Quiet City

by Philip Davison

  Virginia urged him to go home, but he would not. She looked at him with her head tilted quizzically. It occurred to Richard that together they might indeed step out of this corner of hell. He had no experience of this kind of togetherness. And so, to bed again.

  Richard woke in the late morning from a deep and luscious sleep, fully orientated as to what had happened the previous evening and into the night. Richard Meadows: criminal. No nitro spray. No toothbrush.

  The bed linen was stale, but the mattress was soft and there was that heavy jasmine smell again. Virginia was not in the bed with him. She was sitting at her dressing table with her back to him: it was an old-fashioned affair with wing mirrors on hinges, located in the dormer window. She was tugging hard on her matted auburn hair, working herself into a fury.

  ‘Virginia,’ he croaked plaintively.

  She cursed. Her pin brush was in a hopeless tangle. With every tug she made the tangle worse. ‘Wait,’ she growled. Was she talking to herself? Richard didn’t know.

  ‘Stop,’ he called. ‘I can help.’ Her impatience didn’t fit with the steely resolve she had shown, and it unsettled him. He had made a terrible mistake.

  ‘You’ll want to get home,’ she said, using the mirror to connect. ‘Back to your wife.’ She glanced at his pile of crumpled clothes on the chair.

  He was already up and at the dressing table. She appeared older in this early morning light – more her age – but so did he. ‘Let me see,’ he said, staying her brush hand and examining the tangle. She was angry, but she let him have his way for now.

  ‘You need to go,’ she cautioned, but she didn’t mean it.

  ‘When we’re ready.’ It was clear there would be no talking through what had occurred on the road, or in her bed. Wise, he thought. He was willing to talk, but she had it right.

  ‘Do you have pliers?’

  Yes. There was a well-stocked toolbox at the back of the garage.

  ‘Leave that as it is,’ he told her. ‘Come down to the kitchen. Is there coffee?’

  He went to the garage, she to the kitchen. He examined the car for blood, bone marrow, brain matter. There was a small dent and some scuffing to the paintwork. The dump-man had gone under the tyres. There was blood in the tyre-tread. He got the garden hose, which was attached to a tap mounted on the wall, and blasted the crevices of the tyre until he thought he had washed the blood away. Then he found the toolbox and fished out a pair of pliers.

  ‘What kept you?’ she asked.

  The smell of coffee made him slacken. ‘I was listening to the birds.’

  She slapped across the floor in ancient slippers, hairbrush hanging out of her head. She heedlessly poured coffee. He got her to sit on a stool, then set about extracting a cluster of brush pins from their cushioned bed. She seemed not to notice, or care.

  ‘Engineer, you say,’ she muttered. He didn’t answer.

  ‘There,’ he said presently. She looked at the neat line of brush pins he had put in front of her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Now go.’

  But he did not go. Not straight away. He wanted to signal something; he didn’t know what. He put his hand between her legs and she stood up and pushed into him as she had done the night before. ‘Get out,’ she said softly.

  ‘I’ve cleaned down the car,’ he told her. Telling her was a mistake.

  ‘You have? You can go home then, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, you can’t. You have to get your car.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’ For a time he had completely forgotten his car. ‘I do. I will. I’ll go there first.’

  ‘I’ll take you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I? You want to give me a number?’ she asked on the way to the car. Now that he was about his business, she forced a slow pace. She deliberately held him back.

  ‘Yes.’ He wanted to give it. He didn’t want to give it. He gave it. ‘And yours?’

  ‘I’ll ring you. Then you’ll have it.’

  ‘Good.’

  He got a bolt of fear, but it passed quickly.

  5

  Separate, but together, they drove to the city dump following the same route as before. No one travelled behind them on the link road. Richard half expected the impossible – a body still sprawled on the road – but there was nothing. There were no obvious scraps to indicate the scene of an accident, the location of the crime. No mangled bike by the side of the road. Did the police make chalk-marks? There were no chalk-marks. No rats. No carrion crows. Perhaps they hadn’t killed him. Maybe he had crawled away.

