The Zoo (10 page)

I know I sound childish and yet I can't stop myself.

‘Don't be facetious. I'm being honest with you. If I don't tell you this now I don't know how much longer . . .'

‘Sally, please . . .'

‘You know, that might be why you smashed Lou's sculpture. Because it had some emotional truth and you don't any more. You're not the man I married. If I showed him the way you are now he'd be horrified. You were an artist. Now you're a cliché.'

‘You're not exactly following your artistic dream are you?'

‘I'm a teacher, James. I teach children to take joy in art. To learn how to express themselves. I make a difference. Maybe not to all of them, but some of them and that's enough.' Her voice is cracked and clipped with anger.

‘Have you finished the character assassination?'

‘I've barely brushed the surface.'

‘Look. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about last night. I'm sorry about Lou's sculpture.'

I've got my hand on her arm. Her skin is cold. I can feel the shake of her muscles through my palm.

‘Forget Lou's sculpture. That's just you being a prick. You know what it reminded me of? One of Harry's tantrums. When he thinks we're not giving him enough attention.'

‘Maybe it's a cry for help,' I say and am filled with such a wave of self-pity that I think I'm about to burst into tears.

‘You do need help. But the only person who can help is you. You need to look at what you've got and make some very hard choices. You can carry on playing with the boys or you can be a father and husband. But you haven't got long to decide.'

She turns her light off and rolls over, her back to me.

I sit there blinking into the dark, wondering how I got here.

The floor of the corridor ripples like a carpet being shaken, as if someone has grabbed the other end and shaken it. When it passes us I struggle to keep my feet and pull Beth even tighter so she doesn't lose her balance. I can feel the beat of her heart against me, small and fast as a bird's. The light from under my door is growing, flickering, the light of flames. I can hear it too, a whirring and clunking of chains and gears and things moving. Something warming up. Static. The sound of voices. Fragments from an oratory. A place name I recognise and that fills me with dread. How can that place have followed me here? I look at Beth in my arms and shout, ‘No'. I grab her by the hand and lead her through the day room. Behind me I hear the door burst open and the noise is louder. Louder. Louder. The powerful rhythmic chunt of a stream train. The groan of metal on metal. The door to outside is getting smaller, the walls have changed so they meet in the centre, the ceiling gone, vaulted now. My feet are moving as if in treacle. Beth is looking at me, terrified. I hold her head so she doesn't look back, look forwards, always forwards and keep her moving towards the door. The diminishing door. The noise behind is growing. A tsunami. Metal. Steam. Water. Waves. Building. Building. Building. I push Beth out through the door. See the fear on her face, tell her to wait there and turn to face it.

Turn to face nothing. Just the day room. No-one is looking at me. Asian Radio Lady is turning the volume of the TV up and down, so the words are cut in half and the speech is stuttered. Beard and Beaker are in the armchairs. Mark is singing quietly to himself in the kitchen.

I blink into the room.

I expected maelstrom and instead I see domestication.

I edge my way back to the corridor. Pluck up the courage and poke my head around the corner of the door, look left and right. An orderly is sweeping up, iPod headphones in, mouth pursed in a silent whistle. At the desk at the front a nurse is speaking on the phone. I look at the door to my room and in my peripheral catch a glimpse of movement. I freeze. Looking back into the day room I see Beth's scared face through the glass. Then there's the sound of something smashing in my room. The orderly doesn't look up from his sweeping and his musical earplugs. Swallowing heavily I take a step towards my room. Another. Look at the shake in my hands. Clench my fists tight. Then I'm at the door. My mouth is dry, fear is whispering in my ears, don't do it, don't do it, go and sit with Mark, watch TV, have a cigarette outside, don't go in. Don't go in.

