The White Stuff Read online

  ‘You seem OK,’ he commented.

  ‘Well, I didn’t know her, did I?’ she replied. ‘Hard to feel something for someone you’ve never met.’

  She pushed a few fingers of grass away from the masonry with her foot, but they sprang back into position. At some time during the summer the undergrowth had been strimmed, but beneath the weeds another order of vegetation was at work on the grave. These plants were smaller but more tenacious, like some form of sea plant or fungus, with suckers and roots that spidered out across the stonework in search of a fracture or fissure. Other graves had completely disappeared below stands of rose-bay willowherb and saplings of sycamore and lime. The knotweed on this side of the church had been battered and clubbed so all that remained of it were thousands of hollow tubes, like so many blow holes in the earth. Carpet and underlay had been draped across two patches to cut out the light. But it was unkillable stuff. Next year it would be back, four, five, six foot high. And on the opposite slope, behind the steeple, not one gravestone could be seen through the rust-coloured stems and the thick, flourishing leaves. Beyond it, in the very top comer, trees had risen to maturity, and the area within the green metal railings that formed the top boundary of the church was no longer a graveyard but a wood.

  The rain poured and the sun shone and everything grew. A grave needed to be tended. It needed to be watched over and cared for. Otherwise what was it but a flowerbed, an oblong of rich earth in a quiet, undisturbed corner of the world? Maria Rosales had only one grave-keeper, the daughter she’d never met, and Abbie stood wordlessly and unmoved with her hands in her pockets, nudging at a dandelion clock with her shoe. At this point in time she didn’t look like a woman about to make any promises or commitments to this rectangle of holy ground. If you want a person to take care of you when you’re dead, you should look after that person while you’re alive. That’s what Abbie’s silence meant, that’s what her foot was saying to the dandelion clock.

  But later, in the car, that all changed. And Felix was a social worker, so he knew what to expect, and he was ready for it, and he was there for her when it came, ready with the tissues.

  VIRGO (23 August-22 September)

  15

  Out of character. An act of desperation.

  Once every four weeks, Felix sat in the local magistrates’ court, tracking the progress of any Social Services client through the criminal justice system, and once in a while contributing to the proceedings if someone on his caseload came before the bench. The days could be long and tedious. With all the remands, bail applications, stand-downs, delays, adjournments and a whole bunch of other tricks designed to stave off the day of judgement, it was rare that a case ever resulted in a decision and rarer still for a matter to be considered finalized or in any way ‘closed’. At first Felix had enjoyed listening to the bantering that went on between the lawyers and the clerks, but after so many years of the same jargon, the same arguments and identical replies, he now thought of his monthly day of court duty as something of a chore.

  Neville had become so impatient he had flatly refused to do his stint and had removed his name from the rota. The magistrates, he said, were Freemasons on a power trip or nosy Women’s Institute types with nothing better to do. The lawyers were dunderheads and losers, criminal work being to the legal profession what road sweeping is to landscape gardening. The clerks were failed lawyers who secretly thought of themselves as judges, and the criminals were not just small-time thieves and petty crooks but hopeless amateurs as well, as evidenced by the very fact they had been caught. He said he found it beyond his dignity to spend time in such pathetic and miserable company. Bernard, in a rather embarrassing attempt to exert his authority, had called Neville into his office and explained that in his opinion the magistracy of the local court was among the most informed he had ever come into contact with and he had no reason to suppose that the clerks and solicitors were of anything other than the highest calibre.

  ‘So why are they working in this town?’ Neville wanted to know.

  It was the end of the argument and Neville hadn’t been seen in court again, except for that time when a man was half eaten by two ‘healers’ attempting to purify him of his sins, and on that occasion everyone in the department had turned up for a look at the alleged cannibals, including two temps from the typing pool and the office cleaner.

  Bernard wasn’t on the court-duty rota because he was the boss. And Thelma was excused on account of a previous whiplash injury to her neck, a condition aggravated by the constant nodding and bowing to the magistrates each time they entered or exited the courtroom.

  Roy was very often denied access. It had taken a lot of hard work for him to convince the ushers, who ‘knew him of old’, that he was now a fully qualified social worker, and on one occasion when he had actually made it into the courtroom he had been turned away by the clerk on the grounds that jeans and a denim jacket were not a sufficiently respectful form of attire. The quick addition of a pink nylon tie, bought from the charity shop round the corner and worn loosely beneath the frayed collar of his green polo shirt, had almost earned him a conviction for contempt.

