by John Harvey
But then I was brought up on the wrong books, except that in my case they were movies.
While I was doing all this thinking and looking, Anna was unconcernedly reading the last few pages of her novel. I could see that the cover was green and black, but I wasn’t close enough to be able to read the author’s name or the title.
At Waterloo she got up and walked on to the platform. So did I. So did a lot of other people. I still couldn’t figure out which was the one I should have been taking an extra special interest in, or if he was there at all. Supposing it was a he.
I followed Anna to the escalator and then along the passageway that led towards the Festival Hall and all of those other arty buildings along the South Bank. She went over a couple of bridges with a right degree bend in the middle, then under a covered way which had posters for concerts along its walls and an old man sitting in the wet at the far end blowing tunelessly into a mouth organ and looking hopefully at everyone who went through.
She hesitated, dipped into her bag for her purse, threw some coins down into the greasy cap that was in front of the man’s legs. Sorry, leg. One of the coins bounced out and rolled round on the ground in ever decreasing circles. Finally it wobbled on to its side and was still.
He lifted his eyes from the coin and looked up at me: I looked away.
She climbed some more steps and went through the glass doors into the Festival Hall itself. I had this sudden horrible thought of having to sit through a couple of concertos and the odd overture. All that culture in one evening!
But she went down to the cafeteria on the ground floor and stood in line for yet more coffee. I was beginning to think we might get on really well. At least we had one thing in common.
She sat on a kind of double tier which ran along by the window. The window looked out over the river. There were buildings lit up and every now and then a boat would go by with small coloured lights attached to it. I found that I was singing an old song by the Kinks about Waterloo sunset somewhere inside my own head.
I stopped: the sun had already set.
I looked away from Anna Vaughan and at the other tables. To the left a couple were sitting side by side with an aura of depression around them that was strong enough to keep the other tables clear for about ten feet on either side.
Neither of them was saying anything! He was holding one of her hands in his two and. she was using the other one to dab a damp tissue at her eyes every minute or so. His blue suit with its faint stripe, the expression of glorious self-pity in his eyes and the wedding ring on his finger told it all. As usual she was around half his age and you could bet that she wasn’t the one who’d been standing next to him when he’d said, ‘For better, for worse.’
Not that I had anything against a little marital infidelity—how could I in my business?—as long as it brought somebody some happiness somewhere. I didn’t think it did. But then, from what I’d seen neither did marriage.
When it came down to it, happiness didn’t seem to be part of the natural human condition.
And if you had to choose who you were going to be unhappy with, perhaps it was more rewarding to choose with a sense of romantic self-indulgence.
At least it ended up putting more money in a struggling private investigator’s pocket.
On the other side of Anna, there was another likely pair of candidates. Only this time they were at the noisy stage. I wasn’t sure which I preferred.
It didn’t look as though I was able to say neither. Not in this place it didn’t. There must have been something about it that drew them there; the unhappy, the hopeless, those who were filled with desire for someone else who didn’t want it or who wasn’t in a position to receive it.
Maybe they should be like me and learn to keep it all for yourself. But there we were back on the maybes again.
I’d been so busy setting myself up as the Miss Lonelyhearts of the seventies that I hadn’t noticed him come through the swing doors. I didn’t react until he was almost at the table, then I didn’t quite believe it until he was sitting down opposite her.
But there was no mistaking him: he wore the same suit in the same shiny brown material and the cigar in his left hand was still unlit.
8
He obviously hadn’t seen me and I didn’t think he would. He hadn’t looked away from her face since he’d sat down. He had a lot to say and he was saying it fast, punctuating the speech every now and again with little jabs at the air with his right hand. The other one was in its usual position half-way down his thigh. It was a funny way to smoke cigars.
What was happening at that table wasn’t funny. No one was laughing, least of all me.
I didn’t like to see a man like that give a going over to a girl like that. Whatever they were really like. For all I knew, Blagden might be a doting father to his son and send off one-tenth of all he earned to help the starving millions in India. Anna might throw cats down stairs and hit passing babies on the head as they went by her in their prams.
I didn’t care: I still didn’t like it.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying but I could see the words boring into her as she sat there. Her head was lowered and the long dark hair formed a shield around her face. I didn’t need to see her face; the stoop of her shoulders, the ends of hair curling up as they met the table top—they were enough.
Either he didn’t notice or he did and it was what he wanted. Whatever the case, he carried on. He talked at her straight for between ten and fifteen minutes. I was too fascinated to check my watch more accurately than that.
And then it was over. He stopped speaking, sat up straight, looked at the half-smoked cigar as though surprised to find it between his fingers, stubbed it out methodically in the ashtray, then stood up.
