by Tanith Lee
Nick has a strong wish not to answer.
He does not.
But the rapping keeps being repeated, a trio of sharp thumps - a male fist certainly, or a woman in a metal glove.
Nick tries to ignore this. He could go upstairs; he might not hear the rapper from the bedroom.
Then again, probably his lights are visible from the street, floating high and honeyed in the octagonal moon window. If this is Pond, Pond is very determined. There it is once more. Rap clap snap. Perhaps it will never stop. Nick gives in.
It makes him feel weak and dispirited. Also very edgy. “Yes?”
It is not Pond.
No, it is the man who is so like Pond, if more slender and paler, crouching a little too, despite the assurance of his repeated knock.
“Sorry to trouble you,” says the drawer-man, exactly as he did before. “Only I saw you coming up. I’d just come out of 14. We’ve - er. Well, she and I, we’ve made it up.”
“Congratulations,” says Nick. He adds, “If you want to borrow some champagne, I don’t have any.”
“Er, no, no. Sorry and all that. I know it’s late.”
“Yes.”
“But I was wondering. My books…”
“You want your books back.” Nick is stunned by a sort of prickling worry he cannot quite explain.
“Well, er - you see - I find I don’t have extra copies. After all. And June - that’s my er, well she said I should say I need them.”
Nick wants to laugh. Again he is unsure why.
“OK. Look, they’re over there.”
The slightly phantasmal man slips into the flat with the gliding motion of a falling garment.
“Oh yes. Is that all right?”
“They’re your books.”
“I mean, I don’t mind if you want to finish them first.”
“I have.”
Nick goes to the table with the books, Chekov, Mansfield, some pieces by Joseph Roth. “Here. These were all there were,” he adds. “All I saw, anyway.”
“No, no,” says the man, who so far does not take up his books, but is now staring round the apartment with wide eyes. “It’s quite peculiar,” he says, “the way your place is so different from June’s.”
“Really.”
“I expect this is the best flat.”
Nick feels he has become an estate agent. It is surreal. He waits.
The man goes on staring all round. And next his gloomy palish eyes fall on Nick’s notebook, lying there with the glass of orange juice.
“That’s odd,” says the man.
Again, Nick waits.
“Just like one of the notebooks I lost,” says the man.
“They’re quite common, I’d think. WH Smiths.”
“True. But I get my office stationery from there as well.”
With no warning the man sidles forward, leans and plucks up the notebook, opens it, glances.
“Looks like a novel,” says the man. “You don’t use a computer, then?”
“No.”
“Wish I didn’t. Lost that too. Think I told you. Oh well. I’ll take my books. Sorry to trouble you.”
He seems to slide all the way back to the door and, unlike Pond, straight through and off down the stairs. Nick closes the door and locks it.
He is dissatisfied with what has just happened. Not because of the loss of the books, which he had mostly finished, and could anyway buy for himself - for aesthetic reasons too, for as with several second hand works, they had been riddled with individualistic defacements, meaningless underlinings and circlings of words, and doodles in the margins, as if some feeble-minded student had employed them.
Nick lifts his notebook and turns to the beginning, examining the evidence of clearly ripped-out pages. Some of this is due to notes he wrote to himself then removed and binned. Some omissions represent false starts to that section of his writing, also binned. And some, obviously, the ones at the very front, mark where he tore out, with bored inattention, the jottings of the book’s previous owner. As the drawer-man had originally told him, they had seemed to be random dates, notes of places or times, or even incomprehensible directions. Nick, though he paid so little attention, had been aware of this at least. Yet they also had ended in the kitchen recycling bin with Nick’s other paper rejects and plastic water bottles. And all that has been long since collected, of course.
Nick glances across at his cabinet, at its shut doors. In there are the rest of the notebooks from the drawer, they too eviscerated of prior notations, plus the paper clips, pens, envelopes and so on. Such things are so useful for a writer. Even an intermittent and leisurely one who can afford to purchase them himself.
