The real find, though, was the bath. (Moses loved baths, even though he had to fold himself double to get into one.) Deep-chested, eight feet long, it stood on four flexed metal claws. A lion of a bath, it was. Its pristine antique enamel seemed unmarked but for the faintest of yellow stains running from the overflow down to the plug-hole. Sometime during his second week of work Moses walked into the bathroom and turned on the hot tap. A moment’s silence, as if the machinery was gathering itself. Then a clanking, a subterranean clanking deep in the foundations of the building, like a metal bucket hitting the bottom of a dry well, followed by a gurgling that seemed to be ascending, growing louder, that built to a crescendo as the tap coughed a few brown splashes into the bath. Seconds later a powerful flow of water was crashing on to the enamel. Steam lofted into the chill air. Moses began to take off his clothes.
Through the small window above the taps he could see the planes easing down into Heathrow. They slid silently from left to right, dropped two hundred feet as they hit a swirl in the glass. He lay in the water until it had turned cold for the third time, pleasure written all over his face in invisible ink. In future, when crisis threatened or exhaustion softened his bones, he would retreat to the bathroom. It would be his sanctuary from the world. It had the power to heal, soothe, replenish him. Sometimes he would climb into the empty bath and lie on the cool enamel, fully dressed, with his eyes closed. Other times he would open those fierce taps and run a bath so deep it swamped the floor. But he would always feel better afterwards — calmer, more objective. A sense of proportion would descend, as silently as planes. If he ever left The Bunker, he would have to take the bath with him — somehow.
On the day of his first bath, the black cat appeared again. He paused on the window-ledge, one paw raised in the air, disappointed, perhaps, by the absence of pigeons. His glowing yellow eyes raked the room and fixed, eventually, on Moses. Such was the hypnotic power of the cat’s gaze that Moses thought, for one terrifying moment, that he might throw himself from the window as the pigeons had done. He concentrated on one simple thought: I am not a pigeon. The black cat eyed him without blinking. He seemed to be listening, taking the information in. When Moses thought the cat had understood, he relaxed.
‘Bird,’ he said affectionately.
He had decided to give the cat two names, one formal, one familiar. His formal name would be Anton, after Anton Mesmer, who believed that any one person can exercise influence over the will of another by virtue of the emanations proceeding from him. Any one person or cat, Moses had decided, after that exhibition of control over the will of five hundred pigeons a week or two back. His nickname, however, would be Bird. Moses had toyed with the name Seagull, but you couldn’t call a cat Seagull, could you? Bird, he felt, was a nice compromise. Bird the cat.
Bird responded with a cry worthy of his new name. Bird was hungry, perhaps.
Moses fetched the old green and gold cake-tin he had found under the kitchen sink and covered the bottom with milk. He placed the tin in the middle of the living-room floor. Bird stared at Moses with suspicion as Moses moved back to the kitchen doorway. Then, dropping down to floor-level without a sound as if he weighed nothing, he began to creep towards the tin. Stalking it, as if it might be dangerous. Once there, he squatted over the tin, neck extended, and lapped at the milk, his tongue moving out and back like a tiny pink clockwork toy.
Halfway through he suddenly stopped. Black chin sprinkled with white drops, he looked at Moses, seemed to be appraising him.
‘It’s good milk, Bird,’ Moses whispered. ‘It’s Dino’s milk.’
Bird dipped his blunt head into the tin again. When he had finished he paused, as if thinking, then turned, sprang back on to the window-ledge and vanished, as before.
Moses still hadn’t moved. He gazed round the room with its clean floorboards and its grey decaying walls and its open window through which the black cat came and went.
It was beginning to feel like home.
*
As if somebody had splashed petrol around and tossed a lit match, the end of April caught fire. Car tyres crackled on the sticky tarmac of main roads. Clouds rolled along the horizon like smoke. The temperature, unbelievably, touched eighty, HEATWAVE, the papers roared, HEATWAVE.
Moses hired a transit van and moved out of Eddie’s flat in a single day, sweat tickling his forehead, trickling down his spine. He saw roadworkers with red backs. Girls in bikinis. In April. The world seemed out of kilter — surreal, delirious.
Elliot watched him unload from the shadow of a wall.
‘I would’ve given you a hand,’ he said, ‘but you know how it is.’ He adjusted the lapels of his excuse.
‘I know how it is,’ Moses panted, a mattress balanced on his back.
‘So what’s it like up there?’
‘It’s luxury. It’s what I’ve always wanted.’
Elliot threw his head back and swallowed hot sky.
But Moses meant it. Those empty rooms on the fourth floor dwarfed what few belongings he had. He had never had so much space to himself before. The place might have been designed specifically with him in mind, might have been waiting for him to arrive and take possession.
He drove back to Eddie’s that night to return the keys.
‘Finished already?’ Eddie said. ‘I was going to help you.’ He opened the fridge and handed Moses a cold beer.
‘Eddie,’ Moses said, ‘the thought never crossed your mind.’
As he tore the ring-pull off the can, he watched Eddie smiling. The damage Eddie had caused with that smile of his. Moses had long since pushed the statue theory aside, stored it away in the museum section of his mind for re-evaluation at a later date. He had begun to see Eddie’s beauty in wider terms. As a magnetic force. As disruption unleashed on men and women alike. Once, he remembered, Eddie had brought the entire cosmetics department of a famous London store to a standstill simply by smiling as he stepped out of the lift. The air vibrated softly as fifty murmurs of desire coincided. Then fifty tongues emerged to moisten fifty upper lips. One salesgirl let a bottle of perfume slip from her hand. It shattered on the tiles with a crystal sigh and the ground floor of the department store smelt of Opium for several days. In memory of Eddie. Another time Moses and Eddie were walking along a quiet street in Kensington. A red sports saloon, some foreign make, slowed and drew alongside. The woman at the wheel wound the window down. Moses thought she was about to ask for directions. Instead, with her eyes on Eddie, she cried, ‘You’re beautiful.’ The car sped away again, its pert rear-end pointing in the air. ‘What is it about you?’ Moses had asked. Eddie shrugged, smiled. A young man on an old-fashioned bicycle glimpsed the smile on Eddie’s face and rode straight over a traffic island without even noticing. There ought to be a sign, Moses thought. CAUTION: MAN SMILING.
*
That was the really curious thing, Moses thought, as he walked out of The Bunker two days later. Eddie could never be accused of being conceited or narcissistic. He didn’t keep a record of his lovers, as some men did, because he wasn’t trying to prove anything. Girls passed in and out of his life without changing him in the slightest. Their presence was necessary, continuous, and taken for granted — like time itself; Lauren followed Connie as Tuesday followed Monday. Nostalgia had no place in his scheme of things. Nor, it seemed, did expectation. He was like a train with infinite stations on its line but no terminus.
Moses had reached the door of his new local. A jaded murky place. Crawling with small-time ruffians and drunks. He ordered a pint of draught Guinness, and retired to a deserted corner.