The Anarchist

Sheridan Entwhistle was not impressed with Jennifer. And when she left later that afternoon, he suggested to his mother that they look for someone else. Someone with a little more experience, someone less bossy by half. But his mother disagreed. She liked Jennifer and considered her ideal for the job. Besides it would be her not him who would be in Jennifer’s company for the better part of the day. Sheridan wondered what could have possibly passed between them in the bathroom to give his mother such a distorted view of the virago nurse.

The changes Jennifer bought to the Entwhistle household were shocking and immediate. Inside a week, she had not only altered the look and fetor of the place, she seemed to have succeeded in dissipating its burdensome ambience. The rooms appeared bigger, lighter and his mother genuinely happier. But what really swung things was when Jennifer greeted his arrival home with a cup of tea and ginger biscuits.

In the beginning the conversation between them was restricted to short reports about Mrs Entwhistle’s wellbeing and planning the various alterations the house needed to undergo. In the weeks that followed, however, their chat grew to encompass Sheridan’s job and Jennifer’s past. Jennifer, like Sheridan, was Croydon-spawned, and, like him, she intended to leave – eventually. Like most things of any cop, the swinging sixties seemed to have bypassed Croydon altogether. She also told Sheridan that she never planned to have a baby because she’d seen, smelled and, worst of all, listened to childbirth first hand. He shared the sentiment, but for the reason that he’d had enough of people being dependent on him for one lifetime.

It was Mrs Entwhistle who noticed that Jennifer was leaving later and later and that she’d taken to wearing small amounts of make-up. She also noticed a general reduction in the irritability – at a push, desperation – that had characterized her son during recent months. Sheridan assured her that it was to do with his work and made excuses to prune short the evening conversations with the nurse.

Then his mother did something quite extraordinary.

One tea-quaffing evening in late summer, Mrs Entwhistle silenced the conversation with a slap to the arm of her chair. Then she launched into a speech. She began by explaining that perhaps she had a tendency at times to take them both for granted but in the last few months they really had shown her extraordinary kindness. The point being they were young and shouldn’t spend their lives doting over a housebound old woman. She slid out an envelope from the side of her armchair. Sheridan shuddered. He figured the dote must have applied to enter a home. But he was wrong. The envelope contained two tickets for a Bach concert at the Fairfield Hall that Saturday night.

Simultaneously, they reddened. What could have possibly prompted this powerless bag of smiles into becoming a shameless meddler? And how in hell’s name had she managed to get hold of the tickets? They would go, now? she asked. They looked at each other and shrugged. Jennifer was the first to smile and nod. Then Sheridan smiled and it was settled.

As she was leaving he told her how awfully sorry and ashamed he was, he couldn’t think what had possessed his mother to do such a thing. She said, rubbish, it was very thoughtful of her and she’d be happy to go if, of course, he would. He smiled and said, ‘Well, let’s call it a date then.’

As she shimmied into her overcoat he noticed the small rise of her breast in the stiff, white blouse. It was peculiar, he’d never considered Jennifer in this way before.

When Sheridan re-entered the house, he asked his mother exactly how she’d managed to procure the tickets. ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out,’ she told him. Later, when he learned the truth, Sheridan Entwhistle would feel rather idiotic about things. But for the time he merely smiled, content to put it down to the strangeness and unpredictability of female-kind.

During the days that followed he took note of the nurse’s heart-shaped behind as she bent over his mother’s chair and her slender black-stockinged legs. Jennifer also had a big nose. Ever since seeing Breakfast at Tiffany’s he’d appreciated big noses on women. Sheridan wondered how Jennifer would dress for the concert. He’d never seen her in anything other than the nurse’s garb.

Jennifer wore a dark green velvet dress with a plump roll collar falling just high of her cleavage. Her black hair was down and her lips were painted cardinal. In fact, out of the nurse’s gear, she didn’t look unlike Audrey Hepburn. Though Sheridan would have never confessed it, he’d bought himself a new suit for the occasion – a brave faun departure with grand collar and flares.

Over tea in a cafe in St George’s Walk, he gave her the news that he’d need to apply for planning permission to widen the living room door as it formed part of a structural wall. She grinned and told him that talk about his mother was prohibited tonight. He agreed and asked what she wanted to talk about. She said she didn’t know. Then she asked him whether he preferred the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. He told her that he didn’t much like either. What type of music did he like then? she asked. He hesitated and then answered that, come to think about it, he didn’t really care much for music at all. This made her laugh. She told him it was impossible. Everyone had to like one type of music. Sheridan didn’t. She asked about his favourite film. He didn’t know. What was he interested in then? He thought for a second or two and told her, magazine publishing. He went on to tell her that one day he’d own a huge company of his own, publishing everything from trade titles to magazines like Oz. Jennifer was, or at least made out that she was, impressed. At the time working in magazines was considered rather avant garde.

The concert was diabolical. Worse than any recording. When it was time for the organ to sound and a disproportionately loud, flatulent note resounded through the hall, Sheridan actually guffawed. Jennifer tutted and softly slapped his knee.

After the performance he drove her home in his Morris Minor and she asked whether he’d enjoyed the evening. He said he had. She wondered whether he’d perhaps like to go out again. He said he’d like that. In that case, she told him, she’d let him into a secret. Then she changed her mind.

It wasn’t until they’d lip-kissed for the first time after their fourth date that she confessed it was she who had bought the Bach tickets after collaborating with his mother – because frankly Sheridan was worse than useless. He told her that for her information he’d had his fair share of girlfriends. Well, perhaps fair share was a slight exaggeration. He’d had one other girlfriend and that was when he was seventeen – but frankly business put paid to that sort of thing. Had she had any other boyfriends? he enquired. That was for her to know and him to find out, she told him, and kissed his mouth for the second time.

*

Sheridan applied a thin veneer of polyunsaturated fat to his toast and forewent the customary marmalade. Jennifer raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She was shattered. Sherry had made no fewer than eleven visits to the bathroom in the night, on each occasion rousing her from a weightless sleep. Something was not right with her husband, she knew this much. What though? Folucia, work, his health? His health; God, she hoped not – how she detested disturbances.

‘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.