A Certain Age (5 page)

I’ve been turning the place upside down looking for the passports, and of course I found stuff I’ve been hoarding – my degree certificate and this, my letter admitting me to the civil service. And suddenly, all these years of living like, like mice in the skirting board, just came over me in a wave, and I sat here, and I thought, [
quite upset; not angry, but sad
] spit, that was my life, Steve. What’s happened to me? Twenty years ago I was on a fast track in the Home Office, and now I can’t keep a job in a petting zoo. Now I agree with you and your mum about my “MTs” and having no willpower whatsoever, and I keep it a secret if I find joy
in anything, so my husband can’t say I’m unbalanced. No children. Didn’t we work and worry strenuously to avoid children? And of course it never helped the mood exactly to have Steve breaking off to run downstairs to check the fridge was shut. And it was me who wasn’t normal, apparently. I’m beginning to wonder what normal is, Steve. I’m beginning to think it’s not really normal to sweep your front lawn for landmines.

Scene Six: home, happy music

It was just after DS Law left that it all happened. I was putting the biscuits away in the cupboard and I saw the old biscuit tin, and I thought, “Now, what am I going to use you for?”, so I picked it up and opened it and inside there was this letter from Steve with my passport and quite a lot of cash in used notes. He had stuck a note saying “Don’t Lose” on the passport and sealed up the letter in an envelope.

“To my wife,” it said on the outside. “Urgent. Private. By hand.” I turned over the envelope to open it and found on the back “Destroy After Reading”. I opened it. I sat down. This had better be good, Steve, I thought. “Dear wife,” it said. “This evening, June 15, I returned home from Fawley’s at the usual time and found no sign of you. Alert to the Danish experience in this morning’s
Times,
I naturally fear you have been abducted according to the same pattern; I also fear that if you have been abducted, they are really trying to get to me, so I am leaving immediately for Our Special Place, and hope you will join me there to prove my fears are groundless. However, if you do not follow me within three days I will conclude you
are lost to me, even dead, and will remain abroad. I will place this letter in the biscuit tin as I know from twenty-five years’ experience that reaching for the biscuit tin is always the first thing you do, my dear wife, having no willpower whatsoever. Buy your ticket with
CASH.
Check under the car
VERY CAREFULLY
. Steve. Above all, don’t
WORRY,
I know what you’re like.”

I rang DS Law and told him. He said they’d just confirmed Steve had taken a flight to Malaga – our special place – but that otherwise they had no information. “You realise your husband is insanely paranoid?” DS Law said. I asked him, is it insanely paranoid not to have children because you’re afraid they’ll be used at some later date as hostages – and he said yes, that was more or less a definition of insanely paranoid, in his opinion. “You seem to have missed his three-day deadline,” he said. And I said, [
almost stunned; can’t believe her luck
] “Yes, that’s my reward for going mad and buying a new biscuit tin.” Then I counted the cash, which was over three thousand pounds, and rang Mrs Bryan with the good news. She said I could start back tomorrow, and the job of manageress was still open if I wanted it. She also said the goats had missed me, which I think was her way of apologising for thinking I’d stabbed my husband to death.

It said on the news, by the way, that the Danish woman hadn’t been kidnapped after all! The lovely Elsa had run off with her younger lover and hadn’t known how to mention it. The adulterous carefree pair were last seen, funnily enough, in Malaga.

Scene One: driving. He’s humming while driving, and interrupts himself to comment on the traffic

All right, mate, you go. No,
YOU
go. Right-o. [
Hums. Reads sign
] Bexleyheath, right. What’s the time? Oh. Cushti. Just me on this job today. No poncey lady feature writer saying, “Oh take no notice of Mark, he’s just the photographer.” No, this is more like it. Simple news desk job. [
Happy sigh; contented with the normal routine of his life
] Find house, ring doorbell, “Hello, Mr Watts, you’re some sort of news story I understand, no don’t bother telling me
about it, I’m not remotely interested, yes, hello, Mrs Watts, well I wouldn’t say no, two sugars, can I move this lamp, is that a jaffa cake, ta very much, does that window open, can I use this socket, flash bang wallop, back in the car, laptop, mobile, bit of quick image manipulation, send, send, send, and back to me mum’s in Fulham in time for
The Weakest Link.

