The Accidental (4 page)

She has a way of talking i.e. Irish-sounding, or maybe a kind of American. Though Astrid hasn’t said anything about how she’s going to the Curry Palace, she starts talking about it. She says has Astrid seen it and that it is a blatant act of local crime. Why else would anyone throw black paint at the door and windows of the only ethnic restaurant in the village? The only ethnic restaurant for miles around?

Astrid holds her camera higher, then up near her eye, though it’s off and its lenscap is on. She hopes the person will see it and ask her about it. But the person has stopped talking now and is walking faster, a little ahead of Astrid. Astrid lowers the camera. She starts eating the apple. She hadn’t realized how hungry she is.

How did you know? she calls. I mean about the restaurant?

She hurries to keep up.

How did I know? the person says. How could you miss it? How could you not know?

Are you something to do with the house? Astrid asks.

The person has stopped in the road. She is looking hard at the ground. She suddenly crouches down. Astrid sees a bee there, crawling on the rough tarmac, the large kind of bee, the furry kind. The person gets something out of the back pocket of her cut-offs. It is a little packet. She rips it at its corner and empties something out of it into the palm of her hand. She folds the corner of the packet and slips it into her back pocket again. She spits into her hand. It is gross. She is rubbing spit into her palm with her thumb. She scrapes her spit on to the road just along from the bee, which has stopped still now because something is close to it that’s bigger than it.

The person gets up and walks on, licking her palm and rubbing it on the denim of her cut-offs.

Astrid thinks about asking her how old she is. She looks at the person’s legs with the hair on them. It is obscene. She has never seen anything like it. She looks at the bare feet, walking on the road surface.

Is it sore walking on your feet like that? she asks.

Nope, the person says.

Did your car break down? Astrid says.

They are on a road Astrid doesn’t recognize now.

Cars are a very bad idea in such a polluted world, the person says.

Did you rent us the house? Astrid says.

What house? the person says.

The house we’re renting, Astrid says.

The person finishes her apple and tosses the applecore into the air and over a hedge.

Biodegradable, she says.

Why did you do that back there, near the bee? Astrid asks.

Resuscitation, the person says.

She takes the sachet with the folded corner out of her pocket, makes sure it’s tightly folded down, then tosses it to Astrid. It is the square kind they have in café sugar bowls, the kind that has random information on it like the dates of birth of classical music composers or famous writers or the names of famous cars and horses that won races. On one side it says
WHITE SUGAR
. On its other there is the ripped-through picture of a fighter plane and the words ‘
LD WAR 2 1939
–1945 An Estimated 55 Million Lives Were Lost’.

Keep it, she says.

Astrid balances the apple and the camera and tucks the sugar into her own back pocket. All along the new strange road the person is talking about how, after the summer, the worker bees throw the drone bees out of the hive because there’s not enough food for all the bees for the whole winter otherwise and the drones’ usefulness in the hive is finished now that the queen has been fertilized, and the running of the hive is changing because of the summer being over, so what the worker bees do is chew off the wings of the drones then let them drop out of the hive on to the ground.

What happens to them then? Astrid says.

Birds eat them, probably, the person says.

The drones do their best, she says, to hold on to the bees that are ejecting them; they hook on with their feet as their wings get chewed off. But for now, she says, the drones are safe. It’s only the beginning of summer.

She is some kind of a bee expert. She is whistling now. She puts her hands in her pockets and walks along the road ahead of Astrid, whistling a tune like a boy would. Astrid is going down a road that she doesn’t know with someone she doesn’t know, and her mobile phone is buried in rubbish and she is now officially untraceable.

How do you know my name is Astrid? she calls at the back of the person’s head.

Well, that’s easy. The man told me, she says.

What man? Astrid asks.

The man. The man at your house, the person says. The man who’s not your father. I don’t have a father either. I never even met mine.

Astrid drops the half-eaten apple. It rolls off the road on to the verge. She almost drops her camera, but catches it against her as it slips. She stops. She stands in the middle of the road.

Car, the person says as a car rounds the corner ahead of them. Astrid jumps to the side. She tries to remember what she’s said so far out loud. It wasn’t anything about anything. She never said anything. She never mentioned a father or not a father. The car swerves round her and she feels the air as it passes. It is as if a car engine is roaring in Astrid’s ears and eyes, though there’s no wind at all and the noise of the car is gone and it’s a completely calm, completely sunny, ordinary July day.

The person has carried on walking. Come on then, if you’re coming, she calls without turning.

