Loose Connections (4 page)

Torture

When Rosemary got back to the office five minutes later, she was holding a mug and a plate of Viennese Whirls. She put the biscuits down on the desk. ‘How dare you insult my intelligence!' she shrieked. She was angry at the repairman's comment about her not knowing who André really was. She was angry because he was right. She'd been the first to mention Picasso. He'd asked her who her favourite artists were. She hadn't known much about art then. She'd said Picasso because there was an article about him in the newspaper on her desk. She glared at the repairman, her hand shaking. Tea splashed on to the laminate floor.

‘How dare you call me stupid? I'm not stupid! I'm a grown woman. I'm a professional. I'm streetwise. I know what I'm doing.' She wasn't sure why those last two statements were necessary. She wasn't streetwise. She hadn't been into town for months. She had done all of her shopping online until her connection broke down. Now, she sent her husband to the Tesco Express on his way home from work. She winced at the shock of daylight when she left the house to peg washing out. Her whole life revolved around the computer and she was sick of it. And she clearly didn't know what she was doing. She was obsessed with a man she'd never met, so obsessed that she'd taken a worker from her ISP company hostage. Those e-mails were the only thing that made her happy, and now they'd stopped. She had nothing left. 

‘I didn't say you were stupid,' the repairman said. 

Rosemary was angry in a way she'd never experienced before. She could feel it setting like a cancer in the pit of her gut. ‘You didn't say it, no,' she said. ‘But you meant it, didn't you?' When she finished her sentence the room was brilliantly still, the only sound her own breath. The repairman was looking up at her, his spectacles slipping down his nose. Before she could stop herself, she threw the hot tea over his crotch. She then stood there, amazed by her own violence, the mug limp in her hand. 

‘Whoa!' The repairman tried to stand, the handcuffs pulling him back down into the seat. ‘What are you doing, you mad bitch?' he said, his free hand going to the wet patch on his trousers. He tugged at the material, trying to pull it away from his skin, his eyes wide with shock. ‘You're not right,' he said, flailing around in the chair. ‘That tea is boiling hot. It's burning. I only told you those things for your own safety. I'm burning here. You have to let me go.' He crossed and uncrossed his legs, like a child who needed the toilet. 

Rosemary laughed. ‘No,' she said. ‘You've got to fix my connection first.'

‘Jesus suffering Christ!' he said. ‘What's the matter with you? Is it your time of the month, or what?' 

‘Not that old chestnut?' Rosemary said, grinning. ‘I thought you might have come up with something a bit more original.' Suddenly she was shouting again, her voice going from nought to sixty in under a second. ‘Like fixing my fucking Internet!' She turned and stomped out of the room. 

‘Shit!' Aaron thought. ‘Why did I have to say that?' He knew it pissed them off. He used to say it to his wife, and she'd left him. He was scared of what this woman was going to do next. He could hear her footsteps on the floor above him, stamping around. He felt the contour of his mobile phone through the material of his jacket. But he couldn't dial 999, not without fixing the connection. It would be too obvious that she'd been conned.

He reached for the miniature screwdriver on the floor. He wheeled the chair over to the socket, dragging it with his feet. He held the screwdriver in his left hand, supporting his wrist with his right. He shook as he tried to wedge the tip of it into the nook of the tiny screw. It kept falling out. He pushed further into the corner, the arm of the chair jammed against the wall. He could hear the woman shouting, her words muffled, as he worked the screw anti-clockwise. When the screw couldn't go any further, he pulled the screwdriver away, the shoulder of his bound arm aching. He should have done this in the first place. The other boys never told him that she was a nut job. 

The tea had turned cold now, and his trousers were clinging to his thighs. He saw a small green light on the dongle begin to flash. That was probably it. He was connected. Just to make sure, he went back to the socket and tried to tighten the other screw but it was already wound as tight as it could go. He moved over to the desk and tried to work the mouse with his left hand, the arrow thrashing all over the screen. The woman was on her way down the stairs. He took a deep breath, paused, and then started again. He directed the arrow to the start box in the bottom left corner, instructing the computer to restart. He moved back to his original position, the screwdriver hidden between his soaked thighs. 

The woman dropped a roll of brown parcel tape on the desk with a thud. 

‘It's done,' Aaron said. ‘It's connected.' 

