Statistics

I walk between the raindrops, not all the raindrops mind, but the overwhelming majority. In fact, so vanishingly small is the percentage of raindrops that do hit me that, within any sensible margin of error, I walk between the lot.

Malaysia was white sand beaches and palm trees, was sunshine like a weapon and humidity that slowed everything, was cheap DVDs and designer sunglasses, was luxury hotels with wicker chairs that crimped pink western flesh between their trap like rails, was bars with a waitress for every table, tiny and perfect in Tiger Beer skirts, was that odd, morbid, nagging sensation that you were not enjoying your holiday as much as you were meant to.

Myers was the most short sighted person he knew, so myopic that on the dive trip he had to stay aboard the boat, being as useless as an infant without his glasses which would not fit beneath the mask. Standing watching he was the only person who saw the shark eat Professor Mermin.

The Professor had surfaced, removed his breathing apparatus, and shouted, 'look, a shark.' Myers watched a dark shadow shoot into the side of the diver like a torpedo. There was splashing and rolling and great grey flippers rising from the water, the sea went pink a little, but not much, and there was no screaming. The whole episode happened very quickly and quietly. leaving nothing but a slight colouration to the water and a few scraps of wetsuit floating on the surface.

Professor Mermin had been a solid state physicist, he was on holiday by himself mostly to go diving. He and Myers had talked a bit on the sail out, but not much more than to say hello.

That night Myers' girlfriend left him. She told him in their hotel room before dinner that she could not go out with a man who could not protect her. His short sightedness meant he was stuck on the boat meant he could not have saved her from the shark if it had attacked her. Myers suggested that even if he was in the water with twenty-twenty vision it would not have made a great deal of difference to a thirty-foot shark. His girlfriend had said she needed a real man and Myers had said he was one and offered to take his trousers down and prove it. She started shouting again but Myers was thinking of other things, he would have to move out of course, that was not so bad he could stay with his brother. He looked to see if the double bed was composed of two singles, it was, they could pull them apart for the remains of the holiday.

Incidentally, Myers had no idea how big the shark was, but being the only surviving person who saw it he had chosen a nice big round figure and stuck to it. He stuck to it every time he was asked to tell the story, which was often. The story made it easy to meet new people, and Myers was suddenly on his own most of the time.

It is said, sometimes, that the living outnumber the dead. If this is true, then the majority of people who have ever lived have not died and, based on the evidence, the probability of any one person ever dying is less than fifty percent.

Bedford was commuters, was a strange glut of card shops, was a high-street full of pubs that spilled singing drunks, was a wide river and wider embankment, was a thin vestige of history between the prime colours of chain stores, was part Italian, part Pakistani, was bored teenagers at the bus station, pensioners in the post office, wannabe drug dealers in convertible BMWs with skinny white girls in the passenger seats, was KFC on a Saturday night.

Myers moved in with his brother, his brother needed a lodger to split the bills and Myers needed somewhere to go. They fell back into old rhythms and dependencies, Myers managed everything, did the shopping and paid the bills, his brother dragged him away from the television, made Myers meet new people, tried to pair him off with unsuitable women, took him out for heavy drinking sessions in pubs.

Myers awoke Sunday morning with a hangover. He was naked only half under the covers and the curtains were open. He looked down at himself, his belly hung onto the mattress like a sack of beer and he was holding his erection in his hand but did nothing with it.

'I am in a fug,' he said out loud.

Last night his brother had sat him next to a tall blonde who had risen in volume with every glass of wine. She had called Myers 'Mysee' and he had flinched involuntarily from her touch and she had not even noticed. Myers drank too much too quickly and left without saying goodbye. As he walked home he passed a busker picking cautiously through Hotel California on a cheap guitar. Myers had given him a twenty pound note.

His bottom made a plaintive fart, rising at the end like a question.

'I suppose so,' answered Myers.

According to the internet Professor George Mermin worked at Cornell University in New York. There was a telephone number. Myers looked at the telephone sitting next to the computer, and dialled it.

