“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Wait and see.”
“That’s my boy. The decisiveness of Nelson! The ruthless martial vigor of Wellington! The tactical brilliance of Marlborough!”
“Fuck you. One last pint?”
AFTER ANDREW HAD gone back to the office, Leo lingered for another drink. Not beer this time but a large vodka, with ice and nothing else. Five minutes later he was walking through the streets, his head held low, watching the numberless shoes scrape and patter and clump and tap their way on the endless, meaningless walk of humanity. He felt annoyed about missing the tutorial. Three hopeless cases, but the girl, Patricia Standish, was pretty and intense and had never skipped a lecture. Perhaps she might have been the one. He’d track them down and offer each an extra session. With any luck only Patricia would accept. But no, why should she? Anyway, Patricia was one of the names he didn’t like.
Bond Street station wasn’t too bad. It was busy, so nobody had the time to stare. He took the tube out to the campus at Mile End. He had a flat in one of the new student halls. He was allowed to live there rent-free in exchange for “supervising” his block. It didn’t mean much work. One night a week he held a “surgery” for students with problems. Nobody ever turned up. Why would they want to talk to him about their little tiffs and traumas? He was thirty-five years old, single, lonely, and ugly.
Andrew’s research on male beauty had initially drawn Leo into a friendship. They’d met in the British Library when they found themselves both staring at the same very short skirt, Leo with sadness, Andrew with a frank and open gratitude that such things could exist in the world. Leo was already an established academic and Andrew just another student, but that didn’t stand in the way of their joint love of beer and talking bullshit. Of course Andrew’s work was undertheorized, reading like old-fashioned scholarship until Leo helped him out with some spare concepts he’d been keeping for a rainy day. Although he patronized Andrew for the first year or so of the relationship, he eventually came to depend on him. Not as a confidant, anything but that. More as a field of dreams. With Andrew he could pretend to be the kind of person he’d always wanted to be: confident and outgoing and sexually all-conquering. He made up stories about nymphet students and besotted older colleagues. He even invented a dose of gonorrhea. Andrew believed it because he wanted to believe it, wanted to believe in the exploits of his friend, wanted the vicarious thrill of illicit sexual adventure. In reality, Andrew was far more experienced than Leo.
Leo knew everything about love, the endless yearning for beauty and youth, but he’d had only one girlfriend. Joan was pretty but didn’t care. And she was as blind to his ugliness as she was to her own attractiveness. They’d gone to see films and whatever plays reached Cambridge. It was a happy time. They were both virgins and fumbled their way to fulfillment, drunk on red Lambrusco.
He never found out exactly what happened, but when she came back after the long holiday for the second year, she wasn’t his Joan anymore. She wore new clothes; her hair was different; she moved in another circle. They never properly talked about no longer being together; they both just knew. At the time he didn’t mind too much. Surely there would be other girls? But at parties his passes were always taken humorously, laughed off; not with malice but with an unassailable finality. It was then he started to look into the mirror, look deeply, look truly. And what he saw was not the average-looking ordinary guy he expected, the one accepted for his wit and courage by his school friends, the one adored and doted on by his mother, who’d worked so hard to get him into what she regarded as the right school, but a stunted, misshapen, ugly little man. Sometimes he’d play with his face in the mirror, pushing and pulling at it to try to make it look less strange. And the tragedy was that just half an inch here or there, an ounce of flesh moved from one part to another, and he would have been normal—perhaps even handsome. And with a handsome face, who would care that he was small and less than perfectly straight? But no. It would never, could never, be. His future history played itself out before him. Only other uglies would ever want him. He saw the frightening academic woman with buck teeth and old-lady hair. He saw how she moved, as if all her bones had been taken out and replaced completely randomly. He smelled her carbolicky smell, as she came toward him, mouth open, teeth outstretched, and he knew he didn’t want her. Equally vividly, he saw the ones he did want, the girls of the Cambridge glamorous set. He walked past their picnics in the park; he saw them float by on the river; he heard their laughter from windows in the fashionable colleges.
