Seeing Stars Read online

  streetlamps. It looked very appealing indeed. In fact at

  that second Ricky was seized with the overpowering notion

  that all his bodily cravings could be satisfied by the

  quenching juice and zesty pulp of that ample citrus fruit

  sitting in his palm, so without hesitation he plunged his

  thumbnail into the pithy skin and squeezed its entire

  contents down his throat. It was then that he heard

  footsteps. He slipped the mashed-up orange into his jacket

  pocket and looked ahead. A small girl in bare feet came

  running up to him. She was wearing a torn, grey pinafore

  dress and a dirty white blouse. She couldn’t have been

  more than eight or nine, and was clearly distressed. “Sir,

  have you seen an orange heading this way?” “No,” lied

  Ricky, licking the tangy residue from his lips. Her

  shoulders dropped. She said, “They say my father is an

  illegal immigrant and tomorrow they will deport him to

  Albania. I went to Armley Prison tonight for one last hug

  but they turned me away. I stood outside the prison walls

  and shouted his name. Through the bars of his cell he blew

  me a final kiss and threw me an orange. But I stumbled on

  the sloping streets of this steep city and my orange has

  disappeared in the night.” Obviously she had a heavy

  Albanian accent, almost unintelligible in fact, and for the

  sake of comprehension her remarks are paraphrased here.

  She fell to her knees and sobbed. “What colour was it?”

  Ricky asked. At school, humour would often mitigate his

  wrongdoings. “I wanted to eat every morsel of that orange,

  even the skin. Its juice was my father’s blood and the flesh

  was his spirit,” said the girl. “Why don’t I help you search

  for it?” Ricky offered. The girl looked up at Ricky with a

  face like a silver coin at the bottom of a deep well caught

  by the momentary glimmer of a footman’s lantern. “No

  one can replace my father,” she said, “but maybe one day

  someone will find it in their heart to care for me. A kind

  and honourable man. Someone like yourself.” A perfectly

  spherical tear trembled on her eyelash, and there was

  nothing Ricky could do to stop his hand from wiping that

  tear away, as if all humanity were pulling on a puppet

  string connected to his wrist. As his sticky hand neared her

  face, her nostrils flared at the scent of the orange. Then her

  eyes widened as she saw the fleshy strands of fruit clinging

  to his fingers and thumb. She said, “Sir, was that my

  orange?” Ricky knew there was a great deal riding on his

  answer. It was like chaos theory: the wrong word here and

  the tremor would be felt all across Europe. Quick as a flash

  he produced the mangled fruit from his pocket. “This?” he

  said. “Do you mean this? Oh, no, no, no. In England we

  call these apples. This is an apple. Try saying it after me.

  Apple. Apple.”

  The Knack

  Boris was sitting in a field of bullocks above the

  house where he’d lived as a boy, trying to be a

  writer. There were many wild flowers waiting

  patiently to be described. But every time his pen

  made contact with the paper his hand skidded and

  jumped. Boris had to wonder about the spasms;

  were they the onset of epilepsy or some terrible

  motor-function illness? Or variant CJD perhaps—

  he’d certainly eaten a lot of dubious meat dishes in

  his younger years, including a cow’s brain and also

  a cow’s heart, though not at the same meal.

  However, this sudden loss of muscle control wasn’t

  in any way unpleasant, in fact it felt a bit trippy, and

  after a time he gave up fighting it and let the pen

  wander at will. And although arbitrary, the peaks

  and troughs it produced had a confidence about

  them, something you couldn’t argue with, like a

  cross-section of the Alps or a graph of Romany

  populations over the centuries. Eventually Boris

  found himself quite detached from his notepad,

  gazing down at the small end-terrace, at the frosted

  window of the bathroom where his handsome father

  had handed him his first disposable razor. “The

  knack,” said his father, “is to …” But his advice on

  shaving was drowned out by the siren which blared

  from the roof of the village fire station, and the old

  man bolted from the house, racing along the road on

  his bicycle, jumping from bike to fire engine like a

  bareback rider switching horses at the circus,

  heading for the mushroom of black smoke

  mushrooming over a distant town. And there he

  entered the Inferno. Boris put his hand to his throat.

  The flowers were still waiting. Then James Tate, a

  poet much admired in America, went by in an

  autogyro, flicking Boris the V-sign. North America,

  I should say, though for all I know he might be the

  toast of Tierra del Fuego, and a household name in

  Bogotá.

