The Anarchist

Jennifer began to shake her head ferociously, then bellowed, ‘Good God, man, what’s happened to you?’ She paused – and for an insane moment Sheridan thought she must be fishing for a crossword clue – then turned and stormed up to bed.

A small police car tobogganed southbound on the unlit A68.

Through the sullen smog of the storm they saw a large white vehicle standing at an angle that seemed to suggest it had slewn off the road.

They drew up and aimed their headlights at Biddy.

‘Fuck me, it’s moving.’

This was so. The van was literally bouncing on its suspension.

They left the car, peered into the driving compartment and satisfied themselves that it was empty. Then they walked round to the back door.

The wind squealed like a banshee as it forced its way through the Cheviots. Yet above this they heard the rhythmic shrieks of the woman inside. And despite the brutal wash of rain they could nevertheless detect the aroma of alcohol and hashish wending from the hole in the van door.

One of the policemen lifted his fist intending to hammer on the door but the older one took a gentle hold of his arm.

‘They’ll be going nowhere tonight, son. ‘Ippies, I’ll not doubt, but ‘armless enough.’

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.

They pulled over before the slip road to the A1 (M), wrestled out of their heavy coats and slipped into the Babylon bibs.

The Babylon bib had been Jayne’s invention, and as inventions went it was unrivalled by just about anything Yantra had managed to come up with to reduce the inevitable hassles of this way of life. Originally hessian sacks, the bibs had had head-holes cut out and the façade of respectable clothing sewn to the fronts. Thus any Babylon (police) eyeballing them on the motorway would witness a gentleman in a shirt and tie with his long hair hitched neatly back, driving the Bedford, and a woman in a high-necked Laura Ashley number, with albeit unconventional hair, accompanying him.

Prior to the bibs, Yantra would have expected to be pulled over two if not three times on a long motorway journey such as this one – and depending on what type of mood he was in, have his drugs stolen, his van shamelessly criticized and even be forced to listen to crap about the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Since adopting the bibs, they’d only been tugged once and then the policemen found them so funny that it completely slipped their minds to harass them. Painting over the anarchy symbol, fuck the system, and the other brightly painted messages of peace possibly helped matters. These days he didn’t even need to bother with Biddy’s fascist paperwork.

Yantra and Jayne were making their annual journey to London because, compared to virtually anywhere else in the country, its streets and subways really were paved with gold. Not that they intended making their fortunes, but nothing was worse than being at Glastonbury too indigent to get truly wankered out of their skulls. Alas, life required money, but as Yantra often pointed out one can also get greedy on poverty. Money was unquestionably a mu topic – a negative which is beyond negative and positive. And stealing or begging for modest amounts was The Middle Way, and perfectly consonant with the noble path.

And there was another matter. Perhaps it was curiosity. Perhaps it was genuinely familial, though he hoped to God not. He couldn’t know. Still, year on year, the gnawing deepened. Of course, he’d said nothing to Jayne. Nor did he intend to until the groundwork had been done. For Yantra well knew that speaking to a woman about a child and introducing her to one were entirely different matters. Entirely different.

He pulled into the slow lane and unbuttoned his trousers. Jayne smiled nervously and arched down on him. She tried to recall when he’d last had an opportunity to wash and wondered at his reaction to her refusing. To Yantra, fingernail grime, armpit stench, flatulence and just about every other foul thing the body is capable of producing, were human and natural and thus warranted a certain earthy reverence. She half wondered whether he felt sexy at all and wasn’t using her as a method of getting clean.

But Jayne had Yantra quite wrong. He was neither particularly horny nor fussed about hygiene. To him this was Maithuna, a Tantric meditation technique of submitting himself to Shakti (the feminine principle, Mother of the Universe) through impassive intercourse. Silently he intoned a secret Tantric mantra in time with the rhythmic strokes below and adjusted his speed so that the road lines passed in a complimentary rhythm. Once or twice he felt himself succumb to the worldly aspect of what was going on and dragged himself back, Zen-fashion, to the mantra. Only when he climaxed and spoke aloud that he was consecrating his semen as a sacred offering, did he receive a notion that perhaps he was being somewhat hypocritical about things and that he’d squandered a perfectly good head-job concentrating on an enigmatic slab of discourse between Siva and Durga.

By Monday the heat had returned and Sheridan couldn’t be sure whether the waiting room was intolerably stuffy or it was dread that caused him to perspire so copiously.

