Everything You Need: Short Stories (28 page)

I
arrived
at Portnoy’s shop at mid-day on Monday, as requested. I’d made no further progress, but had stopped worrying about it. He wanted to meet, so we’d meet. I’d tell him I didn’t know what the book was supposed to be about, and he wouldn’t give me the remaining six hundred pounds, and that was that. Life would go on.

When I got to Cecil Court I saw through the window that Portnoy was with a customer, so I lurked outside and had a cigarette. Though the cough hadn’t come back, the smoke felt weird in my lungs, and so mostly I just held it in my mouth instead. Portnoy’s book was in a carrier bag in my hand. There had been times over the weekend where I’d found it difficult to imagine handing it back to him, so much a part of my life had it become. At some point in the night that had changed. I was tired of it now, tired of its music and transitions, tired of not knowing what it was about. Ignorance isn’t always bliss. Sometimes it’s just a huge pain in the arse, especially when it’s about to cost you six hundred quid.

The customer eventually left, clutching something in a neat brown paper bag. An early Wodehouse first, most likely, one of Portnoy’s minor stocks in trade. I entered the shop to the sound of him coughing.

‘Sounds like you’ve got what I had,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Could be, my boy, could be.’

Clear grey light was coming through the shop window, and it struck me how seldom I’d seen him lit by anything other than his subterranean lair’s murky glow. Today his skin looked very pale, and waxy.

I held the carrier bag up toward him and started to speak, but he shook his head.

‘Downstairs,’ he said, and reached over to flip the sign on the door to closed.

I followed him down the narrow and abruptly-turning staircase that led to the basement office. The gloom down there seemed even more sepulchral than normal, so much so that I was halfway across the floor before I spotted that something was different: even then it was the smell that gave it away first, or the lack of it.

I stopped, looked around. ‘What happened to all the books?’

‘Moved them on,’ he said.

‘What,
all
of them?’ The room was entirely empty. Aside from the desk and its two chairs, everything was gone. Even the framed page of
The Dream
on the wall. All that remained was dust.

‘Some were sold, others put in storage.’

He sat at his side of the desk, and I sat at the other.

‘Are you shutting up shop?’

‘Good lord, no,’ he said, lighting one of his cigars. ‘Well, in a way, I suppose. I’m moving on.’

‘Moving on? Why?’ I felt panicky.

‘The cost of living where I do has simply become too high, especially as the fabric is falling apart. The lease is up.’

‘But you don’t actually
live
here, do you? In this building?’

He smiled. ‘I meant it figuratively.’

I had no idea what he was talking about, and didn’t really care. I put the bag with the book in it on the desk. He looked at it, then back up at me.

‘What’s that?’

‘The book,’ I said. ‘I’m giving it back. I can’t do what you asked.’

‘And what did I ask you to do?’

‘Translate it. Tell you what the book was about.’

‘No. All I asked for was the gist.’

‘How could I give you that without translating it?’

He smiled again, kindly. ‘A good question. But you have. Can’t you feel it?’

I was distracted by the smell of his cigar. It smelled good. It made me wonder, in fact, why I smoked cigarettes.

He evidently noticed me looking at the object in his hand, and held it out to me.

‘Want to try?’

I took it, put it in between my lips. Drew some of the smoke into my mouth, and let it lie there a while.

‘Nice,’ I said, putting the cigar back in the ashtray.

‘I have to be elsewhere in an hour,’ Portnoy said, ‘So I suggest we get down to business right away.’

‘Business?’ My head felt fuzzy, as if I’d drunk far too much coffee. The cigar smoke, perhaps. But I allowed myself to hope that — as he appeared to be claiming that I had done what he asked — he might actually be intending to pay me the other six hundred pounds. ‘What business?’

He reached into his jacket pocket, and took out a small set of keys and a piece of paper with an address written on it. He put them on the table.

