‘I hope we can do this again soon,’ I stammered. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself this much since … well, within living memory, let’s say.’
‘Yes, it’s been nice. Very nice.’ But there was something tentative about Fiona’s agreement, and it didn’t surprise me to hear a qualifying note enter her voice. ‘Only, I don’t want you to think … Look, I don’t really know how to put this.’
‘Go on,’ I said, when she faltered.
‘Well, I’m just not in the business of rescuing people any more. That’s all. I just want you to understand that.’
We walked on in silence. After a while she added: ‘Not that I really think you need rescuing. Maybe shaking up a little.’
‘That’s fair enough,’ I said, and then asked an obvious question: ‘Are you in the business of shaking people up?’
She smiled at that. ‘Possibly. Just possibly.’
I could sense the imminence of one of those critical, life-changing moments: one of those turning points where you must either seize the fleeting opportunity presented to you or watch helplessly as it slips from your grasp and recedes into invisibility. So I knew, apart from anything else, that I had to keep talking, even though I had nothing much left to say.
‘You know, I’ve always thought of luck as a negative thing; I’ve always felt that if luck has any kind of part in shaping our lives then everything must be somehow arbitrary and senseless. It never really occurred to me that luck can also bring happiness. I mean it’s only because of luck that I met you in the first place, it’s only because of luck that we live in the same building, and now here we are, two people —’
Fiona stopped, and brought me to a halt with her arm. Very gently she laid a finger to my lips and said, ‘Ssh.’ I was astonished by the intimacy of the gesture. Then she slid her hand into mine so that our fingers locked, and we walked on. Her body leaned into me. After only a few paces, she leaned even closer, until I could feel the brush of her lips against my ear. I steeled myself deliciously for her words.
‘I think we’re being followed,’ she whispered. ‘Listen.’
Stunned into silence, I let her hand drop and strained to catch a hint of anything untoward above the noise of our own irregular footsteps. And yes, there was something: a pursuing echo, some way behind us. Furthermore, when we stopped, it continued for a second or two and then paused abruptly; when we started again, it followed. Our movements were being shadowed with some accuracy.
‘I think you’re right,’ I said. It was one of my less helpful remarks.
‘Of course I’m right. Women develop a sense for it. You have to.’
‘Keep walking,’ I said. ‘I’m going to turn round and have a look.’
But by now the mist was thickening, and I couldn’t see more than about twenty yards back. It was impossible to be sure whether there was any movement behind the grey curtain of shifting fog. The footsteps were still with us, though, as audible as ever, and I started to propel Fiona forward by the elbow until our pace had almost doubled. We were not far from home, and I hit upon the idea of taking a few sudden detours in order to throw the stalker off our trail.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed, after I had guided her into an unexpected right turn.
‘Keep walking and stick close to me,’ I said. ‘We’ll soon have him confused.’
I took another right and then a left and then doubled back down a footpath which led between a row of three-storey terraces. Then we crossed the road a couple of times and cut through a small alleyway which brought us out nearly at the edge of Battersea Park. We stopped and listened. There was the usual traffic noise, and the distant sounds of a party just beginning to warm up a few streets away. But no more footsteps. We sighed with relief and Fiona let go of my hand, as if only just realizing that she had been clasping it for the last ten minutes.
‘I think we’ve lost him,’ she said.
‘If there was anyone.’
‘There was. I know there was.’
We walked the rest of the way down the main road, a small unfamiliar distance having opened up between us. There was a short pathway leading up to our entrance porch, lined raggedly with laurel bushes, and it was here, just before unlocking the door, that I had been hoping to offer Fiona a first tentative kiss. But the mood was no longer right. She was still looking tense, her handbag held tightly to her chest within folded arms, and I was so flustered that I worked stupidly at the lock for what seemed like an age before noticing that I had taken out the wrong key. Then, when I had finally got the door open and was about to step inside, Fiona let out a sudden cry – somewhere between a gasp and a scream – and leapt in before me, grabbing my arm so as to drag me with her and slamming the door which she then stood against, breathing heavily.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’
‘He was out there – I could see him. His face in the bushes.’
‘Who?’
‘For God’s sake, I don’t know who. He was crouched there, peering at us.’
I made for the door handle.
‘This is ridiculous. I’m going to take a look.’
‘No – Michael. Please, no.’ She stopped me with a cautioning hand. ‘I saw his face quite clearly, and … and I recognized him.’
‘Recognized him? – Well who is it?’
‘I’m not sure. I didn’t actually recognize him, but … I’ve seen his face before. I’m sure I have. Michael, I don’t think it’s you he’s following. I think it must be me.’
I shook myself free and said, ‘Well, we can soon settle this.’ I opened the door and slipped outside; Fiona followed as far as the step.
It was cold by now and very quiet. Thin lines of mist hung in the air and coiled strangely around the white glow of the street lamps. I walked up and down the pathway, across the lawns, and looked both ways along the street. Nothing. Then I checked the bushes, pushing my face between branches, cracking twigs and making sudden thrusts into every leafy opening. Again, nothing.
Except that …
‘Fiona, come here a minute.’
‘Not on your life.’
‘Look, there’s nobody here. I just want to see if you notice anything.’
She squatted down beside me.
‘Is this the bush where you saw him?’
‘I think so.’
‘Breathe in deeply.’
We inhaled together: two long, exploratory sniffs.
‘That’s odd,’ she said, after a moment’s thought; and I knew what was coming next. ‘There’s no jasmine round here, is there?’
2
Fiona and I watched Orphée together one evening, two or three days after our dinner at the Mandarin. She had recovered from her fright soon enough, and now I was the one who was having trouble sleeping. The last few hours before dawn would find me wide awake, listening tiredly to the fitful lull which, in London anyway, is the closest you ever get to silence.
… La silence va plus vite à reculons. Trots fois …
My thoughts would be dizzy and incoherent, a pointless rehearsal of half-remembered conversations, unpleasant memories and wasteful anxieties. Once your mind is locked into such a pattern, it soon becomes obvious that the only way to break free is by getting out of bed: and yet this is the very last thing you feel capable of doing. It was only when the dry, acid tang in my mouth became too strong to bear that I would find the impetus to go out into the kitchen for a glass of water; after that, I might be assured of some sleep at last, because the circle would have been broken.
… Un seul verre d’eau éclair le monde. Deux fois …
I had an alarm clock which was set for nine o’clock, but invariably I would wake before then. Struggling for consciousness, the first noise I recognized would not be the rumble of traffic or the passing aeroplanes, but the song of a persevering robin as he greeted the feeble daylight from the treetops beneath my bedroom window.
… L’oiseau chante avec ses doigts. Une fois …
Then I would lie in bed, half-asleep, half-awake, listening for the postman’s footsteps on the staircase. For some reason I have never lost faith, not since I was a young child, in the power of letters to transform my existence. The mere sight of an envelope lying on my doormat can still flood me with anticipation, however transitory. Brown envelopes rarely do this, it has to be said; window envelopes, never. But then there is the white, handwritten envelope, that glorious rectangle of pure possibility which has even shown itself, on some occasions, to be nothing less than the threshold of a new world. And this morning, while I gazed with heavy, expectant eyes into the hallway through the half-open door of my bedroom, just such an envelope slid noiselessly into my flat, carrying with it the potential to transport me, not only onward into an unsuspected future but at the same time backward, back to a moment in my childhood more than thirty years ago, when letters first started to play an important part in my life.