Off Script

by Graham Hurley

  ‘Regrettable’ is probably worse. It isn’t a word I’d use in any context, least of all the maiming of someone we both regarded as a close friend. Pavel has always used language with a reverence and precision I’ve hugely admired. He thinks in paragraphs. Every word, every phrase, is carefully chosen, then sifted and weighed to carry the meaning he intends, measured to the last ounce. Sometimes his sheer intelligence, diamond-bright, has astonished me and – spellbound – I’ve been only too happy to become part of his life.

  Now, for whatever reason, his tone has changed. In some strange way I’m still struggling to define, he seems to have become my keeper. By rationing information, he’s playing with me. Worse still, he wants me – needs me – to understand that.

  ‘So, what happens next?’ I manage at last. ‘Are you ever going to tell me?’

  He doesn’t. Instead, he pleads exhaustion. One way and another, it’s been a tiring day. He’d appreciate a little peace, and perhaps some more Dvořák. I leave him to it, closing the door behind me. Now all three men in my life, doubtless for their own good reasons, have saddled up and headed for the hills.

  I stand alone in the lounge for several minutes, aware of Pavel listening to music next door. We have a baby-alarm device wireless linked to a microphone in his bedroom and I’ve switched it on. My knowledge of classical music isn’t all it should be but even I know this isn’t Dvořák. Instead, Pavel is listening to Beethoven and within seconds I recognize the opening movement of the Eroica Symphony.

  Back in the days before the accident in which Pavel broke his neck, he was living in a lovely house in Chiswick. That’s where we started sleeping together, and the memory of those nights I still treasure. We’d make love to a variety of music, usually classical, and for moments that deserved special celebration, Pavel always chose the Eroica. It was, he said, the music of the Gods.

  Gods? I turn off the baby alarm and slump on the sofa. Five minutes with my eyes closed tell me that I – like H and Malo – have to get out of this place. Felip can deal with Pavel. I fetch out my mobile and find the number I want.

  Deko, thank God, is at home.

  ‘Of course,’ he says at once. ‘Come over.’

  NINETEEN

  The Beacon is a ten-minute walk away. I knock at the front door and take half a step back. A sash window on the second floor is an inch or two open and I think I can hear the roar of a sizeable crowd. Seconds later, the door opens and Deko is inviting me in. He’s watching football thanks to Eurosport, and something exciting is about to happen in Amsterdam.

  Does this come as a surprise? Not really. On reflection, as I follow him upstairs, the blokiness that I’ve always associated with football – crowded pubs, spilled pints, intense focus, wild abandon – absolutely goes with the battered leather jacket and the baggy jeans.

  The room at the front on the second floor is where he watches TV. The set is perched on a card table in the bay window and the two unmatched chairs may have come from the tip, or perhaps the nursing home. Apart from this, the room is definitely a work in progress: bare floorboards, recently sanded, and daubs of tester paint on the walls. Deko has a colour sense that is anything but blokey – interesting shades of olive green and what I can only describe as swamp yellow – and already, back watching the action on the tiny TV, he’s noted my interest.

  ‘Anaglypta wallpaper,’ he says. ‘Nightmare to get off.’

  I smile. Already I’ve noticed a tiny whisker of cream paper in one corner of the room. Unable to help myself, I carefully remove it, feeling the indentations of thick paper between my fingertips.

  ‘I don’t understand how you make time for all this,’ I tell him. ‘The nursing home? All that work? How do you do it?’

  ‘I get help from time to time.’ He nods at the spare chair. ‘Help yourself. Drink?’

  I say yes and settle for wine. He’s so obviously absorbed by the game that I volunteer to find a bottle myself. He thinks that’s a great idea.

  ‘Upstairs in the office,’ he grunts. ‘Drinks cabinet in the corner.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll have the same …’ He glances across. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Never better.’