‘There are six months left on this building,’ he said, indicating two of the keys. ‘I’m afraid that will be more than sufficient, given your condition.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The address on that piece of paper is where you live. A
pied a terre
in Fitzroy Square. Not overly spacious, but extremely comfortable. I have left a fairly substantial sum of money in a suitcase under the bed.’

I stared at the young man opposite me. ‘Portnoy, what the fuck are you talking about?’

‘I’m not a bad person,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to be at ease in the time that’s left. The money should see to that. I’ve left a note in the drawer of the bedside table, too, should you decide to, ah, self-medicate. The phone number on the note is that of an extremely reliable and discrete gentleman who can supply morphine at short notice.’

‘Morphine?’

‘The pain can be very bad,’ he said, apologetically. ‘It’s only going to get worse, I’m afraid.’

Only then did I realise that, instead of having my back to the room, the wall was behind me. That I was sitting on the opposite side of the desk to normal. And then that the man I was facing was not Portnoy.

It was me.

I tried to say something about this, but was derailed by a cough. It went on for a long time, and hurt a very great deal. When I finally pulled my hand away from my mouth, I stared at it. It was Portnoy’s hand.

‘What have you done to me?’

‘Not so much,’ the other man said. ‘Think of it as “somatic” drift, if you need a word. It’s never a book’s cover that matters, after all, but what’s inside. The gist. You found him in the end.’

‘”Him”? Don’t you mean “it”?’

‘No,’ he said, standing. ‘Good luck. And remember that gentleman I mentioned.’ He picked up the bag from the desk, and replaced it with something in a frame. ‘A leaving present.’

I reached out for it, feeling tired and old and unwell. I tilted it toward me, and saw it was what had always hung on the wall behind him, that single page from the first folio of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Seeing it close up for the first time, I noticed that three words had been lightly underlined, in pencil.

Thou art translated
.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘From the Latin “translatus”,’ Portnoy said, ‘serving as a past participle of “transferre” — to bring over.’

He picked up the cigar from the ashtray, and stuck it in his mouth.

Around it he said ‘Goodbye, dear boy,’ and left.

1
4

I
n a month
the deterioration has already become marked. From notes left in Portnoy’s flat I learned that my new body has lung cancer, of a belligerently terminal variety. Nothing that can be done about it — except, I suppose, what he did. I wouldn’t know how to even embark upon such a course, even if I still had the book, which I do not. It is with him, wherever he is, in whichever quarter of the world he is starting upon his new life. Or a new chapter of it, at least. I wonder how many times he has done it before, how many younger men, like me, have allowed his meaning to be substituted between their covers. A great many, I suspect.

My days are comfortable, in any event. I sit in the large leather chair in his sitting room and look through the books he left behind, or out of the window at the trees in the square. If the pain gets very bad, I avail myself of the substance I now obtain from the gentleman Portnoy recommended. It beats knocking back pints of Stella, that’s for sure. On afternoons when I don’t feel too dreadful I go for walks, watching the leaves turn, feeling the weight of the city around me, appreciating these things while I still have time.

Last week I even took the tube a few stops north, early one evening, and sat at a table in the corner of the Southampton for a while. Yes, naturally I was hoping that Cass might come in, and wonderously, she did. Her eyes skated over me, not recognising the portly, grey-skinned edition in which I now find myself bound. She had a few raucous glasses of wine with some guy I didn’t recognise, but took herself off into the night alone. I wish her well, wherever she is.

After she left I walked slowly around to Dalmeny Park, and down the alleyway, and looked through the closed gates. There’s no way I could climb them now, and it’s not really my place, after all. My body knows it, however. It remembers being there as a child, with its father, and so I let it stand there for a while, before wheezing my way back up the road and waiting until a cab came to take me back to my nest.

Where I continue to die.

The odd thing is that I don’t mind too much.

