Dockhead

By Paul Goodman

Everyone wants to be filled. Modern-lifers long for meaning, and from Dockhead, London, Edward Fisher sees this clearer than most: in Nancy, his novelist wife, in search of her working-class roots; in lovelorn friends; in his workaholic editor; and in Blake, his famous and distant father, filled with regret. So when Nancy disappears midway through writing her third book, Ed must figure out why before she is swallowed by a media frenzy and he is forced to live out the plots of her past and future works.

The first in a trilogy of books on disillusion in very modern terms, Dockhead is about finding identity in love, in art, through work, sex, drugs, and finding fulfilment through the worlds created by fiction – though fulfilment may be a fiction in itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Goodman
• Release date: Feb 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311471543

Paul Goodman

Paul Goodman taught at the University of California, Davis, for over thirty years. His previous books include The Democratic-Republicans of Massachusetts: Politics in a Young Republic (1964) and Towards a Christian Republic: Anti-masonry and the Great Transition in New England, 1826-1836 (1988).

Book preview

DOCKHEAD

Paul Goodman

© 2015 Paul Goodman. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781311471543

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

Cover art: Jess Whittaker

Layout design: Zoe Alexandria Paton Burt

Title page fonts: Dockhead uses ‘Enso' copyright Tom Tor

Paul Goodman uses ‘New Cicle’ copyright Joan Alegret

For everyone.

Based on a story

Dockhead, Dec. 2009

Relevant to the never-ending, episodic grief

When I say the opposite of hungry what I mean is that state of being where it’s impossible to feel anything but absence in the gut as you wander room-to-room, stomach bubbling nauseously but pointlessly away. I described a full-circle around the kitchen before stopping at the sink and looking out at the lawn, the rotting shed with rusty locks among the flowerless bark-chip beds. This used to be garden, but for the past few days was lost under snow. At one end of my washing line a plump monsieur robin stood en pointe. Rapping the pane to see if I could frit the brother off, he hopped along with his thimble head whipping about, oblivious to the threat.

The times I’d stood on that spot waiting for kettles to boil and toasters to toast and only then in bare feet did I notice the cold, the way it pierced the bone and climbed the shins like ivy. I wrinkled my toes and focused on breakfast.

It had come to a toss-up between the crusts in my left hand and tinned peaches in my right when the doorbell went, and bounding from the kitchen to tear at the door I was unaware, mid-excitement, that my dressing gown had unravelled; I’d not intended any a.m. cock, nor morning balls, but the police constables took it like professionals because sometimes that’s just the way the groove turns.

Two yellow-uniformed brothers with snowfall draped regal around their shoulders regarded me quietly and grim-faced, hanging away from my nakedness, mine just another in a long line of doors fated for bad news that day.

On my left stood a white, thickset kind of guy with tiny, simple eyes and a chocolate moustache, the kind cultivated in ale nutrient in miners’ pubs, whose thickset, gum-chewing kind of face was half-hidden by helmet. Pure size dominated his external world – winter felt him. His black leather gloves were all show, I doubt he felt the cold.

On my right, a white, thickset kind of guy who at five-foot eleven was the dwarf of the duo, single black biro snoozing in his chest pocket.

"Gentlemen."

They said nothing at first – not until the gown was redressed – but after a while the biggie coughed and wrinkled his nose down into his moustache, nosing for truffles. Snowflakes hassling his tanned, quickly paling, soon to be reddening face. Wherever he was from, he regretted Bermondsey.

The eponymous Edward, he said. American. Somewhere South. Somewhere Deep, should have been greeting me hola.

Is this about my wife?

The Yank had opened his mouth to speak but, anticipated by me, shut it again. His silence hit me with a backhand, sweeping my glasses off my face as I slumped back into the hall; both men rushed in after to help me to my feet, though at this point the gown had already re-unstrung and my balls flailed freely, so the effort was made at a distance.

I'm all good, brothers.

