They Do the Same Things Different There (27 page)

And besides, Ray had been exaggerating. It wasn’t all just hard graft; there were lighter moments too, lots of them. For example, there was that time with the two teenagers. They sat under Steve’s branches, and they told each other that they loved each other, and they snogged. And both the declarations of love and the snogs that punctuated them were so forceful that Steve suspected this was the first time for them both; they were so so young, they’d not used the “love” word before. Steve rather liked them. They were sweet. “I love you,” said the boy, “and I’m going to prove it.” And he got out a Swiss Army knife from his jacket, pulled out the blade, and Steve was alarmed, he thought the boy was going to do something terrible to himself, or to her: he wondered whether he should break character and call for help, but that was strictly forbidden. But it was all right, the boy just wanted to carve their initials into the bark, and Steve felt relieved—right up to the point that he remembered the bark was
him
. “What happened to you?” said Cheryl that night, and he told her the whole story, and they had a good laugh about it. “And what’s that around the initials, is that supposed to be a heart?” Steve supposed that it was. Cheryl said, “Oh dear!” and laughed again, and wondered whether it could all be removed by laser surgery. And Steve pointed out that it wasn’t a tattoo, that wasn’t the way it worked. “Oh dear!” laughed Cheryl. And then, “But what a romantic gesture.” And Steve hit upon an idea, and he told Cheryl that she should carve their names into his bark. “No,” said Cheryl. “. . . Do you really think I should? Won’t it hurt?” Steve said it wouldn’t much, and she said he was being brave, and he said he wasn’t really, and she said, no, she liked it when he was brave. “Okay,” said Cheryl, and grinned, and looked so excited, and went to fetch a knife. “Whereabouts should I do it?” And Steve told her that she should carve her heart higher than the teenagers’ heart—this was
proper
love they felt, not some school crush. Their heart should take precedence. “Here goes,” she said, and began to chip out a heart: high up like he’d said, just below his throat. Cut deep, Steve said, unless she wanted the bark to grow over. So she cut deep. And she cut an arrow through the centre of the heart, and then carved their names either side. Their full names, not just their initials, if it was worth doing it was worth doing properly, and Steve was secretly relieved his name only had five letters. Then she laughed at her handiwork, and Steve couldn’t see properly, so had to go and take a look for himself in the mirror, and he laughed too, and said she’d done a great job. And then they kissed. And then Cheryl cleaned the knife of the sap and the little smear of blood.

Pretty soon Steve stopped taking his scheduled breaks at eleven o’clock. He preferred to work through, he didn’t want to break his rhythm. For a while he was still obliged to take the one at half past four, because by then he’d be bursting for a pee—but he then learned that with just a little concentration he could convert all his waste matter into chlorophyll and pump it out into his foliage. It wasn’t necessarily textbook stuff, but hey, it worked. In the van to and from work he didn’t talk much to the other trees, and they didn’t talk much to him; he couldn’t tell whether they just wanted to maintain their focus as he did, or just didn’t like him. And he honestly didn’t care either way. One day the supervisor came to Steve and told him that he’d noticed his common or garden sycamore was now showing signs of becoming a
variegated
sycamore; Steve wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or not, but the supervisor said that the extra effort was appreciated, and gave him a friendly slap on his trunk. And only a few days after that, the supervisor asked Steve if he could have a private word with him away from all the other trees. He asked Steve if he fancied being an oak. “One of the oaks in St. James’s Park has gone sick. Don’t know what, some sort of fungus, doesn’t matter. Would you be my new oak?” Steve was surprised and flattered and just a bit scared; he wasn’t sure he had what it took, to be an oak was every sycamore’s dream. “You’ve got what it takes,” said the supervisor. “I don’t want you, you know, to get above yourself. But I’ll tell you, you’re the most promising oak I’ve seen in years.”

After his shift Steve went home and told his family the news. Ben didn’t say much, he never said much anymore. “Will there be any extra money?” asked Cheryl. Steve said he didn’t know. He’d only be a probationary oak after all, they couldn’t expect much. But that was hardly the point. He’d be in St. James’s Park! That was just an acorn’s throw from Buckingham Palace itself, some days the Queen would look out of her window, and guess what she’d be looking at, Ben? She’d be looking at his daddy! What did Ben think of that? Ben very politely asked if he could be excused from the dinner table, he had homework to do. Steve expressed surprise that Ben was doing homework—he was too young, surely? Cheryl said, “He’s been doing homework for weeks now. I don’t think you remember. I don’t think you listen.” She washed up in silence for a while. And then Steve told her that he was even being allowed to choose which oak he wanted to be, there were so many different types of oak, you know. They trusted him with that decision all by himself. He thought he might go for a sessile oak, partly because he admired the way that its acorns weren’t carried on stalks but directly on the outer twigs, and partly because he just liked the name. Cheryl coolly said that it sounded like he’d already reached his decision, and Steve said, no, no, he’d welcome her input, she’d every right to help choose what sort of oak tree her husband was going to be. She banged the plates down in the sink and left the kitchen.