  When it came to the hollow, Virginia didn’t stop. Nor did she slow down. Instead, she did something odd and dangerous. She swerved onto the wrong side of the road, so that the station wagon passed over the precise spot where the dump-man was struck. Richard shouted her name, but she failed to react.

  He put both hands to his face. They rose out of the hollow in the certain knowledge that they would collide with anything travelling the opposite way.

  But there was nothing between them and the far junction. She swung back to the left.

  ‘I have a heart condition,’ Richard bleated. It seemed a ludicrous thing to say.

  ‘You do?’ It made Virginia think of the sex they had had in her bed. She glanced across, her eyes glistening with excitement. Then she laughed, and he did too – which was bizarre.

  ‘I need my spray.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Not now.’

  She was so distracted that she misjudged the distance to the white line that marked the entrance to the main road. She made an emergency stop that flung them both against their seatbelts. Nobody in the passing vehicles showed any interest. The nearest pedestrian – the only pedestrian in sight – was five hundred yards away.

  ‘It’s best you get out here, love,’ Virginia said. She leaned across and kissed him urgently.

  He half fell out of the passenger door. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she replied. Then she peeled effortlessly into the nearside traffic and was gone. Richard turned in the other direction and stepped onto the kerb.

  It was Saturday. There was no rush hour, but the sound of weekend traffic filled his ears. His body gave an involuntary shudder. It was cold in spite of the light. Unseasonally cold. He began to tramp the crumbling path by the chicken-wire fence. He saw the gates of the dump in the distance, and broke into a run.

  There were birdwatchers who went to dumps. Gullwatchers, really. They would all know his dumpman, Richard was thinking. Would be used to giving him a wave. He could see one now on a ridge of high ground above where he had temporarily dumped Gloria’s chair.

  The dump looked the same to Richard, but of course it wasn’t the same. How could it be? And there was a new man behind the glass. He gave Richard a nod. Seemed like a nice chap. Looked eastern European. Polish maybe, or Latvian. Probably knew nothing of his predecessor. Dumping was going on as usual. Foreigner on the gate. It was a relief.

  He was half expecting that when he walked through the gates, men would gather around him – policemen in plain clothes with bags under their eyes: Excuse me, sir …. Yes, you …. Just a minute, please.

  But there were no police, just people dumping junk. Richard nodded to the new man in the kiosk, spoke through the glass in half mime: ‘Left my car. Had a bit of trouble. Collecting it now.’

  He was waved through, border-guard fashion. Richard nearly tripped over his own feet, but recovered quickly and shambled on. His car appeared smaller and shabbier than it should be. He didn’t recall parking at such an awkward angle. He unlocked it with the key still in his pocket. The device gave a sickly little chirp. Locking the doors had been pointless, of course, as the boot was open. He stood in front of the boot and put a hand on the protruding leg of the chair as though it were a religious act. Gloria’s chair, too, seemed diminished and more worn than the chair he had taken from the bedroom.

  ‘Dear G
od,’ he muttered as a general offering, then went to get his mobile phone, which he had left in the gully between the two front seats. Gloria had rung three times. There were two brief messages from her, both in a conciliatory tone: ‘It’s me. I’m wondering where you are.’ ‘Me again.’

  On the third call she left no message. Richard resisted the urge to ring her immediately. He also resisted looking to the concrete troughs in the adjacent yard. He stuck the key in the ignition, turned over the engine and swung about. He drove out through the gates without any gesture to the new dump-cop.

  He drove carefully, without looking down the service road. He concentrated on concentrating. He needed to get clear of the numbness, and quickly. He needed to get back to his pathetic worries, his manageable crisis. He could do that now and be grateful. For the journey home he would fix on his wife, work the short-circuitry, demonstrate to himself that he was a jealous husband in need of a good thumping.

