Invisible

by Jonathan Buckley

  ‘I’ve already taken a couple this morning,’ he replies, returning his hand to the lid of the computer. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nine o’clock and ten minutes.’

  ‘Can’t take any more tablets for an hour. But thank you.’

  She steps towards the door, dragging the chair back for him. ‘Will I help you?’ she asks.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind steering me,’ he says, placing the computer on the pillow. Pointing his toes, he lets the bag fall from his foot, then he dives forward, levering himself upright, and hops towards her.

  ‘It is here,’ she says, touching an arm to guide him. Lightly she puts her hands on his shoulders as he twists onto the chair. There are tiny black crumbs on his scalp, by the hairline. ‘You have blood here,’ she says, pointing with a finger that circles just above his hair.

  With a fingertip he locates the dried blood and feels for a cut. ‘This’ll teach me,’ he says, smiling at her. ‘Would you mind retrieving my peas? The cold pack,’ he says, waving at the floor.

  She drapes the dripping plastic bag over the swollen foot. ‘I will get another,’ she says. ‘For your foot. This is soft.’

  ‘That would be helpful,’ he replies. His fingers dance on the tabletop, searching for the cup of coffee.

  ‘When I come to clean the room, I bring some ice then.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘When would you like? Half an hour is good?’

  ‘My peas will last another thirty minutes, I’m sure. Half an hour is good, yes,’ he says, and he lifts the cup to his mouth, bending his lips to slowly meet the lip of the cup. She retreats a step, watching Mr Morton. He holds the cup in both hands, an inch from his mouth, seeming to savour the aroma of the coffee, while his eyes move jerkily left and right, up and down, like things with their own life. The edge of the door touches her shoulder. She reaches behind her back for the handle, turns, and is about to pull the door shut when Mr Morton says her name, in a way that is different from the way he says it normally, as if he is calling a friend’s name. ‘Is there a record shop in town, do you know?’ he asks her. His gaze seems to fly around the doorway, then to circle and settle on her face as she steps back into the room.

  ‘No,’ she says, stopping by the door. ‘There is not, I think.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Mr Morton. Disappointed, he takes another sip of his coffee.

  ‘Why is this bad?’ she asks.

  ‘Because. I have to buy a present for my niece. My sister’s little girl. It’s her birthday on Wednesday.’

  ‘She is how many years?’

  ‘Eight. Seven now, about to be eight. Do you know any eight-year-old girls?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she says, trying to recall her cousins when they were eight.

  ‘So what do you buy them?’

  ‘For a little girl? A doll.’

  ‘Ah,’ Mr Morton objects, raising a finger. ‘Not the dolly type, I’m afraid. Never been a girly girl.’

  ‘Then clothes. A nice top.’

  ‘Now that’s probably a good idea, but tricky in my case. I have no idea of her style, you see. I’m a very poor judge of clothes. I don’t even know how big she is.’

  Together, both staring at the wall, they consider the problem of Mr Morton’s niece. In her mind she looks into the window of the shop next to the wine shop, at the toys jumbled opposite the magazines. ‘A witch kite,’ she suggests.

  ‘Which –?’

  ‘A witch kite. I saw it in a shop in the town. A kite, yes? That is what you name it? To fly in the sky, on string?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A kite, but like a witch with a broom and a hat. And a cat on the tail.’

  ‘A proper kite? Not just a scrap of plastic with a string hanging off it? I don’t want to give her something cheap and nasty.’

  ‘No, this is nice. Not a nasty thing, I think. Strong, and nice colours: red and black and yellow. Very bright.’

  ‘OK. Yes, OK. That might be it.’

  ‘I think she will like it.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Thank you,’ says Mr Morton.

  ‘My pleasure,’ she replies, and there is indeed pleasure in helping him, in saying the words.

  ‘What’s the name of the shop?’

  ‘I don’t know. It is by the shop that sells beer and wine, in High Street.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  A flush of guilt makes her hesitate, but she would have helped Mr Morton anyway, she tells herself. ‘But you cannot go,’ she says, moving to the side of the chair. ‘Your foot, you must rest.’

  ‘I’ll get a taxi.’

