At the Edge of the Game Read online

  AT THE

  EDGE

  OF THE

  GAME

  GARETH POWER

  http://www.garethpower.com

  Cover design by mightypretty.co.uk

  CHAPTERS

  1. CAPUT MUNDI

  2. ALL CHANGE

  3. AN ACCUMULATION OF NOTHING

  4. OUT OF PHASE

  5. SOMETHING ELSE

  6. COLD STATION

  7. MUNDI KAPUT

  EPILOGUE: GONE WITH THE WORLD

  CAPUT MUNDI

  The letter, a miracle, fell to dust in my hands. It had survived the ages intact and disintegrated only when I disturbed it. But I had presence of mind. I was quick enough to preserve its content using an imager, separating and polishing each faded speck, then later reintegrating them.

  The letter consumed me for weeks. I hardly ate. Nor did I take fresh air except to stand at the stony water’s edge to look across at the decaying sea vessel. Everything I did concerned the letter - image enhancement, analysis, deciphering, extrapolation, supposition. Perhaps I was driven by the unhappy ghost of Helen, on whose desiccated form it lay, or by the ghost of her shrunken, nameless child, or one of those mummified others who perished with them. It’s done now, and still I’m at a loss. It did nothing to sustain me. I am nothing, and nowhere. The letter is the voice of nobody.

  George -

  Forgive me. I could do nothing for her. It’s so cold in here... [illegible]… Soon I’ll be with her.

  The remains of Helen and the child are still out there in the ship on the water, not far from here, undisturbed since I returned to the Unquiet Spirit. I stood over their dry husks just once, and did not go back. Her hair, only a few remaining translucent wisps on the brown, leathery scalp, was surely once dark and long. She wore a silver locket around her neck. I have it here now. Inside are two likenesses, degraded by time to grey silhouettes, only shapes now set against dirt. But it’s clear enough that the form on the left is Helen, the one on the right the father of her baby, the man called George. I sometimes picture George as an old man - as Dexter, in fact. Perhaps this is because their tomb is now also his, or possibly it is because it is so long since I encountered other live human beings that the face-recognition neural centres in my skull are atrophied. More troubling, though, are the times I picture him as myself.

  I have regressed to the state of mind that characterised my days before Dexter ended my solitude, long before our discovery of the ship of the dead. Then I, a man irrevocably and voluntarily separated from his own age, that improbable age when the world was filled with human beings, tormented by regret at my rash escape from the world, often tried to remember what it was like not to be alone. I found it impossible. My life, pre-exile, was as a dream to me. And, indeed, the present time felt almost as unreal, such was my numbed lassitude. I entertained ludicrous notions. Had I died? Perhaps I had committed suicide, and was now in limbo, or in hell. Or – another related possibility – having died, through the infinite potential of non-existence I re-sparked in another time and place. But surely I would not rematerialise in the same body, nor as a human, nor on Earth?

  I scarcely existed, though I was more alive than I am now. I went about my daily routine; I ate, drank, breathed, walked, bathed in the ocean, felt the sun on my back and the hot, wet air flow through my throat, talked to myself and to the computer, listened to and watched recordings, interacted with the Cat, and in spite of it all passed through the world as though it were at several removes from me. It was a state to which I had become accustomed, one from which I thought I would never emerge. But emerge from it I did, albeit briefly.

  I know you were trying your best. It’s not your fault that you failed.

  I can’t delude myself about my obsession with the letter. To me, it represented life, far more to me than the animate man Dexter, whose heart beat and whose blood was as hot as mine. The letter was life, as he was… something else. Anti-life. Unlife. He offered nothing I could not find in myself, and what I find in myself does not suffice. The letter, though… I envy those ancient people their suffering. At least when they died they lost real lives.

