‘Now I’m wondering how good an idea that is for me.’
‘What could be bad? All I want to do is give you two hundred quid for a name.’
‘Maybe you won’t show up alone. Maybe I could come out of this with grievous bodily harm.’
‘I give you my word that I’ll be alone.’
‘You might change your mind between now and tomorrow; you might think back to what I was going to do to you and get really pissed off. That kind of thing happens.’
‘Well, what do you suggest then?’
‘OK, I’ll take a chance on you. Tomorrow night at ten be standing in the same place where we picked you up tonight. You hand me the money, I’ll give you her name.’
‘Good. See you tomorrow then.’
‘See you tomorrow.’
They shook hands and Klein got out. As the van pulled away he noted the number and wrote it down, then he switched off the microcassette.
19 The Quarry
‘It’s a jungle out here in cyberspace,’ said Klein to himself. He was looking across the river at the building that said OXO. ‘I’m remembering the quarry in Wendell’s Woods. So deep and green and cold that water was.’ He saw it closing over his head as he went down, down into the chill and the darkness. ‘I can’t remember the name of the dog. I was with Bill Muller and Freddie Schulz. Freddie’s dog was with us. I must have been nine or so. We went to the old quarry — I don’t know what they’d quarried there but it was deep and full of water. The side where we were was a sort of clifftop twenty feet above the water but you could climb down if you were careful. There was no cliff on the other side, just flat rocks. The dog went down to a little ledge just above the water and he wouldn’t come back up when Freddie called him. ‘I’ll get him,’ I said. I don’t know why I didn’t leave it to Freddie. I climbed down but I slipped and fell into the water with all my clothes on.
‘I could dog-paddle a little, and I swam back to the steep side where I’d fallen in. I could have swum across to the flat side but I was too panicked to think of that. I clung to the cliffside while Bill and Freddie went for help. There were two tramps living in a shack made of corrugated iron and signs that said PURINA CHOWS and RED MAN CHEWING TOBACCO. They came with a tow chain and let it down to me and pulled me back up. Why didn’t I swim across to the flat place? The dog got back up by itself. The next day my father brought the two tramps a hamper of food. I wonder if Wendell’s Woods and the quarry are still there. Maybe the quarry’s been filled in, the woods cleared and developed. How strange it is that places where I was young still exist! Can this time really be a continuation of that time?’
OXO, said the building across the river, backwards and forwards the same. ‘E621VGD,’ he’d written in his notebook as the van pulled away. ‘Ford Transit.’ He stood looking at the lights on the river, the boats coming and going. ‘Why did I get off my horse?’
20 Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool
When Klein got home he phoned Angelica. After three rings she picked up the phone. ‘Hello,’ said Klein.
‘What?’
‘It’s me, Ruggiero.’
‘Hang on, Ruggi.’ There were sighs and moans of pleasure from Angelica. ‘Oh yes!’ she breathed to an unknown partner. ‘Like that, keep doing it like that! So good, so …!’ Her orgasm followed with appropriate crescendos and diminuendos, duly noted by the little red light on the telephone recorder, then there were murmurs of satisfaction and endearment from her voice and that of another female. Next he heard glasses being filled, heard the two of them drinking with pauses for kisses and fondling and laughter.
‘Hello, Ruggi. Are you there?’ said Angelica.
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘I must say, Ruggi, that I feel more than a little disappointed in you tonight. I was looking forward to a really interesting videotape and now Leslie tells me that you weren’t up to it.’
‘It wasn’t very nice of you to say you’d meet me and then set me up to be Monicaed.’
‘I never said I was very nice. I’m not even sure you’d like me if I were very nice. You do like me, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know that liking comes into it. Was the other voice your regular partner?’
‘Lydia? No, she just dropped in for some popcorn and a video and one thing led to another. I haven’t got a regular partner. “Every day is a winding road …” yes? Ahhh, Lydia! I have to go, Ruggi — she’s at me again. I’m sorry this isn’t a videophone but you can listen to us until I can give you my undivided attention. Or better still, I’ll give you a running commentary on what we’re up to, and all for the price of a local call. Happy Hour for you, Ruggi.’
‘Why not?’ said Klein. He listened and enjoyed.
‘Now, then, Ruggi,’ said Angelica when she and Lydia had reached an interval. ‘What shall we talk about?’
‘Perhaps we could start with why you wanted to do that to me.’
‘Do what to you?’
‘Leslie and the van: Harold’s Monday Night.’
‘Aha! Your real name! Not all that heroic, is it.’
‘Are you going to answer my question?’
‘Are you going to tell me you wouldn’t have enjoyed it?’
‘Enjoy it! I don’t think I’d have survived it.’
‘It might have been a good way to go, though, mightn’t it?’
‘So you were hoping for a snuff movie, were you?’
‘Please, Ruggi — I’m not a monster! I just wanted to see how you’d like what you found so entertaining when it was done to a woman. And really, that’s what you were expecting, wasn’t it? You wimped out at the last minute but you knew it was on the cards, right?’
‘No, I didn’t; I was expecting to meet you as arranged.’
‘I don’t believe you, Harold. When we arranged this rendezvous I gave you plenty of clues: same place, same time of a Monday night — everything but the rain, which was forecast but didn’t happen.’
‘I don’t think the way you do; you said you’d be there and it was you I expected to see when the van pulled up.’
‘Poor you! Can you really be that simple?’
‘Yes, I really can. Are you always devious, never simple?’
‘I’m devious in a simple way, Ruggi: you just can’t count on me for anything but trouble. Got to say goodbye now. Bye-bye.’
21 Noah’s ark
‘This is not a good time in my life,’ said Klein. ‘When was a good time?’ He saw the Hungerford Bridge over the shining evening river, the lights of boats coming and going, the Royal Festival Hall brilliant with expectation across the water, and Hannelore at his side. ‘Die Schöpfung,’ he said, ‘that was a good time.’ He put on the Berlin Philharmonic recording with von Karajan conducting, and the first bars of the orchestral prelude opened The Representation of Chaos. ‘What a beautiful chaos,’ he said: ‘so warm and dark and full of good things. 1970 that was, or 1971. Was that the same chaos that Oannes arose from? A different part of it maybe, not so black.’
The music lifted him out of the present, cradled him in the safety of that good time long gone. When the chorus reached ‘Und es ward Licht’ he wept as always, then hummed along with Fritz Wunderlich on the first day. When Gundula Janovitz made her entrance as Gabriel on the second day he wept some more, marvelling at the perfection of Haydn’s world that never grew old, never filled up with rubbish and defeat. ‘How beautiful London was at night, with its illuminated domes and spires and clocks,’ he said, ‘how shining the river!’