The Tour Guide

I promised you something lighter week this week, and look: there's a fox riding a bus, and a bit of slapstick involving a pancake. I am remembering this week that spring is not a bright clean respite after winter, but a chaotic time when there is sunshine one moment and hailstones the next. So if, despite my promise, you find a razor blade tucked among these stories, I hope that you can see it as as reflective of the season.

This week’s daily stories

Monday

I learned to cook sitting in my bedroom, guessing what was cooking by the smells drifting up the stairs. Later, when the house was quiet, I would slip down to the kitchen in bare feet and hold the spice jars to my nose, and learn which aroma was cumin and which was ginger and which was garlic. For years I cooked without salt or sugar, without any of the things I couldn’t smell and didn’t see. I had to learn all over again, but that doesn’t mean forgetting.

Tuesday

He took a book down from the shelf, saying as he did so, “A mind, like a gun, must be kept well oiled.” He had never held a gun; was not quite sure where the oil went, or what might happen if it was neglected. He had looked at pictures, and imagined what gun oil might smell like. He realised one Christmas that he was imagining the smell of his auntie’s sewing machine oil, and had to change it to something more like diesel. None of that mattered, since he wouldn’t read the book either.

Wednesday

The mug was filled with chocolates and said “BEST TEACHER EVER”. Ted wasn’t sure about it. The mug made him think of Miss Smithson and her wide, safe smile. It made him think of Mr King, who he had been scared of, but who had helped when he broke his arm in the playground. It made him think about cards that said “To a special son” and “To my wonderful wife”, and about how it only seemed to be wrong to lie sometimes. He ate a piece of the chocolate, and that made him feel better.

Thursday

There was a fox on the bus, and nobody else noticed because he had somehow got hold of a broadsheet newspaper and was reading it quietly on the back seat. I could see his little amber paws holding the pages. He seemed out-of-place, to me: the back seats are for smoking and snogging and dead arms. But I suppose that is only school buses, and I have grown up now. Outside the Crown Court he folded the paper, put it on the seat beside him, and disembarked. The rest of us were appalled. He didn’t even thank the driver.

Friday

Between her driving licence and her Tesco Clubcard she kept a razor blade. She imagined a thief sliced to the bone, his blood staining the cash like a bank vault’s dye packs. She began leaving her handbag open in bars and walking home alone. She left her wallet on the wall outside the supermarket. It came back to her in the post three days later, with a rust-brown circle on the leather.

Saturday

Brian came back into the kitchen, and through glances and smothered smiles we all agreed not to mention the pancake stuck to the ceiling. He took up his place by the cooker, and we waited for it to come down on him. It stayed up there for forty days. By the time it fell, Brian was gone, and I was going, and it landed, mid-viewing, on the landlord’s bald head.

Sunday

Scratched in charcoal on the gate were the words “THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE WOODS”. Reading them made me feel better about things. I tried to imagine the woods without anything in them, and it felt like a hole right through me. I thought they couldn't even be woods. I climbed the gate, and hopped over, and went on my way.

I have been reading...

• A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma. These are very fine, tightly observed stories. I'm not sure they are well served by the cover quote that claims they "transform the very nature of reading", although I suppose that may be true of everything we read.
• Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine, which I found so propulsive I read it too fast, and now I feel I need to return to it more thoughtfully. I think that way of reading suits it.

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This week’s story: The Tour Guide

On Tuesdays Arthur gave tours of the gallery. They were not a formal part of his job, which was primarily a matter of pest control, but he was treated with charmed indulgence, and Arthur felt that everybody in a gallery ought to have a stake in the artwork. For his part, Arthur had a stake in everything, particularly the cafe and the garden and the spot in the main atrium where the sun shone down through the skylights.

Arthur generally picked up his tour groups by the front entrance, and this Tuesday was no different. His tours, being unofficial, were not scheduled or advertised: he simply found a lost-looking group and introduced himself. This was the great privilege of working at the gallery: not merely to share the exhibitions with visitors who might feel uncertain or out-of-place or even fearful, but to make them feel at ease. Or more than at ease: at home. Arthur fancied that he was especially well suited to that. Perhaps he didn't have the knowledge of the other tour guides, either the old hands who knew every piece in the collection or the art students eager as kittens, but the visitors never looked at him with glazed eyes, or nodded along so he wouldn't think they were stupid. This was art, to Arthur: an intimacy like the artist's heart beating against yours. He liked to think that, though not an artist himself, he embodied that spirit. He liked to think that's why they called him Arthur, Artie, Art.