The Tryst

by Michael Dibdin

  As Aileen opened the front door, the murmur of the television revealed that Douglas was home, lapping up his daily instalment of the thinking man’s soap opera.

  ‘… further details as they become known. And that’s the six o’clock news from the BBC. Mrs Thatcher told her critics, “We must make ourselves rich enough to be able to afford to be compassionate”, and the Duchess of York made quite a splash as she became the first Royal to try out a water slide when she opened Britain’s biggest-ever theme park. She said …’

  To Aileen’s surprise, however, the living room was empty. Seeing a light on, she walked across to the kitchen, but there was no sign of Douglas there either, nor a half-finished glass of Scotch on the table in the living room. Then she realized that his coat and umbrella had been missing from the rack in the hall. Her puzzlement was just beginning to turn to alarm when the phone rang.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why don’t you give the number when you answer the phone? It’s no use just saying “Yes.” ’

  ‘Douglas? Where are you?’

  ‘At work. I’ll be late tonight. There’s a lot of things to do before I leave for Boston.’

  ‘Douglas, the television’s on, and the light in the kitchen — ’

  ‘Well, of course. They’re on the automatic timer, aren’t they?’

  Then Aileen remembered that after the second break-in, three months earlier, Douglas had bought a complicated electronic box of tricks that switched on and off at random to simulate occupancy.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t normally happen,’ she protested.

  ‘That’s because normally I get home in time to switch it off before the cycle starts. There’s a button which overrides the timer. I explained all this to you when we got it.’

  After he had hung up, Aileen stood quite still for a moment, feeling the house gradually expanding all around her, unfolding like a flower in the knowledge that her husband would be absent for several hours. All its spaces were open now, all the lines of tension smoothed away. She found the switch controlling the timer circuit and turned it off. Then she poured herself a glass of wine and took it upstairs to her study, which overlooked the rectangle of gardens enclosed by the houses on the adjacent streets. Overhead, the landing lights of the planes on their flight path into Heathrow were picked out against the livid grey sky, three of them in line and a fourth just turning out of the holding pattern like a star far off in the east. Douglas was flying off to Boston the next day. At the thought, the relaxed spaces of the house turned chilly. For the paradox of their relationship, the bitter truth that Aileen had finally been forced to accept, was that after twenty-four hours away from her husband she began to suffer from withdrawal symptoms, notably the most terrible depression. Without her domestic bully around, Aileen’s mind started to wander. His presence increasingly drove her to distraction, but to her dismay she had found that his absence was even less bearable. Perhaps he felt something similar. That would explain why, despite everything, they had never actually broken up. There seemed to be no reason now why they shouldn’t just carry on as they were, eventually turning into another old married couple, too exhausted and frightened to do each other much damage.

  When she had finished her wine Aileen began to think about dinner. Only then did she realize that it was Thursday, when they normally did their weekly bulk buy, and so there would be little or nothing to eat in the house. She couldn’t face going to Waitrose, so in the end she decided to pop down to the Polish delicatessen at Turnham Green and get something simple for tonight. By the time she got back it was dark. She half-expected to see Douglas’s Volvo outside, but there was no sign of it. She got out of the Mini and started across the street, glancing up at the house. Aileen had never reconciled herself to the appearance of the place, quite unlike its neighbours, with fake Gothic doors and windows. The pointed arches and elaborate stone dressings, together with the slated roof and the black-painted trim, gave the place a look of hypocritical religiosity. The nearest street-lamp was some distance away, and largely screened by a large plane tree, but there was an almost full moon that night, as Aileen could have predicted from her recent insomnia. Its light silvered the path and the scrap of lawn, rendering them distinct but seemingly insubstantial.

