Matthew, torn between fury and an equal perplexity, said, ‘What the hell are you after now?’
A pause. ‘I think that silly bastard’s got me the wrong number. Sorry about this. Who are you, just for the record?’
‘Matthew Halland.’
‘I thought I knew the voice. How are things with you, my friend? I was thinking of you the other day, down in Spitalfields. It is you that was all mixed up with those Glympton people, isn’t it? I done a nice bit of business with them, in the end, but I dare say you know all about that. Mind, the buggers are going to come a cropper, but don’t quote me. Spitalfields is a dead duck. That’s not where the clever money’s going today. Anyway, how’s tricks? You still looking for a job?’
Either I’m losing my grip, thought Matthew, or he is. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Wasn’t it you that come to see me at the house about working for me?’ said Rutter. ‘We got off on the wrong foot somehow, I remember. Pity, because I thought you was a clever sort of bloke, and they told me you done some good work. I can always find a vacancy for the right man. Tell you what, why don’t you and me have another get together and see if we can’t sort something out. What about a spot of lunch at L’Escargot?’
‘Either you’re even more depraved than I thought,’ exploded Matthew, ‘or you suffer from amnesia.’
‘Eh?’
‘You heard.’
‘I was inviting you to lunch, my friend,’ said Rutter in an aggrieved voice. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about.’
Matthew took a deep breath. ‘Look, you and I had a slight difference of opinion about your business methods. Remember? I accused you of involvement in the Spitalfields fire. Remember? I expressed my concern to the police, as I told you I would. Remember? Since when I have suffered various forms of harassment.’
There was a pause. Rutter made an eruptive sound, a mixture evidently of enlightenment and amusement. ‘Now I see what you’re at, my friend. I’m on your wavelength. There’s been a misunderstanding. That’s all fixed up, that Spitalfields nonsense. The fire was an accident but I’ve had the accountants give those people a payout. Just to show willing. They was very grateful. Anyway, we’re pulling out of Spitalfields now I done this deal with Glympton’s. So there’s no problem any more. We got off on the wrong footing, you and me, and I’m sorry about that because I’m a man that likes to get along with people, know what I mean? Even if we’re not going to do business I don’t want you going off with the wrong idea about me. I’m a smart operator. I don’t mess about, right? Some people might say I’m tough, and they wouldn’t be too far out. I get what I want, Mr Halland. It’s a good idea to bear that in mind. But I play fair. People that’s sensible, that don’t play silly buggers with me, find that they’ll get a fair deal. Right?’
‘No,’ said Matthew.
‘Eh?’
‘Never mind.’
‘You’ve been having some bother, you said? I’ve got every sympathy with you. There’s a lot of villains about. Someone done over my new Roller last week while the bloody chauffeur was having a coffee – be off the road for a month, to get that paint-work right again. Deliberate, no question about that. And are the police interested? Are they hell.’ There was a disturbance in the background, a brief irritable exchange with someone else. ‘Sorry, I got to go,’ continued Rutter. ‘I got fifty people working for me but you still have to see to everything yourself. Anyway, it’s been good to talk to you again, and thanks for calling. Cheerio.’
His condition distorts awareness, Matthew finds. It is as though he were mildly drugged, with the vision clouded, so that sensation is the only clarity, and all else consigned to a muted background – Rutter, Blackwall, Cobham Square, the sequential demands of a day, the week. So this is what it is like to be elated. Happy. He remembers, now. And, doing so, he recognizes also the inborn hazard, the fatal innocence. He foresees a time from which he may look back uncomprehending at an illusion, a moment of unfounded expectation. He foresees and dismisses in the same instant. Life is instantaneous, or it would be unendurable, knowing what we know.
‘It’s me.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I knew before I picked the phone up. It rings in a particular way.’
‘Am I interrupting?’
‘Definitely. Go right ahead and interrupt.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Proof-reading. How do you spell Hieronymus?’
‘As in Bosch?’
‘Exactly.’
‘With careless abandon, I should think,’ said Matthew.