It was in that furnace that the new Leo was forged: the tungsten-hard, cynical, unyielding Leo. He shed those acquaintances that did not afford his kind of amusement; he devoted himself to his studies, soon intimidating even those dons who dared to engage him in debate.
“HELLO, DR. NYE.”
Leo’s key was in the door. He was fumbling. The last vodka. He thought about ignoring whichever student it was and just going straight in. Reflected in the door’s glass panel, he saw Patricia.
“Ah, Patricia. I—um, I—um—”
There she was, twenty years old. Perhaps nineteen. Her face so eager, so bright with hope. And her breasts showing through that cheap green dress. What would she do if he just took her by the hand and led her into the little room?
“Can I give you my essay?”
“Yes. I’m sorry about the tutorial. Something came up.” Yes, five pints of beer and a double vodka. “If you like, we could go through your essay now. I have a spare hour.” He tried to smile but knew it was a mistake. He never smiled when sober.
“Oh, that’d be great, but I have another lecture. It’s Professor Connolly on Shelley.”
Connolly, thought Leo. I wouldn’t piss on his notes if they were on fire. What had she seen that had so disgusted her that she’d rather go to that old fraud’s lecture than listen to him?
“That’s very . . . noble,” he said. “I’ll arrange some other time to catch up. Again, I’m sorry.”
He pushed his way into the flat, clutching Patricia’s neatly typed essay. That was one good thing about the proliferation of computers: no spidery scrawl to pick through.
As always, he went first to the mirror in the small bathroom. He turned on the harsh white strip light. He gazed for two minutes, rearming himself, closing any chinks in his chain mail, and then moved into the other room, divided into the study area, with a desk, a hard chair, and two easy chairs, and the sleeping area, with its single bed. Everything was precise and neat, as it had to be. He put on the kettle, which perched at one end of his desk, and sat down at his laptop. Time to work. His book on Hartley, the poor, stunted, lost, drunken son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A writer of exquisite sonnets but a failure in everything he ever set out to achieve. And hopelessly in love with women who could never look kindly at so tiny and odd a creature.
ALICE HAD ENJOYED the four hours of silly chat with Andrew in the car. She was enjoying walking through the beautiful glass house. She was looking forward to seeing the Audubon: partly, she had to admit to herself, for the excitement of touching something worth millions of pounds, but also for the purer pleasure of being near one of the most beautiful and dramatic objects ever made by humankind. She found herself amused by Lynden’s melodramatic pose; he surely must have known how they would find him. And then she saw his face. For a heartbeat she thought it actually was him, her boy: the eyes, the cheekbones, the mouth. But he was so much older, almost old enough to be the boy’s father. And he was crying. Although her mind had remained perfectly clear, her legs lost their ability to support her, and she found herself falling, but in a ridiculous slow motion that added a surge of embarrassment to her distress. Before she could gather herself, the man was bending over her, drying his own eyes with a sweep on his shoulder. She saw Andrew, his mouth agape, paralyzed with indecision, and felt for him. She didn’t want to be picked up, and she was pleased when Lynden put her down in the Eames lounger. It was only
then that she heard the music, the magnificent, passionate, aching death of it. And then it stopped. There was some water. Lynden had gone to stand in a corner of the room, where he watched the storm pass outside, through the now-closed window. She saw that, yes, he bore some resemblance to the boy, but only in that they were both of a type. She felt very silly and forced herself to stand and shrug off the attentions of Andrew. She was fine. She was fine.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have skipped breakfast,” she said to the window.
Lynden turned. His eyes were still red, and he looked very fierce. She thought he must be forty or forty-five years old, but he was still lithe and sinewy. His complexion was dark, whether through the sun or some southern or eastern blood she couldn’t tell. His nose was strong and very slightly hooked.