  ‘No. Today you must stay here. It is better for me to get it. If you will let me, I will buy it.’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘It is better,’ she insists, seeing from the way his fingers rise and fall on the napkin that he will agree. ‘I buy it, I put it in nice paper, I send it for you. It is easy for me, after work.’

  ‘That would be very good of you. But, really, I –’

  ‘It is easy. This afternoon I do it,’ she tells him. She reaches for the jug of milk. ‘I do it,’ she says, putting the cereal bowl between his hands.

  She takes a sheet from the wallet of headed stationery and Mr Morton dictates to her the address of his sister’s house, then invites her to take from the drawer beside his bed three ten-pound notes for the kite and for the painting set she saw in the craft shop as well. In the lift she folds the money tightly in her hand, forming a nugget of paper. There is nothing wrong in this, she argues with herself. They are almost friends. She hears him thanking her, in a way nobody except Mr Caldecott and Mr Sampson has thanked her since she has been in England. She is doing him a favour and perhaps he will do her a favour in return. It is all fair and there is no reason to feel it is wrong, yet when she steps out of the lift and almost bumps into Mr Caldecott, and he asks her how Mr Morton is getting on, she thrusts her hand into the pocket of her overall to hide the money. And when, having finished for the morning, she enters the hall at the same moment as Mr Caldecott and Mr Harbison and the handsome young man who drives the sports car, she tries to hurry unobtrusively to the door, but Mr Caldecott calls her back, and she blushes while she is speaking to him, because she is afraid that somehow he might understand that Mr Morton’s money is in her bag, and also because of the young man, who looks at her steadily, with not quite a smile, while she is talking to Mr Caldecott.

  He will take care of the building, Simon Laidlaw assures him, solemn and sensitive, like a man talking to a bereaved acquaintance. ‘Jaw-dropping, the workmanship,’ he says, running a palm over the handrail of the staircase, stroking the same section of the rail over and over again. ‘Nowadays, you just don’t get this kind of workmanship.’ He shakes his head at the pity of it, and they move on, towards the Randall Room. ‘Ten years you’ve been here, yeah?’ he enquires, holding the door open for him.

  ‘More or less.’ By the garden doors Mr Morton is sitting in an armchair, working on his laptop, with a wire trailing from one ear and the strapped ankle resting on a footstool.

  ‘You must love it,’ says Simon, regarding the paintings. ‘I mean, I love it, and I’ve been here no time.’

  ‘It’s an impressive room.’

  Simon gives him a respectful look. ‘It is,’ he concurs. ‘It is. It’s a great room,’ he says, turning to prop himself against the table. ‘I love places like this,’ he goes on, spreading his hands wide on the table’s edge behind him, at ease, taking possession of the building. ‘I’m mad about old hotels. The extravagance of them. The excess. I can’t get enough of them. Whenever I’ve got a free weekend I take off, add another one to the roll-call. It’s like a fix. The cash I’ve burned,’ he confides, grimacing at his profligacy.

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘Worth it, though. Always worth it.’ He looks to the side, at the wedding in the country, the lampshades, the mouldings above the door. ‘You know the Pupp, in Karlovy Vary? Used to be Carlsbad?’

&n
bsp; ‘By reputation. I’ve not been there.’

  ‘Fantastic place. Totally fantastic. Looks like it’s made of icing sugar on the outside, and inside there’s a concert hall, with a glass ceiling and plaster cherubs all over the place,’ Simon enthuses, and he looks around as if seeing plaster cherubs on the ceiling of the Randall Room. He proceeds to extol the splendours of the Mamounia in Marrakesh, the Palace at Bussaco, the mind-blowing Gold Coast Room of the Drake, in Chicago. ‘One of my favourite cities, Chicago,’ he adds, raising his eyebrows at the quirkiness of his taste. ‘Terrific city. One of my all-time favourites. Got such a buzz. And, God yes,’ he interrupts himself, ‘the Brown Palace, Denver. You know it? So over the top, it’s not true. It’s got this seven-storey atrium, great slabs of onyx everywhere, and this fireplace, it’s so big it’s now the entrance to a shop. Just the most amazing space,’ he says, while his hands make the gesture of a man overawed. The door clatters, but it’s not Giles returning. ‘What about you?’ Simon asks. ‘You have a favourite? As a professional. If you’ve got to pick just one room, one space, what would it be?’