‘That’s frivolous. They hire me to be scrupulous and accurate. Where are you?’
‘On my way back from Blackwall. I’ve got plenty of change this time.’
‘Go on talking, then, while I go on spelling. How many m’s in commemorate?’
‘A fair number. What are you wearing?’
‘Let’s see … Black shirt. Blue skirt. Will that do?’
‘I suppose it’ll have to.’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’
The condition, though, allows for much by way of dispassionate observation. The chronology of each day may be blurred, but the city is intensified, a cornucopia of incident, of image. He sees faces, gestures, the twist of a mouth, the gleam of an eye, the relentless amazing flow of humanity. He sees pigeon flocks wheeling silver against the white fluted columns of the British Museum. He sees great luminous clouds banked behind the forestry of Docklands cranes. He sees the yellow blaze of a dandelion pushing up between flagstones, the rainbow sheen of oil on a puddle, red ranks of chimney pots. The place is brilliant, and elusive; a quicksilver scene in which no sight nor sound is the same twice. It vanishes as soon as it appears, leaving only the indelible signals of the mind.
He stood with Eva Burden at the foot of the flight of steps leading up to the main entrance of Frobisher House. The glass engraving was in place, installed a few days earlier. The purpose of today’s visit, at the behest of Sanderling’s secretary, was some kind of informal ceremony of inspection and approval.
‘I should be smarter,’ said Eva. She wore cotton trousers and an anorak. ‘I don’t have ceremonial clothes.’
‘Not at all. I’m sorry to have let you in for this. It won’t take long, I promise. These people move fast.’
They considered the engraving. It occupied the panel above the large glass revolving doors, framed in a marble surround, and hung there as a delicate white tracery of light, an intricate ghost ship rocked upon the scrolls of phantom waves.
‘It looks different this time,’ said Matthew. ‘Even better, if anything. Bolder.’
‘The light is different in the morning. I can only see details I wish I’d done otherwise, but that’s always the case.’
‘Most of the people who walk in and out of there are never even going to notice it.’
‘Never mind, it’s the spirit that counts. Have I got the expression right?’
‘You have indeed. One of my mother’s favourites. And entirely apt.’
The building was complete, at ground level. Far above, at the summit of the glass column, cranes and pulleys still operated. There were walkways and flower beds laid out with shrubs. One of the old dockside cranes, painted marine blue, stood enshrined like a sculpture in the middle of a pedestrian precinct of brick paving and infant willow trees. The entrance to the complex was guarded by twin gatehouses manned by Cerberus figures in the form of uniformed security guards armed with walkie-talkie equipment. The automatic barriers swung open now to allow the entry of Sanderling’s car. He stepped out, flanked by henchmen, and approached. Matthew introduced Eva.
Sanderling looked at her doubtfully, and held out a hand. ‘Good to meet you, Miss Burden.’ He turned his attention to the engraving, studying it for a full ten seconds. ‘Very nice. Super job.’ The thin smile gleamed in her direction for an instant, indicating benevolent patronage. ‘Clever the way you get the impression
of light and shade. You’re going to do us some decanters for the board room, aren’t you?’
Eva inclined her head, indicating nothing in particular.
The group stood there, awkwardly. One of the henchmen referred to the stylized motifs of the sun and the points of the compass which occupied the lower corners of the engraving.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Sanderling. ‘And the kite in the top corner. Is it a kite?’
‘The Plough,’ said Eva. ‘Stars. For navigation.’
‘Of course. Very neat.’ A young woman holding a clipboard murmured in Sanderling’s ear. He nodded. ‘I gather they’ve laid on a glass of something in the hospitality room. Shall I lead the way?’
The hospitality room consisted of a sweep of dark blue carpeting and a long polished table at one end of which were bottles of champagne sunk in a silver bucket and glasses on a tray. The exterior wall was entirely glass, affording a softly tinted view of the river.
‘A bit bare,’ commented Sanderling. ‘I suppose the design people haven’t got around to the art work yet. Any suggestions, Miss Burden?’