Better take him in, the Yank addressed his so-far silent comrade.

But I haven’t done anything.

Into your home.

O, I said. Yes.

This established, they helped me to my feet and introduced themselves. The American was a Police Constable Bannerman – the eponymous.

And this, he said, jabbing his dwarf partner with an outstretched thumb, is PC Worden. Am I saying that right?

"Worden. Like burden," Worden replied. At the end of my myopic tunnel the shortarse nearly smiled.

Easy to remember. I never get it right, Bannerman confided, smoothing the ends of his moustache with a gloved thumb and forefinger. "We’re following up on this uh how would you say delicate situation regarding your wife. We’d like to ask you a few questions."

About what?

The two exchanged looks. Worden shivered, shifting snow from his person.

Mr. Fisher. When he spoke – I think he meant to sound concerned – it was with this pan-Zimbabwean brothers like him still called Rhodesian. We're in winter. Would you mind if we came in?

Never mind that they were already in or that with their arms already round mine they could have carried me into my living room – short Worden glanced back at the open door like an old Korean spirit who feared only the cold.

Escorting these police to the living room – escorting not because I didn’t trust them but because this was my home, because I still carried a sense of decorum, anyway Bannerman whistled and patted down the rumples in my upholstered baroque sofa before lowering himself into it – I went into the kitchen to make toast and tea, coffee for the police, perched on the side while the cafetiere brewed and simpered within itself. Even attempted a wry smile at the state of things, my concentration on this mundane but soothing routine. I bit down too hard on my lip and once again my centre of gravity went out from under me. The next thing I remember is kneeling in spilt coffee, cracked china, wailing in the remains with my face deep in Worden’s stalwart pectorals. Struggling to haul me to my feet, he gripped my shoulders and I span and lurched and screwed. Bannerman was over at my appliances, plunging the cafetiere and milking a fresh tea, the first au pair as wide as he was tall.

What followed was drearily routine. Worden led me to the sofa where Bannerman had been sitting, the man himself following us in with refreshments on a floral tray I never knew existed, setting mugs and toast down about my coffee table, setting a place for himself in the armchair opposite me to my right. Worden settled in an identical chair to my left, producing a small black notebook and his lucky biro. All I knew was my knees were wet. This was accounted for: they waited for me to make the first move. Having the sudden nibblesome urge, I picked a triangle of toast, buttered and jammed with care by Americans, and chanced a corner. As if my eating were his mortal goal, Bannerman sighed and popped the chinstrap on his helmet, prising it from his head to reveal a fully bald pate that twinkled splendidly in the living-room light. Seated and comfy, a large hand went straight to his dick, which he groped quietly over his clothes.

Big fan.

Of mine?

Whole family. Bannerman stirred a couple of spoonfuls of sugar into his mug. Gotta be cold in that shade.

It’s a Venn diagram of shame, alright. About to take a sip of tea, I stopped. You read my column?

He smiled. ‘Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.’

Worden glared at him before burning his tongue on his coffee. He put the mug down.

You prefer my wife.

"Oh boy, dig fiction. That line, though – that aint her."

‘Imagination not invention?’ It sounds like her.

Smiling and licking his lips, Bannerman might have gone insane on the spot, a fan with no comeback but ready to thrust himself fist deep into debate. Fortunately Worden had the foresight to thresh.

Why don’t we talk about your wife, rather than something she did or didn’t say?

I relaxed into my seat. Vibe that.

Now, said Worden over the sound of Bannerman gnawing rim of mug. We have it that you filed a Missing Persons for your wife on the – flipping through his notebook – eighth.

Right. I called the station on Tuesday.

Called in on us?

By phone.

Good. Now, did the officer on duty explain the protocol for these sorts of – things?

Whether the officer had or not was currently eluding me in the quicksands of my mind; Worden buffered my shrug with a sympathetic groan.

Well, Mr. Fisher, what the officer on duty does is input all the information you gave along with an official ‘missing’ status on the national computer. Which means – passing some biro-prodding of his notebook off as pragmatic – "it’s official. Every officer – everyone – knows."

