The Nick of Time

by Francis King

  The bus was long in coming.

  ‘We’re going to have a fight to get on.’

  ‘Why no take taxi?’ It was a question which Mehmet, who did not pay for the taxis, often asked. Ed used to laugh at her for her parsimony over taxis. Mehmet got angry over it.

  She gave her usual answer: ‘Why waste money? We’re not in a hurry.’

  Suddenly his face darkened. ‘People say efficient country. No efficient! Terrible!’

  At that she knew already that a storm was imminent. Perhaps, if she managed some diversion, it might still pass over their heads? ‘I thought those dogs terrific. The best thing really.’

  ‘Everything inefficient here. Wait, wait, wait. We wait for bus. I wait for my suit, sent to cleaner, two, three days ago, still not ready. We wait for bloody Home Office.’ His voice was growing in volume. At any moment people would start to stare at them, as she knew only too well from previous such experiences, in shops, in restaurants or on public transport. If only that bus would come!

  ‘You no hear from lawyer woman?’

  ‘You know I haven’t. Of course I’d have told you if I had.’

  ‘Why no ring her?’

  ‘There’d be no point,’ she told him wearily, as she had told him so often before when he had put the same question. ‘ The last time I rang to ask for news, she told me it was useless to do so. She couldn’t hurry things along, there was this huge backlog of cases, and we just had to be patient.’

  ‘Patient!’ It was something that he was incapable of being.

  ‘Yes, patient. Though I know that’s difficult.’

  ‘Why you get me that lawyer?’

  ‘That patient of mine – that retired judge – told me she was one of the best. Later I heard the same from someone I met who works for the Citizens’ Advice Bureau.’

  ‘Why you get woman?’

  ‘What’s wrong with a woman?’

  He pulled a contemptuous face. All that he had so far said she had heard repeatedly before; but now he started on something new. ‘This judge – patient of yours. Why you no ask him to speak to someone?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Sure he know someone in Home Office. Or maybe minister in government. Why you no speak to him?’

  ‘Well, firstly, he’s not a friend, only a patient, as I’ve told you.’ She tried to control her exasperation. ‘And secondly – and more importantly – that’s not how things work in England. They may work like that in Albania but not in England. If one tries to pull strings, one only hangs oneself.’

  ‘You always think Albania bad, England good.’

  She wanted to ask ‘If Albania is not bad and England not good, why are you asking for political asylum?’ But she remained silent.

  A moment later the crowd surged forward as the bus appeared at the bottom of the road. Somehow, Marilyn and Mehmet were carried along in its slipstream and were sucked on board.

  ‘You racist,’ he muttered, pressed up against her, his face close to hers. Then in a louder voice, he went on ‘That why you no marry me. You think Muslim man no good husband. That why I no can live in house, come only one night, two night.’

  The embarrassment of it was excruciating. The people packed all around them could not possibly fail to hear. ‘Let’s talk about this later.’ But to tell him that was as useless as to look up at the sky and say to a storm: ‘Why don’t you move on?’

  His accusations continued, fiercer and fiercer and louder and louder, until the bus had reached their destination and they had struggled off it. Then, suddenly relaxed and smiling, he linked his arm in hers and asked: ‘You know what I wish now?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was stony. ‘A drink?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Something to eat?’

  Again he shook his head. Then he whispered in her ear.

  ‘Oh, but Mehmet, it’s so late. And I’ve to get to the surgery so early tomorrow.’

  ‘Please!’

  After each of these devastating storms, there was always this iridescent rainbow.

