What I Tell You In the Dark

by John Samuel

  Again I ask him to please let us have some peace. I remind him that we are sharing this space. He pauses his conversation to give me a certain kind of look, as if he’s peering at me over the top of spectacles, which he’s not. He then resumes, at the same volume, with an apologetic, No nothing, just some weirdo.

  Before I realise I am doing it, I have removed the device from his hand and cancelled the call.

  ‘There,’ I say to him, handing it back. ‘All sorted.’

  He looks at me for a second then lowers his gaze. ‘Thanks,’ is all he says. He goes to join another queue.

  A few moments later the woman in front of me turns around, just as she’s about to go and buy her ticket, and quickly smiles at me. It’s not even a smile really, more a softening of the eyes, but it’s enough for me to know that I am right. People should not have to endure the tyranny of bullies. Today, I shall make that clear. I glance at the clock – seven thirty. In half an hour I shall begin to tell this to the world.

  On the train I make a mistake – I misjudge my audience. It’s easily done, particularly when the sap of enthusiasm is rising through you, but in a setting like this it’s hard to come back from, and very quickly I’m finding that things are beginning to run away from me.

  The tube carriage is rammed, everyone alone together in that rush hour way with their downcast eyes and their headphones and their branded coffee cups, but I don’t feel like that at all. Or at least I didn’t, when I first got on. I had been supercharged with purpose, excited to share it. But since I tried to speak about this a few minutes ago, my enthusiasm has been replaced by a less glorious kind of energy. I am suddenly aware of the confinement of this space, the way my words are festering in here, malformed, rotting among us. There is no dry wind to catch them, as there had been when my most memorable utterances took flight from Christ – on the Mount, that crowd waiting for me there at the foot of the hill, not only wanting but willing me to speak. It was the right time – people could be told in person then. They wanted to feel it, they wanted to bite the truth between their teeth and test it. But that was then.

  I feel like I need to correct my foolishness – first though, I need to calm myself. I have begun to sweat, my hands are damp and trembling. The moment a seat is available I pounce on it. I lean forward and try to force some oxygen into my blood through long, smooth breaths, but it’s hard to find a rhythm to it with the train stopping and starting beneath me the whole time. There is an unsettling pattern to its progress. For the past minute or so we appear to have simply stopped. No one other than me seems to care – perhaps it’s normal to grind to a halt like this in the dark tunnel, but I don’t like it.

  ‘I want to explain …’ I begin, in an effort to recover myself, but it is said a little too forcefully. The couple standing in front of me move briskly away.

  ‘I want to explain …’ I resume, more confidentially this time, in the direction of the man sat to my left, who tells me that he doesn’t want any trouble.

  ‘Trouble is something you have come to expect …’ I tell him, and the others, widening it out gently to those standing near us ‘… from someone who suddenly starts to speak when custom dictates that they should not. You assume that they are mad, or that what they have to say must be rash or impulsive or ill thought-through. But consider how often you are willing to listen to perfect strangers in other contexts – television, internet … all of these things bring to you the views of people whose motivations you cannot possibly fathom. But it is a conventional source, it is the correct …’ I use my hands for this next phrase – quote-unquote ‘… means of delivery.’

  I am the only one in the entire carriage who is speaking.

  ‘The disembodied words that we so readily absorb online – ghosted for the most part, generated by an unseen hand. The source is obscure.’

  Further down, a few seats away, someone tells me to be quiet. I don’t see who, it’s a man’s voice. There are others, too, who seem irritated at this violation of their right to silence. Most, though, just look away or else fix their eyes more determinedly on what is in front of them – books, electronic devices, newspapers.

  ‘I have more to say,’ I tell them, ‘but I will spare you. I see that this has not worked. Delivering the truth in person is a thing of the past.’

  Learn from this! I tell myself. You have let your enthusiasm get the better of you. It must not happen again. There can be no victory without control.

