RITUALS FICTION: ‘THE CUCUMBERS’ BY IAN CUSACK

The Cucumbers
Ian Cusack

Lawrence Martin and Richard Stevens once were lovers. They met in jail.

Lawrence the deviant dentist with a shameful hard drive; crammed with images of men pissing. Legal static snaps of consensual urolagnia and illegal videos of male clients, uniformly svelte and angular, draining their bladders pre check-up and polish or post extraction. Filmed in Lawrence’s surgery bogs on the poorly hidden camera phone that was his undoing. His professional and family life ruined; daughters who disowned him and an ex-wife drinking to hide her despair and disgust at what she’d learned in court. Quenching her guilt for rejecting his periphrastic and timorous delineation of secret salirophilic fantasies many years before. Pre-sentencing, Lawrence clung to the unmitigating excuse of an internal sex life he’d proudly resisted enacting. Sympathy and understanding were absent in stir. He failed the rigours of the solitary lock up he’d pleaded for after the verdict was handed down. Moved to the nonce wing on account of his jittery eyes and whey-faced pallor, Lawrence resolved to rehabilitate while drowning in the open sewer of Rule 45. Progress was swift. Contrition genuine. Insight profound. Reclassified as Category D, a perv but not a toucher, Lawrence moved cross county from the unending hell behind domineering, austere Victorian sandstone walls to a single cell with a shower. Primed for reintegration. No worse than a Travelodge without a jug kettle or trouser press. A place to make some amends by displaying trust and loyalty, using his education to school fellow inmates in the basics of literacy and numeracy. They called him The Professor and he was proud. Truly, this was a place to think and plan for the better future that would begin in six months. A place to fall in love when his time was almost done.

Richard the career criminal; the inveterate sneak thief, the compulsive fraudster. Unwilling to distinguish truth from falsity. Blinds down. Mind forged manacles shuttered to the world. Obsessed with prime numbers. Recited them like an alphabet of lies. Not a normal quality, but a good one compared to his urge to thieve. Insatiable deceit. From childhood, unattended money or unclaimed property, he’d take as his own. Under his teenage bed, no wank mags but a shoebox of watches he pinched from classmates during PE lessons. An attaché case of treasured detritus. Shoes. Keys. Hats. Books. Unused trophies. He stole whatever and whenever he could. Stuff to wear. Stuff to keep. Stuff to eat. Up fruit trees in neighbouring gardens for crab apples and adamantine pears. Over brittle fences of planks and chicken wire to denude allotments of beans and strawberries, carrots and leeks. Forcing weak locks on greenhouse doors to load his pockets and stomach with tomatoes. The human locust. The defoliating leporid. At work. From friends. From family. He lacked insight into wrongdoing, empathy for his victims and understanding of what constituted crime. Called it finding. Undetected, he stole for years. Charity boxes from shop counters. Chump change tips in bars and restaurants. Pennies off the street. Kept meticulous accounts of every deed and transaction in and out of his pockets. He diverted Customer credit card payments to his personal accounts. It was amazing the Feds took so long to catch him. At length his patient brief managed to persuade Richard to put his hands up for the fraud, but couldn’t shake the belief it had all been a victimless crime. Virtually harmless and utterly inadequate, you’d wonder how he wasn’t diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum years before. A sympathetic, pre-sentencing medical report; clean of drugs, though displaying excessive potassium levels, gained him Category D status, with a cushy job on the gardening squad. Maintaining lawns. Tending crops. Pulling Asperger’s asparagus and hauling teratogenic turnips. The healthy contraband of the leguminous tea leaf on a three-year stretch.

Lawrence was on the home straight; a trimester from breasting the tape to freedom. Cold January. Earth hard as iron. Water like a stone. No gardening for the foreseeable. Giant packs of frozen peas and cubed swede in the kitchens. Less than a year left on account of good behaviour, as excessively healthy eating wasn’t a crime. Richard doing his party piece; reciting all the prime numbers up to a thousand then back down again. Everyone calling him Rain Man. Lawrence, always the model moral prisoner, recognises someone he can work with to help those poor ones who lose count when they run out of fingers. Invited him along to help out in a couple of informal numeracy sessions. Richard had all the knowledge, but none of the skills. Too impatient to explain. Lost interest. Contempt for the dull-witted. Ears twitching in irritation, but Lawrence persisted. Never a colleague, but still wanted to be his friend. Felt an inexplicable connection. Sat next to him in the canteen. Noticed the heaving vegan plate, speculated that’s what gave him the lean and lithe physique. Male take on gamine. Within days Lawrence found himself looking forward to lunch, though not for the food. The insulating layer of post-prandial lard on the roof of his mouth, counterbalanced by slight pounding in the chest. Dry-eyed stares and almost a fluttering amidst his breasts.

