The Good Mayor: A Novel

by Andrew Nicoll

And that was how it ended then, not sneaking down the back stairs but there, on the front steps of the Town Hall, in smiles and laughter and a shower of confetti that Peter salvaged from the trays under a dozen paper punches on the desks of a dozen clerks and pulled from his pocket as Tibo yelled, “Cheese!” encouragingly.

  There was time for a drink—“Just one. No, honestly, no more. Oh, all right, then, you’re twisting my arm. But just one more and that’s all!”—in The Phoenix and then they parted with hugs—“The scarf? Keep it. Don’t be silly, it’s a wedding present!”—and hurried home, Tibo walking quickly up Castle Street, Agathe waiting at the tram stop at the corner of City Square, Peter climbing the stair to his flat above Dot’s second-best butcher’s and the kids, Kate and Simon, running away together, laughing down the hill to the future—whatever that might be.

  Agathe looked after them and tried to decide what it was that she was feeling. Envy? Pity? Nostalgia? Anger? She turned away with a sigh.

  A cold wind blew up Castle Street and, before his tram arrived, it lingered near Tibo, bringing him the sound of Kate’s laughter and the clatter of her feet as Simon hurried her over the cobbles. An unfortunate child—that was what he had called her. He chided himself for it now. They were plain, dull, ugly children both of them, lumbering blindly into plain, dull, ugly, blighted lives but at least they were not going alone. “Unfortunate?” thought Tibo. “Damn you, Krovic, when did you get so high and mighty?”

  The tram came. He had missed the rush of office workers and hurrying shop girls. It was quiet now, easier to get a seat with just a few other passengers including a couple like him—prosperous, well-dressed middle-aged men who had lingered a little too long in a city tavern because they could think of no good reason to hurry home.

  After seven stops, Good Mayor Krovic got off at the kiosk on the corner and turned into his street walking under overhanging cherry trees until, halfway down, on the right-hand side, he reached his gate. It seemed to cling to the wall for support, like a Saturday-night drunk against a lamp post. “I must do something about that,” thought Tibo. “I really must.” He ducked under the birch tree where the brass bell hung in case of visitors and noticed a butterfly clinging to it and stamping feet as fine as horsehair on the rim. At the other end of the path, as he fished in his pockets for the big black house key, Tibo was sure he could hear a tiny ringing.

  A few minutes earlier, in the centre of town, above Dot’s second-best butcher’s, Peter Stavo walked into a flat where the kitchen was steamy with stew and dumplings and he kissed the fat wife who had stood in front of that same stove these thirty years. She shooed him off with a tea towel and an angry tut and complained, “You’re in early tonight! And you’ve been drinking.” But, when she was sure his back was turned and he had settled into the chair with the paper, she looked at him with a smile.

  And, on the other side of Dot, as the tram pulled away from Green Bridge, Agathe made an effort to pull her shoulders back and walk straight and tall as a poplar, curvy as a skittle, round the corner into Aleksander Street, past Oktars’ delicatessen and up the stairs to the flat where Hektor was standing on the landing, scraping a charred frying pan into the bin.

  “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Me and Stopak … You were late coming home so we thought we’d make the tea.”

  Smoke wafted round the landing. It was even thicker inside the flat. “Have you called the fire brigade?” Agathe asked coldly.

  “Aww, don’t be like that,” said Hektor. “Sorry, Agathe. Honest.”

  “Where’s Stopak?”

  “He’s inside. He’s having a little sleep.” Hektor giggled stupidly. “A little sleep. That’s all. Been a long day.”

  “So you were hanging paper in The Three Crowns all day, were you?”

  And all Hektor could find to say was, “Aww, don’t be like that. Sorry, Agathe. Honest.”

  She looked at him with his cigarette sticking out from under that ragged moustache, a blunted knife in one hand, a blackened pan scored with bright silver scars in the other and she almost laughed. This was what her life had become.

  “Throw it away,” she said. “Just drop it in the bin. It’s ruined. Not worth saving. It’s no good to me.”

  He was going to say, “Sorry, Agathe,” again but he thought better of it. He dropped the pan and put the lid back on the bin.

  “I’ll make you a sandwich,” Agathe said and, in the kitchen, she sliced bread and chopped ham and twisted the lid off pickle jars with all the cold fury of a harpy. Hektor said nothing. He ate his way through it and thanked her and left.