  ‘I’ve always liked the Salle des Fêtes, in the Grand, in Paris,’ he responds, naming the first place that occurs to him.

  ‘By the opera house?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I like the Saint-Lazare,’ Simon informs him. ‘Looks like nothing from the outside, but inside it’s something else. Loads of pink granite, and a billiards room with eight tables. Eight of them. Incredible.’ He glances up at the chandelier. ‘Now this,’ he says, pointing, ‘this is really rather special. This will have to stay. I mean it’s hideous. But so hideous it’s great. Classic kitsch. I love it. This your kind of thing?’

  ‘Bit too frilly for me. But it belongs. It fits.’

  ‘It’s from Venice, yeah?’ Simon asks, inspecting the pink and yellow glass flowers with a slanted smile of ironic approval.

  ‘Yes. Salviati.’

  ‘Amazing, amazing. You seen the factories there? The way they blow the glass?’

  ‘Yes. Extraordinary.’

  ‘Incredible. Those balloons of glass, and the way they cut it with shears, and pull it all over the place,’ Simon marvels, scissoring his fingers around an imaginary glass bubble. ‘Must take years to learn. I’d love to be able to do that. To have that skill. Any skill, you know? To carve wood or stone. Really make something. I can’t even put up a bookcase. Useless,’ he rebukes his hands, turning them as if trying to find the fault in their construction. ‘Let’s go outside,’ he suggests, and he ushers him towards the terrace.

  As they pass, Mr Morton removes his earpiece. ‘Good morning, Mr Caldecott,’ he greets him.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Morton,’ he replies. ‘How is it?’

  ‘Recovering swiftly,’ Mr Morton reports, raising the bandaged foot.

  ‘We’ll talk later, I hope. I must –’

  ‘Of course,’ says Mr Morton, with what may be an ironic smile.

  Simon makes no comment about the injured blind man. With a sweep of his arm he encompasses the garden. ‘Now this is not ordinary,’ he says. ‘Not ordinary at all,’ he says, with an undertone of commiseration, then he is extolling the garden of the Villa d’Este hotel on Lake Como, while they stroll down the path where tomorrow Stephanie will walk.

  eight

  The longer he waits more likely it is that he will find a message waiting for him, so Edward remains in the dining room, toying with the catch of his laptop, as if it were the catch of a box that contained something the daylight could destroy. He has been here an hour at least. Everyone else has gone, except for the man who was talking to Malcolm about the chandelier yesterday and now is talking on the phone, not with the peculiar Anglo-American slur with which he spoke to Malcolm and to Eloni, but in an aggressive staccato, slightly louder, like a poor impersonation of an upwardly mobile working-class Londoner. ‘Max? Hi, yeah,’ he says. ‘We still on? Yeah, three. Sure thing, sure. It’s sorted. Yeah. Sure. Look, what’s the number? I forgot the number. I know. Eighty-two. Third floor, yeah. I got it.’ In the kitchen the laden trays of a dishwasher rattle and crash; a blackbird is singing in the garden. ‘Tell him to give Jake a bell. No, that’s bollocks. Not what was agreed. No way. Yeah, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Course he would. Tell him to call Jake, will you? Jake’ll sort him out.’ The song of the blackbird continues alone, for so long that it seems that the call might have finished, but then the birdsong is overriden by: ‘Three, yeah, see you there, sure.’ There is a chink of cutlery as the man stand up. ‘Thanks,’ he shouts, like someone hailing a taxi.

  The kitchen door swings open and shut. ‘Thank you,’ says Eloni, swiping her hands across stiff fabric. The man is moving towards the hall door as Eloni approaches the vacated table. ‘Thank you,’ Eloni says again, in a strangely uncertain tone.

  ‘Not at all. See you around,’ he replies, and before he reaches the hall he is talking on the phone again.

  Eloni goes back to the kitchen and returns with a trolley. Unhurriedly she stacks the crockery from the table at which the man was sitting. She bunches the knives and forks and spoons, and lays them on the trolley. It had seemed, when they spoke about Lucy’s present, that there was something more she would have said to him had there not been other guests to serve, yet she does not speak as she clears the table.

