Beck was still sleeping like he’d been anaesthetized. I got up, went through to the living area and sat in my underwear checking the train times. The earliest was at 5.14, which would get me into Oxford at 6.20, but that was obviously crazy. I did like the idea of wandering around Oxford in the early hours: the old buildings would be that bit more impressive when they were deserted; I could imagine it was the 1500s – but then I’d have to wait six hours to take Professor Caborn to lunch. Unless I intercepted him on his way in to work and took him for breakfast instead? No, that seemed a riskier strategy; he probably breakfasted at home. Plus Beck would worry if he woke up and I’d disappeared, even if I left a note.
Having thought about this, I decided it would be better if I didn’t mention any of my plan to Beck. I was aware – dimly aware – that he might not understand the logic of it. Much better to tell him after the fact, when things had already been brought to a satisfactory conclusion. This meant I’d have to leave the flat after he did, and the first train I could realistically make was the 10.22 out of Paddington. But this was perfect. It would get me into Oxford at 11.18. Then I’d have plenty of time to get my bearings, track down Professor Caborn, and take him to lunch.
I couldn’t read, which was how I would usually have passed the dead hours of the morning. I couldn’t concentrate on anything for very long. I was too eager to get the day under way.
I made coffee, showered, dressed myself in tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie, intending to change later – I didn’t plan to meet Professor Caborn in my loungewear – then went downstairs for a cigarette. The morning was bright and already warming up. It would have been a good morning to walk a dog or go for a run – I felt a desperate need to be out and about – but I didn’t trust my lungs to cope with anything more strenuous than a flight of stairs, and I didn’t know anyone in west London with a dog that I could borrow. Instead, I decided to walk to the twenty-four-hour Nisa on Uxbridge Road, where I bought bacon, eggs and more cigarettes. I then zigzagged home down the empty back streets.
It wasn’t yet six o’clock when I got back to the flat. I killed some time looking at maps of Oxford and researching the layout of the psychology department, then checked my emails, just to make sure Professor Caborn hadn’t got back in touch in the past twelve hours. He hadn’t. As always my inbox was mostly junk; someone out there was convinced that Abigail Williams was in fact a man – a man both pitiably endowed and with chronic erectile dysfunction. But buried in there was also another email from Miranda Frost.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: Wed, Jun 5 2013, 9:00 PM
Subject: A modest proposal
Miss Williams,
I have a proposition. With some regret, I have agreed to spend the coming autumn ‘teaching’ poetry in the States. The decision, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, was purely a financial one.
To dispense with all irrelevant details, I am looking for someone to live in my house and feed my two cats. Perhaps you would like to be that someone?
Why you? Good question. The truth, I suppose, is that the idea amused me. But there is no reason this arrangement shouldn’t be mutually beneficial.
My house is rather nice. It has a garden with a view and is a very peaceful place to write. If you would like a break from the horrors of modern urban living, I’m sure it would suit you. (You could have some uninterrupted time to work on that painfully honest, semi-autobiographical novel that is no doubt languishing in a drawer somewhere.)
The position would be for fifteen consecutive weeks and comes with no pay.
Think it over.
MF
I read this quickly, digested it, and sent my one-line reply: I’ll think about it.
If I chose to interpret her latent, passive-aggressive sarcasm as a double-bluff – which I did – then it seemed Miranda Frost was suddenly taking an inordinate amount of interest in my writing; in my life in general. It was as if she were setting herself up as some kind of eccentric benefactress. Or maybe she just liked me? This was a slightly unsettling notion. Was it a compliment if a sociopath took a shine to you? Probably not, but I decided to shelve this thought and crack on with breakfast.
I was sort of on autopilot as I worked, my mind darting back and forth between several more important matters, like a skittish rabbit in a meadow, and consequently I didn’t realize that I’d dispensed all twelve rashers of bacon onto the grillpan until it was too late and they were already cooking. In hindsight, I was impressed that I’d managed to get twelve rashers of bacon onto our grillpan; they were tessellated in a perfect rectangle, like a finished jigsaw. Yet when Beck came through from the hallway, he looked with a degree of suspicion at the generous plate I presented to him.
