by Sarah Rayne
Not waiting for a reply, Paul Quillam leads Xavier out to a paved area. He lights a fag, shielding it with a cupped hand. Xavier knows that at the end of all this smooth talk will most likely be a definite proposition.
After a couple of satisfied drags on the cigarette, Paul Quillam flashes him a grin, flicks ash onto the floor, and addresses him.
‘What we’d like you – what I’d like you – to at least consider,’ he says, reaching up slightly to rest a hand on Xavier’s shoulder, ‘is something like eight till midnight, nine till one; an evening show. Prime-time evening. Obviously, the money would reflect that. But also, as you probably know, we’re revamping the way the station is organized. You’d go out not just in London, but nationwide.’
‘Nationwide?’
‘And with a much stronger online component and so on. You’d reach a lot more listeners. Which we think you deserve.’
Xavier’s mind flickers over Iris in Walthamstow, over the depressed teacher Clive Donald, the lorry drivers, poets, unwell or uneasy people, all the midnight-to-four-in-the-morning crowd who, to whatever extent, have come to like the company of his voice.
‘I’ve always been reluctant to think about moving slots,’ says Xavier.
‘Do you smoke, by the way? Rude of me.’
It was ruder to have interrupted, thinks Xavier. He continues.
‘Er, no, thanks. Because – the thing is, a lot of the people who call in to the show, they kind of . . . they’re quite a loyal audience, and . . .’
Quillam nods.
‘Sure, absolutely. Well, a couple of things. Firstly, I think you’ll find that your fans will follow you to the new slot. Maybe they’ll all get a bit more sleep this way.’ His mouth twists in a handsome smile for a second and Xavier half joins in. ‘Secondly, there’s always the option of keeping the late-night show, but maybe just a couple of nights a week. You could do the big show five nights, then Late Lines on Wednesday, Thursday . . . whatever you liked.’
Xavier runs his tongue over his lips. The inflated pay packet isn’t of great significance, although it wouldn’t hurt either; but the idea of reaching a much bigger audience stirs something in his recharged brain, brushes against some small pressure points of ambition or desire which have been submerged.
‘The other thing is’ – Quillam presses on, sensing that a small step forward has been made – ‘we’ve got a couple of really good people signed up, people I think you would like working with, who might . . . might bring more out of you.’
Xavier takes a moment to grasp the true meaning of this.
‘Murray is, er, he’s been a very important—’
‘Absolutely. I know you two have a really good relationship,’ Quillam says with studied respect. ‘But I wonder if that could continue for one or two nights a week on Late Lines, while you perhaps forge new relationships with, with other talents on the station.’
Xavier knows where this is heading; Quillam’s voice contains the same note of gentle common sense that numerous others have sprinkled into similar conversations before now. Look, seriously, it says, Murray is all very well, and he’s your friend and everything, but he’s not really up to it. You have to move on.
‘I’d be wary of,’ Xavier begins, ‘I’d be reluctant to work less with Murray.’
‘Well perhaps Murray could continue to help you with writing the show, and preparing it?’ suggests Quillam diplomatically.
But Xavier winces, imagining Murray reduced to scrawling down his ideas on lined paper – ideas which are all too soon discarded – and watching as a younger, more eloquent broadcaster slides into the co-presenter’s seat. Perhaps someone else becomes the producer, Murray’s role diminishing more and more, until, essentially, it is just to pick Xavier up and take him home again.
‘I really don’t think I’d want to . . .’
Quillam looks directly at Xavier, with a suddenly intent expression, a flicker of killer instinct, the look which momentarily passes across the face of his Scrabble rival Vijay as he prepares to strike a lethal blow.
‘To be franker still with you,’ says Quillam, taking Xavier’s elbow for a moment as if about to deliver upsetting news, ‘a lot of people have concerns about Murray. This can’t have escaped your notice.’
They stand there quietly for a moment, Xavier gathering energy for a rebuttal. Inside the pub, a barmaid drops a tray of glasses, which shatter messily on the stone floor, rousing the traditional ironic cheer from drinkers. She grins bravely and goes to get a dustpan and brush. Across town in Chelsea, a glass manufactured at the same factory in Stoke-on-Trent was broken only a few minutes ago by the barman who was in love with Edith Thorne. He is still waiting to hear from her, and can’t concentrate on anything else.
