The Missing World

by Margot Livesey

  Through the kitchen doorway, Freddie saw the frying pan lying upside down beside a pile of rice. He could barely keep himself afloat. Anybody else would sink him for sure. “What sort of hand?”

  “Oh, this is embarrassing. I’m about to put her in a taxi. She should be with you in a few minutes. I only answered my door because I was expecting my assistant and instead, there stood Charlotte, Venus of the rubbish bags. Well, you’ll see. She just needs a sofa for a couple of nights. Her sister’s thrown her out.”

  “Why send her to me when you’ve got room for a family of ten?”

  Mr. Early cleared his throat. “My candidate for the most excruciating sentence in the English language is ‘I need you,’ when I am the addressee. Whereas for you, forgive me, I sense it may be your favourite.”

  From beside Freddie’s left foot a man in a red shirt brandished a power drill, the Reader’s Digest manual of home improvement. “Which of the designers,” he said, “were you?”

  “Freddie.” Mr. Early laughed. “I was the one who got the job. Surely that’s obvious. I was trying to make myself sound wicked and interesting; also to warn you. I’m like a primitive organism, even more ancient than the dinosaurs—I’ll stop at nothing to preserve my world. I’d better let you go, however. Answer the doorbell or not, at your peril. I’m still in your debt.”

  Freddie stepped into the living-room, drew the curtains, picked up a lamp. If this doesn’t beat all. He didn’t know whether he was coming or going, but he did know if the doorbell rang he would answer. To that extent Mr. Early was right. He was a different kind of organism, more primitive or less, he couldn’t say. But his sense of self came from others. Left to his own devices, he was a formless blob.

  chapter 18

  “I should warn you,” the man said, leading her up the dark stairs, a bag in either hand, “things are kind of a wreck.”

  Charlotte nodded, blindly. She was still stunned at the speed with which first Bernie, then Mr. Early, had thrown her out. The latter had opened his door with alacrity, but at the sight of her his smile had dimmed and, once she started to fetch her bags, faded altogether. He hadn’t even allowed her to take off her coat, just a quick whisky in the hall while he made a phone call. When his assistant, Ray, showed up a few minutes later, she’d guessed the recipient of Mr. Early’s smile. She refused to lift a finger as Ray loaded the bags into yet another cab. Wanker, she thought, glaring at Mr. Early. Pathetic old poofter. How dare he treat her like some underling, some extra. And now this American was apologising for the state of his flat, which probably meant, if he was like most people she knew, three teaspoons lying in the sink or, tut-tut, a newspaper spread open on the sofa. Spare me.

  But as she entered Freddie’s hall, she tripped over what turned out to be a phone book, and when she recovered her balance and took in her new surroundings, on all sides the balm of disorder met her gaze. For the first time since moving to Bernie’s, Charlotte felt at home. “What’s that noise?” she said.

  “The dogs. They’ll settle down in a minute. Let me get the rest of your luggage.”

  Luggage. What a lovely, dignified term for her flock of bags. “I can help. There are so many.”

  Freddie smiled. In the unlit hall she had missed his skin, lustrous as an aubergine, his smooth, high forehead and dimpled chin. “You must be tired. Stay here and put your feet up. The couch is free, sort of.”

  Alone, Charlotte wandered into the kitchen. My, my, she thought, taking in the mess of broken china, pots and pans, various foodstuffs. This was beyond disorder; a vigorous tantrum, more likely. She set the Chardonnay beside a jar of peanut butter and, tiptoeing from one island of linoleum to the next, knelt beside the enclosure. The larger black dog sniffed at her outstretched hand and waddled away. The puppies, however, piled up without restraint. They licked her fingers, wagged their entire small bodies, fixed her with their melting eyes. She lifted the nearest one onto her lap.

  “Be careful how you put them down,” said Freddie from the doorway.

  “They’re adorable. What do you mean?”

  “You have to set them on all four paws else their legs get damaged.”

  Then he was gone. She gathered up a second puppy, and the third. One chewed her hair; the other, with excited yips, attacked a button of her blouse. Charlotte nuzzled their warm, black fur. This beat rug-rats any day.

