by Sarah Rayne
At the long-disused railway bridge which marks the halfway point of the path to Highgate, a teenager in a white hooded jacket is spraying a purple graffiti tag onto the wall. He glances at them without interest and returns to his work.
Jamie tugs at Xavier’s sleeve.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘He’s, er . . . Well, it’s called graffiti. He’s sort of drawing on the wall.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, some people do that. They like it.’
‘But why don’t they do it on paper?’
‘Well, they . . . they like people to see their drawings as they walk around.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s a good question,’ Xavier admits.
They turn at the railway bridge and head slowly back towards home, Jamie’s small shoes seeking out puddles left by the light rain of the previous night.
‘Careful not to get muddy,’ Xavier says. ‘Your mum won’t be very pleased.’
‘No,’ Jamie concedes.
‘Do you think you could make her worry less, mate? If you were . . . if you didn’t shout as much, maybe?’
Jamie considers this suggestion with seeming nonchalance, but he gives a half-nod before running off in the direction of a promising stick.
A long time from now, this walk will be one of Jamie’s earliest memories; he’ll wonder who Xavier was and how they came to be walking there, and what his mum was doing at the time. It will swim into his mind of its own accord as he lies awake one night, turning the results of an experiment over in his head, an experiment which will ultimately pave the way for the antibody which will ease the lives of many people, including the as yet unborn granddaughter of the Indian shopkeeper.
Xavier grabs Jamie’s arm as they wait for a car to plough up the hill.
‘Thank you for my walk,’ says Jamie gravely.
‘Thank you,’ Xavier replies with equal seriousness. ‘Perhaps we will have another one.’
‘Perhaps,’ the boy agrees.
Xavier hands Jamie back to Mel, who answers the door in a bathrobe, a book in one hand; she looks as if her hour of freedom was more like a whole day.
‘Was he good?’
‘Couldn’t have been better,’ says Xavier, and Jamie calmly rejoins his mother.
Back in his flat, Xavier suddenly feels drained. He sits heavily on the sofa, realizing that his heart is racing. It was, of course, the first time he’d been in sole charge of a child, or of anything much, since that night in Melbourne. He sits motionless for a long time, listening to the muffled TV downstairs.
It’s late morning in London, night-time in Australia, and an hour after returning from the walk Xavier finally calls his mother. He wants to tell her about Pippa, there’s a lot to talk about, but he senses that, whatever his intentions, the conversation will settle into the usual pattern: her questions will irritate him, they will somehow remain at right-angles to one another’s meaning, especially with the distance, the time difference. All the same, he feels the call is overdue. The phone rings in the family home twelve thousand miles away, its single tone slow and hesitant; it sounds slower every time, he thinks, as if it’s getting older along with his mum. She doesn’t answer. Xavier feels uneasy; this possibility hadn’t even occurred to him. Where would his sixty-eight-year-old widowed mother be at ten at night? He doesn’t know, because he hasn’t taken care of her. She’s probably out somewhere with Rick and Steve. Everything is probably fine. He counts thirty rings before admitting defeat.
Hanging up after a surprisingly unanswered call is a chilly feeling, especially a call made over such a long distance; it feels somewhere between a snub and a failure. ‘Snap out of it,’ he mutters to himself. Then, his fingers shaking very gently on the phone’s keypad, he begins to call Matilda. He stops the call, tries again, stops it. This continues for a few moments. Finally, he lets it ring. The tone this time sounds almost incredulous, as if the call is being put through against everyone’s better judgement. This time, he almost hopes not to get an answer, but it’s picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘Matilda?’
‘Yes.’
She has a fiancé now, she lives in Sydney, she will have a different haircut; she’ll be slimmer, or curvier, she will have a whole wardrobe that he’s never seen, she and Bec and Russell will have new catchphrases and gags, new friends they refer to, new favourite films and bands. There’ll be new clubs and bars. The Zodiac, he knows from a petition he received by email, has been bought out by a company who have ripped out the balcony and put in a second screen. At best Matilda might occasionally glance at a photo of the gang of four, or find an old birthday card and remember for a minute before hastily putting it away. It’s the past and it ought to stay there; it can’t be returned to, this is stupid. All this passes through Xavier’s mind in the three seconds before he speaks again.
‘Mat? It’s . . . I’m sorry to disturb you. It’s Chris.’
‘Chris!’ She sounds surprised, of course, a little fearful, but maybe, just maybe, pleased.
‘I’m sorry. I just haven’t called for so long. I wanted to . . . I don’t know.’
‘Chris! Jesus.’
‘Is it a bad time to call? I know it’s late.’
‘No, no, it’s fine. We’re just watching TV.’
‘You and . . . your partner?’
‘Me and Bec. I’m over at Bec and Russell’s.’
Xavier catches his breath.
‘Oh.’
‘Hey,’ she says, just like she used to, and he can picture her soaring on the trampoline, jumping off it straight into his arms so he staggers backwards, ‘hey, are you on the radio over there?’
‘What? Um. Yeah.’
‘Fuck, Chris, that’s great! There was a rumour you were. I couldn’t find it. Someone said they listened online.’
