It was only just four. Partly because of the necessity of pretending that he was going to the bank, he had given himself three and a half hours, plenty of time. His idea was to walk along the canal, which he had come to know quite well since that first night, when he had lost himself in the Paddington basin. The route would be quieter and it was direct to Camden. He could stop along the way without needing to spend any money. From Camden, it looked straightforward to Kentish Town.
At first it was easy, but soon the water disappeared into a tunnel where there was no path, and for a while he wandered around trying to find where the canal reemerged. He asked a passerby, but she knew nothing. (Nobody in London seemed to know where they were, or where anything was, or where anything might be.) When finally he saw the water again, brown and turbid in the rain, he could not get down to the bank, so he was forced to walk on the road above until the fence was low enough to vault.
The towpath was deserted and he slowed a little, more confident. He listened to the sounds of his boots and his breathing. His previous anxiety—that he had not actually stolen anything that night when Oleg had left the hole in her window—had ceased to bother him entirely; it seemed irrelevant now that he was actually here in London and so close. His plan was to be sure to find out where the brother was. Find out if Gabriel Glover was ignoring his e-mails and calls or if his silence was something to do with all the bullshit that had been going on last Sunday. Either way, he wanted to see Gabriel too. Make sure that there was no chance at all of anything from brother as well as from sister. Make sure there was nothing offered, nothing to hope for. Nothing.
Once he knew how to get hold of the brother, then… then he would simply tell the sister the truth. There was no longer any reason to piss around with the strategies that he and Henry had talked about—ways of getting to know them while making up further bullshit about Maria Glover and her fucking piano. There was no time and no point. If the sister did not want to know, if she was hostile, then fuck it. He would go and find the brother. And if he did not want to know either, then fine. His choice would be made. His new life would start. Good. Fuck the piano. Fuck the conservatory. Fuck Mother Russia. He was staying here and he was going to make money like everybody else. It would be bullshit at first, but he would get through that phase quick enough. Hundreds of Russians were doing the same. Brothers, sisters. Yes, he was down to it.
He passed a mooring. There were no lights on any of the boats. His cap was sodden but his feet were still dry. He passed some fine buildings, pale-colored and elegant, and he was reminded of Petersburg. He saw pretty gardens on the opposite bank. He passed beneath a bridge that dripped and echoed away into the narrowing darkness wherein he could not see. He passed what seemed to him to be giant nets that loomed crazily against the wet heavens. All the while the sleet continued to come down, bending this way and that in the wind, slapping against the plastic of his makeshift cloak. The path ahead was slick and shiny. He kept on, breathing steadily, the water streaming down his face.
46
Between its Disguises
Six forty-five and the Internet café on Kentish Town High Street was half empty. She seemed to be spending her life at these places, but she did not want to go back and disturb Susan and her family. She had said that she would be out until late. And she wanted to let them have their dinner uninterrupted. The last two flats she had seen had been a total waste of time. She’d canceled the third, and now she had three quarters of an hour.
There were a few tourists tapping vigorously at the cheap keyboards, Australians mostly, and a circle of Lebanese huddled around a screen in the corner, but most of the seats were unoccupied. She was facing the wall near the entrance, one empty booth in from the front window. A cheap neon sign advertised unspecific “exchange” to the world beyond, and the back of the flashing light caused the frame of her screen to glow red-gray thirty times a minute.
Outside, the lashing continued, but more sporadically now. If she looked up and turned her head to the left, she could see directly onto the high street. Minicabs, vans, and rented limousines arguing one inch at a time up and down, up and down, up and down. The sleet like thin liquid wires in the headlights.
She must have been sitting in something like a trance, staring at the screen, when she first became aware of someone behind her. A steady, unmoving presence Not someone hovering, as if hoping to interrupt with a quick question, but someone in the business of waiting, steadily—waiting for her to look up, look around, turn her attention toward him. Which she purposely did not do for a minute or two, having learned a long time ago that the best way to handle unwanted men in public is to ignore them completely. She deleted part of the question she had typed: “Did you ever meet her mother, Russian granny?” And then deleted the whole paragraph.
Her second thought was one of irritation. She wanted to reread what she had written alone. But the presence was still there, refusing to go away, a force field behind her chair. Her irritation began to escalate… She didn’t want some bloody random bloke… For Christ’s sake. With anger jackknifing her brow, she swung away from her screen to meet the face, a curse on her lips.
The man standing a just-polite distant behind her was tall, thin, and trying to smile. He had messy, longish blond-brown hair swept to one side off his forehead, and he was wearing an ill-fitting older man’s suit jacket with faded blue jeans and what looked like hiking boots. But it was neither frame nor clothes nor boots that stopped her mouth: it was his face. Hollow cheeks, head raised a fraction in defiance despite the effort at a smile; close-shaved; nose, lips, and brow as even as an icon’s, and a sunken pair of deepest turquoise eyes. It struck her for a second as the face of some ancient human tribe from an unknown pinnacle of civilization long ago. Not handsome—indeed, the sort of face that made “handsome” sound silly—but striking, enduring, prototypical in the way of those faces on ancient vases or the ones cut in stone. And the eyes… the eyes stopped her dead. All of this before she recognized him—then a flood of confusion as she realized who he was, bafflement that she had not seen these features for what they were on the street when loading Adam’s car. Followed, just as suddenly (as he held out his massive hand), by the thought that he looked nervous and tense.
“Hello. I saw you in the window. I was going to the station where we arrange to meet. I am sorry for the surprise.”
She recovered herself. Evidently it was just writing to her father that was heightening everything. She noticed now that the jacket he was wearing was the upper half of the suit he had been sporting on Gabriel’s doorstep.
“Hi. No, not at all. I just didn’t recognize… How are you? What time is it?”
“I am early. It will not be half past seven for forty minutes.”
“Sorry. No, I didn’t mean that.” She didn’t. She realized that it was quite normal for a Russian to stop in if he saw an acquaintance; only Londoners crossed the street and pretended not to have seen each other so as to arrive at an appointment separately. “Hang on, I’ve just got to save this and shut down and then we are gone.”