  When Stopak woke on the sofa at 4 a.m. with a crick in his neck and a sick dryness in his mouth, his plate of sandwiches was still where Agathe had left it, balanced on his paunch.

  And that’s how things were for Tibo and Agathe—every day much the same. Ordinary. They would get up in the morning and take the tram to work at opposite ends of town and she would busy herself and be sad because there was no one in the world who cared for her or wanted her while, just through that door, just on the other side of that wall, Good Tibo Krovic was miserable because there was nothing and no one in the whole world that he wanted unless it was Mrs. Stopak.

  They fooled each other. They fooled each other at the wedding when Agathe thought that Tibo had shed a sentimental tear, never considering that he might have been weeping with frustration because he wanted her and could not have her. And Agathe fooled him when she wept with jealousy for the fat baby growing in Kate’s belly and he never realised. They fooled each other every day in a thousand ways, neither of them daring to admit their lack, neither of them daring to speak their pain, each unwilling to confess the truth about their lives. They almost, almost fooled themselves.

  And yet they comforted each other. Agathe with her buxom cheerful beauty—she couldn’t help being beautiful—and Tibo with his kindness. Tibo couldn’t help being kind. They warmed each other with those little gifts—kindness and beauty. They are precious. They are always in short supply.

  And, in days measured out by the chimes of the cathedral carillon and the clink of coffee cups and weeks measured out in new typewriter ribbons or sittings of the Parks and Recreation Committee, they clung together secretly, nursed each other unawares, dressed one another’s wounds. When Agathe spent the morning looking at her blue enamel lunch box that sat on her desk in the place where once a little parcel from Braun’s had nestled, when the high point of her day was taking it out to the fountain and feigning a surprised delight at discovering the sandwiches she had made for herself that morning, then that was the high point of Tibo’s day too. See him there, up there on the secret balcony, by the flagpole, up in the sky, watching her, watching over her? It’s the fulcrum of his life.

  Or, when Tibo went home alone to the old house at the end of its blue-tiled path and sat in the kitchen as the cheese congealed in that evening’s omelette and he burrowed in a briefcase full of council papers, hoping to find Agathe in it, hoping to drive her from his mind, she was in the flat in Aleksander Street, above Oktars’ delicatessen, thinking about him.

  When Stopak lay there silent and cold, snoring, not noticing the beautiful, plump, scented woman at his side or when Hektor stood in her kitchen, frying sausages on her stove and turning to spit in her sink with a cigarette burning runnels where it lay on her table as Stopak dozed on the sofa next door, then Agathe’s first thought was always, “Mayor Krovic would never do that. I bet Mayor Krovic would never behave that way. I can’t see Mayor Krovic doing that.”

  When she lay in bed stroking Achilles the kitten, who grew under her hand into a strong, sleek cat with claws like sabres, she always went to sleep wishing him well. “Goodnight, Achilles,” she would say. “Goodnight, Achilles. Goodnight, Mayor Krovic. Goodnight.”

  And, alone, in the big house at the end of the blue-tiled path at the other end of town, Mayor Krovic would hear her and roll over in his bed under the quilted counterpane that his mother made when he was a boy, pull it
up to his ears and say, half asleep, “Goodnight, Mrs. Stopak. God bless you and keep you.”

  See how they watched over each other?

  UT THE SUMMERS ARE SHORT IN DOT. Cold winds began to blow over the Ampersand more often and, sometimes, there was no shelter to offer.

  That was how it was the day the letter came—a great white snowflake of a thing that lay on Tibo’s desk when he arrived at work, carrying winter in its folds. Agathe had dealt with all his other mail, sliced his letters open deftly, unfolded the pages, shaken them out, fixed each one to its envelope with a paperclip, laid them in a neat pile on his desk under that iron paperweight that looked like a squashed black doorknob. But not this one. It lay there screaming like a siren, boasting to the other envelopes about the quality of its paper, its high rag content, its deckle edging, its tissue lining and, written across the top left corner in a confident fountain-pen hand were the words “Strictly private and confidential.”

