It had been a surprise to get a phone call from David’s mother. That day had unravelled in a dreamlike sequence. An ambulance had arrived, and Mauro had been taken downstairs by the policeman to ride after the ambulance in a police car. He had sat in a ‘Relatives’ Room’ for some time—of all that day, he remembered best the apricot and peach shades of that dull room, and the boredom he experienced while sitting there. He had paced around, had counted the flowers on the picture on the wall, had conducted minor experiments with his body—could you place your feet toe-to-toe, so that they formed a straight line? He had emptied and repacked his bag; with some shame, he realized that somebody had found that pretty little enamel bird in his belongings and had removed it. He honestly didn’t know why he did these things. That was the sort of behaviour he was supposed to have put a stop to. A nurse had come in, asking if Mauro wanted to phone David’s family, but Mauro thought it was best if the hospital did it. Did he have a number? No, he did not; but David would have one, on his mobile phone, in his pocket, no doubt. ‘It’s really probably best if you call them, if you know them at all,’ the nurse said. ‘I know it’s difficult, and we will call if you still want us to…’ Mauro still wanted them to. At that point, it occurred to Mauro that, along with his mobile phone, David might still have, in his pocket, the half-gram of cocaine he had boasted about. When the nurse had gone to get David’s mobile out of his pocket, or out of the tray bearing the innumerable minor possessions with which David pouched out his hips like a cud-chewing ruminant, Mauro yielded to temptation. He left the room, walking swiftly, and soon came to the front entrance of the hospital. A taxi was there, into which Mauro stepped sharply, believing in the gifts of the gods. ‘For Roberts?’ the driver said unbelievingly, and Mauro agreed that he was Roberts. ‘To the train station?’ the driver said, and Mauro, hefting his weekend bag onto the seat beside him, said that that was what he had asked for over the phone, wasn’t it? He had got on the first train to Bristol, which he knew was a big city; he had changed, walking over the platform; he had got on a train to London, and at London the gates had been left open, and he had walked out of the station, his bag banging against his knee as he walked. He hardly thought about David at all, and before he got on the Underground, he telephoned Christian and asked him if he was around, and what he was up to, now, this second.
Now, his train reached Bristol, and he changed, walking between platforms; he thought of getting a coffee at the little stall underground, but he was late, there was a queue, and he remembered how much his ticket had cost him. The next train was smaller, only three carriages, and stopped at ten towns on the way to Barnstaple. Four or five passengers greeted each other as old friends; there was none of that resentful silence underneath a single mobile-phone monologue, and conversations started up. At Barnstaple he changed again; a small-city urban pride seemed to mark the station, with its flower tubs and its decorative frescos of travellers in a Renaissance style. The train to Hanmouth was waiting at platform one. ‘Have you got a ticket for this train, sir?’ a guard said, and he showed him his authorization. In the train, the passengers all seemed to know each other now, chattering and waving like a school outing, like a party, like crows on a line, and Mauro felt almost left out. He wondered if he would see those two men again. Not very likely: he wasn’t going to stay even one night. As the train went from station to station, leaving the outskirts of Barnstaple behind and reaching stations with a claim to independence, Mauro looked outside, and recognized nothing. He had told David’s parents when his series of trains would bring him to Hanmouth. It reached the small station, going over a level crossing with cars and foot passengers waiting on either side, some with dogs looking up excitedly at the great roar of a small suburban train. On the platform was an elaborate piece of topiary: ‘Hanmouth’ it spelt out, in some sort of hedge material, and waiting there were David’s parents. They peered into the carriage as the train came in, but it was easier for Mauro to see them, looking sober, strained, heavy with worry. They were holding each other’s hands like children.
‘Hello, Mauro,’ Catherine said, shaking his hand with a sort of smile.
‘Did you have a good journey?’ Alec said, and Mauro agreed that he had.
13.
‘We can talk tomorrow,’ Ahmed Khalil said to Tony, ushering him out of his office and turning the lights out. ‘It’s a lot to digest, I know, and you’ll want to think about your options.’
