CHAPTER 13
A boatman from three hundred years ago riding the tidal swell up the Severn estuary and the river Avon into the heart of Bristol might still have recognised the centuries old pub, the Ship. That is if he turned a blind eye to the years of regeneration that had transformed the river and docks with expensive apartment blocks, restaurants, coffee shops, art galleries and museums.
It had stopped raining and, in late afternoon watery sunshine, Eddie decided to walk from the train station and stop for a moment to enjoy the view. It had changed beyond recognition since he was a student there but there was still nowhere quite like Bristol. With the pastel coloured houses on the hillside of Clifton, Brunel’s famous suspension bridge over the Avon gorge and the new waterfront developments, he often felt as if he’d come home which, in a way, he had. He checked his watch. There was plenty of time.
Someone, presumably the developer, had ensured that the Ship’s red brick frontage, chimneys, leaded windows and double oak door still looked similar to the grainy black and white photos taken a hundred years ago, but the tubs of petunias, pansies and fuchsia outside were fresh. So was the chalked message on the blackboard by the door that announced that the first Saturday of every month was Bristol Poet’s Night.
Eddie wandered in, bought himself a glass of orange juice and carried it outside to sit at one of the wooden benches by the water’s edge. He was wearing what he always wore for Poet’s Night – his old Bristol City football club sweater, grey trousers and sandals with grey socks. It was warm so he pulled off his tweed jacket, slung it over the back of the seat and watched the seagulls.
He also watched the people though with less enthusiasm: adults, student types, kids, dogs. Eddie disliked dogs almost as much as cats. Cats had, of course, been the subject of his final poem at the April meeting when he’d met Mark Dobson. Tonight, because of his meeting with Isobel, he had planned a long poem on the uselessness of anti-ageing creams complete with a live demonstration using the wall-crack filler, Polyfilla.
His plan was to mix the white filler in the gent’s toilet before the performance, apply a coating to his face and hope it dried before his slot. The plan then was to crack it open at the end of the recital to demonstrate how ineffective these concoctions were. Meanwhile, he shut his eyes in the sunshine and rehearsed the words.
When he opened them again, he saw the bulky figure, white hair and navy-blue blazer of Mel limping through a crowd queueing for a river-trip boat. Mel had never fully recovered from a fall down a waterfall in Vietnam thirty years ago. In fact, Mel was lucky to be alive.
“Huggs,” he called waving the stick he kept tucked in his armpit as an emergency prop in case his leg gave out. “Nice day for May, what do you say?”
Mel often began with a terrible short rhyme whenever they met. Eddie thought it probably took him a month to think up the single line and then remember it. He flopped down on the seat opposite Eddie and laughed at his poetic genius. “What’s the subject tonight?”
“Anti-ageing treatments. You want a drink? Orange? Blackcurrant? Lemon Barley or the usual?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there and I’ll get it.”
When Eddie returned with Mel’s pint of Guinness, he was sitting back with his eyes closed and his face to the evening sun just as Eddie had been doing. He opened his eyes and took the glass. “Your good health. What’s up?”
“I’ve been burgled.”
“You mean someone thought there was something worth stealing in that unkempt Victorian museum you call home?”
“That’s extremely unkind, Mel.”
“What did they steal?”
“My krabok nuts. Seeds that I brought from Thailand. An entire bagful.”
“Is this what you wanted to discuss tonight?”
“Just a friendly ear, Mel. Someone with a soft shoulder and a dry tissue.”
“Come now, Huggs. Be brave. It’s only nuts. Did you report it?”
“I spoke to a commercial crime investigator.”
“About a bag of bloody nuts?”
“Nuts are seeds, Mel. They were not cooked or roasted. Mature krabok trees could be grown from them. They were individuals, living beings with all the right DNA and as many rights to a long and productive life as you and me. And my computer was tampered with. I think they copied files.”
“Have you started to upset people again, Eddie?”
“I never stopped.”
“Who is the target of your abuse this time?”
“The cosmetics industry amongst others.”
“But I thought you were acting as scientific adviser for one.”
“I am. A local company, Vital Cosmetics. Bill Hughes twisted my arm. They’re paying enough to cover a bursary. And it’s hardly time consuming. In a year, I’ve given one talk to staff and a couple of so-called inspection tours, but I didn’t like what I saw.”
“And you suspect them?”
