Edward Aubyn - On the Edge

Carlos, sitting on his balcony watching the reddening sky, dreamt of the unnecessary income that would come his way if his ear massage mufflers (patent pending) went into production and became one of those stress-appeasers that several million people find in their stockings one Christmas.

The sea still looked pretty, but how many flecks of heavy metal and radioactive isotopes crowded its cubic kilometres? The waves beat themselves against the rocks like washing, and then collapsed back into their own suds. While money still had some meaning, he would buy himself a stretch of primary rainforest back home in Brazil, far from the mutant viruses ravaging the great cities. There he could relax a little longer than the rest of his guilty species, behind a veil of rabies, yellow fever and malaria which would by then have taken on the character of old friends.

* * *

Peter was resting after a revolutionary afternoon. He had moved on and let go of his workshop. That morning in the baths Martha had lectured them on the importance of nudity while she wore an unusually long T-shirt. In the afternoon she had picked on a particularly lost and unhappy woman and told her to choose her ‘mother’ among the group.

‘Tell her you hate her,’ she commanded.

‘I hate you.’

‘Tell her to stop trying to control your life.’

‘Stop controlling my life,’ echoed the hapless seminarian, stamping her foot.

Martha then told the group to pile cushions on top of the woman and sit on her while she screamed, with increasing desperation and difficulty, ‘I want to live, I want to live.’

‘I can’t hear you,’ Martha kept saying.

‘I want to live! Let me out of here. Please!’

‘I can’t hear you.’

‘I want to live!’

Peter, on the other hand, wanted to leave. He took the opportunity to switch to Crystal’s Tibetan workshop. It was technically too late, but the Tibetan chap, who turned out to be an American, and happened to come into the office at that very moment, was so relaxed about it that they let him do it anyway.

They also told him that a message had just come through to call his mother. Slightly irritated, and slightly worried, Peter phoned England.

‘I’ve joined a group,’ said Mrs Thorpe.

‘You’ve done what?’ said Peter.

‘I’ve joined a group. It’s called Cult Busters. We’re all worried friends and parents. It’s been such a help, and I’ve stopped worrying because there’s no point and it doesn’t do the earthliest bit of good.’

‘I’m glad you’ve seen that, especially as I haven’t joined a cult.’

‘But what I find absolutely fascinating is my group. They’ve all had such extraordinary lives, if you put them in a novel nobody would believe it. And there’s a sort of thing that happens…’

‘A group dynamic.’

‘I suppose you could call it that. I prefer to think of it as wartime spirit. It’s not a bit like charity committees and the other groupie things I’ve done; because everybody is so revealing. I couldn’t talk at first, but then I thought I really must buck up and I told them my son had been kidnapped by the Moonies and I got tons of sympathy and at least twenty telephone numbers. I haven’t put them in my proper address book — I’m waiting to see which ones I like in that way. ’

Peter smiled.

‘That’s great,’ he said. ‘It sounds like they’re being really helpful.’

‘Well, watch out, or we’ll come and bust your cult,’ said Mrs Thorpe excitedly. ‘I went with Fiona, and I warn you that she’s met a man she’s rather taken with.’

‘Good,’ said Peter.

‘His girlfriend joined one of those dreadful suicide cults, and naturally he’s been down in the dumps for ages, but then Fiona said a great friend of hers had committed suicide and they became as thick as thieves.’

‘Gavin?’ said Peter. ‘She hardly knew him.’

‘It’s no use being jealous of our group,’ said Mrs Thorpe serenely. ‘We were told about that. You get very jealous because you’ve been feeding off our anxiety for years.’

Peter didn’t bother to point out the flaws in this theory but congratulated his mother on her group.

‘It may not be my only group,’ said Mrs Thorpe. ‘I’m thinking of becoming frightfully green. What we’ve done to this planet is disgraceful. If you make a mess, you have to clean it up. I met a fascinating man in our group — he might well get into my proper address book — who said that all the animals are starting to behave differently. They can sense it, like fire on the wind, he said.’

* * *

Jason was amazed to find that he was obeying Martha and Carlos and writing down the dream he’d had the night before. He reassured himself that this collapse into conformity was only a feint in his dedicated subversion of the workshop. What had got him going was the woman they’d buried under the cushions that afternoon. It was just like his dream.

‘I dreamt I was buried alive by mistake. There was this really loud noise, like rain on a roof, and I thought, “Hang on, that’s too loud for rain,” and it turned out to be a shovelful of earth landing on the cheap pine box I was buried in. I punched my way out, and instead of a crowd of cheering friends, there was just this horrible old git with a roll-up in the corner of his mouth, earning a bit on the side by burying me alive. The sight of me standing there finished him off. He rolled in and I rolled out. I brushed the earth off my favourite leather jacket — the one I lost in Berlin — and swore I’d never play dead again. It felt good to be alive, but I knew it was only the contrast, and it was bound to wear off.’

Was he going to tell them that he constantly fantasized about faking his own death in order to see who would turn up at the funeral? No need to ring Vienna to know that there was a bit of a question mark hanging over his sense of popularity. Should he admit to this? These bastards didn’t really teach you anything, they just activated the superstition that if you didn’t confess everything, you wouldn’t see the light of whatever they were peddling. Then if you didn’t get it, it was your own fault. Cunning. After you got caught in the mangle of your conscience, you couldn’t afford to do anything but come out the other side praising the system that had just wrung you dry.

Bastards, with their essential oils and their pillow-bashing, and their colonic irrigations. What was all that about anyway? Even if you didn’t believe that we were made in God’s image, it seemed a bit iffy to think that the human body was so badly designed that it could only function properly with a pressure hose up its arse.

Well, he certainly wasn’t going to tell them about the second half of his dream, the wet half. He hadn’t had sex for so long that he wasn’t surprised, but the trigger for his unsolicited discharge was a girl he’d only met at Monday lunch. God, was it only yesterday? He had thought about her so much that he felt he had known Angela for weeks. He even felt a song coming on. The only lyrics Haley could inspire were vicious and sterile. What rhymed with aromatherapist anyway? Twist, fist, pissed, cut your wrist …

Angela was a workscholar, that’s what they called the people who paid to work here. Yes, paid to work here. He must get some workscholars in his band. He was going to meet Angela now in the baths. What a great place. You got to see someone naked straight away. What a crazy place where they got to see you naked straight away.

The door of the room opened and Jason stooped studiously over the page.

‘Are you coming to dinner?’ asked Haley.

‘No, I’ve got to write my dream down for Jungos.’

‘Isn’t that rather goody-goody of you?’