[
Manoeuvring
] Bexleyheath. [
Remembering instructions
] Left at the roundabout. [
Manoeuvres
] Straight on for three miles. [
Sigh
]

So, not like yesterday, that’s what I’m saying. Yesterday was well weird. I said to Kip on the picture desk, “Kippo, mate, you know me, I’m not into the arty stuff. I didn’t sign up for that. I’m more of what you might call an all-rounder, only with a particular aptitude for prison vans. That’s right, I’m a legend outside the law courts. The only snapper who can
ALWAYS
get a shot through the window of a moving black maria. And that’s not fluke. David Beckham practises free kicks round the wall. I practise black maria technique. You’ve got to jump
EXACTLY
the right height, see, at
EXACTLY
the right moment, holding the camera above your head at
EXACTLY
the right angle.” Kippo looks at me. “Straight up?” he says. And I say, [
confidential, as if giving away his secret
] “Well, yeah, fairly straight up, but with a crucial last-minute kick in the direction of travel.”

“Well, doing a few portraits won’t kill you,” he said. [
Kippo doesn’t understand it himself
] “Seven mediums,” he said. “It’s for the magazine. Juliet Frampton’s doing seven interviews, and they want a pic for each one. Hang on, I’ll ring the mag.” He reached for the phone while I just stood there, rolling my eyes and hoping he’d suddenly think of someone better suited to the job. “David?” he
said. “Jimmy Kipling, picture desk. These seven mediums of Juliet’s. Yeah, I got your list of addresses. Yeah, got a great bloke here. Mark King, you know him? Good. You’ll have seen loads of his stuff, he’s been on the paper for, what?” [
He’s asking Mark; Mark has to think about it; a bit astonished
] “Twenty years,” I said. “Twenty-five years,” he said. “What? [
Lying
] Yeah, Marko’s
VERY
sensitive, yeah. Very. Very, what’s the word – [
a prompt from the mag man
] what? Oh yes, that’s right, intuitive, yes. And if you need any specialist jumping done at the same time, incidentally, he’s your man. Anyway, just one question. This word mediums. Shouldn’t that be media? Oh. Coz I’ve been trying to visualise. What’s a medium then? Oh. Oh, I see, I’ll call you back, then, cheers.” He turns to me. “Er, Marko, you’re going to do seven very sensitive and intuitive portrait photographs of psychics. In between your normal jobs, of course. And the first one’s this afternoon in Hackney.”

I gave him one of my looks. Although I don’t know why I bothered because my looks have never had an effect on anyone. At home, when I was little, I’d do one of my looks and everyone else would laugh like drains. [
A happy memory; he loved his dad
] My dad used to fall off his chair, the bastard. “Jill’d be good for this, Kippo,” I said. “Or even the Giant Padster, if you can spare him from Cheltenham. I mean, seen one photo finish, you’ve seen ’em all.” Kippo looked at the list. “Tell you what, one of these is in Middlesbrough next Tuesday. You could catch the Lazio second-leg at the Riverside. Johnners could get you in. He might even get you an armband.” Well, that was a bit of a decider. “I’ll pack a warm jacket,” I said. “Good man,” said Kippo. “Good man.”

[
More driving required, slowing down
] Hang on, left here.
Sutherland Road. That’s it. Should be down on the right. [
Reading house numbers
] Sixty-eight. Ninety. Hundred and six. Hundred and ten. Hundred and twenty. [
Stops the car
] Here we are, then. Number one-four-four. And what’s the time? Twenty past? Great. [
Switches off engine
] Oof. I’ve even got a few minutes to spare.

So anyway, off I went to Hackney yesterday afternoon, to meet Juliet and our first medium, who was this very unassuming old bloke in a nice cardigan, and I whispered to Juliet as we looked round, “Not a lot of cash in this psychic malarkey, then?”, which she ignored because she’s a bit stuck-up, being a) from Features, b) married to Brian Frampton, the deputy editor, and c) runner-up in 1997 for Broadsheet Stuck-up Feature Writer of the Year. Anyway, the bloke’s name was Lister. Mister Lister. He made us a cup of coffee and he was obviously quite nervous, coz his hands were shaking, but Juliet didn’t notice. What she did notice straight away, however, was that the poor old geezer couldn’t get the hang of who was in charge between us. He kept saying things like, “And would the, er, lady like sugar?” and all the while addressing me instead of her, even though I made a big show of deferring to Juliet. “Oh, Juliet’s the boss,” I kept saying. “She’s the words and I’m just the pictures.” In the end, she said, rather pointedly, “Would it be all right for Mark to scout for a good place for the photographs?” And Mister Lister looked confused but said all right.