  The Practical Way to Heaven

  The opening of the new exhibition space at the Sculpture

  Farm had been a wonderful success. “Would all those

  visitors returning to London on the 3:18 from Wakefield

  Westgate please make their way to the main entrance from

  where the shuttle bus is about to depart,” announced a

  nasaly Maggie over the PA system. She’d been having

  trouble with her adenoids. The London people put down

  their wine glasses and plates and began to move through

  the concourse. “Great show, Jack,” said Preminger,

  helping himself to a final goat’s cheese tartlet and a

  skewered Thai prawn. “And not a pie in sight!” “Thanks

  for coming,” said Jack. “Put that somewhere for me, will

  you?” said Preminger, passing Jack his redundant cocktail

  stick before shaking hands and marching off towards the

  coach. A proud and happy man, Jack asked his staff, all

  eight of them, to assemble in the cafeteria, and he thanked

  them for their effort. “Have all the Londoners gone?” he

  asked Maggie. “Yes,” she said through her nose, peering

  out of the window as the back wheels of the bus rattled

  over the cattle grid. “Very good. So here’s your reward,”

  said Jack. He clapped his hands, and in through the double

  doors of the kitchen came Bernard driving a forklift truck,

  and on it, the most enormous pie. A wild, ecstatic cheer

  reverberated among the tables and chairs. “Fill your

  wellies!” cried Jack. Tina from the gift shop could not

  restrain herself; she ripped off a section of the crust,

  dunked her arm in as far as her elbow, and smeared her

  face with rich brown gravy. Seth the gardener wasn’t far

  behind, gnashing frenziedly at the crimped edging,

  followed by Millicent from publicity who hooked out a

  juicy piece of steak, went down on all fours and gorged on

  it like a starving dingo. Soon everyone was devouring the

  pie. And like all the great pies of history, the more they

  ate, the bigger it became. Jack threw his jacket int
o the

  corner of the room and whipped off his shirt and trousers.

  He was wearing blue swimming trunks. Standing on the

  rim of the metal dish he lowered himself through the light

  pastry topping. Maggie followed suit in her bra and pants,

  until all the staff of the Sculpture Farm were rolling or

  wading or lolling or lazing or helping themselves in the

  great slow pool of the pie. Now the forklift doubled as a

  diving board as Bernard bellyflopped from one of its

  prongs into the warm mush. It was only after retrieving a

  baby carrot from between his toes that Jack looked up and

  saw Preminger, who’d forgotten his wallet. “You people,”

  he seethed. His face looked like the smell of a broken

  sewer in high summer. Jack stood up. “I can explain

  everything,” he said. A chunk of braised celery slithered

  over his sternum. Preminger spluttered, “You told me the

  pie thing was over. Finished. You said it was safe in the

  north, Jack Singleton. But look at you. Call yourself a

  Sculpture Farmer? You couldn’t clean out a hamster cage.”

  “Forgive us,” said Jack. “We’re pie people. Our mothers

  and fathers were pie people, and their mothers and fathers

  before them. Pies are in our blood.” “Don’t tell it to me.

  Tell it to them,” said Preminger, pointing to the window.

  On the other side of the glass stood the idling coach. Like a

  row of gargoyles, the faces of critics, sponsors, trustees,

  rich benefactors and famous names from the world of

  animal art looked out disgusted and appalled. Preminger

  swivelled on his heel and exited. The bus revved and

  departed.

  Leaving gravy footprints behind him, Jack wandered out of

  the building and into the landscape beyond. And the

  crocodile of staff followed him, past the iron pigs, up to the

  granite bull on the hill, then along by the pit pony carved in

  coal and the shimmering flock of stainless-steel geese in the

  far meadow. Finally they found themselves in a small

  temple in the woods, with tea lights on the stone steps, the

  flames of which looked like the sails from a flotilla of tiny

  yachts in a distant bay. Torches to each corner of the

  building burned with an imperial pride. In front of Jack,

  soaked in pie juice, stood his loyal staff: Jethro with his

  three fingers; Maggie with her shopping problem; Tina

  who’d fallen in a quarry; Conrad who’d done time. Jack

  said, “In the horse I see the plough, in the bull I see the

  wheel, in the goat I see the scythe, in the pig I see the stove.

  Bernard,” he shouted into the shadowy woods behind them,

  “bring out the custard.”

  To the Bridge

  The same bridge, in fact, where it had occurred to

  him that the so-called Manic Street Preachers, for all

  their hyperventilation and sulphuric aftershave,

  were neither frenzied, credible or remotely

  evangelical, just as the so-called Red Hot Chili

  Peppers, for all their encouraging ingredients, were

  actually no warmer than a baby’s bathwater and not

  in the least bit diablo, whereas the Teardrop

  Explodes, either by blind accident or through

  careful purpose had kept every promise ever made.

  Below him, the soupy canal acknowledged that final

  thought with an anointing ripple then slouched

  unknowingly yet profusely onwards.

