‘My agent’s working on it. Are you American?’
‘Yes, but I’ve been living here for the last twelve years.’ By this time we were sitting at a table having our coffee and I was able to study her closely. Brown hair which she wore long and straight; blue eyes; large nose; wide mouth; high forehead. Not exactly a beauty but the overall effect was impressive. She reminded me of champion athletes I’d seen on TV. She had the look of a winner and that made her face add up to more than the sum of its parts.
‘What are you?’ she said. ‘A hypnotist?’
‘Please forgive my staring. I’m a writer. What’s your name?’
‘Constanze Webber. What’s yours?’
‘Phil Ockerman. I doubt that you’ve heard of me.’
‘Oh, but I have. I was watching The Culture Show the other night and Germaine Greer said that Hope of a Tree was a shallow male fantasy that didn’t add up to a novel.’
‘An opinion shared by one or two others,’ I said.
‘Still, the title from Job intrigued me. Does your man feel like a tree that’s been cut down?’
‘Are you an Old Testament user?’
‘Now and then. Job is one of my favourite books. He bears his afflictions with style. Does your man feel like a tree that’s been cut down?’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘There’s a copy of Hope of a Tree at the house where I’m staying. I’ll read it and I’ll probably like it.’
‘And you so young and apparently unafflicted. How old are you — twenty-four, twenty-five?’
‘Twenty-five. There are all kinds of afflictions, Phil. They don’t always show. How old are you?’
‘I’m forty.’
‘Forty seems very far away from where I am now. I can’t imagine where I’ll be at that age.’
‘The years have a way of sneaking up on you,’ She looked at her watch. ‘I must go.’
‘Can I see you again?’ I said.
‘All right — I’ll be with friends in Wimbledon for the rest of this week; you can phone me there.’ She wrote the number on a napkin. ‘Then I’m going back to Cape Town for a couple of weeks. Don’t get up, stay and finish your coffee. See you.’ And off she went. I’d have liked to walk her to Soho, all five foot ten of her, but she’d clearly told me not to so I finished my coffee and had another, this time with a cheese Danish.
When I got home there was a card saying that Royal Mail had tried to deliver a parcel. I went round to the sorting office to pick it up: a bat-shaped box from Louisville, Kentucky. I carried it back to the house as if it were a loaded gun. I took it out of the box and there it was, my GENUINE Barbara Strozzi LOUISVILLE SLUGGER. Blonde wood. Ash? Thirty-four inches long. I weighed it on the kitchen scale: one kilo. Long, heavy, dangerous. I got a good grip on it, took up my stance, looked towards the mound, knocked the dirt off my spikes. Pitcher looks in for the sign, nods, goes into his windup, and here comes Troy Wallis, right over the plate. No, no — only kidding. I leaned the Louisville Slugger in a corner and sat down at the word machine and thought about Job for a while, how one day Satan showed up with the sons of God and when the Lord asked him where he was coming from he said, ‘From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’ That’s the heart of the matter right there — he’s always around ready to lead the unwary into mischief with the first available Constanze or whatever else offers. And of course idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, everybody knows that. ‘So let’s get cracking, Phil,’ I said. ‘OK,’ I answered, ‘just warming up in the bullpen.’ I put the Enigma Variations in the player, picked up the phone, ordered a pizza from Domino’s, opened a bottle of The Wine Society’s French Full Red and poured myself a glass. Put The Rainmaker in the video, and when the pizza arrived I ate it, drank about two thirds of the red, fell asleep in my chair halfway through the film, and dreamed that Constanze Webber was walking far ahead of me through a dim and narrow space. ‘Wait!’ I shouted, ‘I can explain!’ She looked back once, then turned and walked on. I woke up and dialled Barbara’s number. ‘Barbara?’ I said when the phone was picked up at the other end.
‘You have a wrong number,’ said a tight voice.
‘I meant to say Bertha,’ I said. ‘You must be Hilary.’
‘And who are you?’
‘Phil Ockerman, I’m a friend of Bertha’s.’
‘Odd that you couldn’t remember her name.’
‘Anyhow, is she available?’
‘No, she isn’t. Goodbye.’
‘Thanks so much,’ I said to the silence.
I was sitting in my TV chair then with my hand on the round part at the end of the bat handle. I moved the handle around as if it were the control stick of an aeroplane. Then I wrote down the telephone number of Jimmy Maloney’s, put on a jacket and went out to the Fulham Road.
I stationed myself near the bus stop diagonally opposite the club and looked at the big man standing in the doorway. Dark suit, dark polo neck. Did he have a plaster on his head? Couldn’t see one. Took my mobile out of my pocket and dialled the number. ‘Jimmy Maloney’s,’ said a growly voice over a lot of background noise.
‘Is Troy Wallis on the door tonight?’ I said.
‘Who’s this?’
‘Nobody he knows. Somebody gave me a message to give him. Is he there?’
The bartender or whoever it was hung up. I kept my eyes on the door and saw a man who looked like a bartender come to where the bouncer was and talk briefly with him. So that was Troy Wallis. About six four, fourteen or fifteen stone. Right, thanks very much.
I’d read in the paper that Mercury would be low in the west and Venus out of sight. Not too comfortable with that. The moon was in its first quarter, the vernal equinox only three days away. I looked up at the sky and made out Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Polaris, Cassiopeia, and Draco. Draco looked aggressive. I was too ignorant to identify the other constellations. I felt uneasy with the forces affecting me and longed for some guidance from Catriona.
I thought of the Louisville Slugger leaning in its corner, saw the name Barbara Strozzi engraved on it. I hadn’t listened to her music for what seemed a long time and now I hungered for it. I walked home through the Friday-night noise in the Fulham Road, then through the quiet of the path between the common and the District Line. An Upminster train rumbled and clattered past, people printed on the windows as on a tin toy. Crowded but lonely, that train. Maybe all the passengers were headed for a pleasant evening or even a good time; but the train was a lonely tin toy.
At home I put on the Arie, Cantate & Lamenti disc. The voice of Mona Spagele came out of the silence with ‘L’Eraclito Amoroso’. Up and up it circled, obedient to Venus and the moon, to the planetary spring tides and neap tides of love and the death of love. The song was a lament but the beauty of it was Strozzi’s thank-offering for being alive. One doesn’t beg for constant guidance, I thought; one gives oneself and takes what comes.
Well, yes. That had a good sound to it but what did it mean exactly? Getting up from my chair to pour myself a drink I knocked the top book off the nearest stack: Walt Whitman: The Complete Poems. As it hit the floor it fell open to pages 462 and 463. I picked it up and read:
A Noiseless, Patient Spider
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my soul where you stand,