Ventriloquists (23 page)

Roger sighed. ‘Yeah I know. I know it
logically
. But I can’t stop wondering why a man of his age would be hiding –‘

‘Or storing.’

‘… a box of Pampers in the sideboard. And if it wasn’t for Dorota and I on the floorboards at the same time, or the draft we made – or whatever it was – the sideboard door wouldn’t have swung open half an inch and we wouldn’t…’

‘Okay, Rog. Would it make you feel better if we managed to get Don out of his cabin and you could have a proper rummage?’

‘And how would you do that?’

‘I’d talk to Vig.’ Phyllie shrugged and let go of Roger’s hand. ‘He owes me one for refusing my well-intentioned sexual advances.’

Roger chuckled. ‘I’m not sure it works like that, Phyl.’

‘Oh he knows the rules. He’s
German
, for Christ’s sake. And speaking of refusing my sexual advances…’

‘Don’t. I didn’t
refuse.
’

‘All right then. Speaking of sexual advances, it’s been three nights. I must admit, it was nice to have a rest on the first night, but I’m starting to worry you’ve gone off this fat girl.’

‘I haven’t,’ Roger told her.

‘Good. So prove it. Then I’ll call Vig.’

4.

As Phyllie had predicted, Vig was awake – and awake for the reason that she had given Roger. He couldn’t sleep. The truth was he had simply not taken to the house. The space he found constricting, of all things. He was trapped by all of this extra room. It wasn’t natural; and it was playing with his biorhythms. While Dorota slept soundly, it was Vig’s new hobby to wander around the house; to read in his library – his library! – and to stroll out into the chilly pre-dawn air.

Sometimes he went to see the birds.

His footfalls on the path away from the house (or on the lawn, if he was of a mood to feel wet grass through his slippers) would trigger the security light on the patio; and enjoying the cold, perhaps with the moon on his back, Vig would stroll out to Don’s aviary, his shadow as stretched out before him as a bad dream of being chased, or of chasing. The threat of rain in the air had been known to be a comfort.

Rarely were the birds pleased to see him. They did not wake and squawk; they did not fly around within their confines. Quite often, in fact, they slept peacefully while Vig spied on them on their perches, and fantasised the contents of their dreams. It was peaceful. For Vig, it was like… like being invisible. If he could cause no fuss, then surely he could not be present physically.

A childish logic, of course. But it kept him calm, sometimes. Kept him calm until, inevitably, one bird or more woke up and raised the aviary alarm. At that point, it was time to beat a hasty retreat… or to wait for Don.

Sure as night followed day, Don Bridges came running when he heard a commotion in his birdhouse. And as richly as he respected the birds for their enclosed spaces and parameters – even envied them the same – Vig respected the fact that Don responded faster to a cat among the pigeons (as it were) than ever he would, say, to news that the main house was burning down.

If you wanted to witness Don at full pelt, you could do a lot worse than slide a snake into one of the cages.

At the moment, however, Vig was alone. While he thought it through, he was struck by its undeniable poeticism:
it was Vig and the birds, by starlight.

And so it was. The rain that had threatened earlier had not materialised, and the wind had taken the pancake clouds away with it. The sky was a held breath; it was flawless… Feeling about the size of an ant beneath it, Vig watched the birds behind the mesh – as well as he could by starlight and security beam combined – and added to his pondering of what birds dreamed the predicament of why he felt so ill-at-ease.

No, he knew why. The question was unfair (on himself). There was no doubt about it.

It was Don who unnerved him.

Didn’t matter that the accusation was unreasonable; didn’t matter that Dorota’s search of Don’s hut had come up with not a small thing to show. The seed had been planted in Vig’s imagination; and in the absence of anything workmanlike or profitable to do with his day, he had become a noodler and a brooder.

Vig could call himself pathetic until his back stung with whips and self-absement, the truth was that he didn’t want Don on his land. The sheer scale and space that he owned was not a solution. In fact, his acres were part of the problem. Wherever Vig stood on the estate at any time, he knew that Don was out there somewhere – a secret known only to himself – and doing precisely what at that moment was anyone’s guess.

