‘Big enough for me.’
He gives her a small smile, which she returns, and as she looks away she notices his gaze slipping downward before returning to the ceiling. ‘Quite something, though,’ he says.
‘It is.’
‘Must have cost a fortune.’
‘Nearly bankrupted the owner, my dad says. The pool and the garden, and the murals upstairs. Just about cleaned him out.’
‘I bet,’ he murmurs, examining the constellation overhead, then neither of them speaks for quite a long time, as if it were the real night sky above them. ‘Are these just random, do you think?’ David asks.
‘Not sure. That might be Orion’s Belt, down there,’ she says, pointing at a conspicuous band of stars. ‘I don’t know.’ She scans the decoration, searching for patterns among the scatter, then she notices, out of the corner of her eye, that David is looking at her again.
He is smiling, but his smile implies a question, and she doesn’t understand what it means, until he says, directing her attention to her arm, ‘You need to keep an eye on that.’
An entire side of the plaster has come away, uncovering the cuts, and there’s a new bloodstain on the outside. She lifts her elbow clear of the water, pressing on the plaster with her other hand. It won’t stick again, however hard she presses, and he can see that it won’t.
‘Want to get out?’ he asks her, and offers a hand.
She looks for the steps: they are close, but it would look ridiculous if she swam over to them. ‘Not yet,’ she says, starting to tread water, as if getting ready to swim.
‘OK,’ he says. Out of the corner of her eye she sees him watching her. She sees his hands shift on the tiles, as if he’s about to stand up. ‘You’d better change that,’ he says. ‘And I’d better get upstairs.’ He gets to his feet and wipes a hand over his eyes. ‘See you around.’
‘See you,’ she says.
He walks towards the changing rooms, shaking the drops from his fingers. At the door he gives her a wave without turning round, a gesture that seems dismissive, but later that afternoon, crossing the hall to go back to the garden, she looks through the quarter-open door of the room where Mr Naylor sleeps at night, and sees David sitting at a desk in there, scribbling on a scrap of paper, and when he becomes aware of her presence he turns towards her and brandishes the pen in front of his eyes, snarling in exasperation at it. ‘Piece of tat,’ he tells her. ‘Straight out the box and it doesn’t work. Chuck us that one, would you?’ he asks, pointing to the side of her, where, set against the wall, there’s a small table with a pad of headed paper and a pen in a plastic holder, with a gold oak tree stencilled on its base. She brings him the pen and watches him write Mr Morton’s name on an envelope. Before she can ask what he’s doing, David gives her the answer, picking up the earphone from the desk and dangling it between them. ‘The blind bloke left this behind.’ He winds it around the pen then drops the coiled wire into the mouth of the envelope. ‘Like I said. I’m the general dogsbody. I lug the cases, I do the post, I’m the hotel geek,’ he grumbles, swivelling his chair to present the computer that’s wedged into a corner behind the door.
The image on the screen is grainy, like the picture on a closed-circuit TV monitor and at first she can’t make out what it’s showing. It appears to be a vast open-air car park, with only a dozen cars in it. David looks at the computer, then at her, then at the computer again. ‘A shopping mall in Florida. The action’s not got under way yet. Hang around for a couple of hours and things’ll hot up. Round about six, our time, it’s non-stop thrills,’ he tells her, deadpan, inviting her to ask him what it’s about.
The image judders, and now there is a station wagon in the bottom left-hand corner. ‘Don’t get it,’ she says.
‘A webcam. Some maniac’s rigged a webcam in the parking lot of some godawful shopping mall in Florida, for the benefit of all mankind.’
‘That’s all there is to it? Cars at a shopping mall?’
‘Hell, no. You get the drivers and sometimes you get passengers. Plus weather. What more could you want?’ With a put-on expression of doped wonderment, he regards the station wagon. ‘Great, isn’t it? A bona fide epic. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. People arriving, people leaving. I mean, this is what cutting-edge technology is all about. Bringing the whole world to your desktop. And it’s a big world out there, believe me,’ he grins, clicking on ‘Back’. The car park vanishes and is replaced by the word ‘Livingdead’ in muddy brown letters, in the 3-D style of old horror film posters. Below the title a photograph develops – an aerial photograph of a housing estate, with bright blue words on the roofs. ‘Welcome to the home page of Livingdead.com, my very own contribution to the information revolution.’
