Experiment With Destiny (3 page)

             
“Queer bloke,” he muttered and continued his round through an otherwise empty museum.

              The bus that returned him to the coach station was on time. Marcus hated tardiness. He climbed aboard and swiped his card through the auto-fare. Avoiding the stares of his fellow passengers he found a space at the back. This time the warmth of the engine was little comfort as the black oppression descended upon his aching frame. The short journey out to Western Avenue Terminus seemed unending, stopping…starting…stopping, a snail’s progress through the peopled streets. Marcus felt the irritation boiling over into fury but managed to retain his composure until the creaky old vehicle finally turned into the station.

Marcus disembarked, agitated and trembling, to find himself adrift in an ebb tide of humanity. His head began to pound, his chest tightened and his heart raged within. The reaction was so sudden it surprised him. He fumbled for his cigarettes, his hand shaking as he pushed one to his chapped lips and lit it. With each breath he tried to draw the strength to stop his world from spinning. It was useless. Hemmed in by the crowd there was only one means of escape.

              Hands thrust deep into his pockets, head down and elbows pulled in, he charged the wall of bodies. There was a moment of resistance when the growing chorus of startled and angry protest mounted against him like a wave. Then the wall broke and he was pushing free. Leaving the shouted objections behind, he paced toward the number 7 bay and his waiting Valleys coach. Soon he would be free of the city.

             
Suddenly a young couple struggling with a suitcase blocked his way. Marcus refused to hesitate, even for a moment. The girl, raven black haired with stunning green eyes, was sent flying into a nearby queue and the suitcase tumbled into the gutter. Marcus glanced over his shoulder to see her scrambling to her feet, apparently unhurt. There was something about her eyes…he felt a twinge of guilt that rapidly dissipated with her partner’s outburst of righteous fury.

             
“Hey you fuckwit! I’ll…” Marcus turned away.

             
“Leave it, Scott,” she implored, stemming his threat. “Let’s just get out of here.”

             
Marcus reached his coach as the first passengers were allowed to board. He stood panting, leaning against the muddied red and white bodywork and scanning the terminus for a sign of the angry young man. He and the girl were gone. He glanced at his fellow passengers, worried in case they had seen his disgraceful haste and lack of chivalry. They paid him scant attention, their minds on other matters. Marcus waited his turn then stepped aboard and slipped his card through the auto-fare, punching the ‘Merthyr Station’ button. No sooner had the machine deducted the appropriate number of euros and punched out his ticket, he strode toward the back and found a space on the seat over the engine. There, he pressed himself against the window. Minutes later the coach pulled out of the terminus and began its short northward journey. The coach was full but Marcus spoke to nobody. Instead he gazed blankly through the rain and condensation-smeared window, alone with his thoughts.

The streets and semis of Whitchurch eventually gave way to the jaded greens, yellows and browns of hills and reclaimed slag heaps as the bus crawled slowly out of Greater Cardiff. The hills were lined with terraces of two-up two-down houses, painted like ageing crones and spread to the left and right against a backdrop of misty ruin. Occasionally the regimented lines were punctuated by buildings of once grander scale and ostentation, derelict Victorian tombstones to the former mining industries upon which these communities were forged. Libraries, social clubs and other public buildings that had become too expensive to maintain but too architecturally important to knock down. These communities were once distinct towns and villages, each with its own identity and character. Over the years they had sprawled together and become little more than Cardiff’s extended suburbia. But even the Welsh capital had its limits and Merthyr Tydfil, once the iron capital of the world, was it. Marcus’s hometown was the northernmost suburb of Cardiff, the last stop on the CMS-Cardiff network and the end of the road for his bus.

              Marcus stepped off as the bitter wind surged toward him, tugging at his coat. He wrapped it tightly around him, hugging its pockets, and walked through the arcade beneath the monorail station toward the Crown pub. A few doors on from the pub was a newsagent. A hollow bell jangled flatly as he entered and closed the weather-beaten door behind him. Marcus did not look up. The girl serving recognised his hunched demeanour.

             
“Twenty?” she asked. Marcus nodded. The packet of cigarettes slid across the counter and he held out his card. A moment later he collected it from the cold glass counter and retreated without so much as a glimpse of the girl. “Bye!” she called softly. He did not acknowledge her and her voice trailed away as the door closed to the dimly chiming bell. Marcus paused for a moment to study the abandoned and boarded up church opposite. He had been to Sunday school in St Tydfil’s many years ago and vaguely remembered the strange stories they told, the rarefied atmosphere, picture windows and scented candles. Few people went to church any more, and nobody went to this one. Turning away from the old ruin, he walked back to the Crown.

