Holloway Falls (13 page)

Ireland gave the order to check Shepherd out and let him go. A couple of hours later, Newell returned to the holding cell. He showed Shepherd the door.

Neither Ireland nor Lowe returned to thank him for his cooperation.

Outside the station, Shepherd found a rotting wooden bench. He sat and collected his thoughts. It was nearly 4 p.m. He wanted to take a walk to get the smell of the station off him.

He slung the bag over his shoulder and headed to where he used to live.

It wasn’t far. He walked for perhaps twenty minutes. Then he set the bag down on the corner of Chandos Road, in sight of the newsagent where he used to buy the Sunday papers and sweets for the kids; the organic butcher where Rachel liked to buy their meat; the Italian restaurant where they sometimes ate a groggy Saturday brunch.

He knew by looking at the house that nobody was home.

A passing Jeep Cherokee slowed to look at him. He supposed he didn’t look much like a Redland house-owner any more. And the sportsbag on the pavement beside him was about the right size to stuff in a VCR.

He imagined Andrew Taylor glancing from the bedroom window and seeing Jack Shepherd, staring at the house from the corner. Andrew would have the cordless digital telephone in one hand, ready to call the police. He would be making notes: time, place, date and description. The man was six foot two or three, he would write. Middle-aged, white male. Big build. Shaved head, heavily bearded. Mid-to-late forties. Small, wire-framed spectacles. Olive drab army jacket with many pockets. Worn blue jeans, battered running shoes.

Shepherd smiled. He removed his spectacles and wiped his eyes. The house maintained an impassive countenance. It was moved in neither one way nor the other.

Strange, how he knew by the simple fact of proximity that it was empty. He wondered where the children were. Rachel.

He crossed the road. The cool, familiar shadow of the hedge passed across his shoulders.

At the side of the house, just beneath the kitchen window, they kept a spare key beneath a concrete plant pot. He didn’t know what kind of plant it contained, but it didn’t look well. The key was kept there for the children, at his suggestion. It was still there, in a zip-lock plastic freezer bag. Indeed, it might not have been moved since he put it there. He’d given the kids dire warning not to tell anybody. If somebody found the key and burgled them, he said, the insurance company would not replace the TV or the video or the Playstation. They rolled their eyes, all three of them, and elbowed and pinched and jostled one another. But they listened and they did as they were told.

He removed the key from the freezer bag and let himself in through the kitchen door. He walked into the musk of them, their compound smell. Four of them, who had been five. And the cat. It infused the walls, the floor, the air.

Issey Miyake, Natrel Plus.

The morning’s washing-up was piled in the sink: a few breakfast bowls, teaspoons, mugs, a buttery knife, a fork whose tines were sticky with seedless raspberry jam. A pot rimmed out with soggy egg. There was a scattering of damp crumbs beneath the toaster, a spillage of tea, milk. Cereal cartons had been left unclosed. He took the Crunchy Nut Cornflakes from the shelf, closed the inner bag and replaced the box in its proper slot on the shelf, between the Weetabix and the Special K.

He touched the wall.

The cat glared at him from the hallway door.

‘Hello, Hungry Joe,’ said Shepherd, quietly.

The cat swiped its tail once, then showed him its arse and undulated prissily away.

On the table next to the telephone in the hallway was a photograph of him. Andrew and Rachel, Dorset, 1992. It was taken by her father. Shepherd lifted the frame. As he adjusted its angle, the reflected light obscured first his face, then Rachel’s. He rubbed dust between thumb and forefinger. He put the photo back on the table.

He climbed the stairs. They creaked beneath his weight. He recalled sneaking up these stairs, late, after a work Christmas party.

When he saw the chaos in the bathroom, he laughed once, out loud. The boys’ deodorant and shaving foam. He wondered when they started using it. Inside-out tights, an empty Tampax box, toothbrushes in a water-stained, chromium holder. Their bristles leaned as if shaped by a prevailing wind. Dove soap, Gillette shower gel. The portable radio on the window sill hadn’t been properly turned off. He could hear the low murmur of Radio 4. A small pair of boxer shorts had been trampled underfoot into the sodden bathmat. Somebody had left a Swatch on the shelf, next to a new but lidless tube of toothpaste that had been squeezed from the middle.

