Ventriloquists (30 page)

WHAT U DOING? Yasser had texted.

U OK? X, he had thumbed a half hour after the first message, at 10:37.

I’M IN CAR PARK, NEXT TO MECHANIC, read his last words on the subject. TEXT ME U OK.

The house was silent; probably Chris had gone to bed – she had minutes to spare to let Yasser know that she was fine so far. The problem was… she
wasn’t
fine: she really needed to urinate. Her body wasn’t joking anymore.

In the darkness she fingered the cold sides of the utility room sink. There was no plastic bowl in the sink; her stream would not make much noise… would it? Shyleen unbuttoned her trousers and lowered them to her knees along with her thong. It took her two attempts to hop backwards on to the sink unit; when she managed to do so, she could not kill a sigh that poured out with her pee.

And that was when Chris found her.

5.

‘I want some answers,’ said Yasser.

‘Well, aren’t
you
the man.’

‘I’m serious, Maggie.’

‘I don’t doubt you. Do you want some tea?’

‘Not the shit tea you serve. Are you serious?’

‘Yeah. Yeah I was as a matter of fact.’

Maggie grinned like a dolphin; there was nothing lovely about this smile.

‘Take a seat why don’t you.’

‘I’d rather stand,’ Yasser answered.

‘How Oscar Wilde. Well, suit yourself. I’m brewing up.’

Yasser took a look around the well-familiar environment. ‘Why did you film me?’ he asked.

Dressed in a tightly-wrapped dressing gown, with slippers on her feet, Maggie stood still at the stove. Water in the kettle was already boiling; steam mingled.

‘For fun?’ Yasser demanded.

‘Yeah, why not for fun? Do you feel you’ve been disadvantaged in some way?’

Yasser coughed and cleared his throat. ‘How did Branston get hold of it?’ he managed to say.

‘
Who’s Branston?’ Maggie poured milk into two hefty mugs.

‘My film teacher.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘It was Tommy then. Or Max.’

‘Or me da,’ Maggie added, pouring water from the kettle into the mugs.

‘…Do you know what I came here to do, Maggie?’

‘Confess your sins? Declare your undying infatuation?’

‘
No. Burn your caravan to the ground. I even bought petrol.’

‘Good riddance to the dump,’ Maggie answered. ‘Here’s your shit tea. Just the way you don’t like it.’

‘Thanks… But
why,
Maggie?’

‘Jesus. You assume
choice?
’

‘Well, who forced you? The Brazilian?’

‘Me father forced me, that’s who. Oh do sit
down
,’ Maggie added as she did as she’d instructed. ‘You’re making me a bag of nerves.’

‘That’s rich.’

‘Which is more than I can say for this brew.’

Despite himself, Yasser laughed. ‘Maybe I should burn Tommy’s down instead,’ he said.

Maggie raised her free hand and said, ‘Your funeral!’

‘Yeah that’s right.’ He sipped his tea; it was woefully familiar – as bleak as a weekday hangover. ‘Do you want to help?’

‘Can’t say I’m not tempted.’

‘Go on, live a little. You should be getting out of this shithole anyway.’

Maggie smiled: a nicer, more genuine smile this time, it subtracted a dozen years from her weary façade. ‘Now it’s
career advice
you’ll be giving, eh Yass? Well, that’d be fine from anyone other than a bloody market trader living with his parents.’ And she laughed like a faulty cistern.

‘Thanks.’ Yasser had believed himself to be unprovokable; to be indifferent to another further slur. He had thought himself coolly professional (of all things) in his intentions to perpetrate arson. After all, he had endured the initial threat, then an actual physical assault, and the embarrassment of his brown arse bopping by camera light… not to mention the wealth of verbal insults that he’d taken in fairly good grace in the weeks since he’d first entered onto the driveway of this godforsaken camp. He’d nearly been savaged by that bastard hound Excalibur; he suspected that he’d had his petrol siphoned; he was certain that the whole experience had taken years off his lifespan in worry alone, and that was before he stopped to consider (he tried not to but sometimes in the night, when the dark thoughts crowded, he couldn’t help himself) the irreplaceable amount of time that he’d misspent on Maggie so far… And now
this?
And now she was teasing him for the fact that his life seemed to lack prospect and direction?