‘Er, what’s this?’ He was still sleepy, so I was willing to forgive the pure idiocy of the question; in a way, it was quite endearing.
‘It’s breakfast,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t sleep and it’s a beautiful morning, so I went to the shops. Surprise!’
‘Yes, it is . . .’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘You couldn’t sleep so you decided to cook breakfast?’
‘Yes: bacon and eggs.’ I gestured to the plate with my spare hand. ‘Mostly bacon, actually. It was buy one get one free. Do you think you can manage seven rashers? I don’t think I can handle more than five.’
‘Er, yeah, okay. I mean that’s a lot of meat to digest on a Thursday morning, but I’ll give it a go.’
‘That’s the spirit. I’m fairly sure the British Empire was built on bacon and eggs for breakfast.’
‘Oh. I thought it was built on conquest and the ruthless exploitation of indigenous populations and their resources.’
I laughed. It was a very girlish laugh. ‘Yes, that too. But you can’t brutalize the world on an empty stomach. Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, Lord Nelson’ – I was plucking names out of the air – ‘they were all bacon-’n’-eggs men. Especially on a Thursday. Historical fact.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Beck pointed at the plate. ‘But this is less breakfast and more food art.’
I shrugged. I had plated the food like a cartwheel, with a pool of scrambled egg at the hub and symmetrical spokes of bacon fanning out in an extravagant circle. There was a single leaf of parsley crowning the axle and seven blobs of ketchup marking the circumference, as if it were an unfinished dot-to-dot picture.
‘I couldn’t just heap up seven rashers of bacon in a tower,’ I explained. ‘It would have looked ridiculous. Do you want coffee, too? I’ve just made a fresh pot. It speeds up the metabolism, so it will help you digest your food.’
Beck gave me a quizzical look, but I’d been on enough crash diets to know what I was talking about here.
Paddington, 9.54. I bought a first-class return to Oxford because it was too hot a day to suffer second class; it was also too hot a day to be worrying about money. I was sick of watching every penny. Anyway, I reasoned this trip would pay for itself, several times over. Plus I’d probably need the free Wi-Fi and a table, and plenty of coffee to keep me sharp. You could never rely on the buffet trolley in standard, which always felt like a dreadful lottery. No, first class was justified on so many levels. And since this was a work trip, I could take the £65 out of my taxable income, so there was another incentive. My father would be proud.
Paddington, like so many of those grand old Victorian stations, was slightly shit in various ways. Peeling paint, blackened glass and brickwork, dirty, dusty, draughty, fumy. Nowhere to smoke. I hadn’t been through the overground part of the station for several years, but it was just as I remembered it: basically, a vast glorified barn with one end offering up a tantalizing semi-circle of daylight and open space. Frankly, I don’t know what Isambard Kingdom Brunel was thinking. I couldn’t wait to be away, but since the train wasn’t yet boarding, I went on a hunt for the bronze statue of Paddington Bear, which proved elusive. In the end, I gave up and went to the first-class lounge, whe
re I availed myself of the first-class toilet, which was worth the ticket price all by itself. They had two types of hand lotion and theatre lights around the mirror. I touched up my lipstick, tucked away the few strands of hair that had blown loose in the Tube tunnels, pouted, and felt generally good about the girl who pouted back. She was wearing a fuchsia vest top with a sea-green A-line skirt – thin, floaty and falling just above her knees. It was a bold combination, but well judged, and clearly the most vivid colouring her skin tone would allow. The large pale pink flower on her hairclip sang of summer, while her glasses added just the right note of quirky bookishness. Her footwear wasn’t quite visible in the mirror, but I suspected she was wearing turquoise sandals with heels large enough to lengthen her legs, but modest enough to suit the gaze of an ageing professor of evolutionary science. Her earrings and bracelets were also turquoise.
