“His grandfather would be so proud.”
I woke the next morning, hours after the alarm clock usually pesters me into wakefulness, punch-drunk and groggy, with a dank, sickly sensation in the pit of my stomach. Beside my bed was a glass of water, a packet of Alka-Seltzer and a small square of cream-colored card on which was scrawled the following:
Report Monday morning.
We’ll send a car at 8.
Then, an unconvincingly hearty postscript.
Enjoy your weekend.
As soon as I had showered and felt at least 70 percent awake, I switched on my computer, logged not the Internet, clicked into Google and typed the phrase: “the Directorate.” It returned not a single hit. According to the most powerful search engine in the world, the organization which Dedlock had told me was the last hope for the British people did not even exist.
I had supper with Abbey before she went out, fielding her bemused inquiries by improvising something about having got an unexpected promotion, asked if anyone had come home with me the previous night. She shot me an oddly disappointed look. No, she said. She hadn’t seen or heard anyone but me.
We did the washing up together and she left to meet her friends, leaving me lolled in front of the television, flicking aimlessly from game show to sitcom to murder mystery, wondering whether all of it wasn’t so much lather and bubbles to mask the real truth of the world, the grime, the scum beneath.
On Sunday, partly because I couldn’t think of anything better to do, partly because Mr. Jasper had peremptorily suggested it, I went into town, where I bought myself a new gray suit, a couple of shirts and some fresh underwear, and where, for a short while, things felt almost normal again.
In the afternoon, I saw Granddad. The ward was busier and noisier than before, cramped with families trooped dutifully in to visit half-forgotten relatives, packing the place with their guilty faces, their bored offspring and wilting bunches of grapes. There they sat, disguising their yawns, making pointless small talk, checking their watches every other minute, counting down till the end of visiting time.
I took Granddad’s paper-skinned hand in mine and broke my silence only once.
“What were you keeping from me?” I asked. “What did you have to hide?”
No answer save for the ceaseless reproach of life support.
Suddenly the lull was over. I was out of bed on Monday morning, showered and breakfasted at least an hour before I needed to be ready. I sat watching the morning news with its usual countdowns of crisis and disaster, feeling as fluttery and nervous as I suppose I must have done on my first day at school Abbey drifted into the room in her pajamas and dressing gown, peerlessly elegant even as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. “You’re up early.”
“My new job starts today.”
“I know.” She grinned. “Wouldn’t forget that, would I?”
“You might,” I burbled. “No one expects you to keep track of the lodger.”
She reached out and ruffled my hair. “Oh, you’re more than a lodger.”
I turned a shade of damson.
“New suit?”
I said that it was.
“Thought so. But you’re not cycling in that, though, are you?”
“Believe it or not, they’re sending a car.”
Abbey arched an exquisite eyebrow. “You have gone up in the world.” She disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged a few minutes later with a bowl of chocolate cereal. I rose, checked my appearance in the mirror and turned to say good-bye.
“Have a good day.”
“You too. Good luck.”
I walked toward the door.
“Henry?”
I turned back.
“I really like the suit.”
“Thanks.”
“You look good…” An implication of naughtiness crossed her face. “I definitely would.”
There was another silence, still longer than before, during which I cannot honestly say which of us flushed the pinker.
“Bye,” I said, and fumbled with the latch, burning with embarrassment and improbable hope. I was halfway down the stairs and almost onto the street when I was struck by a tiny irony. Today was my birthday.
An elderly black cab idled by the curb, a torn piece of card blue-tacked against its window. It read:
Lamb
The driver (unkempt, straggle haired, a stranger to the razor) was engrossed in a chunky hardback book. I tapped on the glass and he wound the window grudgingly down.
“Good morning,” I said, trying my best to sound cheerful. “I’m Henry Lamb.”
The driver stared at me.
“I was told you’d be waiting.”
Another long, sizing-up look, unticlass="underline" “You can call me Barnaby. You’d better get in.”
I hauled open the door and scrambled into the back seat. The interior was covered in the kind of long white hairs which smell of wet dog and cling jealously to your clothing for days.
“So you own a dog?” I asked, trying to make conversation as I strapped myself in and Barnaby cajoled the engine into life.
“Dog? Why would you think I own a dog? Yappy little gits.”
A long and very awkward pause ensued. We were passing through the dregs of Stockwell before either of us spoke again.
“What are you reading?” I asked at last, still attempting to be pleasant.
Alarmingly, Barnaby took his eyes from the road to glance down at the title. “The Middle Narratives of H. Rider Haggard and the Structuralist Problem of Modernity.”
“Sounds a bit heavy going.”
Barnaby reacted to this with barely checked fury, as though I’d just insulted his sister. “You think I’m a driver? Just a bloody cabbie? Is that what you thought?”
I blurted out a ham-fisted retraction. “I’m not sure what I meant.”
“Well, I know what you meant. I know damn well what you meant. Listen, before I was recruited by Dedlock’s outfit, I was a whole lot more than just a driver.”
“Oh, right. Really? What did you do?”
“I was professor of literature at one of this country’s foremost centers of excellence. I was an acknowledged authority on fin de siecle peril fiction. So I like to keep my hand in. Big deal. You got a problem with that?”
“Course not.” Although taken aback by his belligerence, I was still determined to be civil, the importance of a sort of relentlessly cheerful politeness having been instilled in me by Granddad since the crib. “So…” I floundered about for a question. “What made you give up academia for all this.”
“Wasn’t given a choice, was I? Those greedy bastards framed me. Got me thrown out of college on the most disgusting charges. The whole business was completely trumped up. There wasn’t an ounce of truth in any of it. It was a wicked, stinking pack of lies. You understand me, Lamb? It was all invention. The whole pernicious lot of it. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
“Absolutely,” I said hastily. “Without a doubt.”
After that, the rest of the journey went by in sullen silence, as we passed through Clapham, Brixton and on to central London via an unusually circuitous route. Abruptly, we turned a corner and found ourselves in the taxi line at Waterloo station.
Barnaby exhaled noisily. “You can get out and walk from here.”
In the shadow of the Eye, Mr. Jasper was waiting. A queue of sightseers snaked around him on the pavement — disgorged passengers from those coaches already wallowing by the side of the street.
Strange that in the twenty-first century, the city’s greatest attraction should be a bird’s-eye view of itself. For all its cocky futurism, there was something Victorian about the Eye. It had a sense of permanence and antiquity, as though it had been there for decades, looking down upon London as it burgeoned and swelled. It is easy to imagine the Elephant Man being taken aboard for a daytrip, staring awe-struck through the glass and wittering on about how terribly kind everyone had been to him.