‘I’ve thought about my options,’ Tony said, walking almost backwards before Ahmed. ‘I’ve done little else but think about the prospective future of teaching German in this town, little else for months on end.’
‘And now, you’ll have the opportunity of teaching Film and Media, too,’ Ahmed said. ‘Or not. As you prefer. Have a think about it overnight, over the weekend.’
‘I’d rather talk about it now,’ Tony said.
‘That’s not possible,’ Ahmed said. ‘I’m sorry, Tony. That’s not possible.’
It was a Thursday night. A few weeks ago, Ahmed had given Kenyon a key to his house—it seemed the sensible thing to do, so that Kenyon could come and go with the minimum of disturbance. Since then, Kenyon had found a way to leave work in London soon after lunch on Thursday. He would say, he told Ahmed, that he had to work at home, and it was true that he arrived with a briefcase with his underwear in it. Ahmed had no idea what Kenyon told his wife; she had never telephoned him, as far as Ahmed knew, when Kenyon was at Ahmed’s. Today Ahmed had been kept at work somewhat by this meeting with Tony, after the end of the school day, about the future of German teaching and the need for Tony to find some more specialities to justify his existence. He thought of Kenyon, quite probably already at home in Missouri Avenue, waiting for him, and his pleasure seemed to start from nothing. He unlocked the car door and slid nimbly in.
‘Wotcher,’ Kenyon said, as Ahmed came through the front door. He wasn’t, as once before, lying upstairs in bed—Kenyon was not the sort of person you would expect to do that, and in the end he had had to call downstairs to attract Ahmed’s attention, half an hour after Ahmed had come home. He came towards Ahmed, and they kissed; a big, deep, smiling kiss. Kenyon was wearing Ahmed’s old leather slippers, Ahmed noticed; it was a great pleasure to Ahmed that he and Kenyon were exactly the same size in almost everything; the same five foot seven, the same size eights, the same thirty-four around the waist and sixteen round the neck, and a pleasure that Kenyon could come into Ahmed’s house and comfortably put on his cracked and soft butter-yellow slippers. Once, they had experimentally dressed in each other’s clothes; they had expected to be amused, as if at fancy dress, as if at disguise, but in the event they had looked perfectly unremarkable. They just seemed to fit into each other, and had done ever since they had met at adjoining tables in Caffè Nero that time, Kenyon passing the time while Miranda took an extramural class. They had started talking, had gone on, had walked in the same direction, and surprisingly had been in bed together only two hours after Ahmed had knocked a glass of water all over Kenyon’s shoes. ‘It’s only you,’ Kenyon had said, more than once, explaining his general tendency. ‘It only seems to be you, I think.’
‘Well, I don’t mind that,’ Ahmed said. For him it was not just Arthur, as he called Kenyon, almost the only person alive to do so. Or, rather, it had not just been Arthur, in the past. But now it was. He liked his broad face, his puzzled eyes behind the enlarging lenses of the long-sighted, his perpetual schoolboy untidiness, his hair sticking out at the end of the day in all directions, his nice neat little mouth, the dusting of freckles across his wide, white, milky shoulders. He liked him all, in fact. Sometimes Ahmed even looked at Kenyon and thought about the future.
Kenyon looked at Ahmed too; he liked his bemused, open, problem-solving, capable face, the brilliant whites of his eyes and of his teeth, when he smiled, the smooth colour of his cheeks. He wondered what Ahmed was thinking; he seemed pleased to see Kenyon.
‘I’ve only got chicken breasts from M an
d S,’ Ahmed said. ‘And a salad. Is that OK?’
‘That’s fine,’ Kenyon said. ‘I don’t come here for the food. What’s up?’
‘Oh, the usual,’ Ahmed said. ‘People being difficult for the sake of it at work. A fourteen-year-old pregnant.’
‘Wasn’t there a fourteen-year-old pregnant a month back? Is it the same one?’
‘No, a different one. It must be catching. And,’ Ahmed hurried over this one, ‘Faisal’s in trouble. My son Faisal.’
