Cloud Cuckoo Land Page 6

  They sold great big meringues in the baker’s shop, sugar-white mountain tops. He munched one as he walked, licked his fingers and wiped the front of his coat. OK, so it was dangerous here; wherever you were in the city, all you needed to do was turn left and then left again and you were likely to get stabbed! He thought about testing the theory, then thought, ‘What am I doing here? Why don’t I just go home, all the way home, back to the Norfolk Broads and carry on like I did before, like nothing was going to happen?’ If he could just accept the fact that one day soon, the world was going to come to a sticky end. Well, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? He could probably live quite well on what was left of the borrowed time.

  Leonard could imagine himself taking it easy back home, driving carefully around the traffic islands, sucking on a jelly baby. The glucose syrup, the gelatine and acetic acid would be dissolving in his mouth, the artificial flavourings seeping into his thin blood and he’d feel fine. All he would have to do would be to brush up on that diversionary skill called ‘kidding yourself’, and then he could just sit tight, ignorant and blissful.

  Leonard was embarrassed by who he had become; he was so petty-minded, so accommodating, so mild mannered. He was never embarrassed by the enormous amount of pleasure he felt when he was able to park outside his own home. Often, back home after work, after parking, he would draw the curtains and just sit there in the dark with his eyes open, and his bladder full. He would then see very clearly that he was not who he thought he was, not who he wanted to be, but what the hell? He tried; he sometimes left the house determined to commit an act of kindness, but he was rarely successful. He was not a good man, not an exceptional man. In fact, it sometimes dawned on him that he was the most ordinary man in the world. Even though his internal voices kept on insisting that he was somehow special, somehow different, he had to admit that just about everybody thinks they’re different, and anybody who thinks they’re different is likely to be more ‘the same’ as almost anybody else in the world.

  Maybe coming here had been a bad idea, but he wouldn’t leave the city, not yet. The only way forward was to find a heroic angle. He came here because he had vowed to amend his mediocre life with a last, up-tempo act of faith. He would find the vessel, he would secure his place and he would try to make himself useful by rebuilding the world.

  He finished the meringue and picked up a newspaper. The headline read: FOOTBALLER CAUGHT IN THREE-IN-A-BED ORGY! The sub-headline, in smaller, black lettering: Rogue comet will rain down from the heavens in just eight weeks’ time. Global violence spreading unchecked!

  ◊

  Up ahead, the business quarter loomed with its flat blue backdrop of coastline. The level of energy was markedly different here; it was vibrant and industrious. He studied the passing pedestrians, looked into their faces for clues as to how they were feeling, and they didn’t look that concerned. No ‘end of days’ panic, despite the fact that pieces of ruptured comet were likely to rain down from the sky in something like eight weeks time.

  The people here seemed preoccupied, they were busy ferrying supplies; couriers were arriving, delivering and picking up. There was a visible sense of security here. Square-shouldered men answered doors, took in parcels, they had radios tucked into their belts, they worked efficiently and silently.

  Leonard carried on walking. He turned a corner and the road widened, and the tarmac receded to reveal cobblestones, green polished stones, which sloped away towards the docks. Walking down the slope, trying not to twist an ankle, he was flanked on both sides by industrial buildings, sheet steel warehouses with angular rooflines and rust bleeding from rivet holes. These buildings were fenced in by plastic-coated diamond wire. Above the rooftops red cranes marked out the docks, they turned, dipped and lifted bulging cargo nets, Heron-like.

  Leonard had this reflex to turn and look behind, and when he did, he realised that he was being followed. He didn’t look like a street criminal, though, this guy. He was in his mid-sixties, one of those invisible, ‘I would never have thought it was him’ men. Small, thin and pale faced, wearing retirement colours, he looked as if he’d been wearing beige all his life. That was the way, though, with surveillance operatives; they were the most ordinary men, they were the ones who got the cloak and dagger assignments, because they were forgettable people, who lacked distinguishing features. Leonard felt vulnerable with the man at his back, so he decided he would turn and head back towards him, meet him head-on.

