The Spanner - 6

‘Bloody crap-sticks,’ Ramble muttered when he saw the blue VW Polo parked in the driveway.

He trawled his memory for some mention of Reggie coming to visit. Elaine had probably told him, but like everything else she said that information would have been filtered out or otherwise tangled in his grey matter before it reached the hippocampus. Damned hippocampus, he thought, you and I used to get along. Where did we go wrong? Was it the drinking? The LSD in my younger days? Or have we simply become estranged? Now you’ve locked me out when I really, really need to get something out of there. Just let me collect a few things and I’ll leave you alone. What do you say?

‘Stan?’ Elaine crowed at him from the open front door. ‘Are you going to stand in the driveway all night? I’ll get you a tent, if you’d like.’

He jumped. How long at she been standing there? How long had he been standing there? ‘Just gathering my … thoughts,’ he said.

‘Oh, that could take a while. Perhaps I should get the tent.’

‘Ha bloody ha,’ he said, and stepped past her into the house.

‘You did remember Reggie was coming to dinner didn’t you?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘With his new girlfriend?’

The dark fog in Ramble’s head was suddenly obliterated by a warm burst of sunshine. ‘Girlfriend?’

‘Yes,’ Elaine said. ‘His girlfriend. The one I told you about nearly a month ago. You have no idea, do you?’

He rifled around through a few scraps of memory, flipping them over and searching for clues. A few mentions of Reggie, but nothing about a girlfriend.

A girlfriend.

‘Are you okay?’ Elaine said. ‘You’re not having a stroke are you?’ She said it almost hopefully.

‘No, I’m fine, I just … a girlfriend.’

‘Yes, a bloody girlfriend, I told you about … Oh, wait. Oh, I see. You were still labouring under the false impression that our son is gay, weren’t you?’

‘No, no no no. No.’

‘You don’t have to keep shaking your head like that Stan, I understood you when you said no. Or are you having a stroke after all?’

‘I didn’t think he was gay.’

‘Yes you did. You used to refer to him as our sausage-loving she-boy.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘That was two weeks ago, at the Wintons’ barbecue.’

‘Ah. Well, yes, I did say that, but I was being facetious.’

‘Don’t you say ah to me, save that shit for work. Just repeat this phrase, and for Christ’s sake try to remember it, and keep your bloody voice down: our son is not gay.’

‘Our son is not gay. But he does live in Brighton.’

Elaine looked like she was trying to suppress a scream. ‘You … stupid … fucking …’ She reached out and twisted Ramble’s left nipple through his shirt. ‘Don’t squeal,’ she hissed.

Ramble bit down on his tongue and tasted warm copper. She let him go.

‘That was unpleasant for both of us,’ she said. ‘Believe me. Now come on.’

Ramble took some deep breaths and wiped the tears dribbling from the corners of his eyes. Then he followed Elaine down the hall, into the sitting room at the back of the house.

Reggie was on the sofa with some tattooed and heavily-pierced freak. It appeared to be female, but Ramble had made that mistake once before in a Soho bar. It had long black hair with streaks of iridescent blue, and the bulges in the chest area of the back dress suggested tits, but he couldn’t be too careful in that department. No, one could never be too careful.

Reggie stood up as he approached, hand outstretched and a nervous smile trying to come out of its closet.

Ramble stopped. ‘You’re leaving?’

‘No I … we just got here.’

‘Why are you standing then?’

‘I’m … I’m saying hello, Dad.’

‘Oh. Ah, yes, of course. Hello Reggie.’ He took his son’s hand, and it felt like a damp squid which had been left to marinate in warm brine. When they released grips he wiped his palm on his trousers.

‘Dad, this is Regina.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Stan!’ Elaine said, and jabbed one of her bony knuckles into his ribs.

‘Ow! Sorry, that came out wrong. You are kidding though, aren’t you?’

‘No Stan, he’s not kidding.’

‘Pleasure to meet you Mr Ramble,’ Regina said, standing and holding out her hand.

‘Yes, er, pleasure to meet you Regina, of course.’ He took her hand, turned it over one way, then back again. It certainly looked like a female hand. ‘So, you’re a student too, are you?’

