‘I married you,’ she said. Edward stopped. ‘Not some tramp off the street.’
All Edward could say was: ‘I know.’ He wished he hadn’t said anything at all now. He left the room, hoping it would all sort itself out when he returned, but when he left he found Frederick Wolf standing in the living room. He looked like a statue, standing tall, his hands at his sides. Edward was stopped in his tracks. The man he had brought in looked markedly different. In Edward’s old clothes: dark jeans and a jumper, a clean-shaven face and combed-back hair, he looked somewhat homely, the kind of man who had never lived on the street a day in his life. His face was clear, and only now could Edward see all his features. He did not notice any similarities, but then again he did not know to look for any.
‘Are you hungry?’ asked Edward.
‘No,’ said the man.
‘Would you like something to read?’
‘No,’ said the man.
‘Okay,’ said Edward. He looked around the room, trying to think of something for him to do. ‘Maybe you’d like to sleep. Are you tired?’ The man nodded. ‘I mean, I know it’s early, but you must be tired.’ He did not nod this time. Edward nevertheless took Catherine’s keys out of his pocket and led the man next door. In Catherine’s old apartment was Edward’s old mattress. He covered it with a fresh sheet and gave the man a pillow and a blanket. Before he left, he reached into his trouser pocket.
‘Here,’ he said, holding a few notes in his hand, ‘in case you need anything.’ The man took the money, the most animated he had been all evening, and put it into his old jacket, which he was holding.
‘Light?’ asked the man. Edward didn’t notice the cigarette in his hand; his final cigarette.
‘No, I don’t, but...’ Edward left the room. He returned with a small box of matches. After Edward left, the man’s cigarette died out just as the sun disappeared completely.
It was Catherine who Edward made food for now. He cooked her sausages and eggs with coffee. It in fact turned out to be too much food for Catherine, but she enjoyed what she did eat. The dinner table conversation was quiet: Catherine seemed tired from the day. Edward could tell her energy was low.
‘Do you like the sausages?’ asked Edward.
‘Yeah, they’re nice,’ said Catherine. There was a silence before: ‘You’ve never made dinner for me before.’
‘That’s not true, I must have.’
‘You haven’t.’
‘I’ve made you beans, breakfast, toast.’
‘Beans, toast, sausages, eggs. Variations on breakfast, not dinner.’
‘Oh.’ Edward no longer knew whether the food he had placed in front of Catherine still counted as dinner. This was the last piece of conversation they had that night. Catherine was quick to finish, to put her plate away, and left the table before Edward had finished eating.
That night, Edward tried to make amends by lying close to Catherine. But it was no use: her back was turned to him.
When Edward returned to the spare apartment the next morning, he found the front door wide open and Frederick Wolf nowhere to be seen. He ran down the stairwell and out onto the street. The man had vanished. Edward felt somewhat furious that his aid had gone unnoticed. Not a word of recognition, not a word of thanks. Catherine was eating a bowl of cereal as Edward returned to the apartment and shut the door quietly. They were still not talking. A few passing words, but nothing substantial.
‘He’s gone,’ Edward said.
‘What?’ she said, surprised. Her eyes met his for the first time since last night.
‘He’s disappeared.’
‘God, that’s strange. Without a word?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Maybe he didn’t want help.’
‘Maybe not.’ They continued in silence.
If Catherine had looked out of the window twenty-five minutes later, she would have seen a clean-shaven, well-dressed man walking along the street and into the building. At least then she would have been prepared for what was to follow the knock at the door. Edward opened it and was struck still by what he found: in the doorway stood Frederick Wolf, dressed in a new clean suit with a new haircut and wearing shiny leather shoes. He looked remarkably younger than he had the night before: no longer the decrepit old man. Yet the man who stood in the doorway was no longer Frederick Wolf. He was, in fact, Henry Rose. The transition was now complete.