  Twenty minutes later, the pups were back in their pen and she and Freddie were on the sofa with mugs of tea. She could smell the slight, pleasant tang of his sweat: all those bags, all those stairs. “Sorry about the mess,” he said. “Let me explain. I just came home, and while I was out a friend got mad and kidnapped Arkansas.”

  “Arkansas?”

  “One of the puppies.”

  She knew what he was telling her was important, upsetting even, but Mr. Early’s whisky, on top of the wine at Hazel’s, rendered her stupid. “Awful,” was all she could muster. Suddenly she noticed she was sliding towards Freddie’s shoulder. Wait a minute. She’d met him only half an hour ago. Swaying back to the vertical, she said, “This is very kind of you.”

  “No problem.” He sipped his tea. Charlotte did the same. Lacking his shoulder, she allowed herself the small luxury of slipping off her shoes and curling her feet beneath her on the sofa. “I don’t mean to be a doofus,” Freddie said, “but what’s wrong that you need a place to stay?”

  Doofus! Weren’t Americans wonderful? “I fucked up.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said, so clearly meaning “Me too” that she did. Not the version she’d hastily concocted for Mr. Early—torn between two good deeds, a woman taken ill and the rug-rats, her sister going berserk because she chose the former, etc.—but the one that had actually happened: the unexpected morning phone call, the drama of Hazel finding her long-lost flat, Bernie’s missing note.

  “This woman, Hazel, where does she live?”

  “In Highbury, off the Holloway Road.” Why was he leaning forward, his voice sharp with interest?

  “And does she have seizures?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He stood up, paced to the door, back again, gave an absurd little jump, and finally knelt in front of Charlotte and took her hands. “You must think I’ve gone nuts.”

  He explained how he’d met Hazel through work, and her next-door neighbour taught some kind of class. Charlotte let his words wash over her—such coincidences were commonplace—and focussed on his hands. “So what happened today,” he was asking, “when you went to Hazel’s flat?”

  “Her lodger let us in, a quite nice one-bedroom in Kentish Town. We had a cup of tea.”

  “And? Did her memory come back?”

  Something’s going on, thought Charlotte. She started to push her way through the veils of alcohol, the pleasure of his touch. “No. She recognised stuff, furniture, pictures, but she didn’t remember being there at all. She got rather upset.”

  “Shoot.” He let go of her hands and resumed pacing. “Where is she now?”

  “Home. Are you okay? You seem a bit flustered.”

  Freddie pulled himself back inside his amazing skin. “Sorry. I just know the setup between Littleton and Hazel isn’t on the level. He’s taking advantage of her.”

  Charlotte remembered the occasions on which she’d caught Jonathan gazing at Hazel. “He loves her. I mean, he may still be taking advantage, but he is crazy about her.”

  “You say that as if it’s some kind of excuse.” He bounced from foot to foot. “I think we should go over there.”

  She stared up at him. What exactly was he proposing? That she leave his cosy sofa to traipse over to Hazel’s, once again an unwanted guest? She recalled her glimpse of Jonathan earlier that evening: his grumpiness about the candles, his brusque payment. “If you don’t mind, I’ll sit this one out. Find my toothbrush and get settled. Do you have any blankets?”

  “No,” he said, not meaning the blankets. “Black boys don’t prowl around alone at night, even in London. Please
say you’ll come. All you need to do is walk to my van. I’ll do the rest.”

  In the face of his urgency there was only one answer. “Can we have scrambled eggs when we get back?”

  “Sure. And I’ll wash the pan.” He held out his hand, the palm nearly as pink as Bernie’s, in a gesture Charlotte recognised from American films. “Deal?”

  “Deal,” she said, searching for her shoes.

  Jonathan began to lob sentences through the tendrils of candle smoke. “We did make mistakes, Maud and me. You have to understand what it’s like. Hogarth claims the seizures have no single cause. Often, though, after we have a difficult conversation, you foam at the mouth. Surely you can see how that makes me feel.”