  He concocts a scenario. He summons Tom Pearse, his rival, his nemesis. He knows about Gloria’s infatuation with Tom. Knows about his interest in her. He pictures Gloria in her beloved chair at the bedroom window early one morning, one of those days he is out on site. Already, this is fantasy. She sees Tom gazing up at their apartment block. She goes down to meet him, but he has vanished by the time she steps onto the street. That’s what has Gloria sitting by the bedroom window these mornings. The next scene he concocts has her driving a country lane to Tom’s house. It’s a beautiful pile in County Wicklow, set above a long slow bend in the road. People like to look and admire as they pass in their cars. They like his house on the hill so much, Tom tells Gloria, that every other year it’s the cause of an accident on that bend.

  ‘I’m here,’ she says simply when he opens the door to her. She’s standing before him in the nude now. Gloria knows how to hold her nerve. Poor old Tom. He doesn’t know what to do. The vision puts a sticky crease in his heart. He kisses her full on the lips with a kind of sucking action. The greeting produces in Gloria an instant, but weary, delight.

  This is the Tom who was unable to get his hands out of his pockets when he, the gallant Richard, jumped a tennis net to seduce Gloria, who was at his side.

  ‘I’m here,’ the naked Gloria repeats in the hallway, ‘to say how sorry I am about your wife.’ She is, indeed, sorry.

  Tom cants his thick head. To Gloria the gesture seems exaggerated. She thinks his ear might come to rest on his shoulder. She speaks again urgently, to stop that from happening. ‘I saw you in the street … my street ….’ Her voice trails off. She is at sea. She needs to sit down.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ says Tom, sweeping her towards the living room. He is perplexed. For a moment he cannot recall what he is at. ‘How’s Richard?’

  In this fantasy, Richard has Tom speak his name with a hearty burr.

  ‘Not gone yet.’ Gloria gives a hysterical laugh, which she suppresses with a shake of her head.

  Tom rejoins with a booming laugh of his own, but it comes a little late. ‘It’s good to see you, Gloria. Sorry we lost touch.’

  She sits down heavily in the middle of his couch. The room is untidy, but he has a fire going. There’s a bottle of wine open on a cluttered desk, and a dimple of red in the bottom of a solitary glass. He sees her taking in the sheaves of paper with columns of figures.

  ‘Tax,’ he says, plunging his hands into his pockets and blowing out his cheeks. ‘A tax audit, actually. Getting everything in order for an audit, that is.’

  ‘Business is good?’ she asks. She wants to shake her head again, but holds fast.

  ‘Drink?’ he asks, being the rude bugger that he is. ‘Of course you will.’

  When he comes back with two glasses of Pomerol, he finds she has slipped out of the only item of clothing she was wearing: her shoes. ‘I won’t be staying,’ she says. There’s no stopping them, except for the fact that Tom is a slow one. Has there been a terrible row with Richard, he wants to know. Her upset seems to him to be of a general nature. If she needs to be comforted, he wants to take a long run at it.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to invite you and Richard over.’ Lying bollocks.

  ‘Have you? I see. That’s nice.’

  ‘Is everything all right? I don’t want to pry.’

  ‘Oh, you know ….’

  Well, no. He doesn’t. She looks at her shoes. They are strange objects. Certainly, they seem unfamiliar. She tells Tom that Richard has turned atheist. ‘You still believe in God?’

  The question takes Tom by surprise. He can recall no instance of Gloria being overtly religious.

  ‘I do,’ he hears himself say.

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘I pray, that is,’ he adds.

  ‘I’m not talking about church-going.’

  ‘I know that.’ Well, this is bizarre for Tom. ‘I have my doubts, of course.’ Now he looks at the shoes.

  ‘Of course you do.’

  This visit is a bad omen, Tom decides. He’s getting superstitious in his old age. He hopes Gloria isn’t going to ask him to pray with her. But how attractive she is, still. He has a warm surge. He wants to take hold of her again and this time kiss her without the sucking, and squeeze her flesh, but she seems to be signalling that something else is called for. So far as he can judge, the shoes on the floor aren’t about seduction.

