David follows tamely, peering about, hiding his nerves behind a show of bravura – still reluctant to admit weakness but sensible enough at least to go along with her decisions, guesswork though many of them are.
On the plus side, people back away on seeing him, providing her with more space than she’d have ever been given on her own.
She leads them into an unlit passage, away from spying security cameras for the first time since they disembarked. A breeze rustles the litter around their feet. It is a hazardous place to be at any time of day, but David close behind her gives her courage.
The passage opens onto a side road in which waits a rickshaw driver smoking a long-stemmed pipe. She has seen these machines in Lizzie Long graphic novels, a bound collectors’ edition of which was in Matthew’s library. Lizzie Long and the Shah of Persia’s cat, Lizzie Long and the Great Wall, Lizzie Long and the Velvet Flower. Lizzie in army shirt with epaulettes and khaki shorts, always knowing what to do… always someone to be reckoned with.
Evie steps into the street and the driver removes his pipe and spits a string of phlegm into the gutter where it lies, glowing, giving the illusion of pulsating on the surface of the dirty snow.
They eye each other speculatively. He is appraising her as a commercial proposition. She’s feeling like she’s entered the pages of a Lizzie Long picture book.
‘What would you charge to go to Waterloo station?’ she asks.
He tilts his head, assessing how much there is of her under her coat – how much work she will be to tug along. ‘Thirtydollarmissy,’ he mutters, his lips barely parting beneath his moustache.
Thirty dollars, she repeats to herself, thinking about how much money she has left and what she can afford.
David emerges from the passage behind her, dwarfing the fragile vehicle. The driver backs along the kerb. ‘Noride, noride,’ he snarls, flapping his hands.
‘You need to take both of us,’ she says, hoping that his sudden reluctance is just part of the negotiation.
‘Noride,’ he repeats, but although he wags a yellowed fingernail up at David, she senses that there is a price he will be willing to accept.
‘One hundred,’ she says, ‘for the two,’ holding up two fingers.
‘Twohundred.’
‘One,’ she insists, buoyed by David’s presence, folding her arms, attempting to be resolute despite how irresolute she feels. How would Daniels have done this? He always gave the impression he knew what was fair and that people knew he knew.
‘Onefiftyandnotabloodycentlessmissy,’ the driver hisses, hunching his shoulders and turning his back on them.
It is a lot for the addition of a second passenger but she has little choice. If this continues, they’ll start to attract attention.
They clamber into the back. David takes up two-thirds of the narrow cushion, squashing her against the struts.
The driver climbs onto the cycle attached to the front and they leave the kerb, slowly at first, wheels slipping, but gaining pace.
As they tilt around the corner, she glances behind through the little window in the rear of the hood. It has become a habit, checking her tail. She sees nothing, but it is still difficult to relax.
Their progress is accompanied by a string of complaints. ‘Một cô gái ma và một cậu bé béo…’ the driver wheezes. ‘Nói về việc mang lại xui xẻo.’ The tirade is louder on the slippery downhill when he has the breath and can freewheel with his feet clear of the pedals. They hit the uphill again, ‘Lừa!’, he repeats bitterly, ‘lừa!’, and as they meet a broad junction, he sneezes loudly into his loose sleeve, muttering what could have been ‘sly bitch’.
He seems so angry that maybe the deal she struck is better than she’d supposed – although she is also suspicious of the original price. Without David’s presence, he could have been intending to drive her somewhere isolated to rob her.
He would have had a surprise, though, when she’d fought back.
With the two of them in the rear, the machine rides at a list like a poorly loaded dhow. David’s shoulder presses against Evie. She can feel his warmth.
What would Lizzie Long have made of events, ever scornful of male assistance as she was? Her only companion in her stories was a kimono-clad twelve-year-old rescued from an orphanage in Kyoto, expert at both the tea ceremony and with the deadly needle-pointed tanto, one of which she kept concealed in her sash at all times.
While the streets are relatively clear, the kerbs are crowded with wrecks, flat on their axles as if ploughed into the tarmac – the legacy of bio-fuels growing scarce and reliable electricity becoming unaffordable for most.
The rickshaw builds momentum, steaming over junctions irrespective of traffic signals. A small solar-powered car, similar to Maplin’s, halts suddenly ahead of them and their driver is forced to swerve. He passes it with an inch to spare, leaning down to knuckle the window. ‘Bạn nghĩ bạn đang lái xe gì?’ he shouts, kicking the door with the toe of his sandal. ‘Một chiếc xe bò trong một lĩnh vực?’
David chuckles, his shoulder rocking hers. It is the first time she has seen him smile. His face is swooningly beautiful, that has been her impression from the start, but only now does she begin to find it likeable.
‘What is it?’ she asks, smiling back, suddenly less alone.
‘He called him “driver of bullock cart”,’ he murmurs.
‘You understood that?’
‘I try to figure out what I can – it was useful to know what the people who came to look at me were saying. I got to know Vietnamese quite well.’
Evie is astonished. To have taught himself languages without books, purely through observing visitors to his exhibitions, puts her own ineffectual attempts at self-education, when she had a whole library to hand, deeply in the shade.
‘What else did he say?’
‘Something about ghosts, I think because of your “moon” skin.’ David chuckles again. ‘Something about marriage also, but for that you’ll need to play your cards right, apparently he has two very ungrateful wives already and the last thing he needs is a third.’
Evie stares back. The light from a roadside fire flickers over his cheek. In the last few minutes, he has said more than in the whole of the preceding three hours and something of the confidence and charisma she glimpsed from the other side of his enclosure in the museum is re-emerging.
27
At Waterloo, Evie and David wait for the morning train, hiding in the end cubicle in the men’s latrines. The locked, cramped space is comforting – they are safe for a while, at least.
‘Where are you from?’ he asks, surprising her with his interest. It is the first personal question he has asked.
‘From here in London,’ she replies, although all that seems like a very long time ago.
‘What is London like?’
‘I loved my home. I was happy there. The rest of it – all of this,’ she glances about them, ‘I’d rather forget.’
‘I heard the curators say you killed your owner.’
Evie tenses. ‘That is untrue. What is true is that I killed the man who did kill my… my husband, and I wouldn’t have even done that if I hadn’t been forced to.’
‘I am sorry,’ he says, meekly, ‘I did not mean to make you angry.’
‘You didn’t,’ she says, although her voice is still raised. ‘It is just that people are telling lies. And the truth is the opposite of what they are saying.’
‘So after what happened, you had to leave?’ he asks, his gentle tone soothing her.