“I can’t believe Semele didn’t tell me you were here. The child runs wild. I’ll have her bring us some tea; Grace isn’t here today. How was your journey?”
Somehow, Alice got through the afternoon. The Audubon was exquisite. She looked for all her favorites—the passenger pigeon, the Carolina parrot, the great auk. The ones that were gone. Something about the standing auk, looking rather dim and melancholy, suggested a premonition. And the pair of passenger pigeons, once the commonest bird in the world, the flocks of which could take a week to pass overhead as they moved to the woods where they nested, seemed sadly resigned to extinction, full of the knowledge that their kind would be blasted from the sky with cannons and netted in their millions, until none were left but the solitary old lady, called Martha, in the Cleveland zoo. If anything, the parrot was more poignant. Seven red, green, and yellow birds squabbled and squawked in a tree, full of life and energy. How could they all have gone from the world? Alice had to fight the unprofessional urge to press her cheeks against the pages to breathe in the artistry, and the labor, and the sadness.
Lynden came every half hour to see how they were proceeding. She thought that there was something strange in the way he looked at her. But who could blame him after the appalling thing she had done?
When it was time to leave for the day, she realized that she had used up every particle of energy and willpower in her body. Back in the hotel room (how had she got there? Andrew . . . sweet boy), she bathed and lay on the bed, swathed in towels, trying to gather and organize her thoughts. What could it mean, meeting this man, so like her boy? He was handsome, in a cruel way. She thought about the strength of his arms around her and shuddered. How had it affected her feelings for the Dead Boy? Was this a symptom of her obsession or a route out of it? And then, to her astonishment, as she lay there, warm now and wrapped in the clean white towels, she found herself doing something she hadn’t done for nearly a year.
She was still flushed and breathless when Andrew knocked half an hour later.
The evening with Andrew had been less of an ordeal than she expected. She didn’t know if it was the drink or the shocks of the day, but she told him—told him almost everything about the Dead Boy. The fact that she had already spoken about it to Odette made things easier. It was a relief. It didn’t sound quite as mad as she feared it might. Sounded, in some ways, too ordinary. She’d seen a boy killed; it had affected her deeply. Of course it would, Andrew was saying. It’s only normal. He looked like Lynden, she told him. He’d choked on that, as he munched his way methodically through some enormous meal he’d ordered at the bar.
On the way back to the hotel she had taken Andrew’s arm. The skies had cleared and he said something about the stars being God’s daisy chain, which she took to be some kind of jokey allusion, but she didn’t recognize the source. She giggled anyway. He was a nice person, and she liked him.
THE NEXT DAY Lynden was out for most of the morning. They were admitted by a suspicious-looking housekeeper, who showed them to the library and stood sniffing for several minutes before shuffling away. Alice assumed this to be Grace. Lynden finally appeared, dressed in a long black coat, just before they were leaving. His hair was wet and his face was streaked with mud. Something about his manner made Alice nervous, confirmed when he said he’d been shooting mink, which he called “filthy foreign vermin.” But he thanked them cordially enough as they left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Sublime Machine
KITTY WAS in the sitting room drinking pink gin from a champagne flute. It was half past seven. Alice had come in from work at seven and had decided to talk to her mother. She’d sat on the side of her bed, thinking about how she would put it. She’d decided to speak to Kitty because she thought that was what her father had been trying to tell her. The fish had been barely moving in the bottom of the green pool. She asked her father what she should do, and although he hadn’t spoken to her, she was sure he’d wanted her to talk to Kitty. And it didn’t seem right that she had told Odette and Andrew the truth and yet left her mother in ignorance.
“Mummy?”
Kitty turned slowly away from the television. She was addicted to the soaps—all of them.
“Not now.”
“Mummy, I have to talk to you.”
Kitty huffed and took a long drink from her glass. A little of the pink liquid spilled from the corner of her mouth.
