The Paper Eater (4 page)

– So I want something done, I said after I’d done this long spiel about the charter. Meanwhile I shall be sending an e-mail to the local authority about the standards of care in this institution.

She was pretty gobsmacked, I can tell you. But I think she was pleased too, because when I’d finished, she smiled, and said she thought I’d turned a corner.

Mum was as good as her word about Dad and Uncle Sid. They came to me that evening in the dormitory.

– I’m on your side, son, whispered Dad. And I always will be. Remember that.

– You’re our special boy, said Sid. Craig won’t lift a finger against you again.

And the funny thing was, he didn’t. The moment my family
stepped out of the wings, I became immune to bullying. Nothing touched me. Nobody could hurt me. It was like I carried a bubble of safety around me. Craig got on with his career in commercials. He didn’t pick on me any more. He ignored me. No, more than that: he avoided me, like he was scared to come close.

It was the vibes.

It was only years later, when I got hauled into Head Office, that I actually had to go into the psychological mechanics of it – which were simple enough. How could any child grow up in a children’s home and not know that something big was missing? How could you avoid it, when you saw mums and dads with their shrieking kids in the open air, getting tangled in a kite and swearing, fighting over the last peanut-butter sandwich, or chucking a stick for a drooly Labrador? I knew happiness when I saw it. It didn’t all happen at once. It was organic, my family tree.

It grew from that one magic acorn of shock.

My older sister and younger brother first appeared about a year after I’d met Mum, Dad and Uncle Sid. I must’ve felt pretty much adored by the grown-ups in the family to risk introducing other kids who were a potential threat – but overall, it panned out pretty well, once I’d learned to keep my brother in his place.

The money side of things evolved organically too.

It was a labour of love deciding what they’d all look like and then doing the biz with my photomontage graphics package. For Mum, I first scanned in Mrs Lardy, and morphed her with a very skinny nurse from a TV soap, then superimposed the Tragic Princess. Somehow, through some further nifty palette-mixing, I ended up with a face that was pretty close to that of the ravishing salamander-woman I’d first seen by the biology pond after Craig Devon had administered his ‘purge’. Although I should really have called her Gloria, her official Christian name, to me she was just ‘Mum’. Dad was called
Rick, and he was a combination of St Francis of Assisi, from an oil painting I downloaded from my Medieval Art CD, and a footballer I cut out from the back of a cornflakes packet, and scanned in. Uncle Sid was much older than Dad, more like a grandfather really, and I generated his picture from the policeman on the Say No To Drugs campaign. I swapped the left and right-hand sides of his face around, and relocated his eyes to make them friendlier. Then just added a moustache, took away the uniform, gave him a pumping-iron sort of body – too young for his age, really – and stuck a big scar on one cheek.

My sister Lola had freckles and pigtails and all the usual big-sister stuff. I scanned her in from the ‘after’ picture in an advertisement for spot cream, and superimposed a girl from a centrefold. I left the breasts in, so I guess from the start there was a hint of incest. Although I’d reckoned I always wanted a brother, once I had Cameron up and running, I never quite warmed to him, and often thought about killing him off altogether. He had a nerdy, I-haven’t-got-any-friends sort of face. The basis was a kid in one of Mrs Lardy’s ancient knitting patterns, but I morphed it with three separate baseball players. I made him smaller and skinnier than me, and then gave him crooked teeth, because even then I was jealous of him. Sibling rivalry. It’s pretty much normal, I think.

It was plain sailing after that. It’s easy enough to convince a set of machines that somebody exists. You trawl through old newspapers to get hold of dead people, resurrect their identities, generate their birth certificates by back-dooring into the Statistics Office, kick-start the automatic posting system, change their names by deed poll, generate a new set of paperwork, and Bob’s your uncle.

Or in my case, Sid.

Once I’d established their identities on-line, we were in business.

* * *

– Which would you prefer, begins John after breakfast.

We’re back in the cabin. Him sewing, me chewing A4 sheets torn from the criminal dossiers by the bed.

– Being stripped naked by Captain Fishook, who barbecues your goolies over red-hot charcoal pellets, or a JCB comes along and lifts you up on its arm thing and hangs you upside-down in a bath of piranha fish that gobble up your eyes and leave like, just the hollow sockets?

