Spring

by David Szalay

  She shook it and told him her name.

  ‘Who are you waiting for?’ she asked.

  He said the name of a very famous singer, an American. ‘She’s checked in as Jane Green,’ he said. ‘She’s staying until Friday or Saturday. It’s supposed to be a secret that she’s in London. She’s here to see…’ He named a film star, also American. This film star was famously married to someone other than ‘Jane Green’. ‘He’s shooting a film in London. She’s here to see him, and nobody’s supposed to know. A shot of them together would be…’ He laughed. ‘Priceless. Just priceless. I don’t imagine they’ll be seen in public together, though, and just a shot of her in London would do almost as well.’

  ‘If you’re in here,’ Katherine said, ‘how will you know when she comes down?’

  He said he had a spy on the hotel staff who would phone him when she was on her way. Then he smiled and said, ‘I know it’s silly. All this skulduggery.’

  ‘Who’s your spy?’

  ‘I shouldn’t say.’

  She shrugged and was about to say, ‘Okay,’ when he said, ‘Can you keep a secret?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  He laughed. ‘Sometimes?’

  It was strange—­she had never been so aware of her own pulse in her life. ‘If you don’t want to tell me…’ she said.

  He did tell her. The spy was a man. She knew his name, knew him by sight—­one of the senior security staff, who would presumably be able to see ‘Jane Green’ and her entourage emerge from their suites on his wall of CCTV monitors in the sub-­basement.

  ‘Do you pay him?’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, still squinting as he smiled. ‘That is a secret, I’m afraid.’

  He said that he wanted to be a landscape photographer. This was the next day—­he and the other paps were still there. There had been no sign of ‘Jane Green’. He said that he loved nothing more than to travel to remote places—­northern Norway, Kamchatka, Patagonia—­and spend a week or two in the wilderness taking shots of nature. That is, Nature. He talked of walking for days, or even weeks, through unpeopled mountains to find the perfect shot; of setting up the equipment and waiting while the sun, in its own sweet time, moved into position. Then the exposure, a fraction of a second. That fraction of a second was the whole point. It was what justified all the waiting, the walking, the weeks of sleeping under nylon. That fraction of a second was all that mattered. It was something, he said, that made you think about the nature of time.

  She had not expected this. Now, incredibly, he was saying something about T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. ‘Yes, I know them,’ she said, and smiled imperceptibly as she thought—­A philosopher pap! A philosopher King!

  ‘Do you know Ansel Adams?’ he said. ‘Do you know his work? The stuff he did in Yosemite?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ she said. Her heart was pounding.

  ‘I’d like to do stuff like that…’

  ‘Are you married?’ she said, surprising herself.

  The question took him by surprise too. He smiled and looked at the thing on his thick finger. ‘I was,’ he said. ‘Well, strictly speaking I still am. We’re separated. Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘Do you live on your own?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately. I wish I didn’t.’

  He was looking her in the eye when he said that. In the frayed, neglected space, she felt her pulse swell with terrible energy in her throat. For the past twenty-­four hours it had been like that.

  The next morning she was late into work. She had been to the doctor—­the incessant heavy tambour of her heart had started to frighten her. He made her unbutton her shirt and placed the heatless milled-­steel head of his stethoscope on the skin where it started to slope into her left breast. He pumped up the sleeve of the sphygmograph until it was fiercely tight on her arm. He said it was nothing serious, and prescribed her some pills.

  The paps were still there, on their strip of marble. Fraser was with them now—­the security men seemed to have forgiven him—­and to her surprise she found herself swerving off her path towards the front desk and walking up to him. She had no idea what she was going to say. Stepping away from the others, he spoke first. ‘Morning,’ he said, smiling. He looked at his watch. ‘Late, aren’t you?’ The other paps eyed her with interest—­the shortish skirt, the slightly saucy shoes. She had taken time, that morning, to decide what to wear.

  ‘I’ve been to the doctor,’ she volunteered.

