The Paper Eater (8 page)

– I chose this morning, first thing, he said eagerly. Cos I want to make sure they finish that golf course, I do! The thing that puzzles me is (he leaned closer to her, conspiratorially,
and looked at her with bright eager eyes set deep in his tanned face) who are they, these people?

Hannah looked blank. What was he on about? What people? She tried to convey her question with an eye-movement above the mask.

– Who are they? he repeated. Who are this five per cent lot? The ones choosing B and not A?

She’d wondered herself, in an idle way, but knew she’d find out soon enough: Munchhausen’s would be processing their questionnaires, afterwards. They’d probably turn out to be the usual suspects – the ‘difficult customers’ classed as Marginals. You can’t have winners without losers.

– Mystery, said the man, more to himself than to Hannah, and sighed. One of the seven wonders of the world.

He got off at the next stop, his clubs chinking.

Hannah took off her mask, yawned, and peered out of the window again. She could smell the lavender of St Placid.

– Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, she murmured, echoing Wesley Pike.

Her boss liked to quote poetry. Outside she could see pylons, and the air-crystals glittered mauve.

Tilda was smaller than Hannah remembered. Hannah spotted her through the window, on the platform, scanning the carriages. Her tilted face was the narrow, questioning shape of a papaya.

– Hello, Ma, said Hannah, stepping out into muggy warmish air.

An awkward moment followed: Hannah bent to kiss Tilda’s papery, powdered cheek but somehow bungled it because of the crush around them and it turned into a fumbling embrace which they both shrank from.

– I came under my own steam, said Tilda, taking a step back and smoothing her mauve shell-suit. She nodded in
the direction of an electric buggy parked on the kerbside, its disabled sticker prominently displayed.

– How are you health-wise? asked Hannah dutifully.

– Well, the laparoscopic investigations continue, sighed Tilda. We’re coming up to the tenth anniversary of the start of that. I’ve got more keyhole surgery booked for March, but in the meantime the doctor who deals with my connective-tissue question is taking long leave. And d’you remember that polyp I told you about?

It was after Hannah was diagnosed with Crabbe’s Block that Tilda’s health problems came into their own. Internal organs, usually. Nothing visible. It was only when Hannah was head-hunted into Head Office’s Munchhausen’s Department that she realised her own mother counted as a classic seeker of attention. Munchhausen’s by Proxy, to begin with. Then the real thing. The Liberty Corporation, it dawned on Hannah, had known about her Munchie mother from the start. That’s why they’d recruited her.

She wasn’t offended. She was pleased to have been spirited away from home like that. Pleased to have been given a role.

As Tilda continued the story of her latest medical adventures – the scheduling of appointments seemed to be a key feature – Hannah looked round at the neat fuchsia’d borders of the tram station. The pressed rubber chips of the platform felt different under her feet, as though they were full of packed energy.

– Anyway it’s my kneecaps now, finished Tilda. The plastic’s fatigued.

– I don’t remember it like this, said Hannah. Something’s changed.

– Well, what d’you expect? Tilda ducked into her buggy and gripped the little steering wheel.

It made her even smaller, Hannah thought, like a toddler in a pretend car.

– St Placid’s had more makeovers than any other city, Tilda said proudly, starting the ignition. Even
we
can’t keep track!

But it wasn’t a makeover thing – it was something else, something less tangible than a revamp, Hannah thought, oddly aware of a springy feeling underfoot as she trailed her mother’s electric buggy on foot down the residential streets past rhododendron hedges, mail-boxes, and tidy lawns dotted with miniature wells, windmills, and bird-baths with plastic ivy. Water features were big this year, and lawn furniture with pop-up parasols. The lavender smell gusted out from the gas pumps. It seemed more potent than usual, as though it were fighting a competing perfume from a rival source.

Tilda’s ground-floor apartment comprised a box shape within the larger box of the block itself, which was painted in variegated pastel shades. Inside, Tilda had chosen lilac as a theme, to complement the lavender. Here the smell seemed more voluptuous and luxuriant, like a bath-house.

