By four o’clock I was weary and feeling a bit paranoid, in case the CCTV cameras picked me out and the police came to arrest me. By five o’clock I was ready to give up, but decided on a last sweep of the area before heading for home. As I turned into the slip road for one last recce I expected to see nothing more than the dirty grass verge again, but this time I was in luck – a patch of red caught my eye (hallelujah!). It was Oggy’s rucksack. Eureka! It was him sure enough: he was there by the side of the road, waiting to be picked up again, his left arm held aslant in a hitching pose. I squealed to a halt and made a big show of being surprised.
Fancy meeting you here again! I said genially as he piled into my BMW. This time he ponged a bit, I noticed, and I definitely smelt alcohol on his breath. He was less together than he was the first time we’d met, but I turned a blind eye (to his language especially, it was much too colourful for the Bible Class!). Dear God, what a week he’d had. Poor Oggy had bought a present for his handicapped niece (poor little girl, what with only one eye working properly and terrible epilepsy, but so precious, so special) then the poor little mite had been rushed into hospital with meningitis. While they all cried and prayed by her bedside (I was glad about that) a thief had broken into the house and ‘nicked’ all the girl’s birthday presents, plus all the money they’d saved to send her to Lourdes (Oggy knew who’d done it, he’d get the b******). There was even more bad news after that; I ended up choked with emotion and close to tears. This time I gave him sixty pounds and presented him with a surprise gift – a mobile phone we’d bought for him (Ruth Godwin’s idea – not too grand, bog standard and no camera) so we could keep in touch with him. He was delighted (well made up guv) and he shed a couple of tears himself when I dropped him off where he asked, the car park of a McDonald’s. As I drove off I saw him take a bottle out of his pocket and toss his head back to drink its contents. Poor bloke, he needed something to steady his nerves after a week like that.
The first thing I did when I got home was to put Oggy – 07933 703 940 in neat turquoise writing in my new address book. I felt pleased I’d solved the problem of the empty O section, and I hummed in the shower as I prepared myself for the Bible Class. During tea I rehearsed my talk to the club – and to be truthful I prepared all the information on my computer in PowerPoint format. It looked rather good. I put on a newly laundered suit and tried to look my best (as if I was briefing an important new client!) when I joined the rest at the Bible Class.
Meeting Room 2 was absolutely full when I walked in, I was amazed. It took half an hour to register twelve new members (I was particularly impressed with Rachel Forman, Registered Class Member 199!). After prayers we got down to business – nobody wanted to do the usual stuff because they all seemed to be there for the latest news on Oggy. While my laptop warmed up I gave a brief but poignant talk on how I’d found him again, after days of searching among the down-and-outs of Chester (this wasn’t actually untrue, technically, and they’d never have understood the bit about cruising around, since some of them already think I’m gay). I told them that Mary (the little girl) was on a life support machine and the next few days would be critical, so they all had to pray extra hard!
I felt a warm, almost moist wave of compassion when I began my PowerPoint presentation on Oggy, complete with a picture of him, which I’d taken on my mobile.
He’s so handsome! whispered the new girl, Rachel Forman.
And so rugged too, added the girl next to her.
I must admit I hadn’t noticed his looks, and I was slightly miffed that the girls were obsessing about something so superficial. Surely we were trying to save his soul. The collection that night was gi-normous – over two hundred pounds. Oggy’s Moggy was stuffed full of cash when I took her home to be emptied. Rachel Forman phoned me later and we had a nice chat about the evening, so I invited her round on Saturday morning. When she arrived we spent ages talking about Oggy over coffees in the kitchen (her reflection looked really nice in my smoked glass table-top), and for a while she put her hands over mine and held them emotively while she discussed Oggy. I was exhausted and a bit trembly when she left a couple of hours later.
After that, things began to spiral out of control. The whole church became involved, and one Sunday I was asked to address the congregation after morning worship. I got a bit carried away, said I was going to offer Oggy a home with me until he was back on his feet. (Whatever made me say that? Was it the way Rachel Forman looked at me and held my hands in the kitchen?)
