At breakfast on Tuesday I sat with Frank Bland. He had called the hospital first thing, he told me. Rinaldi was feeling much better. He would be discharged within the hour. Bland celebrated by ordering smoked haddock, a basket piled high with toast and a large pot of tea. Later, we were joined by John Fernandez. When the waitress came, he wanted scrambled eggs and black coffee, nothing else.
‘How was the bar?’ I asked him.
He shrugged, then took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. ‘We were out till about two.’
‘What about you?’ Bland said to me. ‘Did you get an early night?’
I smiled ruefully. ‘No. Not exactly.’
Waking at seven, after less than two hours’ sleep, my first sensation had been one of almost painful nostalgia. I had been part of something wonderful, but it was over. At the same time, I didn’t know quite what to believe. It was possible that I’d been drugged. That would explain the exquisite clarity, and the way the minutes, even the seconds, had seemed to slacken and stretch out. And the nausea that came afterwards, it might explain that too. How much of what happened had been imaginary? And if it had all been imaginary, could it be imagined again?
‘Parry?’
I looked up. Fernandez was staring at me.
‘I didn’t get to bed till five,’ I said.
‘Five?’ Fernandez and Bland both spoke at the same time. People at the other tables looked up from their breakfast.
Fernandez was the first to recover. ‘Where did you go?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure.’
Bland and Fernandez exchanged a glance.
‘You know, you shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Sudhakant Patel, who had just arrived at the table. ‘After all, this is the country of the mystical, the unex —’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Fernandez said. He produced a bottle of Tabasco from his jacket pocket and shook a few bloody drops on to his eggs.
The next few hours passed in something of a blur. I heard a phlegmatic delegate deliver a softly spoken and yet impassioned plea for the statue of the famous admiral to be removed from its column in no man’s land and installed outside a maritime museum on the Blue Quarter’s south coast, and though I acquitted myself reasonably well, I thought, making at least one contribution to the debate, my mind was restless and jittery throughout. I kept drifting back to the events of the night before. My gamble had paid off. I hadn’t had any contact with the local population, not unless you counted the club’s employees and the taxi-drivers. What’s more, the experience itself had exceeded any expectations I might have had, so much so that all I could think about was going back again that evening.
When lunchtime came, I bought a map of the city from a kiosk in the lobby and took it into the restaurant with me, settling into a booth next to the window. I had just located the Great Western Canal and was following it with my finger when I sensed somebody at my shoulder. I looked up to see Walter Ming standing beside me. He had really surpassed himself this morning. He was wearing a green tweed suit with leather-covered buttons, a bright-yellow shirt and a knitted tie of an ambiguous brownish colour.
‘Walter,’ I said. Somehow I felt I was beginning to know him a little, even though we hadn’t seen each other since the cocktail party.
He blinked. ‘Mind if I join you?’
‘Not at all’
He glanced at the remains of my lunch. ‘You know, before I sit down, I think I’ll just go and get myself something to eat.’
While he was busy at the self-service counter, I folded up my map and put it away.
Ming returned with a white coffee and a bowl of rice pudding topped with two generous scoops of vanilla ice-cream. He took a seat opposite me, his eyes immediately sliding towards the place where the map had been.
‘So,’ he said, ‘did you go?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘How was it?’
I nodded. ‘Like you said. Very interesting.’
He gave me a careful look, then turned his attention to his dessert.
‘I didn’t see you there,’ I said.
‘No. In the end I couldn’t get away.’
I watched as Ming spooned rice pudding and ice-cream into his mouth. He had the unusual habit of biting his food up with his front teeth, which made me think of certain rodents. It pleased me to have noticed this about him. Though I had the feeling he possessed information to which I wasn’t privy, I wanted him to realise that he, too, was under observation. It helped to redress the balance.
In less than a minute Ming had finished. He bent over his cup of coffee, took a quick sip and then sat back. ‘Will you go again?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘From what I hear,’ he said, ‘it can be a bit addictive.’ He crushed his napkin into a ball and let it drop into his empty bowl. ‘Well,’ and he shifted in his seat, ‘I probably won’t be seeing you again.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘I’ve got to get back to work.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I had a half-day off, so I thought I’d look in on the conference. Get some ideas, some inspiration.’ He smiled in that mirthless way of his, then we shook hands. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you,’ he said. ‘Enjoy the rest of your stay.’
From where I was sitting, I was able to watch him leave the hotel. Something about his manner failed to convince me. He didn’t look like a person who was going back to work. Not that he faltered or dawdled. No, he walked at a steady pace, looking neither to the right nor the left. But there was something… Then I realised what it was. He looked as if he was walking away from an appointment rather than towards it. One hand in his jacket pocket, the other lifting casually to smooth his hair, he had the air of someone who had just relaxed. The job had been done, the mission had been accomplished. What job, though? What mission?
I glanced at my watch. If I didn’t hurry, I would be late for the afternoon session. Far from making sense of the previous night’s events, I had somehow managed to wrap them in extra layers of mystery. I felt like the fly that struggles to free itself from the spider’s web only to discover that it is contributing to its own imprisonment. As I rose from the table, there was a moment when the floor appeared to be sloping away from me and it seemed I might be about to faint.
Should I or shouldn’t I?
I stood on the front steps, under the awning, and looked out into the dark. It was ten o’clock in the evening, and it had been raining continuously for hours. A light mist curled and drifted on the surface of the canal. I had found a gap in my schedule that afternoon and slept for two hours, and I felt calmer now, more balanced. I put my anxious, befuddled state of earlier in the day down to simple exhaustion. After my nap, I had showered and dressed, then I had eaten a quiet dinner with Patel and Bland. Once the meal was over, I had excused myself; I had an event in the morning, I told them, and I needed to prepare (not entirely true: I had written my paper weeks ago). Now I was lurking outside the entrance to the hotel, trying to decide whether I could risk going to the club a second time.
A water-taxi drew up, and a young couple got out. Their coats held over their heads, they ran through the garden and up the steps, then pushed hard on the revolving doors that spun them, laughing and breathless, into the lobby. As I turned back to the canal again, still trying to make up my mind, I noticed someone sheltering in the shadows at the far end of the steps. The figure wore a long, pale, shapeless garment, a kind of cloak, and its face was hidden by a hood or cowl of the same colour. I knew instantly that this was one of the White People.