He sat on the edge of the bath. He watched a beam of sunlight move through twenty degrees.

In the twins’ disordered bedroom
(DO NOT ENTER!!!
, read the sign he had allowed them to Blu-tac to the door) he breathed the fungal air of male adolescence: the cheesy feet, the unwashed armpits, the sweaty bedding, the sharper top-notes of deodorant and aftershave. He ran his hand along the frame of the bunkbeds. There were new posters on the wall: Manchester United, Tupac Shakur, the Phantom Menace. Pamela Anderson in a red swimsuit. There was a new PC on a rickety workstation. On the chest of drawers, the portable TV and Playstation were veiled in dust. He drew his finger down the screen. With the darting tip of his tongue, he touched the dust that clung to his fingertip.

Next door, Annie’s room was pastel and neat, fragrant with perfume and soap. On her dressing table a collection of coffee mugs bloomed with grey mould. He picked up a mug, examined it, made a repulsed face, smiled. Her PC table was crowded with books and sheets of photocopied A4. He ran his palm along the crisp duvet cover. It released a burst of her scent, and for a moment he imagined she was behind him, over his shoulder.

‘Dad,’ she would say (he knew her so well), ‘you grew a
beard
.’

He entered the marital bedroom with some reluctance. Something had changed. The wardrobes were the same. The curtains. The dressing table with her perfumes and her makeup: a grubby white bowl of foundation, a tube of mascara clogged black round the rim. He pulled open a drawer, slowly closed it again. Her underwear, laundered and folded. Photographs had been jammed in the mirror’s frame. Rachel, the kids, her family. None of him.

He realized what had changed.

There was a new bed.

The cat sashayed in there after him. It leaped upon the new bed and curled on the pillow. It stared at him with eyes like headlamps.

He looked at himself in the full-length mirror.

He wanted to come home.

But there could be no coming home. The people who lived in this house had marked his death, and had been sad. But that sadness had been accommodated within their lives. The farther he receded in time—as his children became adults, as his wife bought a new bed, as the cat grew older and more cantankerous, as the apple tree in the garden added another inch, as new school years were started and completed, and office politics ran their circular and repeating course, as Christmas came, and Easter, and summer holidays and bonfire night, and exams, and university, and promotion, as friends divorced and remarried, as new lovers enticed—the fainter grew the mark he had left here, the impermanent stamp of who he had been. He was fading like the Polaroid of a good moment; like something broken and left outside, blanched now with sun and swollen with rain.

The cat followed him to the kitchen door and into the garden. It watched him replace the key in the bag under the potted plant under the kitchen window. He was tempted to say goodbye to it, to stoop and caress it under the wishbone of its jaw, to feel the muscular squirm of its skull in his palm.

But the cat wanted no part of him. When it was convinced he was not coming back, it returned to the house via the catflap he had fitted when it was a kitten, while the children played badminton in the garden behind him and Rachel spoke to her mother on the telephone about who would be coming to who next Christmas, fully five months early.

Shepherd was back in London in time for
EastEnders
. Eloise had cooked him a fish pie.

The police had already spoken to Lenny. He felt grieved and betrayed. For two or three days he didn’t speak to Shepherd, and for a week after that he was curt and rather clipped. But soon enough he got over it.

14

Somehow, a researcher for a satellite television station tracked Shepherd down. He never learned exactly how. He supposed a police officer somewhere had benefited financially from the transaction.

All he knew was this: one day he picked up the phone to a delighted young woman called Chloe, who, when he dolefully expressed his unwillingness to appear on camera, responded: ‘Oh,
absolutely
,’ and proceeded to bully him into doing exactly that.

His identity would not be revealed. He would appear on screen in silhouette and his voice would be electronically altered. He would be paid £500. Cash.