I step into the doorway. Everything is still. There's no one in here. I take another step into the room. Nothing happens. Nothing at all. I laugh to myself , laugh at the situation. What did I think was going to happen? My shoulders relax, hands unclench. I'm in the middle of the room now. I look at The Zoo. Something is wrong with it, something not right, something is out of place. I can't quite figure it out. My head is muddled, confused, heavy. I step closer. The door slams behind me. I jump, spin round and, as I do, something moves. So quickly it's just a blur, a dark shape. I can't get out of the way and it hits me hard in the face. I can't feel any point of contact, not a fist, not even solid, but something with weight and matter and pain. My vision blurs and I taste blood in my mouth. My legs go from beneath me and I hit the floor. Everything spins, my vision turns orange, then white. The blur of movement goes past me. I pass out.

 

As soon as I wake I know something is wrong. Very wrong. I am propped up against the bed. My neck is stiff. I stare at my hands for a long time. The skin is white, veins tracing patterns beneath it. Dirt is packed under the fingernails. The nail of my index finger has been bent back, a blue-black mark across the middle of it, crusted with blood. My throat is dry and sore. I try to speak my name, but it barely comes out. I touch my head and flinch. Probe my sore eye socket.

I can feel the eyes of The Zoo on me. I try to stand but my legs won't hold me, so I move sideways across the room like a crab, the floor clinging to me. I'm lower than ground level, my legs have gone. It takes me decades to reach The Zoo. With one eye closed I count The Figurines and The Animals with an outstretched finger. They're all there.

But there is a gap.

On the second level there is a gap. One of them is missing. Yet they are all there. A gap where there wasn't one. A space where there shouldn't be. What is it? What is missing? I reach back and find nothing.

I collapse back onto the cold floor. Creeping, creeping cold against my skin. Then I pass out again.

 

I wake in my bed. It's night. For a while I listen to the sound of the sleeping world. The tick and tock of the sleeping ward. I run fingers over my face and find nothing, no pain, no bruise. Nothing. A slight tenderness to my skin, but aside from that – nothing.

Lights from a passing car sidle across the ceiling, drawing my eyes with them. I can hear the rumble of the heating. Music from somewhere, it sounds like ‘je ne regrette rien', warbling and indistinct. I am cocooned by my blanket, wrapped tight in it, a chrysalis. I free my feet and clench my toes against the cold. I try to go back to sleep, but it is elusive and I lie shivering, alternating between staring at the inside of my eyelids and the ceiling. I grow restless and irritable.

Getting out of bed I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and go out into the corridor. The world is bathed in a blue light. It shimmers like water. The reflections of a swimming pool against the walls. My feet stick to the floor and the sound of my skin peeling off the floor tiles as I walk is loud in the ward. Afraid someone will hear, I slow myself to a creep. I don't know where I am going, only that I can't stay in bed.

The day room is still. There are Snakes and Ladders spread out over the table, left there against the rules. The door to outside is locked. I press my cheek against it, watch my breath fog the glass, and trace a smiley face in it. For a while I sit in the armchair. I'm unsure of how long I stay there, but when I stand I have a memory of shapes and colours, of movement, but nothing distinct, everything shaded with the pallor of a dream, narcotic and distant. I find myself in the corridor again, making my way along it. I realise the destination as a sudden burst of panic and fear, but can't stop my progress.

I stop at the door to his room. Wonder where the night porters are. Why I am on my own here. Someone should stop this surely? Someone should be here to see this. To stop this happening.

I push the door open.

Despite not being able to see anymore, he recognises movement in the room, shifts his weight up and turns his blind head towards me. I pad across to him and sit on the edge of the bed. I push him back into the bed with a palm on his chest, whispering ‘sssssssssssssshh'. There is a sound from under the briefcase. I press my ear against the leather, try to hear what he is saying. The leather holds his muffled words captive. He tries to kick out, but his limbs are bound to the bed. I study the knots, sheets wrapped into cord and knotted tight. Around them his skin is red raw and blood crusts the sheets. The briefcase is over his face. Over his head. The ripped handles are securing it around his neck. His naked body is an ugly mass of blue/purple bruises. The weapon is a sock full of soap, pulled over his penis like a balaclava.

I put my hand over my mouth to hold the noise in, not sure if it is a laugh or a gag or a noise of revulsion. Somehow I keep it in, shoulders shaking with the effort. When it subsides I kneel down on the floor. The contents of his briefcase are arranged as a cityscape, tower blocks of personal items, the landscape of the life he was trying to keep private.

