Alabaster Conjugal 3.

I wrapped the alabaster version of Marnie in a black bin liner, lifted her over my shoulder, and put her in the boot of my car. It was past midnight and when I looked at the sky I was relieved to see that the moon didn’t think any less of me.

I set the alarm and left the house with bags stuffed with clothes and a few trinkets, including an album of wedding photos. I started the car and let the engine roll, waiting until the curtains in the lounge were properly on fire before heading to the motorway. I saw traffic police parked at the side of the road and wondered if driving with the body of a wife who had turned into a statue contravened the latest updates to the Highway Code and what the signage would look like.

“Marnie, do you know it’s our wedding anniversary soon?” I said over my shoulder.

She didn’t answer.

“We’ll start afresh,” I said, “this new beginning will reset our love to zero.”

It started raining. I switched the windscreen wipers on full, looking hard at the Cat’s Eyes studded into the road to guide me through the darkness. Lightening crackled across the sky. Gusts of wind swept into the flank of the vehicle, forcing me to correct the steering. At any second, I expected to collide with the articulated lorries and trucks of the night. I visualised the shattered glass and twisted, crumpled metal. Wheels folded inwards and rooftops caved in. The perky voice of a DJ talking to a dead driver and panicking passenger who begged to be cut free from smouldering wreckage.

I kept my foot on the accelerator, pushing to go faster through the spray and Christmassy glare of red tail-lights and white headlights.

I imagined Marnie’s fleshy, organic presence in the passenger seat. My bold plan to migrate to Weimar Germany was misplaced. We didn’t need to drown ourselves in the drug-addled decadence of the Berlin underground, or seek the thrills and speedy tarmac excesses of what would become known as Das Autobahn.

Everything we could ever dream of was right here for us in the land where I was born.

I wanted to reside in a wooden house with a white veranda by the sea. We’d live a simpler existence, away from the storm and stress of scampering each day to the central business district like worker ants. We could say goodbye to all that. Living by the seaside, enjoying the early mornings together, drinking steaming hot cups of tea, immersed in the dawn, listening to the natural rhythm of the tide sloshing in and the stoic cry of seabirds. I’d go for a run along the sandy shoreline, tasting the tang of salty air in my mouth as the blood pumped through my veins, a dog galloping by my side, its ears flapping and pink tongue hanging out. The hound would follow me as I ran round the dilapidated harbour, passing the boarded-up restaurant with the broken plumbing. The fishermen, wearing their cable-knit jumpers and woolly hats, would wave and greet us in their strange accents as they set out in their battered trawlers to catch mackerel, haddock and bass, their bearded faces wrinkled and scoured by years on the ocean, battling against the rough seas and the hardship of trying to make ends meet in a moribund industry. I would carry on and then climb over a wooden stile, slippery with moss, to run up a steep and winding chalky path to the top of a cliff and stand on the edge, breathing heavily, hands on my hips, watching the small boats bobbing as they headed for the horizon. I would strip off my shorts and t-shirt, wearing only my watch, double-lined sports socks, running shoes and headband, and I’d play with myself until I ejaculated pristine liquid alabaster into the glorious light of the rising sun.

And, when I said the words, “Good boy,” my trusty hound would lick my balls with its coarse tongue.

I’d find the sandpapery sensation agreeable.  

***

I was low on petrol and saw a sign for a garage. I slowed the car and turned in and parked by a pump. I waited a few minutes, wondering how I hadn’t caused a 20-car pile-up on the motorway, and then stepped out and opened the boot to give Marnie air for her phantom lungs.

I slotted the nozzle in and pulled the trigger. I preferred to watch the litres as opposed to the price. Through the mechanical noise of refuelling, I heard a coughing sound. For a brief moment, I thought it was Marnie.

“Happiness is fleeting. Sadness can last forever.”

I looked and saw a man standing by his SUV at the charging point for electric vehicles.

“So I hear,” I replied.

I realised it was the CEO of the insurance company where I used to work. Clumsily, I added, “Sir.”

“No need for formality.”

“But you’re the CEO.”

“Not so.”

“How come?”