He had seen the drawer with its contents, just sitting there on the table in the lobby, on his way out to a Debby afternoon. Coming back, the drawer had still been there, so Nick had simply carried it up to his flat. Someone would have despoiled it, it might as well be him. There had been no computer certainly. That theft is not down to Nick, nor would it have been. The drawer though, once thoroughly unloaded, Nick had finally taken out to a larger bin on the main road, and left it there on the pavement. Maybe it was picked up too, by someone wanting a drawer…
Does any of this matter?
Will the drawer-man, who undoubtedly, and from the first probably, reckons Nick to be the guilty party, now mount a vendetta against him, possibly aided and abetted by the unseasonal June?
There is the problem of the piece of ivory as well, if it even was ivory.
God knew what it was and is, anyway, it had just been lying by the drawer when Nick had cleared it, dislodged by his plundering no doubt. It must just have been down among the envelopes, snuggled up like a blunted, squarish moon-bone, hiding from the light. Nick had left it there, on the table, forgotten. And then Laurence dislodged it again and next swiped it. Or had it swiped Laurence? Seeing he has since disappeared, so far without trace.
Sometimes he thinks of Angela and that he should call her, to apologise or comfort, something. But Nick recoils at the idea. He cannot help her anyway.
It occurs to him that when Laurence reappears, no one may even tell Nick about it.
Yet, if Laurence does not reappear, Nick assumes they will all want to tell him, invade him, drive him mad with it -Angie, Reenie, various others. And Pond. Of course, Mr Pond.
The night Serena-Reenie called him, Nick had been in Scotland. He was staying with an older woman, (around thirty, but he was then eighteen) who had invited him to Edinburgh and paid his expenses, and added a “gift”, an envelope type of gift.
She was a nice woman. Her name had been Sandy or Mandy or Candy - he could not, afterwards, recall. She had one of those smoke-grey mansions that stand like exquisite stony artefacts directly on the street, and must have mystically detached themselves from the bastion of Arthur’s Seat and flown down for company.
The house windows were small; they looked as if sheltering hot dark sunlight, from outside in the gloaming.
She took him to a folk club, very good music, and beautiful whisky - which as a rule Nick did not like, but this was like no drink he had ever had anywhere else, a wonderful dram. And Sandy-Mandy-Candy then bought him a bottle from a place below the club, a sort of cellar. Only after the phone call he forgot the bottle. Forgot all of it that was significant, including the woman’s proper name, or what she had looked like.
Was it four in the morning? Later? It was November then, too, and pitch dark, and anyway they were so far north.
His mobile rang out. Then, it had some tune on it, God knew what. He should have turned it off before bed. But the whisky, and the music, the sex even, had made him forget.
He crawled out of the covers - his friend did not wake - and went into the little passage shivering, to take the call.
Serena’s voice was like that of a feral lynx. It screeched and clawed.
“Who is this?”
“Me - me, you fool, you fucking fool - Oh Nick, oh Nick - she’s dead - she’s d
ead - she died - she’s dead…”
How old had Serena been then? If he was eighteen, then in her mid-twenties. Why had she behaved like that, lammed into him that way, not even half prepared him with that fruitless yet ominously alerting phrase: I’m afraid I have some bad news…
If she had loved Claudia at all during the past decade he could not say. She had never seemed to. She simply used Claudia, to further her, Serena’s, career, or to wheedle stuff from Joss that Serena herself had been unable to access.
But then, Nick felt he could not really judge.
He had since learned about women and their mothers, like sons, often, and their fathers. They might discount them, hate them. But death - death could change everything.
They had all come out of Claudia’s womb, like little attractive maggots from the perfect apple of her inside.
Claudia was clean as light. She had never been ill. Never had anything wrong. Clear as crystal. She was fifty-three.
“What are you talking about?” he thought he said. Maybe he had not said that.
But Serena told him.
She had stopped screaming and could barely speak for tears.
