Late, far later than he had expected, she called him from a pay phone. She had arrived at Totnes station, and was about to hire a taxi. She was with him half an hour later.
When she saw he had finished, Sue said, “Do you understand what it means, Richard?”
“What is this?”
“It’s Niall’s way of dealing with the inevitable. It’s a story, something he made up about us.”
“But why should he give it to you?”
“He wanted me to know. He wrote it to say that he finally accepted that I had finished with him, and wanted you.”
“This is what happened, though! How the hell could he have written it?”
“It’s just a story,” Sue said.
Holding the sheaf of papers in his hand, Grey slowly rolled them, making them into a short truncheon.
“But how did he know?” he said. “When did Niall give you this? You said it was just after the car bomb—but this is what really happened later!”
“I don’t understand it either,” Sue said.
“Niall didn’t make this up! He couldn’t have! He must have been there—all the time I was in hospital Niall was there too! That’s what this means. Don’t you see that?”
“Richard, that story’s been in my room for months.”
Suddenly Grey moved in his seat, looking wildly from side to side.
“Is Niall following us now? Is he here?”
“I told you, Niall is always here. Don’t let it matter.”
“He’s here now, Sue! He’s in this room!” Grey stood up, lurching on his weak hip, and took a clumsy step to the side. He flailed at the air with the papers in his hand. The beer can at his feet fell on its side, the frothy lager pouring in gulps onto the carpet. Grey swung about, groping with one hand at the air around him, prodding and punching with the rolled-up pages in his other fist. He moved awkwardly to the door, snatched it open to peer outside, then slammed it closed. He reached blindly for me as the air swirled about us both.
I stood back, keeping my distance, not wishing to be struck with a truncheon of my own making.
“Hold it!” I shouted, but of course you did not hear.
I heard Susan say, “Richard, you’re making a fool of yourself!” but neither of us paid her any attention. You were directly in front of me, balancing your weight on your good leg, your fist raised against me, your eyes in their desperation seeming to stare straight at me. I turned away from your disconcerting gaze, even though you would never be able to see me.
It has gone far enough. Here it ends.
Hold that position, Grey; nothing more is going to happen. Susan too; stay still!
I pause.
My hands are trembling. You scare me, Grey. We both threaten each other, you with your blundering ability to cause pain, I with my freedom to manipulate you. But now I am in control, and you can stay there as you are.
All right, Grey, let me tell you what you least wish to hear:
I am your invisible adversary and I am somewhere around you. You can never see me. I have been everywhere with you: I watched you at the hospital, I was there when Susan came to see you, I overheard what you said. I was in the South of France, I followed you about Wales, I have been with you in London. You have never been free of me. I have looked at you and listened to you; I know what you have done and everything you have thought. Nothing is private to you because I know you as well as you know yourself. I said I would fix you, Grey, and that is what I did.
I am everything you have ever feared. I am indeed invisible to you, but not in the sense you mean.
IX
Consider the room in which the three of us now find ourselves. We are in confrontation once more, facing up to each other ineffectually, and as ever failing to see. Yet there is a difference: you and Susan are both here, but I am not. I am no more here than I can be everywhere, because each is an absurdity.
Consider this room, the living room of your apartment.
I feel I know it intimately, although in reality I have never visited it. No matter; I can see it. I can move around it, walking or even drifting, look at it in its generality or inspect it in the closest detail. Here the white-painted walls that Susan so dislikes, covered with the cheap emulsion paint used by the builders who converted the house into flats; here the slightly worn carpet and furniture once owned by your parents. A television set in one corner, a layer of pale dust over the screen, a video recorder beneath it, the digital clock blinking on and off because you have never bothered to set it properly. I see a couple of bookshelves attached to one wall, and they are sagging in the middle because you or whoever put them up did not properly measure the distance between the brackets. I can scan along the shelves to look at your choice of books—some technical manuals, books of photography, a stack of glamour magazines, a random selection of paperback novels with broken spines—and I know you are not a serious reader except when you travel. On the sill against the window are the marks on the white paint where your houseplants stood; the sunlight has yellowed the paint except for five circular patches, themselves slightly marked by grains of dried potting compost. There is a faint smell of dust, also of damp. Your room speaks of transience, impermanence. I judge you are often away, that you do not feel settled or comfortable here even though you have owned the place for some time.
I know this room. I have inhabited it mentally from the day I first knew of you. It is real to me because this is how I have always visualized it, how I have imagined it when I have known you are here. I know the rest of the apartment in the same way, my interest in you extending to everything about you.
Your real life does not concern me, nor does the reality of where you might actually live. This is what I have created for you.
So here you are in this room, and Susan is with you. Both of you are motionless, because for the time being I have stilled you. Susan is sitting wide-eyed in the chair by the window, watching what you are trying to do. She has placed her canvas bag on the floor beside the chair and its strap snakes lightly over one of her feet. On the carpet in front of her is the opened envelope in which I had given her my story. A dark pooi of moisture lies in the weave of the carpet beside the overturned beer can. You are a few feet away from Susan, frozen in your aggressive search, just as you were when I decided to call a halt.
And I am here too, of course, although neither of you can see me.
What do you hope to achieve as you search for me? If you found me what would you do? Do you seek some kind of conclusion to all our wretched dealings? Surely I cannot matter to you anymore, as for weeks I have left you alone, or at least have left you alone as far as you were aware? You have stirred me from my quiescence by this sudden eruption of interest in me. Left to yourself, you had decided to break off your relationship with Susan. That suited me; only Susan concerns me, and as soon as you have finished with her I will be finished with you. So why should I matter to you anymore?
Yes, but Susan has shown you what I have written about you!
You clasp it in your hand, knowing that it describes you. It invalidates you, Grey. What you remember of the hospital now becomes false because I created it for you, and by extension it invalidates your memories of France, and by extension from that it invalidates everything else. You thought you could trust those memories because they have conviction, but I can tell you they have not.
Do you believe me? How good is your memory? Can you believe anything you remember or do you trust only what you are told?