  Hazel gave no sign, either by word or gesture, of seeing anything. He fanned away the smoke, trying desperately to think of additional arguments. A detail from an epilepsy pamphlet he’d read at the hospital came to mind. “You probably don’t realise that the seizures affect your short-term memory. You often lose a couple of hours preceding them. I did tell you, more than once, that we’d had our quarrels.”

  It wasn’t working—she was getting up—but he rushed on. The main thing was not to mention the job, those letters. Blame himself for everything, not that. “Of course I should’ve told you about Suzanne, but you were so strident about women’s rights. It was as if my opinion, the man’s opinion, was irrelevant.”

  At last he had her attention. She paused, crouching, to look at him. “You have a daughter.”

  “Suzanne has—” he began and then, as she made a slight pushing motion, quickly said, “Yes.”

  “And you’ve never met her?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He drifted over to the cheese plant. Now was the moment to deliver his well-rehearsed anguish. “I’m not sure.” Do the puzzled frown. “At first it was mostly my fault. I wasn’t very persistent. You and I were just getting to know each other, and I didn’t want anything to come between us. Then—”

  “Don’t do that.”

  He released the leaf, what remained of it, and dropped the green fragments into the pot. “When I did ask to see her, Suzanne wouldn’t let me. Either I had to be a full-time father or nothing. All she wanted was my money.” Hazel raised a hand to shield her yawn. “I can see how engrossing this is.”

  “Jonathan, it’s hard to be interested, except in a pathological way, when my first reaction is to wonder whether this really happened. When you told me about Maud, I knew you were telling the truth. You blurted it out. Just now I could see you calculating every sentence. If what you’re saying about Suzanne is true, that’s rotten. Frankly, though, I wouldn’t bet a fiver either way.”

  He ought to explode with righteous anger—that was what people did when falsely accused—but he could only listen, mesmerised, as she gathered momentum.

  “I was describing to Charlotte the day we met at the library. You were wearing a shirt with tiny red and black checks and you asked me about India, about tutoring those rich kids. You told me about your bees. I loved how passionate you were, and that you didn’t take yourself too seriously. Later, over dinner, you talked about your dog, Fluffy.”

  “Flopsy.”

  “Flopsy. It never occurred to you that your parents had lied. I found that so—” she spread her fingers—“so touching. You know Plato’s theory, the original whole divided, the halves striving to be reunited. I had the idea that was us. I’d been living on impulse for nearly a decade, and you’d had your shoulder to the grindstone. You could teach me how to live the examined life, I thought, and I could teach you the reverse. It seems funny now, but I blamed myself when our relationship started to unravel.”

  If the brain has cells like a honeycomb, thought Jonathan, little wax chambers, row after row, waiting to be filled and capped, now his were brimming.

  “Maybe,” she said, and finally she was looking at him, “you didn’t do anything with Suzanne I wouldn’t have done, but I would never have kept it secret.”

  “You know”—he took a step towards her—“for all your principles about tolerance, you aren’t very forgiving. No one gets a second chance. Not me, not your parents, not even my parents with their stupid fib. Anything dodgy, you run for the high moral ground.”

  “What do you mean?”

  For a moment, the interest in her voice made him want to laugh. Wouldn’t ninety-nine people out of a hundred rather talk about their own bad behaviour than another person’s virtues? “You said our relationship unravelled.” She gave a small nod; he did like her hair longer. “If I had to pick a single occasion when matters took a wrong turn, it would be the night you proposed to me and I panicked. I’ve regretted that a million times, I’ve apologised from here to Timbuktu, but you never listened. I had my chance. I blew it. End of story.”

  “Boris told me the same thing, that I hold grudges.” She stopped, and from the way she cocked her head he knew she was chasing some distant memory. “No.” She sighed and moved towards the door.

  “Now we have a second chance.” Two halves, she’d said, seeking a whole. “That’s what your illness has given us, the ultimate second chance.”

  She was doing what she always did, walking away.

  For the second time that evening, he grabbed a woman’s wrist. Hers was thinner than Maud’s.

  “I met Daniel today.”

  “Daniel?”

  “My tenant.”

  His palms itched, his eyeballs no longer seemed to fit. In his grasp, Hazel’s bones squeezed together. “You can’t imagine”—her voice wavered—“how strange it was to be in this flat and see my books, my pictures, my desk, the sort of washing-up liquid I always buy, and to have not the faintest recollection of ever setting foot there.

