The Missing World (3 page)

At nine o’clock, desperate to pass five more minutes, he went to ring his office. The manager, an elfin woman he’d never seen without a cup of Earl Grey, answered. Even the syllables “Com-et In-sur-ance” seemed to carry a whiff of bergamot. Over the years he had watched her listen to countless tales of ruin and disaster with implacable calm—You need to fill out section 18c, sir; That’s dealt with in the appendix to G6—but as soon as he said that his wife had been hit by a car, she burst into a flurry of commiseration. He started to explain about his appointments and she chased him off the phone.

Then he went to the bathroom. Wife, he thought, I’ve got a nerve. But she hadn’t called him on it. He was not, as Steve suggested, pursuing martyrdom—quite the contrary. The Hazel who tore at the walls, foamed at the mouth, and said
“caracals” was closer to his beloved than the harsh, strident woman who had moved out of their house and threatened to get an unlisted number if he didn’t stop calling. As he rubbed the soap between his palms, Jonathan allowed himself to hope that at long last the cloud of rage which had settled over Hazel, distorting everything he said and did, was lifting.

A few miles away, in another part of the city, Charlotte stared at her visitor, aghast. Ever since her sister dropped in last autumn, she’d had a firm rule about uninvited callers, but at least she need not compound the error of opening the door by allowing her landlord even one step inside. Barely taller than she was, with a belly as high and round as if he’d swallowed a beach ball, Mr. Aziz was smiling in a way that made her clutch her coat more tightly over her nightdress.

“Miss Granger,” he said with a little bow that somehow did not involve his belly, “there seems to be a problem with the post.” In his hand he held a stack of envelopes, presumably collected from the ledge in the hall where mail for Charlotte, and the house’s three other tenants, piled up.

Ignoring the envelopes, Charlotte began to babble. “I’ve been away, doing the Christmas pantomime in York—
Peter Pan
. I was Wendy. Didn’t you get my note?”

“Oddly, no, but here we are. It’s four months since you paid rent. Am I to assume”—his small brown eyes grew even smaller—“that you are moving out?”

Would crying help? Or was the high road of indignation better? Her heart was pounding so violently it was all she could do to hold her ground. “No,” she managed, and louder, firmer, “No, I’m not.”

“So I will have a banker’s cheque by the end of the week?”

“I swear.” Then, as her hand closed around the letters, she
realised the recklessness of her promise. “The end of the month,” she amended. “When the theatre pays me.”

Mr. Aziz, frowning, reached into his pocket and produced a diary. “Three weeks. You are asking me to wait three weeks for four months’ rent, five by that time.”

“Please, I’ve been a good tenant. No fuss, no repairs. If I get the money sooner, so will you. But by the end of the month, for sure.” Cross my heart, she almost added. Instead she concentrated on parting her lips and letting her coat fall open, just an inch, a damsel in distress.

For a long moment Mr. Aziz continued to regard her. Then, with the briefest of sighs, he closed the diary. “I suppose I’ve waited this long. But I warn you, Miss Granger—”

“No need,” Charlotte interrupted gaily. “Thank you, thank you. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I was about to take a bath.” In one swift movement, she stepped back, closed and secured the door. Heart still pounding, she pressed her ear to the wood and listened to his footsteps, oddly light and regular, descend the stairs.

An hour later, having skipped the bath but fully dressed, Charlotte had something that resembled a plan. All this kerfuffle, she thought, reaching into her bag, past a National Theatre brochure, a free sample of soap, an apple core eaten down to the pips, and a hairbrush, was simply a matter of sums. In the seam of lint at the bottom, her fingers rooted out a coin, several coins, but not, alas, the pleasant chubbiness of a pound. She laid the two fifty-pence pieces and a ten on a corner of the futon. If she sublet her flat to a student—better still, two students—and moved in with her sister, just until summer, she would be able to catch up on the rent, get a good haircut and new publicity photos, pay off her debts. Well, not the bank maybe, but interest rates were down, and surely the manager could see his
way to extending her loan. Amortising: it had such a nice solid sound.