Usually it’s the responsibility of the officer on duty to follow up on the report, said Bannerman, coming forward in his chair. However, the pressure when high-profile individuals such as your wife are involved requires a more capable uh officer to take charge. All enquiries and actions flow through that man – which is me, he concluded, sipping coffee through a smile falling short of winsome.

It’s the sensitive nature of your situation, continued Worden, fishing a card from the pocket on the front of his uniform and handing it to me. This came into our possession this morning.

A glance at the picture a couple of moments before giving it back, postcard being my major conclusion: snow and brown peaks stretching towards invisibility, a sky of unbroken blue.

If that means anything to you or…

Huh.

…y’know, anything.

What is it?

The Pennines, said Bannerman. The brother blew on his coffee then knocked it back.

Keep it. Worden slid the postcard back to me.

Then flip it, said Bannerman. It’s addressed to you.

I had to do this.

Happy Birthday.

That’s terse.

Worden shifted in his chair. If you’d like a minute.

Bannerman said nothing, preferring to tend to his moustache with a blank, bovine glaze about his eyes.

Had thought, maybe expected reassurance from Nancy, something prim but bridling with the passion of her sex – I’m alive. I love you. The Pennines are super – but I stared at those last words certain I’d glimpsed but missed their meaning. I gave up and chewed on my triangle of toast. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind.

It's never easy, said Worden, scribbling in his notebook.

I’m just tired.

Can’t sleep, said Bannerman, watching me.

It’s her side of the bed, I said. It’s like looking into an empty grave. In fact had me thinking of the Saxon burial mounds up at Suffolk Hoo with my dad, who was passing through one of his good-parenting phase, something he did with the regularity of dry bowels. He was so desperate to show me the tumuli that he hauled me there on a day it hammered with rain. The mounds were just mounds, dug up years ago and already pilfered of worth. All Blake could say was I must show you the tumuli, Edward, while he stomped around wiping rainwater from his glasses.

Stretched back and received a belt crack out of my spine, picking up as I did the white-wine stench coming off my body. The waxhead American was inhaling and exhaling loudly through his nose and didn’t seem to notice.

Well, steepling his hands in front of his moustache: I want us to help each other out. Think we can do that?

Groovy.

So, said Worden, after a silence. How long has it been since you last saw your wife?

Four days. On Sunday she was gone. My twenty-ninth birthday, I added with a ball-less chuckle.

Happy Birthday, said Bannerman. Worden glared at his colleague. Now, this postcard came to us from Manchester late last night, along with a number of other items, possibly those of your wife’s.

Nancy’s things?

Well, some of–

What time are we now?

It’s – Worden dropped his eyes – one.

Mr. Fisher, Bannerman dropped a hand like boiled pork onto my shoulder. These items were found in a bar in Stockport town centre – the ladies’ washroom of that bar, put precisely – and with it were a number of other items which uh leads us to believe that your wife is not in danger. What I’m saying, Mr. Fisher, he leaned in, in a way I think he thought was comforting, there’s no need to treat it like a murder just yet.

Who’s treating this like murder? I said, then calmer: What reason to believe?

The brother swiped at a dry patch on his scalp, a hopeful grope for sweat or something human.

The uh brevity of the note suggests no duress.

And remember it’s addressed to you, said Worden. Do you recognise the handwriting?

I said so.

As your wife’s?

I looked at him. "Yes."

He smiled the visual form of a warm, wet fart. Then there’s every reason to believe she’s okay.

Exactomundo Eduardo. So relax. Obviously we're gonna need you down at the station at some point soon to confirm the rest of these things belonged to her.

Long.

What’s that?

"Belong to her. This isn’t murder yet. Honestly, brothers, I’m fit enough. I’ll come now," I said, though that treacherous gown was rapidly re-reunravelling; a brief but ill-advised wrestling match followed, both men staunchly avoiding my genitals as they forced me back into my seat.