The other oaks were set in their ways and standoffish. Sod them, Steve thought, and put his efforts into being the best sessile oak he could. He liked the park; he sheltered a better quality of picnicker there. He loved all the tourists, and all their different accents, and that they were always so excited by everything, and took photos all the time, and he liked to imagine they’d flown all around the world from their own countries just to visit him, they were there to see him. He knew it wasn’t true, not necessarily, but it sent a warmth of pride from the tips of his upper branches right down to the furthest ends of his roots. And in the evenings at home he’d study, he’d pore over gardening books and encyclopaedias and the latest academic dissertations about oak care theory. Just so he could be expert. Daddy was doing his homework whilst Ben was doing his!—and he’d tell Ben that, and he thought Ben would find that amusing, he couldn’t quite be sure. He’d explain to Ben why the oak was the best tree in the world. There was a reason it had been adopted as a national emblem in England and France and Germany and the USA and Poland and Latvia and Estonia. And he’d tell Cheryl that after that time of unemployment all he’d wanted was to be a normal man again. But he now believed he was actually
good
at this, special, she was living with a man that was special. He loved his afternoons now, they were long and rich and full of sunshine and birdsong . . . “Don’t you care,” asked Cheryl, “that your own son is scared of you? He’s
scared
of you. Doesn’t that bother you at all?” That pulled Steve up short. He’d never hurt Ben, he never would, he loved Ben, this was all for Ben, for them both, he loved them both. “He doesn’t know what you are anymore. He thinks you’re a monster.” With all his talk of trees, that’s all Steve would talk about anymore, just bloody trees—and Steve didn’t raise his voice, he pointed out to Cheryl as gently as he could that he
was
a bloody tree, what did she bloody expect? “We came to see you this afternoon,” said Cheryl. “Ben wanted to see where his daddy worked. We came to see you in the park.” Silence. “You didn’t even know he was there.”

She told Steve she didn’t love him anymore. She’d tried, but she’d given up trying, she had to give up now. She was so sorry. And she gave him a sudden hug, and held onto him fiercely, buried her head against his hard mottled chest, and began to cry. Steve looked down at her, and thought she looked so small, and she couldn’t reach her arms round him of course, it was almost funny—she was so small he could barely feel her. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said. She kept on saying that, over and over again. They went to bed, and she sobbed, facing away from him. And he wanted to comfort her, to protect her, but he didn’t know how. He reached out for her, he brushed her skin, and he wasn’t sure she’d want that, he thought she might tell him to stop, but she didn’t tell him to stop, and she didn’t stop sobbing either. And he held her in his arms, his long strong arms, and she accepted them gratefully. That’s how she fell asleep at last, gripping onto him, her fingernails cutting thin little slits into his bark. When the alarm woke them the next morning she smiled at him, and kissed at him, and for a moment Steve thought everything might be all right. And she asked him to move out.

Sometimes in the park a family would approach him, and the father would say, “Do you want to play in the tree?” and the little boy would say, “Yes! Yes!” and the mother would smile nervously and say, “Now, be careful,” and the father would lift the boy into Steve’s branches, and the boy would squeal with joy, and Steve would hold him tightly in those branches to keep him safe, and he’d think, Ben, he’d think, it should be Ben I’m holding, I should be holding my own son. And then the thought would be lost upon the breeze.

He tried phoning Ray once. Ray wasn’t in. He didn’t try again.