‘Listen, I know you have a lot of loyalty to Murray and to all your listeners, but, well, things do have to change sometimes. Things have to keep moving forward.’ Quillam’s air is still matey and respectful, but there is a faintly threatening edge to his words now.
‘I’m just not going to leave Murray high and dry,’ says Xavier.
Quillam coughs, discards the fag-end, nods, and slaps Xavier on the back; he’s made the territorial advance he wanted.
‘Of course, of course. I admire your . . . well, your whole approach. But do think about this. I’m sure there’s a way.’
They go back into the pub. Quillam stops abruptly a few paces inside the door, there’s a disturbance of some kind. Xavier follows his gaze and stiffens in dismay. Murray, who’s waded knee-deep in drunkenness over the past hour, is squatting down to make hopelessly unwelcome remarks to the barmaid as she clears up the glass. Onlookers trade glances of either amusement or contempt.
‘Are you sure you don’t want any help with that?’ Murray offers in a voice which is like a pop song played too loud. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a . . . a man’s touch?’
‘I would leave it,’ someone warns him.
Murray shakily offers a finger to the stranger, whose mates break into appalled laughter. The barmaid turns her face away, discards the brush and begins gathering up the tiniest fragments of glass with her fingers.
‘At least allow me the privilege of – the opportunity to carry the, carry your dustpan,’ slurs Murray.
There’s more laughter. Xavier feels his cheeks burn in empathic shame for Murray, but also, tellingly, for himself. He sees Paul Quillam making a conspicuous attempt, for his benefit, not to notice the scene.
Xavier heaves an internal sigh, and – bracing himself physically as if for contact with cold water – strides into the middle of the bar and pulls Murray, almost roughly, to his feet. Murray’s eyes begin to fill with a slow-acting awareness of his stupidity, but his dulled reactions still trail well behind his instincts.
‘Wer, wer, what are you doing . . .?’
‘Let’s get you out of here, mate.’
Xavier ushers his unsteady friend away from the grateful barmaid, from the sniggering drinkers, from the condescending glance of Paul Quillam, at the bar with a gin and tonic. Before Murray knows quite why, he and Xavier are outside. The wind is beginning to pick up; the wooden sign bearing the pub’s name creaks in the breeze, unheard beneath the general hum and throb of the streets.
Xavier shakes his head. What is there to say? Murray stares at him, hair tossed like spaghetti in the wind.
Xavier takes his arm.
‘Come on.’
‘I . . .’ Murray gestures helplessly. ‘I must have just had a bit too much to drink.’
‘Why do you always do these things at precisely the moment when I’m trying to—’
‘Wer, when you’re trying to . . .?’ Xavier has said too much, and Murray – even reaching through the treacle of drunkenness – is able to grab some of his meaning. ‘Shit. Was he watching me? The new guy, Quillam?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Come on. Let’s go and sit somewhere. Somewhere quiet.’
‘Oh shit. I think I was really making a ger, a ger, a good
impression on him, too. I sent him some stuff, some ideas. Fuck.’ Murray’s thick fingers grasp his moist forehead in despair. ‘Now I’m back to square one.’
Xavier steers his friend down a hidden thoroughfare, past a pair of stinking bins at the back of Chico’s, the Spanish restaurant; past the rear of a sportswear superstore where pipes discharge murky water into a drain.
‘You just have to watch yourself. How the hell did you get drunk so quickly? Were you pissed before we even met?’
‘No.’ Murray stares with exaggerated concentration at the drain as they pass, as if trying to understand its precise workings. He belches. ‘No, I mer, mer, mostly started to get drunk when you told me about the girl, about the cleaner, Pippa.’
These words sit, heavy as a sandbag, in the air between them.
‘Because I didn’t tell you about it before? Or because – what?’
Murray shrugs as if it doesn’t matter. The side street drags them across the east end of Tottenham Court Road, where a long queue of punters in feather boas and fishnet tights awaits admission to a club, and down another alley, where Xavier knows a club of a rather more upmarket kind.
‘We’ll just go in here and have a – have a coffee or something, and we can talk things over.’
