“I’m flying to Mauritius tomorrow morning.”
“What,” said Odette. “On holiday?”
“Great idea,” said Andrew enthusiastically, although he rather wished she had thought about perhaps asking if he might want to go too. “Get away from this shit hole for Christmas, come back in January with a suntan and a baby-lemur-skin handbag.”
Only Leo realized that something more significant was afoot. “I don’t think that’s what she means,” he said, looking closely at her.
“What do you mean, not what she means?” Something akin to awareness had dawned, but Andrew didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Leo’s right. I’ve planned this for a while. I tried to tell you, but somehow it never . . . worked out. I’m sorry.”
Andrew looked like a whipped dog, but Odette seemed—was—pleased. “So you’re going to do your research on—”
“Island biodiversity. Land snails of the Indian Ocean.”
“What made you decide?”
“Well, you know I held over my scholarship for a year, and time was running out. But more important, it was what I thought my dad wanted me to do. There was a dream I kept having, and I could never see his face, never quite capture him. But then it came to me that the way I would find him was not somehow inside myself, but out there, in the world, in the way the world is. Choose science, he was saying, choose knowledge. It was there all the time, but the dead—but Matija stopped me from seeing it. And now he isn’t there . . . here anymore. Anyway”—she laughed—“I wasn’t any good at selling books, and even if I had been, it’s a pretty worthless sort of life.”
“Thanks,” said Andrew.
“Oh, Andrew, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“You did. And it’s true. It is a pretty worthless existence. You can forget it for a while, but the truth of it always gets you in the end.”
For a moment it was as if Odette and Leo had vanished from the pub, leaving the two of them alone.
“You know, you’re the only thing that’s kept me sane,” she said.
“Well, I didn’t do a very good job of that, did I, you nutter?”
“I mean it. Meeting you and getting to know you has been one of the most precious things in my life. I love you; I love you all.”
She took his hand, and ODETTE’S, and Odette took Leo’s, and Leo took Andrew’s, which made them both pull faces, even though this wasn’t the time, so they were all joined in a circle, formed around the glasses of beer and wine, and the rings of beer and wine on the table, and the ashtray, full with the ash and stubs of other smokers.
“I know you’re doing the right thing,” said Odette, “but I’ll miss you.”
“How long are you—does it last?” Andrew was fighting to keep the emotion out of his voice, but it sounded cracked and strained.
“Three years. Perhaps longer.”
“And tomorrow morning?”
“Tomorrow, yes. Early. In fact I have to go soon. I haven’t packed yet, and I have to spend some time with Mummy.”
“How is she about you going?” It was, of course, Odette, who cared. It was always Odette who cared.
“I think she understands. I mean understands that I’m going, and understands that I have to go. I’ve done what I can to make sure she’ll be okay. I think she may have more friends than I sometimes imagined. Perhaps some of her unhappiness was my fault and she’ll be better when I’m not here, I don’t know.”
Andrew wasn’t listening to any of that. All he could hear was go soon go soon go soon. They weren’t holding hands anymore.
“What about us?” he said.
Alice looked at him, a little puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what about us? How will we . . . cope?”
Alice forced out a laugh. “Oh, they’ll find someone better than me at Books. Maybe they’ll give you Ophelia to beat into shape.”
“I don’t want Ophelia, even to beat. I want you.” Suddenly his expression brightened. “What about your notice? Don’t you have to give them a month? It’s a law or something.”
“I’m still in my probation year. It’s a week for each side. And with the holiday coming . . . I left a note on Oakley’s desk.”
“Crumlish’s.”
“Crumlish’s.”
Alice tried hard to keep the tone light, telling the extraordinary story of the day’s events at Enderby’s. Leo was worried about his friend and didn’t say much, although he enjoyed the story.
Andrew was largely silent. Finally, looking at Alice, he said, “Do you remember when we met in that park, the one with the wallabies and the bandstand and the flamingos?”
“The ones who were bored with your conversation about plankton?”
“You do remember. Do you ever go there?”
