Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

Annabeth breathes out, relieved. At once the room becomes alive with chatter: men knocking about bawdy jokes about feeling comfortable with somebody’s legs wrapped around their face, or feeling at their best propping up the bar in the White Horse. She is about to use the hubbub as a cover to chat with Rufus, to see if he’s doing OK, when she notices him walking over to Cox. He leans down. Whispers in his ear. Stays there, bent over, for several moments. When he straightens up, there is a red welt on the back of Cox’s wrist. Though he tries to hide it, pain is etched on his face.

Orton turns away from him as if nothing has happened. Smiles, as he witnesses the class engaging in the topic. Seeks out Annabeth and catches her eye. Gestures at himself, with a mock arrogance, that says, ‘I did this’.

She looks back to Cox. He’s looking at the back of his wrist. Staring at the livid red welt as if not quite believing it.

And he is smiling.

Grinning, inanely, as if listening to a joke nobody else can hear.

She crosses to his table. Looks down at what he has doodled on the paper.

Feels her heart clench; her insides turn cold.

He’s drawn a snow globe.

‘Like it?’ he asks, his eyes hypnotic, his face inches from hers.

And she is eighteen, again. Bloodied and weeping, trapped beneath the unmoving bulk of the man she has just stabbed through the neck.

ELEVEN

They’re looking at him as if he’s about to sing. Eyebrows up, pencils poised over clean, lined pages. Christ, if he’d known criminals were this eager to learn, Rufus would have sacked off universities and their lifeless, dead-eyed English students years ago. Sure, Karen the librarian is busy scribbling something more important than he is on her big A4 pad, but everybody else wants to know what Rufus Orton – a man who went from a rising star to yesterday’s darling without noticing anything very much in-between – is about to say. He likes it. Likes it a lot. He’ll hate himself later for basking in such unmerited adulation, but for now, he just likes having an audience.

They’ve had their coffees. Had their biscuits. He didn’t get a chance to chat with Annabeth as she was off doing something in the offices during the break, but she arrived back just as the second session was about to begin. He’s glad. This is the bit he prides himself on. He might be shit at almost anything, but he knows he puts on a good show.

‘Character’s not a difficult area to get right, provided you’re even slightly interested in human beings,’ he says, perched on the edge of the desk and addressing his comments to the room in general rather than a specific student. The last thing he wants is to make anybody uncomfortable, though he wouldn’t object to another opportunity to butt heads with Griffin Cox. He feels him on the periphery of his vision, sitting there and giving off a fog of bad energy: a compost heap on a hot day.

‘If you’ve had one meaningful conversation in your lives, you can create characters who are fully formed: real people, with flaws and dreams, regrets and secrets. It’s like building a snowman. You start with a snowball, and you roll it and roll it and it becomes bigger and more human until soon you’re looking at something that deserves a face and a name. Watch.’ A smile, to the group: a clown about to twist a balloon into a rude shape for the children. ‘I’ll show you.’

He glances at Annabeth. She’s staring at him as if studying a painting.

‘I’d like to introduce you to somebody,’ he says, smiling. He shifts his position and waves into the empty air to his right. ‘This is John,’ he says.

‘You’re off your box, mate,’ smiles Mings, with a grin, and is shushed at once by a hard stare from Callan: his eyes looking like they could cut a hole through a bank vault.

Rufus rubs his hands together. Presses on.

‘I won’t ask you to say hello because he can be a bit shy, can John, and he has a tendency to blush when he’s anxious. It’s a bit of a disability. He’s got Irish blood, you see, on his mother’s side. A tendency to freckle in the sun. Sweats a lot so he’s always paranoid that he’s giving off a bit of a whiff. Over-compensates. Splashes on the aftershave until it’s a bit overpowering. Big brown eyes that make him seem a bit soft – the sort of chap who might like to stay out of trouble rather than throwing himself in. Clever lad, is our John, though he doesn’t push it forward. Big reader. Loves the poetry of Seamus Heaney and can recite it from memory, though he’s got nobody to recite it to. Lost his wife, God rest her. Three months after the honeymoon and the doctors told her that she wasn’t going to make it to their first anniversary. Broke John, so it did, but she was determined to make the best of her last few months. Told John to take out the biggest loans he could so they could have the holiday of a lifetime. Sad thing though, John’s credit rating was shot to shit. His dad – bit of a wrong ’un. Been using his boy’s name to swindle credit cards. So John couldn’t give his dying wife what she wanted …’

‘Poor bastard,’ mutters Mings, at the front of the room, and nobody takes the piss.

Rufus alters his posture. Enjoys knowing that everybody here is now emotionally invested in a fictional character he’s making up as he goes along.

‘But John here had a friend, who had a friend, who knew somebody that could help him out. Said he could have ten K in his pocket within the hour. No contract. No further discussion. No details about repayment rates or deadlines. Just a gesture that could enable John