Frederick Wolf had awoken early that morning, before the sun had fully risen, and found himself gasping, his mouth dry. He searched his jacket and trousers for a cigarette but all he could find were stray flecks of tobacco. He dressed quickly and hurried out to find an undisturbed morning, the kind that he had grown to used to. The light was only just rising and he felt himself sinking into the dull blue that covered the buildings and the empty pavements. As he walked, he watched the streetlamps flicker out. Only the movement of Frederick Wolf interfered with the steadiness of it all.
This did not distract him from his objective: he soon found an early morning newsstand where he bought a packet of cigarettes. He lit them with Edward’s matches, smoking two in quick succession. The dawn brought hunger, and with the notes from the old jacket he wore over Edward’s clothes, he filled his stomach at a café he came across. There, he looked over the recent entries in the little black notebook he kept in his jacket pocket; if he had looked over the earlier pages, he would have seen the words Mia Rose scribbled there. By the time he had finished, the light outside was brighter, even if it was still chillingly cold. He ran his hand through his hair and looked down at his tattered jacket. He decided that this was the morning to shed his skin, to undergo yet another transformation. He had his hair cut short and neatly combed, and bought himself a whole new suit and brand new shoes, along with a warm overcoat to keep out the cold. He had used up Edward’s money on the breakfast. The rest, of course, came out of his own pocket. He put his old jacket and shoes, as well as Edward’s clothes, into a shopping bag, and would have thrown them away if he did not find himself on Edward’s street so soon. Instead, he turned inside and walked up the stairs. He knocked on the door.
Catherine’s face was statuesque: frozen in its place. Henry Rose placed the bag of clothes on the floor and sat down on the sofa. It took Edward a few moments to shut the door: he was trying to comprehend how a man he had seen only a few hours earlier could now look so different. Even in the way he moved: he no longer took those heavy and laboured steps, instead walking with strength and purpose. He even spoke with confidence-speaking at all being an improvement on the night before-‘I am afraid I have caused you much inconvenience. I am entirely grateful to you both for taking such good care of me last night. I am now refreshed and feeling almost one hundred percent again.’ He spoke out into the room, not addressing anyone in particular. He sounded eerily rehearsed, somewhat insincere: ‘I will only be needing a few more days to recover fully, a few days of rest. I will not inconvenience you much longer. Now, if you will excuse me, I am a little tired and must rest.’ Without waiting for a reply, he walked towards the door. Edward opened it. Henry Rose stood out in the corridor until Edward had retrieved the key and let him into the next apartment. There Henry Rose pretended to sleep. In actual fact, he had no intention of leaving. He had found Edward Rose and that was all that mattered.
Edward shut the door of his apartment. Catherine was still motionless at the breakfast table. He couldn’t find anything to say either. Eventually, she spoke.
‘Was that the same guy?’
‘I think so...’ said Edward.
‘It didn’t look like him.’
‘I know. It didn’t.’ Edward spotted the bag the man had left behind and immediately pulled out its contents. ‘My clothes, his old jacket.’ He didn’t bother to look through them. He threw the items onto the sofa. He started pacing. ‘What the hell’s he up to? He’s a mess for all this time, the minute he’s here, the minute I give him some money, he’s up and out, looking all smart.’
‘You gave
him money?’
‘Yeah.’ Edward stopped moving.
‘How much?’
‘Just a little.’
‘Well that’s very fine-you giving a stranger all our money to swan about in new clothes with!’
‘I only gave him a tenner!’
‘How do you explain all the new clothes then?’
‘I don’t know... he must have stolen them or something.’
‘Oh, that’s just great. Living with a homeless thief. Thanks, Edward.’
‘There’s no way he could have bought all that stuff with the money I gave him.’
‘You mean he already had money on him?’
‘No, that’s impossible.’ Even though Catherine had crystallised what Edward was thinking, he refused to believe it.