Some stories, some people, deserve their length and span. They merit a novel-length treatment, have things to tell and other lives to illuminate. The real Portnoy — whoever or whatever he was — is one of those, and I’m sure he’s already making far better use of my body than I ever did. There are others, people like the man I was, who should aspire only to being a novella, or perhaps not even that.

Short stories have their place in the world, after all. The tale remains afterwards, beyond death, and perhaps one day someone will read mine and understand what I amounted to.

A few events and mistakes, several hangovers and a kiss, and then a final line.

S
heila supposed
their marriage had been old-fashioned right from the start. They met in 1961 and married in 1963, a year which now sounded - and felt, sometimes, though not always - an awfully long time ago; but even back in those dim and distant days the world had been changing. Women had begun to quietly reassess and realign their roles in the home and the workplace. “Quietly” was how women had most often done things in those days. It worked, too. Nobody likes being shouted at. Sometimes a soft voice gets heard far more clearly.

She and John had been perfectly well plenty aware of the changes in society, and paid due attention. On the other hand... their way worked. He was cheerfully useless in the kitchen. Sheila was a decent cook and a whizz at keeping the place clean and tidy. He pitched in with both from time to time but it was a chore for him and a pleasure for her, so what was the point of reversing roles for the sake of it? Likewise with the children, and the washing and ironing. Yes, you could insist these household tasks be shared evenly - just as he could have insisted that, once the children were old enough, she go out and get a job - but neither felt the need, any more than Sheila fancied going without a bra.

Doing what the new people tell you, for the sake of it, is surely no more sensible than doing what the old people had said, for the sake of that. The traditional division of labor worked for them, and once both had realized this they let it be, with some relief.

Not that she’d been the little wife indoors - far from it. She drove, of course (though he kept track of the car’s service records, and when it needed an MOT). She was the one who dealt face-to-face with plumbers or electricians when something in the house needed fixing (though it was John who filed the maintenance contracts, and could lay his hand on them when required). He knew where the bank statements were, the mortgage agreement, receipts for major household expenses like furniture and white goods; he knew who the car was insured with, who held their medical insurance, what it covered and what it did not, and how much they were paying each month for any number of other things and services, and to whom, and which were on direct debit, and how on earth that worked.

She fretted from time to time that it was ridiculous she didn’t know any of these details, but just handed it all over to him. Usually this concern stayed within her own head but sometimes she would articulate it. He’d shrug and say it was all boring stuff and he had a system and there was no point both of them wasting time and energy over it when there were more interesting discussions to be had and cups of tea to make and long walks down country lanes to enjoy together.

Whenever some household matter required clarification or resolving, he’d quickly and easily find whatever document was needed. Afterwards he’d put it back in its designated drop file and push the drawer shut. If she happened to be nearby, he’d smile at her.

‘Remember,’ he'd say. ‘Everything you need — it’s in here.’

“
H
ere” was
the three-drawer filing cabinet that stood in the middle of the wall of the upstairs room John used as an occasional office. In the days after he died, this was the room Sheila found most difficult to traverse. It had nothing to do with her. It had been his, just as the kitchen had been hers. She felt like a tourist in his office, with neither local currency nor any understanding of the language. When they’d gone on holidays to France as a family it was her schoolgirl French that got them fed and into hotel rooms: John limited his input to standing in the background looking affable. In the office, however, she couldn’t even say her name.

She found it particularly hard when confronted with some aspect of the process of death that required documentary evidence. ‘John dealt with all that,’ she’d say, feeling old and small and stupid. Fiona didn’t actually roll her eyes, but you could tell she wanted to. Fiona had been climbing the corporate ladder — with some success - since the age of eighteen. She had a spreadsheet for everything and backed them up to the cloud, whatever that was. She didn’t understand that a way of being had existed between her parents, a tacit agreement, or that her mother’s lack of engagement with ten thousand pieces of household management over the decades demonstrated neither lack of will, nor intelligence, nor a failure of fealty to the sisterhood - but had just been the way things worked.

