The Late Hector Kipling (24 page)

‘It’s very simple, Hector. Here’s how I make my recompense. You give me the eight hundred and forty pounds—’

‘What?’

‘Wait. Listen. Hear me out. You give me the eight hundred and forty pounds. I take the train up to Blackpool, reply to their advert in the local newspaper, go round there, buy the bloody thing and take it off their hands straight away. What the hell, I’ll offer them nine hundred. That way they’ll make a profit. Wouldn’t a profit be enough to escort your father from intensive care?’

I really can’t argue with this. Like he says, it’s perfect.

‘You’ll do this for me?’

‘Hector,’ he says, trotting over and kneeling at my feet. (A bit over the top, this trotting and kneeling business, but he does.) ‘Hector, it’s the least I can do,’ and he puts his hand on mine. His eyes are wide and glad and the pad of his thumb rubs against my wrist. ‘I owe you, sir.’

‘Sir?’ I say pulling my hand away and leaning back.

‘I owe you, Hector Kipling. What better way to repay the debt of my folly?’

All this poshness is giving me a headache. I’m not being flippant in saying that, I mean it. The bloke is giving me a fucking migraine with his fol de rols and his la di das.

‘OK,’ I say, ‘OK, if you’re up for it.’

‘I’m most certainly up for it. You give me that money and I’ll take a cab to King’s Cross right now.’

‘Euston.’

‘A cab to Euston right now.’

‘But I don’t have the money.’

‘Where’s the nearest hole in the wall?’

‘I can’t take nine hundred pounds out of a hole in the wall! And besides how do I know that you won’t just run off with the fucking money? You throw horse shit all over my painting, run away, turn up at my flat, ask me to hand over nine hundred quid and point you in the direction of a train station?’

He makes another grab for my hand and captures it. ‘I know, I know. Of course. No need, no need. Listen, I’ll do it. I’ll write a cheque to them and you pay me upon delivery of the sofa. How does that sound?’

‘Well, that makes more sense.’

The telephone rings. I let it.

‘Shouldn’t you get that?’

‘No.’

‘It might be your mother.’

‘Exactly.’

The machine clicks on.

‘Hector? Hector, it’s Eleni. Where are you? Why are you not returning my calls? I have been phoning and phoning. I have left messages on your mobile and messages at home. Where are you? What is going on? Where were you last night? I rang three times . . .’

She’s crying. She’s definitely crying.

‘I rang three times Hector. At midnight, at two and at five. Have you listened to these messages? How can you not be calling me? I’m tired of leaving messages. I’m tired of saying it all. They say my mother may not make it. Hector, where are you?’

She’s wailing. She’s definitely wailing.

Odd. I’ve never heard Eleni wail. Monger is lighting a cigarette and folding up his handkerchief. All the time he is watching my face. All the time my face is breaking out in horrible boils of despair and disgust.

‘I don’t know what to say, or do, or think, Hector. I don’t know whether to worry about you or be angry with you. I rang Lenny. He says that something happened at the show. That you ran out. You haven’t called Lenny either. I spoke to your mother, and your father is in hospital. You haven’t spoken to them. Hector, where are you? Why did you hang up on me last night? Hector, I am worried, so worried about you. I cannot believe that you have not answered my messages . . .’

There’s a long silence as the storm of tears turns into a light drizzle.

Bleep.

Silence.

Monger clears his throat.

Silence.

The phone rings again.

‘I’m afraid I’m not here, and neither are you. This machine, however, is . . .’

I didn’t expect the answering machine to fly into so many pieces. I thought it might just crack a little. I mean, I only hit it with the stepladders. Twice. Twice with the stepladders and then again with a chair. And then I go back for the stepladders. The red light’s still flashing and I half expect the voice to carry on speaking, like Ian Holm’s head in
Alien
, his wires and fuses still fizzing, a warm blue smoke snaking from his ragged neck. I deliver one more blow. As both myself and the ladders buckle at the hinges, the volume dial flies across the room and comes to rest, at last, beneath Eleni’s piano. The red light glows brighter than ever and then fades to black like a soused coal.

Monger sits there perfectly still, utterly composed, as though I’ve just stood up to draw the curtains. He picks up the bottle of vodka and pours out the last two glasses.

My brain is a bonfire.

‘Have you tried St John’s wort?’

‘What?’ I snap, throwing the ladders at my painting. A sizeable gash appears in the bottom left-hand corner. We both look at it.

Monger leans forward and offers me my glass. I take it.

