Joseph Barnes  

Extract from Untitled Novel

Chapter One

Unless decapitated, dismembered, or otherwise deconstructed, Ellis would leave the world as uncomfortably large as he entered it. There was too much of him; he didn’t fit. He moved in a towering, teetering way. His limbs encroached upon uninhabited pockets of air. His spade-like hands enveloped and invaded. He felt, at times, as if all six foot eight of him was expanding uncontrollably into a universe not configured to his proportions.

           The dancefloor at Dynamos, at least, was nowhere near big enough.

           He’d been squirming about for air in the crammed heat of it all. Arms, legs, mouths and torsos twisted together into a kind of human apparatus, which turned cog-like with each torrent of music. Ellis could sense the machine’s dream to whirr on without him, to purge itself of the rhythm-disturbers and motion-perverters, the faulty components who stumbled around and spilled their drinks.

           Ellis couldn’t, however, see a way out. The clockwork spun suffocatingly around him. He tried to turn against it but found himself blocked. A man scowled up at him, his face appearing purple then red in the shifting light. He moved again but was blocked by the same man, who pointed furiously at a stain on his shirt. Had he done that? Ellis said he was sorry, leaning in to lift his message above the noise. He was sorry, he said, as the man took hold of him and dragged him away from the crowd. As they hurtled out of the club, Ellis remembered that his friends were outside, and he felt a wave of relief when he saw the stars shining above him and smelled cigarette smoke around him. Before he could turn to look for them, however, Ellis earned three blows to the head, two to the ribs, and one to something inside him. His face erupted on the wet concrete and he felt his mind trying to seep out through his wound, as if it wanted to escape the shame of his body and wander out into the night.

           As he lay on the floor, covered in blood and booze, he began to wonder whether being dismantled was not out of the question.

*

Looking around, the first thing Ellis noticed was that he’d spilled himself all over the place. The second thing he noticed was a boat, which the tidal movement of the ground carried towards him. The concrete rippled and the boat pitched up and down on black waves. Ellis lifted his head, straining towards it. A blurry oar wavered back and forth in front of him, whisking mist into milky whirlpools. It moved so close he thought he could touch it. His nostrils were lined with the smell of salt and wood as a gust of wind passed over the waves and through the boat. Elevated by this breeze, his mind seemed to move back into him, his body began to lift itself up.

           But, when he was punched again, ears ringing with the blow, eyes like melting snow, Ellis collapsed back into the inky waters. He spilled himself into the world and the stars were condensation above him, casting icy droplets down upon his motionless body.

           He shivered as he dreamt of the kayak. He dreamt of how he’d been nestled perfectly in the tip of it, fitting then as he’d never fit since. He dreamt of his mother paddling him through clusters of jellyfish and beneath rocky arches cloaked in sea birds. Her strokes had rippled rhythmically around him. Now, sixteen years later, they rippled within him. Like a distant heartbeat.

           Over the past few months, Ellis had been unable to escape this dream. Whether sleeping, daydreaming, or knocked unconscious outside a nightclub, he found himself on the childhood holiday, reliving that day once again. Often, it began with his brother, Isaac, dragging him across a pebbled beach towards the sea. His feet hurt as the stones pushed sharply into his soles. Isaac, however, needed to show him something and he was trying to be brave. When they reached the water, panting and covered in salty speckles, his brother put his arm around him and pointed at a large crab. It sat like a fat judge beneath the surface, watching the two boys stoop towards it.

           “This…” started Isaac, his eyes wide with excitement but his imagination unable to keep up.

           “Is a very dangerous creature!” he continued, now sure of his story. “It has been killing lots of fish, and also sometimes people, who have dared to come near this beach.”

           Ellis instinctively moved away but his brother clung onto him: “We must take care of it before our adventure today. We must make sure our family is safe, Captain Smellis.”
           He remembered how his brother’s eyes had been huge and nocturnal with delight.

