One London Day

by C. C. Humphreys

  He’d been on the edge of tears all morning. A blackbird’s call, his wife’s fingers on his cheek, his son’s laugh as he watched his cartoons, Rachel coming down the stairs in her bat mitzvah dress, each had brought him again and again to the brink. Now, hearing her voice, her clear, beautiful voice ringing with the Haftorah verses… he went over it.

  Vicky took his hand, squeezed it and he glanced at her, saw tears in her eyes too. But his were not like hers, and her touch did not comfort him. She cried only for pride, for love. And though those were in him too, he knew that most of his tears were for himself. For this life he saw before him, hearing it in his daughter’s voice, feeling it in his gathered family and friends, in his community in the synagogue. His life here, spiralling out of control.

  He squeezed Vicky’s hand, then took his own back, to thrust the heel into his sockets, wipe away the salt tracks on his face, rub at a jaw inexpertly shaved that morning, feeling the rough patches his distraction had left him with, seeing a trace of red where he pulled off a scab. He looked up, away from his daughter because the sight of her would finish him, across to his parents on the other front bench. His mum’s attention was fixed on her granddaughter. His father was looking at him, smiling at him, that ironic smile he always had. You see, Morrie was saying with it, they break your heart, your kids. Now you know what we went through.

  He looked behind his parents. Two of his brothers there, their wives beside them, the third, Israel, in the land he was named for, his own wife about to give birth to their fifth and so unable to travel; his sister Nomi and her latest partner, David. Behind them, cousins, family, back through friends, some of whom he’d known since elementary school, whose bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs he’d attended, as they’d come to his, in this same synagogue. Behind the friends, others he knew less well, the congregation. All were staring forward, entranced by the beauty of Rachel’s voice. He took pride from their looks, for the efforts his daughter had put in, though much came naturally, for she was the star of her school’s drama department, had always craved the spotlight.

  He felt his tears recede. It will be alright, he thought. I’ll sort it. I’ll end it. I’ll…

  Then he saw him, the one face other than his father’s not turned forward - because a man he barely knew was staring directly at him. A man who was part of the chaos.

  Nate. Nathan. He didn’t know much more about him than that. Younger than him by about ten years, recent worshipper at Finchley Reform. Who had approached him six months before and asked him how good he was at old school accountancy.

  The man now gesturing outside with his eyes.

  Joe responded with a widening of his own, flicking them to the bima upon which his daughter still triumphantly sang.

  The reply came in a shrug. Of course. Afterwards.

  Joe turned back, looked at Rachel, didn’t truly see her, though it wasn’t his tears that prevented him now. It was fear.

  The Shadows were back in touch.

  “Joe, you take Mum, aunt Silvie, and Esther. Go straight to Mum’s. Caterers will already be there but the magicians and Disco people will arrive soon after that. I’ll bring - ”

  He didn’t need to know the rest, now he had his instructions. He couldn’t focus on anything else anyway. He was seeking among the shifting, greeting, smiling crowd for that less familiar face. His attention had been on that through all the hand shakes and back claps that followed the ceremony. I’ll see you later, he’d kept saying. Catch up at the party.

  Then he spotted him. Nate was standing on the other side of the street, beyond the gates, leaning against a BMW, smoking. Removing himself from his brother Dan’s embrace – “I’ll see you later, yeah?” – he walked down the long driveway, let himself through the iron gate, crossed the road.

  “Mazeltov,” Nate said, moving his head to the synagogue. “Your daughter’s got a lovely voice.”

  “Thanks.” Joe raised his hand, anticipating the congratulatory handshake. But one of Nate’s hands was busy with his cigarette, and the other was in his pocket.

  He drew it out now. It held a packet of Rothmans. “Want one?” he said.

  Fifteen years of instant refusals came. But so did a flash – of Lottie, lying naked next to him in the Portobello bedroom, after the patio, after they’d tried again, failed again, and her reaching for her tobacco pouch. “Nothing that can’t be solved by nicotine, I’ve found,” she’d said, beginning to roll. “You just need to chill, bra.”

