Whirligig Page 3

  ‘Do you go back to Scotland much?’ asked Peregrine.

  ‘Nah. Haven’t been there for years. Used to go on holiday there till Granny died. I stay put in London mostly. Spain for holidays.’

  Peregrine sniffed the air. ‘Ah yes. Italia para nacer, Francia para vivir, España para morir. And of course you can’t beat the dear old Prado.’

  The two men stared into the middle distance, remembering their respective Spanish holidays. Of the two of them, only Claypole could see how different those memories would be. Peregrine, a floozy named Minty or Bella in tow, probably drank delicious rosé with cravat-wearing Spanish nobility in the olive groves of delightfully dilapidated castles. To date, Claypole’s solo holidays had consisted of sleeping in the burning sun on plastic deckchairs next to tattooed plumbers from Brentwood with brattish children, and then trying to find somewhere in the evening that actually served Spanish food while he thumbed through a paperback.

  Peregrine continued.

  ‘The reason I ask is that you might have to… how shall I put it…? emphasise… no, encourage, the Scottish part of you, should you decide to go into this business.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Claypole leaned back.

  ‘The Scots – the real Scots, not people like me who were educated in England – are terrible whingers.’

  Claypole’s brow twitched.

  ‘Well, it’s true. The silly buggers think they’re a persecuted minority.’ Peregrine wasn’t smiling. ‘It’s incredibly childish. But I suppose being Scottish is pretty ghastly, so the only thing they’ve got is being more Scottish than someone else…’

  The ghost of a smile crept into Claypole’s expression.

  ‘I’m serious! These people hate outsiders, especially the English, coming in and doing something clever which they should have done themselves if they didn’t have their heads up their bottoms. Hence all this independence kerfuffle. Load of old tommy-rot.’

  The two men nodded gravely – Peregrine to emphasise his point; Claypole trying to keep a straight face.

  ‘It’s politics, really,’ Peregrine added, ‘this last bit of the process. We’ve got all the paperwork, and nothing very much should stand in its way. We just need to gee everyone up a bit and get the all-clear from the busybodies on the council. I’m not awfully good at schmoozing – tend to get people’s backs up.’

  Silence again. Claypole struggled to think of what else he could ask.

  ‘Is it an island? Garvach, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ said Peregrine. ‘But it may as well be. You can only get to it by one road, and that goes over a tiny bridge over an isthmus that links it to the mainland. The isthmus is covered every few high tides, but mostly it just sits there being muddy and technically links us to the mainland. There’s an old tale about the place, actually.’

  Claypole stifled a yawn. Peregrine carried on.

  ‘Saint Mungo, who wanted to marry the Chief of Garvach’s daughter, went to the old Chief and asked for his permission. The Chief said Mungo could marry the daughter if he could get a boat to circle the Chief’s lands in one day. The Chief knew it wasn’t possible, but Mungo accepted the challenge. Mungo set sail, and got around the peninsula of Garvach in twenty hours. He then dragged his boat across the muddy isthmus and met the Chief at the other side. The Chief said he would still not agree to the marriage of his daughter.’

  Peregrine sat back. Claypole was still waiting for him to finish the story, but Peregrine just smiled.

  ‘Is that it?’ said Claypole in disgust.

  ‘Yes,’ said Peregrine. ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t have an ending. You know, I mean… did Saint Mungo just go home and have a cup of tea?’

  ‘Oh. Dunno. Probably killed everyone and took the land, I should think. That’s the sort of thing those chaps did.’

  Claypole wrinkled his forehead. Celtic stories always seemed to be rather peculiar, obeying none of the usual rules that stories tend to. He had studied the genre while at university. (Or rather, he had read half a book about it in the pub.) There certainly was little justice, and rarely a moral. Stuff just happened to the hero, and then he died. This heavy hand of Fate was, although in Claypole’s view perfectly realistic, somewhat depressing. Claypole was not a sentimental man, but he liked a happy ending.

  ‘What did Mungo get sanctified for?’ asked Claypole. ‘Services to disappointing narrative?’

  Peregrine smiled neutrally. As he did so, Claypole could see light-blue-blazer man finally fall forwards into his prawn-and-avocado mousse and instantly wake with a start, his face a shambles of green and pink.