She ignored him. She was fiddling with something in her hand. Aaron bobbed around in the chair, trying to see what it was. It was a box of Tampax. She took two tampons out and then picked the spool of tape up, dropping it on to her arm like a bracelet. She came towards him. 

‘I said it's done,' he said, holding his free arm up, trying to ward her off. She slapped his arm down. She tried to sit on Aaron's lap. He moved the chair with his feet, dodging her. ‘I said it's done!' he shouted. He reached for the screwdriver and held it in front of him, the handle gripped in his fingers. The woman prised it from his hand and threw it over her shoulder. It landed with a tap on the hallway floor. 

She grabbed his hand and tried to push it down on to the arm of the chair. He managed to pull it away. He trapped it beneath his left leg. The woman straddled him.

Behind them the computer was starting up with a fanfare. ‘It's connected!' Aaron said. ‘Look, take a look. You can let me go.' 

The woman pushed all of her weight down on to his thighs. ‘I'm sorry but I don't believe you,' she said. ‘Must be my time of the month. It makes me a bit cynical.' She held a tampon between her thumb and forefinger and tried to push it into his mouth. ‘No,' he said, turning his head this way and that, trying to avoid it. A boy at school with him had had to be rushed to casualty with a tampon trapped in his throat. He'd found it in the yard and swallowed it, thinking he could pull it back out by its string. But tampons expanded in water. He couldn't breathe, and he turned blue. 

The woman pinched at his chin, trying to hold his face still.

‘No!' he said, speaking without fully parting his lips. ‘Come on, I did my job. Don't do anything silly now. You can let me go.' He wriggled, trying to fight her off, but she was much stronger than him. She lodged the tampon between his lips and drove it in with her forefinger. Aaron could feel the cotton wool, dry and fluffy against his tongue. He tried to bite down on it but the sensation was ghastly. He hated cotton wool. He retched and she stopped pushing. The tampon was loose in his mouth, balancing on his tongue. He bit down on the string to stop it travelling any closer to his throat. 

‘This isn't silly,' she said, her voice high and chirpy, the way women talked to babies. ‘You know what was though, don't you?' 

Aaron nodded. There wasn't much else he could do. 

She took the second tampon and roughly thrust it into his mouth. Again he managed to catch it with the string before it got too close to his throat. ‘There we are!' she said. She took the roll of parcel tape from her wrist and gripped its edge, a thick strand coming away with a rip. She slapped it over his mouth. 

The woman stood up and inspected him, smiling proudly at her handiwork. ‘Do you want a biscuit now?' she said, stepping backwards. ‘You have to try my Viennese Whirls. I make the shortbread myself.' As she turned her back on him, Aaron pulled his free hand from underneath himself. He reached for the tape covering his mouth and grabbed at a corner, preparing to pluck it away. The weight of his mobile phone was burning a hole in his pocket. The woman heard him shuffling. She turned around and caught his hand. She held his wrist with both hands and pushed his forearm down on to the leather arm of the chair. She sat on it while she pulled the end of the parcel tape from the roll, the tape making a loud screeching noise as the stickiness gave way. She wound it around his arm several times. ‘No!' Aaron tried to yell, his voice muted by the wadding in his mouth. He had no way of fighting back now.

The woman checked that the tape on his mouth was still secure, slapping it lightly a few times. ‘There, there,' she said. ‘Biscuit time. You love a biscuit, don't you, you repairmen?' 

‘Hmmm,' Aaron said, nodding at the monitor. He was trying to alert her to the Internet icon on the bottom left side of the screen. It was flickering, showing that it was connected. 

The woman ignored the gesture. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. She waved her hand around her face. ‘I can't hear you. You've got tape over your mouth.' She took a biscuit from the plate and carried it to him. She held it in front of his mouth for a moment and then pushed it against the tape, the cream and jam smearing out of its sides. She flicked the top off the biscuit and then slapped it down on to Aaron's cheek. She rolled it over his face like a child pushing a toy car along a grid. He could feel the thick band of jam smearing across his skin, the buttercream getting caught among the stubble on his jaws. 

Soon it was clogging every space on his face. He could feel the grittiness of the crumbs in his ear canals. There was buttercream stuffed in his nostrils. There was burgundy-coloured jam smeared on the lenses of his glasses. He couldn't see anything. All he could smell was its sickly sweet aroma, caught at the back of his throat. He felt like a fly with its wings pulled, trapped in a can of Coke. And his legs were dead from the woman sitting on them. He was so aggravated he began to cry. 