‘You did that?’
‘All my own work,’ he proclaims, self-mocking. ‘The world’s most tedious webcams, gathered together in one place.’
‘So you really are a geek.’
‘A semi-geek. In October I go to college in London. To become a fully-fledged geek. And piss about, of course.’
‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a geek,’ she tells him.
He bows to her, hand on heart. ‘I thank you. Appearances are deceptive. Now behold, and be amazed,’ he declares, clicking the mouse. ‘Every roof is a link, see? And this one takes us to –’ A new page is unscrolling, but David clicks again before it has emerged completely, and the screen is beginning to fill with a panorama of brown sea. A foreground materialises, in which cars are driving through brown mist. ‘Rain in the Baltic. The tension is very bearable. Let’s try –’ He returns to the home page, then clicks another link. The sea gives way to a murky night scene, and when she puts her face a couple of inches from the screen she can make out a knot of tyre patterns on a snowbound traffic intersection. ‘Snow in northern Canada. Beautiful,’ he whispers, so close to her that she can smell a trace of the swimming pool’s water on his skin. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to get these done,’ he says, indicating a pile of letters by Mr Morton’s envelope, ‘but be my guest. Make yourself at home.’
While David runs the letters through the franking machine she roams around the network of Livingdead.com, visiting a mist-engulfed path in the Jura mountains, a small airstrip in Germany, a tatty public park in Denmark, a Spanish beach. As if straining to see through the mossy glass of a badly kept aquarium, she is trying to make sense of the picture coming from a dark apartment in Oregon, when she hears a car pull up on the drive outside. Sighing at the interruption, David gets up from the desk. ‘Don’t want your dad to see that,’ he tells her, reaching for the mouse. ‘Be a pity to get sacked with only a week to go, wouldn’t it?’ he says, and his hand touches the outside of her little finger.
Having unpacked his suitcase and verified that the tapes inside the bubble-wrap envelope are the interviews with Jochen Stadler, Edward goes into the living room to listen to the answering machine. Eight messages have been left: Niall is letting him know that he’s out of London for most of the next week but will come round to reinstall the software as soon as he’s back; someone whose name is indistinct confirms that the Stadler book has been posted to him and says that they’d like to bring the schedule forward, so if he could turn it round before the end of the month they’d be very grateful, and there’d be a top-up on his fee, of course; Lucy thanks him for the kite; somebody who doesn’t leave a name has called twice, asking someone called Peter to call tomorrow at the latest; there’s a volley of noise from what seems to be a call centre; Malcolm has phoned, to tell him that he’s posted an earpiece they found on the floor of his room; and, lastly, an outburst from Claudia. ‘Why do you tell me about this girl? She is not important. What is she to me?’ she almost shouts. ‘I am so angry. It is possible I will call you later and maybe I will not,’ she says.
But she does call later, and from the start she is at the same pitch of indignation. ‘We are in a serious situation. We are arguing. It is very serious. But what do you write
about?’ she demands. ‘You tell me about this man and his silly girl. You spend your words on them, not me. I don’t care about this girl and I don’t care about her father. They are not important.’
‘I thought you might like to know –’
‘I am not interested in them. I am interested in us. That is all I am interested in.’
‘Not quite true. Cephalopods,’ he corrects her, which provokes a smothered scream and a muttered phrase, in Italian, that eludes him. ‘I’m sorry. That was not appropriate.’
Claudia does not reply. He hears her breathing deeply, as if to bolster her self-control. ‘Edward,’ she says at last, ‘I have decided.’
A sensation of weightlessness overcomes him fleetingly, followed instantly by something akin to the fearfulness of being abandoned in a vast and unknown room. ‘Yes?’ he says. ‘And?’
‘I will tell them yes. I am taking the job. Tomorrow I will send the letter.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK. Good. That’s good.’
