They Do the Same Things Different There (22 page)

That night in their digs they had argued. She told him this wasn’t what she had expected from their marriage. It wasn’t just the act anymore, it was the entire
marriage
. She was bored with the constant travelling. It wasn’t as exciting as she’d expected. She thought they’d be on television by now. “Do you still love me?” he’d asked. She’d thought about it. “I don’t know,” she’d replied.

She turned away from him in the bed, and he wanted to reach out towards her, but he was too proud, or too frightened he’d be rebuffed. And he lay there in the darkness, and it seemed to him that it was a darkness so profound, and he wished they’d left the bathroom light on, or had the curtains open, anything, the darkness was beginning to hurt his eyes. And he felt that surge of power inside him again, and he knew she was right, he should be better than this, it was all supposed to be better.

He didn’t know her anymore. He didn’t know her. Their magic was gone.

And he realized all the darkness in the room was her, it was her, it was coming from her. He could feel it now, it was pouring out of her. With every breath she made she was spitting more of it out, and it lay heavy on her, and it lay heavy on him, and it was going to suffocate him unless he stopped it. He’d lost her. He’d lost her. She’d been swallowed up whole.

He got up. She didn’t stir.

He packed the truck with all the props he needed for his magic act, his costume, the takings from the last three weeks of performance. He drove off into the night.

Within a few days the truck ran out of petrol. There hadn’t been a petrol station. There was barely even a road anymore. He abandoned the truck. He found a horse cart amongst the rubble that lay about, so much rubble, things thrown away and no longer wanted. He loaded the cart. He picked up the handle. It was so heavy. He had to be strong. He walked.

The world was cracked, and the darkness was pursuing him, and he had to outrun it. And in some towns there was talk of war.

He did a few tricks for coins and food. Most of his tricks didn’t work without an assistant.

Some nights, if the ground was dry, he slept underneath the cart. He could pull the canvas covering down for added warmth or shelter. One morning he woke to find a little girl was curled up, at his feet, like a dozing cat.

“Oi!” he said. “Wake up!” The girl did, stretched, looked at him without shame or curiosity. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Where have you come from?”

She didn’t answer.

And he didn’t ask again, because he felt somehow if he did she would go away.

When he pulled the cart along, she walked beside him. And the next town he reached, he played his act, and she was there. She knew the tricks just as well as he did. And she had her own sequined dress, it fitted perfectly.

The distance between towns seemed greater and greater. Sometimes they’d walk for weeks before they’d reach a new one. And when they did the people were hostile, or hid from them altogether. The paths were hard to walk, the ground rough, chewed up even, and no matter how much it rained the mud beneath their feet seemed so hard and sharp and unyielding. “I can’t go on,” he’d say to the girl, “I don’t see why we’re going on,” and he might cry, and then the girl wouldn’t look at him, as if she were embarrassed. One day he dropped the handle of the cart. “I’ve had enough,” he said, “if we must walk, I’m not carrying this anymore!” Without missing a beat she went to the cart, tried to lift it herself, tried to drag it behind her. She was such a little thing, but she managed it; he could see her grit her teeth with the effort, and then force one foot on in front of the other, so slowly, too slow—she was going to pull the cart no matter how long it took. Shamed, he went back, relieved her. She smiled at him then, just a little smile, and it was of triumph, but it was not unkind. On he walked. On she walked, always keeping pace.

He called her Lucy; it was what it said on the posters. And sometimes as she slept beside him he thought he could see something of his wife in her face. Sometimes he liked to pretend this was his wife, but small, and silent, from the years before he’d met her. And sometimes he didn’t need to pretend, he knew it was true.

“Give us a good trick, magic man. And maybe we’ll spare your life. You, and that brat of yours.”

He tried his best. But the cards kept slipping through fingers damp with sweat.

“Haven’t you got anything better?”

He pulled a rabbit out of his hat. He pulled a hat out of a rabbit.

“Last chance, magic man.”

He didn’t know what to do. He looked at Lucy for help.

Lucy didn’t seem afraid. She seemed as blandly unaffected by this as she was by everything else. And for a second the man rather envied her. And for a second he was rather frightened of her too.