Well, to Hell with her.

‘Who are
you
to criticise
me
for living with my parents?’ Yasser said as calmly as he could manage. ‘Unless this is all a big show, you’re hardly a high flier yourself, babe! And who is it you share this box with, again? Oh that’s right: your fucking
father
. So don’t come the Lady Muck with me, Maggie. At least I’m
trying
.’

Maggie’s eyes had turned flinty. ‘Trying what, exactly?’ she demanded.

As Yasser answered ‘I’m studying, aren’t I?’ in a tone of voice that made clear his frustration, he could not help wondering what it was – what it was exactly – that Maggie was attempting to goad him to say or do. What was he missing? he wondered for the thousandth time. What he been missing all along?

Into the ensuing silence Yasser repeated softly, ‘I’m studying,’ but this time there was something different in his voice. It tasted like shame. Or defeat.

Maggie’s tone was more understanding; she had melted a tad. ‘Yes, you’re studying to be a home porn video maker. I’ll bet your ma and da are’s proud as focken peaches, right?’ And then she turned away from him, all passion spent.

It took a few seconds before Yasser understood that she was silently crying.

He did not attempt to comfort her. Rather than inspiring his sympathy, Maggie’s softly shaking shoulders provoked a sense of distant disgust, like something unpleasant viewed not at the time but through the lens of memory. Inexplicably Yasser found himself thinking of a legion of bluebottle flies feasting on a lump of dog crap on a pavement. So strong was the connection that the first shake of his head was insufficient to rinse the image away; it took him another two goes before he was successful. And even then he felt unclean.

Tick tock goes the clock,
he heard his father say into the part of his brain that nurtured guilt. He had to be getting back to Shyleen. Say the man was more than a gambler. Say he liked a bit of rough. How would Yasser’s conscience ever recover? He had to be leaving…

And yet.

Where’s the camera man this time? he wondered. If Maggie was playacting for another taste of his penis, he wanted to know at what angle he would be captured. (He was aware of his best side.) But somehow he did not think that tonight a fuck was on the cards.

‘I’m not going to say anything to hurt you, Maggie,’ Yasser explained.

‘Well that’s a relief.’

‘Not deliberately hurt you, anyway.’

‘Thanks for the warning,’ Maggie muttered, now turning to him once again. ‘Sorry about that. I must be pre-menstrual.’

‘I was going to suggest exactly the opposite.’

Maggie smiled. ‘You think I’m pregnant?’

Yasser shrugged.

‘Oh I see,’ she went on. ‘You think I borrowed you to
get
pregnant. What a focken charmer you are, Yass, really. Cuz we’re all the same, all us focken Pikeys, so we are. Why buy it if we can steal it, right?’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Yasser.

‘Then why don’t you make me a
film
about what you meant, because as God made little apples your spoken word is a dismal bloody failure, so it is.’

Yasser sighed. ‘I’m trying to be civil.’

‘Comes with an effort, does it?’

‘So why can’t
you
be?’

‘Be civil?’ Maggie laughed. ‘Oh you poor lamb, you wanna see me when I brew up a
real
head of steam – or rather you don’t. So listen. For clarification, if for nothing else, okay? I did not take you into me bed in order to squeeze a child out of you, Yasser. In point of fact, you have
no idea
quite how racist some of the people are on the land, and you make it from me that a child with an Asian boy wouldn’t do me immediate prospects any focken favours. Or me long-term prospects either, for that matter. Chances are I’d be out on me arse. So no: I did what I did because I
wanted
to; because I fancied a bit and I was fairly certain you liked me too. I could’ve been wrong, of course, but as it turned out I wasn’t. So take it as a compliment.’

‘I do.’

‘Good. Of course – if you didn’t pull out in good time then we’ll have to cross that particular bridge when we reach it. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ Yasser answered. ‘But did you know it was being filmed? Be honest.’