  I would scream at the crashing ocean, except my breath would be lost, would not perturb one droplet. I am a captive of myself. Thinking the same thoughts, being caught in this endless brooding cycle. It has no natural conclusion; there are no conclusions to be drawn. And worst of all now is when I sleep. I dream of nothing but their world, the world of Helen and George, of all the escalating catastrophes of that time. I imagine and reimagine it, relive it in fresh permutations each night. Yet I never forget I am dreaming, never escape there, never draw any solace from it. It is as though I am being sent there by the triumphant, non-human forces of this current age, sent there to be mocked.

  Thinking about that idea I’d like to turn into a story, a television programme, a play, whatever. It’s about the man whose life, like mine, is filled with endless trivial torments. Each day he endures unfriendly people, noisy streets, dirt, inability to rise above his lowly station, his failure to realise his modest ambitions. The twist is that somehow in the end he realises that he is not alive, but is in fact dead. He is dead, and has been condemned to see out eternity in one of the upper rings of Hell. A highly autobiographical piece of work it would be.

  The bus is stopping on O’Connell Bridge - not actually a bus stop because - a symptom of the times - scumbags have barricaded O’Connell Street. Their sturdy bulwark consists of burnt-out cars, bicycles, pieces of wood and masonry, sacks of rubbish, all heaped high.

  Well, good. Better to out here anyway on the bridge rather than that filthy cesspit lost to the forces of law and order. Step onto the hot pavement. Breathe in two half-lungfuls of the city centre’s familiar gaseous mix. It does not quite nauseate.

  Bus u-turning back the way it came, almost tipping over in its haste to get away from the danger zone.

  The police watch it go, sheltering against the hail of stones, bricks, bottles coming over the barricade from the scumbags, who have discerned that their fastness is threatened.

  Jesus, it’s hot. Shirt dripping with sweat. The bus was a hothouse, but it’s no better out here. Take off this tie, choking me. Stick it in my pocket. Will put it on at the steps when I get to work.

  Pigeons line the walls of the quay, flapping wings to keep cool. My feet swollen and raw on the littered boardwalk. Twenty-five minutes to get to work from here. No hurry. No point in that. For today I am to receive the professional equivalent of summary execution.

  No one else is hurrying either. People slope along slumping under the beating sun, squinting against the grit of the hot, dry gale.

  The Liffey shrinks a little more each day, now a sludgey trickle in a black silt channel. Exposed riverbed thick with rubbish. All of urban life is down there, every facet of human activity represented in one way or another - shopping trolleys, forklift pallets, tyres, shopping bags, planks, life belts, bits of rope, garments of various types, cans and bottles. The terrible stench wafts up as I walk across the Ha’penny Bridge. Pigeons oblivious to the vileness of it all drink at the low-tide limits of the water’s edge.

  A beggar is saying something. Don’t look at him. We all have to look after ourselves nowadays. It’ll be hard enough making ends meet now without giving money away to beggars as well. As of today, I’m no longer an earner. How many notches more do I have to fall before I’m a beggar? Not so many I fear.

  Some of those brought low in recent years still essay the swagger of old, but it doesn’t fool anyone. It’s too self-conscious, doggedly maintained for reasons unknown as they wander around doing whatever it is they do with no work and no money.

  Further down the quay there are no b
eggars, no bankrupt go-getters. I look across at the Four Courts, at the flak-jacketed Gardai standing with machine guns in front of the old building’s granite façade, at the stooping snipers on the roof. They are probably training their sights on me at this very moment. Move along. Last thing I want is to be mistaken for some pro-democracy firebrand or - worse - an IRA spotter.

  The soldiers despise the democracy people, but they fear the IRA. No democracy movement can topple the junta, but the Unity IRA just might be able to establish a different one. That’s the essential distinction. That’s why they’ll kick your head in if you demand a vote, but they’ll shoot your brain out if you advocate a 32-county socialistic Gael’s paradise.

  Close to Heuston Station now. Something in the cracked mud of the riverbed, a human form, sprawled, face-down, half sunk into the still-moist lower layers. The smell of rotting flesh wafts up to me. Don’t want to stop, deal with this.

