He was dissembling. Didn’t he know better? He had been tempted in St. Petersburg, and look what had happened. Knowledge was not necessarily a good thing. Go ask Eve. It was wrong to look in the bag, there was no way round that fact, it was a moral absolute, yet once the idea had lodged itself in his mind, it wouldn’t go away. He had a bond with Paul Bradley, he had saved his life, for all he knew it might be the best thing he was fated to do in his own life. Didn’t that bond give him permission to know more? You could find your way round temptation, you could say no, I’m not going to go behind the wooden door and buy a Lyudmila or a Svetlana, but then you end up picking up a girl at a matryoshka stall. “You’re a weak-willed, lily-livered little pansy, Martin.” Flowery language from his father, on the occasion of what? He couldn’t remember, probably when he left the army cadets because he couldn’t complete the assault course. A girl named Irina who had the palest skin, who called him Marty.
Of course, it could be a story about a man like Martin, a man to whom nothing ever happens. The Man to Whom Nothing Happened. How he got unexpectedly caught up in someone else’s life, how he discovered something in a bag that changed his world forever. It was a lie, he lied to himself. All the time. Something had happened to him. Once. The incident. The girl from the matryoshka stall happened. Once. But once was enough.
The chapel was deserted. He checked this fact several times. This was how he would feel if he was about to masturbate in public—not that he would ever do that. The horror of being caught! Then, casually, as if it were his own bag that he needed something from, pulling on the zipper and peeling the bag open. A toiletry bag, a change of underwear, and a box, that was all. The box was unremarkable and black, like the holdall, but made of some rigid plastic material, pitted like an orange peel and with steel clasps. That was that, then. He had seen inside the bag and there was nothing that revealed anything about Paul Bradley, just a black plastic box, a mystery within a mystery. Perhaps the box would contain another box, and inside that box another box, and so on, like the Russian dolls. Like his own Russian dolls, the prelude to his brief courtship and consummation with the girl from the matryoshka stall. Wasn’t that a lesson? A lesson not to go somewhere that you shouldn’t?
Someone entered the chapel, and Martin clamped his hand on the bag as if it were about to shout out his guilty name. He thought it was a patient or a patient’s relative, but it was some sort of church minister who was smiling encouragingly at him, saying, “Everything all right?” Martin said yes, everything was fine, and the minister nodded and smiled and said, “Good, good, always a difficult time when a loved one’s in the hospital,” and wandered out again.
Paul Bradley might be a rep of some kind, a traveling salesman, the black box containing samples. Samples of what? Or maybe it held jewelery? A gift. Something he was delivering. Would it really hurt to look? Could he not look now? It was only after he’d unhinged the metal clasps and started to lift the lid that he wondered if it might be a bomb.
“There you are, Martin!” He snapped the black box shut. His heart had gone up several floors and then shot down again to the bottom of the shaft. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Sarah, the nurse with the nice smile, said. She was standing in the doorway of the chapel, grinning at him. “Your friend’s been discharged, he’s ready to go.”
“Right, I’m just coming,” Martin said too loudly, grinning inanely back at her while surreptitiously tugging on the zipper. He stood up, and Sarah asked, “Are you all right, Martin?” touching his elbow. She looked concerned, yet tomorrow he knew she would have forgotten his name.
“Hello, Martin,” Paul Bradley said. He was waiting in the corridor, a bandage on his head, but otherwise he looked fine. He took the bag off Martin and said, “Thanks for taking care of that.” Martin was sure that just by looking at the bag, Paul Bradley would be able to tell that Martin had been searching inside it.
“Saying your prayers in there, Martin?” Paul Bradley asked, indicating the chapel with a nod of his head.
“Not really,” Martin said.
“Not a religious man, then?”
“No. Not at all.” It felt odd to hear Paul Bradley say “Martin,” as if they were friends.
There was one forlorn taxi standing at the rank outside the hospital. Martin suddenly remembered the silver Peugeot and wondered what had happened to it. The police must have seen to it, presumably. Paul Bradley seemed unconcerned. “It was rented,” he said offhandedly. Martin’s own car was parked where Richard Mott had left it earlier in the day, in front of Macbet on Leith Walk. Too late to retrieve it now, he couldn’t begin to imagine how much it was going to cost him to liberate it in the morning.