‘Oh, yes?’ Kenyon said. ‘Sorry to hear that.’ He loosened his tight grip around Ahmed’s waist, leant back, inspected Ahmed’s face. He didn’t give the impression of being particularly concerned. It came to mind that Faisal studied in the faculty where Miranda taught. Kenyon did not want to mention that, or bring it up.
‘He calls himself Phil,’ Ahmed said. ‘Or he used to. I think he might have started saying Faisal again.’
‘Nothing serious?’ Kenyon said.
‘Serious enough,’ Ahmed said. ‘Let’s not talk about him.’
‘I’ve never met him,’ Kenyon said. ‘Where does he live?’
‘A hall of residence, just five minutes’ walk from here,’ Ahmed said. ‘I don’t know why. They know their own minds; he didn’t want to go on living with his father, though he still brings his washing home. His bedroom’s there for him.’
‘I’m counting the days,’ Kenyon said.
Ahmed looking enquiringly.
‘Till Hettie moves out. She’s going through a difficult phase.’
He really didn’t want to spend time talking about their children, about Faisal and about Hettie. For a moment an absurd fantasy crossed his mind in which the pair of them met, got on, fell in love. A curious-looking double wedding took place in Kenyon’s mind.
Ahmed’s house was a Victorian terrace, on three floors, the downstairs window bellying out over a pocket-handkerchief of earth and the bald remains of neglected shrubs. The house, on the other hand, was neat, new-furnished and a touch anonymous; Kenyon had sometimes wondered that there was hardly anything identifiable as coming from Pakistan in the house, but of course Ahmed had never been there, was born in London in the late 1960s, and since what sounded like a painful and humiliating divorce, he and his son had lived a completely English life, eating Marks & Spencer ready meals on Habitat furniture. There might be an aspect of deliberate separation in this, Kenyon believed, but he knew many professional people like this, even in India and Africa, who had, apparently, an enthusiasm for stripping their circumstances of anything that could locate them within a thousand miles of any particular place. Ahmed’s surroundings, his house, his décor, the food he ate, the way he talked and dressed, were studiedly anonymous and unspecific. Really, though, it was not the smooth, unspecific, interchangeable professional in Ahmed that Kenyon was drawn to and liked so much. He put it no more strongly than that.
Now, after these months, he knew Ahmed’s house from top to bottom, even the preserved bedroom of Faisal. Ahmed must have forgotten that he had shown him that, too, the first time he came here. Kenyon now took the plastic bag from Ahmed’s hands, placing it on the floor in the hallway. Ahmed, in his kindness, had bought a bottle of wine—Ahmed did not drink, and had no real insight into it beyond spending more than seven, less than ten pounds on a bottle, often bringing a heavy sparkling Australian red to drink with fish, or cava to accompany a beef pie. He would sit and watch Kenyon drink it, steadily, politely, appreciatively, and Kenyon had never made a suggestion about the wine next time, or wanted to. Now he took Ahmed’s hands in his own, right in left and left in right. He kissed Ahmed, and Ahmed’s lips stayed fastened on his own as he walked backwards up the stairs; whether Kenyon was leading him backwards, whether Ahmed was following him, neither could have said, and they were both thinking, oddly, the same thing: what it would be like to be there, walking forwards or backwards on the stairs, kissing the person who was now kissing them. Kenyon thought what it would be like to be Ahmed, kissing Kenyon, and Ahmed thought what it would be like to be Kenyon, kissing Ahmed. They happily envied each other; and quite soon, bumping into tables and chairs and even picture frames on the way, their eyes closed, they came to Ahmed’s neat bedroom, and fell like one body onto Ahmed’s bed.
14.
The Wolf Walk, on maps, extended upwards out of Hanmouth like a finger pointing to the heavens. The Strand petered out in a last flourish of Dutch houses, a Queen Anne customs house and a 1930s villa, now expensively restored by the hedge-fund abstractionist with steel, frosted glass and a double ash door on a central pivot. Then the road turned left, and a small cobbled jetty led the walker onwards: to the Wolf Walk.
