The other shell, with the folds, is Argonauta argo, what is called the Paper Nautilus. Your hands will tell you straight away that you must be careful with it. Very careful. It is not a shell like the Nautilus pompilius, which is a true shell. Nautilus pompilius is a big water snail, and it has a true shell. But the Paper Nautilus is an octopus and its shell is not an armour – it is an incubator. It is formed from a cement that the female squeezes out from her body. She lives inside it, with her eggs, and when the embryos are advanced she moves them into a chamber in the shell, as many as fifty thousand of them. Isn’t that incredible? Fifty thousand in a shell. And the shell is incredible too. Why is the shell of the Argonauta the shape it is? This is another thing I do not understand. Why is it so like the shells of other species, shells which are true shells. The Argonauta somehow makes a copy, a forgery. She makes a false shell in the style of a true shell. But how does it do it? I do not know.
In old books the shell of the Argonauta is described as a boat, and people thought that the creature raised a sail of skin to catch the wind. But the little sail, it is a fantasy. There is a membrane, this is true, but it is not to go sailing. The membrane is the source of the substance that forms the shell, this is what it is for. It is true that the Argonauta waves its tentacles on the water, like it is rowing, but mostly it moves by squirting water from its body. When it spreads its arms on the surface, it looks like a red-brown flower with long thin petals. Her shell is so fine it is half transparent sometimes, so you can see the body through it, like through a pleated dress, a Fortuny dress, and her eyes are peeping at you over her collar.
The way she mates is weird, Edward. You will not believe it. A tentacle falls off the male and swims over to the female, carrying the spermatophore. It gets inside the female and empties itself and dies. The first people who saw it thought it was a parasite, a worm that lived on the female. It is a very unusual way of doing it, but very necessary, because the male is not the equal of the female. The female has her shell house but the male is naked, and he is very very tiny – the female is ten times bigger than him, sometimes twenty times. So he has to be careful, and send his penis over to her, like a messenger. Extraordinary, no?
Two nights ago there was a storm. In the morning there were leaves and branches all over the sand, and in the middle of some leaves I found an Argonauta, a female, with no shell. She was dead. Near to her I saw another, also dead, and then a third. They must have been thrown from their shells in the storm,’ Claudia laments, and he sees something: a beach strewn with weeds and splintered wood, and a pale many-limbed knot of flesh, at the feet of a woman who has no definite face, the half-realised idea of Claudia. Her voice whispers in his ear, with the sea whispering around her and behind her the sounds of his street at night, the Beatles, a siren, a lorry. ‘The sea is frothy like cappuccino near the shore, but the colour of squid ink in the distance, and the sky is the same blue-black. I can see thousands of stars, very bright. They are like salt crystals on blue-black velvet.’
sixteen
Edward hears the stirring of a hand in water, and the slap and swish of a sponge or cloth on metal, but whoever is washing the car says nothing as he walks past the open door, past the scent of old leather and the voice of a DJ taunting one of his studio crew. The same voice, aping a Dean Martin croon, is coming from the car when he gets back. He swerves around the door and a thick dribble of water falls into a bucket, out in the road. ‘Morning, Ed,’ says Mike, too loudly for the distance, and with a perky irony in his voice.
‘Good morning,’ he replies, offering what he hopes is an affable smile. ‘Nice day.’
Damp fabric squeaks on glass. ‘It is,’ says Mike.
‘Very nice,’ he agrees, smiling at the sun.
‘Just giving the wheels a bit of attention,’ Mike informs him. ‘Thought I’d take my mates for a spin.’
‘Not at work today?’
‘Nah,’ says Mike. He stops rubbing at the windows and turns the radio off, but says nothing, as if inviting him to come up with a better question.
‘What is it? What make?’
‘Citroën. DS.’
The name, though familiar, perhaps from his father’s collection, brings nothing with it other than this imprecise sense of being known. ‘Very nice,’ he remarks.
‘Yeah. Bit of a classic,’ says Mike, plainly with something else on his mind.
‘So where are you going?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You said you were going for a spin.’
