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  ‘I was cut out of my mother like a tumour. She never held me, never kissed me. I was toxic. I wasn’t rejected, it was more subtle than that. My mother parented me in the way that she had been parented – with a kind of meticulous distaste. I was fucked up with a degree of creativity rarely seen before by a parent who experienced me as a complicated chattel rather than a child. When the intervention came, when they decided that a child who had gnawed through her own knuckles to the bone might be in need of a little time out from her mother, all that was left of me was a knotted ball of wool that could never be unravelled. Add to that the traits I have inherited from a father who was imprisoned at the age of sixteen for murdering five semi-professional ballroom dancers whilst wearing the recently emptied skull of a wildebeest and you have the perfect dinner date.’

  M had begun to perspire. There was an unfamiliar movement within his chest cavity, he thought he was going to be sick, but what came out of his mouth was the end of a sentence he had started to speak eight years earlier.

  ‘Stop,’ he rasped and slumped back into his chair exhausted.

  ‘!’ stopped.

  ‘Have you ever seen the way a cat tortures a small bird?’ asked M. ‘Never letting it get far away, desperately gentle, programmed to preserve life in order to destroy it. That was my father. Each day his criticism would kill us a little more, tiny loving wounds delivered by a man with endless ammunition. We were all damaged in different ways but it was intangible. Teachers, therapists, counsellors couldn’t get to the bottom of it; they couldn’t see that all myself and my siblings were, all we are, are tiny birds, waiting for the certainty of the final deadly blow.’

  He was waiting for ‘!’ to leave and inside she certainly wanted to, but this was the ‘!’ who would one day become M’s wife before the unbearable knowledge that she was a mermaid weighed down upon her until she could barely move.

  ‘!’ reached out a hand and placed it close to M’s on the table.

  ‘Do you think you could kiss me without touching?’ she asked.

  M had never kissed anyone before but was sure that touching was the point of the exercise. And yet, he thought, and yet, perhaps this would be better.

  ‘I could try,’ he said.

  Chapter 19

  Residing in us all is the stubborn spark of perfection. It may be incongruous to the geography of our DNA, but it is this and this alone which fills our lungs with breath each day.

  *

  As he lay in bed each morning, Dorsal Grellman would study the tattered photograph taken through the window of the small local pub his parents once frequented. It was an image of a world from the time before their relationship ruptured, causing them to haemorrhage their son. He would linger, transfixed by the image of his mother and father fussing over his infant self. He wanted to be part of that beloved triumvirate, to understand how this nascent Dorsal had felt, to know he belonged, was entangled. He had been too young to learn the vocabulary of love and now he was illiterate. ‘Reach out’, he implored this static two dimensional Dorsal and then, beset by the malady of betrayal, he would put away the photograph until the next day. It was his only deviation from the path of violence and it was a ritual performed for fear that his last connection with the past might shatter and with it the last vestige of his humanity.

  Abandonment had left him conflicted – it was this photograph that reminded him about the infinite capacity of parents to make their children suffer and stoked the malodorous flames of his antipathy for them.

  *

  ‘He’s done it again, head teacher,’ said Mrs Phibes, the woman cursed with bestowing art upon the heathen of Camden, the most northerly outpost of what had once been the Holy Roman Empire, whose ruthless, all conquering, despotic mantle had now been bestowed upon the Inner London Education Authority.

  Caldwell Bynes, who retained the helm of The D’Oily Cart Academy for boys despite remaining resolutely anti-child and anti-education, regarded the telephone as if it were contaminated with leprosy. He was a man who experienced hatred in the same way that others felt hunger. He had, for a while, worn surgical gloves to shield him from human contact, having once been so appalled by a parent whose hands had consumed his own like a ravenous alligator that he had vomited on them. When the cloying feel of the latex began to disgust him he resolved to become a recluse, meeting other members of his species for the sole purpose of administering punishment and disseminating wretchedness. In this, he had achieved Olympian proficiency.