No evidence.

It’s not important.

They searched.

It’s not important.

He’s a harmless old man who loves birds.

It’s not important.

When the realisation struck Vig that he walked out to see the birds on insomniac nights for the
purpose
of meeting Don, it was sufficient to make him come over queer and giddy. The sensation – help me God! – was not far from a pang of love, a strobe of longing.

‘You can’t sleep again, sir.’

Vig turned. Don had a habit (and an ability) of creeping up on him.

‘Evening, Don. Are you well?’

‘Fair to middling. And you?’

‘I’m exhausted,’ Vig answered honestly.

‘Same here.’

Nothing in the older man’s tone – not now, not since – gave any indication that he’d been put out or chagrined by the search of his modest home. Incredibly, the man had behaved impeccably. However, if he’d intended a good grace to indicate humility, the ploy had failed. As far as Vig was concerned, Don behaved like a man who had got away with something and was currently surfing the waves of relief.

They chatted for a few minutes, Don rolling, lighting and smoking a cigarette as they spoke. It felt natural. Calm. Two strangers at a bus stop, perhaps. Two men queuing. Vig realised that he knew nothing more about the birdkeeper – not one single thing – than he had when he and Dorota had moved in. Had he expected the old man to reveal all about his past in bite-sized chunks? Well, kind of. No, not kind of. Yes. Yes he had.
Exactly
what he had expected, the man living on his land and so forth…

‘Thought I saw foxes earlier,’ said Vig, this time not so honestly. Rather cackhandedly, in fact; but Vig imagined it to be a good idea to get back to the subject that had been abandoned: the subject of unexplained noises in the woods.

‘Couple of families-worth,’ Don agreed. ‘You can hear them when it’s still.’

The two men fell silent. Vig heard nothing but the wind combing through branches, ploughing the trees. He did not even hear the phone ringing in the house.

3.

But Dorota did.

She swore in Polish, and eiderdowned in a thick night-dress, she swung her legs out of bed and shuffled along the corridor to a spare room that housed one of the property’s phones.

‘It’s Phyllie Reydman.’

‘…Do you know what time it is, Phyl?’

‘Yes. Do you know where your husband is?’

‘No,’ Dorota admitted. ‘What about him?’

‘Roger’s on his way over to you. I’m about to follow in the other car.’

‘Why?’

‘You might not be safe, that’s why. Not in the long run: reputations and all that…’

Dorota shook her head. Maybe she remained gluey with slumber; maybe this was really making sense after all.

‘What’s up?’ she asked.

And Phyllie told her.

4.

When the Berlin Wall splintered and cracked, Vig had been thirteen. He was old enough to remember hatred and forgiveness, easily, and knew more than he wanted to know about the spastic death throes of Communism, about witch hunts…

Much of it came back to him now.

Having finished shooting the breeze with the birdkeeper, Vig had been crossing the lawn in a gloomy slouch when Dorota burst out onto the patio, actually waving her arms as if she’d expected to have to use semaphore to attract his attention from a distance. Running out to meet him, she had called: ‘Roger’s coming!’

‘Roger who?’ Vig had called back.

‘Roger Moore! Who-do-you-think Roger!’

‘Sorry! What’s he doing?’

In the space of this interlocution, their strides had brought them closer, almost to a collision point. Then Dorota had swept him up in her aura of energy and purpose, now striding blokeishly, and had collected Vig along with her, like a relay baton.

‘I’ve opened the front gate,’ she said, not answering her partner’s question.

‘Dorota. What’s going on?’

‘We’re going to see Don.’

‘I just saw him. What about?’

‘You just
saw
him?’

‘By the birds. We had a chat.’

‘Roger swears he saw baby milk in his hut.’

‘Slow down, will you? So what if he did?’

‘Why would he have it?’

‘I don’t know. For the birds?’

‘For the
birds
now!’

‘I
don’t know.
What are you suggesting?’

‘It’s what Roger’s suggesting.’

‘Then what’s
Roger
suggesting?’

