London and the South-East

by David Szalay

  Um.

  That guest house.

  The spliff has gone out, and he places it on the side table, next to the tannin-stained mug. His mouth is drier than the dry valleys of Antarctica, where it has not rained or snowed for thousands of years. These valleys must be something he saw on television – there is an associated image of a mummified seal (naturally mummified, he seems to remember, in that perpetually frozen and waterless environment) the colour of a nicotine stain, lying on a gravel slope. What was the programme? He does not know. The dry valleys, and the desiccated, weak-chinned face of the seal – which in a melancholy way resembles his own face – is all there is. Very slowly, he moves to the little sink in the corner of the room. He turns the squeaky tap and finds a trickle of water. It is not easy to drink, though. The sink is too small for him to get his face under the tap, and when he tries to use his hands the water leaks away before he is able to lift it to his mouth. Then he sees the mug. Even when he has drunk several mugs of tepid water, however, his mouth feels moistureless. Naturally mummified. If he keeps drinking, he tells himself, he will just have to piss. So he stops. Standing there, he senses that he has forgotten something … For what seems like a very long time he stands there, with his mouth open. Yes! Andy. He is downstairs, sicking up in the loo. Slowly, Paul switches off the light and leaves. Humming snugly, he descends the tightly turning stairs. He seems to descend through many floors – perhaps twelve – until finally he finds himself in the narrow hall at street level.

  Surrounded by the shining silence of the stairs, he had felt safe. Now, though, there are sounds. Mrs Mulwray has turned on a television. From the street, he hears quiet voices speaking a strange language. He stands on the final step, wondering what to do. He has been in this position for some time when he notices that he is visible to Mrs Mulwray. There is a convex mirror high on the wall, tilted so that from her booth she is able to see up the stairs, where he is standing. With sudden purpose, he propels himself towards the exit. The outside air seems to stroke his skin. Passing the phone, he stops. There is something else … Something … He must establish the fact that he is leaving. He must, or she will make him pay. Turning, and trying to project his voice, he says, ‘Um … Guhnight …’

  Part of Mrs Mulwray’s face emerges into view. ‘Goodnight,’ she says.

  Quarter to eight in the morning, and Regency Square looks less swanky. A street sweeper (not Malcolm, though his ‘patch’ is only a few metres further east) slowly plies the margin, and in the unforgiving light the terraces and hotels look their age. They look tired. They look fed up. Curtains cover their windows like flannels on mature eyes – eyes that have seen through everything, that have no youthful illusions left. The lawn is flecked with litter. Everything looks moist and streaked with dirt. A seagull squats on the head of the bronze soldier, his bronze arm outstretched, symbol of the fallen in an unfashionable war.

  Entering Russell Square with a holdall in his hand, Paul Rainey looks up at the rotten brown cornices and window frames of the Queensbury guest house. The spicy odour of superskunk is noticeable on the pavement outside. On the stairs, it intensifies. Outside Andy’s door it is vivid. Andy is sitting in bed in his boxer shorts smoking a spliff. Seeing his torso, Paul is surprised how fat he is. Loaves of pale flab sit on the waistband of his shorts. Downy tits, round shoulders. He looks up, pale-eyed. ‘What are you doing?’ Paul says, stepping into the smoke-filled room.

  ‘Quick doob.’ Andy’s voice is hoarse.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’

  ‘Oh, come on …’ he says, in a whisper.

  ‘We’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  Paul shoves aside the greasy lace curtain and opens the window. The grotty sash gives with a scraping grunt. ‘You can smell that thing all up the stairs,’ he says. ‘Put it out.’ Surprisingly, without a word, Andy does so, stubbing it out on the inner surface of the mug, which he is using as an ashtray. He yawns, showing fat teeth. ‘There’s the suit,’ Paul says, indicating the holdall. Andy nods. ‘What size are your feet?’

  ‘Nine.’

  ‘Fine. I’ve brought some shoes as well.’ The big black brogues – highly polished ebony artefacts – would be as implausible as the chalk stripe. ‘I’ll wait for you downstairs,’ Paul says. ‘You’ve got five minutes.’