  This left Mo, Marjorie and Felix to man the barricades, or ‘staff’ the barricades, as Mo had once corrected him, and Felix being Felix, the gaps in the schedule had become his responsibility. Sitting at the back, he would spend the first hour of every morning reading through the numerous court reports supplied by either his agency or the probation service, reports which were full of stock phrases used to explain or excuse the behaviour of individuals. Phrases such as ‘out of character’ and ‘an act of desperation’. ‘Looking at Mr Bloggs’s record, it can be said that the attack on the garage that night and the injuries he caused to the woman in the kiosk were very much out of character.’ ‘In interview, Mr Bloggs presents as a thoughtful and unassuming man, a husband and a father with a family to support, and in that light, his obtaining money by deception over the past two years can only be seen as an act of desperation.’ ‘Mr Bloggs tells me that the gun was fired in the heat of the moment. The incident itself was an act of desperation and very much out of character.’ It wasn’t Felix’s job to doubt the phrases - the cynicism could be left to the likes of Neville, or the magistrates, who presumably scoffed at the reports over their tea and biscuits in the retiring room before returning their decision. But people doing things that were out of character, or doing things as an act of desperation, or even doing them in the heat of the moment - these were concepts that Felix struggled hard to come to terms with. They were far-fetched.

  Until, that is, the sunlit Tuesday morning, not long after nine fifteen, when he knocked at the house of Jed, his closest friend and next-door neighbour. That was the instant. That was the precise point the normally level-headed, calm and collected Felix did something which was well and truly out of character, and quite possibly beyond the character of anyone he had ever known, alive or dead. Jed was still in his pyjamas and midway through an enormous yawn as he pulled open the door.

  ‘Thought you were the paper boy,’ he managed to say, when his mouth had fallen back into position.

  Felix rocked from one foot to another, and let out a long stream of breath, like a weightlifter about to attempt some huge feat of strength. ‘I need your help, Jed.’

  ‘What’s up? Won’t the car start? I think the jump leads are still in your garage - is that what you’re after?’

  ‘Jump leads? Er… kind of.’

  ‘Jesus, man, you’re sweatin’ like a racehorse. What’s up?’

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Felix sat on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar and drank a glass of cold apple juice from the fridge while Jed went upstairs to get dressed. When he came back down he put his hand on Felix’s shoulder and said, ‘You and Abbie had a domestic?’

  ‘No. But if I don’t sort this mess out we’ll have the biggest domestic of all time, and I don’t know if we’ll ever get over it.’.

  ‘Aw, come on, man.
Look at me an’ my Max. We have the mother of all slanging matches but it’s always OK again in the morning. Nothing seems as bad in the cold light of day.’

  Felix gestured towards the window and the dear blue sky filling it, making the point that it was morning, that here they were in the cold light of day and there was still a problem. The sweat had begun to collect on his forehead again. Jed tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and passed it to him. ‘So… have you been… playing around?’

  Felix didn’t even bother to answer. Instead, he reached into his pocket and produced a small plastic bottle with a yellow screw top, which he placed on the Formica surface. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  Jed lifted the empty bottle to the light. ‘Air?’

  ‘The bottle. Do you know what it’s for?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Sperm.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘My sperm.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘My sperm, to take to the hospital this morning, to be specially prepared for this afternoon.’

  ‘Right. So what happens this afternoon?’

  ‘IUI.’

  ‘Good. What’s that?’

  ‘Intra-uterine insemination. Seven hundred and fifty quid a shot. They inject the sperm into Abbie, and fingers crossed she gets pregnant.’

  ‘Right. So… what’s the problem?’

  Felix helped himself to another glass of juice and another sheet of kitchen roll. It was almost half past nine now. There wasn’t time for all this conversation, all this chat.

  ‘I can’t get it up,’ he said. He was facing the window so he didn’t have to look at Jed when he said it.

  There was a quiet, understanding pause before Jed said, ‘Right,’ again, but this time with a gentler voice, without any hint of comedy.

  ‘You see, Jed, it’s kind of now or never. We can’t afford another go after this, and Abbie says she can’t stand any more disappointment, on top of the stuff about her mum and everything. So this is the big one. We’re banking on it. And it must be the pressure or something, because I just can’t…’

  ‘OK, OK, wait there. Don’t go away.’

  Jed opened the internal door to the garage and was gone for three or four minutes. When he came back he was carrying a large plastic bag in his hand, which he dropped on to the breakfast bar. ‘There you go.’

  ‘What?’ said Felix, prying into the bag.

  ‘Bash mags. Some of the lads at work… Anyway, what the fuck. There’s all sorts in there, Swedish mainly. You can chuck ’em once you’ve finished, just don’t let on to Max, all right? She’ll brain me.’

  Felix pulled out one of the magazines. A naked woman looked at him from between her legs. He slid it back into the bag. ‘Jed, this isn’t really…’

  ‘Go on. Take ’em. That’s what they’re for. And here, don’t forget your bottle.’

  Felix left Jed’s house and walked across the driveway to his own home. Now would have been the time to stop what he was doing, to pull back from the edge, but he didn’t. Desperation. The heat of the moment. Only the moment had lasted a good twenty minutes now and was still simmering. He sat in the living room for a while, then crossed back to Jed’s house and knocked at the door, by which time his actions were becoming not only out of character but altogether alien - one of those out-of-body experiences people talk about. He could see his arm rising towards the glass panel, he could hear the rapping of his knuckles against the pane, but his true self was elsewhere, watching from a distance, horrified and appalled.

  ‘Did the trick, did they?’ said Jed, grinning.

