The Paper Eater

ON THE BRIDGE

Garcia escorts me to the bridge, nudging me along the corridors with the butt of his stun-gun. Fishook stands at the wheel, a little metal bullet of a man, capsule body foursquare on stumpy legs, salt-and-pepper shaven head, pebble-spectacled eyes squinting at the horizon through cigar smoke. The chunky Havana perched in the metal ashtray on the sill. The radio’s tuned to the twenty-four-hour weather channel. – Pitkie, Skagwheen, Mohawk, St Placid’s Reef, Canary Bight… it drones faintly. Fresh, southerly…

– Welcome, Voyager Kidd, he goes, a smile in his voice. His silver-framed glasses flash at me in greeting. In the distance, the spume of a whale fountains up and descends in a scatter of rainbows. – Come and join me, he says, all fake bonhomie. It’s like we’re old buddies. Members of the same club. Except the gag is, we aren’t. Hesitantly, I step forward next to him. A tattered sheet of seagulls whips past, squawking. It sounds like jeers.

– Would you like to take a turn at the wheel? he asks, grinning. Have a go at steering this mighty vessel?

I remember now. I’ve heard of this from other blokes. It’s a prelude to mind-games. He once got Flussman to do forty sea-miles, then told him his daughter had been knocked down by a tractor on her boyfriend’s farm. Flussman was so shocked he couldn’t speak: he just carried on steering for another forty sea-miles, trying to work it out. His daughter was a lesbian, and lived in the city.

Eventually he’d ventured to ask Fishook – Is this a joke, Captain?

It was, Fishook confirmed, roaring with laughter and offering Flussman a cigar.

– Very funny, Captain, was all that Flussman could muster. Fishook isn’t mad, though; just has a very particular sense of humour that doesn’t obey the normal rules of comedy. So when he stands aside, grooms his cigar and gestures at the wheel, smooth dark wood and brass, I’m nervous. I grip it tight, relieved to grasp something, though the warmth left by his hands gives it the revolting intimacy of a shared toilet seat.

– Fairbairn, St Mornay, Butt of Cortez Lighthouse, Ganderville, easterly winds, veering south… says the radio.

– You know, in some primitive societies, Fishook goes, tapping out ash from his cigar, this horizon would represent not the future, but the past. They see the past ahead of them, and the future behind. They are travelling backwards through life. The stretch of water ahead of them freezes over as time passes. That’s the past, solidifying before them. The water at their back is fluid and unknown. That’s the future. Waiting to freeze.

I can’t think what I’m supposed to say to that, so I just go uh-huh, as though he’s said something meaningful. The future, waiting to freeze? What kind of gobbledegook bollocks is that?

– I understand from Garcia that you received a letter recently, he says after a while.

– I haven’t opened it.

My thoughts jump around but can’t find anywhere safe to land. So in the end I just listen to the monologue of the weather channel and stare at the sea. It looks cold. You could feel powerful up here, steering a massive ship, I guess. But only if you’re its captain.

– Well, perhaps you should, goes Fishook. Some men find, when they are faced with a situation such as yours, that friends and family can be a comfort.

A situation such as mine? Friends and family? What’s he talking about? From the corner of my eye I notice that he’s put his cigar down and taken the microphone of the tannoy system from its holster. He’s fondling it near his cheek like an electric razor.

Then he clicks it on and speaks.

– Wind east-north-easterly, he says, switching to DJ mode. His processed voice ricochets about the vessel, setting up a million tinny vibrations. – Steering a steady south-southeasterly course, due to exit Northern Waters Section at 0500 hours GMT tomorrow, destination, Atlantica. He gives a little pause, then, and looks at me. Where we will be celebrating Liberty Day with the Final Adjustment of a leading Sect member and Enemy of Libertycare. Another pause, in which he looks at me more intently. – Some of you know him on board as the Paper Eater. (What? I’m thinking dumbly. What was that?) It still hasn’t sunk in. And it still doesn’t, even now when he’s looking me right in the eye and saying slowly into the microphone – His name is Harvey Kidd.

I just think, hey, that’s my name too.

– Light vessel automatic, winds westerly, says the radio. The words catch me in a smooth trap of language. Turning to gale force later… winds fresh, southerly… It’s mesmeric. If you stay very still, the words sort of imprint themselves in your head, and giddify you. That’s the way mantras are supposed to work. I read it somewhere, in the Education Station, when I was searching for the meaning of life and came across the knitting-machine theory. I looked up love too. Devoted attachment to one of the opposite sex, esp. temporary. Fishook is looking at me.

– What? I mumble. I really am feeling a bit confused, as if the geography of the shipping forecast has somehow dislocated me. – Me? I ask finally. Stupidly.

Fishook gives me a sideways look. And a little nod that says yes.

That’s when my knees give way, and I’m sagging to the floor, clutching the wheel to stop myself.

Fishook switches off the tannoy, replaces the microphone in its metal holster, re-lights his cigar and stands next to me, puffing Cuban clouds. Together, we watch the horizon. I grasp the wheel, numb. My heart’s contracted like a shocked scrotum but I don’t let it show. Steer a straight course. I’ve seen him marlin-fishing. He likes to leave them writhing on the deck. Sometimes he’ll have them thrown back. Sometimes not.

Something inside me’s collapsing, sucking the breath out of me. If I could just wipe the last five minutes from my mind, stick my head in the sand, pretend –

Is this a joke, I ask, remembering Flussman.

– Sadly not, Voyager, he says. The decision has been made at the highest level.