“They use krabok nut oil in some products. But I was already suspicious before I contacted the investigators a month ago. I met their Mark Dobson. We sat right here. I’d just performed a poem about cats. It was a shame you missed it but you were away last month.”
“So sorry. What do you need my opinion on?”
Eddie’s reply was delayed as a group of poetry fans arrived and recognised him as a star performer. It took him a while to get rid of them. Then: “I need you to listen, Mel but it might take an hour and right now I need to mix some Polyfilla for my performance.”
“Polyfilla? Are you repairing cracks in walls in there?”
“No. It’s my anti-ageing, age defying, deep wrinkle treatment.”
Three hours later, sweaty and smelling of beer they emerged from the Ship with a plan to walk and talk and catch a late-night bus to Clifton where Mel lived.
“Well? Did you like my anti-wrinkle cream demonstration?”
“Very entertaining, Huggs, but you’ve still got Polyfilla in your hair, what little there is. Do you have any views on hair restoration treatments?”
“If I had a cure for baldness, Mel, I'd need a decent brush. I'd brush my hair in the morning air and brush from dawn till dusk.”
“Mmm. That’s not one of your best, Huggs.”
Eddie made a face that exaggerated every wrinkle, line and crow’s foot. “You want a list of utterly ineffective chemicals they put in these products, Mel?”
Mel knew what was coming, but what are friends for? They walked a few more yards. “They make alpha-hydroxy acids sound like miracle chemicals,” Eddie said. “But there are hundreds of them from those in your pot of yoghurt to the apple in your lunchbox.”
Mel nodded. The chemistry was well known to him.
“Peptides – thousands of them like those from digested milk and not one ever proved to reduce wrinkles.”
Another yard. “Retinol. Vitamin A. Essential but don’t for God’s sake ingest too much if you’re pregnant. Meanwhile, keep eating the carrots. Anti-oxidants. The panacea of the free radical cult, not that any of them would recognise a free radical if one came up behind them and bit them on the arse. Put a fresh tomato in your lunchbox instead.”
Another few yards. “Elastin. If you’ve got worn tyres on your car, would you smear them with cream containing rubber and feel safer for it? And collagen. Everyone’s heard of collagen these days. Use collagen they say to rebuild the structure of your ageing old skin. But the molecules they use are too big to pass through skin. There’s no way they can reinforce your own collagen.”
They were walking over the old swing bridge, water slopping on both sides and a small, boat with a light on its stern was moving upstream in the darkness. That was when, inadvertently, Eddie did his stage trick and tripped on an iron drain cover. He quickly recovered but it prompted another thought.
“Do you know where cosmetics go when they’re finished with, Mel? Down the drain. Out to sea. Eaten by fish. Up the food chain. Swallowed by birds. Along with all the plastic packaging and other man-made junk.” He spotted another raised drain cover and slowed down.
“Botanical essences,” he went on.
“Ah yes,” said Mel. As Eddie was to discover, Mel was anxious for a botanist’s view on botanical essences because Mel’s wife, Cilla, swore by a shampoo from a plastic bottle with a picture of a tuft of grass on the front.
“Eucalyptus oil,” Eddie yelled. Hazard-watching was holding him up although it was Mel who limped everywhere. “Recommended for treating herpes. Which herpes virus is that for God’s sake? Genital herpes? Mouth sore, herpes? They never actually say. Whenever I ask, they never reply because they don’t know. And Eucalyptus prevents bacterial growth and pus formation, they say. Don’t they know that pus consists of white blood cells doing the job they were designed for, for goodness sake? The body’s natural reaction to deep infection. Without pus, we’d never have evolved past earthworms. Would Eucalyptus work on deep ulcers and gangrene?”
“Unlikely,” Mel agreed waiting for Eddie to catch up.
“Lemon grass.”
“Ah yes,” Mel replied. That was the one Cilla swore by.
“Claimed to be a good tonic. A tonic?”
The volume of Eddie’s voice had, by then, increased exponentially but Mel limped on listening and taking it all in as a good friend should. They passed a group of giggling girls in miniskirts on their way somewhere for their own version of a tonic.
“Lemon grass allegedly aids recovery from illness by stimulating glandular secretions and the muscles of digestion. Oh, dear me, Mel, if my peristalsis suddenly speeded up after chewing on a stick of lemon grass, I’d call an ambulance. But that’s not all. Lemon grass is good for colitis, indigestion and even gastro-enteritis. And it removes lactic acid and stimulates circulation and of course, like all the others, it’s a bloody insect repellent. I’ve seen swarms of mosquitoes hovering around tufts of lemon grass. But no mosquito will dare come close if you lunch on a few sticks of lemon grass. You believe that, Mel?”