  Richard stopped with the shoes. The torture fantasy had been a useful distraction, but now he was pulling off the street, descending into the car park under their apartment building. He was nearly home. He didn’t remember making any driving decisions on his journey across the city. The time it took didn’t register. What he did now see was that his wind-up watch had stopped.

  He parked in the street at the front of their building. He wasn’t intending to stay. He was going to take Gloria out: drive her to her favourite restaurant and make a clean break of everything. He ignored a salute from Billy, his elderly neighbour, who was going out for a gerijog in his white knee-length socks and blue runners. Richard pretended he hadn’t seen him. Billy didn’t mind. He was wary of interrupting a man’s silence.

  When Billy was gone, Richard got out, took the chair to the lift, sat down on it for the ascent. When the doors slid open, he rose slowly, turned around, and reversed out of the lift carrying the chair as though it were a precious gift.

  ‘Gloria,’ he called on the landing. He had never done that before. Was it a warning? Yes, it had to be that.

  Gloria wasn’t home. Everything was as it had been when he left. He called her name again, more softly now, as he brought the chair through to the bedroom. Guided by the four dimples in the carpet, he returned her chair to precisely its former position by the window. He stood for a moment and listened. He heard the fridge click on. He went to get his little green pouch, which he had left in the kitchen. On the scribble pad by the house phone, Richard wrote a brief note to his wife:

  Gloria, my love, we worry too much. We’re all right. You’ll see. I’m down below in the café.

  It was the pen that was trembly, it seemed, not his hand, but the line of ink came out smoothly. How did he manage that? ‘There, you see,’ he said aloud. He could hold his nerve. He could follow through. He could suppress any fizzling doubt.

  Before signing his note, he crumpled it and put the paper ball in his pocket. He returned to the bedroom, used the spray in his mouth – though there had been no alarm coming up the dumb waiter. He looked down into the street at his car. Over by the café he observed an old man getting ready to climb onto a tall black bicycle. The old boy took an age to bend down and unlock the frame from the railings. He needed a rest once he had wrapped the chain around the crossbar. With one hand on the ancient saddle and the other clasping the handlebars, he looked around as though he were lost. What presented as patience Richard saw as grim determination. An assertion that he was still capable, still in this world. Evidently he would soon fail, but not today. A shaky old man on two wheels was a danger to himself and others but, like everybo
dy else, he was taking his chances.

  Richard went down again in the lift winding his wristwatch. He didn’t go to the café across the street. Instead, he got in the car and drove all the way back to Virginia’s house.

  6

  As he wound his way up the drive he felt there was a different air about the place, but couldn’t say what it was. When he stopped on the gravel in front of the hall door he saw there was another car in the garage. A BMW sports model. No sign of the station wagon.

  He rang the bell. No answer. Rang it again and pounded the knocker. No answer. He walked along the front of the house and looked through the windows of the living room. They hadn’t gone into the living room the previous night. He knew only the kitchen, her en suite bathroom, and her bedroom. He saw now that the furniture in the living room was gathered in the centre of the floor and covered with opaque plastic sheeting. Paintings had been taken down and were stacked in ranks face-in against the walls.

  He went around to the back of the house, disturbing a pair of grubby magpies that flew over his head and away. He peered into the dining room. It, too, had swathes of plastic sheeting, which covered a long hardwood table and eight dining room chairs. There were more paintings covered and stacked against the damask-covered walls. He had an urge to try the handles of the French windows that opened onto the back lawn. So he did. He pulled down the handle, but the doors were securely locked. He was about to work his way around to the garage to inspect the car when he caught sight of a shadow passing in the hallway. It was a male figure. He quickly went back the route he had come, but was met by a bullish man who had come out from the hall door and was standing between Richard and his car.