Invisible

by Jonathan Buckley

  At the chime Malcolm checks his watch: Stephanie is now a quarter of an hour late and the idea that she has been delayed by a row with Kate is beginning to pester him. From the portico of the National Gallery he continues to survey the people milling around on Trafalgar Square, and after a minute or two he sees a girl who may be Stephanie, approaching from the Mall side. She has Stephanie’s build and Stephanie’s gait and is wearing baggy jeans like Stephanie’s, but now she is veering across the square, away from the gallery steps, yet he watches her anyway, even when it’s plainly not Stephanie, until there is no more likeness to be seen. His gaze again swims upon the crowd, finding resemblances in a head of hair the colour of Stephanie’s, a top the same as one of Stephanie’s, a girl in a hurry pushing through a tour group. He looks towards Pall Mall, towards St-Martin-in-the-Fields, towards Pall Mall once more, and sees in the distance a girl whose posture, with her face downturned and shoulders brought forward a little, is Stephanie’s, and he feels a confusion, a tightening in his chest, when he realises that the boy walking beside her is with her, a tightening that peaks when he sees the boy put his hand on her stomach and kiss her, though in the same instant he sees that the girl is not his daughter.

  She is twenty-five minutes late. As if in obedience to a superstitious belief that if he stops looking for her she will promptly arrive, he counts the number of heads in a zone he draws at the foot of Nelson’s Column, and proceeds to calculate the number of people within the whole square. His conclusion, after another estimation, is that there are more people in this small patch of the city than have stayed at the Oak in the past year, if not the past eighteen months, and then ‘Good afternoon,’ says Stephanie, and she is standing beside him, arms folded and one eyebrow cocked, in a way that suggests she has been watching him for some time, wondering how long it would take him to notice that she was there.

  ‘And good afternoon to you,’ he replies, surprised by her short denim skirt and even more surprised by the gaiety of what she is wearing with it: a white T-shirt that has a single wing of iridescent multicoloured feathers printed over most of its front. ‘That’s nice,’ he says.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Unusual.’

  ‘Unique,’ she corrects him.

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Did it myself. It’s from a painting. I just scanned it and got it printed. Easy to do.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  Propping a foot against the railing, she reties the lace of her scuffed old tennis shoes. ‘Sorry I’m late. I was in there,’ she says, nodding at the door. ‘I lost track of the time. It’s on the blink,’ she explains, showing him the face of her digital watch: 03.21.

  ‘Do you need a new one? I could get you a new watch,’ he suggests.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she says, standing straight, the relacing done. ‘Only the battery that’s buggered.’ Wide-eyed, she clamps her hand to her mouth, then skips down the top half-dozen steps. ‘Let’s go,’ she calls up to him, beckoning as if to a timorous companion on a steep hillside.

  They walk in single file to the corner of Trafalgar Square, threading a way through the oncoming bodies. ‘Lovely day,’ he remarks when he catches up with her.

  ‘Beautiful,’ she agrees and she smiles at him, but again they are forced apart. She strides ahead, not slowing down as she jinks through the crowd, as if she were leading him along a twisting path through woodland.

  ‘How are things at home?’ he asks, emerging from a group of Italian students.

  ‘As ever,’ she says. ‘Great.’

  ‘Any more rows?’

  ‘All quiet on the western front.’

  Passing the street into Chinatown he asks: ‘Have you eaten?

  ‘No,’ she replies, nipping between an elderly man and his wife.

  ‘Do you want to eat?’ he resumes once he’s caught up.

  ‘Not particularly. When’s your train?’

  ‘A couple of hours.’

  ‘Not really time,’ she says, with the confidence of a city girl addressing a friend from the provinces. At Cambridge Circus she puts a hand on his arm to pull him back from the edge of the pavement, away from an approaching lorry. Seeing an opening in the traffic, she gives his sleeve a pluck and dashes over. He stays, deterred by a motorbike courier bearing down on him, so close that the tyres squeal against the kerb. ‘Come on,’ Stephanie mimes, waving from the other side of the road, and the way she is looking at him, with her head at that angle and one hand on her hip, and her eyes so steady, reminds him so vividly of her petulance as a child, in the last year or so before she and Kate went away, that it occurs to him that this performance of exasperation is intended to remind him of how they were, as a sort of parody of how they used to be. He grimaces at her and gestures at the traffic, playing at being helpless.

