by Tim Pears
‘I’m so sorry, my friend,’ he said, reaching out a hand to James’ arm. James nodded. ‘It’s so awful a thing, my wife and me, my friend, if you want—’
But James pushed on, his throat filling with air, nodding vigorously, the merest sound – ‘Yep, yep,’ – escaping his lips, pushing past Mr Khan for the refuge of the flat, unable to cope with kindness.
As Adamina hardened to their outdoor days, so she was less tired at night. She disappeared after supper one evening, and an hour later James realized that she wasn’t asleep on the sofa in his bedroom. He went downstairs for the first time, into the empty, white-walled rooms below: it was too much like descending into a recently prepared tomb. But he found Adamina there, drawing on one white wall with felt-tip pens; she was drawing a feast of food, on a table seen from above, a meal her mother might have made. Adamina was too young a draughtswoman for James to identify all the shapes before him: he scrutinized them before hazarding guesses, which she confirmed or rejected with a nod or shake of her head.
‘You’re very clever,’ he said. ‘You’ve given me an idea. You do this room and I’ll take the next one, OK?’
They now had an indoor project, for evenings and the wet days that came occasionally, at the beginning of August. While Adamina made her murals James brought his enlarger down from the darkroom, put an infrared bulb in the light socket, and blacked out the next-door room. He bought printing paper in liquid form that he painted in rectangles on the walls, and he projected negatives onto them. Each one took a long time: test strips had to be painted on, developed, painted over again. The developer, stop, wash and fixer chemicals had to be sprayed on using a plant spray, and the liquids streamed down the walls to collect in old newspapers and towels.
James began, following Adamina’s example, with one of the few black-and-whites he’d taken of Laura’s food that first time in his flat. ‘You never know when they might come in useful,’ he’d told her.
He sifted through his negatives of Laura and Adamina, and times they’d spent together, and laboriously printed them around the room, photographic frescoes almost, the images seeming to sink into the texture of the walls. Adamina standing on a Dartmoor tor; Laura sleeping; Laura dancing with Alice at the ceilidh on her birthday; James and Adamina running towards Laura – who took this slightly out-of-focus picture – in a Somerset field, between cheese-making farms; Laura smiling, two tiny dimples showing above her cheekbones.
James locked the front door, and they only entered his flat by the iron staircase; and he locked the door down into the empty flat from above, too, whenever they went out.
* * *
James never answered the telephone. He let the messages accumulate until there were twenty-seven and the tape was full, and then without listening to them he turned the cassette over and let more build up on the other side.
Zoe delivered food twice a week, and finally she called one wet morning while they were still inside the flat. James came up from the empty rooms below to meet her.
‘How are you?’ Zoe asked. ‘Are you OK?’
‘We’re OK,’ James assured her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked him.
‘We’re looking for Laura, of course,’ he told her, realizing as he said it that he’d come to believe it too, in some way. He saw Zoe’s anxiety. ‘She can’t be gone for ever,’ James explained. ‘I don’t think that’s possible, do you?’ he said calmly.
‘James,’ Zoe said, ‘you look terrible. Are you sleeping?’
‘Kind of,’ he replied. ‘I am eating, thanks to you.’
‘People have told me they’ve seen you and Adamina walking through town, just walking all day long.’
James nodded, smiling, smug.
‘She’s six years old,’ Zoe said.
‘Don’t give me shit,’ James warned her.
‘I just need to know she’s all right,’ Zoe told him.
‘I’ve told you all, I’m her guardian.’
‘Yes and I’m yours, you idiot,’ Zoe said. ‘Aren’t we allowed to care for you? Do you have to go through this alone, you stubborn bastard?’
Adamina appeared at the top of the stairs and came into the sitting-room in paint-splattered clothes.
‘Hello, sweetheart,’ said Zoe. Adamina walked over to James and stood by his chair, and gazed blankly at Zoe.
‘Look,’ said Zoe, ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, but you must know it can’t go on for ever.’
‘Trust me,’ said James.
‘I’m trying to,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep people off your back for the moment, anyway. Do you need money?’
James didn’t reply, but lowered his eyes. ‘Here,’ said Zoe, passing over some notes. ‘Here, take it. It’s a loan, OK? Pay us back later.’
Zoe went up to the house. She found Alice clearing out Robert’s rooms and recounted her visit.
‘James is fine,’ she lied. ‘They’re both doing well.’
‘School starts next week,’ Alice pointed out. ‘Mina should be there.’
‘They both need time. She can catch up.’
‘Did she say anything?’ Alice asked. ‘Is she speaking?’
‘A few words,’ Zoe lied again.
Driving home, Zoe begged James in her thoughts: Don’t let me down. Is this too great a gamble? Do I have the right to let you take it? I don’t have children, what do I know? Don’t let me down, James.
Her attention was diverted by finding herself stuck in an unmoving queue of traffic approaching the bridge over the canal leading to the High Street. Someone was tapping on her window. Zoe wound it down. A large man with an orange beard addressed her: ‘Sorry if this delay causes you inconvenience,’ he said, ‘but this leaflet explains the reason for the demo.’