“It was so sudden, Nicky. No one expected it. They said they think it’s a kind of stroke - some sort of blood-clot hitting the brain…”
“What?” he whispered.
What hitting what? Whose brain? Who was Serena talking about?
“She wouldn’t have felt it. She just - fell. There was a party. Samson was there, and - Oh God, I can’t think - Dad’s in Limoges. I was - I was just bringing some limes and lemons for the drinks - bloody Roo forgot…” (oh yes, Mrs Rush had still been with them) “and Laurence - I forget where Laurence - Laurence isn’t - only Claudia was standing there with someone - I can’t remember who - and she just turned, and frowned as if the sun was in her eyes, only it wasn’t, we were indoors - and then she just fell down. Just - she just - and then Samson and everyone, we all just stood there, and then - somebody - who was it - went over and lifted her head and then…”
Nick put his phone very carefully on the floor. He thought, distinctly It’s another of their jokes. It’s a trick. I’m not going to fall for it this time. And then, like Serena’s, his memory became and remains a blank. He can never now recall anything else until he was on the train returning to London, and the countryside gushing by under the gin-coloured sky and the slice of lemon sun.
7
As a rule Nick cleans the flat on alternate weekends. He is thorough but uninvolved; it neither interests nor bores him. He just prefers the place to be clean. But also it takes him less than two hours. There is slight clutter, and only the bathroom and bedroom carpets to hoover, and the special purring thing to run over the wooden floor about once a month. Even the kitchen asks little. He seldom cooks.
When he has finished the bathroom Nick opens the bathroom store cabinet to gauge supplies. A stack of four individual soap boxes remain, with a single soap out of its box on top. He puts the soap by the bath, then thinks to check the top box, which may be empty. It is not, none of them are. In fact the box the loose soap had occupied has been compressed almost but not quite flat, then wedged behind the others. He removes it and opens it out, and sees that something small, and closed in a Kleenex, lies inside.
Nick knows he has not emptied this box, put anything in it, hidden it.
He shakes the wrapped object free.
It lies there on the undone tissue, in his palm. It is a little tapering stick with one pointed end. On the other end, at the top of the stick, is a miniature face with a sort of bunching halo rising above it. In colour the object is a murky greenish brown.
Nick carries it into the main room, and picks up a magnifying glass he has, probably, hardly used before, and looks at the stick through it.
He has already had a strong theory about what it is.
The magnification confirms this. A pin, maybe bronze, decorated with a woman’s head with a severe face, and a classical, complex, ridiculous hairstyle. It is almost certainly Roman, and so nearly two thousand years old.
After a minute Nick sits down.
Could this be a fake? There is no way at all Nick, not an expert, can know. The nearest he has ever got to any of the things unearthed during Laurence’s digs, has been to see them in photographs forced on him by others.
Now, however, Laurence has definitely left the Roman bronze pin, (if so it is) here in Nick’s flat. Why? Another trick? Again, why?
Nick puts the pin down, still in the protective tissue, on the table.
He thinks of something. He is after all a writer.
Laurence’s reason for calling here last Friday had been curiously shallow, frankly unconvincing. When had the wonderful and dynamic and self-admiring Laurence ever needed to seek Nick’s advice, or required Nick’s listening ear? No, the desirable female TV producer and all her works were either invented, or merely used as an excuse to visit the flat. Admittedly Laurence had, now and then, foisted himself on Nick here, but there had always been some more solid reason - for example, Laurence had once, after a delayed payment from a publisher, requested a ‘small loan’. Which Nick had given him. (It was, naturally, not so small and never repaid, nor had Nick thought it would be.)
This time then Laurence had wanted to enter the flat, and had subsequently gone into the bathroom, in order to conceal the Roman cloak-pin, or whatever it was. Predictably he would have intended to retrieve it - preferably before Nick discovered it was there. That must mean Laurence had some other bolt-hole - or person - where or with whom he could ultimately leave or hide the pin more thoroughly. Which might indicate Laurence anticipated someone else might, in the interim, come looking for the pin, and even in the house he shared with Angela in South Kensington.
