The concierge hesitated. ‘No, it’s no problem, sir. If you would please call me at reception as soon as you have a clearer idea of your plans?’
‘Yes. . . yes, I’ll do that.’
‘Okay, sir, goodbye.’
‘Bye.’ As soon as Edward was off the phone, he hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door. He then paced the room. He sat and waited. He stared out of the window, the television running constantly in the background. He watched every person walk along the pavement down below, examining every face. None were the man he was waiting for. Perhaps his good fortune had just run out on him; perhaps he was now the subject of some cruel joke. A stranger wandering about the city, paying for meals for the starving, checking them into hotels, and leaving them there. It didn’t strike Edward as very funny. The television did not seem to alleviate the anxiety that was building inside of Edward. He tried reading more of The Cityscape Chronicles but it was useless. He knew that he could not pay for this room, not one penny of it. He was stuck inside now, starving himself once again. The luxury of the warm bed and the hot water had turned into a burden; he was stuck in a five-star prison cell. That night he did not order room service in fear of increasing his bill. Again, he was starving himself. Even in this palace of luxury, he still felt as though he was out on the street. He vowed one more night, one more night and then he would leave; if Wolf had not returned by noon the next day, Edward would walk out of there, never to return.
He could not sleep. He found himself awake in the early hours of the morning, and instead of remaining in the comfort of the bed, he took a long shower. He stared out of the window as the morning rose: Edward Glass sitting by the window, washed and dressed. He then occupied his time by tidying the room, until it looked as though no one had occupied it for the past few days; the cleaners couldn’t have done much better. Midday came and his stomach sank. He stuffed all the hotel papers into his bag, along with his freshly washed clothes, and peered out into the corridor. It was empty. He had not stepped into the winding corridors since he had arrived, and his first step onto the soft, plush carpet, in light of his outstanding payments, felt somewhat unauthorised. Luckily, the luxury of the carpet served to soften the sound of his footsteps. Apprehension weighed him down as he turned corner after corner, as he tried hard to remember the reverse journey he had made to his room. He soon felt lost, and he no longer knew where his room was either. There was now no other option than to go through with his plan. Only then did he hear the sound of a lift door opening.
Standing alone inside the lift, he stared at himself in the mirror. The days’ rest had clearly had a calming effect over him. He looked refreshed, revitalised, back to how he looked before he left for London. But no sooner had he noticed this did the lift ring and the doors open. Peering into the lobby, all seemed to be as usual: eerily quiet and orderly. He stepped cautiously out of the lift and from there he could see the wide doors at the other end of the room waiting for him, his final destination. The staff at reception and the scattered guests did not seem to notice Edward as he stood there, nor as he began to walk across the foyer. Just going for a quiet stroll, thought Edward to himself. Yet however much Edward tried to comfort himself, he couldn’t help but shiver with fear. He felt as though he might as well have been running out of a shop with his arms filled, might as well have been running straight to prison. As he reached the exit, another obstacle lay in his path: the doorman. He willed himself to stare towards the floor, to make no eye contact, and as he did so he suddenly felt the rush of the odorous London air. He had made it, had broken out. Now all he had to do was run, run as far as he could. His plan was about to be set into action when, as though he had been tackled to the ground, as though his face had hit the pavement, he heard his name.
‘Edward!’ called a voice from behind him. Edward stopped in his tracks and cautiously turned. Standing behind him was Wolf, wearing the same suit and overcoat, another cigarette in his mouth. ‘Where you going?’ he asked.
‘For a walk,’ said Edward. Wolf’s face turned serious.
‘I was coming to get you.’
‘You said yesterday. You said yesterday you’d come get me.’
‘So, yesterday, today, what’s the difference?’
‘I didn’t know if you were ever going to turn up.’
‘Of course I was going to turn up. Today is an important day.’
‘Important?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How?’ Wolf didn’t answer. Instead, he entered the hotel. There he paid for Edward’s stay and all extraneous bills. Without hesitation, he grabbed Edward’s arm and led him away from The Ritz. They boarded a London bus and, sitting at the top deck, Edward looked out over the neglected offices and apartments that existed above the giant shops and department stores. And as the bus ran on, the buildings began to deteriorate; they turned from grey to black, from grimy to filthy. It was only when the buildings could not have deteriorated any further did Wolf and Edward step down off the bus.
Wolf, without saying a word to Edward, stormed through the streets on a route that had clearly been committed to memory. Edward followed, now and then struggling to keep up. Amongst the winding roads that seemed to cut off any paths or walkways, behind the buildings where small-time shops barely existed, was a block of flats. Wolf walked right up to the entrance, removed a key from his pocket, and walked in. He took Edward up to the third floor, his footsteps slapping flatly against the stone staircase. There, he took out another key from his pocket and opened the door at the end of the corridor, one of two.
When Edward entered, he found himself in an empty room. The walls were bare, but recently painted white. Off-to-the-side: a bathroom, a kitchen en-suite. No furniture to speak of. The carpet: worn but freshly vacuumed. Another room contained a space clearly designed to be a bedroom.
‘What is this?’ asked Edward.