  In a curious way, I mean it. There’s something very normal about this man. More and more, I’m intrigued by the life he seems to have made for himself, and I love his lack of drama. He must know what I’m going through, how hard it must be to cope, and yet he resists the temptation to feel my pain. Modern relationships, for whatever reason, seem to be sustained by extravagant displays of empathy. Maybe it has to do with reality TV, hour after hour of oddballs banged up together until one of them loses it. Or maybe grief itself has become a race to the bottom, a competition to see who chokes first. Either way it’s a huge relief to find someone sitting in an empty room watching football. Sanity, I think.

  The bottom of the drinks cabinet offers an assortment of wines, most of them red. I select a Macon my mum happens to like and look around for a corkscrew. Deko’s desk is littered with paperwork and I can’t resist a peek. Most of this stuff turns out to be invoices, and none of them appear to have been paid. Garage bills. Demands from building suppliers to settle his account. A £389 invoice, again unpaid, from a skip-hire company. Of the HMRC tax demand I’d seen earlier there’s no sign but I’m starting to get the picture. No wonder he’s doing all the work himself, I think. The last thing he can afford is the luxury of paying someone else.

  I’m still at the desk when I hear a voice behind me. It’s Deko.

  ‘Take a look at this.’ I can hear the roar of the crowd from downstairs. ‘The Hunter just scored. Amazing goal. You need to see the replay.’

  I follow him downstairs with the still-corked bottle. Me snooping around his desk doesn’t seem to have registered. All that matters is the game. Ajax are already one-nil up. Huntelaar, Deko tells me, is on fire but this second goal is a peach.

  Huntelaar is evidently an attacker, and Deko points him out: tall, deep-set eyes, scary haircut. He dances towards the enemy goal, beating one player after another, tempts the goalie towards him with a lift of his right leg, then slides the ball into the bottom left-hand corner of the net. While the crowd erupt, we see the goal again from a different angle, and then a third. I’m no expert on football but Deko is right. This man belongs in a corps de ballet. He has perfect balance. He defies the laws of gravity. He moves like a ghost, or maybe an assassin.

  ‘Well …?’ Deko wants a reaction.

  ‘Perfect,’ I tell him. ‘Albright in Giselle. The women in the audience would wet themselves.’

  He shoots me a look and then tells me I’ll find a corkscrew in the kitchen in the basement. Glasses, too. I leave Deko back in his chair, eager for the game to re-start, and go downstairs. The kitchen, like much else in the house, has been stripped back to bare walls. New units and a huge fridge are still boxed and for the time being Deko seems to be relying on a camping stove, with a couple of saucepans and a single frying pan. A slotted wooden block contains a collection of kitchen knives of various sizes. I recognize the make at once, a Japanese company famed for the exquisite sharpness of their blades. I have a collection myself and they’re perfect for making sushi. The biggest of the knives is missing but I use a smaller one to peel back the foil on top of the bottle. A corkscrew and a couple of glasses lie on the draining board in the new sink.

  Back upstairs, I find Deko distraught. Excelsior, the other team, have come back with a goal of their own, thanks to a slender, unshaven metisse my mother would love.

  ‘Mounir El Hamdaoui.’ Deko shakes his head. ‘Rotterdam boy. Plays for Morocco.’

  Once again, we watch the replays while I uncork the bottle. This time, the goal is unspectacular.

  ‘Huntelaar’s on a hat trick,’ Deko tells me. ‘This lot have got it coming to them.’

  I pour the wine and pass him the bottle. There’s a remote on the floor beside his chair and he picks it up and freezes the action as soon as he
sees the next close-up of Huntelaar.

  ‘You don’t want to watch any more?’

  ‘It’s a recording. The game happened last week.’

  ‘You’re telling me you know the score already?’

  ‘Of course. Six–two.’ He nods at the figure frozen on the screen. ‘And he did get that hat trick.’

  We raise our glasses to The Hunter. Van Gaal, Deko tells me, thinks there’s no better player in the world when it comes to close control in the penalty area. I’ve no idea who Van Gaal might be, but I can imagine the audience at Sadler’s Wells on their feet.

  I’m still curious to know what satisfaction Deko gets from watching a game like this when he already knows the score. Where’s the tension? Where’s the surprise?

