Strip the Willow (17 page)

But she wished, sprats or no sprats, that Julie would come to a suitable end.

Alison stood outside LeopCorp Towers and looked up. She knew there was a surplus of Semtex from the previous Spectacle. She could even get access. But no, she couldn’t. For one reason only. Gwen was in there.

She had no sooner come back from the stark, staring shock of the cemetery outside Huntly, than she had been hit with it by email. It wasn’t even the email; that was blank. It was the attachment.

The attachment was a thirty minute video file, edited together, apparently secretly taken. Gwen was in it, you could see her face, all sorts of rapt expressions. You could see all of her. And her lover, Bill she presumed. His face more shadowed. So many positions,
hard-edited
and fiercely rendered.

She had got the ultimatum by quite a different means. A man in the street who spoke behind her in a crowd, and then melted away inside ten seconds. If Alison did not play ball at work, the man said, then the video, exposing her named and only daughter, was going on the Internet.

Given everything else, she was just about ready to kill.

– So that’s what we did. We shot at the mouth of Loch Eriboll and steamed in a circle and picked up our end. The purse came taut as the Triplex, massive roller-jawed beast that it was, took its grip and started hauling the net upwards. Spermy was in the
wheelhouse
, Baxter out on the flying bridge. We crew were lodged on the after-deck mostly, beginning to pull down the heavy net from the transporter and make big folds. Then—

Fuckin bastardin shitin cunt! Spratshiters, get tae fuck! We’re shaftit noo, Baxter, we might as weel cut awa. Sprats!

Cut awa, is it? Is that whit ye wint? shouted Baxter. Cut awa?

Na, ye daftie! bawled Spermy. We’ll try haulin.

Haul awa, is it? Haul awa?

Aye! Come ye an tak ma helm in hand. An let me get oot tae that fuckin Triplex.

He seemed to be in a deeper trance, thought Lucy. Doing all the voices full blast. Probably what it was like in the hospital with Tam.

The sprats were rising like a mass of bristles, silver-shimmering in the tautening net. I heard their scales flying, I felt their screams. I felt the pain of the men as they took hold of the bar-tight net, ranged along the port side, and shook at it and shook – with the strength of their fingers and wrists only – and vibrated the sprats out. The millions of sprats cascaded down and back in the sea like a broken bank – oh, like torn life – like terrible, terrible waste.

Some escaped – oh, but briefly – and were carried up in the dark folds. They were crushed to death between the first and second rollers. They were squashed to oil between the second and third. Oil dripped and slopped on the flying bridge.

The gulls came of course; the gulls were interested in us from when we left port. It was the first of January, after all, no other boat was out that night. We would have the market to ourselves, and sky-high prices. The gulls got sprat enough to sicken them.

Greedy gulls pecked and fought over the same sprat – although there were thousands the same skimmering across the surface within a wing’s-length. Blind gulls killed for it. Gorged gulls tried to flap off, but flopped on the water and swam bloated.

I watched their fates probably far too much, and was shouted at to shake harder. I was not the world’s best sprat-shaker, that was clear.

Spermy shouted an oath and told me to join him on the flying bridge. Climbing up, I realised the night was growing filthy. What
a wind had risen! The boat was giving some right old heaves, as the swell passed underneath. I glanced in at the wheelhouse clock: it was ten to midnight. Come and dae something tae fuckin earn yir pay, said Spermy. That was no way to talk to a kidnappee.

We were wearing ourselves out at the rough end of nowhere trying not to catch these wretched fish. The sky was invisible. The net was making the tiniest progress, then, oiled and slipshod, slipping back. Spermy showed me the red and green control knobs of the Triplex. He showed great faith in my practical powers.

I’m goin doon on deck, tae gee these bastards up, said Spermy. Tak in when ye can.

I had to ask him again.

Pull on the green, ye twat, I only just tellt ye, didn’t I? he said. Pull on the fuckin green.

I wished at that moment I had stayed in the city to fight the Provost and Senator. But the battle is always easier on the other side.

I looked down on the men, trying to save the huge net that had been gatecrashed by freeloaders, part of a horrible joke, as bad as any played on Odysseus and his unlucky band. I stood in a swill of oil and scales with nominal charge of red and green knobs, afraid to touch them.

Suddenly the men were absenting themselves from the deck. Julie, we had all forgotten about Julie, Julie had yelled them into the cabin for soup. I felt sick and shouted to her, No, I’ll stay on deck, be in the air.
Be in the air,
the crap we speak.