‘What's the matter?' Rosemary said as she noticed a tear snaking down through the yellowy buttercream spread on the repairman's face. She lifted his spectacles up and set them on top of his head. ‘It's not blood. It's only jam.' She wiped a dollop of jam from under his eye with the edge of her fingertip. She put it into her mouth, the sugar tingling at her taste buds. ‘See?' 

The repairman was staring hard at her, his irises golden. The two blue tampon threads were dangling out of the brown tape like tails. She realised that he couldn't answer her with his mouth taped up like that, and very suddenly all the fun had trickled out of the situation. She jumped out of his lap and stood looking down at him. ‘This is grievous bodily harm, isn't it?' she said. The repairman nodded. Rosemary glanced around the room, at the roll of brown tape and the puddle of cold tea on the floor. What was she going to do now? She had to kill him or let him go. 

‘Bloody hell,' she said, the consequence of her actions dawning on her like thunder. She peeked at the repairman and a whimper came from the back of her throat. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I'm sorry.'

Escape

Behind them the front door was opening. The handle was being pressed down. Somebody was coming in. The repairman looked up expectantly. ‘Shhh!' Rosemary said, glaring at him. She pressed her index finger against her lips. He blinked and then nodded. She moved towards the office door and peeked outside. Her son was in the hallway, his schoolbag on his shoulder. 

‘Danny!' she said, voice frantic. ‘What are you doing home?' She squeezed out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. She stood in front of it, guarding the office. 

‘Study period,' Daniel said. He noticed the screwdriver on the floor. ‘What's this?' he said. He frowned as he stooped to pick it up. He handed it to his mother. 

‘Oh, nothing,' she said. ‘Thanks.' She quickly turned, opened the office door, and threw the screwdriver on to her desk. She flicked the light switch off and then slammed the door closed again. She stood in the doorway, grinning at her son, hands pressed protectively on her hips. 

‘Are you OK, Mum?' Daniel said. He was trying to look past her, through the wooden panels of the door. 

‘Fine!' Rosemary said. ‘I'm absolutely fine.' She reached up and ruffled her son's dark hair. It was stiff and tacky with hair gel. Daniel moved away from his mother's touch. Rosemary wiped her fingers on the thigh of her jeans. ‘Well, let's get you something to eat,' she said. She pointed at the kitchen door, expecting her son to move towards it. He didn't budge. ‘Come on, you must be hungry.' She pushed him in front of her, following him down the narrow hall. 

‘How was school?' she said, as she opened the fridge door. 

Danny sat at the dining table, still wearing his padded jacket. He rolled his eyes. ‘It was school,' he said, shrugging. ‘What do you expect me to say?'

Rosemary put a block of cheese, an onion, and a cucumber down on the worktop. She reached into the cupboard for a chopping board. ‘I expect you to tell me what subjects you had. I expect you to tell me how your revision is going.' She took a knife from the cutlery drawer and lopped the end of the onion off. 

‘Maths and English,' Daniel said. ‘That's what I have every Thursday morning.' Rosemary peeled the onion at arm's length, dropping the flakes of papery skin into a small pile on the worktop next to her. ‘But you don't usually have a study period,' she said. ‘Are you telling me the truth about that?' 

‘Yes!' Daniel said, offended. ‘Do you think I'm stupid or something? I know you'd ring the school. It's our chemistry teacher. He's off sick. They couldn't get someone to take his place in time.' He stood up and dropped his bag on the surface of the table. He unzipped it and rummaged around inside. He pulled a sealed letter out. ‘Can I get a stamp from your office?' he said. 

‘No!' Rosemary stood still, the paring knife in her hand. ‘Get it later. Help me with this sandwich for a minute. Come on, come and butter the bread.' She waited until Daniel had put the letter down on the table and joined her at the worktop before she started cutting again. ‘What's it for anyway?' she said. 

Daniel took four slices of bread out of the bin and laid them on the counter. ‘It's just an application form,' he said, ‘for a Christmas job at the supermarket.' As he opened the carton of margarine, he could feel a strange energy coming from his mother. She was tense as a coiled spring, her hands shaking. He noticed a jam stain on the shoulder of her blouse, two seeds clinging to the material, the red liquid soaking in. ‘What's that?' he said. 

