Inspections of the Wounded

INSPECTIONS OF THE WOUNDED

TOM LOCKINGTON

Copyright. David Mathew

SATURDAY

At midday, when the doorbell rings, I know I’m going to regret agreeing to this. It’s all going to come crashing down around me, unless I maintain an air of exceptional tranquility. But maybe I’m too old for exceptional tranquility. I’m certainly too old to feel up to snoopers.

- Hugh Bargeld

1

Pornography or the phone bill?

It was a difficult decision for Sarah to make: which to open first? The small cardboard offering with the black masking tape (a video from her usual supplier near Euston Station) . . . or the replacement bill for this quarter, which she’d brought here to the workplace from the flat, smuggling it out?

Ordinarily, no contest. Not much got in the way of Sarah’s pursuit of porn – especially bills, which were Alan’s responsibility. But this phone bill was special. Once she’d discovered that Alan had destroyed the original, she’d phoned British Telecom to request a copy. She wanted to know what numbers Alan had called.

If Holly’s number was there, God help them both.

The affair had finished three months ago. That’s what Alan claimed – although at no point had he admitted that the other party was Holly, Sarah’s half-sister. On the rare occasions that Sarah spoke about the incident, Alan lied and said that the other woman was Liz, who worked as a secretary.

Sarah knew the truth.

When the previous phone bill vanished, Sarah had also requested a replacement. Alan was too organised to lose bills; he filed them neatly as soon as they’d been paid. On the itemized listing Sarah had discovered twenty-two long calls to Holly’s number in Yorkshire – and a couple of inexplicable calls to a number in Buxton, Derbyshire. The first time Sarah dialled the Buxton number, she put the phone down when the lady answered, ‘Palace Hotel. Can I help you?’ The second time she did something more practical. She had a few drinks and called again . . . to ask if she could be sent a copy of the bill for Alan Chandler, for tax purposes.

How could a husband know so little about his wife? He’d refused to assume that she had the barest hint of interest in his movements, despite his half-hearted confessions of a few months ago. Was it possible that he assumed the discovery of the affair had hurt no more than the sting of a nettle? Alan hadn’t even bothered to change his name for the hotel records. And they’d checked in together as Mr and Mrs . . .

Sighing, Sarah put the most recent phone bill on the counter, still unopened. She would see what the film was first: this was meant to be her quality time, after all; her thinking time. It was ten a.m. on a Saturday morning, and Sarah always tried to have five minutes with a cup of tea before she opened the shop - HandyFilms - to the public.

Anyway, the bill would solve nothing. It would prove that Alan was still calling Holly, or would suggest that he’d at least started taking precautions - by phoning her on his mobile, or from his office at work. His most recent Vodafone bills were also suspiciously absent from the filing cabinet in the hall of their Islington flat.

Ripping open the cardboard box, Sarah said to herself: Doesn’t matter. If he was still engaged in the affair, or if he wasn’t: it didn’t matter.

The two of them were going to pay, either way.

It was too late to stop that . . .

There remained a sloughed skin of unopened post at the bottom of the chute that people also used to deposit their tapes after business hours. (Rarely did Sarah go to the trouble of fining for tardiness. Life’s too short.) Envelopes, mainly brown; mainly windowed. Bills and promotions; the stuff that any independent video supplier might receive. Having picked up this catch, Sarah sided off to the kitchen to fill a kettle. While she was waiting for the water to boil, she opened up the shop. Needs must.

Behind her counter, five minutes later, Sarah pushed into the video slot a tape called The Lesbionic Woman. There was no need to press PLAY: it was a pre-recorded tape - no pirate, this - and the protection tabs had been removed. It played on its own, just as its viewer would shortly be doing. Sarah Chandler came alive . . .

She was pleased that the place in Euston had sent her the tape. The owner had sounded suspicious on the phone, although he’d been her sole supplier of porn for the last eighteen months. A recent request had consternated the man, despite Sarah’s assurances that the material was not for her. She’d obtained a tape for somebody else entirely. Not child porn; but something as bad as child porn, in the eyes of many . . .

But The Lesbionic Woman was regular hardcore, and Sarah loved pornography: the harder the better. The TV screen rolled and flickered, like the eyes of someone rapidly losing consciousness. Picture’s a bit grainy, Sarah thought. Ah! but here it was. The blue background, the white writing: in Dutch. The picture settled. So it should, too - for twenty quid. That’s better . . .

