by David Szalay
… and she had been asked to do two nightshifts, tonight and tomorrow, starting at ten.
Testing the meaning of ‘for a while’—as in, ‘I don’t think we should see each other for a while’—he suggested they meet in the early evening.
‘Maybe,’ she said, as if thinking about it. ‘Phone me later.’ (Up!)
He did phone her later, in the middle of the afternoon, and she seemed to have lost interest in the idea. She said vaguely that she wasn’t sure what time she would be home—she was out somewhere—and that she would phone him.
Hours passed without her doing so. (Down.)
Five fifteen found him in a Spitalfields pub with Mike, a friend from his City days. When they were settled with their pints, James asked after his wife and kids. They were fine, Mike said. He had thickened since James first knew him. His wrists, his neck. Though he wasn’t losing his hair—or not much—somehow his head had an increasingly taut, polished look. He had taken, in the last month or two, to wearing a three-piece suit. (James was in nondescript mufti—designer jeans, a soft zippered top, Adidas.) Night was starting to fall outside on Commercial Street when Mike went to the bar for a second pair of pints and James tried Katherine again. When she did not answer he felt deflated. He started to tell Mike, in outline, what was happening. ‘Yeah?’ Mike said. Though not unsympathetic, the way he said it made the story seem insignificant. It made it seem as if next to his own unmentioned worries—London school fees, the state of the markets, the travails of a long-standing marriage—James’s situation was essentially frivolous.
And though he was in fact a few years younger, James felt that Mike was older than him now, that he had managed the transition to a sort of maturity.
His phone let him know, in the usual way, that he had a text message. The message said—I’m home! Where are you?
‘What is it?’ Mike said.
James was staring at the screen of his phone. ‘I’ve got to go after this pint, mate.’
‘Fair enough.’
He phoned her as he walked under the heatless lights of Spitalfields Market—an empty space after dark, except for the metal frames of the stalls and their multiple pale shadows—and said he was on his way to Moorgate tube.
They met in the Old Queen’s Head. ‘I’m working later,’ she pointed out, when he asked if she wanted a drink. He himself was quite tipsy from the two pints he had had with Mike, and perhaps also from the unexpected pleasure of her presence. (He put out his hand and touched her.) Whatever the reason, he was in fine form. He told her about Fontwell Park yesterday—upmarket pastoral, no shortage of men in green tweed suits and fedoras—and about Miller. Miller was one of the green-tweed-suit wearers. He looked, James said, like an ambitious farmer on about a million quid of EU subsidies a year.
‘And what happened to your horse?’ she said.
‘She fell.’
‘She fell!’
Even later, James felt unable simply to ask Miller if the fall—and the nightmarish ten minutes that followed while the screens were swelling out on the track—was planned, was part of the trainer’s plot, or whether it was just something that happened. He found himself unable even to insinuate that it might have been planned. It just seemed too shocking—that that was the way Miller had planned to stop her. And indeed, while the screens were still up and keeping their terrible secret, and James was standing there waiting for the worst with tears in his eyes, Miller had said, ‘Wasn’t expecting that.’ Unfortunately, the way he said it, working a lighter, was not entirely persuasive. ‘Normally she jumps super,’ he said later, when the suspense was over. ‘She’s schooled super. Don’t know what happened there.’
‘No,’ James said. ‘No.’ He tried to inject some scepticism into his voice. It was the most he felt able to do.
In the Old Queen’s Head, Katherine looked at her watch—a pretty little Swiss thing—and said it was time for her to leave.
‘It’s only half eight!’ he protested.
‘I know. I have to go home, eat something, have a shower.’
‘I’ll walk you home then.’
It was a very short walk.
‘How is she now, your horse?’ she said as they walked.
‘I think she’s okay. I phoned Miller this morning. He said she was okay.’