Satisfied that everything was just so, I picked up my laptop bag from beside the sink – black, unfortunately; white would have worked much better – and went to find my train.
It was all going very well for the first fifteen minutes. I drank one cup of coffee and got an immediate refill. I found and ordered two new laptop bags, one in white and one in taupe. I made small talk with the woman opposite as the semi-detacheds of Berkshire blurred across the window. She laughed when I told her she looked a bit like the Queen. I was having a perfectly harmonious journey until Slough, where three men entered our carriage and seated themselves at the table across the aisle.
I could tell straight away that they were dickheads. They were suited and sweating, and began talking loudly about the wholesale price of meat and last quarter’s net profits and their BMWs and some fresh-out-of-school administrator that one of them was apparently banging like a drum at carnival time. I rolled my eyes and tutted quietly at the Queen, but she had her eyes fixed on the Daily Telegraph in a valiant attempt to ignore them. I decided to do the same, and set to typing a plan for a top ten train stations in film and/or literature. It was June, so a travel feature was certain to sell. MSN would probably snap my hand off.
1) Grand Central – North by Northwest. 2) King’s Cross – Harry Potter. 3) What was the station in Brief Encounter? 4) I’m a big fan of Paddington Bear, but I can’t really put Paddington Station in there, however wonderful the toilet. 5) Why can’t they shut the fuck up and let me concentrate? It’s a beautiful day for a train journey and they’re ruining it for every other person in this carriage. 6) Gare Montparnasse – Hugo.
Then the ticket inspector arrived, and my ears pricked up. For a moment, it seemed I was to be saved.
‘What do you mean not valid?’
‘I’m very sorry,’ she repeated, ‘but these are advance tickets. They’re only valid on the stated train. This is the 10.36.’
‘Yes, I realize this is the 10.36, love. We got to the station earlier than expected, which is why we’re on the earlier train.’ It was the largest and sweatiest of the meat men. He was speaking in the slow, patronizing voice usually reserved for the very young, the very old, or the very foreign. ‘Anyway, the man behind the information desk at Slough told us these tickets were definitely valid for this train. If they aren’t, it’s his mistake not ours.’
The ticket inspector looked towards the door at the far end of the carriage, as if imploring for back-up. At the same time, the meat man winked smugly at his two sweaty colleagues. I tried to beam supportive thoughts into the ticket collector’s head: stand firm, tell him he’s a lying bastard, call the transport police.
‘I’m sorry, but it’s very unlikely that you were told that. Perhaps you misheard?’ She was being far too gracious. ‘The simple fact is that you don’t have a valid ticket for this train. None of you do. You’ll have to buy replacements.’
‘Buy replacements? Because of someone else’s incompetence? You’ve got to be joking!’
‘If you wish to make a formal complaint you’ll have to put it in writing to central office. They’ll decide if the fare should be refunded.’
‘Oh, what’s the bloody point? Your man in Slough will just deny it.’ He pulled out his wallet and slapped it on the table with the kind of indignation that only those feigning insult can manage. ‘Well? How much?’
The ticket collector tapped at her machine. ‘Three first-class singles to Hereford comes to two hundred and sixty-two pounds and fifty pence.’
‘How much?’
‘You can move to standard if you’d prefer. Then it’s only one hundred and twelve pounds.’
‘One hundred and twelve pounds! To sit in steerage? That’s literally highway robbery!’
This jumble of metaphors, cliché and appalling English was the last straw.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Four sets of eyes swung in my direction. ‘A highway is a road, steerage is a nautical term, this is a train, and you’re being an absolute arsehole!’
I didn’t say it in a hostile way, but just as a self-evident list of facts; I borrowed my sister’s telephone voice. Nevertheless, the meat man’s face went lobster pink. ‘This has nothing to do with you, sweetheart.’ He was trying to do alpha male, but sounded more like a sullen adolescent. ‘Keep your opinions to yourself.’
