“And he . . . he is afraid of her kindness, that it will break something in him, some resolve. He is afraid to be loved, because he is unworthy. He is too ashamed. But also he is angry. So angry, because he is hurt in some way which he thinks is unfair, and he is like a child, he does not know why. And this new job will make it all better. It will make him good again. Make him clean. Make the bad thing go away.”
Ma Lubitsch sets a cup beside me; when she wants to, she can move like a cat. Ma Lubitsch is very good at being the woman she is. Her weight has made her graceful; her bulk has made her strong. She has brewed a smoky tea, because it is after midnight and we need the sharpness, and she has poured a spot of milk into it to make it smooth. In Ma Lubitsch’s house only she is the arbiter of how you take your tea. She judges by eye, and she awards Darjeeling or Lapsang Souchong or Assam or Pekoe as the moment requires. She gives no quarter to received proprieties of milk and sugar. She picks the vessels too, little cups on hot summer days, thick mugs for winter. Tonight we have some I have never seen, thick with glaze and chipped to reveal the terracotta underneath. Emergency mugs, for moments of desperate need.
“I spoke to James,” this being Jim Hepsobah. Old Man Lubitsch will not acknowledge the contraction. Jim is always James to him, as if Jim’s strength is too great to be contained in a nickname. “Or rather I tried. He was polite. He made small talk. He is . . . very bad at small talk. He passed me to Sally. She lies well. She lies with omission and elision and prevarication and misdirection. She was cheerful. What could possibly be wrong? She was very unhappy.” Old Man Lubitsch sighs.
“And now, you,” he says. “With that face, in the middle of the night. And you are the opposite. You want to run away, as if we will attack you. You expect to be rejected. And yet you have done nothing wrong. Every part of you is certain. You have done nothing wrong. You are angry too, but you are not guilty. Why? Who are you? And why are you here? You are not here to keep secrets. If you wanted to lie, you only had to walk past the door. So. What has my son done to you, that he is running so far and so fast?”
I cannot answer straightaway, but there is no need. There is no time in this room. The fire will burn for ever—Old Man Lubitsch tosses another log on it, and pine sap puffs and steams and burns—and the tea will keep flowing. This is the heart of the world, and I am safe. I draw my thoughts together, and I tell my tale. I do not try to separate my memory from Gonzo’s or to make judgements about what actually happened in a given room. The past is memory, and no two persons’ memories are alike. I know my story, and I tell it as it was for me. I do not skimp when the moment of my genesis arrives. I do not prevaricate. I make the position clear. I am Gonzo’s shadow. I am his imaginary friend made real. I am new.
Ma Lubitsch’s eyes widen, and she draws back, then catches herself and growls. After a moment she leans forward and pokes me tentatively in the arm with one fat finger, watching closely to see if anything happens. When nothing does, she settles into her chair again. Old Man Lubitsch simply nods as if just now understanding something he should have realised ages ago. Neither one of them seems terribly upset at the idea of having a bifurcate in the house.
“I am a monster,” I tell them, in case they haven’t understood.
“Are you?” Old Man Lubitsch wants to know.
“Yes.”
“What is the most monstrous thing you have done?”
Well, now that he mentions it, I can’t recall the last terrible crime I committed. Participated in the Go Away War, perhaps. But human people did that. Gonzo did.
I suggest that being a monster is a matter of fact, rather than action, and Old Man Lubitsch says “Bah.”
Since that seems to be all they have to say about it, I carry on with my story.
SUNRISE on the Aggerdean Bluff is cold. The wind off the ocean is wet, and the air is rich with salt and weed. The waves are quiet and slick, the colour of the sky, so that the horizon line is impossible to find except where the sun is resting on it, white behind a cloud—a world in monochrome after the warm colours of the living room. Old Man Lubitsch is wearing his preposterous fur hat, which is even more like a rat than I remember. Ma Lubitsch is bare-headed, but the bottom half of her neck is wrapped in a tweed scarf, and it climbs at the back so as to take in the lower part of her ears. Her thick coat is the colour of pea soup. When the sun cuts through the cloud, it lights her up golden, and in those brief moments you can see that she was beautiful, still is beautiful. I realise that this is what Old Man Lubitsch sees all the time. His Yelena.
