“What time is it?”
“Eight forty-five. I’d better get going. I’m going shopping with Frank at lunchtime for at least two hours. I’ll keep an eye out for coats you might like.”
Or maybe there was no reason. Maybe there was no reason at all. Maybe he just did not like safe harbors. Maybe he was the sort of idiot who enjoyed throwing away the best things that he had found. Nothing would surprise him these days. They finished their breakfast and he put down money enough to cover their food.
Their lines parted at King’s Cross. She continued south. He had to go west. He kissed her and jumped off. He put on his headphones—Martha Argerich playing Bach’s Toccata 911. The Hammersmith and City train was first to arrive. He stepped inside, eyed the other madmen a second or two, dropped into his favorite seat at the end of the carriage, and closed his eyes.
Marriage, commitment, clever wife, pretty wife, dependable wife, capable wife, children, one, two, three, love and money coming in, love and money going out, security, the family breakfast table, homework help sessions, holidays, hobbies, barbecues with friends at the weekends, picnics in the summer, occasional reflections on politics, television, exhibitions, mortgage paid off, holiday home, grandparents, contentment… How had Lina come to represent these things, and why did he alone in all the world think that this wasn’t what life was all about? Why did he alone find it so nauseating and depressing and escapist a proposal? What disfigured gene of contrariety was he carrying? Why was he furious with her for noticing that pianist’s scruffy shoes? Why was he miserable because she bought him a sweater that matched his socks? And what were these minor, minor things beside his own persistent deception and monumental cruelty, which had now been going on for ages? Oh, Ma. All he had to do… all he had to do was get it together. And there it was ahead of him, the motorway through the mountains, the best of the Western human being’s life—laid out, smooth as freshly smeared tarmac in all its satisfying, fulfilling, familial glory, and yet… And yet here he sat, knuckles white, looking desperately this way and that for another route, determined to assert the other, eager and willing as a fool for love, chaos, pain, any kind of feeling that would lead him away, off this main road; here he sat, implacably ready to oppose whatever was asserted and to assert whatever was opposed, steadfastly determined to champion the antagonist, the great adversaries, the counterlifers, to ask the same questions again and again despite knowing that they were probably meaningless, despite knowing that such questions were the wrong questions to ask; here he sat, searching the rain-smothered crags, hoping for that moment when the sun might slice its brief light between the heavy clouds and show him some other way. Some steep and shining path.
26
Club Voltage
The old pipes must have cracked or backed up somewhere. The stink was foul. And the sound of their squelching made him want to retch. Someone appeared to have laid a makeshift pathway of plastic carrier bags across the rancid courtyard; but, torn and thin, they were of no use at all, and the slime simply engulfed them with every footfall. Henry cursed the hole in his sole. The freeze, when it came, would be welcome here. Hard ground. A filthy gull barked as it circled in the cold gruel of the sky.
They passed into a stairwell opposite—a door banged high up above them, there were drunken shouts and then the sound of two or three coming down. Then they were out in the daylight again, into a second, smaller courtyard beyond. This one was muddy too, but not so bad underfoot, mostly broken cobbles, miniature steppingstones. The smell here, if anything, was worse. Fate seemed to have shackled them together, as if two prison friends escaped Sakhalin and slogged these three years three-legged all the way across Siberia in ever-deepening silence, all but abandoning any hope of severance.
They entered the dimness of the building on the far side, crunched on broken glass, and turned down the dark and crumbling stairs below ground level. They walked along a scarred brick corridor, under a low beam, around a corner, past a bare bulb; stepped over bags of damp cement; went past a second light, around wires that stuck out sharp and bent and crazy from the wall, like the severed tendrils of some grotesque creature whose body was trapped on the other side—wherever that was. They went further into the gloom, a jink right, a correcting jink left, and three final steps as far as the third bulb, which illuminated a Lenin-red rusty iron door square across the passageway.
Arkady pressed a half-hidden button to one side, then stood in the glare of the bulb. There was no sound from the buzzer itself and no sound from within. Henry leaned against the wall. Neither spoke.
There had been nothing back from Paris. But London—London was good. London was hope. London was their chance. All Henry had to do was hand over the down payment and there would be no turning back. Arkady would be on his way.
Henry prayed. And he didn’t care that prayer was as big a joke as communism. He prayed with fervor and dutiful urgency, as if he were thirteen again and trying not to touch himself and come top of the class in Latin and not be punched in the arm by Mark Rolke on the bus. He prayed without a second’s counterthought, prayed to God’s only son, somehow both fully human and fully divine, somehow born of a virgin, died (definitely died), and somehow resurrected for our sins—he prayed that they would have enough money, that there would be no problem with Arkady’s friend of a friend of a friend, that the passport and visa would be ordered and collected safely, that Arkady would go, would not delay or stall, that the Russian would make it unhindered to London, and that his family would treat him kindly.
And so far it was damn well working: his prayers had been answered. Okay, so Paris was a nothing. Perhaps Arkady was right—what man wants to hear from his wife’s long-forgotten love child? Perhaps the address was wrong. But Henry’s assiduous Internet fishing for Gabriel and Isabella had finally produced results: too many Isabella Glovers, and no matches at all for Isabella plus Maria, but a single match for Gabriel and Maria Glover—an article from a local newspaper. A godsend. From this Henry had learned that son had “followed mother’s footsteps into journalism.” So, a search for journalists called Gabriel Glover. Disregarding the Americans and subtracting those listings attributable to the same person, three possibles. Next, some very expensive calls to receptionists at the companies most recently served by these Gabriels to “confirm the e-mail because I have to send something…”
Then nothing for five days.
So more calls.
No, Gabriel Glover did not work here anymore, try the Camden Journal. Passed about like a pedantic reader. Until someone on the news desk said, Oh yes, that Gabriel Glover used to work here, on features—God, that must have been about five years ago now. Ask Jim. But Jim was off on holiday.
One week later he had found his lead again: try the contract-publishing firm Roland Sheekey Ltd., Jim advised. Another call to another receptionist, another e-mail pretending to be from Arkady. This time, despite the cost, Henry waited at his desk in the cheap-Internet-and-foreign-calls café near Primoskaya, hoping. Three hours later, he had his man.
Sure, by all means, get in touch when you arrive, look forward to talking very much.