Despite the rain the shop was busy, and for once Zeke was grateful for the events that normally rattled him: greeting the customers, watching them pinch and pummel the produce, answering questions about whether he would have pineapples or mangoes or star fruit anytime soon, fussing with bags and change. At six-thirty, while he was offering Ray, from the fishmonger’s next door, half price on a bunch of spinach and a pound of tomatoes, the door swung open and his father was suddenly in the middle of the shop.
“She’s going to be okay. It was benign. There’s nothing to worry about. She’s fine. Fine!”
Zeke understood instantly. His mother might be hit by a car tomorrow, but for today she was saved. While his father reeled around the shop, embracing first Ray and then him, making a clumsy attempt to juggle three lemons, he felt the muscles of his face forcing his eyes open, pulling at the corners of his mouth. Like his father, he was beaming uncontrollably.
“Come and have a drink,” Don said. “We’re celebrating.”
“Dad, I have to close the shop. Why don’t you and Ray go? I’ll come round as soon as I’m done.”
“Close the shop,” said his father, “or leave it wide open. Let everyone help themselves. Not often you get two lucky breaks in the same family. I know this sounds like one of your daft ideas”—he hefted a cabbage like a bowling ball and looked over at Zeke—“but I kept worrying that Gwen was going to pay for my good fortune.”
Gently Zeke set down Ray’s spinach and tomatoes. Why, he thought, was he so absurdly slow to comprehend even the most obvious things? Of course you didn’t get good fortune for nothing. And if Don didn’t pay and Gwen didn’t pay, then the account was still due and, in his small family, that left him. No wonder Verona kept abandoning him. In the cosmic economy she had had no choice but to punish him. And now, he surmised, he was punishing her, to settle her brother’s account.
So many things were different that in the pub, when his father asked what he was having, Zeke said a pint of bitter. Then—sev—eral neighbors and friends had gathered and people kept jumping up to buy rounds—he had two more. He had a lengthy conversation about foxhunting with Ray and, more plausibly, he discussed new bus routes with his aunt. As he walked home through the lingering drizzle, he finally understood why people drank. Nothing had changed, but he didn’t mind as much. Inside his flat, he wasn’t even tempted to go into the living room. He brushed his teeth, drank a glass of water, and climbed into bed. He was about to fall asleep when it occurred to him—he’d listened to people talk about drinking for years—that he should set the alarm clock. He sat up, pressed the buttons, and let sleep roll over him.
The next morning as he drove toward Emmanuel’s house, he experienced a new respect for his old friend. If this was how he felt most days, it was astonishing that he even got out of bed, let alone came to work and wielded paintbrushes and power tools. The mysterious word hangover now made perfect sense. Someone seemed to have walked through his brain and hung heavy dark curtains across doorways and windows. He turned into Emmanuel’s street and there was his friend, leaning against the wall in front of the house, smoking a cigarette. For nearly three years, morning after morning, Zeke had double-parked, jumped out to ring the doorbell, and sat behind the wheel, hoping that the flashing of his indicator conveyed his apologies to other motorists as they squeezed past.
“Where have you been?” Emmanuel said, as he clambered in. “I thought you must have had an accident.”
“I didn’t think you’d worry. You’re often late.”
“But you’re always on time. Your being ten minutes late is like me being ten hours late. How was America?”
Zeke moved his shoulders up and down. No sentence, not even many of them piled together, would convey what he had been through since Emmanuel bade him farewell at Heathrow. On the phone when he had called to make arrangements about their new job—painting an empty flat for a letting agent—Emmanuel had asked the same question and he’d changed the subject.
“What do you mean?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Emmanuel wriggling his shoulders in imitation. “Did you like Boston? What happened with Verona?”
“It was cold. Nothing happened.”
“Nothing? How could nothing happen when you were in a hotel together?”
Bleakly Zeke sketched the main events of his journey. “Can we talk about something else? I got drunk last night.”
As he had hoped, that distracted Emmanuel. Then there was buying the paint and having breakfast. By nine o‘clock, drop cloths spread, radio playing, they were filling the walls and masking the woodwork. The flat was a soulless, modern conversion. No wonder, Zeke thought, that the future tenant had requested tangerine paint for one wall in the living room and a mixture of blues and greens for the kitchen and bathroom. He got through the day by counting cups of tea, glasses of water, aspirin, how often the radio played certain songs, how often Emmanuel went outside to smoke, but no amount of counting could stave off five o’clock. As they made their way downstairs, Emmanuel suggested they wait out rush hour at the pub.
“I can’t,” said Zeke. “It made me feel—”
“I don’t care what you drink, lemonade, water, but we need to talk.”
He was still stammering out objections when Emmanuel seized his arm, as his father had done a couple of days before, and led him down the street. At the main road there were two pubs on opposite corners. They chose the one named after a British prime minister.
“So let me get this straight,” said Emmanuel, when they were settled at a corner table with a pint of beer and a glass of water. “Verona went to Boston because of some kind of crisis with her brother. She asked you to join her. At the hotel there was a letter saying she’d gone to New York, again because of the brother, but would be back soon. Then you got a phone call saying she was flying back to London.”
