‘Have you come to look at the house?’
‘I’ve come to see Miss Burns.’
William Welsby looked a bit like the film director Federico Fellini. Fellini had been in the news and Welsby was dressed in black. William Welsby, Fellini’s bereaved and forgotten cousin. As for the little girl, she could be anyone because she was still young enough to be capable of anything. One day she’d grow up to be a member of both the MCC and the Surrey County Cricket Club.
‘Are you sure you haven’t come to look at the house?’
Henry wished they’d both go away. They were just more people between him and Miss Burns, and he didn’t have enough powder to poison them all.
‘You look a bit pale,’ William said. ‘What you need is some fresh air.’
It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, in Macclesfield or Dorking or Gainsborough or Harwich, in Hawick or Keynsham or Milford Haven or Norwich, Hazel is wondering what’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this. She expects her very own River Phoenix to ask her exactly this question any second now. It’s his class of line. He is medium-build, black hair. He is nineteen years old and a Scorpio like she is, and he claims to be a criminal. If her accent has dropped slightly during their conversation it’s only in search of the authentic, and she quickly discovers how much fun it is to talk to a stranger she knows she’ll never see again.
They’ve moved from the swimming pool to the bar, partly because Hazel is disgusted by the way Olive gets handed towels by Sam Carter, but also because a new set of races needs to be stewarded and River Phoenix is hiding from his supervisor.
'I thought you wanted to be a swimmer?’ he says.
They sit right in the comer of the bar, beneath a speaker playing selections from Mozart or Bartok or Rachmaninov by the London Symphony Orchestra or the Vienna Philharmonic or the Ungarica. The bar manager has ambitions for a sideways move to the Arts Centre. Perhaps by way of compensation the television screen shows highlights from the British Lions against New Zealand, or Bath against Leicester, or England against Australia.
‘People change,’ Hazel says. That’s what people do.’
‘But a lawyer? A doctor? That’s quite a change.’ Hazel recognises this from University. It’s the syndrome of the ruffled boy trying to get his own back, which in this case he ought to do quickly before he’s lured away from his community service by Quentin Tarantino. She’s not complaining, but she wonders why her body has yet to learn a language which tells men she isn’t interested. Dying her hair brown or black might just work, but in the meantime her college experiences, not to mention the cautionary example of her own parents, have made her properly careful of men’s friendship.
Her father, as it turns out, is having the affair her mother always suspected. With his new secretary and an airline hostess and an exotic swan-necked foreigner who doesn’t speak English. It all counts. He has taken full advantage of Virgin Freeway or Continental OnePass or SAS Eurobonus to collect air miles for his lovers to travel free to foreign sales conventions, where he hands over more accumulated air miles in exchange for hotel reservations. This explains why his bank statements have never betrayed him. Hazel asks her mother why they stay married, and not under the influence of drugs she says that marriage is like an identity card. It reveals who you are, both to other people and yourself.
‘Why would someone like you want to be a lawyer or a doctor?’
‘To be happy,’ Hazel says, which is such an unsatisfactory answer it annoys her. She also sees that River Phoenix isn’t going to let her get away with it. He says:
‘Happy in what way exactly? You mean your parents’ idea of happiness?’
‘My mother thinks happiness is Nembutal. Yours?’
‘God. For Mum, happiness is God. And hanging on to the right memories.’
‘Ï forget things all the time,’ Hazel says, remembering Sam Carter drying Olive’s long brown hair. She’ll soon forget it, she hopes, hoping that the things you forge’I don’t matter any more.
'It’s hardly very ambitious, is it?’
‘What?’
‘Doctors. Lawyers.’
‘Twenty-five percent of candidates fail the bar exams.’
‘What are you frightened of?’
‘I’m not frightened.’
‘You’re young,’ he says. ‘You’re gorgeous. Don’t you ever dream of a life more exciting than that?’
