by William Boyd
“Do you go to school?”
“No. Mum says we do home-teaching.”
After the plunge pool they went into the hottest room, the Laconium. The heat stunned—anaesthetised them both: it was enough simply to breathe, conversation was impossible and they could only stand it for a couple of minutes. Ly-on whispered, “I’m dying, I’m burning,” so they went back to chill down in the plunge pool before they opted for more steam in the Sudatorium. But it worked, Adam felt he had never been cleaner in his entire existence: every pore void and pink, every sebaceous crevice purged and purified. Under a hot shower he shampooed his hair and beard, washed Ly-on’s curly mop for him. They dressed and stepped out on to Purlin Nail Lane.
“You hungry?” Adam said.
“Drinking,” Ly-on said. “I need drinking.”
They went to a pub where Ly-on had two pints of lime and lemonade with ice and Adam drank two pints of lager, immediately replacing the weight he had lost in the steam room. He ate a baked potato with beans and grated cheese and Ly-on had spaghetti for the first time in his life. They went to Greenwich and Adam took him into the Maritime Museum and then they wandered down to the river bank where Adam bought him a sweatshirt with the word ‘LONDON’ written across it.
“What’s that?” Ly-on said. “Lon-don?” Reading the word, Adam was pleased to note.
“That’s where you live. London.”
“I live for Shaft.”
“The Shaft’s in London.” He gestured at the river, at the far bank, at Millwall and Cubitt Town opposite and, towering beyond them, the glass and steel alps of Canary Wharf. “All this is part of London.”
They rode the Dockland Light Railway back to Bermondsey and walked to Rotherhithe. As they made their way along the pitted pathways of The Shaft, through its various bedraggled, worn quadrangles, hand in hand, Ly-on quizzed him about the city he lived in.
“So if somebody say—hey, Ly-on, man, where you come from? I say—I come from London.”
“Yes.”
“So, I say: I’m a London, I’m a London, me.”
“Londoner. You’re a Londoner.”
“Londoner…” He thought about that. “That’s fit, John. Green peas.”
“Say it with pride. It’s a great city, the greatest city in the world.”
“You a Londoner, John?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Why?”
“I don’t live here, I’m not from here. I’m just visiting.”
They were almost level with the big guy coming towards them when Adam saw who it was. He let him go past and then changed course so he could get an oblique view. He stopped and looked back. It was the man from the triangle, the man from the mews at Grafton Lodge, the man he’d knocked unconscious. The man was walking purposefully, briskly, as if late for a rendezvous. He hadn’t seen Adam, had walked right by him without a sideways glance—but, of course, he wasn’t looking for a bearded man holding the hand of a small boy.
“What’s knocking you, John?” Ly-on asked in a worried voice. “What’s freezing you?”
Adam eased his grip on Ly-on’s hand.
“Nothing. Let’s get home.”
In the flat—Mhouse was back—Adam gathered up his few possessions as Ly-on tried to explain to her what spaghetti was. (“Strings, Mum, like soft strings. Fit like new car.”) Adam shoved his old pin-stripe suit and his various shirts into two plastic bags, checking his room thoroughly to make sure there was nothing left that would associate him with the place.
“What you mean, you leaving?” Mhouse said, with disgruntled surprise, when Adam offered her two weeks’ rent in advance.
“I told you I’ve been offered this job. In—” He thought quickly. “Edinburgh.”
“Where’s that?” she said, taking the notes.
“Scotland.”
“Near Manchester?”
“Nearish. If anyone asks, say I’ve gone to Scotland. Got that? Scotland.”
Ly-on was lying on cushions in front of the TV, watching cartoons.
“I’m going away for a few days,” Adam said, crouching down beside him.
“OK.” Ly-on’s eyes stayed on the screen. “When you come back can we go to the mist again?”
“Sure.”
“Green, green peas.”
At the door Mhouse now seemed breezy, unconcerned.
“Mind how you go,” she said. “Take care.”
“I’ll be back,” Adam said, knowing he wouldn’t and suddenly found himself completely incapable of articulating his feelings, understanding only that he had to remove himself permanently from this small family that had sheltered him.