  “When I try to recover the past,” she went on, “where most people have a window, I have a wall.”

  Suddenly he found himself remembering that snowy evening, her eyes rolling back in her head as she walked, endlessly, into the living-room wall. And then he was holding her, shaking, trying to contain her despair and his own jubilation. The letters were gone, dead and gone. His arms were around her, and she was neither crying nor shouting nor pushing him away. Soon, nothing could come between them.

  Charlotte regarded the van’s uninterrupted windscreen with pleasure. She could not remember the last time she’d ridden in the front of a vehicle and so high up. “Here we go,” said Freddie, but for a minute or two the engine coughed and hesitated. When it finally caught, he turned to her. To thank her again, or give her a hug? No, something about a seat belt.

  She was still disentangling the loop of material as he leaned across, his arm pressing gently against her chest, to straighten the belt and snap the buckle into place. I’ve only known him for an hour, she reminded herself. But could compatability be measured chronologically? Bernie had thrown her out after more than thirty years, and Walter bolted after five.

  “You should have air bags,” she said. “Why do you have a van? How old are you?”

  He was back-and-forthing to get out from between the adjacent cars. “To carry my tools. I fix roofs. Didn’t I tell you that’s how I met Hazel? They had a problem with the flashing on the back party wall.” He edged into the street. “Thirty-five.”

  After the van’s balky start, their progress was remarkably smooth. As they turned onto the main road, Charlotte had a pleasing sense of Freddie beside her, shifting gears at precisely the right moment. “I’m thirty-three,” she said. “Do you have a girlfriend?” A pub where she’d once done a Pinter play flashed by. Something warm lay beneath her fingers; glancing down, she discovered her hand resting on Freddie’s thigh.

  “I did. Felicity, but I have the feeling she’s history. Or I am. She’s the one who stole the puppy.”

  “If she ditched you, I think you’re history. Am I asking too many questions?”

  They slowed down at a red light. “Too bloody right,” he attempted in cockney, then switched to America
n. “Well, we’re roommates, so can I ask you a question?”

  Here it comes, she thought, whisking away her hand: the dreary interrogation. How long are you staying? When’s the last time you acted? Where’s your boyfriend? The road ahead was jammed with cars. People going home from a night on the town, seeing Les Miz or An Inspector Calls, and what was she doing? Trundling along on some tedious errand, with an American stranger. Even his shambolic flat was less reassuring now that she knew this Felicity was responsible. “I suppose,” she muttered.

  “I just wondered about Hazel, whether she ever mentioned me?”

  Was it possible, she thought, that Freddie had a pash? He shifted down, and she dismissed the notion. He was like her, worried about Hazel, caught up in the drama of her amnesia. As if neither of them need notice, she put her hand back on his thigh. “Not that I recall, but there’s no reason why she should. Either I’m reading to her or we’re working on her memory. You know she and Jonathan are getting married in a couple of weeks?”

  Only the seat belt saved Charlotte from meeting the windscreen. She found herself staring down at a white mini.

  “Married?” said Freddie.

  “Good you made me wear the belt.” She pointed at the dumpy car. “Don’t worry. We didn’t hit them.”

  The mini bounded forward, apparently unaware of its narrow escape, and again they were moving.

  “What do you mean, ‘married’?”

  “That thing people of the opposite sex do at the Town Hall when they exchange rings.” She giggled. “Though maybe the flat will change that. Hazel was pretty upset.”

  “Shit.”

  Looking around, Charlotte saw they’d missed their turn. “We can do a U-turn at the lights,” she said soothingly. Although at this point, her initial reluctance to leave the sofa had vanished; she would happily drive all night. They could go to Scarborough, where she’d once done a summer season, and watch the sun rise from the clifftops. Only two hundred miles.

  But Freddie was already signalling, apologising. “I’ve had a peculiar day,” he said. They passed a school, a stark playground, and here was Hazel’s street of neat two-storey houses and leafless trees. Why did that woman ditch you, she was about to say, as he pulled over. Later.