She held his gaze for a moment, then turned, and left the stage.

He thought she’d abandoned him. And he couldn’t blame her.

But she came back, and when she did, she was wheeling on the Cabinet of Vanishments.

“No,” he said to her. “No.”

She shook her head at that. She set it down centre stage. She presented it to the audience. And so, he went on with the act. He cleared his throat.

“I shall say the magic word, abracadabra. I . . . I don’t know what it means. No one does. What it means, I.” His voice cracked. “Maybe that’s why it’s magic.”

There was laughter. Real laughter, or were they mocking him?

He opened the cabinet. There was no darkness in there, the darkness had all got out long ago.

And Lucy gestured that
he
should step inside.

“No, I’m the magician,” he said.

She ignored that. With a bow, with a flourish, she once more waved him toward the box.

“No,” he said. And this time he was quite firm.

She stared him down for a little while. Then she leaned forward, and he thought she was going to speak at last, he thought she was going to whisper something in his ear. He bent down to listen. She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Get on with it,” came the voice from the audience.

They got on with it. Lucy climbed inside the cabinet. She looked so tiny there suddenly, you could have fitted five Lucys inside, more maybe. He closed the doors on her. One didn’t shut properly, the rainwater, the warping—and there was laughter again, and this time they were definitely mocking him. He had to hold the door to keep it flush.

“Goodbye,” he said to her. And he liked to imagine that inside she mouthed a goodbye to him too.

He tapped on the box three times with his wand. “Abracadabra,” he said. He stepped away from the box, the warped door swung open and revealed that the cabinet was now empty.

“Can you bring her back?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Bring her back.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not bringing her back. Not to this place.”

They came up onto the stage then, and took him by his arms, and bent him over backwards so his spine hurt, and held him tight. He saw that they were demons and angels, both—that they had little lumps for horns, and lapsed haloes, both.

“Bring her back,” they said.

And he felt such a power surging through him, the magic was back, even in a world as cracked as this. And he thanked them, sincerely—he thanked them that they had helped him give his best performance, that they had made his act at last mean something. The fear had gone. The fear had gone forever, and they could now do what they liked to him.

They bit him, and punched him, and pulled at his skin and hair. And he didn’t cry out, he laughed, he barely felt a thing, he was so full of magic now, he was invincible. This enraged them still further. They shut him inside his box, and they set fire to it, and he didn’t cry out, not once, and he looked deep into the flames and fancied he saw in them what Lucy had found so fascinating, and it didn’t hurt, not very much, right up until the end.

And Lucy turned about, and opened her eyes, and there was noise, and people, and the buildings stood intact, and the smell in the air may not have been clean but at least wasn’t sulphur.

Her sequined dress was ripped, and spattered with mud.

There was a pack of playing cards in her hand.

There was a tongue in her head.

She began to speak, and the more she said the better she got, and the better she got the louder she became.

She fanned out the playing cards to the world.

“Roll up, roll up,” she said. “Prepare to be dazzled by the Great Zinkiewicz!”

For a while no one paid any attention. But then, even in a world so cracked, the magic began to hold.

Michael Bell died, and went to heaven, and was told by the man at the front desk where he could collect his seventy-two virgins. “Oh,” said Michael, much surprised, “I don’t think I’m entitled to . . . There’s been a mistake . . . I mean, I’m not a Muslim,” and the man at the desk looked cross and said that if Michael had any complaints could he please take them up with someone else, it was a busy day, and he had a lot of corpses to process. So Michael apologized, signed the register, took his room key, and set forth into the afterlife.

He had been assigned his own apartment. They called it an apartment, but it was more like a mansion, really: there was a garden with a swimming pool in it, and a billiard room, and a study, and a kitchen full of all the latest mod cons, and a basement with a swimming pool in it. It would have been far too big for Michael all by himself, so at first he was rather pleased there were seventy-two virgins to help fill it.