He asked what the programme was about.

She told him: ‘The supernatural.’

A new Rover 200 arrived for him at 11 a.m. on the day of recording. Through the curtains, Eloise and Lenny watched him leave. They looked like proud parents. Eloise gave him an abashed, supportive little thumbs up.

He didn’t say much to the driver, who listened to Capital FM all the way. The television studio was located in a low-rise industrial complex on the extreme north edge of London. It was as if commuter-belt suburbia segued into an internment camp, upon which shone a triumphant imperialist sun.

He stepped from the car and thanked the driver. Clearly, the driver didn’t give a shit either way. Shepherd brushed himself down and walked into Reception. He smiled at the receptionist. After a very few minutes, during which he sipped delicately at a cup of tea, he was introduced to Chloe. She was surely no older than twenty-one or twenty-two, perhaps five foot two. She wore a spiky, pixie haircut, heavy-rimmed spectacles and very baggy clothes in shiny modern fabrics. Shepherd felt old. He cast an obelisk shadow over her.

She led him like a trained elephant through the natty reception area into the working corridors of the building. Young people in various states of high anxiety bustled this way and that. Chloe showed him the Green Room. He had always associated the name with the glamour of television. Sean Connery sat in the Green Room and told golfing stories with Jimmy Tarbuck before appearing on
Parkinson
.

He was disappointed. The Green Room was about the size of a double bedroom. There were threadbare carpet tiles on the floor. Pressed against the walls were the kind of chairs that might be found in a dentist’s waiting room. In one corner, on a wheeled stand, stood a large, rather ancient television. Its screen showed an empty row of superior chairs in a darkened, empty studio. Some black loops of cable were in shot. Along the lower edge of the screen he saw the brief, lateral movement of a camera dolly.

On a coffee table next to the television was a tinfoil tray of sandwiches and some flasks of the kind that might be found at a sales conference in a Midlands hotel.

‘Tea’s on the right,’ she said. ‘Coffee on the left. It’s no smoking but you can ignore that if you must. We all do.’

He looked at her meaningfully.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Chloe. ‘We don’t bite!’

He said: ‘What do I have to do, exactly?’

She put her hands on her hips and made a face that told him he was very naughty.

She said: ‘When the times comes—’

‘It’s not live or anything?’

‘Oh no. It goes out on Thursday night. In the eleven o’clock slot. When the time comes, we’ll lead you to the studio and sit you down. You’ll be miked up and Geoff will ask you some questions—’

‘There’s no audience?’

‘No. Don’t worry. The discussion will be edited and shown to a studio audience tomorrow. The panel on tomorrow’s programme will debate what you’ve said.’

‘Who else is coming?’

‘They’ll be here in a minute,’ she said.

Next door, in an even smaller room, he was invited to perch on a revolving stool before a big mirror. A pleasant Glaswegian woman with a face the colour of a satsuma smeared make-up on that bit of his face still visible above the beard. She dabbed it with a triangle of sponge on his bristly scalp. Then she offered to neaten his beard and moustache. He thanked her. Her scissors clicked hypnotically.

In a matter of minutes he looked like a scholarly lumberjack.

When she was finished, he experienced a brief moment of panic.

He went next door to the Green Room. He was still wearing the hairdressing gown. Chloe was deep in conversation with a young man in a Gap T-shirt.

He interrupted them. He said: ‘Why do I need make-up if I’m going to appear in silhouette?’

‘Oh,’ she said. She made a concerned moue. ‘Did nobody speak to you? Did nobody call? It’s OK,’ she assured him, ‘we changed the format. Don’t worry. You would’ve been in silhouette if we were going live with an audience. As it is, it’ll be edited so that only your eyes or your mouth or whatever are on screen at one time.’

His legs were numb.

‘You absolutely promise?’

‘Oh, absolutely.’

‘Do I sign something to that effect?’

‘If you like,’ she said. ‘Absolutely. I can sort that out with Colin in ten minutes. Don’t move!’

