“No, I’m not.” The truth was temporary, but it was still a truth.
“Well, you will be seeing him. I know what you’re doing.”
I said nothing, turning away from the wall and the phone, the coiled cable of the receiver stretching across my throat. A telephone conversation has an unseen quality, each speaker invisible to the other. I tried to imagine where Niall was: a shuttered room in a French villa, bare polished floorboards, flowers and sunlight, different voices in another room? Or some house in London, one he had broken in to so he could use the phone? His voice sounded so close it was impossible to believe he was in France. If he wanted me to visit him, why did he not tell me where he was? If he was paranoid about you, why had he gone away and left me?
He was still crowding me; it was just a new way of doing it.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Niall said.
“I’ve nothing to say that you would want to hear.”
“I’m only asking you to see me for a few days.”
I said, “You’re interfering because you know I’ve met someone else. If you must know, I’m going out with Richard tonight.”
Niall broke the connection immediately, hanging up on me. The line clicked, went clear, and then I heard a whining sound. I was left standing there with the thing in my hand, still tangled up in the cable, listening to the petulant noise. No one had ever hung up on me before, and it had an instant effect. I felt angry, humiliated, repentant and alarmed, all at once. I wanted to call him back directly, but I had no idea how to do that.
You arrived a few minutes later, and I was still upset by the call. I was relieved, just then, that we were still relatively unknown to each other, because I was able to conceal this from you. We saw a film that evening, then afterward went for a late supper. That night, when you ran me home in the car, I invited you in. We stayed up talking very late, and at the end of it our kisses were lingering and intimate. We did not sleep together. Before you left we made plans to go for a walk the following afternoon.
Shortly before you were due to arrive, I finally admitted to myself that I was in a jumpy state. It had been growing in me all morning, and I had tried to ignore it. A few minutes before you arrived I could hardly keep still for the tension, knowing that Niall was going to ring.
When the telephone went I was almost relieved. I ran to it before anyone else in the house could get to the hail, and picked it up. How did he know?
This call was different. Niall was in, or sounded as if he was in, a suppressed mood. He apologized for hanging up on me the day before, and said he had been upset.
“When I saw you in the pub with Grey, I knew you preferred him to me. I had to go away. I knew this would happen one day.”
His voice was clear and close, almost as if he were in the next house. I was trembling.
“I want to lead a normal life,” I said. “You know that.”
“Yes, but why are you doing this to me?”
“Richard’s just a friend.” It was a lie, because already you had become more than that. Perversely, I wanted Niali to be angry, because that would be easier.
“Then if he doesn’t matter to you, come and see me.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said, wondering if by appearing to go along with what he wanted I would find out what he was doing. “I don’t even know where you are.”
“If I tell you, will you promise to visit me?”
“I said I’ll think about it.”
“Just a few days, so we can be together.”
“Then tell me how to find you. No, wait a minute—”
The doorbell had rung, and I could see your shape through the frosted and stained-glass window built into the front door. While the receiver swung on its cable I opened the front door. I explained I was in the middle of a conversation, and showed you into my room. I made sure the door was closed so you would not hear, and cupped my hand over the mouthpiece.
“Go on, Niall.”
“He’s there, isn’t he?”
“Tell me where you are.”
He started detailed instructions which I barely heard: a train to Marseilles, a bus along the Coast, the village of Saint-Raphael, a white-painted house. I was thinking: it’s a lie, he’s making it up, he’s somewhere close by and watching me, in a house across the road, standing by the window and seeing you arrive, following me whenever I meet you. How else does he know to call just before I see you?
I let him finish, then said, “Why are you telling me all this, Niall?”
“I want to see you. When will you leave? Tomorrow?”
“I’m going to have to go now.”
“Not just yet!”
“I’ve got to. Goodbye, Niall.”
I put down the phone before I heard anything else. I was still trembling because I knew he was in London and the story about France was untrue. He knew I would know, but we both maintained the lie. What was he up to?
I was too upset to see you straight away, so I walked to the front door and leaned against it for a few moments, trying to steady myself. Something moved outside, vaguely blurred through the translucent glass. I started with alarm, and backed away. I think it was only a bird, or someone walking down the road. I thought of you, waiting inside my room, just a few feet away. All I wanted was to be with you, but Niall intruded at every step. He must know our plans! I remembered the terrible dread that Niall could achieve a level of invisibility which even I could not detect. He could be with me every moment I was with you!
It was madness to think he was capable of such deviousness.
But how else? As I stood alone in the bare hallway, plucking up the courage to go in and see you, I wondered, not for the first time, whether invisibility itself was a form of madness. Niall himself had once described it as the inability to believe in oneself, a failure of identity. The glams led a mad life, riddled with phobias and neuroses, paranoiac in their creed, parasitic on society. Their perception of the real world was distorted, a classic definition of insanity. If so, then my wish for normality would be a quest for sanity, a search for belief in myself and a sense of my own identity. Niall’s hold on me was the desperate clutching of a madman who sees a fellow inmate open the outer door of an asylum, yet who knows he cannot follow.
To escape I had to put the madness behind me. Not just cure myself, but change my whole knowledge of the invisible world. While Niall made me believe he was haunting me, his grip was still tight around me.
My only hope of normality was to disbelieve in him.
You were standing by the window in my room, looking out at what could be seen of the overgrown garden. You turned as soon as I walked in, and came smiling across the room to kiss me.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “Just a friend.”
“You look a little pale. Is everything all right?”
“I need some fresh air. Where shall we go?”
“What about the Heath?”
I made a perfunctory effort to tidy the room, realizing I had left a pile of unwashed clothes on the floor and half-finished work scattered across my desk, then collected my bag and we drove to Hampstead. It was another hot afternoon, and there were people all over the Heath, enjoying London’s unreliable summer. We strolled around all afternoon, arms linked, talking and looking at the other people, sometimes kissing. I loved being with you.
That evening we went to your flat and there we made love for the first time. I felt secure in your flat, believing that Niall could not find it, and so I was more relaxed with you than I had ever been. A summer storm blew up while we were in bed, and we lay there in the sultry evening, the windows open, while the thunder rolled across the roofs. It felt delicious and illicit to be curled up naked with you, listening to the weather.