  “Sure,” Joe said now. Nate held up the packet, he extracted one, Nate held out his own half-smoked fag, Joe took it, sucked the glow, handed the butt back. He looked over his shoulder to the crowds still milling around the synagogue’s entrance, and kept the cigarette low.

  “Don’t worry, they won’t catch you,” Nate said. “Your family’s distracted.”

  “Yeah. Uh, so am I. I haven’t got long. I should - ” He dragged deep, felt that buzz, the instant high that regular smokers lost. “Is there something - ”

  “There is.” Nate had taken his cigarette back between his thumb and forefinger, pinching it. He raised it, took a drag, not deep, letting smoke slip out to rise over his face. Then his voice changed entirely. “You’ve been a fucking idiot.”

  “What?” Joe was shocked. The change in the man, from congratulatory fellow Jew to accuser was instant, not just in the voice. His whole face was contorted with rage. “What do you mean?”

  “When I approached you about doing this little job for me, you were grateful for the cash. Bills to pay, you said.” He glanced briefly at the crowd outside the synagogue’s entrance. “But that wasn’t enough for you, was it? No, you had to get greedy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking ab…”

  “Cut the shit. You know very well.” He dropped the half smoked Rothman’s, stamped on it, rubbing hard. “You were paid to do the books. Tot up the figures, that’s it. Be handsomely paid for the work too. You were not meant to take the details and use them to make your own investments.”

  It was another stinking hot day – and Joe suddenly felt as cold as he’d done on any winter’s one. How had they found out? What had he done? “I haven’t. I… really, what are you…?”

  “I said, cut the shit. I know. We know!” He stepped closer, dropped his voice even lower. “Are the books safe?”

  “Of course.”

  “At your home, are they?”

  The lie came fast, easy. “No.” He had been a fucking idiot. But he suddenly realized that, with the type of people he was dealing with, the books might be the only leverage he had. “I can get them for you. Anytime you like. I’ve been busy so they are not quite up to date,” he lied again, and licked his lips. “There’s not a problem, is there?”

  “There may be.” Nate stared at him. “How long will it take you to bring them up to date?”

  “A day’s work?” He swallowed. “I can’t probably today, uh…” He glanced back to the synagogue’s entrance, where someone was laughing loudly. His father.

  Nate followed his look. “Monday. Midday. I’ll text you a rendezvous. Oh, and here. I thought of not giving you this, since you’ve been so fucking stupid. But I suspect you need it. Consider it incentive for speedy work.” He reached into his suit, brought out a plain brown envelope, the kind Joe had collected before from the PO box.

  “Thanks.” Joe took it, shoved it into his own jacket pocket. He felt the weight of it there, even though fifty £100 pound notes didn’t weigh much. Instead of the thrill he usually got though, it made him uneasy now. “Listen, if I give you the completed books, everything will be ok, yeah?”

  “Everything? No. But guess what?” He reached over and put his hand on the back of Joe’s neck, drawing him near, before whispering in his ear. “If you keep everything kosher, everything mind, from this moment on,” he paused a moment, then continued, “I may be able to keep you alive.” He pulled back, and looked at him. “How’s that for incentive?”

  He released his
grip, stepped away, as Joe staggered. Suddenly, Nate was smiling again. “Mazeltov once more,” he said. “Enjoy the party.” He reached into his pocket, and the BMW’s door clicked.

  Joe stepped away, walked unsteadily back across the street. Turned to watch Nate drive off.

  He felt faint. He took a deep drag of his cigarette. It helped, he remembered now how much it used to help him focus.

  What had Nate said? “I may just be able to keep you alive?”

  He heard his wife’s voice, rising from the hum, calling him. He turned to look at her, saw her with Reuben in her arms. Saw his daughter, laughing in a group of her friends. If he was under threat, so were they. He had to protect them, even before himself. But he’d been right, in his first thought, when Nate had confronted him: the books were all he had in this mess. They needed them. While he had them, they needed him. But he had to get them out of his house, away from his family, fast.

  There was only one place he could keep them.

  He pulled out his phone, dialled her number. It went to voice mail. He spoke. “Please message me as soon as you get this.”

