The Museum Of Doubt. James Meek
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knew she could walk because she told me. She was big and mobile in skirt and sweater and her hands stuck in the pockets of her open raincoat which was flying behind her in the warm wind over the car park, her face was white and her mouth slightly open and she was staring straight ahead. She had a crutch tucked under her right arm. I had to catch her by the elbow to stop her.
Excuse me, d’you know how much longer it’s going on? I said.
She stopped, one foot lifted, balanced by my hand resting on her elbow – it was a soft, round elbow – and looked at me long enough to say: I can walk! before she walked, then ran, to her car and drove away. It was a straight slip road to the M8, a busy enough evening with no roadworks, and as far as I could understand from the paper next morning it happened within a couple of minutes of her merging with the flow that the juggernaut swung easily through the barriers and hit her car head on, with a combined speed of 150 miles per hour. I suppose Pastor Samuel might have said Well, I healed her, so the least she could’ve done was to have stayed to the end of the meeting. Now she walks, nay drives, with the Lord.
I was concerned for myself. I kept her back for half a second and the juggernaut hit her. In half a second a truck moving at 70 miles an hour travels its own length twice – that’s what Arnold told me when I shared this with him, a free sample. From her side she could have avoided the truck by being more polite. We were both in the wrong. I suffered by not knowing I’d have to wait quarter of an hour for Jenny to come out. The woman who could walk suffered by being conscious for at least 30 seconds of the sensation of the destruction of her body by an oncoming lorry (spontaneous Arnoldism.) Usually when I think about the woman who walked the thought is: I didn’t summon up the juggernaut, did I. You don’t guess the instant when northbound and southbound collide, like a single bolt of lightning. Only when I see Arnold I think about how maybe everything is equalled out in the end, not in a good way, and how easy it is to summon up an irresistible opposing force, after all.
What Siobhan said this one time, and the tenner pointing at my empty tumbler was sharp and fresh as a new razor, was even more ominous than Arnold lurking round the pub as he was: Same one again? she said. Not Same again? but Same one again?
Ah, better not, last ferry and all. I looked down into the glass and dodgemed the sleek humps of ice around the bottom. The unnecessary One hung in the air.
Go on, said Siobhan. You sold a house today, didn’t you? Take a cab.
I sell a house most days. I sold one yesterday.
It was a big one, you said.
It was a big one. I felt like rewarding myself with a third g & t. But the taxis skin you for a ferry trip and it’s no better picking up a second one on the other side.
I can’t drive after three, I said.
Take a cab. Two gin and tonics please, she said. She’d seen the weakness in my face and got the order out the way so we could argue about it over a drink.
I don’t want to take a cab, I said, looking over at Arnold sitting by himself at the table by the cigarette machine. He was working, he had the yellow pad out in front of him. He turned and smiled at me. I looked at Siobhan.
It’s not the money, I said. I don’t like being screwed. I’ve got to take the car across. I’ve got a season ticket.
Well drive then, she said, holding the two glasses out in front of her.
But I can’t if I have a third drink, I said. I took one of the glasses from her.
Don’t drink it, she said.
I won’t, I said, and took a mouthful of the stuff and swallowed it down.
You’re so weak, she said, smiling and touching her earring.
You make it sound as if that’s good.
Oh, I love weak men.
So how do I get home?
I’ll give you a lift back.
I was very happy. It was easy to make me happy. Maybe I’d have four drinks and all in Siobhan’s company, and a free ride all the way to Kirkcaldy on the big white ship. There’d be time for one on the moon deck bar on the way over and we could sit there studying the constellations, talking. I was grinning too much too close into Siobhan’s heroic delighted face and turned again to Arnold. We smiled at each other and waved. I raised my glass to him. He raised his. It looked like water.
Great, I said to Siobhan. In the rush of it I almost said I love you, not meaning it like that, but instead said: Why did you say Same one again?
Confusion sluiced darkly into her face.
You said Same one again instead of Same again.
Did I?
Yes.
She looked into the middle distance, frowning, quiet for a while. So what? she said eventually.
I took a deep drink and went under, groping for something good.
We’re like sister and brother, you and me, I said.
She looked at me without saying anything for a few seconds, then put her drink in my free hand. Arnold’ll give you a lift, she said, and walked out the door.
I finished my gin, sat on a bar stool and started in on hers, raising the side without lipstick to my mouth, turning it to the side with lipstick. It tasted pretty much the same. I was watching Arnold. He was scribbling away with a pencil. The bar was full but the only person I knew was Arnold, sober as an ayatollah and his car parked outside.
Once there was a group of merchants who returned to the borders of the empire after months spent crossing the great wilderness. Everyone wanted to know what it had been like. Och, it was all right, the merchants said. Hot deserts of course, cold mountains, wet jungle – still, we made it.
Folk listened to them politely, clapped them on the back and drifted back to their affairs. Some time later another group of merchants arrived. The locals gathered round – what was it like? Incredible, the merchants answered. Absolutely unbelievable. It was so hot that the beaks of the vultures would soften and fuse together and they would die of starvation if they were careless enough to close them. It was so cold that we had to breathe on each other’s eyes every five minutes to stop our eyeballs freezing solid. It was so wet that a cup held out would fill with rain faster than a man could drink it.
A huge crowd gathered round the second group of merchants, stood them drinks for a year, offered them their daughters in marriage and secured them pensions for life.
Arnold was making a good living on the discovery that folk hungered after apocryphal facts like drinkers hunger after salty snacks. He had a name. The editors would ring him up: Death Valley, Arn, they’d say, give me ten by six. And he’d sit around and write: In Death Valley in August, you can toss an ice cube in the air and it will have melted before you can catch it. Nine more like that. Or: Dead composers this week mate, say a dozen. And he’d write: If the Italian composer Vivaldi was alive, he would be the richest man on the planet, earning an estimated £1 million a minute from royalties on the use of The Four Seasons on telephone switchboards. The secret lay in the utter lack of research and confidence that anyone who could be bothered to challenge his published facts would be rejected as a nitpicking wanker. Besides, whenever one of his jobs appeared, it was so quickly plagiarised that it immediately took on the veracity of gospel – more so, in fact, since every second of every day somewhere in the world an average of 6.5 people challenges the authenticity of the New Testament (6.5 – what Arnold calls the precision principle in successful apocrypha) whereas no-one, not even the Vatican, had ever taken the trouble to complain about Arnold’s assertion that, for liturgical reasons, the Pope never flies in aircraft that can land on water.
He never said but I reckon it was something about the six months he did for dangerous driving that got him on the apocrypha thing. He’d been terrified of getting beaten up or abused or whatever in jail and tried to keep in with the authorities on both sides by writing pornographic stories to order. And maybe after a while the sex fantasies