Gábor says, ‘And your job…’ He finds a more satisfactory pronoun. ‘Our job is to look after her. Okay?’
Balázs simply nods.
‘Okay,’ Gábor says, with finality, having performed what was obviously an embarrassing task. ‘Just thought I’d tell you.’ He drops his cigarette and extinguishes it under the toe of his trainer. ‘See you inside.’
Mimicking his employer, Balázs toes out his own cigarette. Then he lights another, and squints out at the shimmer standing on the tarmac.
—
The flight is uneventful. The plane is full, but Gábor has paid for priority boarding and they have seats together — Balázs squashed into the window seat, Gábor stretching his legs in the aisle, and Emma in the middle, listening to music and staring at the plastic seat-back a few inches from the tip of her nose.
Balázs concentrates on the window. There is nothing to see, except a section of wing and fierce light on the endless expanse of white fluffiness far below. You would fall straight through it, he thinks, solid as it looks. He isn’t sure, now, that he understood what Gábor meant when he said that Emma would be ‘doing some work’ in London. Had he even heard him properly? The light hurts his eyes and he half-lowers the plastic shutter. He folds his swollen hands in his lap and sits there, listening to the serrated whisper of her headphones, only just perceptible over the massive white noise of the labouring engines.
—
Zoli meets them at Luton airport in a long silver Mercedes.
Zoli is tall, and not unhandsome, and manages a moustache without looking silly. He has an air of slightly savage intelligence about him — he is in fact a doctor, a gynaecologist, though not currently practising. It is true that there is an unhealthy puffiness to his face, a swollenness, his eyes protruding more than is ideal, but Balázs does not notice these things until he sees them, intermittently, in the rear-view mirror — he is sitting in the back of the Mercedes with Emma, the lowered leather armrest emphatically separating them — as they make their way towards London.
They do so with single-minded speed, Zoli pushing the powerful car through holes in the traffic on the motorway. Holding onto the spring-hinged handle over the window, Balázs sees fleeting past a landscape somehow more thoroughly filled than any in his own country. It seems more orderly. It is very obviously more monied. It is early June and everything looks plump and fresh.
Gábor lights a cigarette. He is sitting in the front with Zoli, who immediately tells him to put it out.
Gábor apologises and presses it into the ashtray.
Still forcing the Mercedes forward, Zoli explains that he has borrowed it from a friend of his who has a luxury limousine hire service. He promised he wouldn’t smoke in it.
‘Sorry,’ Gábor says again. Then he says, ‘This is the new S-Class, yeah? Very nice.’
Zoli agrees vaguely.
He is in his early thirties, only a few years older than the others. Even so, Gábor is having trouble relating to him as an equal, something he normally manages quite easily with older and more important-seeming men. They had made some small talk as they drove out of the airport — though even that came to an abrupt end (Gábor was in the middle of saying something) when Zoli had to pay for the parking — and, as they head into London, Gábor’s usual effortless friendliness seems to have faltered. Whether that is because he is simply intimidated by Zoli, or for some other reason, Balázs does not know. Seeing them shake hands in the arrivals lounge the situation had seemed to him to be this — they had met before but did not know each other well. Zoli and Emma, on the other hand, seemed never to have met. Gábor introduced them, with a strange sort of formality, and Zoli was very friendly to her — a wide smile, a pair of kisses. To Balázs — obviously the minder, with his shit clothes and his muscles — he had offered only a peremptory handshake. Then he had hurried them to short-term parking. They were in a hurry because, as Zoli said, ‘There’s one tonight’ and what with the delay they were pressed for time, as they had first to go to the flat. Zoli, it seemed, had sorted out a flat for them to stay in while they were in London.
They spend some time stuck in traffic, the flow of the motorway silting up as it enters the metropolis. They are slowed by traffic lights. (The air conditioning is on — outside the tinted windows London, what they are able to see of it, swelters.) Then there are smaller thoroughfares, a more local look to things. There are neighbourhoods, parks, high streets, overflowing pubs. Smudged impressions of urban life on an early summer evening. All that goes on for much longer than Balázs imagined it would.
Finally they arrive. The flat is on a quiet street with a few trees in it. Small two-storey houses, all exactly the same. They wait with their luggage and Duty Free while Zoli opens the front door of one of them, swearing to himself as he struggles with the unfamiliar keys. They walk up some narrow stairs to the upper floor, where there is another struggle with the keys, and then they go in. One bedroom, white and sparsely furnished. For Balázs, the sofa in the living room, which overlooks the quiet road. On the other side of the landing, lurking mustily, is a windowless bathroom, into which Emma disappears with her washbag as soon as they arrive.
The men wait in the living room, Gábor on the sofa, Zoli pacing slowly and taking in the view from the uncurtained window, and Balázs just standing there staring at the old lion-coloured carpet and its mass of cigarette burns and other blemishes. Gábor wonders out loud where they might get something to eat. Zoli offers only an uninterested shrug. He says he doesn’t know the area well — he lives in another part of London. Turning to the window again, he says the high street is nearby — there will be something there.
‘D’you mind popping out,’ Gábor says to Balázs, ‘and getting some kebabs or something?’
Balázs looks up from the carpet. ‘Okay.’
‘Do you want something?’ Gábor says.
The question is addressed to Zoli. He is still staring out the window and doesn’t answer.
‘Zoli?’ Gábor says, tentatively. ‘D’you want something?’
‘No,’ he says, without turning.
‘Okay. So, yeah, just get some kebabs,’ Gábor says.
Balázs nods. Then he asks, ‘How many should I get?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll have one. Do you want one?’
‘Uh…Yeah.’
‘And Emma might want one. Four?’ Gábor suggests.
—
The stairs are almost too narrow for his shoulders, he almost has to make his way down sideways. The downstairs hall is dark, despite the frosted square pane in the front door, which opens as he nears the foot of the stairs and admits a youngish woman in a charcoal trouser suit. She leaves the door open for him. Otherwise they ignore each other.
It is very warm and light out in the street, a nice soft evening light that flatters the parked Merc. He lights a Park Lane, and then sets off through the little mazy streets of pinched, identical houses in the direction Zoli had indicated. It takes him twenty minutes to find the high street, and when he does there seems to be nowhere selling specifically kebabs. He walks up and down, sweating now in the summer evening, his orange T-shirt stuck to his skin. He notices a Polish supermarket, and the number of non-white people in the street. Then he phones Gábor. ‘Is chicken okay?’ he says.
Gábor doesn’t seem to understand the question. ‘What?’
‘Chicken,’ Balázs says emphatically. ‘Is it okay?’