The Magpie Trap: A Novel (27 page)

‘I
know, Danny, but he’s pretty strange, isn’t he? Do you think the death of his
father has fucked him up a bit?’

‘Yeah,
I know, I know. But we’re all a bit on edge at the moment. These are difficult
times, cocker.’

Mark
was about to back out of the room without being seen, but Chris caught sight of
him in the reflection on the hard, almost metallic slate worktop.

‘Mark!
How long have you been there?’ asked Chris. ‘Come on; I was about to call a
taxi. Table’s booked for half eight.’

Chris
had simply swept the overheard conversation under the carpet. Mark simply shook
his head. ‘I know that I might sometimes be an embarrassment, but please bear
in mind that without me, you do not have a plan,’ he said, the wine going to
his head a little.

‘All
right; don’t snap mate,’ Danny interjected. ‘I know you have all of the
technical aspects covered mate. Just one thing; who thought this up?’

They
were all staring at each other across the kitchen table, each refusing to back
down; the tension in the room was tangible.

‘You
two roisterers need to calm down,’ Chris finally sighed, ‘We can’t have our
team break up even before we do the heist. Then we really will be
England’s Stupidest Criminals
. Passing
up an opportunity like this for a petty argument’s sake!’

He
chanced a smile and a wink, and finally they all began to laugh. It was a laugh
of release; the liberation of pent up tensions and anxiety.

‘What’s
all this about roisterers?’ asked Danny. ‘That sounds like something I’d say…’

Di Maggio’s was only a
short walk away from the flat, however a convoy of three taxis took the ten
friends there; Chris wanted to arrive in style; to be
seen
to be arriving in style. Di-Maggio’s was
t
he
Italian
restaurant for the footballers’ wives generation: ostentatious, almost tongue-in-cheek
décor reflected the opulence of this people-watching paradise. It was a place
where appearances counted, and despite the fact that Di Maggio’s was
incongruously found on the ground floor of a new-build multi-storey car park,
it oozed panache. Notwithstanding the seeming revolving-door style of filling
and emptying tables, the food proved that there was some substance behind the
style.

On
their arrival, the group was squeezed onto a table in the back corner of the
room, close to the kitchens, and regardless of Chris’s moaning, there really
wasn’t anywhere else they could have all sat. The fact that they were away from
most of the rest of the diners, however, meant that the setting became far more
intimate; they were at least able to hear each other talk. At first, all of the
talk had, as usual, been about business; who was earning what; what deals they
were involved with; the undertone of aggressive competition lay beneath every
word spoken.

Chris
and Danny were evidently happy in this kind of a conversation; enjoying the
banter and macho posturing. They paused briefly to order their starters and
more wine, but the waitress’s intrusion seemed to Mark as awkward as a cleaner
entering a rugby club changing rooms embarrassingly early; when the players
were still sizing each other up in the showers. Mark watched her squirm with
embarrassment as a procession of them ‘accidentally’ brushed against her or
made crude comments as she rounded the table taking the orders. When she had
returned with the first course, Steve Elton looked as though he was about to
slip his hand down her top under the guise of ‘helping her’ distribute the
armful of plates she brought.

Mark
did not notice at first, but a silence descended on the table as they waited for
him to finish his starter. The other diners proceeded to stare at their forks,
the light-fittings, the elegant candle set; anything but Mark, as he stirred
his fork into what was now some kind of unpalatable stew. The diners
impatiently waited, their embarrassment disallowing any speech. Mark allowed
himself furtive glimpses up at his dining companions; for the first time he saw
them for exactly what they were; people who wore masks to hide their real
selves. The wine he had drunk had given him alcoholic x-ray glasses which
seemed to grant his eyesight the power to burrow deep down into the reality of
this mixed crowd, and see the innate uncertainty in them all.

Adjacent to Mark was
Jed Burton; gangly elbows drawn in so as not to disrupt any glasses, plates or
bowls. Jed was perhaps the most difficult guest to please because he was a
restaurant critic by trade. In front of him lay over half of his
chicken-wrapped-in-Parma-ham starter; pieces were discarded to the side of the
plate as though the detritus from some one-man game of pass the parcel. Mark
had spied Jed Burton eating alone in restaurants on many occasions, and knew
that his outward arrogance hid a real fear that he would grow fat; he never
really seemed to enjoy or even swallow any of his food, preferring to simply
move it around on his plate.

To the left of Jed the
bird-like Suze perched. Suze was Chris’s current bit-of-fluff, and her nervous
anticipation of his leaving led her head to perform some kind of repetitive
twitching movement from side to side. She had arrived at the table late,
vaguely interrupting the clashing Y chromosomes around the dining table. Chris
had ordered for her, but Mark noted that Suze had devoured her entire starter,
whatever it had been; as always snatching at the opportunity to eat when it
presented itself; usually, it seemed, she forgot. Corrupted by endless weekend
alcoholic dazes in the company of Chris, and sometimes Danny, she spent the
week trying to overcome a massive guilt complex at having thrown her life away;
she would voraciously train at the gym, endlessly mark books and clean, clean,
clean. A teacher, she had been beaten down by the brute force of teen
disrespect for her authority. Mark saw that Chris offered her the only chance
she had of adult conversation, but because of her innate lack of confidence she
allowed Chris to treat her like shit.

Steve
Elton, meanwhile, had consumed the entrée as though it had insulted him
personally. He had hacked and sawed, ripped and chewed, like a lion devouring
its prey, and had in fact spilled much of the juices down his shirt. But
underneath his bestial mannerisms, Mark saw a sad man, a man angry at his lot
in life, a lonely man who could not make any meaningful connections with other
people.

