by WALL, ALAN
I shrugged.
‘Maybe that’s where I’ll find the hidden hand, if there is one.’
Then the telephone rang. I could tell within seconds by Stefan’s intimate tone that it was a woman. His responses seemed discreet, ambiguous, until he finally said, ‘I’ll look forward to seeing you later then.’ He turned to me with his winning smile.
‘Sean, I wonder if you would mind staying over at Theobald’s Road again tonight…’
9
London, fluked in a dawn light, can reinvent itself; appear inexplicable and unexpected. Each street you walk down seems to have only just happened. In my search for historical paradigms I once read the work of Walter Benjamin and was fascinated by his notion that the past has an afterlife which is neither more nor less than our consciousness of it, and that unless we struggle to sustain this afterlife, in our ceaseless polemic with time, the past will die once more. More importantly I seized upon, or perhaps was impregnated with, his concept of the dialectical image, by the simple law of which the products of any given society contain within themselves both an aspect of the past and an aspect of the future, the former as a memory trace riddled cunningly into its technology, and the latter as an unconscious vision, whether dream or nightmare, or even sheer hallucination. Every commodity, every instrument, can be seen as a little moon containing a series of occulted faces, which are revealed only through darkness and revolution. Thus do the objects themselves dream what is to come, an impending world which has already started to engulf and obliterate them, though a few will survive, severed from all that once kept them alive, like fragments of bone in a reliquary.
I stood in front of the shop window in Covent Garden. I had just finished my night shift and was now almost alone in the early-morning mist, as the first glimmering of dawn life bestirred itself out on the streets. I stared at the items displayed: scientific instruments from hundreds of years before. Navigational, chronometric, astronomical, medical. Ancient clocks stood next to astrolabes of the same period. There were orreries, compasses, brass telescopes and quadrants, and suddenly I was back up north during one of my grandfather’s ghostly visitations. It would happen now and then in the afternoons, following a trip to the pub at lunchtime, when he would retrieve objects otherwise destined for the municipal tip. These would vary in the extravagance of their unusability, depending on how many pints he’d had. I acquired at various times the following items: a black bicycle with crooked wheels; a long sheepskin coat, home to a myriad of tiny creatures; a miniature snooker table, its green nap already shiny with baldness; a pair of luminous rubber swimming caps with gold hearts impressed in formation across them; several reproductions of Victorian paintings showing wide-eyed animals about to be hunted to death; an upright Remington typewriter, none of the keys of which could be depressed without each prong jamming into all the others; and a vintage radio, still boasting its original fluffy valves. This last I kept in my room, but everything else departed the day after its arrival, with my grandmother’s muttered curses accompanying the unwanted goods all the way back to the tip.
I never could think of the north without thinking of Dan and now he was in the papers once more. It appeared that he had created a network of companies sufficiently complex to baffle even the City analysts, but it was a new age of surging trade with Europe and his various businesses had mostly thrived. He floated the company. Shares were bought eagerly and were soon worth several times their purchase price. You could turn to the financial pages and find his name there every day, the fluctuations of his quoted prices a matter for ceaseless speculation. My old friend Daniel was becoming seriously wealthy.
And now he was opening little cafés and restaurants here and there, all called Davenant’s, so it seemed I might have had some small effect on his business dealings after all. Jennet would have been proud of me, whatever she might have done in the attic with the man they called Shakespeare. They were clean and elegant, these cafés, with décor the precise opposite of his mother’s tastes: Scandinavian chairs, Italian coffee, well-made and well-packaged sandwiches, wine that was unpretentious, potable, acceptably priced. The word went about that once again Mr D. Pagett had got it right. There was one in Southampton Row, only a few minutes’ walk from Stefan’s flat, where I would go from time to time. It was odd, as I handed over my money, to think that it was destined for Dan’s pocket. Davenant’s was approvingly remarked upon by almost everyone, and presumably emboldened by his success Daniel had continued his expansion into the world of fashionable catering. I picked most of this up on my news trawls for the BBC. I hadn’t actually seen him since that day in Thames Ditton with Dominique.
10
If I was working my shifts, then there was no problem. Stefan might ask me to leave a little earlier in the evening than usual. I even occasionally saw one of them coming in as I went out. They always looked my age or younger. It was when I wasn’t working that it started to become tiresome. Whether it was merely the monthly cycles of his libido, or simply the good fortune fate intermittently brought his way, there were times when I had to spend two, even occasionally three, nights at Dalrymple House.