Hazel remembers, just in time, that she’s allowed to retaliate. She mentions that she used to like River Phoenix, until she grew out of him. ‘You know you’re dead?’
‘I read it in the paper.’
‘Sad.’
‘Tragic’
‘At your age.’
They both think of River Phoenix fixed in time, captured on film, never getting any older. No more tomorrows for River, which in fact is often how Hazel feels. She doesn’t actually register time passing. She believes she’s going to live forever, and that forever will always look very like today, which she knows is wrong. Time passes and people grow old and accidents happen. That’s why she has to be a lawyer or a doctor. That’s why she has to be responsible and act her age.
‘You have to live in the real world,’ she tells her own private River Phoenix, who’s doing community service. He must have committed a crime and she bets he didn’t go to a private school, which still sounds to her like a more real world than her own. He’s now telling her to imagine a parallel universe where there are always several options and everything is always possible. She can be anywhere she wants to be and do anything she wants to do.
‘No I can’t. There is such a thing as reality, you know.’
'I bet you learnt that from your mother.’
Hazel is almost too angry to reply. There is such a thing as reality, whether they like it or not. It exists and you can see it, smell it, sense it, touch it, remember it, even take bits of it home with you in a box. There is the unique moment in which life is real, and that moment is always now. Here they are at the pool, in the bar, music, television, and there’s only so far they can bend it to suit themselves. Real life keeps insisting on its own shape, and a million ifs or buts or eithers or ors don’t make a blind bit of difference. This is what there is and we have to stand up and get on with it and grow old in it. It won’t let us go anywhere we like or do anything we want, quite the opposite, which is why it makes sense to be a lawyer or a doctor, and fully insured by General Accident or the CIS or Commercial Union. Things will go wrong. That’s how you know that they’re real.
‘You can still dream though, surely?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘Or is that something else your mother made you afraid of?’
'It has nothing to do with my mother. And anyway, I don’t have to become a lawyer or a doctor.’
‘I bet you will though.’
He leant back with his arms crossed, certain of victory. Hazel hated him.
‘All girls are the same,’ he said.
'What?’
‘Eventually you’ll become your mother.’
‘You know absolutely nothing.’
‘You’re sure we haven’t met before?’
‘Only in your dreams.’
11/1/93 MONDAY 14:12
‘Fresh air never hurt anyone,’ William said, and Henry couldn’t disagree because he was already feeling better than he had inside. He and William Welsby, who shared his cousin Federico’s fascination with the burlesque, were standing on the terrace, leaning on a balustrade which overlooked a semi-circular lawn. It was still overcast, but the cloud was lighter in patches with flushes of sunlight just failing to break through. Grace had carefully put the bowl with the fish in it on top of the balustrade. She tugged at Henry’s sweater.
‘Guess again,’ she said.
‘Mr Confusion,’ Henry guessed. ‘Drum Taps, Very Dicey, Flashfeet.’
‘No. Guess again.’
‘You said he had a name like a horse.’
&
nbsp; ‘He does.’
This was a very good example of why children made Henry feel nervous. They could always remind him of the many questions it was usually impossible to answer.
'I once had a horse,’ he said. ‘His name was Benjamin.’
The idea that Miss Burns knew he’d have to leave the country worried away at him. She knew everything else, so why not that? He couldn’t make it fit into his idea of their destiny together, and he wanted someone to blame, and to punish, but just then a bird started singing and William held up his hands, as if everything else had to stop.
‘Georgi Markov,’ William said. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard one of him before. He’s a Siberian robin.’
Facts. In times of stress Henry knew he could always calm himself with facts.
‘Actually it’s not,’ he said. ‘It’s a red-flanked bluetail.’
‘Are you sure?' William strained to listen more closely.
‘Tarsiger cyanurus” Henry said. ‘Georgi Markov’s a funny name to give a bird.’
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ William said, distracted, hoping for another snatch of birdsong. It was the Siberian connection.’
‘Georgi Markov was Bulgarian.’
