Whirligig (20 page)

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

'In Memory of W.B. Yeats', W.H. Auden

F
rom the moment he was woken stupidly early by his uncle Jerry, Claypole spent the day scowling. Jerry, a bumptious beardie who had lived in Australia for the last twenty years, had seen his sister, Claypole's mother, only twice in that time. Claypole was now an orphan, but there was no need to treat him like a child. Jerry was estranged from his own family because he was a total jerk, Claypole's father had been an only child, and all the older generations were already dead. It was just the two of them in the tiny suburban house, and the two of them would be the only relations present to cremate the remains of Janice Claypole.

A sunny day announced itself through the net curtains onto the pot-pourri as Claypole thundered out a slash into his dead mother's toilet. He wondered how many more times he would get to pee in that bowl before it was gone from his life for ever. He would have no reason ever to return. The house was rented and
she left no legacy except a few bits of outdated furniture. Only Claypole would remain. All her toil, all the work she had done to send him to a fee-paying school, and every breath she had taken, would be memorialised only in him.

Claypole found the sunshine irritating. Couldn't he have been given a little pathetic fallacy? For once, couldn't he have been allowed some drama? His mother's passing from the world should have been marked by a chill in the air, or drizzle, or a wind blowing withered leaves around a bleak cemetery. But the crematorium had only municipal functionality to offer, and was glaringly cheerful with its gaudy plastic flowers. But he determined, as he walked uncomfortably in his black suit, white shirt and black tie, that he would display only dignified mourning. He didn't want to show how dismally empty he thought his mother's life had been. No one would know how much he wanted to scream. Who could he tell anyway? There was only Tiny Sue from orchestra; Sheila from the night class; one or two retired colleagues; and Uncle Jerry. The crematorium guy was a grey-skinned droop who ambled through the process of frying Claypole's mother as if she were just another job, which is exactly what she was.

Jerry was enjoying the whole funereal process, and being top gorilla. He patronised Tiny Sue, was flirty with Sheila and was way too cheerful with everyone. Would anyone have objected if Claypole had shoved Jerry, along with the coffin, through the sliding doors to hell? Claypole chewed the corner of the hastily photocopied order of service, of which he had laid out a pointless number on the not-really-pews.

There were no readings, but Uncle Jerry insisted on going through the biography of Janice
Claypole née McNair, managing to omit any reference either to her husband or her son. ‘Then college, where Janice gained a life-long love of classical music,' he intoned. ‘She moved here, and never left – teaching art and music to generations of children'; ‘she set up her own summer school'; and ‘in retirement, she took to
macram
é
…' It was over pitifully quickly.

If Claypole had spoken, he would have told the assembled that Janice had had a rubbish life. It was full of drudgery and regret, and characterised by nothing but mediocrity. She was cheated on, abandoned and bereaved within eighteen months – triply betrayed by the garrulous fat man she loved. She was in turn used, bullied and then ignored by her son, who so resembled – without the cheeky grin – the man who ruined her life. She had worked hard to pay for an above-average education to be drilled into Claypole's below-average mind. The only things in her life that gave her solace were art and music, but she couldn't even share those things with her indolent, moody son. He was too busy sucking up every visual opiate that TV for his generation had to offer to pay her even a tenth of the attention she lavished on him. The generation before his had grown up watching all four channels, because there was nothing else. It was decent quality, and it was a shared experience. The generation after him had the internet with its billions of directions in which it could take you, its eclectic corners and wild frontiers. But his generation was caught in the middle. They all watched the gradually multiplying television channels avidly – MTV, Sky, Channel Five. And it was all crap.