She is now going quite fast. Astrid starts to run. But it’s as she catches up that it dawns on her. The whole point of being awake first in the morning is that there is nobody else about, just Astrid, yawning, near-asleep, leaning out of the open window, steadying herself with her elbows on the sill to film the light coming. All there is is the waking-up birds, all there is is the trees moving in the wind, the crops moving, no cars on the near or the faraway roads, no dogs barking, no nothing. But on one of the mornings Astrid, through her camera lens, which has a very good long range, has seen her.

It was her.

It was definitely her.

It was far away, there was someone sitting on the roof of a car, a white car, Astrid is sure it was a white car, parked at the very far edge of the woods. She seemed to have binoculars or maybe some sort of camera, like a birdwatcher or an expert in some kind of nature. Funny that she was watching the only other person awake, who almost seemed, typical and ironic, to be watching her back, and now when Astrid catches her up on the road she talks as if they’re midway through a conversation and as if she takes it for granted that Astrid understands exactly what she’s talking about.

Because listen. If you tell anybody at all, the person says, I’ll kill you. I mean it. I will.

The person turns and looks at her. She starts to laugh, as if something has delighted her, something so funny that she can’t not laugh. She makes a wide-eyed face at Astrid and Astrid realizes that the reason the person is making this face at her is that her own face is so wide-eyed. Her eyes have gone so wide open that she can actually physically feel how wide open they are.

The person, still laughing, reaches out her hand, puts it firmly on the top of Astrid’s head then raps twice, hard.

Anybody in? she says.

For quite a while after, Astrid can feel the place where it knocked. The top of Astrid’s head feels completely different from the rest of her, like the hand is still there touching her head.

Something has definitely i.e. begun

the beginning of this = the end of everything. He was part of the equation. They took her head. They fixed it on the other body. Then they sent it round everybody’s email. Then she killed herself.

That noise outside is birds. It is swifts. They are making their evening noise. Birds are pointless now. Evening is pointless. They took her head. They put it on the other body. They sent it round the email list. Then she killed herself.

It was a Tuesday. It was just a Tuesday. Magnus knows there will never be just a Tuesday again. There used to be just days in the week where everything felt like normal. It is astonishing now to think of that feeling. They walked along the corridor, just walked down the main stairs then along the corridor like it was any old Tuesday. He was wearing what he’d put on that morning. It was just clothes. The clothes didn’t mean anything other than clothes, then. Was he wearing those socks? He knows he was wearing those trousers. He was definitely wearing those shoes. Those are his school trousers. Those are his school shoes. It was just a joke. They were all laughing about how funny it would be. He was laughing. He was the one who pushed the door open. He can still feel the door now pushing hard back at him on its fire hinge. They used one of the new scanners. A child could have done it, though, even on old equipment. It was a pretty easy procedure. But they were both computer-stupid. They couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t shown them. First they scanned her. Then they scanned the other picture. Then they dragged the head on to the other picture. Then they emailed the jpeg round the email list. Then they went on doing things, clothes, shoes, school corridors, home, days of the week, day after day, for days. On one of those days, she killed herself.

Is it light? Magnus blinks at the blind pulled down over the window. You can pull down a blind but it’s all still there behind it. Light makes all his muscles like they’ve been drugged. It makes his legs not want to do anything. It makes his arms like they’re set in stone. If it’s light, it’ll darken. They took her head. They put it on a different body. They sent it to people. Then she killed herself.

He sits up, holds his stomach. He squints in the light, the dark. Far far away, as if he is looking down the wrong end of a telescope, he can see a boy. The boy is the size of a small stone. He is shining, as if polished. He is wearing his school clothes. He waves his arms the size of spiders’ legs. He speaks in a squeaking voice. He says things like
well cool, quality, quite dodgy really
. He talks all about things. He talks as if they matter. He talks about calculus, about how plants grow or how insects reproduce or about what the inside of a frog’s eye is like. He talks about films, computers, binaries. He talks about how holograms are produced. He himself is a hologram. He has been created by laser, lenses, optical holders, a special vibration-isolated optical table. He is the creation of coherent light. He is squeaking about it now. He says coherent light is well cool. He is quality. He contains all the necessary information about his shape, size, brightness. He is sickeningly excited about himself. He is quite dodgy really. He only seems to be dimensional. He is a three-dimensional reproduction of something not really there. He was never really there. Look at him. He’s lucky. First of all, he doesn’t exist. That’s lucky. Second, he is so small. He could slip away under a door. He could slip away through a crack in a wood floor. Third, he is back then, before. The real Magnus is this, now, massive, unavoidable. The real Magnus is too much. He is all bulk, big as a beached whale, big as a floundering clumsy giant. He looks down at his past self squeaking, shining, clambering about on his own giant foot as if the foot is a mountain, an exciting experiment or adventure. Hologram Boy has no idea what the foot belongs to. Hologram Boy could never even imagine such monstrous proportions. First they. They then. Then they. Then she.