           Together, they began to pelt pebbles into the sea. Ellis felt like the most courageous man in the world, until Seb came down towards them. His eldest brother had come to show them how to skim stones. When Seb realised what they were actually doing, he pushed them over and screamed. Isaac laughed in high-pitched squeals but, seeing the look on Seb’s face, Ellis felt guilty.

           Later, they joined their parents and divided up into kayaks. As his mother pushed them forwards, Ellis slowly lowered his six-year-old hand into the ocean. He’d been afraid of doing this when they’d left the harbour, as the water was full of jellyfish which were swollen and purple like translucent plums. Now, however, they’d entered the realm of great explorers, and he forced himself to be brave.

           The water sloshed around his hand; it was a cold crystal soup. Proud of its cleanliness, it sparkled confidently as it leapt up around him. He wiggled his fingers back and forth approvingly and watched as Isaac – almost nine – stood up suddenly at the front of Dad’s kayak. Before anyone could do anything, Isaac jumped in. There was no splash. The ocean accepted his brother without complaint and sealed over him like gel. Ellis was catapulted into the rear of the boat by his mother’s arm. She’d caught him just before he’d been able to join his brother. It was more difficult to feel like a proper explorer when you couldn’t jump in after your colleagues. He’d wished his mother wasn’t there. She held him tight as they watched Dad reach over the side of the boat, forgetting to close his mouth, which he’d left in an oval shape. Seb sat in his kayak, silent and still beside Dad. He looked very scared, and Ellis thought that out of the three of them, Isaac was definitely the best explorer and Seb was definitely the worst – even though Seb was eleven and got to have his own kayak.

           Years later, Dad told them that Isaac almost died that day. Ellis had found that difficult to believe; he’d envied his brother; his brother had relished his plunge. That was how they both remembered it. Though, apparently, Isaac had become stuck under Seb’s kayak, which had been pushed right up against Dad’s. Isaac was therefore contained beneath the surface by two boats. When Dad eventually closed his mouth and jumped in, Isaac had taken large gulps of water and was almost unconscious. Ellis didn’t remember Isaac being pulled out, nor his parents arguing about Dad’s delayed response. But he did remember him and his mother venturing off on their own after Isaac’s incident. He’d felt strange about leaving his colleagues but had put it down to a separate mission reserved just for their kayak. He was very much enjoying being an explorer and understood that moments such as these required bravery and determination. Isaac’s plunge had leapt into the very centre of Ellis, stirring everything into a frenzy of excitement.

It had pained him since, the realisation that he couldn’t remember the final moments of his family being together. He couldn’t remember the moment when they’d separated at all. Then again, if Isaac hadn’t jumped, he might not have the final memories of his mother that he did now. For there was a thread inlaid in the sinews of his brain that glistened with this trip. It had remained glowing all this time.

           Ellis remembered, very clearly, passing into a cavern of blue light.

           “Look at the fish, Ellis! Look at the fish fluttering beneath us!” his mother had said.

           And, in the cavern of blue light, a forest of sea grass swayed below. The light was filtering in from an underwater passage, illuminating the grass. Ellis latched onto that word fluttering. His mind was spluttering different utterings of it as water dripped off his mother’s paddle and filled the cavern with a ‘pat-pat-pat’ sound. She had a beautiful way of seeing the world. This was something he maintained even now, despite having only know his mother for six years.

           The word fluttering played upon his imagination, so that when he peered over the side, his face a pulsating shade of blue, the tiny fish swimming between the weeds had looked like woodland nymphs darting from tree to tree, influenced by the stormy ripples of his paddle. The water was clear enough to see down to the forest floor, where dark shapes shuffled and scuttled around the base of the trees. He feared for the nymphs but was happy they could flutter up to the surface where they were safe (he’d keep them safe with his paddle).