             
Its brick and paintwork had dulled through decades of neglect and its hanging sign creaked loudly in the ever-present wind. Marcus peered had through its smoky glass windows. It was too dark to make out any details but the silhouettes were few enough. He entered.

“Usual?” asked the barman. Marcus nodded inside the collar of his coat, looking around to avoid the barman’s eyes. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the battered open packet and took out his last cigarette. As the barman pulled his pint of bitter, he proceeded with the ritual of removing the cellophane and foil tab from his new packet, scrunching it into the old and crushing the useless packet in one fist, dropping it onto the side of the bar. Then he lit his cigarette, paid for and collected his pint and inhaled deeply, searching the shadowed corners for an empty table. He found one near a fruit machine that bleeped hopefully at him before launching into an annoying electronic jingle. Marcus sat down and sipped his beer. It tasted stale and watery, it always did. He remembered real ale and malt whisky. Such flavours were unattainable now. Not for us moles, he thought.

              The jukebox jarred into life. Two skinheads were sat beside it, sneering at the untidy collection of ageing drunkards who sipped, cursed and argued over loudly in their shaded corners. The guitar riff sounded first, joined by the bass and then drums. Marcus recognised the style, late 1970s post punk, though this particular single was not amongst his prized collection of ancient vinyl. The vocalist was howling like a crude impression of a dog. London Calling by the Clash…Marcus had heard it before.

             
A pensioner, perhaps someone who worked in the local collieries at the time the record first came out, his grey, bristled face squashed beneath a stained flat cap, stood unsteadily and bawled drunkenly at the two skinheads.

             
“What do you know about music like this?” he slurred, his finger jabbing at the smoke-filled air. “You don’t know nothing, butty!” The skinheads stood and squared up to him as he swayed helplessly and prodded one of them in the chest. “You’re a disgrace!” he accused.

             
“And you’re dead meat, fucker!” The youth lashed out and sent the old man sprawling against the table from which he had risen. Glasses shattered and beer sloshed as the table toppled and the stench of ale became suddenly stronger. Marcus looked away, trying not to catch the skinheads’ attention as the barman moved in to hastily resolve the scuffle. His sympathies were with the pensioner, another relic of better days.

* * *

II

IT was dark when Marcus emerged from the Crown. He buttoned up his coat against the assault of the wind and turned along the road toward his bedsit. He walked briskly between the terraces that fronted onto the street, sometimes peering into their windows as he passed. He saw sullen faces, wide-eyed but lifeless, lit by the lulling hues of the evening transmissions. Opiate for the people, he mused. He saw lamps, tables, chairs and a variety of garish modern décor. Fathers snubbed their children, children snubbed their mothers, mothers turned their backs. House after house, terrace after terrace, Marcus saw people with nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to believe in. Yet life went on. Normality undaunted.

              He passed the graffiti-ridden community centre, dark and empty, then slipped from the lurid amber streetlights across a waste-ground that was once a cinema. Back under the surreal lighting he was again among the rows of houses. Across the street, above the rooftops, he caught the bright white gleam of the floodlights from Rhydycar Park, home of Merthyr’s perennially underachieving football club. He walked among the shadows toward the towering main stand and listened to the voices of the reserves echo around the empty terraces as they practised. Football was the closest thing to a religion these days, even if the Martyrs’ miracles were much less impressive than the multi-million pound cathedral in which they were performed.

             
The stadium was behind him now, a few more streets and he was nearly at his destination, not so much home but a temporary resting place. His pace quickened as another downpour filled the skies, an icy rain that stung his eyes and face. Ahead was the three-storey block that housed his bedsit and his treasures. Once a proud Georgian guest house, it was now just a squalid ensemble of self contained apartments. But it was better than nothing, Marcus reminded himself as he searched for his keys.

             
Marcus Smith lived on the third floor of the once grand building and, each night, he would close the heavy wooden door behind him, pace the threadbare lobby carpet and clasp the banister to aid him up the many stairs to his room. A host of familiar sounds – babies bawling, music throbbing, snatches of conversation from the soporific soap operas, a heated argument from one of the second floor suites, soon to descend into violence – greeted him. He did not choose them but they were part and parcel of his life nonetheless. The staircase narrowed as he reached the last flight of steps. His chest wheezed with the effects of cigarette smoke as he climbed it. A second door, a second key, which Marcus fumbled with before turning it and pushing his way into his darkened sanctuary. As the door closed behind him, the sounds from below deadened. Neglecting the light for a minute, he waited in the darkness, breathing in the dust of time. Surrounded once again by things that were old, antiquated objects from another era, Marcus Smith finally sensed his tension easing. Marcus felt calm.