The opening credits consisted of stills, or two-second bursts of action, from the film that was to follow. Sarah had encountered this approach before: quite often, in fact. Only in the genre of pornography, she’d thought on such occasions, would such a giveaway of what was coming next be seen as an advantage. So this guy would be ejaculating into the face of this woman. Fine. But if the credits of a detective drama gave away the confession scene you’d want your money back, wouldn’t you?

Sarah smiled.

As she sat down, she heard the tinkle of the front door hitting its warning bell. She looked up. That lad - Daz - who came in every weekend with the oil on his jeans; a packet of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Benson and Hedges: the same as she smoked. However, Sarah liked Daz for reasons other than brand name compatibility; they’d been half-heartedly flirting with one another for a few weeks now - playing a game of mental footsie. As soon as he stepped into the shop, Sarah lost track of any thoughts to do with Alan or any phone calls he might have made lately.

The tape kept rolling. The film had started. Sarah flashed Daz a quick smile and watched what was going on. Most of what she saw of pornography was similarly viewed: in the shop, with the sound off . . . Daz was browsing in the Thrillers section. From where he was standing she knew which boxes he was looking at: the Steamies. The 18-rated homicide pieces with the femme fatale, or the stripclub massacre. Sarah smiled again.

‘What’s this one like?’ Daz asked across the shop. ‘A Spanish Tragedy.’

‘Very violent,’ Sarah replied.

‘Not foreign is it?’

‘It’s set in Seville.’

‘But with Americans, yeah?’

This seemed important. ‘That’s right.’

‘That’ll do then.’ Daz walked over to the counter with the box, his denims perfumed by a thousand cigarettes. Surreptitiously Sarah turned off the TV and stood up.

‘Thanks. Three pounds.’ Using the handheld scanner Sarah joined the information on his membership card’s barcode to the electronic details on the cassette box.

Daz regarded her in an embarrassed manner. ‘I wanna ask you summing,’ he said. ‘Will you go out with me . . . for a drink or whatever?’

‘I’m a married woman, Daz. That’s not so easy.’

But events had been leading here. Sarah felt the pang of unacceptable acceptability. She was seriously considering the unforgivable . . . as she had been for some weeks. With him. Not because he amounted to anything, or was worth anything; but simply because he had shown an obvious interest.

‘I’m going to the gym tonight,’ Sarah added. ‘Meet me there.’

2

Alone in the flat, mid-morning, Alan wondered how best to spend his Saturday. Usually, on weekends when it was Sarah’s turn to do the dreaded shopping (before she drove on to HandyFilms), he watched children’s television until noon: he was infatuated with one of the female presenters, an Amero-Oriental goddess. He then drove to The Green Man pub, where he drank Guinness and met up with two friends who were part of the furniture there, especially at the weekend.

In the kitchen, Alan puckered his lips and depressed the detonator of the cafetiere. Spooned honey into his favourite coffee mug (YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE MAD . . . ), and then, when the drink had been prepared, he sat down in front of the television, and watched cartoons with a smile on his face . . . He was not, however, entirely at ease. Alan’s brain automatically laboured for excuses: for his idling, for his leching. Which was one of the things about Alan: never comfortable.

Watching kids’ TV, of course, was good for reasons other than titillation. Firstly, it was a therapeutic diversion from the real world: the sweet candle incense of banality. And secondly - paradoxically - kids’ TV was connected to what Alan did (unsuccessfully) for a living. Bargeld Trading was a company that secured the rights to manufacture fictional characters on incongruous products. For example, a Finnish cartoon called Shangri-La-La had been bought by the BBC. As yet, nobody in England had seen it, but it was due to be overdubbed and broadcasted two nights a week. If it became as popular as it was in Finland, the following months - leading up to next year’s Christmas - would see a marketing campaign of eerie concentration. As a Purchaser, Alan was among the team that phoned up and wrote to the Shangri-La-La people and proposed buying the rights to manufacture Shangri-La-La bubble bath, or lunch boxes, or duvet covers. Then, the rights secured, Alan’s company paid third parties to handle the manufacturing. So, in a sense, by watching children’s TV, Alan was keeping a fingertip on the pulse - doing his market research.

That was his excuse and he was sticking to it.

