The Missing World (31 page)

Her hand slipped from his grasp. “I don’t think so,” she said quietly. “I think she was my friend years ago, not now. Do you love her?”

“Who?”

“Maud. Do you reciprocate her affections?” She pushed a T across the board.

“Absolutely not.” He shook his head. “She’s been great since your accident. Before that, though, in the old days, I never understood why you liked her.”

“So,” said Hazel, releasing the T, “let me see if I’ve got this straight. Last autumn you and I have a major row. I move out and get hit by a car. You and Maud, for some mysterious reason, decide to pretend that you and I are, were, and always will be happy as Larry. You secretly sublet my flat, instruct other people to stay away or keep quiet, and count on gratitude to prevent me from investigating my doubts.” She stared at him steadily, until there was nothing in the room save her eyes, the whites shining around the pupils. “True or false?”

Both, he wanted to say. Neither. Just when he thought he might have to tell her everything, he managed to pull his gaze away. The taller candles he knew by their clear, steady flames to be beeswax. In the Middle Ages, monasteries often kept hives partly in order to make the altar candles. His palms itched furiously. The bees signalled their intention to swarm by building a new queen cell; her skirt, her tunic. Some keepers clipped the queen’s wings after the nuptial flight, not him. Everything I did, he thought, I did for love.

“True,” he said. “But not the whole truth.”

She nodded gently, almost approvingly. “What was the row about? Was it to do with Suzanne?”

“No,” he said, and at once thought,
idiot
. Suzanne—with her earnest opinions, her sensible skirts and flat shoes—could be negotiated. “I’m sorry about Maud,” he repeated. “It’s not as if it makes a difference.”

“Jonathan, what did we quarrel about?”

None of your effing business.

“You know, my memory’s coming back. In a few days or a few weeks, I’ll remember for myself. You might as well tell me.”

She leaned against the sofa, arms folded. In the past he’d always been able to outwait her; now her patience filled the room. He stared at the Scrabble board: a few words—“zoo,” “pot”—were still intact. What if he told her, told her everything, couldn’t they make a seamless union between past and present, then and now? He let the sentences unfurl in his mind.

All last spring and summer, ever since she found his cheque book, they’d had rows. Then in September she applied for a job in Brussels. Jonathan’s first intimation was when she came home, and announced that the interview had gone well. He didn’t understand—after all, she did several interviews a month—until she explained. But what’ll happen if they offer it to you, he said. I’ll live in Brussels, she said. You can always visit, once I get settled.

Rage had foamed inside him. How could she do this? Apply for a job abroad, without even talking to him. Nowadays, she’d said, I don’t think it’s any of your business. Her calm torched his fury. She watched contemptuously as he broke a chair, pounded the bathroom wall.

Oddly, or perhaps predictably, once he’d stopped thrashing around, they were easier together than in several months. She listened to him talk about his bees, he asked about her latest article, they collaborated on the cooking. He lulled himself into believing there wasn’t a job in Brussels; or that there was, but she hadn’t applied; or that she had applied, but was wholly unsuitable. One evening, walking along the towpath near Noel Road, he dared to bring it up again. I’m glad you decided against pursuing the Brussels business, he said. What’s that,
said Hazel, pointing at a grubby white pyramid rising from the middle of the canal. Fifty yards closer, they recognised a mattress, mostly sunk beneath the brackish water.

I can’t imagine who dumps these things, she said. They told me I’d have a letter by the end of the month.

After that, it was easy. He watched the letter box like a warrior bee guarding the entrance to the hive. The second post was tricky until he got into the habit of dashing home at lunchtime. Eleven days later it arrived, the envelope clearly marked.

Dear Ms. Ransome,

It is with great pleasure that I write to announce our unanimous decision to offer you the position of sub-editor in our Brussels office. The terms would be as we discussed at the interview, the standard salary plus …

Without delay he had climbed the stairs and switched on his computer.

Dear Ms. Charlewood,

Thank you for your letter of the 22nd. I am honoured that you decided to offer me the post of sub-editor. Unfortunately since our meeting an unexpected family situation makes my going abroad impossible at this time. I apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

He had posted it in the pillar box at the end of the street and stopped for a dram at the Lord Nelson. In the bottom of his glass he found the flaw. If Hazel got no letter, she would phone Ms. Charlewood. He started back to the house, then
remembered the office computer, on which he could construct a facsimile of the letterhead.

