by John Harvey
I got out of bed and went into the kitchen. Found a carton of orange juice in the fridge and poured some into a wine glass. I took a couple of sips there and then carried the rest back into the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed and had another drink. At last I felt able to communicate with another human being, even if only on a very superficial level.
‘Hello,’ I said into the phone, ‘this is Scott Mitchell. Who are you?’
He said, ‘George Anthony,’ in a way that suggested that maybe I ought to recognise the name.
I didn’t. I said so.
‘You don’t know my work, then?’
‘Sorry. What kind of work do you do?’
‘I’m a writer. Poetry, mostly.’
I’d read a poem once. It hadn’t been one of his. On a better morning I might have apologised for that, too. But it wasn’t a good morning.
‘What can I do for you, Mr Anthony?’
‘Find a lady for me.’
‘Any particular one?’
‘Very particular.’
‘They mostly are.’
‘Not like this one.’
‘That’s what all you guys say.’
‘What kind of guy is that?’
‘The kind that phones me up and drags me out of bed to find the very special lady he couldn’t keep hold of himself. I can never understand it.’
‘What?’
‘If she was that special why did he let her go?’
There was no answer from the other end of the phone. Possibly he was clean out of words. Then again, he could have been scribbling a quick sonnet on the cover of the telephone directory.
‘You sound a hard man, Mitchell,’ he finally said.
‘Sure. That’s me. Hard as they come. So where are you?’
‘In Hampstead,’ he said. I needn’t really have asked.
‘You’ve got transport?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
We were living in an affluent consumer society; even poets had cars nowadays.
‘You’d better come round here.’
‘All right.’
I gave him the address and checked that he knew how to get there. Then I put down the phone and drained the glass of its orange juice.
After ten minutes in the bathroom I climbed into some clothes and made it back to the kitchen. I put some coffee beans into the grinder and set it going while I switched on the grill. When the coffee was ground, I filled the kettle with water and set it to boil. I sliced two pieces of toast for the grill, then put butter, a couple of eggs, the top of a pint of milk and some salt and pepper into a small pan ready for scrambled eggs. As I was stirring this mixture slowly around with a wooden spoon, the kettle started to whistle. I shook the coffee into a red enamel pot and filled it with boiling water. Now it was time to put the toast on and finish off the eggs.
I enjoyed doing all that: it was the kind of thing that I could handle with ease. Maybe I should hand in my licence before Hankin took it away from me and look for a job as a breakfast chef. That way I wouldn’t overextend my talents and I wouldn’t make so many dumb remarks down the phone to people I didn’t even know.
Why did he let her go? If I knew anything at all, it was rarely a case of letting go. If the lady was really as special as he had said then he probably did what any other guy would do in the circumstances.
He did everything he could to get her and then when he had her, he treated her so damn badly that he drove her away again,
Well, I thought, that’s life and this is scrambled eggs on toast and never the two shall meet.
I was finishing my second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. I went to the door to let him in. I’d never spoken to a real live poet before.
He was medium height, around five seven or eight, and he walked with something of a stoop. All those hours bending over a hot manuscript. His hair had started to fall out at the front and on top, so that he was left with a greying fringe around the sides and a fluffy line stranded somewhere across the centre of his scalp. He was probably in his early forties.
He shook my hand with a grip that should have been firmer than it was and waited politely until I ushered him into the room and asked him to sit down. He accepted a cup of coffee without milk or sugar and sat there with both hands round it, looking at me expectantly.
It was as though he thought I had found her already.
I let him drink his coffee.
Then I started to ask all the usual questions. A couple were enough to get him going. It usually is. They can’t stand the pain of what’s happening to them and they’ll talk about it at the drop of anybody’s hat. They don’t restrict the outpourings of their tortured souls to friends, tried and true. They’ll let it all out to bus conductresses, milkmen, the girl who delivers the newspapers and the guy who calls at the door with a set of encyclopaedias. Even private detectives.
I sat back and got myself ready for a long wait. A fresh cup of coffee in one hand and I could listen for hours: especially to a professional like George Anthony.
He didn’t look at me all of the time he was talking. Just stared at a spot a foot or so in front of him on the floor. That, and fiddled continually with the ring on his left hand. It was circular, about the size of a penny and twice as thick. The centre seemed to be some kind of grey stone, maybe even slate. The surround was in tarnished chrome, but it looked as though it had been remounted on a new silver band.
All the while he spoke about her, he toyed with this ring, rubbing the central finger of his right hand round and round its smooth surface.
‘Her name is Anna. Anna Vaughan. She … we lived together for a year. Almost exactly. A year all but four days. Of course, I’d known her for longer than that. About three years longer.
‘The first time I saw her was at a poetry reading I did in Nottingham. I still don’t know what she was doing there. I don’t think she’d been there before and I’m sure she hasn’t been there since.
