The Red Men (9 page)

‘Harry Bravado has taken a particular interest in Raymond. We’ve logged calls in which Harry has promised to produce a collection of Raymond and Florence Murray’s writing. It
concerns me. It breaches our health and safety policy. Do you think Raymond can cope with that kind of provocation?’

I didn’t want to say anything that might cost Raymond his job.

‘It’s a challenge he will have to rise to,’ I said.

‘The red men are bored by us. But not by Raymond.’

‘There are no losers in their world.’

Morton scrutinized me.

‘Why would a red man be interested in a loser?’

‘Cats are interested in mice.’

‘Yes. They can be predatory.’

‘Have you spoken to him about it?’

‘To Raymond?’

‘To Harry.’

Discomfort crumpled Morton’s face.

‘We can plead with him to stop, but we don’t have recourse to punishment. We would have to ask the other red men to keep him in line. Their attitude to the real world is disturbingly
cavalier. The psychological well-being of a minor Monad employee doesn’t really register.’

Our journey along the crest of the Wave lifted us above the Canary Wharf district. The boulevards and offices below resembled a cross-section of the brain, a hemisphere of cerebral arteries and
white matter rising to meet a concave turn of the Thames, a protective band of skull. Seen from a distance, millions of individual decisions appear to be the will of a single organism and in this
regard a city resembles a brain.

‘I have an idea that I would like you to consider,’ I said.

Eakins almost groaned with pleasure at my subservience.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘You’re going to ask me to let Harry Bravado take control of a Dr Easy.’ He allowed himself a chuckle. ‘We are monitoring the situation
very closely, Nelson. Bravado asks Raymond, Raymond asks you, you ask me. And I say, no. Absolutely not.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t need a reason to say “no”. I only need a reason to say “yes”. Can you think of one?’

I could not. I felt foolish advocating a course of action I did not believe in myself. That was the story of my career.

Eakins was swept away by his assistant, and I found myself by the water cooler in an office full of poets, awkwardly picking my way through their surly preoccupation to where Raymond was sat. I
put my hand on his shoulder.

‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘Not good,’ he replied. ‘The weather has crashed again. The sky appears to be full of question marks.’

The surface of his desk was a window into the simulated Monad. With his hands he adjusted the
x
and
y
and
z
axis and twisted the focus to shift me through the office city.
Once we hit ground level, he suddenly tilted the view upwards. The sky was indeed full of question marks. So was Raymond’s face: what did Morton Eakins say?

I told him that his request had been denied. He digested the news slowly. It was a large disappointment to swallow but Raymond seemed OK about it.

Harry Bravado would take the refusal far worse, as we were soon to discover.

On the promise of a weekend away from the screens, Raymond took Florence to Cornwall, pitching his old canvas tent on a campsite at the top of Polruan hill. He knocked in the
last peg, checked the tension of the guy ropes and sauntered up to a hillock overlooking the Celtic sea. A submarine surfaced in the distance. Raymond suggested to Florence that they spend some
time alone together. The coastal path followed the headland away from Fowey. They scrabbled down to a deserted cove to swim naked. Florence went in first, her hands protecting her nipples from the
cold waves until the water was up to her ribs. She flashed him a look of comic trepidation then dived into the waves, her buoyant white arse surfacing first. He chased it with a messy front crawl.
When he caught up with her, he wanted to touch her. She resisted his embrace and pushed him away with her feet. She wanted to swim.

Raymond was tired after lugging the tent up Polruan hill. He picked his way back onto the beach and then sat naked under the afternoon sun. Mildly aroused, his cock acted as the gnomon of a
sundial, its shadow marking time on his belly. Braids of seaweed hung off the rocks. Pale skins of underwater flora lay at the water’s edge. He closed his eyes and felt the sand mould itself
around his body. The world turned within and without.

Florence is like a seal, he thought. Florence is like a mermaid. One thing looks like another. Or sounds like another. Or feels like another. We see ourselves in nature. Metaphor was invented
when early man stared at the moon and saw something like his own face. Banks of cumulus cloud shake off the wispy resemblance of a running child. Neolithic man stares into a bonfire; the flames are
his bickering women, then they are flames again. The mind sees familiar faces in the cold randomness of nature. It’s a design flaw which makes us egotistical.