What he hadn’t counted on was the grapevine. A fortnight later, a friend of a friend ran into Hazel at the pub and mentioned how disappointed the editors were by her refusal. Too late to do anything, though; their second choice had already signed the contract.

It all made sense, he thought now. His failure to recognise his own feelings in the early stages, his mishandling of the Suzanne business, Hazel’s sudden intoxication with worldly success, a few pieces in the
Guardian
and she thought she was Hunter S. Thompson. And, more recently, the strenuous, complicated efforts he’d made to protect their relationship. He studied her slender ankles beside the Scrabble board and longed to pour out his explanations and apologies in a sweet, unalloyed, golden stream, and have her hear them exactly as he intended. But it was Hazel who broke the silence.

“Look!” she said.

Following her gesture, he saw something quivering at the tops of the windowpanes. The glass, he thought: just as the actress promised, the glass is on the move. As he drew near, however, he saw that what was moving was not the pane but the putty, warmed by the candles, expanding and bubbling beneath its layer of paint. One by one he snuffed out the flames.

Freddie woke, standing in the hall, holding the phone. “Mr. Adams,” the receiver was saying, “is that you?”

“Who is this?”

“You fixed my roof, I fixed you meals. Donald Early.”

Unmistakable, yet somehow different. In his voice was a wisp of embarrassment, or maybe shame. “I was asleep,” Freddie offered.

“I am sorry. I’d call back if I weren’t ringing to ask you a favour, an odd and unhappily urgent favour.”

“Shoot.” Freddie shook himself. “I owe you one, if not two.”

“All debts are cleared. I have an acquaintance, a former student, who’s in trouble. I was hoping you might give her a hand.”

Through the kitchen doorway, Freddie saw the frying pan lying upside down beside a pile of rice. He could barely keep himself afloat. Anybody else would sink him for sure. “What sort of hand?”

“Oh, this
is
embarrassing. I’m about to put her in a taxi. She should be with you in a few minutes. I only answered my door because I was expecting my assistant and instead, there stood Charlotte, Venus of the rubbish bags. Well, you’ll see. She just needs a sofa for a couple of nights. Her sister’s thrown her out.”

“Why send her to me when you’ve got room for a family of ten?”

Mr. Early cleared his throat. “My candidate for the most excruciating sentence in the English language is ‘I need you,’ when I am the addressee. Whereas for you, forgive me, I sense it may be your favourite.”

From beside Freddie’s left foot a man in a red shirt brandished a power drill, the
Reader’s Digest
manual of home improvement. “Which of the designers,” he said, “were you?”

“Freddie.” Mr. Early laughed. “I was the one who got the job. Surely that’s obvious. I was trying to make myself sound wicked and interesting; also to warn you. I’m like a primitive organism, even more ancient than the dinosaurs—I’ll stop at nothing to preserve my world. I’d better let you go, however. Answer the doorbell or not, at your peril. I’m still in your debt.”

Freddie stepped into the living-room, drew the curtains,
picked up a lamp. If this doesn’t beat all. He didn’t know whether he was coming or going, but he did know if the doorbell rang he would answer. To that extent Mr. Early was right. He was a different kind of organism, more primitive or less, he couldn’t say. But his sense of self came from others. Left to his own devices, he was a formless blob.

chapter 18

“I should warn you,” the man said, leading her up the dark stairs, a bag in either hand, “things are kind of a wreck.”

Charlotte nodded, blindly. She was still stunned at the speed with which first Bernie, then Mr. Early, had thrown her out. The latter had opened his door with alacrity, but at the sight of her his smile had dimmed and, once she started to fetch her bags, faded altogether. He hadn’t even allowed her to take off her coat, just a quick whisky in the hall while he made a phone call. When his assistant, Ray, showed up a few minutes later, she’d guessed the recipient of Mr. Early’s smile. She refused to lift a finger as Ray loaded the bags into yet another cab. Wanker, she thought, glaring at Mr. Early. Pathetic old poofter. How dare he treat her like some underling, some extra. And now this American was apologising for the state of his flat, which probably meant, if he was like most people she knew, three teaspoons lying in the sink or, tut-tut, a newspaper spread open on the sofa. Spare me.

