Antoine Rivarol
My phone beeped earlier than I thought. She must have moved quickly. It was 10 a.m. the next day. I guessed that meant that she would have dropped her children off the night before. It would give her better cover travelling with them, but it also put them at risk and it would slow her down. I put a few things in my pocket, grabbed a slice of toast and went out to my car. I turned on the laptop to get a better visual reading. Mary’s biological tracking device slipped in my coffee was a lot higher up the techno pecking order than mine, but the one I had put beneath the Little Pony sticker on her laptop when we first met was still working. Ironically I did it because she felt she was in danger and I thought it might come in useful to know where she was. I hadn’t told her because I didn’t want to frighten her.
She was driving south. I was no more than fifty minutes behind her. My guess was Heathrow or Gatwick and given that I was pretty sure she was leaving the country – the dream of Fiji beckoned – she would have luggage to check in, so unless she was really playing with margins or running very late I would have time.
*
Heathrow. I checked the airlines. I bought a newspaper, sat and waited. The tracking device was still happily bleating a faint orange light on my phone. Luggage was checked in, goodbyes were being exchanged. A trim woman with black hair, wearing a two piece pin stripe designer suit, clipped past with some expensive luggage on wheels. I wasn’t fooled. I would know those legs anywhere. I stepped in front of her as she looked in her bag for her travel documents.
“We can’t go on meeting like this,” I said.
Her eyes flickered and, just for a moment, she thought of bluffing it out and forcing me to make a scene, but she was too intelligent, and smiled. I took out the hair in the tiny plastic envelope and showed it to her.
“Anna took a souvenir. The police will have found others and this will match.”
She looked annoyed rather that frightened.
“Why can’t you let it go? I disappear and you never hear from me again. You’re no friend to the police and you’re not some bloody Daily Mail moralist. Or perhaps you are and the shambolic free thinking philosopher mask is just that – a pose you strike to impress gullible students. Are you just a paper tiger?”
“You’ll have to dig a lot deeper than that if you want to wound me. It’s Anna. I owe it to her.”
She looked at me derisively.
“You told me I confused a sense of mission with personal guilt over Andy’s death. That’s exactly what you’re doing with Anna.”
“The difference is – I know it,” I said. “I’m making a pathetic attempt at redress and perhaps even making myself feel marginally better, though that rarely works. Come on, Mary. I’m not letting you go. It’s also professional pride. You set me up.”
Something happened to her then, a transformation. Five hundred years ago I would have believed it to be a possession. Her pupils widened and darkened. Blue eyes became black, the whites shone, as if she was a shape changer. She moved in close to me as if she couldn’t decide whether to kiss or bite me. Lavender and almonds and a whiff of insanity.
“All my life I’ve met men who are losers. Who can’t hack it. Who aren’t my equal. Years ago, when I heard you talking in that lecture hall, I thought I’d met someone better. But you’re all wind and straw. Hollow man.”
“That’s me,” I said.
“But what you’ve got to ask yourself, Paul, is: what is she holding against my ribs? A nail file, or a knife? One big enough to get between the bone and stop the heart.”
It was a good question. I felt the tip of something against my chest. I leaned forward until I was almost kissing her eyelids. I bent down and whispered into her left ear.
“Go on then. Push. Do it.”
She looked at me. I felt the sharpness increase. She was clinically insane. Perhaps even she knew it. She smiled.
“Paul, come away with me. We could have such a life. I have money. You can do what you like with me and I’ll enjoy it. My kids can follow. They’ll adore you.”
She was so close. A world of macabre possibilities opened in my mind. A door had opened. The Marquis de Sade would have run through it. But I was Paul Rook, monumental fuck up. I had my darling Cass, Anna to avenge, a failed academic career to pursue, scores to settle, vanities to unravel, pomposities to prick, David to destroy, Lizzie to love hopelessly. How could I turn my back on such a life feast?
“It’s over, Mary.”
She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as if she had just lost a small bet, stepped back and put the nail file in her handbag.
“Ok,” she said, defeated. “But you take me in. At least I can embarrass your reputation by making you deal with the police.”
We walked towards the exit. She suddenly stopped.
“Tell me, now it doesn’t matter. Did you find me attractive?”
I took a deep breath.
“I’ve woken up several times with you on my mind and a thundering erection under the duvet. Small childlike hands capable of killing and depravity, eyes set on impossible horizons, pale skin to madden all men, legs to die in the Crusades for. You are dangerously sexy.”
“It was all worth it, then,” she said coquettishly. She looked at the Ladies room. “I need to go and take off this stupid wig and put on some make up. I’m not going to be arrested looking like a library card.”
