What Becomes (23 page)

‘Yeah.'

‘And you want him to sign that. Your programme.'

She tucks her feet in nearer to herself, to the backs of her thighs. This will wrinkle her skirt. ‘I don't think he's coming to see us tonight. It's late. He wouldn't make us hang around this long. Something must have happened. Guests. Or he's tired. Everyone else has come outside. Not him. He's gone another way.'

Paul sees how she is curled all to the left, beside the wall: trying to keep cosy, and thinks this must be uncomfortable and ineffective. Her blouse is old-fashioned, Laura Ashley, something like that – he can't really tell in the shadow.

‘
TGM
doesn't sign things.' She yawns just enough to put a tremor in her jaw: a sweet, sweet trembling.

‘No. I forgot.'

‘What did you think?'

‘About what?'

‘The show.' This makes her begin to smile and he can imagine the same gentle, drowsy expression being there for some person who cares about her, lighting for them in a dawn with pillows and the spread of her hair. She faces him – perhaps studying, perhaps amused, he can't be sure – and asks again, ‘What did you think? You haven't been before, have you? Whatever funny little club we are, you're not really in it yet.'

Paul wants to yawn, to join her in that – because yawns are infectious and he is tired and it would be very easy for him to tremble, ‘I thought . . .' offer her a piece of himself that might seem sweet, and he would – by the way – like to see her hair on a pillow, anyone's hair on his pillow, ‘I thought . . .' But it's too late for that, doesn't matter, and it's fine for him to tell her now what's true – tell her as he would in a first morning when everything is interesting and you want to talk and you feel that you'll never get all that you need of this new woman and who she is and what she might enjoy and there is no pain from anywhere, not yet. ‘I thought . . .' It's additionally fine – it will be absolutely fine, any disclosure – because in the morning this blonde whose name he does not know and will not ask will have forgotten him entirely. He'll be gone. ‘I thought he was great.' All gone.

‘But?'

‘No but.' He smiles to reassure. ‘Really. There's no but.' He knows he can hold her hand and she will not take it amiss, so he does, squeezes her fingers, cuddles them, and they sit together in the doorway with the cold of the stone underneath them and he says, ‘I thought he was very good at what he does and . . . it was how he did it. Because of him not being that big, you know? He didn't look like a big man, not tall – and not, not some twat in a campy suit, or a Gandalf beard, or some kind of . . . I mean he's not a twat – and he was like my size – and ordinary, average – smart but average – and trying so hard to make these things happen, these bonkers things – and they did – he tried hard enough so that they did. I mean, it wasn't easy. Not that I didn't think he'd manage, just that it wasn't easy. He had to fight. It's all just fake, I get that – but he had to
fight
– he took the trouble to make it seem beyond him, impossible – and then he beat it. He won.'

Paul begins again with, ‘For people like me . . .' and then lets it fade. And he won't even attempt, ‘And he was – he was like he was
magnificent
– because if you win you're allowed to be magnificent. You should be.' Because he thinks it would send him a little bit weepy – the way he'd got when there'd been that section in the second half: business that used a length of chain. He'd remember the chain: had a strong suspicion he would dream it, because it already had been half turned to a dream when it was presented, there had been a quality about it that had slipped right in.

‘When it lifted, when the chain lifted . . . It's a trick, I know it's a trick – but it was right . . . It was the way that you need it to be.'

She squeezes
his
fingers now. ‘Like something coming true.'

It is pleasantly, slightly painful to consider this. ‘Yeah.' The word seems damp and fluttery in his throat.

‘That's what I come for.' And she pecks his cheek. ‘That's why I come. To see that. Because it isn't real anywhere else.' And then she lets him go, because they are nothing to each other, he is nothing to her. ‘I think I'll head home now.'

He is nothing to anyone. ‘Will you be all right?' His knuckles feeling unnerved, stripped. He has the hands of no one.

‘Yes.'

She stands, slightly unsteadily and Paul rises with her and holds her shoulder for a breath. ‘It was nice meeting you.'