But as she entered Freddie’s hall, she tripped over what turned out to be a phone book, and when she recovered her balance and took in her new surroundings, on all sides the balm of
disorder met her gaze. For the first time since moving to Bernie’s, Charlotte felt at home. “What’s that noise?” she said.

“The dogs. They’ll settle down in a minute. Let me get the rest of your luggage.”

Luggage. What a lovely, dignified term for her flock of bags. “I can help. There are so many.”

Freddie smiled. In the unlit hall she had missed his skin, lustrous as an aubergine, his smooth, high forehead and dimpled chin. “You must be tired. Stay here and put your feet up. The couch is free, sort of.”

Alone, Charlotte wandered into the kitchen. My, my, she thought, taking in the mess of broken china, pots and pans, various foodstuffs. This was beyond disorder; a vigorous tantrum, more likely. She set the Chardonnay beside a jar of peanut butter and, tiptoeing from one island of linoleum to the next, knelt beside the enclosure. The larger black dog sniffed at her outstretched hand and waddled away. The puppies, however, piled up without restraint. They licked her fingers, wagged their entire small bodies, fixed her with their melting eyes. She lifted the nearest one onto her lap.

“Be careful how you put them down,” said Freddie from the doorway.

“They’re adorable. What do you mean?”

“You have to set them on all four paws else their legs get damaged.”

Then he was gone. She gathered up a second puppy, and the third. One chewed her hair; the other, with excited yips, attacked a button of her blouse. Charlotte nuzzled their warm, black fur. This beat rug-rats any day.

Twenty minutes later, the pups were back in their pen and she and Freddie were on the sofa with mugs of tea. She could smell the slight, pleasant tang of his sweat: all those bags, all those
stairs. “Sorry about the mess,” he said. “Let me explain. I just came home, and while I was out a friend got mad and kidnapped Arkansas.”

“Arkansas?”

“One of the puppies.”

She knew what he was telling her was important, upsetting even, but Mr. Early’s whisky, on top of the wine at Hazel’s, rendered her stupid. “Awful,” was all she could muster. Suddenly she noticed she was sliding towards Freddie’s shoulder. Wait a minute. She’d met him only half an hour ago. Swaying back to the vertical, she said, “This is very kind of you.”

“No problem.” He sipped his tea. Charlotte did the same. Lacking his shoulder, she allowed herself the small luxury of slipping off her shoes and curling her feet beneath her on the sofa. “I don’t mean to be a doofus,” Freddie said, “but what’s wrong that you need a place to stay?”

Doofus! Weren’t Americans wonderful? “I fucked up.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, so clearly meaning “Me too” that she did. Not the version she’d hastily concocted for Mr. Early—torn between two good deeds, a woman taken ill and the rug-rats, her sister going berserk because she chose the former, etc.—but the one that had actually happened: the unexpected morning phone call, the drama of Hazel finding her long-lost flat, Bernie’s missing note.

“This woman, Hazel, where does she live?”

“In Highbury, off the Holloway Road.” Why was he leaning forward, his voice sharp with interest?

“And does she have seizures?”

“Sometimes.”

He stood up, paced to the door, back again, gave an absurd little jump, and finally knelt in front of Charlotte and took her hands. “You must think I’ve gone nuts.”

He explained how he’d met Hazel through work, and her
next-door neighbour taught some kind of class. Charlotte let his words wash over her—such coincidences were commonplace—and focussed on his hands. “So what happened today,” he was asking, “when you went to Hazel’s flat?”

“Her lodger let us in, a quite nice one-bedroom in Kentish Town. We had a cup of tea.”

“And? Did her memory come back?”

Something’s going on, thought Charlotte. She started to push her way through the veils of alcohol, the pleasure of his touch. “No. She recognised stuff, furniture, pictures, but she didn’t remember being there at all. She got rather upset.”

“Shoot.” He let go of her hands and resumed pacing. “Where is she now?”

“Home. Are you okay? You seem a bit flustered.”

Freddie pulled himself back inside his amazing skin. “Sorry. I just know the setup between Littleton and Hazel isn’t on the level. He’s taking advantage of her.”