“I liked being here, you know,” he said. “With you and Ly-on.” He touched her arm, letting his fingertips follow the swell of her bicep. “Especially you.”
She brushed his fingers away.
“I’ll have to get me another lodger now, won’t I?”
“I suppose so.” He swallowed. “Can I kiss you goodbye?”
She turned her face so her cheek was presented to him.
“On the lips.”
“No kissing.”
“Please.”
She looked at him. “It’ll cost you.”
He gave her a £5 note and pressed his lips to hers. He breathed in, smelling her particular odour and its superimposed layers of perfume—hair spray, talcum powder, cheap scent, trying to remember it, trying to store it away in his memory bank for the future. He felt her tongue flash against his teeth for a second—and their tongues touched.
“You’d better go,” she said blankly, unfeelingly, pulling back. “Now.”
Was that a spontaneous sign of affection or a deliberate rebuke? Adam wondered as he walked out of The Shaft with his two plastic bags, not looking left or right. Will she miss me a little—or am I just another man, in the long list of men, who’ve disappointed her and cut and run? All he knew was that he had been tracked down and, if he didn’t leave, he would inevitably lead his hunter to Flat L, Level 3, Unit 14. It had been no malign, extraordinary coincidence—the ugly man was in The Shaft for one reason only: he knows I’m here, somewhere, Adam said to himself, experiencing a surge and shudder of retrospective fear that made him stop for a second. What if he hadn’t seen him? What if he and Ly-on hadn’t crossed his path?…
He quickened his pace, heading south, wanting to be in a crowd. An Underground station—Canada Water—that would do fine. He’d make his phone call from there.
“Hey, Adam. I don’t believing. Fantastic, fantastic.” Vladimir embraced him like a brother, Adam thought, almost tearfully: like a brother who’d been away at a war and had been presumed missing in action.
“You my first visitor,” Vladimir said, stepping back from the front door and beckoning him into the flat.
Vladimir’s single-bedroom flat was in Stepney, in a building erected by a charitable trust housing project from the 19208—Oystergate Buildings, off Ben Jonson Road. It was grimy and grey, built entirely of white-glazed bricks—that gave it an eerie monochrome appearance, almost like a ghost building—glazed bricks that were now cracked and stained. The facade was fussy with open landings, narrow balconies and wrought-iron railings everywhere, a far cry from the austere angles of The Shaft. Vladimir had a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom and sitting room. In the sitting room was a new, black, three-seater, leather sofa and a flat-screen TV. The rest of the small apartment seemed entirely unfurnished—no towels in the bathroom, no kitchen utensils—only a mattress and some tangled blankets on the floor of the bedroom.
“You sleep on sofa,” Vladimir said.
“Where did you get this stuff?”
Vladimir flourished his credit card. “You have wonderful country.”
They went out and ate chicken burgers and chips in a Chick—“N”—Go. Adam paid, it was the least he could do, he thought, and Vladimir seemed to have no cash on him—he was living entirely on what his credit card could provide. They bought a six-pack of beer and retur
ned to Oystergate Buildings. Adam gave Vladimir a month’s rent in advance—£80. Vladimir said that everything would change once he started his job on Monday as a hospital porter at the nearby Bethnal & Bow NHS Trust hospital. He would be earning a starting salary of £10,500 a year. He showed Adam his uniform—blue trousers and a white shirt with blue epaulettes and a blue tie—and his necklaced ‘proximity’ ID badge with his photo in the name of ‘Primo Belem’. Then Vladimir asked if he could borrow a further £50—he would pay him back with his first pay cheque. Adam handed it over—he was running low on cash himself now, he’d have to visit his bank in the triangle.
“I get some monkey,” Vladimir said. “We party this weekend before I starting work. We smoke monkey—best quality.”
“Great,” Adam said.
