Our Tragic Universe

  'I saw the poster in the café,' I said. 'Why's he coming to Totnes?'

  'He's been before. He's connected to Dartington in some way. I saw him last time he came; that was how I found out about his theories.'

  I sighed. 'Oh, well, at least Kelsey Newman doesn't tell you that you have to pay money into his foundation or sign up for his website. He doesn't have a range of clothing, or jewellery that "might bring you luck".'

  'You're really down on these people today,' Josh said. 'More than usual.'

  'Oh—I'm doing this feature for the paper on New Age self-help books. My editor thought it was a good idea after he saw my review of Newman. I had no real idea about just how much crap there is out there. You know what I don't understand? Say there was a mysterious life force, or energy, or Qi, or Energia, or whatever in the universe that meant you could heal people or tell the future. Say you found out how to use it. Surely you'd be a very enlightened person, in tune with everything, and you wouldn't need to flog books to the public about it? If you did write a book about harmony with the universe, surely you'd give it away for free? Or you'd at least write it and be done with it—not churn out another ten books on the same subject because your publisher's putting pressure on you because there's such a market for your bullshit. In fact, if you were in harmony with the universe you'd probably write brilliant novels or something, or paint great pictures—not write self-help books. I read this book on cosmic ordering that has clearly earned the author more money than he's got from cosmic ordering, which just goes to show. And none of these people can write a sentence.'

  'Ouch,' Josh said. 'You're right, of course. But I do think all of that is just there to distract you from the real stuff.'

  'What, as in a conspiracy?'

  'Not necessarily. Just that you're always going to see fraudsters and tricksters out there on the street, peddling what they've got, because there's no other way for them to live. If you could do real magic you wouldn't need to have a stage show, I assume. Or write a book about it. You'd live quietly in a cottage somewhere and no one would know. Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it isn't there: think of genes, for example, or sound waves. And for every hundred terrible books on Tarot or poltergeists, there's one good one that does expand your understanding of the world somehow. You just have to know where to find it.'

  'But what's the point of it all?' I said. 'This universe that's just data. I mean, let's say you're right, and magic is as easy as putting a shortcut on a desktop if only we knew it, and that Newman's right and you have to live a heroic life and prove yourself before you can properly access all this. What's it for? Even if there are magic and dragons and adventures on flying carpets in eternity with your perfect soul mate—what would make anyone bothered about it? Why would anyone do anything at all? If nothing is matter, how can anything matter? If nothing's material, then everything's immaterial, if you see what I mean. Death has to be what defines life, since living things are those things that will die but are not yet dead.'

  As I spoke I saw Dartmouth in my mind: the same winter scene in which I'd bought my first balls of wool, just before Christmas. I saw people trudging to the shops in the gloom to buy items to magic the gloom away. As I had at the time, I saw the people themselves, already bad copies of pictures in magazines, ageing, breaking, dying, for no reason at all, just like everything they ever bought. Not long after that I'd drafted something like a science fiction story about a society of people who have been cursed to think that everything is more exciting than it is. So each time two of them kiss in a disco, they imagine they are embarking on a perfect romance. Their daily lives are spent trading what they believe to be very complex items. The people will lie, kill or steal for these items, which they believe to be love potions, beauty creams, elixirs of success or even flat-pack fairy castles. But in fact all they are trading are empty cardboard boxes, which they stack up in their houses until there are too many and then they throw some away.

  Josh tilted his head. 'What do you mean? Why would you choose to die if there was an alternative?'

  'I don't know. But there must be more to life than ending up in a cave fighting a monster and then coming back and doing it all again in some other way.'

  The shrivelled man in the wheelchair suddenly gasped and threw back his head as if he was dying: a real-life death, if that was possible, not just something from my imagination or a hypothetical discussion. I got up, took a step towards him and then didn't know what to do. His head was frozen at a strange angle, and his mouth was open. I looked at Josh, but he had turned the other way. I tiptoed towards the man, but as I did his head fell forwards again and he let out the second half of his snore. I sat back down and Josh giggled.

  'That's amazing,' he said. 'I thought he was dead.'