“I agree it’s a little farfetched.”
Eddie caught up because Mel had stopped and was looking across the water to a line of floating restaurants. Much closer, on their side, was a late-night kiosk selling coffee, tea, hot dogs and bacon butties. He pointed with his stick. “Fancy a coffee, Huggs? My treat.”
“Good idea. A coronation chicken baguette was my last meal.”
Mel bought two crispy bacon sandwiches and, with two plastic cups of tea, they wandered to a seat overlooking the water and sat down beneath a street light. They were quiet for a while because Eddie had squirted too much ketchup and was licking it off his fingers.
“Your daily dose of free radicals, Huggs?” Mel said. “But I’m still waiting to know what advice you need, old chap.”
“I know,” Eddie said. “I haven’t forgotten. I was setting the scene, giving you the background.”
“Forgive me but it sounds like the birthing pains of another of your vendettas, Huggs.”
“It is,” Eddie admitted. “Together with the energy drinks and food supplements business.” He stood up and carried his plastic cup of tea and ketchup-smeared tissue to the quayside, stayed long enough to finish the tea and then crumpled the cup along with the tissue and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Then he returned and sat down.
Mel was absent-mindedly drawing circles on the ground with his stick. “If you’re talking about destroying the cosmetics industry, Huggs, my friend, it’ll never happen. Too many people don’t care enough. You’re wasting your time. You can annoy them but it’ll be like water of a duck’s back. Plastering stuff over your body is human nature. We’ve been doing it since the Stone Age, probably before. It’s vanity.”
“Vanity,” Eddie repeated. “From lowly selfie-takers pouting at their phones and zapping their images out into the cold infinity of cyberspace, all the way to those occupying the highest offices in the land. It's unseemly, this desperate campaign to control how we are seen by the world. You know who said that?”
Mel shook his head.
“Richard Lawson, Donald Trump’s official photographer. And I agree. I would also add that vanity is one of the worst human characteristics. It’s not just simple showing off but conceitedness, narcissism, smugness and self-worship. If people did less self-worshiping and more worshipping of others, even of a God of their own choosing, perhaps we’d all get on better. What is it the Bible says? ‘Oppose the proud and give grace to the humble’? Vanity and self-worship is like appointing yourself as a deity to be looked up to with admiration and devotion. It’s an abomination, but then to exploit narcissism, vanity and self-worship for profits and financial reward is even worse. It should be the eleventh commandment, Mel. Thou shalt not worship yourself over and above the Lord thy God.”
“I agree,” Mel replied, “but pandering to moral consciences won’t work, Huggs. It’s too widespread. And when was the last time you heard of a business bowing to moral conscience instead of bowing to its shareholders? You won’t change it. Industry will shrug it off. So why even bother?”
“Because…” Eddie paused. “Because things need saying. They need pointing out. We need different viewpoints. In the case of the cosmetics industry, I find the business of promoting body perfection when there is no such thing as perfection is immoral. No human body is perfect. All have flaws. So-called flaws or, as I would call them, natural variations, should be celebrated not be the cause of outbreaks of depression, self-harm or anorexia amongst the young. Natural variations should never be dealt with by surgery. Accepting natural variation is vital for sanity and for a better understanding of the frailty of life. It’s a morality issue that religious leaders are afraid to speak up about. If this world is leading to disaster then there is one reason – weak leadership and a total lack of moral guidance.”
They were silent for a while. In a way, Mel agreed, but he also knew that what Eddie really wanted were words that went against everything he’d just argued for. Eddy, for all his strong opinions, could still be influenced.
“They’re not just trying to cover up flaws, Huggs,” Mel said. “They’re trying to make themselves look more attractive. They’re seeking attention like you and the Polyfilla.”
Eddie looked at him and said, “Mmm.” In fact, he was remembering telling Mel forty years ago that he found him useful as a sounding board. Back then he’d compared Mel’s views to checking out a new pair of shoes. If they were too uncomfortable, Mel was not to be insulted if he stuck with his old pair.
“OK, maybe.” Eddie said reluctantly but with an image of Isobel foremost in his mind. “Maybe. But, take women for instance. Is lipstick attractive, Mel? Can you explain the need for lipstick?”