  ‘Well,’ said Claypole, stretching extravagantly and making the leather on the ancient sofa squeak. ‘I don’t think this is something for me.’

  Peregrine nodded slowly. ‘May I ask why?’ he said coolly.

  The light-blue blazer had wiped his face with a crisp linen napkin, and was gleefully eating what he had so nearly breathed in. Claypole took a moment, dropping his shoulders. He would have loved to reply honestly. ‘Here are the reasons why I will not invest in your wind farm,’ he would like to have said. ‘One, there are no experts involved. Any business has to have experts. Two, if there were anything of any value there, the previous company – if they were professionals – would have sold it before they went bust. And, if they weren’t professionals, the work they have done so far probably isn’t worth anything. Three, it’s not based on sound principles. Basing any business on the whims of politicians is too risky. Those bastards change their minds every three minutes. Wind energy might be in vogue today, but who’s to say it won’t be nuclear tomorrow, or wave power, or something else? Four, you don’t believe in it. If you think that global warming is nonsense – which is the whole reason for the business to exist – why should anyone else? Five – and this is the most important – it doesn’t have the feel of a business that should work. That’s because for you it’s not a business – it’s a scam.’

  But Claypole said none of this. Instead, he shrugged, and tried to look gently grave, as if telling a nine-year-old that their hamster has died in the night.

  ‘Just don’t fancy it,’ he said. ‘Best of luck with it, though. Brr.’

  Claypole’s flat was in a mansion block in an area sandwiched between a trendy and a stuffy part of west London. He had bought at the very top of the market, and the service charge was high, but Claypole had always considered it worth it, if only because he was greeted by a porter when he got home. Claypole wasn’t entirely sure how to pronounce Wolé’s name, having only ever seen it written down, and he calculated that it would be ruder to get it wrong than not to say it at all. Wolé was too shy to use anyone’s name. So Claypole and Wolé nodded silently to each other this evening, as they did every evening, and performed knowing and manly winks.

  The front door to his flat stuck against the letters and junk mail, and Claypole had to push his bulk against the door to force it open. He shuffled the assorted items into a deck, picked them up and puffed sweatily to the sitting room. Claypole had not decorated the place since buying it two years before, and had not even rearranged the furniture, also purchased from the previous occupant. She had been a woman of rather singular tastes. The purple and orange silks, the sheer curtains and lightshades, the ubiquitous African and Middle Eastern ‘style’ dark wood, and the overstuffed sofas with a thousand luxurious cushions gave it the air of a well-appointed Tangiers brothel. Claypole could not have cared less. No one ever came here, he had spent little waking time in it, and he neither cleaned nor tidied the place. Half his possessions were still in wilting cardboard boxes in the two unused spare bedrooms.

  He hovered over the dusty dining table, leafing through this day’s paper doorstop. A freebie computer gaming magazine and Didge, a glossy rag for the technologically advanced media professional, were the periodicals. There was a bank statement, which he did not open, and a few bills of no apparent interest.

  ‘Brr,’ said Claypole,
sweeping everything into the bin, save for one businesslike white envelope.

  He examined his mobile phone idly for ten seconds or so and then put it back in his pocket. It was a conditioned reflex. He didn’t really want to find out who wanted his attention. He just looked at it automatically, like someone who is not hungry looking in a fridge. Getting up with purpose, he took an unopened bottle of single malt whisky from his briefcase, saw that it was older than he was and sneered with pleasure. He also took a crystal tumbler from a shelf and a tray of ice from the freezer. He lined all these items up. He poured three-quarters of a tumbler of whisky into the glass and added six cubes of ice. Before putting his lips to the brimming glass, he squinted at the bottle and then at the remaining ice cubes. He calculated that he should put no more than four ice cubes in each glass, or he would run out of ice before he had finished the bottle. Satisfied, he sat back in his chair and drank deeply.

  ‘Nyah!’ he pronounced with exquisite pain, and bared his teeth.