Martin hadn’t really thought about where they were going until they climbed into the taxi and the driver said, “Where to?” and before he could speak, Paul Bradley said, “The Four Clans Hotel.” Martin protested, offered his own home (as if he hadn’t learned his lesson with Richard Mott), but Paul Bradley just laughed, said he had agreed to Martin “watching over” him in order to get out of the hospital and that Martin was now “discharged of his duty.” He asked Martin’s address and said to the taxi driver, “Did you get that?” peeling a twenty-pound note from the wad in his wallet and handing it through the window. “Take him on after you’ve dropped me, okay, mate?” You had to admire the man’s sangfroid, Martin thought, he could have died today and yet here he was, quite the man, only the professional dressing on his head indicating the day might have deviated from its intended course. Martin had returned the wallet to Paul Bradley with a strange reluctance that he couldn’t explain to himself.
The taxi eventually drew up outside a small tourist hotel in the West End that announced itself to be the “Four Clans.” An illuminated red sign saying VACANCIES hung in one of the windows. Martin thought the sign made the hotel look like a brothel. He had no idea who or what the “four clans” were. Scottish by birth and inclination, Edinburgh born but not bred, Martin knew there were certain things about his native culture and history that he would never understand.
“It was all I could get,” Paul Bradley said, peering at the unpromising frontage of the hotel through the taxi window. “The town’s booked out.”
“The Festival,” Martin said gloomily.
Paul Bradley climbed out of the taxi, and Martin sighed but followed resolutely. It was no good, much as he wanted to go home and fall into his own comfortable bed, he just couldn’t let Paul Bradley go like that. He had made a contract with a nice nurse named Sarah.
“Really,” Paul Bradley said, “get on home, mate.” Martin shook his head stubbornly, rooted himself onto the pavement as if Paul Bradley might try to place him physically back inside the taxi.
“I can’t,” he said. “I couldn’t forgive myself if you died in the night, in a strange hotel room, away from home, family, friends.” Martin heard himself talking like an agony aunt and didn’t imagine it was going to have much of a persuasive effect on a man like
Paul Bradley.
“I’m not going to die, Martin,” he said.
“I hope not,” Martin said, “but I’d like to make sure. You can go,” he said, turning suddenly to the taxi driver, slamming the passenger door of the taxi shut and slapping it twice with his palm as if it were a horse’s flank, an uncharacteristically emphatic gesture that took him by surprise. He picked up Paul Bradley’s bag, strode up the stone steps, and windmilled his way through the revolving door of the Four Clans before Paul Bradley could raise any further objections.
Paul Bradley followed him into the empty reception area and, making a gesture of helplessness, laughed and said, “Okay, Martin, mate, have it your way.”
The hotel smelled of fried bacon, despite the time of day, and made Martin salivate although he hadn’t eaten pig in twenty years and had no desire to start now. The hotel was surprisingly cheap and unsurprisingly awful. Anything that could be decorated with tartan was, even the ceiling had been papered in a funereal B
lack Watch. On the walls were hung framed prints of Old Edinburgh and heraldic clan insignia mounted on wooden shields.
Martin had a book about tartans, bought when he was looking for one for himself for a kilt, in the expectation that as a writer he would have a glamorous life attending black-tie dinners and celebrity launches, perhaps a reception at Holyrood Palace. “Alex Blake” had received a great many invitations in the past, but Martin always felt he was an inadequate substitute for his more exciting counterpart, people always seemed to be looking over his shoulder for the appearance of the real Alex Blake, and nowadays he rarely attended anything.
His mother was a MacPherson before her marriage, so he had eventually decided on a kilt made up in a MacPherson dress green but had never had the nerve to wear it in public, and it hung neglected in his wardrobe. Occasionally he tried it on and wore it around the house, but it was an odd, closeted act, as if he were a secretive transvestite rather than a swaggering Scot.
Paul Bradley banged authoritatively on the old-fashioned brass bell at the reception desk. It sounded very loud in the muffled atmosphere.
