‘Last night …’ said Sheridan earnestly lowering his toast. ‘Well, actually this morning, to be accurate. I had the most remarkable of dreams.’
Jennifer shot him a startled look. They never spoke about dreams. The encoded messages that periodically surfaced from the mind’s sewer were ipso facto private. To Jennifer, breakfast-time dream autopsies were as tasteless as discussion of sexual matters or bowel movements. In two and a bit decades of marriage, dreams had never been on the agenda. There was quite definitely something up with the man.
‘One of those full-colour, three-dimensional, profound-truth dreams. You know the sort?’
‘Sherry, please. It’s too early for Freud. I can’t cope with potties and willies at breakfast.’
‘I assure you that this dream was entirely potty and willy free.’
‘Still, Sherry.’
‘I was in the City. Actually, I suppose it could have been New York, Croydon even, surrounded by the most colossal skyscrapers …’
‘Precisely …’ she spat. ‘Archetype of male virility. Seven, six.’
‘Good grief, Jennifer. Of course, last night I dreamt a dream of a thousand cocks.’
At that moment a dishevelled Folucia tramped in.
‘That must have been nice for you, Daddy,’ she grinned. They bade her a low key good morning, to which she grunted back, and watched on as she opened the fridge, removed what she required and exited – neither, it seemed, ashamed nor guilty that her hob-nails had clumped up the stairs at one-thirty that morning.
Jennifer looked over at her husband disapprovingly. He anticipated her and uttered assurance that, if he got the chance he’d do the father, daughter bit that evening.
‘American valedictory cliché. Four, one, four, three,’ smiled Jennifer in the porch and they clicked their mouths together without touching.
‘I’ll do my utmost. You have a nice day too.’
Sluggishly ambling his way to the bus stop, Sheridan Entwhistle began to mutter. ‘One, two, three … four … five, six.’ No fewer than eleven Bill Isaacs, Cons grinned down from his neighbours’ windows.
An undoubtedly positive aspect to being in the middle of nowhere is that everything is delivered.
On the other hand, folk rise early making it that much more awkward to receive their donations.
Scouring Fort William and the foothills of Nevis that morning, Yantra managed to collect just a pint of milk, a loaf of bread and some eggs. Still, as he often commented at such times, hunger assists humility and provides an empty focus for meditation. And, of course, where there’s famine there’s repletion. They should feel glad that someone would be eating what they would not.
At times, Jayne had the distinct feeling that Yantra’s crude Zen-styled maxims were little more than a façade for life’s frustrations. She was bloody starving and she made this plain.
‘For God’s sake,’ he barked in a very unenlightened manner. ‘I’m really not in the frame for begging and, forgive me if I’m mistaken, but the Jocks aren’t exactly known for their love of the didgeridoo.’ She tutted, but he went on. ‘Tell yer what though, Jayne, find me one of them dying cats in a tartan sack and I’ll have a crack at it. But, you know, babe, it’s been a long day already so just give me a fucking brea … Hey, like sorry. Yeah, I know what you’re saying. You want to use some of the money, right?’ She nodded, so he undid the zip at the back of the driver’s seat and reluctantly pulled out the bank bag. They were down to their last twenty pounds.
Shopping in Fort William was not easy. They concluded that a tribe must have visited the town earlier for many of the shops and pubs had handwritten signs saying no travellers and no gypsies.
Yantra wanted to make enquiries. Was it possible that they’d travelled alone for so long that they’d failed to hear about a festival? Or had the town merely been paranoic hosts to a tiny group of travellers? Jayne had experience of Yantra’s making enquiries. Invariably he’d ask the most inappropriate person he could find – like a pig or a pub owner – and wind up in a vicious debate over civil liberties.
‘Yan, I don’t feel welcome here. You know, I’m experiencing some powerful negativity from the indigenous. Can we, like, just do the dust from our shoes thing.’
‘Well, babe, to my reckoning the path of least resistance has to be the A82. Which leads us directly to the middle of an even more nowhere place than this – and a highly Buddhist place it is to be, if I recall.’
They managed to find some vegetarian burgers in a small shop on the edge of town which they wrapped in tinfoil and cooked on Biddy’s engine as they hurtled southbound on the path of least resistance.
Six weeks before, Sheridan Entwhistle had had a somewhat uncomfortable conversation and quite possibly it had been the beginning of everything.
The cautionary palpitations. The peculiar thoughts flinging up into his consciousness. The dissipation of a hard-earned inner pomposity. And, as it would seem a month and a half later, the folding of his existence into a bizarre anarchy.
‘You realize this meeting is the result of a quite ludicrous misunderstanding,’ Sheridan announced with all the resilience of a seasoned building. ‘And the fact that the unfortunate episode, as you so delicately put it, occurred post a luncheon, where yes, as we’ve established, I did partake of the grape in moderate quantities, is purely circumstantial. The events are entirely unrelated. And in my view, and I imagine the view of anyone with an ounce of commonsense, the events are significant only inasmuch as they are entirely insignificant. I don’t think I can make myself any clearer. Nor do I think that I can spare any further time in discussing these fictions.’
He rose.
Belinda Oliphant, Director of Personnel and Human Resources, cleared her throat.
‘Please sit down, Sheridan.’
He complied with a frown and she nodded to her PA, indicating that what she was about to say needn’t be recorded.
‘Look Sheridan, the last thing I want to do is waste your time and mine re-treading the same ground. And believe me, Sheridan, the very, very last thing I want to do is suggest that you’re, well, being conservative with the truth. But, Sheridan, surely you can see that there are things which simply don’t add up.’
‘Absolutely, Belinda. Someone’s imagination has got the better of them. And I suggest it is to them you should be talking. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things …’
‘And frankly,’ Belinda went on, raising her voice a touch, ‘if person A reports that person B was slurring their speech and reeking of alcohol, I’m duty bound to treat the sober account …’
‘I take exception to …’
‘Sheridan, what motive could she possibly have for making this up?’
‘I’m not suggesting that she did make it up. I simply believe she misunderstood the intention behind the invitation.’
‘But you repeated the invitation. You wouldn’t take no for an answer. That is not something that a person makes up or misunderstands. That is a statement of fact.’ She gestured to the PA to recommence note taking.
‘Look, if I did, it was purely because, well, I suppose I thought she was being polite, or shy or something … you know how these girls, these women, can be.’
‘Helen declined the invitation, initially on the grounds that she wouldn’t feel comfortable in a wine bar dressed as she was. Is that correct?’
‘Yes, I believe …’
‘To which you replied …’ Belinda donned a devilish pair of spectacles and read from a typed