  At the bookshop she leads the way to the poetry section. ‘Looking for something in particular?’ he asks her, as her fingers skim Keats, Kipling, Larkin, Lawrence.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not here,’ she replies, and that’s all she’ll tell him.

  They go over the road to another bookshop, to the poetry shelves again. ‘Nothing doing,’ she announces, shaking her head at the paltry stock, and the third shop is a disappointment too. ‘Useless,’ she says, and begins to search for something else, which isn’t there either. They go back to the previous shop, then to the first, where finally she selects a book, a fat anthology of German poems.

  ‘I didn’t know you could read German,’ her father remarks, taking the book from her.

  ‘I can’t. That’s why I need the English. See,’ she says, opening the book in his hand. ‘German there, English here.’ He strains his eyes at the page she is showing him, as if he is working something out. The next thing he says, she is sure, will be a question about Mr Morton.

  ‘And what else?’ he asks at last, closing the book. ‘We have to get something else.’

  ‘This is fine. Really.’

  ‘No. One measly paperback is not enough.’

  ‘One huge paperback.’

  ‘I insist.’

  ‘This will keep me going until next year.’

  ‘I insist,’ he repeats sternly, and though he is joking she seems to recognise this unyielding face from years ago, confronting her mother at the end of an argument.

  ‘OK,’ she concedes, ‘one more,’ but for another hour they roam through the shop, through every floor, her father following a step behind, browsing over titles that evidently mean nothing to him, examining the books she has chosen with an expression she finds both irritating and touching, an expression that seems to signify a baffled pride in her, and an awareness of an inadequacy in himself.

  In the street he hands her the bag of books as if it weighed far more than it does, as if submitting the first instalment of his compensation for all the years of his absence. ‘Enjoy,’ he says.

  ‘Thank you. This is too much.’

  ‘No,’ he says, then he bends forward and kisses her on the forehead, like a priest giving his blessing. He gives her a significant look, a meekly beseeching look, which she refuses. ‘I’d better get a move on,’ he says, glancing at his watch. He watches a bus slowing down at the traffic lights. ‘Do you want to come back, then?’ he asks, trying to make it sound like a casual question. ‘To the Oak?’

  fifteen

  The breeze surges through the leaves with a sound like small waves on shingle, then the trees become still, and Eloni feels an immensity of emptiness. She stops in the middle of the empty road, like someone suddenly realising she is lost. It would be good to be lost, to walk through the wood and come out in a place she did not know, a place where her life would be different, but she is not lost, she is merely alone, and fearful, and her fear grows stronger as she walks through the town and out to the housing estate, along roads she has never walked along before. Like a beacon on a harbourside, a phone box stands on a wide corner of tarmac pavement. She stands beside it, her hand on the door, as t
hough she would be stepping into the same room as Francesc if she opened it. She unfolds the piece of paper that has Mr Laidlaw’s number on it, and the page that David printed for her, with ‘Who are you?’ and Francesc’s number on it, and she steps into hot air that smells of urine and cigarette ash. Looking out through the thickly scratched writing that covers the glass, she phones Mr Laidlaw’s office. Again he isn’t there, and he has left no message for her. She asks the girl to tell him she has phoned; again the girl says ‘Cool’, in a way that says that she will do nothing.

