A Man Melting (16 page)

‘I’m not stupid, Danny. I knew things were tight. Don’t you think I could have helped?’

‘It’s not too late.’

‘What do you want?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you want to save Camp Grant? Or do you want out? If you’re not happy here, now’s the time to say.’

‘I wasn’t happy here.’

‘But?’

‘I wasn’t happy in the city, either.’ He knew what was coming next. Not another punch, but a question that would have the same effect. ‘It’s not you,’ he said. ‘Without you I would be miserable. I’m not miserable, not depressed, not anything.’

He thought of that golf ball of apprehension. It had
vaporised when Sophie entered his life, but had she vaporised more than that? With that golf ball, had he lost his drive?

‘But I am missing something. Maybe it’s like you felt without this camp, I don’t know. It’s just my twenty-ninth birthday crisis deferred a couple years. I feel as if my life has been building towards something, and now I stand on the cusp, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to leap into. I’m not supposed to be an accountant, or
a novelist
, or a repairman.’ He sighed, imagined it drift out to the island. ‘What could I do? I am not ageless. My youth is gone.’

‘Are you quoting something?’

‘Sappho, I think.’

It was Sophie’s turn to sigh. He imagined it drift out to the island.

I received an email from Charles Darwin today. He said he was
the
Charles Darwin, ‘the one who invented evolution’.

Yeah, right.

I was at work but found the time to write back: ‘Darwin didn’t
invent
evolution, he merely posited a theory and provided some supporting scientific evidence regarding the evolution of all species of life from a limited number of common ancestors through a process of natural selection.’

I may have pinched from Wikipedia slightly.

Charles Darwin replied one minute later: ‘Religious nutter! Ostrich-headed Christian!! Science heathen!!!’

Before I could reply that I was not religious, nor did I believe in ghosts, auras or alternate universes, another email
from Charles Darwin appeared in my inbox. It was just a jpeg of a fleshless, skeletal hand doing the finger.

Then another email a minute later: ‘Sorry. I know all that evolution stuff. I am Charles Darwin. Test me.’

I sent: ‘What was your mother’s name?’

He replied: ‘Susannah Darwin (
née
Wedgwood).’

I replied: ‘That is exactly how it appears on Charles Darwin’s Wikipedia page. You even put the acute accent above the first e in
née
.’

He replied: ‘Then ask me something that isn’t on Wikipedia, or anywhere else on the net. PS Who knows what the thing above the e is called anyway?’

I wrote back that I didn’t know enough about Charles Darwin to test him.

‘Well, you’ll just have to believe me then. An interesting voyage awaits.’

That was just weird enough to snap me out of it. What was I doing emailing this crackpot?

I left my office, asked my personal assistant, Sian, if she wanted a cuppa (she was too busy looking up tanning salons online to answer), and made my way to the kitchenette. Lib Drury, VP of distribution, was there.

‘Mr Leon, just the man I was looking for. I need another body.’ The microwave beeped. Lib removed a steaming cup of soup and gave it a stir. ‘What was I saying?’

‘You need another body?’

‘Ha. You betcha,’ she said. Lib Drury is a metre and a half tall and must be a hundred kilos, and doesn’t let anyone forget it. ‘But seriously, Dave, I need someone for an interview panel.’

‘I’ll check my calendar.’

‘You’re a gem, Dave.’

Thirty-six emails from [email protected] were waiting in my inbox this morning. The emails all had the subject line ‘Print me, David Leon’ and each contained a picture of two Galapagos tortoises copulating. If it wasn’t for the slightly different file size of the jpegs, I would have sworn they were the same photo.

At the end of each email he signed off, ‘
The
Charles Darwin.’

I didn’t bite because, in addition to my usual workload, I had to read through the stack of junior analyst applications Lib Drury left on my desk.

And, just like that, it’s the weekend.

What a weekend! Maxine and I spent Saturday searching garden centres for a DIY gazebo to construct in our backyard, but my wife has exacting standards. Too expensive, too tacky, too flimsy … When she could not level any of these faults at a particularly attractive kit, she claimed it would be too complicated to erect! She might as well have double-dared me.

Sunday was dedicated to the erection of our gazebo, though sunset arrived sooner than expected, and the finishing touches will have to wait for next weekend.