His thoughts turned to Harry Bravado, a metaphor of Harold Blasebalk, the code which looked like a man. We’re always seeing faces even when they are not really there.

Florence sat down beside him, her thighs firm from the exercise. The breeze pricked out goose bumps in her skin. They did not have a towel and so she too lay naked to dry in the sea wind.

‘This was a fantastic idea,’ she said, leaning over him with a smile.

‘I have a confession to make,’ said Raymond. ‘This is not a romantic weekend away. It’s an escape. I wanted to get away from Monad.’

She nodded. ‘It’s all good.’

‘It’s more than that. I had a visit. The night we went out with Alex Drown. Harry Bravado came into our flat and asked me to do something for him. In return, he offered to edit our
writing into a book. I agreed to help. I was very curious to read the manuscript.’

Florence inspected her wet hair, found a split end, and callously plucked it out, as unfeeling as one of the Fates cutting a thread of life. ‘You let it work on my poetry?’

‘It was all for nothing, anyway,’ continued Raymond. ‘Monad refused Bravado’s request.’

‘What did he request?’

‘To take over a Dr Easy.’

‘I found that night with Alex Drown and her red man very disturbing. I don’t think the red men should walk among us.’

‘Bravado wanted it badly. The red men do not like to be denied.’

‘Do you think Bravado will blame you?’ It was the second question on her mind. The first question was an accusation: what gives you the right to make decisions about my writing? She
would make Raymond work to discover the source of her indignation and intended to sulk until he prised it out of her.

Raymond said, ‘Bravado will know by now that his request has been refused. That makes me nervous. I didn’t like the way the red man came into our front room. And I was ashamed for
even talking to him. But it was very late and Harry caught me unawares. In the morning, I saw how ridiculous it was – the idea that a red man could write our book for us. But I had promised
to help him.’

Florence dressed silently, her hair wet, her face angry. They hiked back up the coastal path. The weather was neurotic, fidgeting with rain showers. Arriving back at the tent soaked did nothing
to lift Florence’s mood. She retreated to her sleeping bag with her notebook.

Raymond did not feel he deserved such treatment and so could not bring himself to initiate reconciliation. It did not help that he was lust-sick, locked in the self-pitying rage of ungratified
desire.

He asked Florence if she was hungry. He would go into town and get her a sandwich. That would be a start. She had to think about it. Was it enough to get him off the hook? Well, that would
depend on what he hunted and gathered. Could he guess what she wanted? That was the real test.

Zipping up his waterproof, Raymond set off on the mile-long walk down Polruan hill. The gradient was steep and he had to walk downhill in tense tentative steps, Yes, letting a red man assemble
their book sold out every principle espoused in her work. But they were already complicit with the culture of screens through their jobs. Was there really any difference between taking the wages of
Monad and taking advantage of its technology? Selling out had never been a problem before because no one had wanted to buy. Why are we kneecapping ourselves with artistic principles when we are yet
to produce any art?

Rain sluiced down the street releasing the perfumes of the neighbourhood gardens. There were bohemian touches to the village. Abstract sculptures made from farming implements. Rough-hewn pagodas
with bamboo wind chimes knocking in the sea wind. Posters proclaiming support for the UK Independence party or British Freedom Alliance or whatever euphemism it was flying under that year.

Ducking into the pub for a livener, Raymond took a quick reading of the regulars at the bar. Tones of fishermen and boat builder, with plummy notes of middle-class retreat. In the snug, he
downed half his pint without tasting it and eavesdropped upon Liz and Nicola, who had recently escaped from West London. Gavin had to go back to the office on Monday, so he was taking the boys
surfing now. Was there time for another glass of wine or should they go back and put the dinner on? The chicken would take no time but what about the gravy? Raymond had matured to the point where
he could readily admit that he knew nothing of these women’s lives beyond his own prejudices, that he was incapable of seeing through the type. The few times he had broken bread with the
middle classes he was always starving by the time they got around to serving dinner. He wondered if one accumulated social status the later one dined. Where was he that time when the joint
wasn’t carved until eleven o’clock, and he was still being polite about the potatoes as midnight approached? His reverie was interrupted by the ring of a mobile. Liz clicked her fingers
and took the call. It was a wrong number. Or so it seemed initially. Then slowly, she stood up and looked around the pub.

