Читать книгу Invisible - Jonathan Buckley - Страница 7

On a big white chair, opposite the man and woman who are presenting the show, sits an actress whose face is on the cover of a magazine this week. Behind the man, on a big screen, the actress is dressed in a nurse’s uniform. They all look round at the screen, and the picture begins to move. An old man is lying in a hospital bed, with a white plastic curtain around him. Tightly he grips the nurse’s arm, then lets it go. On the screen the actress is crying; watching her cry, the woman presenter puts down her sheet of paper and looks as if she might start crying too. Facing the screen, the actress touches her hair nervously; she has very long fingers, with nails as pale as cuttlefish bones. Her watch is the size and shape of a lemon half.

Eloni pours the water over the tea bag. ‘Yes, totally, totally,’ the actress answers, making her eyes big, like a young girl’s. She pulls at the hem of her tiny skirt and the man looks at her legs, which are shapely and bare and very smooth. The actress puts her fingertips on her face. ‘I was like, I’m sorry? Excuse me?’ she says, shaking her head in bewilderment, and then she laughs, and the man and the woman both laugh with her.

‘I’m sorry? Excuse me?’ Eloni mimics, buttering her toast. From her window she looks down into the back yard, at the rusting drums of cooking oil and the bin of meat wrappers and the mound of squashed cardboard boxes, on which the pictures of tomatoes have been turned milky by the sunlight. Even with the window shut the room smells bad, because of the blood on the wrappers and the bucket of bones in the corner of the yard, which the cats get into every night, knocking the lid off. And there are big patches of trodden food on the tarmac, a stinking grey mud of vegetable leaves and peel and scraps of rind that never gets scraped away. She would complain, but that might get her into trouble, or she could offer to clean the place, but that might be the same as complaining. She takes the air freshener from under the sink and shoots a cloud of sugary rose scent into all four corners of her room.

Before leaving for work at the Oak she irons her best blouse and the overall she wears at Burgerz. She opens her purse. It contains only coins, so she takes a £10 note from one of the plastic wallets she keeps underneath the mattress at night. She wraps the wallet tightly again, binding it with rubber bands, then extracts the other one and takes them both to the sink, and there she stuffs them into the tin of tea bags, where no thief would think of looking. On the television an expert in something to do with families is frowning deeply as he listens to a phone call from a woman in Liverpool, who has some problem with her husband. The blouse has cooled enough to put it on. She turns back the bed sheets, then switches the television off. At the door she stops to kiss the photograph of her parents, and picks up the sheaf of keys.

This is her favourite time of the day, when the air still has a taste of dew and the whole of the High Street lies in a deep, moist shadow. Up on the highest roofs there are patches of buttery sunlight and the pale blue sky above them is as pure a colour as any precious stone. It is cool in the shadow, but the cloudless sky and the sunlit roofs are promises of the warmth of the approaching day. Singly, at an easy speed, the cars pass by, slipping between the buildings at the end of the street like fish between boulders. She walks up the High Street, looking in the windows, at washing machines and cameras and clothes she cannot afford, but today is one of the days she feels the beginnings of happiness as she looks at these things, because each of them seems to reveal a life that might be hers. Be patient, the shops seem to say to her: be patient, and work hard, and this life will be yours, in time. Resting her forehead on the cold glass, she stares into the delicatessen. On a small white table bulbous jars of fruits preserved in syrup glisten in the light from the street. Shelves recede into darkness, laden with plaques of Swiss chocolate, spices in bottles, dozens of different pots of honey and mustard, deep tins with labels that seem to have been drawn by hand. Stepping back, she looks up and down the street, to make sure that nobody has noticed her. The hands and numerals of the church clock are glowing bronze against the golden stone of the tower. A morning like this is almost enough to make her forget everything, she thinks, staring into the dazzle of the clock, then she sees the time that the hands are showing, and resumes her walk, taking her usual detour to avoid the police station.

