Wide Open

5

He drove home later than he’d anticipated and hit the rush hour. In his keenness to evade it he’d skipped changing, so wore his white skin-suit, in full, but without the helmet. From the neck downwards he resembled an alien. Or an astronaut. He even wore his plastic gloves, which generated a curious friction on the steering wheel as he turned corners.

Pulling up to a roundabout in Lee Green, Ronny noticed something exceptional. A man was standing on the island in the centre of the roundabout. He was tall with a beard, his arm was extended, his left arm, and in his hand he held something that shone in the glare of many headlights. Something gold.

The traffic was heavy. Ronny waited his turn to join the flow. He stared at the man. Someone flashed their lights behind him. He took his chance. He pulled into the traffic. He did one circuit. He did two. On the third circuit he indicated left and slid into a parking space outside the World of Leather showroom. He sat for a while and gazed at the showroom through his windscreen. Then he climbed out of his car and walked back over to the road. He stopped at the kerb, put his hands to his lips and yelled.

‘RONNY!’

The other Ronny gave no indication of having heard him so he whistled and called again.

‘RONNY!’

The other Ronny turned, cocked his head to one side but did not move. Ronny waited for a gap in the traffic and then jogged over. The other Ronny continued to hold out the glittering object. It was a watch.

Ronny raised his voice over the honk of the traffic. ‘What are you doing here?’

The other Ronny showed him the watch.

‘I’m holding out this watch.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m offering myself. I’m offering my time. To this island.’

After a pause he added, ‘I like that suit. You look like the Michelin Man.’

‘It’s protective clothing.’

Ronny stared at the watch. It seemed familiar. The other Ronny caught him looking.

‘Recognize it?’

Ronny swallowed, suddenly unnerved. ‘Should I?’

‘I don’t know. It’s just that I think it might be yours.’

Ronny took a step backwards. ‘I don’t own a watch.’

‘Yes you do. You’re wearing one.’

Ronny blinked. ‘I mean I don’t own that watch.’

‘It has an inscription on the back …’

The other Ronny turned the watch over. Engraved in the gold were the words: ‘To Big Ron, with love, your Elaine.’

Ronny began shaking. His suit quivered and it made a strange synthetic sound, a noise like a gust of wind hitting the canvas jib of a small sailing boat, a sound like the beat of a swan’s wings in flight. It was clearly audible but the other Ronny seemed not to notice.

‘I wish I could whistle like you do,’ the other Ronny said, ‘but I can’t whistle at all. I never learned.’

‘Whistle?’ Ronny scowled, and then recollected. ‘Oh …’ As a kind of strangled appendix he added, ‘In fact it’s my father’s watch,’ and then, with startling synchronicity, his nose began running.

He rubbed at it with the back of his glove, but the glove was plastic and soaked up nothing. Instead it smeared moisture across his cheek for the chill evening air to tip-toe over.

The other Ronny continued to inspect the watch. ‘It looks expensive. Will he be wanting it back?’

‘No.’ Ronny shook his head and then sniffed violently. The other Ronny glanced up. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

He focused in on Ronny’s face. His gaze was like the pure sweep of a bowling green; it was flat and it was plain and it went on and on. Ronny was alarmed. He began blinking rapidly. A nervous tic.

The other Ronny looked crestfallen. ‘I’ve brought back some bad feelings. I’m sorry.’

He curled his hand around the watch so that Ronny was no longer obliged to look at it. Ronny said nothing but he kept on blinking. If he stopped blinking he’d start crying and that wouldn’t do. He’d never cried.

But he remembered the watch. Very clearly. And mixed in with the memory was the scratch of rough hessian and the pungent taint of cider vinegar. Something acrid.

‘Is he dead?’

‘Who?’

‘Big Ron.’

‘Yes.’ Ronny nodded.

‘The way you spoke earlier made it sound like he was still living.’

‘He is living,’ Ronny struggled. ‘I mean, in my head.’

Again he put his gloved hand to his face.

