Even - Nigel Barley

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and drool, you have been taught that revenge is bad, immature, something to be outgrown. How many films have you sat through where the hero finally gets the drop on evil incarnate and instead of blowing its head clean off, lowers the gun and delivers some tired little homily on the virtues of forgiveness or the rule of law? Instead of thinking about that, remember that moment at school where, incandescent with a rage that banished all fear, you finally took a swing at the class bully and punched him on the nose. Remember that delicious impact, the shock on every face, the delight of his dripping, malevolent blood that entirely consumed the interest of your opponent and that glorious moment of soaring triumph that roared in your ears and moved you beyond the reach of mundane reality - before fear of the consequences reared its ugly head again and you turned to flee in terror. Now, for £24.99 you can know that feeling again. For this modest fee, wrathofgod.co.uk can arrange for a beautifully wrapped dog turd to be delivered – fresh and neatly coiled in a box produced without use of child labour in Thailand - to the person of your choice – ex-girlfriend, boss, office rival, whatever. Despatch can be organised from any of 15 participating countries and the fee includes the option of an enclosed message, hand-written in copperplate. ‘I saw this and thought of you,’ is a solid but unimaginative favourite. Personally, I prefer something more intimate such as, ‘One day I will rub this in your face.’ There is nothing immature about any of this. Remember again that hymn they made you sing in school, ‘Hills of the north, rejoice!’ There’s a bit about ‘He comes to reign with boundless sway and makes your wastes his great highway.’ Revenge ancient and modern, recycling, semiotic use of excrement – the green dog turd. It’s all there. Imagine watching your target, how you will snigger to see their sweaty, puzzled discomfort as they take sudden stock of their relationships. See their pathetic attempts to snitch a sample of people’s handwriting, for comparison, without attracting attention, their wild-eyed surmise as they realise that someone out there really, really hates them. It can be an enriching and life-changing experience of deep therapeutic value.

      If you check our website, under the animated logo of a Spike Milligan-type figure flicking out thunderbolts, you will see that we do other things of course. I wouldn’t want you getting the idea that dog turds were the limit of our activities. We can arrange for the delivery of a hundred pizzas, the arrival of the fire brigade, a simultaneous visit by the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and Holy Rainwater Outpouring Revivalists, even a raid by the vice squad but that’s all very pedestrian. A little more subtle is a slow-ticking letter of denunciation to the Revenue, an untraceable email address that emits insulting messages automatically around the clock both to the target and, under the target’s name, to others, a visit to your office by dancing Indian transvestites or your local Pest Control Officer with authorisation to search for and destroy bedbugs, or a legal warrant distraining upon your goods to be enforced by a bailiff for non-payment of a non-existent bill. Most of this is just about legal but I’m willing to cross the line, for my art, if I can be convinced that justice is being served. I don’t do public figures or members of the royal family – too high profile. And nothing even jokingly involving bombs, fake, real or stink. That’s a button you don’t want to press, believe me. It’s important to remain not worth the trouble of tracking down as far as the guardians of civilisation are concerned. A man, as Mr. Eastwood so correctly said, has to know his limitations.

      In fact, I have only ever had one run-in with the law – as an infant, in the company of my joking partner, Kevin. Kevin had taken against a teaching assistant at our school on the not unreasonable grounds that she smelled. He determined to let down one of the tyres of her bicycle and I was a witness. The local policeman, who already knew Kevin’s family well in his professional capacity, decided that the teacher might well have had an accident which, purely theoretically, might have proved fatal. Kevin was charged with attempted murder and I, an eight-year old child who had watched someone letting down a bicycle tyre, was accused as an accomplice to attempted murder. Luckily, the headmistress was herself no shrinking violent and slapped some sense into the policeman but it showed me the enormous gulf that lies between mere law and true justice. I have never forgotten that lesson.