  ‘Do you want me to wear the suit?’

  ‘No. Why would I? You can try it on later.’

  In the corridor downstairs the smell of superskunk mingles with the smells of toast and tea. Quiet munching and murmuring sounds emanate from the dining room. Paul steps out into the dank morning air and stands on the discoloured chequer of the front steps.

  ‘Where’s the instructions?’ he says, when Andy joins him.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Go and get them.’

  Andy trudges up the stairs. ‘Where we going?’ he asks, when he next emerges.

  ‘Somewhere. I don’t know.’

  They wander off in search of a café, ending up in the Starbucks on Market Street. There Paul studies the newspaper while Andy studies Watt’s instructions. When he has looked through them a few times, Paul puts down the paper and tests him. ‘What’s your email address?’ ‘What sort of strawberries you offering?’ ‘How many grams in a punnet?’ ‘What’s the most usual price this week?’ ‘What price are you asking for?’ ‘Why might an inspection be a problem?’ When Andy scores poorly on these questions, he spends a further half an hour studying, while Paul purchases a lemon muffin and a second latte (wondering, in the queue, whether to expense them), and then settles down to the international news and sport. Andy also fails the second test. He is still quite stoned and only able to remember one or two facts at a time.

  When Paul asks him, ‘How many grams in a punnet?’ he stares at him with pink eyes for a few moments and then says, ‘Four hundred?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Um.’ Andy frowns. ‘How many?’

  Paul puts down the stapled sheets of A4. He has passed a long night of tedious meditations; meditations that went nowhere, like one of the kiddy-rides on the seafront. Nevertheless, he now wonders for the umpteenth time whether to tell Andy to fuck off back to London and forget the whole thing. Start looking for someone else. To proceed with him seems suicidal. Watt, though, would never wear a postponement. With a sigh, Paul picks up the pages. ‘Two hundred and twenty-seven,’ he says.

  Andy nods. ‘Oh yeah.’

  Once more in the room on the top floor of the guest house – it has to be vacated by noon – they turn to the equipment. Paul spent Saturday night experimenting with it. There are two units. The first is the camera. Made of rough, unmarked plastic, it has a serious, functional, professional look. On one side there is a small hole, and on the other a socket where the wire plugs in. Were it not for the battery, it would weigh nothing. The other unit is the digital video recorder, which looks more like an ordinary item of consumer electronics, with a metal finish and some chrome buttons. Watt has prepared the bag for use himself – he has made a small hole in the side, and seems to have sewn in a pouch of the camera’s exact size so that the ‘lens’ – it is more of a pinprick – is aligned with this hole. Ensuring that it is pointing towards Martin, Andy will simply have to open the bag and press record on the DVR. Taking out the punnets of fruit – they stopped into Tesco’s for them, and have transferred them to the unmarked punnets which Paul pilfered from work – will provide an ideal pretext for doing this. On Saturday night, while Heather and the kids slept, Paul recorded some images and played them back on the TV; the picture quality was surprisingly sharp, even in low light. He shows Andy how it works, and they take some practice shots, working out how the bag has to be positioned in order to find an object in the camera’s angle of view.

  Then Andy tries on Paul’s suit. It is more in the black economy line, very much more typical of the gangmaster sector, than his own. A bland blackish blue, with shiny patches, old creases and a missing button, it is not a
perfect fit. The shoes are scuffed. The tie a dismal strip of paisley. ‘You look shit,’ Paul says. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Like you then.’ Andy smiles. ‘Only joking, mate.’

  Paul says that if he scores a hundred per cent in a final test he’ll stand him a pint. ‘And then that’s it,’ he says. ‘That’s it – no more booze till it’s done.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He makes the test easy, and they stroll to the Regency Tavern. Sitting under the large frosted-glass window, Andy looks nervous. He is quiet – very unlike him – and smokes even more heavily than usual. Other than his smoking hand – shuttling to and from his mouth – he is very still. He has a misleadingly unpractised way of smoking, an odd manner of holding the cigarette between his plump fingers, of exhaling the smoke like a twelve-year-old girl. They sit in silence for a while. ‘Look, don’t worry about it,’ Paul says. ‘If you stay sober, everything’ll be fine.’