“Yes.”
“Weird.” He shook his head. “I’ve known chicks to do some crazy things, but this wins the prize. Especially when she’s big as a house. Although maybe that has something to do with it. You know, hormones.” He sat back in his chair and stared across the table. Zeke did his best not to look away. There was something in the middle of Emmanuel’s forehead, in the place where Indian women wore their bindi; presently he recognized it as a smudge of tangerine paint.
“With anyone else,” said Emmanuel, “I’d say run while the going is good. Who needs this level of aggravation? But I’ve known you for three years, and I’ve never seen you interested in anyone before. I don’t get why Verona clicks with you, but maybe you should try to find out what’s going on. Give her a chance to explain.”
“I don’t believe in explanations.” It was something one of his doctors had said.
“Oh, crap. Who told you that? Some effing doctor.”
For nearly an hour they wrangled back and forth, Emmanuel stubbornly insisting that Zeke should give Verona a second chance. “It wouldn’t be the second,” said Zeke. “It would be the third, the tenth.” He was surprised to hear his own voice sounding so firm and definite.
“Who’s counting? When you were in a bad way people gave you a hundred chances.”
But Zeke continued to cling to the few facts he could articulate. He had done whatever she asked, deserted his parents, turned his world upside down, and in exchange she had given him nothing but loneliness, expense, boredom, heartache. “I didn’t decide not to talk to her,” he told Emmanuel, “any more than I decided to fall for her. Every time I go to phone her I can’t make myself do it. My feelings have changed.”
“So,” Emmanuel said, getting to his feet, “they can change back. The course of true love never did run smooth.”
He headed for the Gents, leaving Zeke to ponder this claim. Was it true that his feelings could change, again and again: that one day he would drink his coffee white, one sugar, the next prefer it black with three? How could he navigate the world if everything, including himself, was in flux? Maybe other people—his parents, Emmanu
el—could manage these twists and turns, but he couldn’t. When I get home, he vowed, I’ll listen to the answering machine and erase her messages and that will be that. He was about to explain all this to Emmanuel, but his friend was hurrying toward the table, brow furrowed, shoulders stiff.
“I forgot I promised Gina to buy the groceries,” he said, reaching for his jacket. “Can you give me a lift to the tube?”
He listened to her messages, one by one by one, trying not to hear the words—the pleading, the requests, the explanations and supplications—trying to simply let her voice wash over him. He had heard of people who turned sound into color. Now he lay down on the floor, closed his eyes, and tried to let the colors of her voice wash over him. He caught flashes of scarlet and gold and a deep earthy brown he had seen in a tapestry at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It had belonged to some queen—Anne? Victoria? Mary?—he couldn’t recall. But at times, when her voice broke or strained, he glimpsed something else, a timorous yellow, a fearful mauve, the faintest edge of violent blue. Sometimes she sounded like Cecily at her most desperate, like the other women who had pursued him with such unnerving disregard for his inclinations.
He didn’t know how long he lay there listening, pressing REPEAT over and over. His clocks chimed quarter hours, half hours, and finally twelve distinct strokes. Midnight, he thought, the witching hour. He listened to her words one more time and pressed ERASE. Then silence. Did silence have a color? He stood up and restored the machine to its position on the table. If only there were a button he could press in himself. He had asked one of his doctors about this, the one who had compared greeting people to ringing a doorbell, why certain thoughts came up over and over again, even when he didn’t want them to. That’s a very interesting question, the doctor had said. Everyone experiences this to some degree. The only thing I can suggest, as soon as you notice it happening, is try to interrupt. Music can help. Some people find a powerful smell—mint, lavender—works for them. Or a brisk walk. In your case it’s especially important to break the cycle before it takes over.
Too late for music, he thought, it would disturb his neighbors, and mint would only remind him of the shop. He walked from room to room, searching vainly in his neat bedroom, his immaculate kitchen, for something that would finally, irrevocably banish Verona. At last—he wasn’t at all sure it would work—he unplugged the answering machine, put it in a shopping bag, seized the trowel he used to tend his window boxes, and let himself out of the flat.
Almost at once, even passing the stump of the ash tree, he felt fractionally better. The night was cloudy, starless, moonless. Years from now, he thought, perhaps I’ll tell someone about my adventures with Verona and the stupid thing I did one night. He made his way through side streets to the local park. He walked across the grass, past the scorched circle marking the Guy Fawkes bonfire, until he reached the row of houses where, late one evening after reading Jigger’s notebook, he had watched the man and two women. Tonight all the lights were off and he wasn’t sure which house it was. No matter. He paced thirty feet away from the leafless plane trees, knelt down on the damp grass, and began to dig.
The ground was surprisingly hard, and in the dark it was difficult to figure out what he was doing. It must be tricky, he thought groping around with the trowel, for blind people to garden. He did his best to pile the soil in one place. After several attempts he at last had a hole large enough to accommodate the answering machine. He wound the cords tightly around its body and set it down in the earth. “Good-bye, Verona, good-bye, Ms. F,” he said. “Fare thee well.”