‘Actually,’ the other Ronny intervened, ‘you have a rash. On your cheek. You should stop touching it.’

Ronny took his hand from his cheek and swore softly. ‘My gloves might have chemicals on them.’

‘You should’ve taken them off then.’

‘They’re attached to the suit. I was in a hurry to return the car. It isn’t mine.’

The other Ronny craned his neck to peer over at the car.

‘Green Volvo,’ he mused, unhelpfully.

‘Yes.’ Ronny spun around and jogged to the edge of the island. His nose was still running. His eye began stinging. He’d been clumsy. He hated himself for it.

The other Ronny watched impassively as he jinked through the traffic.

Back at the car, Ronny unzipped his suit and unrolled the top half down to his waist. It was a complex manoeuvre that took several minutes, during which time the pain in his cheek intensified.

He scrabbled around in the side pocket on the driver’s side of the car and located a bottle of water which he unscrewed, sniffed and then poured on to his hand and dabbed over his cheek. He repeated this process several times and then inspected his face in the side mirror. His cheek, nose and left eye were slightly puckered and swollen. He applied some more water.

‘Do you want the watch back?’

The other Ronny had deserted his island and was now standing behind him, holding out the watch.

Ronny prickled, like he was full of static. ‘Not at all. You’re welcome to it.’

‘How’s your cheek?’

‘It’ll be fine.’

‘You must be cold. Here …’

The other Ronny took off the old brown cardigan he was wearing and proffered it.

‘Actually I have a change of clothes in the boot.’

As he spoke Ronny noticed the other Ronny’s arms. They were skeletal. He put his hand to his mouth. He felt an unexpected combination of deep alarm and lurching nausea.

‘What?’

The other Ronny inspected his cardigan with some confusion as though Ronny’s distress had been generated by it and not by him.

‘Your arms,’ Ronny managed, through his fingers.

The other Ronny looked down at his arms, grimaced, and then put his cardigan back on again.

‘I can’t keep the watch,’ he said quietly, ‘I would feel beholden.’

Ronny was shivering. He went and grabbed his clothes from the boot of the car and began dragging them on. He felt sick. His mouth was drowning in a sweet saliva. Was it poison or was it pity? He couldn’t tell.

‘Pawn the watch,’ he said thickly, ‘and get something proper to eat.’

The other Ronny didn’t appreciate this suggestion. ‘I would never consider selling it,’ he said and then turned to go, patently wounded.

Ronny panicked, he didn’t know why. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To my island.’

‘How long will you stay there?’

‘I have no idea.’

He left him.

Ronny bundled his white suit into the back of the Volvo and then sat down in the driving seat. He adjusted the rear-view mirror, initially to inspect his cheek and then to try and catch sight of the other Ronny.

The other Ronny was back on his island. Ronny sat watching him for a while. He wanted to go. But something stopped him. An unfamiliar impulse. He was late. He wanted to go, he wanted to, but he couldn’t.

He dabbed at his eye with the cuff of his sleeve. He felt terrible. His stomach was rollercoastering.

‘Jim!’

Like a voice in his head. Ronny started and glanced up in alarm. As if by sorcery, the other Ronny had rematerialized next to him.

‘Pardon?’

‘A gift. From me. In exchange for the watch.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘A new name. Jim. It came to me in a flash.’

Ronny laughed nervously. ‘I don’t need a new name.’

The other Ronny was visibly galled. ‘Big Ron is dead,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘so why not bury him?’

Ronny was surprised. He was confounded. But above all he had the strong feeling that it was ill-mannered to reject a gift so freely given.

‘Jim’s a nice name,’ he said gently, ‘but I don’t ever hide from things.’

‘You’ve got nothing to hide from,’ the other Ronny insisted, as though he really understood everything. ‘You have an honest face. I have an instinct for honesty. In faces.’

Ronny was taken by surprise. He was quiet for a while. The other Ronny misconstrued his silence. He decided that it might be best to return to his island. He took a few steps back. He never pushed things. He was a piece of chaff. A dandelion seed. He floated and landed, floated and landed.