  ‘Nothing serious, I hope.’

  She shook her head. ‘Any sign of Jane Green?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Fraser said. He was still smiling.

  She stood there for a few seconds.

  ‘Well…’ she said.

  The fact was, now that the security men were willing to have him in the lobby, there was no point him hiding in the staff cloakroom.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said, and walked the twenty metres, under the twinkling inverted wedding cake, to the front desk.

  She wondered whether she would see him later. For the next hour or so her eyes kept sliding towards the posse of paps. He was never looking at her, though two or three times her eyes met those of one of the others—­a younger man, with well-­gelled hair and pointy sideburns, and white leather shoes that were pointy too. Eventually she stopped looking, fearful of meeting the pointy-­shoed man’s eyes again.

  Feeling slightly low, she went for lunch and when she got back, she found him—­him is Fraser—­sitting in the staff cloakroom.

  ‘I know I shouldn’t be in here,’ he said.

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘It’s just,’ he went on, ‘if I’m in here, I’ll get a different shot from the others.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. She was staring at him. Her heart was walloping again.

  ‘They’re all going to have the same shot,’ Fraser said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I’m in here, I’ll get something different.’

  Yes, you just said that, she thought.

  She hoped all this stuff about shots was just a silly excuse to come and see her. However, he was now saying that if his unique shot was somehow superior to their set of very similar shots, his would be the one all the papers would take.

  ‘I understand,’ she said shortly. She wished he would stop talking about it.

  He smiled.

  Then she said, ‘What if she gets smuggled out through the kitchens or something?’

  ‘Oh, she probably will be smuggled out through the kitchens,’ he said.

  ‘She will?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why are you all here, in the lobby?’

  ‘We’re not,’ he said. ‘There are—­what?—­five of us here? We’re the awkward squad. We’re taking a punt. We’re hoping she’ll try to wrong-­foot the pack by just walking straight out through the lobby.’

  ‘The pack?’

  ‘Most of the others are outside.’ He smiled. ‘You think I’m making this up, don’t you? Have a look then. Do you want to have a look? Let’s have a look.’

  It felt strange to be walking somewhere with him, to be out in the wind and traffic of Park Lane. Turning into the street at the side of the hotel, they passed the sombre entrance of the ‘State Rooms’, and further on some of her fellow employees smoking in a sticky doorway. They traversed the moaning out-­vents of the heating system, and a vast expanse of steel shutter. Then they turned into Park Street, and saw several dozen photographers—­ a hedgehog of telephoto lenses on the pavement opposite the service entrance, marshalled by a lone, tired-­looking policeman.

  She laughed with surprise.

  He made her laugh with stories of the exploits of sweatily desperate paps. He told her the story of a friend of his, Ed O’Keefe, who used to work for a national tabloid and was sent by his editor to doorstep Ian Hislop in the village where he lived. He was told to get a shot of Hislop laughing to illustrate a piece on a natural disaster. He arrived in the village
on Friday afternoon. There was no sign of Hislop. Nor was there any sign of him on Saturday. Finally, on Sunday morning, he emerged. He was on his way to church and he said, ‘Who the fuck are you? What do you want?’ Ed O’Keefe explained that he just needed a shot of him smiling. Hislop told him to fuck off, and went on his way. For the next week, Hislop wouldn’t stop scowling, and finally poor Ed—­unwashed, unshaved, and sore from sleeping in his car—­headed back to London to face the wrath of his editor. Then, just as he was leaving, his engine started spewing smoke and exploded, and Hislop, who was watching him leave, exploded wth laughter, and, ignoring the flames, the quick-­thinking pap whipped out his Nikon and got the shot.

  ‘Sangfroid,’ Fraser said. ‘Should’ve been a war photographer.’

  She smiled. She looked at the time. It was twenty past eight. She had finished work well over an hour ago, and she was still there, in the institutional light, listening to him.

  ‘I suppose I should go,’ she said.

  ‘Okay.’