  Felix pushed past him and dropped the bag of magazines in the corner by the bin. He produced the empty plastic pot again and put it down on the worktop. He tapped on the lid.

  ‘Jed, listen. I need you to help. Do you know what I’m saying? I’m asking for your help. As a friend. Do you see what I’m saying?’

  Jed obviously didn’t understand, because he scrunched his face into a strange, quizzical expression and rubbed at the stubble under his chin. Then a darker, more serious look came over him. He stood up straight, six feet and four inches tall, and peered down towards where Felix was hunched over the table. ‘Don’t tell me…’

  Felix looked up at him, waiting for the penny to drop.

  ‘You mean you want me to…’

  Felix nodded, encouragingly.

  ‘You want me to… toss you off?’

  ‘NO! NO!’

  ‘Well, thank fuck for that. I know we’re mates but… Christ Almighty.’

  ‘Jed…’

  ‘I know. Stupid. I mean, if you can’t get a bone on looking at those porno mags, you’re not going to want me to…’

  ‘Will you just listen?’

  ‘What about a film? Come and have a flick through the satellite channels, there’s that Dutch station…’

  ‘I want you to do it.’

  Felix picked up the transparent plastic pot and took a couple of steps towards where Jed was standing. He felt his arm rising again and his hand opening. Now the container was there, between his thumb and finger, right in front of his face. All that Jed needed to do Was to reach out and take it.

  ‘It’s not how. It’s who. I can’t do it. I want you to do it.’

  It was as if the container was red-hot or radioactive. Ever so slightly, Jed backed away and took his hands out of his pockets and curled his fingers around the metal towel rail behind him. Then he forced himself to smile and said, ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  Felix shook his head. He wasn’t kidding. It was nine forty-one on a weekday morning. He was standing in another man’s house, holding a plastic container in his hand designed for the collection of semen. He was pouring with sweat, holding the container under the other man’s nose. Did this look like a joke? Would he be doing this if he was kidding, if he wasn’t absolutely 100 per cent serious?

  They sat on the front step. Jed had made a pot of tea and was smoking a cigarette. He hadn’t spoken for a while. It was now ten to ten. He let the smoke stay in his lungs, then blew it out of his nose. He went back into the house, and Felix heard the sound of him peeing in the downstairs loo and the toilet flushing. Then he came out again, sat down and picked up his cigarette, which he’d balanced on the rim of a garden tub. A garden gnome looked at them from the window of his windmill. If the wind blew, the sails, went round and it played a tune, but today there was no wind and the windmill was stationary and silent.

  ‘Supposing…’ said Jed. He took another drag on the cigarette, then dimped it in the dry soil among the dead geranium leaves. ‘Supposing I did. Just supposing, mind.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What if it works?’

  ‘I don’t know. We could move house.’

  ‘And what if…’

  He didn’t finish the sentence. What was the point? There were too many ‘what ifs’ to choose from. They’d be here all day. Instead he said, ‘Felix, let’s stop pussyfooting around. You want me to wank in that pot, then you’re gonna take it up the ’ossie and they’re gonna squirt it into your wife, and if she gets pregnant you’re gonna pretend it’s yours, and we’ll all live happily ever after? Is that it?’

  Felix nodded his head. ‘I know it’s mad. But if I don’t come up with the goods I think this could be the end of the line. She’s obsessed. Nothing else matters.’

  ‘But have you thought it through?’

  ‘Course I haven’t thought it through. Half an hour ago I was sat on the edge of the bed with my/trousers round my ankles, and now I’m here asking you to do this. It’s crazy, of course it is. But I’ll tell you this: I know Abbie, and I know what’s going on in her head. She wants a kid. That’s what her life is all about now. Having a child. There’s nothing else. And if it doesn’t come from me it will come from somewhere else. So it might as well be you. It’s terrible, I know. Terrible on her, on you, on Maxine…’

  Jed stepped inside the house again and didn’t come back. Felix went to look for
him. He was standing by the oven, staring at the floor. Felix sat down at the table. It was exactly ten o’clock. Jed’s watch gave a little electronic beep. He held out his open palm. ‘Give us that pot, then.’

  The sticky label had started to peel, a reaction to the heat and sweat generated by the trembling hands of a very frightened man.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Am I fuck. So pass it here before I change mi mind.’

  Felix dropped it into Jed’s big red hand.

  ‘Never breathe a word,’ he said. It wasn’t exactly a threat, but it was more than the extraction of a promise.

  Felix nodded his head.

  ‘Or it’s two marriages down the toilet. Not just yours.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Felix feebly, almost tearfully. ‘You’re a friend.’

  ‘I’m a mentalist that needs his head seeing to,’ he said, and slapped Felix hard on the shoulder. He walked out of the kitchen and went up the stairs. It was five past ten, there was still time. Just. Felix stood motionless in the kitchen, trying not to think about anything. If an image or idea came into his mind he blocked it, visualized an empty road, a windscreen, white lines and streetlights flying past, the pedal full to the floor, the needles on the dials way over into the red.