She strides up the hill towards the gateway of the Oak, walking in the middle of the empty narrow road, in a tunnel of leaves, on a long avenue of leaf shadows. She passes through the gate, onto the shining white drive, where she stops by the big stone flowerpot in the shape of a lion. The sun is lifting off the horizon and some bits of mist remain in the lower part of the valley, clinging like cotton to the grass where the slopes are in the shade. Above the mist, dozens of cars are on the move, up and down the long line of the road. Nose to tail, two lorries climb the incline, slowly as a caterpillar. She surveys the ranks of roses in the flower beds, these English flower beds that meet the grass at borders as straight as the edges of a carpet. She looks at the hotel, at the place she has worked for so many weeks. The stone of the façade has been turned a sweet hay-like yellow by the early sun and the windows shine like little waterfalls. On the garden side the shaggy coat of ivy that hangs from the gutter to the ground is the black-green of river moss. She looks at the stone and at the ivy, and the beautiful colours seem to soothe the sadness that is falling over her, a sadness that is for herself but also a bit for Mr Caldecott. But she must get to work, she tells herself, counting the windows in which the curtains are closed, each of which is the sign of a job to be done.

Three cars are parked beyond the ivy, deep in the shadow of the building. Close to the wall at the far end is Mr Gillies’s handsome old car, with its thick chrome bumpers and wrinkled leather seats. On the other side of the bay, under the honeysuckle, sits Mr Harbison’s BMW. Beside it is a silver sports car, as slender as a speedboat, with a back window that’s the size of the slit of a letter box. Curious, she walks up to it, treading in the channels that its tyres have ploughed in the gravel. The windscreen is as big as a bath towel and is almost flat. It must cost more than she would earn in two years, or three years, she guesses, then she sees that a man is crouching in the passenger seat, bent double as he reaches for something in the glove compartment, which is nothing but a plain steel shelf. He sits up, holding a map, and notices her. He gets out of the car and leans on the low roof, his hands wide apart and arms locked. ‘Hi. How’s it going?’ he says, ruffling his uncombed hair. His voice is pleasing, like a newsreader’s, and he is handsome in the way that young American lawyers on TV are handsome, with a small straight nose and long jaw, and a brow that’s all straight lines. His white shirt, heavily creased and half tucked into the waistband of his vivid blue trousers, is unbuttoned to the breastbone, showing skin as smooth as a boy’s and the colour of her own skin, a colour that only rich people have in England.

‘Good, yes,’ she replies.

Glints come off the face and bracelet of his watch as he raises a hand to screen the glare of the sun. ‘Beautiful morning,’ he comments, blinking at the sky. ‘Real summer.’

‘It’s nice,’ she agrees.

They regard the unclouded sky for a moment. The man scrubs a hand across his hair again, making it even messier. ‘You work here?’ he casually asks.

‘Yes.’

He rubs his unshaven chin, seeming to consider an idea that has occurred to him. ‘It’s quiet,’ he adds, in a tone that could mean that quietness is good, or could mean that it’s bad.

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘Very quiet.’

‘Very quiet,’ she replies, and the man looks at her with narrowed eyes, as though she had said something unusual. Beginning to feel embarrassed, she is relieved to hear the clang of the hotel’s glass door. Mr Caldecott appears under the porch but, seeing her talking, at once withdraws with a backwards step. She points towards the building. ‘I have to –’ she apologises to the young man.

He looks at her and smiles again, and opens the door of the car. ‘Sure,’ he says, then lowers himself into the passenger seat and ducks down to attend to something on the floor.

Touching for luck the coin-shaped fossil embedded in the left-hand column of the porch, as she has done every morning, she goes into the hotel. There is no one at the desk, but a note from Mr Caldecott is lying on the register. A printing machine could not make writing as fine as Mr Caldecott’s: you could lay a ruler across the tops of his capital letters, and every loop is identical, like the eyes of large needles laid in a row. She scans Mr Caldecott’s handwriting, then reads what it says and goes to the storeroom for her overall and pinafore. In the kitchen she turns on the lights and the coffee maker. She removes the cutlery that will be needed, giving each piece a shine before setting it down on the large metal tray, which she then takes through.