  His obsession with ‘that bastard’ never abated. Some of the worst of the worst times centred on him. More than once she would be roused by Mehmet’s voice, late at night, on the extension telephone in the room next to hers. On the first occasion, she listened intently and heard ‘You shit! Shit! Shit!’ Then he must have put the receiver down, since silence followed. On the second occasion, similarly woken, she jumped out of bed and ran into the room. But already the call had ended. ‘What are you doing? Who are you telephoning at this hour?’ ‘My business.’ ‘ Were you telephoning that man?’ ‘My business.’ He turned away from her and clambered back into his bed. On the third occasion, she heard his ‘ Bastard! Bastard!’ as she entered the room. ‘Will you stop doing that! If you must do it, do it somewhere else. He can have the call traced to this house. That’s the last thing I need.’ He glared at her. ‘You think only of self.’ ‘Well, I have to. You don’t think of me.’

  Infuriatingly, in answer to Marilyn’s increasingly exasperated probings, he would refuse ever to divulge anything whatever about the ‘bastard’. It was, she often thought, like clawing at a locked metal box. Where did he live? How had Mehmet met him? What was his profession? Why should he have wanted to harm Mehmet? To all such questions Mehmet would either say nothing, merely shrugging his shoulders, or he would respond irritably: ‘Please. No talk! I no wish talk about that bastard.’

  Had it really been this man who had denounced Mehmet? Or could it – as she constantly suspected, only to repudiate the idea – have been Audrey? Audrey might well have thought that she was taking steps to get rid of Mehmet, not because of her hatred of him, but for Marilyn’s good. She was, after all, a person who was dedicated to the good of others, and such people could be dangerous.

  Audrey was now even more careful that she and Mehmet should never run into each other. Once, when Marilyn had been delayed at the surgery and Mehmet had arrived, punctual as always, on a weekday visit, his repeated ringing of the bell had failed to be answered. Audrey was in her front room in the basement, filing her nails. She knew who it was. But she went on with her filing.

  At the weekends she totally disappeared from sight. For each meal, she would scrupulously lay a single setting at the kitchen table. The setting was for Marilyn, not for the interloper.

  But if the worst of the worst times often occurred, so, even more often, did the best of the best of them. When Marilyn told Vicky that Mehmet was ‘the most wonderful companion when the mood is right,’ it was the truth. He could be surprisingly funny, despite his faltering English; he could be tenderly helpful, as on the occasion when, during Audrey’s absence on a trip to Paris with Laurence, he had nursed her through a virulent bout of flu; and, of course, he was, as she also confided to Vicky, a terrific lover – ‘the best I’ve ever had.’

  Over the weeks and then months of waiting for the Home Office decision, Marilyn began to introduce him to her friends. They not merely accepted him, they clearly liked him. With a trace of patronage but also with affection, some of these friends would tell her, ‘He fits in so well.’ Some of the women among them would also tell her: ‘ Oh I do envy you. I wish I had a lover like that.’

  But for how long would she have this lover? His anxiety began to infect her, so that it was with increasing difficulty that she restrained herself from ringing up the lawyer yet again with the futile question ‘Have you heard anything?’ She was, she thought, like a patient who waits to hear whether a leg must be amputated or not. But the patient hears soon enough. For her, the wait had now extended for more than seven months.

  Eventually the news arrived, with the arrival of spring. The news had been long delayed; the spring was abruptly premature.

  Marilyn was in her consulting room, between patients, when her telephone rang. It was Carmen to tell her that a Mrs Wright was on the line – not a patient, she added, she would not say what she wanted. In her imagination Marilyn had so often prep
ared for this moment. By now she had convinced herself that, with the support not merely of the statement that she herself had provided but also of the letters in which three experts, one Albanian and two English, set out the still grim political situation, in that corner of Europe, Mehmet would be granted his asylum. But now, even as she waited for Carmen to transfer the call, she realized her folly. The decision had gone against him.

  ‘I must tell you that it’s not the verdict I expected. His case seemed so strong – particularly after those recent killings. What can I say? But there’s the possibility of an appeal, if you’d like to go on with it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. Yes!’

  ‘We can’t get legal aid for an appeal. And we’d have to have a barrister. That could all be pretty costly. What do you feel about that?’

  ‘Oh, please, go ahead, whatever it costs.’

