by David Szalay
He sat down on the sofa wiping the freezing moisture from his pate. ‘Fuck me it’s cold,’ he said. ‘How are you?’
‘Okay.’ James handed him a Jack Daniel’s and Coke.
‘Thanks very much. Mind if I smoke?’ He lit a Gauloise filterless—he did have eight hundred or so Gauloises filterless squashed into the haversack somewhere. ‘I find it very nostalgic,’ he said, ‘smoking these.’ There were then some phlegmy noises, which went on for quite a while. ‘Fuck me…’
James stood there watching him, swinging his glass slightly, making the ice tinkle. Freddy did look out of sorts—with a suspicious, unfriendly eye on Hugo, he was sucking saliva thoughtfully through his teeth, which made a quiet squeaking sound. For a minute that and the ticking of the fire, and the tinkling of the ice, and Hugo’s quiet panting, were the only sounds. The television was muted, pictures only.
‘What the fuck are you going to do?’ James said, not unsympathetically.
Freddy had enormous faith in his own powers of sorting something out. He had been able to sort something out in the most unlikely situations in the past. His present situation had seemed pretty tricky, however—it had seemed frankly intractable—until, waiting for a Piccadilly-line train at South Kensington, he had thought of something.
‘Looking forward to Sunday?’ he said.
James shrugged. ‘I s’pose.’
Sunday was Plumpton, and Absent Oelemberg’s next outing. (Her final outing under their ownership—they needed to sell her just to pay Miller what they owed him in training fees.) Ten days ago she had won at Towcester under a penalty. The plan had been to turn her out quickly under a double, but she had emerged sore from the Towcester win, so Miller had let her have a fortnight off. On Sunday she would run from her new mark, which was eighteen pounds higher than her old one. Miller said he still thought she would win.
‘Planning to lump on?’ Freddy said, matter-of-factly.
‘I don’t know,’ James said. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Mm.’ Freddy nodded.
‘Shame you missed her last time.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where were you?’ Freddy had never properly explained why he couldn’t make it to Towcester that day. (He was in Paris.) He just waved a hand in the air and said, ‘I had some things to do. I was wondering,’ he went on. Then he stopped.
‘What?’
‘If you could lend me some money.’
When they spoke, some seconds later, it was simultaneously. James said, ‘How much?’ And Freddy said, ‘I mean, to bet with.’
‘To bet with?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
‘Five thousand?’
James laughed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Freddy said, impressively straight-faced.
‘I’m not going to lend you five thousand pounds to bet with.’
‘Why not? I’ll be able to pay you back on Sunday…’
‘You will if she wins. What if she loses? Then what? Then I’ll never see the money again, will I? Why would I do that? Don’t be a fucking idiot, Freddy.’
Freddy looked away. He was sucking his teeth again—it was a habit he had had since school.
* * *
Later he finally spoke to Katherine. She finally answered her phone. He was standing in the living room, in the Gauloise smoke, slightly drunk. Freddy was out procuring more Jack Daniel’s.
‘Hello,’ he said, surprised. He had lost count of how many times he had phoned her since Sunday—he had stopped even hoping that she would answer. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m okay.’ She didn’t sound okay. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
They talked for while. This and that. He did most of the talking. Then he said, in an offhand way, ‘What were you doing last weekend?’
‘I saw Fraser.’
‘Did you?’ There was a silence which started to stretch out. ‘And?’
‘And it’s over,’ she said simply. ‘The love is dead.’
His instinct, since she was obviously in some sense in mourning, was to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ That seemed just too dishonest, though. He was not sorry. He was not sorry at all. The way she put it was so wonderfully absolute. It was dead. Her love for Fraser King was dead. He tried to keep his voice sombre when he said, ‘Well… how are you feeling?’
‘Very sad.’
‘Mm,’ he murmured as sympathetically as he could. ‘What did… ? Where did you… ?’
‘We went to Scotland.’
‘Oh. Well…’ And then finding himself with nothing else to say, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
She said nothing, so he went on. ‘And what have you been doing? For the last few days. I’ve been trying to call you…’ He was irritated to hear the querulous note in his own voice.
