♦
“Hey, Adam. I don’t believing. Fantastic, fantastic.” Vladimir embraced him like a brother, Adam thought, almost tearfully: like a brother who’d been away at a war and had been presumed missing in action.
“You my first visitor,” Vladimir said, stepping back from the front door and beckoning him into the flat.
Vladimir’s single-bedroom flat was in Stepney, in a building erected by a charitable trust housing project from the 19208—Oystergate Buildings, off Ben Jonson Road. It was grimy and grey, built entirely of white-glazed bricks — that gave it an eerie monochrome appearance, almost like a ghost building — glazed bricks that were now cracked and stained. The façade was fussy with open landings, narrow balconies and wrought-iron railings everywhere, a far cry from the austere angles of The Shaft. Vladimir had a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and sitting room. In the sitting room was a new, black, three-seater, leather sofa and a flat-screen TV. The rest of the small apartment seemed entirely unfurnished — no towels in the bathroom, no kitchen utensils — only a mattress and some tangled blankets on the floor of the bedroom.
“You sleep on sofa,” Vladimir said.
“Where did you get this stuff?”
Vladimir flourished his credit card. “You have wonderful country.”
They went out and ate chicken burgers and chips in a Chick—“N”—Go. Adam paid, it was the least he could do, he thought, and Vladimir seemed to have no cash on him — he was living entirely on what his credit card could provide. They bought a six-pack of beer and returned to Oystergate Buildings. Adam gave Vladimir a month’s rent in advance—£80. Vladimir said that everything would change once he started his job on Monday as a hospital porter at the nearby Bethnal & Bow NHS Trust hospital. He would be earning a starting salary of £10,500 a year. He showed Adam his uniform — blue trousers and a white shirt with blue epaulettes and a blue tie — and his necklaced ‘proximity’ ID badge with his photo in the name of ‘Primo Belem’. Then Vladimir asked if he could borrow a further £50—he would pay him back with his first pay cheque. Adam handed it over — he was running low on cash himself now, he’d have to visit his bank in the triangle.
“I get some monkey,” Vladimir said. “We party this weekend before I starting work. We smoke monkey — best quality.”
“Great,” Adam said.
That night he lay on the creaking leather sofa (Vladimir had lent him one of his blankets) thinking about Mhouse and Ly-on. He was feeling sorry for himself again, conscious of the precarious nature of his life, his particular, unique plight and this new threat that, through swift response, was now neutralised, he assumed and hoped. He missed Mhouse and Ly-on, he had to admit, missed his life in The Shaft with them. But he consoled himself: despite the bleak realities he faced — his rare situation — he had done the only thing possible. He had had to leave The Shaft: at least Mhouse and Ly-on would be safe now, that was all that was really important, all that mattered.
31
WHAT IS IT ABOUT DOCTORS’ WAITING ROOMS IN THIS COUNTRY, INGRAM thought? Here he was, about to pay £120 for a brief ten-minute consultation with one of the most sought-after and exclusive general practitioners in London and he might as well be sitting in a two-star provincial hotel in the 19508. Chipped, bad reproduction furniture, a worn, patterned carpet, a job-lot of dusty hunting prints on the wall, a couple of parched spider plants on the window sill, and a two-year-old pile of magazines on a coffee table with a spavined leg. If this were New York or Paris or Berlin it would all be clean, new, solid, glass, steel, lush greenery — the decor saying: I’m very, very successful, I’m high tech, cutting edge, you can trust me with your health concerns. But here in London, in Harley Street…
Ingram sighed, audibly, causing the other waiting patient in the room — a woman with a veil up to her eyes and a head-scarf down to her eyebrows — to look up at him. She had a small boy with her, his arm in a sling. Ingram smiled at her — perhaps she smiled back: he thought her eyes crinkled slightly, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation, but he couldn’t be sure, that was the problem with veils — indeed, that was the purpose of veils. He picked up a copy of Horse and Hound and flicked through it, tossed it down and sighed again. Perhaps he should simply leave — he felt a bit foolish — just a few tiny drops of blood and these potent, fearsome itches: why bother the doctor at all?
“Ingram, old chap. Come away in, laddie.”
Ingram’s doctor, Dr Lachlan McTurk, was a Scot, through and through, but a Scot who did not have a Scottish accent, except when he decided to affect one from time to time. He was very overweight, not quite clinically obese, had a head of thick, unruly grey hair and a flushed, ruddy face. He wore tweed suits in various shades of moss-green, winter and summer. He was married with five children and, although Ingram had been his patient for some thirty years now, he had never met Mrs McTurk or any offspring. He was a cultured man whose keenness to explore and consume every art form available was undiminished. Ingram sometimes wondered why he had bothered to become a doctor at all.
“Will you have a ‘wee dram’, Ingram? It’ll soon be noon.”
“Better not, thanks. I’ve got a rather important meeting.”
Lachlan McTurk had done all the obvious physical tests: blood pressure, pulse, palpation, reflexes, listened to his heart and lungs and could find no sign of anything wrong. He poured himself a generous three fingers of whisky and topped it up from the cold tap at his sink. He sat down behind his desk and lit a cigarette. He began to scribble notes down in a file.
“If you were a motor car, Ingram, I’d say you’ve passed your MOT with flying colours.”
“But where’s this blood coming from? Why? What about these infernal itches?”
“Who knows? They’re not symptoms I recognise.”
“So I’ve nothing to worry about?”
“Well, we’ve all got plenty to worry about. But I would say you could push your health to the back of the queue.”
“I suppose I should be pursued.” Ingram put his jacket on. “What am I saying? I mean relieved. I should be relieved.”
“Do you smoke?”
“Not for twenty years?”
“How much do you drink, roughly?”
“Couple of glasses of wine a day. Approximately.”
“Let’s say a bottle. No — you’re in pretty good nick, in my professional opinion.”
Ingram thought. “Perhaps I will have a small Scotch.” He might as well get something for his £120, he calculated. McTurk poured him his drink and handed it over.
“Have you seen the new production of Playboy of the Western World at the National?” McTurk asked.
“Ah, no.”
“It’s a must. That and the August Macke at Tate Liverpool. If you do two things this month do those. I beg you.”
“Duly noted, Lachlan.” Ingram sipped his Scotch. “I have to admit I’ve been a bit tense, lately. Lot going on.”
“Ah-ha, the Dread Goddess Stress. Stress can do the strangest things to a body.”
“Do you think stress might be the answer?”
“Who knows? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio’.” McTurk stubbed out his cigarette. “So to speak. Do you know what?” he said. “I’m going to run some blood tests. Just so you sleep easy.”
This is what happens, Ingram thought, a simple visit to the doctor and suddenly you discover medical conditions, health problems, you were completely unaware of. McTurk took a good syringe-full of blood from the vein in his right elbow and made a series of samples from it.