  'Me too. My God.'

  'That's the best snore I've ever heard.'

  'You should hear Christopher.'

  'I have,' he said. 'On those hideous camping holidays when we were kids. I'm sure they contributed to my psychological problems.' He yawned. 'Anyway, I think you're completely wrong about everything, and I think Newman will resolve all these issues in his new book.'

  'He doesn't. I've read it. It's yet more blah about how your life is a big quest narrative. There's lots about being a hero and not sitting around eating pizza. Remember all that narrative theory I teach about admirable protagonists and character arcs? It's basically that, but at the end of time.'

  'How have you read it? It's not out for another month.'

  'I've got an uncorrected proof,' I said. 'From the newspaper. I'll lend it to you if you like.'

  Josh smiled. 'Thanks,' he said. 'I've been waiting for that book for ages. I bet there's more to it than you say there is.' He looked at the door Christopher had gone through, and then back at me. 'So, even though you clearly have some reservations, will you come?'

  'What, to hear Kelsey Newman?'

  'Yeah. I think it'll be really interesting. It was last time. He explains things really well.'

  'I don't know. Maybe. What date is it again?'

  'The twentieth of March.'

  That was the day before the opening of the Labyrinth. I'd had plans to take Frank and Vi out that night, but of course those plans were all shot to pieces now.

  'I'll need to check my diary.'

  'Well, let me know when you decide. We can go together. Maybe eat first, like have a pizza at Rumour or something?'

  'Yeah. I'll let you know.'

  'Oh—on a different note, any news on the Zeb Ross job?'

  'I'll know in mid March,' I said. 'But keep your fingers crossed. You—or whoever does it—will be a recluse with some sort of disfigurement. That's all I know.'

  'What sort of disfigurement?'

  'We're just trying to work that out.'

  'Like, a real one? Am I going to have to have surgery?'

  I laughed. 'You knob,' I said. 'Of course not.'

  Josh laughed too. Indeed, we were both still laughing when Christopher came out with the X-ray results, which showed he had broken his hand in three places and would not be able to do any manual work for at least six weeks.

  The ferries would have stopped for the night, so I drove back to Totnes and then down the Lanes to Dartmouth. Every time we went over any sort of bump, Christopher whimpered and clutched his hand, but apart from that he said nothing. I half-wanted to say sorry, but I didn't, because I also half-wanted to scream at him that it was his own fault, that everything he was upset about was his own fault. I knew he probably wanted to say something to me about Josh. Had I been flirting with him again? Why had we been laughing together? And what would I say back to that? No, I'm not in love with your brother; I'm strangely attracted to a man twenty-five years older than me whom I can never have. But in any case I'm not sure I love you any more, and I didn't want to be anywhere near you this evening because you're a fucking lunatic. My thoughts were storming through my head like a mob with pitchforks. What the hell had he been thinking
, punching walls and ruining everyone's evening? How dare he be silent now? If he wanted to say something stupid about Josh why didn't he just do it? But after a while I let the angry mob go their own way. I was tired, and the hedgerows on the Lanes made me feel protected, although from what I wasn't sure. I imagined, again, crawling into a badgers' set, although this time Rowan was with me. We became Mr and Mrs Badger and lived happily ever after, cosy and snug underground.

  I couldn't believe I'd mentioned that ESP book to Rowan. It had activities in the back that I had done as a child, and although I had vague recollections of Rosa being impressed that I was able to move a pendulum in a glass just by concentrating on it I imagined that Rowan would think I was a complete idiot if he knew. Rosa and I once spent a rainy Saturday afternoon making up cards with symbols on them, and we took it in turns to guess which one the other was looking at. We also practised remote viewing, and we used to go to the park and take it in turns to be blindfolded and follow the other's telepathic instructions to arrive at a marker on the ground. I remembered that we'd had some spectacular results, or at least we thought we had at the time.