              He sat, as always, in the deep 50s armchair, the sound of Mozart’s 24th piano concerto filtered through the room from his antique gramophone. To most of his contemporaries his bedsit would have seemed more like a junk shop, a seedy back street room cluttered with ancient wooden furniture, strange brass ornaments and sepia tone or faded colour photographs of long dead people in odd looking clothes. But few of Marcus’s contemporaries had ever found their way into his quiet haven and he was inevitably alone each night with his treasured icons.

             
Almost in time to the morose melody of the piano, he leaned forward and lifted the Victorian teapot from the 70s maple and glass coffee table, gently pouring his instant tea into a chipped bone china cup, circa 1936. The milk had curdled but he did not mind. At least it was not the powdered kind. Adding a spoonful of sugar from the matching blue-patterned bowl, he reclined, stirring the liquid in his cup. He did not like sweet tea particularly, but he thrilled at the ritual he had mimicked from his collection of period dramas that he had transferred, at great expense, from ancient videotape to laserdisc. If only he could have afforded real tea leaves, or even teabags.

             
Marcus looked around the room and the faces in the many photographs gazed back. They were frozen moments…real people who lived real lives…people who were interesting. A rugby team posing with a trophy, a rag and bone man with his horse and cart, two old men playing cards, a shift of coal-blackened miners emerging from the pit shaft, a woman scrubbing at her husband’s shirts in a foam-filled wooden tub. The rich variety of once-upon-a-time real life. Marcus loved them. He named them. And, each day, he told them: “I will be like you.” Yes, one day he would join them. He, too, would find a meaning to his life.

Later that evening Marcus rose from his armchair and tidied away his tea set. Returning from his pokey little kitchen, he collected his cigarettes and ashtray and left his friends in darkness, moving to his bedroom. There, hanging in solitary splendour above his ageing four-poster bed, was the painting. It was the only painting he possessed, for he did not care for them much. Paintings were not reality, more imagined or dreamed, unlike photographs. Yet this tranquil watercolour had pleased him. It had a quality unlike any other painting he had seen. The artist, whose signature he had failed to decipher, had captured the reflected sunlight on the water, the contrasting textures of the grass bank, the clothing, the wooden punt and the picnic basket with a camera-like realism. But the coup-de-grace was the way the delicate brush strokes had brought the flesh tones to life, her flushed cheeks, the rise and fall of her ample bosom, the moistness of her rouged lips, framed by a dimpled chin, sparkling blue eyes and her curling auburn hair. He could not resist Picnic On A River from the moment he spotted it in the window display of Morgan Bros’ back street antiques emporium years ago, around the time of his 18th birthday…around the time his mother died.

              Marcus remembered the picnic basket in the National Museum, the moment of exhilaration as he finally came face-to-face with the reality, the precious minutes when he transcended his mundane life and reached out to touch heaven. His bile returned as he recalled too the shattering blow of intrusion that left nirvana agonisingly beyond his grasp. He needed another chance to taste such glory again, another chance to be, to feel, to breathe. He kneeled on his bed and reached up to touch the solid wooden frame that held his solitary painting, then caressed its lovingly polished glass covering. The New Cathays development find was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fulfil his long-held dream. He could not let it slip away so easily as he had this morning.

             
Marcus sat, cross-legged, on the bed and gazed up at the painting. He lit another cigarette and considered. Perhaps arrange for a private viewing? No, too expensive, too complicated. Why not simply sneak in, just before the museum closes, and wait…wait until everyone else had gone. He would be left undisturbed for a whole night. The picnic basket would be his and his alone for a good many hours. Marcus began to tremble with excitement. A private viewing at no extra cost. It could do no harm. Who would even know? He could hide until they opened up again and slip out unnoticed the next morning. Nobody would be any the wiser. But when? He pondered…tomorrow, the next day? It had to be soon, especially if they were going to mess around with the display. It would mean another day off work, his wages for the month diminished, but it would be worth it. The Edwardian umbrella stand at Morgan’s would wait another week or so while he delayed the final payment. The picnic basket was more important.

             
Marcus lay on his back, planning and re-planning the adventure in his mind and blowing smoke up to the artexed ceiling. It wasn’t wrong, it couldn’t be. He was not stealing anything. In the pale blue cloud above his head he caught a glimpse of his forgotten youth and he remembered one of those long lost bible stories about a man called Moses and his tablets of stone. “Thou shalt not steal!” warned the sharp voice of the Sunday school teacher. She held him with her stern gaze. “One of the 10 commandments…thou shalt not steal!”

             
“I only want to look,” he said aloud, his adult voice strange in the cold air of his bedroom. The memory faded, leaving him staring at the yellow nicotine stained swirls on the ceiling above. “I only want to look,” he repeated quietly.