He took several more steps. The wind was behind him. A gust of it touched him and defined his outline against the streetlights and the headlights.

Ronny took it all in and felt his gullet fracture. This man was a streak of piss, a twig, a little foal. He was one small knot in an endless scrag of string.

‘If you want to do me a favour …’ his mouth said – his eyes showing the shock of it – ‘I mean if you want to repay me for the watch then you could drive me home. My eye’s sore and I feel nauseous. I’m in a hurry to get the car back. You said you knew someone in Sheppey …’

‘You.’

Ronny frowned. ‘What?’

‘You’re the person I know in Sheppey.’

‘But we only just met.’

The other Ronny cleared his throat. ‘Same people,’ he said, ‘different lives.’

Ronny smiled, but thinly. ‘I certainly hope that isn’t true.’

He meant it. He believed that each person could only lead one life. He sensed that nothing in him could be different from how it was. He was a closed book. His pages were permanently meshed together.

‘I live in a beach house,’ he said eventually. ‘I have extra blankets.’

The other Ronny stood and considered his offer.

‘I have no driver’s licence,’ he said finally.

‘Me neither.’ Ronny tried to appear indifferent, but suddenly this mattered to him so badly.

‘It’s a Volvo,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and they have big bumpers.’

The other Ronny still seemed uncertain.

‘There’s the beach,’ Ronny said, scrabbling for incentives, ‘and a natural wildlife reserve with owls and hunting birds …’

Still the other Ronny hesitated.

‘And rabbits … I mean unusual rabbits. Jet black ones. Wild. It’s a strange place, flat and empty like the surface of the moon.’

‘And the sea …?’ the other Ronny said, teetering.

‘Yes.’

The other Ronny scratched his right arm with his left hand. ‘Fine,’ he announced, ‘but here’s the hitch …’

Ronny nodded, ready for any eventuality.

‘You’ll have to change gear. I don’t use my right hand.’

‘OK.’

Ronny never yearned for anything. Not any more. Although at one stage in his life he’d discovered a worrying talent for persuasion. Persuasion had become a weakness with him. A sickness. Once he’d set his sights on something he seemed to yearn for it with an almost obscene fervour. Often things he hadn’t even known he’d wanted. Those were the worst.

He’d convinced himself that those times were pretty much behind him. This was a blip.

‘And the second thing …’ the other Ronny was eerily emphatic, ‘you’re Jim or I don’t come.’

‘Jim.’

‘That’s my gift.’

‘You call me Jim.’

‘No. You call yourself Jim and you mean it.’

‘Jim.’

Ronny felt a wave of euphoria, like he was lodged in a tiny dinghy and he’d just pushed himself adrift. He was floating. He could leave things behind him. Then it cut off. The euphoria. Just like that. He clambered over to the passenger side.

The other Ronny climbed in. He slammed the door shut, he felt for the pedals and then for the knob to adjust the position of his seat. He found it. He pushed himself back, but only slightly. He turned the ignition. The engine whinnied and then rumbled.

‘Get the gears, Jim.’

He carefully adjusted his rear-view mirror.

Jim said nothing. He wiped his eye, sniffed once, and then calmly stuck the gears into reverse.

6

Nathan told Margery before she’d even had the chance to sit down.

‘I saw James this morning.’

Margery hadn’t had an easy day. One of her clients was in court pleading guilty to a charge of fratricide. Another client, a child, had been taken into care after trying to burn down his grandmother’s house. And then she’d spent the remainder of her afternoon unsuccessfully trying to communicate with a young girl who’d become voluntarily mute after witnessing her sister’s death in a road traffic accident. It was grim.

‘James who?’

‘Jim. Jimmy.’

They were in Nathan’s flat in Stamford Hill. Above a bakery. Margery lived in Bethnal Green. Next to Tesco’s.

‘Jim?’ She turned to look at him. ‘So why didn’t you call me?’