I phoned Oggy but couldn’t get hold of him – I suppose I was slightly relieved about that, but the story had its own momentum by now. When I addressed a crowded meeting of the Bible Class one Friday I fell into the pit of sinfulness: I told no lie, but I told no truth either. I said I would live among the down and outs of Chester for a week if everyone in the church gave a tenth of their wage to Oggy’s Moggy that month. Rachel Forman began to talk in tongues and went into raptures – afterwards, in the recovery room, she called out my name and said I was a saint.
And so it came to pass. When I managed to get hold of him, Oggy was all for it. He was there waiting for me when I went to get him, on the slip road, and when I showed him my spare room he tested the bed with a happy grin on his face. All went well: he had a bath and then wore some of my clothes while I put his things through the wash. I gave him a spare key and told him to come and go as he pleased, so long as he took his shoes off by the front door. Meanwhile, I prepared – with a downcast heart – to leave my own home and sleep in a cardboard box (or whatever else these people use) for a whole week. It was at this time, when I was spoken to by Satan himself, that I weakened. Any number of escape routes opened up in front of my eyes. I could accuse Oggy of some unmentionable act or crime and get rid of him, perhaps – but although I’m a weak man, I’m not a bad man, So Help Me God.
So I made a plan. I knew it would cost me money, but it was the only solution.
Oggy helped me along the way by confessing on the second night – after seeing off a whole bottle of expensive malt whisky in my ‘welcome’ cabinet – that his stories were a fiction: they were how he stayed alive. There was no sister, no ‘special’ baby in hospital. Every day for the past five years he’d hitched from his sleeping place – a railway station – to Chester and back, telling stories. He had a gift, he said. Within minutes of getting into a car he could tell what sort of story the driver wanted to hear. I’d been easy, he said. And he was right, I’d been a pushover. But Oggy wasn’t a bad man either – he wasn’t doing anyone any real harm. Merely redistributing wealth, he said, and practising one of the oldest professions – storytelling.
It was a joint decision, in the end. We came to a mutual understanding. He’d always wanted to go to Glastonbury: all I had to do (and it wasn’t much, given my resources) was to book him a ticket and take him there with some spends in his pocket. And then he would disappear out of my life for ever. A few weeks later he was gone, and I have to say I rather miss him (spiritually, you understand, not physically!). In return he gave me two very positive and life-enhancing experiences, which’ll look good on my heavenly CV. He left me a story, which I’ve sold to Reader’s Digest (without mentioning the Glastonbury bit!) and which I’ve told to countless people all over the world. And he’s still in my address book – I call him sometimes, but he’s never there.
Lastly, he found me the love of my life. It’s like a fairy tale – as if Oggy had imagined it all and told it to someone in a car on the road to Chester. Tomorrow I marry Rachel Forman at the church where we met. It will be a day of joy and celebration (and we’ll honeymoon at Glastonbury!). Rachel knows about Oggy. I told her the truth. And that was fine by her, she said, holding my hands in the kitchen and making me tremble. She said she loved me, and she forgave me. Rachel Forman wants to be my wife for evermore.
Glory to God on high – and praise be to St Omobuono of Cremona, who gave all his food and drink to a beggar one day and, on refilling his flask in a stre
am, found it full of wine.
red
IT’S THE hottest day of the year so far and the town lies squat on the ground, a scorched pancake swimming in a syrup of lethargy.
A dying jellyfish stiffens slowly on the sands and a tiny aneurysm drifts within it, a bubble trapped inside its spirit-level skin. A fat old man (who may be me sometime in the future, I’m not sure) lies breathing softly on a hot and tousled bed. His apertures suck the air for oxygen, and the rolling dunes of his body shine with sour sweat. Seeping through the tinnitus of summer he hears ghostly echoes, disembodied hoots and honks from the traffic, and a steady beat which may be the clack of the Chinaman’s wok as he prepares food in the take-away, five doors down from his flat.
Someone arrives suddenly by his bed. A nurse – she wants to puncture him again. His arms are already strewn with violets and bluebells. To her it’s blood, to him it’s ichor. When he was a young god he exchanged the clear liquid of his vigour with lovers, many. Now his lifeblood is dark and turgid. The wok clicks and clacks in the distance, but it’s not the Chinaman – it’s different, a mechanical noise. Where is he?