He rolled things over again and managed to ease his disquiet temporarily. Of course Dr Dickinson wouldn’t give him a verdict there and then. He’d require tests. Arrange appointments for the future. Give Sheridan more time to come to terms with his predicament.

Yes, that’s what would happen.

He wouldn’t be dropping any bombshells on his wife and daughter tonight. And that would be fine. After all, he was sure that if he just had a week or two more, he could prepare himself for things. Think events through a bit more and work out a method of dealing with the circumstances. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was the first person on this planet to learn that he was unwell. People of Folucia’s age and younger had had to come to terms with mortal ailments. There could be no question that with his age and strength of character he’d cope. All he needed was a week or so’s grace. Yet, as he stared unseeing at the open magazine, his heart pealed and he barely had the strength to remain on his stool.

Of course, it was quite pointless denying it. Sheridan Entwhistle was more terrified than he’d ever been in his life.

Memories of Jennifer’s wedding dress, a brand new Folucia, his first magazine launch and the like momentarily rocketed into view – only to be snatched back into a barrel of impotent sentimentality. It struck Sheridan that his brain was out of defence mechanisms and the only thing dividing him and his fate was the sterile glaze of the fear itself.

He felt suddenly alone and badly regretted not sharing his fears with Jennifer. If she were sitting next to him this morning, he knew he wouldn’t be feeling nearly so abysmal. Besides, perhaps she already had an inkling that something was up. On several occasions over the weekend she’d asked him if everything was all right. As if the black coffee and low-fat margarine would have escaped her.

His name was called and he harnessed all the energy his liquid body had to stand.

There would have to be more tests, he told himself.

Time.

A little time.

Dr Dickinson was not a man who would pronounce a verdict like this without sufficient tests. Yet, on entering the surgery, he discovered to his comprehensive horror that he wasn’t to see his old friend Dr Dickinson.

She was perhaps thirty, with shortish blonde hair, gentian eyes and breasts, Sheridan considered, far too fulsome for a doctor. Nevertheless he explained things to her, answered her questions and, when asked to, removed his shirt.

She measured his pulse and blood pressure, weighed him on an old-fashioned balance and shone a miniature torch into his mouth and his eyes – all in virtual silence. It struck Sheridan that, to her, his body was little more than a fleshy machine. A machine that she had been trained to put right. It pleased him that there were no sudden expressions of horror as she jotted coded notes about his machine on her pad.

‘Breath in. Hold. Breath out. Relax now. Please try and relax, Sheridan.’

But Sheridan certainly couldn’t relax. Despite the curt efficiency of her pawings and shuddering frostiness of the stethoscope, she was vastly more than a machine to him.

‘Please Sheridan, relax,’ she breathed against the skin of his naked shoulder.

After some more minutes probing, she asked Sheridan to sit back down and told him that he would be pleased to know that she doubted very much that he had suffered a heart attack.

‘Well, thank you very much,’ he said with disguised relief, squeezing up his tie knot. ‘That really is all I wanted to know. I can only apologize for troubling you.’

She smiled and watched him rise, dig his shirt back into his trousers and swing on his jacket. When he was midway to the door, he beamed at her and said, ‘Once more. Thank you so much for your time, doctor.’

‘No,’ she said calmly, staring down and doodling vacantly on a pad. ‘The symptoms you described were those of a stroke.’

He halted. They stared at one another. She wasn’t smiling. She held out her palm and indicated the chair. Sheridan complied.

‘A stroke, right?’ he said stoically, wrenching up a small grin.

‘Yes, Sheridan. They could have been the symptoms of a mild stroke. But I don’t think they were. Now it’s up to you, of course, but would you care to know what I think did happen to you on Thursday?’

‘Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I just got it into my head that it was … Sorry, please go on.’

‘I think that you have suffered from an anxiety attack, Sheridan.’

‘Right, well. Anxiety, eh?’

‘And have you any idea why you panicked and hyperventilated?’

‘Not the foggiest.’

‘Well, Sheridan, perhaps it’s nothing, but when a seemingly stable, professional forty-four-year-old begins to suffer panic attacks, I think it’s wise to find out why.’

‘Well, it was an unusually hot day. I probably got a little short of breath and panicked. I’m sure it was a one-off.’

‘And how long have you had the facial twitch?’

‘Sorry?’

‘And the tremors in your hand?’