  Between times, as we drank fizzy drinks and ate biscuits in my bedroom, we had delicious, half-whispered conversations about Rosa's poltergeist. It didn't hurt anyone, apparently, just threw things around every night. Her parents had booked an exorcist, but she made me promise not to tell my parents this. Apparently her father had said my father would not approve. Of course, my father did find out, probably from Caleb. He didn't disapprove at all; not exactly. He said the poltergeist was a figment of the Coopers' imaginations, and that if they needed to believe that an exorcist had got rid of the poltergeist in order to remove it from their imaginations, then it was probably a good idea to get one. My mother asked him how imagination made books fall off shelves and fly around the room, and he simply said that this was not happening. My mother said, 'But we hear it every night,' and then he said, 'We don't know what we are hearing.' My thoughts continued to drift as I drove down the Lanes. There were no cars, no people, no animals. I remembered one time when we were on holiday we'd been driving down roads like this and my father suddenly stopped the car, switched off the headlamps and urged us all to look into the darkness. 'I bet you've never seen darkness like this before,' he said. And then we all got out and looked up at the stars, and my father put his hands in his pockets, leaned backwards and said, 'This is what it's like to live on a planet!'

  I hadn't spoken to my father for more than ten years, but I heard he'd become a professor at the university. When he discovered my ESP book and my experiments he didn't get quite as cross as I'd feared. Instead, he sat and lectured me, for hours, long past my bedtime, on every reason why it was stupid to believe in the paranormal. I argued back. I told him that the Chinese used animal precognition to help tell them when earthquakes were likely to happen, and that the Queen had a homoeopath. He asked me why nothing paranormal had ever been conclusively proven in the history of the whole entire world, and I told him, in a small voice, something else I'd read in my ESP book: that paranormal events don't work so well when they are being observed and tested. Then, feeling overwhelmed and tired, I burst into tears. Instead of comforting me, as I thought he would, he said, in a cold voice, 'You are just like your mother,' and left the room. I knew then that I'd lost him for ever.

  Not long after that, Caleb declared that he had converted to Hinduism after reading a book that said something about us all being the 'dance of God. Mrs Cooper and my mother did not approve at all, and said dark things over cups of tea about the oppression of women, and caste systems, and having to marry a man with more qualifications than you, even if you had a PhD, but my father was always ready for a cheerful discussion about the meaning of the universe—as long as it was with Caleb. One day I saw Caleb and my father lying on the Coopers' patio, staring through the cat-flap. Rosa later told me they'd been doing an experiment. Caleb had said that our current understanding of the universe was like watching a cat walk past in front of a small hole. You see the head, and then the body and then the tail, but not the whole cat at once. So you believe the head causes the body to appear, and the body causes the tail to appear, but it's actually a whole cat with no cause and effect at all beyond its simple 'catness. My father had patiently argued that from this perspective the head does cause the body to appear and so on, and that if you were watching a cat walk past in front of a small hole you would never see the body of the cat first, and then the head and then the tail, not because of a mysterious 'catness' but because cats, walking in a straight line, tend to go head first, and in that sense the movement of the cat, its physiognomy, the structure of its legs and so on do cause the head to appear first, and this does in some way cause the rest to 'happen. It was this discussion that had caused Caleb and my father to end up lying there watching through the cat-flap, both hoping for a real-life illustration of their particular argument. The cats, however, were all asleep in the laundry basket upstairs and so my father and Caleb just watched an empty kitchen for a while before the football started.

  The Lanes were still silent. I drove down the bumpy road past the Sharpham Estate and down the hill towards Bow Creek. Christopher clutched his hand as we went over the hump-back bridge by the Waterman's Arms. We passed the Maltster's Arms and Tuckenhay Mill, and then went over another bumpy section of road. Christopher whimpered again.

  'Can you please try to be more careful?' he said.

  'I can hardly get a steamroller and flatten all the bumps.'

  'You could have gone on the main road.'