‘Ha!’ My laugh was genuine, possibly borderline hysterical, but I couldn’t help it. It was such a ridiculous thing for him to say. I turned to look at the ticket inspector, giving her my warmest smile. ‘You know, I saw him wink at his buddies – just after that bullshit about being given inaccurate advice at the information desk. I can write you a statement if you like. How much is the fine for deliberate fare evasion?’ She looked at the meat man and arched an eyebrow. He looked as if he’d just been kicked in the balls. ‘Or maybe he’d prefer just to buy a valid ticket – for steerage – and keep his mouth shut for the rest of the journey?’
If life were a film, this would have been the moment when the rest of the carriage broke into spontaneous applause. If it were an American film, there would have been some whooping too, and maybe an isolated ‘You go, girl!’ But this was reality and I was in Britain, the land that invented social awkwardness. I got nothing. Most of the other passengers had already averted their eyes from this unseemly public confrontation. The Queen looked mortified. The ticket inspector cleared her throat and returned the carriage to some semblance of normality. ‘Er, yes. I think the young lady is probably right.’
The meat man shot me a look that said this wasn’t over. I shot a look back that told him I was getting off at Oxford and had no intention of ever visiting Hereford, much less Slough, so it was. Anyway, his associates were already up and getting their briefcases from the luggage rack. I flashed him a catty smile and went back to my top ten stations.
10
PROFESSOR CABORN
I smoked a cigarette at Oxford Station and then looked up the number for the Department of Experimental Psychology. My plan was to phone reception to try to get a pinpoint on Professor Caborn’s whereabouts. I would say I was an old colleague. But this was the full extent of my plan. I had absolute confidence that I’d be able to wing the conversation and everything would fall into place.
A couple of rings.
‘Hello? Psychology – Sarah speaking.’
‘Oh, hello, Sarah. My name is Julia. I’m trying to track down Joseph Caborn. I’m an old colleague of his. From Liverpool.’ (God bless you, Wikipedia!)
‘Joseph Caborn?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think he’s in his office. Just a moment, I’ll put you through.’
‘No! No thank you, Sarah, but, well, I’d actually prefer it if he doesn’t know I’m coming. We worked together a while back. Actually, I was one of his Ph.D. students four, no five years ago. I haven’t seen him since. I’ve just got back from Uganda and I’d really like to surprise him.’
‘Oh.’ A brief pause. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Julia. Dr Julia’ – I searched for a likely surname – ‘Walters.’
‘Julia . . . Walters? Julie Walters
?’
Shit. ‘Oh, yes. Ha ha! No relation.’ I found my feet. ‘Sorry, I get this all the time. Phone calls are always a nightmare.’
‘Yes, I can imagine.’
‘I’m just thankful my surname isn’t Roberts.’
Sarah laughed. Good: despite a shaky start, she was starting to relax. Charm and self-assurance – they can’t teach you these things on a journalism degree.
‘Sarah, I’m in Oxford, as you will have gathered, and I have a spare couple of hours. So I was planning to pop in to see if Joseph wants to grab a bite to eat. I’m going to come over now. Is that okay?’
‘Um, well . . . If you’re a friend I’m sure it will be fine.’
‘Oh, yes. We used to be very good friends.’ Too suggestive; I didn’t want her to think there was anything funny going on. ‘Actually, I suppose Joseph has always been more of a mentor to me. Almost everything I know about primatology came from him.’ I was extremely proud of this line. Not only was it a good recovery, but it was also, technically, true. ‘You won’t tell him I’m coming, though? As I said, I’d really like to surprise him.’
‘Er, no. My lips are sealed. He should be in his office until at least midday.’
‘Thank you, Sarah. I’ll see you very shortly.’
We said our goodbyes and I hung up.
I followed my GPS map through central Oxford, admired the dreaming spires, and thought a bit more about Dr Julia Walters. The telephone conversation had gone pretty well, but I knew I’d have to be even sharper in person. I needed to inhabit my character. I couldn’t afford any blips.
The Mirror World of Melody Black Page 8