  The silence that returns to the carriage is a deeper, more lasting kind than before. Even the screeching of the train as it arrives at its stations and the inflow/outflow of people do little to reset it. You can see in the faces of the new arrivals that they sense an atmosphere. I can feel myself the object of everyone’s attention, and somewhere in here too there is a palpable aggression, turned towards me. I cannot tell where it’s coming from, and as my unease turns to something more like fear, I stop looking and stare instead at the shiny tops of Will’s father’s shoes. The lightness of the gun at my back suddenly feels like a bad thing. Abaddon’s wolves are circling – it has been a bad mistake to draw such attention to myself, out in the open like this.

  The train is slowing down, starting to squeal in its braking. The recording in the carriage tells us that we are arriving at Marylebone. I bundle out with the other passengers, all of whom pretend not to notice me and try not to touch me.

  I don’t like the platform. There are too many people moving past me. I am frantically searching for the exit when a young man pulls into focus just steps away, olive skinned, elegant, the glint of a knife in his hand. I lurch backwards, perilously close to the line, windmilling my arms to recover my balance. One of the platform attendants rushes to help me. The man fades back into the crowd. I shrug off the questions from the attendant and look past him at the blistering of faces and movement – a painting dissolving in a fire. Further danger immediately appears, this time in the form of a woman, her hideous bulb of a nose, her thick black eyebrows, coming for me. A hag from the woods, muttering spells.

  I throw up my arms and shout. It clears a space. The woman turns and recirculates with the others, biding her time for another pass.

  ‘Get back!’ There’s a yellow line at my feet, a breadcrumb trail. I begin to trot, then run, looking down, staying on the line.

  I hate these tunnels.

  Courage is a bubble, courage is a bubble, I repeat to myself in time with my steps.

  Courage is a bubble that rises.

  People get out of my way.

  From the deepest floor of the ocean, the bubble begins.

  I am on the escalator, still running, clearing a path. I am taking too many breaths. I want to breathe more slowly. I think of the air outside.

  It journeys up from the unseen bed, up and up, toward the vast embrace of the sky.

  18

  I caught sight of myself just now. It wasn’t pretty. What I saw there, in the lobby mirror of The Drum hotel, was not the face of a calm, persuasive man. But now, shut away in the confines of a toilet stall, with Will’s body in the same cramped attitude of prayer as the day I entered it, the strength that so quickly drained out of me in those hideous tunnels is beginning to return.

  This position, knees to the ground, elbows resting on the black plastic of the toilet seat, was one that I adopted instinctively, a recovery position, but now that I am like this I realise that I must speak to Him one last time. I was wrong back there on that train, giving in to my urge to speak, and perhaps I am wrong now too, but this cannot be reasoned away. It is a compulsion as strong as any I have known. Whatever is left of me, what part of me that still survives in this human shell, must be heard. I refuse to believe what Abaddon said, that He has taken against me because I have chosen to defy Him. I know in my heart that it cannot be true, but it is not enough simply to know it. I must say it to Him, so that whatever is ahead of me can be faced, if not with His blessing then with the soundness of spirit that comes from knowing you have told y
our all and left nothing to ambiguity or chance.

  I am surprised by what comes out. It is neither confession nor anger. I do not inveigh against Him as I thought I would. I do not beg for His forgiveness. I simply speak. I open my heart to Him, and I say the words that only a child can say to a parent – an innocent and unvarnished declaration of love, even as I stand on the precipice of treachery. For I am His child. That is one of the things I say – I am Your child, Your son. Son of perdition I do not say, but I think it.

  As before, others overhear my prayer, and it is their interruptions that bring it to a close.

  ‘You okay in there?’ a man asks.

  Without thinking, I reply in the tongue of prayer. This prompts a further question.

  ‘Are you being sick?’ asks another. ‘Do you want me to call someone?’

  ‘No,’ I say, getting a hold of myself. ‘I don’t need anyone.’ And it’s the truth. That prayer has done what needed to be done. I feel right again.