By common consensus, any extra that Alan was prepared to put into his work could only be to the good. It’d been a miracle that he’d got the job; a curse that he had to stay. Nobody respected him. Even the team’s secretary, Liz, had stopped flirting. Alan was an example of what used to be called middle management. Above him at Bargeld Trading was Hugh Bargeld himself - a stately fusspot who on occasion wore cream suits, and was rumoured to be gay - and a subordinate gang of lightly-bearded bullies.

Alan was on the third rung: for now. He had no ambition to climb up to the level of Hugh’s immediate understudies. But he might be pushed down. Alan felt (correctly) that he was just about being tolerated. Every Monday morning he half expected the courtly summons to the top floor and the corresponding invitation to leave the company.

But to hell with it: that was Monday. Two glorious days of R and R were to be savoured like steak and wine before then. Starting now.

Sod the coffee. Midday had been and gone, and therefore it was time for a pint. Alan got dressed and contemplated calling a cab for the half-mile journey. The Omega was playing up and he didn’t want to make himself upset trying to get it to start and fire over properly. No. He’d walk. The exercise would do him good.

The Green Man (at the doors of which he arrived, very thirsty, shortly afterwards) was not his favourite pub. His favourite pub was Filthy McNasty’s, an Irish place, where he drank alone from time to time, glad of the solitude. But The Green Man contained two of his favourite people. Not so much Dave the barman, for every pub in the English-speaking world has employed, at one time or another, a barman named Dave; nor even Janeece, who, with her metallic helixes of bangs and dreadlocks, and her blimpesque inflatable raft of a jacket, was a def, young and kind kid who sure played a mean pinball. Or ‘pimball’, as she would have it. Neither of those. Alan talked to Janeece now, briefly, but she wasn’t who he had come in to see.

Lance and Billy arrived fifteen minutes later, when Alan was frowning at the quiz machine. ‘Who captained England to victory in the 1966 World Cup?’ The clock was ticking. A, B or C. It had to be a trick: they were never this easy. Who captained England . . . Who captained England . . . Alan continued frowning. The clock continued ticking. Option C was somebody called Eddie Huddleston: not a name that Alan knew. Was it possible that England had won the 1966 World Cup in a second sport - in hockey, in darts, in tiddlywinks, in Connect 4? Alan pressed C: Eddie Huddleston.

The quiz machine burped at him disdainfully.

‘Twat,’ said Lance, to Alan’s left.

Alan turned. ‘Oh, hello, boys. Thought it was a fucking trick, didn’t I.’

The next question arrived on the screen. Billy read, ‘Who directed the movie Eraserhead?’

‘David Lynch, David Cronenburg or David Copperfield,’ Lance continued.

Sarah would know, thought Alan. ‘Go for Lynch,’ he said.

Lance, Billy and Alan, some expensive ten minutes later, sat down, having ordered pub lunch. They talked calmly; they had known each other for years. They’d met at teacher training college, and had remained in touch even though Alan had abandoned the educational faith to go into something more profitable: gambling. No, no, purchasing. Spending money on behalf of companies to make even more money for those companies . . . Lance and Billy lived together, and showed their solidarity at the annual Gay Pride march through London. And it had occurred to Alan in the past to query why it was that he couldn’t keep straight male friends. The answer was: because he always felt he had to compete with heterosexual men. He felt comfortable with Lance and Billy, although they teased him, often, about Sarah.

‘So what did you buy the mantis this week?’ Lance asked.

‘Earrings,’ said Alan. ‘Next week I’m being more original. After we’re finished in here I’m going to the travel agent. I’m taking her to Dublin next weekend.’

But he didn’t go to the travel agent at all. He was scared to.

3

Making one of his rare, disconcerting, appearances in the kitchen, Hugh Bargeld sat at the solid table from eleven o’clock, waiting.

For fifteen minutes or so, he pretended to read the papers. The Times to begin with, the unlocking of whose interconnected sections Hugh normally found a mildly taxing task. Today, however, the bulk and complexity of the package simply annoyed him. To grunts of displeasure (Mrs Eggleton, at the sink, restrained herself from glancing over her shoulder), Hugh casually tossed aside supplements; they floated across the surface of the table as if on a cushion of air . . .