  He dismisses both questions. It’s not about the result, he says, it’s about the team. They’ve just beaten Juventus in the quarter finals of the Champions League. Next, in the semi, they’re meeting Spurs. He needs to know they’re ready, properly prepared. The first leg will be at Spurs’ new stadium at the end of the month.

  ‘And?’

  ‘The boys are on fire,’ he says. ‘All of them. The thirtieth is a Tuesday. I’ll be taking the boat to France the previous week, staying over a couple of days, back in time to catch the game. Fancy it?’

  This invitation, so natural, so casual, is a real tonic. It tells me that there really will be a life after what’s happened to Carrie, something I’d begun to doubt.

  ‘You want company?’

  ‘Yeah, and I want crew, too. I can sail the boat alone, no problem, but two of us will make it a lot more fun.’

  Fun. Normally I distrust the word but not now.

  ‘Where are you going? Exactly?’

  ‘Guess.’

  I gaze at him for a long moment. I haven’t a clue.

  ‘You’re telling me I should know?’

  ‘I am.’ He smiles. ‘Breton Thoniers? Amen’s spiritual home?’

  ‘You mean Douarnenez?’

  ‘I do. Think you might be able to cope?’

  I nod. Since he showed me his boat out on the estuary, memories of the fishing port have come flooding back.

  ‘There’s a cliff walk through the trees to an amazing beach,’ I tell him. ‘We used to take that path as kids. I can still smell the resin from the pines. At low tide, that beach goes on forever. We could go there. I could take you.’

  I grin, cupping my wine glass in both hands the way a child might, comforted by the memories.

  Deko still has the remote. He thumbs a button at the top and The Hunter fades to black.

  ‘No more football?’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘I think maybe we need to talk.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Your call.’

  ‘And we can take the bottle?’

  ‘Of course we can. I’m afraid you don’t get much more than a bed and a view but I’m thinking that might not be a problem.’ He gets to his feet, extending his spare hand. ‘Am I right?’

  He is. The bedroom is at the rear of the property and we make love as dusk steals in from the east. Deko has left the curtains wide open and afterwards, when I leave him briefly to step into the en suite, the dark outline of the church looms above us. Deko has made me very happy and for that, in ways I find hard to describe, I’m deeply grateful.

  Back in bed, I tell Deko the truth: that I’d wanted him from the moment I laid eyes on him.

  ‘So, what else do I owe Aretha?’

  ‘Nothing. You hadn’t sung a note.’

  ‘That sounds like a line from a movie.’

  ‘Then you’re watching the wrong films, Mr Rainbow Man.’ I run a fingertip through the light auburn curls on the broadness of his chest. ‘There’s something else I need to tell you, too. You can blame my mum for this.’

  ‘Always say thank you?’

  ‘Exactly. Not just a stud. Not just the Rainbow Man. But someone who took the right kind of care of me.’

  ‘Took?’

  ‘Takes.’ I’m delighted by his acuteness, and by the change of tense.

  I start to tell him about Pavel, how he has the same talent for mind-reading, and maybe for one or two other things.

  ‘You fucked him, too?’

  ‘I made love to him. There’s a difference.’

  ‘So, what happened? How come he’s paralysed?’

  I start to tell him about the accident that broke his neck, the small-hours dive into the wrong end of a swimming pool at an Orkney hotel.

  ‘He’d been diving on the wreck in Scapa Flow,’ I explain. ‘He’d come up with this movie idea and German TV wanted to film him underwater. A blind man? Mapping the remains of a long-dead battleship through his fingertips? That’s his phrase, not mine. Pavel loved the dives. He said it set him free. Made him weightless. They all got drunk that night and Pavel couldn’t get enough of the water so he found his way to the pool at three in the morning. Rule one: never dive in the shallow end.’

  ‘He broke his neck?’

  ‘He did. There was CCTV in the pool, monitored from the front desk, and that made him lucky because they managed to fish him out before he drowned. You know about any of this stuff?’

  ‘Yeah. We had a guy on the crew once. He fell off the gangplank in Rotterdam and broke his neck. Booze again. Very similar. Last time I saw him was in a nursing home in Antwerp. Won’t ever get out of his wheelchair, poor bastard.’