Some time later Marcus awoke from the dream he had experienced most nights for the past few weeks. The river, the grass, the jetty, the boat, the basket, the flame-haired girl - they were all there…except for the dashing young man. This time it was Marcus who stood on the boat and let its mooring slip before pushing it out into the gently lapping water. There was, unusually, no sign of the man with the white flannels, navy blazer and straw boater. Marcus was alone with her, a picture of innocence and beauty, and the picnic basket, a feast for the senses. He watched the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the pure white lace of her gown. He felt himself growing hard. They were alone at last and drifting further from the bank. She smiled, white teeth gleaming behind full red lips, her blue eyes sparkling like the sun on the water. He kneeled in the centre of the boat, pushing the picnic basket aside, then reached for her. He peeled back the layers of her lace gown to reveal the swell of her peach-like breasts, then lowered his head to them. She pressed her lips to his ear; he felt the touch of her hair against his cheek.

“Taste me, Marcus,” she whispered. “Suck me.”

And, as he sank against her, his eager mouth pressed against the welcoming warmth of her rounded flesh, he remembered the picnic basket. Too late! He felt it tumble from the side of the boat and heard its mighty splash. Then, as he gazed in dismay, it sank without trace and, as he turned to face her, her eyes clouded with fury.

Marcus was awake and gasping for air. He was flailing, fully clothed, on his bed. He stopped, sat upright and gulped in the cold night air. After a moment or two he removed his clothes and let them fall into a heap at the foot of his bed. He lay back, naked and shivering. He tried to shut her out, but he could not. His desire could not be iced over like this barren world. Tonight was worse. Tonight she had been his to taste, not just to watch. He tried smoking but, after eventually stubbing out the butt in frustration, his craving was still as intense. Finally, he reached beneath his bedside table, 1990s Swedish, and fumbled for Friday’s Merthyr Express. Turning to the back he found the ‘personal’ section and ran his finger down the columns of telephone numbers until he found it.

‘Your fantasy…just call Misty,’ it read, and then the number. Marcus clutched the telephone, standard post millennium Telecom issue, the basic non-vidi-link model. He preferred it that way. Marcus dialled, hating himself as he did so. He hoped she would not look, that she would lace up her pretty white gown and turn away from his betrayal. She should not have to watch this. The number rang…once, twice, three times…then, a click.

“Hello caller,” said the voice in a sultry, if mechanical kind of way. “Thank you for dialling Misty’s fantasy line. In a moment I will let you speak to Misty but first, let me tell you about some of the other premium rate services we have to offer…” Marcus dropped the receiver to his chest and stared at his ceiling, waiting. The pre-recorded message continued and he knew he should stop, hang up. He couldn’t. The betrayal continued. Soon enough the voice of a real live woman breathed into the handset.

“Hi, this is Misty. Who’s on the line?” Marcus lifted the plastic to his ear and began to touch himself.

The night was filled with voices and visions. Marcus slept, but it was an uneasy slumber that left him edgy and weary. When he rose again it was Sunday, the start of another working week. He dressed, as ever, in his crisp grey uniform trousers, socks and shoes. Leaving his shirt and jacket until last he padded quietly to the bathroom to wash and shave. Returning to his bedroom, he averted his eyes from the girl in the painting and slipped a white shirt from its laundry-fresh bag. Pressing in his silver buttons, each emblazoned with the CMS crest, he pulled it on over his head then snatched his peaked cap and jacket before marching to the kitchen. Breakfast consisted of instant tea, toast and jam. The curdled milk had finally gone off, so he drank it black, dispensing with the ritual of the teapot. While he sipped and chewed he watched the early morning news on his portable television.

             
The news was one of the few things he watched, other than the re-run classics on the Golden TV satellite channel. His favourites were the costume and period dramas, like
Quadrophrenia
,
Four Weddings and a Funeral
and
The Italian Job
. But then he liked most programmes from the last century. It was only the archive science fiction he couldn’t stomach – full of 20th century optimism for the future, gleaming spaceships, moon colonies, genetic perfection, robotic servants and time travel for all. There was one time traveller he did admire – Catweazle, a scruffy magician from Norman times who flew through time. Marcus often wished such power could be his - to leap into the water, an ancient spell on his lips, and emerge spluttering in a long vanquished era. But Marcus knew the difference between an impossible dream and a 20th century children’s television fiction. He returned his attention to the news.

             
“Police are still hunting outlawed British Nationalists who sparked a riot at yesterday’s third division derby between Merthyr Tydfil and Hereford United. Eleven people were injured including two club stewards who both needed hospital treatment. And governors of a Cardiff primary school will meet tomorrow morning to decide the fate of teacher Lynette Swinn who has been accused of peddling Christian dogma among pupils in her classes. Miss Swinn, a self confessed ‘Pentecostal’ extremist, has denied that teaching children bible stories and proclaiming her Christianity to pupils was, in any way, racist. Now the weather, with…”