Did these facts succeed in calming him? Not really. They didn’t seem to make William Welsby very happy either.
'I knew that,’ he said. ‘Obviously.’
While William stared accusingly in the direction of the mulberry bush, Henry made an effort to speak to the child. Miss Burns might be watching from an upstairs window, and attention to children was known to impress.
‘Are you having a good birthday?’
‘The best. I’ve got a brilliant fish and Uncle Spencer’s making me a special birthday cake.’
'Is anyone else coming?’
'I asked Granny, but she had a fancy lunch to go to. Are you going to stay for cake? Uncle Spencer won’t mind. He never minds anything.’
Henry didn’t know what to say. It was all Spencer this and Spencer that. Spencer Kelly, incurable victim of Parkinson’s or meningitis or cancer of the colon, died in surgery. Henry looked down at the wet lawn beneath the balustrade, and then beyond at the path winding through small copses, bisecting a mulberry tree and a clump of hornbeams. How could he compete with all of this? What did he have to offer? Hazel knew about wild flowers and British painters and birdcalls and the names in order of every King and Queen, so of course she knew he’d have to leave. She knew everything. She probably even knew how to make the poison called ricin, just like he did. Thanks to Dr Osawa, Henry had learnt how to give life to people. It was probably just as easy to take it away. Spencer Kelly, nothing. He would kill them all, leaving Miss Burns a simple choice of one.
What he really needed was that automatic weapon, especially at this time of year. Hallowe’en was yesterday and only a few days to go until November 5. People on the other side of the wall would assume the gunfire was fireworks, and he’d get away with it. Passers-by would pass-on-by as if they’d heard nothing, knowing it was none of their business to intrude on the embarrassing emotional instability of others, even if it led to gunfire, mayhem, bloody death. Easier to believe it was fireworks, and walk right past.
‘You’re looking a bit shaky again,’ William said.
'It’s nothing. I’m fine.’
He was only thinking these bad things. He wasn’t actually doing anyone any harm. It’s nothing. 'Just a little panic attack.’
‘Oh, I know all about those,’ William said. ‘You just have to block some things out.’
‘I have to see Miss Burns.’
‘Good idea,’ William said. ‘It worked for me.’
‘I’m not quite sure what you expect me to do,’ Spencer said. ‘He’s your friend. You invited him in. I intend to be civil and wait until he goes away again. Unless you have a better idea.’
‘You can take over the soup.’
Hazel threw several packets over the kitchen table to where Spencer was arranging his ten candle-pierced Jaffa cakes in the shape of a happy face. After forgetting to buy
Grace a present, this was his improvised attempt at a birthday cake. He was hoping Grace would like the idea of ten cakes instead of one, even if they were really biscuits. It had been a busy morning, and maintaining the illusion that this was Grace’s special day was now Spencer’s main priority. Just for the moment then, Hazel’s student was Hazel’s problem.
Unasked, uninvited, her Henry Mitsui had found his way to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway and said he had to speak to her, calling her Miss Burns. He meant somewhere else, alone. It was something very important, yes, and he didn’t want Spencer to hear it, no, and because Hazel didn’t believe in being frightened she crumpled up Spencer’s apron (If you don’t like it write to the Queen) and took Henry through to the dining room, mostly because she knew where it was. She deftly managed to get the huge table between her and him before saying anything.
‘We’ve met each other now,’ Hazel said. ‘Which is what you wanted.’
It wasn’t just to meet you.’
‘I was your distance-learning teacher. Nothing else. Just a voice on a telephone.’
‘You know everything.’
‘I know nothing.’
‘You know the names of all the Kings and Queens. You know flowers and birds.’
‘I know how to look up facts in reference books. All these things are easy to learn. They’re only hard to remember.’
‘I have money,’ Henry said. ‘I don’t have a house like this but I can play the piano. I’ve travelled. I want to make you happy.’