           In this moment he felt not just like an explorer but a god, peering down into a world of his own creation. He could see fish gathering in the shadow of their boat and turned to smile at his mother, feeling proud of their discovery. His mother smiled back, placing the tips of her fingers in the glowing water and twinkling them quickly up and down, her nails red buoys in a tropical storm. The fish came flying up to greet them and she, a puppeteer of the seas, led them back and forth beneath her palm. Ellis was bewitched by this magic. Now water dripped from his paddle too. It joined his mother’s ‘pat-pat-pat’ with a ‘pit-pat’ sound and together they filled it all with their own noise and made music in the blue light.

           After that, everything looked different. He’d felt a strong sense of everything fitting together, and of him fitting within it. The universe had made sense then in a way it had not since. Ellis had been chasing that vision these past sixteen years. He often tried to ignite within himself the feeling he once had of being perfectly encased within a kayak, which was encased within a cavern, encased within an island, encased by an ocean, beneath which was encased a whole stream of life.

           When they left the cavern, his mother had pointed out old forts and bastions dotted on the tops of cliffs. He didn’t know what bastions meant but, when she explained it, he thought how good it was that they were called bastions and how nice that word felt in his mouth, like a cold cube of stone.

           “Look how they trickle down into the sea, Ellis,” she’d said. And he’d lingered on her words, having visions of bastions falling into the sea and being inhabited thereunder by nymphs seeking refuge from the dark, shifting shapes on the forest floor. He’d been like a telescope mounted to the front of that kayak; all light flowed through him and he flowed through it, his mother pointing things out and him travelling into them. In those moments he had discovered coves and caverns, castles and cliffs, communities of birds and fish, all for the first time. The island belonged to him and his mother; they had forged for themselves a place within it. The two-person-kayak, small and nimble, enabled them to snake in and out of rocks and archways, bays and pools. All the while they encountered nobody else.

           All life was their life.

           Ellis and his mother were wordless and trance-like as they handed the kayak back to the bearded old woman they’d rented it from. They walked up a steep cobbled track to the hotel and then Ellis’ memory came to an end. He had tried, many times, to recreate this final journey. It was, however, like a marathon for the mind, and he wasn’t the right fit for long-distance running.

           Every time Ellis had attempted to recall the disappearance of his mother, he expanded into the clouds, sometimes having nightmares in which he’d trampled her, having lost her beneath him.

Ellis had been trying to work out how he fit into the story of her death ever since. He knew they’d been due to leave the island the next morning. She’d taken the opportunity to stray from the path, leaving Ellis safely placed on the stone cobbles like a chessboard king. She’d gone to look at the view. To look over all their recently explored territory. And she’d fallen to her death there.

           The area was virtually abandoned, which, though previously lending to the magic of it all, haunted them in the following days. They searched for an explanation: it had been windy; precarious ground; historical site of misadventure. The conclusion was drawn: she’d explored too much.

           In his dreams, Ellis was left to walk beside her until she disappeared. Until he crushed her, outgrew her, outran her, outlasted her in some way. But this time, as the ambulance pulled up outside St Pancras Hospital, he awoke just before the sad part. He woke to find that his face was streaked with liquid and that there was a strange smell in the air. As the sea seeped from his mind, pain and embarrassment flooded back. Fluorescent lights flickered with a shocking blue-white immediacy above him. Ellis turned onto his side and vomited. It splashed up the side of the bed and filled the air with a bitter, beery smell. A nurse appeared from nowhere and muttered something. His feet were cold and his face tingled with the substances that had been stuffed into it.

           And then he was asleep again, curled up and breathing very slowly as he was wheeled into a room where things were attached to his twitching fingers.

Chapter Four

The flooded concrete lapped over Ellis’ shiny brown shoes. He was shivering in the shirt and tie Isaac had made him put on, his wet trousers chafing his thighs as they marched down Piccadilly Street in the drizzle.

           “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” said Ellis.

           “Doing what? I’m only taking you out for dinner, Ellis, it’s quite a normal thing that people do,” Isaac said, looking around quickly to get his bearings.

           “Dinner, right.” It wouldn’t just be dinner. It was Isaac.

           “Yes, the meal that’s eaten at the end of the day. And I’m buying it for you at the end of this day because you look like an emaciated wrestler.”