  He didn’t say his name. His name suddenly seemed a dangerous thing to him. But she would know it was him.

  Lottie would know it was him.

  Smiley faces glowed at each teenager’s ear; rainbow lights alternated with white strobe, shifting through the thin filaments of the plastic chandeliers dangling from the ceiling like a glowing, inverted forest. The only noises came from the click of one DJ’s fingernails as she worked the keyboard of her computer, manipulating the music that played in two of the channels; came also from the soft fall of vinyl onto rubber as the other DJ hoisted records and placed the needle onto the turntable in front of him. Behind Joe, back in the house, the loudest sounds of all came from the parents of those who swayed before him, in the clink of ice in glasses, in the rumble of voices marvelling at technology that allowed them to hear themselves at a party, and not have to listen to what passed for music with kids these days.

  The speeches had been spoken, the food inhaled, the magicians had conjured and vanished, the jugglers had put away their clubs and their chainsaws. It was the time of the Silent Disco, Rachel’s request. Joe had worried that the result would trigger an epileptic fit in the dancers, or some prolonged flashback in him, which he’d been warned might be the consequence of all the acid he’d taken during his own clubbing youth. But he had to risk it, because standing there was better than standing inside making conversation, fielding questions or, worse, having Vicky on his arm being all lovey dovey and teary and proud of what they’d made, their child; now, this day, a woman. And he’d have to listen, and smile and pretend and lie, while most of his attention was on his pocket, the phone there, waiting for it to buzz with the message he needed: that Lottie was back at the flat in Notting Hill, and that he could come round immediately.

  He pulled it out, checked ‘Settings’ for the fourth time. ‘Vibrate on Ring’ was still highlighted. He wouldn’t miss her. He couldn’t miss her.

  The books were in his car. They mustn’t stay there. Keeping them at a flat he owned probably wasn’t ideal either but it would do as a standby until he could think of an alternative. The best would be to return them to Nate on Monday and say, sorry, and thanks, but can’t do more. He’d miss the money. But the five thousand in his pocket would finish off paying for the bat mitzvah and the stress of earning it, collecting it, laundering it, the stress of the figures themselves with their codes and their amounts going all over the world for god knows what to god knows whom but he could guess… no, it was time to end the relationship. He’d already sold all his shares, and closed his account, deleting the trading app. How had they found out about that? Who were these people?

  The faint tinkle of keyboards bled out of the headphones he’d slipped down to his shoulders. He recognized it, unlike the execrable Grime, rap and House that had been in all three channels before. He lifted them over his ears.

  ‘Just a city boy

  Born and raised in South Detroit

  He took the midnight train going anywhere.’

  The kids who were listening to that track were telling others. More were switching channels to it. Why thirteen year olds were into a song that was already getting old when he was young beat him. But they all seemed to know it and their movements changed from frantic to smoother, contrast to those still stuck in rap. Many were now lifting their arms, reaching up into the forest of lights.

  It was actually quite a good song, he recalled now. He let the singer’s voice carry him, watched his beautiful daughter raise her hands too, and then his mind jumped back. ‘End the relationship’. It wasn’t just the Shadows he should part from. He should end the madness of him and Lottie. It hadn’t gone too far, after all. He hadn’t crossed any of the big lines, broken the Ten Commandments. He’d coveted her, but she wasn’t a neighbour’s wife. And as for the adultery…

  He flushed, tried to focus on the music, failed – and he was back for a moment in that bedroom in Notting Hill, the girl beside him, gorgeous, naked, willing… and he just couldn’t. Wanted to, couldn’t, no matter what they tried. The guilt was too much, the fear. It was a relief now, of course. He hadn’t committed adultery. The commandments said nothing about tequila on a back. He could live with that. He could end it with Lottie. He’d let her stay there the month he’d promised and then move her on. He’d never see her again.

  And then his pocket buzzed. He pulled his phone out.

  I’m back. Only for a couple of hours. Come round.

  Raising his phone to his lips, he watched the silent teenagers dance.

