Edward Docx - The Calligrapher

Once in my little hall, I stood, hot-breathed, arid-eyed, parch-tongued, leaning on the banisters by the entryphone, trying to wrest my mind into clarity. (My hangover, like a drunken Glaswegian in the opposite seat at the beginning of a long train ride, sweating and swearing and wanting to be friends.) My thoughts were confused and came in crimson flashes. I did the only thing I could: I went into the bathroom to empty the bubbling cauldron of needles in my bladder. After this there really was no more time. I grabbed a pair of jeans that were loitering by the bath, squeezed a measure of toothpaste into my mouth, and set off down the stairs.

Now, in the normal run of things, I am an absolute master of the old Cartesian pack drill: if ‘a’ is the case, then ‘b’ must surely follow, et cetera, et cetera. But I would be deceiving you if I were to say that I had anything quite so formal in my head as I rushed headlong down the five flights of doom that morning. My lock ruse was as far as I had ever planned ahead. All I recall thinking was ‘I’ll think of something’ every seventh step, whereupon I would instantly forget that I had settled on this as my strategy and panic all over again on the eighth. Worse still was my anger, my rage, at having allowed such an oversight. I was furious. How could I have forgotten that she was coming in the morning? Beyond all question, this was the most shameful and disorderly fuck up in my entire career. I hated myself.

I thumbed the red master button that popped the lock and, grinning a grin calculated to convey a hopeful blend of benign insouciance and penitent disarray, I swung open the mighty front door to greet the waiting Lucy.

‘What kept you?’ She stepped up and hugged me tenderly.

It was enough to make you weep.

‘What’s wrong with your buzzer?’ she asked, changing tone, leaning back and looking up, meeting my eye.

‘Nothing,’ I replied, in a voice as blank as a pure white page. ‘It’s the lock that’s gone. The buzzer works fine and I can hear you through the intercom but I can’t unlock this door from my flat. I have to come down. I’m not sure what’s wrong. I was going to find out if it’s the same for the other flats later today – when they all get up.’

‘You don’t exactly look ready to go,’ she said, her head moving safely back towards my chest.

‘No. Yes, I am. What time?’

‘Now, idiot. The van has got to be back by one.’

‘Now. But Lucy …’ – exasperation to cover feverish brain-ransacking – ‘… it’s not even seven o’clock yet and it’s … it’s Sunday and –’

‘Oh Jasp, you are hopeless. I’m moving today, remember?’

I blinked.

‘You know – moving house – when a person takes all their things out of one place and drives them to another.’

‘I know. I know.’

‘Well, don’t act all surprised about it then.’ She rocked back on her heels. ‘Oh, come on stupid, let’s fix you some breakfast and then we can get on the road.’ She glanced over her shoulder down the street to where a white removals van waited menacingly. ‘The van will be OK over there for fifteen minutes, won’t it? I saw them towing someone away when I was coming over. Is parking still all right on Sundays around here?’

‘The van?’

Another change of tone, concern perhaps. ‘Are you OK, Jasper? What did you get up to last night?’ She broke away and put her hand up as if to take the temperature of my forehead.

I moved slightly to block the entrance and hoped that the black clouds of adversity that were scudding across my face were being interpreted as evidence of the earliness of the hour rather than the deepening crisis.

Businesslike now: ‘Jesus, Jasp, come on, let’s get you washed and dressed.’

‘We can’t,’ I said, a beat too quickly.

That was it. She was about to catch the insinuating scent of betrayal wafting down the stairs behind me. I could not hug her again. I had to act.

‘I’m not sure about the van,’ I said. ‘We had better check the parking restrictions. I think they’ve changed them because of the Heathrow link and the Paddington basin stuff … and I don’t think you can park here without a permit, even on Sundays. It’s because all the people coming in from the airport started leaving their cars and choking up the whole area. And now they’re just – you know – towing everybody away right, left and centre. Round the clock. We’d better check.’ I shook my head. ‘Did we really agree seven?’

Before she could get a word in, one arm around her waist and the other holding up my jeans, we were off to get a closer look at the nearby lamp-post with the parking notice on it. Three steps away from the door and it clicked shut behind us. Locked.

We stood together, bereft in the early morning street. How I berated myself. Shut out of my own home! How I cursed. And yet how adamant I was that I would not wake my neighbours to get in. Lucy, no! At this hour of the morning? No! Even if we are let into the hall, I’m not sure I left my own front door open! And the only person who has a spare set of keys is the Roach – but he’s a DJ and he doesn’t get up until mid-afternoon and there’s no way I am waking him up now: he’s probably not even home yet! I’ll sort it all out later. Then, how suddenly enthusiastic I became, how eager to be off. Hey, come on Lucy, what’s the problem? I’ll get a shower at your house, borrow some clothes … we might as well get on with it now you’re here. No sense hanging about. I’m up now! And, finally, how quietly apologetic: I’m sorry I forgot. Luce, I really am. I’m such an idiot sometimes …

So, five past seven on a Sunday morning: I had only been awake for less than ten minutes and already I was half-dressed, grinding through the rusty gears of destiny up the hill towards St John’s Wood.

It was a baneful day writhing with the horrors of which nightmares are made. And help, too, was thin on the ground. As usual, Lucy’s elusive sister, Bella, with whom Lucy shared her flat (and whom I had never had the pleasure of meeting in any of my scandalously few visits) was nowhere to be seen – away on holiday again. According to Lucy, Bella also wanted to ‘take the plunge’ and so hadn’t wished to sign another year’s contract either – although, clearly, she was some way behind Lucy in the property-hunting business. ‘Bloody Bella hasn’t even started looking so God only knows what she is going to do with all her stuff when she gets back tomorrow – probably ship it over to Mr Wonderful’s.’ (It may have been my over-zealous imagination but I couldn’t help but feel that the barb of this comment was intended as much for me as for Bella’s boyfriend.) Neither, I might add, were any other of Lucy’s many reported pals in evidence. In fact, the only other assistance was provided by Lucy’s nice-guy landlord and would-be best friend, Graham, a merchant banker with pretensions to photography, whose daily scratchings in that latter-day Golgotha that Londoners call the City had yet to reduce his towering smugness by so much as an inch. (Hey, watch out ladies, here comes Mr Right … and guess what? He’s single! And very nice manners. And so tall.)

Six foot two and boasting of some feeble drink-induced discomfort, Graham appeared shortly after eight, bringing with him – following a quick call on Lucy’s mobile phone – an old Oxford shirt, a pair of jogging trousers and running shoes. Though everything was too big (I am a lean five eleven), I was grateful all the same. Graham, I sensed, liked to inhabit a sartorial Hades all of his own and his charitable offerings could have been a lot worse. Not that this excused the poverty of his mercantile soul.

While Lucy wrote labels and Graham wrapped crockery, I dutifully showered and changed before rejoining the fray, manfully ignoring the toxic Armageddon taking place inside my head.