‘You could make it a celebration of the Arctic,’ said Eva, after a moment. ‘Birds and animals. An Eskimo.’
Sanderling looked bewildered, then nodded. ‘Nice idea. Can you make a note of that, Emma.’
‘No Eskimo,’ said Matthew.
Eva looked at him. ‘No, you’re right.’
Sanderling had moved over to the window and was identifying nearby developments and features on the far side of the river. Emma with the clipboard murmured once again and he glanced at his watch.
‘We shall have to leave you, I’m afraid. Thanks so much for coming down, Miss Burden, and for your splendid effort on our behalf. Very good idea of Matthew’s, that was.’ He glimmered again and made for the door, with the attendants in his wake, leaving Eva and Matthew alone with the champagne and the quilted expanse of the river.
‘Another drink?’ said Matthew.
‘This isn’t really my style, especially at twelve o’clock in the morning, but I suppose we may as well.’
In the foreground, at the water’s edge, was an old Thames barge, prinked and painted, the rust-coloured sail rolled up and new plastic covers stretched over the holds. In the distance, the City Airport hovercraft rushed east.
‘So …’ said Eva. ‘Do you wash your hands of this place now?’
‘Heavens, no. Our responsibilities go on for quite a while yet. But in the sense that it ceases to be the dominant concern – yes.’
‘And what is the dominant concern?’
‘Oh – a reconstruction we’re doing at Cobham Square. A shopping precinct in Croydon. Offices in Finchley.’
‘And something else too, I would say.’
‘Sorry?’
She laughed. ‘You are glowing. Like a child with birthday and Christmas all rolled into one. I wonder what it is that happened since I saw you last.’
‘Ah,’ said Matthew. ‘I see. It’s like that, is it?’
‘It is indeed.’ She patted his arm. ‘Don’t be embarrassed – you are a tonic. Good luck to you.’
‘Thanks. I think I need it. I’m rather conscious that expectation is deeply treacherous.’
‘Try not to be. It’s all we have.’
He moves about the city, doubling back and forth, navigating time and space. In Covent Garden there are no violets, but he hears Alice Cook tell him that she is pregnant, and buys her red carnations. The plane trees in Lincoln’s Inn Fields rise up from the lake of their own leaves, but he sees an afternoon in June, shirtsleeves and Coke cans. In Cobham Square a white van sweeps around the corner, again and again, as he glimpses an abyss. He sees his scattered hours – irretrievable, enshrined.
‘It’s me.’
‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to panic.’
‘So was I. Traffic. A terrible insistent client. I was afraid you would have gone.’
‘Anyway … there you are.’
‘Here I am.’
‘Yesterday …’ she said.
‘I know. Yesterday.’
‘I can’t quite believe in yesterday. I didn’t imagine it, did I?’
‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘You didn’t imagine it. Or if you did, then I did as well.’
‘That would be too much of a coincidence. It must have been real then.’
‘It must have been.’
She sighed. ‘And now it’s gone. Will it be like that again, ever?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Lots of times.’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Not exactly. Different.’
‘I want it to be now always.’
‘It will be,’ he said.
‘I can hardly bear this. Just hearing you.’
‘Yes. It won’t do. It won’t do at all.’
‘But it’s much better than nothing.’
‘True.’
‘You sound funny,’ she said, after a moment.
‘Funny?’
‘Where are you?’
‘You know the phone box on the corner …’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You don’t mean …’
‘Look out of the window,’ he said.
And he waits, poised at this instant of exquisite anticipation, until it topples on into the next, and he sees the shape of her framed there, and she speaks again, voice and presence fused in one moment of perfect grace, until that too is fled.
Night, once more. The child has woken. ‘I didn’t know where I was,’ she says. ‘I was frightened. I thought I wasn’t anywhere.’ He pulls back the curtain. ‘Look,’ he says. White clouds flowing across a blue-black sky, and the ice green quiver of a single star. The dark geometry of buildings, and the rhythmic jewelled flash of an aircraft tracking overhead. ‘There,’ he says. ‘You’re here, I’m here.’
Penelope Lively, City of the Mind
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