Think Yourself Lucky (7 page)

"Somewhere out in the country, I can't tell you anything else."

"Is that where you met your Mr Newless?"

"I didn't meet him. I never have and I wouldn't want to."

"Gosh, I've never heard you sound so fierce. I was only thinking you might have thought you did when you were out of your head."

"Not even then," David said, which felt like trying not to put the memory into words. He'd lain on the icy shards of the world and gazed up at the moon, the half that shone like snow and the rest that he couldn't be sure he was seeing, a rounded segment of the night like a denial rendered solid. The frigid light had gathered all around him until he'd started to believe that nothing was alive except him—that nothing else was even real. The notion had closed around his mind, eating away at his sense of his own reality, a threat that had terrified him so badly that he'd clutched at the only solution he could think of. "It's exactly what I didn't do," he told Stephanie. "I managed to imagine everything was happening to him instead of me."

"Did it help?"

"It must have." All the same, for a moment if not longer—it had felt like the rest of his life—he hadn't known where or even who he was. Until he'd succeeded in recalling his own name he'd felt as if he had left his body, which had frozen beyond his ability to revive it, unless the dead light had entirely erased it. At last he'd rediscovered the use of his muscles and had jerked the shaky puppet to its feet, and it had jittered slithering across the blanched field towards the false dawn of the town—the amber glow that, however artificial, had seemed less dead than the moonlight. As he'd run back to the room he'd set out from, the breaths in his ears had sounded like the world returning to life. When he'd fallen back into his chair nobody had bothered wondering where he'd been, and he'd found his insignificance unexpectedly reassuring. He must have been over the peak of the drug by then, since he'd been able to close his eyes and dream in great detail of countries he wanted to visit even though he never would. "It got rid," he said.

"Or you thought it had."

David shifted uneasily, and the quilt slipped off their shoulders as if somebody were tugging it away from them. "Why only thought?"

"Weren't you dreaming about him last night?"

"He's never in my dreams that I'm aware of." David was conscious of having far too much still to tell. "Do you want a coffee?" he found he would rather ask. "We ought to be moving if we're going for a drive before you've got to head for work."

"I'll come down with you. I'm guessing there's more to hear." As he made for the stairs David was beset by a sense of how little his personality was apparent in the house. The spare room was playing host to all the superhero comics he had collected as a boy and was keeping as an investment, but otherwise the place didn't seem to have acquired much character in a lifetime hardly more than twice as long as his. The dark green fittings of the bathroom belonged to the previous owner, but the plastic switches and sockets on the walls looked like the opposite of history, while the plain pine banisters of the narrow staircase and the carpets with their blurred perfunctory pattern could be as old as the house. In the kitchen some of the dull metal surfaces marked by anonymous scouring came vaguely alive with his reflection and Stephanie's as she followed him. "Is there, then?" she said.

"I told you what happened at the writers' group," David said and turned away from her to load the percolator. "I shouldn't have let myself go at all. I felt as if they wanted to turn me into someone else."

"Nobody but you is all I want. Are you saying they made you write about your character?"

"I never have and I wouldn't want to. They got a title out of me, that's all. The first thing that came into my head."

"That doesn't seem very much to bother you in your sleep."

"It was like being at an alcoholics' meeting and having to stand up and speak." With an effort David said "Only that wasn't the end of it. Someone's used my title for a blog or some kind of fiction site."

"It must have been a better title than you thought, then. And if you were wrong about that—"

"I'm not saying anybody stole it. It's just a phrase people use. No, the thing is, what's odd..." He almost wished he were a writer after all if that would help him speak. "Whoever it is," he said and felt his breath falter, "he's calling himself Lucky."

"That's a coincidence, isn't it? I don't suppose it's very much of one, though, if you say the title's such a common phrase." Stephanie gazed into his eyes as if she was seeing someone far away and said "Why does it bother you, David?"

"I suppose I don't like the idea that anyone could have things like that inside them. He seems to want to kill half the people he meets."