  She didn’t move, though. ‘How long do you stay here? Do you ever go home?’

  ‘Never,’ he said, smiling.

  She looked at him sceptically. ‘Well, I’m going home,’ she said. She stood up and started to put on her coat. He watched her. ‘You can stay here if you want.’

  ‘If that’s okay.’

  ‘M-­hm.’ She opened the door, letting in noise from the lobby. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’

  ‘You too. If you do sleep.’

  It was hard to say whether the pills were having any effect on her heart. It was still thumping with unwarranted force as she walked to the tube station. She wondered why he still wore his wedding ring if his marriage was over.

  The next day, in the middle of the afternoon, someone phoned him on his mobile. Something short and to the point. ‘Yes, okay,’ Fraser said, and hung up. ‘She’s on her way down,’ he said, starting to prepare his equipment.

  ‘Through the lobby?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  There was nothing unusual happening in the lobby. The other paps—­standing in their notional pen near the entrance—­did not seem to know that their long days of waiting were almost at an end. When one of the lifts pinged and the doors parted, Fraser moved urgently forward. It was not ‘Jane Green’. The other paps had noticed him, however, and were themselves now starting to prepare. Though life in the lobby went on as normal, the sudden tension of the paps seemed to be spreading to other people. The security guards sensed that something was afoot—­they seemed to be moving into position, in fact—­while some of the doormen and porters had stopped what they were doing and were trying to see what it was that had unsettled the paps. This in turn had some of the more perceptive members of the public doing the same thing. She stood at the front desk and watched the numbers over the lift doors slowly descend.

  When it happened, it happened quickly. Two lifts pinged simultaneously and some people poured out of each. At first this tightly knit dozen merely walked, quickly and with purpose, towards the doors, where two long silver Mercedes had pulled up outside. When the paps fell on them, however, they started to move faster. There was suddenly a lot of shouting. There was pushing and shoving. The paps had scattered from their pen and were everywhere. As soon as the lifts opened, Fraser had sprung forward and was now where the fighting was fiercest. Other paps were walking backwards towards the doors, firing off flashes as they went. And they walked straight into still more paps, arriving at a sprint from their futile vigil in Park Street. These ones too were snapping as soon as they arrived. Voices were shouting Jane Green’s real name. Shouting, ‘Over here! Here!’ Katherine heard one man shout, ‘Oi! You fucking whore!’ (Fraser would later explain, when she mentioned it, that this man had not meant anything nasty—­he had simply been trying to get her attention and perhaps provoke some sort of interesting facial expression.) It had turned into a scrum in the vicinity of the doors. As they poured into the lobby, the influx of sweating, panting paps from Park Street was pushing against the security guards and Jane Green’s now furious entourage. There was even a policeman involved. Some hapless members of the public were knocked over as the scrum wheeled to one side. More security guards arrived at speed, sprinting through the lobby in their blue blazers. A pap was knocked over too—­his camera, which may have taken a kick, went skittering over the marble. Immediately he was on his feet shouting threats to sue, but by then the entourage had forced its way out, and moments later the two Mercedes were pulling away, even then being pestered by paps on foot, stumbling through the flower beds in front of the hotel, holding their cameras over their heads to fire off a last flickering fusillade as the mopeds appeared from nowhere and tore off into the traffic in loudly nasal pursuit.

  Fraser was triumphant. His face was shining with joy. She loved that. She loved the way his face was shining with joy. It made her feel joy herself. Needless to say, her heart was pumping frenziedly. Flushed with victory, having spontaneously picked her up and spun her around—­she shrieked, then laughed—­he was showing her the shots he had taken. Throughout the whole mad half-­minute—­or maybe it was even less—­she herself had not seen ‘Jane Green’.

  And now, excitably, Fraser was saying something else.

  ‘What?’ she said. She had not heard. There had been some furious shouting—­a pap and a security guard were still having a private feud.

  ‘I want to buy you a drink,’ he said. ‘What time do you finish work?’ His face was still shining with joy.