He sat on a stool in her white kitchen, with its sash window overlooking the street, while she ate something. He seemed to have lost his pizzazz. He sat on the stool watching her spread pâté on toast. He just shook his head when she asked if he wanted some. They had sparkled in the pub. They had sparkled easily, without effort. It had seemed then that everything was okay. Now, in the kitchen, a question which it had been possible to ignore in public seemed to be pressing itself on them insistently. She was nervous and impatient with him, as if he had overstayed his welcome. He should not have lingered, he thought.
‘I should be off,’ he said.
Her mouth was full, and she just said, ‘Okay.’
He went to the hall for his jacket. ‘Okay?’ he said when he had put it on.
‘M-hm.’ She had finished eating and was hurriedly tidying up, wiping surfaces near the toaster. When he went to kiss her, she seemed to spot something that needed seeing to on the floor and, stooping, started to mop the old linoleum. He just stood there, waiting for her to finish, until she laughed, while still mopping, and said, ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready.’
Finally she threw the damp sponge into the sink and pushed a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. ‘Bye,’ she said.
Somewhat tentatively, he put his hand on the woolly swoop of her waist. She was wearing a long wool jumper. ‘Will I see you this weekend?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. If you want to.’
‘I do want to.’ To that she said nothing. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘When?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to feel. After the nightshift. Phone me.’
‘Okay.’
He pulled her towards him. She yielded to this pull, though if she was smiling it was the faintest smile he had ever seen—and then, seeming to withdraw even that, she lowered her face. He stroked one of her transparent eyebrows with the tip of his little finger. The neon tube over the sink was humming.
4
She visited him the next morning, straight from the nightshift. She had phoned in the small hours and said she would. For some time she had whispered into the phone while he lay there listening, half asleep. She told him she didn’t know what she wanted or what she felt. That was why she had kissed him in the kitchen last night, kissed him properly just as he was leaving, her tongue in his mouth struggling, it seemed, to obliterate its own intransigent singleness.
He heard her shoes on the metal steps outside his window. For a moment she seemed to pause in the wet area. He sat up and inspected his watch. It was twenty past eight.
‘It’s sweltering in here,’ she said, ignoring his total nudity, and heading straight for the living room.
‘Is it?’
‘Why don’t you put some clothes on? And turn the heating down.’ As she went through the hall she twisted the thermostat herself. He followed, shrugging on his dressing gown. ‘How was it?’ he said. ‘The nightshift.’
She looked very tired as she stepped out of her wet shoes. With a small sigh, she sat down on the old wooden swivel-chair. Under her weight it too emitted a small sigh. It went with the stupidly huge desk. Its back was a padded U on little wood pilasters. Its seat looked as if it had taken the shallow impression of a sitting arse.
She said there were ‘loads of hookers’ in the hotel overnight.
‘Hookers?’
‘Yes, loads of them. I mean, up-market ones. You know, escorts.’
‘There were loads of them?’
She nodded. ‘I mean, I was expecting some.’
‘How did you know they were hookers?’
&nb
sp; ‘Young women on their own. Tottering out through the lobby in the middle of the night. Without looking at me. In dresses slashed up to the hip. Holding sparkly little handbags.’ She laughed. ‘It’s obvious. I kept thinking of their parents,’ she said. ‘I imagine their parents never know.’
‘No, probably not…’
‘Some of those girls must make loads, seriously loads.’
‘I’m sure…’
‘Supposedly they’re all saving up for something. They look quite sensible, most of them. Like the sort of people who have ISAs and things. I suppose it’s just a way of getting where they want to be in life.’
‘And the hotel doesn’t mind?’
‘There’s nothing we can do about it!’
‘Isn’t there?’
‘What can we do about it? We’d lose masses of business if we tried to stop them! Everyone would just go next door to the—’
‘Everyone?’
‘Most of our best customers.’
‘I’m not surprised…’
‘You would be,’ she said. ‘You think you know, but you don’t.’
‘I don’t think I know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know…’
‘There’s some VIP staying,’ she said. ‘Some African president, with a whole big entourage. Maybe that’s why there were so many of them last night.’