  A man is coming up behind me. I stop him and point. ‘Jaysus’, he says, and takes out his phone. He’s ringing the police. A couple of women come across the road and are excited to see the corpse, speculate as to the nature of its provenance. I’ll leave them to it.

  Tighten my tie climbing the steps of the Boehm-Adler Professional Building. Someone has opened the window beside my desk up on the second floor to let in the breeze.

  Here is Baynes in the lobby, giving something to the receptionist. See if I can get past him before he sees me.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘So I am,’ I say.

  Keep walking. Oh God, why did I say that? What if the grapevine is all wrong and they’re not really going to sack us all today? Who knows what manner of misunderstanding might have occurred?

  The desks on my floor are deserted. I boot up my computer, access my mail. Says here that a general meeting is scheduled for 9:15. What time is it now? 9:17.

  Hurry down to the boardroom. Suffer the torment of walking into the meeting already in progress, all eyes on me. Just one seat is left, and it is the one right beside Baynes.

  The big screen is displaying a slide with RATIONALISATION in big letters.

  I look around the room and see the dismay on everyone’s faces. So it is true after all.

  Baynes is talking now, outlining the ‘challenges’ that ‘we’ face. Lists Boehm-Adler sales offices around the world that have closed in the past year.

  I wish he’d stop beating about the bush, wipe that stupid, smug look off his face. Look at him now, keying a text message even as he continues to explain to us how loss of trade with South-East Asia has depressed the European and North American economies. He’s on auto-pilot. He knows we’re hanging on his every word, but it would make no difference to him if we weren’t.

  Now he’s leaning forward in a sincerity pose. His talk edges closer to the message of doom we are all waiting to receive.

  ‘All right, then,’ he says. He has the gaze of a lizard. ‘The good news is that this office will not be closed. We’ll focus on our core accounts, those that have the most robust numbers. This will mean that projections can be made more accurately, and overall operational efficiency will be that bit greater. The bad news is that staff levels here in Dublin are to be cut by eighty percent. We had been hoping to provide a voluntary programme, but really what’s necessary is to be able to retain the right people, those with the skill sets Boehm-Adler will need in the coming months. You will all receive notification immediately outlining your employment status with the company going forward. Any questions?’

  There are a million. Everyone is trying to speak at once.

  There is no hope of finding a few job anywhere in Ireland as a graphic designer. None. Or any other similar work. Even labouring jobs are almost impossible to find. Still, Baynes sits and grins. I want to hit him, knock his teeth out of his gob, throw him out the window. Let him join that poor bastard in the river, who probably didn’t deserve that fate even one tenth as much as Baynes would have.

  I can’t take this. I’m getting out of here. I’m going back to my desk, and I am going to sit there until I’m told whether I am to get the boot. Don’t they understand that Baynes will tell them nothing more, that to wait for reassurance or consolation from him achieves nothing except to humiliate themselves and to fuel his pathetic ego?

  I stand at the window in the glare of the morning sun, try to derive some sustenance from it. There are police cars and an ambulance down at the quayside now, dealing with the corpse in the mud. A long tailback along the quay, drivers honking their horns at each other. I wish I were among them, and not in here awaiting sentence.

  Fifteen or twenty minutes go by. Only a few members of the department have returned to their desks. The junior girl from HR drops a sealed envelope on my desk and keeps walking. She wants to avoid talk, which is fair enough in the circumstances I suppose.

  George Holden it says on the envelope. The letter is typed in company notepaper, signed at the bottom by Baynes.

  George,

  Further to this morning’s discussion in the boardroom, I’m sorry to tell you that you have been selected for compulsory redundancy. In compliance with current legislation, you will receive four weeks’ salary as severance and a month’s salary in lieu of notice. Your employment at Boehm-Adler ends immediately.

