‘Now empty all your pockets, one by one. The jacket first.’
Rook pulled out the envelopes with both hands, the rolls of banknotes, all the pitch money he had received that day. He held the money up and out, at arm’s length, as unthreateningly as he could and as distant from the knife as his shoulders would allow.
‘It’s yours,’ he said. But Joseph had no hand free to take possession. One arm was pressed against Rook’s throat. The other held the knife.
‘Just drop that too.’
Rook let the money go. The envelopes and banknotes, more money than Joseph had ever seen before, fell on the pyramid of cakes. Con’s envelope was in the pile.
‘The trousers now,’ he said. Rook emptied both pockets and turned their innards out like a schoolboy caught with sweets. ‘Let’s see what’s there.’
Once more Rook held out his hands at arm’s length. He held a handkerchief, his staff pass, his keys, and just a little change.
‘Keep that,’ Joseph said, and liked the sound of it, the style, the generosity. He released Rook from his grip, and stepped away. The laurel branches fell amongst the booty at his feet. ‘Turn round. Back off.’
Rook turned to face the robber and his knife. He moved two steps away and waited. The ‘Keep that’ spoken by the youth had told Rook what he had hoped, that the knife was for display and not for cutting throats or stabbing chests. The ‘Keep that’ meant ‘Live on’. Rook’s fear made way for irritation and for shame that he had let this ill-dressed, ill-shaped hick make such a fool of him on this of all days, when he’d already — unaided, uncoerced — made himself a public fool. He wrapped his fingers round his keys. He let the bevelled end of one long key poke out beyond his knuckles. He bit his lower lip — not fear, but anger on the boil. He felt a little sick, a little drunk, a little like a brute. It was not hard to take one long step forward as Joseph bent to gather up the envelopes and cakes, to fix his eye on that birthmark in cherry red, and strike this young man in the face with knuckles and with keys.
Rook meant to hit him on the nose or chin, but missed. He struck him on his forehead, just above the left eye’s overcliff. The key’s sharp end went in. It broke the skin and left a fleshy pit like those left by the beaks of jays in pears. Rook struck again. This time his fist caught Joseph on the ear. Again the jay had left its mark, but raggeder this time. A tear. A bloody one. The third blow came from Rook’s right foot and left an imprint of the street on Joseph’s suit and a crescent-shaped bruise on Joseph’s chest. He toppled forward, winded, shocked. He crushed the cardboard pyramid. His face was pressed against the laurel leaves, though there was no marzipan to scent his fall. The laurel stems, in fact, no longer smelt. There is no permanence in plants. Their sap, their colours, and their odours drain, disperse. The only smell was tunnel dirt. The taste was blood, and tears. He’d wake up soon. He’d find the blood came from a forehead wound. The blood was running down his face. The tears were blood. The laughter-lines around his eye, his lips, his hair-line on one side, the lapel and shoulder of his suit, were marked in red. The picture from the catalogue and the photograph of Rook fell from his pocket, faces up.
Rook’s final blow was to Joseph’s hand. He kicked the knife away. That kick was delivered with a cough. Rook’s throat and chest were heaving like a gannet’s. Joseph got up and, empty-handed, ran up the flight of stairs, into the light and safety of the street. God bless the street.
Rook gathered up the things that he had dropped: the banknotes, the envelopes, his staff pass, the flattened box of flattened cakes. He picked up Joseph’s knife as well. He closed its blade and dropped it in his pocket with his keys. The laurel branches were too battered now for Victor’s chair. He kicked them against the tunnel walls. He was surprised at how calm he felt, despite his breathlessness. First, the restoration of his nebulizer. Then, champagne.
He felt no anger for the country boy. That scrap with him had been too short and undramatic for lasting animosity. The asthmatic turbulence that Rook had suffered at the table in the Soap Garden had done more damage than the fight. The mockery had hurt him more. If only those old friends of his — the greengrocers with whom he’d grown up — had seen the scuffle in the tunnel and how the street in Rook had put to flight the mugger with the knife. If only they had witnessed what he’d done. Violence is the perfect repartee, he thought. More dignified, more eloquent than words. He felt in touch again, with boyhood, streets, the town, the universe of labouring. He felt excited, eager for the day. He felt as tough and sentimental as a movie star. He couldn’t wait to share a cake with Anna. He couldn’t wait to use his fists again.
Rook stooped to recover one last dropped banknote from the tunnel floor. It was moist with Joseph’s blood. Next to it was the clipping from the catalogue, covered by the photograph which Con had given Joseph. Rook looked at Rook, perplexed. He had not seen that photograph for years. How could it have fallen with his money there? Perhaps some trader, who had paid his pitch money that day, had put the photo with the cash. Why? Some arcane rebuke to Rook, no doubt. Some accusation from the past. It was the sort of petty rebuff he’d expect from bitter, unforgiving men like Con. Rook picked the photo up. The suit, the model, and the barmaid, which had been hidden underneath, were now on show. He took a closer look. He recognized the bar, perhaps? The model’s face? He put both pictures in a pocket with the knife. He knocked the detritus of laurel from his coat and trousers and headed for the steps.
Rook made his way back to Big Vic and, clumsy and encumbered though he was, he could not disguise the hint of hopscotch in his step as he walked across the coloured marble flagstones of the windswept, empty mall. Around him, out of sight, the bankers banked, expeditious every instant of the day; dollars became lira, became marks; commodities and futures bobbed and ducked in value, unobserved; screens conversed in numbers on fibre-optic cables like gossips at a garden fence. Above, a restless matrix with its lights like traffic headlamps in the rush sent out its electronic information into town. The stock report. The city news. A flood in Bangladesh. A birthday greeting for the boss. A puff for Fuji Film. Traffic junctions to avoid. Fly Big Apple — Fly Pan Am.
Rook reached security at last. The automatic doors swept him into processed air. He showed his pass. He tightened his tie at his collar, and summoned the old man’s private lift. While he waited for it to fall the twenty-seven storeys of Big Vic, he picked himself a fine bouquet of plastic branches from the gleaming, sapless, perfect foliage of the atrium. He did not have to tug or cut. Each leaf, each twig and branch, was fixed by sleeve joints. The real, reconstituted bark was stuck to moulded trunks with velcro pads. The soil was soil with nothing much to do, except to fool the people of the town.
5
ROOK PUT the final touches to the room, while the waitresses and kitchen staff prepared the settings and the food for Victor’s lunch. His buoyancy had not been punctured by the tightening of his tie, by the dull proprieties of going back to work. He’d dropped the scuffed and battered pyramid of cakes on Anna’s desk and simply said, in response to her surprise, ‘I had to fight for these!’
Anna asked no questions. She simply filled her lungs with air and closed her eyes and said, ‘Such gallantry!’ Her persiflage was sweet. It was a tease. It was the kind of irony that Anna knew would work on men. Men were clockwork toys when it came to love and sex. You wound them up, you faked a phrase or two; they marched, they danced, they beat their drum. It was her plan to fake some satisfaction, if she had the chance, with Rook. Why not? He was not married. She was now divorced. She was only older than him by a year. He was not short of cash and might have fun if he could spend his money and his time with her.