Picturing Bernadette, Charlotte felt some of her satisfaction slip away. Bernie would lecture, she would scold, she would carve out her kilo of flesh, but Charlotte, for once, would hold her tongue. With Mr. Aziz at the door and Bernie her only living relative, what choice had she? Not my only living relative, she corrected. She had, once again, forgotten not merely their impossible parents but the rug-rats. That Bernie’s bonking Rory had somehow created two new people with a claim on her was hard to keep in mind. Aunt. The very word was a wail of pain.

But weren’t the rug-rats grist for her mill? She picked a pair of tights off the floor by the television and draped them along the bookcase. She could hear herself telling Bernie, in crisp Oxbridge tones, what a good thing it would be for Oliver and Melissa to have their aunt around during this difficult time. Stability is so important for children. She would take them to museums and matinees, encourage their artistic pursuits. Oliver, at eight, was a bit of a bully, but Melissa, six and a half, had real dramatic talents and, so far, seemed to have escaped Bernie’s suffocating neatness of spirit. “Order,” Charlotte announced to the cluttered room, “is the enemy of art.” She turned her attention to the armchairs, in whose crevices the odd coin sometimes lurked.

The bus for Oxford Circus was pulling away as she reached the stop. Bollocks, and all her own fault for being seduced by a cushion in the skip at the corner: red embroidery, African looking, probably thrown out by the tasteful lawyer couple two doors down. Not daring to leave it until later, Charlotte had dusted it off and carried it home. Now a good ten minutes passed before another bus came shouldering through the traffic.
Only to Marble Arch, but on she hopped and, good news, the conductor was upstairs. Maybe everything did have meaning. At first there seemed to be no seats. Then she spotted one next to a schoolgirl.

The girl gave a little sigh and drew close to the window. Nicely making room, Charlotte chose to think. She settled her capacious bag on her lap and glanced over at the notebook the girl was holding.
Why does Iago hate Othello?
was written across the top of the page.

“Are you doing
Othello
?” she asked.

“Yes.” The girl leaned even closer to the window.

“So what’s the answer?”

“I know it,” the girl said sharply. “I just can’t think how to put it.” She twisted the point of her Biro into the page.

My younger self, thought Charlotte. The bus braked abruptly and jerked forward. “If I were answering,” she said, “which, thank goodness, I’m not, I might say, ‘Iago claims to hate Othello because of a rumour that Othello has slept with his wife, but that does not entirely explain his vehemence. There is an unreasoning quality to his hatred, perhaps inspired by Othello’s nobility.’ ”

The girl was scribbling furiously. “A what quality?”

“Unreasoning. You might mention race, but I’m not sure I remember what Iago says about that. Are there more questions?”

“Two. ‘Why does Othello believe Iago’s lies about Desdemona?’ And ‘What does Othello realise after he’s killed Desdemona?’ ”

“Who on earth gave you these? They’re pathetic.”

“Miss Groper. Do you have the answers?”

“Groper!” Charlotte stifled the jokes everyone else must have made. “I can certainly come up with something.” As with
many plays, she was much more familiar with the second half of
Othello
than the first, owing to her habit of slipping into theatres at the interval and settling herself, sans ticket, in an empty seat. “The real reason Othello believes Iago is that that’s the plot and Shakespeare needs to get on with the play, but Groper would probably have a fit if you said anything so postmodern. Maybe, ‘In spite of Othello’s protestations that he is not jealous by nature he experiences twinges almost as soon as Iago hints at Desdemona’s infidelity. He is subsequently convinced of her guilt by seeing Cassio with the handkerchief.’ ”

Before she could launch into a disquisition on Act V a cry came: “Fares, please. Fares.” Charlotte sat very still, but as the conductor approached she felt the girl’s eyes upon her. Caught between the two, she handed over a precious fifty pence.

“What handkerchief?” the girl said, closing her book. “This is my stop.”

Charlotte quickly listed the handkerchief’s various owners. “Can you remember all that?”

“Of course.” With a shy smile, the girl squeezed past and was gone.

Alone, Charlotte allowed herself and her possessions to sprawl across the seat. A cushion and
Othello
before ten in the morning; surely such good fortune justified the dearer coffeehouse. Then she remembered Mr. Aziz, his absurd belly and small brown eyes, his diary ticking like a time bomb.