‘You
know
what he’s suggesting!’

‘Shouldn’t we wait for him?’

‘Surprise is the best form of attack, Vig.’

And it felt like a witch hunt. It was hateful, creative in its cruelty – and to Vig it resembled a witch hunt. He didn’t know whether to feel guilty or appeased.

Delivery

1.

How do you know when it’s time to stop work for the day, Tim?

Well, Victoria
(or was it Virginia?)
it’s like asking a high-jumper why he doesn’t try for his personal best for the eighth time that afternoon. You always want to be doing your best work, whatever you do. In life, I mean. And just like the high-jumper won’t get his magic

What?

Three metres?

How high could an athlete jump?

…two metres sixty, or whatever his best happens to be, I know instinctively – it’s like an instinct – that whatever I do at that point is likely to need to be redone in the morning. So it’s time to put down the pen.

That was a laugh. A pen now! Since when, Tim?
I ply the scrivener’s trade,
eh son? And all that wind.

Branston was interviewing himself again (old habits died hard; he had tried to quit but self-interest had proved too heavy an anchor to ignore); but for this particular interview, on the compositional process of film scripts, the subject had brought along with him an annoying punitive superego of an interruptive smartarse. Who would not keep it zipped. Who wanted its own thoughts on the record. Who wanted in.

It had come to something when a man could not conduct a conversation with himself without fearing an interruption by a third party!

Branston lowered the weights. A
monologue interieur
was one way of sublimating the dread and rage that he directed towards physical exercise, but he could taste rust on his lips and this was his usual sign that he’d benched enough.

Rising to his feet, Branston performed a tight boxer’s two-step in the full-length reflection. As ever he had exercised nude. Exertion had drawn his penis into itself: it was all but smothered in a nest of auburn curlies. If the whim took him, he could reverse that situation in the bath in two minutes flat; but he knew he must wait. Work before pleasure, Victoria. (Or was it Virginia?) Having reached for a towel, which he used to mop his shoulders, Branston crossed the landing and settled down at his desk to mark some of his students’ work.

It was Saturday morning. Branston could not recall the last time that he had not marked students’ work on a Saturday morning.

The task he had set was to write between one and two thousand words on an inspirational film- or documentary-maker of their choice, paying attention not to the artist’s
oeuvre
but more to the qualities that made that person inspirational and what the contemporary budding filmmaker could learn from them. The low word limit had been intentional: Branston had imagined that without it he would see novella-length hagiographies about Lynch or Tarantino. What he’d wanted was for his students to analyse, not to gush.

By the third essay in, the tactic seemed to have worked. These were better than he’d expected. So far, so good: even if he had needed Google’s help with the identity of a Finnish epidemiologist that Sammy had chosen to concentrate on, for reasons of her own.

Midway through a minefield of exploded punctuation on the first page of an essay on Jim Jarmusch, Branston jumped when the letterbox flapped shut downstairs. For decency’s sake (and just in case) he pulled on a pair of jogging shorts and skipped down to collect his mail, thinking:
Early for a Saturday.

The package was the size of an electrical plug. It had not been delivered by Royal Mail: there was no stamp on the packaging; there wasn’t room for one.

Branston tore it open. A memory stick was inside. Intrigued, he bounded upstairs and turned on the computer.

2.

Half an hour later, and Branston perched on the chubby wing of his old-fashioned sofa, thinking back to the class in which Yasser had shown the film he’d made about the kidnapping. That film had been hard enough to watch. But this new one – delivered by hand to his house, he reminded himself – had been even worse… Branston’s arms felt tired, though not because of his workout. Anaesthetic-like tiredness had closed in on him. What to do?

Branston knew. And because of that first film he also knew where Yasser worked for his Saturday job.

High Town Market.

Branston got dressed quickly and left his house.

3.

Yasser was changing a twenty-pound note for a customer when he saw his teacher approach on foot. So surprised was he that it took him two glances before he’d confirmed that it was indeed Branston coming his way.

Transaction completed, the customer pocketed his change and sloped off, clutching a pair of hedgetrimmers to his considerable chest.