‘And it was nice meeting you.' This before she walks away, aiming for the street and a cab, he guesses. No other options beyond a cab at this time of night. Unless she's walking. Alone. Alone might not be safe.

Paul shouts after her, ‘You'll be okay? Do you need somebody with you?' But she half turns, waves her programme at him and shakes her head, keeps on round the corner and back to the usual, old world.

The other girls must have given up too, when he was occupied elsewhere, so there is Paul now and there is Lucy and Simon and his two companions with their imaginary names – each of them staring at Paul because he has called out. ‘Sorry!' Although he isn't sorry. Quite the reverse.

Simon ambles over, ‘No,
I'm
sorry. This is
crazy
. He's
never
this late. It's . . . he never doesn't come out, but he never leaves it this late, so I don't know, mate. Don't think badly of him.'

‘I don't.'

‘Don't think badly of magic.'

‘Oh, I don't.' Paul thinking of nothing but that chain: broad links, dull and heavy, dragged into the air, driven upwards by pure will and then compelled to disappear: a whole building of human beings casting them away and the magician there to hold their wish, find it, touch it out and show a proof of what they were and could be.

Just a trick. And just that last tangible moment before you're free – seeing that, for once seeing that. And if you can see it, then it can be and nothing left to hold you back. ‘I don't think badly of it. Really. I had a good time. Thanks.'

Just a trick. But I could see it, see myself.

Now you see it.

Yes.

‘You going home? It's past two.'

‘Is it?' Paul's watch agreeing that suddenly it is past two and on the way to three. ‘Oh. Might as well hang on a while longer, though – d'you think?'

Simon takes a pound coin and folds into his hand and out and back and melts it somewhere between his fingers. ‘Yeah, might as well.' He shrugs. ‘Come and join us, guys.' He beckons his friends. ‘The smug one's Barry and the miserable one's Gareth – his mum's Welsh.'

Gareth wanders towards them, avoiding Lucy, ‘She
wants
to be Welsh. That's different.' And Barry follows, nodding.

The four of them slouch together in a huddle – they shift and cough.

‘When he
does
come out . . .' Gareth tugs his moustache.

Barry reaches round and tugs it, too, ‘You mean
if
.'

‘When he
does
come out, we should all just ignore him – like we're expecting someone else.'

They grin.

‘No, but that would be rude, though.' Paul's sentence fading as he starts to feel inept – spoiling the joke. ‘I mean, if we're his friends . . .' But then softly the men – Paul included – being to grin in the way that friends do, before they get to trick their friends.

It's colder and the sky seems to rest down against them: attentive, but wearying.

Paul understands the magician isn't coming. He also understands it doesn't matter any more. They won't leave: Simon, Barry, Gareth, Lucy – they'll stand here and he'll stand with them – they're all going nowhere. Together.

But that's fine, I'm just fine now. I know why I'm waiting for him: The Great Man – I'm absolutely sure of that. I know exactly what I'll ask him, what I need him to make me do.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Versions or sections of these stories have appeared in
Crime Spotting
,
The Book of Other People
,
Granta, Guardian
,
Harbour Lights
,
New Statesman
,
New Yorker
,
Ox Tails
, and the
Threepenny Review
.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Fiction

Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains
Looking for the Possible Dance
Now That You're Back
So I am Glad
Original Bliss
Everything You Need
Indelible Acts
Paradise
Day

Non-fiction

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
On Bullfighting

About the Author

Author photograph: © Brian Tarr

A. L. KENNEDY is the critically acclaimed author of
Day
, winner of the Costa Book Award, the Lannan Literary Prize for Fiction, the Austrian State Prize for Literature, the Saltire Scottish Book Prize, a finalist for the Clare Maclean Prize, and a
Globe and Mail
Top 100 Book. She has published five previous novels, including
Paradise
, and has twice been selected as one of
Granta
's Best Young British Novelists. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland.

About The Publisher

HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS
was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi's commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada's pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”