Before Xavier can press the tiny intercom buzzer next to the club’s brass nameplate on the wall, Murray coughs and takes a handful of curly hair in each fist.
‘It just came as a surprise,’ he says, staring at the pavement, ‘because we don’t really talk much about relationships, well, not about your relationships.’
‘I know.’
‘And I thought . . .’ Murray wipes his hand across his wet lips. ‘I thought, I don’t know, it had crossed my mind you wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer, wer—’
Xavier watches ineffectually as, inside Murray’s throat, the desired word thrashes about, resisting eviction, like a child defying attempts to lift it out of a car-seat.
Murray puffs his cheeks out.
‘I thought it could be the cer, case that you mer, mer, mer, mer, mer, mer, mer, mer, mer. Mer, might be gay.’
Xavier almost laughs. Then his stomach twists as Murray turns away, hands on hips. After a twenty-second suspension of what feels like all activity in London, he shuffles a step towards Murray and lays a hand on his shoulder. Murray turns his head. His eyes are moist, his cheeks pinkish.
‘I’ve been stupid,’ says Murray, ‘I’m sorry, this has been a stupid night. Let’s go home.’
‘Are you sure?’ Xavier gestures weakly at the club with its demure brass signage and, inside, its scuttling waiters in black waistcoats, who know the clientele – among them, the MP who had an affair with Edith Thorne – by name.
Murray nods and buries his fleshy hands in his sleeves. He looks suddenly older and calmer; there’s no trace of the stammer for now.
He nods again, resigned.
‘Yes. Forget I spoke.’ He’s already making for the main road, scanning it for the approaching beacon of a vacant taxi. ‘Let’s go home. Let’s just go home.’
IX
The second week of April; a mild Tuesday morning, mild both in weather and, so far on Bayham Road, in incident. The buses weave through traffic, workers head for their offices. Xavier answers the front door, signs for a parcel on behalf of Tamara upstairs, whom he’s not seen for some days now, and collects a heap of other letters, catalogues, assorted junk from the postman, whose daughter will later today compete in Mathdown, the London Schools’ Maths Olympiad, against Julius Brown.
Xavier knocks on Mel’s door. There is a short delay before their usual roles are taken up: Mel, hollow-eyed, opening the door and squinting wearily at her neighbour; Jamie dashing nimbly for the corridor and Xavier, almost as a matter of routine, blocking his path and shepherding him back to his mother. Xavier and Mel smile, like teammates.
‘How are you doing?’
‘Oh, I’m better, much better.’ Mel blinks brightly. Behind her, the flat is a shambles, toys everywhere, washing-up piled high, the TV chattering in an attempt to pacify the overactive Jamie. ‘He’s starting at a daycare place soon. Just a couple of mornings a week. So that’ll give me a bit of, er—’ Mel gestures at the door, at the outside world, looking as if she hasn’t visited it in recent memory. ‘And his dad’s taking him this Saturday and the Saturday after.’ But this thought triggers more discomfort than satisfaction and her lips thin in an ironic grimace. ‘No doubt he’ll have his views on how I’m doing.’
‘Well, anything you need.’ Xavier hands over her letters, or rather, bills, by the look of them; her eyes flick, discouraged, over a forbidding brown envelope. ‘You know where I am,’ he adds.
Mel reaches out, as if to pat him on the arm, he thinks, but Jamie has found something not to his liking in the living room, and his yells summon her back to her post. Xavier watches her retreat and gently shuts the door.
He and Pippa have been communicating by text, Xavier taking the lead, Pippa replying after suitably nerve-racking intervals of time. He doesn’t know whether to put the pauses down to her incessant work schedule, or to a deliberate campaign to unsettle him, as punishment for what happened before. If the latter, it’s been successful; he’s caught himself glancing at his phone far too many times, feeling odd little stabs of disappointment when the display offers no new message, followed by an embarrassingly strong reaction to her dispatches, which, when they do arrive, are phrased with the correctness of her handwritten notes. I should like to see you at the weekend, but it may not be possible. Tuesday afternoon is no use as I have to clean for this ghastly madam in Marylebone. Maybe he always felt this way when she contacted him, almost from the beginning; it’s hard to say now.
