The Professor of Truth

by James Robertson

  7

  WOKE LIKE SOMEONE I DID NOT KNOW, A MAN SPRAWLED half-undressed on the hotel bed, head pounding, dry-mouthed, and with a tight, evil knot in the stomach. Gradually the scattered parts of the previous evening—the starlit sea, the kindly waiter, the exhibition, the absurd stand-off with the man from the gallery, the wine bottle—reassembled themselves. I recalled what I’d eaten, could taste or smell or feel a fishiness in every breath I exhaled. Sickness threatened, but did not come. I looked at my watch. It was nearly eleven—too late to phone Carol even had I been fit to do so.

  I couldn’t understand how I had become so rapidly and thoroughly drunk. I’d only had a bottle of wine, which hadn’t seemed particularly strong. Two glasses at the gallery as well—it was quite a lot, but hardly extreme. Lying there, trying to find a cool patch of sheet on which to rest my cheek, I considered the possibility that I’d not been so much drunk as out of control, out of character. To have even momentarily entertained braining the bald man with the bottle! Thank God for the waiter, or I might now be languishing in a police cell.

  I remembered paying for the meal with my credit card. If they were trying to track me down, they would find me now. How little I cared!

  I sat up suddenly, to check that I wasn’t actually in a police cell. The movement pulled at the knot in my belly, and I went to the bathroom to try to loosen it, but without success. I collapsed back on the bed with a moan. The bowlful of mussels, and one slyly winking mussel in particular, kept swimming into view. I got up, drank some tepid water from the tap, lay down again. I told myself to try to sleep. I had to go to see Kim Parr that afternoon.

  The next time I came to, my sore head had eased but the stomach cramp was worse. Slowly I got myself ready, showering gingerly, patting myself dry, easing my limbs into my clothes. Any sudden or vigorous action hurt. I was by now pretty sure that, whatever had got into me last night, I was suffering more because of that evil mussel than because of the wine.

  I put on my hat, made sure I had money in my pocket, and went out into the day. The wind was as hot as a hairdryer, the sun like a grill. The short walk to KIM TAILORING was a major exertion. I paused beside the red scooter, as if to run through a plan of action, but I did not have one other than to collect the mended clothes. I had no idea what would happen when I went in.

  Kim Parr was in the same seat, working away at the sewing machine, with the radio playing as before. When she saw me she immediately stopped what she was doing, fetched the things from a shelf and showed me the repairs. The shirt looked as new, and I could not detect that there had ever been a rip in the trousers.

  “Thank you,” I said. I handed her twenty dollars and she went to get change. In that brief interval nausea surged in me, and my face broke out in a sweat. I fanned myself with my hat but the shop’s atmosphere was already cool from the electric fan. I staggered slightly. Black shapes like mussel shells broke up my vision.

  “I need to sit down,” I said, to no one in particular.

  A kind of hot fog formed about me. I heard the woman’s voice say, “Here, sit here,” and felt her fingers pushing down on my shoulders—the lightest of touches but I gave way at once. Somehow a chair was under me. I put my head forward, almost between my knees, and groaned.

  “I get you water,” she said.

  Sweat poured from my head on to the floor, which I could dimly see was some kind of linoleum, the colour of red earth.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Drink,” she said, and held a plastic cup full of ice-cold water to my lips. I took a sip.

  “More.”

  I drank again.

  “You want doctor, ambulance?”

  “No, no,” I said. “Just let me stay here a minute. I’ll be all right.”

  “You don’t look good,” she said.

  “I don’t feel good.” But my vision was clearing, and the pain in my stomach was not so cruel. Perhaps the outpouring of sweat had got the poison out of me.

  “You stay there,” Kim Parr said. “You going to fall? Faint?”

  “No,” I said, although I was far from certain.

  She went away briefly, and returned with a roll of paper towels. She tore several off, knelt down and wiped the floor around my feet.

  “I’ve made your floor very wet.”

  “Like a swimming pool,” she said. “Don’t want you slipping.” She tore off some more towels and handed them to me. I began to wipe my head and neck. Then I felt a churning, urgent prelude in my belly.

  “Is there a toilet?” I said. “I need to go.”

  “You going to be sick?”

  “Maybe. No, not sick.”

  She understood my predicament. “Okay, this way. Take it easy.” In a manner not unlike that of the waiter guiding me from the restaurant, she helped me past the hangers and dummies to what looked like a cupboard but was in fact a tiny toilet.

  “Don’t lock the door,” she said. “Just in case.”

  She went back to the shop. I made it to the toilet and sat down heavily, holding on to the edge of the seat with both hands. Everything gushed from me. I heard the sewing machine going again, and the radio, and hoped they covered the noises I was making. I thought again that I would faint, but held on and the feeling went by like an out-of-service bus. I wiped myself, and immediately a second and then a third evacuation happened. I don’t know how long I was there. I cleaned myself again, and flushed the toilet twice. Dispersing the smell was a different matter: there was a can of air freshener, which I used liberally. The sweat was cold on me now, but I no longer felt giddy. When I thought of the bad mussel it was not leering at me. The crisis, I thought, still not entirely confidently, was now past.