  When I come out I see that there are two men there, Will’s kind of age. They’re both looking at my cuts and bruises.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I say to them. ‘I got into a fight this morning. I’m not much of a fighter.’

  ‘You should probably get that looked at,’ one of them says. The other one agrees. They seem like nice people.

  ‘Oh don’t worry, I’m going to sort it out right now.’

  Before, when I rushed through the lobby and into the ground-floor toilets, I attracted a few looks, so now that I’m back out here, I’m trying to blend in a bit more. There are a few people at reception, checking in, checking out – I wait my turn, quietly and respectfully. I sit down in an armchair and leaf through one of the hotel’s brochures. The Drum is a louche bolthole for the twenty-first century libertine, it says, somewhere to attack life and work in a symbiotic hub of business and pleasure. Reading on, I discover that these were once five large town-houses that have now been joined together and decorated with bespoke wallpaper and expensive chalk-based paints. And all around are faux Victorian portraits of cheeky guttersnipes and roguish villains with stovepipe hats and halfway smiles that let you know they’re not all bad. In reality, of course (and let’s not forget, I actually know what it was like back then), it was a slum of violent chancers, pimps, rapists and child molesters. But this has been airbrushed into marketing oblivion. Same thing with the Blinding Bar: it offers London’s largest range of absinthes. I think I’ve read enough. I think I’m about ready to talk to someone.

  The young woman at the reception desk is now free. She is wearing a dress that resembles a scientist’s tunic and her hair appears to have been cut by someone either very young or very old.

  I saunter across to where she’s standing. ‘I’m early for my meeting,’ I inform her.

  Like everyone I speak to, she needs the first few seconds to sort out how she feels about my face and my general demeanour. To help her in the right direction, I adapt what I said to the guys in the toilet, making it sound a little less brawling and a bit more fashionable.

  ‘Things got a bit out of hand at boxing,’ I tell her in my most bored voice.

  She likes that explanation. ‘Cool,’ she purrs at me. ‘Where do you go?’

  The name Sparta comes to mind but I can’t bring myself to say it. Those guys were properly hard – you have to respect history, even in a place like this. I go for Warriors instead. I also throw in the location: ‘In Hoxton,’ I say.

  That seals it. My credentials are complete. Things are starting to move in the right direction again. Each second falls neatly into place.

  ‘Got to do something to stave off the executive burnout,’ I explain with a wink that draws the skin around my eye painfully tight. I wince a little, we both laugh.

  ‘You said you were here for a meeting?’

  ‘Yes, with Abaddon.’

  She has a look on her laptop. ‘Perhaps I’m not spelling that right but I don’t think we have …’

  Get it together. ‘Sorry – work jargon. I’m here for the Abel-wood meeting.’ Still no recognition. ‘With David Saint-Clair?’

  That name she recognises. ‘I think they’ve already started.’

  I glance at the clock behind her. It’s quarter past eight. ‘Yeah, I’m running late. Listen,’ I lean in a fraction, ‘maybe you could save me from getting even further into anyone’s bad books.’

  She smiles encouragingly. She likes me.

  ‘I’m going to need to mail out some AV during the meeting – might be a pretty hefty file. I should’ve checked all this with you guys beforehand …’ I raise my eyebrows, because of course I didn’t, because I’m the loveable rogue.

  ‘No problem at all. We have superfast broadband in all the meeting rooms,’ she informs me proudly. ‘We had fibre optic installed earlier this year. It’s as quick as it gets.’

  ‘Perfect.’ I glance again at the clock. ‘I guess I should probably get moving. Which room are they in?’

  A thin, handsome young man with an insultingly uninterested expression has appeared at my side. He is not wearing a uniform but he is without doubt a member of staff.

  ‘Gregory will show you,’ she tells me, confirming this. ‘And if you need anything else, you know where I am.’