  Mehmet accepted the news with a quiet fatalism, instead of with the despair and recrimination that Marilyn had dreaded. When Marilyn told him ‘ The fight’s not over, we still have the appeal,’ he gave her a melancholy smile and shook his head. He seemed already to be convinced of the uselessness of proceeding any further. She wanted to shout at him: ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you just going to give in?’ He had fought so tenaciously in the past; now all the fight in him had drained away.

  In the court he was apathetic, sitting, head bowed, hands clasped and face expressionless, as the two barristers droned away. When questioned, he was not merely halting, vague and often self-contradictory but, even more disastrous, he gave the impression of not really caring what the outcome might be. The verdict again went against him. He had ten days to leave the country. Marilyn now had a large overdraft, incurred for nothing.

  During those ten days, there were no recriminations, as so often in the past. He was always calm, sometimes even cheerful.

  ‘What will you do?’ Marilyn repeatedly put the question. To it, there was a silent, desperate corollary: ‘What will I do?’ She could not bear to think of life stretching ahead, arid and joyless, without him. His departure, she thought, would be as devastating as Ed’s death, and it would leave her with the same gnawing guilt.

  Mehmet would shrug in answer to her question and tell her that he would manage, he could always manage, he would find some way of coming back. Was he thinking of another false passport and another period as an illegal? She longed for that and yet saw the folly of it. From time to time, she would assure him that, just as soon as it was feasible, she would make a visit to wherever he was.

  On their last night together, they had dinner alone at a Tunisian restaurant, his favourite, beyond Shepherd’s Bush, and then, since his departure was so early the following morning, at once went to bed. She wanted to make love but, when she put her arms around him and her head on his chest, he merely lay there stroking her hair slowly and rhythmically, as one might a dog’s or a cat’s.

  ‘How do I get in touch with you?’ She had asked the question before and had received no satisfactory answer.

  ‘I tell you – tell you many times. I will telephone. I arrive, I telephone.’

  She felt weighed down with the dread of losing him forever. ‘But can’t you give me some contact number?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Or an address.’

  ‘I tell you – I have no address. When I arrive, I find address, then I telephone.’

  ‘But your family …’ He did not answer. ‘Surely you’ll go to see your family?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Then I could send a letter care of them.’

  ‘No. Maybe letter get lost.’

  She gave up.

  ‘As soon as you’re settled I want to travel out to see you. Wherever it is, however dangerous, however much it costs,.’

  ‘We see.’

  ‘No, no, we don’t see. I’ve made up my mind. That’s certain.’

  Again, he made no answer.

  Eventually, with a sigh, he got slowly off the bed and stooped to kiss her, not on the mouth but on the forehead. She put out her arms to draw him down towards her but he jerked away. Then he stared down at her and she saw, with a mixture of sadness and joy, that his mouth was oddly contorted – she had seen patients look like that in the aftermath of a stroke – and that there was a tear glittering in one corner of his eye. The tear looked like a fragment of glass embedded there. ‘Oh, Mehmet! Spend the night with me. Sleep with me this last time!’

  He shook his head. ‘I snore.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. Don’t be silly! If I don’t sleep, I don’t sleep. Let’s be together this last night. Let’s!’

  He raised a hand in silent valediction. Then he slipped out of the room.

  For two days after Mehmet’s departure, Marilyn had hardly eaten anything. Her mouth felt dry and tasted unpleasantly bitter, as though a residue of the experiences of the past days still lingered there. Mechanically she smiled, mechanically she palpated or sounded her patients, mechanically she added this or that to their records on the computer and wrote out prescriptions for them.

  On the second day, as she hurried out of the surgery, Carmen ran out after her into the street. It was raining and Marilyn had put up her umbrella. Carmen was only in a flowered cotton dress and sandals.

  ‘Dr Carter! Dr Carter! You OK?’ Breathless, Carmen caught up with her. The dress was sticking to her shoulders and her thighs.

  ‘You’re getting drenched!’ Marilyn cried out. ‘Come under my umbrella.’