‘Listen to me, Henry. Listen carefully. The whole point of being a distance-learning teacher is not to get too close to the students. I want to do the work without having the human contact. Basically, I’d prefer it if you weren’t here.’
‘But here I am.’
And Miss Burns was here too, in the same room, just the two of them. This, surely, was the right time to try out the magic words, which changed entire lives. I love you. But then why, if destiny and luck were indeed on his side, should he launch their life together so timidly?
‘Miss Burns,’ he said. ‘Will you marry me?’
And unbidden, in the silence which immediately followed, Hazel thought: at last, a man who knows what he wants.
10
To the vast majority of the peoples of Europe, it has seemed since the war that practical sanity and orderliness has vanished.
THE TIMES 11/1/24
As of this morning, for example, every citizen of the United Kingdom is also a citizen of the European Union.
THE TIMES 11/1/93
11/1/93 MONDAY 14:24
‘Shouldn’t we wait for Hazel?’
'The candles are melting onto the biscuits.’
Spencer turned off the lights. In the November afternoon gloom the white core of each of the ten candle flames was hard and bright. Speared into the Jaffa cakes, they lit up the sign of a happy face.
‘Is everyone ready?’
William said it again: ‘What about Hazel?’
‘She’s with that man,’ Grace said, hopping with excitement. The candles were burning closer to the chocolate, which shone and slipped in the flamelight.
‘He won’t be staying long,’ Spencer said. ‘He’s just a student of hers.’
‘He seems very nice,’ Grace said. ‘Can I blow out the candles now?’
‘Quickly then,’ Spencer said, ‘and all in one go, or it’s bad luck.’
Grace lunged forward, strafing the candles several times, left to right and back again. When her breath ran out she extinguished at least one of the flames with a direct hit with spit. Her face went pillar-box red, and eventually with no breath left and one candle still alight, she closed her eyes and started inhaling and coughing at the same time. Spencer deftly blew out the last candle.
‘Have you made a wish?’ William asked. Grace was recovering quickly, still choking but also laughing and bri
ght-eyed. ‘Everyone has to make a wish on their birthday.’
‘I wish it was my birthday every day!’
‘Except if you say it out loud it never comes true,’ William said.
‘It might.’
‘Well you just wait and see if it’s your birthday again tomorrow.’
‘Alright then, I’ll make another wish.’
‘And you have to cut the cake,’ Spencer said, handing her a table knife.
Grace looked up at him slyly. 'If I say the wish aloud it won’t come true?’
‘Correct,’ William said.
‘Then I wish Uncle Spencer never sees Hazel ever again in his whole life.’
‘Very clever,’ Spencer said. ‘Very assertive. You put the knife in one of the cakes and you make a wish. When the knife hits the plate you scream.’
Miss Burns hadn’t said yes. There again, she hadn’t said no. She opened a door. It was a gym. She opened another door and it was an empty paint-flaked billiard room once touched up by David Jones.
‘David Jones was a painter,’ she said.
Closing this door, she turned an ankle, grimaced, pulled off her shoes and backtracked more quickly to yet another door. Watching her naked feet, Henry followed close behind her. He’d have been a fool not to. He was in love, an instant convert to the idea of a life lived happily ever after, and he couldn’t help himself. All this was his destiny, because nothing else could explain why he’d fallen so hopelessly in love. She turned back towards him, closing the door to a Jacuzzi, almost touching him. He thought of obstructing her, holding her, backing her against indifferent doorways and caressing her, but he let it remain a thought. She seemed to be lost.
‘The kitchen,’ Hazel said forcefully. ‘We’re going back to the kitchen where the others are.’
She was either suppressing her emotions or playing hard to get, both of which were admirable British characteristics. It was exactly how Henry would have expected her to behave.
‘Stop following me about,’ she said.
‘Will you marry me?’
‘I think you should leave.’
‘I’ll look after you. I’ll never be unfaithful.’
Damascus Page 18