“To bring attention to the lips,” Mel replied. “For kissing purposes.”
“Face creams and powders?”
“To conceal blemishes.”
“Those stockings they wear?”
“Mmm. Well it can’t possibly be for protection from the English weather so, smooth legs I suppose. And probably to give the impression of full-bloodied health to otherwise anaemic-looking limbs. Maybe you should consider wearing them with your shorts, Huggs.”
“Finger nail paint?”
“There you have me. No idea.”
“Toe nail paint?”
“Even less idea. What are you getting at Huggs?”
“Isobel Johnson, Mel. She possesses all the essential, intellectual requirements of a highly effective businesswoman and yet she resorts to unnecessary adornments, lipstick, face powders and nail paint.”
“I’ve not seen her, but what you’re describing is a professional woman who believes she needs to look like that to maintain her power and influence. It’s self-marketing. We live in a visual world in which there’s a need to create an image of yourself that enables others to slot you into a category so you can freely go about doing what you want to do.”
“I don’t,” I said.
“Ahhhh! Stop fooling yourself, Huggs my old friend. You once set about doing what you wanted to do by adopting the image of a long haired, seventies rock star. Now, because you look and feel sixty-two you set about it by adopting this quaint old hippie image of rejecting consumerism and being anti-capitalism by not even wearing a decent suit You’re a first-rate publicist who has, in fact, just used his image of a downtrodden, cynical old tramp riding a bicycle who can only afford a pair of sandals just to recite a few ridiculous poems.”
Eddie thought about that. Mel was right in some ways although Eddie didn’t think the image he’d created was consciously planned. He needed to dwell on it, though. When he was alone. Meanwhile, he decided to change the subject.
“So why break into my house?”
“Ah, so we’re back to that, are we? Just as I was warming to the subject of your own public image, flaws and imperfections. Have you got evidence they copied documents?”
“The CD port was left open.”
“Carelessness. You left it open,”
“I never do that.”
“They were a couple of local lads who found nothing worth taking except a bag of nuts.”
“They opened the front door with a key.”
“You forgot to lock it.”
“It’s self-locking.”
“So, who?”
“A criminal element.”
“Dear me, Huggs. What’s got into you?”
“Listen,” Eddie said. “I’m suspicious. Mark Dobson had a good word for it. He calls it fishing. Apparently, he spends half his time fishing – fishing for information, fishing for leads, fishing for links. During my last trip to Thailand I went fishing. I went down to Malaysia, to Malacca, and found the place where Vital source their raw materials, their oils, their perfumes. I crept around at night. Outside, I found bark from krabok trees.”
“The illegally felled ones? How do you know they’re yours?”
“I brought some back and tested it. Forensic biochemistry, Mel. Over a year ago I found some krabok trees that oozed a white sap. When I looked further their leaves were in a better state than other kraboks. I suspected a natural fungicide or insecticide so I took samples, marked the trees with blue marker and told the park management and my friends at Chulalongkorn University.”
“So, you’re feeling mad about some trees.”
“Of course, but the Malacca place is run by Russians. I spoke to a few locals. Then on my way back at the airport in Bangkok I met my botanist friends from Chula. We were at the somewhat upmarket Novotel. That’s where I saw one of Vital’s directors, their buyer. Peter Lester talking to a Russian.”
“Did he see you?”
“I don’t think so. But then there was another co-incidence. The company in Malacca. is the same one Mark Dobson’s looking into for counterfeiting. So, I’m off to Bangkok next week to help with the investigation.”
Mel took a deep breath and a long look at Eddie’s old jacket with the elbow patches, the trash hanging from the pocket, the red sweater and the sandals.
Once, a long time ago, he’d told Eddie he needed to sometimes wear a suit. They’d laughed about it but, on one occasion at least, Eddie agreed he’d made an error. They’d been at an evening reception at the University. Teaching staff and researchers were in suits, white shirts and black bows. “Standing around like stuffed penguins” Eddie had said. Glasses of wine and champagne were being handed around on silver trays by students wanting to earn a few extra pennies, but Eddie had not changed from his daywear that included sandals, alleging he’d been too busy to go home.
Mel looked at his old friend as they sat under the street light staring in silence across the harbour. Then he put his arm around Eddie’s shoulder. “Let’s find a bus home, Huggs, old friend.”