Again she does not speak, but now he cannot even hear the sound of her presence at the other end of the line. ‘Claudia?’ he asks, and still he hears nothing. ‘Claudia?’
‘Is that all you have to say?’ she asks calmly. ‘“Good.” That is all you think?’
‘No, of course it’s not. But this isn’t the way to discuss it. I thought –’
‘You said you wanted to talk. That’s what you said: we must talk. So here we are. We are talking.’
‘But you’re not making it very easy.’
‘I am not making it easy?’
‘Well, we’ve started this conversation on the wrong foot, haven’t we? I mean –’
‘And that is my fault?’
‘No. It’s –’
‘That is what you said. You said I am not making it easy.’
‘All I meant –’
‘Edward, I have done everything to make it easy. I will do everything to make it easy. Everything that a person can do. I have lived in your country, now you live in mine.’
‘It’s hardly the same, Claudia. For one thing –’
‘No,’ she sighs emphatically. ‘It’s not the same. I want us to be happy and you want us to be unhappy. You are right. It is not the same.’
‘I do not want you to be unhappy. The opposite is the case. Which is why I wanted you to take the job.’
‘I take the job. You do not come. I am unhappy,’ she explains, demonstrating a straightforward equation.
‘I’m thinking of the long term. What happens in the long term.’
‘I can tell you that, Edward. That is easy too. In the long term we are dead. All of us. We are dead. I can guarantee it.’
He gives a quiet, brief laugh, which is not reciprocated. ‘That’s true,’ he says.
There is another pause, then Claudia states without emotion: ‘I am going away tomorrow.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten. That’s one reason I wanted to talk to you.’
She makes a sound as if blowing a strand of hair from her face. ‘And I think I will not phone you while I am away.’
‘Is that what you want to do?’
‘Is it what you want?’
‘I wouldn’t say it’s what I want. But it might not be a bad idea.’
‘So you can have one of your big thinks.’
‘Well –’
‘Because if you speak to me you’ll want to be with me and that will confuse things for you.’
‘It’s possible. If we –’
‘You’ll want to be with me and that is a problem.’
‘This is a very big decision, Claudia. I –’
‘You want to talk; you don’t want to talk. You want to talk; you don’t want to talk. It is completely ridiculous. It is so stupid. For a clever man you are very stupid. Stupid stupid stupid,’ she yells, and she puts the phone down.
For a few moments he holds the whining phone to his ear, as if to forestall his comprehension of her absence. Incapable of thinking in the disarray created by their conversation, he fixes on a fact: he now has a week alone, a week in which to reflect on what he should do. Tomorrow he will see nobody and will speak to nobody, and things will begin to become clearer. Tomorrow, undistracted, he will start along the path to his decision, he resolves, but for now distraction is needed, so he plays the first of the Stadler tapes.
Mein Vater war Förster, a quavering tenor announces, then there is a pause, a portentous pause, before Stadler proceeds with the tale of his life and his father’s fate. Querulous and pedantic, Stadler’s is not a pleasant voice, and so lacking in variety that it is difficult to attend to his words at times, even more so when music begins to mingle with the interview, barely audibly at first, then appreciably louder. The Beatles are playing as Stadler describes the pot of diamonds that belonged to Göring, the Reichsjägermeister. He stops the tape, rewinds it and restarts, increasing the volume. ‘It was a small pot, filled with diamonds,’ he translates. ‘The Reichsjägermeister liked to dabble his fingers in them, as you would rinse your fingers in a fingerbowl of water after a meal. And as in the court of a Sultan, there was a man whose job it was to carry the Reichsjägermeister’s pot of jewels, to be at hand whenever he felt the need to run his fingers through the precious stones. Once, my father was that man.’