‘It’s a new apartment.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘For you, of course. It’s your new place.’ Wolf held out the keys. Edward didn’t take them.
‘You’re just giving me a place?’
‘Yes. I told you my plan, to help you. It just took me a little more time than I had expected to secure this place, but I’ve managed it and here you are.’ Edward couldn’t find anything to say. All he could do was look around the bare room. ‘You want a roof over your head, don’t you? You want to be out of the cold, right?’ Edward was silent. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then take the keys, Edward, and we won’t say another thing about it.’ Edward stared at the keys dangling from Wolf’s fingers. As he took them, he could feel the very same keys locking the shackles that now connected the two men together. Edward held the two keys in the palm of his hand, and as he did so, standing at the centre of this skeletal new home, Edward felt sick with shame, sick that he had to be pitied, that he had to be handed-out to, instead of taking care of himself. But before he had time for these turn of events to sink in, Wolf had already opened the front door. ‘Come on,’ he said. Edward didn’t have time to protest; Wolf was already half-way down the stairs. Edward quickly locked his new front door, silently proud of his new home in the city.
Wolf again led Edward through the streets, this time to a large building that appeared somewhat opulent from the outside, but on the inside it was bland and silenced. There Wolf helped Edward set up a new bank account, and as he did so, Edward could not help feeling that this man’s grip was tightening. He felt a dull gratefulness that only really existed in the rational workings of his mind. The rest of his body was numb. The only natural conclusion that he came to was that sometime in the future this man would want repayment in one form or another, would want favours from Edward that could never be outweighed by the fact that he was saving Edward’s life. Edward could only imagine these requests to be untoward or unsavoury, some kind of twisted exercise to be performed. As the transactions at the bank were underway, Edward knew that this man was in fac
t buying his life. Without these charitable financial gifts, Edward was sure that he would have soon been dead: lying in a doorway, his body given in to inevitable starvation, or worse, the inevitability of violence: a life of crime, or victim of an aimless murder.
The man, however, did not notice Edward write his name as ‘Glass’. In fact, the man did not know that this was Edward’s last name. It certainly hadn’t been, until a few weeks ago, until Edward had begun to read The Cityscape Chronicles, until the run-in with the police at the side of the motorway. Sitting in the back of the police car, being asked his name, the first false name that came to mind was that of the protagonist of The Cityscape Chronicles, Heronymous Glass. It was a name he felt suited his new identity, a name both mysterious and vivid. From then on, Edward had thought of himself as Edward Glass, and whenever he had been asked his name, he had always answered Glass. Strange, then, that this man sitting beside him, his saviour and benefactor, had never asked for Edward’s surname. It had never come up in conversation, had never been alluded or referred to. He had always been referred to with the singular Edward. It was not surprising then, that when Edward handed the form back to the woman behind the counter, she received it with a glance.
‘Thank you, Mr Glass.’ Wolf’s eyes darted over to him.
‘Glass?’ he asked, harshly.
‘Yeah,’ said Edward.
‘That’s not your name.’
‘Yes it is,’ said Edward. There was an abrasive silence. ‘What is my name then?’ The man did not answer. Edward was told by the bank worker that his account had been set up and that his new card would be sent to him in a few days’ time.
It was only when Wolf and Edward were heading back towards the apartment that Wolf, a stern look on his face, said anything.
‘It does not matter what your name is. I know who you are. Names are for paper.’
Edward did not know what this meant. He did not say anything of it. Close to the apartment, Wolf stopped in his tracks.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Edward.
‘You have everything you need now.’
‘So, what, are you going now?’
‘Yes. When you get your card, check it every month and every month you will be sent another instalment.’
‘When will I see you?’
‘I will contact you soon enough.’ Edward was about to say thank you, to show some form of gratitude, but before he could say anything at all, Wolf was walking away. He soon turned a corner and was lost to the city.
Edward walked to his new apartment, to his empty room in the midst of the city. His bankcard did not arrive for a few days and so he slept on the floor. He was just pleased to have a warm room to shelter in. With the fifty pound note that Wolf had given him, Edward bought a green, ring-bound notebook along with a desk lamp and several pens. He bought some food, such as sandwiches and crisps, which lasted for the next few days. When he was thirsty he drank from the kitchen tap. He set up the desk lamp in the living room, and on the floor he continued to write in his green notebook. He tried to transcribe some of what he had written in the hotel room but, as before, he found new words invading the existing words, new sentences forming. Soon enough he found the notebook filling up. When he tired of writing, he read The Cityscape Chronicles.
As planned, a letter from the bank fell through the door five days later. Attached to the page was a plastic card, an artificial key for unlocking his funds. He never saw Wolf again. He did, however, receive brief notes from him, conducted in a purely business-like fashion. They would fall through the door a week at a time. Turns out that Frederick Wolf was not his real name. Every note was signed with a different name, an entirely new identity for each correspondence. Frederick Wolf was merely one name of many: Samuel Faber, Matthew Constant, Vincent Posey-but Frederick Wolf was the only one that Edward referred to him by. It was a name so strange, so bizarre, so clearly made-up, that it had lodged itself firmly into Edward’s mind.