Catherine and Edward spent the morning in a conversation that came and went in short bursts. Somewhere between a discussion and an argument came various theories about the stranger; they hit upon a few accurate ones without knowing it: ‘What if he isn’t who he says he is?’ ‘What if he somehow planned his entering our home?’ ‘What if he causes us harm?’ But Edward did not seem to hang onto any of these ideas. Before Catherine knew it, he was back to talking about how he ‘owed him’, how his life was indebted to the now double stranger next door-the man who had plastered someone else’s face onto his own. Except that, of course, his new face was his own.
For the days following, Frederick Wolf ate dinner with Catherine and Edward. The conversation was non-existent. Whenever Frederick Wolf did talk, he only spoke to Edward, never to Catherine. This only taught Catherine, who didn’t like him anyway, to despise him. After dinner, however, Frederick Wolf would become more animated and, talking only to Edward, would tell elaborate stories, claiming they were from his past. He would wait until both he and Edward had sat on the sofa before he told a story, as though what he was about to tell him contained truths of the utmost importance. Catherine was disheartened by her husband, who sat and listened with intensity, encouraging him with remarks of, ‘Really?’ ‘Oh God’ and ‘What happened next?’ And he kept his stories to one a night, as though they were daily instalments of an enthralling serial. These stories were unbelievable tales that could not have been anything but lies, fantasies of his imagination; to connect these experiences with the stranger sitting in the living room was an impossibility. Catherine listened secretly, but only to witness their implausibility.
‘The sea was rough that morning and the boat was being flung about from wave to wave. We saw the wood splintering, the fish we had caught spilling out over the deck, flapping all around us. They were trying to escape, gasping for breath, diving into the water. But they were of no use to us any longer; we were now only trying to stay alive. Then the boat began to tip, teetering on its side...’ Or, ‘the deal was on the verge of crumbling, but I clinched it at the last second from right under their noses and the money just went up and up. I was the envy of the corporation, but the money just kept rolling in. I felt like I was drowning.’ Unlike most people, who would understandably reminisce about when they were a child or a soldier, this stranger seemed to be reminiscing about when he was a pirate or a maverick businessman, happily skipping across different times and places as though he had lived everywhere at once, in every skin.
Although this stranger did embellish the truth, there were actual details and events buried beneath the fiction. If Edward had listened carefully, he would have found quiet parallels with his own history. During one of these tales, Catherine felt herself brimming with frustration; she had had enough of this man who invaded her home. All she could do was leave. The streets were more inviting: at least there she could get away from Catherine Glass. She grabbed her coat and hurried out. Edward did not say a word.
Walks along streets: the late night lives of people observed. The shouting and the silence, the artificial lights, the shuffling of feet. Catherine Glass walked in one direction only, never turning, observing the cars that passed, people that emerged and receded in and out of the woodwork, and the towering buildings with their dark windows and aging bricks. And soon she was nowhere at all: dark streets with nothing to distinguish them, no footstepping or whirring motors, just the bristling of leaves, the faint, interlocking shadows huddled around dying streetlamps. And then: the tall gate, the pathway gravel, the windows, the bricks and the door: the ghostly house that stood where it always had, Catherine staring up at it, her throat sinking into her stomach. She did not dare to go any closer; she did not dare to touch the gate. A turn and a run: quick step after step after step, a trip, a fall. She picked herself up, pressed her hand against her knee to subside the burning. After that, all there was for her to do was begin the long walk home. But that did not stop her from walking into a cinema she passed. She sat down long after it had started and so the film made no sense to her. It did not matter though: she was not watching. She sat huddled in her jacket, and even though she trembled, even though she wanted to, she did not cry.
When Catherine returned, the lights were out. Edward, tired of waiting up for her, had gone to bed. Even though Catherine felt exhausted, she did not feel like sleeping; at least, she did not feel like sleeping next to Edward. In the darkness, her eyes adjusted, and she took down the small yellow paperback from the bookshelf and read over the address at its front. She replaced it. She made herself a cup of tea: something to prolong her resistance to sleep, something to keep herself company. She was going to turn on the television and see what goes on after dark, but by the time she sat down on the sofa with her tea, she had forgotten all about it. Instead she sat in darkness, her mind alive with a medley of memories and fractured thoughts.