‘I know you have. I’m sorry.’
‘So what have you been doing?’ he said.
She said she had been shopping with her mother—furnishing the house in West Kensington.
‘And what are you doing for the rest of the week? At the weekend?’
‘I don’t know.’
He heard Freddy unlocking the front door. ‘Will I see you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, as if it was something she simply didn’t know.
‘Well,’ he said slightly exasperatedly. ‘Do you want to see me?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Do I want to see you?’ she said, as if putting the question to herself out loud would help. ‘I just don’t know. Maybe. Maybe if you think of something fun to do…’
Freddy was there, taking off his overcoat. James waved him away.
‘Do you want to come to Plumpton on Sunday?’
‘No,’ she said without hesitation.
‘That isn’t fun?’
She laughed—a weak laugh, like someone ill. ‘No.’
If he had not managed to feel very sorry when he heard of her sad weekend, he did feel something like joy when he heard her laugh. ‘No,’ he said, smiling. ‘Okay. I’ll try and think of something fun to do. I’ll be in touch. Okay?’
‘Who was that?’ Freddy said, unwinding his long schoolboy’s scarf.
‘Um.’ James seemed to be somewhere else. ‘It was Katherine.’
5
Simon were well aware that he were sweating. He wishes it weren’t so hot in the hall. Staring out at the local membership with an impassive expression on his face, percolating in his tweed three-piece, he slides a hand through his hair. He had it done specially this morning, at the place in Trumpington. While he outstared himself from under the smock, the lass laboured over it for an hour with all the tools of her trade, and now it is a magnificently perfect peruke in silvered sable. The upper part looks like silky racoon fur. It is short at the sides—with flashes of wisdom at the temples, like the president in an American film—and neatly squared off on the pink neck. He knits his fingers in his humid tweed lap and tilts his head thoughtfully. They are on a makeshift stage, himself and the other VIPs, sitting in a line under the important lights, facing the party faithful. Politics.
On his feet at the podium, Nigel has been speaking for some time. Simon long ago lost the thread of what he was saying. From the stuff they send him in the post, he is familiar with Nigel’s positions on more or less everything. On Europe anyway. They are the same as his own positions. That was the point. (Mechanically, he joins in an episode of applause, without having heard the line that set it off.) What’s more, he is nervous about his own speech. He is up next.
For a long time, from his oblique angle of view slightly behind and to the left of him, he had kept his eyes loyally fixed on Nigel. He had noticed, staring at him for minutes on end from only a few yards away, how his dark hair, dense as fungus, tapered into two prongs on his thin neck. He had noticed the organic debris on the shoulders of his suit. The long fleshi
ness of his inelegant ears. He had noticed the way he kept flexing and straightening his left leg. After a while, however, it was a strain keeping his neckless head turned to two o’clock like that and, hoping that no one would notice and overinterpret the movement, he had let it find a more natural position facing the audience. They’re an elderly lot. (‘Half of this lot’ll be dead at the next election,’ he had whispered out of the side of his mouth to Mossy as the VIPs made their way through the hall and onto the platform, to pleasing applause. Mossy laughed at the impiety. ‘The ones that aren’t will definitely vote, though.’ When Mossy said ‘vote’ it sounded like ‘volt’.) What Simon would have liked to see is a few more people of his own vintage—serious men in their prime, mature and experienced, and deeply worried about the future of their nation. They all seem to be up on the platform, while what he sees in front of him puts him in mind of an old folks’ home. They are not of the present, these blue-veined people. They very obviously have nothing to offer the future. And the future is what is at stake here—the future of this island as an independent nation, and what the fock was more important than that?