‘Which president?’
‘I’m not supposed to tell you.’
She told him.
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
He laughed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t supposed to tell you.’
‘Why not?’
‘You mustn’t tell anyone.’
‘Who would I tell?’
‘I don’t know. Your friend.’
‘Who?’
‘The journalist. The one you set up the magazine with.’
‘Freddy? He wouldn’t be interested in that. I’m just going to feed Hugo. Do you want tea?’
‘Yes.’
She examined a hole in the heel of her tights. She had just been saying whatever popped into her head. Just talking. Talking. Just talking. It was nice to talk like that. Drizzle pittered quietly on the skylight. The only light in the living room sank to it past high walls—it seemed to lie in the depths of a well, this subterranean hidey-hole full of heaped-up stuff. Only a few strips and squares of tired carpet, the colour of pale jade, were visible. The largest was in front of the TV, where there was the plastic tangle of a Playstation, one of those men’s toys… She touched the orbit of unfeeling skin on her heel.
‘What’s this?’ she said.
‘What?’ He put the tea on the desk and his hands on her shoulders. ‘It’s a grape stem…’
‘Who’s Izette?’ The grape-stem was in an unsealed envelope, on which James had written Izette.
‘She’s South African,’ he said.
‘And?’
‘And? And I’m selling that to her.’
‘What?’
‘The grape stem.’
‘You’re selling it to her?’
‘Yes.’
He started to massage her shoulders. She shrugged him off and, turning to look up at him, said, ‘What do you mean you’re selling it to her?’
‘I put it on eBay.’
She laughed. ‘What are you talking about? Why does she want to buy it?’
‘The shape, I suppose.’
He had found it one evening while eating grapes, and a few days later, in a spirit of experimentation more than anything else, he had quietly taken some photos and put it on eBay.
‘What do you mean the shape?’ Katherine said. ‘She thinks it’s miraculous or something?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said. ‘It’s her mother who’s buying it. She saw it on the Internet in South Africa…’
‘This is absurd!’
‘Why?’
‘Did you say it was miraculous or something?’
‘No…’
‘Did you say it was holy?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Who did?’
He sighed. ‘I don’t know. People on the Internet. I don’t know who they are. There are various threads…’
‘And how much are you taking from these people, these poor South Africans?’
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown. ‘A few hundred dollars…’
‘A few hundred dollars?’ she screeched.
In fact it had sold for more than two thousand. He said, ‘What? I haven’t lied to them. What are you so upset about?’
‘What am I so upset about? It’s immoral.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re taking advantage of these people.’
‘No I’m not…’
‘You are!’
‘I’m not. If they want to buy it—’
‘It’s a worthless… It’s worthless!’
‘They don’t think it is.’
‘You do. You wouldn’t pay for it.’
‘So what? I don’t think it’s holy. If I thought it was holy, I might.’
‘Can’t you see,’ she said, ‘that what you’re doing is wrong?’
With his hands in his pockets, James said, ‘No. I didn’t say it was holy. I never said it was holy. I was totally upfront with these people. What they do with their money is up to them.’
She stared at him with her mouth open.
‘They want it,’ he said. ‘There were hundreds of them.’ That was true. ‘The money’s just a way of deciding who wants it most. Isn’t it quite patronising of you,’ he said, suddenly thinking of something else, ‘to think you know better than they do how they should spend their money? They don’t need you to tell them how to spend their money. Who are you to tell them what to do? They’re free to do what they want with their money.’
‘That’s just a way of excusing your cynicism,’ she said. ‘You know what you’re doing is wrong.’
For a moment the only sound was what was now a downpour drumming on the skylight. She stood up and slipped her feet into her shoes.
‘You’re going?’ He sounded surprised.
‘M-hm.’
‘Why don’t you stay here? You look exhausted. You’re not upset, are you? This hasn’t upset you?’
‘No,’ she said. She was putting on her white puffa jacket. ‘I do think it’s dishonest.’