She didn’t look at him; waited until he had turned away from the table and was standing in the gangway, gazing out over the river. Then she did look at him, quickly, with him not noticing. She pushed her chair back with her body and it was the action of a person who has suddenly realised they are very tired.
She stood up very slowly and I could see her face clearly: she had been very tired for a long time now.
He didn’t look round, simply started walking towards the door as though knowing that she would follow. She did. Her step was heavy. I wondered what she was carrying with her, within her.
I followed the pair of them as they walked out into the evening on to the embankment. I hesitated in the shadows of the building as they moved across to the parapet. They stood close together and for an instant I thought he was going to take her hand, to touch her in some way. But he didn’t. He talked again, more urgently than when they had been sitting inside. A boat passed by along the river. There were people shouting and laughing on board and the sound floated across the water hollowly. The speakers on the ship blared out some pop song or other.
As I stood there watching them, they could have been lovers. But they weren’t.
They began to walk away, then climb the steps to the higher level. Suddenly, Blagden surprised me. He put his hand briefly underneath Anna’s elbow, then turned and walked away towards the station.
Anna stood there, staring for a few moments after him. Then she walked to the bridge that would take her across the river in the opposite direction.
I had to choose one of them and I didn’t know which. It was Blagden I really wanted. After all, he was the guy who had got me into the whole mess in the first place. It was for him that I’d been hit on the head, not once but several times, and it was because of him that the cops had hauled me in, hoping to throw a nice murder charge at me. George Anthony wanted me to find Anna for him and say a few kind words in her ear on his behalf. I could tail Blagden now and pick the girl up at her office the next day.
That would be the common sense thing to do.
Common sense. That was the thing that kept the average man paying h
is mortgage and feeding his two point whatever it is kids and overlooking his wife’s little infidelities. Common sense is what keeps a guy at his desk until he’s sixty-five so that he won’t lose his pension and then he drops down dead a week before he can collect. Common sense would have kept me in the police force and now I’d be running a newsagent’s shop in New Cross Gate. Common sense …
Oh, to hell with it!
I pulled up my coat collar and hurried up the steps and along the bridge.
I had nearly caught up with her by the time she got down on to the far side of the embankment. She stopped for a moment by a waste bin that was fixed to a lamp post and fished around in her bag. Finally, she brought out the book and dropped it in. Then carried on walking.
I hung back for a while then went over to the bin. She had made me curious. I fished the book out from among a pile of empty, screwed up cigarette packs and hot dog wrappers. I held it up to the fight by two fingers. ‘Playback’ by Raymond Chandler. On the cover this tough looking guy was holding a girl by her arm. She was young and beautiful; her hair was long but blonde. The guy looked old enough to know better.
I wiped a splash of old tomato ketchup from the back and shoved the book into my coat pocket, alongside Anthony’s book of poems. I was getting to be a regular little library.
I quickened my pace.
At first I waited to see where she would go, but she didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular. Just wandering. Thinking. I wanted to know what she was thinking.
She crossed Ludgate Circus and turned to the left quickly. I almost thought I had lost her. But I pushed open the door of this wine bar and there she was, sitting by herself in a booth at the far end.
I went over and slid into the seat opposite her.
‘Hello,’ I said.
She didn’t say anything.
‘I think you dropped this,’ I said, and pulled the paperback up into sight.
‘I’d finished it,’ she said.
‘I know. I’ve been watching you read it. You’re a fast reader.’
‘If you’ve been watching me read it, then you must know that I finished it.’
‘I thought you might want to keep it.’
‘But I threw it away.’
‘Don’t you ever throw away things and then wish you hadn’t. It’s not often you get a chance to change your mind about things like that. This might be your lucky day.’
‘That isn’t funny.’
‘I know.’
She looked at me then, dark eyes trying to read something without knowing what.
I said, ‘Thrown away anything else lately?’
‘Do you mean things … or people?’
‘Which do you go in for most?’
‘Throwing away? I throw the things. The people throw me.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’
Her eyes questioned me again. It was too early for me to give many answers. I wanted her to give something first. I wasn’t sure what. A girl in a striped dress that looked as though it was meant to be a discreet kind of uniform was hovering around the end of the table.
I looked across at Anna. Said, ‘It’s time you had something to eat. All that coffee on an empty stomach’s bad for you.’
To my surprise she smiled. I hadn’t thought I’d get a smile out of her that evening, whatever else I managed. I was glad I had. It was a pretty good smile. Not a great smile. She wasn’t feeling confident enough for that. But, like I said, it was pretty good.
‘What would you like?’
She turned round and looked at the menu that was chalked up high on a wall over the serving hatch. ‘I’d like a ham salad.’
She smiled again. I was beginning to like that smile.
‘A ham salad, a steak and kidney pie with baked potato, and a bottle of red wine. Whatever you think’s best … as long as that doesn’t mean the dearest.’