One day he was alarmed to find a ridge running across his midriff, over where the navel used to be, right around his body and back again. He was quite certain there’d been no trace of it the day before. He hadn’t felt anything even approaching alarm for quite a while now, and wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. So at the end of the shift he told his supervisor. “Oh, that’s a ring!” said the supervisor. “All trees get those. That means you’ve been doing this job a whole year. Congratulations!” Steve thanked him. “Don’t thank me. A whole year, hey, that must mean you’ve got a holiday due. Have you taken a holiday yet? You’re owed a holiday.” Steve informed the supervisor that he hadn’t taken a holiday. “Well, you must then. No arguments!” Steve asked him what sort of holiday he ought to take. “God, I don’t know, I’m not a travel agent,” said the supervisor. “Somewhere sunny. I don’t know. With a beach.” So Steve dutifully went to the travel agent’s, and an excitable young assistant there told him that yes, there were
lots
of sunny holidays she could recommend, and
plenty
of them came with beaches. And she booked him one right there and then to prove it. “Just the single passenger, is it, sir?” she asked.

The aeroplane was full of noisy families. Steve usually liked noisy families, but now he wasn’t there to shade them and they made him feel awkward and somehow sad. Once he’d cleared immigration a shuttle coach took him and the noisy families to a noisy hotel. “I hope you like your room, sir,” said the bellboy, and Steve said that he did, even though the bed was too soft and too too small, and whenever he turned on the
TV
something Spanish came out. He sat on the bed to have a think, but no thoughts came to mind. So he got changed into his T-shirt, his shorts, and his sandals, he put on sunglasses and sun lotion. In the mirror he looked at the heart that Cheryl had carved into his skin, and on a whim he covered it up. Then he went for a walk on the sand. He left strange footprints behind him.

He’d walked for a couple of hours, maybe three. The sun was beginning to set. He stopped at last, and stared out to sea for a good few minutes, unmoving, unthinking. Then he turned to the nearest palm tree he could see, and told her that he admired her fronds.

The palm tree didn’t reply.

Steve didn’t do a lot of talking anymore, so he wasn’t sure he’d got it right. Maybe he just thought he’d spoken. Maybe the words hadn’t actually come out. He found that happened sometimes. So he told the palm tree again that he admired her fronds.

“I heard you the first time,” said the palm tree. “We’re not supposed to fraternize.” Steve apologized. And then said that he didn’t know whether she’d be interested, but maybe Steve could buy her a drink? He was staying at a hotel. Somewhere, back there, he didn’t know where exactly, but they served drinks, he was sure of it. Maybe he could buy her one.

The palm tree didn’t say anything, and for a moment Steve thought he’d have to come right out and say all that again, and that would be such an effort. But he was just summoning up the breath to do so anyway, when the palm said, “Are you married?”

Steve had to think about this for a while.

“Yes,” he said, at last.

The palm tree seemed to shrug. “All right, señor. One drink. Just the one. At your hotel.” Steve thanked her. “Don’t thank me,” she said. “But only after my shift, okay? I’ve got to finish my shift first.”

“I can wait,” said Steve. And he sat down beneath her shade, rested his head against her bark, and closed his eyes. And let the crash of the waves against the shore lull him to sleep.

Richard Marklew had a skull that was cracked across the top, forming a gash that ran from the roof of the scalp right down to the middle of the forehead. In the right light the crack seemed to yawn open most invitingly, and Marklew took pains to enhance this effect, always positioning the skull near candlelight or flickering lamp. And sometimes when Marklew hosted a dinner party (and, sometimes, when he merely attended someone else’s), he would present his skull at the table after the meal was done, and he’d dare the ladies to put their fingers into the crack, deep down, as deep as they could go.

Most of the ladies shrank away, of course, but he could usually persuade one or two to give it a try. These bolder women weren’t necessarily the most attractive, but that didn’t matter; to Marklew, beauty was rarely skin deep.

That night the first woman to accept the challenge was Mrs. Alice Powell, and she was a somewhat unlikely candidate—Marklew had written her off as too mousey, too timid, to be of any interest to him. She too seemed surprised at her own daring, and now that she was standing up seemed only to want to sit straight back down again—but everyone’s eyes were upon her, and she wavered, uncertain what would frighten her the most: to touch Marklew’s skull, or to suffer the humiliation of changing her mind. She looked back to her husband, but Mr. Powell was no help at all—he nodded and smiled, he actively seemed to be encouraging her. “It won’t bite,” said Marklew, kindly enough, he thought—and there was a ripple of laughter, and Mrs. Alice Powell blushed bright red. She stretched out one finger, daintily, and let it brush against the skull—not at the crack, nowhere near the crack. And because that was clearly not enough, she touched it again, gave it an actual prod this time, and she shuddered, and laughed as she shuddered.

“But, Mr. Marklew,” she said. “How can you ever sleep, with such a fearful thing in the house?” And her eyes were big and round, and Marklew knew she wouldn’t be sharing his bed that night.