“You don’t think it’s a bit late for checking in?” Martin said, and Paul Bradley frowned at him and said, “It’s me that’s paying them, Martin, they’re not doing me a favor.”
An unfriendly night porter appeared and made a performance of searching for Paul Bradley’s reservation. He looked them both up and down and said, “It says a single here.” Martin wanted to say, “We’re not gay,” but then perhaps Paul Bradley was gay and would find his protestations insulting. (Perhaps the night porter was gay.) Martin thought that if he himself was gay, Paul Bradley would probably be out of his league as a partner, even for a night.
“I’m not staying,” Martin said to the night porter, “not really. I’m not sleeping.”The night porter barely glanced at the dressing on Paul Bradley’s temple.
“I don’t give a monkey’s nut what you do,” the night porter said in a long-suffering way, “but you have to pay for a double if there’s two of you in the room.”
“No problem,” Paul Bradley said pleasantly, taking more twenties from his wallet and placing them on the counter.
Martin tried to take the holdall again, but Paul Bradley said, “Give us a break, Martin, you’re not my manservant,” and swung the heavy bag over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing and set off up the stairs, Martin in his wake, following the path of a Dress-Stewart stair-carpet. He avoided meeting the wretched gaze of the large, moth-eaten stag whose decapitated head had been hung above the stairs. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had suddenly opened its mouth and spoken to him. He wondered why it was all right to mount stags’ heads but not, say, horses’ heads or dogs’heads.
The room had a double bed, despite it being nominally a single, and Paul Bradley threw his bag down on the brown-and-orange bedspread and said, “I’ll take the left side, you take the right,” in an easy manner that made Martin think he was used to sleeping anywhere, used to sleeping with other men in a nonsexual way. He had known a lot of Paul Bradleys when he was younger. Army.
“Were you in the army?” he asked. He realized it was the first personal question he had asked him. Paul Bradley gave him a quizzical look but held it a little longer than most people would have, so Martin said, “Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.”
Paul Bradley shrugged it off, saying, “That’s okay, I’m not hiding anything. I was in the navy, actually. SBS. We don’t seek out attention like the SAS do. Now I’m just a desk jockey, pushing pieces of paper around. Very boring. Have you served in the forces, then?”
“Not exactly,” Martin said. “My father was a CSM, he brought us up in a domestic boot camp.”
“Us?”
“My brother and me. Christopher.”
“Are you close?”
“No,” Martin said. “Not really.” He could see what Paul Bradley was doing, turning the tables, questioning Martin to avoid answering anything about himself. “I’ll just sit in this chair here,” he said. “I’m supposed to be watching you, not sleeping.”
“Up to you,” Paul Bradley said, taking the holdall into the tiny en suite and shutting the door. Martin tried to close his ears to the noise of another man washing, brushing, peeing. He switched on the television in an effort to mask the sounds, but it was showing snow on all channels. He leafed idly through the only reading matter in the room, a brochure advertising Scottish tourist attractions— a mishmash of whiskey distilleries, woolen mills, and heritage trails.
“The bathroom’s free,” Paul Bradley said when he emerged, smelling of cheap soap and toothpaste. Martin felt like the shy bride on a virgin honeymoon, the groom oblivious to his blushing reticence.
Paul Bradley opened the minibar and said, “Have a drink.”
“Maybe just a mineral water,” Martin said, but when he inspected the minibar he saw that water was too sophisticated a request. Its contents were basic, no water or mixers, no Toblerone, no unpalatable Japanese crackers or quarter bottles of champagne, not even any salted peanuts—just cans of lager, spirit miniatures, and Irn-Bru. The sight of the miniatures triggered a sudden desire for alcohol, something to wash away the turmoil of the day.
“Let me fix you something,” Paul Bradley said, retrieving a tiny bottle of whiskey and a can of Irn-Bru. “Hang on, I’ll get a glass from the bathroom.”
Martin looked in horror at the glass of orange liquid that Paul Bradley came back with but felt obliged to say, “Thanks,” and take a drink. He was sure there were cells in his liver that were committing suicide rather than dealing with Scotland’s two national drinks together in one vile cocktail. The copper tones of the room’s decor, the fluorescent orange of the Irn-Bru, and the marmalade tint of the sodium streetlamp outside the window all contributed to Martin’s sense of alienation, as if he had stepped into a sickly science-fiction world, tainted by some ecological catastrophe.