  ‘What have you done with it, Mrs Phibes?’

  ‘I’ve put it out with the rubbish just as you told me to do with the others, head teacher.’

  Bynes looked at his hands – an archaeological spider’s web of furrows and ridges had begun to radiate up his arms like the traces of a physiological radar signal. This was evidence of ageing at its most villainous, pickpocketing the years and leaving him bereft of time.

  ‘And the boy knows nothing, Mrs Phibes?’

  ‘I have told him that his paintings are an abomination, head teacher, just as you instructed me, and yet…’

  Defiance? Bynes ran the Academy with a Stalinist ethos. There was no room for dissidents or exile; they were already in Siberia. Teachers were members of his secret police force, Stasi officers who were expected to inform on each other and submit to his absolute authority or pay the ultimate price. It was roughly in line with National Schooling Guidelines, with a few tweaks.

  ‘Are you questioning me, Mrs Phibes?’ His words twisted back and forth in the icy gale they had manifested.

  ‘No, head teacher,’ replied Mrs Phibes, clearly shaken by the suggestion.

  ‘Because if this is a challenge to my authority…you will recall what happened to Mr Herald. I doubt that the stains will ever come out of the walls of the geography lecture theatre.’

  ‘It’s just that he is such an exceptional young artist, what a shame to…’

  ‘He is an enforcer, a hired gun, a hoodlum, a goon and under no circumstances whatsoever is he permitted to be talented in anything other than administering indiscriminate malfeasance at my bidding and whim. If he does it again, burn it in the classroom in his face and send him to me. I will deal with him.’

  *

  Colin Collins, professor emeritus of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, had found a hairstyle which suited him, by chance, at 6.45pm on the 18th March 1976 and had never been able to recapture it. His head, at best, sported what appeared to be the ruins of a Mayan temple constructed out of Asian palm civet faeces. At worst, it was as though two crows had waged a battle to the death and their remains had been covered in bitumen and ignited.

  Dressed in a full-length green velveteen cape and leatherette codpiece, Colin Collins was very much a man of his time and that time was the late sixteenth century.

  Finding himself, if not in the arse end of London, then certainly in its nether regions, Collins covered his nose alternately with a lace kerchief and a posy of roses. Positing that the stench might overpower him, he gripped a vial of smelling salts as he entered the tawdry precincts of what was officially the school with the worst overall academic record in Southern England – The D’Oily Cart Academy. (The school with the second worst academic record had recently been burnt down by its own headmaster but whilst only the smouldering ruins remained, it still scored a higher satisfaction rating amongst children and parents than ‘The Cart’.)

  Acting on a tip-off from an anonymous source, Collins made his way to the giant metal bins at the rear of the science building where he found, underneath a steaming pile of duck beaks and what appeared to be a human hand, a battered artist’s portfolio. He undid the gnarled ribbon with trembling fingers. He imagined how Howard Carter might have felt as he entered the tomb of Tutankhamen and, brushing away the last remnants of duck, he opened the portfolio.

  The paintings dazzled him like a ray of sunlight slicing its way through the musty inner sanctum of a church crypt. Redolent of a young Car
avaggio, this was a master’s hand. He searched for a signature or a date, how could the work of a genius have been consigned to this ignominy. He turned over the first painting for a clue and found a rectangular sticker. The manuscript inscription read, ‘Your work is far too pretentious – you were asked to depict “what you did on holiday” and according to the title of this painting, “The Slaughter of the Three Wise Men by the Beast During a Visit to a Cocktail Bar in Margate”, this would appear to be a matter for Special Branch, the Vatican and the Licensing department of Thanet District Council. “F” fail – Bynes C, Head Teacher.’