While Tilda fussed in the kitchen with her little percolator, Hannah glanced around the living-room. Her mother’s latest craze was for Japanese flower-arranging, and the occasional tables were cluttered with cut palm leaves, wires, secateurs, dried-out sticks and other Ikebana accoutrements. On the shelf by the CD rack was a hologram of Hannah as a child, clutching a Marilyn doll in one hand, and in the other, a plastic monster, a gorgon with multiple heads. The small face overwhelmed by glasses, the pale eyes not meeting the camera’s stare.

– You probably can’t even remember what it was like before, said Tilda, returning to the living-room with the coffee and re-arranging her flowers, a big bouquet of blue irises and orange tulips. See? They’re in Liberty colours. That’s a nice touch, isn’t it?

– What? asked Hannah. The heat in Tilda’s apartment was already making her sleepy and confused.

– You can’t remember politics. D’you still drink it black?
You were barely an adult. All that incompetence. I can’t believe we put up with it. Look at the Americans. Look at the mess
they’re
in. Then she lowered her voice and whispered proudly – Have you seen how jealous they’re getting?

She reached for a plastic box, with twelve individual drawers. Pill time. She had labelled the little drawers neatly, in felt pen.

– You remember I phoned the Hotline when the neighbours were making all that noise with that idiotic mixing desk?

Hannah forced her eyebrows to make a questioning shape.

– Gone.

Tilda arranged a row of five pills before her, then poured a glass of spring water. She gulped the first pill, swished it down with water, and covered her mouth to give a small ladylike burp.

– Gone?

– Transferred. The second and third pills. – The rep was on to it straight away. Next day, literally, they were gone. They were borderline Marginals, he said. He said you were right to call us, Mrs Park, it’s people like you who enable us to do our job, and on behalf of all of us at Libertycare, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you personally.

Hannah recognised the wording. The Hotline used it.

– I’m a satisfied customer, I told the rep, Tilda went on. You can guess how
I’ll
be choosing!

Through the triple-glazed window, a clutch of fit seniors jogged by in masks and pastel track-suits, goldfishing laughter.

– HRT trash, snorted Tilda. That’s my tax dollar. I’ll fix us lunch, shall I? I ordered the Gourmet Special, two minutes in the microwave. They do me a daily delivery, with my knees.

It was a platter for two, with plastic knives and forks: something white with plenty of fat and carbohydrate, and sprinkle-on vitamins from a sachet. Comforting.

– Breaded turkey escalopes, Tilda said after they’d finished it. With cauliflower
dauphinois
.

Hannah pictured a bird in the shape of the country called Turkey, flattened like a lumpy pancake.

– Can they fly? she asked Tilda abruptly.

– I think they’re like ostriches, said Tilda, after a moment. Talking of which, Chunky Choo-Choo on tomorrow’s three-thirty at Mohawk. Fancy a flutter? You can borrow my code. You need to watch her form though, she laid an egg on the track last season!

She laughed, throwing her head back, then looked at Hannah and stopped smiling. She sighed – a small, pained exhalation. In the silence that followed, Hannah had a sudden, sinking sense of what was coming next. She could almost see the words forming themselves in her mother’s brain.

– I don’t know how someone like you ends up as a psychologist.

Hannah folded her arms, pulled back from the table.

– I’ve told you before …

– Well, I don’t understand the difference. Psychologist, statiwhatsit. You need to know about people for that, don’t you? Don’t you? And you’re hardly what I’d call a people person.

There was no real point in replying. Slowly, Hannah pulled at one of the elastic bands on her wrist, then let it snap sharply against her skin. It hurt.

– Industrial psycho-statistician, said Hannah.

She looked away from her mother, out through the window at the rhododendrons and the camellias.
Go
, she thought.
Go now. Escape. Out
. Clouds freighted with the beginnings of rain.

– You don’t need people. I’ve told you. It’s all on paper. Or on screen. Or on CD ROM.

She took the elastic band off her wrist and swiftly scrunched
her wispy hair into a little ball. With the elastic around it, and bits sticking out, it sparkled like nylon hay.

– So what are you working on now then?

– It’s confidential, said Hannah, reaching for her mask. Using the inhaler was a tactic she’d adopted in childhood, to gain – quite literally – breathing space. Sometimes the need was genuine, and urgent, but often, with Ma, it was more complicated.

– You could give me the gist, Tilda reproached her plaintively.