  Beyond Huddersfield

  We drove a couple of hundred miles north. To sip beer in

  a log cabin. To taste the air from the mountains and feel

  the DNA of our ancestors tingle in our marrow. We

  hooked compliant fish from the lake, grilled them over a

  log fire and ate with our hands as the sun melted into the

  west. And on leaving, we left the place just as we’d found

  it: cleaned out the stove, swept the veranda, made a

  fingertip search of the meadow for the tiniest slivers of

  silver foil and suchlike, and folded the cold ashes into the

  earth. On the way south we pulled in at a roadside

  recycling site to offload the rubbish. The woman on the

  gate with the gun and the clipboard waved us over and said,

  “Plastics in one, cans in two, cardboard and paper in three,

  and there’s a bear in four, so mind how you go.” True

  enough, in the last skip, a black bear was squatting in a pile

  of junk. He was a sizeable creature and no mistake, could

  have creamed my head clean off with one swipe of those

  claws had the notion occurred. But he just sat there, on his

  throne of trash, doing nothing, staring his five mile stare.

  In the days that followed I thought a lot about that bear.

  With every recollection he became more wretched and

  undignified in my mind, and I couldn’t suppress the

  escalation of inglorious imagery. First he was begging with

  a paper cup. The next time I thought about him he was

  wearing a nylon housecoat. Then a pair of Ugg boots, and

  the tortilla wrap between his paws was a soiled nappy.

  Then he was flipping burgers with a floral lampshade on

  his head and a whitewall tyre around his neck, and the next

  weekend, either for his sake or mine, nothing could stop me

  jumping in the car after work and racing north to the tip. It

  was two in the morning when I drew up. The gate was

  locked but I hopped over, walked onto the gantry above the

  dumping bays and shone a torch into the void. There he

  was, asleep in the skip, snoring like a sawmill. But

  swinging the car around to drive home the headlights made

  one final sweep of the scene, and I saw him again, on his

  hind legs now, the grapefruit in his mouth like a luminous

  gumshield, pizza toppings and chicken bones hanging from

  his matted coat, a red bandana knotted tightly around his

  skinny thigh, leaning to his work, busy at his groin, the

  gleaming needle digging for the sunken vein.

  Cheeses of Nazareth

  I fear for the long-term commercial viability of the new

  Christian cheese shop in our neighbourhood. Poor old

  Nathan, he’s sunk every penny of his payout from the

  Criminal Injuries Compensation Board into that place,

  but to me the enterprise seems doomed. Last Friday he

  had to make a trip across town to the opticians. “Will you

  mind the shop for me—I’ll pay you, of course?” he said.

  “Nathan, it will be an honour to wear the smart blue

  smock of the cheesemonger and to spend time amongst

  such noble foodstuffs,” I replied. But in eight hours only

  three people crossed the threshold of his emporium: some

  knackered old dosser asking for a glass of water, a young

  villain in bare feet looking for the needle exchange, and a

  pregnant woman suddenly overwhelmed by a craving for

  Kraft Cheese Slices, a product Nathan refuses to stock.

  “Nathan, Nathan, Nathan, wouldn’t this business have

  been better suited to one of the more fashionable

  districts? Is it too late to relocate?” He blinked at me

  through his new specs. “No, my work is here,” he said.

  “Hope must put down it
s anchor even in troubled waters.

  Today a cheese shop, tomorrow a wine bar or

  delicatessen, next week a community centre or a

  playground for the little ones, until ye church be builded.”

  Then he went outside with a bucket of soapy water to

  attack the graffiti scrawled across his front door.

  I almost love Nathan for his dedication to the cause, but

  the hour of my betrayal draws ever nearer. How did it

  come to this, unemployed and lactose intolerant,

  surrounded by expensive and rude-smelling dairy

  products in a fleapit of a council flat during the hottest

  summer on record? Pretty soon I’ll have to turn my back

  on Nathan, slip away like the last visitor in the lamplit

  oncology ward withdrawing his hand from the weightless

  grip of his mumbling mother-in-law. From up here on the

  third floor I can see Nathan right now in his ironed apron

  and starched hat. Nathan, oh Nathan, silent and alone,

  presiding over the faceless faces of Camembert and Brie,

  the millstones of Buterkäse and Zanetti Grana Padano,

  the dried teardrop of San Simon, the uninhabited planets

  of Gouda and Chaumes, and the cowpat of Cornish Yarg,

  mummified in its drab nettle-leaf skin.

  Show and Tell

  Marlon said, “That was the school on the phone. They

  want me to go in and talk to Jennifer’s class.” “You?

  Why you? You don’t know shit about shit,” said his

  significant other. “All the other dads have done it. They

  say it’s my turn.” “Well, you’d better not make a pig’s

  arse of it, for your precious little Jenny’s sake. But don’t

  ask me, I’m only the wicked stepmother,” she said. Then

  she went back to her online taxidermy lesson.

  For the next week or so Marlon was in a muck sweat,

  fretting about the talk he’d agreed to give. Finally he

  decided a quick show-and-tell session should do the trick.

  Something to focus their attention—concentrate their

  minds. The morning duly arrived, and although Marlon

  had visited the school on several occasions, today the

  route seemed unfamiliar and through a part of town far

  rougher than he remembered. After bottoming the car