"But I’m fine now."

Mr. Fisher, please. Worden talked at me a slow and patronising tune, unable to stop glancing at my privates. The biggest favour you can do us now is not to stress-your-self. Since you’ve verified the handwriting, it’d be better if you visited in a few days and we’ll see, eh?

I’d given up. Bannerman was leaning back in his chair. He spoke directly to his partner.

We can leave it here.

More of Bannerman’s silence, tongue poking his teeth while he formulated a tactic.

"We will have to conduct a complete search of your home – further evidential leads and so on. Police Constable Worden?"

While I sat staring at Bannerman Worden excused himself, trudging up my stairs with the foreboding of a brother preparing to find my carrion exhibition.

Bannerman rotated to me, eyes only briefly on my dick. Considering your family’s status, might I suggest you keep this to yourself. At least for the time being. Out of respect for your own privacy.

I hear you, Police Constable.

He loomed on me. That means no Facebook.

Not a problem.

"Twitter. YouTube. Mobile telephone."

Even if I could.

You got it?

Nil by media. Ich verstehe, Kapitän.

He nodded – not before peering about the room, hopeful expression – and yelled for his partner out in the hall. Following what sounded like a lecture in murmurs, in came a sorry-looking Worden, shuffling to his coffee, cold and quietly sullen on the tabletop. Smiling weirdly-wonkily, he picked it up and drank it in one before following the American out of Dockhead.

Splitting of hairs had me famished. Traipsing kitchen-ward to foray for snackables and standing at one of the many drawers in there, riffling through all the cheap and nasty tat me and Nance’d scooped up like turds from dewy park floors, I lost my legs to some distraction and my strength raced out; I gripped the granite surface to stop myself collapsing into the hall.

Out in the world it was late, deeply dark. Quiet save for the infrequent scalping boom of nightbuses. Visions came to me of Nancy, clinging to the wheel of a hired Mustang (for some reason it was always an American-made motor), eyes drooping under the weight of night as she climbed the dark inclines of a somewhere-cliff, tongue poking out in focus. The gloom gutted me there. The evening cast sticks across the sky.

I missed the white of her teeth. There were parts of the house that still smelled of tangerine, a Hilfiger perfume for girls whose lingering inspired me to search for her hazel eyes there in the house, in case none of this was real, in case she'd not have left after all. But wherever Nancy had gone it was her secret.

The hours since eating more than the rings in a giant oak. Microwaved two-day old Chinese holding out at the back of the refrigerator and noshed it staring out the kitchen window. Nothing living in my limp, grey garden. Munching on sinewy beef and wet green peppers, I longed to have the snow’s one-purposeness in here, its non-need to do anything but fall and fade into the massive and taciturn white.

What was Bannerman getting at: help each other out? Fixing a drink from Superiors rum and Coke and switching on BBC News I sat uneven and restless, the brother smoothing his moustache forever in my mind as the faces on screen cheerily declared the coming of a new winter. Dockhead, London, Manchester, Stockport, the Pennines. Fishers bleeding out.

In the living room I woke to the sound of ringing. Made contact with the receiver by slamming the wrong side of my hand into it. My knuckles echoed the collision, the radiator on a timer pumping hot air into the room as snow dripped down the other side of the window. Phone still ringing. Unhooking it from its base as quietly as I could muster, I spake unto the mouthpiece:

Be gone.

Ed.

I crumpled back into the pillow and shut eyes. Rob.

Alright, lad?

Hand on my forehead, checking the on-creep of staleness. What’s up?

A brief rustle of papers. Had a chance to skim the week’s piece. Made some suggestions. Check your emails. More scrabbling and scruffling; a fag lit in the background, way, way back in the scenery. Even Rob’s Bradford monotone betrayed the odd wobble.

Cheers.

Heavy night?

A late one. I’m resetting my body clock.

You're not answering your phone.

And what’s this?