  Francesc’s phone rings for so long that she starts to hope he will not answer, but then he says ‘Yes’, as if he wants to start a fight, and she nearly puts the phone down right away. ‘Yes?’ he says. People are talking near him; steam hisses from a coffee machine; a cup clatters on a saucer. He swears at her when she tells him who it is, then he says that he expected her to phone earlier and asks where she is. She tells him that she has got some money for him, for the passport. ‘You have the money?’ he says, in English, very slowly, as if speaking to a person who had said a thing so crazy he cannot believe it, then he says her name to someone who says something back to him in English as well. He sounds like the tattooed man but she cannot hear properly. ‘Some money,’ she says, and he asks how much. It is so difficult to pronounce the number, as if he were standing in front of her and could strike her with his fist, but she sees the figure on the little grey screen of the phone, counting down the coins that remain unspent, and she tells him: five hundred pounds, in cash. ‘No,’ he says, with absolute finality. But this is all the money she has, she tells him. She has worked every day and has put aside every penny that is left, every single penny. ‘No,’ he interrupts, ‘you shut up. You shut up now. This is shit. This is fucking shit,’ he says, very calmly, and the conversation in the background stops. Everyone in the room is listening now. ‘You listen,’ Francesc tells her, his mouth so close to the phone that the scratching of his beard makes her shiver. ‘This is shit, what you give me. You think I’m saying OK, I take this? I wait more for what you owe me? You think I’m saying that? No. You pay now. All the money.’ She did pay, she reminds him, trying not to sound like someone arguing. She saved all her money at home, for years, to pay what she was told it would cost. ‘So you were told wrong,’ he says. This is all she has, she repeats. She can’t pay any more, not now, she says, and then she promises to pay him more. If he gives her the papers she will pay him more, every month she will send money. She will soon have another job and she will send money to him every month, the day she gets paid, she promises, on her mother’s eyes she promises. For a moment he doesn’t speak, as if he has listened and is thinking about what she has said, but then he breathes into the phone, a long breath of mounting anger, and she knows he has not listened. ‘This shit you give me, it is money for one day. You understand? In one day here you make this money. One fucking day. You give me money for one day and you say I will wait, some day I get what you owe. You think I am fucking stupid? You are stupid. You are the stupid fucking bitch. That’s what it is. You are the stupid fucking bitch,’ he shouts, and he hits a table-top, making a clash. She pleads with him: she will pay, she has always been honest, she has never broken her word, she needs her papers, she must have her papers. ‘You have your papers when I will have my money,’ he tells her, suddenly as reasonable as a lawyer. ‘All my money. It is fair. I have all my money and you have your papers. But now it is more money. Another thousand. You go away, I have to get another girl. It costs me money to get another girl, so you have to pay. You understand? I don’t pay for you to go. You understand? It is simple,’ he says, talking over the groan that escapes from her. ‘So you understand. OK. We are agreeing. Now I tell you what you will do. You listen. This is what you will do,’ he says. She cannot speak: her tongue is dead in her mouth. ‘You will come back to here. In one week you will be here. One week, yes? You will pay me all the money, and when you pay me you have your papers and you can go. You come back, you pay me and I forget all this,’ he says, as if he is being kind. She can see his small green eyes; she can feel his fingers tightening on the skin of her arm; she can see the room, the stains of greasy hair on the walls, the flies on the light bulb. No, she tells him. She will not come back, she says, though to say it makes her pulse hurt her eyes. She cannot come back and she cannot pay another thousand. It is not right and it is not possible. And then, made reckless by her own voice, by confusion and fear, she tells him that she could go to the police, and the instant she says the word Francesc yelps, as if something red-hot has touched his hand. ‘You fuck with me?’ he screams. ‘You fuck with me? You fuck with me? I fuck with you. You fuck with me I fuck with you, big time. Big time. Understand? A fire, that is nothing. I really fuck with you. I fuck with your family. Your mother, your father, your cousins, I fuck with all them. You understand? You do this, everyone here goes back home. All the girls. The end. You go back, all the girls go back. But me? Nothing. Nothing bad happens to me. I pay some money, a bit of money, and then everything is OK for me. I know this. They do nothing to me. It happens always. They do nothing to me, but it will be bad for you. It is the end for you. Your papers, I throw them away. No papers now. And you pay for it. You pay, your family pay. You think of it, OK? You think,’ he tells her, catching his breath after his shouting. She is thinking, she replies, but she is only talking, not thinking. It is not possible to come back, she whispers, to herself more than to Francesc. ‘No no,’ he corrects her. ‘No no. You come back. After one week you are here. Seven days. I give you seven days.’ It is not possible, she repeats, with no strength. ‘Next week you are here. You pay what you owe. All of it. You pay all of it,’ he says, as if explaining the details of a plan that will be good for her, as if she had said nothing, then he lights a cigarette. ‘You are here,’ he goes on, ‘or I find you. You understand? I find you,’ he says, stating a simple fact, like ‘tomorrow is Wednesday’. ‘And when I find you it is really bad for you. It is the worst. So you come back, because now I find you easy. You phone me, see? Now I know where you are. You phone me, I know the number, I know where you are. See? Yes? You are the stupid bitch. You understand? You are the stupid fucking bitch.’ He laughs, with the sound of someone clearing his throat to spit, then the laugh stops, like a tape turned off. ‘You think this means nothing?’ he demands, angry again. ‘Here, come here,’ he says, talking into the room. ‘You, come here,’ he orders. His fingers snap; a chair scrapes on a bare floor. ‘You tell her what I do,’ he orders someone beside him, and a woman’s voice says a phrase and his name. ‘Tell her,’ Francesc shouts from deep in the room. ‘Tell her what I do. Now.’