"Don't we all have days like that sometimes?"

"I don't believe I ever have." He hoped she didn't take that as criticism. "It's how he writes about them as well," he said, "as if he's eager to find the next victim. And he has too much fun imagining what he'd do to them."

"So who does he want to get rid of?"

"There was a shop assistant who carried on talking instead of serving a queue, and somebody whose car alarm disturbed him every night even though it was miles away, and a man who kept walking in front of him in a cinema while a film was on. That's all I looked at."

"They all sound like people we might like to strangle."

"Yes, but we wouldn't write about it, would we?" Talking about the material he'd seen had left David more uneasy than he understood. "We wouldn't write about doing worse to them," he said. "We wouldn't put ideas like that in people's heads."

A hiss at his back gave him an excuse to turn away. "Here's the coffee," he quite unnecessarily said, "and now I'll forget about all that if you don't mind."

They took their mugs upstairs and shared the bathroom before making a token breakfast of cereal. As they left the house Mrs Robbins emerged from its twin across the road with a bag of garbage in her hand. "Off to work, Mr Botham?" she called. "And the lady, of course."

"Not just yet. Going out for a drive."

"Well, you take care." Having shut her bin with a decisive slam, Mrs Robbins said "And the lady as well."

She retreated into her house as David unlocked the car. "I don't think I've ever felt less like a lady," Stephanie said with a rueful laugh.

"You're enough of one for me," David said and managed not to wince as he glanced at the scrape on the side of the car. Weeks ago he'd ground it against the gatepost, having instinctively waved back to a passing neighbour. "Thanks for the souvenir, Mr Dent," he muttered, but he oughtn't to blame Dent for his own carelessness. Still, he was glad not to see Dent hurrying to guide him out of the driveway, as the fellow insisted on doing whenever he had the chance. Now David thought about it, he hadn't seen the man for weeks.

As David stepped onto the crossing at the fifth bleep of the green man he was almost deafened by the blare of a horn. He just had time to stumble backwards onto the pavement as a car hurtled at him. A woman cried out behind him, and the driver brandished the mobile phone he was using. "You nearly trod on my toe," the woman complained. "It's sore as it is."

"My fault," David mumbled, though he hardly thought it was.

When he ventured onto the crossing again a man at the front of the crowd that met him was ready with advice. "You want to watch out what you're doing, lad."

"I'm trying to give people a holiday," David said and reached for a flyer from the bundle in his hand, but the potential customer had gone.

As the green man fell silent and flickered like a dying flame David made for the opposite pavement. He'd set foot on it when a cyclist sped onto the crossing, almost knocking the leaflets out of his hand. "Mind the fuck out," the rider counselled him on the way to veering through the crowd.

"Forgive me for walking on the pavement," David said, but nobody seemed amused or even sympathetic. At least he'd made people look at him, and he took the chance to hand each of them a Frugogo flyer. "Everyone's a customer," Andrea had told him, though in the words of the head office, when she'd sent him forth. He was heading along Church Street in the wake of the cyclist, though the road was meant to be reserved for pedestrians, and turning up his collar against the vicious March wind when a discarded Frugogo handbill followed by another fluttered past him.

Might people keep the leaflets if he said something as well? As a young couple emerged from a department store he held out a flyer. "Are you thinking of going away?"

"We're going, mate," the man said, and his partner called back to David "We've gone."

A pair of oldsters looked more promising. "Are you going away this year? Because—"

"She is and I hope she's coming back." In case it wasn't clear why his eyes had grown even moister the man said "The hospital."

"I'm sorry I, I'm sorry." As a phalanx of young women wheeling toddlers in buggies came towards him David said "Have you booked your holidays this year?"

"How many do you think we get?"

"Try having kids and see how much they cost."

"Do we look like we can afford one?"

He had to dodge out of their way as they bore down on him, all three resuming conversations on their phones despite the wails of their brood. He seemed to have run out of questions, and so he didn't speak when he peeled off a flyer to hand to a woman on her own. "If it's about God I've got one," she said.