Again ‘Get Back’ fades out, followed promptly by ‘Hey Jude’, even louder. The windows at the front of the house must be open, because most of the noise is coming from the street, not through the walls. While Stadler deplores the fate of the bison of the Lithuanian forest, the finale of ‘Hey Jude’ is joined by the bawling chorus of the neighbour and his guests. The song ends, and in the lull he hears the sounds of Mr Campbell coming back from the pub: the energetic clearing of the bronchial tract; the vehement expectoration, twice; the key chattering on the lock. ‘Penny Lane’ begins, even louder than ‘Hey Jude’, with accompaniment from the chorus, and Mr Campbell bellows from his doorstep: ‘Shut that fucking row!’ The singers stop, then resume at full voice. ‘Shut! That! Fucking! Row!’ repeats Mr Campbell.
The music quietens, a sash window rattles and an Australian voice replies, in an amiable shout: ‘Mind your language, mate.’
‘Bollocks,’ Mr Campbell cries.
‘And bollocks to you,’ the Australian parries.
Mr Campbell’s key skates on the lock again, then his door bangs open. ‘Fuck off,’ he yells.
‘Fuck off,’ comes the rejoinder, and laughter at the window.
‘Fuck off.’ The door slams, with the clatter of a heavy doorknocker.
At the shriek of jet engines, the start of ‘Back in the USSR’, Edward gets up and walks to the bedroom. He lies on the bed. Meaning to take hold of the radio, he touches the towel that hangs on the back of the door. He pulls it from the hook and holds it to his face. A fragrance is in the folds of the fabric: the lavender of the bath oil that Claudia uses, and the smell of her hair, a smell that has cinnamon in it.
twelve
When Malcolm comes back into the office, Stephanie is sitting on the sill, by the open window. She smiles towards the door rather than at him, then turns her face, still smiling, back into the balmy air. The piece of oak has been taken down from the wall, he notices, and then he sees that it is resting against the sill, and Stephanie’s right hand is strumming slowly over the ridges of the wood as she looks out at the garden. Sitting at his desk, he observes her. Too far away to be heard, a helicopter is flying along the valley; she watches it tilt to turn across the town and pass from sight. As it was last night, when they watched TV together, her silence seems less obdurate than it had been at first. She is no longer making a show of withholding herself. She seems drowsy rather than bored. At the creak of his chair she looks at him.
‘You’ve found the relic, I see,’ he says, pointing.
Her hand stops, then she looks down, as if she hadn’t been paying attention to what it was doing. ‘What are these green bits?’ she asks, picking at the wood. ‘They feel like metal.’
‘Old pennies. That’s a lump of the original oak, the oak that gave the Oak its name,’ he explains. ‘It was a wishing tree. People would knock pennies into it and make a wish.’
‘Like throwing coins into a well.’
‘Exactly. But over the years the tree received too many wishes for its own good. The coins gave it copper poisoning so it had to be cut down. That piece is all that’s left,’ he tells her, and she elevates the relic on her fingertips, joking in a way she would not have done a couple of days ago. ‘It used to be the centrepiece of the whole garden. I’ll show you,’ and without thinking he puts a hand out to lead her. She does not take it, but hangs the remnant back on its bracket, then follows him to the picture. ‘See, there,’ he says, indicating the tree in the centre of the engraving.
She bends down to read the inscription on the scroll, which is partly obscured by a water stain. ‘What’s Oak Day?’
‘Royal Oak Day. May 29th, commemorating Charles II’s return to London in 1660. You know, the story of the king hiding in an oak tree?’ Stephanie nods, looking closely at the throng of ladies and gentlemen around the tree. ‘It’s still celebrated in some parts of the country, but it’s called Oak Apple Day now.’
‘Oak apples?’
‘The galls formed on oak twigs by wasp larvae. They’re called oak apples and you find them at the end of May. I suppose that’s why it’s called Oak Apple Day rather than simply Oak Day.’ Four or five loose hairs are clinging to the fabric of her top, in the middle of her back, and he wants to pick them off, to have an excuse to touch her. He stands at her side, his arm close to hers, to show her the quirky little details in the engraving: the rabbit on the path, the solitary figure beside the fountain, the drummer boy half hidden in the foliage. He points out the sprigs of oak leaves that some of the ladies are carrying, and when he steps back she continues to pore over the crowd, as if counting how many people there are.
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