  The little man showed no surprise at Leonard’s about-face, he just kept walking straight and tidy, all the way ‘til just before he crossed Leonard. Then he sort of shrugged his canvas rucksack, and in order to avoid Leonard’s eyes, he glanced through wire fencing at the arse-end of a factory. But as he passed, he said something, something like, ‘Leonard Gopaul?’

  Leonard stopped in his tracks and turned. The little man was young in the face but with greying eyebrows and a fixed but anxious grin.

  ‘Are you Leonard Gopaul?’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘I’m a runner.’

  ‘A runner?’

  ‘Are you Leonard Gopaul?’

  ‘You know I am. You must have been following me since I left the hotel. Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘I’m a runner.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Means I issue demands.’

  The runner handed Leonard a slip of paper. Leonard recognised his own signature, it was the credit note he had given Ian two weeks ago in payment for one of his checked shirts.

  ‘What’s this got to do with you?’

  ‘It’s a cod!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘C.O.D. Certificate Of Debt. My client needs some work doing out at his place and I’m just delivering the notice, calling in the debt.’

  ‘And what if I tell you to go stick it?’

  He pulled out a two-way radio.

  ‘Well, I get on this radio and call your reaction in to the police. At best you’ll be deported. And remember, I say at best!’

  Leonard looked at the certificate again. In small print on the reverse side, it had those familiar words, ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand all sums, deeds, goods, as indicated.’

  ‘Look Mr Gopaul, I have the credit and the means of enforcing the credit and you have the shirt, right? So where is the ambiguity?’

  Leonard shrugged.

  It’s horrible when a man with the upper hand introduces an element of humour and needle into a deal.

  Leonard was two heads taller than the runner, but he sensed that the little man would not have a soft centre, not in this line of work. He remembered too that he had turned left and left again and he was, therefore, dreadfully exposed to the possibility of attack.

  ‘So, do I call in your refusal?’

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘Half a day’s manual labour. You’ll be given the details on the job.’

  ‘When’s this for?’

  ‘No time like the present.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Here, here’s the address.’

  The runner passed him a slip of paper with some printed information.

  ‘Thank you for your cooperation and have a nice day, sir. Oh, and here’s my card in case you have need of my services.’

  ◊

  A green hill, up above the bay, exposed to prevailing winds. There’s wood-smoke on the breeze and soft mud on the drive. The city is visible across the water, on the opposite headland several miles away. This part of the country was still within the southern jurisdiction, still within the patrolled border and controlled by the city police.

  Leonard approached a whitewashed farmhouse with a moss-green roof. He knocked on the door and a man with red cheeks answered.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Hello, I’m Leonard Gopaul.’

  ‘Yeah? And I’m Reggie, so what?’

  ‘You hold a C.O.D. credit note against me, a cod.’

  ‘Well now, you’re
keen. Normally have to squeeze it out of ‘em. Come in then, I’ll give you your chores.’

  Low ceilings inside, smoke-aged plasterwork between wooden beams, an open fire ticking away in the corner of the room.

  Leonard followed Reggie through the house. He was a heavy man, and the floorboards underfoot were shifting beneath his stomping gait.

  He arrived in the kitchen and filled a kettle.

  ‘Cup of tea before you start?’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  ‘Have a seat then.’

  Leonard sat up close to a cast iron range and warmed his hands.

  ‘Got any work clothes, you know, outdoor clothes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Reggie lifted the latch on the back door, covered his bald head with a hat and disappeared outside. A long steel bolt scraped a grey arc into red floor tiles as the door pulled shut.

  When you first meet someone, who just as quickly leaves you alone, they leave a vivid afterimage, a clear and accurate likeness. The farmer’s green cardigan had tilted buttons straining to do the job of covering up his rounded stomach. He’d knuckle-cracked his fingers and his hands were ready at his hips, like they were hovering above holsters. His eyes were watery blue, and seemed to follow on sharply behind his quick mind.