‘I remember that she sat on the floor in the corner of the room, her head resting against some kind of cupboard that had been left there. While she was listening her face changed. She became more and more like a child. I half-expected her to slip her thumb into her mouth. I wasn’t even sure if she was listening to what was being read. She gave no sign of understanding or enjoyment. She never looked up at the platform.
‘Yet all of my attention that evening was focused upon her. When I read my poems I read them to her, for her.
‘When it was all over, the organisers took us off to the pub and she was there again, different as she could possibly be. She was sitting at a table at the far end of the bar surrounded by a lot of other young people. There was no doubt as to who was the centre of attention. She seemed to be drinking a lot and her voice got progressively louder as the evening went on.
‘Finally it was time for me to catch my train back to London. I had just settled into my seat when I caught sight of this figure running along the platform. Of course, it was her.
‘I jumped up and opened the door and helped her on to the train as it was pulling out. All she had with her was a paper carrier bag stuffed full with I don’t know what. She was wearing a fur coat she’d bought in an Oxfam Shop. She sat down opposite me in the carriage and within ten minutes she was sound asleep.
‘I sat there and watched her. Her face moved a lot as she slept and once or twice she called out names, odd words, nothing that I could really distinguish. We were almost in London before she woke up.
‘When we left the station she was holding on to my arm. I was staying in a friend’s flat in Hammersmith. She didn’t let go of me until we were inside. It was very late; early morning really. She … she took off her clothes, straight away, there in front of me. Her body was like a young girl’s. Perhaps it was. All the time I knew her, she never told me how old she was.
�
�She stood there for a minute, like that, naked, then went into the bedroom and lay down on top of the bed. I followed her into the room and she closed her eyes and parted her legs slightly. I remember kneeling down beside her and kissing the flat of her stomach, just once, and saying: ‘That’s not what I want, you know.’ But it was. I wanted her more than anyone I’d ever seen.
‘We made love until it was fully light and the street outside was busy with the sounds of people going to work. I’ve never known anything like it. She … she knew everything, wanted to do everything; things that I’d thought could only exist in people’s fantasies, we did there in that bed that first night.
‘Later I got up and she asked me if I would go out and buy her some cigarettes. When I got back she had gone. I didn’t see her for over a month. Then, there she was again, sitting on the floor at a poetry reading—at the ICA this time—looking as vulnerable as she had the first time. After that she was around more often; sometimes she would come and stay with me for days at a time, others she would kiss me on the cheek and disappear from sight.
‘Then, about a year ago, I was offered this job in Devon. Running a kind of writer’s centre down there, poetry courses and things like that. It sounded ideal: time to write, interesting people to meet and a chance to get into the country. I jumped at it. One evening I met Anna in a pub in Soho; she was almost falling down drunk. I got her back to my place and tried to sober her up. In the morning I asked her to come to Devon with me. To my astonishment she said yes.
‘Of course, I never thought she would actually come. But she did. I was so happy, proud. Just to be with her was enough for me. I fooled myself into thinking it was enough for her. She seemed to enjoy it, revel in it. The fresh air gave her a colour I’d never seen before; she really seemed to be a new person. Happier, more stable. She said the farmhouse where we lived was the most beautiful place she had ever known. She was always saying that. She said it the last time just two days before she left.’
George Anthony looked up at me for the first time since he had started talking; but he didn’t stop playing with his ring. I didn’t know what to say. He had lived with a girl he loved for a whole year before she walked out on him and he thought he was the most miserable person on earth. I thought he had been very, very lucky.
I didn’t think I’d tell him that. Not now. Later maybe, but not now.
Instead I said, ‘And you don’t know where she’s gone?’
‘I haven’t any idea. Except that I imagine she’s come back to London.’
‘Which is why you’re here?’
‘Of course. I’ve been looking for her. Everywhere I could think of. There wasn’t any sign.’
‘Her friends?’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t really know her friends. They weren’t …’
‘Poets?’ I suggested.
He almost grinned. ‘Something like that,’ he said.
‘How much idea did you have that she might leave?’
He gestured with empty, wide hands. ‘None. None at all. That was the worst thing. I didn’t know anything was wrong. I thought she was really happy living there, with me. I … I … no, it just paralysed me. I couldn’t do anything, think of anything.’
‘How long ago did she leave?’
‘A little over three weeks.’
‘And when did you come to try and find her?’
‘Three days ago.’
‘You took your time.’
‘I told you, I was numbed. I couldn’t think about anything at all: apart from the fact that she had gone.’
‘But I expect you managed to write a few poems about it,’ I said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Nothing. I thought emotional stress was one of the things that made for the genuine article. You know, kick a composer in the crutch and a whole symphony comes pouring out.’
‘I don’t think that’s very funny.’