– A cock-up? I muster. I mean, I’m white-collar. I thought the killers had to be –

– Don’t believe everything you hear in the mess, Voyager, he goes. Priorities change. The Americans are polling as we speak. Atlantica needs to show them how the system deals with its human waste. It has an example to set. He smiles. – Your Atlantican’s a discerning customer. He doesn’t want to watch just any old Final Adjustment on his national holiday, Harvey. He wants value for money.

Nothing left to say. My hands drop from the wheel, and I stand aside to let him take over. I see what he means now. The past, it’s ahead of me, on the vast water. And the future’s behind me because there isn’t one. After a few moments the tears make the line wobble and then spill and I see it again, the open sea, my life. Just like he said. I take a good long look, a last look, drinking it in.

Power for the Powerless: NB There isn’t any.

Then Fishook bleeps Garcia.

– Escort this Voyager back, he says.

It’s half-way down the corridor of D deck, as Garcia is taking me back to the cabin from the poop, that I make the mistake of looking across at the growing hump of Atlantica on the horizon. That’s when the physical reaction comes, unexpected and unbidden, a big tidal wave of nausea that I’m helpless against.

– Wait, I tell Garcia. And unleash a frightening quantity of black bile, with lumps of paper in, on to the shiny rubber.

– Like in horror film, says Garcia when I’ve finished.

He looks impressed.

In the cabin, John’s there with his eyes all red. His shoulders hang slack, like a boxer who’s toppling about in the ring, surrounded by people yelling in his ear to go back and fight. But you know he’s been felled like a tree and his career’s done with.

I don’t speak. There’s this big emptiness inside me. I can still taste the sick in my mouth, so I go and rinse. When I turn round, John’s slumped in his chair.

– You should be glad, I go.

He should, logically, shouldn’t he? So why isn’t anything like you think it’s going to be? He’s crying now, big shuddery man-sobs. It’s worse than what happened on the bridge. It’s torture. I reach for my letter. What have I got to lose? A cold wave of misery slaps over me as I look at the envelope in my hands. When I first saw the red handwriting it was more flabbergasting than blood. It set my nerves jangling, fired up a mad little sizzle of hope that despite what happened, despite everything I knew, a certain woman might still be –

John looks up at the sound of the dismal tearing.

– What are you doing there, Harv?

– Facing up to reality, I tell him. The letter’s out of the envelope now. I flatten it out – it’s covered in the same big childish red writing – but I’m still not ready to look.

– You said you weren’t opening it. I’m not opening it, you said. You said no news was good news.

– Well, that was before, wasn’t it.

Before. When I had all the time in the world. I look at it. John’s watching me.

– Is it from Hannah? You never said – But he stops, probably because he’s seen my face.

– It isn’t from Hannah, I begin.

The world shifts as I speak, into a flat thing, two-dimensional, with only a faint vertigo to tell you we’re on a round planet, ruled by gravity. I think about my cud, and the half-dried rook with the fat arse, which is supposed to represent my not-daughter Tiff. I think about the game I’ll play with the French cyber-forger from H deck, Ollivon. I’ll use the Queen’s Gambit and win thanks to some nifty bishoping. Or lose, because I’ve never had a way with knights. Is the cat still alive, I wonder, and living with Mrs Dragon-lady? If so, is she still feeding him that dried rubbish packed with addictive additives, that wrecks his gums? As John’s needle flashes anxiously in mid-air, I’m also thinking, I’ve never actually said the words before, even to myself.

– It’s not from Hannah, I say slowly.

It’s a struggle just speaking. Something heavy starts to do battle in my throat but I swallow to force it down. I look out of the porthole, try to banish the nudge of vertigo. Seagulls chopping against the wind.

– Why not? His voice different, husky.

I can’t tell him though. Can’t bring myself to say it. The words are stuck.

But pennies are beginning to drop with John, I can feel it. That’s how well I know him; I don’t even have to look. While he’s hovering between saying it and not, the power of the moment swells like an electric force. It’s just when I think it’ll knock us both flat that he clears his throat to speak.

– Is it because she’s dead? he asks formally.

I’m braced for it, so I don’t turn.

I sit and watch the seagulls and the cormorants flapping. There’s stuff you come across, never quite makes sense, isn’t there. Like what on earth possessed somebody – I forget who – in 1793, someone near Bergen, in Norway, to construct a whole church, complete with pews, pulpit, organ, knave, window-frames, walls, the whole shebang, entirely of papier mâché? It stood for thirty-seven years. It might have stood for longer, if it hadn’t been demolished. Then in 1883 in Dresden, a watch-maker made a watch from it that worked. It was his masterpiece, and it performed as well as any metal watch, he said.

Chew, chew, chew.

– Pike sent me that card, I say finally, nodding at the shelf. It’s tasteful, a white background, the Bird of Liberty, and forget-me-nots. – It arrived three months after I came on board.

Oh, I’d already guessed by then. I knew in my heart of hearts it’s what they’d do. Betray the customer and you are betraying yourself.

– Sincere condolences, it said. There was a little newspaper cutting too, and the text of the in-house obituary. A Tragic Accident.

John coughs apologetically, a little husky bark. It must set up a tiny air-gust in the cabin, because it’s enough to send the letter whooshing off the table. It doesn’t seem to matter any more, though. So the letter flaps in a zigzag to the floor, and I leave it there. From where I’m sitting, I can see the signature at the bottom, though. It both surprises me and doesn’t.

Tiffany.

I clear my throat.

– The heyday of papier mâché in Europe was 1770–1870, I tell John. That’s a long time ago.