Composite Creatures, Caroline Hardaker [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗

as if playing a detective himself. He didn’t look like the Art in the party hat. This was Arthur McIntyre, who didn’t laugh or smile. His eyes were smaller, concealed behind thick-framed acetate glasses that he might’ve found in a fancy-dress shop.

There was a photo in the folder too: Art when he couldn’t have been more than five or six, standing beside a couple wearing the protective green overalls, wide-brimmed hats, and veils of the scatterers. Behind them stood a row of sealed white tents and chemical sprinkler pipes. Above the awnings and half out of shot, I could just about make out the edge of an iron cage suspended in mid-air – a tractor, or harvester of some sort. Through the mesh, the woman grinned from ear to ear with the same straight and square teeth Art had. The same wide, white eyes, but set into a face that had lost a lot of weight. Skin hung loose beneath her chin, her neck a slim column of blue tendons. The man, who must have been Art’s dad, stood head and shoulders above the woman, and wore a sharp grimace. One arm pinned the woman close to him, while the other held Art’s wrist. Art was half-standing and half-sitting, as if his legs had buckled and the photographer had captured the exact moment he’d started to fall. He was looking away to the right, at something beyond the edge of the snapshot, with his mouth gaping, his eyes angry and small. I propped the photo up against a cup on the coffee table.

Back to the folder. Next up was a pile of letters, folded carefully into envelopes which were badly crinkled at the corners. I knew what these were. Art had been telling me about a pen-pal he’d had in his early teens who lived in England, a girl the same age named Wendy. They’d been matched up by a school programme and written to each other for four years, comparing their day-today lives and sharing ambitions that transfigured with every letter. They never met in person. Art said that as the years went by he’d get a thrill when a new letter arrived in his mailbox, and he’d rush straight upstairs to his bedroom to read Wendy’s news. But when it came to writing back he’d hit a blank, and end up repeating the same stories, hating himself for his laziness and the banality of what his life must sound like. So he started to make things up, but when he received further replies from Wendy he was surprised to see she wasn’t as captivated as he’d imagined she’d be. She just wrote about herself.

His stories became more and more elaborate and unrealistic until he ended up writing stories for himself, rather than Wendy. This way, he could live a thousand different lives without lying to anyone. But he kept Wendy’s letters, and when the opportunity came (years later) to move to the UK he snapped up the chance, this being the only other home he felt he knew.

The final piece of himself Art had included in the folio were a pair of purple socks, spotted with red. They were obviously well worn, the heels thin and threadbare. When the voices began to settle and I could raise my head again, I carried the socks to my bedroom, closed my eyes, and threw them towards the bed. They lay at the foot on the right hand side. I stared at them for some time before stripping and crawling under the covers on the left side, trying to forget that the socks were new and convincing myself that having them there was utterly, utterly normal.

2

It seemed that nothing in my own folio turned out to be too horrendous, and Art and I continued to meet up in safe public spaces for “activities”. It all seemed so old-fashioned and formal, and there was something reassuring about that. One thing that I did find odd was that Art was often keen to revisit the same attraction or venue over and over again. At one point, we went to see the same film on four occasions. It wasn’t even a new film. Art talked about that film endlessly; turning what should have been flirtatious after-drinks into a post-midnight panel discussion. The film was about a boy who survives a shipwreck by escaping on a lifeboat, shared with a tiger. After seeing it once, I shared Art’s enthusiasm – revelling in the luscious tapestry of the sea, the animals, and the blazing sun. We debated the possibilities: was it all a dream? Was he dead? Was it all a lie? But after the second viewing, I started to see metaphors for all sorts of things, and by the third I started to feel irritated at the obvious flaws in the boy’s story. I didn’t believe him anymore. Art felt the opposite and sank deeper into the boy’s fantasy with each retelling. By the time we went to see the film for a fourth time I didn’t want to talk about it further, and just let Art waffle on, only adding in an occasional nod or shake of the head.

One time I wanted to take Art somewhere special to me. I picked him up at his flat and drove him to Copsickle Castle, an ungated ruin free to wander. By day, the place was crushed with couples huddled on picnic blankets, families bending their knees awkwardly to all fit in a photo, and outdoor types spearing the earth with Nordic poles and striding across the yellowing lawn with too-heavy boots. It made the castle look like it was built on a sea of gold, so delicate that you could kick it up with your shoes. This was one of the last “unscattered” places, land made up of what land should be. No chemicals turning the earth, no carcinogens creeping up through the clay. And even though it was no longer green,