Hannah felt a flash of anger. Her mother always did this.

– Just Hotline duty, she said reluctantly.

– Oh really? asked Tilda, smiling. It’s a lovely service! I get special rates.

Hannah felt the annoyance mounting.

– Do you realise that when you ring up it’s a machine asking you the questions? she blurted. Then instantly regretted breaking protocol.

Tilda flushed deep red.

– Well, they’re very clever, aren’t they, these computer programs, she said finally, twisting in her seat. A good sight cleverer than real people, I reckon. They’ve done an excellent job.

But she looked slapped. A small itchy silence.

– Nice arrangement, tried Hannah, indicating some red sticks emerging from a flat vase on the television cabinet.

– It’s not finished, said Tilda defensively. It needs pods. She pulled off a fluffy slipper, laid it on her lap and stroked it like a cat. Her lips puckered into a knob.

– What happened to that young man at Head Office then, she asked, the technical one who you were on that course with?

Hannah fingered the plastic tube of her inhaler. She should have seen this coming.

– Nothing happened, Ma, she said tersely. You know that. We’re just friends.

– Friends, spat Tilda. That’s very trendy, isn’t it, to be just friends with a man.

Hannah said nothing. Looked at the Ikebana. Wondered what kind of pods you’d –

– I expect you’re still a virgin then, blurted Tilda. She flushed. Looked shocked with herself, but pleased too.

Hannah swiftly shoved the small mask over her nose and mouth and inhaled deeply.

A terrible silence flapped its wings between them.

An hour later, Hannah was back in Harbourville, breathing in the zestful, wake-up smell of peppermint. Walking from the tram station along the estuary embankment, watching the reflection of Head Office ripple out in broken stars, she felt a little zing of relief to be home. In her small apartment on the tenth floor of the ziggurat, she watched the news. The yes choice had been over 95 per cent. The nos would be questionnaired.

The departmental celebration party was at six.

As she cut herself a strip of bubble-wrap from the big roll by her bed, and then fought with the flaps and zips of her yellow party dress, she again tried to picture a turkey. Annoyed at her lack of recall, and curious, she flicked on the encyclopaedia and ran a search. And there was a bird-creature called a turkey, its bottom-feathers arranged in a curious flip-out fan at the back, its wattles red. She clicked to hear its cry, and the turkey jiggled its red wattles and opened its beak to release a low chattering bark rising to a squawk.

The bird-creature looked nothing like what she had eaten at lunch.

Life kept doing this.

* * *

She shared the lift with a tall blond man, youngish, wearing earphones: a field associate. He was handsome, with the soap-sculpted face of a mannequin, but he had a defeated look about him. His strong jaw swivelled as he chewed gum. When he asked her which floor, she could see the crinkled blob of it in his mouth: a bright, frightening green.

– Nineteen. Please.

– Festival party? he asked. His eyes were blue.

She nodded and looked at the floor, feeling his eyes on her as they shot upwards. Always too fast; she hated the lurch of it. Yet you were never quite sure when you were in motion, and when you’d stopped.

– It’s Hannah Park, isn’t it, he asked. She saw the blob again. I’ve seen you before, he said. Planning meeting. You’re in Munchhausen’s, right?

– Yes, said Hannah. She felt uncomfortable. She never ceased to be puzzled by the ease with which her colleagues struck up these mini-encounters with each other. She’d seen it happen time and again; people beginning a conversation with a virtual stranger, like this, and ending up friends, or enemies, or lovers. Fleur Tilley had slept with fifteen people in Customer Care alone, according to e-mail gossip. In lunchbreaks. On office floors. Someone from In-house Surveillance tipped her off about the spot checks in return for –

Hannah reached in her pocket for her bubble-wrap.

– This may be the last time you see me, the man volunteered, chewing more fiercely. I’m being questionnaired.

He must have done something or said something quite serious. Hannah wondered if he might be drunk.

– What happened? she asked reluctantly. The lift stopped. She wasn’t used to this.

– I said we were drones.

– Drones? she asked, as they stepped out.

– You know. Like worker bees. Servicing the queen. It was just a quip. But I said it to the wrong guy.

– Uh-huh, mustered Hannah. Drugs maybe, she thought. You could get them.