  ‘Eight,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll meet you here at eight. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and he jogged off, whooping and waving to some of the others.

  He was early. At ten to eight she saw him waiting in the lobby. No longer in his photographer’s fatigues, he was wearing a suit with an open-­necked shirt and two-­tone shoes. (Those shoes made her smile.) And he looked touchingly nervous. He was nervously pacing.

  As soon as they were out of the hotel he surprised her by lighting a cigarette. A Silk Cut. It seemed an effeminate choice of smoke for him. He offered her one and she shook her head. Then she said, ‘Yes, okay.’ He lit it for her—­together they made a tulip of their hands in the fresh night wind. She was so intensely aware of the points at which their fingers were touching that for a second she felt slightly faint. The frail flame steadied. They started to walk towards Hyde Park Corner. ‘I don’t really smoke,’ she said.

  ‘No, me neither.’

  He told her that a London tabloid had snapped up his pictures of ‘Jane Green’, and they were selling well in other territories too.

  ‘How much for?’ she asked.

  ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘How much?’ she insisted.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not that much.’ He was smiling, very pleased with himself. ‘Enough for a drink in one of these places.’

  They went to one of the other handsome Park Lane hotels for their drink, and there, in the very first lull, with her poor heart moving into overdrive, she lifted her eyes to his and said—­‘I find you very attractive.’ It was not the sort of thing she was in the habit of saying to men she had only just met. It was not the sort of thing she was in the habit of saying at all. That she said it was part of the intense strangeness, the strange intensity of those days. It was what she was thinking, and she felt a sudden vertiginous freedom just to say it. So she did.

  For a moment he seemed less sure of himself. There was in his smile for the first time a shadow of self-­doubt. It was not what she had said—­that or things like it he had heard many times. It was the essentially unflirtatious way that she said it. She said it as if it was something important. She looked very serious. It was very intense. He smiled—­the shadow of self-­doubt—­and seemed to be about to say something himself, he was not sure what, when she leaned through the elegant light and kissed him.

  Without saying a word, she then placed hers
elf entirely in his hands, and he seemed happy to take the initiative. The luxurious mojitos finished, and paid for without her noticing when or how, she found herself in a throbbing taxi, then in a street somewhere south of the river—­perhaps Battersea—­then in a tiny lift, and then in an equally tiny flat, then on a sofa that seemed still to wear the plastic wrapping in which it was shipped, with his tousled head between her white thighs (his hair was thinning on top), and then naked on an enormous bed, and all the time her heart was pounding. He would not let her lift a finger. She loved the way he would not let her lift a finger, the way he let her lose herself again and again in her own passivity. Her fantasies were mostly fantasies of passivity, for instance of medical examinations, of white-­smocked professionals straying from their task and starting to touch her in ways they were not supposed to.

  ‘You’re too smart to work in a hotel lobby,’ he said. He was propped on his side, peering at her in the imperfect darkness of the London night.

  ‘I know,’ she said, and then laughed—­Ha!—­at her own immodesty.

  ‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘So why do you? You went to university?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Which?’

  She told him.

  It made him laugh. ‘Jesus!’ His smile shone. ‘That’s quite intimidating!’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘So why do you work in a hotel?’ he said.

  She said she wanted to set up a small hotel, somewhere near the sea, and she needed some experience of hotel management. That was why.

  ‘That’s very sensible,’ he said. ‘Most people would just get on a plane somewhere and fuck it up.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. This time she did not laugh.

  ‘How long have you been working there, in the hotel?’

  ‘A few months.’

  ‘What did you do before?’

  ‘I worked in publishing…’

  She had taken his flopping penis idly in her hand—­or it seemed that she took it idly. In fact, she felt quite self-­conscious, and she just held it as in slow pulses it started to stiffen. ‘I worked in publishing,’ she said. He seemed to have no further questions. Still feeling quite self-­conscious, she moved on the mattress until her flaxen hair spilled onto his furry stomach.