Joe Treasure - The Book of Air

‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s not a good time.’

‘It’s now or never, Pen. I’m over forty. Caroline’s thirty-four. If we’re going to have a family we’d better get on with it.’

‘But look at what’s happening to the planet. Look at this weather. It’s November, Jason, and we’re sitting outside. Doesn’t it freak you out?’

‘Of course it does, if I stop to think about it. But what can I do? What can any of us do by ourselves?’

She pulled back and looked into my face. ‘Is that it then? We give up?’

‘No, we elect governments and they create regulations. It’s like speed limits. Everyone cheats a bit, we moan when we get caught, but we know they’re right.’

‘That’s pathetic, Jason. I mean it’s insane how utterly pathetic that is.’ She turned away from me, felt around in her shoulder bag and pulled out a book. ‘You should read this.’

‘What is it?’

‘Just read it, OK.’

It was Kishar in Crisis. I’d never seen it before, never heard of it. How could I know it would soon be notorious and Penny with it? It was just some book. The subtitle, the seven paradoxes of human survival , was just a bunch of words – the kind of words publishers put on the front of a million books to say this one’s important, buy this one, the way an estate agent might describe any random block of flats as a prestigious development affording luxury accommodation and iconic views. It was sales talk. I saw nothing sinister in it. And I didn’t feel threatened by the blurb that called it a self-help manual for Planet Earth . I completely missed the point, that there might be some kind of tension between the planet’s survival and ours. If it was there to be seen, I didn’t see it. All I saw was this garish black and yellow cover and a title I only half understood.

‘What is it then, Kishar?’

‘ She , not it .’

‘Who’s she then, when she’s at home?’

‘She was babble-odeon.’

‘You what?’

‘You know, from babble-odea. She was a babble-odeon earth goddess.

‘Babylonian, you mean,’ I said, ‘from Babylon. Like the Whore of Babylon.’

Penny shrugged. And in a way she was right to shrug. So what if she mispronounced a word? Why should it bother me if she mangled Babylon beyond recognition? It did, though. That kind of knowledge, what Dad called book-learning, might be overrated, but I saw how vulnerable Penny was without it.

‘The thing is BK’s a genius.’

‘BK?’

‘BK Compton who wrote it. She understands everything. This book is huge. It’s…’ she struggled for a word that could express her sense of it. ‘It’s got everything in it, everything that matters – that’s what Troy says. Not because it’s got all the answers but because it chucks out all the old questions and replaces them with the only important question.’

‘Which is?’

‘It’s a big book, Jason. I didn’t say I’d read it all.’

‘And Troy’s what… a sky god?’

‘Troy’s my boyfriend.’

‘And what does he do, this Troy?’

‘What’s it matter what he does?’

‘Which means he’s unemployed and grows his own vegetables, I suppose.’

‘He’s a zoologist. With a real job. See, that took you by surprise. He does research in a lab. He’s got a PhD and everything.’

‘All right, you got me. Research into what?’

‘I don’t know exactly. The environment.’

‘That’ll keep him busy then – there’s a lot of it about.’

‘And he’s big in the solutionists.’

‘Who are they?’

‘People who’ve read this book, mostly. People who are looking for the solution.’

I wanted to ask her – hadn’t she been here before? They give you a book. They say, it’s all in here, this is all you need. But I said nothing.

She phoned me next morning and told me to forget about the solutionists. I was late for a meeting and snarled up in traffic on Tower Bridge.

‘How do you mean, forget about them?’

‘Forget I mentioned them.’

‘I had forgotten them until you just mentioned them again.’

‘It’s just that they’re not important. I made it sound like they’re important but they’re not.’

‘You didn’t make them sound important. You just said they were looking for a solution.’

‘So you hadn’t forgotten. You remembered everything I said.’

‘I remember it now you’ve reminded me.’

She didn’t respond and I thought maybe we’d been cut off. The weather had broken and rain was hammering the roof of the car and falling in fat drops on the windscreen.

‘It’s just that Troy gets annoyed at me.’

‘About what?’

‘He says I shoot my mouth off.’

‘He sounds like a charmer.’

‘Please don’t think badly of him.’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Because we’re moving in together.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘And because the thing is, Jason, something terrible happened to him when he was a kid. His dad murdered his mum. And he actually saw it happen. Can you imagine what that must have felt like? He was only eight. It must have felt like it was his fault.’

‘Why must it?’

‘It just must have felt like that, that’s all I’m saying. Because I think it left him feeling he had to hold everything together, be responsible for everyone.’

‘Your childhood was a hardly a picnic.’

‘Exactly. Which is maybe why I understand him.’

She texted me a few weeks later. I gathered that Troy wanted to meet me or she wanted me to meet him or some combination of the two. I suggested a pub on Blackfriars Road. I might have taken you with me, Caro, but I reckoned you could do without the aggravation.

I got there late and they’d already found a table in the window. Penny went to the bar and left me with Troy. When I sat down he seemed to be waiting for me to speak.

‘So you’re a zoologist,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I work at the zoo. Hang out with the reptiles in the reptile house.’

‘But I thought…’

‘You thought what?’

‘Penny said you work in a lab.’

‘Oh, she told you that. I usually don’t. I prefer to keep things in separate compartments. Work life, home life, pub life, whatever.’

‘Sorry. She didn’t say it was a secret.’

‘It’s not a secret. It’s just that it’s my business not your business.’

He wasn’t good at eye contact. He could do it, look you in the eye – he’d fixed me a couple of times already – but it was always too much. And it was a relief when his stare shifted – to his phone, the door, the noisy table in the far corner. He seemed restless and distracted, but there was this stillness in him at the same time that unnerved me, some predatory quality.

He nodded towards the street. ‘You drove here.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘I know you did. Penny recognised your tank. We saw you go past twice looking for somewhere to park. It gets tedious I should think. You should get rid of it.’

‘What?’

‘The tank. Sell it for scrap. Get a bike.’

‘Sorry, I’m confused. Is that your business or my business?’

‘I’m just saying. It must be hard always looking for places to park.’

‘Well it is, but I need a vehicle for the job.’

‘Which is?’

‘Penny didn’t tell you?’

‘I wanted to hear your version. She gets things wrong sometimes.’

‘I build things.’

‘Things?’

‘Buildings.’

‘You build buildings.’

‘Yes, look, I know you’d rather I did something else, but that happens to be what I do. And I could tell you why it’s a good thing, like nursing or teaching or growing vegetables, because people like living indoors with roofs to keep the rain out and running water and drains so that the streets aren’t open sewers and everyone doesn’t get dysentery, but that’s my business not your business and I prefer to keep things in separate compartments.’