  The kettle boiled; Leonard lifted it off the stove and made the tea, leaving out Reggie’s unknown spoonfuls of sugar.

  The latch lifted and the door swung in.

  ‘Here you are, then. Put these on and we’ll get to it!’

  Whilst Leonard pulled on some blue overalls, the farmer stood over his mug of tea with the bag of sugar in his hand.

  ‘Have you sugared?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Three, see.’

  He spooned in the three sugars and started sipping, blowing and sipping.

  They walked across the yard and entered a brick barn. There was a stinging odour in the air, of fermenting straw, piss and shit. While Leonard’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the dark interior, his ears were telling him that a large animal was breathing heavily and moving around inside. Light from a stable door half way along the barn spilled in and reflected off the animal’s wet nose. It was a bull with wiry red hair, its ears were scanning forward as Reggie started making some reassuring noises.

  ‘Move over then, you. We’re going to have a spring clean-up today, eh, boy?’

  The bull breathed out through its nose, leaving a cloud of vapour. It moved away a few steps, moving slowly because the floor was slippery. The bull’s legs were black with mud all the way up to his chest. He turned and looked back, happier at a distance, then yawned, showing Leonard his muscular, pale-pink tongue.

  ‘Here you go, then.’

  Reggie handed Leonard a shovel and cracked a smile.

  ‘Know what this is?’

  ‘Well, I…’

  ‘It’s bullshit, real, honest-to-God bullshit. Clear the stuff out the door, and then get it into the trailer. You can use the wheelbarrow if you want.’

  Leonard stepped through the mud and grabbed the barrow. He checked the route he would have to take, out into the yard then along a plank of wood, which ran up into the trailer. He pushed the shovel under eight inches of soiled mud, lifted and felt the weight: it was heavy, he’d have to pace himself. As he snatched the shovel up to the lip of the barrow and twisted it, he could feel his hip joint opening up and the tendons in his back straining.

  Reggie climbed up a ladder and started pulling compacted blocks of straw down from a raised platform.

  ‘You live here on your own, Reggie?’

  ‘Uhh?’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Yeah, but, well she’s gone back to her family in Australia.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Oh, you know, she ain’t coming back. She heard on the telly that there was more chance of survival in the southern hemisphere.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘I’m staying here.’

  Reggie dropped three more bales of straw to the ground.

  ‘Aren’t you interested in the survival programme? I mean aren’t you going to try and get onto the vessel?’

  ‘Yeah right, as if I stood a chance in hell, with all the back-handers going on.’

  Leonard stopped scooping and leant on the shovel.

  ‘What do you know about that, then?’

  ‘Nothin’, I don’t know nothin’, I don’t want to get in any bloody bother, do I? Shovel’s not an ornament, you know.’

  Leonard lifted the blade and kicked it into more shit.

  ‘Look, Reggie, I need to get some capital together. If I come back tomorrow and help you out, will you give me a credit note?’

  ‘Well I don’t know if…’

  Leonard pointed across the yard at the beat up, canvas topped vehicle parked in front of the farmhouse.

  ‘Or maybe you could lend me your Land Rover for a couple of days?’

  ◊

  Reggie carved off a couple of thick slices of bread and buttered them up, then ladled out some soup, leek and potato soup. As he turned, there was a gyroscopic effect going on in the soup bowl: he was turning and the bowl was turning, but the soup stayed still. Reggie put Leonard’s down on the table and sat in his armchair, balancing his own bowl on his lap. Leonard was kneeling down by the iron grate, he hadn’t set an open fire burning for years and he was enjoying the process of getting it going. The newsprint blackened his hands as he screwed up the broadsheets. There was something so comforting about burning newspapers, he felt like the lord of hindsight sending all that non-libellous opinion up in smoke. All those carefully edited quotes crackling into life and all that arch phraseology crumpled to dust in his own bare hands.