  There were similar stickers on the other works. A spectacular oil painting titled ‘The Beheading of Anne Boleyn by a Traffic Warden Just Outside the Newly Refurbished Offices of Newport Pagnell Rural District Council’ bore all the hallmarks of Velasquez. The sticker on its reverse read, ‘This would have been a flagrant breach of the secretary of states guidelines for the conduct of parking attendants and traffic related operatives – section 6.13.4 – unprovoked acts of violence perpetrated against members or putative members of the House of Tudor. “F” fail – Bynes C, Head Teacher.’

  There had been no greater crime against the international art and cultural community since The Hymnesof Astraea had a disappointing first publication in 1599 or Van Morrison was removed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Colin Collins would have no truck with it. He would track down this Bynes C, expose him as the charlatan and mountebank he clearly was and discover the identity of this artistic prodigy whose talents had been so outlandishly suppressed. He departed the bin store with a lavish swish of his cape. He liked a good swish.

  *

  ‘There is someone to see you, headmaster,’ growled Mrs Bennett, Bynes’ redoubtable PA, through the mouthpiece of her semi-functional telephone, her voice almost lost amidst a minefield of static. ‘He appears to have been waiting since the early part of the sixteenth century.’

  Collins swept into Bynes’ office, slammed the portfolio down on his palatial desk and stood with one foot on the visitor’s chair, his hands on his hips and his codpiece thrust forwards for maximum dramatic effect.

  ‘And?’ asked Bynes quizzically.

  ‘Are you the ignoramus who has decried this pre-eminent work so scandalously?’ asked Collins with Shakespearean aplomb.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ said Bynes.

  ‘I am Colin Collins, professor emeritus of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford – I sponsored Hockney in his first exhibition in the United Kingdom, I am a pre-eminent expert in the work of Millais and was a confidant of Warhol, I have been the senior judge for the Royal Academy summer exhibition for the last twenty-five years. How dare you speak to me in that way, you shrivelled, pasty-faced, weasel of a man?’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said Bynes, ‘there appears to have been a terrible misunderstanding.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ replied Collins, brushing imaginary stagecoach dust from his knee.

  ‘Go fuck yourself Professor Collins, you unutterably emeritus shite hazard,’ said Bynes. ‘Is that a bit better?’

  ‘Your puerile abuse is of no consequence to me. I want to know what qualifies you to judge this man’s work?’ bristled Collins, brandishing his lace kerchief at Bynes as aggressively as one can brandish a lace kerchief.

  ‘Dorsal Grellman to the head teacher’s office right away,’ Bynes demanded, through the prehistoric school-wide intercom.

  Bynes and Collins sat in silence for a moment before thunderous footfalls approached along the western corridor, shaking the variety of totemic ephemera that littered Bynes’ desk from their dusty resting places. Collins was in fear that a large predatory animal had muscled out of its zoo cage and was set to devour them and he was not dissuaded from this when Dorsal burst into the study with Ferris still under his arm in a headlock. Collins raised his hands instinctively to his face to prevent scarring. It was the standard knee-jerk reaction experienced by anyone meeting Dorsal for the first time.

  ‘This is your young auteur, Professor Collins, is he what you anticipated?’

  ‘His appearance is immaterial,’ replied Collins unconvincingly, ‘genius is blind. He will bring the world of art to its knees, he will be the figurehead of a new Renaissance.’

  Bynes sat back in his chair with a comfortable squeak and interlaced his fingers.

  ‘That’s not what he’s for, Professor Collins.’

  ‘For…’ replied Collins.

  ‘When I bought him from his parents it was not for his artistic potential,’ said Bynes. ‘He is, will always be, a thug, my thug. This artistic streak needs to be stamped out, not encouraged by some ageing sycophantic relic from the court of Henry the Eighth. He will not be permitted to paint anything again, his art teacher will see to that. Now if it’s no inconvenience I would like him to beat the living shite out of you and then burn his artwork so that this never happens again. Dorsal, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  But Dorsal did mind. He was not aware that his parents had profited from his enslavement to Bynes, that they had travelled so very far from love. This man thought his art was good, great, that he had value, purpose, that he was more than the dust that Bynes ground his face into.