His mother jumped, her knife catching the tip of her thumb. ‘What?' she said, twisting around to look at him, her thumb going to her mouth. 

‘There's a stain on your blouse.' As he spoke he saw the dark mascara ringed around her eyes. ‘Have you been crying, Mum?' 

Rosemary shook her head. ‘It's the onion,' she said, pointing at it. ‘Get me a plaster please, Danny. There are some blue ones in the First Aid case.' She ripped a square piece of kitchen roll from the holder and held it over her thumb. Daniel was still standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at her. ‘In the second cabinet,' she said, ‘third shelf, quickly!' 

Danny put the case down on the worktop and toyed with the plastic catch. ‘It's a First Aid case,' he said. ‘Why is it so hard to open?' 

His mother pushed him out of the way and located a plaster. She wound it around her finger. Daniel noticed that there was jam under her fingernails as well. ‘Hang on,' he said, his head tilted, ‘wasn't the ISP guy coming to fix the connection today?' 

Rosemary was still. 

‘I think I saw his van outside,' Danny said. 

‘Oh, the repairman?' Rosemary said. ‘Yes, he's in there now. He's having a few problems. The line is faulty. Best to leave him be for a while.'

‘But you turned the light out,' Danny said. 

‘No I didn't,' Rosemary said. ‘I passed him his screwdriver. He must have dropped it.' She turned back to the sandwich, pulling the cover from the cucumber. 

‘You did,' Danny said. ‘I saw you. You turned the light off.' 

Outside, in the middle of the cul-de-sac, Aaron sat tied to the leather chair. He was waiting for someone to notice him. His glasses had fallen from the top of his head in the rush to escape. They'd landed in front of his eyes, the lenses still covered in jam. All he could see was the dirty fish-tank light of the outdoors, like being buried in a big jar of Vaseline. The bird song was muffled. The cold breeze bit at the insides of his thighs. The trousers were stuck to him like a fourth layer of skin. 

He tried not to think about the damage to his skin. Instead he listened to what he could hear, or at least what he thought he could, car tyres whipping on tarmac, children playing in a park. The source of the noise seemed to come from a distance and those two hours bound up in a windowless room had confused his senses. He couldn't remember where the entrance to the cul-de-sac was. He was afraid to wheel the chair any further across the street in case he planted himself in the middle of the nearby dual carriageway, but he knew that very soon that woman was going to realise that he was gone. 

It was like one of those nightmares where, while being pursued by some mad axe-man, your body became completely paralysed. But the mad axe-man was a woman, and Aaron wasn't asleep. A new overwhelming sense of frustration attacked him and he pulled at the handcuffs. By now his wrist was so swollen he wasn't able to measure the strength of the metal. All he could feel was the stinging of his skin. 

He felt so bloody stupid! He had attended many courses designed to teach him how to deal with these situations. Anyone who spent most of their working lives visiting members of the public needed to risk-assess the property, as well as the client, on arrival. He remembered some of the questions on the official check list. Does the customer appear to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Does the property appear to be a dangerous environment? For example, is there any evidence of drug paraphernalia (needles) or dangerous weapons (knives) present? Are all pets, particularly guard dogs, locked securely in another room? He had been very aware of these sorts of issues when he did work on sink estates but this was a wealthy area of the city and nothing had seemed out of place. The woman had been slightly irritable, but well spoken and well dressed. Everything had seemed ordinary until it was too late. 

He had realised he had a chance to escape the moment the woman turned the light off. She didn't want her son to know that he was there. That meant she had to keep her son busy for a period of time. Aaron had dragged the chair across the floor with the soles of his feet, as if pushing a skateboard. The door handle was at waist height. Luckily it was a handle, not a knob, and he was able to push it down with his elbow. The door burst open with an abrupt pop and he sat under the frame for a few seconds, wondering if the woman, or the boy, could hear or see him. They were at the back of the house and they were talking, but Aaron couldn't hear what they were saying. He heard them the way he heard his music while lying in the bath, a non-stop drone. The stifled sound seemed to continue without pause, so he carried on along the hallway, the plastic wheels scraping against the laminate floor. 

In his head he said a prayer. ‘Please God, let me make it out of here alive. If I get to the front door undetected, I promise I'll never dupe another customer for an extra bit of cash.' What do I need money for anyway, he thought, I only spend it on computer games. When he reached the front door, he was able to stand for a moment and lift the chair over the threshold. As he blindly made his way across the drive and over the kerb, he kept repeating the prayer. ‘I'll never dupe a customer for any extra cash ever again. I promise, I promise, I promise.' 