Anyway, our net lay stopped. A hammocky, shroudy section hung close to me, flapping, close to the flying bridge. It was ready to be hauled taut again, steady as fate in the howling wind, up into the maw of the Triplex.

Net lay on the stern, in a fankly pile. Net streamed in a black and silver bow, out to one side. And net no doubt hung deep, weighted by our dying enemies, their swim bladders packed so tight they were packing in. A deep cache of silver, like all the cash you’d ever spend if you lived to be a thousand.

So I looked from the rail of the flying bridge. I was weak with speculation, master of nothing I surveyed. I laid one hand on the red, one on the green, to try and be ready.

And a swell rose from the north and lumped and broke, it washed through machinery, spilled across deck, out through the net, my eyes followed it.

And a swell rose from the north and lumped and broke, it washed through machinery, spilled across deck, out through the net, my eyes followed it.

And a swell—

– You okay? said Lucy.

She saw his head twitch, neither nod nor shake. She didn’t want to touch it.

– And I was cycling along the rim of a long curved beach.

And the sea rose and lumped, and spilled and broke, it swashed through my spokes. And the selfsame sea, with one small pause, backwashed the other way.

And the sea rose and lumped, and spilled and broke, it swashed through my spokes. And the selfsame sea, with one small pause, backwashed the other way.

And I was not alone, there were two bikes with me, Lucy on the bike to the right and Julie on the other. Hub to hub, let it go sideways.

And the sea rose and lumped, and spilled and broke, it swashed through my spokes—

O it was horizontigo alright, never described, so never known,
horizontigo
surely. And the selfsame sea, the selfsame sea— The bridge was oily after all, the kidnappee was dreaming, who pulled on the green and slipped in the net, who was conveyed, and up purveyed, to the gates of hell. His skull but a sprat to burst as a zit!

I thrust my hands between the blocks – I thrust out my palms and rived – life or oblivion – to rive that Triplex apart!

When Peem came out of the bathroom not long after, he found that Lucy’s door was locked.

Next morning it was grapefruit. There was no sugar on the table. And eggs. And Lucy, with eyes made up, saying,
I think it’s time we entered the real world.

Lucy had kept her time off to a minimum, and her reasons for it necessarily false, but by the time she got back to the office she knew that things had shifted and were still shifting.

Alison couldn’t brief her – she was busy, there was a Joint Working Group due at ten – so Lucy decided to see what she could find out from Marilyn. Marilyn just talked, however, about a new minimum requirements form that was coming out as regards office space rationalisation. Lucy confessed to not knowing that
rationalisation
had been decided upon, but Marilyn assured her it was an executive decision and wouldn’t therefore have appeared in any minutes.

Marilyn was hovering with her hand over her desk-phone, so Lucy retreated to her office and opened thirty two emails, dumping twenty and attending to none by the time ten to ten came, when she nipped along to the staff toilet.

It was strange, recomposing her own hair after spending so long on Mister Kitoff’s head. Peem’s head. She would never look at hair again without that X-ray sense of what lay beneath. Memento mori, the elongated, deceptive skull at the bottom of Holbein’s
Ambassadors
.

Though not as deceptive as his.

Because of the Julie thing, because of his knee-trembler against the fish-room boards in a gathering storm forty years earlier, on the same day she fell in love and more, she thought of him as – what—? Lucy looked in the bright mirror, and noted her cheekbones.

As a skull on legs.

Peem went to the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and asked what to do in the case of rediscovered identity. It turned out there wasn’t a leaflet on that.

The bloke bust a gut to try and help. He searched the generic list.

If it was a rediscovered
item
like a handbag or mobile, you would of course hand it in to the police.

If it was a rediscovered
march stone
or
burial stone,
then you would phone the City Archaeologist in the first instance.

If it was a rediscovered
work of art,
say a portrait in oils by the local genius Jamesone, then a discreet mention to the Art Gallery’s directors might be the thing.

– But when you are neither item, stone, nor work of art, Peem said, what then?

– Your best bet would be Google, the bloke said.
Peem
is not that common a name. I’ve got a minute, let’s have a look. You won’t be on MySpot, then?

Peem just looked at him.

They found boohooyoohoo.com, a new site for missing persons, and their search was narrowed to a couple of possibilities in no time.

One Peem was ruled out on account of age, while the other was son of Andrew Endrie and Madge (d. 1956), with two brothers and a sister thrown in.

– That’ll be you then, sir, probably, what do you think?

– In all probability, said Peem.

– When did you last see them again? said the man.