In a corner of the dining room Mr Caldecott is sitting beside Mr Harbison, studying a sheet of paper that covers most of the table. Mr Harbison is looking out of the window, pursing his lips and grimacing, while with the fingers of his right hand he twists the too-tight ring that he wears on his left little finger. ‘Video games?’ she overhears Mr Caldecott ask sarcastically, at which Mr Harbison stops turning the ring and gives Mr Caldecott a look of glum sympathy, as if they had suffered a setback together. Pinning a finger to the sheet of paper, Mr Caldecott makes a remark she cannot hear. With one hand Mr Harbison makes a gesture of giving something away without a thought, then a frenzy of beeps starts inside his jacket. Rolling his eyes in exasperation, he gets up from the table, plunging his hand into his inner pocket. He turns away, hunching over his phone like a man trying to light a cigarette in a gale. ‘Yes,’ he says, annoyed. ‘Yes. Yes. Good. Goodgood. Yes. Right. Good. Yes.’

Mr Caldecott signals to her, and orders a full English breakfast for both of them. Noticing her glance at the building plan, he raises an eyebrow, smiling resignedly.

‘And a bottle of mineral water,’ Mr Harbison whispers loudly, smothering the phone. ‘Still. Not fizzy. Thanks, Eleanor,’ he says, and then he does a peculiar wave, which she realises a second later is meant for the owner of the silver car, who is coming towards them and looking past her as if she is not there.

Annie has turned up now, and together they prepare the breakfast for Mr Caldecott and Mr Harbison, which Annie serves, leaving Eloni to set the tray for Mr Gillies and carry it upstairs. She returns through the dining room, expecting to see Mr and Mrs Sampson, who usually come downstairs at exactly half past seven, but instead she sees, by an opened window, the man who arrived yesterday – Mr Morton, says Mr Caldecott’s note. Tying the loose belt of her pinafore as she hurries to his table, she apologises for keeping him waiting.

‘Not to worry,’ says the man, directing a smile to the side of her face. He gives his order, blinking slowly at the table, as if he has not woken up properly, while his fingers stroke the folded napkin. Moving around the juice glass, his hand knocks it a tiny distance from its place, and it is then that she knows that he cannot see. ‘Pardon me for asking,’ he says, as she finishes writing, ‘but was it you upstairs when I arrived?’

‘I am sorry?’

His eyes flicker at her. They are very dark and not clouded at all, but the skin around them seems shrunken and lifeless, like a fruit that has begun to dry out. ‘When I was standing at the desk,’ he says, ‘before Mr Caldecott came, there was someone on the gallery, a woman. Up above,’ he gestures, pointing over his shoulder. ‘She spoke to me. “Hello.” I was wondering if it was you.’

‘Yes,’ she replies.

‘I thought I recognised you. My name’s Edward,’ he announces, pushing a hand towards her, for her to take.

‘Mr Morton,’ she says, as if his name were hers. Confused by herself, she backs away.