‘I said can you call me a taxi?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘If the phone is still intact,’ he says, and we both look over at the phone.

‘Yeah,’ I say, draining my glass, ‘the phone’s still OK. I’m sorry . . . erm . . . I’m really sorry. I’ve just got a few problems right now . . . as you can see.’ I begin to cough.

‘Well,’ says Monger, I really don’t want to become one of them, Hector. No, no. In fact, quite the opposite.’ He checks the laces on his brogues. ‘So if you’ll give me your parents’ phone number and anything else I should know, I shan’t inconvenience you any further.’ He stands up and smoothes himself down.

He’s so tall. I wouldn’t like to be that tall. Tall enough to make
people stare. Tall like a freak. If he put on some weight, and wrestled a bit more life into that face of his, he could be a real, bona fide monster.

‘OK,’ I say, ‘OK,’ trying to calm myself down, trying to remember which muscles monitor breathing in and which ones look after the breathing-out bit. ‘OK, well, if that’s what you wanna do. If that’s . . .’ I’m shaking, ‘if that’s what you’re offering to do, I er . . . I suppose that would be great. Excuse me, this is all a little strange.’

‘Of course it is, Hector. Good God, we’d both be perfect fools if we didn’t acknowledge all this as being a little strange.’

‘Yeah, well. . .’

‘So if you’d call me that cab.’

I call him that cab and write out Mum and Dad’s number on a page from my sketch pad. I write down the name of the newspaper, the
Evening Gazette
, Mum and Dad’s address, how to change trains in Preston and how not to give the game away if Mum mentions anything about how she wishes her son dressed a bit more like him. Monger smiles and puts the piece of paper into his wallet – vermilion lizard skin, cards all gold – asks me if I would like to see a picture of his kids and then pulls out a photograph of two juvenile goats. He throws back his head in snorted posh laughter. I almost smile and walk him to the door. He makes a move to hug me and I try to avoid it but his wingspan is so broad that I have no choice but to succumb to his embrace. I feel like a doll in the arms of a desperate child. It’s a first.

Alone.

Silence.

The telephone rings again. I let it. Ring, ring. Drip, drip. Ring, ring. Drip, drip. The silence when it stops aches more than the silence it broke.

Fuck’s sake, Hector. Call Mum. Call Eleni. Call Lenny. Call Bianca. Call Kirk. Call an ambulance. Call a hearse. Call Myers. Call time. Call a fly or a nosebleed. Call the Samaritans or a horse. Call Benson and Hedges. Call Gilbert and George.

I wish I could call Rosa. I want to call Rosa. My bowels are telling me to call Rosa. My passion is to call Rosa. My rage is to call Rosa. My heart, my throat, my tongue, my thighs, my flesh, my pipes, are all screaming at me to call Rosa. Well, they can all shut the fuck up cos I didn’t get her number.

I put on my Crombie and take a long vodka walk down to the shops. I buy a tin of Heinz macaroni cheese, a tin of Heinz meat-free ravioli, a tin of Heinz tomato soup, a loaf of suffocated bread, a tub of Flora, a packet of crisps, some chewing gum, sixty Camel Lights, four cans of lager and some nail clippers. In the newsagent’s I buy the
Evening Standard
so that I can add to my Brian Sewell collage. I buy a mint Aero, a packet of Nurofen and a birthday card.

Having clipped my nails and digested the soup, the ravioli, the crisps, the bread and two of the beers I lie down on the bed to sleep.

Brown and blue seagulls chattering in a plywood sky. Blackpool Tower on fire in a high and howling wind.

I’m on a bench in Golden Square watching the pigeons. That one’s called Duggie and the one with the missing toe and half an eye is Mr Osgood who’s flown in from the Midlands to see how the other half live. So far he’s impressed. He’s left a wife and kids on the ledge of a small chemist’s in Wolverhampton. He’s already been down Trafalgar Square, where he was welcomed into the throng like a prodigal friend. At one point his ebullition had reached such giddy heights that he thought ‘Why not? Fuck it!’ and perched on the head of a Norwegian albino whose obsequious new wife caught it all on camera. ‘Fame!’ thought Mr Osgood. ‘I’m gonna live forever – or at least for a few months – on some polished pine mantelpiece in Oslo.’ That’s what he thought.

I’m waiting for Kirk. I’ve rung his bell five times now.