  Tibo picked the letter up. He weighed it in his hand. He balanced it, diagonal to diagonal between the tips of his fingers where the strong paper corners burrowed into his skin like tiny gimlets. He blew on it and watched it spin there. He threw it down on the desk. He was just pushing back his chair so he could rise and go to the door to ask Agathe for some coffee when she appeared there, carrying a cup and saucer.

  “I’m not being nosy,” she said but she sounded concerned.

  “No, that’s all right,” said Tibo. “I’ve been expecting this for a while. I know what it is.”

  “Right,” said Agathe. But she stayed where she was, hands folded together at the wrist, standing on the other side of his desk.

  Tibo tucked the point of his little finger under the flap of the envelope and ripped it open. The ragged edge of the sky-blue tissue lining spilled out like a wound. He read it aloud to her. “Dear Krovic, As I’m sure you know, the lawyer Guillaume has seen fit to make a formal complaint to me about your conduct in a recent case. You are a good man, Tibo Krovic, doing a good job, and we need more like you.

  “Everybody is entitled to a half hour of madness every now and again and no harm done and even Guillaume says his man deserved what happened. If matters are as he alleges, I don’t have to tell you that it would be a very serious situation indeed but, if you can tell me now that the whole thing is a lot of bollocks, that’ll be good enough for me. I am writing this to you by my own hand from my own chambers and I don’t have to tell you that none of this will go any further. I know you can clear it all up very quickly, my boy.”

  It was signed with a flourish “Judge Pedric Gustav.”

  Tibo dropped the letter on his desk with a grim sigh. “So that’s that, then.”

  “That’s what, then? It’s a lovely letter.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Stopak, read it! It’s an invitation to resign.”

  Agathe snatched the letter from the desk. “Listen,” she said. “Listen. ‘Tell me it’s bollocks and it’s over, I know you can clear this up, none of this will go any further.’ He wants you to stay on. He’s asking you to stay on. It’s not an invitation to resign.”

  “Mrs. Stopak, the very best you can say is it’s an invitation to lie.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. Nobody’s asking you to lie.”

  “Judge Gustav is. All that stuff about a mad half hour and how Yemko Guillaume knows his client deserves all he got. If Guillaume thought that for a minute, he would never have complained to the judge and, if Gustav believed I had a leg to stand on, he’d have had his secretary write this letter, not this hole-and-corner business, writing to me secretly from his locked chambers. It’s a very kind, very generous, very pleasant invitation to resign.”

  Agathe pushed the letter around the desk with the rubber tip of her pencil. “Let me write to him. I can type something up in a minute. You don’t have to do it.”

  “Mrs. Stopak, I’d have to put my name to it. I’d have to sign it.”

  “No, I could sign it. I could say you were out of the office.”

  “I know you’re trying to be kind but no. It’s ridiculous. No.”

  “Ridiculous! Now I’m ridiculous, am I?” She flicked Judge Gustav’s letter across the desk. “Have it your own way, then. I might be ridiculous …”

  “You’re not ridiculous. I didn’t mean you.”

  “Well, I might be ridiculous but at least I’m not …” She stopped to draw breath. “At least I’m not prissy!”

  “Prissy?” said Tibo. “Prissy. You think I’m being prissy. Telling the truth is prissy, is it?”

  Agathe stamped out of the office. “Oh, go ahead and resign if that’s what you want to do,” she said. “See if I care.” And she slammed the door and sat at her desk and wept, dabbing hot tears from her eyes because she did care. She cared a great deal. She had to sit there and listen as Tibo banged about in his office looking for paper. She had to give it to him when he finally gave up the hunt and came out to ask for help. She sat listening for the scrape of his pen as he wrote, feeling the nib scoring against her flesh as it scored against the paper. She handed him an envelope and took a single red stamp from the tray in her drawer and, when he strode out of the office, heading for the postbox, she sat watching him go.

  “I don’t think you’re ridiculous,” he said, without turning round.

  And, too soft for him to hear, Agathe said, “I don’t think you’re prissy.” And then she had another little cry because she couldn’t share this with him and she couldn’t protect him from it or take it on herself.

  She did what she could. She did her job well. She made him coffee. She told him funny stories about Achilles the cat and utterly, completely refused to pass on a word of gossip—oh, all right then, but you mustn’t tell another soul—about what the Town Clerk’s wife had got up to at the Sunday School picnic, she brought him the evening paper but she never, never mentioned life at home or Stopak or Hektor.