‘What do you do for lunch?’ Branston asked. ‘Usually.’

‘Go to the bacon van, Tim. Usually.’

‘I’ll treat you.’

Yasser cocked his head. ‘What’s the occasion? Is this about college?’

‘I wish it was. Can you leave your post?’

‘In a minute I can. My uncle’s gone for a coffee. When he gets back.’

In due course they walked away, Yasser and Branston, but they did not tarry at the former’s favourite stop for breakfast and lunch. They carried on walking along High Town Road, saying little after Yasser had earned from Branston a brisk nod of the head with the question:
Is this about Maggie?

They repaired to an alehouse called The Green Child. In the workman-clotted back garden, Yasser waited for his large chilled orange juice, wishing that he had a paper to read, while Branston ordered at the bar. But Branston wasn’t long. He emerged back out into the lunchtime sunlight, blinking, with an orange juice, a pint of bitter and a thin cigar. As Yasser sipped his drink, Branston tore the cellophane from his smoke and lit up.

With his other hand he slapped the memory stick on the table.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s you, Yasser,’ Branston told him, reaching for his beer. ‘And your ladyfriend Maggie.’

‘…I don’t understand.’

‘I deliberately didn’t bring my laptop to show you, and it wasn’t something I wished to discuss at Barnfield.’

‘What wasn’t? I’m confused, Tim.’

Branston rinsed his mouth with bitter. ‘You may or may not know that you are on digital record – you and Maggie, sitting in a tree. It’s all there, Yasser. And while it’s none of my business, of course, what you get up to with whomever…’

‘You mean
sex
?’

Branston nodded. ‘…what I
do
have to ask myself is why someone – Maggie presumably – thinks it’s a good idea to take a copy to my house, for me to see.’

‘You mean she
filmed
us?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean. Or someone did, anyway. And then she – or someone – thought it was a good idea, it seems, to show me your performance.’

‘Christ. But how does she know your address?’

‘That was one of the questions I had for
you
.’

‘Well
I
didn’t tell her. Why would I? And I don’t know where you live anyway.’

Branston took a long swig. ‘I had a feeling you’d say something along those lines.’

‘It’s true!’

‘I believe you. Which means someone’s followed me home.’

Nothing to argue with there. ‘But why?’

Branston shrugged. ‘
Keine Ahnung
. That’s why I’m here.’

Noisily Yasser exhaled. He could not conceive that Maggie might have done this to hurt him – not deliberately. No. It had not been Maggie’s idea. It had either been her father’s or it had been the brainchild of Tommy the Brazilian.

And one of them was going to pay.

4.

Having brooded for the rest of Saturday, and having slept through storms of difficult dreams, Yasser showered and got dressed on Sunday morning and walked out to the car. With the engine running and the wipers moving, he took a few minutes before he engaged first gear and pulled away. This was it: the last time. He could not imagine that this trip to Maggie’s could be anything but the final visit. Done.
Finito
. How could it be anything else, now? All the same, it surprised him to note that the understandable emotions of anger and disappointment had been joined by that of regret. As he calmly drove through Dunstable, he regretted the fact that he had been unable to handle the commissioned task. He had failed. And if the signs had been clear for weeks – the signs that he was
going to
fail – they had not prepared Yasser fully for the reality of the bust that had followed the boom. He had failed to locate the missing child. And he felt lousy. If this was the last time that he’d see Maggie, this morning was their break up. Something had shifted, not only in the universe, but also in Yasser’s heart: he had had no choice but to come to realise that he cared for the woman… and he had never been good at transforming a girlfriend into an ex.

Not that he’d shout her down, of course: that wasn’t Yasser’s style. She would be allowed to explain herself. (
That’s big of you, Yass
, Shyleen had told him sarcastically when he’d confessed his plan to her in a postcoital moment of their own, last night.
Oh the women you use and discard!
She had laughed. The comment had left Yasser reeling. Urgently he had asked himself: Is it
me
doing something wrong?) Yasser found that he was looking forward to hearing Maggie’s reasoning. And then, afterwards, perhaps she would blow him – an apology fuck,
non?
Just a quick one for the road – then
adios, sweetheart, it’s been as much fun as an anal pimple, but I can’t say it hasn’t been an experience.