The GP allowed her demeanour to melt into something akin to empathy. She forged a smile and explained to Sheridan that if there was anything he felt the need to discuss about his work, marriage, financial affairs, problems sleeping or anything else that might be worrying him, it was her job to listen. Or, if Sheridan would rather, she could refer him to someone else whose job it was to listen. Sheridan shook his head and assured her that at present his life was remarkably problem free. But if he ever felt the need he’d be sure to get in touch.

She glared at him in silence. He twitched and diverted his eyes. As Sheridan rose and walked out, she shook her head.

They pulled up at a service station and refuelled with some of the cans of petrol pilfered during the weekend stopover in Newcastle. The road was fairly clear and it seemed likely that they would make London by dusk.

The problems started just outside Ripon when Yantra decided that he felt the need for another Tantric experience and Jayne refused.

He pulled Biddy over and told Jayne to get out. Naturally enough, Jayne complained that he was acting the bastard. He agreed and apologized to her, explaining that the stress of London must already be biting.

Still, he was sulking. And when Yantra sulked he had little else to take it out on but the road. Finally, Jayne went for his fly button and said that as long as he recommended using the mirror and indicating then she’d comply. He told her thanks, but the mood had passed. She accused him of being childish. He half smiled and said that anyone who had lost touch with the child in themself, had lost touch with their soul. She attempted to kindle this into some sort of a conversation but he wasn’t having it.

Then Biddy took out the front light of someone’s Escort.

At the best of times, Yantra had problems with names and addresses. But trying to explain that legal appellations were labels without meaning, merely handcuffs of the establishment, and that the corpulent, bald Yorkshireman in the suit was in fact standing outside his address did not help the situation.

The man looked down at his tiny, glistening black shoes and breathed hard. Was it possible, he wondered, that the van might perhaps be uninsured? Nor was he impressed when Yantra opined that insurance was indicative of a rejection of destiny and faith in the principle of ultimate good.

‘Please, man,’ whined Jayne, when he reached into the car for his mobile phone. ‘I mean, you won’t exactly be profiting any by calling the pigs. All you’ll be doing is harming us. You know, for the, well, sheer sadism of it.’

‘Yeah, sadism, man.’

She indicated for Yantra to shut up.

‘And like, I’m sure there’s some way we can pay you for the damage. You know, I feel rotten about your vehicle and that. And, well, I’d be willing to do virtually anything,’ she tugged at his jacket sleeve and grinned coyly, ‘to make things good.’

The man reddened. He looked up at Yantra who was nodding in complicity.

‘Anythink?’ the man mouthed.

‘Do you, you know, wanna follow the van into the country and discuss it with me?’

‘And wha’ about ‘im?’ he said warily.

‘He’s cool. Very cool. Aren’t you, baby?’ Yantra nodded, attempting to push a smile through his revulsion.

‘And you, you travel in t’car?’ She nodded. ‘And ‘ow does I know yer not gonna, well, do us in? Rob us and the likes?’

She looked hurt.

‘Because we’re pacifists,’ she told him earnestly.

‘Pacifists, ay? I see. Well now.’ Yantra moved back into the van. ‘What’s yer name? Yer very attractive for an, you knows, an ‘ippy. ‘Ope yer don’ mind t’word ‘ippy,’ Yantra heard the man stammer as he stepped back into Biddy.

The two vehicles left the A-route and scudded along roads that grew increasingly narrow until finally they were bouncing over unlaid moorland track. Biddy squeaked to a halt and Yantra stepped down from the vehicle. He walked a fair way out onto the turf, tested its firmness with his boot, then went back to Biddy and drove her onto the grass, stopping a few yards from where the land gave way to a small stream. He jumped out and opened the back doors to release Endometrium. Then he indicated that the pair of them should use the van.

Six hours later, as they flew off the motorway and down through Hendon, Jayne and Yantra were still not talking.

As far as she was concerned, luring him into the van then removing his trousers and challenging him to call the police now, was ample punishment for the man’s antisocial behaviour. Why Yantra had seen fit to dump his distributor cap and mobile phone in the water, liberate the air in his tyres, then coin I’m a fat fucking pervert and an anarchy symbol into the Escort’s paintwork, was quite beyond her. The nearest building was perhaps five miles away.

For Yantra’s part, he could hardly accuse her of being the degraded tart he obviously wanted to. Nor could he express anger over her pursuing the charade long enough for the man to emerge from the van with a tent pole in his Y-fronts. That would have sounded like jealousy, which he never felt. Consequently, he interpreted her anger over his actions as colluding with the state, which was indefensible. Well, he’d find a few women in London and Glastonbury to collude with and then they’d see how far her humanitarian principles really stretched.