  I sighed. Indeed I could. I could also have cheered him up by telling him the half-truth I'd constructed, that about £3,000 had suddenly come into my account. We could clear our debts, and he could get some new clothes, and perhaps he could do a short course in heritage studies, or conservation, or something that would help him get the kind of job he wanted. I knew if he could do something he loved every day, then he'd feel a lot better. Perhaps then we'd be OK. But for some reason I didn't say anything. I was still thinking about what Rosa had said in her interview. Of course, they did get an exorcist in the end, but he wasn't able to do anything. He explained why this was. Apparently, in virtually all cases, the reason for a poltergeist like theirs was the effects of the disturbed energy of a pre-teenage child in the immediate vicinity. Real ghosts could be sent back to the Otherworld, or wherever it was that ghosts were supposed to be, but not poltergeists. Poltergeists were a manifestation of misery, angst and childhood uncertainty, and would stop bothering everyone only when the child either grew up or became happier. Poor Rosa was immediately interrogated about all the disturbing things that had happened to her in her life, but the poltergeist went only when Toby and I left with our mother, about six months later.

  The next morning it was raining again. Christopher was out of it in bed on the strong painkillers they'd given him at the hospital, but had begged me not to leave him alone. I'd been planning to see Libby that evening, but it looked as if that was going to be impossible. The rain made things trickle and gurgle outside, and while Christopher slept I sat on the sofa with my laptop, re-establishing my personal email account. There was nothing at all from Vi. There was lots of stuff about the TV deal, though. My new agent had also asked more questions about my novel, and wanted to know whether I might finish it this year. I wrote him a long email about the notebook idea but it looked wrong, so I deleted it all. Then I wrote another long email about how I hoped my career would now be able to progress more in the way I'd originally intended. I hinted that I was embarrassed about my Newtopia books, and asked whether my name would have to appear on the credits if the TV series was actually made. I explained that I wanted to leave genre fiction behind and become known as a serious writer. I tried again to summarise the notebook idea. I looked at what I'd written and realised that I was trying to say something I could not yet say, as if I was designing my own afterlife. I deleted it all and wrote a couple of lines confirming that I woul
d try to finish the novel this year. I'd finish the novel and let that speak for itself.

  Just after I'd gone on the Internet to look at Greek islands, there was a little bleep that told me I had a new email. Had the agent responded already? I flipped from the browser to my inbox and there was a message from Rowan. The subject header was 'Lunch?' The email itself was brief, but it was as if there was a Catherine wheel inside me as I read it. He was sorry he'd been 'odd' on the ferry the other day, and was I free to have lunch any day next week after all? I didn't know what to say back. Yes? Or No? Should I insert an Aristotelian reversal and tell him I didn't think it was a good idea, or just accept and take the ship in a bottle along as an excuse?

  In my Orb Books account there were various messages from board members and regular ghostwriters on the subject of Zeb's disfigurement. These had become rather silly, and Claudia had sent a new message telling everyone off for being childish, and reminding us that Zeb needed a proper character arc, based on cause and effect, and could not have been simply 'abducted by aliens that look like taps'. Could he have learned something from his disability? How has his disability helped him to write? What everyday activities does he struggle with, and how does this help build his character? Someone had almost immediately written back: OK, so back in the '90s Zeb is this moronic rich kid with a Porsche. One day he's on his way from seeing a beautiful girl for lunch, and he's heading to the gym to tone his glistening abs when he gets a flat tyre. He pulls over by the side of the road to fix it and then hears a little yapping noise coming from the electricity generator nearby. Oh no! It's a puppy! Zeb jumps in to rescue the puppy, takes a few thousand volts/amps/whatever it is you get in electricity generators and is then paralysed for ever. In hospital he listens to audiobooks, and because they help him through he decides to help others by writing books, which he must now do with his EYELASHES or at least by dictation, although maybe he has lost all speech ... Someone else had responded: Good—but flat tyre is too much of a random act of God. Maybe a bit episodic? Why does Z feel compelled to save the puppy? Did he have a puppy as a child, before all the rich-kid stuff made him hollow and shallow? Is he trying to get back to this state? Then Claudia had reminded everyone that the disability would probably be better as a simple disfigurement, as originally suggested, and must be attractive. We're thinking more Harry Potter's scar than the Hunchback of Notre-Dame, people! she said. The kind of thing you'd put on a visa application as a distinguishing feature. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES does Zeb write novels with his eyelashes.