  Taking out his phone again, it took him four scrolls and two clicks to order his usual: one family-sized Krakatoa Special pizza with three kinds of sausage, extra chilli oil, extra chillies and extra cheese; two large tubs of Fatty Arbuckle’s Famous Choctasmic ice cream; and four cans of different ballistically caffeinated and highly sugary drinks.

  He leaned back in the chair with satisfaction, and looked sideways at the one remaining item of post. The white envelope. He took another massive draught of Scotch and crunched the ice. Then he poured himself another and drank it down. In the two minutes between drinking half a pint of whisky quickly and being drunk, his stomach burned unpleasantly and a high-pitched whine sounded in his ear. Claypole waited unblinkingly for these symptoms to be replaced with a warm body-wide buzz.

  He picked up the letter, held it for a few seconds to his face as if about to sniff it and then opened it with undextrous violence. There were two pieces of paper. The larger one, with an embossed letterhead, he scanned and discarded. The smaller piece of paper was a cheque. Claypole regarded it without changing his expression. He put it on the table, facing him. Sipping Scotch all the while, he stared at it with unfocused grimness. He put his feet up on the table and picked the cheque up again. He put it down. He read it once more.

  ‘Pay… Gordon Claypole… Sixty-six thousand one hundred and eighty pounds only.’

  Claypole took another belt of Scotch, sat upright and refilled the glass again, adding four more cubes of ice. He looked once more at the cheque.

  Slowly, Claypole started to cry. For a while, no part of him moved. Tears formed and ran down his cheeks, but there were no other symptoms. Then his shoulders started to shift rhythmically and the sobbing began, remaining constant – neither growing in volume nor intensity. But it did continue, whisky the only punctuation, for the next half-hour.

  When the doorbell went, Claypole dried his eyes and stumbled to the door in the full expectation that this would be the carbohydrate and fat delivery into which he could dive headlong with heavy-hearted abandon.

  -2-

  KING: Did we? Did we, uh…

  LADY PEMBROKE: Your Majesty?

  KUING: Um, did we… Did-did, uh, did we forget ourselves utterly? Because, if we did, I should so like to remember, what, what?

  The Madness of George III, Alan Bennett

  Claypole lay absolutely still in an effort to give the Universe the impression that he was still asleep. No part of his body showed movement. They were all in on the ruse. His stomach was on fire but quiet, his lips parched but unmoving, and his bowels a tremulous but ostensibly dormant volcano. The pain and the nausea were as violent and as greasy as the North Sea, his heart was racing, and his teeth sang, but still he refused to acknowledge being awake. His brain, too, was trying neither to dream nor to think. Despite a sloppy tide of panic and shame rising, it was trying its hardest simply not to be. But remorselessly the questions came at him like the Viet Cong. How long had he been like this? A minute? A week? Where was he? If he did try to move, would he die, or vomit? (There could be no other outcome.) Could enough time pass lying like this for the horror to recede, or would he feel this bad for ever? Why did his hair ache? There were no answers.

  Finally it was his eyes that betrayed him. The twin Judases opened falteringly, like cold neon lights flickering on. He now had no choice but to acknowledge that he was becoming awake. Immediately, other turncoats revealed themselves. His mouth twitched, and his dry tongue flicked over his lips, tasting flakes of noxious spittle. His stomach began to lurch and bubble, and his brain to rush. Violent and pestilential images rolled through his mind, and an anonymous paranoia pricked him mercilessly. As the actuality of the room came upon him, he tried to establish where he was. The curtains, not in focus but recognisable as the ones in his own bedroom in his own flat, formed a briefly reassuring backdrop. But in the foreground there was a sinister, dissonant presence that caused him instant angst. Something was in his bed that shouldn’t be. He tried to bring the object into focus, but his pupils would not contract sufficiently. His nostrils twitched as they felt a distinct tang. The smell was acrid and intrusive. His eyes flickered and crossed uncomfortably. He closed them firmly, squeezing until it hurt, and then opened them again. There!