Magnus lies on the floor face down. If he were really a whale, even a beached whale, it would still be possible. If he were a fish, any kind of fish, in or out of water. It would be possible to go on breathing. Or it would be a relief, the flap, the panic, the not being able to breathe any more. If he were just the water or air that passes through the gills of a fish. Or if he were a dog, any dog, on or off a lead. If he had paws with pads leaving galloping trails of pawprints along a beach in the sand. If he were a dog with a dog-brain. He could be a dog from now on. He would be loyal. He would wait all day in a house for nothing but someone to come home. He would enjoy the waiting. He would eat from a bowl. He would drink with his tongue. He would do as he was told. He would do stupid tricks. It would be brilliant. He could be any animal. He could be a badger. He could live in the ground. He could eat worms. He could dig with talons. There could be earth in his talons. He would gladly be a badger. Bad ger. Even the word is lucky. It is only half bad. Magnus himself is all bad. He was bad all along though he didn’t know it. He believed in his own coherent light. He was wrong. He was bad. He was bad all through. He is like a rotten fruit hanging off a branch. If anyone picks him, splits him open, they’ll see. The world with its Tuesdays, holograms, whales, fish, dogs, frogs, snuffling wet-eyed badgers, reels away from him. It reels away by itself as if he is watching down the telescope an old-fashioned film of a foxhunt in old England, all jolly hunting horns in its fading soundtrack as the fox disappears then the backs of the horses, the backs of the huntsmen recede. Hologram Boy smiles a boyish smile, waves his handkerchief as if goodbye, then all the Christmases, Easters, half-term breaks, summer holidays flicker away, gone. Magnus pulls the duvet off the bed. He rolls it, heavy, over his head but he can still breathe, even against the weight of it. Worms are eating her. There is earth under his nails. The bone, the muscle that held her body on her head were snapped. The end. It is because of him. He showed them what to do. They did it. They put her head on another body. They sent it round the email list. She killed herself.

Magnus is shocked every time he thinks it. What really shocks him is that nothing happens. Nothing happens every time he thinks it. Didn’t it matter? Doesn’t it? They took her head. They put it on the other body. Even though it was a lie it became true. It became more her than her. When he got home that Tuesday he checked his mail. The message flashed up. He was on the email list too. He clicked on her. There she was. It was funny. He laughed. He thinks of it now. He gets stiff. Up he comes, up he goes. Every time he thinks of himself standing looking at the picture they made, on his own, in his room. He was in on the whole thing. Every time, up he comes again. Ah. He is so fucking monstrous. He can’t stop. He has tried. Try harder, ha ha. It was hilarious. The way her head was on the neck. The way the breasts were angled. The way hardly anybody knew. But he knew. Now he is laughing again, stiff as hell. He is foul. He changed himself when he changed her. He snapped his own head off without even knowing. It transplanted itself on to a body he doesn’t know. If he looks in the mirror he looks the same as before. But he isn’t the same. It is a shock to see how like himself it looks. She saw herself changed too. She never knew who did it. It was him. He did it. Magnus is God. There is actually no God. There is only Magnus. Hologram Boy believed God probably existed. Hologram Boy saw God as more human than human, moving among subhuman beings like the weekly celebrity among the Muppets on The Muppet Show. Hologram Boy was the form captain. He made the speech in Assembly on Remembrance Day for the dead soldiers in the world wars. It was Hologram Boy’s job to lay the wreath, lead the squeaking prayers, lest we forget. But Hologram Boy was all forgetfulness. He was lucky. Hologram Boy’s brain was all blank light. There will be no forgetting now. There will be no forgetting ever again. The remembering is like the darkening. The darkening is now happening more. It is like the way having the flu made light go dark. It is almost exactly like when he had flu in December 1999 January 2000. The old series about the Germans down below in the submarine was on tv every night, the pressure, whether or not they’d survive being that low. The first time it happened was two days after he knew she’d done it. He was standing, just standing, by a bus stop by a tree. The tree had a sticking-out branch. Above the tree, round the branch, the sky got darker. Then everything got darker. But nothing had changed. The sky was blue. There were no clouds. There was no change in the air. It just carried on, getting darker. It went away after he slept. Then it came back again the next week in the café. Then it went away. Then it came back, darker. There is no warning. It is like when you are at a cinema waiting for the lights to go down. Something inside your brain knows that at any moment the lights will dim. So sometimes you feel them go dim when they haven’t done anything, haven’t changed at all. It keeps happening to him. It is caused by causal effects. He has caused it. He has changed the way the world is. They played about with her head until they were happy. They shifted it about on the neck. Then they delivered it. Then she killed herself.