‘Yes, I see him,’ Liz said, pointing at Raymond. ‘It’s for you,’ she said, handing over the mobile.

‘Who is it?’ replied Raymond, staring warily at the phone.

‘It’s your father,’ said Liz.

Raymond shook his head.

‘He says it’s important,’ repeated Liz, again presenting the phone to Raymond, passing the problem on.

‘Ray? Are you there Ray?’ His father’s last words.

He threw the phone down, bolted up from his seat and pushed his way out of the bar. He was about to panic. Or was he already panicking? He panicked about it.

The small ferry from Fowey had just come in, and half a dozen passengers were lugging their bags and suitcases across the wet jetty. The boat, he thought. I should get on the boat. But then he
heard a mobile phone ring, then another, then another. The group of boat passengers paused to take their calls and Raymond knew that each of them was at that very moment talking to his poor dead
Dad.

Where is my son?

Can you see him?

Raymond’s first instinct was to run into the local shop to ask for help. A family was at the counter, two young children dithering over their choice of ice cream. He agitated at the back
of the shop, threw some pasties into a basket, tried to keep things normal. The family were making slow progress; the children wanted to know why they had to choose between an ice cream or a lolly
ice when surely there was money to buy both. Then their father’s phone rang.

‘Don’t answer that!’ shouted Raymond. He reared so suddenly out from the aisle that the two children fled behind their mother. The father took the ringing phone slowly from his
pocket, while keeping his gaze fixed upon Raymond.

‘Why shouldn’t I answer it?’ said the man.

Raymond just blurted it out. ‘Because it’s my dead Dad and I don’t want to speak to him.’

The father nodded, carefully considering. Behind him, the matronly shopkeeper quietly ushered the children behind the counter. Raymond caught a glance of the mother’s intense focus. She
was shaking her head slowly, willing him to stop. The phone’s ringtone of Ravel’s Bolero continued to trill. By now the father had measured Raymond’s capacity for violence and
decided that the little man would come up short. He showed Raymond the name of the caller.

‘It says “Office”. It does not say “Dead Dad”.’

The man took the call but his smug expression quickly darkened. He snatched the phone from his ear and held it out for all to hear.

A broken breathless straining whisper: ‘Help… me… help… me… help… me.’

‘Your Dad needs your help.’

‘Dad’s dead. Dad’s been dead for months.’

‘Then who is this? Is this a joke?’

Adam Chase’s dying plea was unbearable. The children started crying. Raymond clutched at his head, snatched the phone and threw it to the ground, cutting off the vile broadcast. He ran
from the shop and sprinted up the hill. From the houses all around, he heard phones ringing in his wake. He ran faster up the steep road.

The red men saw everything, from the surveillance cameras in Paddington station to the microphones in every smartphone. He knew enough not to use his credit card. He had plenty of cash, and had
taken the precaution of leaving his mobile phone at home with its battery disconnected. But he’d underestimated the reach of the red men. He had not considered all the angles.

The weather lost its nerve. It started to rain again, weightless drops drifting slowly over the crest of the hill. Raymond ran through it and on to the campsite. The field had only a few tents
in it and the other campers were out for the day. He hoped desperately for some respite. In his agitation he could not untie the entrance to the tent and Florence, hearing his panic, undid it for
him. Once under the canvas, he was steaming. She wanted to know what was going on. He couldn’t get the information in the right order quick enough. Dead Dad. Harry Bravado. Haunted by the
ghost in the machine. It could torment him at will. Where could they go to get away from it? Nowhere.

His Dad. His poor dead Dad disinterred and dragged back to life for an undignified encore. He wanted to throttle Bravado. But he could not reach through the screen. He could not get inside the
Monad. He would have to take his punishment and do Harry Bravado’s bidding. Be the red man’s real world bitch.