‘I go by a different name. Um. Xavier.’
‘Xavier.’
‘I know. It’s kind of dumb.’
‘Xavier! Fuck! You’re a DJ! That’s awesome!’
‘It’s pretty cool, eh?’
For thirty seconds they’ve been talking as if they still saw each other regularly, or were, at least, still in the same city. Suddenly aware that this is not the case, they falter.
‘How are you?’ asks Xavier.
‘Good. Yeah, things are good.’
‘How’s . . . how’s Bec? And Russell?’
‘They’re good.’
It’s difficult again, but at least they’ve got this far. He takes a deep breath.
‘Would she speak to me? Do you think?’
Matilda considers it for a while. Xavier starts to backtrack, but then she says, ‘Hold on.’
There are footsteps and a muttered conversation which he longs to overhear. The phone audibly changes hands a couple of times.
‘Hello, Chris.’
‘Bec.’
‘How are you going?’
‘I’m good. It’s good to hear you.’
‘And you.’
Bec’s voice has changed over the five years since he last heard it, in the indescribable ways voices are changed by time – the way experience, stacked up inside a person, weighs on the vocal cords. The tiny, careful strokes are enough to carve the first nicks into the ice that froze over everything. Or almost enough.
Xavier swallows an empty mouthful.
‘How is Michael?’
Bec takes a breath, and her voice is unsteady.
‘He’s OK.’
There’s nowhere they can go from there, and the moment is cold and stiff, but it was a moment they had to pass together. Bec gives the phone back to Matilda and they say goodbye. He imagines Bec and Matilda mentioning the call to Russell when he comes back, and the three of them soberly discussing their old friend.
He knows that Australia is gone and these people are gone from him, that the life he had can’t be returned to, but nor does it have to torture him any more. It is just what it is. Xavier puts the phone
down. He looks out of the window at a bus labouring up the hill. In Sydney Harbour, the moon that beamed in on the sleeping Pippa last night is now a ghostly floodlight over the placid, lapping water. Matilda, on Bec’s balcony, looks up at it and thinks about Chris for a moment.
It’s raining by the time it gets dark: once again, London seems to be using the darkness to sneak in adverse weather. At eight, the doorbell rings. Jamie is quiet in the flat downstairs; Mel is watching TV. Compared with the boisterous programmes she normally puts on for Jamie, the overwrought yelps of her soap opera are almost soothing. Pippa stands on the doorstep with her blue-and-yellow bag, which Xavier takes smoothly from her. In her other hand sits the handle of a big black umbrella.
‘I thought you didn’t like umbrellas.’
‘I didn’t want to spoil the lovely coat you bought me.’
‘I didn’t even know you had an umbrella.’
‘I invested in one for four pounds. Don’t say I never take your advice on board.’ She edges past him onto the stairs. ‘Seldom, but not never.’
They lie together after a bout of sex which, in ten minutes, relieved each of them of eight hours’ irritations and imperfections. Xavier’s notes for the night’s show are on the bedside table. He caresses Pippa’s strong shoulder with his left hand. The covers are pulled up over her; he is stretched out naked on the sheets.
‘That was nice.’
She rolls away.
‘I don’t know what you are referring to,’ she says haughtily.
Xavier grins.
‘Will you sleep here tonight?’
‘You won’t even be here. You won’t be back till half past fucking four, excuse my language.’
‘But I just like going to sleep next to you. I like it when you’re there.’
‘I need to look after Wendy.’
‘Are you always going to look after Wendy?’
‘What do you mean?’
Xavier’s tongue runs over his lips.
‘It’s just, if you – moved in here . . . If you lived here . . . you’d have a hell of an easier time.’
She doesn’t say anything.
‘You could still work whenever you wanted. But you could relax more.’
‘And me sister?’
‘You could still see each other the same amount.’
‘She’d hate it.’
‘She could move in too.’
Pippa cackles.
‘You can’t have two Geordies move in overnight. You’d have a nervous breakdown. We make a lot of noise.’
‘I’d quite like a lot of noise.’
She sits up, gathering the covers around her. Xavier glances down at his naked body.
‘She relies on me being around all the time.’
‘But do you think that’s healthy?’
‘“Healthy.”’ She snorts. ‘This is Xavier Ireland on Late Lines.’
‘I know she’s . . . I know you’re sisters. But I’m not saying you should leave her to struggle. I just think it might be good for her to be more, more self-reliant. I don’t know. Sometimes you have to be brave.’
She looks at him and he wonders whether she’s going to bring up the Tamara situation, any of the numerous examples of his cowardice or passivity. But she just rubs her hand gently against his, then swings her legs over the side of the bed, and goes to the bathroom. As after so many conversations between people, it’s hard to say what the outcome was.
After Pippa has left to go back to Wendy, Xavier thinks over what he said about being brave and taking action, reflecting that it is – as the English say – a bit rich for him to lecture Pippa on these ideas.
He gathers his notes for the show and pulls on his jacket, just as Murray honks the horn outside. He goes down to the door and sees the Escort and the curl-topped head of his friend inside.