Now Aaron felt a hand pressing on his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?' It was a woman's voice. The urgent need to identify who it belonged to forced Aaron to shake his head until his glasses fell from his face. They landed on the ground with a tinny rattle. 

An elderly woman was leaning down in front of him, frowning. He pointed at the tape on his mouth, asking the woman to remove it. The woman took the corner of the tape. Aaron nodded hard, encouraging her. It came away with one pull. He spat the tampons out and they landed on the ground next to the old woman's pink slippers. She stared at them with worry. ‘Just a practical joke,' Aaron said, taking a gulp of the delicious new air. ‘Can you help me cut myself free? My keys are in my pocket here.' He thrust his chest out, showing the woman his breast pocket. ‘There are scissors and bolt cutters in the van.' 

‘Shouldn't I ring 999?' the old woman said. 

‘No,' Aaron said. He couldn't risk involving the police. There'd be an investigation into the incident. They'd ask him why the connection had taken such a long time to repair. They'd ask him why he hadn't rung them earlier. They would ask all sorts of questions. ‘I'm fine,' he said. ‘It was just a joke.' He cocked his head at the bloated tampons on the ground. ‘I'm getting married at the weekend,' he said. ‘It was my stag party last night.' 

The old woman looked unsure. She reached towards his pocket but then hesitated, her soft, crinkled fingers frozen in mid-air. ‘You're not playing a trick on me?' she said. Aaron shook his head, eyes fervent. No more tricks. He felt her fingers fumbling against his chest. He heard the clatter of his keys as she lifted them out. 

Daniel walked carefully towards the office, his job application seized in his hand. 

‘Wait,' Rosemary said, following him, the paring knife gripped in her fist. She tapped his shoulder blade to try to slow his pace, but he continued anyway along the hall. ‘It's not what it looks like,' she said. 

The office door was wide open. Danny reached around the frame and turned the light switch on. ‘There's nobody here,' he said, puzzled. Rosemary squinted over his shoulder. The room was empty. The miniature screwdriver was on the floor, next to the upturned, jam-stained plate. The mug sat innocently on the desk. There was a faint, electrical snore from the PC, the monitor blank. Daniel turned to look at his mother. 

Rosemary shrugged. ‘He must have popped out for a tool,' she said. ‘Unless he's finished. Is the Internet connected?' She pushed past her son and went to the computer. She pressed the space key on the keyboard and the screensaver started up with a photo of the Eiffel Tower. I should change that screensaver, she thought, too much of a giveaway. She leaned against the desk and pressed the space bar a second time. When the desktop appeared, she saw the Internet icon at the bottom left of the monitor. It was flashing bright green. ‘I think it's done,' she said excitedly. She double-clicked on the purple and red ISP emblem. 

Daniel picked up the plate and put it down on the desk. He picked up the screwdriver too. ‘What did you mean when you said it isn't what it looks like?' he said. 

Rosemary was staring at the screen, her body bent over the keyboard, her elbows on the desk. ‘What?' she said, voice prickly. 

‘That's what you said,' Daniel said. ‘You said, “It's not what it looks like.” Are you having an affair with the Internet man, Mum?' He was rummaging around in the drawer looking for the book of first-class stamps. 

Rosemary laughed. ‘Me? An affair?' she said. ‘Who would I have an affair with? I hardly leave the house!'

‘But that Internet guy is here all the time!' There was a playful quality to his voice. He was joking. 

‘Don't be ridiculous, Danny,' she said. From the corner of her eye she could see that he was holding a piece of paper with her spidery handwriting on it. 

‘What's this?' he said. He held it up to the light. ‘Oranges, for Cézanne, are more than just juicy fruits,' he read, his eyebrows knitted into a squint. ‘Heavier than reality, by far, they are dense geometric forms, individual beings, symbols of Eden or perhaps eternity. In this great counting game, the picture is more than the sum of its parts.' They were the notes Rosemary had made at the National Museum, according to André's instructions on how to look at art. 

She plucked the paper out of her son's hand and glanced at it briefly. ‘Can't remember,' she said. ‘Might have been some translation work I did once for a gallery.' She scrunched the paper into a ball and flicked it into the wastebasket.