‘Why?’ he said exasperatedly. ‘It’s not dishonest. Why is it dishonest?’
She thought about this for a while. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘it’s not dishonest. It’s not very nice, though. If they want it so much, and you think it’s worthless, you should just let them have it.’
‘Why don’t you stay?’
She sighed. Then her shoulders slumped and she fell against him. He put his arms around her. ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘You can sleep in my bed. I won’t make any noise. I have to go out and do some things anyway. Okay? Okay?’ She nodded—he felt her head move on his shoulder.
When he had put her to bed, wearing a set of pyjamas that he never wore himself, he took the umbrella and walked Hugo. The lights were on in offices and students hurried through the streets of Bloomsbury in hoods. He had some toast and coffee, and then a shower. All of which took place to the varying sounds of the rain—on the skylight, on the umbrella, pinging on the area steps, splashing in the mineral puddles of the melting area floor.
*
He was lying on the sofa with the TV on—the volume so low that at first the sound seemed to be off—waiting for the two-ten at Sandown, when she appeared in the doorway, wearing his tartan pyjamas and looking extremely muzzy. ‘What time is it?’ she said.
‘Two.’
She moaned and smothered her face with her hands—she had only slept for five hours. Moving slowly, she picked her way through the stuff on the floor and lay down on the sofa with him. Lying there warmly squashed together, he put his hand
inside the pyjama jacket and stroked her soft stomach. (Up—very much so.) There was a loud sluicing sound from somewhere in the same vicinity. ‘Are you hungry?’ he said. ‘Do you want something to eat?’ She laughed and said she wanted to have a shower first and stood up shakily, tipping over with a squeal when she was halfway up and poking him with a sharp elbow.
When he heard the shower start—not a very vigorous sound—he stood up himself and took her a towel. She was standing in the stall, the plastic of which—limescaled and wet—was only partially transparent, with her wet hair trailing over her face and stuck to her white shoulders, and water trickling down her long pale body. It was not very warm in there. The only heating was a single electric bar over the door, pathetically amplified by a piece of scorched tinfoil. He tended to turn it on an hour in advance, and feel its just perceptible warmth on his shoulders, like the weakest sort of sunlight, when he stepped out of the stall. Though it was too late now, he pulled the string that turned it on, noticeably soiled where his and other fingers had seized it innumerable times, and said, ‘Here’s a towel.’ She started slightly. With her eyes shut she had not seen or heard that he was there. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
He watched the two-forty from Sandown, the novices’ chase, while she sat naked on his bed drying her hair. When it was over, the winning trainer, Venetia Williams, talked to an interviewer about some Festival hopes of hers. ‘One hopes,’ she said, with a wistful smile, over the whine of the hairdryer. ‘One hopes. Of course, if it doesn’t happen one mustn’t be disappointed. But one hopes.’
When she was dried and dressed, they went out and, holding each other tightly, traversed the windy tray of Brunswick Square. They had a late lunch at an Italian place on Lamb’s Conduit Street. When they left the restaurant it was twilight. On the way home they passed the Renoir and had a look at what was on. All of which made him think, as they stood there looking at the programme, of another day when they had done exactly the same things. That Tuesday in the first week of February, when London was under a hard, dark frost. That February afternoon he had fed her forkfuls of strawberry tart while she looked through his limited selection of DVDs, finally and sentimentally settling on Brief Encounter—which he had never seen; it had been free with a Sunday newspaper. They had not been watching the film long, however, when he noticed that she had surreptitiously undone her jeans and had her hand inside them, and though she went very pink and smiled distractedly, she did not stop what she was doing. He said, ‘I doubt this film has ever had that effect on anyone until now.’ Which elicited a small hiccup of a laugh. Then he pulled the jeans first halfway down her thighs, then over her knees and finally free of her feet. The film plodded stoically on, oblivious to what was happening on the sofa. ‘There’s your train,’ said Celia Johnson. ‘Yes, I know,’ said Trevor Howard.