  ‘I’ve finished too, if you want to clear up,’ he says, reaching for the stick. ‘I’ll get out of your way.’

  She scrapes the tablecloth with a blade that shrieks on the starched cotton. ‘It is OK,’ she tells him. She opens a window, moves a vase on a sill, pushes the trolley closer. A fume of soap powder comes off her sleeve as she reaches across him. ‘Would you like coffee?’ she asks, lifting the cup on its saucer.

  ‘No more, thank you.’

  ‘Is sufficient?’

  ‘Exactly. Sufficient.’

  ‘Good. It is sufficient,’ she repeats smilingly. One item at a time, she removes the things from his table.

  ‘Eloni?’ he asks. ‘Who was that? The man who was sitting there?’

  ‘Mr Laidlaw.’

  ‘Right. And who is Mr Laidlaw, do you know? Is he a colleague of Mr Caldecott? They were talking yesterday.’

  ‘Yes. He is buying the hotel, Mr Caldecott says. This hotel.’

  ‘Blimey. Just him? On his own?’

  ‘He is rich, I think. He has a rich man’s car.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘How old is the car?’ she replies, perhaps joking with him.

  ‘How old the man.’

  ‘Not old. Thirty, I think.’

  ‘Thirty? And he’s buying the hotel? Impressive.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is he tall, short, fat, thin? I have to imagine, you understand?’ he explains, whisking his hands around his eyes. ‘He sounds thin to me.’

  ‘Not fat not thin.’

  ‘Aha.’

  ‘Not tall not short. Normal.’

  ‘Not quite normal, I’d say. He sounds weird. Strange. Unusual. Or, in his case, a bit phony.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Phony. Fake. Not genuine. Not real. Pretending.’

  ‘He is a nice man.’

  ‘He may well be a nice man, but he sounds a bit phony. He says “siddy”.’

  ‘No, he is nice,’ she counters, in a voice that suggests it would not be inappropriate to tease her a little. ‘He gives me a big tip. A lot of money.’

  ‘Well, that is nice of him. A big tip is a nice thing to have. But he says “siddy” when he should say “city”.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘“A terrific siddy.”’

  ‘What is wrong? So he talks this way.’

  ‘The word’s “city”. With a “t”, not a “d”. They sound different in English English. We say “Not at all”, not “Nod a dall”. “Totally”, not “toadly”.’

  ‘I like the way he talks. It is good to hear. And he is polite as well.’

  ‘A fine qu
ality, I agree.’

  ‘And he has a nice face.’

  ‘Aha,’ he exclaims. ‘I see. A nice face as well,’ he laughs, raising a forefinger, as if inspired, but Eloni does not laugh. She says nothing. He hears her busying herself at a neighbouring table, though nobody was sitting there this morning. He has offended her, perhaps, or she thinks she has offended him, because he wouldn’t know if the man is handsome. With long passes of a hand she smooths the unused tablecloth. She goes to an adjacent table and again her hands skim across the thick, slick cotton.

  He is about to apologise, or remark on the singing of the blackbird, when she says, in a tentative voice: ‘You are from London, Mr Morton? That is where you live?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is where you go when you leave here?’

  ‘Yes, back home.’

  ‘And you will go home this week?’

  ‘When I can,’ he says, gesturing at his bandaged foot. ‘Tomorrow, I hope, or the day after.’

  She has crouched to bring her face level with his. ‘Mr Morton,’ she says confidentially, ‘there is a situation. I am in a situation, that you could help me, I think. A small thing you could do for me. Can I tell you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Later today?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Mr Morton says, but now that she is about to carry out her plan she begins to think that her idea is not a good one, that it will fail, and throughout the morning she worries over it, but always she returns to where she started, because Mr Morton is the only one who could help her right away, although Mr Caldecott is going to London soon. Mr Caldecott would help her if she asked him, but she cannot ask Mr Caldecott because she could not tell him the story she will tell Mr Morton, because he would see that it is not true. And it is only a small favour she is asking Mr Morton to do, and so, as they have arranged, she goes to Mr Morton’s room when her work is finished.