When I checked my emails this morning, it seemed Mr Darwin had had a busy weekend also:

‘David Leon, have you considered what office life will be like 50,000 years from now? 50,000 years is but a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms. But humans? Look at what has transpired since my quote-unquote passing. Children can play computer games on instinct alone (
your
Lord knows parents are not teaching them). We fly in metal canisters like it is nothing. We trust the white paint of a pedestrian crossing to stop whatever many-wheeled vehicle is hurtling towards us. We are not afraid of anything we should be afraid of: heights, speed, other predators. (There are still some who harbour these fears, but there are always genetic backwaters in any chain of being.)

‘Humans have evolved, David Leon, to defy the fears of the body, to become accustomed to unnatural scenarios (your zookeeper, your stunt double), postures and routines (your gay-for-pay porn star, your office worker … i.e. YOU).

‘Those who excel in the postures and routines required by modern circumstances, and fuelled by our own conglomerated demand, flourish.

‘Those who do not perish.

‘This is what I was writing about when flesh still clung to my fingers. Adapted structures wedge into gaps in the economy of nature, weaker structures are thrust out. But there are so many people, so many niches in which to survive, perhaps I should have called it
Survival of Best Fit
?

‘So what of you, David Leon, assistant VP of new revenue, MBA, BBS, esq.? What of your kind, 50,000 years from now? Have you thought of this? There are fish that have
evolved their eyes to oblivion because they live in darkness. Will office workers become ‘h’-shaped so they are better suited to deskwork? The woodpecker’s tongue is as long as its body. Will office workers have telescopic arms to enable them to collect printouts without leaving their workstation? Whales can communicate across vast oceans. Will office workers find a way of communicating across continents without the aid of machines; that is, organically?

‘Have you thought about this at all?’

Last night I dreamt of work, which is not unusual in itself. Maxine has been known to nudge me and say, ‘You’re talking about variances again,’ or, ‘Darling, you’re pretending to shuffle paper.’ But in this dream the office was different. There was a goldfish in the water cooler. A donkey nudged the mail cart up the corridor with its nose. The floor in Meeting Room 3 was covered in sand.

I related this dream to Charles Darwin in an email when I got in this morning.

His reply: ‘Uninspired.’

Me: ‘I didn’t make it up.’

Him: ‘Yes, you did.’

I wasn’t in a position to debate the difference between conscious and unconscious creations, having already spent twenty minutes emailing a famous deceased scientist. I hadn’t even finished shortlisting candidates for the junior analyst position. Once I had that monkey off my back, I paid Lib Drury a visit.

Pinned above her desk is a bumper sticker that reads:
In case of emergency, break gas

I placed the applications down on a clear spot on her desk.

‘Have you had a chance —’

‘Dave, how are you?’

‘Fine. And you?’

‘Splitting headache, got worse the minute you came in. Just kidding. I’m fighting fit.’ She put up her fists, which she has referred to as
dukes
on more than one occasion.

‘These applications,’ I said.

‘Lottery?’ she said cryptically and bent, as best she could, to open the bottom drawer of her desk.

‘I guess paper applications aren’t the best way to separate the wheat from the —’

She pulled a black pork pie hat from the drawer. I recognised it as the one she had worn to the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’-themed Christmas party two years ago, though I have no idea which movie star she was supposed to be.

‘Do we have a list of names?’ she asked.

‘You’re not suggesting we draw their names out of a hat, literally?’

‘Do you have a better idea?’

‘This breaks countless procedures, Lib.’

‘Are you the same pedant at home that you are at work, David Leon?’

I didn’t know what to say, so I picked up my pile of applications and left her office.

Back at my desk I couldn’t shake the thought that Lib Drury was the one pretending to be Charles Darwin. When two people call you a pedant, in so many words, you’re
bound to draw a link.

‘Why would she do something like that?’ I asked Maxine over dinner.

‘What makes you so sure it’s Lib Drury?’ she replied.

‘Who else could it be?’

‘But why would
she
have anything against you, David?’

She reached across the table for the plum sauce, and we dropped the subject.

This morning I asked Sian to deliver a document to Lib Drury, her being my PA and all. Sometimes I feel compelled to remind her what PA stands for.

‘What is it?’ she asked, despite the fact the page was perfectly legible through the plastic sleeve.

‘A merit list of the applicants we should interview.’

‘You’re scared of Lib, aren’t you?’

I tried explaining my conflict-management approach — by delivering the list in a non-threatening way, Lib would be more likely to follow procedure — but Sian was not convinced.

It was a relief to see a new email from Charles Darwin when I returned to my desk.