The waitress smiled as she wrote down the order.
All it needed was for me to start smiling and we’d look like an outing from the funny farm.
When the striped uniform had gone away I looked back at Anna. She was still smiling.
‘What gives?’ I asked.
‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘It’s a long while since anyone picked me up and then bought me dinner.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘It makes me feel twenty-five again.’
She reached for her bag and rummaged around for her cigarettes. I took her lighter from her and lit one. As she turned her head to one side to blow away the smoke I saw how straight the bridge of her nose was, how exact the angle as it turned under.
She drew it down into her lungs, then coughed. Once she had started she continued for some time. The food had arrived before she had stopped coughing.
I pointed at the cigarette in her hand.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t smoke so much,’ I said.
She coughed again, just once.
‘That’s why I smoke so much,’ she said.
Then suddenly she was smiling again and cutting into her salad as though she hadn’t eaten for a week. I poured her some wine and she seemed to enjoy that too.
Between mouthfuls she said, ‘You didn’t just happen to follow me around a little waiting for a chance to pick me up, did you?’
‘No,’ I shook my head.
‘What are you after then?’
‘I’m not sure.’
She drank some more of the wine. ‘You don’t look the kind of man who’s often out of his depth.’
‘How far are you out of yours?’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
I shrugged my shoulders. She bit into a piece of tomato.
‘Who are you working for? Who sent you?’
I leaned across the table and said in my best conspiratorial tone, ‘George sent me.’
Instantly her face hardened, her eyes went downwards as though she had a sudden desire to study the remaining contents of her plate. She pushed it away. She had had enough. She reached over and lit-up another cigarette.
‘What does he want?’
She had a way of making ‘he’ sound like the dirtiest word in the English language.
‘Nothing,’ I told her.
She didn’t look as though she believed it; she said so. She said a lot of other things about George Anthony. None of them were very complimentary.
‘He seemed a nice guy,’ I said, ‘for what that’s worth.’
‘Not much. George always seems a nice guy. Until you get to know him. People are always being taken in by that sincere front he carries around.’ She broke off and looked at me quickly. ‘But that’s the way we all operate, isn’t it? It’s like a gigantic hall of mirrors. Only they’re all distorting.’ She laughed. ‘Some people even think that I’m a lovely young girl when they first meet me. It doesn’t usually last long.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say. Not right then. I poured out some more wine.
‘So what did old George want then?’
‘To know how you are, where you are. He was worried about you. He thought that you were in trouble.’
She laughed again, but this time it wasn’t very convincing. ‘Me? What kind of trouble could I possibly be in?’
‘The worst kind.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m not sure yet. Not totally sure. But I do know you’re in one hell of a mess and …’
‘You’d like to help me out of it.’ She finished the sentence the way she thought I was going to. Perhaps she’d been right, but I corrected her anyway.
‘And George would like to help you.’
‘Huh! What’s he going to do? Write a sudden bestseller? The only thing George has got two of to rub together is last year’s clichés!’
‘He can’t help it if he hasn’
t got money.’
‘And I can’t help it if I need it.’
‘Can’t you?’
‘No!’ She spat the word out and for a moment she sat there looking like a spoilt child. Then she changed her expression, almost as though she had realised what she had been doing. I wondered just how aware of herself and the games that she was playing she really was. A lot of people must have wondered that. A lot of men.
She was lighting another cigarette and the waitress was waiting to see if we wanted anything else.
‘No, thanks,’ I said.
‘I’d like a brandy,’ Anna said.
The waitress went to fetch a brandy.
‘If you don’t think. George can help you …’
‘Then you can.’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve got a lot of money.’
‘No.’
‘Then forget it … I don’t know your name. You’ve taken me out to dinner—sort of—and I don’t know your name.’
I said, ‘I’m sure it isn’t the first time.’ I went to my wallet and gave her a card.
She looked at it and leaned right across the table so that her face was only a few inches away from mine.
‘Scott,’ she said softly. ‘That’s a good name. Strong without being brutal. I like names.’ She smiled and I could feel the warmth of her breath on my face. She was seducing me there in the middle of the restaurant without even having to touch me. There were people all around us, talking, eating, drinking. Somehow that made it better still.
‘You’re right, of course,’ she said quietly, only for me. ‘I have been out to dinner with men whose names I didn’t know. I’ve been all sorts of places with men I didn’t know, done all sorts of things. There’s something exciting about doing very intimate things with someone you’ve never seen before and you know you’re never going to see again.’
For a moment I could see shadows of those things in her eyes, deep in the darkness of her eyes. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see them but I didn’t have any choice. She held me, hooked.
And when she was certain, she moved her head away and lifted the glass of brandy to her mouth.