It ran alongside a sloping harbour wall of cemented stone, almost five feet high; over the wall, there was a neglected pear orchard, which could not be expected to do well in the prevailing atmosphere of salt and mud. No one knew who that belonged to. The Wolf Walk itself was an almost straight path five feet wide, edging the estuary. Wading birds, coots, gulls, ducks picked their way along the velvety mud, ignoring people on the Wolf Walk, digging with their bills for estuary worms and grubs, taking short runs at each other to bully enemies off a fat patch. People said on a fine day they could come down here and watch them birds for hours. They were comical, weren’t they, people said. It was a good place to sit and watch.
Along the half-mile stretch of the Wolf Walk five solid benches had been placed, dedicated and screwed down after an unfortunate incident with a large group of drunk students who had thrown one bench into the estuary. The jetty by the quay was a more popular place for the dedication of benches, and they fairly lined up, arm to arm, there. The Wolf Walk was more of a stride, as they said. Perhaps it would be beyond the reach of frail old people in their last days, when they might be asking sons and daughters if, when they were gone, they would put up a bench with their names on it. There were five such benches, dedicated to Marjorie, to Alan and Queeny, ‘who loved this place’, and two other old people.
The one everyone remembered was to Tracy Wood, at the very far end of the Wolf Walk, where the long finger on the map curved slightly and the path came to an end, pointing northwards out to the mouth of the estuary, the Bristol Channel and the open sea. The only options here were to turn back, or to turn left to the dull bird sanctuary where no one ever went. Here, at the turn, the setting sun could be heavenly, with the clouds at sunset gathering about a salmon-coloured light, a great draw to photographers and watercolourists. Here was Tracy Wood’s bench, which people remembered because it was to a girl who had died at thirteen, in 1978, with no other information. It was said that her family must have moved out of the area many years ago. Information differed as to who she was, how she had died, what her story was. The population of Hanmouth, despite what it believed about itself, was too transient to remember a dead girl like that for thirty years. Not a single house on the Strand was still lived in by the person who had lived there in 1978. But still, sooner or later, every inhabitant of Hanmouth would walk right to the end of the Wolf Walk, taking note of the good long lives the other people had lived who were commemorated by benches, and then see Tracy Wood’s: she had died at thirteen or perhaps even twelve. The dates did not specify anything beyond years. They would turn to their companions and say the same thing: ‘How awfully sad.’ But she had the most beautiful view, the one right at the end of the Wolf Walk.
No one knew why it was called the Wolf Walk. There was a romantic tale, and a blunt, boring explanation. The blunt, boring explanation was that it had not, originally, been ‘Wolf’ at all, but had been corrupted from its original, which was Wharf Walk. The Dutch merchants who had settled here and developed it as a small port and prosperous little town had spoken much as Dutch people speak today, with a pronounced r, even in the middle of words— ‘an intermediate r’, the amateur historian who worked in the bookshop would explain, as he had looked into it. A Dutchman saying ‘Wharrrf’, deep in the back of his throat, would to an Englishman sound very like
someone saying ‘Wolf’, and the name was corrupted. Nothing so very remarkable: it was the walk to the wharf.
But others objected that the wharf was not there, and never had been, and that if the Dutch rolled and made a meal of their intermediate rs, then so did the men of Devon—rather famously so, in fact. And it was rather odd that they would not understand a word like ‘wharf’, which they heard every day of their lives, and would mistake it for the name of an animal none of them would ever have seen. ‘Those romantic explanations,’ the amateur historian who worked in the bookshop would say, ‘are always wrong. Always. Take it from me. If there’s a story attached to a name, a place name, then without the slightest doubt, the story was made up some time in the nineteenth century. Do you know,’ he went on, in a practised way, ‘the story of how the word “posh” came to be? An interesting example, and also quite wrong.’
His listeners would do their job and listen, impressed. But they liked the story, which, too, was told in the amateur historian’s self-published little account of Hanmouth, sold in the bookshop—he knew and half respected his audience, after all. They read it, or heard it, and told it again.
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