“All right?” Paul Bradley said.
“Yes, fine,” Martin said. He took another drink of the orange liquid. It was deeply unpalatable yet strangely compelling. Swiftly, without sign of any self-consciousness, Paul Bradley stripped down to a gray T-shirt and gray boxers. Expensive, nice cotton jersey fabric, Martin noticed, although he averted his eyes almost immediately and stared instead at a surprisingly graphic print of Culloden that was hanging above the bed—bodies being pierced by bayonets and swords, open mouths, heads tumbling. When he next looked, Paul Bradley was on the bed, on top of the orange-and-brown coverlet. Martin wondered when it had last been washed. Within seconds, Paul Bradley’s features softened into sleep.
Martin went to the bathroom and locked the door. He tried to urinate quietly. He washed his hands and dried them on the thin towel that was damp from Paul Bradley’s ablutions. Paul Bradley’s toothbrush stood at ease in a glass next to the taps. It was old, the bristles worn and splayed, proof of a life that preceded their strange encounter. Martin always found something poignant in the sight of a singular toothbrush. He had never walked into his own bathroom and seen two toothbrushes standing companionably together.
The holdall was on the floor, its mouth gaping wide. Martin could see the black box inside. Surely, Paul Bradley wouldn’t have left it lying there if it contained something private or illegal? Adam’s wife whispered in one ear, Bluebeard’s wife in the other, urging him, Just one look. And Pandora, of course, not to forget Pandora, standing behind him, saying, Open the box, Martin.What harm can there be? He had a vague memory of watching Take Your Pick on television when he was a child, the audience shouting at the contestant, Open the box! The sensible ones took the money, the gamblers opened the box. Martin opened the box.
Inside was a charcoal-colored sponge material that had molded itself to the contents—a golfing trophy, a figure that was eight inches or so high, in a chrome finish that caught the light in the bathroom like a mirror. Dressed in plus fours and diamond-patterned sweater with a tammy on the head, he was caught at the height of his swing, the
little pitted ball waiting forever at his feet. The plinth he stood on was engraved with the name R. J. HUDSON—1938, but there was no indication of what tournament it had been awarded for. It looked cheap, a generic kind of thing that ended its life in a charity shop following a house clearance after an old man died. The kind of old man who had lived alone with one toothbrush.
The trophy didn’t look valuable enough to merit a padded box, and the box itself was all wrong, the size of it indicating a void. Nina Riley would have discovered the false bottom immediately. It took Martin a few moments longer. He placed the golfing trophy on the sink, next to the glass containing Paul Bradley’s lone toothbrush, and wrestled with the charcoal sponge. It felt clammy to the touch, like the ancient green oasis that his mother used to stab with flower stems in her less-than-halfhearted attempts at artistic arrangements. Pandora, Eve, Bluebeard’s anonymous wife, and the entire ghostly audience of Take Your Pick were at his back, urging him on. Finally, he managed to remove the sponge.
A gun.
He hadn’t been expecting that somehow, yet when he saw it, there seemed a perfect logic about it.
The fact of the gun was overwhelming, eliminating any thought about the reason for it. It took his breath away, literally, and he had to hold on to the sink for a few seconds before he recovered.
Not any old gun. A Welrod. Of course, that figured, an ex-SBS man would have a Welrod. His father had owned an old one, illegally. He kept it in a shoe box on top of the wardrobe, the same place that Martin’s mother kept her “party shoes”—uncharacteristically frivolous footwear in gold or silver leather. Although Martin was born more than a decade after the war ended, he and Christopher were, nonetheless, brought up on tales of their father’s best years— parachuting behind enemy lines, hand-to-hand combat, daring escapes—like one of their boys’ comics come to life. Were those tales of Harry’s all true? From this distance in time it seemed less likely. After the war, life was, necessarily, a disappointment for Harry. Martin himself knew, from a young age, that any chances he might have had in life to be a hero had already been used up by his father.
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