  Douglas Macklin regularly reminded his wife of her shortcomings, which included not giving the number when she answered the phone, not sheathing food in plastic before putting it in the fridge, leaving lights on and taps running, muddling his socks with hers in the wash, and slamming the front door so hard that it bounced open again. Since she had already been ticked off once that evening, Aileen was relieved that he had not come home while she was out, because when she reached the door she discovered that it was indeed open. She could just hear him say, ‘It does rather tend to undermine the value of having a sophisticated timing device to deter burglars if you’re going to leave the front door standing wide open, you know.’ This final exaggeration was designed to lure her into protesting that the door was not wide open, only a crack. ‘Oh, I see!’ Douglas would then reply, pulling out the sixteen-foot sarcasm stop. ‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it? Perfectly safe!’

  She pushed her way into the hall, set the bag of groceries down and groped for the light switch. It never ceased to surprise her that things in the dark remained where they were supposed to be, as though without the compulsion of the light they might go wandering about like untethered animals. The switch didn’t work, however. Aileen flicked the lever back and forth several times, but no light appeared. Then a sudden rush of sound in the darkness at her feet startled her as the bag of shopping subsided. The bulb must have gone, she thought. Unless in turning off the automatic timer she had somehow disturbed the rest of the circuits in the house. She stood there wondering what to do, listening to the murmurs of the night. A moment ago all had seemed dead quiet, but now she discovered that what she had taken for silence was in fact a patchwork of noises: the murmur of traffic from the main road, the fridge whining in the kitchen, the gurgles of the central heating, the rustle of her breath, her rapid heartbeats. And then, somewhere upstairs, a sound that made her skin crawl.

  This time she knew that it was not the water pipes. The cry was brief and not repeated, but even in that instant it was piercingly familiar. To her amazement and horror, she found herself turning towards the stairs, putting her foot on the worn patch in the centre of the lowest step. As she moved upwards like a sleep-walker, the dimness of the hallway gradually closed up until it was wholly dark. Beyond the local clamour of the stairs and her thumping heart, all seemed silent, crouched and waiting. She was well aware that what she was doing was absolute madness, but she had no choice.

  She continued to climb, one hand held out in front of her, until her groping foot could feel no further step. She could now see nothing, but knew she must be standing on the landing. Gradually her breath grew steadier and she felt her body relax. The reality of the sound she had heard began to grow abstract and doubtful. It must have been the pipes, she thought. What else could it have been? There was no baby in the house. Then a door opened and the accumulated darkness gathered itself up and rushed her. She was gripped by a terror so great that she could do nothing but stand there, trembling and ready to vomit, as it went barging past, sending her reeling backwards down the stairs, head over heels in a gradual graceless slither.

  When she sat up, the front door was fully open and the hallway calmly illuminated by the moonlight. She crawled over to the phone and punched the numbered buttons. Only when Douglas came on the line, inquiring rather curtly what she wanted, only then, absurdly enough, did she begin to scream.

  8

  Steve looked forward to his shopping expeditions for the old man. Apart from his trips to the OOD S ORE, they provided his only chance to take part in the real business of life, the thing that made sense of it all. Until then he’d been a mere spectator, wandering through the covered mall where the shops spilt out on to the promenade and the goods were heap
ed up in seemingly wanton profusion. It looked as though there was more than enough for everyone, as though you could just help yourself, but of course these free and easy manners were only a tease. The gorgeous hordes of goodies had their pimps, big ugly toughs in cheapo uniforms with spluttering walkie-talkies who sized up the punters’ spending power at a glance. If you looked too lingeringly at the merchandise or fondled it with too much feeling, without having what it took to take it home, then they moved in fast.

  Nevertheless, the boy sometimes used to risk loading up a trolley with items, pretending to think long and hard about some, chucking others carelessly in, just like the shoppers whose mannerisms he had studied. The prices were already familiar to him. The stotters never missed an episode of the television show where people won things by knowing how much they cost. ‘Stupid cow!’ Jimmy would jeer. ‘Three hundred and ninety-nine quid? Up my arse!’ But when the trolley was full Steve had to abandon it and slip away empty-handed, so it was poor fun compared to the real thing. Besides, interpreting the old man’s lists involved a satisfying degree of responsibility. The instructions ranged from the nebulous (‘Vegetables. Fruit?’) to the pedantic (‘Steak and kidney pudding, not pie — Fray Bentos if possible, otherwise a small one only’). This kept Steve on his toes, and he prided himself on being able to account for every penny he spent.