‘What gave it away?’ she said. ‘Was it the blue hair or the nose ring? Or do I carry about me a general air of poverty?’

Elaine barked out a laugh. ‘I like this one.’

Ramble wasn’t so sure. Her tone, for one, was filled with dry insolence. All she needed was to throw a whatever in there somewhere to complete the stereotype of apathetic youth. Combined with the similarities of their names, she was too much like a girl version of Reggie. Ramble’s ancestors had a promiscuous history; there could be common genetic material between those two.

Decent looking arse though.

Reggie was doing his best to scowl at Ramble, but it was water off a duck’s back. Ramble bulged his eyes and raised his eyebrows as if to say, what? It was a look he had cultivated over the years, modelling it in part on the expressions produced by Tom Baker in the old episodes of Doctor Who — the best Doctor Who, without question — and in part taking advantage of the naturally startled look he’d been born with. Elaine hated it. She said he looked somewhat daft at the best of times, but when he goggled his eyes like that he looked utterly daft and terminally confused.

Reggie waited until Regina turned to sit back on the sofa, and gave Ramble the finger before sitting back on the sofa with Regina. Reggie had none of his ocular gifts; his eyes were more like Elaine’s, slightly feline with pale blue irises. He’d also inherited Elaine’s blonde hair and slender frame, and he had at least half a foot of height on Ramble.

He thought, not for the first time, that he should secure some of Reggie’s hair for a DNA test.

Dinner was a stingy and uncomfortable endurance. Elaine had made some kind of chicken breast salad with lots of green leafy stuff and mango and peppers.

And it was all cold.

‘What’s wrong with a roast?’ Ramble complained. ‘Or steaks? And spuds or mash would have been nice.’

‘It’s too hot for all that,’ Elaine said. ‘I’m not going to start cooking winter meals until it’s bloody well cold. There’s a big bowl of steamed broccoli there. Help yourself.’

‘Pah!’

‘You eat too much starchy food as it is,’ Elaine said. ‘Too many simple carbohydrates. You’ll be developing diabetes any day now.’

‘What do you care?’ Ramble muttered.

‘Because if you consciously eat yourself to death, the insurance company might consider it suicide.’

Reggie and Regina both tried to stifle laughs, and both failed.

Ramble felt his face heating up. ‘Right, I’m going out to the shed.’

‘Oh, don’t be like that,’ Elaine said half-heartedly. ‘I was only joking.’

‘I have work to do,’ he said, and scooped up his laptop bag as he headed for the back door.

‘Pleasure to meet you, Mr Ramble,’ Regina said from behind him, but he pretended not to hear.

The sanctuary of his shed was in sight, and once out the back door he just about bolted for it. He rested the laptop bag against the armchair, and was about to settle into it and mull over his current catalogue of problems when he had a thought.

It was quite hot, Elaine was right about that. And humid, especially after the rainfall the night before. Sticky. He started to walk around to the back of the shed, holding his breath and hoping for some special visitors. There was a small patch of ground he’d discovered several years ago where, under the right conditions, and at the right time of year, there grew …

Ah, yes, there they were. Ramble allowed himself a victorious fist-pump. Nestled between the uncut blades of grass at the back of the shed, a small area which picked up a few glimpses of sun in the morning but remained in shade for the rest of the day, stood a small crop of slender white angel caps. He crouched down, his knees popping and creaking under the strain, and plucked them out of the soil one at a time. When he had all of them, checking the surrounding area for any he might have missed, he gently curled his fingers over them and returned to the shed. He laid them out on the work bench and counted out thirteen.

Thirteen. Unlucky? Ramble wasn’t a superstitious man, but he went outside to check the area again, just in case there were any stragglers. It would be better if he had an even number, he told himself. When he couldn’t find any more, he repeated his claim: I am not a superstitious man.

He placed the mushrooms in a cigar box to dry and slid the box into one of the drawers under the bench, amongst a miscellany of screws and bolts and washers. These new tools, he thought, these could help him unlock that stubborn hippocampus.