  ‘Pavel’s got a high break, C-three and C-four.’ I touch the back of Deko’s neck. ‘Any higher and he’d be dead. As it is, he can turn his head. He can chew and swallow. He can talk, hear, smell. He has feeling on his face and around his neck but that’s about it. Nothing else works. No feeling, no control. The inside of his head is where it all happens, but that’s always been his story so plus ça change … ’

  ‘The more things change?’

  ‘Exactly. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Pavel’s a one-off. I’ve never met anyone like him. In my business you need people with vision, people prepared to take a risk or two, people with that little chip of ice deep inside them. Pavel’s always had that. He’s a magpie. He thieves bits of other people’s lives and turns them into something special on the page. I had a lovely part in one of his BBC radio plays when I was still too wobbly to go back on set. That’s how we met.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now we all look after him.’

  ‘I meant the movie sets. You’re still in the game? Still doing it?’

  Good question. The fact is, I haven’t done a proper film for nearly a year. I’d like to blame this career break on a lack of scripts but that wouldn’t be strictly true.

  ‘I’m a jobbing thesp,’ I say defensively. ‘When the call comes, I’ll report for duty, but lately … I don’t know …’

  ‘Lost your appetite?’

  ‘Lost something.’

  I gaze at him a moment, and then we kiss. I can taste cigars on the smoothness of his tongue. He rolls on to his back and lets his head settle on the pillow. I hang over him.

  ‘You look a bit like Pavel,’ I tell him, ‘with your eyes closed like that.’

  ‘There’s a difference,’ he murmurs. ‘Try me.’

  I do. The second time is slower, more gentle, less urgent. Afterwards, I slip off him and lie enfolded by one giant arm. For minutes on end we say nothing. Then I prop myself up on one elbow, looking down at the big face on the pillow.

  ‘Why do you owe so much money? Do you mind me asking?’

  At first, I think he might be asleep, then one eye opens.

  ‘Why the question?’ My snooping doesn’t seem to bother him in the least.

  ‘I’m curious,’ I say. ‘Maybe that’s something I’ve picked up from Pavel. All those invoices on your desk. The tax demand. I know I shouldn’t have been looking but we must be talking six figures.’

  ‘Easily. Does that upset you?’

  ‘Not at all, but if I had debts like that it would frighten me w
itless. So either you’re a great actor …’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘That’s my question. There must be something I’m missing.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Are you expecting some huge windfall? A legacy, maybe? Is there someone rich in your family?’

  ‘Christ, no. My dad’s gone. You know that. I told you. He died without a guilder to his name. My mother remarried recently and her new guy hasn’t worked for more than a year. She always took in the strays, cats mostly.’ He pulls a face, and then shakes his head. ‘So, no. No magic fairy. And no money tree.’

  ‘Just the debts.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Unsettled.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Until?’

  ‘Until I can pay them. How does next month sound? Would that make me respectable again?’

  We’re very close, just inches away. I can feel the warmth of his breath on my face. Just now, I’m doing a Pavel, trying to pinpoint the key word in that little speech.

  ‘Respectable?’ I murmur. ‘Is that something that should matter to me?’

  Deko has a smile I can only describe as winning. It creeps over his face like an incoming tide. Laugh lines around his eyes. A hint of crooked teeth in his smile.

  ‘Respectable?’ He pulls me even closer. ‘Christ, I hope not.’

  TWENTY

  I spend the night at the Beacon. Next morning, by the time I make my way back through the town, the police tapes at both ends of Carrie’s street have gone, and everything appears to be back to normal. I linger for a moment, wanting to believe nothing ever happened, that it was all some kind of dream, but then a passer-by pauses outside Carrie’s place and peers down at her basement flat. Bad news lingers, I think. Like the worst of smells.

  Back at the apartment, Ndeye has already arrived. On her first day of work, she’s wearing a uniform in a subdued shade of deep blue. After last night’s explosion of colours, this comes as a mild disappointment, though nothing can lower the sheer voltage of her smile.

  ‘Ms Andressen.’ She kisses me on both cheeks, the way us French do.