The only thing his mother could service Claypole with that he showed the slightest passion for was food. But there too Claypole ingested only rubbish. Again,
Claypole had suffered from his particular time in the world. The generation previous to his had the benefits of a limited but balanced diet – the hangover of rationing. The generation after had prosperity and the resurgence of good food, with TV chefs preaching the use of quality ingredients. But his mother had served him what she had been told to by the marketeers of the eighties: processed food of the most dangerous kind, in as much quantity as her greedy son desired. She was told, as they all were, that these processes were technologically advanced and therefore good. Certainly her own arteries suffered: she had been sixty-five and a few days when the staff at Asda found that the last car in the car park contained an unmoving shopper.

Claypole would have told the thin assembly for Janice's funeral all that without hesitation. He would also have told them of the tawdry weight of guilt he felt now that she was gone. He had never treated her with any respect because she had never demanded any. But that didn't mean she didn't deserve it, and he felt desperately, desperately sorry. For her and for himself.

Uncle Jerry sidled up to him at the wake. Over curling fish-paste sandwiches and sherry, he wanted a man-to-man chat. Claypole stood stiffly and scowled.

‘Gordon, mate,' said Jerry in the Aussified English accent that placed him precisely nowhere in the world. ‘You should think about coming to Queensland.'

Claypole looked at his uncle with the blankest expression he could muster. Jerry winked.

‘It's the golden land, you know. There's nothing a man like you couldn't do there. Forget the States. Oz is the real land of opportunity.'

Claypole stared at him. The thought of even visiting,
let alone living in Australia, had always filled him with horror. His father had always been disparaging about the place, largely because it was where Jerry lived. ‘Hot, perilous, and full of cunts,' had been his father's assessment of God's Own Country.

‘You could stay with me while you set yourself up. We'll have a laugh. And Aussie girls…' Jerry tried to elbow his nephew, but a surfeit of sherry caused him to miss Claypole's stomach and lose his balance slightly. ‘They're the best, mate.' Then he added under his breath, ‘Fit and fast, yeah?'

Claypole had looked at his watch. ‘I've got to meet a man about a wind farm.'

Pulling his black suit around himself, Claypole had left his mother's wake early and made his way back to London, and to Pink's club on St James's.

At first, Claypole thought the boat was being attacked from below. He had at least a hundred yards to go before the shore and did not expect to be running aground so soon. With the boat going nowhere, he attempted a few more strokes of the oars before he gave up. He sat panting as the boat gently pirouetted on a rock or sandbank and brought him face to face with the shore he had been striving for. The prospect of dragging the heavy wooden craft a hundred yards through the freezing shallows was grim. But he was at least relieved not to be heading for Nova Scotia.

He stood up in the boat and tried to survey the water. It was impenetrably black. The depth, he calculated, could not be more than a foot or so, for that was the draught of the little rowing boat. So he balanced
himself on the bow and jumped out, his jacket in hand, and plunged up to his nipples in the black and terrifying sea.

He realised, as he gasped and slithered on the seaweeded rocks, that he probably should tether the boat, or drag it up the shore at least a little. But equally he knew, as the waves bumped it against him, that he did not care about the fate of the small boat, so he simply let it go, and it drifted away into the night. As he watched it disappear, he knew that technically he would owe Bonnie Straughan a rowing boat. She could whistle for it. Rapist.

Stepping gingerly between the rocks and up onto the drier seaweed at the shoreline, he glanced briefly up at the moon, which had emerged from the clouds. The moon he was used to seeing was dirty orange, like an eco-bulb. This was a bright hundred-watter, and every detail of the landscape was picked out. For that, if nothing else about his situation, he was grateful. He decided that treading his way back to civilisation in wet socks and wet brogues was not the way forward. He sat on a rock to take them off. Twenty yards later, he regretted it and put them back on again. His feet were still soaked, of course, and also now very cold. Shivering, he removed the damp clothing from his top half and replaced it with the only thing he had with him that was dry, namely his jacket. It felt strange having the lining of the jacket next to his salted skin.