‘Dunno. Down to the coast, maybe,’ Mike responds heavily, before firing a long burst from the aerosol. He rubs at the glass, as if to budge something that’s stuck there, then stops.
‘Well, have fun,’ he says, beginning to move away. ‘I’d better get back to work.’
‘Sure,’ says Mike. And then, as the front door is opening, he adds: ‘You only had to ask, you know.’ His voice is accusatory, with a hint of disappointment.
‘Only had to ask what?’ he asks, but receives no answer. Something hits the water in the bucket with the plop of an object released from a height. ‘Only had to ask what?’
‘You know.’
‘I do not know.’
‘Yes you do,’ Mike replies, in a childish taunting lilt.
‘No, I do not know. Only had to ask what?’
‘Calling out the rozzers. Bit over the top.’
‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Unfriendly of you, Ed. Not nice at all.’
‘You’re saying someone called the police about the noise? When? Last night?’
‘Do me a favour, Ed. Yes, last night.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘I think it was you. You’re the only one who’s complained.’
‘Exactly. I complained. I asked you to turn it down.’
‘Exactly. You’re the only one who has a problem.’
‘Evidently not.’
‘We turned it down before and if you’d asked us last night we’d have turned it down again. No need to get the police involved.’
‘If I’d wanted you to turn it down I would have asked you to, like I did before.’
‘A neighbour, they said it was. A gentleman.’
‘Well, that really narrows the field down.’
‘So who do you reckon it was?’
‘How on earth should I know?’
‘Mr Campbell?’
‘Could have been.’
‘He was so rat-arsed it took him half a fucking hour to find his front door. It would have taken him all night to dial 999,’ Mike reasons. ‘It wasn’t him. It was you.’
‘Mike, it wasn’t me,’ he says, stepping over the threshold. ‘Believe me or don’t believe me.’
‘I think I won’t.’
‘Suit yourself.’
‘I will,’ Mike calls out to the closing door. ‘It was you, Ed. It was you,’ he repeats, with a grieving cadence.
‘It was you, Ed. It was you,’ he mumbles on the stairs, mimicking the voice of Marlon Brando, and he laughs, but by the time he reaches his desk the car radio has been turned on again, not very loud, yet loud enough, and as he puts on the headphones he experiences a longing, a craving of peculiar immediacy, for the tranquillity of the Oak, and sitting at his desk he begins to amass the required justifications for his departure: the progress he made on Leopardi when he was there; the progress he is failing to make on Stadler; the company of Malcolm Caldecott and his daughter; his inability, at home, to resist the temptation of Claudia’s voice; the last night of the Oak; the garden…
Stephanie walks up the hill to the Oak, taking her time to get there, because in the soft green light of the tunnel of trees, amid the whispering hiss of the leaves, her anxiety at the thought of seeing her father again, at the thought of seeing David, is receding minute by minute, is becoming something else, an ambiguous trepidation, an excited uncertainty. She is going to make a mess of everything, she tells herself.
She doesn’t know what she is doing, she thinks, seeing the gate appear beneath an arch of branches, but it will be a mess of her own making, and whatever might happen the mess must be better than the life she is beginning to leave. Upheaval can only be good, she assures herself, and she quickens her pace as she passes through the gate, intent as a tightrope walker.
Business at the Oak appears to be better than it was when she left. Half a dozen cars are parked beside the hotel, and over by one of the flower beds a rotund little woman in a ghastly sky-blue dress is talking to a plump little man whose overdone tan and slicked-back silver hair and cream linen suit give him the look of a South American dictator in comfortable exile. In the middle of the entrance hall stand two suitcases, which must belong to the elderly couple at the reception desk. The lift bell chimes, the door slides open and there is David, brushing at a sleeve of his uniform. Flicking at the cuff, he crosses to the desk and takes the proffered key from the receptionist, who indicates the luggage, and in looking towards the suitcases David notices her. As he picks up the cases he rolls his eyes in mock dismay, so that only she can see, then he turns to ask the elderly pair to follow him. They get to the threshold of the lift and then the man, remembering something, goes back to the desk to ask a question, which leads to another question, and another. His wife, releasing a long-suffering sigh, steps out of the lift, mouthing words at her husband’s back. She taps him on the shoulder, apologising to the receptionist with an acidic little smile. Her husband shrugs at the receptionist, then allows himself to be led away.