In the two shows since the weekend, there’s been no acknowledgement of what took place, other than a very slight reference to it by Murray when he picked Xavier up on the Sunday evening.
‘It’s well and truly out of my bloodstream, you’ll be pleased to know.’
‘And are you . . . are you all right?’ Xavier ventured.
‘I’m in fine fettle,’ said Murray, drumming on the steering wheel with his inelegant fingers, and in the process accidentally honking the horn at a startled man crossing the road. And indeed, the Sunday and Monday shows zipped past nicely, with ‘Dream Holiday, Money No Object’ on Sunday, ‘Superpower You’d Most Like’ exciting plenty of calls on the Monday. They’d used that topic before, but nobody seemed to mind: sometimes, longtime listeners even email in requests for old discussions to be reprised.
Even ‘Murray’s Musings’ – featuring a rumoured pandemic and a return to the hot topic of Edith Thorne’s infidelity – have gone pretty well the past two nights. Xavier hopes that, if that trend continues, and if Murray avoids reviewing the weekend for a little longer, perhaps all its pressing points can be deferred until they disappear from view. It’s a cowardly hope, he knows, and probably a naive one, but then, it’s worked well enough in so many other situations.
Xavier showers, shaves, examines himself in the mirror. He’s lost a little weight recently, though not intentionally. It occurs to him that he ought to call home, call his mum. Maybe later in the week. It has certainly been too long. Or he could wait to see if it turns out that he is ‘seeing’ Pippa after all. She’d like to hear about that.
In other parts of the restless city, Julius Brown frowns furiously over a tangled equation at Mathdown, while his competitors, equally engrossed, pay no attention to him. Vijay, Scrabble champion, loses half a day’s work as the university’s computer system goes down. He raises his eyebrows, shakes his head, and goes out to get a sandwich. At Frinton, Ollie Harper – who finally has a new phone – hears that Sam has a new boyfriend; no wonder she’s not been replying to his texts. He’s irritated to feel jealous of them both. Roger, Ollie’s boss, is experimenting with a new mouthwash. He’s decided not to seek any more therapy: clearly, the whole industry is full of crackpots.
Frankie Carstairs’ scar is finally starting to fade.
In her Notting Hill home three streets away from that of Maggie Reiss, Edith Thorne receives the ultimatum breathlessly predicted by the papers, from her husband Phil. Swear never to cheat on him again, or say goodbye to their marriage now. He knows it’s two-thirds her money, her house, her everything, but he can walk away from it tomorrow, if she doesn’t think she can commit. No, says Edith, she wants to be with Phil, nothing else matters, she’ll do anything. By the end of an hour’s conversation they are both crying. Later Edith will attempt to get straight out of the door and into a waiting car, its tinted windows like admissions of wrongdoing, but even in the ten yards from door to vehicle she’s caught: the gently accusatory sound of a shutter opening and closing, the photographer grabbing his bounty of shots. He shouts her name as she slams the car door. The chauffeur, professionally indifferent, acts as if he didn’t notice.
Clive Donald is teaching a class on quadratics to twenty-nine mixed-ability students. Six of them, intending to pursue maths to AS level, concentrate and take notes; ten or twelve more face the front, at least, even if nothing he says is of any importance to them; the remainder are openly subversive, throwing things at each other, writing notes – DONALD IS GAY – shouting, eating snacks, counting down the minutes to the end of the lesson. The tired rattle of the bell is a relief to everyone. Clive watches the pupils disperse. It’s not their fault. He remembers being a pupil himself; catching the bus home after school, wanting nothing more than to be far away from the relentless square brick buildings, the radiators with their chipped paint. It’s not clear to him – maybe it’s never been clear, he thinks, starting up his grey Peugeot with a halfhearted wave to a colleague – why, after thirteen entirely undistinguished years at school, he allowed his life to amount to nothing more than a shapeless streak of days in an almost identical institution. And for what? To produce more teachers. Five of the kids in his A level set will become maths teachers just as he’s a maths teacher produced by his own maths teacher. It’s like some infinitely replicating sequence of the kind he would be enthused by if he were a real mathematician, rather than a facilitator of endless future educators.