Nathan scratched his head. ‘When I threatened to he ran off. There seemed no point once he’d gone.’

Margery had lit a cigarette. Nathan didn’t smoke. She inhaled and then pulled a smidgen of loose tobacco from the tip of her tongue.

‘So you simply didn’t bother ringing at all.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Margery grimaced. ‘To hell with being sorry, Nathan. Did he say where he was going? Did he say where he’d been?’

‘No.’

‘Then what was he after?’

‘He wanted a watch.’

Margery inspected Nathan’s wrist.

‘And you gave him yours.’

‘Yes.’

‘And he didn’t say where he was living?’

Nathan paused. ‘When I asked he said that he was going to Manchester.’

‘Manchester?’ Margery was bemused. ‘Why Manchester?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it was just a whim.’

Margery threw herself down on to the sofa next to Nathan. ‘I wish to God you hadn’t given him your watch, Nathan.’

‘I know. I know.’

Nathan felt ashamed but he didn’t want a lecture.

‘I’m not being nasty,’ Margery continued, ‘but it’s a real weakness on your part.’

‘I realize that now. And I’m sorry. I just felt … I felt pity for him. He was very thin. I thought he might sell it in exchange for food or something.’

‘Please.’

Margery stubbed out her cigarette with a ferocious thrust. It hadn’t made her feel any better. Her lips were burning, for some reason.

Quite unexpectedly, Nathan began crying. He didn’t sob or sniff but tears flowed silently down both of his cheeks. Margery scowled. She was unmoved by tears. She’d seen too many over the years. Tears were a part of her job, after all, a part of her life. Tears were an excuse. A mechanism for delay. She felt in her pocket for a tissue. She had none. She felt in Nathan’s pocket. She drew out a ball of paper. She unfolded it.

‘You were going to show me this, I suppose?’

‘What?’ Nathan turned and saw the square of paper. He wiped his eyes. ‘What is it?’

‘He’s signed this request form Ronny. Did you see?’

Nathan shook his head. ‘I didn’t see. I didn’t read it.’

‘And under Address he’s written …’

The handwriting was so poor that she couldn’t decipher it. ‘Shelby … Shel … Well certainly not Manchester.’

Nathan was feeling raw and puny and defensive. ‘He told me Manchester. I have no reason to lie about that.’

Margery rubbed her eyes with her hand. A smear of mascara settled on her forehead above her left eyebrow. Nathan stared at it.

‘You know …’

She was exhausted and demoralized. ‘It’s at moments like this that I begin to wonder … I mean by rights I have an obligation to contact the authorities.’

Nathan took the slip of paper. He could see that the word written under Home Address was ‘Sheppey’. Margery watched him. ‘Can you read it?’

‘Uh …’ he swallowed, ‘uh … no.’

She sighed. ‘I just wish you hadn’t given him your watch. If something happens to him and they find your watch …’

Nathan felt his wrist. ‘I hated that watch,’ he said.

Margery relaxed her head on to the back of the sofa. ‘I’m too tired for this,’ she mumbled.

Nathan nodded. ‘I’m tired too, but I felt I should tell you.’

Margery ignored him.

‘And he did say Manchester,’ Nathan repeated, regretting that he had confided in her now and abandoning all previous ideas about honesty being the best policy. He pushed himself up. ‘I’ll make a start on dinner.’

He went into the kitchen.

Margery pulled her aching legs on to the sofa. She closed her eyes. Her body relaxed but her mind wheeled on in full throttle. She was implicated. She hated that feeling. It was a compromise and she hated compromises. She was hardened. She knew it. And it was a nasty thing to know about yourself.

Her father had been a doctor. Her mother had been a midwife. Two strong service traditions. Caring was just another mechanical gambit she’d learned about in tandem with tying her laces. It was an inconvenience, sometimes. When Daddy had to make a house call on Christmas day. When his dinner went cold. And it was probably only some stupid old woman who was stuck on her own and had no one to talk to. But he took it for granted. They all did.