           “Where are we going? How come I’ve had to dress up? Don’t spend loads on me Isaac, I can’t really taste – my face is screwed.”

           “Just a local of mine.”
           “You live miles from here.”

           Isaac threw his arm around Ellis, which hurt because everything was bruised. Then he suddenly stopped dead in the middle of the pavement and hissed, “Look at the size of her nose!”

           He pointed directly at a woman across the street. Ellis swatted Isaac’s hand down.

           “You’ve got a big nose.”

           “But she looks like she’s being dragged along by it,” Isaac said, still staring at her, “at least I’m in control of mine.”

           He started doing an impression of her, pushing his nose forwards and stumbling after it. 

           “Stop being a dick!”

           Isaac did stop being a dick, after about twenty seconds, when they reached a white building with black railings and a sign painted in green italics above the entrance: Maison Des Sportifs.
           Isaac straightened up and guided Ellis towards the door.

           “French restaurant?” Ellis asked.

           “Ssssh,” snapped Isaac, as a man in a three-piece suit opened the door and held out a hand. Isaac handed him a card: “one member, one guest.”

*

The man guided them through a wood-panelled corridor. It was lined with candles that stuck out from the walls and lit up a plethora of old cartoons depicting hockey players, cricket players, rugby players and jockeys. There were also many photos of men in bow ties, aged about twenty-five to sixty, lined up beneath the heading Committee Sportifs. They were dated, ranging from 1903 to 2016. A green curtain lined the end of the corridor. Their guide pulled it back and beckoned them through to a large room swarming with smartly-dressed people. The whole place sizzled with noise. It was lavishly decorated, with green armchairs and dark wood, a bar in the centre with ornate gold beer taps and a vast bookshelf with leather-bound volumes spanning the entire length of the far wall.

           Ellis and Isaac were shown to a table in the corner.

           “Let’s get drunk,” said Isaac, rubbing his hands together.

           “I’m concussed!”

           “Me too” he said as he called a bald man over to the table. “Four Sixes?”

           The man nodded and scuttled away.

           “What just happened?” laughed Ellis.

           “I ordered four Sixes.”

           “Okay… and what are four sixes?”

           “24, I think.”

           “What?”

           Isaac smirked at him and leant forward.

           “Okay,” he whispered, “A Six is this brilliant drink they do here - it isn’t on the menu, bit of a member’s secret, which is why I’m conveying this to you right now in such a secret manner.”

           “Okay,” Ellis said, “and what’s in it, why’s it secret?”

           “What’s in it? Well I don’t fucking know! I don’t make them, do I? I’m just a man, Ellis, and not worthy of carrying around such information. It’s a secret because it tastes unreal and it completely knocks you out the park – which is why they don’t serve it to just anybody. And that’s why it’s called a Six, because in cricket when – ”

           “I got that, thanks.”

           “And apparently they use six different types of booze to make it.”

           “Six! Isaac this is a bad – ”

           “Already ordered them. You wouldn’t make me drink four by myself?”

           “Only because you’re a bad drunk.”

           Ellis shook his head and looked around. The whole way there he’d caught people looking at his face, the bruises and taped-up nose contradicting the smart clothes. But here, he’d barely received a glance.

           “What’s the deal with this bar?” Ellis asked.
           “Well, it’s more of a club. A sports club, for people involved in the sports industry – y’know, sportsmen, sports agents, analysts.” He cleared his throat and something teemed in his eyes. “To be a member, you have to get referred by three current members. Then there’s this giant fuck-off waiting list. I’d have been on it for decades. A century, maybe. But I got in with just my charisma. It’s a miracle really, considering – ”

           “That’s super cool mate.”

           When Isaac started pumping himself up like this, someone had to burst the balloon before it was airborne. Otherwise, he’d be floating around for hours on an unreachable current of pure ego.

           “So, is it a men’s club?” Ellis asked.
           Isaac winked at him.