  But there was another and deeper reason for the boy’s satisfaction. Ever since the time when his collection of snapshot memories had been taken, he had been surrounded by people whose job was to look after him. However kind they were, he could never forget that they were paid to care. They fed and clothed and sheltered him because doing so provided their own food, clothes and shelter. They were really caring for themselves, not him at all. Of course there might be something else there, something real, but you could never prove it. Sometimes the other boys tried to do so by acting impossible, smashing the place up or trying to kill themselves, but what good was that? If the social workers and house parents continued to accept you however badly you behaved, it just proved how badly they needed the money. Steve felt sorry for these official minders, their lives made a misery by little shits like him. He wouldn’t have done their job, not for anything.

  What had attracted him to the stotters was that they’d taken him on of their own free will. At the same time he knew it had really been a freak, a whim which had briefly flared in the darkness of Jimmy’s brain and which he’d imposed on the others in a fit of pique. Besides, they never allowed Steve to forget that he was dependent on them, a household pet who would be abandoned the moment they lost interest in him. With the old man it was different. The old man needed him. Again, there were moments when Steve wondered if perhaps there was more to it than that, love or whatever it was called. But the boy knew that you couldn’t build on anything as vague and feeble as that. Need was the stuff, need you could count on. He still didn’t understand what created Ernest Matthews’s need, why he couldn’t just go out and do things for himself like everyone else. Presumably it had something to do with the man Steve had nicknamed Hazchem. The story the old man was telling him would make all that clear. In any case, it wasn’t important. All that mattered was the need itself. It was as real as money: warm and smelling of people, of their dirt and their weakness. And Steve had a pocketful of it!

  Friday being pay-day, all the tills at the checkout were busy. The trolleys lined up one behind the other, piled high with sliced white, washing powder, baked beans, ice cream, dog food and toilet rolls. Stunned-looking men with tattooed biceps and soft tummies stood awkwardly beside women in whose faces beauty came and went like the picture on a poorly tuned television set. Both sexes looked prematurely old, exhausted and bewildered, casualties of some routine disaster. Around their legs children clung and stumbled, their faces smudged with bruises, red with tears, cuts below their eyes.

  Some one pushed Steve roughly from behind.

  ‘Fuck you doing here?’

  It was Dave and wee Alex, with a trolley full of cans of lager. Dave gave the boy an even more meaningful punch.

  ‘Asked you a question, wanker!’

  ‘Shopping,’ Steve said.

  Dave pawed through the contents of his basket.

  ‘Who’s this shit for? Where you get the money, you little fucker?’

  ‘Robbing Peter to pay Paul,’ muttered Alex.

  ‘It’s for this old bloke,’ Steve explained. ‘He can’t get out. He’s crippled.’

  ‘You’ll be fucking crippled, time I’ve finished with you,’ Dave snapped.

  At that moment the security guard intervened. A huge West Indian who never stopped smiling, he looked like a black Santa Claus.

  ‘Now then, lads, let’s calm down,’ he said in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere beneath the floor. He was still smiling merrily. Dave backed away, scowling.

  ‘They giving you any trouble?’ the guard asked Steve.

  ‘No, it’s all right. I know them.’

  The guard moved away, but not very far. He kept an eye on the trio while Steve unloaded his basket and paid, under Dave’s and Alex’s hostile scrutiny. When he had packed the shopping into the orange sling, the boy walked quickly to the door without looking back. Once outside he started to run. His plan was to make it as far as the public lavatory by the park and hide in the cubicle with the broken window. It was only a temporary respite, of course. They’d get him when he came home. But at least it would give Dave a chance to cool down a little. The shopping was heavy and awkward to run with, but Steve hurried on as best he could. When he reached the lavatory, he stopped and looked round. There was no sign of Dave and Alex. They probably hadn’t even bothered to try to catch him. Steve always tended to overestimate the stotters’ energy. He slipped inside and sat down in his favourite cublicle.