Through the window in the kitchen door she spies on Mr Morton as he eats his breakfast. His head never stops moving: he turns his face to the garden, to the room, to his food, to the ceiling, as if he did not know what to do with his eyes. Like crabs nibbling at seaweed on a rock, his fingers scurry over the basket of croissants, barely touching it. The sight of him gives her a feeling of unease, not just because of his strangeness, but because he brings to her mind the blind man at Sarandë, and now she can think of nothing except the blind man at his table. All day long he sat there, outside the café, drinking cup after cup of coffee, gulping the soup that the owner’s wife brought him, smoking his American cigarettes without a break. From the start of the day to sunset the blind man sat staring at the sea with his dead white eyes, as if plotting the most complicated plan that anybody had ever thought of. His jaws were moving all the time, clenching with anger, and nobody spoke to him, other than the owner’s wife, and she seemed scared of him too. All day he was there, staring into the sun, with the evil dog at his feet. The animal stooped under the weight of its greasy black fur and a wide scar of bald skin ran across the dog’s shoulder. Its ragged mouth, always grinning, swung back and forth like a scythe when the animal walked. Leaving the blind man at his table, the dog would swagger down to the beach, to root through the rubbish on the sand, and in the middle of the day it took shelter from the sun inside the boat that was stranded on the beach, creeping up the ramp of reddening sand to the breach in the hull. Like a drop of black oil falling into a pool of oil it disappeared into the shadows, and sometimes you would hear it barking at a rat in there, a horrible sound, booming out of the wreck. One day she sat on a chair she had found in the water, a cracked red chair. She was so near the wreck she could hear the scratching of the dog’s claws on the steel as it prowled through the hold. Pushing her feet into the hot sand, she looked out to sea, despairing of her life. She could see a brightly coloured sail against the hills of Corfu. She looked around her, at the tidemark of bottles and rope and seaweed and tins, at the miserable café where the blind man sat. Inside the café, Italian music was playing loudly on the radio. She watched the small waves gnawing at the rusty hull. The blind man’s dog began barking in the hull while she gazed with longing at the coast of the Greek island, thinking of life in Greece, in Italy, in England.

As soon as Mr Morton has gone out of the room she clears his table. He has left everything very tidy: the napkin folded to the side of the plate, no crumbs on the tablecloth, no drips of coffee either. It is odd that Mr Caldecott did not write in his note that Mr Morton is a blind man, she thinks; it is possible he did not realise that he is blind, but it is not very likely. Impossible, of course, because he spoke to him. Noticing that the window has been closed, she unfastens the catch and sees Mr Morton out in the garden, standing halfway down the drive, with his hand on one of the stone dogs.

Edward bends to touch the object that his cane has struck and his hand comes into contact with a steeply curved brow and high ears, above a long pointed muzzle that must be the mouth of a greyhound. Lilies are growing nearby. He walks towards the scent, crossing turf until his shins press against a chain barrier, where the smell of bare soil now mingles with the perfume of the lilies. He turns back to the path and follows it to the iron gate, where he turns right, along the perimeter wall. There is indeed a narrow road here, but a road of tarmac rather than the scrubby track he walked with Charlotte. On the opposite side of the road there is a stand of trees which may be the wood through which they climbed. Standing in their shade, he turns his face into a billow of soft warm air and thinks about where he is. What are the contours, the colours of this terrain? How far is the horizon? He extends a hand to the trunk of a tree. His fingers ruffle a ragged patch of bark, like a piece of frayed satin. It is a silver birch: Betula pendula. He repeats the name, Betula pendula, a name that has given him pleasure since he was a boy, for the melody of it and for its assertiveness and silvery delicacy, a combination perfectly befitting this obdurate wood and its clothing of feathery bark. And there was always pleasure in the sight of the birch, however obscurely he might have seen it. Amid a vagueness of greenery, in the sea-grey twilight that his eyes put over everything, the monochrome birches, the black gashes against the bright white trunks, stood distinct almost to the end. He cannot recall, though, if he saw silver birches on that afternoon with Charlotte.