He never saw her again.

He poured himself a cup of tea. He spilled UHT milk on his shoes. The little drops looked like sperm.

One by one, three more guests arrived. Each was accompanied by a Chloe clone. One of them was a slim young Brazilian man with long legs, who suggested they call him Tony.

The first guest was a stout, somewhat tweedy woman. She introduced herself with the kind of abrupt civility that suggests a Tory bigot. He made her a cup of tea. She thanked him distractedly, as if a hot beverage was her ancestral due.

She and Shepherd watched the silent screen, upon which technicians dragged cables and huddled in urgent-looking conversations.

Next to arrive was a popular scientist called Julian. Shepherd recognized him from the television. Lenny had angrily dismissed him as a professional sceptic. Julian’s clothes were slightly donnish, but his accent had a touch of Estuary round the edges and his hair was luxuriant and dandified.

He said, ‘Hello again!’ to the woman. Hearty and cordial adversaries, they shook hands.

They heard the fourth guest arriving at Reception. He announced himself with a series of raucous cackles. The loud presence was followed into the room by the man who projected it. He was squat and powerful. He moved like a bouncer. He wore a grey suit and purple silk tie. He had a shaved, bowling-ball head and a grey beard that bristled like a boar.

He marched up to Julian and pumped his hand.

‘Nice to see you again, mate,’ he said. Then he moved to the old woman, whose powdered cheek he kissed with exaggerated delicacy, like a thuggish fop in a powdered wig.

‘And how are you, doll?’

He squared up to Shepherd. He rubbed his hands like a barrow boy.

‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ he said. ‘Have we?’

Shepherd wiped a palm on his thigh and extended his hand.

‘Jack,’ he said.

‘Well, I hope you’re all right, Jack,’ said Rex Dryden. ‘I’m Rex.’

They shook hands. Then Dryden said: ‘Let me get at those sandwiches.’

He peeled back the Clingfilm like the skin from a rabbit.

Shepherd felt vaguely affronted and proprietorial, as if sole rights to the sandwiches were his.

Dryden scanned them with an index finger.

‘The trick,’ he said, ‘is to find something without avo-fucking-cado in it. That’s why they call them green rooms.’

He picked up a sandwich and shoved it into his maw. He champed on it in a way that aroused in Shepherd a protective feeling towards his distant children. He watched a sliver of chicken riding those cheerful lips like a dingy in rough weather.

Before Shepherd could subtly push himself past Dryden and get to the sandwiches, they were joined by the presenter. His name was Geoff. Shepherd had never heard of him. Geoff’s hair was bouffant in a way that marked him out as second-rate. His eyes had the ingratiating slipperiness of one who glances over shoulders at parties.

When Geoff had introduced himself and appealed to them to be at their ease, Dryden, Julian and Patricia visited Make-up. Each returned the colour of a different citrus fruit.

Shepherd was prepared for the studio to be surprisingly small. Famously, everything and everyone involved with television was surprisingly small.

Nevertheless, its smallness surprised him.

One by one, except Dryden, they were guided into swivelling, leatherette chairs. Impassive and wordless young people urged them to pass microphone cables through their clothing.

Shepherd was seated in a chair slightly to the left of the main group.

Geoff walked off to consult with some clipboard-holding young men and women in the corner. He sipped professionally from a waxed cardboard cup of coffee.

There were five cameras: four pointed at the leatherette chairs, another at a wooden lectern that had been erected in one corner. Each camera was operated by a man in his early forties. Not one of them gave any sign that he gave the least proportion of a flying fuck about what was going on. Their assurance, like that of mechanics in a backstreet garage, was subtly emasculating.

The guests took their seats and each was asked to speak into their microphone. Each pushed their chin into their throat and said:
Hello. One-two. One-two
, before a bored floor manager told them to try again, pretending the microphones weren’t there. They were told to speak to Tony on camera 2.

While attendants fiddled with his microphone Geoff the presenter ran through his introduction. In repose, his face looked older.