  The story on which his eye usually fell first, because of its position, was so squeezed in that the final words of each line had been pushed up on to the door frame. The story itself Steve found particularly obscure, since it lacked the usual terms for the parts of the body and the things people did with them. It began ‘THIS SCHOOLGIRL ASKED ME TO EAT HER OUT FIRST I LICKED HER LITTLE BUSH IT FELT SO GOOD I THOUGHT I WOULD DIE SO SHE BEGGED ME TO STICK MY TONGUE DEEP IN HER BOX AND I DID IT TASTED LIKE HEAVEN’, after which the writing became increasingly vertical and eventually slipped off the wall altogether in a rather pedestrian ending including such details as the fact that the schoolgirl in question was only thirteen and came there every week looking for older men. Steve leant back, the downpipe of the toilet pressing against his back like a second spinal column, trying to work out what the story was about. It seemed to involve a meal the writer had had with someone he loved, but the details escaped him.

  When Steve came out of the lavatory it had started to drizzle. He hurried on along Paxton Grove, half-walking and half-running over the cracked uneven slabs. The house in Grafton Avenue seemed cosier and safer and more welcoming than ever that day. Ernest Matthews’s high tea the week before had been such a success that the old man had decided to make it a regular event. The water was already bubbling in an enamel saucepan on the stove, and while Steve unpacked and put away the rest of the shopping Matthews lowered the eggs in one by one, tut-tutting when one of them cracked, releasing a milky cloud. He stood in front of the stove, watch in hand like a station-master, until the statutory three minutes had elapsed. Then the eggs were promptly rushed to the table, where Steve demonstrated that he had mastered the art of opening them correctly. Then they ate, soaking up the runny yolk with strips of buttered bread before taking up their spoons to excavate the white.

  Afterwards, as Steve sat looking round at the sideboard laden with nameless oddities, he realized for the first time what made this room feel so special, so different from any other: you couldn’t have won anything in it on that television game show. Steve had always assumed that everything had a price the same way it had a name. But the old man’s room was full of things that had neither. They seeme
d to have sprung magically out of nowhere, their very existence a scandal.

  ‘Where you get all this stuff?’ the boy demanded finally.

  ‘It was here before I came. All in different rooms, scattered throughout the house. I brought it all in here, what I wanted. Some of it was my mother’s, you see.’

  But for some reason Steve didn’t want to see.

  ‘When you going to get on with the story?’ he asked, glancing pointedly at the clock.

  ‘My, but we’re impatient today!’ Matthews remarked. ‘Very well, then. Where were we?’

  ‘Hiding behind the hedge listening to the man telling his friend about the woman he’d seen,’ the boy promptly replied. The fact that he didn’t believe the old man’s tale actually made it easier for him to remember, just as the things that he and the stotters watched on TV always seemed more real than what happened in between.

  Ernest Matthews nodded and smiled, pleased that the boy had not forgotten.

  ‘Good lad! That’s it. That’s it exactly. Well, as I said, Maurice Jeffries went on and on about this young woman he claimed to have seen on the lawn in the middle of the night, how she was the woman of his dreams, the woman he’d been hoping to meet one day. In fact he started getting so carried away that I began to wonder whether he was quite right in the head. Nor was I the only one, for Aubrey Deville, the friend to whom he was telling all this, started chaffing him about it. But Maurice refused to make a joke of it. He became more and more impassioned, until Deville hastily assured him that he believed every word he said and would watch with him that night, prepared to follow the woman if she should appear. That’s as much as I heard, for just then the head gardener appeared and started giving me what for. But though I went back to work hoeing the flowers, it wasn’t that bed I was thinking about for the rest of the afternoon, I can assure you. For when I heard Maurice describing this ravishing female roaming around the garden in her shift in the middle of the night, it was as though I could actually see her in front of me, and not exactly overdressed for the time of year, if you know what I mean.’