I woke up at four in the morning. I felt – if I may be so artless (or is it artful?) – like shit. Like mindless, heartless, stinking shit. The stuff itself. The consistency, the colour, the contours, the aroma. Brian Sewell would hate all this. But I’m sorry, Brian me old son, that’s how I felt, how I still feel, and no amount of Tchaikovsky or Bizet will tell it any better.

Mr Osgood has found a discarded box of Dunkin’ Donuts and is fighting with Duggie – in a mad frenzy of pecking – over the hundreds-and-thousands scattered by the railings.

I’m not sure why I’ve come to see Kirk. I haven’t returned any phone calls. I should be in Blackpool. I should be in Crete. I should be round at Lenny’s with a mop and some bleach.

But then I don’t need to be in Blackpool, cos Monger’s on the train with a cheque for nine hundred quid and the answer to all our problems. Well, the answer to Mum and Dad’s problems. I still have a few problems in storage.

I should be in Crete. I should be holding Eleni’s beautiful Greek head in my monstrous Lancastrian hands. But what am I gonna do in Crete? Sit there by Sofia’s sad bed and watch her slip slowly and silently (or would it be noisily?) away into some other dimension. What would I do? Learn something?

It starts to rain and I sit there feeling like I’m in a film. I think it’s a film, or is it an opera? Whatever it is, I think it’s French. Everyone has gone. The pigeons have gone. It’s just me, the trees, the plants and the rain. Drip drip. I stare at my fingers for an hour. Maybe two.

‘Well, what happened to your mobile phone?’

‘I dropped it in someone’s bath.’

‘Whose bath?’

‘My bath, Mum, I mean my bath.’

‘You said in someone’s.’

‘Why would I be in someone else’s bath?’

‘You tell me.’

It’s still raining. Hailing in fact. It looks like it may never stop. I might as well be in a bath right now. The wind is driving sharp bullets of hail into the phone box. If you can call it a box.

‘How’s Dad?’

‘Why haven’t you called?’

‘I only just got the message, Mum.’

‘You should have called anyway’

‘Mum, it’s all gonna be all right, you know.’

‘And why have you only just got the message?’

‘Cos I only just got home, and my mobile is dead.’

‘Aye, cos you dropped it in someone’s bath.’

‘My bath.’

I don’t like this. I don’t like any of this one bit.

‘So in between getting the message that your father’s in hospital, and phoning me, you had a bath?’

‘Mum!’

‘Whose bath was it?’

‘Mum! How’s Dad?’

‘Some lass’s bath?’

I’m stunned. How do mothers know everything? What is it? Do they work in teams? Is she in contact with a network of mothers from East London, all stood on street corners and ladders muttering into walkie-talkies? There’s a flash of lightning. Do they control the weather?

‘No, Mum! No, not some lass’s bath. Forget the bath, it was a slip of the tongue.’

‘Well, that’s what happens if you’ve got a slippery tongue.’

‘Mum, how’s Dad?’

‘He’s just sleeping. He’s got chest problems and they want to keep him asleep. He’s all white.’

Oh Christ, don’t say that. There’s a deafening punch of thunder, like Jupiter just burst. ‘But is he gonna be all right?’

‘How the bloody hell do I know, Hector? Ask a doctor. Ask God!’ And that’s it. She’s held out till now, but I can hear the tears collecting in her throat. ‘I wish it was me. I do, I wish it was me. It should be me lying there in a bed. Lying there dead.’

‘Mum, Dad’s not dead.’

‘No, but I should be. What have I done? What have I done to him?’

I can see her with her hands over her eyes. She can’t speak now for crying. I’m going to say something now. I’m gonna find the words. I’m gonna make it all all right again, and I’ll be a magnificent son and the next time I see her she’ll hug me and kiss me, and so will Dad, for being their little hero.

‘Mum, I promise you, things are gonna work out.’

‘Hector, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re talking like you’re soft in the head. You won’t even come home. You haven’t once offered to come home.’

‘Mum, is the settee still for sale in the
Evening Gazette
?’

Nothing but crying.

‘Mum, if the settee’s still in the paper, it’ll be all right. Someone’ll come along and buy it, I’m sure. Why don’t you take yourself off to the hospital and tell him that someone’s bought the settee?’

‘Because he’s unconscious!’ Oh my God, that was a very loud scream. Not the sort of scream you’d associate with a lovely mum like Mum. More like Elizabeth Taylor in
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
?.

The time’s getting close to say that perfect thing.

‘Hey, hey, Mum, calm down, calm down. Have them wake him up. Why not have them wake him up enough to tell him that the settee’s been sold?’