  ‘Don’t stop… believing…’

  Joe pulled up outside the flat. He’d been nervous on the drive over, kept looking out for suspicious vehicles – as if he had any chance of spotting a professional tail. Still, he looked around again now. At a road sweeper, a big black man, emptying a large pan into a garbage bag. At that same traffic warden, still on the prowl, who scowled at him when he placed the one hour visitor’s parking on the dashboard. At a homeless man outside the bakery cafe, young or old he couldn’t tell, kneeling on the pavement, his forehead to the ground, his arms stretched out before him, his hands clutching a polystyrene cup, its edges frayed, as if chewed. At a dozen other people going about their business under the hot sun. Any one of whom could be a spy for all he could tell. Bloody idiot, he thought, chewing at his lower lip. Just get on with it.

  But he sat there a few minutes longer looking for things he wouldn’t know if he saw, before he finally grunted, got out, grabbed the hemp Waitrose bag from the boot, the books inside it. As he passed the prostrated man, he reached into his pocket for coins. All he had were pounds. He dropped two in but the man didn’t react, didn’t move at all. Joe went up the steps and pressed the buzzer marked ‘C’. As he waited he thought of Vicky, her puzzlement as he told her he had to leave the party for a bit – a tenant with lost keys, all his staff away. Was it because he felt so guilty that he thought she must know he was lying? She didn’t reveal that, only her annoyance. “Make it quick,” her final words.

  He would. Drop the books, ask Lottie to look after them. Then tell her that this was his last visit. She’d deal with Oliver from now on. He needed to keep away. He was a family man.

  The buzzer buzzed, no voice. He let himself in and went into the lift.

  Lottie was standing at the flat door, wearing a sleeveless slip of a primrose dress, one brown arm running up the door’s edge. “Mr Severin,” she said. That voice of hers, the slight husk in it, mockery tinged, made his breath come a little shorter. But he took a deeper one, made his own voice solid.

  “Hello. Sorry about this. Needed - ”

  “No apologies necessary. Do come in,” she replied, stepping aside for him to pass her. As he did, he inhaled, caught her scent, almost the same as when he’d first met her – tobacco, leather from her car; mainly that tanning oil, coconut in it.

  It was as if she read
his mind as she followed him into the living room. “Sorry I took a while to get back to you. Been sunbathing in the park. Always turn the phone off.”

  “Oh. No worries. I - ”

  “You look nice,” she interrupted, was looking him up and down. “Wait! The fancy suit? Isn’t it your daughter’s thingy today? Already finished?”

  “Bat mitzvah. Yeah. No, still going on. I have to, uh, get back.”

  She raised one wild eyebrow. “But you took a break to pop around and replenish my tequila?”

  “Eh?” She nodded to his Waitrose bag. He lifted it a little. “This? No, I need to… need to leave something here. If that’s, uh, ok.”

  “Of course it is. Your flat right?” She gestured to the kitchen. “Coffee? Beer? Me?”

  She’d flopped her hair over one eye on the last word, taken her lower lip between her teeth. She was playing with him, he knew it, and he couldn’t play back. “Sorry, no, got to go. I just need to - ”

  He’d lifted the bag again. Now he was there, he didn’t know where to put it. There was no safe in the flat. And he didn’t know her, not really. What if she was to look inside? The figures wouldn’t mean anything but… would she call someone? Why would she? Who the fuck was she?

  “Are you alright?” she said. She’d taken a step nearer, concern replacing the tease on her face. “You look ill?”

  “Oh. No, I’m fine. Maybe a glass of water?”

  “Still or sparkling?” she said, the tease back, but didn’t wait for a reply, just went into the kitchen. He heard the tap run as he dropped onto the sofa, bag at his feet. Get it together, you fucking idiot, he told himself.

  She returned, held out the glass. He took it as she said, “So if not tequila, what’s in the bag?”

  “Books,” he replied. “Not to read. Ledgers. I’ve been doing some accountancy work, on the side. For, uh, this company.”

  “And you want to leave them here?” Her brow furrowed. “Why not at your office?” her brow cleared. “Mr Severin! Is all this not quite kosher?”