I mean your mobile.

Battery went a few days ago. Fuck knows where I left the charger.

That’s really sad, said Rob, who, in a drawl so deep it had started sucking in planets, was able to convey exactly how sad.

Why call? You already emailed.

No reason. A pause. I heard about Nancy.

Something I had to sit up for. How?

You’re not going to anybody with this, he said. Are you?

The lounge was bathed in fug and a fusty gloom. You mean the papers?

Anything anyone can read.

Wasn’t planning on it. My poor front door plagued with hacks, imagine it.

Good, he was saying. Good...

Rob, who told you? I said, wary that I hadn’t. Yesterday’s coppers might have kicked a pebble or two cliff-wards. That American, Bannerman, was overkeen. By now the whole www was probably savvy.

Er. Blake did.

"Blake Blake? Dad Blake? When did you see him?"

Eh? What was that?

Hang on, I said, midway through pulling on a sweater, arms twanging stuck in the sleeves. "Rob. When?"

"He was in Tribune HQ the other week. He didn’t"–

–Your office?

Your office too.

Kitchen, cold feet: scrimmaging for supplies and a breadknife to slice them.

Had he come to see me? I asked, hacking all gore at a half-bloomer.

"He told me about you-know-what in confidence, lad. Confidence. He didn’t mention you."

"I just filed a Missing Persons report, Rob. He couldn’t have told you the other week."

Well, he said, he told me.

The receiver was cool on my forehead but not soothing. I thought he was in Quebec.

Well, said Rob. This interview’s been on the cards for a while now.

That explains why no one told me, then. Five years, Rob: you’d think Canada was underground. When was I going to find out?

As Rob gave his gruffness, some wordless noise into the receiver, I was penetrated by a further, more worrying thought.

We’re not giving him to ‘Minute with McKae’.

Why not?

Rob. Ian’s new-school. Blake’ll own him.

He’s alright.

He’s not.

It's pulp anyway, Ed. What’s your problem?

I stopped. He didn’t ask for me at all?

He remarked on the fact that you weren’t here.

I work from home, I said. He knows that.

Well, I don't know.

Look, brother, besides the police, I’ve told no one. Who told him about Nancy?

Ah, he said, now I’m not comfortable.

Come on.

Apparently Nancy.

"O, fuck you, Wingrove."

Rob gasped, I think he expected me to hang up. Realising I was still on the line he went on in this whisper, like my issue here was volume.

I’m just as confused as you. Why didn’t you call? Some of us deserve to know.

I was told not to. Just like you told me not to.

Hm. It's just, you don’t think this is a publicity stunt, do you? he said, changing direction.

She didn’t tell me. Look, I have to find a way of dealing with that. So should you. You have your wife. Blake has Nancy. I get the police. She’s dead to me, Rob. I’m moving on.

She’s not dead.

She’s as good as. She’s not coming back.

What passed, then, across the ether: swollen, humiliated silence, and outside, a shriek, a bottle smash, raised voices. I’ll cut you slag pealed a sister, a voice I knew too well. No-hopers. Born and bred in one postcode, odds of dying there, even better.

What’s wrong with you?

Sorry, Rob.

Ending the call, I sank into the sofa with the postcard weighing on my chest like a boot.

Stymied for the day.

In no mood for Wingrove’s corrections, I left the laptop to juice and rummaged around the shelves for something to pass the time. Nancy used this study more than I ever did, and tended to leave her research lying around for me to trip over, some snide reminder of the husband:wife productivity ratio. Margolis, Bloom, other names and post-feminist titles like The Self-Deprecating Metaphor (1979, L. Marone, ed.) that meant nothing to me other than being the foundations of Nancy’s novels.