I asked a cleaner if there was any other exit from the Ladies and she said there wasn’t. I told Mary she had two minutes. Two minutes later I realised how stupid I’d been and went inside. One locked cubicle. I entered the one next to it and stood on the seat to look over. Mary sitting on the toilet, her upper body sideways against the wall, a thin garrotte tightened around her throat. I got down and shoved my shoulder against the cubicle door. It gave way easily and I almost fell on her. The black wig askew, the tongue already swelling horribly through the lips. Mary King and her train of destruction and mayhem was no more. Two more motherless children in the world. It must take a will of iron to garrotte yourself.
I left the Ladies and put a chair across the door to suggest it was closed. I couldn’t risk a phone call until I was clear of the airport, so some poor soul would have to discover Mary’s body. So many things had happened in the past week to incriminate me in various ways I was amazed the police had not already been to see me. As I walked towards the terminal exit someone bumped into me and we both stopped. He stared at me. It was the American who had followed me to Prague.
“My fault entirely,” he said. “Is everything OK? All done?”
“All done,” I said.
He half smiled.
“Am I OK to walk away too?” I asked.
He looked around. Two armed policemen were strolling through.
“Of course,” he said. “Life goes on.” He nodded and walked away. CIA? Ocean Investments? Political trouble-shooter? God alone knew and He wasn’t telling me anything. He never did. But I was safe from any police investigation, I did understand that much. I had no illusions – it was precisely because I was of no consequence that I was safe. Any connection with Anna’s death they discovered might lead to me saying something awkward for the big players in this dirty game of money and guns, so a phone call or a word in a bar or at a club, and it’s all hushed. If I was more important I’d be in more danger. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
Chapter XXII
‘No human thing is of serious importance’
Plato
4 p.m. Tuesday. Audrey knocked and entered, followed by the Registrar, a slow-witted man with too many teeth and a nasal whine of a voice, and two pro vice chancellors, Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Audrey looked around, surprised at so many people. There were some fifteen students, including the President of the SU, a feisty young woman called Haneefah. Cass was among them. Alfred sat on my desk eating a plum and eyeing Audrey suspiciously. Mrs Simpson sat in an easy chair with a mug of tea.
“Dr. Rook, this is a formal disciplinary meeting, not a bingo hall,” Audrey said.
“It’s also a democracy. You have your representative, I have a number of mine, and given that I am making a counter complaint to your complaint I can have who the hell I like here.”
I was playing to the gallery and the gallery liked it. She couldn’t back down without it looking like a defeat, so she sat, with Toothy next to her, and the pro vice chancellors bookending them. Toothy read her complaint, which amounted to me being guilty of gross misconduct and several counts of an “unreasonable refusal to carry out a reasonable instruction.” The removal of Alfred was one of these. If found guilty I could be sacked. I disputed every count and immediately countered with an accusation that she exceeded her authority, had proven herself incompetent, and moved that we needed a new head of department. Audrey smiled.
“Dr Rook, if you wish to put yourself forward for the position of head of department, then may I suggest…”
“Oh, I’m not, Professor. I’m thinking of a far more suitable candidate altogether.”
She looked discombobulated. Tweedledum and Tweedledee looked at each other and Toothy looked determinedly at his crotch. I let the moment hang.
“I move that we have a democratic vote on a new de facto interim head of department until such time as the whole faculty is present for a full debate.”
“Who are you suggesting, Dr Rook?” asked Toothy, genuinely curious.
I produced my trump card.
“I suggest Alfred,” I said. “The parrot.”
“I second that,” said Cass.
Everyone’s eyes swivelled to Alfred, who sensed that he had an audience and did a little jig on the desk. I had a few key words which I knew would trigger him into action if required.
“You’re utterly mad!” said Audrey.
“Foucault argues that madness…” I began and Alfred picked up the rest, “…that madness is silenced by reason, thereby losing its power to highlight the limits of social order and to point to uncomfortable truths.”
The mouths of several students and certainly those of Tweedledum and Tweedledee dropped several inches. I gave Alfred a grape.
“Into the valley of death rode the six hundred,” he said.
Everyone sensed a genuine drama. Where would this end? I had the initiative, or rather Alfred did, so I decided to push home the advantage.
“I propose Alfred because he is liked and respected by the student population, and because he is clearly a scholar with a wide conceptual grasp of the history of ideas. On Natural Law for example.”