  Andy nods, and says, ‘M …’

  The hangover lends him a pallor, a slightly hollow-eyed quality, which is entirely welcome. His edginess, too, will be in keeping with the role. He should not, however, be overly nervous. And to take his mind off the performance ahead, Paul says, ‘How’s things going at PLP?’

  ‘How are things going?’

  ‘Yeah. For you, I mean. Getting the deals in?’

  Andy shrugs. ‘Some.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  He seems unwilling to say more.

  Why are you still working there? Paul thinks. He wonders whether to put this question to him; he even wonders whether to make an impassioned speech, urging him to leave sales and start something else while he still has time, to wake up, to shake off the sedations, to stop and think, to save himself from the sort of life that he is sleepwalking into.

  Instead he says, ‘What’s it like working for Tony?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  They leave the pub, and for a few moments loiter in the mews. ‘I’ve got to go, mate,’ Paul says. He is not happy about leaving Andy on his own in a town full of temptations, but he is exhausted. He keeps yawning. ‘All right,’ Andy says. Wearing Paul’s suit, he has his own luggage with him as well as the flight bag. ‘This Short character,’ Paul says, yawning. ‘He’s very tall. And he doesn’t drink.’ Andy nods. Paul looks at his watch. ‘You’ve got four hours. If I was you, I’d dump that stuff at the station. It’s not far.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Get a paper or something.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No more drinking.’ Andy smiles. ‘Why are you smiling?’ The smile vanishes. ‘Look, mate, if you can’t go four hours without a drink –’

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘And no more of that.’ Paul makes a smoking motion. He feels that there must be more to say. Nothing occurs to him. ‘All right. Phone me when you’re done.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And good luck, yeah.’

  ‘Yeah. Which way’s the station?’

  ‘That way.’ Paul points to the far side of Russell Square. ‘Turn left and just keep going. There’s signs.’

  ‘All right. Cheers, mate. See you later.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  For a few moments, with misgivings, Paul watches him totter off past the peeling guest houses. In that shapeless blue suit, it might be himself that he is watching. He has an uneasy feeling that he ought to have done more. He is too sleepy, however, for this thought to trouble him much. He will sleep. Whatever his omissions, it is too late to mend them now – a state of things which imports a sort of peace – and he will sleep through the event itself. And he turns and wanders off through Regency Square, with the sea wind in his tired face.

  23

  IN A LONG series of hallucinations on the edge of sleep, he has lived through it many times. Has seen Martin and Andy meet in the green-striped interior of the Regency Tavern … Strawberries, flight bags … Light bulbs in the form of candle flames, orange and flickering … Each time, though, something essential seemed to be missing; whenever his puzzled head poked for a moment into the oxygen of wakefulness he wondered, in particular, whether the upshot was success or failure. Once, he threw off the sweaty duvet and left the house – was walking through streets, making for somewhere with an overwhelming sense of purpose … Once, more prosaically, he was in the kitchen, preparing his porridge. Often he experienced the moment when his mobile – unusually stationed upstairs – would startle him. Whenever this happened, he never managed to find it in time. It seemed to be hidden under mountains of stuff, or lost in a room at the far end of the house. He staggered down passageways pointing to infinity. And always with the panicky sense that the phone’s next iteration would be its last.

  When finally it does start to vibrate and twitter, his searching hand thrashes on the side table like a little bull in a china shop, and his sticky mouth struggles to form the word hello.

  ‘Urluh,’ he says. A sort of tinnitus is howling in his head. ‘Ndy?’

  ‘It’s Roy Watt here.’

  ‘Oh.’ Paul sighs, and lying on his back says, ‘All right?’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Watt says urgently. They spoke yesterday evening, when Paul told him that the meeting with Martin had been set up.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he see him?’