Putting a restraining hand on the door, David lifts one eyebrow queryingly and makes a sly beckoning gesture. She waits for the elderly couple to get into the lift, then takes a place beside David. ‘First for you as well?’ he enquires, with a politeness from which nobody could tell that they have met before.
‘Top floor, please,’ she requests demurely.
Impassive as a sentry, he jabs the buttons on the gleaming brass panel and the wooden door rumbles shut. Shoulder to shoulder they stand, four in a line, not speaking, as the ponderous lift, creaking like an old boat, hauls them gradually to the first floor, where David, following the couple with their luggage, turns to give her a querying look, pointing upward.
She wonders if she is making herself look ridiculous, like a love-struck kid, and for a minute or more, arriving at the upper storey, she holds a thumb on the button that prevents the doors from closing. She peeps out. To the left, near the end of a corridor, a trolley laden with fresh bedding and thick white towels is parked outside a room. A chambermaid emerges from the room and waves to her, leaving her no choice but to acknowledge the greeting and purposefully walk out. She turns the other way, past the head of the stairs and right again, following the balcony. At a dull brown painting of sailing ships in a harbour she stops, as if intrigued by the activities of the scarecrow mariners. Crossing to the balustrade, she pretends to be fascinated by the antics of the pigeon that’s dancing on the glass of the skylight. Below, in the hall, at the table by the wall, another guest is consulting a telephone directory.
With a ting the lift returns, and the doors open on David. He lopes towards her, inspecting something in his hand. ‘Makes it all worthwhile,’ he remarks, goggling with disbelieving gratitude at the one-pound coin that he is displaying on his palm, as if it were a pearl.
‘Seemed like lovely people,’ she says. ‘Happy together.’
At the angle of the balcony, a few feet from her, he leans back on the balustrade, crossing his arms and ankles, as if he were now off duty. ‘Fifth visit, apparently. So your dad says. He keeps tabs on all of them. Mr and Mrs Shand, from Reading. Married forty years. Christ knows how they’ve made it.’ The drone of a vacuum cleaner starts behind him and he looks back over his shoulder, as if to be sure that they are not being observed.
‘Business is on the up,’ she observes, pointing at the man with the directory. ‘Who’s he?’
David looks down into the hall. ‘Mr Densley. Third visit. Retired carpet salesman. Confirmed bachelor. Diabetic. Nice man. You just got here?’ he asks, indicating the bag between her feet.
‘Yes,’ she replies, aware of a tightness in her throat. She looks up to the skylight, at the rags of ripped muslin cloud. She looks askance at the dull old painting, then meets a gaze which seems to see that he is the chief reason she is here, but does not show what he thinks about her coming back. ‘Thanks for the pictures,’ she says. ‘They made me laugh.’
‘You here for the terminal festivities?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m on kitchen duty for the last night. Washing up, clearing away.’
‘That’ll be fun.’
‘That’ll be fifty quid,’ he says, rubbing his hands together.
She smiles at the stairs, and then there is a silence.
‘Your dad’s in his office,’ he tells her, as if he can’t think of anything else to say to her, but then he shifts nearer and asks, tapping the tiny broken-nosed man of the bracelet, ‘What’s he all about? A good-luck charm or something?’
‘It’s just a bracelet.’
‘Let’s see,’ he says, lifting the little head on a fingertip. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘A present from my father.’
‘Unusual,’ he congratulates her.
‘Yes,’ she says, examining the minuscule battered face. ‘It’s Celtic.’
‘Yeah?’
‘The design of it, not the thing itself. It’s not that old, obviously.’
‘No,’ he says.
