‘What was all that about?’ I asked Jim as we turned out of Houghton Street and walked down towards the Strand tube station.
‘Nothing, really. Nothing worth talking about.’
‘Come off it Jim, you owe me an explanation. Those blokes weren’t doing a late pick-up. At least I didn’t see you sign for anything. They were talking about me.’
‘Yeah, well I did tell them that you might be interested …’
‘In what? Interested in what?’
‘In meeting this Carlos fellow.’
‘I don’t even know who he is. How do you know I’d be interested in meeting him?’
‘Well, you were interested in Stein’s lecture. And Carlos isn’t dissimilar, excepting that he’s something of a leader, as well as a teacher.’
‘Leading what? Who does he teach?’
‘This little group of motorcycle couriers. I suppose you’d think it was all a little bit cranky. Another facet of my overriding obsession. But these bikeys have cottoned on to almost the same set of ideas as I have myself.’ He paused. ‘They’re fed up with waiting.’
‘Well, I’d be fed up with waiting if I were a despatch rider. It must be an incredibly frustrating thing to do. Doesn’t it have one of the highest occupational death rates? I’m sure that’s because they get frustrated and then they make mistakes.’
‘You don’t understand. These people are operating at the limit.’ Jim was getting worked up. He was going into rant mode. He stopped in the middle of the pavement and turned to face me, arms akimbo, twitching. ‘They’re shooting methedrine, or basing coke, or snorting sulphate. They’re driving at all hours of the day and night, existing at a level of frayed neural response that we can only faintly imagine. They’re operating not at the level of other traffic, a straightforward level of action and anticipation, but at the level of nuance, sheer nuance. They perceive the tiniest of stimuli with ghastly clarity, and respond. Think of it, man. Weaving your way through heavy traffic astride a monstrously overpowered motorcycle, always pressured to meet a deadline, the ether plugged into your helmet. They have to mutate to survive!’
After this little outburst we carried on walking in silence for a while. We were going down Essex Street past one of the world’s largest accountancy firms. Between the slats of a three-quarters-closed Venetian blind I could see a man in shirtsleeves. Still crouched, at this late hour, over a flickering monitor in the pool of an Anglepoise. As I glanced at him he pushed a button and the figures on the screen scrolled upwards in a stream of green light.
Jim was breathing heavily, but he’d calmed down a little. I didn’t know what to say, I was curious but I didn’t want to provoke him. For the first time I had the sense with absolute clarity that Jim had teetered over that fine, fine line between eccentricity and madness. Eventually I spoke. ‘These despatch riders, Jim, do they believe in “waiting” as well?’
‘Of course, of course, of course. They are the real waiters. Waiting is ground into them. Every moment could be an arrival, at a pick-up or drop-off, or the ultimate dropoff, death itself! No wonder they understand what is happening. They exist at the precise juncture between the imminent and the immanent! Carlos has seen their potential. He is a man of extraordinary powers, he understands that the future will belong to those who clearly articulate the Great Wait!’
We were standing in the forecourt outside the tube. A few late office workers mingled with the eddy and flow of tourists, who moved in and out of the entrance in their bright pastel, stretchy clothes. It was a clear night and the neon sign above the National blipped its message across the flat water. I took Jim’s upper arm in what I hoped was a firm, avuncular sort of a grasp.
‘Jim, don’t you think you’re letting all this rather get to you? I think you’re overtired and overworked. I’m sure you’re not spending enough time with Carol. Why don’t you take a rest for a few days? If you’ll forgive me for saying so, the world will wait for you.’ His response surprised me.
‘Well, yes, er … you could be right. She has seemed a little distant recently. She can’t cope with my insomnia, you know. Perhaps you are right. But even so, you should meet Carlos, he isn’t a crank, or a freak. His powers are real enough, believe me. I’ve never had any truck with any kind of cults or mystical twaddle, have I?’
No, he never has, I thought to myself, after we had parted and gone our separate ways. And perhaps there is something in what he says. My eyes flicked across the tracks, between which lay the typical refuse. I picked out Jim’s figure at the far end of the platform. His shoulders were hunched and he’d inserted his body between a dangling sand bucket and a coiled, canvas hose in a wooden cabinet. It was as if he was trying to restrain himself. It was clear from his posture and his blank stare what he was doing. He was waiting for a train.
I tried not to think about Jim for the next couple of days. If he was having a breakdown of some kind there was probably very little I could do for him — and if he wasn’t. Well, after Norfolk and Stein’s lecture I didn’t really want to see him for a while, anyway. I needed a change of company; I needed to spend some time with people who were a little less heavy. I went out in the evenings to films and parties, I got tipsy, I had yelping conversations with people I had just met. Conversations in which each yelp seemed, at the time, a touchstone of empathy. At the time, that was.
But try as I would I couldn’t shake Jim. He nagged at me and I knew it was because I should at least try and help him. The image that stayed with me most clearly — appearing as a flickering ghost when I switched on my terminal in the morning — was of Jim in the old lecture theatre, his arms clutching the seat back, his face distorted.
After a week I was really anxious. Jim hadn’t been in touch, which was unlike him. I resolved to go and see Carol, his wife. After all, I reasoned, before the whole ‘waiting’ thing took off we used to see quite a lot of one another. I had been in the habit of regularly having dinner at their house. Childless couples have a tendency to adopt single people and try and feed them up and marry them off. And this is the way it had been. Carol had invited me to a series of Tuesday evening affairs where I’d eaten spinach and tomato lasagne and met a number of her female colleagues.
After a while the Tuesdays had petered out. I missed them. I missed the atmosphere of somewhere where people cooked on a regular basis; and I missed seeing Carol, who I liked. And who, despite my failures as a potential pair-bonder, never seemed to judge me. She was one of those people who had a tremendous sense of containment about them, her physical presence constantly emitted the quiet message that she was fine just as she was, she was content to do x or y, but it wasn’t really necessary. When she and Jim had married their friends had called it ‘a marriage of opposites’. It was significant that over the years no one had seen fit to add to this observation.
Carol worked at home as a freelance editor. So I could be sure of finding her in if I called unannounced. I took the morning off work and the train out to Wandsworth. Their flat was across the Common from the station. As I walked over I felt the morning’s catarrh slop and gurgle in my chest. I had a bitter, old iron taste in my mouth and felt considerable premonition.
Jim’s Sierra was crouched on the steep camber of the road outside their flat, like a beetle redesigned by committee. I walked up the tiled path along the privet hedge and pushed the intercom buzzer. After a while there was a crackle on the speaker.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, Carol. I need to talk to you, about Jim.’