“I haven’t been since I met you there.”
“I go sometimes.”
“I thought you hated parks. Hare-eyed clerks with the gitters.”
“That’s the only one I like. Anyway, isn’t that what I am?”
“Fucking hell, Andrew,” said Leo, “don’t be such a tit. From what Alice has been saying, you are the man when it comes to the world of smelly old books. Sans Oakley and with Clerihew marginalized, aren’t you on the way to a glittering career?”
It was true. Promotion was beckoning. He didn’t care.
SOON, AFTER ANOTHER drink (Leo brought over a bottle of champagne to celebrate, but most of the glasses remained half full), it was time for Alice to go. Odette and Leo had a table at the River Café, and they asked Andrew to join them. He shook his head and turned to Alice.
“Can I see you home? We could walk.”
“Not in those shoes,” said Odette, her laugh forced.
“I think I should get a taxi.”
“Can I ride with you?”
After a pause: “Yes.”
Before the two couples split to find taxis, there was a Teletubbies-style group hug. Odette cried; Alice cried. Andrew didn’t cry, yet. But his knuckles were white, and he gripped Leo’s shoulder so hard he had to pull away.
Andrew and Alice didn’t speak in the taxi. Nor, despite the shiny vinyl of the seats, did they slide comfortably together. Andrew felt sick to his soul. They reached St. John’s Wood. Andrew was paralyzed.
“I’m here,” said Alice. “I’d say come up, but with Mummy there . . . it would be awkward.”
Andrew still could not move or speak. Alice leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips. She then quickly pulled away, opened the door, and fled into the night. The contact was too brief for either to feel the hot salt tears of the other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A Death at Heathrow
ALICE KNEW she had caused Andrew pain. And she knew that leaving him was the most difficult part of her decision. She knew he loved her, and she knew she felt strongly attracted to him. She didn’t suffer the agony of love she had felt for Matija or experience the intense sexual excitement and passion she had sometimes felt welling inside her for Lynden. What she felt for Andrew was a kind of joy, a lightness, a sense of harmony and rightness. Did that deserve less than the pain and the passion to be called love? Well, if it did, she couldn’t let herself use the word. She knew she had to go. She could not stay, even for . . . even for love.
Kitty was waiting for her when she came in.
“How was my dress?” she asked.
“Everybody loved it. I think it was the best costume there.”
“That’s nice. Now take it off before it gets ruined, and then come and sit beside me and tell me all about it.”
Alice told her. She made it sound as grand and as glorious as she could, and Kitty’s eyes shone with pleasure. And then, close together on the sofa, they watched a late film.
AS THE DOOR to the taxi closed, Andrew came to life. He wiped the tears away with his sleeve and pounded the seat, until the cabbie said, “Steady on, son.” His mind knew a turmoil he had never experienced before: the churning, grinding
horror of love lost, of love lost forever. I can’t live without her, he said to himself, and was shocked at the implication of the words.
Andrew had always prided himself on his superficiality. “Depth is an illusion,” he would say to anyone who would listen. “Surface is everything.” It was only a way of saying that what counted, what contributed to meaning, was what people said, how they behaved, those things that changed the fabric of the world. Invisible movement beneath the surface, he contended, was not movement at all. All talk of depth was myth or metaphor, ultimately traceable through Christian thought back through the Neoplatonists to Plato himself and the invention of the soul, the inner being.
But now he could only think of this dreadful thing that had happened in terms of depth. He had been fissured, pierced to the soul, as much and as deeply as any Saint Sebastian. He could not shrug off this pain as a passing shower through which he would emerge to dry in the sun of new experiences. He was soaked to the skin, and through the skin to the soul, and now he would never dry out.