She turns to survey the hall again, placing her hands on the balustrade. The Shands have reappeared by the reception desk, where they are talking to Mr Densley, who laughs quietly at an obserservation from Mrs Shand. ‘They’ve made a friend,’ she remarks. Mr Densley holds the door open for the Shands, and just as he is about to follow them a dozen pigeons land together on the skylight, fluttering their wings so noisily that the agitation catches the attention of Mr Densley and of the receptionist, who notices David on the balcony and gives him a subtle scowl of disapproval.
As David takes a half-step sideways, the outside of a finger touches hers. He glances at their hands, as if only now, alerted by the touch, had he become aware of their proximity. ‘Back to my post,’ he announces, adjusting his tie.
‘See you later,’ she says.
‘See you later,’ he says, then he bounds down the stairs, to help Mr Shand, who has returned to the desk, clutching his brow.
Once David has followed Mr Shand outside, she takes the lift back down. By her father’s office she stops, seeing him through the open door. He is standing by a stack of boxes, looking out at the garden, and though he is standing in the sunlight and his office must be as warm as a greenhouse, his jacket is buttoned and his tie is firmly knotted. She watches him put a finger to the dampened hair above his ear, then knocks on the frame of the door.
‘Come in,’ he calls, turning, and then he does a small jolt of surprise. ‘Welcome back,’ he says, taking a couple of steps towards her, intending, it seems, to give her a hug, but he stops at arm’s length and regards her with a smile of oppressive significance, as though they were in agreement as to what this visit signifies, coming so soon after the first.
‘Thank you,’ she says, slipping the bag from her shoulder.
He puts out a hand to take the bag, still smiling. ‘How was the journey?’ he asks.
‘OK. Longer than it should have been. Problem with the points somewhere.’
‘Always something,’ he says, shaking his head resignedly. ‘Shameful, isn’t it? We invent the railways and now we have the worst in Europe.’ He carries the bag to the chair at his desk and places it on the seat. ‘It’s a pity. Terrible pity. Trains are the best way to travel, I think. Exploring Europe by train, it should be on the curriculum. Everyone should do it.’
‘Not Mum’s preferred mode of transport.’
‘Really?’
‘Too much like socialism. Why mix with the p
oor people if you can afford to drive a bleeding great four-by-four?’ she points out, expecting him to tell her not to swear, again, but instead he grins, almost laughs.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘when you finish school you should take a month to go around Europe by train. That’s my advice. Don’t plan too much, just get on the train and go. You’ll have a great time. Believe me. France, Italy, Spain, Germany, wherever. Just get one of those go-anywhere passes and go,’ he urges, and his eyes widen with inspiration. ‘I tell you what. For your birthday that year, I’ll buy you a ticket. How about that? Finish your exams one week, next week set off on a tour of the Continent. What about that?’ he says, throwing his hands apart in a startlingly exuberant gesture.
‘Too much. Very nice of you to offer, but too much.’
‘Not at all. An essential part of your education.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘I think you could,’ he coaxes.
‘And a lot could happen before then. Mum might have me deported next week.’
‘Of course. And I might fall under a bus. But I’m not going to let this one go,’ he warns her.
‘We’ll see,’ she says, looking around the room for something that might change the subject. ‘Started packing, I see,’ she goes on before he can speak, indicating the boxes.
‘Yes.’
‘The old place seems quite busy,’ she observes, as Mr Densley ambles into view on one of the paths, followed by Mrs Shand.
Her father looks where she is looking. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Should have a decent turnout for the last night.’
‘They regulars?’
‘They’ve all been here before, yes,’ he says. With a solicitous superiority, like a doctor at a health spa keeping an eye on his patients as they take their prescribed stroll, he watches Mrs Shand and Mr Densley until they have disappeared round the curve of the path. ‘Shall I get you something?’ he asks, when they have gone. ‘Sandwich and a drink?’
‘A drink would be good. Orange juice,’ she says and her father suggests that they go to the Randall Room, where every window and door has been opened and the air smells strongly of cut grass and more faintly of rosewater, and the woman in the horrible sky-blue dress is reading a magazine on a wicker settee, while the silver-haired dictator dozes in a leather armchair, underneath the stiff arching leaves of a huge potted plant.
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