Alfred blinked his onyx-black eyes and commenced a discourse in a dazzling compendium of different voices: “Natural law is often conflated with common law, but the two are distinct in that natural law is a view that certain rights or values are universally inherent in or cognizable by virtue of human reason or human nature, ‘ave a juicy grape, darlin’, while common law is the legal tradition whereby certain rights or values are legally cognizable, cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right, by virtue of judicial recognition or articulation… ” He stopped to eat a grape from my hand. Three students applauded, then the others joined in, and one, a mop-haired scarecrow with a bobble hat, punched the air and shouted, “You the man, bro!”
“I suppose he publishes too,” said Audrey.
I frowned and shook my head at her.
“Professor Pritchard, you may have noticed that Alfred is differently bodied, and therefore typing is a problem. I thought that as a university we were committed to equality, diversity, and provision for the differently abled?”
“Yo!” said a thin white girl who imagined herself a Harlem street radical.
“I told you to get rid of that disgusting bird!” said Audrey.
“Moving a parrot from its home is what a fascist would do,” said Cass.
“I’m not a fascist just for trying to get a bloody parrot off campus,” said Audrey, her voice a tremor of outrage.
“Not fascist but species-ist. Which is almost fascist,” said the bobble hat.
“Quasi fascist,” said a young girl with purple pigtails and a hat like an apple pie.
“Neo-Nazi,” said a young boy, his ears bolted with wing nuts.
“I am neither a Nazi nor a fascist,” said Audrey. “Your argument is completely specious.”
“Just what a Neo-Nazi would say,” said Haneefah. The others cheered.
Two crimson spots appeared on Audrey’s cheeks. The cracks had appeared and were rending. The battle wasn’t over but the war was won. I sat back and watched the chaos with a deep, soul-warming delight. The outcome was some ludicrous compromise whereby another meeting would be called to discuss the ramifications of this meeting. It would all evaporate.
*
Half an hour later Cass and I were giggling our way across the car park. A little anarchic madness had been timely to dispel the horror and sadness of the past week. I put my arm around her.
“You will be sacked, you know,” she said.
“I live in hope, my darling. Alfred’s perfectly capable of teaching philosophy, so you’ll be OK.”
“When I was little, I thought that basically everything was stable, fixed, and I could have a tantrum every now and then, but things would always return to normal. Now I think normal is chaos.”
“Welcome to my world. Let’s go for a pizza.”
Chapter XXIII
‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’
T.S. Eliot
To avoid madness it is necessary to order things. That night Cass and I opened a bottle of Sancerre, lit a candle, and toasted Symon. I read a few lines of Baudelaire which I know he liked.
I greet
the desert and the sea with tenderness:
I laugh at funerals, I cry at feasts,
wine tastes smooth that’s full of bitterness
We had a quiet evening. For once I slept like an angel. At dawn I drove to a favourite place. A walk past a giant elm whose indifference always reassures me that there are bigger things at work than the small lunacies of human beings, to a stream that forks into the river Avon. I sat on the bank, dangling my legs almost in the water. The current was fast and the sound of the water made me imagine the whisperings of the dead. I took the tiny shell from my pocket, kissed it and threw it in the stream. It bubbled and rippled for an instant and was gone. The sun glittered the water. I said sorry, but the word was thin, and then from out of the air came a song, the one song that I remembered Anna saying she loved. As Time Goes By. She sang it once. I hummed the melody and a few words, “a smile is just a smile, a kiss is just a kiss, as time goes by…” and then I left.
*
I drove straight to my Mum’s. She was sitting staring into space, seeing God knows what. I kissed her forehead, the skin thin and papery, then sat and held her bony hands in mine. I decided I would stop treating her like a ghost, and would tell her real things.
“You liked Symon coming, didn’t you, Mum? He loved seeing you. Afraid he won’t be able to any more, but I’ll come more often, and I’m sorry I’ve neglected you a bit.”
Something in her stirred.
“Nice lad, Symon. Cupcake Symon. Made me think, that boy.” And she smiled. A lovely resonant smile. I stayed another half an hour, and then rose to leave. She opened a drawer and took out a crumpled heap of papers, and made a ‘Shhh’ gesture. I played along and pocketed them, then kissed her and left. In my car I took out the papers and straightened them on the passenger seat. They were her scrawly drawings of weird creatures, except now I really looked, I could see something else. These weren’t just phantoms, they were letters. The wings of a harpy were the cross in a T. A gaping mouth was a P. An insect-like horror was an E. Another the same. I straightened them all and fifteen minutes later I had a name. Pete James. It was the only possible combination that made sense. I knew exactly what she’d given me. The name of my father. I almos
t gagged on my own tears. Why did it mean so much? But it did, it just did. And now I would try to find him.
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