‘Demo? What demo?’
‘We’re cycling around the roundabout by the bridge. We’re campaigning for more cycle lanes and less cars coming into town.’
‘How much longer are you going to be?’ Zoe asked him.
‘Another ten minutes or so, unless the police shift us before then. You’re the woman from the cinema, aren’t you? Well, I better get on with these leaflets.’
Zoe pulled her Morris Minor over and walked down to the bridge. A hundred or more cyclists were wheeling around the roundabout, transforming it into a merry-go-round. They were all ages on all sorts of bicycles: racers, tourers, mountain bikes, Dutch-types, children on tricycles, a couple of tandems and plenty of sit-up-and-beg bikes with wicker baskets. They were ringing their bells and Harpo Marx hooters, and the sound of irate car horns only added an appropriate freneticism to the carnival atmosphere.
Zoe watched them circling the roundabout and then at some unseen signal take off in a rolling cavalcade across the bridge and away up the High Street.
That evening Zoe rang the telephone number at the bottom of the leaflet she’d been handed. She introduced herself and offered to hold an evening of films to raise funds for their campaign. The offer was gratefully accepted and one of the organizers came to confer with Zoe: he turned out to be the orange-bearded man who’d tapped on her car window. His name was Matt and he owned the bicycle shop further along Lambert Street (not having a bicycle herself, Zoe had never been in). They considered possible films and their availability, to be shown on the earliest free date in the cinema’s schedule, a month hence.
Matt dropped by again a couple of days later with a rough layout for a leaflet to publicize the event.
* * *
SPECIAL SCREENING
in aid of
CLEAN AIR CAMPAIGN
BICYCLE THIEVES
BREAKING AWAY
A SUNDAY IN HELL
SUNDAY 4th OCTOBER 1992
ELECTRA CINEMA
tickets £10
CYCLISTS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE
BUT YOUR CHAINS
* * *
Zoe found a still from Bicycle Thieves in her office.
‘Do you own y
our own shop?’ she asked Matt over a cup of tea.
‘It’s on a twenty-five-year lease,’ he told her. ‘It’s owned by some company, Meredith Holdings, in London.’
‘Me too,’ she replied. ‘Well, the building was on a ninty-nine-year lease originally, but it’s up for renewal next year, I guess we’ll move on to a new twenty-five-year one. Though that should be plenty long enough: I doubt if there’ll still be cinemas in twenty-five years’ time. People will watch through this virtual reality gear; they’ll live inside the films of the future. They’ll become participants, protagonists, in the stories.’ Zoe laughed grimly. ‘What bull. As if they don’t already.’
The evening was a great success, raising more than £1,500 for the campaign, except that not all those active in it were overjoyed to turn up on the night and find the event sold out in advance: the tickets had been snapped up by cycling aficionados never seen on the demonstrations. They came from miles around, triple-locked their gleaming bikes outside, and rendered the cinema foyer shocking with bright Lycra: it was a relief to Zoe and her usherette when they’d filed into the auditorium and the lights had gone down. Zoe slipped in to watch the films herself; her audience sat glowing in the dark.
James and Adamina didn’t simply pound the pavements, as if on some military exercise. Often Adamina would stop in some nondescript street and for a while watch people entering and leaving houses and blocks of flats. James feared that she might take it into her head to go further, knock on doors and peer through windows, but she seemed to accept a mature compromise: lingering in a particular road with an apparent insouciance, like an animal waiting for the scent of prey to carry on the wind to her; as if, were Laura there, Adamina would know soon enough. And then at some point, apparently satisfied with the absence of clues, she tugged James’ arm and they proceeded with their search.
Sometimes, though, they stayed too long. Net curtains would be pulled aside, faces appeared at windows, eyes watching them, the searchers. James made sure he and Adamina bathed daily, he shaved, and they had clean clothes; but they weren’t new clothes, and walking and weather aged them. Occasionally vigilant householders approached: if polite, they asked if they could help, are you lost, are you waiting for someone? If not, they demanded to know what do you want, there’s a neighbourhood watch scheme around here, don’t get any ideas coming into our road, we’ve heard about men with child accomplices and kids can’t be prosecuted, so clear off or we’re calling the police.
One cold Tuesday afternoon a police car was called: it cornered them in a trim, uncluttered close. The cul-de-sac appeared eerily uninhabited, not a single car parked in a driveway, and maybe for that reason Adamina had been reluctant to leave: as if the place were odd enough for the extraordinary to take place there.
They were sitting on someone’s wall. The police car drew up alongside them; James felt no fear, only irritation at the interruption of Adamina’s shivering vigil. A policewoman asked Adamina to sit in the warm car while James was invited to explain what they were doing there. He said it was none of their business and asked if there was a law against being in a public place. The policeman said it was his business and there were a variety of offences concerning loitering with intent, and that was what he wished to ascertain: James’ intentions for being where he was. James said he had his own reasons which were personal and the policeman told him he wasn’t helping, either the police or himself or that freezing child. James said that was a real shame, wasn’t it, and the policeman explained that there was another offence, obstructing the police in their line of duty, and from that point on it wasn’t long before James and Adamina were being driven to the police station at Westbridge.