It was a sad old house, really. Old bloke on his own. It felt like he’d been on his own for about thirty years. Pictures of his wife on the walls, the last dating from around 1970. Framed drawings in pastel of Arabs and Chinese – it all felt quite normal to me, to be honest, coz
there was quite a bit of spiritualism in my dad’s family; my granddad had a spirit guide called Abdul and my Auntie Madge had one called Mister Chin. In fact, Mister Lister had a framed cartoon at the top of the stairs that would have amused that lot. There was this medium gazing into a crystal ball and saying, [
he’s amused by this
] “Well, Mr So-and-so, I’m afraid I can’t contact your late aunt, but there’s a horse here who’d like to say hello.”

[
The thing is, Mark
IS
intuitive; he just doesn’t know it
] This bloke Mister Lister could have been my granddad. His house had the same smell, you know, of old lino and hard cheese, and wet wool and calamine lotion. I took a dozen shots or so, and then [
he shivers
] I suddenly thought, “I hope this feature isn’t going to be one of Juliet Frampton’s famous chainsaw massacres, coz he doesn’t deserve that.” So I went back downstairs and knocked lightly on the open door to the living room and found Juliet and Mister Lister both looking a bit – well, uncomfortable. I sensed at once there had not been a meeting of minds.

“So would you let me say it’s about being
OPEN?”
she said, with pen poised above notebook. He winced and shook his head. Evidently she was pressing Mister Lister to unlock the secret of his craft, and he wasn’t having any of it.

I took a couple of discreet shots from the doorway, and Mister Lister looked up. [
Relief
] “Oh, but here’s our friend back at last! Young man, I’ve got a message for you!”

[
Beat
] I laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

Juliet was pursing her lips, she was well wound up, so I grabbed a quick couple of shots of her to wind her up even more. It had exactly the desired effect. “Mark!” she said. “Could you please not interrupt?”

“Oh but this isn’t an interruption, dear,” said Mister
Lister. “The spirits don’t interrupt us. We interrupt
THEM.
And there is someone here who would very much like to say something to Mark.”

[
Laugh
] “Is it a horse wanting to say hello?” I said.

Mister Lister laughed, and Juliet looked so confused that I snatched another shot of her. It was a classic, actually. I’m going to blow it up and use it as a screensaver. Evidently not only was this assignment foisted on her, you see, but it turns out, if she hadn’t been here, she could have been at the Hyatt Regency in Portman Square gazing into the eyes of Jude Law over a cup of steaming Lapsang.

But back with this message. “It’s a very practical message,” Mister Lister said. “Your dad is unusually straightforward, isn’t he?”

[
Cheerful, affectionate memory
] “Yes, he is. I mean, he was.”

“Well. He says, Marky, Marky, you’ve got a head like a sieve.”

I shrugged and laughed. It was true. Good old Dad.

“He says you forgot your dry-cleaning ticket for those combats of yours, didn’t you?”

I rolled my eyes at Juliet. Tsk!

“Well, he says luckily your mum will remember it in about ten minutes’ time, just before the shop closes, so you’ll still have your outfit for tonight.”

They both looked at me for my reaction.

“Ha!” I said.

“So that message does mean something to you?” said Mister Lister. He seemed anxious, I don’t know why.

[
Not overwhelmed at all; as if it’s quite normal
] “Oh yeah. Totally. Good old Dad.”

Juliet seemed to think this wasn’t an adequate reaction.
“Mark, are you saying that sounded like a message from your father
WHO IS DEAD?”

[
A shrug; what of it?
] “Yeah?”

She looked completely astonished. She also had the rather worrying look of someone whose brain mechanism is suddenly whirring very, very quickly.

“Any message for your father in return?” said Mister Lister.

“Oh. Oh OK. Could you say thanks a bunch, Dad? Blimey, I’d be lost without those combats.”

Scene Two: at home, at his computer, which hums. He’s looking at the pics