That night he lay on the creaking leather sofa (Vladimir had lent him one of his blankets) thinking about Mhouse and Ly-on. He was feeling sorry for himself again, conscious of the precarious nature of his life, his particular, unique plight and this new threat that, through swift response, was now neutralised, he assumed and hoped. He missed Mhouse and Ly-on, he had to admit, missed his life in The Shaft with them. But he consoled himself: despite the bleak realities he faced—his rare situation—he had done the only thing possible. He had had to leave The Shaft: at least Mhouse and Ly-on would be safe now, that was all that was really important, all that mattered.
31
WHAT IS IT ABOUT DOCTORS’ WAITING ROOMS IN THIS COUNTRY, INGRAM thought? Here he was, about to pay £120 for a brief ten-minute consultation with one of the most sought-after and exclusive general practitioners in London and he might as well be sitting in a two-star provincial hotel in the 19508. Chipped, bad reproduction furniture, a worn, patterned carpet, a job-lot of dusty hunting prints on the wall, a couple of parched spider plants on the window sill, and a two-year-old pile of magazines on a coffee table with a spavined leg. If this were New York or Paris or Berlin it would all be clean, new, solid, glass, steel, lush greenery—the decor saying: I’m very, very successful, I’m high tech, cutting edge, you can trust me with your health concerns. But here in London, in Harley Street…
Ingram sighed, audibly, causing the other waiting patient in the room—a woman with a veil up to her eyes and a head-scarf down to her eyebrows—to look up at him. She had a small boy with her, his arm in a sling. Ingram smiled at her—perhaps she smiled back: he thought her eyes crinkled slightly, acknowledging the absurdity of the situation, but he couldn’t be sure, that was the problem with veils—indeed, that was the purpose of veils. He picked up a copy of Horse and Hound and flicked through it, tossed it down and sighed again. Perhaps he should simply leave—he felt a bit foolish—just a few tiny drops of blood and these potent, fearsome itches: why bother the doctor at all?
“Ingram, old chap. Come away in, laddie.”
Ingram’s doctor, Dr Lachlan McTurk, was a Scot, through and through, but a Scot who did not have a Scottish accent, except when he decided to affect one from time to time. He was very overweight, not quite clinically obese, had a head of thick, unruly grey hair and a flushed, ruddy face. He wore tweed suits in various shades of moss-green, winter and summer. He was married with five children and, although Ingram had been his patient for some thirty years now, he had never met Mrs McTurk or any offspring. He was a cultured man whose keenness to explore and consume every art form available was undiminished. Ingram sometimes wondered why he had bothered to become a doctor at all.
“Will you have a ‘wee dram’, Ingram? It’ll soon be noon.”
“Better not, thanks. I’ve got a rather important meeting.”
Lachlan McTurk had done all the obvious physical tests: blood pressure, pulse, palpation, reflexes, listened to his heart and lungs and could find no sign of anything wrong. He poured himself a generous three fingers of whisky and topped it up from the cold tap at his sink. He sat down behind his desk and lit a cigarette. He began to scribble notes down in a file.
“If you were a motor car, Ingram, I’d say you’ve passed your MOT with flying colours.”
“But where’s this blood coming from? Why? What about these infernal itches?”
“Who knows? They’re not symptoms I recognise.”
“So I’ve nothing to worry about?”
“Well, we’ve all got plenty to worry about. But I would say you could push your health to the back of the queue.”
“I suppose I should be pursued.” Ingram put his jacket on. “What am I saying? I mean relieved. I should be relieved.”
“Do you smoke?”
“Not for twenty years?”
“How much do you drink, roughly?”
“Couple of glasses of wine a day. Approximately.”
“Let’s say a bottle. No—you’re in pretty good nick, in my professional opinion.”
Ingram thought. “Perhaps I will have a small Scotch.” He might as well get something for his £120, he calculated. McTurk poured him his drink and handed it over.
“Have you seen the new production of Playboy of the Western World at the National?” McTurk asked.
“Ah, no.”
“It’s a must. That and the August Macke at Tate Liverpool. If you do two things this month do those. I beg you.”
“Duly noted, Lachlan.” Ingram sipped his Scotch. “I have to admit I’ve been a bit tense, lately. Lot going on.”
“Ah-ha, the Dread Goddess Stress. Stress can do the strangest things to a body.”
“Do you think stress might be the answer?”