Books, classics, piled so the bands of colours match perfectly: The Picture of Dorian Grey; Wuthering Heights; The Scarlet Letter. I allow my finger to trace their spines. They feel waxy and unreal.

Three photo albums. I hesitate, then open the first onto family holidays – kites and picnics and laughing on a beach. I drop it like it burns.

A birthday card. When I open it, it plays Happy Birthday. I allow the first bar of warbling, wavering notes to play before snapping it shut.

A comb, blond hairs woven around its teeth.

A stuffed rabbit. One eye missing, an ear falling over the other.

These things, these totems, they were his life. I understand why he held them tight. They are personal, deeply personal and I am trespassing. I feel dirty and invasive and ashamed.

I leave him there. Briefcase over his face. Limbs stretching against their bindings.

I leave him them and return to my room, where I vomit into the toilet. I don't flush the chain, afraid of the noise.

Sleep still hides from me. So I think of The Zoo.

The next of The Plastics is The Soldier. The order goes: The Cowboy, The Knight, The Pirate, then The Soldier.

Logic would dictate that The Soldier should be nearer to the top than this, and he may well have been above The Pirate were it not for his defect.

He is a cripple. The veteran on the street. A cardboard sign between his legs. He is the guilt in all of us over the horrors of war in a foreign land. The reality of death and maiming we all want to hide from. He brings it all home and we avoid his eye. Study our phone and hurry on. He is the chink of coin in a paper coffee cup. He is the TV news reeling out casualty figures like football scores. He is divided opinion.

He is moulded out of green plastic, an American Marine from the Second World War, and the mould has left a ridge of plastic that runs along the centre of his fried-egg-shaped base. The ridge is too small to gnaw away with my teeth, though I have tried, scraping at it, the sharp plastic scratching at my gums. I worried away at it, trying my eyeteeth, forcing it into the side of my mouth to test it against my molars. In the end, which could have been ten minutes or four hours or three years later, I gave up and picked at it with my fingernails, discovering at the same time that he felt very satisfying in my hand, the end of his rifle pricking the inside of my thumb – an inoculation against the hopelessness of the chewing.

He doesn't stand, he can't stand, he leans and rocks on his ridge like a weeble and for this reason, despite the sensory pleasure I derive from him, he is lower in the ranking than you would immediately think he should be.

He is the following of orders. The debasement of having no choice combined with the masculine ideal of killing for a cause. He is brute force and ignorance. He is the grunt.

He is the taker of lands and the defender of lands.

The Soldier makes up the last of The Figurines; beneath him are only the Animals, which make up the main part of The Zoo. He is the last that understands; beneath him are those that can only listen and obey.

 

In the morning Newbie is gone. When I ask Mark where he is, he looks at me blankly. I check Newbie's room. The bed is made, the blinds up. The window is slightly open, shifting the plastic of the blind against its frame with a rhythmic slap.

At dinner I sit next to Beth. Her hands shake as she eats. She takes tiny mouthfuls, barely a spoonful each time, then leaves half her meal.

I push my plate away. I can't face it. She asks me if I want a cigarette. I say yes and numbly follow her outside. The cold hurts the bones in my hands as I draw the smoke into my lungs.

I ask her how she came to be here. I immediately want to withdraw the question. She examines me. Momentarily I think she is going to slap me: her hand is raised, her palm flat, then she rubs it against her face.

‘How does anyone end up here?' she says, ‘how did you?'

She waits for me to answer, but I don't, so she starts talking.

‘I was an infant teacher. It's a great age. They're just starting to be people, but too young to have been affected by the world. They're beginning to understand things, there's no cynicism there yet though, just an intrigue. I tried teaching older kids and found it heartbreaking to see that gone. They change so dramatically, so quickly nowadays.'

‘Hasn't it always been that way?' I ask.

‘I know I'm sounding nostalgic. Think back to when we were kids though. Think about what we did and hat we had access to, then think about today.'