Then he pushed the soil back on top, stamped it down, and covered it with the few ragged pieces of grass he had managed to save. Probably there was some law against this, he thought, burying a machine in a public park. If charged he would explain that it was an emergency. He bowed once to the grave and turned toward home. At the first rubbish bin, he threw away the shopping bag and the trowel. A waste of both, but he wanted no part of her to reenter his home, or his brain.
Verona
27
At every stage of Verona’s departure from America, difficulties arose. The limousine, which Adrian had booked to take her and Henry to the airport, arrived late; an accident choked the highway; the airport itself, once they located the correct terminal, was a maelstrom of confusion. Almost no one spoke English. The loudspeaker announcements were incomprehensible. The lines to check in tangled across the concourse; so did the lines to get through security. By the time Verona was free to call Zeke, she and Henry were at the gate and the plane was boarding. At the row of phones she squeezed in between a man in a fake fur coat and a girl in a powder-blue tracksuit and dialed the number of the hotel in Boston. As she listened to the phone ringing, she remembered telling Zeke how she had written the names of everyone she wanted to get rid of on her bedroom wall and painted over them. That was what they would do with America. After a dozen rings the hotel operator answered. She was on hold, waiting for the switchboard, when she felt Henry tugging at her sleeve.
“V, we have to go. You can make all the phone calls you want from London.”
Like an echo came an unusually clear announcement: last call for London. Furious with herself, with the tediously slow hotel staff and the punctual flight, Verona relinquished the phone and followed Henry down the jetway. As soon as she entered the no-man’s -land of the plane, she knew she had done something irrevocably stupid. Nothing was more important than talking to Zeke. Besides, her suitcases were in the hold; they wouldn’t have left without her. She let Henry go ahead and turned back down the aisle. She was almost at the door when a flight attendant stepped in front of her.
“Madam, the door of the plane is closed.”
For as long as it took to blink, Verona imagined clutching her belly, complaining of pains. But that would be inviting the dream to come true. She allowed herself to be ushered back to her seat. Slowly, implacably, the plane rolled away from the gate.
“What was that about?” said Henry. “Are you all right?”
“I made a terrible mistake.”
“Tell me about it. I’m a master of mistakes and how to survive them.”
He was leaning back in his seat, his eyes closed. Studying him at close range, she noticed for the first time in years the tiny scar just below his hairline where, one winter afternoon, he had cut his head on a radiator while they were playing catch. As the plane accelerated down the runway and into the air, she finally confided in Henry. She began with finding Nigel and George in her flat and went on to describe her appeal to Emmanuel, her meeting with Zeke and their day together, Toby’s frightening fax, her precipitous departure to America, and how she had invited Zeke to Boston, only to find herself going to New York.
“You mean”—Henry opened his eyes and turned to look at her—“he came all the way to Boston, expecting to see you, and you weren’t there.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t speak to him just now?”
She gave a small, miserable shake of the head. If Henry was shocked, matters were even worse than she’d imagined. He reached over and patted her knee. “Poor Verona. What a lot of trouble I’ve caused you. But look on the bright side. You would never have met him if it hadn’t been for my bad behavior.”
Somehow that twisted fact, and Henry’s pride in it, did make her feel slightly better. “Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?” she said.
“You are in a bad way if you’re asking me that.” Then, seeing that she was beyond teasing, he went on to explain his theory of lovers’ quarrels: the real problem was not forgiveness but coming to terms with lost illusions. “People can forgive each other until the seas run dry, but if you’ve lost the feeling that the other person is special and amazing then it doesn’t help much.”
As he spoke, the noise of the plane’s engines shifted to a lower note; they had reached their cruising altitude. “So is that what you think about Betty,” she said, “that your relationship was based on illusions?�
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“Well, certainly on her side. She had the bizarre notion that I was a nice person. As for mine, I wish I’d had the chance to find out. I probably idealized her hopelessly as the rich beautiful socialist.”
“Are you going to get in touch with her?”
“I change my mind twenty times an hour. Unless some miracle occurs—she catches me rescuing a drowning child or giving my wallet to a blind man—I don’t think much is going to change. She doesn’t trust me, and who can blame her?”
“Maybe I could talk to her.” As soon as the words were out Verona was struck by her own contrariness. Her brother had betrayed her twenty times over, yet the old habits of loyalty persisted.
“Maybe,” he said vaguely. And then, “Yes, if you explained what had happened—how I was tempted and fell but it doesn’t mean I’m rotten to the core—perhaps she’d understand. I could talk to Zeke.” He was sounding more confident by the syllable. “Tell him it was all my fault you’d abandoned him in Boston.”
Would that help, she wondered. She had no idea. As two flight attendants approached with the drinks cart, Henry, still enthusing about this plan, asked for her mobile phone and entered Betty’s number in the directory.
“A gin and tonic, please,” he said, and then, to her, “If you were drinking, I’d order champagne.”
“Bring it to the hospital in six weeks. When I was ill I kept having this dream that the baby was going to be born in America.”
“Not exactly a fate worse than death. It would have been nice for our new relative to have joint citizenship. So who’s the father?”
His voice was so casual that for a few seconds she nearly told him the truth. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “It’s quite enough that you’ll be an uncle. You don’t need to know anything more than that.”
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