Finding the fence, he followed it until another fence met it. He then climbed it ineptly and fell over on the other side. Clambering down and up a ditch, he saw that he was next to a road. He set about guessing which direction he should go in. He was suffering from the cold, and knew that he should get somewhere warm
as soon as possible. As he stumbled along the road, he reflected that he hadn't spent this much time alone in years. At least, that was how it felt. The time he spent in London was generally solitary, but invariably accompanied by something: the telly, the radio, the iPod. In Scotland, though, and almost since he had arrived, he had been
really
alone. Time that would end soon, he was sure of that, and in grim ignominy. He would leave having failed on counts both professional and personal. For, how could he now gain Coky's love in the knowledge that her mother had seduced his father and precipitated the end of his parents' marriage? Perhaps, if he were honest, he could square the morality. But it was just so damned offputting.

Some way along the road, a path through the trees opened up to his right and away from the sea. Excitedly, he realised that he knew it. It was one of the paths that he had wandered along the morning after he had spent the night in the Land Rover. It would lead him to Dorcas's cottage in less than an hour, as long as he could remember the route. He whistled as he bounded along the path, feeling warmer. Just as he began actually to sing, he saw a flash of something light through the trees and stopped dead. He tried not to move, but his breathing was noisy. Through the trees, but unmistakeable, was a horse. Lit by the moonlight, its pale coat was given a bewitching sheen of silver. What was this unearthly creature doing? Why wasn't it asleep? Did horses sleep? Perhaps they slept standing up, and with their eyes open. Claypole had no idea. The belly of the horse seemed to be heaving, and its legs quivering. Was it ill? He took a step closer and saw to his horror that an object seemed to have been inserted into the back of the horse. Disgusted and intrigued, Claypole
took a couple of paces forward better to see what the thing was. It looked like a transparent shopping bag containing something black and long, maybe an aubergine. He briefly wondered who could have done such a terrible thing to a poor defenceless animal when he saw the thing for what it was. With a dreadful thrill, Claypole realised that the object was a pair of spindly hoofed legs enveloped in a placental sac.

‘Lady horse…' he whispered in surprise, ‘having a baby.'

The mare looked directly at him. He ducked and averted his eyes. After a few seconds, he peeked back at the animal. Her gaze was fixed unblinkingly on him. He looked around him. The mare snorted again, the whites of her eyes luminescent in the moonlight. She must be in pain, Claypole thought. She took a pace towards him. He took a pace back, feeling that she might be about to attack. Then he looked at her unreproachful, gooey eyes, and wondered if the opposite might be true. Was she… (he gulped)… asking for his help?

He took a step forward, but stopped as the mare flopped onto the ground. A gush of amniotic fluid poured onto the forest floor. Claypole gagged and looked around him again. There was nothing but trees. No people, no houses, no lights. He looked back at the horse, which was unmoving. She must be dying, he thought, and he felt not just sympathy, but something he had not felt before. He felt a sense of duty, neither imposed upon him nor sullied by self-interest. The higher being's duty to help the lower. It was most ennobling.

Claypole took off his jacket and scuttled forward, half naked and crouching like a soldier. He made a cooing
noise and muttered, ‘There, there, horsey' to the mare, several times over, as he approached her gingerly. She seemed to encourage his presence with her eyes, so he carefully stroked her mane.

The mare twitched and heaved, but Claypole did not flinch. He looked towards the animal's tail. To his horror, more of the foal was beginning to emerge. He patted the mare's neck gently and kept his eyes fixed on her hind quarters with increasing wonderment. Knowing somewhere deep within him that he must help her, he crawled down to the business end. At considerable speed, and with great heaves from the mare, the foal was emerging. Claypole beheld the pliable damp sac through which he could see the foal's tiny thin head. It wasn't moving, and he reckoned he had to act quickly. Before he could stop himself, he was tugging at the foal's legs with both hands, aiding it out of its mother's womb. With a rush and a flop, the rest of the foal emerged. Claypole toppled backwards but kept hold of the foal, which collapsed half on him.