The weather softened. Richard goes back outside. Come snap time, Lawrence’s waiting anxiously for his new pal with the sleek body and weasel features, skull skin taut like opaque Clingfilm. Richard arrives; high-fibre, protein-rich Desperate Dan serving. Sits next to Lawrence, still idling over soft crackers and orange cheese slices fit only for soling shoes. Pungent sweat stink of a day’s graft. The honest labours of a dishonest man. Hot salt and leaf mould. A growth or encrustation under the armpits, like camembert rustique. Lawrence gasps. He’s hardening. Richard’s eating. Loud gulping. Noisy chews. Clears the plate. Panting as he guzzles endless glasses of water. Turns slightly, tongue protrudes minimally from mouth, licks closed lips. Vestigial overbite. Cute, like a volatile leveret. Looks through him. Unseeing and unseen together. Places right hand over Lawrence’s left wrist. No discernible pressure. Liquorice eyes never flicker. Semi connection.

They stand. Chairs screech on vinyl tiles. Steady pace across the floor to the washroom. Instantly, Lawrence on his knees, lapping and slurping; swallowing Richard down. Slight gag on red Leicester smegma and trickles of Brie flavour perspiration, before gulping a serving of an overly salted Covent Garden ambient broccoli and Stilton medley. Richard fucking his mouth. Taking the prepuce and glans to Lawrence’s tonsils like an endurance test. An audition. A dealmaker.

Then on, they’re a discreet couple. Richard gives and leaves. Lawrence accepts and is grateful. Idly picking at the dried jizz on his cheek, crumbly to the touch like artisanal Wensleydale, once the door has closed on him. Every day his body is probed and his mind expanded by earthy root vegetables and assorted gourds from cold frame and garden. They never kiss. Richard’s mouth remains closed. Two front teeth engrave indentations on his bottom lip. His cock pours liquid into Lawrence. Rarely they talk and never about the future. Though Lawrence makes secret plans. He’s ready for outside. Not for him fruitless discussions with the housing office. He is putting down roots.

The divorce settlement and dissolution of the business (the GDC enforced a career change) insulated him. Rich and bald and fat. A crash helmet of money and an airbag of cash. Invested it in a small shop with a flat above. Vacant possession. Moved immediately. Somewhere for Lawrence to prepare and nurture ready for Richard’s release. A greengrocers and cheesemongers; jobs for the boys. He called it The Cucumbers. Scrubbed it sparkling. Bought a van. Sourced products. Filled shelves. Opened the doors. Sold a load. Threw away a bit. Broke even. Established a niche. Accumulated regulars. Slept alone. Dreamed of cocks fountaining white and yellow. Counted the days. Then Richard got out.

Lawrence rose early. Drove fast. Arrived aroused. Optimistic. Sat in the van. Gripped the wheel. Climbed out. Walked up and down. Wished he smoked. Ate a gruyere pastry. Checked his watch. Got agitated. Calmed down. Fantasised. The gate came ajar. Richard emerged, unblinking. Athletically skeletal, he flowed like fluid away from the jail. Towards the minibus that took the freshly free to the main line station. In panic, Lawrence called Richard’s name, to no response. He flaccidly hurried after him. Still calling. Still ignored.

By the back doors of the bus where Richard had stowed his holdall, Lawrence caught him up. Placed his sweating hand, veined and mottled like ripened Sage Derby, on Richard’s shoulder and compelled him to turn. Richard set his empty face to him, impassive, like a dreaming rabbit. Ignoring the weak and worthless old man smiling helplessly, Richard climbed silently on board, took a seat and stared out the window at nothing.

When the bus departed, Richard’s eyes gave Lawrence no sign of love or farewell or recognition.