“I want to try,” said Lady Constance suddenly, and rose from her chair, and there was nothing for it but for Mrs. Powell to retreat to her own, dismissed. Lady Constance was the sort of woman that could be termed handsome. Marklew thought there was something bovine about her, as if her blue-blooded ancestors had bred with cattle.

“How old did you say this was?” she asked, and Marklew hadn’t, and told her it was not so very old, it dated back maybe to the sixteenth century. Lady Constance nodded at that, as if that were an answer she approved of, as if she had been checking the skull had a decent vintage. And then she plunged her fingers into the crack.

There was silence for a few seconds as she began to explore.

Then one of the husbands said, with a slightly embarrassed cough, “And how many of these skulls have you collected, Marklew?” But Marklew ignored that, it was a typical question from the gentry: how many, how big, how much is it worth? Another man asked what had caused the crack, had it been in battle? And Marklew said, yes, in battle, or perhaps in ritual sacrifice—although of course it was a battle wound, but he liked talking of ritual sacrifice, the women always thrilled to it, it gave them such a frisson. All the time Marklew looked only at Lady Constance, into the crack now up to her knuckles. And she said, softly, “Do you give the skull a name?”

“I do not,” said Marklew. “But you can correct my omission. You can name the skull for me.” He thought she would like that. She did.

“Very well,” she said. “Then I shall name him Oswald.”

And there was some amusement at that. It was an open secret that Lady Constance was having an affair with Oswald Lutyens, the artist, and the rumours were that she was tiring of him.

“Oswald it is,” said Marklew.

“It’s all so smooth,” she said. “Do you think we’re all so smooth, beneath the skin?” Marklew said, very probably; he knew the reason the bone was so smooth was that he had the servants polish it each week with linseed oil.

“And to think,” Lady Constance breathed, her eyes no longer on the skull, eyes only on Marklew, but her fingers were still stroking at the bone, stroking away. “That this man lived hundreds of years ago. He lived, and he died, and now you
own
him. He’s
yours
, and you have the power to do whatever you like to him. He cannot resist. He has no rights. He’s like your personal dead slave.”

“Yes,” said Marklew.

And at this the maids brought in liqueurs, and Lady Constance returned to her chair, and the conversation was changed. And Marklew put Oswald away—Oswald, or James, or Sylvester; the skull had been at so many dinner parties, and had been given so many names.

After his other guests had retired for the evening, Marklew took Lady Constance on a private tour of his collection of
memento mori
. He showed her fully articulated skeleton puppets operated by gossamer-thin strings; they stood ten feet tall and came from Mexico. There were canopic jars from ancient Egypt, death masks from Renaissance Europe; there were iron markers from children’s graves, dug up in Austria a hundred years before. Lady Constance cooed over the beauty of the jewelled clasps he had collected, and he told her that each of them had been worn by grieving widows and contained locks of hair from their dead husbands’ heads. And there were more skulls, of course there were; he had skulls from Saxon times, from Norman times, he had skulls from Africa and Asia and the most obscure island tribes in the South Pacific. And they all looked the same to Lady Constance. But Richard Marklew knew the differences between each and every one of them, and he loved them all.

He showed her an erotic portrait of two cavorting corpses, and Lady Constance reached for his hand and squeezed it.

“What a display!” she said. “Well, well. You must feel you have triumphed over death!” But that wasn’t it at all.

As he showed her all the pieces he had, gathered over so many years, the little memorabilia, the nick-knacks, the shards of bone and cartilage, Marklew felt a growing pride. And she seemed still to regard it all as some flirtatious game, as the exotic hobby of a wealthy man who had nothing better to do with his time. Something flippant, something trivial—with every fresh objet d’art he expected less and less from her reaction, and he really rather hated her for that.

He took her finally to his bedroom. He showed her the bed.

“Is it something wickedly sinister?” she asked. “Has it been constructed from the skeletal remains of torture victims?”

“No,” he said.

He pushed her onto the bed, and he fucked her. They fucked twice, and then he was tired, and he suggested she should return to her own room so that he might sleep.