It was too big. Hugh opened instead The Sun: after all, an intellectual he might be, but a man of the people he definitely was. And briefly the nudity and simple prose refreshed him; but soon enough he had laid that aside as well, and was regarding the wreckage - half a tonne of dead paper, unusable, unwanted - while his fingers traced the knots and nodes in the wood as though expecting the table to communicate with him in Braille.

‘Cup of tea, Mr B?’ said Mrs Eggleton.

Hugh had already drunk four. ‘Yes, please,’ he said, sighing and stretching.

Hugh wondered, as was his wont on such occasions as Mrs Eggleton had cause to speak to him, if he should reciprocate the presumed and undesired intimacy by referring to her as Mrs E. He’d tried in the past (and he tried now as well) to remember a time when she had used his full, unabbreviated surname; but he’d been unable to. ‘Mr B’ he’d always been to her; ‘Mrs Eggleton’ she to him. With his other staff (Hayley, who cleaned upstairs twice a week, and Marcus, the gardener and handyman) it was a case of first names, both ways.

The steaming tea arrived. As dark as ebony it was, just the way he liked it, and sweeter than candyfloss. Yum. (It was a wonder, given his sugar intake, that he was wiry of build.) Staring into space, he sipped the drink and let his thoughts chatter away, wondering how different this very room would be if the visitor had her way. What would she suggest?

‘You look troubled, Mr B. Everything all right?’

There were plenty of things on Hugh’s mind, of course. This was perfectly standard. He ran Bargeld Trading, and only yesterday had felt obliged to discipline an employee. Well, not so much ‘discipline’ him, perhaps, as rip a hole in his chest, figuratively speaking. There’d been the compulsory warnings, the meetings . . . but when it came to it, the guy was not performing with the company in mind. And that could not be tolerated. So Hugh had spent an entire thirty minutes on one speech - uninterrupted and without a pause - on the subject of how poor the employee’s work had become of late.

And that guy was nowhere near as incompetent as Alan Chandler.

But a different fate was in store for Alan. A dressing-down was insufficient.

Mrs Eggleton was still waiting for an answer, Hugh realised, so he said, ‘I’m fine. She’ll be here soon.’ The tone was wearied. To Hugh it also sounded as though the second of the two sentences was a non-sequitur in relation to the first: he’d implied that his guest’s arrival - or the imminence of it - was making him feel all right. Being honest with himself, Hugh knew that when Holly arrived would be when the troubles really began. Too late to worry about everything being ready for Holly’s week-long lesson; preparations were now ancient history.

This was real. This was happening.

When Holly arrived the situation might just become horrible.

4

Driving south from Yorkshire (where she’d attended university and where she now lived) - to Buckinghamshire (where she would be working for a week, thank God), Holly’s mind was not on the road before her. Notwithstanding the itchy trouble that her contact lenses were causing her, Holly’s mind was up in the occident. Not even on the car and its heavy sighs (which it should be, because there was a legitimate cause for concern), or the shudders it writhed through every time it drew to a partial halt. The car meant nothing. She’d walk there if necessary . . . And besides, Holly had good company on the journey to Aylesbury. Accompanying every stop, start, or bounce through a mine-crater, a kaftanned Christ wriggled on the end of a short chain dangling from her rear-view mirror. Bearded and barefoot, Christ was a smooth mover and then an acrobatic trampolinist. He also resembled a suicide, Holly thought.

Dangling Jesus brought Holly luck, or so she believed. So she’d believed for some time. And so she wanted to believe, not having anything else to trust.

But Holly was thinking of the week’s work ahead, still nervous about the project. And a little bit stunned. While setting up her business a year ago she had scarcely dared dream that something so big would happen so soon. Okay, so Alan had put in a good word for her, but that was how people in Holly’s line got big: by word of mouth. Reputations were like bouts of influenza: easily transmittable, and swift to spread. Because she did good work and her rates were reasonable, her name had been passed to Hugh Bargeld. Even so, she thanked her lucky stars . . .

Thank you, Alan.

What a dream gig! Not just a bedroom or a kitchen or a lounge (the solitary room being what she was used to), but the whole house. Holly needed to twit herself regularly - in order to refuse the pull of complacency. This was the real world, no matter how it felt from time to time. Customers like Bargeld were the reason that Holly had spent all those years at university in Yorkshire, and then on various courses in night-schools, learning her trade. Hugh Bargeld was her justification. Holly had paid her dues; now it was her turn to smile and rake in the rewards.