'Hello,' he said, 'I'm ringing about Professor Mermin.'

'Oh,' said a voice from across the Atlantic, 'I'm afraid he was eaten by a shark.'

'I know, I saw it happen.'

'Oh your that guy,' said the voice, 'hey there's something we all really want to ask you.'

'There is?'

'What kind of a shark was it?'

Myers said he was afraid he had no idea.

'Did it have any markings?'

Myers said, 'not that I noticed.'

'What colour was it?'

'Sort of grey, I guess.'

'What about the dorsal fin.'

'The what fin?'

'Dorsal. The fin on the back. The one that slices through the water in Jaws.'

'Oh yes,' said Myers, 'it definitely had one of them.'

'You didn't notice anything about it?'

'Only that it was there.'

The man was disappointed, but put Myers through to someone called Hank who told him that Professor Mermin had a sister called Alice in Richmond, London. Myers was not sure that this was what he wanted to know, but it seemed to be what the man wanted to tell him, and when it came to it he could not actually think of anything to ask.

Myers put the phone down and stared at the computer screen, his brother poked a head around the door and asked if he wanted breakfast.

Myers nodded.

'Are you looking at porn?'

'No,' said Myers, 'I'm going to Richmond.'

'You want eggs first?'

'Yeah.'

They said on the news that there are fewer dead hedgehogs at the side of the road this summer and that this is evidence of a decline in the hedgehog population. Of course the hedgehogs could just be getting smarter, or perhaps it is merely a consequence of the decline in Robin Reliants.

Richmond was money, was intimidating stares from immaculate attendants in fashionable shops, was a wide river and narrow embankment, was pleasant and gentile pubs, was sulky posh girls, was giggling schoolgirls, was impossibly thin Chinese girls, was girls so pretty it hurt right in the gut, was cricket on the green, was large townhouses, was the residual hangover of monarchy.

Myers walked up the high street, down by the river, across the green. He had a pint in the White Cross and watched the tide slowly creep towards parked cars. He had another in the Cricketers and watched tourists photograph a real bronze statue unaware that it was not a street performer and was never going to suddenly move. He walked back past the station and away from the town centre towards the address he had been given. There he stopped.

He stood dumbly at the door. It was a shop. A Cake shop. An abandoned cake shop. In the windows old cakes gathered dust, a yellow piece of paper advertised 'The Last Day Saturday Tenth November'. A price list on display was fading and curling in on itself at the corners, next to it a flyer advertised a band offered "Jazz Styles Selected To Suit Your Celebration. A square white cake iced with the outline of a football field read 'Happy Fourth Birthday Jason', above it a cake in the shape of a bridal dress reminded Myers of a toilet roll cover. All these cakes slowly decaying, it was the saddest thing Myers had ever seen. He stepped backwards into the street and saw a line of tiered wedding cakes standing watch in the first floor window, forlorn and grey with dust, like old men on park benches, like puppies unpicked in a petstore window, like ghosts on castle ramparts, like an avenue of dead trees, like empty chairs, like maidens locked in towers, like tombstones.

Myers double checked the address. And then got out of the way before a bus ran him down.

On the opposite side of the road, was a pub. Myers sat in it and had a pint and looked out the window at the shop, summoning up the resolve to ring the bell. What the hell was he doing? He did not know what to say to the woman when he found her, 'Hi, I'm the guy that saw your brother get eaten.' Nobody had mentioned anything about a cake shop, abandoned or otherwise, surely this was the wrong place. He should have stayed in Bedford. The whole trip was a dumb idea.

When he was a student Myers had lived in London, immediately afterwards he had moved west to a suburb outside Twickenham and had drunk in Richmond often, in The White Cross, The Cricketers, O'Neil's and many other places. There had been a crowd of them then, all friends, they had spent long evenings in each others company, they had drunk themselves silly, they had laughed till they were hoarse, they had sat up all the night, they had fallen in and out of love with each other and with others. Where had all that gone, how on earth had he ended up where he was. Why did life suddenly seem so pale and uninteresting.

