Why did she not go now to catch her bus? Because she was seduced by all the multiformity of food? Because she was confused by colour, noise and crowds? Because Cellophane directed her on some detour? Or because a woman who had just detected death in lettuce leaves could have no difficulty picking up the smell of Rook as he sat with his coffee in the Soap Garden?
Rook spotted her as she negotiated chairs and customers. At first he watched her idly, thinking simply that she was a woman to his taste, a trader’s stylish wife, perhaps, or the elegant and tempting boss of some boutique. Then he recognized her, just in time, as she saw him. His chest grew tight. His trousers, too. The lovers had not spoken for five months. Or touched. So Rook felt doubly cornered, both by the brutal carelessness with which he’d treated her and by the meanness of his sudden concupiscence. He wished to be a thousand miles away; he wished to be ten metres closer, so close and wrapped that he digested her, took from her mouth the salty sauce and fillet of her tongue.
‘You’ve changed,’ he said. ‘You’ve cut your hair.’ She seemed embarrassed. She reddened when he complimented her on how she looked. Was that the red of anger or delight? She did not speak, but put her lettuce on the table, and sat down facing Rook. Let him speak first.
‘Am I to take it that there is another man?’
‘Why should there be?’
‘The way you look, of course.’
‘Like what?’
‘You’ve blossomed since I last saw you. Is there a man?’
‘Of course there is,’ she said, quite truthfully.
‘And who is he?’ Rook looked as if his face had lost its bones.
‘An architect,’ she said. ‘He’s asked me back to the Excelsior, no less. To celebrate.’
‘And what is there to celebrate?’
‘The end of all this!’ Anna spread her arms and flapped her hands, as if she were an illusionist who could make the real world disappear.
To some extent she was exactly that. Most women are. They are illusionists, at least when they are young. They have the trick of making clocks stand still for men, of making clocks run fast, of lowering the temperature a trace, of raising it, of being so desirable that all the world beyond the bubble of themselves is distanced and diluted. Their narrow heads, their scent, the scissored hairline at their neck, the leafy rustling of their skirts become bewitchments. So Rook was netted and engulfed, and Anna gloried that she was not too old or large to hold this man in thrall. She laid her hands upon his table. He had the courage and the shame to hold her by the wrist.
‘Just like my architect,’ she said, and then her story tumbled out, how secretive the boss had been, how plans had been passed off as something else, how nine architects — so far — had been escorted up to Victor’s suite like prisoners in custody and not allowed to share a lift or chatter with the staff. She told how Victor was obsessed by plans, and how his books on greenhouse pests had been pushed aside by models, elevations, and projections for the Soap Market. She told how Signor Busi had — that afternoon — seduced the boss with sculpted words and how she was convinced — like him — that Busi would be the man to ‘start from scratch’.
‘I could have stopped him. I would have stopped him,’ Rook said, more energized and focused than he had been for a dozen years. ‘But now I’ve gone, who is there to give him good advice?’
‘So, that’s why you got the sack? He didn’t want you in the way …?’
‘What does Victor say?’
‘What does Victor ever say? He hasn’t said a word. When does he ever say a word? You know what he’s like, out of sight, out of mind …’
She put her one free hand on top of his so that the three arms on the table made a bas-relief of flesh and fingers. Rook felt reprieved. Anna had not learned about his market fraud from Victor. The ice cube had not revealed the truth. Nor would he. Rook raised his head. He squared his shoulders. He was a cockatoo, all squawk and feathers now, all strut and peck and preen.
‘Come home with me,’ he said. ‘Let’s celebrate.’
‘I’ve called round at your home a dozen times,’ she said. ‘I’ve written and I’ve called. Not one reply.’
‘So come home now. We’ll put it right.’
‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘You’re not as fancy as my architect.’
‘Ah, the Italian, yes.’ Rook took his fingers out of hers. He held the edges of her coat. ‘If he wins, I’d like to see his plans.’
‘He’ll win. I’d bet on it.’ Anna’s voice had lost its resolution. She held her breath. She watched his fingertips.
‘When will you know?’
‘Next week, officially. There’ll be a press conference and a presentation of the scheme when the contract is awarded.’
‘And where?’
‘Big Vic.’
‘I’d like to see the plans before next week, before the press. Can you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Give me a preview of the scheme that wins.’
‘Why should I take that chance?’
‘Because I want you to,’ he said. And (he thought) because the old man plans to put an end to all of this. Because there’s no one in Big Vic to stand up for the soapies and the marketplace.
Rook spread his arms and flapped his hands in mockery of her. But there was no illusion at his fingertips — no desire to see the real world disappear, no wish to interfere in the bustling kinship of the citizens who went about their business in the Soap Market with the fitful, browsing innocence of weevils in a cake.
‘What can I do?’ Anna said. ‘Victor keeps his room locked. And anyway, those plans aren’t small. They’re tablecloths.’
‘And what about your fancy architect?’ Rook let her repossess his hand.
‘Who? Busi?’
‘Yes. He must have duplicates.’
Anna nodded, shrugged, as if to indicate she had no access to this man.
‘I think,’ said Rook, his hand pushed through the buttoned vents of Anna’s coat, his palm upon her slimmer waist, a finger tucked beneath her belt, ‘that it might be a good idea to let the signor take you out to dinner. At the Excelsior, no less.’
5
ROOK WAS A JUGGLER. He held and tossed five lives. He had to spin and mix them in the air. He had to pitch them so that they arched and fell into his hands with just the angle and the impact he required. Rook had to space the five lives in his grasp, ensure they did not meet or touch, for he was keen to settle scores — deftly, speedily, undetected. He was ready and impatient now to pay off debts and make amends, with Busi, Joseph, Anna, Con, but, most of all, with Victor. Quite what he ought to juggle up, Rook was not sure, though at their simplest and their meanest his intentions were to punish Con and Victor for the job, the private income from pitch payments, the self-respect they’d robbed from him.
The uniformed expulsion from Big Vic tormented him. He had to torment in return. This was unadorned revenge, and revenge is next to lust in its single-mindedness, its self-regard. So Rook did not care that Busi, Anna, Joseph, and yes, Con and Victor, too, were mostly innocent of blame for the malfunctions in his life. He’d still be on the 27th floor and welcome in the Soap Market, sweet with Victor, Anna, Con, if he’d resisted those envelopes of cash, that money in the palm, those bribes. This is something that country people understand more readily than townies. If you sow thorns, then you get thorns. They don’t need watering. They flourish and they snag.