  And Tibo did what he could for her. He was a kind and considerate employer. He was always polite, always asked nicely for whatever he wanted done, never made her work late, always made sure there were biscuits with her coffee and sometimes even a cake, never, never mentioned that he was crazed for her and wanted her past bearing. And, above all, he watched over her with devotion, whether that meant he had to get up from his desk a dozen times a day to open the door between their offices or run like a madman as soon as she left at lunchtime so he could stand on the tower of the Town Hall to look at her. Tibo did what he could. He sensed her pain. He recognised it as if it had been reflected from a mirror and, because of that, he watched over her.

  And that’s what he was doing that day at the end of summer when Agathe sat down at the edge of the fountain and accidentally knocked her lunch box into the water.

  Look down now from the top of the Town Hall, as Good Tibo Krovic did that day, as he has done in memory so many days and nights since. Look at the square, full of people, some happy, some angry, some lonely, some loved, pretty girls and plain, that filthy old drunk with his broken, wheezing accordion hanging from one arm, the policeman coming to move him along, the dog on a string, the tram clanging past. Look at the day. It’s a bright afternoon at the beginning of September, summer’s last throw. The flowers in the window boxes are making one more brave effort, the hanging baskets are striving for one last surge of colour, one final glorious trumpet blast to outdo the municipal geraniums of Umlaut, the trees along the Ampersand are defying autumn, the geese among the islands have refused all arrangements for flying south. And all of them, flowers, trees, leaves, birds, dogs, drunks, shop girls, all of them chorus together, “It will never be winter!” because there, in the middle of the square, sits the proof of it. Mrs. Agathe Stopak, tall and buxom and creamy pink, sitting on the edge of the fountain, permitting sunbeams to kiss her.

  Look at her sitting there. Look at her through the eyes of Good Tibo Krovic. Look at the shape of her, the curve and the line. Look at her foot resting feather-light on that flagstone, toes point-peeping from
her sandals, the round arc of her heel, the nip of her ankle, the swell of her calf, the bight of the back of her knee and on, up to where the polka-dot silk of her dress holds a promise of thigh and stocking-top and tense suspender clasp. Look at the slalom curve of her, hurtling downhill from her chin, round her throat, over breasts that would outdo the statuary of a Hindu temple, the sheer mathematical impossibility of her waist, the swell of her belly, the buttocks that spread and settle and accept the fountain’s marble edge. Look at her as she moves, the grace of her, the joy of her, shaking out that chequered cloth over her knee, a sedentary Salome.

  She turns to reach for a sandwich from her lunch box, every joint in motion, waist and shoulder and elbow and wrist and knuckle, curve and line and angle, down to the very tip of her finger which now, for just a moment, brushes the lid of the box and pushes and begins to tip. And this is the moment that lasts forever. This is the moment when Good Tibo Krovic stands outside time, as far above the ticking of the clock as he is far above the square. For Mrs. Stopak’s lunch box is moving. It is slipping off the edge of the fountain. It is sliding into the water as slow as syrup in a winter kitchen and Tibo begins to run. Through the door beside the flag pole, a leap from the top of the four wooden steps, into the small white room beneath with its buckets and its ladders and its dust sheets and its mole-heaps of crumbling plaster, a struggle with the lock and out on to the back stair as the door bangs behind him, then crashing and leaping and falling like a rock, down three floors past Licensing and Entertainments, past the Town Clerk and the City Engineer, past the Planning Department, into the terrazzo corridor outside his office, through the glass door and, before it’s had time to bounce on its hinges, across the thick blue carpet and down again, down the green marble stairs that lead to the front door and City Square where, just beside the fountain, Mrs. Stopak is turning with disgust to fish her sopping lunch box out of the water.

  Good Mayor Krovic pauses before he steps out into the sunlight. He tugs firmly down on his waistcoat, he shoots his cuffs, he pushes his fingers through his hair, he exhales deeply through his mouth and sucks air in through his nose with a whistle until his lungs are full, his breathing calmed. And then, in the very instant that the heel of his shoe lands on the smooth grey flagstones of City Square, the mechanism of his watch moves on, tick turns to tock and time starts again.