– Goolies and pellets, probably, I sigh. But actually, mate, I’m not really in the mood.

– Atlantica, he goes. He’s embroidering again. – Liberty Day, he breathes. Harbourville.

He knows how just the sound of things can knot up my intestines.

– And other stuff, I say. His Final Adjustment, is what I mean. – So can we just not talk, for a change? Can we just shut the fuck up?

He doesn’t like this. His voice changes to wheedling, but there’s menace behind it.

– C’mon, kiddie. Let’s have a conversation. Or a story. I don’t mind which.

He’s looking at me steadily. Sometimes I think he might kill me one day, just for something to do. He’s stood up now, his belly jostling about under his T-shirt. He smiles and I look at bad gums and the botched dentistry of his teeth.

– Question One, he says. (He’s pretending to be a teacher, which I guess appeals to him.) – When are you going to open your letter?

– I’m not.

– Question Two. Why?

I’m scared to, is the truth. I look away, chew some more paper. But he won’t let go.

– Question Three. Who d’you reckon it’s from, then?

– Dunno.

I don’t want to know, either. The letter, the news about
Atlantica, the words
Final Adjustment
… Head in the sand. But John’s persistent. It’s boredom does it.

– Question Three. Might it be from the wife?

It takes me several chews to remember that I was once married. That’s how distant my life on Atlantica seems now.

– If you’re talking about Gwynneth, I go, after I’ve spat, she’s not my wife, she’s my ex. And apart from some stuff she wrote on a form once, I don’t think I ever saw her handwriting.

It was true. Who uses handwriting, nowadays?

– Question Four. Your daughter, then?

– Tiffany? He must be joking – If it weren’t for her – I begin.

Then stop. Why do I let him do this? I reach for a sheet of paper and crunch it into a ball.

– I’ve heard that she’s the one …

But by then I’ve stuffed the paper into my mouth, and I’m back to chewing.

The best, and most honest thing I could have done, once the Hogg family had custom-built itself around me, was to stick to their company exclusively. Not get involved in any other relationships – especially ones that meant practical commitment. But I couldn’t, could I? I was human. I had physical needs. I don’t just mean sex, I mean the day-to-day stuff you do as a couple, like sharing a tub of popcorn at a drive-in, choosing which texture wallpaper for the utility room, microwaving something Thai.

Gwynneth seemed like another godsend, at first. In an odd sort of way she reminded me of my sister Lola. She loved to laugh, live for the moment, act on impulse. She’d drag me off to places I’d never dreamed of going on my own – clubs, rollerblade races, and live TV shows that required audience participation, where dysfunctional families slagged each other off. She was always getting tickets for this or that.

I met her in a queue.

It was at the Taxation Centre, as it was called back then, before you did everything online or by phone; I was there sorting out some family business. Gwynneth was ahead of me, but she was dithering about, grappling with the usual problems posed by Section 9(g) of the YB408 self-assessment reclaim clause. Anyway, the long and the short of it was, I helped her with it, and she asked if she could buy me a coconut milkshake to say thanks.

– Or there’s a new diet drink with cinnamon? she goes. If you’re not too busy?

That’s when our eyes sort of met and locked. Hers were very round and wide, like Pacific Ocean shells with mother-of-pearl in. She had a nice body too. By nice, I mean it was a sensible size and shape that looked welcoming. Not madly sexy and outrageous like Lola’s – just well, OK. I liked that.

One thing led to another, and in a little bistro, on our third Mexican beer, I realised how badly I wanted her to like me. Soon I found myself pouring out all sorts of stuff to her about my folks, and the computer consultation service we ran as a family concern. I was enthusing about them, like you do when you’re proud of something and it’s all yours. She was very impressed with the business side of it (I didn’t use the word ‘fraud’), and our complicated deals. It was obvious from the way I spoke that I had money. That’s never a turn-off for women, is it? But I think I genuinely appealed to her too. You got the feeling she’d maybe had a hard time with men, and that I might be an experiment in something different.

– So what do you call yourself, exactly? she goes. I mean, when you’re talking about your job? I mean, mine’s simple, I just say beauty therapist.

I hesitated. Technically speaking, I was a criminal.

– I’m a flexecutive, I went.

That seemed to hit the spot. And it wasn’t a complete lie; it’s a broad church.