  “You okay?” Kim Parr called.

  “Yes,” I croaked.

  After a little longer, having washed my hands and splashed water on my face, I went back through to the shop.

  She stopped her sewing. “You better now?”

  “Yes, thank you. I ate something bad last night. A mussel. I’m sure that’s what it was.”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes they don’t clean the fish enough. It only takes one little bit. Very dangerous.”

  “I suppose there’s always a risk with seafood.”

  “You don’t eat anything today,” she said. “Give your body time off.”

  “Yes, that’s good advice.”

  “Your five dollars is there,” she said, pointing to the big table. I saw the note sitting on top of the plastic bag that contained my folded shirt and trousers.

  “Keep it,” I said. “It’s the least I can do. I’ve put you to all this trouble.”

  “No trouble,” she said. “Someone gets ill in my shop, a customer, what am I going to do? Charge him for it?” She let out a little trill of laughter. Her smile—it was the first time I had seen it—was like an open flower.

  Five dollars was such a tiny amount.

  How could I say what I had come to say, after that smile, after what had just happened? What words could I lower myself to, in order to get to Parroulet?

  I started for the door, then remembered the bag of clothes and the money and came back for them. I lifted them, put them down again.

  Frowning, she watched my indecisiveness. She understood that I had something else to say.

  She said, “What is it? What do you want?”

  “I don’t know where to start,” I said.

  She stood up, away from the sewing machine. She was a small, delicate-looking woman, but strong too. I could see this. She went to the door of the shop and flipped a CLOSED/OPEN sign that hung on the inside. Then she locked the door. This, it struck me, showed great self-assurance, a lack of fear. She switched off the radio.

  “Why not start with your real name?” she said.

  I sat on the folding chair she had brought me earlier, taking occasional sips of cold water. She was back behind the big table, defended by it, very upright, hands folded on the table surface. The kindness that had been
in her smile and her earlier actions was gone.

  “My name is Alan,” I said, “but not Smith. My name is Alan Tealing.”

  “Tea-ling,” she said, stretching the name out so that it sounded like two words, oriental. “Yes.”

  “Does my name mean anything to you?”

  “Nothing.” But her answer was too sharp, and she tried to soften it. “Maybe I have heard it before. I knew Smith was not your name.”

  “How did you know?”

  “When you came yesterday I saw you are trouble. You had torn the clothes. You didn’t come to have clothes mended. So what did you come for? I don’t know, but your face was like one I’ve seen before. And now your name, maybe I know it too.”

  “You’re right. It was a pretext. I came because I want to talk to your man, your husband.”

  “What man? There is no man. Do you see a man?”

  “Not here. In your house in Sheildston. I know that is where he is.”

  Her face, when animated, was attractive—beautiful even—but now it was a mask, blank and without emotion.

  “You asked me my real name and I have told you,” I said. “His real name is not Parr. It is Martin Parroulet.”

  Her eyes conceded nothing.

  “What are you, a journalist?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? Why do you come here to bother me? Why do you come to be ill in my shop?” Her voice quickened as her anger grew.

  “That was not meant. You have been very kind. I am trying to tell you.”

  “Tell me what? I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know you. You are trouble.”

  “I lost my wife and my daughter many years ago. They were killed in a plane crash. The bombing. You know what I am talking about.”

  She stared sullenly at me.

  “I was a husband and a father. If my face looks familiar it’s because you’ve seen me on television or maybe in a newspaper. Not for a while now, but after the trial at which your husband was a witness. And my name too. That’s why you know my name.”

  “What has this to do with me? Maybe this is why I know you. But it has nothing to do with me.”

  “It is to do with your husband, Martin Parroulet. Maybe he has spoken to you about me. He has mentioned my name or shown you my picture.”

  She shook her head.

  “I must speak to him. Ask him some questions.”

  “Are you police?”

  “No. I told you. I lost my family in the bombing.”

  “What questions? There are no more questions.”

  “Yes there are. I need to find out the truth.”

  Abruptly she stood up and came towards me. I still felt weak and wasn’t sure what would happen if I got to my feet. She stopped right in front of me and brought her face, her eyes, close to mine.

  “What are you doing, Alan Tealing, bringing all that here? Yes, I know your face. I know what you said about that trial. You said it was wrong. You said it was the wrong man. But that is over, all gone. It has nothing to do with me or my husband any more. Go away and leave us alone.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “How do you come here? Nobody knows to come here. And why do you come with this stupid story about buttons and pockets? You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t see you have other reasons? Why not tell the truth, if you want truth?”

  “I was afraid he would not see me.”

  “He won’t see you. I knew you were no good. I wish I never took your stupid clothes to mend.”

  “Then why did you, if you knew?” I asked.

  “I never turn away work.” A strange defiant pride was in the words. “Never. Not even from you.” Then she returned to the attack. “Why do you come? What do you want with my husband? He won’t see you. He left all that behind. He came here to have a new life. Why do you come to spoil everything?”

  To my amazement, she let out another trill of laughter. But then I saw it wasn’t laughter. She wiped furiously at her eyes. She sat down behind the table again, but slumped this time, resting her forehead on one hand.