‘Dear David Leon,

‘When Adam Rainer of Austria celebrated his 21st birthday in 1920, he was classified as a dwarf, standing just 3 feet 10½ inches tall. But in his early twenties something triggered a “growth spurt”, a release of growth hormone which had so cruelly been withheld earlier in his life. By the age of 32, Adam Rainer of Austria stood 7 feet 1¾ inches tall,
a giant, but he was unable to stand, worn out by a decade of unprecedented growth.

‘There are many more examples of dwarves and midgets growing significantly — though not as profoundly as Adam Rainer of Austria, it has to be said — well after adolescence.

‘What causes the pituitary gland to act after years of indolence? Some say the growth is stimulated by the physical labours of adulthood, of earning a crust. Others claim psychological stimuli. In many cases: shame. A painful emotion resulting from an awareness of inadequacy.

‘What I say is this: any life form, but especially the human life form, is a complex system for which one solution is never enough.

‘If I told you to grow three inches this year, David Leon, could you? No. Most likely not. Perhaps if you read all the literature, visited experts, thought of nothing else, behaved like you would grow three inches, well, who knows?

‘But of course there is probably a drug around today …

‘A magic flute …’

After reading this, I knew deep down it could not have been Lib Drury — Ms ‘In Emergency Break Gas’ — writing to me. But that only made the mystery press harder against my forehead. I re-read Darwin’s emails, thinking like Maxine:

• Who has a vested interest in sending me these messages?
  
• Who might want to distract me?
  
• Who might want to get me fired?
  

I wondered if Sian was playing me for a fool. I looked out of my office at her freshly blonded hair, her skin a deeper shade of orange with every passing day as she packs in
the sunbed sessions before her boyfriend returns from the Solomon Islands. It occurred to me that she is evolving. Turning herself into the creature she thinks will best meet her boyfriend’s needs. But when I tried to talk to her about evolution, her eyes clouded over, just like they do
whenever
I explain the difference between cc-ing and bcc-ing (discretion is not her strong suit).

I have decided the fact Charles Darwin is emailing my work address is a red herring. My guess is he/she/they really do want me to change. To grow.

But why?

I’m still working on
why
.

What keeps replaying in my head are Maxine’s words from two nights ago, though a more sinister tone may have crept into her voice, I’m not sure.

What makes you so sure it’s Lib Drury
?

What makes you so sure it’s Lib Drury
?

Just to be safe, I’ve begun monitoring Maxine’s behaviour. To my knowledge there is no link between her bedtime reading (
The Clan of the Cave Bear
for the hundredth time) and the subject matter of Darwin’s latest email (the Huxley–Wilberforce debate of 1860: ‘Shouldn’t the question of whether or not Lady Brewster
really
fainted be at the heart of all enquiries?’). I’ve also checked the history of our internet browser, the activity on her library card … tomorrow I’ll give one of her colleagues a call. Just in case.

Charles Darwin’s latest email, all sixteen words of it:

‘Did you know I spent eleven days in New Zealand? We were all glad to leave.’

My confrontation with Maxine:

‘Is it you, Maxine?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Is it you?’

‘This has really gotten under your skin, hasn’t it?’

I stared at her, compelling her to answer.

Finally, she said, ‘You shouldn’t have to ask, David. You shouldn’t.’

‘Is that because you are him, or you aren’t? If you want a holiday, just come out and say it!’

‘Stop it!’ she said. It was the end-of-her-tether voice she’d use with our misbehaving children, if we had any.

‘Is it you?’ I asked, softly, hardly any air in my lungs. ‘I need to know.’

She shook her head and I spent the night on the couch.

‘I was taught at school’, Charles Darwin began today’s email, ‘that the Earth was only six thousand years old. During my prime I held that it was in fact hundreds of millions of years old. Nowadays the consensus is that this fair planet is four billion years old. I sometimes wonder if it gets any older whether science might start looking as ridiculous as religion.

‘Personal confession time, David Leon. I believed once. When I was young I desired to lead an easy life as a country parson. I grew out of it. (When will you?) But when I stepped aboard HMS
Beagle
for the first time as a twenty-two year old, I still believed.

‘What happened?

‘I saw the world!’

This afternoon we had the first batch of junior analyst interviews. Our competency-based questions (‘Describe a time you had to make a hard decision, and how you went about making that decision.’ ‘Give an example of a situation where you solved a problem in a creative way’ …) seemed to invite monologues about individual growth. All these kids — I call them that because that’s what they are, being almost half my age — had been ‘enriched’ and ‘improved’ by their unscrupulous paper-round bosses and battles with glandular fever. When the last candidate, a fresh-faced international business graduate called Olivia, said she had ‘evolved as a person’ after backpacking through China, it was too much.