Hovered over a title I’d acknowledged before but never read, because frankly it looked dull even for me: Marital Psychosis? An Apt Analysis of the Male Psyche, the doctorate of some crank that had ended up as inspiration for Nancy’s debut, Wet Beds and Englishmen (2001). For more than two months Nancy carried this paperback around – a paperback in excess of four hundred pages – diving into it at every opportunity, during ‘us’ time, hiding behind the pages during meals like a hedgehog poking around the bins. It was horsemeat to me, from its ridiculous title to the fact that any negative remark from me drove her deeper into it. I wanted to snatch it from her just to force a reaction.

Well, there it was. If there was fuss, I was finding it.

The first chapter tracked the break-up process from the male point-of-view – no doubt reliably, written as it was by Dr. Agnès Mainard. The downward spiral was described in detail: following separation came loss of assets, friends who defected to the female… Dr. Mainard coined the term ‘Cleopatra Complex’ to describe this process. The pages here were dog-eared and scrawled-on, Nancy’s hand. I thought of the postcard, its words twisting within me. Surely this ‘doctor’ wasn’t suggesting I’d be driven to suicide over shedding a few false friends. I made a list:

1. Tony Mabbott

2. Amber McKae

Which now hung on my study wall. Over the weeks I added the odd annotation:

1. Tony Mabbott – Afghanistan (2005)

2. Amber McKae – Know through (1). Married dickhead.

Tone was still on tour and had been out of contact since his girlfriend broke things off over Skype, and Amber and Nancy never hit it off; and maybe it had been a while since I'd heard from either, but I wasn’t going to invent a connection by suspecting one.

Back to Marital Psychosis, which was the usual, if inventive wank: congenital deficiencies bound to the male DNA and a till-now undiscovered ‘m’ chromosome, which this Mainard had decided should be held responsible for the depravity that defined us, males, that is, domestic violence, alcoholism, philandering, sometimes a trifecta mélange of all three. This sister probably believed her agenda as much as the poor dupes who bought her. This was pseudoscience masquerading as educated opinion, presented as fact; man is violent but sentimental – therefore weak – whereas woman, mighty in freedom, sheds no tear, wouldn’t hesitate in throwing our emotional remains under a bus to be happy.

Big ideas, but when I shut her book and went back to work I still felt like hurting a doctor. Rob’s email was the lone dove in my inbox. Going over his edits and applying half at random, the article was back on its way before I went back to the sofa.

Next a.m. Toying with the blank page open on my laptop, a scream from outside tore me from the womb. I jumped and pulled at the curtains to find the street placid – and that I’d torn the curtain from its rail. A cluttered terrace observed from across the road, apartment buildings, taxi service, launderette, off-license and Chinese, roofs thick with snow.

Dockhead is the name on the sign. Not Dockhead Road, not Avenue, although it is an accident; assembled over the ages, a hodgepodge of hubs, holes and walls, tagalongs of interwar estates and half-arsed goes at community. A protestant church once stood alone on the corner of Jamaica Rd., without pomp, without ceremony, only now it's overshadowed and out-designed by the house next door. Faux-Georgian, built c.1990, affected, spacious, historically minded, imported beams and doors from a broken-down manor just outside Oxford. This was Blake’s wedding gift to us. He’d made a small fortune in his transition from the BBC’s World Service to producing a series of documentaries on the African troubles, and received an obscene advance for a Gulf special, and a good portion of it went into building this house. I love it, I really do. It was the only thing of his I accepted unconditionally – for Nancy.

But my page was still blank. After five minutes I found myself back in the pages of Psychosis.

On Saturdays Nancy and I would wake with the sunrise and walk to Borough Market under lilac skies. We couldn’t shop on empty stomachs – couldn't pass the banks of green leaves, ripe tomatoes, throbbing chillies, fat pink chickens, fragrant veal, venison sausage with appetites in our hearts – so wandering half-sleeping between stalls, taking in the aromas – paella and stuffed olives, steaming quilts of focaccia and churros – we’d breakfast by Southwark Cathedral, sipping hot tea while our minds caught up with the world.

Not long after we started dating, I sussed that Nancy craved these moments of introspection; the moment food reached her lips there came