‘Neither do I, but for what it’s worth, it wasn’t meant to be.’
I got up and emptied the coffee pot. I could use some more even if he couldn’t.
As it happened he could, so we sat around for a while longer and discussed the difficulties of making a living as a poet. He made it sound almost as bad as being a private investigator. Perhaps he ought to try thrillers; they might sell a little better.
‘So,’ I said at last, ‘what do you want me to do?’
‘To bring her back to you? No deal. From what you’ve told me about her, there’s only one way she’s going to go back to a guy and that’s on her own two feet.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not what I want. All I want to know is where she is and if she’s all right. I want her to know that I’m there and …’
‘Sure, sure …’ I brushed the rest away. There was just so much of that stuff that I could stand. Then it began to cloy in my throat like candy floss.
‘What makes you think she might not be all right?’ I asked.
His eyes told me there was something, but I didn’t think he was about to tell me. I wanted him to tell me.
I said: ‘If you want me to work for you I can only do it if you don’t hold out on me. So tell me what you know.’
‘Eight days ago she telephoned. It was after two in the morning and she was drunk. Again. She didn’t seem to be making very much sense. All I could make out was that she wanted some money. A lot of money.’
‘Did she say what for?’
‘No. Only that she needed it badly. She must be in some kind of trouble.’
‘Any idea what kind?’
‘No.’
‘What did you say about the money?’
‘What money? She knows I don’t have money. Not spare. To give to people just like that.’
‘Not even when they’re supposed to mean as much to you as she does?’
He looked at me with a mixture of anger and helplessness. His hand was shaking and his cup spilled a little coffee down on to the carpet. We watched the spots darken.
I said, ‘She gave you no idea what the money was for or how you were supposed to get it to her.’
His eyes were looking tired. ‘I told you, she wasn’t making that kind of sense. She could even have been making the whole thing up.’
‘But obviously you don’t think so.’
‘Why obviously?’
‘Because you’re hiring me.’
He gave me a list, neatly written out, of places she used to go to: pubs, clubs, the odd restaurant with an even odder name. She must have been a vegetarian—when she wasn’t being an alcoholic.
‘These are the places you went to yourself?’
He nodded. Then added, ‘There is one other possibility, only … only I didn’t do anything about it myself. She used to stay, live, call it what you like, with this musician, Gerry Locke. I think he plays the saxophone. She spoke about a lot of men from time to time, but he was the one she mentioned most.’
‘Most girls have a thing about saxophonists,’ I told him.
‘Why’s that?’
‘I’m not sure. Unless it’s all that triple tonguing they have to practice.’
He didn’t look as though he thought that was funny. And this time it was meant to be.
Oh, well, lose a few here, lose a few there. It all adds up.
I took his empty cup away from him and carried it into the kitchen along with my own. When I came back he was holding out two envelopes.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘One of these has got some money in it. The other has photographs of Anna.’
Christ! I thought. He’s even more methodical than I am! And I’d always thought poets were scruffy buggers who couldn’t even find a sharp pencil when inspiration struck.
I took the envelope with the money first. Opened it and counted the contents. It would do. For a while. Then I reached out
for the other.
As I did so it hit me. You know, that sudden wave of coldness that starts in your arms or along the backs of your thighs and sweeps right through you. A warning. A fear. An omen.
By the time my fingers had closed around the brown manilla I was sure they, would stick to it forever. Somehow I got the thing open. The first photo was enough.
‘You know her,’ he said. ‘You’ve seen her before.’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘But …’
‘She’s just a beautiful girl.’
And I walked towards the door, hoping that he’d follow. He did.
I said: ‘Where can I get in touch with you? Will you still be in London?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve got to go back to Devon. There’s another course about to start up. Here …’ He reached inside his coat and pulled out a printed leaflet. ‘The address and telephone number are on there. You’ll get in touch as soon as you …’
‘If I …’
I opened the door and watched him as he walked down towards his car. It was a green Citroen Deux Cheveux. One of those things that look like an empty can on wheels. Just right for a poet.
I shut the door and looked at the rest of the photos. She wasn’t wearing the leather jacket, or the boots, but there was no missing who she was.
Whoever she was.
6
I thought it was time I went to the office: if only to get the moths out of the mail box.
It seemed that I had thoughtful friends. Someone had beaten me to it. Only they hadn’t kept themselves to the mail box. They’d given the place the kind of going over that was guaranteed to leave every speck of dust looking shiny and new.
The search Hankin’s boys had made the other night looked like amateur night at the Co-op Hall.
I admired the way they’d picked the locks instead of breaking the doors down. Not only professionals, delicate as well. Men with a well-developed sense of property.
Mine.
I wondered how good they really were. There were two places I had specially arranged. I had used them when my last lot of visitors had been on their way. It would take someone really experienced, really dedicated to find them.