He bought another pint. Three pints of Dutch courage and not a fluid ounce of real courage. When the girl collected his empty glass he looked at his watch, pretending he was waiting for someone so she did not think he was an alcoholic. She looked straight through him, to her he was nothing more than another customer consuming beer. She was right. He got up, leaving the drink half drunk, walked over the road and pushed the bell. It did not ring.

'It's broken,' said a voice.

The voice belonged to an old woman standing on the pavement.

Myers said nothing.

'You must be Myers, am I right?'

'Yes,' he said, 'how did you know?'

'Hank from the university said you'd called. He e-mailed me a picture of you. I'm Alice Mermin.'

'A picture?'

'You told him your name so he looked you up. We are all a lot easier to find these days.' She gestured to the pub over the road. 'Shall we go and have a drink.'

They walked in to the pub and Myers went to the bar to buy two drinks, he bought himself a brand new pint despite the fact his unfinished one from earlier still sat on his previous table, the girl behind the bar gave it a curious look but said nothing. While he waited he tried to think of something to say. By the time he sat down opposite Alice Mermin the best he had come up with was 'do you really live in a cake shop?'

'No,' she said, 'but I was stalked a few years ago and my friends still remember to give it as a fake address.'

'Stalked?'

'I used to be an actress, I was in an advert as a sexually active grandmother who ate organic tomatoes.'

She reached out for her drink, lemonade, and Myers noticed the flesh hang limply from her bones in the bag of her skin, he could not imagine her as an advertisers image of a sexually active anything, with organic tomatoes or otherwise.

'He was a sweet man really,' she said, 'just a bit lost. I haven't heard anything in ages, he just seemed to loose interest after a while. Why are you here?'

'I don't know,' Myers admitted straight away, 'I thought you might like to hear how your brother died.'

'He was eaten by a shark wasn't he,' said Alice with a shrug.

'Well, yes,' said Myers.

'Was that it?'

'Kind of,' said Myers, 'but then kind of not. I suppose I wanted to find out myself why he died.'

'He was eaten by a shark,' Alice repeated.

'I know that,' said Myers, 'but why?'

'The shark was hungry, I should imagine.'

'That's not what I mean.'

'So what do you mean?'

'Why him?'

'Why him specifically?'

'Why not, say, my ex-girlfriend?'

'Was she in the water at the time?'

Myers nodded.

Alice paused, and then said 'no reason, just dumb luck. Bad luck for George, good luck for her.'

Myers drank his beer and looked away into the middle distance.

Alice said 'does that answer your question?'

Myers looked down at his half empty drink. 'No,' he said.

'It's just statistics,' said Alice, 'every year so many people get eaten by sharks, this year he was one of them.'

'I suppose,' said Myers.

Alice Mermin finished her drink in one long draught. 'Would you like to bake a cake,' she said.

'A cake?' asked Myers.

'In the shop over the road.'

'Is it your shop then?'

'It's the bank's shop now, but I still have a key and there are ingredients in there that are just going to go off.' She smiled a conspiratorial smile.

'What sort of cake?' said Myers, the beer had made him hungry.

'What sort of cake do you like?'

'All cake is good cake.'

'That,' said Alice, 'is the smartest thing you've since I met you.'

Cake, thought Myers, and something shifted within his head. It was so stupid really, so trite, that he could only express it in clichéd platitudes. Life goes on, he thought, and he realised that it had nothing to do with George Mermin, and nothing to with him, and even less to do with his ex-girlfriend, but it had everything to do with the shark. The shark was hungry, and now, so was he. Myers finished his drink, and went with Alice.

I reasoned, once, that whilst there was only a finite amount of truth that could be spoken, there was an infinite amount of untruth. Therefore, whenever anyone opened their mouth, the probability that they spoke the truth was a finite number divided by infinity, which was zero. This confused me.

Then it occurred to me, that while there is only a finite amount of truth, people can, and seemingly intend to, repeat it an infinite amount of times, bringing the odds to about even again, or as near as I can guess.