We spent the first part of our walk peering through the doors of the house on Aggerdean Bluff. I offered to let them in, but when we opened the door it seemed like a pointless intrusion. Should I walk them around the house and show them the things which were never there? Here is where I didn’t sleep? This is where a mother I never had never made me breakfast on a stove which never existed? I have no appetite for it, and fortunately nor do they. I lead the way down the hill to the sandpit and show them the game. This is where Gonzo was. There was the ice cream van. You were here. Yes. And Ma Lubitsch remembers the day—of course she does, she remembers every day of that awful month separately and completely—and nods as I flatten out the sand. Yes, this was Gonzo’s game. And mine. She smiles, old love and old pain.
Through Cricklewood Cove, still in shadow, sky dark on the far side. These are my streets. They are still gloomy, but now there are shapes in them, and early risers are brushing their teeth and going to and fro, visible through their windows. We walk more quickly because our silence is oppressive. We’ve had our air, and there are conclusions to be reached. And breakfast to be had, of course. In half an hour the bees will wake, and then by turns the rest of the Cove, and Ike Thermite will be looking for me.
In the hallway that smell again: winter fires and nectar and a bitter bar across the back of the mouth. There’s something animal in it too, something doggy maybe. Perhaps Ma Lubitsch has adopted another stray, a cannibal dog left over from before. (I picture her ruffling its massive head and disciplining it with a smart tap on its thick black nose. “Tcha! No eating! Eating guests is bad. Ju-uuust the play . . . Who’s a good dog? You are! Yes!” And the vast head and scrap of tail waggle as the animal makes plain its willingness to be her eternal servant in trade for her belief—broadly applied and absolutely improbable—that there is good in everyone and everything, and a little pie and friendship will find it out.) But that’s not it, not quite, this elusive flavour in the air. Perhaps it’s just a house smell: rising damp, old furniture and good food.
“You came here to find him,” Ma Lubitsch says abruptly. I am sitting back in my chair by the fire, and she has produced fresh cold juice and bacon fried to make it crisp. You can pick this bacon up in your fingers and pop it in your mouth like a sweet, or sandwich it between layers of brown bread with mayonnaise. Served with Assam and scalded milk, so that there’s something toffeeish in every swallow.
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“Tcha.” Ma Lubitsch is used to people not knowing. That’s what she’s there for. To know, on their behalf, until they know too; to be grumpy at them until they use their heads and figure it out. “You came because of what you are and what he is. Of course you did. And you know what he is doing now.”
I have no idea. And yet of course I do. Something big and stupid, to wipe clean the slate. Something ineffably Gonzo, with fireworks and fanfares, to restore himself in the eyes of the world. Something heroic. And there is no one there to dig him out when it goes wrong. Gonzo is flying solo. He needs help. He needs a second opinion.
Whatever else I am, I am not the sort of person to leave a friend in the lurch. I am, by definition, the other sort. By Gonzo’s definition. I could choose to become a different kind of person. I don’t want to. I’ve met those people. I don’t like them.
I have given myself away—in the face, or the sigh, or something: Old Man Lubitsch nods to himself and says his own personal version of “t
cha,” which is a sort of “hihnf.” It is a noise of confirmation.
“He has a job in the city,” Old Man Lubitsch says. “They came for him. Executives, in person. They made him feel very good. Very important. It was uncomfortable. Yelena was not happy. Gonzo should not need these men to believe in himself, but he did. Without them, he was like a puppet. Slack. Leah also was not happy. She would not say why she was unhappy, but it was the job, of course. She was unhappy with what they asked of him. She was unhappy because he agreed to it.”
“A dangerous job.”
“Perhaps. But also a bad one.”
All this is making Ma Lubitsch impatient. It is man chat, needlessly precise. She raps her husband on the arm, flaps at him to be quiet.
“You must help my son,” she says. “It is who you are. Afterwards, there will be time for the rest. You can be angry with him then. But for now it doesn’t matter. Gonzo needs you.”
Ma Lubitsch understands the mathematics of love. Love is merciless. Love does not count costs, only value. I came here because of a relationship I remembered with two people I had never met. I did not expect them to acknowledge me, to return my affection. I did not expect to find, in this house, family and its attendant responsibilities, but I have. And so I will do what I have always done. I will find Gonzo. I will save him from himself. I will be a friend, in spite of all of it. Where is Gonzo? He has gone deeper into whatever enemy plan is at work.