I want to send a message to this old man. A final memo from me to him, on a day unknown, wet and windy or dry and dusty, I don’t care. A mental note that will arrive during his final few seconds, when his breathing rattles to an end and his eyes puddle into two small plastic jellyfish.
Slowly, he twigs what’s going on around him. They’ve moved him to the hospital. A trading post – he can hear them doing business over his body, bartering. Soon his family will hand him over, swap him for a morning off work and a jarful of ashes, lumpy and grey. The ritual is underway. Someone will throw in a posy of flowers, too, and a couple of damp handkerchiefs. In another room, out of sight, the crucibles are fired up: they’re preparing to melt him down.
The wok’s clack-beat is suddenly irregular. No, it’s a machine. Systolic, diastolic. Someone’s heart. It’s struggling, it’s in crisis. Is the old man on a sweaty bed in his final throes, is he about to depart? There’s a deathly silence.
Listen old man, this is the last story you will hear. Are you listening?
As the nurse skims towards your bed you will hear her soles squeak on the chessboard floor tiles – she will come to you as your body loses its own pattern, begins its slow descent towards ground zero. Moments before the rictus I will be with you for our final exchange. Old man – this is my message, which will be your final thought. When the nurse comes to tattoo more purple on your chest with her electric machine, don’t look at her eyes. Listen to her soles, squealing like two frightened little pigs. Then you’ll remember…
A day in December, long ago. Grey and gruesome after weeks of rain, saturated, a dead cat floating in the water butt, fur all matted together. You were nearly thirty, late twenties for sure. Quite handsome, still in good shape. It was late at night, with cold hard rain. A party going on in the background. Someone was playing an acoustic guitar, someone else was banging spoons on dirty crockery.
There was a house in New Orleans, they call…
God, those parties: raised voices, the usual menagerie of drunken shrieks and laughter. A glass shatters on a floor somewhere and a hoarse collective hooray fills the smoggy kitchen. But you were relatively sober. Why? Perhaps you wanted to keep an eye on her. You always did have a small-town streak in you. Bit of a jerk, really, staying off the booze just to keep tabs on her. If you expect it to happen it will, boyo. Sure as eggs. She ran off in the end, didn’t she? Women don’t like that sort of thing, being watched, doubted. You took a long time to learn. Anyway, round about midnight you heard a squeal of brakes outside the house. Just after the band left. That’s right, you’ve remembered. There was a band there. Hardly anyone noticed them shuffling off because the party had skidded out of control by then. Christ, it’s flooding back now – it was her birthday, nearly everyone legless. The band left, and then you heard the bang. Trademark sounds of the twentieth century: tyres screeching, metal crumpling, glass breaking, then a lone disc of metal – hubcap perhaps – tinkles on the tarmac at the end. It was the same that night so long ago, wasn’t it old man? Are you still with me? Can you hear me through the seeping hiss of summer? Cover yourself man, your gooseskin flanks are naked for all to see. Pitiful. What’s that white residue around your slack old gob – a high tide mark, foam? Medicine perhaps. Don’t go to sleep, you won’t ever wake again. Concentrate. What happened next?
You ran out of the house, yes ran, you old fool. Haven’t done that for a while, have you? There was someone with you. Tall, dark, on the periphery of your social group. Peter? Paul? Don’t start searching your memory, for chrissakes don’t start the ABC thing now, we’ll be here for ever. Is that the idea? Stuck on a hospital ward for eternity going ABCDE what the F was his name, the tall dark boy who came after you through that massive front door, across the wooden footbridge clank clank clank, across the gleaming black pavement and into the road? Can’t remember, won’t ever remember again. Gone forever. He’s a silhouette now, can’t even remember his face, can you? Nice bloke, going out with one of the girls. Good manners, no trace of any dark matter swirling around him. Wholesome, that’s the word, he was nutritious. One day a middle-aged woman will snuffle into her handkerchief and say he was such a lovely man, he was the best daddy in the world. Could be happening right now: hundreds of weeping people, biggest funeral ever seen, popular figure, doting husband, greatly loved father and grandfather. Not like you, old man. So forget him.