“I’ve been ousted.”

“Ousted?” I saw that his suit was stained and grubby. His pocket square was wrinkled and crusted with dried snot. The left arm of his jacket was ripped at the elbow. He smelled like he had been drinking heavily.

“What happened?”

“The Chair of the Board removed me.”

“But why?”

“I was told that I’m a man without vision. That I lacked answers for the disruption to the car insurance sector. ‘The future is synchronised,’ he told me, ‘and your thinking is too asymmetric for our shareholders.’ I thought the Chair was joking, but he has the backing of the whole Board, including my Chief Finance Officer, who is taking on the interim CEO role. ‘Shareholders want a synchronised narrative,’ the Chair told me, explaining how my strategy of diversification was causing uncertainty, especially with the ultra-conservative, risk averse institutional investors. The fear is that activists might take advantage and launch a takeover bid, falsely claiming to increase the share price through their plan to unlock pent-up value. I’ve been hung out to dry. None of the Board understood what I was doing. They pretended they did, except they lacked the stomach for the fight. They couldn’t see my vision because they’re blinded by the dividends they want to hand out for shareholders today, like pigs at the trough – what happens tomorrow is somebody else’s problem. And the Chair, he doesn’t understand how to take us into the future. He’s a banker and a bean counter. He’s never led a company in his life. He worked for one of the investment banks and then was CFO of a Fortune 500 pharma business that was successful through acquisitions, divestments and got lucky with diseases. He hasn’t grown or built anything apart from schmooze advisors, avoid heavy taxes and manipulate balance sheets through the creative interpretation of accounting standards.”

I looked between the former CEO, the litres and the nozzle, waiting for the sound of a click when the tank of my car was full.

“The real problem is that people don’t understand what the future means. They think it unfolds like a child’s story with a neat da-dar finale. That’s not how time works. It’s not like we’re going to experience an overnight change and all vehicles will suddenly be automated. The future is asymmetric. It’s leaking out of the present, spurting out of the world we’re in now like splits in a hose pipe.”

I saw him looking at the open boot and felt nervous about whether he would ask what was inside. I decided the best option was to change the conversation entirely. “Are you going anywhere nice?” I asked.

Cautiously, he said, “You mean – away?”

“Yes, away.”

“Away?”

“That’s what I mean.”

I had a horrible feeling he was going to X-on-Sea. It would be a disaster if he decided to go there too. I saw that there was a figure in the passenger seat of his car. “Are you going away with a friend?”

“A friend?”

“Yes, I hear that it’s nice to go away with a friend.”

“Is that what you hear?”

“I have heard this, yes.”

He gave me a pitying smile, as if he might say “there, there” and touch me on the shoulder with a parental pat. He didn’t go that far. He carried on talking about the Boardroom revolt. I seriously hoped he wasn’t heading for “X-on-Sea” as it was my special place. No agent of the law, such as an Investigator, would think to find me there. I was desperate to live in a town where nobody knew me and I could start over again. I had done terrible things working in car insurance. Committed awful acts. And this CEO, now former, was the main culprit, the person who had wantonly forced me into cruel and obscene behaviour with his directives and bullying motivational emails and slogans, all in the name of so-called better-quality insurance. I needed to be reborn like a Christian, except without the going-to-church and praying and religious paraphernalia. That’s why it was vital I arrived at “X-on-Sea” as a total stranger, a man without a name, mysterious and aloof, like a latter-day Paul Gauguin landing in Tahiti, minus the cruelty towards underage girls and the dysentery and fever and hysteria. I liked to visualise myself painting endless portraits of Marnie, staring at her in the evening light, a brush between my teeth, capturing the naive essence of her being in the post- Impressionist, emergent-Expressionist style. Perhaps I’d indulge in the occasional decadent painting of fruit. After all, when you say goodbye to everything, when you’ve pushed yourself to the very limits and gone to live in an economically deprived coastal resort, then what did you have to lose? I might as well wear a blue smock and develop a fearsome handshake, strutting boldly into the fruit and veg section of the nearest budget supermarket and announce loudly, “I want to astonish X-on-Sea with an apple.”

***

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