It was a curious way of putting it; one of the names has fled the country, another, of course, is under house arrest. In fact, that was the very difficulty he was coming to — ‘He’s under house arrest and it’s pretty impossible for him to handle the money.’
‘There’s still money coming into the country?’
It wasn’t a matter for my curiosity, but he had drawn me along so far, and I suppose he felt he owed me something. ‘Coming in, all right. At least it would if we could arrange for it. Good God, Liz, if you knew what I’ve tried, these few days. I’ve been battling to fix something up, but wherever I go, from this one to that one, there’s a snag —’
‘It’s dangerous! Don’t you think they know about you, by now?’
He didn’t answer, only smiled as if to say, debonairly, let’s leave that one alone. If he hasn’t someone on his tail, he would never admit it, and if he has, well, the fact has long since been accepted by both trailed and trailer, they will run their course together.
‘It’s such an easy thing, too, Liz man’ — as if I could banish the obtuseness, the unwillingness of ‘this one and that one’ — ‘it’s just somebody with a bank account with a bit of money in it. Somebody who gets cash from overseas sometimes — that’s all you need. Don’t you know someone who’ll take a few extra credits for the next few months?’
So that was it. I was caught out; like that game we used to play as children, when the one who was ‘he’ would drop a handkerchief behind your back and you would suddenly find yourself ‘on’; it doesn’t matter how alert you think you’re being, you still get the handkerchief served on you.
There was a quickening of wits between us. ‘Who on earth would I know!’ I made it sound ridiculous.
‘Some friend —’ If I had drawn back, he had stepped up to confront me. He had that expression again, as if the sun were in his eyes; dazzled but not deflected.
‘But what friend?’
His large eyes took in, barred in advance, any way out I might try. He waited.
‘I don’t know anybody — and what about the colonel?’ Anyone who received this money would go the same way as old Gaisford.
‘No, there’s no chance of that — we’ve got it taped, now.’ He gave the fatally easy assurance you always get from people like him. ‘And we won’t use one account for more than six months or so, from now on.’
He went on looking at me, half-smiling, satisfied I couldn’t get away.
‘You’re not thinking of me!’
It was absurd, but he saw the absurdity as another attempt at evasion, and made me feel as if I were concealing something by it. But what? It’s true that I have no money coming to me from abroad, in fact nothing in the bank more than the small margin — which often dwindles into the red — between the salary I deposit at the beginning of a month and the bills I pay by the end. He laughed with me, at last, but beneath it, I saw his purpose remain; the laughter was an aside.
‘Ah, come on, Liz.’
I told him he must be mad. I didn’t know of anyone, anyone at all whom I could even approach. I said I was out of that sort of circle long ago — a meaningless thing to say since we both knew he wouldn’t have come to me, couldn’t have come to me, otherwise. But everything I was saying was meaningless. What I was really telling him and what he understood was that I should be afraid to do what he asked, should be afraid even if I knew ‘someone’, even if I had some feasible explanation for money suddenly coming in to my bank account. We kept up the talk on a purely practical level, and it was a game that both of us understood — like the holding and flirting. The flirting is even part of this other game; there was a sexual undertone to his wheedling, cajoling, challenging confrontation of me, and that’s all right, that’s honest enough.
I said I’d think about it; I’d try and come up with a suggestion. If I could think of someone, I’d perhaps even sound out whoever it was, to see. He told me a few more details — ‘Just let me brief you’ (he likes that sort of phrase) — as if the person would ever exist.
And while we talked, the thought was growing inside me, almost like sexual tumescence, and like it — I was nervous — perhaps communicating its tension: there’s my grandmother’s account. She always has had dividends coming in from all over the place. For more than a year, now, in order to make payments (for the Home, and other odd expenses) independent of her unreliable mental state, I have had her power of attorney. I was afraid Luke would somehow divine — not the actual fact, but that there was a possibility; that there really was something for me to conceal. His hand, his young, clumsy presence (there at my pleasure, I could ask him to leave whenever I wanted) hung over it. And at the same time I had the feeling that he had somehow known all along, all evening, that there was a possibility, some hidden factor, that he would get me to admit to myself. Probably just the black’s sense that whites, who have held the power so long, always retain somewhere, even if they have been disinherited, some forgotten resource — a family trinket coming down from generations of piled-up possessions.
‘Even for say six months, good God, you don’t know how important it would be for us — even just a few months.’ We went on talking as though the non-existent ‘someone’ I should never approach were already found.
I kept saying, ‘Well, I can’t promise anything — maybe as I think about it … there might be a name I can’t think of straight off. But I doubt it …’ and he hovered on the margin of my uncertainties and excuses, snapping them up like a bird swooping on mosquitoes: ‘It’d be marvellous, man. Our hands are tied, tied! The money’s there in London, waiting for us, but for eight months now — eight months! — we haven’t been able to move, our hands are tied!’
‘Well, I’ll look around and let you know.’
‘You’ll let me know?’
I said, yes, we’d be in touch; we always say that when he comes; it means that perhaps in six weeks, three months, he will turn up again, and I’ll tell him that I’m awfully sorry, I couldn’t find anyone.
He said, ‘Tomorrow night?’
But I could say with a laugh at his impatience, ‘It’s tomorrow already — give me a chance. I’ll have to think.’
So he said, affectionately, watchfully, ‘All right, Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe. You see I’ve got to get back, I can’t hang around here too long.’ He kept looking at me with a jaunty, admiring male pride, as if I were displaying some special audacity that charmed him. ‘I’d better let you get some sleep,’ he said, coming over and putting out a hand to pull me up from the sofa. I was chilly and wrapped my arms round myself. ‘What’ll you do now’ — his eyes took in the room again — ‘phone the boyfriend?’ I looked at him and smiled. ‘He’s fast asleep long ago.’ We spoke softly at the door, and when I opened it, signalled goodnight, because of the light still showing behind the glass door of the flat opposite. The soles of his shoes creaked, and I wanted to laugh. He grinned and, with just the right, light regret, put the palm of his hand a moment on my backside, with the gesture with which one says, wait there.
Chapter 7
And so he’s gone, my Orpheus in his too-fashionable jacket, back to the crowded company that awaits him somewhere in the town-outside-the-town. In a way it must be a relief to leave behind pale Eurydice and her musty secrets, her life-insured Shades (Graham has made me take out an all-risk policy). At this time of night, all the objects in the room lie around me like papers the wind has blown flat in an empty lot. I stand about; but where can I go, to whom? This is the place I have hollowed out for myself. Only the flowers, that are opening their buds in water and will be dead by Monday, breathe in the room. I put my face in among them, ether-cool snowdrops; but it is a half-theatrical gesture.