  I said, “I don’t wish to cause you distress, but I must see your husband. He is the only one who can help me.”

  She said, “I knew this was going to happen. One day someone would come. I’ve waited for it all this time. Him too. This is why he never goes out. Now you are here. But he won’t see you. I won’t tell him about you. So you can just go away now.”

  “I can wait too,” I said. “I’m good at it. I’ve been waiting many years.”

  She put her hands back on the table, made herself upright once more, apparently challenging me to sit it out, to see who gave up first.

  “Can you imagine,” I said, “what it is like, to lose your wife and your only child in such a way?”

  She looked away, as if something else had caught her eye.

  “No,” she said. “I cannot imagine that.”

  “Well, then.”

  She turned on me again. “ ‘Well, then’? What does that mean?”

  “You are a humane person,” I said. “You have already shown that. I know you are.”

  “You know nothing,” she said. And once more she seemed to look at something I could not see. Then she repeated her earlier question: “How do you know to come here?”

  “Somebody gave me information,” I said.

  “Somebody?”

  “A man came to my house. In Scotland. An American. He told me where your husband was.”

  Emotion of some kind flickered in her eyes.

  “Then you are just the first. Others will come.”

  “He told only me.”

  “He will tell others.”

  “No. He is dead.”

  Again, her eyes showed something, but whether fear or courage I could not say.

  “He was ill,” I explained. “He was dying of cancer.”

  She nodded, as if slightly reassured. “But others must know.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t think anyone else will come.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “No, I can’t be.”

  She pondered this for a few moments. She said, “A man came to your house. Then you came to our house.”

  “Yes. Yesterday, and the day before. I pressed the buzzer. You were there, or someone was. I am sure of that.”

  All this time the big table had been between us. Now, as though she had suddenly made a decision, she re-emerged from behind it.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” she said. “You are not sick now. You must go.” She bustled around me, forcing me to stand, and as soon as I did she folded the chair and put it against a wall. “Go. Go away now.”

  “Please,” I said. “Don’t do this.”

  “I need to think. I can’t think with you in here. Go away. Come back later.”

  I could hardly believe the rush of hope that those last three words supplied. “When?”

  “One hour. Give me one hour.”

  My legs felt so weak. If I returned to the hotel, surely in an hour she would have locked up and gone. I wouldn’t have the strength to go back out to Sheildston, not walking. And anyway by the time I got there she’d have warned Parroulet, and they’d have left.

  She seemed to read my thoughts. “Leave the clothes. You come back for them in one hour. I will stay till you come back.”

  What could I do? She was my only means of getting to Parroulet.

  I said, “One hour.”

  Outside, the heat was as intense as ever. It was the middle of the afternoon. I heard the shop door shut and lock. I began to walk.

  Something had changed. It took me a minute to work out what it was. An odour was in the air, so faint it was hardly there, but it was, and it was different from the usual cooking smells of the Strand. A kind of perfume, medicinal, sweet and bitter at the same time: the scent of the bush burning.

  The heat drove me from the street. I went to my room and lay down. I felt drained—I was, literally—but at least the poison was out of me. I
knew I’d escaped lightly. I thought of my mother. She’d have been right round to that restaurant to complain. I, on the other hand, didn’t want to go near the place ever again. Did that make me a coward?

  Was Kim Parr testing me? I thought so. Despite my anxiety that she would have fled, I forced myself to undergo the test. With five minutes to go before the hour was up I set out again.

  Street signs, bollards, lamp posts danced in my vision. A small creature crouched in the doorway of her shop. A dog or a cat? As I drew near, it metamorphosed into the plastic bag that contained my repaired clothes. And the scooter was no longer parked against the kerb.

  So this was what it had come to: another deceit. I pushed and tugged at the door, hammered on it with my fist, peered through the glass to see if she was still inside. Nothing moved.

  Enraged, I pulled the trousers and shirt from the bag and shook them, turned the bag inside out, seeking a note or some other sign that she had not tricked me. But it seemed clear that she had.

  Then suddenly the anger went, and was replaced by utter exhaustion. I had not the strength to rage. All struggle was beyond me. I was up against yet another prison wall, and this one felt too thick, too hard for me to dig through.

  I slid to the ground, my back against the glass door. It seemed all I was fit for now was to collapse. One collapse after another. My hands clawed at the clothes, drew them into my chest. I wanted, desperately, somebody to hold, to be held by somebody. But the street was deserted, and I was alone. In twenty-one years I had never felt so alone. Was this what I had come for? To be, finally, here in this empty alley, defeated?

  I put my face into the shirt. Once I had started to weep I found I could not stop.

  8

  T IS NO GOOD RUNNING AWAY,” THE WOMAN’S VOICE said. Her shadow fell on me as she spoke. I was blindly stuffing the clothes back in the bag and gathering myself to get back to the Pelican, the first stage of my total retreat.

  “Not you,” Kim Parr said. “Me. I got three hundred metres and found I had a flat tyre.” She smiled briefly but the smile became a frown. “You have been crying.”