With the first financial instalment, Edward bought some furniture: a mattress, sheets, and a chair. After that: a desk and a small black and white television. Eventually: a worn grey sofa. This was all he really needed. He would buy other things as he went along, such as a mirror and more clothes, but these things would do for now. As he returned to the cash machine on the high street on the first day of every month, he noticed that the generous instalments in fact differed each time. They would either be less than the agreed amount or they would wildly overshoot the mark. In either case, the money was more than enough for Edward to live on, so much so that there was in fact no reason for Edward to find a job. But this did not mean that Edward did not work. Every day he would put paper to pen, every day he wrote word after word after word.
Night was becoming dawn. Edward stopped talking. Just like the words that had trickled from his pen, the words from his mouth had spilled out in a steady stream until he could not stop himself. Catherine looked tired, exhausted by the story. She was silent for a long while, lying on the sofa, her feet on Edward’s lap. She drifted off into a deep sleep where she dreamt about motorways and hotels and paperback books.
8.
A little red disposable camera dangled from Edward’s wrist. He stood up close to the cage, his stare transfixed by the creature he saw before him. It’s skin leathery, creased, it’s shape so amusing; yet its eye: its eye was sad and human-like. It was only a baby yet already so large. At first Edward was pleased to see it, and then, after realising what he was really seeing, felt sorry for the lonely elephant. It was not moving much, just sitting at the centre of its cage, its small eye peering out somewhat disinterestedly at those who passed him. Edward put his hand on one of the bars and felt its strength; there was no escaping. Edward wondered where the rest of its family was, and how it was coping with the harshness of the British climate.
‘Why don’t you take a picture of it?’ asked Catherine.
‘I don’t want to,’ said Edward.
‘Well take a picture of me then.’ Catherine stood by the cage. Edward took a photo of her, but made sure not to include the elephant in the shot.
Edward and Catherine had already seen the melursus ursinus, the camelus bactrianus and the oryx leucoryx, or in other words, the sloth bears, the Bactrian camels and the Arabian oryx. They were now off to see the spheniscus demersus; in other words: the penguins.
‘Why do they still give you the Latin names of the animals?’ asked Edward.
‘I think that’s probably their real name. The same animals are given different names in different parts of the world. This way, using Latin, they can identify the animals accurately.’
‘I see. So if a penguin was to fly to Timbuktu, it would have a different name there than it would do in London?’
‘Well, yes, probably, because of the different languages, and because of the culture specific to that area. Except penguins don’t fly.’
‘Don’t they? I wondered why they weren’t in a cage,’ said Edward, watching the penguins waddle about the artificial Antarctic enclosure. ‘They’ve got wings.’
‘Yes, but they can’t fly.’
‘Do you think they used to be able to fly and now their wings have become redundant?’
‘Probably.’
‘Poor things. I bet they’d love to fly away. They look a little heavy though. Look at that one, he’s a little plump. Looks like he’s been keeping all the fish for himself.’
‘We can see for ourselves. The zoo person’s going to feed them in a minute.’ And soon enough, one of the zookeepers entered the enclosure with a bucket of fish. The penguins saw her coming and went wild at her feet, waddling up to where she stood above the artificial pools and streams. Some dived down on their bellies into the main pool below where she stood. Others jumped up onto higher ground to get to her ankles. The zookeeper playfully threw the fish into the water, where the penguins gobbled them up. A few penguins were weaker than the others, or were just being lazy, and held back. The keeper made sure she threw
some in their direction. Edward watched wild-eyed at the spectacle unfolding before him. Each penguin immediately obtained their own individual personality, whether they were shy and retreating or confident and bold. Edward willed the fishes to make it into the mouths of those penguins who did not push to the front, who were not desperately vying for the attention of the zookeeper. Edward read the placard, discovering that these were blackfooted penguins all the way from South America. Their favourite food was fish, clearly, but the placard stated that they specialised in eating anchovies. Like many of the animals in the zoo, these penguins were endangered.
‘It says that they have become endangered due to oil-spills and overfishing,’ said Edward.
‘Why don’t we adopt one?’ asked Catherine.
‘Can we take it home if we do?’
‘No, it’s not like adopting a child.’
‘How would we know which one was ours?’
‘Well, they’d give us its name and I’m sure they know which one’s which.’
‘But they all look the same.’
‘They must have ways of telling.’
‘Do you think they like it here?’
‘I think they do.’
‘Isn’t it a little cruel to keep them here like this?’ asked Edward.
‘No, not really. They are treated well here, and they are endangered, so at least here they can preserve them.’
‘But that elephant looked kind of sad.’
‘I think that elephant probably always looks sad. Doesn’t mean he is sad.’
‘You’re probably right.’ The penguin feeding procedure had come to an end. ‘Who do we talk to about adopting one of them?’
‘You really want to?’
‘Yeah. I want to adopt that one.’ Edward pointed to one of the penguins who was standing on a rock on its own in the corner.
‘I don’t know if they let you choose which one you adopt, but we’ll see what they say.’
The Glass Book - A London Love Story Page 10