  Gregory wanders off across the lobby and into the lift, then down a few corridors on the second floor, during which time he barely even bothers to check that I’m following him. He just drones out a scripted monotone about the week’s activities (except here they are called ‘happenings’). Needless to say I tune out almost immediately and so we both amble along together in perfect isolation. I am, if truth be told, starting to feel the nerves a bit. This is my moment.

  ‘Sorry, what did you just say?’

  Gregory stops his tired happenings summary and looks at me disdainfully.

  ‘Filming,’ I prompt him. ‘You just said something about filming.’

  ‘I – we,’ he concedes generously, ‘are making an online short about the hotel – webcasting some tranches de vie from the public areas.’

  He is evidently slightly bemused that I hadn’t been quietly marvelling at this project but there is no time for him to say more – not that he really looks like he could bothered to anyway – because we have reached a pair of double doors at the end of the corridor. The meeting room has a tastefully subdued sign on it: The Workhouse.

  ‘Here you go,’ he says and turns to leave, signalling the end of our acquaintance, but I can’t let him get away now. This is far too good a chance to waste.

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to earn a little extra cash?’

  I’m listening. He doesn’t actually say this but every inch of his body language says it for him.

  ‘I’ve messed up.’ I’m talking quietly because I don’t want the people in the meeting room to hear us – the element of surprise is going to be an important part of my entrance – but also because it adds to the sense that we’re sharing a secret, a secret with which I need his help. ‘We’ve got a bit of filming to do in this meeting and I was supposed to bring a cameraman but … well, like I say, I messed up. But if you could maybe help me out in there, for half an hour, tops … well, let’s just say I’ll make sure that a hundred pounds from petty cash finds its way to you. What do you think?’

  ‘No problem at all, sir.’

  Sir, is it now? Amazing what money can do.

  So I make an arrangement with Gregory: I will call down to reception and summon him to do the filming.

  ‘It’ll just be on a phone,’ I add, in the assumption that someone in there will have one. ‘Probably not the standard of camera you’re used to.’

  He smiles indulgently at this pleasantry, now that we’re friends.

  ‘When you call down, just check with Fleur,’ he tells me.

  ‘Who’s Fleur?’

  Fleur, it turns out, is the woman I was flirting with at reception. Gregory is in no doubt that she will be ‘cool’ with
our arrangement.

  ‘Okay, but just make sure you get here quickly when I call for you. It could be any time,’ I add mysteriously, ‘depending on how things go.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  When he’s gone I press my ear to the door. There’s a light murmur of conversation.

  I breathe in strength. I breathe in courage. I push open the door. Every face turns towards me.

  19

  There are six of them sitting around a table, with me now standing in the doorway, a lucky seventh. This being The Drum, of course, it isn’t your typical conference room – there’s a restored refectory table surrounded by mismatched antique chairs and arrayed with mineral water and quirky drinking glasses.

  Abaddon is sitting at the head of the table. He had been in the middle of saying something when I walked in. His face offers no clue to what he is thinking.

  Alex is the first to speak. ‘Will,’ he says to me in the tone he reserves for tricky work situations, ‘this is, erm … unexpected.’

  ‘Be quiet, Alex. Hello everyone,’ I announce to the rest of them, ‘for those who don’t know me, my name is Will.’

  ‘Will, what on earth are you doing?’ It’s the boss woman, Stella.

  ‘You too, please,’ I say to her. ‘Quiet.’

  Still no one is moving, which I find a little surprising. I’d have thought at the very least Alex would have got up by now. I am aware that Abaddon is trying to catch my eye. I avoid looking at him, although I’m pleased to note that this is no longer through fear. I just don’t want the distraction – I need to concentrate on my own performance. We all have our parts to play here.

  The old guy, Nicholas, who took such a dislike to me last time we met, looks particularly unimpressed. The remaining two simply look dumbstruck at my appearance (both here in the room and, no doubt, my actual appearance). It’s to them that I address my next remark.

  ‘You must be the silent partners. I see now how you earned that title,’ I quip.