Читать книгу The Anarchist - Tristan Hawkins - Страница 15

At five that morning a splendid rainstorm cracked and flashed above Edingley. Sheridan, on the precipice of sleep, listened contentedly as lavish raindrops slapped into the fat leaves of the sycamore outside. He envisaged the tree lurching gleefully and clumsily manoeuvring its heavy limbs to catch the cool drops.

This was the first benevolent thought he’d had about the tree since learning that it was thieving moisture from the foundations of the house and would need to come down. And in his halcyon drowsiness he couldn’t decide whether subsidence should be classed as a separate, additional problem or one of the steps on the sardonic staircase that he was currently crashing down. Of course, Folucia (without question, an additional problem in her own right) had argued that the sycamore had more right to existence than the man-made construct of their home. And Jennifer made the clever suggestion that perhaps they could hire a team of men to dig it up and move it further down the garden.

As Sheridan slowly wakened, the lulling comfort of the rain’s thrum diminished. More than likely the bloody stuff was coming in through the window and corroding the paint work. Or rolling over the sill and detaching wallpaper. Rotting the carpet. Perhaps one of the drains had blocked. And he now pictured it, drop by pernicious drop, dislodging shards of plaster, purposefully weeding out clumps of lawn and turning the meticulously eclectic flowerbeds into Somme trenches. He envisaged the water level in the pond rising higher and higher until goldfish, mud, weeds and God knows what else spewed into the lake that his garden had become.

The bastard rain also reminded him that he had a bladder, so he climbed sluggishly from the bed and put on his dressing gown.

Stooped before the lavatory bowl, the nausea of waking billowed through his being. He faltered and reached out to the cistern for support. Feeling too groggy to make it back to bed, he sat on the floor for a short rest. And Sheridan Entwhistle had to confess to himself that he felt drastically unwell. Perhaps he’d mention this to the GP.

Immediately he regretted permitting thoughts of the doctor to enter his mind. Throughout Friday, he’d purposefully avoided the issue, repeatedly chiding himself that no amount of worrying would affect the toss of this particular coin. In fact, bar a squash match, worrying was just about the worst thing he could do at the moment. That is what it had said in the family health manual, so consequently, Sheridan considered, it must be achievable. So why the hell couldn’t he achieve it? Were other people better helmsmen of their own minds?

Sheridan recollected being at school. Whether it was his prep or his gym slippers that he had accidentally left in the dorm he couldn’t now recall, yet on one occasion he faced the housemaster on a charge of forgetfulness. The crime being venial, he was ordered to write two hundred lines. Still, the young Sheridan questioned his master. ‘How can it be my fault that a particular thought didn’t enter my mind?’ The master smiled benignly and told him that it was precisely because it wasn’t Sheridan’s fault that he must be punished. He didn’t understand. The master went on to explain that the nature of the punishment wasn’t retributive, rather corrective and would perhaps afford the boy greater mental discipline – and that mental discipline was one of the most enviable going in life. The heinous rigours of trigonometry, memorizing the strange stories in the Bible, Latin declensions, the staple diet of Polynesia – did such pursuits serve a purpose? Indeed they did – they served to discipline the heinous rovings of a young man’s mind.

So why, thirty years after suffering such asinine tortures, was Sheridan’s brain in a state of complete anarchy? Why couldn’t he shift the eidolon of Dr Dickinson imparting the worst. And why couldn’t he recall whether it was his prep or his fucking gym slippers?

When Jennifer discovered him perhaps fifteen minutes later, Sheridan was cross-legged on the bathroom floor cradling his head in his hands. And she couldn’t be positive but it seemed that he was mumbling, ‘It’s not my fucking fault,’ over and over and over.

All doubts and all hopes vaporized. Disturbance was afoot. There was unquestionably something very wrong with her husband.

Thanks to the storm much of the heat and oppression of Friday had been rinsed from the air. And as Sheridan strolled down the hill towards the newsagent’s a mixture of tiredness, relief and good humour mingled into an agreeable feeling that he might almost have described as postcoital. Several of the people who passed bade him a good morning. Yet as they would later recount Sheridan seemed to be unaware of them – as if something weighty were on his mind.

Indeed, this was so.

Sheridan Entwhistle was plotting a crime.

‘Good morning,’ smiled the newsagent.

‘Indeed it is, Mr Khan. Indeed it is.’

Sheridan slid a Croydon Chronical from the pile on Mr Khan’s counter. His heart was clattering and the sweat of his thumb stained the paper. Moreover, he had no idea why he was about to do this. Quite simply, the notion had presented itself to him, and, like the suggestion of visiting the bathroom in the small hours, he found that he had no choice about things.

‘In fact, Mr Khan, it is such a fine day that I detect an aberration coming on.’ Mr Khan raised an eyebrow. ‘Twenty Benson and Hedges, please.’

As the newsagent turned and reached up for the cigarettes, Sheridan adeptly snatched a Kit-Kat from the adjacent display and interred it in his jacket pocket.

‘On second thoughts, filthy bloody habit. Scrap the cigarettes, Mr Khan.’ He paid for the paper, they exchanged parting smiles and he exited.

As Sheridan’s face met the fresh air a fantastic elation surged through him and the sweat that had more or less sodden his shirt chilled wonderfully. He hadn’t the first clue why he’d committed the daft felony, yet it felt so satisfactory. As he trekked slowly back up the hill he thought with irony of the sign in Mr Khan’s door that read, Only two schoolboys at a time.

… and what exactly is the point of, like, revising something I already know?’ he heard Folucia object as he entered his front door.

‘Look, Folucia. Look …’ his wife spluttered impotently.

‘It’s my bloody life, Mummy. Besides, I’m leaving home on my sixteenth birthday and there’s not a lot anyone can do about it. So put that in your pipe …’

‘Perhaps, young lady, you’d like to put that one to your father.’

He walked into the kitchen and the women scowled at him. Ignoring them, he bent down to greet Hogarth who was wiping his mottled head over Sheridan’s feet and shins.

‘He’s lying. He’s been fed,’ said Jennifer matter-of-factly.

Sheridan didn’t look up. Instead he pulled the Kit-Kat from his jacket and handed it to Folucia.

‘What’s that for?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘It’s a bribe,’ he answered.

‘Bribe?’

‘Yes, my dear. I’d like you to do me a small favour, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Favour. What favour?’

‘Well Folucia, I’d very much like you to tell your mother that I’ve given you a thorough going over. You know, explained that I think you’re a selfish, immature brat, that you take us for granted, that you’re deceitful, ill-mannered and …’

Folucia reddened, then forcibly regained her composure.

‘And I treat this house like a hotel.’

‘That’s the ticket.’

‘Well, Daddy, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m checking out on my sixteenth birthday.’

‘I see,’ said her father calmly.

‘What do you mean … I see?’ she mumbled. He didn’t need to look up to sense her eyes fill. ‘Are you … are you … throwing me out?’

Sheridan said nothing and sat down. He unhinged a dry piece of toast from the rack and began to nibble on it, masticating and forcing the shards into his dry throat. Folucia began to stammer. Still Sheridan maintained his cool.

It was Jennifer who broke.

‘Of course not,’ she announced, laying a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘We’re doing nothing of the sort.’

‘He,’ Folucia growled, pointing at Sheridan, ‘wants me out, doesn’t he?’

Sheridan remained silent.

‘He wants nothing of the sort, darling. Do you, Sherry?’

‘Well, Folucia,’ he said slowly. ‘I mean, if you’re unhappy, here. If our moderate existence in some way offends …’

‘Sheridan Entwhistle, stop it this instant.’

Sheridan grinned to himself and returned to his toast eating.