  It was a bottle of whisky. Not the ancient and delicious single malt, though. This was one of those ‘whiskies’ which shared only flammability as a characteristic in common with the quality of Scotch Claypole usually drank. This sort of whisky tended to be popular in hot countries, labelled with lurid tartan and symbolised by birds of prey very far removed from anything that might actually be found in Scotland. Its top was missing, and when Claypole spasmed the bottle slopped a little more of its contents onto the sheet in the direction of his face. Claypole instinctively recoiled. Then he jumped. His left foot had touched warm human flesh.

  So rare was it for him to have anyone else in his bed that Claypole instantly screamed, at first spluttering, and then hard and high. A moment after Claypole began his scream, scrambling his wispy legs and arms to panic stations and bolting upright, the other warm body in the bed squirmed and also sat up. Witnessing Claypole screaming, in all his crumpled and sweaty horror, his lank hair frighteningly distributed, the person sharing the bed with him – a woman, in fact – also screamed. Her scream was unlike his. There was less terror to it, and it contained more of a note of concern. This despite the fact that Claypole, with his arms waving about his pale-grey torso, appeared like nothing so much as an upturned woodlouse. For a couple of seconds Claypole and the woman sat shouting at each other, marooned on the bed. His surprise at being in bed with a woman was then overtaken by his surprise at being in bed with a woman he recognised as Coky Viveksananda, the niece of Peregrine MacGilp of MacGilp, and his thirty-fifth Facebook friend.

  Her hair was thick and untidy, possibly self-cut. Her skin was a lighter shade of brown than it had appeared in the photograph on Facebook, and she was not as thin as that image had suggested. Her nose was long and asymmetrical with a curious knobble on the end of it. Her front teeth were white, but the rest yellow and the canines more than a little fanglike. Her upper lip had vestiges of dark hair at the corners, and her lips were thinnish and slightly cracked. Were it not for one aspect of her, she might have been described as conventionally unattractive. Her eyes, though, were extraordinary. A little tired-looking and quite deep-set, but of a violent blue – like a Mediterranean summer sky. Claypole had no time to decide that she was in fact unconventionally attractive, or to attempt to remember why or how she had got there, because he saw, with an extra fizz of panic, that she was wearing one of his t-shirts.

  Except during his occasional and testy brushes with pornography, and when watching Wimbledon, Claypole had no time for thinking about sex. He was, after all, a fat, balding man, and very busy, so sex had no time for him. Women could not be expected to be interested in him, and if he had ever raised an enquiring eyebrow at one, disappointment (not to say rejection in the strongest po
ssible terms) had been the inevitable result. Now though, as he found himself looking at Coky’s breasts, bra-less but clothed by his own t-shirt, logic told him that these breasts must at some point have been naked in his flat. Sweat began to form on Claypole’s upper lip and at his temples, and he suddenly felt as if he had too many arms.

  ‘Guh. Brr,’ said Claypole, and saw the expression of concern on Coky’s face change to one of suppressed amusement as he coughed violently into a corner of the bedsheet.

  ‘Hi,’ said Coky Viveksananda. When he had finished coughing she added, ‘Better now?’

  Claypole shuddered as he realised that if he could not remember whether they had slept with each other, he could not have performed well if they had. Furthermore, he would no doubt have blown any chance of repeating the act. Equally, if they had not slept with each other, surely he would never again get the chance to do so. She would, unless she had some sort of mental problem, or was more desperate and weak than she appeared, avoid him from now until the End of Time. He had no choice but to find out from Coky herself what had happened the previous night. But he knew this much about women: he would have to make conversation first, lull her, and then discover the truth by stealth, employing the nearest approximation to charm that he could manage. Gently does it, he thought.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Claypole suddenly, his eyes frozen on Coky’s breasts.

  Had Claypole not immediately averted his eyes, he would have seen that she was, although surprised, smirking. But he buried his face in his clammy hands and muttered ‘sorry’ (meant for Coky’s ears), and added ‘what the fuck?’ (in self-admonishment).

  ‘I’ll just go and…’ said Coky, and stepped somewhat heavily from the bed, collecting a pile of clothes from the floor and moving towards the bathroom.

  Claypole uncovered his face, hoping desperately that she had gone into the bathroom so that she did not have to see his shame; and, equally desperately, also hoping that she was in sight so that he could get a repeat view of her mostly naked legs. Was she tall or short? He could remember nothing.