What’s that noise… is the Chinaman slapping his wok again, five doors down?
No. It’s closer now. Systolic, diastolic. Dum-dum, dum-dum…
The drum is beating again outside the trading post but this time the drummer’s right by your ear. They’ve wired you up, old man – to a machine. Your private spokesman is describing physical carnage and chaos, that final helicopter flight from Saigon. That faltering, diminishing beat is your own heart, loud-speakered out to those who can’t enter the stadium of death. And the medics, traders in turmoil, dealers in decay, are all around you, striking deals with your mortal friends. When the music stops you’ll be taken away. Swapped for a plastic sweetie jar full of the greyness extracted from you, your honeycomb shattered. Your body will be hot-wired by a gang of po-faced funeral directors, driven around then torched. Yeeee-haaa.
But let’s stay in the past for now. Let’s go back to the accident outside your door, the rolling hubcap, the deathly silence immediately afterwards. You and the nameless, faceless one are standing by a motorbike which is lying on its side in the road. It’s raining slantwise across the orange streetlights so you pull your collar up and study the scene. There has been an accident. A man lies unconscious in the road, near the bike, which is still hot. You can hear end-of-performance, off-stage noises – clicks and clacks, the sound of a cleaner in the wings, sweeping up broken glass.
The bike’s a 250cc two-stroke, you can smell the oil. But the engine is no longer running. The man-boy in the road is wearing black leathers and a full-face helmet. Peering into the visor (because you’ve been taught not to touch this prone figure) you espy that he’s wearing a scarf or a facemask, covering his mouth and nose. Bad news. You also see the band driving off into the night in a big black Mercedes van, their eardrums still too stuffed with noise to hear anything real. Finally, as your dark acquaintance runs into the house to call the emergency services, you notice a trickle of thick black liquid inside the biker’s helmet. The bad news gets worse. Let’s leave it at that for now, old man – you’re exhausted. Have a little rest while I try to recapture the scene.
At this point I can afford to think out loud, since you won’t remember a word I say.
You’re in a side room at the local hospital, it’s a hot and windless day, and your rickety old brain cells – in their piss-stained pyjamas – are having a final dribble up yonder in the Cranial Rest Home for Retired Gentlefolk. By the side of your bed there’s a bleeping monitor, which you keep mist
aking for the Chinaman’s wok five doors down from your flat. Your thin and purple lips are embellished with a white scum-line. You’re alone. That’s worrying. If indeed you are me in the future, old man, scrawny right flank exposed to the stares of passers-by (clutching their Tesco flowers and their pathetic fruit tokens), then there’s much to concern us both. Why is there no-one at your bedside? No concerned children. No worried wife/lover/brother/other. Nobody at all, old man. You must have been a bastard. A sod. A selfish prick.
Me? A sod, a selfish prick? Let’s leave that one alone, let’s not go there. Let’s go back to the crash scene, quick. Feed me another morsel from the past, oh great and masterful brain, before you slip into your tartan slippers and forget which pills you took today, before you fall down the stairs, tangled up with your last and worst dancing partner, Fraulein Zimmer.
No, let’s not go there either. For chrissakes, organise yourself. Control your thoughts. Try to think clearly. Focus. We’re trying to guide an old man through his last moments on Planet Earth, goddess of creation and gluer of all dust and particles into semblances and forms. We’re at the site of a fatal accident, kneeling in a shallow puddle of water, by the dying man-boy you met four hours earlier as he leapfrogged joyously and youthfully up the steps of the Labour Club (helmet in hand, smiling and nodding to you as he bounded past, his buckled leather boots leaving a trail of muddy prints on the hallway floor). You happened to think, as you passed, that his prints would irritate the hell out of the fat Italian cleaning lady who mopped that floor every Sunday morning, her gargantuan, filthy-looking mop trailing stringy bits which reminded you of the puppets’ hair in Rosie and Jim.