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Go shoppingMy foster brother, Nemo Davies, was a living statue. He had a number of different ‘skins’, but my favourite was his Invisible Man. For this effect, he wore white gloves and an extended jacket fitted over his head. The spectacles and hat were fixed to his special chair. Covent Garden’s crowds liked it, and tourists were pleased to drop fifty pence in his box in return for a handshake and photo.
[private]The council gave him a flat in the Market Estate near the Caledonian Road. I only went to visit him once; just once. It happened during an unseasonably hot spell. He texted me. I was revising for my GCSEs and it was misery. Nemo never took any exams, but no one seemed to mind. He came from a hideously poor family in Wales and they used to lock him in sheds and make him live in the garden, even during the winter. That was why he came to live with us in the first place.
(A few years ago when we were kids, I asked him how he put up with it, and he said he didn’t really mind. Weren’t you cold? I asked. He looked at me. He was blind in one eye and it used to roll around everywhere. He fixed me with his good eye and said yes, it was cold. But it gave him time to think.).
His text said: “Got something crazy come over right away.”
I told Dad I was going swimming. If it was something crazy, he’d want to know what and then he’d only worry; he was always worried about Nemo. As I sweated on the number 29, I tried to imagine what crazy thing it was. I just knew it would be extraordinary because Nemo’s brain didn’t function on any other level.
The Market Estate was a little crumbling world in itself, all red brick and community murals, dating from those futuristic days that NASA put their first man on the moon. It had a big old clock up one end, very incongruous, stranded there like Lord Disraeli in the middle of Tesco’s. Number one hundred and ten was the same as the others, but Nemo had Sellotaped a print of a Möbius strip to the security bars and biro’d “HOME OF THE IMPOSSIBLE” in large capitals underneath. That was typical of him, he was a science-fiction nut.
As soon as he opened the door, I could tell something was up. He hugged me tighter than usual and his manner was even more intense. I looked around the tiny place with interest, taking the offered cigarette; it masked the smell of dirty clothes. His invisible man chair was standing in one corner and a gold wig and half-used pot of gold greasepaint lay beside his futon. Everything was smothered with images: cutouts from comic books, superheroes, dragons, warriors … On the fridge I spotted a photo of his real Mum and Dad.
“What have you found?” I asked.
He sat on the tea-stained carpet, indicating that I should sit too. “It was yesterday – I was working down Covent Garden…” He spoke rapidly. “And this bloke comes up to me, this city type, pink shirt – and he comes right up to where my eyes look out of the costume.” He indicated the place, approximately chest level. “And he said to me, softly, you’re a waste of space. You’re a dosser and you always will be.”
I was full of indignation. “What a prick!”
Nemo shrugged lightly. “Not really.”
“So what did you do?”
“Nothing,” he said. “It was so hot in the costume, I was just dreaming, not paying attention, you know. But then the bloke whispered ‘I’ll pay you to stop’. And he dropped fifty quid in my hat. So I took myself off to the churchyard to count up and I had seventy-two pounds.” His blind eye rolled wildly. “That’s an all-time record take. Not that it matters now.” He checked himself. “Hey. Are you hungry?
I’ve got pistachios.”
“No thanks.” I said. “What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”
“Listen,” he breathed, alight with excitement. “I felt someone was standing behind me in the churchyard and it was the same bloke again. He said ‘you don’t want to be a dosser all your life do you?’ and I said ‘no’ and he said he wanted to help me out. Then he gave me this thing.”
For a moment, his blind eye fixed firmly on mine. I swallowed. “You’re not a dosser …” I began. Nemo ignored me and lifted up the discarded gold wig to reveal a mobile phone.
“Did he give you that phone?” I asked.
Nemo nodded. “It’s not a phone. It’s a Time Machine.
Look.”
My heart sank as I leaned over his shoulder. A couple of years ago, he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital for trying to strangle himself with his girlfriend’s hair extensions. I’d been to visit him once, a strange and dismal experience.
The tiny green display was set up to resemble the controls of a time machine. It was … different. I smiled warily.
“Did he make it himself?”
“I’ll show you.” Nemo stood up. I remember him standing there now, in his blue tracky bottoms with that scrappy bleached hair. “You rub your finger on the screen like this. That tells it who to transport. Then you type the exact moment you want to visit – like this –”
He glanced at the clock then jabbed the keypad. “Now you press ‘enter’.”
Immediately, he vanished.
At first I didn’t realise what had happened. Then I laughed, as if he’d made a joke. Then, like a wave, the reality broke over me. I just had time to press a hand to my mouth when he reappeared.
“You see?” he crowed. “That was ten seconds into the future!” I was silent. Now he was back, I couldn’t believe he’d ever gone. It was more likely that I’d fallen asleep for a second. Or I’d imagined it. It was more likely that I’d blacked out. Anything was more likely. Nemo was grinning like a clown, waiting for me to say something.
“Let’s see your seventy pounds then,” I said eventually.
“I lent it to Danielle.”
“You idiot!” I knew I sounded like Mum but I couldn’t help myself. Nemo was always giving things away and Danielle was a drug addict.
His grin faded. “What about this?” he asked gently, indicating the phone. “Isn’t it crazy? Isn’t it the craziest thing you’ve ever seen?”
I nodded slowly. “It’s pretty amazing …” I began. “Incredible. But I’ve got to get home or Dad will wonder where I am.”
He gave me a look of bottomless disappointment and put the phone back in his pocket.
Two weeks later, the note said:
“Please don’t be sad, you don’t need to be. Please don’t be sad and don’t look for me. I’m not here now, but I will be.”
The flat was uninhabited. Despite the note, Mum and Dad did look for him; they hunted in every corner of the world, but Nemo wasn’t there. Mum got quite angry when I talked about his time machine, and Dad started crying so I didn’t mention it again.
A year later they held a service at Saint Mary Magdalen “to celebrate his life”. Really it was to say goodbye. They put his invisible man chair before the altar, just as he’d always had it, except this time it really was empty. Somehow the word had got around and the massive church was crowded with drug addicts, tramps and Big Issue sellers: all the no-hopers Nemo had helped over the years. I cried and cried. Every time I caught sight of that empty chair it set me off again.
Four years later I went to Caledonian Road. The clock was still there, but the Market Estate was gone. In its place was a building site surrounded by a hoarding. The hoarding showed funky city living, balconies and glass, all modern again. The image was peopled with illustrated men and women. One was a city trader, a small painted figure in a black suit with a pink shirt.
What if Nemo just walked around the corner? I thought. What would he think of this hoarding? He didn’t come of course, and in my heart I knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t coming back; he’d set the machine to max. I looked up at the clear blue sky where his flat used to be. He’s a billion years away, I thought, and he’s free.[/private]
Vanessa’s first play was written when she was seventeen and resulted in her being expelled from school. Since then she has worked as an electrician on feature films, squelched under London in pitch dark sewers, traded antiques and sold hot chestnuts. Her short stories have been featured in numerous anthologies, websites and magazines including Smoke, Tales of the Decongested, One Eye Grey and the Evening Standard. She regularly performs with the band ‘London Dreamtime’ telling scary folk tales set in the Blitz. Market Futures was originally part of the Liars’ League story event for the Market Estate Project. You can find out more about Liars’ League at www.liarsleague.com and about the Market Estate Project at www.marketestateproject.com.