“Who knows? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio’.” McTurk stubbed out his cigarette. “So to speak. Do you know what?” he said. “I’m going to run some blood tests. Just so you sleep easy.”
This is what happens, Ingram thought, a simple visit to the doctor and suddenly you discover medical conditions, health problems, you were completely unaware of. McTurk took a good syringe-full of blood from the vein in his right elbow and made a series of samples from it.
“What tests?” Ingram asked.
“I’ll just run the gamut. See if any flags are flying.”
Oh good, Ingram thought, another £500.
“You don’t think,” he began, “I mean, these couldn’t be, I mean, symptoms of a—what would you say?—sexually transmitted disease…”
McTurk looked at him, shrewdly. “Well, if there was blood dripping from your back-side and your cock was itching—or vice versa—I might have my suspicions. What have you been up to, Ingram?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Ingram said quickly, instantly regretting this course the diagnosis had taken. “Just wondering, perhaps, if a misspent youth was catching up with me.”
“Oh yes, the pox. No, no—we’d sort that out immediately. No mercury baths for you, laddie.”
Ingram left feeling weak and considerably iller than he had when he arrived. He also had a mild headache from the whisky. Fool.
32
THE TARGA CIRCLED THE small dinghy once and then Joey accelerated past it, downstream. The tide was ebbing and Rita heard the throaty change in the engine noise as the screws reversed and the Targa held itself immobile in mid-stream, stern to the tide, waiting for the flow of water to carry the dinghy down towards them. Rita took up position on the aft deck with a boathook poised. She saw a length of the painter that was attached to the bow of the dinghy trailing in the water and reached forward quickly to fish it out. She secured it to a cleat, hauling the dinghy in tight to the Targa’s side, making it fast.
They had been about to go off duty when they were alerted to the abandoned dinghy—it had been spotted floating past Lambeth Bridge—and they had cruised upstream, Rita in the bow with the binoculars, looking for it. She saw it emerging from the shadow cast by Waterloo Bridge—it was barely eight feet long, a stubby, beamy pram tender made of dirty pale-blue fibreglass, with low freeboard, designed for short ship-to-shore journeys or jetty-to-jetty work, with one thwart, two rowlocks bu
t no oars, as far as Rita could see as she tied her final half-hitch. In the well was a bundle of grey polythene tarpaulin and two inches of brown water slopping about.
“Give me a second,” she shouted to Joey, picking up a length of dock rope. Feed out a little extra line, she said to herself, we can tow it in, don’t want this dirty old pram scraping our neatly painted sides. She knelt on the deck, reached down, slipped the end of the rope through the shackle in the bow and was about to knot it when the tarpaulin moved and she gave a short scream—more of an instinctive yip of alarm—but to her intense annoyance, all the same.
Something, somebody, was stirring under the tarpaulin and in a second it was flipped back to reveal her father.
It took only another split second to register that it wasn’t Jeff Nashe, at all—just another stubbly, gaunt-faced, elderly man with a frazzled grey pony-tail.
“What the fuck—” the man mumbled, in a daze, rising to a kneeling position, looking across the water at Somerset House, as if suddenly struck by the austere classical geometry of its river fafade. He swivelled round to stare at her and Rita caught the half-deranged gaze of a man near the end of his particular road. Rita stretched out her hand and helped him aboard, smelling that unique sour reek of the long-unwashed, the foetor of poverty.
“Thanks, darling,” he said, as she steadied him. Now she was close to him she saw that he wasn’t that old, really—late thirties, early forties—but toothless, the lower face squashed, jaws unnaturally close, lips making that unreflecting pursing and pouting that you see in very young babies. She sat him down in the cabin and re-rigged the towing-line, signalling Joey when he could safely move off. She took a blanket out of a locker and draped it round his shoulders, sitting down opposite him.
“I didn’t nick it,” he said. “Just crawled in for a kip. Stone the crows, got a shock when you woked me up.”
“Where was that, then? Where you started your kip.”
“Ah,” he thought, pouting his wet lips, rubbing his chin with the knuckles of his right hand. “Hampton Court.”