  Carmen made no attempt to do that. ‘You OK?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine. Fine.’

  ‘I wonder. I think – maybe … You seem – something wrong … You are sure?’

  ‘Yes, of course I’m sure! I’m just tired, that’s all. Sick of seeing patients,’ she added.

  ‘Fine.’ Carmen said it with her head tilted to one side, and after that she pulled a little face. She did not believe Marilyn, she felt rebuffed.

  ‘Thank you, Carmen!’ Marilyn called out after her as she hurried, at a near run, back to the surgery.

  Carmen did not look back but Marilyn knew that she had heard her.

  Marilyn’s first question on being greeted by Audrey was, as always, ‘Any calls?’ During the past two days she had never once asked ‘Any call from Mehmet?’ or even ‘Any call from the rent boy?’, but Audrey knew that that was what she meant.

  Audrey shook her head. ‘Only one from Father. He seemed to be worried about you. He asked how you were bearing up. He said that, if you wanted a change, then perhaps you’d allow him to treat you to a weekend break.’

  Marilyn shook her head. ‘That’s kind of him. But I’m far too busy at the surgery’

  ‘Surely not at the weekend.’ Having said that, Audrey flushed, aware of her tactlessness. Marilyn’s weekends had always been Mehmet’s. Now they belonged to no one but herself.

  Having sat down to Audrey’s moussaka – Audrey had prepared it, knowing that it was a favourite of hers – Marilyn took two mouthfuls and then pushed it aside. ‘I’m sorry. I have no appetite. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’ But she knew only too well.

  Audrey stared at her. Then she said: ‘It may be difficult to telephone from Kosovo. From all reports, things are still bad there.’

  Marilyn ignored the remark. She sipped from the full glass of vodka before her, then tipped it up and drank almost a quarter. Audrey let out a little gasp. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ Marilyn suddenly rapped out.

  Audrey jumped to her feet, her napkin slithering off her to the ground. She stared at Marilyn, despite the prohibition. Her face expressed all the anguish that Marilyn herself felt but could not express. Then she hurried round the table. She rested one hand on Marilyn’s shoulder and with the other, greatly daring, eventually touched her hair. ‘Poor Marilyn!’ It was what she used to say, touching her hair exactly like this, in the terrible aftermath of Ed’s and Carol’s deaths. ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she lowered her head, pu
t her cheek against Marilyn’s and burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry, sorry. Will you ever forgive me?’

  Marilyn jerked away from her. Then, stonily, her eyes fixed on the middle distance, she produced a single, devastating monosyllable: ‘No.’

  Chapter Twenty One

  On the first occasion that Adrian put out his hand in the darkness, groped for the telephone receiver on the bedside table, knocking over a glass of water as he did so, and then heard that rasping ‘Bastard! Bastard!’, it was as though he had been punched in the face.

  ‘What do you want? What the hell is this?’ He was shamefully conscious of the tremor in his voice.

  ‘You bastard!’

  There was a click and silence. He replaced the receiver and at once became conscious of the drip-drip-drip of the spilled water off the table on to the floor. Oh, hell! He groped again, this time for the bedside lamp, and switched it on. Then he pulled a handkerchief out from under the pillows and began to mop ineffectually at the table top. His heart was thudding and he felt a constriction, as of an elastic band, around his forehead.

  He lay back and stared up at the ceiling. In the past weeks he had often thought of Mehmet, wishing that he had not precipitated that last scene between them, that those brutal words had never been delivered, and that things were again as they once had once been. But now that this contact had been made, the situation had clearly become even more hopeless than before.

  He got out of bed and padded down the corridor to the sitting-room. It was there that he kept what he called ‘my little machine’, to record the numbers of incoming telephone calls. But on this occasion, all that it had recorded was ‘ Number Withheld.’ He returned to his bed and, though the night was muggy, pulled the blanket up under his chin. He began to shiver uncontrollably and gritted his teeth in order to stop himself from doing so.