‘Stefan has been busy entertaining this week, hasn’t he?’ Maggie would say to me. She knew things about him I didn’t. She spent a lot of money on her hair and lavished her face with daily make-up. I couldn’t help wondering if, some years before … But no, I wasn’t going to start speculating on Stefan’s love life. That way madness lay. It was hard enough keeping up with his contemporary lovers without trying to archive the historic ones. There was a portable television set in the corner of the tiny room where Maggie always put me. I only switched it on once, to see the features of Gus Markus, Australian commentator and wit. I stared at the screen for a moment and marvelled at the extent to which he had become the robotic mannikin of his own slickness. His permanent wry smile had hardened into a mask, a passport now for meeting celebrities. His little eyes gleamed with the brilliance of proof coins and I quickly switched the television off again. And left it off.
So I would go out more and more often; to the pubs round about, the sandwich bars, the pizza restaurants, even to Davenant’s. I would read my books and make notes in their margins, sitting in a corner of the Plough or the Museum Tavern rather than go back to the solitary cell of Dalrymple House. Maggie had offered to make me dinner some time, but I didn’t take up her invitation. Stefan had asked me never to return to the flat, after one of his evenings of entertainment, before ten in the morning, to allow for any delayed departures. When I arrived, there was always a trace of perfume in the air and it always seemed to be a different scent from the last one.
I had never done so much research, not even while living with Dominique, but I suppose it was really a relief, all the same, when Dan turned up on that Saturday evening. I had been standing looking at a map of the Elizabethan capital which Stefan had hung on his wall. I had only just noticed the date: 1593. A plague year. Back then you could have walked within the liberties of London and seen the ravaged bodies proliferating under hedges or in the cages where they were often fastened, sometimes three at a time. Plague years meant the closure of the theatres, so emblems shifted from stage to street and from thence to the graveyard: flowers of all sorts were scattered when maids went to their graves and rosemary was always worn to mark the passing of a bachelor. Maybe that’s what, in her clairvoyant prevision, Ophelia meant: ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance – pray you, love, remember.’ Hamlet would die a bachelor like her brother, to whom the words were spoken. That particular plague was merely an epidemic of mendacity shrouding the State with its murderous untruths. There’d been plenty of others.
Stefan and I had been sitting in silence as I went to answer the door.
‘Guess what I’ve bought, my friend?’ Dan said, standing in a shaft of summer light from the window, with his jacket over his shoulder. I smiled at him.
‘What?’
‘The Pavilion on the King’s Road. Go and get y
our coat and I’ll drive you over.’
I explained to Stefan that I was going out for the evening.
‘Good luck,’ he said and smiled. ‘See if you can find yourself a little female company for once.’
Dan now drove a Porsche 911 Targa. Its black roof had been removed and its white bodywork gleamed in the evening sun.
‘Not too fast, Dan,’ I said, fastening my seatbelt.
‘In London? The chance would be a fine thing.’ It felt fast enough all the same, the way he throttled and cornered. I think Dan imagined I was afraid of speed. It’s not fear, in fact, but a kind of vertigo when things blur by, lose their precision in the surge of movement. I feel as though I’m the one who’s disappearing. Probably why, for me, walking is the only form of locomotion compatible with keeping your wits about you.
‘Had this long?’ I asked as he swerved round Trafalgar Square and up on to the Mall.
‘No. Not long. To be honest I’ve just about got its number. It’s a real beast, this one, believe me. You have three litres of serious German engine crouching on the axle back there. As the acceleration increases, the rear weight hunkers down closer and closer to the road, which is fine unless you have to lift off suddenly while you’re doing a bit of hard cornering. Then, mild understeer turns into pronounced oversteer before you can even blink.’
‘And what does that mean?’
‘It means you lose the car, that’s what it means. The back’s suddenly round the front of you. I know, because I took it out on a skid-pan a few weeks back and did it.’
‘And is that likely to happen?’
‘You’ve got to be going fast, Sean. Fast. You never have managed to get your brain round the speed of things, have you?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘But then, given the speed the BBC moves at, I don’t suppose it matters too much anyway.’
And on we went. Buckingham Palace went by swiftly and soon we were humming down Eaton Square, then round and up along the King’s Road. Two minutes later Dan pulled into the forecourt of his new possession.
* * *
The Pavilion was an enormous confection of white stucco, its façade contrived to provide the stone impersonation of a marquee. A large purple banner was now draped across the broad lintel, which read: The New Pavilion. Opening Tonight. I looked at Dan and he grinned.
‘Fancy a drink, Sean?’
‘Know anywhere round here that’s decent?’
‘This place isn’t bad, I’ve heard.’ And in we went.
Everything glittered and shone. Metallic chairs and tables winked at the chrome bar, which in turn reflected the gleaming fittings of the ceiling lights. Whatever wasn’t painted white was painted a bright primary colour. The waiters and waitresses went about their tasks dressed in yellow uniforms, the men in jackets and the women in some form of zippered jumpsuit.
