Clear: A Transparent Novel - Nicola Barker

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day 8 or day 9 – I forget which (can’t quite read it on that handy 44-day digital clock of his from where I’m currently sitting) – but it already feels like it’s been going on for ever (we’ve had the golf balls, the eggs, the girls baring their breasts, we’ve had the paint gun, the fences raised, the security doubled and Shiraz Azam with his all-nite bhangra drum…).

      Don’t think (for a moment) that it’s just some lucky accident that I’m perched here (right in the hub, you might say), because I work (as a clerical assistant, much against my will, my instinct, my inclinations) in the only building directly adjacent to this psychotic happening (you might’ve seen us – in all the design magazines – early last year): a huge, grey-green-glass Alessi milk-jug of a structure (a tipsy fat penguin): the Greater London Authority Building (we were the centre of the world till they went and built that stupid gherkin near Aldgate. Now we’re just last night’s chip paper. Modernity’s like a badly trained dog: try and make it heel, even for a moment, and it turns and bites the hand that fed it. Snap).

      I’m sitting a little way along from all of the kerfuffle. The press are still very much in attendance, having their field day, ‘making’ all their pictures, ‘writing’ all their commentaries (uh, is it just me, or don’t they actually realise that this slightly chubby, very famous 30-year-old illusionist isn’t really going anywhere? Don’t panic, lads, you have about 36 more days to sort out your copy. Sit back, relax. Just do as the magician does).

      It’s a tragic fact, but Blaine is definitely bringing out the worst in we Brits. I don’t know if this is what he wants (if it’s all part of the buzz for this American Christo-like) or if it’s what he expected, but he’s headlining it in most of the tabloids today. They’re calling him a fake, a cheat, a freak, a liar. They’re up in bloody arms, basically. And it’s a moral issue, apparently. Because it’s in Very Bad Taste to starve yourself if you have the option not to – yeah, so why not go and tell all those fucked-up, deviant Anorexics that? – especially (especially) if you’re calling it Art (and pocketing a – purely coincidental – 5 mill. pay-out).

      Cynical? Moi?

      Look, I’m just sitting on this damn wall and watching all the colour unfold around me. I don’t quite know if I’m loving it or loathing it (you’ll find me on the fence. I’m the kind of guy who used to actively enjoy leaning on his bike’s crossbar as a kid). But who (who?) can deny that it’s a big story? It’s a big setting – I mean Mary Mother of Jesus, how the hell did the council give permission for all this crap? Right here, on their doorstep? In the middle of everything?

      It’s just a wild guess, but I’m definitely getting the impression that some poor bastard has currently got his nuts in a vice over this whole farrago.

      ‘Uh…’ he’s stuttering, ‘I thought it might attract the tourists, Mr Mayor. I thought it might be a nice…an impressive culmination to some of the other cultural events we’ve been staging in the park throughout the summer. I mean the kids loved the visit from the local city-farm, didn’t they? All the goats and hens and everything? And then there was that cookery demonstration in the striped marquee. That went swimmingly…’

      The cleaners (let’s get down to brass tacks) are absolutely fucking livid (I’m not certain if they have the mayoral ear, but if they do, then that fall guy’s nuts are definitely for the high jump).

      I’m actually on nodding terms with Georgi (Gee-or-gi. Twenty-two. Toothless. Romanian. Angriest man in the world right now).

      Georgi already deals with a lot of shit (he sells me dope, the occasional E), because the life of a cleaner on this part of the river is not an easy one. The whole area’s paved – and enclosed – for one thing. And it’s a huge tourist draw, a landmark (the whole world feels like it already owns this view, and in some ways – if affection begets possession – it does).

      It needs to look good – at all times – and because of the tons of dodgy marble and smooth cement and dramatic architecture, any stray detritus just – kind of – sits there. It stands out. It looks bad. It needs to be dealt with, and quickly (So fuckin’ jump to it, lad), else all we proud Londoners (okay I’ve lived here 10 years, so I think I qualify) start to look shoddy.

      And we don’t like that.

      But with the advent of Blaine’s box, things have started to go crazy. Is it Blaine himself? The excitement? The fury? The awe? Whatever the root cause, people suddenly seem to feel the powerful need to generate mess. It’s Goo-ville. It’s Crap-town. There’s old fruit, rotten eggs (British poultry farmers are just loving this situation. Fuck Sky, man. We really need to start seeing the colour of their sponsorship money), and worst of all, there’s the ‘human’ element.

      Now don’t get me (or Georgi) wrong: people have always pissed in corners (a bridge – any bridge – almost demands as much from any man with a working penis), but the way things are currently, it’s like the embankment is a toilet and Blaine is just the scented rim-block dangling in his disposable plastic container from the bowl at the top. It’s getting completely degenerate. People are shitting everywhere. Man, it’s Shit-o-fucking-rama down here. Huge steaming piles of the stuff, in every alcove, every crevice, every corner. And then there’s poor Georgi – with his broom, his weak hose, his little shovel – being expected to clean all this crap – your crap – up.

      But here’s the best part: He doesn’t blame you.

       Uh-uh.

      Not at all.

      He blames the hungry (and decidedly shitless) bugger in the box.

      Blaine.

      ‘Is him,’ Georgi gesticulates irately towards the pallid New Yorker with his broom, ‘tha’ stupid, crazy, dirty-fucky-bastar’ Jew.’

      Yeah. So where the hell am I supposed to stash my sandwich wrapper?

      I have an agenda. You really need to know that. I mean all this isn’t just arbitrary.

      Uh-uh.

      I have an agenda.

      So my dad’s name – for the record (and this is pertinent; it’s the core of the thing, the nub) – is Douglas Sinclair MacKenny, and all things being equal, he’s a pretty run-of-the mill kind of guy. He enjoys gardening, Inspector Morse, steam trains and Rugby League. He’s into trad-jazz, Michael Crichton, elasticated waists, Joanna Lumley and lychees. When he was nineteen years old he swam the English Channel. But he doesn’t swim much any more.

      He runs a sub-post office in north Herefordshire (where I was born, 28 long, hard years ago – not on the counter, obviously, let’s not be that literal, eh? – his lone progeny: Adair Graham MacKenny). He’s happily (well, within reason) married to my mum (Miriam), and he’s fundamentally a very genial, affable, easy-going creature.

      (Fundamentally – so he doesn’t like black people or queers, but which underachieving 55-year-old, small-minded, Caucasian, Tory-voting cunt does? Huh? Name me one.)

      Nothing bugs him (not even the long and inexorable queue of pensioners at closing). Nothing winds him up.

      Well…okay, then. So there’s this one thing…it’s a really tiny thing…and it bugs him just a little.

      Is that a fair representation?

      No.

      Fine. Fine. So this particular thing bugs him quite a lot.

      He doesn’t like it, see? It pees him off. It rings his bell. It pulls his chain. It sits – it really sits, and it presses, hard – on his buzzer.

      This

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