Very cosy, Bumhole. Fraught with charm and personal growth. Now, could we return with some dispatch to the matter of cui bono? Because while you are having a group hug, you may be reasonably certain that your unfriend out there—whom we shall term the Evil Mastermind, Bumhole, so as to keep matters clear for your tiny brain—is occupying himself with further nefarious doings, most likely on present showing to be in the nature of mayhem and death. Am I right?
Yes, Ronnie, you are.
Simultaneous with this realisation comes another, even less welcome. I am standing. My eyes are moving and my limbs are light. Something is wrong. I listen. There: that silence was not a silence. It was the gap between two very faint sounds. Another. Tahhh . . . pahhh . . . [pause] . . . tahhh . . . pahhh . . . [pause] . . . The noise of footsteps, very quiet.
I move to the breakfast tray and cover my fingers in bacon fat, then transfer it to the hinges of the door. Wait. Don’t hurry. Listen . . . now. The person is not in the hall. He—or she—is upstairs. More, the next step is . . . now, which is the perfect time to open the door. It glides on bacon fat and more ordinary greases, Old Man Lubitsch’s home maintenance at work. I slip out into the hall. In the kitchen there are harmless domestic items which might be pressed into service as weapons. I should have asked Old Man Lubitsch about his home defence. Perhaps it is a big stick. I would like a big stick right about now.
The kitchen is on the north side of the house. It is still dark. The hallway is light. Move quickly.
Kitchen door. Open it. Step through.
A bee buzzes past me, a glinting, metallic bee with sharp wings. Like every other bee in history, it imagines it can pass magically through glass. Unlike every other bee, this one is right. The window breaks. This is not one of Old Man Lubitsch’s bees. It is another sort. The window shatters. I keep moving, or rather my body keeps moving: it ducks, smoothly and unfussed, weaves around and about, and my hand slaps wood as I vault over Ma Lubitsch’s kitchen table. Stout construction, it barely notices my passing. More bees float past, angry about something. One of them is a bad navigator, buries its head in the larder door. It is a most curious bee, with five sharp points. A shuriken bee, very rare. Very specific. Five spikes around a central hub, you flip it like a Frisbee or a playing card. Kill with it. Tool of butchery, indeed. My body is still moving; I twitch the shuriken bee out of the larder door, send it back the way it came, slip away as more bees fly into the shadows of the kitchen. Real bees would never do this, they like light and sun. Old Man Lubitsch’s bees converged on bulbs and glowing rods. These bees are evil bees, bees of darkness. Fear the evil bee. I do. But I cannot hide from it for ever. I cannot leave Gonzo’s parents to face the Evil Apiarist alone.
For a moment there’s a single figure silhouetted in the corridor. Bad ninja! You are revealed! Your teacher will hit you with a bamboo stick for this behaviour. If I don’t get you first. I bowl a copper pot at him and whip away again, using available cover. In this case the available cover is the kitchen wall. Thus, he knows I must come through that doorway. He will assume I must come from right or left. I wait. The softest of steps, one, two. Deliberately loud enough to hear. I am invited to gamble. Come from the left, and maybe he will guess wrong, maybe he will not be fast enough to adapt. Ho, ho, ho. He has a weapon of some sort, sharp. He will be holding it horizontally. Both my options are bad options. Don’t gamble. The house always wins.
This is my house.
I step back, bounce off the lip of the kitchen counter and catch the door frame. I slither through the doorway at head height, feet first, my hands hinging me and the lintel a brief caress on my hair as I pass. The apiarist is all in black, and he has got pollen on him from climbing Old Man Lubitsch’s trellises to reach the upstairs window. He carries a formidable thingummy with beak-like blades at each end. My feet slide over the top of it, take him in the chest, and he staggers. I land badly, try to roll back into the kitchen. The ninja springs back to his feet, whirring. If only I had some Tupperware. Must be some in the kitchen. Too far.
Damn.
He doesn’t kill me because he misjudges how winded I am from falling on (as it appears) Old Man Lubitsch’s leather umbrella stand. Instead, the blunt bit of the thingummy hits me in the shoulder. White light. Pain. Idiot. You’re fighting like Gonzo. I’m not sure whose voice it is. It’s right.