– Eh, early ’68, I’d say. It’s been a while.

– Let me see that name again?

– Andrew Endrie, said Peem. Why, does it ring a bell?

– If it’s Andy Endrie, he used to – but then he – no, likely not the same bloke. Anyway, I’d say, better meet up with Clan Reunited Counselling first, sir. There are issues you would need to go through.

– Shock, like?

– Shock would be one issue, sure, I imagine, on both sides. I’ll nip through and give the CRC a ring for you. Would you mind signing our wee petition?

The Citizens’ Advice Bureau was being moved out of its prime
location
at the junction of St Nicholas Street and UberStreet to make way for something called GrottoLotto. The new Bureau was to be burrowed in beneath the huge Mounthooly roundabout, with access by underpass. Access to help by long tunnel was not ideal: a mugger’s Nirvana, a groper’s Eden. The title of the petition was:
Do You Want Underground Advice
?

The CAB man came back off the phone.

– That was the CRC I had on the bell. They’ve got a counselling slot for you in a couple of weeks, that do? Would that do, sir?

His client had shoved the petition aside, and was rehearsing
Peem Endrie, Peem Endrie,
several times on a scrap of paper. A
signature
he now appended.

He met Maciek in KostKutters by chance, and introduced himself. Maciek expressed surprise at his appearance, now that he was cleaned up.

– The wheel, Peem said. Spinning again.

– You can come and stay with us, said Maciek, if you don’t mind a floor.

Lucy’s meeting started at ten. The lack of a pre-meeting with Alison she found unsatisfactory, cagey. She found out why.

– In your absence, began Guy, looking Lucy square in the eye,
we asked Alison to chair, and since she’s up to speed, the view is that we best continue that way, at least for now.

She was taken aback; Alison had uttered not a word about this.

– The view is? said Lucy.

– Yes, that’s the view. And, continued Guy, due to the advent of new global openings, we feel it is an ideal opportunity to look at Spectacle afresh, to seek to renegotiate partnerships and to plot new directions.

Alison said, But we need the views of all the players.

Certain players were not slow to respond. Even the councillors were up for it. They didn’t actually speak, but two of them hemmed, and one blew his nose in a hankie.

First Otto, whatever suppurating stone he’d crawled from under, categorised the previous direction of Spectacle – and by implication all of Lucy’s, and indeed Alison’s, historical and cultural researches – as
not really cutting-edge.

Lucy said, Chair, can I come in on that?

Alison said, Let Otto finish his point.

Otto said, No, I’m finished.

– Now Guy, you were going to say something? said Alison.

I might as well leave right now, thought Lucy, before I fucking implode.

– And Guy, said Alison, if you can just stick to the fifteen we agreed. Then it’ll be you, Lucy. I do want the views of all the players.

What the fuck, thought Lucy, is a
player
all of a sudden?

Guy had fifteen minutes to expound. She felt quite dizzy as his spiel went on. Certain words or phrases buzzed in her mind, so that she got a gist, no more than a gist. A lot got said. She was trying to decode it more than anything.

The bones of it was, it wasn’t really for the Joint Working Party to try to devise paltry ideas from month to month, and then impose them on the poor cantonians, most of whom had
day jobs
and
family commitments.
Big Money was now talking, and it was the JWP’s central task to transcribe these thoughts.

The collected works of Big Money were quite impressive, and another volume was due to be written. Big Money loved nothing more than Bigger Money, so the whole of Spectacle was going to be
reworked in that light.

Spectacle would no longer seek to struggle through a blatant series of primary school themes.
Education
and
celebration of the past
both had their place, but not on the streets of a modern city.

Spectacle would be
recast in a new spirit.
The spirit of Lottery.

Lottery, it was to be understood, in society as a whole, had taken over from the
failed narratives
of religion and socialism, which
falsely promised a rich life for all
, here and hereafter, when obviously any pleasure in that would be devalued immediately by its horrible commonness.

Lottery, according to Guy, realigned history by recognising that wealth and high reward were only ever enjoyed by the Few, whether the Few had attained their Fewness by hereditary, military or, as Guy said coyly, in a concession to Lucy perhaps,
less openly nefarious means.

There was a fit of barking, not by a councillor this time. Lucy saw that Lord Provost William Swink II was at the meeting, sitting along from her in the same row.

The health of Society, continued Guy, could only be restored when proper deference to the values of Chance and Exclusivity was re-established, and the inferior gods of Redistribution and Mass were bidden to remember their place.

– Hear, hear, said Lord Provost William Swink II.