Clive Donald won’t be tuning in tonight; he’s already sleeping soundly in advance of another week at school. He saw his doctor, who prescribed a gentle tranquillizer to steady his sleep patterns. This evening he sent Xavier an email explaining this, and thanking him for ‘helping to turn things around’. While this regular listener may be absent, twenty-two-year-old Alessandro Romano, the barman still in love with Edith Thorne, will hear Late Lines for the first time tonight. He’ll turn it on at 2 a.m. when he returns to his unheated flat and plays with the radio dial in search of company. Still in a state of raw, heightened sentimentality, he will cry at the nineties rock ballad ‘It Must Have Been Love’.
Xavier gets into the passenger seat. The air in the car is murky, as if Murray had either farted or been eating some sort of takeaway. There are empty sandwich packets at Xavier’s feet.
‘So, the joys of another Sunday,’ says Murray.
Although he doesn’t feel it at this point, an idea begins to occur to Xavier, one not firm enough yet for mental fingers to touch and pull from the pile of thoughts. It will take several days to collect itself, gathering whatever material ideas are made of. Then, soon, it will lodge heavily in Xavier’s brain, forcing him into action.
The following Sunday, the 10th of May, Xavier arranges to meet Murray in the afternoon, before the show. Murray has been suggesting for some time that they ‘sit down and have a chat’. From the officious way he says it, Xavier knows that the ‘chat’ will have something to do with work. They go to a pub in Crouch End, not far from Bayham Road. Pippa is disappointed to learn that he’s going out on one of her free afternoons, and Xavier wishes that she would stay in his flat, treat the place as her own, and be there when he comes back from the show. But Wendy has to come first. Choosing not to rake the embers of the awkward subject, he leaves in a substandard mood.
In the pub, young families buzz messily around long tables, well-behaved children in fashionable striped jumpers, tiny designer jeans; couples sit with pints of beer studying the bloated Sunday newspapers, the sections stored inside one another like Russian dolls, spilling out when the paper is lifted up, as if to mock the reader’s attempt to make sense of the whole universe.
‘So, ner, next week is Quillam’s birthday drinks,’ says Murray.
Xavier had forgotten this, but indeed the new boss has requested the pleasure of their company – as the invitation puts it – at a floating restaurant on the Thames next Saturday.
‘So we’re going, right?’
‘I was thinking . . . I don’t know. It depends what Pippa’s doing. If she’s working.’
Murray grimaces.
‘Are you just going to get more and more boring, now you’re with her?’
‘That remains to be seen,’ says Xavier.
‘So, look.’ Murray thoughtfully kneads his hair. ‘I don’t know if we’re going to get to talk shop with Quillam. But it’s a good chance.’
‘Last time he saw you, you were pissed, harassing that barmaid in the pub.’
Murray shrugs impatiently.
‘That’s all behind us now. Here’s the point. If you look at what we’re getting and what other people are getting – I’ve been talking to a couple of people. I think we should be pushing for a better deal.’
Xavier looks down at the table. The thought which was born in the car a week ago now sits poised in the back of his throat, like food waiting to be expelled.
‘I just think wer, wer, wer, we’re one of the most popular double acts on the radio, and wer, wer, we need to give them a bit of a kick up the arse from time to time.’
Xavier, still looking at the table, says, ‘Look, mate. Quillam spoke to me recently, at that party. He’s been talking about a slightly earlier timeslot.’
Murray shakes his head.
‘I don’t think we’d work in an earlier slot. Our thing is connecting with the late-night crowd. You know. Wer, wer, we’re too unusual for . . .’
Xavier looks into Murray’s brown eyes and sees them change, second by second, as if a chemical agent were being fed in drop by drop.
‘Hang on. Der, der, do you mean us or just . . . just you?’
>
Xavier toys with the cuff of his shirt.
‘He was talking about shaking it up a bit. Pairing me up with other people. You know.’
Murray doesn’t say anything at all.
Xavier says, ‘People have offered things before, and it’s never seemed right. But, you know. We’ve had this show for a long time. I kind of feel that the time might be right to try something else.’
Murray gulps and his Adam’s apple visibly wedges itself in his throat. He takes a large swig of beer and wipes his lips with his hand.
‘I mean, they’d keep you on as a producer.’
Murray’s face is a little red.
‘They wouldn’t. The, the, they only have me because of you.’
‘I’d make sure they kept you.’
‘But I wouldn’t be able to present. They wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wouldn’t have me as a presenter. They only keep me because of you.’
Xavier feels the flush from his friend’s cheeks spreading, like a germ, onto his own.
‘I’m not stupid, Xav. I . . .’ He takes his run-up to the sentence. ‘I wouldn’t be on the radio at all.’
‘We can’t have a relationship that’s based on . . . on that.’
‘On what?’
‘On me doing you a favour. It’s not fair on either of us.’
Murray’s big head swivels to look around the pub, as if seeking some dramatic intervention from a third party, some revelation that this is all a stitch-up. Then he looks at Xavier.
‘Is this the girlfriend’s idea?’
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s funny,’ says Murray, nodding slowly, ‘funny that you mer, mer, meet her and you’ve never had any problems with the show, and then suddenly now that you’ve got her in your ear—’