      That particular day was not, at first sight, very challenging. Prepaid orders for two dog-turdings from abroad that I forwarded to our affiliates in France (bondieu.fr) and Germany (himmelarschundwolkenbruch.de) for action. But there, nesting in my inbox, was a request for a meeting from a new client who wanted a personal consultation. One of our more satisfying options is revenge-profiling. We try to produce a graduated, escalating programme of action against a target that meets the specific needs of a client and contains enough of a sense of poetic justice to be satisfying to myself. But, as the only point of contact between us and our public, these represent a fundamental chink in our armour that can be dangerous and have to be organised with care. I would have to get out the dressing-up box again.

      ***

      The club was the wrong age, located somewhere near the plastic revelry of Covent Garden. You went downstairs into a black pit from an otherwise respectable shopfront that looked as if it should be selling handmuffs and bishops’ gaiters. I had first known it as an out-of-hours drinking club for world-weary journalists but it was many years since it had figured on the best cellars list. It was all muted thump, thump housey music as if someone was piledriving next door, with solitary teens standing around gyrating with their eyes closed - which seemed only sensible since they were being strafed and raked with randomly hostile lasers from the ceiling. I envied them their self-containment. Young people were all vegetarians or teetotal nowadays and sex was increasingly the next thing on their list of things to see through and give up. Why weren’t they at work or school or outside soliciting or sitting in a corner with a blanket over their heads, worrying about discovering the real them? On the street, lay bland late-afternoon sunlight with all the goodness sucked out of it and poisoned by traffic fumes but here the lights made the dusty air milkily visible like the water in a neglected aquarium. Convention seemed to require that patrons hold glasses of overpriced drinks in primary colours as an alibi but the real intoxicants lay elsewhere. In dark corners, some sort of furtive exchange of substances for cash was taking place below waist level, policed by black men with dancing eyes and empty faces who flitted between transactions and looked into space like bad TV actors. I had mistakenly opted for a long, swishy overcoat and hat, a sort of male version of Roy Strong, that was sweltering in the steamy club and I was anyway a good twenty years too old for this sort of place. She was there, as described – red hair, orange scarf, yellow handbag – conspicuous if not exactly colour-coordinated – also far too old for this place, sticking out like a sore bum, perched on one of a cluster of wobbly stools herded into one corner, a rock of ageism. I sat down beside her and coolly slid my card across – the one with Spike Milligan dispensing thunderbolts. It wasn’t easy. I have all sorts of cards in there. She peered at it, probably needing reading glasses.

      ‘You’re not quite what I expected.’ I let that ride. Closer up she had a crumpled, resentful air as though someone had just stepped on her. Mid-forties, thin bitter lips. No wedding ring. Darkness became her. Rhodda would see low self-esteem issues. This would not be about betrayed love, then, but about money. ‘This place was a bad idea. You should have chosen somewhere yourself.’ So now her rotten choice was my fault. I never chose the same place twice for a meet. It gave away too much information about where you lived and what you got up to on off nights. She had probably been married then, once, and acquired the ready instinct of shifting the blame. ‘It’s not really suitable. I haven’t been here for years and it’s changed. I thought you’d be bigger, a sort of bodyguard type.’ Life today was full of disappointments for her.

      ‘I didn’t even know these places were open at this time of day. As for the bodyguard stuff, most of what I do, I do with a keyboard. I’ve got great hands. Everyone says so.’ I spread them like a concert pianist.

      She snorted sceptically and dug in her bag for a cigarette, like a squirrel scratching for nuts, looked up at the ‘No Smoking’ sign, back at the dope dealers and lit up anyway with a what-the-hell toss of the head and talked through her cigarette. ‘Let’s get down to business, Mr…er…God. I have a friend who has issues with her stepmother - at least that’s what she calls herself.’ I put rapt attention on my face like Rhodda in one of our sessions. Perhaps I would take notes. It was all therapy. In marketing, the first thing they tell you is that, whatever it is you’re selling

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