Rhinoceros 17
On the eve of Ryon’s release – not that Alan was counting – he met Jen in The White Lion. Already their relationship had formed itself into a series of fixed habits, like a new shell forming on a snail. The same cubby hole, the Black Sheep and Magners, the ritual of straightening out recent events in Alan’s life, like remaking a constantly ruffled bed.
They hadn’t moved on to the cinema, yet, nor had they kissed or even held hands. Alan wasn’t sure why. Perhaps, he pondered, age and wisdom had discounted the rites and games of love, and that they would instead find themselves a couple one day by a process of osmosis. Or maybe Jen was waiting for a sign from Alan. Come to think of it, he had been thinking of buying a new jacket recently.
During the course of the evening, which, as ever, provided a varied and surreal menu of conversation, Jen asked about Ryon, and how his release would affect Alan.
“Well, it’s got to happen, that’s my take on it. And he is a master of his own actions – within certain limits. I don’t know what he’ll do. He leaves school soon – not that he was in school much anyway – but I don’t think he relishes a return to life with mum and the Mitchelsons.” Alan shuddered. “Who would? He’s a bright boy, but I don’t think he can see a way out.”
“Can’t he just go away?”
“Move from The Meadows Estate? How many actually manage that? The place is a giant human magnet. You say ‘university’ to the brighter ones and it’s like you’ve suggested moving to Mars. No, he’ll stay. But something will change.”
“Could he go to college, at least?”
“Realistically, he won’t get the GCSEs he needs. They’ll offer him a foundation course, but he’ll tell them to stuff it, even if he tries it. Too baby-ish. As I said, he’s bright. Could get five A to Cs easily. But you need English and Maths minimum to get on the good courses. The system’s dug him into a hole. With a little help from Ryon himself.”
“Will he make life hard for you?”
Alan shrugged. “He could, but why should he? He seems to have had a hand in the YouTube thing, but I don’t think he had any motives. That’s the trouble. He has no objectives, he just plods through each day, see what it brings. An opportunist.”
“The same point could easily be made about you, Alan. The victim of circumstances created by others. Wouldn’t it have been just a little exciting if you actually had put the films on YouTube?”
“What for? The attention?”
“Your job!”
“It would’ve backfired, Jen. Everything always does.”
“Really?”
“The staff think I’m some kind of folk hero, and the pupils think I’m an idiot for not fleecing the newspapers. Life feels dangerous enough already for me, without the need to shake it up further.”
“But you’re just reacting all the time…”
Alan took a big gulp of his drink and sighed, partly to forestall the conversation going further. “I’m sorry, Jen. Left to my own devices maybe I do seem to mess up. But the world is a messy place.”
“Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself, Alan. I’m sure you said a while back that we are masters of our own destinies.”
“Well, other people seem to be, yes…”
“Oh, come off it!”
Alan was aware that he was being given a telling off, but he continued anyway. “There is a part of it where whatever we do, whatever, um, contingency plans we make, other events sneak up unawares. It can’t just be me that’s constantly being caught out.”
“Other people anticipate, Alan, they make – “ and she made speechmarks with her fingers mockingly, “ – ‘contingency plans’. That’s how life works.” Alan felt uncomfortable with the course of the discussion, and held on to the edge of the table for support. He began to see her as a bitter medicine disguised in glucose. But he also felt he needed to hear her, too.
“They count for little in my experience. Life has too many parallel universes.” Alan was talking himself into a rut, he knew it. He was like a car crash, and Jen was telling him how to avoid disaster but he carried on oblivious, foot firmly stuck on the throttle.
“Your experience is somewhat narrow, Alan,” Jen flatly said. There was a hint of lives Jen might have lived that Alan hadn’t even bothered to find out about.
“How so?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Of people, other lives, other ways of living, alternatives…”
“I see enough of life every day at work.”
“That? Just the Meadows Estate with a few pasty-faced kids who think they live on the Bronx. But they’re all doing nicely on benefits. I should know.”
“Then you should know that the benefits system keeps them there, right at the bottom of the pile, where everyone seems to want them.”
“Then we agree. Take away the benefits, and allow people to adapt to survive.”
“That’s not what I was saying.” Alan used to enjoy a good debate, but these days he didn’t feel he had a full grasp of the facts. “What if you’ve been dealt a duff hand at birth? How does that work?”
“And how many children around the world could you say that about? They survive without 3D TVs, fast food, a taxi to school. They learn what’s important in life, Alan.” Jen was exasperated. He hadn’t seen her like this before, her mouth shaped to a rectangle, eyes glittering, leaning forward to press home her point. Alan felt uncomfortable with this demonstrative edge, like he was in the deep end of an emotional pool. His arms felt like superfluous appendages, slumped on the table.
He sighed. “This is Sheffield, not Mozambique. We can only start from where we are.”
“Oh, that again.” And Jen sat back, defeated.
There was a long pause during which Alan weighed the balance of their progress so far. All their interactions seemed to be held in sway by subtle systems of checks and stops, Alan mused. These offered possible ways out, or perhaps just pauses for reflection. And for Alan, each conversation was a probe into unknown territory.
Alan considered Jen. Perhaps she had complications in her life, too, awaiting appraisal or organisation. Perhaps he had exhausted her energies. Somehow he had slipped comfortably into a familiar stance of passive victimhood. Annie had often pointed out that he had never ceased being a child. But Annie was a figurehead of the past.
A little later on in the evening, after some faltering, but reassuringly less challenging, conversation, Jen said, “Go and see Ryon when he comes out. Meet him somewhere. Tell him how things are, tell him what you’ve told me tonight. It’s no use to me, but you could make a difference to him. Tell him what you are going to do, before he tells you.”
Alan thought for a while. There was a tension between them now, like the resonation of an off key note in a symphony. He might lose her if he didn’t shape up, he realised. And more to the point, he didn’t want to forego this warmth and a sense of a future to be lived.
So Alan resolved there and then to come up with a viable plan, a series of propositions leading to action. And he held on to this intention throughout the following days, right up to the time when he decided to visit the newly released Ryon Walker in his home.