Some of the seventy-two virgins were useless. He could see that in an instant. Eleven of them were babies. Eighteen of them were men. Four of them weren’t even human: he’d been given two virgin cats, one virgin goldfish, and a virgin grey squirrel. But that still left him with thirty-nine virginal women—young (mostly), ripe (he supposed), and his for the taking. “Hello,” he said to the throng, a little shyly, “my name’s Michael, but, uh, why not call me Mike?” He asked them their names. “Goodness,” said Michael, “I’ll never remember all those. Maybe you should all wear name badges?” So, for a while, they did.

He told them they should feel free to use all the facilities. The swimming pools were at their disposal, and if anyone ever wanted to join him in a game of billiards, all they had to do was ask. None of the virgins liked swimming, apparently. And no one fancied billiards. They would instead crowd into the sitting room around the widescreen television set. They would squabble for space on the single sofa that was there, and shush each other when the ad breaks came to an end. Michael sometimes watched
TV
with them, but they never seemed to want to watch any of the programs he liked, and besides, he was never fast enough to get a spot on the sofa. Sometimes he’d hang out in the kitchen and make himself toast. He couldn’t work out how to use most of the mod cons, but the toaster was nice and easy. Or he’d go to the billiard room, and he’d roll all the balls from one end of the table to the other, and then walk to the other side, and roll them all back again.

He got to know Eliza quite well. Eliza was fond of toast, and would sometimes come into the kitchen when Michael was making some. She wouldn’t say much, but her fingers and his fingers might collide taking slices of bread out of the breadbasket.

Michael began to think about Eliza a lot. He wondered if she ever thought of him too. One day he asked her why she didn’t watch
TV
with all the other virgins, and she blushed, and said she didn’t like
TV
much, and that besides, she’d rather be with him. She wasn’t especially pretty, but she looked as if she were in her teens, and Michael was pushing seventy, and he felt guilty for flirting with her until she told him she’d died of scarlet fever in the 1860s and was therefore older than his grandmother.

He asked her whether she’d like to be his girlfriend, and steeled himself for a rejection, and she kissed him gently on the cheek and said that that’d be quite all right.

He was intimidated by his own bedroom. Sweet incense and crushed silks and pillows that were fleshy—he couldn’t sleep like that. He’d kicked the pillows onto the floor. Before they got into bed together, Eliza stacked the pillows high again.

She said, “I’m scared. Is that silly?”

He said, “Of course it’s not silly.”

She said, “You won’t hurt me?”

He said, “I promise.”

“Tell me,” she said. “What it was like. Your first time. Were you scared?”

“No,” he said, wanting to be brave for her sake, but he had been terrified. He could remember the circumstances now, and the basic sequence of events that had got the girl from the dance floor to the car seat, but there were events missing, the bits that linked A to B to C. He remembered now only the urgency, the desperate urgency, the need to be a man and abandon his childhood as fast as could be, and that he wasn’t sure during the whole thing whether he was in the right hole or not, the girl seemed to have grown holes all over the place, was she going to laugh at him?—and then afterwards the dull realisation that the world hadn’t changed, everything was just the same, he may now be a man but nobody cared.

“But it was nice?” she said.

“It was very nice,” he said.

They had sex then, and it had been so long since he’d done it with Barbara that frankly he felt just like a virgin too.

And after he was out of breath and sweaty and his heart was going like the clappers, and he wondered whether he might be having a heart attack but supposed he couldn’t die twice. He stroked at Eliza’s hair, kissed her softly. He asked her if her first time had been all right.

“It was very nice.”

He fell asleep then, with Eliza in his arms, and he dreamed of Barbara, and he hadn’t dreamed of Barbara in ages, really not much since the divorce at all. And there were some bad things in the dream, inevitably, but it wasn’t quite bad enough to be a nightmare.

When he woke in the morning Eliza wasn’t there. He thought she might be making some toast. She wasn’t.

He asked the other virgins if they had seen her. They were watching
The Jeremy Kyle Show
, they didn’t want to be disturbed.

Michael went back to the man at the front desk. He explained the situation. The man didn’t look very sympathetic, he spoke to Michael as if he were an idiot. “You get seventy-two
virgins
,” he said. “She’s not a virgin now, is she? She’s gone.” Michael could see the logic of that. But he asked whether he could have Eliza’s address. Even if they couldn’t be anything more, and why should she want to be, with an old man like him, he’d be a fool even to think it—even so, he hoped they could still be friends. He’d like to see her still, as a friend. The man rolled his eyes. “When I say gone, I mean
gone
. That’s it. One bang, and she’s gone forever.”