Maggie shrugged and sipped her tea. ‘Naturally I did. They film me every night.’

Yasser raised his eyebrows. ‘
Excuse
me?’

‘You heard. They like to keep me scared – under their thumb, like.’ She paused; exhilaration and relief at finally confessing something had made her a little breathless. Her bosom swelled, as if on waves of lust.

The need to hear more was strong in Yasser, but pictures of Shyleen formed colourfully, vibrantly. What was she doing right now? Was she safe? Yasser fought an urge to remove his phone; he wanted to text her. Ideally he wanted to produce his phone and read a message from his cousin that read: I’M PERFECTLY FINE. DO AS YOU WANT FOR A COUPLE OF HOURS – as unlikely as such a communiqué happened to be.

Nothing seemed more likely to destroy the mood, however, than producing, in front of Maggie’s eyes, the one non-human material link to Shyleen that Yasser owned: the mobile phone. So he sat where he was, still wondering if he was on camera somehow, and tired to think of good words to offer… The problem was that every time Maggie opened her mouth, Yasser’s only plausible response was a question to put to her: and Q and A took
time.
Too much time (thinking again of Shyleen); but how could he stop this now? It was like being in a maze, and everything that Maggie told him took him to ever-greater numbers of pathways to choose from.

Despite any intentions that he might have had to clear things up tonight (including arson), it was apparent that he wriggled, more pinned down than ever before.

At great length his brain showed him the next question to ask… although a bigger question loomed above all of the others.
Why are you telling me this now?
From Maggie’s point of view, what had changed? What had put her in the mood for confession?

‘Why do they want to keep you scared?’ Yasser asked.

Maggie’s eyebrows flattened: she was serious. Whatever she was close to saying would make her miserable, but at least she was being serious.

‘To punish me,’ she said at last.

6.

So engrossed had Shyleen been in the transient satisfaction of micturation that she had not so much as heard him move through the house. Dressed only in boxer shorts, he had come downstairs for a glass of water and had heard Shyleen clambering onto the sink unit… and then the sound of water drilling against the basin.

Chris turned on the light. When he saw Shyleen perched on her unlikely throne, he did not gasp, but the girl side-on in front of him did. And then she turned away from him, faced the beige wall, and said, ‘Do you
mind?
’ But Chris did not move an inch: his vision feasted on the girl’s left buttock, crushed on the lip of the unit, her brown thighs, and the pubic hair that she had shaved into the shape of a question mark (for Yasser).

‘Wanna tell me why you’re pissing in my sink?’ Chris inquired.

‘Can’t you wait?’ Shyleen demanded, still facing the wall.

‘Couldn’t
you?
’

‘No I couldn’t as a matter of fact.’

Chris took a step into the tiny room, for a better view. A smile flickered on his features when he confirmed that it was indeed a question mark, and he watched the top of her legs as they opened slightly, any further movement impeded by the trousers throttling her knees.

Shyleen asked, her voice softer than before, ‘Good show?’

‘Yes,’ Chris answered.

‘But what if your wife comes home?’

‘She’s gone,’ was the simple response; and as the last drops of Shyleen’s urine tapped against the sink, with the aroma a cloud in the air, Christ bent at the waist and pushed the trousers and thong further down to the intruder’s ankles. And then over one foot. The clothing hung from her right foot, and Chris stepped up against Shyleen’s perched body while she opened her thighs wide.

The erection in Chris’s boxer shorts was all but ready; he was hard enough to ease his penis into Shyleen’s warmth, which he accomplished with the girl leaning back against the taps.

They both felt feverish and strange (and would later query if it had indeed happened) but Chris answered Shyleen’s shaved question mark with a subvocalised ‘Yes.’

And thrust against her.

7.

‘Why do they want to punish you?’ Yasser wanted to know.

Maggie stood up and took their mugs to the sink. ‘For losing me child,’ curled in her wake.

There really
had
been a child? Yasser had all but discounted the very possibility. He had long since concluded that Maggie had lied about the abduction; but now his function – that of baby-finder
extraordinaire
– returned to focus all that he’d learned up to now into one amorphous lump.