One thing led to another; tickets to a show, a Korean restaurant, more talking, some rather fumbling sex. It was odd, doing it in the flesh for the first time, rather than in my head. I had trouble keeping my eyes open, even though I was keen to see what was going on. I was so used to imagining things. But Gwynneth’s hotness and wetness and – well, fleshiness – they really drove me wild. There were all sorts of things I hadn’t expected – the grappling with clothes, the grunty panting that goes on, the tropical nature of the atmosphere you somehow build up between you, the urgency of it all, and the whoosh of release. What a fandango!

– I love this! I blurted to Gwynneth, as I exploded into her – joy of joys! – on the turquoise leather settee of the three-piece suite she called her Best Bargain.

– I love
you
!

I couldn’t help it. It was my first time doing it for real. And I
did
love her. I loved everything that she brought me. I loved being normal. I even loved going shopping with her! She was a true Atlantican that way; it’s in the blood. She was a choosy and discerning consumer. She knew what to buy to suit her mood, knew when to purchase, and when to window-shop. She liked theming, she liked self-assembly – or rather, she liked to buy things I could put together with an Allen key while she made us something from a sachet. It was a kind of a foreplay thing.

The trouble was, as things progressed, she wanted to meet my parents.

– And Lola and Cameron too, she goes, all pink with enthusiasm. And your Uncle Sid! They sound just brilliant! God, Harvey, you’re so lucky! My parents are awful. My brother’s an arrogant jerk, and I haven’t spoken to my sister since she deliberately smeared taramasalata on my basque.

Well. All relationships have their sticky moments. Gwynneth
was shocked and disappointed when I finally broke the news to her about my family only existing on paper.

– And in my heart, of course, too, I added, trying to smile winningly. In my heart, they’ve always been very much around. I can hardly remember a time when I didn’t know them.

She didn’t like this one bit, though. In fact, she said, she was
shocked to the core.

– Frankly, Harvey, she says, I’m just a bit worried that you might have a mental illness. I’ve never come across anyone inventing a whole family before.

– How many orphans d’you know? I snapped. Look. My real father was just some bloke with sperm, as far as I can gather. No record of him. And my real mother drank bleach when I was three. Can you blame me for craving a spot of normality?

She looked at her nails for a moment. They were impressive, because they were made of acrylic that was stuck on, and then decorated with twirly sea-horses and glitter. When she looked up, she blinked tears.

– I’m sorry, Harvey. It’s just I mean, have you ever thought about seeing someone – professional?

This hurt, but strangely enough, in the end I managed to sway her. It took time, but I knew she wanted to give me a second chance. What I did was I persuaded her to come and see things for herself. Back in my apartment, I showed her my CD ROM, and all the downloaded paperwork that had accumulated over the years, and talked her through it.

– So they’re a business really, I concluded. A family business.

The paperwork was my salvation, because slowly, the Hogg family’s transactions, which represented real money, persuaded her to imagine a set of scales, with my financial wizardry weighed against my possible madness. The dosh won out, and I thanked my lucky stars it did. When I asked
her to marry me, she said could she think about it for a while. Then one week, two days and five hours later she said yes.

I was over the moon. At last, I was going to be a normal bloke after that bad beginning I’d had. Not only did I have a girlfriend, I was going to keep her! That’s what marriage is, isn’t it? Having someone exclusively?

I was wrong there as it turned out.

I’ve wondered many times since then what Gwynneth thought about during those nine days and five hours when she was making up her mind to marry me. Was it because she was self-employed at the time, doing nail extensions, and needed someone to sort her paperwork? Was it because she wanted to get away from the boring parents, the arrogant brother, and the sister who attacked her with taramasalata? Was it because she loved me and wanted to stay with me for ever, forsaking all others?

All I know is, things seemed fine. They really did.

And then, not long after our marriage, something started to buckle and turn hopeless. Sex is always one of those dodgy things, isn’t it? I’m no expert, I’ll be the first to admit, but for every high, it strikes me, there seems to be a low. A sort of depression, even. Things were fine, to begin with – no, more than fine, they were crakko! We’d go at it with gusto, in that bedroom of mine with the dressing-table that had the angled mirror that, if you accidentally opened your eyes, reflected interesting parts of the anatomy as you were doing it. But then one day, soon after we’d bought the house in Gravelle Road, things went wrong. Just like that.