Period of danger over, Laurence would have returned to Nick’s flat on some other pretext, and retrieved his trophy.
And the pretext had been furnished, had it not? Laurence had taken the ivory counter, in order to ‘turn anything up on it’, and reassure poor jittery superstitious Nick. Laurence must have been planning then to call round again, with some (invented - even actual) facts. During the second visit, a second visit to the bog - problem solved.
But Laurence has not been able to re-visit now. Laurence has vanished. And Nick has seen the pin.
Why had Laurence had it - and where from? From the dig at Coreley? Had he found it on site and stolen it? Maybe worse, had he got it elsewhere, via some shady black market in ancient artefacts, and meant to plant it on the site during filming - creating an exciting additional, and Laurence-aggrandising, coup.
Either seems feasible to Nick.
In his early forties, maybe Laurence is undergoing some sort of premature male-menopause or mid-life crisis. It would be just the kind of brainless clichéd state he would buy into.
Nick wonders if he himself is amused by all this. When and if Laurence comes back, will he now be in Nick’s power? Nick finds this notion leaves him cold. He does not care. He does not even care if Laurence has gone for good, or not… one way or the other.
Even so he takes the Roman pin and puts it upstairs in the bedroom, under a narrow area of carpet that tends to come loose next to the window-wall.
Then, as he has before, he glues the carpet back in place. The glue generally holds for a few months, especially in winter.
On Monday an unknown young woman calls Nick. She is polite and sounds slightly nervous.
She says her name is Kit, and she hopes he will not mind but a friend of hers, Sonia Daforian, raved about him, and said he might be willing to see her. Nick has never received a second hand intro like this and is not sure he wants to take it up.
But the girl has a musical voice and a soft London accent. She works, she explains, where Sonia works, and describes the work and the building, which are the correct ones. Nick is somehow curious, and agrees to meet Kit at four that afternoon for a drink. He makes no promises of a result, nor does the girl, but she thanks him an
d murmurs warmly she will look forward to it. She adds a brief description: “I’m twenty-eight -well, I am in December. About five-five, blonde, slimmish.” (Nick wonders if she is fat, but that would not faze him; Lilian is very fat. Weight, or lack of weight, do not, and would not, put him off.) She says she will be wearing blue.
The venue is the Chandos off Trafalgar Square. When he walks in at four minutes to four, Kit - he recognises her instantly - is already waiting for him.
For a second, he checks.
Although he has identified her from her given details, blue suit, pale blue blouse, and curvaceously but factually slim, she is beautiful. She is additionally a very successful peroxide blonde, with clear white skin and eyes to match her clothes. Yes. She has a look of Claudia. He can see it at once. It throws him, almost frightens him. The fact is he has never in his life seen anyone who resembled Claudia, even Serena, even himself, who are the less like her for being like her. It has never occurred to him a real likeness might be possible. Yet - here this girl is, sitting cross-legged as Claudia might have, sipping what is probably a straight soda with ice -never Claudia’s drink - and reading a book with a garish red and grey cover that Claudia would doubtless never have picked up.
Nick considers quite seriously walking out and going away. But just then the girl looks at him.
She identified him too, evidently. Sonia will have described him. The girl smiles, a little uncertainly. He thinks he may appear stern, disapproving even. He smoothes his expression and goes over.
“Hi. I’m Nick Lewis.”
“I know.” Like a well-mannered old-fashioned guy she stands up and holds out her hand so he can shake it. Her hand is cold - nerves? “I’m Kit.” She looks straight into his eyes and says, with an innocent boldness, “You’re even more handsome than Sonia said.” Then - she flushes. Nerves or excitement? She looks away. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“That’s fine. I’ll get them. Do you want another of those?”
“I think I need a brandy,” she says. She laughs. Nice laugh. “I’m scared to death. Sorry. Never done this before.”