  Stephen Baynes, Senior Development Manager

  I crumple it up and toss it out the window. It lands on the porch roof over the main entrance.

  I had better phone Helen. I dial 9 for an outside line, but nothing happens. They’ve actually cut off the phones. Unbelievable. Have to use my mobile.

  ‘Yeah?’

  Heathshade’s voice. I hate it when he answers the phone. It’s not his phone to answer, something he seems unable to comprehend.

  ‘Marcus.’ I am civil to him as always. ‘It’s George. Is Helen around?’

  ‘Oh hello, mate.’

  His voice is scratchy and subdued. In the months since he became our lodger he and his Manc accent have some to symbolise all my misery, all the limitations and compromises of the lives we find ourselves living. €30 a week he pays us. €30. Talked us down from a still-pathetic €50.

  ‘Sorry, mate. Bit hoarse. Jesus, what a night last night. Still a bit drunk if I’m honest. Anyway, here she is now mate.’

  ‘Hello?’ Helen’s voice.

  ‘Well, it’s happened.’

  I’ve been too blunt. I hear her gasp at the other end. She’d held out some hope. It strikes me how upset this will make her.

  ‘What’s the package like?’

  ‘Legal minimum.’

  There’s a pause. ‘You okay?’ I ask her.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We knew it would happen, didn’t we?’

  ‘It’s different when it’s real.’

  And so it is.

  I promise to come straight home. No one even to say goodbye to here. I don’t have any friends in the office any more. It’s not like the good old days. Everyone I got on with has left, got out before the ship sank. All except for shiftless me, too lazy to apply for other work, too contrary, too in love with my own perverse sense of personal dignity to make a good impression with the boss.

  I have to pass by the police and the ambulance crew fishing the body out of the mud. The smell of putrefaction is stronger now. Cross to the brewery side of the road to minimise the chance of witnessing something disgusting. And I’ll give the bus a miss, I think. Walk through the city centre. Temple Bar and Grafton Street. Stop by a record store for a few minutes, but only succeed in depressing myself. Can afford nothing. Stephen’s Green, then Harcourt Street and across the canal. Stop in an air-conditioned shop in Ranelagh to get a two-litre bottle of water. I tarry there for a few minutes, leafing through magazines, to enjoy the coolness of the air. But I am rumbled by a bouncer, and told to make my purchase and leave.

  I get back little change out of a tenner and return to the enveloping heat outside. A water tanker is rolling past, one of the hundreds tha
t enter the city every day, converted creamery lorries from the relatively moist west of the country. It’s got an escort of two cycle cops, armed. Seems like every other week there’s a news story about a tanker hijacking, as often as not involving gunfire. Sometimes it’s the crime gangs, sometimes the Unity IRA. One thing that never changes is that it’s always scum attracted by the promise of easy money.

  The tanker is leaving behind a trail of water on the asphalt sucked almost instantaneously into the dry air.

  In the front door now, the smell of some sort of casseroley thing reaches my nostrils.

  Heathshade’s sitting in front of the TV. He’s got a black eye. No doubt his night on the town was a suitably sordid affair.

  ‘Lunch smells good. Eh, mate? Your lady’s a hell of a cook.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Kitchen.’

  She’s sitting at the table waiting for me.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ I say.

  ‘Worried.’

  ‘I promise you, things will turn around.’

  ‘Don’t promise things you can’t control.’

  ‘But…’

  I don’t say what I was going to say. She knows what it was anyway, and I know she doesn’t want to have to give the answer she’d give.

  Yes, my graphic novel might end up making us some money, but that it is not very likely.

  There is nothing to be gained from covering that territory again.

  Heathshade appears for his lunch, and whatever more there is to be said on this matter - not much, I expect - will have to wait until later.

  Eat in a silence sullied by Heathshade’s slurping.

  ‘Nothing so good as real food,’ he says.

  He steps over to the fridge, takes out a couple of cans of his Dutch Gold.