Thomas Maloney - Learning to Die

He sits up. Daffodils. Everywhere. A flash of chrome above a nearby ditch. He crawls to a flint wall that his body apparently didn’t slam into, gets an arm over it and hauls himself upright.

He looks down at his mud-streaked leathers. There’s a small tear on one sleeve.

‘And you?’ he says to his leg. ‘Are you going to fucking start working too, as part of this fucking miracle?’ The leg twitches ineffectively. Dan looks to the sky and laughs.

James is on the beach. Tide down. Shoes wet through; on one a stubborn straggle of weed. The near-empty bottle leaves him only one coat-pocket to cram a hand into. The laptop corpse nowhere. Not content with destroying his novel, the sea has actually done away with the hardware. Acid bath murder.

Lines from the dead novel assail him. Flawless lines. The sun a dripping sponge on my face, between rounds of brawling night. Dismembered now, functionless, grotesque. It’s all come to nothing, after all. Thirty-odd years of blur and blot. The deadest thing. Stupid phrase, he’s always thought, but maybe Hardy was on to something. Wind oozing thin; yes, that too.

He turns unsteadily and sees the village now far away along the waste of mud and shingle. It seems easier to go on. Didn’t you have a back-up, she said. His father used to plead, nag, badger: ‘Write if you must, but finishing your degree will give you a back-up.’ James has never believed in back-ups.

Mike Vickers is sandwiched between an English tearaway daddy’s girl with indecent lips and an older Lithuanian lady of doubtful profession and penetrating intelligence; a Ghanaian model with a gift for deadpan one-liners sits beside Pete Walley, who is in his element; and Maurice, summoned by text, has just arrived wearing a vinyl zip-up shirt, to the general delight of the table. Mike’s Amex card is behind the bar.

‘I work in investments,’ he admits to the ladies, ‘but only until something better comes along.’

‘Mike’s idea of spontaneous,’ explains Pete, ‘is to buy monthly travelcards instead of an annual, in case he has to jam. He’s that wild.’ Verity, the tearaway, who has probably never purchased a travelcard, snorts.

‘Michael,’ purrs Maurice, slipping into his Anthony Blanche Brideshead act, ‘you would have us b-believe that you have made a great sacrifice, that you have laboriously b-bricked up the windows of your imagination in the service of your career. But I rather think you are like the P-pantheon or La Madeleine — you were constructed with no windows. Only a single round hole in the t-top of your head.’

The table dissolves into hardly-warranted laughter and Mike meekly displays the ginger crown of his head to left and right. Maurice feels entitled to refer to Mike’s flat as the far-famed masturbatorium. Pete keeps mockingly calling him the Jack of Hearts. The more drinks you buy them, the more freely they insult you. Interlopers come and go, contributing to the atmosphere of entitlement and little else. The abuse in James’ emails tastes much, much better than this.

When he goes to pay, Mike is casually presented with a bill for eight hundred and three pounds. He glances at it just as casually and taps in his code. The manager slithers out from somewhere.

‘I hope sir and guests had an enjoyable evening,’ he fawns.

‘It’s salvageable,’ shrugs Mike. ‘I’ve had better.’

Just a drop in the shallow end of the swimming pool of digits he signed over to shrewd, twinkly Ira McFooley this afternoon, in exchange for an object rather smaller than a penny and of no special beauty. He feels sick both at the probability it’s junk, and at the remote possibility it’s not.

Life: you know it’s a swindle, but you still buy.

James F. Saunders awakes in an unfamiliar metal bed. A police cell, maybe, or a hospital. His shoes are standing neatly in a plastic tray on the floor, stuffed with newspaper. Birds are chirruping. Without raising his head he tugs at the curtain and sees hard blue sky. Swaying tree branches — no leaves on them, just a few dozen of the sniggering feathered imps.

A motor starts up outside — a trimmer or a saw. The birds skedaddle and James thinks of Brenda. If I have not. Love. Her cold eyes, full of hatred. Out of control. What if she’s done something stupid? The classic twofold melodrama; the double whammy. He lurches out of bed and tries the door.

It’s not a police cell — it’s the YHA at Stoupe Hole. Walkers, he’s told, reported his wretched existence to the manageress, who ventured out onto the rocks at dusk and recognised him as Bay’s unofficial writer-in-residence. She lets him use the phone for free — Brenda won’t recognise the number — but there’s no answer. No voicemail. He tries three times, then tries calling from his own phone, which he finds intact and functional in his pocket. Where Brenda should be, there’s nothing.

Mike Vickers is awakened by his phone’s Ride of the Valkyries ringtone and insistent buzzing on the bedside table. He turns apprehensively to the other pillow but it’s untenanted. Ah, yes. He and Lulu played a delicious, wordless game in the back of a cab after the club but then she left him hanging. Just a fragrant nuzzle on the cheek. Clever, classy girl. Mike’s arrangement with Victoria is informal, of course, a pragmatic alliance. But there is a special sweetness in pleasure that leaves the conscience clean. In every bad night a bright spot.

Oh. Only now does he remember Ira McFooley. The confiding whisper. The uncatalogued item. The elaborate provenance, tantalisingly incomplete. George egging him on in that dimly-lit room where common sense has no jurisdiction. He slumps back, fingers planted in his eyes, but the phone is still chuntering. He submits. It’s James, of all people.

‘James, old man,’ he croaks, with affected cheeriness. ‘How nice of you to call. I was thinking of you last night. Among other topics dear to my heart.’

‘Have you heard from Brenda?’ James’ voice is even more humourless than he remembers. A hint of urgency. James and Brenda: Mike has forgotten all about that curious match.

‘Not for a while. Should I have?’

‘I’m worried about her. We had a row. She — she’s not answering her phone.’

‘She rarely does.’

‘We had a bad row,’ James repeats. His whining tone resounds with guilt and defeat. Mike is surprised by a flash of suspicion.

‘What did you do to her?’ he asks, sharply.

‘Nothing! We were — having a good time. She came to visit me. I was talking about my book, some things I said came out the wrong way, and she — she flipped.’ This story sounds plausible, and Mike’s suspicion recedes. He’s seen Brenda flip, once or twice.

‘I’m sure she’s fine. I warned you not to mess with her.’

‘Can you call her? She looked crazy. I’m worried.’

Brenda doesn’t answer Mike’s call. No surprise there. He texts her the single word ok? , which is an agreed signal. There is no reply. She’s probably in the mountains. Fasting in the wilderness.

Mike dons a silk dressing gown, pads down to the kitchen and slices his grapefruit with a fiendish Japanese knife. A sensualist not only by inclination but by deliberate cultivation, his first refuge is always pleasure. The masturbatorium, indeed. He manspreads luxuriously in his Eames recliner and consults a mental library of fantasies into which Lulu might be inserted; the opening premises tend to be crude, but unexpected nuances often develop. They’re a creative outlet of sorts: expressive therapy.

Afterwards, he sits looking up at his Damoclean chrome chandelier and feels utterly worthless.

Twisted headstock, broken engine mount, cracked wheel rim, bent disc: the bike, now at the garage, will fetch a few hundred quid for parts. Torn jacket sleeve. A scuffed boot. Dan’s flawed biological machinery untouched. He reaches for his tablet and watches the wipeout video again: probably the last ride of his life. A wistful sense of what might have been.