He stopped the taxi in the middle of nowhere. He wanted to walk. He thought he could probably find his way back to the flat in Crouch End. And if he couldn’t, so what? As he walked he found that he was doing something he hadn’t done for twenty years: He prayed. Please God, he said, make her change her mind. Make her not want to go. Make the plane not work. Make Mauritius have a volcano erupt, or a revolution, so nobody can go there. But what if he was praying to the wrong god? There were so many. He briefly nodded toward Allah and Jehovah, before going on a whistle-stop tour of world religions, pacing them out with his quick steps. Did Buddha count as a god? Could you pray to him? He tried. Confucius? Softly softly catchee monkey. Probably more to it than that. And which was the best of the Hindu gods? The one with the elephant’s head? He always had a soft spot for the one with an elephant’s head. Looked sort of friendly. Unlike Baal, who was one of the hard bastards. And Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, who feasted on the hearts of human sacrifices. And then there were the big-toothed war gods of Polynesia. You wanted those on your team. Help me, he prayed, prayed to all of them, get together and make this all right. You can do it, you know you can.
He was in Archway, still miles from home.
She wasn’t going to stay. There weren’t any volcanoes on Mauritius, just beautiful beaches and lots of those fascinating snails. How could Alice not prefer that to stinky old England and stinky old him? If he were her, he’d . . . go.
Go.
Go!
Madness.
What about the wonderful career at Enderby’s opened up for him by the new regime? Oakley gone; the hard-nosed Americans gone. But what had Alice said about it? “A pretty worthless sort of life.” Did it make any difference now just because the English toffs had turfed out the foreign Johnnies? And wasn’t there something unpleasant about the way Brooksbank had described the Americans and the Japanese? Something bordering on the racist? Was it really any better to be governed by idiotic snobs, even if their manners and their suits were perfect, rather than the ruthless slash-and-burn merchants of the dollar–yen axis?
No, not really any better. His dad had been right about the Farquars and the Percies.
But what could he do if he followed Alice? Was there a university in Mauritius? Of course, there must be. There were universities everywhere. Fucking Salford had one, for Christ’s sake. What did they teach in? Mauritian. Was that a language? No, surely it was French. His French was très bien. Or was it très bon? And even if there wasn’t a position for him at the Ancien Universitaire de Mauritius, surely he could teach English as a foreign language or get a job picking coconuts.
The plans whirled through his brain, and when he reached his flat at three in the morning he was more awake than ever before in his life. He hadn’t used his passport for two years, and it felt as if it took him that long to find it. There, under the sheet of lemon-colored wallpaper that lined his sock drawer, along with an old tube pass, twenty quid, and an emergency condom, now sadly past its use-by date.
What was the weather like in Mauritius? Hot, surely. But was it Mauritian winter now, or summer? Hang on: equator. It was always summer. Probably the rainy season, though. So, put on his light summer suit and take an umbrella. Why didn’t he get it cleaned before putting it away in September? Surely those couldn’t be sweat marks under his arms? How did he manage to sweat right through his suit? But wait, getting ahead. If he was to catch Alice’s plane, he had to find out when it left, and if there were any seats. You could get tickets at the airport, couldn’t you? They always did in films. Cost more, though. Fuck it. Not every day you sacrifice everything to chase a snail expert to Mauritius.
It took him half an hour to track down the right number and get a sensible reply. Eight forty-five. London Heathrow. Air France. Had to be it.
It was five-thirty by the time he’d finished packing. Travel light, he thought. Boost the local economy by buying what he needed out there. He wrote a letter to work, resigning on the grounds, in draft one, of mental turmoil, in draft two of repetitive strain injury, in draft three of neurasthenia, and in draft four of melancholia. He then started again and asked for a month’s special leave to attend a sick relative. No point burning all his boats. Just a canoe and a broken bit of wood to use as an oar. In case it all went wrong.
How the hell did you get to Heathrow? He found a map and traced his way with his finger. Fuck: M25. He hated the M25. He had memories of going all the way around London twice trying to find the right place to get off. He washed his face and brushed his teeth, wearing his summer suit, getting toothpaste stains down the front. He wiped it with a face cloth, knowing that the white smear would appear again later on, when the wet patch dried. Didn’t care. Hair. Brush, pull, tear.