A few notes had entered her head; they had come to her somewhere on the journey home, jolted into her, perhaps, on her collision with the pavement. She looked over at her piano: it had not been touched in weeks, months even. She could not remember the last time sounds had invaded her; it used to happen all the time. She was drawn to the stool, where she sat down and lifted the lid. Her eyes ran over the keys, played tunes in her head. She placed her fingertips on their surfaces and pretended to press down hard. She imagined a furious performance: angry chords and violent crashes. But all there was was silence: she dared not play one note, dared not wake Edward Glass.
It was purely by chance that she found the notebook. Returning to the sofa for the last sips of her tea, her eyes fell on the spilled clothes that lay there. She did not touch the clothes: she merely happened to see the black notebook sticking out of the side pocket of the stranger’s tattered jacket. She removed it by its corner, gingerly dragging it out and letting it fall beside her. It was creased through years of thumbing. A short, fat book, it contained many more pages than would at first appear. The pages seemed to spill out when she opened it, and as her eyes passed over them, she found them to be brimming with words. In particular, references to Edward Rose dripped from these old, frayed pages and, after further inspection, she found them to also be scarred with the words: Mia Rose.
Edward had no knowledge of this man’s connection with him; in all honesty, Edward had never contemplated that he could have had a living relative, let alone a father-for him, the idea of a father was an abstract notion, an impossible fantasy that was not worth even a moment’s thought-and even if events were pointing towards certain conclusions, Edward was nevertheless oblivious to them. Edward and Henry Rose had gone about their respective business without asking any questions. The two men did not even take a moment to look at each other; if they had, they would have noticed a few striking similarities: the thin frame, the wiry hair, the dark eyes. Give or take the effects of a few generations, Edward and Henry Rose looked markedly similar. Catherine saw this. Certain mannerisms, certain nuances of their bodies’ language hinted at a deeper connection between them, but Catherine did not have the courage to verbalise this, to make her suspicions concrete. The discovery of the notebook the night before only served to unlock her deepest nightmare by tying this strang
er even tighter to Edward. As she watched them both as they ate breakfast in silence, she wondered whether to remove the notebook from its hiding place and let its pages spill out all over the breakfast table, or instead stay silent and hope that the book ceases to exist. She could feel herself speeding towards a brick wall, a violent collision resulting in an elaborate explosion of twisted machinery and dazzling flames. She understood that with the discovery of the notebook such a collision was inevitable and that the best thing for her to do was to prepare herself as best she could: she would at least have to wait until Henry Rose had left the room.
Now that he knew where Edward was, Henry Rose was now free to come and go at will. He could take his time wandering the streets, always knowing where Edward would be when he returned. After breakfast, he left Catherine and Edward to take a walk. He had no destination, only the desire to walk where his steps would take him. He watched the ground as he moved, the fractured paving stones, the turning of corners. And as he continued, he found his path becoming more determined, and as the streets became more and more familiar, he realised that his feet were leading him somewhere in particular.
He found himself standing in front of the building. He tried the front door and found it stiff, but it opened when he used enough force. Inside, he found the foyer much darker than it used to be: dust and cobwebs reigned. The lift no longer worked, and he wondered whether anyone still lived here at all. On a walk up to the top floor there were no signs of life, only noises coming from the city outside. There were leaks in the ceiling and sunken steps on the staircase, and when he came to his door, he found it unlocked. On entering he found everything to be as he had left it, except for the dust that had accumulated. He was surprised to have found anything at all, to find that his possessions had never been ransacked. The marble pillars still stood firmly beside the door, and all his objects and furniture were present, if slowly decaying. The scuttle of rats was the only movement. The apartment, and the building itself, was a fading monument to what was once the epitome of luxury. He had no idea what the story was between his departure and his return; some financial dispute, he assumed, that had somehow forced the other tenants to move elsewhere, that had left his apartment dormant.
The Glass Book - A London Love Story Page 18