As she changed gears, Holly noted the fingernails on her left hand. She tutted to herself in a schoolmarm fashion. She might as well have been painting double-yellow lines by the side of the road for all the care and attention she’d put into this decorative job. However, that was easily fixable: two minutes in a rest-stop Ladies. What mattered for the next five days was her mind, not her appearance. She hoped.

Having little choice in the matter, Holly paused in traffic. Quite aside from the fact that she wanted something sweet to nibble, she didn’t care about this or any other delay; her journey south was well ahead of schedule. She was cool. She had plenty of time. The car’s engine panted and gulped like a dog after exercise. Holly quickly reached into her handbag, which was on the passenger seat. She pulled out a packet of custard cream biscuits and her small tube of hair spray. While the light was still against her, she aimed the latter’s nozzle at her head like a gung-ho Russian roulette player. Inside the car the smell was immediately saccharine - like a concentration of decaying flowers, like a funeral parlour. With a little bit of peach perfume in there too. Just great. Peach perfume: the smell of the execution chamber’s final gases.

With a biscuit in her mouth, Holly used the floor of the vehicle, beneath the pedals, to push down with her feet and raise her body in the sticky chair. Sighing at the sound of various clicks and pops along her spine - like a complicated set of signals from animals to one another at various points of the riverside - Holly watched the pedestrians cross in front of her. Not for the first time she questioned their blind faith in the power of the lights. The green man on the rectangular panel said to walk, and so they were walking; but none of them was even looking Holly’s way to check if she looked impatient to be waiting. She could release the handbrake and mow these sheep down . . . if she’d been at all that way inclined.

A skinny woman with glasses and dark hair pulled her children across the break in the mumbling traffic as though she were hauling items of heavy luggage. One of the girls was dressed in the no-nonsense togs of a Brownie pack. Holly herself had gone to Brownies, and had assumed that the practice died out long ago, modern youth demanding ever more dangerous thrills. The mother’s walk was harried but confident, with her upper body leaning into the stride. Holly was quite the self-taught student of people’s walking styles, and she examined people whenever she could. The young girls walked better than their mother: straight-backed, with their weight more evenly distributed into a more compact space.

The lights said Holly could progress onwards. She did so, more nervous than ever. There soon, she thought. She hoped she’d dressed okay: she’d certainly put on her finest working clothes, but would they be good enough for an entrepreneur like Bargeld?

No, that was paranoia talking. Holly chided herself; she already had the job, albeit without a formal written contract, which she’d secure soon enough. Just relax. Calm down. She wasn’t going for an interview.

She carried on driving. Fifteen minutes later she was at the front of Bargeld’s property, in Aylesbury . . . During their numerous telephone conversations Bargeld had instructed her as to the procedure for getting through the gate. Leaving the engine running, Holly got out of the car and took three steps to the console set into the brickwork of the gate’s right-side turret. An intercom system. Holly pressed the button and bent her face to the cross-hatchings of the grille.

‘Hello?’ a female voice said through a background of crackling crisp packets.

‘I’m Holly Paver? I’ve a meeting with Mr Bargeld at twelve. I’m early.’ Quietly confident that her message had sounded professional, Holly was nevertheless distracted by the thought that so much information had surely been unnecessary. The name should have been enough. Bargeld would have informed his staff that she was coming.

‘Drive up to the front door.’

Holly stepped back to her car. While her right hand took the wheel, her left went up to the dangling Jesus. ‘Wish me luck,’ she whispered, rubbing the figure from head to toe with a podgy thumb.

The gates were opening slowly. A long thin gravel drive was in front of her, rock-bordered, leading up to the house. Holly drove slowly, taking it all in . . . Gardens in winter always made Holly think of old women - doing their shopping, with their triangular coats, their tartan trolleys, their headscarves. Like these Arndale-warriors (an expression she’d learnt and adopted from Alan) the gardens were tired but determined. Someone had been doing a good job of keeping up appearances . . .

The house was six-bedroomed, four-bathroomed, with a dining room, two living rooms, a gymnasium, and even a separate little room - a segregated nook - in which to make phone calls. Hugh had told her all this already. He had also mentioned somebody called Bertram, but had refused to be drawn on the topic . . .

As Holly was removing her suitcase from the boot, Hugh came out of the house. With amiable professionalism they greeted one another and shook hands. ‘Leave that,’ Hugh told her.