Dave
Redford had only just managed to avoid a different kind of connection; the
splashes of juice from his
neighbour’s
plate. He was a careful, deliberate man; a man who had managed to avoid being
labelled
an IT geek despite his proficiency in the
subject, but his oh-so-obvious attempt at the look of ‘aloof cool’ was not
helped by his discomfort in his own skin. He looked as though his mother still
dressed him in his black roll-neck and tight black jeans which would make him
‘look nice’ for the ladies of
Leeds
.
 

 
Paul Sellars and Andy Gregory sat opposite
Mark. They were so alike as to be interchangeable; both sported the
Leeds
haircut of choice - the mullet - and both looked as though they were
the losing contestants in some kind of awful reality TV
programme
. They both attempted to drink like Danny, or to
charm like Chris, but Mark was struck by the fact that their eyes betrayed
their youthful naivety and fundamental fragility.

Saul
Chambers, Peter Dance and Andy Matthews completed the table; Mark could see
that they all shared the same kind of late-twenties fear, a fear of what their
lives were turning into. Even Chris and Danny, who so majestically presided
over the table, wore ghostly looks of apprehension; the tides of time and fate
were beginning to wash over all of them, leaving their dreams battered and
washed-up on the shore.

When
Mark had finally finished his starter, the buzz of conversation began to jolt
into life, as though every one of them was attempting to laugh off the
spectre
at the feast; growing old.

‘I
for one do not want any of this new country of ours,’ said Chris. ‘England is
changing, people; becoming more fragmented; the internet has allowed more and
more of us to pursue our own special interests, however what worries me is the
fast food, fast talk culture which we live in is humanity’s one common
denominator. We’re becoming mind-numbed by this, just like my father’s
generation was by the new wealth after the war.’

Some
of the diners agreed. There was much sage nodding of heads. But in this
nodding, Mark sniffed out the underlying sense of desperation. He wanted to
scream at him – ‘this is all an act’ - he wanted to ask all of these people
what they were doing to change their lives, to escape the cynical nature of the
age…

‘Technology
was supposed to serve the needs of the people,’ continued Chris, ‘but we now
find ourselves changing our
behaviours
to suit it. Maybe that’s why we are all planning to leave…’

Mark
silently seethed at these people; could they not see that they were preaching
against a world in which they were all complicit; every one of them played a
part in the formulation of a world in which screaming for attention is rewarded
by fifteen minutes of fame, a world in which Western people with no discernable
talent or hard work increasingly
expect
riches
and fame to be dropped into their laps. Mark saw that Chris and Danny were
trying to talk themselves into a moral justification for their proposed
horrible crimes, but no amount of clever talk would persuade him that the heist
would be anything other than pure opportunism, or perhaps desperation.

           
An expectant hush descended on the table; finally Chris
was going to explain why they were escaping the country. He climbed to his feet
and chimed his knife against the side of his wine glass- reinforcing the
manufactured stillness of the moment. He
cleared his throat and
looked around the table at the collection of appreciative faces. Mark was
struck by the sheer
performance
of
the whole thing; it reminded him of a rehearsed Oscar acceptance speech.

‘Danny Morris, Mark Birch
and I have asked you to join us here to celebrate a momentous occasion; this is
the last time we shall all be in
Leeds
together. We
have chosen to leave the country and to follow our desires. We have chosen to
start a new life in sunny
Mauritius
.

Imagine if you will, our
fear upon reaching the forbidden age of thirty without realising any of our
wildest dreams. This is what we wish to overcome; this fear; this regret. I
believe that regret is quite possibly the most bitter emotion known to man; we
three want to avoid looking back on this, our most potent age without being
able to say: “I gave it my all.’”

Danny began to heckle:

‘Chris, you’re about to
start sounding like Robin Williams in
Dead
Poets’ Society
! Seize the day, and all that. Or else you’re Henry V trying
to rouse us all into battle: ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends…’”

Chris laughed off the
interruption, ‘I’m sure that by now, you all know about our plans, no matter
how much we promised ourselves we would keep them quiet, we’ve all let little
tasters slip through, and by now there’ll be a whole internet full of
speculation and rumour.

To set your minds at rest;
in two day’s time, we set sail for
Mauritius
. We have set
up a registered Charity called Backpackers Heaven, and the money we’ve already
raised has allowed us to charter a small boat to take over most of the
equipment we’ll need; including vans, building supplies, and ourselves.

When we get there, we will
be setting aside a whole strip of beach-front land on which we will start to
rebuild the shanty towns devastated by the weather. We will not be employing
local labour; instead, travelling students and backpackers will pay us to
volunteer on site; with food and accommodation provided by us. When the project
is complete, we will hand the land over to the locals…’

Chris’s speech dragged on,
and on for Mark; he had heard all of it before and knew that it all formed part
of Chris’s huge confidence trick; people believed that his style was his
substance, his appearance was his reality. Surely people would be able to see
through the rehearsed platitudes of this brash young man? Amazingly though, as
Mark’s eyes had surveyed the table, he had seen sentimental tears in some of
the people’s eyes.

Suze, who had been so
afraid of Chris leaving her for some recklessly masculine foreign jaunt in
search of women and bungee ropes, now looked at him as though he was some kind
of saviour who was making a brave sacrifice for the paupers of
South Asia
. He saw the
jealousy in Jed Burton’s eyes - Jed had not been asked to participate in the
scheme; Steve Elton simply looked bemused. Why would anyone do anything like
that without there being a money-making scheme wrapped up in there somewhere?

Mark’s eyes glazed over
and he began to pay more attention to the Italian football game being shown on
one of the big screens behind the bar area of the restaurant. The initial buzz
of the red wine was now starting to wear off, and he was resorting to drinking
the over-priced mineral water, in an attempt to resuscitate his senses. He
felt like a charlatan; he could not play a part
in the forced joviality of the evening.