An hour ago, out in the foyer, they talked through what would happen. When Nigel was finished, Simon would be introduced by Nick LaRue, the local party secretary, and would then speak for fifteen to twenty minutes. Fifteen to twenty minutes… He feels himself start to sweat more urgently. Even now, just sitting there, he feels exposed on the stage. When they talked last week about what he should say, Mossy told him to keep it light. Keep it personal. ‘Tell some jokes about mad European directives that have affected you personally.’ ‘Like what?’ Simon said, pen in hand. ‘I dunno,’ Mossy said. ‘Maybe something like, “They’ll be telling us we can’t use miles and furlongs next…” Doesn’t matter. You can’t go wrong with that sort of stuff. Just imagine you’re in your local. I’ve seen you in action there. You’ll be fine.’ Simon wishes he was in his local, in the Plough. His face twinkling with sweat, he is staring at the illuminated green exit sign at the far end of the hall. The first speaker of the evening was the party’s local MEP, Pierre Papworth. Still in his twenties and unsettlingly intense, Pierre is on the extreme wing of the party. He sometimes gets into trouble with things he says in the press—they are never ‘meant seriously’—and the members love him. When Pierre had finished, Nigel took a more statesmanlike tone.
He is still speaking. On the platform in the hot sports-hall—Simon notices various lines on the dull green floor—no longer even trying to look interested, he suddenly feels very sleepy. He had a few wines in the foyer to settle his nerves, and it has been a long day. His feet feel sore and smelly in his shiny leather shoes. That morning he’d had to teach young Dermot a lesson. Dermot was one of the lads in the yard—over from Ireland—and he fancied little Kelly. In fact they had some history, those two. They’d had a fling, last summer. Trouble was she weren’t interested now, and when she told him, Dermot started to pick on her. He’d slag her off in front of the other lads and lasses. He’d hide her boots or fill them with warm manure. He’d throw her posh velvet helmet into the pissy mud of the yard. That sort of thing were typical, of course. Went on all the time. Lads will be lads. Whenever a new lad joined there were the usual pranks. Dermot himself had been stripped naked and left tied up in the tackroom overnight, his privates smeared with stinging hoof oil. Piers found him there in the morning. Luckily it were a mild night or he might have died of hypothermia! He shouldn’t have picked on Kelly, though.
Yesterday at evening stables, when she was just finished doing Mistress Of Arts, plaiting her mane and everything, Dermot told her she was wanted in the office and, when she went, he smeared the shining mare with manure and dumped Kelly’s kit all over the floor. When Piers saw that, Kelly got a tongue-lashing. She had to stay on late and do the mare again—Piers weren’t interested in excuses.
That night she told Simon about Dermot and everything that had happened, and this morning Simon was waiting in the stables with a heavy steel spade.
They told the ambulance men that Dermot had fallen off a horse in the outdoor school. That was always happening. The ambulance was there several times a week, its blue lights flashing in silence. Still, it was a stressful start to the day.
And then there was the last meeting of the season at Plumpton, the long drive down to Sussex. No winners unfortunately. He’d hoped for one or two. The little ex-French mare—he thought she’d win. Maybe her new mark was a touch too high. Maybe she wasn’t quite as useful as he’d thought. Maybe she was just tired… And the owner, the tall one—fockin hell, the look on his face. He must have lumped on with everything he had, he looked that sick. ‘You were on then?’ Simon said as they stood on the terrace afterwards. The tall fella just nodded. ‘Well. You win some, you lose some,’ Simon said philosophically. ‘Went to the well once too often, I suppose. Put her away for the summer now, and have another try in the autumn. Okay?’
‘Actually, I’m looking to sell my share.’
Simon took that in. He said, ‘Your mate too?’
‘Yes.’
He lit a Marlboro watchfully. ‘Well, I’ll have a look, see if I can find someone to take it.’
‘How much, do you think?’
Simon let the question hang there for a while in the faintly faecal-smelling spring air. It was a fine spring day. ‘Well,’ he said, enjoyably smoothing the silkiness of his salon-fragrant hair where it met the hard paunch of his neck. ‘She’s done her winning. Or most of it. That’s the thing. That’s the problem. She’s exposed now.’
‘So how much… ?’
He sighed. ‘Might be able to get you four or five grand,’ he said. ‘No promises, though.’
‘The thing is, it’s quite urgent.’
‘Well… That doesn’t help.’