  She puts the phone down and a single coin falls into the hole below. She scoops the coin out and holds it tightly in her fist for a minute or more, so tightly that it digs into her palm. Staring into the scratches on the glass, she has no will to move, but the sickly stink of urine forces her out. With her back against the door, she stands on the corner, looking at the deserted roads of the estate. Straight ahead, on the next junction, there is a shop with boarded windows, and outside it there is a white car with a dented roof and no tyres. She scans the houses and the flats, and every window she can see is shut, even though the day is fine, and she feels that she is in a place that has closed against her. A car slides across the gap between two walls, beyond the abandoned shop. The driver turns, takes a look at her and passes on. It can’t be true that Francesc can trace where she is, she assures herself. ‘Where are you?’ he asked, and he wouldn’t have asked if he knew he could find out, she reasons, but her reasoning cannot banish the anxiety, and by the time she is back in the centre of the town her mind is possessed by the notion that at any turn Francesc might appear, or the tattooed man, or someone else, one of the other people who were with him, whose faces perhaps she doesn’t know. Any car might be carrying her kidnapper, she thinks, panicked by every car that overtakes her as she walks down the High Street, imagining a car door opening in front of her
, so she has to run into a shop for safety.

  Stephanie pauses on the doorstep of the house where Mr Morton lives, and recalls the things that Mr Morton said to her at the hotel and how friendly he was this morning. It would be nice to see her, he had said, and there was no reason to say that if he didn’t mean it, she tells herself. She pictures his face when she read to him in the garden and the way he said goodbye to her. The drilling stops. She presses the button on the entryphone as the drilling starts again. She puts her ear to the speaker. With a crackle Mr Morton’s voice says ‘Hello?’ and her misgivings have gone.

  He is standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, smiling at the stairwell. ‘Welcome,’ he says, and steps back to usher her into a bare hallway that has only a single hook on the wall, with a raincoat hanging from it, wrapped in a dry-cleaner’s plastic cover. ‘Would you like something?’ Mr Morton asks. ‘Cup of tea? Coffee? I’ve just boiled a kettle.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘First door on the right,’ he says, directing her forward with a wave of a hand. He follows her into the kitchen, not touching the walls, moving with the certainty of the sighted.

  Scuffed yellow lino covers the kitchen floor, and above the cooker there is a white plastic clock, its second hand frozen. A dirty lace curtain quivers over the open window. ‘Shall I –’ she begins, but is interrupted by drills.

  Facing the window, Mr Morton cocks an eyebrow, waiting for them to stop. ‘The UK Freestyle Drilling team.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks, looking through the curtain at the trench.