John would have known what the cloud was. He wouldn’t have used it — he believed in bits of paper, documents you could touch and hold (and wave imperiously at someone, if required) — but he would have at least brought it within his ken. Sheila was slowly starting to realize that, when it came to the administration of the life she’d lived and now had to keep on living, her ken was entirely empty.

Each time this happened Fiona would dart up to the little office and open the filing cabinet and quickly track down whatever document was needed.

‘Say what you like,’ she’d say, returning in triumph. ‘Dad’s systems worked. It’s all in there.’

‘Everything I need,’ her mother muttered, quietly.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, and put the kettle on again.

T
he funeral came and went
, a somber train arriving out of darkness to pause in a station for a couple hours before pulling smoothly back out into the fog, never to return. Sometime during the following night a team of invisible workers came and removed all the track, abandoning Sheila on a platform from which there was no way forward or back.

Friends came to visit. So did Fiona, every day. Sometimes with her husband, occasionally with her children. Neither of these seemed to know how to deal with a grandma who was now no longer always smiling as she bustled around a kitchen filled with steam; and Mark — who Sheila privately thought was okay, though no John — stood around looking as if he could hear unanswered emails mounting up on his phone.

After the second week their visits tailed off, but Fiona kept popping in. She was a good daughter. She had a little of both parents in her, of course, and was unconsciously compensating for her father’s absence.

Sheila didn’t miss her husband’s efficiency, however. She missed him.

She missed the man.

A
fter ten days
Fiona brought up the idea of going to Brighton. ‘You always liked it there, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you. I could do with a break and it’ll do you good to get out of this house. We could have tea at The Grand.’

She must have seen how horrified the idea made her mother. ‘I know it’ll be weird, without Dad,’ she added, quickly. ‘But you have to start making new memories. He wouldn’t have wanted you to just stop living.’

But Sheila didn’t want new memories. The idea of them made her furiously sad. What possible use could they be, if she couldn’t share them with John? What would she do with such memories? What would they be
for
?

Fiona dropped the subject, but three days later mentioned it again, in passing, careful to move the conversation on quickly afterwards. Her mother knew she was being ‘managed’ now, that the tactic was to drip-feed her until the idea became lodged, and came to seem reasonable, less of a denial of how the world had once stood. John had tried something similar with Sheila a few times, back in the early days. She had firmly put him right over it. He’d never tried it again. Fiona had yet to learn, evidently, that people aren’t as dim as you think they are, and that taking over her father’s role wasn’t as simple as downloading a backup of him from the ‘cloud’.

After Fiona had left, Sheila went and sat in her chair in the living room.

She had never realized how loudly the clock ticked.

The next morning a man called from the mobile phone company. He had an Indian accent but said his name was Bob. He had great news about their phone contract.

‘My husband deals with all that,’ Sheila said, before she had time to realize what she was saying.

Bob cheerfully asked if he could talk to her husband, then. Sheila said that would not be possible, and put the phone down.

When Fiona popped in later she could tell something was wrong, but her mother wouldn’t tell her what it was. She stayed a little longer than usual, as if hoping that would wear her mother down. It did not. Sheila felt sad, yes: today she felt wretched. That did not mean she had reverted to being a child. Dimly she sensed it was important that her daughter understand this, too, and before it was too late - that the road to role reversal between the generations was far more of a one-way street than it ever had been between the sexes.

Just before she went, Fiona mentioned that she’d heard a new bistro had opened down on the sea front in Brighton. Locally-sourced food, all organic.

‘Hmm,’ her mother said. She had not felt hungry for several days.

T
hat night
there didn’t seemed to be anything on television. Sheila had adopted a temporary policy of not watching the shows she and John used to enjoy together. Not for ever, just for now. Settling down in front of
University Challenge
or that cook they liked, Rick Stein, was simply not a tolerable prospect.