  ‘Thinking about leaving me, Dorsal – where are you going to go? Professor Collins, can Dorsal come and live with you in Never-Never Land, he’s almost house trained now?’

  ‘Well, I, it’s, I don’t have…’ flustered Collins.

  ‘No, no one has the space for a child who smells like a bison on heat, requires a nine foot-long bed and is liable to decapitate you if you don’t get his eggy soldiers right in the morning. Funny that. You hear that Grellman, no one will have you, you are lucky that I put up with you and your ugly ways but you fulfil a function and whilst you continue to do so you will have a place here.’

  ‘He is not an animal and you should not speak to him as if he is, he is a child,’ said Collins.

  ‘He is neither,’ replied Bynes, ‘he is a symptom of a disease for which there has never been a name. He will never inherit the earth, he will never raise the eagle standard above his head in triumph, he is the machinery of vengeance and he is mine. Now deal with Professor Collins and return to what you were made for. There is no room for aspiration in this world, only duty, everything else is artifice.’

  Dorsal turned from Bynes and shook with a pain that knew no remorse. As he dealt with Colin Collins, his eyes ragged with tears, he knew that he was the night.

  Chapter 20

  Monday morning and still not murdered, Daniel entered the school playground to find a line of twenty or more children of various ages snaking across his path. Some weeks before, Dorsal Grellman had informed the head teacher that he was finding his job both time-consuming and unrewarding. It seemed that not only were many of the recipients of his peculiar brand of violence ungrateful but also, in some cases, surprisingly evasive.

  By initiating a queuing system the head teacher believed that bullying could be conducted in an orderly manner each morning, giving Dorsal the opportunity to pursue his hobby of torturing members of the teaching staff, at his leisure, throughout the rest of the day.

  A ginger-haired child whose features were covered by a dense thicket of freckles stepped forwards impassively, handed Dorsal the contents of his pockets and was punched in the head, knocking him off his feet into a puddle. He stood up, brushed himself down and walked into school snivelling.

  A hushed silence fell when the next child stepped forwards. He was wearing two pairs of glasses and appeared from almost every angle to be perfectly rectangular. He handed Dorsal a tattered ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ playing card and tried to initiate a polite conversation.

  ‘This is an ancient wizarding token which gives you the right to enter the Kingdom of Kalamar. There you will find your elf guide who will take you to the Inn of the Screaming Elms where you must ask for Gwendrach the Goblin King – it is he and only he who can…’

  It w
as difficult for Ferris to continue speaking because by this point he was lying in a puddle with Dorsal’s shoe in his mouth. Dorsal used his fingertips to reach down into Ferris’ jacket pocket and remove a packet of chocolate buttons which he poured into his palm and swallowed all at once. Dorsal stood on Ferris’ head and grabbed the little girl who was next in the queue by the pony tails when it occurred to him that breathing, which he had excelled at up to that point in time, was no longer as straightforward as it had once seemed. It had in fact become completely impossible. The chocolate buttons had formed a cork which had lodged in his trachea and he was about to suffer an ironic death.

  Dorsal fell to his knees in the puddle clutching his throat. Unfortunately for Ferris, the current incumbent of the puddle, this meant that Dorsal’s full weight was now on his perfectly rectangular buttocks and head leaving him with no option other than to drown. Daniel, who had been following these events from a safe distance, mustered his tiny legs into a sprint and with the assistance of the little girl with pony tails and nine other children, he was able to shift Dorsal (whose face had assumed a hue of fire engine red which is particularly popular with interior decorators) and pull Ferris free. Ferris leapt to his feet, retrieved both pairs of muddied spectacles and grabbing Dorsal by the waist he delivered five perfect upward thrusts into his abdomen, dislodging the chocolate and allowing Dorsal to breathe again.