Fucking biscuit brain, thought Lucy. All her thoughts were seething with oaths.

Anyway, a consortium had come in and was going to
underpin the operation.
Because of the consortium’s very large commitment, the
balance
within the Joint Working Party would necessarily have to be
adjusted.

Just as Lucy wondered if it would not be easier to put
everything
in mental italics from now on, Guy started talking
balls
.

UberStreet’s hitherto hidden quality as a street, said Guy, as a long street, a long and very straight street, was its
aptitude as a giant ball alley.

Alison tried to catch Lucy’s eye a moment, pointed to herself and shook her head. She even proffered a pallid smile, which didn’t quite make it across the table.

Jesus, Lucy thought, some half-assed private joke absolves her somehow?

Balls in themselves were not the point, continued Guy strongly, sensing the tension between the two women. The existing National Lottery was
a lot of balls,
he cracked, and not much else, and the twice-weekly jiggling of numbered plastic spheres on national TV was growing stale, especially for the fourteen million eternal losers. In a nutshell, he asserted that the National Lottery was too
impersonal,
entirely
bloodless,
and lacked
narrative,
unless fourteen million Cinderellas hanging wistfully round the hearth counted as sufficient tale. It also lacked a
defeat-sweetener
—

Defeat-sweetener,
Lucy noted. No greater need for mental italics had ever been.

So, moving on,
balls-with-a-difference
had been sought.

And had been found.

Balls would roll along UberStreet, of a magnificence and
significance
that had never before been witnessed on our slightly-
flattened
-at-the-poles planet.

Not golf balls, cricket balls, footballs, cannon balls, regal orbs or, heaven forfend,
polystyrene beads.

No, these would be balls that Atlas himself would have been proud to heft, at some risk of hernia, on his better shoulder. Guy was getting carried away. All he needed now was a peroration. He summoned up an image of Luna to inspire him.

These were
balls that demanded ballroom,
he said.

These were
balls that carried with them the aspirations of global companies.

These were
balls
.

– How are they supposed to work? said Lucy. Your
balls
?

It was as though she had farted in the Kirk, shortly after the Reformation. A flush came over her, no one knew why. She
remembered
asking a similar question of Theo, forty years earlier, about his
Sisyphus
in the winter garden.

But everyone else thought that because she flushed, she was losing her bottle; menopausal. She was, in truth, well past that.

She would take them on. She saw that pitying look in their eyes, in Guy’s, in Otto’s, in Alison’s even, and moved in an instant beyond them.

What did they think she represented?
Lovey-dovey vision,
gone down the tubes? Ah, well, let them bite on this, she thought. Let them bite on this and be fucking-well parched and lost forever in their chosen deserts.

She was no lovey-doveyer, she was no sinking heart. She was sunk heart. Sunk as a plate in Peem’s crushed skull. Sunk as Spermy’s father’s trawler, the
Dépense
.

Sunk as sunk.

She laughed inwardly at boy emperors and global servants soaring their world, like buzzards or bald eagles.

When you were sunk, the good thing was, there was no deeper to go.

– I’m waiting? said Lucy. How are these
balls
supposed to work. Tell me?

Two of them started to speak at once. Alison had to indicate who had priority. This time it wasn’t Guy.

– I don’t know what Guy Bord was going to say, said the
newcomer
, who had a soft, impassive face, and a squashed-in nose, like a badly-restored sphinx. But I am sure he would stress at this stage the overriding need for discretion. We would not want to be trumped.

– Who wants to trump you, I wonder? Lucy snapped. And who are you, by the way?

– Oh, said Guy. I thought Alison was going to introduce. This
is Mr George Singer, former Chief Executive of NuLot. UbSpec Total, on behalf of LeopCorp, has just bought NuLot out.

Lucy knew that she was now officially distrusted. Little of moment was likely to be said in front of her. A sort of housework took place: a cleaning-up of items and details and snags and feedbacks from the one previous Spectacle.

The content of what was coming, apart from the fact that it was centred on an exalted species of universally important balls, was not gone into.

The composition of a new sub-committee was determined. Provost William Swink II would be the sole elected councillor thereon. Alison, the only Council official, would officiate as Chair. To
expedite
planning issues, and to keep factions apart. Not that there was any sign of those.

Guy Bord and Otto Mobius would be on for UbSpec Total. Mr George Singer would be there, carrying forward in a new context the work of NuLot, within UbSpec Total, on behalf of the Leisure Division of LeopCorp,
in the city as rebranded.