As soon as they were separated there James came to his senses.
‘Don’t take her away,’ he panicked, ‘she’ll want to be with me.’
‘You might have thought of that before,’ he was told brusquely. So then he did explain their story. He was glad they responded with more annoyance than sympathy, demanding to know the name of her school, and they let him and Adamina go with a warning not to waste their time again.
James took Adamina up to the cottage. In contrast to the haste with which they’d stuffed Adamina’s clothes into cases they took their time now, collecting things of Laura’s: the collection itself became a ritual, as one of them lifted an object – earring, lipstick, hairbrush, shoe, kitchen utensil – and the other indicated yes or no or not sure, James entering Adamina’s mode of silent discourse.
Back in the flat they arranged the things they’d brought on the floors of the empty rooms, again silently, making a secret shrine of small possessions.
‘Her things will be ready for her,’ James said when they’d finished.
On fair days, meanwhile, the red felt-tip pen filled in the streets of the town map as they trod them down. James could see an agitation in Adamina’s demeanour as the blank avenues diminished, as hope implacably contracted. She began to slow him down, feigning weariness, slumping on park benches, pointing to grey clouds and pulling him homeward soon after they’d set out. She marked just one or two new roads they’d reached and, satisfied, returned to her murals in the flat below.
* * *
On the last Saturday in October, James and Adamina made their base the memorial at the end of Queen Street, for the occupation of whose steps there was an endless battle between youths and winos. In summer the young predominated but as the climate cooled so the wizened drunks reclaimed their territory, from which to beg and mock early Christmas shoppers. James could stomach their company; he could talk knowing there’d be no undermining understanding from them.
‘I lost my legs,’ a man in a wheelchair told him. ‘They chopped them off. I can still feel them twitching.’
‘People live in the memory of those what loved them,’ said another. ‘I remember my wife like it was yesterday. What was her name? I forget that. I forget details. Can’t remember what she looked like.’
‘You’ve never been married, you queer cunt,’ the legless man told him.
‘I can’t forget,’ the man said. ‘They don’t let me. They give me drugs to make me remember and I see her, her hair black like a raven, a crow, black as night, long, black, satin hair.’
With James distracted, slugging cider, Adamina rediscovered her card crumpled in her pocket – ‘were looking for my mummy have you seen her’ – and showed it to a morose lady on the other side of the memorial.
‘I’m your mother,’ she said.
Adamina shook her head.
‘I’m her rain carnation,’ the woman insisted. ‘I’ve been looking for you too, my darling. Come here.’
Adamina stepped back, returned to James and pulled him away.
The next day, Sunday, they spent in the park north of the town centre. James no longer joined Adamina in scrutinizing passers-by, but her attention was almost as quick as on the first day.
‘You’ll wear your eyes out, little bird,’ James told her.
They circled the park, rested on a bench, strolled around again, ate sandwiches, walked more. In the early afternoon, after their seventh or eighth lap of the park, they found their now customary bench occupied. They carried on past but a voice said, ‘James.’ He turned without pausing, on guard immediately.
‘James Freeman.’
He recognized her too, and relaxed. Her name was Jos and she’d once sung in a band for whom he’d taken publicity photos. They never got anywhere and he heard from other people that she’d given up music, drunk, drifted, become a junkie.
‘It’s nice to see you,’ she smiled.
‘You too,’ James said. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I had to get out in the open,’ she told him. ‘You know how it is. You got any gear? Look, I brought my novel with me. I can’t leave it in the B&B.’ She gestured to a carrier bag at her feet, stuffed with exercise books and loose sheaves of paper.
James took hold of her hand, blue with cold. ‘How long have you been outside?�
� he asked.
‘Half an hour,’ she replied. ‘Sure you haven’t got any gear?’ Her pupils were like stars, like black snowflakes dissolving. ‘I’ve got some acid, I don’t want it. I’ll sell it to you.’
James hesitated. ‘I don’t think so, thanks, but—’
‘I need the fucking money!’ Jos yelled at him.
He bought the four blotters she had and he and Adamina left the park.
After Adamina had gone to sleep that evening James let the blotters dissolve on his tongue one after the other, and he washed them down with whisky. After half an hour the patterns in the carpet began to dissolve and melt and flow. Particles of dust danced vividly around him. The windows changed shape, becoming holes that sucked and pushed and threatened him. The colour of objects in the room poured out of them, making him giddy with crazy laughter. ‘This is what I’m going to live for,’ he said or thought he did, ‘for film that can show colour as it really is.’
He was high above the building looking down on his rooms, then he was plunged into the furniture, lost in the atoms of inorganic objects.
At some point he realized he was moaning through gritted teeth and sweating like a pig while everything became fluid around him and flowed through him full of poison, and he knew later that Adamina had woken and spoken to him then, and held him.
The next day he was blank; they walked the streets, and that night he returned to alcohol alone.
James drank so as not to dream, and it worked, mostly. Every now and then an image of Laura appeared on the far side of his stupor, effortless, an image mundane and heartbreaking, and he awoke with hope only to be gutted by reality.
