‘Hang on a minute, I’m not up yet.’
I waited for more than a minute. But when I saw, through the glass door panel, the door of their flat swing open, it wasn’t Carol who emerged. It was a young man. A tall young man, who came to the door, opened it, and walked past me with a cheery nod and a cheerier ‘Good Morning’. He tucked his arms energetically into his windcheater and jauntily walked off down the road, implying that he was off for a day’s hard work. One that he was looking forward to.
A few minutes later Carol came and let me in. She was wearing a dressing gown patterned with pastel blooms. She was superficially groomed but there hung about her the subtle, sour smell of someone who’s been making love in the morning. I followed her down the corridor and while I sat at the kitchen table she made me a cup of coffee.
‘So what about Jim?’ Carol panted, vigorously depressing the stainless steel plunger of the cafetière.
‘Just that I think he’s having a breakdown, Carol. I think he needs help of some kind. I haven’t seen him for the past week; the last time I did he was absolutely raving.’
‘I haven’t seen him either. I haven’t as much as clapped eyes on him. You know he’s cabbing in the evenings now?’
‘Cabbing? What on earth for? Not for money, surely.’
Carol laughed and pulled a twist of inky hair away from her face. ‘Oh no, not for money. To relax him. That’s why he does it. He says it relaxes him.’
‘He’s mad.’
‘Maybe, maybe, but you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, believe me.’ She said this earnestly, and sat down opposite me, an identical coffee mug cupped in her hands.
I believed her. Whatever part the young windcheater played in her life there was no doubting her affection for Jim. If she couldn’t influence him, no one could.
‘He comes back from work every evening and goes straight out again. I don’t think he actually takes a lot of money. He’s more intent on keeping in touch with his friend Carlos.’
‘So you know about that.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And the despatch riders. What do you think?’
‘Well, strictly speaking, I suppose he could be right, but it strikes me that there’s enough that’s obviously wrong with the world without becoming obsessed by the intangibles.’
I took the train back into town. I had a couple of hours to kill before I was expected at work. I thought I might walk into Soho and drink some espressos at the Bar Italia. The clear, sharp light of the morning had given way to the kind of intense sepia tone and gritty air that precedes a summer storm in London. The sense of rising barometric pressure was tangible. I felt oppressed and confused by my talk with Carol. I still couldn’t accept that there was nothing to be done for Jim. It was if those who loved him were just waiting for something awful to happen.
I trailed my damp, stinging feet along Oxford Street and turned into Soho Square. There was a gust of wind and a peppering of grit flew into my eyes. For a moment I was blind. I leant against a wall while the tears gathered and flowed down my face. When my vision cleared I saw Jim.
He was standing, leaning on the inside of the door of his car, talking to another despatch rider. This despatch rider was even more singular than the others I’d seen with Jim. He had the regulation jacket and bright, vinyl tabard. But instead of boots and leather trousers he had on baggy, green cords and battered trainers. He was propped on his bike, a battered, black 250 MZ, regarding Jim with slight disdain. His head was quite repulsive. He looked like a failed albino. His hair was the palest of gingers, his face putty-white, his features were soft and vestigial, his eyes the pinkiest of pinky-blues.
I crossed the street and hailed them. The failed albino turned to look at me, I could see his hand clutching the handlebar. It was as flat as a skate, the nails — dirty little crescents of horn — were deeply recessed into the flesh.
‘I was just at your house, Jim, and I saw the car outside. Were you there all the time?’
‘No, mate, I was out on the Common doing my exercises. I just went back, picked up the car and came into town to meet Carlos.’ He indicated the failed albino with a twist of his hand.
‘Why aren’t you at work, Jim?’
‘I could ask the same of you, mate.’
There was something rather light and cheery about Jim’s manner that I found reassuring. I suppose in retrospect I should have been scared by the change in him. After all, the last time I’d seen him he’d been utterly driven, but, despite the mood swing and the weird company he was keeping, I was pleased to see my friend looking a little more like his old self.
‘Carlos is taking me on a run today. Do you want to come along?’
But before I could reply, Carlos broke in, ‘Can he come along, James? May he please come along? That is the question.’ Carlos had a high, fluting voice and spoke with the accents of a comic Welshman. It was immediately clear that he always spoke facetiously and that all his questions were rhetorical.
‘Carlos, this is the man I was telling you about. My old friend. He’s the one I went to Stein’s lecture with. He knows most of it already.’
‘There’s a difference between knowing and seeing, isn’t there, James? Now I don’t suppose you’d deny that, would you?’
I wasn’t really paying that much attention to this exchange. Carlos struck me as a ludicrous figure. I had to get back to work. I was suddenly angry with Jim. Everything he said was clearly a manifestation of what I now saw as an illness. It was strange, but I could feel falling back down my throat the level of choked emotion I had invested in Jim. I should never have tried to help him. He was someone I knew only vaguely. I could do without Jim. He was receding fast.
‘What are you waiting for, man?’
‘What’s that?’
Carlos was addressing me. ‘Why don’t you come and see, then? I value Brother James’s opinion very highly, very highly indeed.’
‘Look, Carlos. I don’t really know what you and Jim are talking about. All I know is that my friend here’, a jerk of the thumb and special, heavy emphasis on ‘friend’, ‘has developed a dangerous and cranky obsession. He has tried to draw me into the fantasy world that he’s constructed around this obsession, but I’m not interested — I think he needs help. Apparently you are an active player in this fantasy world. Therefore, I can only choose to adopt the same attitude towards you.’
As soon as I’d finished speaking I felt ridiculous. The words had sounded all right as I was saying them. But now, as they hung in the air unwilling to disperse, they constituted a reproach. The failed albino and my twitching former friend stood there, both of them still propped up by their vehicles. Jim’s hazard lights clicked. In the square, female office workers, hobbled by tight, mid-thigh-length skirts, lay on the grass eating sandwiches, their legs free from the knee down. They were like some species of crippled colts. Jim and Carlos regarded me quizzically.
‘Come and look.’
The pink, flaccid Welshman had a voice of insidious, quiet, insistent command. We walked in single file up to Oxford Street. Standing on the inside of the pavement, grouped stiffly together, the three of us formed an odd little protuberance, around which the great stream of pedestrians flowed. Carlos leant up against the window of Tie Rack. He’d left his helmet on the bike, and his pale hair fluffed out around his ears. As he pressed backwards, his plastic tabard rode up above his shoulders. His eyes seemed to disengage; they unfocused, slid out of gear, and became simply oval, colourless blobs stuck down on to his blurred, colourless face. Jim and I stood either side of him, awkward and still.
After a while sweat began to well up from Carlos’s temples. His eyes quivered. I had never seen anyone sweat like this before — the sweat coming straight out of the exposed skin, rather than trickling down from the hairline. It was as if a boot had been ground down into a peaty, boggy surface. The sweat ran down his temples, milky against the pale flesh. I felt utterly nauseous and afraid. Then, as quickly as Carlos had gone into the trance he snapped out of it with a chilly shiver.