“Very well. But don’t drag it out. I’m being collected at eight. Conrad Dosing-Ball is taking me to dinner.”
No, thought Alice, he isn’t. Did he ever really exist, or was he a complete figment? Was it a name Kitty had read somewhere in a magazine? Or was he an old beau, a lover from before she was married? Either way, she knew that nobody would be coming, not in a vintage Jag, or a sleek Ferrari, or a carriage and four gaily plumed, high-spirited horses.
“Mother, I haven’t been . . . well. Some things have happened to me, and I can’t . . . I don’t know what to do.”
Alice had never spoken to Kitty about anything important. It was proving just as difficult as she feared. Part of the problem was that she didn’t quite know herself how to put it into words.
“You haven’t been well? Alice, I never cease to be amazed at your selfishness and egotism. When have you ever heard me complain about my illnesses? You know my heart is weak, and yet you continue to plague and bother me. Every day I have to face more pain than you can imagine. And where is the comfort, the solace I should expect from my child? I used my influence—influence I could have used to help myself—to get you a good position, and what have you done with it? Are you engaged? Is there even a . . . boyfriend? I thought it might help you to meet more people, the right people. Was it too much to expect that you might introduce me to a new circle, to help to enliven my days? But no. All you do is mope and sulk and get under my feet. And do you know the worst thing?”
Alice was looking at the whorls and spirals in the frightful brown carpet and didn’t know that an answer was expected.
“I asked,” repeated Kitty, even more savagely, “if you knew the worst thing?”
“No, Mummy.”
“You bore me.”
It was a familiar theme, but it hadn’t lost its ability to sting.
“Mummy, I’m sorry about everything. But I want to talk to you. I want to . . . some things have been . . .”
But Kitty was lost again in the soap world beyond her reach, so Alice quietly left the room, carefully closing both the living room door and the door to her own bedroom to keep out the chatter from the TV and keep in the sound of her own sadness.
“ALICE DUCLOS?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a call for you.”
It was unusual for the switchboard to put calls through to her by name. General inquiries would come up just for Books, or those specifically wanting her would normally have her extension and dial direct. She’d been working on the catalog for a sale of original scientific papers. Nothing groundbreaking or famous, no telltale spark of genius: just the routine work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century toilers in chemistry and physics. It was dull work, but she was the only one qualified to do it in-house.
“Hello, Boo
ks, Alice Duclos speaking.”
“Hello Books, Alice Duclos speaking.” The voice was distinctive. Harsh. Familiar. But not instantly recognizable.
“Who is this?”
“Edward.”
“Edward?” She didn’t know any Edwards.
“Edward Lynden.”
Alice was sure he hadn’t mentioned his first name before, but she should have remembered it from the background papers. She suspected it was a stunt to throw her off guard. That didn’t stop her from being flustered.
“Oh, sir . . . Mr. . . .” Alice couldn’t remember what she was supposed to call him.
“Please. Edward.”
“Edward. How can I help you? Would you like to speak to Mr. Heathley?”
“If I’d wanted to speak to Mr. Heathley, I’d have asked for him. I wanted you.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Do you always assume there must be a problem when somebody wants you?”
“No, but I—”
“The truth is I’m having second thoughts about the sale. I can’t pretend I’m a book collector, but it seems wrong to split up the prints and sell them off. I know they meant a lot to my grandfather. I’m looking into other ways of raising the capital I need.”
This was very bad news. She and Andrew had been lauded since they secured the sale. Parry Brooksbank, the one remaining owner of Enderby’s, had paid an ostentatious backslapping hand-squeezing visit, smiling as though for invisible press photographers and claiming credit for his expert judgment of character in appointing Alice, which rather annoyed her, as she’d never previously met him. How pleased she was, now that the deal looked anything but secure, that she had bitten her tongue.
“Well . . . Edward, you know our main concern here is giving the right service to the client, and if you decide you don’t want to sell, then of course we respect that. But there are other issues.”
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