on for a few seconds and I realise it’s a text message, so I go and get the phone out of my bag. There’s a little picture of an envelope on the front and I press the button that metaphorically opens it.

r you still on for 2day where shall we meet

Shit. That’s the thing I’ve forgotten. It’s Patrick. I think quickly and then text back:
Cathedral crypt 5pm
. I can’t not see him. I cancelled last time, and anyway he’ll probably buy me dinner. His text messages aren’t very articulate when you consider that he’s a professor of linguistics, but then again he’s the kind of person who writes his e-mails in lower-case type because he thinks it’s the done thing. I’ve been seeing Patrick for about the last three months, and in that time we have had sex less than a dozen times. But it’s good sex; intense sex; the sort of sex you can only really get with an older man who isn’t worried about whether or not you will eventually get married; the kind of sex that is had for its own sake, and not as a deposit against something one party wants to gain in the future. Patrick is already married, of course, although his wife has affairs, too, which stops me from