  Up close, the chimney acted like a great big ear, funnelling sounds in from the outside. Leonard could hear the wind noise and mixed in with it the sound of a cuckoo, far off, out in the fields somewhere.

  ‘Soup, Leonard.’

  Leonard turned and Reggie lifted his head in the direction of the soup, to show where it was.

  He got up and sat at the table, scooped up a big spoonful and blew on it. He could taste something lovely, something from a long time ago: it was pearl barley.

  ‘That’s good stuff.’

  Reggie nodded.

  ‘Making my nose run.’

  ‘Look then Leonard, if you come back here tomorrow and do the pigs, I reckon I can let you have the Land Rover for a couple of days, long as I ain’t gonna need her. Alright?’

  ‘Course it is, thanks a lot.’

  ‘Alright, then.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It’s all very sober, the way ‘Warden’ is stamped onto the door in gold leaf, a black border outlining the letters, giving them false perspective. Just below and between the ‘r’ and the ‘d’, is the tiny lens of a spy hole.

  Raymond made his way along the corridor, with Jennifer following on behind. He turned and looked at her to see how the drugs were doing. She looked compliant, but she needed her smile back. Warden only wanted to see happy faces; he wanted girls whose only personality trait was that they smiled a lot. Raymond brushed Jennifer’s hair back off her face, smiled at her, and right on cue she smiled back. He had loaded her up with stimulants, ready for the matinée performance. She’d been pumped full of dreamy drugs which would stop her from seeing too clearly. The Dextrone would distort disgust and the Phenulase would turn it into erotic desire.

  Raymond lifted his thin fist and knocked on the door. Up close, he saw the narrow beam of light jetting through the spy-hole from the large window opposite, on the far wall of Warden’s office. The view looked out over the church and the market square, but the glass was always clouded with condensation in the winter.

  Warden heard the knock, but sat still in the armchair. He looked across his desk at the sparkling mineral water bottle. It had been squeezed in the middle when the screw top had been done up tight, so the plastic form had a tucked in w
aist, flared hips and shoulders - the hour-glass. He was a sick, obsessive old bastard but he was, however, quite chuffed at his own, enduring libido. It kept him looking on the bright side, even in the middle of all this shit. And there had been a ton of shit recently, with men of influence badgering him all hours of the day and night, asking big favours, promising good terms and then underlining them with threats.

  Being Warden on the project gave him a position of power; he had influence. But to have power was no protection at all, everyone was subordinate to someone else and there was a brutal pecking order. He mustn’t grumble, though; the job did come with the only wage worth doing anything for, a place on the vessel, a chance at survival. He kept thinking how his life, and for that matter how everybody’s life was a kind of long, slow walk out of the corner of the ring, toward a far more experienced opponent. There were three ways of dealing with this: (A) on the way out of the red corner you picked up a very big stick and started swinging; (B) you took off your gloves and offered a hand to shake. In this case you were only going to get booed and pick up a broken nose, cauliflower ears and black eyes. The only sensible thing was (C) the famous ducking and diving we hear so much about, the bobbing and weaving and giving as good as you get kind of thing. This was all shit though because theories and philosophies were just pies in the sky. Opinion bored the living crap out of Warden; actions were the only things that counted, actions and events. The door knocked again.

  Out in the hallway, Raymond noticed that the stream of light coming through the spy-hole had cut out. Obviously a beady eye had been levelled there on the other side of the door, it would be the Warden’s eye, taking a gander. The door swung back but they were not exactly welcomed with open arms. Warden didn’t say a word; he just backed away along the hall.

  Jennifer reached for Raymond’s hand, and holding her fingers, he felt that he should be on her side, he felt bad, felt like a pimping bastard, like he was fencing his own daughter.

  He shook her fingers off and let her walk forward. Warden looked her up and down, drew a flat circle in the air with his finger and she spun around, twirling and giggling. She was looking to him for her instructions now. Warden looked past her at Raymond, he nodded.