‘Which was actually rather…’ his companion pondered for a moment, ‘rather audacious on your part, come to think of it.’
Arthur considered this. He considered the word. Audacious. He paused. Audacious. Yes. He drew a deep breath. His back straightened. His chin lifted again. He stopped pretending.
‘So,’ he said, his voice hardening, ‘does moving up a level –I believe those were your words –does moving up mean that you’re to be held wholly responsible for that boy drowning recently?’
His companion stiffened; his beam faded. ‘He wasn’t a boy. He was twenty-eight bloody years old. Don’t you read the papers?’
Arthur shrugged. He looked down, modestly, his insides warming. His companion walked to the opposite side of the path, leaned against a Scots Pine and then peered up tentatively into its branches, as if expecting to see a wild little monkey dangling among its boughs.
Arthur strung his fingers together. His confidence burgeoned.
‘I did read the papers,’ he muttered eventually, but without any hint of brashness, ‘I read about the Treasure Hunt. I followed the clues.’
‘No,’ his companion interjected, unable to help himself. ‘No. Not a Treasure Hunt exactly…’
‘Oh God. But how… how imprecise of me,’ Arthur’s mean lips suddenly served up the thinnest of grins, ‘and how stupid. Of course not. You called it a Loiter, didn’t you? A Loiter,’ Arthur unstrung his fingers and then hung them, instead, slack and loose between his bony thighs, ‘because our good friend Wesley invents special words for things, doesn’t he? He thinks words make things special. He wants every action to be particular, to be… to be individual in some way. And you know what?’
No time for a response; Arthur rushed on, regardless, ‘I honestly –I mean I honestly – believe that Wesley is actually self-obsessed and arrogant and vain… and vain…’ Arthur lunged after this word hungrily, and when his mouth finally caught up with it, his tongue literally wriggled with the physical pleasure it accorded him, ‘and vainglorious enough to seriously think that this curiously irritating custom of his –this silly habit, this novel facility –gives him some kind of special premium on originality. Not just that, either, but on… but on morality itself, even… You know? Some kind of God-given… some kind of…’
Arthur’s fingers were now twitching so violently as he struggled, a second time –and failed, quite notably –to find the word he was searching for, that he actually looked as if he was playing scales on an invisible Steinway (right there, in the forest), or practising something impossibly fast and fiddly by Liszt or Stravinsky.
And while he continued to grasp –helplessly –for this infernal word that evaded him so absolutely, his eyes –previously glazed and grey –seemed to moisten and widen (their pupils dilating), his cheeks (previously sallow and sunken) grew ripe as sugared plums in an autumnal pudding (a crumble, a fool, something tart, something hot, something sticky), until he looked like a man who’d swallowed down a large lump of gristle much too quickly –without chewing properly.
But Arthur was still breathing. He was not halted or suffocated or silenced by what was happening. He was still vital. He was still active and still functioning. If anything, he’d been galvanised. He’d been enlivened. He’d been pinched –slapped –spanked –thrashed by an intoxicatingly hard whack of righteous propriety. An exquisitely addictive, high-minded, bare-fisted, low-church-style sanctimony. His rage was not only pious, it was borderline biblical – it was Abraham’s wife Rachel, trapped, temporarily, in a violently impotent maternal frenzy.
Arthur’s companion (still leaning against his tree), observed Arthur’s long, lean fingers racing, the deep colour in his cheeks –his lips –and a tiny quirk of satisfaction began to lift his brow a way. Yet before it was completely risen, before it could settle, unequivocally, Arthur’s fingers abruptly stopped their fluttering. They fell back between his knees again. He suddenly grew still, the colour draining from his face –at speed –as if somehow repenting the too sensual flush of its former flowering.
‘The sad truth of the matter…’ finally his voice re-emerged from the icy depths of his sudden stasis, ‘the sad truth is that Wesley’s been brainwashed by his own publicity. Brainwashed to the point that he actually, honestly believes in all that rubbish he’s been spooning out over the years. All the lies. All the humbug. All the ridiculous chic… chic… chicanery.’
Arthur stumbled, quietly, on his final delivery. But even this stutter couldn’t trip him up. It couldn’t silence him. Not utterly.
‘The bald truth is that he’s watched too much bad TV,’ Arthur spoke almost regretfully, inhaling again, eventually, with some difficulty. ‘Yes. That, and he’s been lucky. He’s landed on his feet a few times when by rights he shouldn’t have. He’s milked his opportunities. And finally, to top it all off, he’s jumped –and so… so wholeheartedly, with such flagrant, such obvious, such embarrassing rapaciousness – onto this whole, madly convoluted, New Age environmental bandwagon. All that ludicrously pat Third Wave jumble. All that Alvin Toffler “Small is Beautiful” crap.’
Arthur sniffed, somewhat haughtily, ‘I mean it’s all been very timely. No point denying it. And he’s certainly taken the opportunity to read up on a little bit of pretentious French philosophy. He’s sharpened his act. He’s honed it. And I’m sure…’ Arthur’s voice was growing louder, his hands were picking up tempo again, were playing again –The Death March now, real-time, then double-time, then just plain madly, ‘I’m certain he thinks he’s a thoroughly modern hero. Like something from Rousseau. Or Nietzsche. Or, better still, an anti-hero. In fact I’m positive he thinks he’s a genius. And there are plenty of fools out there more than happy to go along with his delusions. But not me. I’m not one of them. Because he isn’t a genius, and I’ll keep on saying it. He isn’t a genius. Far from it. He’s puerile. He’s a shithead and a fathead and a peacock. He’s… He’s…’
Arthur stopped again, mid-flow, swallowed hard, twice, as if to keep something down, to push it back, ripped off his baseball cap (as if longing to keep his fingers distracted) and then continued talking, but glancing up now; connecting, engaging, projecting, speaking more carefully, more plainly, ‘A Loiter,’ he rotated his cap in his hand, pulling gently at the lining, as if testing its solidity. ‘It’s a movement –a violation, of sorts –but slow and calm and casual. It’s an invasion, isn’t it? Or an infringement? A trespass. It’s slippery. It’s untrustworthy. It’s stupid and it’s pointless. In actual fact it’s just like… it’s just like Wesley. It expresses him perfectly.’
Arthur shook his head, slowly, as if in wonder, ‘A Loiter.’ He rolled the word around on his tongue, ‘It’s actually quite pathetic, when you really come to think about it. It’s unformed. It’s adolescent… And yet,’ he looked up, keenly, ‘didn’t the company end up adopting the phrase? Didn’t you adopt it, I mean personally?’
Arthur’s companion grimaced, as if taken aback by his pointed ferocity, but then he shrugged, ‘We might’ve used it in the initial publicity, for a price, but –and let me emphasise this fact quite categorically –in this particular context it had nothing whatsoever to do with either mischief or risk. That was our proviso. And obviously there had to be a worthwhile prize at the end of it all, an incentive, a reward…’
‘So you called in Wesley,’ Arthur, in turn –even