Margery was disgusted by weakness but equally disgusted by her own disgust. She’d been married, a man she met at university. He’d studied engineering. He was ambitious. It hadn’t lasted. It had lacked something. Compassion? Should a marriage be compassionate? Divorce. Then she’d floundered. And finally she’d met Nathan.

It was on the job. A routine investigation into allegations of misconduct at a children’s home in the London borough of Brent. There she met James, who was Jimmy, who was Ronny. He was a lost boy. Like in Peter Pan. A little lost boy. Nobody loved him. Nobody wanted him. But he was looking for love and in all the wrong places. He was vulnerable.

He’d had this habit of losing things. He didn’t have much, but what he had he lost. On the way to school he’d drop his books. He’d leave his lunch on the Tube. He’d take off his coat and he wouldn’t pick it up. As if he was a snake and just shedding skins.

Then he’d begun making claims. He’d go and make a claim and he’d hope to get something back that wasn’t his. Something interesting that had a life, a meaning, elsewhere. Something distinct. Something whole.

And it was in this place that he met Nathan. And Nathan had once had a brother he’d abandoned who was roughly the same age as James, as Jimmy. So he gave him things. The brother’s things. It was a private deal between them. But it was wrong. It was wrong.

Margery had imagined that James was on the game. What else could she think? His steady accumulation of possessions had to point somewhere. So it was a relief when she’d finally met Nathan. He was as harmless as a newly hatched chick. And she liked him. He was steady and gentle and he cared about minutiae. He was lovable.

They went out for a drink together. It was unprofessional, admittedly, but she didn’t regret it. She merely told Nathan that he shouldn’t see James again. He shouldn’t give him anything. That was all. There was no mystery. He’d said, ‘I hadn’t realized … I mean I didn’t realize there was anything … uh … untoward … I didn’t. God. I didn’t think that for a second.’

‘It’s a real shame,’ Margery said kindly, trying to reassure him, ‘but the world is such a sick place. You do something in all innocence and the world manages to make it cheap in some way. That’s just how it is, I’m afraid.’

Then James went missing. Initially the police expressed a tolerable level of interest. A list of names were fed into a computer. They called on Margery. Flat hat, blue suit, big boots. Did she know about Nathan? Did she know about Nathan’s history? More specifically, did she know about Nathan’s father? He was a convicted paedophile. Did she understand what that meant? Nathan’s dad was sexually deviant. He fucked small children. All the time. Big Ron. Big bad Ron. He huffed and he puffed and he blew their fragile houses down. And his own little piggies? He tucked them up tight at night, so tight that they couldn’t move their tiny arms, and then he peered and he leered and he panted through their weak straw walls. It was all spelled out. Every letter. And every letter spelled a single word. And the word was horrible.

Horrible. Horrible. Horrible.

She wanted to withdraw. But no. Nathan had red hair and blue eyes and skin so pale it was almost transparent. He was almost transparent. So soft and so gentle. He was see-through.

And by then she was in too deep, dammit.

Nathan had prepared a chicken-in-a-bag meal that you boiled for ten minutes. It tasted like chalk, but fibrous. She never told him that she knew. She simply waited for signs of it. She studied him like you’d study a tomato plant in a greenhouse. Was it getting enough water? Were there greenfly? Was there mildew? She kept on waiting for something to go wrong. Like he was a bomb just a tick-tick-ticking.

Nathan watched Margery eating. She didn’t complain. She munched dutifully.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘it tastes awful.’

He was as soft as a strawberry cream.

‘It does taste awful,’ she said quietly, eating on regardless, then picking up the ketchup from a tray resting on top of a brown cardboard box which had been propped, without her noticing, next to the sofa. The box. All close and closed and tightly bound. Nathan gave it the quickest of glances, every so often. Some things, he resolved, no, many things, many, many things were often better just left that way.

7

‘Now here’s the thing,’ Ronny said, appraising Luke and detecting a powerful smell of fish, ‘he’s changed his name and now he’s called Jim.’