He put his case on the front passenger seat of the Merdemobile. The trunk wasn’t opening anymore. He hoped there wasn’t anything useful in there. A Mauritian-English dictionary? Snake antivenom? A lemur snare? Probably not. Just a badminton racquet and some seashells that had been there when he bought it, the relic, perhaps of some disastrous family holiday in Llandudno or Cleethorpes. Where in God’s name was Cleethorpes? He still wasn’t remotely tired, though he could feel the redness prickling in his eyes. Not even the tedium of the motorway dulled his thoughts, as he raced at a clattering fifty miles an hour.
Cleethorpes. Wherever it was, it was a long way from Mauritius, a long way from Alice. They were on the beach now under a palm tree. No, the veranda of one of those grass-roofed beach huts. They were drinking long drinks and talking the talk. And then she took his hand and led him into the darkness of the hut. She was taking off her bikini. But it was so dark, he couldn’t see. He reached for the light, but there wasn’t one. Fuck, the Heathrow exit. Shit. A horn blasted behind, beside, ahead, as he swerved, his bald, flattening tires gripping feebly at the tarmac. Safe. On target. Remember, he told himself, stay alive. Being dead would never get him to Mauritius, unless Mauritius was heaven.
Amazingly he was almost there. Quarter past seven. Plenty of time. He drove past the model of the Concorde, ugly evil-looking thing that it was. Which terminal? Did he know that? Yes he knew that. Parking: long stay or short stay? He knew that too. It was time to say goodbye to the Merdemobile. It was certainly worth less than the cost of parking it, even for a month, should he decide to return, sick relative nursed back to health. Maybe not very community-spirited just to dump it. Would they think it contained a bomb? He’d write a note, explaining that no explosives were carried.
He found a place in the short-term car park and left without getting a ticket. He was running, now, and became a little confused, missing the direct route to the concourse. He found he came out close to the main entrance, where taxis pulled up and delivered their passengers. His head was fizzing and pulsing, and his eyes were stretched and sore. He had to weave between the lines of taxis and other cars dropping people.
And there: Could it be possible? Was that Alice by the big glass doors
? His Alice, waiting for him.
Alice was even more astonished to see Andrew, dressed in a flimsy cotton suit in the freezing wind. She had just got out of her taxi and was waiting for a porter when she saw him. His hair was sticking out all over the place, and he was squinting into the wind. She found herself smiling like an idiot. He had come to wave her away, even though she had forbidden them last night to do it. How lovely, how wonderful. She would miss him so much. She stood up. But he was carrying a tatty old suitcase. What did it mean?
Her heart began to beat with excitement at the mad folly of it—if, that is, he was doing what she thought he might be doing. The fool. The lovely fool. Perhaps only an insane gesture such as this could have tipped her feelings in the way she now felt them tipping. With each long stride he took, she felt her heart overflow. She wanted him to be near her, wanted to feel his silly arms around her. She wasn’t looking for the car. Strangely, it was Andrew who noticed it first: some function, perhaps, of his excruciatingly heightened senses. He saw Alice smile at him, saw her somehow, mysteriously, open to him, something she accomplished with the tiniest imaginable movement.
But then he knew it was coming, and he knew that it was, in a way he could never understand on this side of the veil separating life and death, just and right. He turned to face it. It was a sleek, low, anonymous thing, metallic gray or green. He couldn’t blame the driver; he knew it was his fault, he had stepped out from an invisible place, coming like an apparition into the path of this thing. Strange, so strange how time slowed: strange only because it seemed the confirmation of the cliché. He tried to replay his life, but he couldn’t remember any of it. He looked back at Alice. She saw the look in his eyes. It was a look she had seen before. And then she looked toward the car, coming slowly, so slowly.
He had heard the story of the Dead Boy so many times now, and though he hated his memory, and knew that the courage had been false courage, he felt that he must emulate it. He fought the urge, the pointless urge to throw his arms and the case before him, as if one could simply ward off the car that killed you. He opened to the car as Alice had opened to him, and his only concession was to close his eyes the moment before the impact.
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