Unfortunately all of the other television seemed to have been made with someone different to Sheila in mind. She watched almost a whole episode of what was evidently supposed to be a comedy without feeling moved to smile. This wasn't because she was grieving. It was because it wasn’t funny. When something wasn’t funny and you were watching it with someone, you could enjoy not finding it funny together. By yourself, it simply wasn't funny.

Although everyone in the audience seemed to be laughing.

For a moment Sheila felt very afraid, wondering if the show was funny after all but she was unable to see it. She’d always known what funny was. She and John used to make each other laugh all the time. Even in bed. But what if that hadn’t been her?

She used to say things that would make John laugh, but what if it was his laughter that made them funny, rather than what she said? What if — without realizing it — she’d left all of that to him, too?

H
alf an hour
later she found herself upstairs, outside the little office. The door was open and the filing cabinet was visible. It was a murky green color, with beige drawers. John bought it from a catalogue and for years afterwards they got a laugh out of an occasional update arriving at their door, addressed to “The Office Furniture Buyer”. John would open up the kitchen waste bin, bend down and call “More post for you, Cyril...” and drop the catalogue in.

Their mobile phone contract would be in the cabinet somewhere. Sheila knew she didn’t have to look for it. She understood that any news “Bob” might have had for her would have been nothing more than a covert means of getting her to upgrade, or committing herself to a longer contract with the same provider. A history of leaving things to someone else didn’t make her a complete dimwit.

It seemed important, however. It felt symbolic of something. It was a useful test case, too. If Bob or one of his familiars called back, she could hear him out — armed with the relevant documentation — and simply say “No, thank you,” if she so chose. There was nothing to lose.

She walked into the office and up to the cabinet. She put her hand on it. The metal felt cool to the touch. It was strange. Despite the fact that John would have had far more contact with other objects in the room — the desk, the chair, his biros on the little pot — the cabinet felt like the essence of the space.

She opened the top drawer. It was easier than she’d thought it would be. Not just that she was able to reach out and do it, but also because it slid out faster and more smoothly than she'd anticipated.

Ka-thunk
, it went. It was a capable sound.

The smell of old papers wafted out. Each drop file had a neat plastic tag at the top, arranged so as to progress from left to right, all visible at once. Each one held a tiny rectangle of paper in John’s extremely legible capitals, saying things like CAR, KITCHEN, and MEDICAL. Big nouns, concrete and abstract. The building blocks, tangible or otherwise, of a life lived.

Sheila ran her hand over the top of the files, causing some to open a little. Many pieces of paper lay within. Letters, receipts, contracts. Even though a lot of them presumably related to things she was still using, she had never seen anything that looked so dead. Deader even than John. He at least still lived — to some degree — in her mind. These things... they were just dead.

She closed the drawer, not having been able to spot a tag that related to mobile phones, and feeling neither inclined nor strong enough to work through the contents of all the drop files one by one.

She opened the second drawer. This didn’t come so easily. Perhaps the mechanism had rusted, or a piece of paper inside had become caught. She pulled harder, and it eventually withdrew.

It wasn’t just a mechanical problem, however. She was crying now. Crying hard enough that all of the energy in her body seemed focused on yanking muscles tightly in the wrong directions, stretching the tendons in her throat. There was little power left for anything else.

She dragged her sleeve across her eyes and forced herself to read the tags in this drawer.

GAS & ELECTRICITY. BROADBAND. TAX. She couldn’t imagine why she would ever, ever want to open drop files labeled thus. There were more, but still not the one she was looking for.

She pushed the drawer. It suddenly slammed shut, far more easily than it had opened. The noise scared and unnerved her.

She reached down and took hold of the handle on the lowest drawer. She pulled, but nothing happened. She tugged, with all her might, but it would not open.

It wasn’t locked - it gave a little - but there was evidently something jammed in it, stopping the drawer from sliding out more than about half an inch. A few more half-hearted yanks at it achieved nothing. She stopped.