On their rare previous visits to London, Hazel’s parents had struck Jonathan as out of their depth. Brisk, upright country people, the pointless busyness of the city stymied them. What was it all for, this huddling together amidst noise and litter, they seemed to ask. They endured the activities Hazel organised—an exhibition, a play—dutifully expressing pleasure
but never losing the air that the zenith of their visit would be the moment at Euston when they boarded the train back to the Lake District and their useful lives.

Now they were surprisingly self-possessed as they joined him at Hazel’s bedside, to which, after a long morning of shuttling between the cafeteria and the waiting room, he had finally been admitted. Stout, red-faced George asked intelligent questions over the unconscious body of his only child; forty years of farming had educated him in medical matters. Nora held Hazel’s hand and smoothed her hair. The seizures were still coming with alarming frequency. Various machines registered them with jumping lines and small beeps, but no dials were needed to detect their presence. They passed over Hazel like wind over water, twisting her face and limbs, rattling her breath. Sometimes she spoke in that odd, deep voice. George identified several of her remarks as referring to India—a barasingha was a kind of deer—and Jonathan wrote down whatever he could. Once she mentioned him. “Jonathan, did you pick up the potatoes?” Not exactly oracular, but at least not embarrassing.

Between his phone call to George and Nora and their arrival, his sole respite from worrying about Hazel had been to worry about their reaction to him. Everything was terrible, yet here he was at the hospital as her next of kin; the advent of her parents could only spell demotion. What would they have made of Hazel’s complaints against him, her moving out? Up popped a memory of her shouting, “Don’t you understand? There are things you can’t apologise for. They change who you are, and you can’t change back.” And that, Jonathan thought, was before his slip-up.

So when George and Nora tiptoed into Hazel’s room and behaved as if he were the ideal son-in-law, he felt an immense, billowy relief. Nora embraced him and George pumped his
hand. “Thank goodness you were there,” they both said. What the hell had Hazel told them?

On the morning of the second day, a doctor paused long enough to listen to their questions. Why wasn’t Hazel conscious? George demanded, puffing out his chest.

The doctor, a tall, solid woman, smiled chidingly. “Mr. Ransome, we’re still trying to find out. The CAT scan is negative, which”—she coiled and released her stethoscope—“is good news, and the EEG is fine.”

What does that show? Jonathan wanted to ask—George, too, was shaping the words—but the doctor, enunciating as if for non–English speakers or the hard of hearing, swept on. “The next step,” she said, “will probably be a spinal tap, to check for infection, even though at present we see no signs of trauma. Meanwhile, I’m afraid you’re learning why we use the word ‘patient.’ ” She was still nodding at the familiar joke when her beeper sounded.

The hours stuttered by. Later that afternoon, following an especially severe seizure, Hazel was taken away for yet more tests. George stared after the gurney. “I feel so helpless. Nobody’s giving us an honest answer.”

He sank down on the empty bed, Nora joined him, and they both turned toward Jonathan. A single night at the hospital had aged them a decade. George’s eyes were bloodshot, his chin flecked with stubble. Nora’s hair had slipped out of her usually neat bun, and her skirt was askew.

Don’t look at me, Jonathan wanted to say. He yearned to break something, hurt someone. Instead he summoned his most authoritative manner. “They’re doing their best. Everyone seems to agree that they won’t know what’s causing this until she wakes up.”

The empty bed, the two elderly people—it was unbearable.
With nowhere to go in the small room, he retreated to the window. In the car park below drivers jousted for spaces, their jerky U-turns and reversals mirroring his muddled thoughts. He wanted Hazel better, of course, but wasn’t that like desiring his own banishment? What he really wanted was for her to recover not merely from the accident but from the delusions that had carried her away from him.

“Yes, they’re not keeping anything from us, George,” Nora chimed in. “We’ll talk to the neurologist tomorrow. Get up for a minute.” Behind him, Jonathan heard them moving. “I was wondering,” she continued, “about Maud.”

“Maud?” Why on earth would Hazel’s mother ask about Maud? Bewildered, he turned to discover her straightening the bed.

“You mean,” Nora paused, a taut sheet in one hand, “you haven’t told her?”

As a longtime inhabitant of the hospital Jonathan had learned to avoid the phone beside the fire-drill notice. Instead, he waited for a woman in overalls to finish using his favourite, near the X-ray department. “No, no peas,” she was saying vehemently. The receiver, when at last she ceded it, smelled of cleaning fluid.