The ninja flourishes his beak-like thingummy, slashes at me. I roll away. My arm is useless. It’s not broken; it’s just switched off. Left hand only then. Slow. Relax. Think. He is strong, but I am skilled. The only enemy is timing. The only danger is fear. Master Wu’s garden, endless hours of practice. Elisabeth Soames’s mute approval as she helps me out of the fish pond. The thingummy blurrs. I step. None of my limbs comes off. The thingummy wheels away to one side with a clatter. I hit the ninja in the nose with my elbow. He hits me back. We tumble out into the garden. Real fights are undignified. Only true masters make them look effortless. I am not one. He pokes me in the eye. Master Wu would be disappointed. This is not how it’s done. I can’t find the quiet place in my head from which to fight. But hey, it’s my first time.
The ninja hits me again, gets to his feet and snaps into a sort of “ready” posture while he tries to decide which way to kill me, and then there comes a quite remarkable noise. It goes: WHACK-LUTSCHSCHslutchscludderpankpank.
The ninja stops absolutely still. He makes a sort of sad little sound of his own, a child-like reproach. And then he falls forward on his face. Ike Thermite is standing behind him, with a plank. It looks like a fence post.
“Was that right?” Ike says. “He was attacking you. So I hit him.” He waves the plank. It appears to have a couple of nails sticking out. Spare fence posts are piled against the side of the house, ready for deployment. This is probably not what Old Man Lubitsch had in mind for them. “Is he going to be okay?” Ike Thermite says. “Because I only really wanted to knock him out.”
The ninja has two largish holes in the back of his head. There is white stuff coming out. He shakes.
“I saw all the planks,” says Ike Thermite cheerily. “Gosh, there are a lot of planks. But I couldn’t decide which one. And then I thought, what the hell are you talking about, it really doesn’t matter which one. Only I think perhaps it does. Yes? Because this one has nails in it . . .”
The ninja stops moving. The smell of blood is rather acute.
“Oh dear,” Ike Thermite says. There is brain matter on his shoe. “That’s quite unpleasant.” He drops the plank and passes out.
I have been saved from death
by a specialist in physical theatre. This is bad. Sadly, it is not the worst thing about this moment. The worst thing is that the dead man has five friends—or at least colleagues—standing in the azaleas.
Ma Lubitsch throws a bucket of perfumed furniture polish out of the living room window. It mostly lands on Ike Thermite. A healthy dose of it splashes on me. If this was an attempt to wake Ike and unleash his dreaded Mime Powers, it does not work. Ike stays down. I have nectar goo on my trousers. If it comes to a fight—and it will—I’m going to be all sticky. I hear a voice, surprisingly calm and very dignified.
“May I have your attention, please?” says Old Man Lubitsch. “You are on private land. You are not welcome. You were not invited. You have offered violence to my house. I would like you all to leave.”
The five remaining ninjas look at him. I turn to look too. Old Man Lubitsch is standing next to his beehives. He is standing, in fact, next to the large black hive he was building the last time I came to Cricklewood Cove. It is tall and oddly shaped, ugly where the others are uniform little whiteboard houses. Clearly, he feels it represents some sort of threat.
The ninjas don’t. They step forward. Old Man Lubitsch shrugs. He reaches up and pulls the lid off the hive. And then, demonstrating that sanity has absolutely passed him by today, he gives it a solid kick.
The noise which emerges from the big hive is a deep Harley-Davidson growl of warning. Quite apparently, the occupant is a mutant bee. Gonzo’s father has raised a single, furious, man-size bee with teeth like razors. It is a guard bee. Even the ninjas pause. The nearest one is about eight feet from me, and from Ike Thermite. He looks as if he doesn’t like the idea of fighting a giant bee very much.
Old Man Lubitsch kicks the hive again. It explodes.
It doesn’t actually explode, of course, but the phenomenon is remarkably similar. There is a noise as of war in heaven. A black shadow crosses the face of the sky like the end of days, racing out from the hive in a circle which expands until it covers all of us. We are struck by a thousand tiny impacts, like a shower of gravel: bees landing, swooping, tasting.