Dryden took his place behind the wooden rostrum, and then, with less perturbation than Shepherd thought possible, the taping began.

The studio went dark. Camera dollies moved like daleks across the polished floor. Stooping young runners moved trailing cables out of the way of their casters. A single light fell on Geoff the presenter. He fixed the camera with his serious gaze, behind which there twinkled what he thought of as his trademark ironic sauciness.

‘Hello and welcome to the programme,’ he said. ‘Well: after all the doomsaying and the soothsaying, life as we know it did not come to an end. Planes didn’t fall from the sky. The microwave ovens didn’t stand up in open revolt. The River of Fire turned out to be—well, a river of water. It’s the year 2000. Summer’s here. Suddenly, we’ve got new concerns: our decaying transport infrastructure,
Big Brother
. But cast your minds back, just a few short months, to the turn of the twenty-first century. What happened to all the prophets of doom? All the millennium buggers? All the scientists and the New Age gurus who stood in line to say our time was up? Do they
still
insist there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy? Or have they packed up and gone home? Has the New Age gone to ground?

‘Our guest speaker requires little introduction. Nowadays, Rex Dryden describes himself as a transcendental comedian. But it wasn’t so very long ago that he was responsible for duping several hundred perfectly ordinary people into believing some outrageous claims he made on behalf of his so-called religion, the Temple of Light. To kick us off this week, we asked Rex Dryden why there are so many people who will believe in anything—except, that is, a future.’

The light dimmed over Geoff’s head. A second picked out Dryden. He clutched the sides of the lectern and leaned forward slightly.

‘It’s a well-known fact,’ he began, ‘that, when members of the public recognize celebrities in the street, they’ve usually got one thing to say. John Cleese was driven mad by people reminding him not to mention the war. Now, I’m not what you’d call a celebrity, but occasionally, people do recognize me. And they always ask the same question. “Rex,” they say. “Whatever happened to the end of the world?”’

Dryden bared his teeth in a smile.

‘I always give them the same answer,’ he said. ‘The end of the world hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just round the corner. It always has been.

‘A few months back, several hundred people drank poison, just because I asked them to. Or at least they thought they did. Actually, they were drinking Lucozade.

‘Who would do that? Who would kill themselves, just because somebody asked them to? Were these people mad? Most people would probably say yes. But I’m not sure I agree.

‘A few years back, I saw the movie
Braveheart
. At the film’s climax, Mel Gibson is being tortured to death at the order of the English monarchy. They’re cutting off his arms and legs and slicing him open and rooting around in his guts with hot tongs. And while this is happening, he’s shouting one word at the sky. He’s shouting the word
Freedom
.

‘Now, if I was in Mel’s position, I’d be making a lot of noise as well. But it wouldn’t be freedom I’d shout about.

‘The first time I saw
Braveheart
, I thought it was a comedy. I thought it was
Monty Python
. I thought Mel was going to jump up off the torture table and hop around on one leg, telling everyone it didn’t hurt, that it was only a flesh wound, that the English were all cowards, that he would take them all on.

‘I remember thinking: I wouldn’t let a kid watch
this
. Not in a million years. That’s not heroism, that’s
idiocy
. It’s one thing truly to die in the name of freedom. It’s another thing to be killed for your country. Too often, we assume the two are equivalent. But they’re not. Quite the contrary. After all, what
is
a country? It’s an abstract. It’s an idea sometimes (but not always) expressed by geography. Countries expand, countries contract. A country is legislation, specifically designed to restrict your freedom, intellectual and physical. A country exists to make you a productive unit. A
consumer
. You’re fuel to your country’s economy. And all over the world, and all through history, people have been happy to kill, and to die for exactly that idea. For this
Monty Python
idea of what freedom is.

‘A government provides one freedom. It frees us from the tyranny of true choice. Modern democracy dazzles us with ephemera and calls it liberty. Meanwhile, the important decisions are made on our behalf. Partly, that’s because we long to be told what to do.