‘I know. Of course not. Would you pay five thousand for our share?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me personally?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘How much would you pay?’
Simon thought for a minute. How much would he pay? He would be able to sell a half-share in the mare for £5,000 tomorrow… ‘Two and a half?’ he suggested, thinking vaguely that this would pay for his two weeks in Barbados with the missus, his end-of-season treat, same as every spring.
‘You just said a half-share was worth…’
‘It’s worth what someone’ll pay for it,’ Simon said, with a laugh. ‘And I don’t want it. I’d need to sell it on. What I’m saying is,’ he went on, ‘if you need to sell urgently, that’s what I’m willing to pay. She doesn’t owe you anything, does she.’ He wasn’t in the mood to haggle. He had more important things on his mind. His speech. Politics. The future of the fockin nation.
He notices that the audience is applauding and feels an icy finger trace the full length of his spine. Nigel has finished his speech. There is some awkward shuffling on the stage as he makes his way back to his seat and Nick LaRue takes the podium. They do that thing where, heading straight towards each other, they simultaneously swerve one way, then the other, then the first way again. The audience laughs. Nigel makes some joke that nobody hears. He sits down, smiling inanely. Towering over the lectern, Nick LaRue is also making a joke about the incident. Then he starts the preamble to introducing Simon. Despite his insanely loud pinstripe—he is wearing a stripy suit, it is as simple as that—he is emceeing the evening with enviable style. Simon’s mouth is suddenly very dry. He hears Nick LaRue say something about ‘one of the leading National Hunt trainers in the country’. At the sound of his own name he feels a hard prickle of adrenalin in his armpits and leaves his moulded plastic seat—prematurely as it turns out. He has to wait there, standing next to the podium and sweating under the lights—he is able to smell himself, his own smells—while LaRue finishes his introduction.
The applause stops sharply. It seems very quiet when he ta
kes his place at the lectern. You could have heard a pin drop. Those words tumble woozily through his mind. There is nothing else there. His mouth is now unprecedentedly dry, and he picks up the jug and pours himself some water. His hand is shaking so much the jug audibly ding-a-ling-a-lings on the lip of the tumbler. He has a tiny sip of water. He puts down the tumbler. He takes the sweat-soft printed sheet from the tweed pocket of his suit. It immediately starts flapping in his hand. He looks up—sees nothing. He starts to make his speech.
*
It is still light when James gets back from Plumpton, when he walks through Mecklenburgh Square and lets himself into the familiar smell of the flat. Still light at seven o’clock. These sudden light evenings. It is spring now. It was spring in Sussex. Petals shook in the sharp wind. In the parade ring, there were speckles of sunlight on the shivering narcissi. Trees were unfurling leaves from blood-red branch tips in suburban gardens the train passed. It was spring.
The mare had lost, though for much of the way she had looked okay. Hard on the steel, she had taken it up half a mile from home. Then she flattened out on the turn, found nothing. Faded up the hill to finish a tired fourth. James only had a few quid on. There was a time when he might have staked everything on her. Now he just wanted to hold on to what he had. He had understood that on the train down to Sussex at lunchtime, when he was still wondering whether to lump on. When he decided not to—silently, staring out at flooded fields—he immediately experienced a flat feeling of peace.
He just stood there on the terrace for a while in the uncertain sunshine. ‘You were on then?’ Miller said. He seemed to misunderstand what James was feeling, to misinterpret the expression on his face. James nodded, and Miller started to produce various platitudes. Then he said, ‘Put her away for the summer now, and have another try in the autumn. Okay?’ James told him he was looking to sell, and made his way to the sleepy station at the far end of the track.
He phones Katherine as he walks through Mecklenburgh Square. When she does not answer, he feels a sharp pinch on his heart. They have not spoken since Wednesday. He tried her from the platform of Plumpton station—a tiny thing, lost in the Sussex landscape—while he waited for the London train. Now, when she still does not answer under the leafed planes of the square, the light-filled sadness of the spring evening pierces him—it is just so fucking sad, the way everything is moving on, starting something new.