‘Two restaurants, one burger joint and three separate bars.’ Dan said as we arrived at one of them. ‘What’ll you have?’
‘A gin and tonic,’ I said without thinking.
‘No you won’t,’ he said, ‘you’ll have a pint of this.’ And he laid his hand on the tap of the draught beer we both used to drink in Yorkshire. Tetley’s.
‘Does it travel?’ I asked.
‘Better than you do, I should think.’ As the pints were being pulled, Dan suddenly darted off and I watched him as he spoke to one of the young men in yellow jackets. The movement of his arms looked menacing. Then he was back again. He lifted his glass and chinked it against mine.
‘So what do you think?’
‘It’s very impressive, Dan. Congratulations.’
‘Only the beginning. In this particular field, anyway.’
‘You keep saying that.’
‘Give this character here whatever he wants,’ he said to the barman, who nodded, ‘he’s an old friend of mine. My oldest friend, in fact, isn’t that right, Sean?’ Then he was off again, shouting instructions, shaking his head at something or other, disappearing downstairs. And I was left to sample his free drinks and look around me at all the dizzy sheen and glitter.
‘Known Mr Pagett a long time then?’ the barman asked, as he spilt a stream of change into the till with a professional jangle.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A long time.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘He beat up someone who’d annoyed me.’
* * *
Soon the place filled up. Invitations had evidently been scattered across London. People had been tempted to come and have a free glass of champagne. Most of them were dressed so elegantly that it was hard to believe they needed a free glass of anything. Food appeared on trays. Canapés and savoury chunks on sticks, tiny cubes of cheese, folded little whispers of meat. From time to time Dan appeared and nodded to me confidentially, as though we were the only ones who knew what was really going on. I turned round halfway through the evening and saw Dominique in the reflection of one of the full-length mirrors. I walked across to her. She was made up up for the occasion and wearing a black trouser suit I didn’t remember seeing before. She kissed me lightly on the cheek.
‘Impressive, isn’t it? Your friend is doing well for himself.’
‘And he didn’t even go to Oxford.’
‘Or do analysis.’
‘Didn’t expect to see you here, Dominique.’
‘You always expect too much or too little, Sean.’ Then Dan was beside us. He took me by the arm.
‘Come, come now. This isn’t the time for old faces,’ he said, pulling me away and grinning. ‘It’s an opportunity for you to meet some new ones.’ Ten seconds later I stood before a woman in a tight white dress who had the brightest orange hair I had ever seen.
‘Kate Halloran, meet Sean Tallow. Sean’s my oldest friend and a very distinguished author. Get him to tell you about his book Oral Sex and Dental Hygiene. I found it full of useful tips, myself, though you might as well skip the archbishop’s introduction. Even you might learn a thing or two, my love. Kate, Sean, is a model.’ Then he was gone. Kate looked at me and shrugged.
‘Was he always like that?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s definitely improving.’
So we found a table and sat down. A bottle of champagne was delivered with the compliments of the house. I told her, since she asked, how I knew Dan. From time to time I caught sight of Dominique, who moved in and out of his circle at the bar. She seemed to laugh a lot, a lot more than I remembered her laughing. What was so funny, all of a sudden, and why had no one told me the joke? Odd how lonely seeing her laugh like that made me feel, so I tried to focus entirely on my new companion, who seemed more than happy to be focused on, and some time around midnight I went to get her coat. Dan was in the foyer, with a gaggle of men about him in various states of inebriation. They were all spraying him with the congratulatory dottle of their bonhomie.
‘Glad you’ve hit it off with Kate,’ he said and gave me a knowing smile. ‘I had a feeling you would. Was it the flaming hair attracted you?’
‘You know me, Dan. I just like girls whose hearts are in the right place, that’s all.’
‘I never got as far as her heart, but I think you’ll find all the other bits and pieces are more or less where you’d expect. Her exits and her entrances. You might find it a pleasant change, Sean, to be honest.’ A few minutes later, Kate and I were in a taxi heading for Museum Street.
That night we made love repeatedly and, given her cries and gasps, I suppose noisily. Dan had been right, I did find it a pleasant change, so pleasant that only in the morning light did I start to consider Stefan. He had, after all, encouraged me to go and find a female companion. On the other hand, he had been very particular about maintaining the boundaries of amorous discretion. Or did that only apply to him?
When I finally emerged from the bedroom, he was already there in the kitchen, percolating coffee.
‘Hello, Stefan,’ I said. He smiled at me. Given the byzantine complexity of his facial semiology, o
ne could never be sure, but it looked like a smile of congratulation.
‘I brought a friend back last night.’
‘Yes, I heard. Is she still here?’ On cue, Kate padded in, having finally disentangled herself from the sheets. She was barefoot and barelegged.
