Beggars Banquet

Frank blinked towards me. Maxwell was the only one who called me ‘Ke

‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ Maxwell asked now. Frank rapidly finished his pint. ‘And tell me, do they do food here?’ Maxwell stood up. ‘No, don’t bother. I’ll just go ask Do

By this time, you see, Do

‘That’s why I work lunchtimes whenever I can, keeps the nights free.’ Her pale face surrounded crimson lips. She wore two gold studs in either earlobe. I started to drink a whisky with my beer, just so she’d turn around towards the row of optics, giving me the chance to stare. Her shape seemed near perfect, set off by short hugging skirts and thick black tights. Surface. Everything was there. Not like in the videos where the nakedness was so naked that it became clothing in itself.

‘I don’t know how you can teach in the afternoons,’ she said one day. She meant, how could I teach after a couple of pints and a couple of shorts. The answer was: by remote control, literally. I used videos more and more in the classroom, hogging the TV set, showing whatever was vaguely relevant and available. Shakespeare was easy, poetry not. I’d even take a class to the school’s video lab – we have some excellent facilities, due to a go-ahead rector who realises that technology is where future jobs lie. (What he doesn’t realise is that after hours I often use the video lab’s facilities for copying Maxwell’s tapes.) I could fill an hour showing the class how to edit films, why the cameraman is so important, and how an editor can make a movie work where the director has failed.

I could do all of this, and still have room in my head for candles and music and animal skins.

Until Maxwell came along. Within a week, he’d fixed a date with Do

‘She’s buggered off,’ he informed me. ‘Took another job.’

A job Maxwell had found for her, convenient to his own office. When he told me this on the phone that evening, told me while Alice played TV roulette with the remote and ate another packet of crisps, I knew I had to do something. The living-room seemed stuffier than ever, chip fat and salt, blue noise from the television and a sofa full of wife. My life felt horribly scripted, badly acted, its scenes decided long before I’d been cast for the role.

Splice and edit, I thought. Splice and edit. I might not be the director, but I could still save the movie…

Just one of those things, I thought to myself. Just one of those crazy things. I couldn’t get those two lines out of my head as I stood there over Maxwell’s body. I was reassuring myself that I’d only come to his place to talk. To talk about what? That’s what the police would ask. To talk about Do

Officer, I spend most of my life in a state of jealousy.

He’d only fallen down the stairs of course. I’d been apologising as I walked down after him. But he’d lain there very still, and when I hauled him up by the shoulders his head swivelled wildly, neck obviously broken. I checked his pulse anyway, and found nothing.

Only a fall down the stairs… except that I pushed him. Oh yes, we’d been arguing. Or rather, I’d been arguing and Maxwell had been laughing at me. We hadn’t even got as far as his living-room. I’d been arguing on my way up the stairs, arguing ever since he’d let me in the door. In the hall at the top of the stairs I fairly vented my spleen, until I could feel myself emptying, the anger lessening. Catharsis, I suppose. Or exorcism. But he was still laughing, rocking back on his heels. So I stood there and blinked and then gave him a mighty shove. I only just managed to stop myself tumbling after him. Gripping the banister rail, I watched him sail backwards and begin the thumping descent. It’s a steep staircase, uncarpeted, the wood stripped and varnished. I remember the varnish was expensive, but it meant the wood only had to be redone every five years or so.

Just one of those things, I thought to myself. It was lucky Maxwell lived in a mews. Those places are like morgues at the best of times. This one even boasted a dead end, no through traffic. Ground level was all doors and garages, with living-room windows above. Nobody was looking as I dragged Maxwell out of his own door and into the boot of my car. His keys slipped from his trouser pocket, along with some loose change. I scooped it all up and pocketed it.

I was supposed to be fetching fish and chips for our supper. My excuse to Alice for taking so long was car trouble. I used Maxwell’s change to buy the food, parked outside my own flat, and checked the boot was locked. Over supper I’d have a think what to do with Maxwell. Since Alice slept like a horse, I’d have no trouble sneaking out in the dead of night to get rid of the poor bugger. I’d seen enough crime movies to know that I mustn’t panic and I must take care. Each take had to be a perfect take, had to be what directors called ‘a wrap’. On the way upstairs I unwrapped a hot package and pulled out a chip, dropping it into my mouth. It had a new and vivid flavour.

Not that Alice noticed. If a thing wasn’t behind glass and wrapped in Japanese plastic and changeable with one press of the remote, she tended not to see it. She didn’t see my heightened colour, or the way I stared at my smeared plate. So passive was she, I almost wanted to blurt out a confession. Just once to surprise her. I resisted the temptation of course. As soon as it’s out of your mouth, it’s in the public domain, and this had to be kept strictly private, strictly between me and God.

It would be interesting, too, to see if I possessed such a thing as a conscience.

By the time we got to bed, I felt I’d explode. I wasn’t much nearer working out a plan, my head full of sitcoms and advertising jingles. I cleared my throat.

‘Alice, what do you really think of Maxwell?’

She was lying on her side, her back to me, one hand supporting her head and the other holding a paperback book.

‘Maxwell’s all right.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘I feel sorry for him actually.’

‘How do you mean?’ I was startled. She felt sorry for him? She couldn’t have surprised me more if she’d said she was carrying his child.

‘All that bravado of his, the macho stuff.’ She left the explanation at that and returned to her book.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘That, Ke

‘What don’t we see?’

‘You don’t see anything, you don’t see anything at all. Now shut up and go to sleep.’