Marklew did not expect to be understood by Lady Constance and her ilk; and, truth be told, he wouldn’t have much wanted to have been. They saw at best a random assemblage of curios—interesting, certainly, maybe even a little macabre, but without proper form or intent. Whereas Marklew knew that each item he owned had been specifically hand picked, that the entire collection was a single piece of art, that it was a summation of something—that it was a summation of
him
. Yes, it was an expression of self, and by now, at the age of fifty-five, he knew himself quite perfectly, everything he set his mind to accomplish, he did; and everything he did was something he had set out to do, quite deliberately. And whilst the collection grew each year, he also edited out earlier acquisitions—pieces he felt now symbolized a younger man he no longer was and did not want to be again; he would throw out skulls that he judged to be naive, entire skeletons that he’d once loved but in his maturity had outgrown. Had Lady Constance seen his collection for what it was he would have been irked, maybe even a little frightened; what man wants to be so easily decoded, his real and complex self to be exposed? Richard Marklew thought he was deep.—Richard Marklew
knew
he was deep. He was a man who had depths all over him; he alone could guess how many depths he had.

No, if Marklew wanted appreciation for his life’s work, he would find it at the convention. The convention was attended by the like-minded: enthusiasts, scholars, and collectors of the arcane. Membership was offered by invitation only, and was reassuringly rigid in its selection: you could not apply for it, or ask others to make applications on your behalf, and any member found colluding in any such practice would face summary expulsion. Membership was also, needless to say, extremely expensive.

Marklew remembered the first time he had received an invitation. It had arrived by some special delivery: the envelope was small and plain and had no stamps upon it. Inside had been a card informing Marklew of the location of that year’s convention, and that his attendance would be permitted. It had not said so, but Marklew had known instinctively that had he turned the invitation down, no more would ever be forthcoming. Marklew had then been only twenty-four, and his collection was only small, and, by his later standards, mostly worthless; certainly, by the time he’d reached his forties, he had disposed of the majority of it. He had heard that such a convention existed, of course. Sometimes the dealers he bought from would allude to it—but only in jokes, as if it were a myth none of them quite believed in. Marklew did not know how the convention had heard of him. He never asked.

That year it had been in Istanbul. He later learned that the convention was never held in the same place twice, and that Istanbul was amongst the least exotic of the hosting cities. But this had been in the days of the Great War, and Turkey had not only got itself caught up in the middle of the damned thing, but had ended up on the wrong side. To go to the convention would have all but bankrupted Marklew; he had never been a poor man, but these were still the days in which he could hardly have been described as rich. Nevertheless, he went.

To be in the company of other men who explored so fully the passions he was only starting to feel—that itself made the adventure worthwhile. Marklew had tried to talk to these men, and they’d accepted his drinks, they had even been polite, but they had never encouraged any friendly intimacy. Now, so many years later, Marklew himself understood why—and it sometimes made him wince to think of his younger self, still wet behind the ears and knowing nothing, worth nothing, wanting to impose his presence upon others. He marvelled in retrospect at the senior members’ patience with him. He wouldn’t have shown any. Indeed, if Marklew was now approached by any such novice he refused even to acknowledge him—there were always new members every year, and it was something the old crowd may have to tolerate, but didn’t need to indulge.

If you wanted to be invited back to the convention, you quickly learned: these men were closer to you than family, but that didn’t mean they were your friends. To be amongst your peers, the only people to whom you would never have to explain yourself—that was enough.

Richard Marklew liked to hold a dinner party on the eve of a convention. The contrast amused him.

By the time he awoke in the morning, Lady Constance and her chattering friends had gone. He was taken by cab to a private airfield; from there, by chartered plane he flew to Bogota. Marklew didn’t know Bogota. By the end of the weekend he still wouldn’t; he was met at the airfield by an arranged driver who took him to the hotel in a limousine with windows so black he could barely see out of them. The hotel was maybe a two hour drive away; it was small and anonymous. It could have been anywhere in the world—which Marklew always supposed was entirely the point. He was shown to his room. It was spotlessly clean and luxuriously appointed. The bed was large and hard, as to his stated preference.

He unpacked. It did not take long. There was little that he’d needed to bring. And then he went downstairs to the bar, where the other members of the convention had started to gather. He sat down in an armchair, at a table on his own, ordered an Old Fashioned, and pretended to read a newspaper. He allowed himself to be seen.

The centrepiece of the weekend’s events was the auction on the Sunday afternoon. It was always fully attended, although Marklew knew that there were never more than the same dozen serious bidders. There was someone from China, someone from France, someone from one of the Indies, Marklew didn’t know which, it may even have been India itself. Several Americans, of course, no doubt trying to seize hold of a history they had never had. The majority were British, which was as it should be.