  ‘He’s seeing him now.’ Paul shuts his eyes. The TV is muttering under the floor. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘I should be hearing from him soon.’

  ‘Can’t you call him?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What if he’s still with Martin? He’ll call me as soon as he’s done.’

  ‘And you’ll call me.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘As soon as you hear from him.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting for your call.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Paul drops the phone and turns away from the window. A wave of sweat shimmers over his whole skin. He farts. Then the phone starts again. It is Andy.

  ‘Mate?’ Andy says.

  ‘Yeah.’ Paul opens his eyes and sits up painfully. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about this, mate.’ Andy sounds nervous.

  ‘Sorry about what? What happened?’

  ‘Look.’ There is a long silence. ‘I.’

  ‘You what? What happened?’

  At first Andy tries to hide the fact that he is laughing – he hawks ostentatiously and holds the phone away from his face. Paul listens without emotion. ‘Don’t worry, mate,’ Andy says when he is able to speak again. ‘I was just … Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Everything’s fine?’

  ‘Yah.’

  Surprised at his own lack of surprise, Paul leans over to the pack of Marlboro Lights on Heather’s side of the bed. Extending his fingers like Adam on the Sistine ceiling, he is just able to pick it up. He lights one, holding the phone to his ear with a round shoulder while Andy talks excitedly. When he has finished, Paul tells him to wait in the Regency Tavern. Then he phones Watt and passes on the news. Then he stands up – still smudged with exhaustion – and tugs on his clothes. He is working later; his first shift since Friday.

  Descending the stairs, quivering slightly, he is surprised to hear strange voices in the lounge. A young man in a suit steps into the hall. ‘All right?’ he says.

  ‘All right …’

  ‘Your wife let us in.’

  ‘Did she?’

  The young man offers no explanation for his presence; Paul presumes that he is an estate agent, one of Norris Jones’s people. Presently, he is followed out of the lounge by some other people, a man and a woman. They nod timidly in Paul’s direction, and are ushered into the kitchen. Heather is in there – Paul hears the woman say, ‘Sorry about this,’ and Heather says, ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘Lovely garden.’ The estate agent.

  ‘Um, when’s it available?’ the man says, a few m
oments later. The agent asks Heather when she is moving out, and she says, ‘A month. Just under.’

  ‘There you go.’

  In the hall, overhearing this, with the agent’s sharp sandalwood scent in his nostrils, Paul puts on his jacket. Without looking at him, the viewing party leave the kitchen and start up the stairs to inspect the bedrooms. Several times, he has been woken in the middle of the afternoon by a knot of such people whispering in the doorway.

  Andy seems disappointed that Paul is not up for some sort of impromptu stag weekend. He offers to fund it himself with the two hundred pounds that he has paid him. Paul, however, sticks to a single half of lager – he did not even want that, and only agreed to it because Andy looked so spaniel-like and sad. Then he tells him not to be a stranger, and leaves him in the Regency Tavern, remembering on the bus back to Hove that he is still wearing his suit and shoes. He sends him a text message saying that he will pick them up next time he is in London. Then he dumps the flight bag in Lennox Road, puts on his uniform, and hurries to work. In the morning, he is supposed to leave the flight bag in a left-luggage locker at the station. Watt says he will transfer the money when he has seen the tape; first however, exhausted though he is, Paul wants to watch it himself. So with a microwaved shepherd’s pie, still in his uniform, he sits down on the sofa in front of the TV.

  For a while the screen fizzes, then suddenly a picture appears. The first thing he notices is that the lens is not perfectly aligned with the spyhole – a wide band on the left of the screen is just black. The rest of the image shows the surface of the table and Martin’s suited torso, his shirt front and tie; the lower part of his face – and only the lower part – makes occasional appearances. This worries Paul until he sees the moment – some way in – when Martin lowers his whole face into the picture to sniff the punnet of fruit in front of him, thus providing an undeniable positive ID.