From the remaining seventy-one virgins there came one morning a deputation of ambassadors to his bedroom. “We want you to get rid of Cheryl,” they said.

Cheryl was big and blousy and so fat she took up space for two upon the sofa. She talked too loud during the programs and had an annoying laugh and would fight for the remote control, and, moreover, was an utter bitch.

They brought Cheryl to his bedroom later that evening. There was a sack upon her head. There was some evidence of a struggle: her legs were bleeding, and she had had to be dragged to him. But she was quiet now, accepting. They pushed her into Michael’s arms, and shut the door on them.

Michael pulled the sack off her, asked her to sit down, tried to be as nice as he could. “It’s all right,” he said. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”

“No,” she said. “I suppose I’m going to have to pop my cherry sooner or later, may as well be with you.”

They both got undressed in silence. He tried not to look at her, all drooping bust and tummy. She had no such qualms. She stared at him, grimly, as if staring at an execution block.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I’m not much to look at.”

She shook her head.

“So, what?” she said. “You get killed in a war, or something?”

“Me? No.”

“To get all us virgins.”

“No.”

“But you did something heroic, right?”

“No.” Michael’s death hadn’t been especially heroic. Up to the end in that hospital pleading for even one more day of life, and all of the nurses trying to reassure him that it was going to be all right—and he’d felt, he really had felt, that they had never seen this happen before, that he was the very first man in the world who was going to die, that he was special. “I didn’t go to war. There wasn’t any war on.”

Cheryl sniffed. “There’s always some war on somewhere, if you just look.”

“I suppose I was too scared.”

She nodded at that, seemed to accept it. She got into bed. She seemed resigned now, not too nervous, neither of the loss of her virginity, nor of the oblivion that would happen afterwards.

She kissed him on the lips, almost by way of experiment. He kissed back. It was nice. She kissed at his neck then, and he nibbled at her ear, and he’d never thought to be a nibbler before, not ever, not even when he and Barbara had been happy. She moaned a bit, and he was worried for her, but she said it was a good moan.

“You’re wonderful, Cheryl,” he told her. “Do you know that? You’re wonderful.”

And she smiled at him, and she cried a little.

“I’m going to make the very best love to you that I possibly can,” he said, and she thanked him, and true to his word he did his best.

He tried to remember the last time he and Barbara had slept with each other, but there hadn’t been a last time, not as such, but then, there had to have been a last, surely? But it had been nothing momentous. It hadn’t been so bad that it had caused either one of them to be banished to the spare bedroom, there had been no tears or anger. One night he and his wife had had sex, and, as it turned out, they’d never bothered to try it again.

In the same way, nothing specific had ever caused the divorce. Looking back, he couldn’t even decide which one of them had brought the matter up.—No, it had been her, definitely her. Still.

One night as he dreamed of Barbara he realized he’d given her Cheryl’s face. And try as he might, he couldn’t recall what Barbara had looked like. And one night, while he dreamed, he realized he couldn’t recall Cheryl’s face either.

He killed Eunice quite by accident. She’d suggested they just fool around for a bit, and Michael had never been much good at foreplay, he just told her he’d follow her lead. They didn’t do anything worse than kiss and squeeze at the other’s genitals, and yet in the morning she was gone, and there was no way of getting her back.

And Natalie was unhappy, she had attempted suicide any number of times, she had tried drowning herself in the swimming pools, she had stuck a fork into the toaster. Nothing had worked. Before she impaled herself upon him, Michael asked her what she was so upset about, and the poor woman had burst into tears. “It’s my babies, I miss my little babies.” Michael asked her why she had ever been given to him, she wasn’t a virgin at all then, surely? And Natalie shrugged, she really wasn’t interested in discussing the finer points of her employment contract, not now—and she flung herself upon him, all lactating breasts and crude stretch marks, and she was gone.