"It's nothing to do with God. It's—"

"Then you should be ashamed," a grey-haired man said and shook a pocket Bible at him. "Sinners like you are what's wrong with the world."

"My God, all I'm trying to do is make people aware of our holiday offers. I don't think that's much of a sin."

"Taking His name in vain is one, my friend." The man ensured that the capital letter was audible by emitting it with a wheeze. "Try making them aware of Him," he said in the same way, "and you'll do some good."

"That's what I'm trying to do as it is."

"He is all the holiday we ought to need. He brings more peace than any holiday."

The woman had departed at speed, but a few amused bystanders were lingering. "You look like you need one yourself," a man called, and a woman told David "If he's thumping you with the book, give him one of your screeds. Fair swap."

As the evangelist left him a testamentary frown David handed the woman a flyer. The preacher set about haranguing the crowd from the middle of the street, and David was moving onwards when a Frugogo leaflet sailed past him and flapped up an arcade of shops. He couldn't see who had consigned the flyer to the wind, but as he left the arcade behind, a man carted out of it, "Hold on there," he shouted. "You with the papers, hold on."

He marched into David's path and stared up at him. His large eyebrow-heavy face looked like a bid to compensate for his shortness. "Is that yours?" he said and jerked his head to indicate the errant handbill.

"It was."

"It's still your responsibility."

"I didn't throw it away. I'd blame whoever did."

"They aren't here and you are. In any case you need to show me what you're carrying."

"Take one by all means," David said, holding out a leaflet. "We've got offers to suit everybody. Grab whatever takes your fancy before someone else does."

"Not your advertising." The man lowered his eyebrows as if he suspected David of facetiousness. "What we've given you," he said. "The council."

"I don't think you've given me anything in particular. I don't live on this side of the river."

The man's head jerked again, and David saw it was a tic rather than an indication. "Leafleting requires a permit," the man said. "Kindly show me yours."

"I don't have one with me. If you'd like to contact our Bold Street branch—"

"Then I'm afraid I must ask you to desist at once."

"Look, the firm sent me out to do this. I'm just trying to get on with my job. I don't think you can say I'm doing any harm to anyone."

"For a start you're causing litter, and in any event we can't have unauthorised promotions. Our streets would be overrun with nuisances to the public."

"I've come across a few of those recently." Just too late David realised that the man might think this was aimed at him, and so he pointed at the evangelist, who was informing everyone that their existence was a sin. "Have you told him he can say that sort of thing?"

"Some people still believe in sin."

It wasn't clear whether the official did. "Just let me hand these out, then," David said, "and I'll make sure we have a permit when I get back to the branch."

"That won't be possible. You've been given notice of the situation."

"Can't you forget about it for a little while?" When the fellow only stared at him David said "Can't you loosen up a bit this once?"

The man's head twitched as if David had struck him in the face "If you attempt to distribute any more material I shall be forced to call someone."

"You say you're from the council." It occurred to David that he should already have said "How about showing me some proof?"

"I believe I've given you every chance," the man said and snatched out a phone. "You can take the consequences."

"All right, you've won. You don't need to call for backup," David said and saw another of his handbills flutter past him. "I'll even help you keep the street tidy," he declared and darted to retrieve the flyer.

As it reared up and slid out of reach, an action that seemed positively mocking, David heard a metallic screech, and an object jabbed the back of his right calf. "Can't you look where you're going?" a man shouted.

He was riding a mobility scooter, though he barely fitted into the seat. "Trying to cripple someone?" he demanded so vigorously that a wobble climbed his stack of chins and spread through his apoplectic face.

"Well," David said but wasn't quite able to leave it at that. "I think—"

"Let's hear it, mister. Share it around."

"I think if anybody's just been crippled it was me."

The council official made a sound that hardly needed him to add "We don't encourage that kind of language about people who are challenged."