The man looked down at his tiny, glistening black shoes and breathed hard. Was it possible, he wondered, that the van might perhaps be uninsured? Nor was he impressed when Yantra opined that insurance was indicative of a rejection of destiny and faith in the principle of ultimate good.
‘Please, man,’ whined Jayne, when he reached into the car for his mobile phone. ‘I mean, you won’t exactly be profiting any by calling the pigs. All you’ll be doing is harming us. You know, for the, well, sheer sadism of it.’
‘Yeah, sadism, man.’
She indicated for Yantra to shut up.
‘And like, I’m sure there’s some way we can pay you for the damage. You know, I feel rotten about your vehicle and that. And, well, I’d be willing to do virtually anything,’ she tugged at his jacket sleeve and grinned coyly, ‘to make things good.’
The man reddened. He looked up at Yantra who was nodding in complicity.
‘Anythink?’ the man mouthed.
‘Do you, you know, wanna follow the van into the country and discuss it with me?’
‘And wha’ about ‘im?’ he said warily.
‘He’s cool. Very cool. Aren’t you, baby?’ Yantra nodded, attempting to push a smile through his revulsion.
‘And you, you travel in t’car?’ She nodded. ‘And ‘ow does I know yer not gonna, well, do us in? Rob us and the likes?’
She looked hurt.
‘Because we’re pacifists,’ she told him earnestly.
‘Pacifists, ay? I see. Well now.’ Yantra moved back into the van. ‘What’s yer name? Yer very attractive for an, you knows, an ‘ippy. ‘Ope yer don’ mind t’word ‘ippy,’ Yantra heard the man stammer as he stepped back into Biddy.
The two vehicles left the A-route and scudded along roads that grew increasingly narrow until finally they were bouncing over unlaid moorland track. Biddy squeaked to a halt and Yantra stepped down from the vehicle. He walked a fair way out onto the turf, tested its firmness with his boot, then went back to Biddy and drove her onto the grass, stopping a few yards from where the land gave way to a small stream. He jumped out and opened the back doors to release Endometrium. Then he indicated that the pair of them should use the van.
Six hours later, as they flew off the motorway and down through Hendon, Jayne and Yantra were still not talking.
As far as she was concerned, luring him into the van then removing his trousers and challenging him to call the police now, was ample punishment for the man’s antisocial behaviour. Why Yantra had seen fit to dump his distributor cap and mobile phone in the water, liberate the air in his tyres, then coin I’m a fat fucking pervert and an anarchy symbol into the Escort’s paintwork, was quite beyond her. The nearest building was perhaps five miles away.
For Yantra’s part, he could hardly accuse her of being the degraded tart he obviously wanted to. Nor could he express anger over her pursuing the charade long enough for the man to emerge from the van with a tent pole in his Y-fronts. That would have sounded like jealousy, which he never felt. Consequently, he interpreted her anger over his actions as colluding with the state, which was indefensible. Well, he’d find a few women in London and Glastonbury to collude with and then they’d see how far her humanitarian principles really stretched.
Sunlight crashed into his face and it was wonderful.
He pulled off his tie, flung his jacket over a shoulder and unbuttoned his shirt down to his navel. He was laughing. Laughing out loud to himself like a maniac.
‘Morning, Bill,’ he called a couple of times, waving at the Con-man.
Of course, people gawped at him – but so what? They could look at him and think what the hell they liked. No one could touch him. Not today.
On the bus, he smiled at the passengers who diverted their eyes. Again, he couldn’t help but chuckle out loud.
It was nearing eleven o’clock so the station was relatively empty. Still, some commuters were making their way to work and Sheridan wondered whether any of them had freshly emerged from doctors’ surgeries in unexpected receipt of their lives. Perhaps not. Without exception, they looked thoroughly pissed off with things.
It was announced that the Victoria train would be six minutes late. Sheridan laughed.
He had an urge to hijack the tannoy for a few seconds. Tell all these gloomy fuckers to cheer up. That there was more to life than Monday mornings and shitty jobs. That there was life itself.
On the train, thoughts of Ashby Giles, James, Belinda Oliphant and, of course, the Helen episode sobered him up somewhat. Still, he told himself, he would always retain something of this morning’s experience. It was as if an existential ballast had been inserted into his being – a bench mark that he could utilize to call any of life’s setbacks into perspective. Never in his life could he recall being so utterly delirious with joy.
Then he recollected the dream. Had he not then experienced a near identical elation – and the very same conviction that the world and its insane concerns were meaningless? And Sheridan quizzed over how a dream about death could prophesy its precise antipode.
And, whilst pondering the nature of predictions and the like, he recalled how Folucia had burst into tears and rushed upstairs to pack while he calmly munched on toast and the ballast momentarily faltered.
Fissures of sunlight shot through the blue gauze of cigarette smoke. Ashby sat, bare calves slopped on the desk, chatting casually into the telephone. The sales figures hadn’t moved. There were no good mornings. He could see from where he was standing that Helen hadn’t bothered to switch on his coffee machine, so he took a cup from the dispenser and headed towards his office.
Then something odd occurred. Helen looked up at him and offered a sheepish smile.
‘Feeling better?’ he enquired, simulating sympathy. She nodded dolefully. What was it about her? Was there something of an apology in the look? And though he knew that this was unquestionably the wrong thing to do, he said, ‘You OK, Helen? Would you like to … you know … chat?’
She followed him into his office and, to his mild surprise, closed the door.
For a time she said nothing and stared at Sheridan’s desk. He unwound a succession of paperclips and scrawled something on his pad. They cleared their throats simultaneously. Then she spoke.
‘Listen, what happened before. Like, I don’t want to talk about that, right. That was that, OK. But, like, what I want to tell you is that, what happened before and that, was my total involvement in things. You know, I haven’t been in much, so I couldn’t have had anything to do with it. And I wouldn’t anyway, you understand. And, like, I s’pose if I knew about everything else, I might not have done it. I mean, I was right to do it and that. But, you know, I didn’t figure on everything else. So, like I said. I’m not sorry about the first bit but I’m sorry about the rest. I wouldn’t have wished that on you. Anyway, that’s what I really wanted to say.’
‘Right,’ smiled Sheridan. He pulled another paperclip from his pyramid and straightened it. ‘Erm, if I’m going to be entirely truthful about things, Helen, I, er, have to confess that I’m not exactly with you on much of this.’
‘No, I s’pose not. But, like, when you are, remember that I had nothing to do with it.’
‘Sure. I’ll remember that.’ He turned back to his paperclip.
‘OK. That’s that,’ she smiled and stood up. ‘Oh yeah, and you know, when you refused to call the managers coordinators or supervisors, you were right.’
‘I know I was.’
‘Manus, hand. Not man, male. I, like, you know, looked it up.’
‘Quite