He’d once seen a film — One Deadly Kiss — in which an English lord had hunted down, one by one, the five male passengers on a country post-chaise bound for London. His motive? One of the men — and only one — had ‘kissed and robbed’ his wife as she slept in the cushions of the coach. ‘Better that all five die than that one blackguard lives to taint again the honour of a lady,’ the Englishman had said, in those vaulting, vowelly tones that English gentry, and English actors, used to have. He bribed the coachman, richly, to reveal the passenger list, and set off across the country in wild and righteous pursuit. He did not know, as he despatched another with a pistol or a knife, that all five men were guilty of some other, capital offence — arson, murder, treachery — and so ‘deserved’ to die. He did not know — how simple these films are! — that none of the five had touched his wife. The rapist was the bribed and silent coachman, free, as the credits rolled, to kiss and rob some more!
The English love these ironies, and Rook took pleasure in them, too. Rook dreamed the film, but in his dream the passengers were greengrocers, the coach was Victor’s birthday lunch. Rook became a younger man, the firebrand dressed in black. He hunted down and polished off the five. They fell amongst their fruit. They died on beds of spinach. Who was the coachman, free to sin again? Rook’s dream was crowded out by deeper sleep before the credits rolled.
By day, Rook fantasized; and in these angered fantasies he would avenge the noon indignity of being thrown out, a vagrant, from Big Vic. He would be the English lord, though more heroic and less mannered. His weapon would be Joseph’s knife. He practised with the blade, and mimed the damage he might do. He punched the bathroom door. He bit off the nails on both his hands. He masturbated, but could not hold the image of a woman in his head. He lay in bed too long. He stayed up late, and drank too much of the Boulevard Liqueur he had bought for Anna during the weekend. His breathing became laboured, first with nerves, and then his asthma took hold in his right-side chest, brought on, intensified, by his loss of work and income and the anger that he felt. He nebulized more often than he should. He grew lightheaded and unsteady from the alcohol and medicine and from the cheap narcosis of his dream.
At last — for wrath’s a sprinter and soon tires — he became more calm, less frantic. Bruised, he was, discoloured by the blows that he’d endured. But it slowly dawned on Rook, the self-approving optimist, that he was not weakened as a man, but made more potent. He was persuaded now that Victor had freed him from a curse. The job that Rook had lost was no great loss. Good riddance to it. He’d paid for it a dozen years before, with … what word is there to use but ‘soul’? The moment that young Black Rook had taken Victor and his cheque by the hand he’d dropped the sanction of the street, he’d lost the casual chatter of the marketplace. The city sparrow had spread its wings to rise on cushioned thermals beyond the pavement commonwealth and join the austere governance of hawks. Now he was back on earth again.
He felt too sick to eat, too shaky in the hand to lift a fork or pour a cup of coffee, but now at least he looked ahead as much as he looked back. What could he do with this new potency, this rediscovered soul? He was too old to start a fresh career. But, surely, he was rich enough to set up a modest business of his own. He checked the balance of his savings. He counted all the currency notes which he’d amassed. He had no debts, no obligations, no family to maintain. His situation could be worse. To be a rich man without work was not the meanest fate of all. There was no rush. He’d take a month or two of rest, and keep his eyes peeled for … for what? A bar, perhaps? A shop? He was alarmed by the dullness in prospect. Could he afford six months of rest? Or nine? He deserved a little breathing space to plan his future years. At least the spare time on his hands could be good fun. He’d please himself and no one else. His tie could hang loose all the time. He need not wear a tie. He need not wear a suit. That was the uniform of servitude. He need not hasten through the city streets, his coffee hardly drunk, to be at work on time.
Now he was ready to go out. He searched his wardrobe and he found the black leather jacket he’d once worn. The skin was scuffed and greying and the cuffs had split, but still it fitted, and the zip was good. The leather smelt a little of the marketplace, and the lining was stained beneath the arms and in the middle of the back from working sweat. He did not have the working trousers or the shirt to match — but he had dark and casual office clothes, and these he wore. He felt transformed. The jacket set him free. He had resurrected the man he’d been a dozen years before. He transferred his keys and wallet, his nebulizer, the Joseph ‘nife’ from his suit into the zipped pockets of the leather jacket. He tidied the apartment, read the notes that Anna had left, put her snapshot on the mantelshelf, and went into the town.
It was just a week since Victor’s birthday lunch, a week in which he’d rediscovered love, and lost his job, and soared and plummeted, one hundred metres, twenty-seven floors, onto the street. All in all he felt winded and invigorated, like some shaken boy who’s just stepped safely from a switchback ride. He set off for the Soap Market. The sooner he was seen amongst the stalls and soapies the better for his shaken self-esteem.
He walked between the banks of vegetables and fruit without a greeting or a glance. He was not snubbed. He was not recognized, at first. His leather coat was a disguise. It made his walk more bearlike, from the shoulders, hands in jacket pockets, collar up. The suited Rook had seemed a little taller, more loose-limbed, and walking from the hip. But once he sat amongst the traders at a bar in the Soap Garden, his face was known. He heard the whispers, and caught the glances and the nods. The waiter was his usual pleasant self, but waiters do not count. The market workers — the porters and the salesgirls — did not speak to him, but then they never had. He’d been too grand. He’d been the old man’s nuncio, his representative on Earth.
Rook did his best to seem relaxed. But he was not relaxed enough to hold his cup steady with one hand. He shook so badly that the sugar for his coffee trembled in the spoon. He wished he had a newspaper with which to shield himself. He wished that he could hide behind a cigarette without the smoke occasioning a fireball in his chest. Part of him feared that he would see one of the birthday guests, some arthritic merchant on a stick, and feel obliged, compelled, to make a scene. But mostly he feared what the market men might do to him now that he was stripped of office. He feared their jeers, their ironies, the jabs and punches they might give to him, and with good cause. Those modest tithes, those sweeteners, which Rook had levied every quarter and for which he’d guaranteed clean access to the boss’s ear, were now revealed as money down the pan. Rook was further now from Victor’s ear than any soapie in the market. He was the only one whose contact with the boss was limited to ‘the mediation of lawyers’.
Mid-morning, though, is not the time for arguments or scenes. The market was too busy and the traders too immersed in chalking prices for the day to spend much time on Rook. It was no secret, naturally, that he had lost his job — but no one there was certain why. The five old men were keeping quiet. Old men have enemies enough, and take more pleasure out of secrecy — their greenhouse secret with the boss — than spreading tales amongst the market hoi polloi. So Rook was noted, but not judged. The men who never cared for Rook, did not abhor him more or less because — or so the rumour was — he’d lost his job. Why would they like him any less because he was dismissed? The traders did not know the social protocol. His misfortune was, perhaps, good news for them. It might save them money. Who could tell? But then, there’d be new Rooks, and tougher ones whose pitch fees were less modest. They’d rather stick with their asthmatic. He was not loved but he was witty in his way and had the common touch. He had, at least, sprung from the marketplace. He’d robbed them, true, but done no lasting harm. Such is the vagrant logic of the street that Rook was almost popular with his old foes, just as a bully’s popular when he releases captives from his grip.