Something like that, anyway. This was what Yasser had planned for his parting shot, and Shyleen had even dared him to go through with it. She claimed that Yasser’s lovemaking style improved when he was in a state of anxiety. I’ll give
you
an anxiety in a minute, Yasser had replied, wiping himself off with the wanksock that he kept behind the chest of drawers – the sock that resembled a Womble’s toboggan.

It was only as he pulled onto the camp’s driveway that Yasser experienced the full force of his nervousness – its rich extent and pull. Excalibur’s manic barking was nostalgically welcome (if not welcoming): Yasser went so far as to imagine that he might miss the vicious wanker when all of this was over. Was there even something valedictory in the fact that the dog had been allowed off its leash for a change? It chased Yasser’s car, yapping all the while, until it grew tired or bored.

Yasser pulled up outside Maggie’s home.

Frantically inflating a rear tyre on his vehicle – his foot pumping up and down with real welly – was Tommy the Brazilian. On seeing Yasser get out of the car, the man smirked with a matchstick between his lips. The smirk appeared spiteful.

‘She ain’t home,’ Tommy called.

Yasser took the half-dozen necessary steps to Maggie’s door.

‘She’s out over the doctor,’ Tommy added. ‘Getting the morning-after pill.’

Yasser turned to face him. ‘Morning after what?’ he demanded. ‘I wasn’t
here
last night!’

‘What cont said you were?’ Still smirking, Tommy took a break from inflating the tyre in order to make his point. ‘You think you’re the only blade in Maggie’s life, do you, boy? The only one she shares her sheets with?’

‘I have no idea.’ Yasser felt queasy.

‘No, well
get
an idea.’ Tommy laughed. ‘Quite an adventuress, our Maggie. Even her pa agrees.’

Yasser grimaced. ‘You’re disgusting,’ was the best he could manage.

Tommy held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘Don’t beat me no harder, sir!’

Yasser returned to his car. He was about to get in when Tommy said: ‘And compared to the others, boy, by the way…’

What others?

‘…your performance was
languorous
.’

Languorous? Yasser had encountered the word before but he could not define it now. The meaning was probably irrelevant. What Tommy was saying was that he’d viewed the sex tape.

Or more.

‘
You
filmed us, didn’t you?’ Yasser demanded.

‘That’s between me and my conscience.’

‘You haven’t
got
a conscience.’

‘Between me and this slow puncture then,’ Tommy answered, kicking the tyre in question.

‘…Where is she really?’

‘Well, pardon me but I’ve misplaced her focken social diary.’ Tommy was growing bored with the conflict; he was drifting away – his energy ebbing like that of a ghost.

Maggie had once told Yasser that she only travelled on the 61 bus, but that didn’t help him much. In what direction had she headed? He couldn’t spend the morning scoping out all points on the Luton-Aylesbury continuum!

Maybe she’s gone to see me, Yasser imagined with a sudden panic. She’s taken a copy of the sex tape to show to my parents!

5.

Tim Branston, meanwhile, had made a decision of his own.

He had smelled a story on Yasser’s clothes from the moment the student had brought the film assignment of the kidnapping to class. Instinct had told the tutor that the end of the film was unlikely to represent the end of the
story
; that more would play out; that the sum total of what had been recorded marked no finale.

Overall this impression had been confirmed on Branston’s receipt of Yasser’s sex tape… although Branston had perhaps not seen this bigger picture at that time. Not quite: at the time he had been frightened and furious that someone would have followed him home from work in order to deliver the memory stick by hand. It had made him feel violated; he had gone through a period of post-trauma depression (one which he soon regarded as ludicrous), simply because a would-be pornographer or two had proved themselves cleverer than one of his students. Oh, and cleverer than Branston himself, as well: let’s not forget that he had been shafted along with Yasser.