           “Not in that sort of way, you knob. I mean, is it men only?”
           “No,” he grinned, “I don’t think so. I met a load of members through work and they were all great guys and were determined to get me in and now I come quite a lot. I like it here. It’s got everything I want.” He paused and tapped his finger on the table. “This place will be here forever, you know? It’s already been here a while. And, one day, I’ll bring you here and there’ll be a photo of me on the wall. A part of the committee. And when we all die, it’ll still be on the wall. My kids will be really gutted because I’ll be dead. And they’ll be like, Wow, fuck, I miss Dad. He was just the best. But then they’ll be able to come in here – because they’ll be members too – and they’ll order a load of Sixes, look at the picture of me on the wall and feel connected to me in a really profound way.”

           “You’re an idiot.”
           “How? I try to open up and you obliterate me,” he said, frowning.

           Ellis was never sure when Isaac was being serious.

           “I don’t think you’ll end up having kids, Isaac.”
           “That is an unkind and inflammatory thing to say.”
           The waiter arrived with four bright red drinks in tall glasses.

           “What is this?” Ellis laughed. It was cranberry juice, but borderline fluorescent. Elmo’s stomach bile.

           “Four Sixes,” said Isaac, raising a glass. “Cheers Smellie, here’s to a speedy recovery!”

Ellis looked at his drink. There were things he’d rather be doing. Places he’d prefer to be. But there was also a soft twinge inside him. A feeling of affection towards his brother, who he didn’t see enough. He couldn’t remember when they’d stopped spending time together.

Ellis took a sip and felt the drink charge through him, sweet and spicy and strong as hell.

*

They’d ditched the table in the corner for a spot at the bar and Isaac was talking to a group of friends he’d known a few months as if he’d known them a few lifetimes. Instead of eating the dinner Ellis had been promised, they’d hurried through four rounds of four Sixes, Isaac telling him that he was determined not to “sully the blood of Christ with stale bread.”

The guy who was talking to Ellis seemed to be having a decent conversation. But Ellis found himself in bed the following morning and could feel the future memory of each movement he was making, each blunder he was about to enact. He swayed on the barstool, bruised and bandaged, arms dangling between legs. He wished he was invisible. Wished he could slip a ring on like Bilbo Baggins at his One-Hundred-and-Eleventh birthday party and leave all these people behind.

           At home, there would be the blue smell of moonlight on the quiet lane. The soft skittering of animals retreating to their beds. The warmth of –

           “Ellis – meet Paul – Paul – meet Ellis, my brother.”

           Ellis’ companion had walked away and now Isaac was stood above him, leaning against a large, amber-coloured man with watery green eyes and freckles all over him. Ellis couldn’t tell how old Paul was; the man looked at once twenty and fifty.

           “Ellis,” said Paul, flinging a hand on his shoulder, “Isaac told me how big you are, bloody hell! You play rugby?”  

           Paul had a whispery way of shouting, like an earthquake shaking a field of wheat.

           “I don’t, no. Do you?”

           “Ah, you’d be good. I see you have the mentality for it.”
           Ellis couldn’t work out what that meant. Paul chuckled, wheezily, and Isaac laughed next to him, already on the threshold of a new conversation with another old friend.

           “I’m not sure about that.”
           “What happened to your face?”

           “Oh… to be honest, I don’t remember how it happened.”
           Paul slammed his spare hand on Ellis’ other shoulder, his face gleaming: “Hahaha, good lad!”

           Ellis smiled, or thought he did, and wriggled faintly under the heavy man’s grip. He tried to find Isaac’s gaze but his brother’s back was turned.

           Paul shook him slightly, his breath hot and hoppy, spiced with the hint of a Six. “Let’s get some drinks mate, and if someone starts on you again, I’ve got your back. Not that they would here. You’re a lot like your brother, I have to say, just a lot bigger,” Paul laughed, leaning over to taunt Isaac, who turned around and pretended to care.

           Four more Sixes arrived and Ellis tried to do the maths.