Excited by the slightest of breezes, the birch leaves sweep themselves. A car horn blares on a road below, the road his taxi must have taken from the station; and farther away there is a continuous low noise of traffic, so low that the leaves erase it with their whispering when the air moves. It is an English sound, this mingling of trees and distant traffic. In England there are cars within hearing wherever you are, and this diffident breeze, carrying a modest scent of grass, is English too. He hears a tractor’s growl, far off; in the trees there is a fluttering of wings – pigeon’s wings, they would be. This is England, he tells himself; this is the voice and the air of England. But then the breeze expires and for an interval the world is emptied of everything except the texture of birch bark and the tenuous roar of traffic far away. Another bird sets off in a shaking of leaves, and now the sound signifies nothing more than a bird taking wing. For all he knows from what his senses tell him, he could be standing on the hill above Gengenbach, the town in which his friends were strolling towards the abbey and taking photos of each other outside the half-timbered buildings. Held by both arms in the centre of the group, like a mascot, for a picture in front of the famous Rathaus, he had abruptly become morose and had removed himself to the wooded hill, where he stood with his hand on the trunk of a birch, in the breeze that flowed over the invisible forests and the rooftops and the vines that grew on the slope of the valley. The valley is called the Kinzigtal, and the cars that he could hear were on the road to a town beginning with Off – Offenburg. Of Gengenbach itself he remembers narrow alleys with plants climbing and hanging on both sides, and small cobbled squares in which fountains dribbled water from high spouts. That was Gengenbach, and this hill he will remember as the hill near the Oak, the hill where he thought of Gengenbach.

Skimming his fingertips on the wall, he retraces his steps to the garden. He strolls off the path, across a lawn that ends at a high hedge. It is hornbeam, he decides, stroking the serrated leaves with a thumb, running a finger across the troughs between the leaves’ prominent veins. And this car will be Charlotte’s, he is almost certain. The last dab of the throttle before turning off the ignition is Charlotte’s trick; the crack of the door sounds like Charlotte’s crumbling Citroën. He brushes the leaves with his hand once more.

‘Edward?’ Charlotte calls, leaving the gravel. ‘Edward? What on earth are you doing?’

‘Talking to the trees, Charlie.’

‘Daft bugger.’ She cradles his face gingerly in both hands. ‘Hello, bro,’ she says.

He receives a kiss of gluey lipstick and inhales a scent which he does not recognise. ‘What’s that?’

‘What’s what?’

‘The perfume.’

‘Joop.’

‘A whole bottle?’

‘Fuck off, Edward. I like it.’

‘It’s nice,’ he says, putting his hands on her waist.

‘Thank you. Rude pig,’ says Charlotte, brushing something from his shoulder. ‘Dust, not ’druff,’ she explains. ‘Snazzy kit you’re wearing.’

‘Wouldn’t want the folks to think I can’t look after myself.’

‘You’re looking well.’

‘As are you, I’m sure,’ he smiles, squeezing her hips. ‘But a bit too skinny for Mum, I’d say. Bet she’s force-feeding you. How are they?’

‘Bumbling along. They’re well.’

‘And the house?’

‘They like it. It’s the right size for the two of them. But the garden’s too small for a shed, so Dad’s taken over one of the bedrooms.’

‘That’ll be fun for Mum.’

Prompted by a nudge, Charlotte links arms and leads him towards the car. ‘Mum’s hurt that you’re not staying with them. I’m warning you.’

‘And where exactly would I go? Burrow in the sawdust? I mean, you’ve got the sofabed –’

‘They don’t actually have a sofabed. Just a settee and a load of cushions.’

‘Well, there you are then. Ridiculous.’

‘I know. I’m just warning you she’s narked. They were going to borrow a camp bed for you.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Edward, I know.’

‘And I couldn’t get any work done there, could I?’

‘No, Edward. I understand.’

‘And they’d drive me bananas inside a day.’

‘They’re already driving you bananas. Head.’

‘What?’

‘Head,’ she repeats, and her hand falls onto his hair to guide his stoop under the car’s roof.

Charlotte’s car smells of her perfume and warmed plastic and crackers. His hand, sweeping the seat around his thighs, finds some sharp flat crumbs and a cellophane wrapper. ‘This is the same old heap, isn’t it? The Citroën?’ he asks as Charlotte inserts the ignition key.

‘Don’t be rude, Edward. It’s a reliable car, and it’s friendly.’

‘Done sixty in it yet?’

‘Would you like to walk? That can be arranged.’

‘No, but it’s about time this thing was put out of its misery. It must have half a million miles on the clock by now.’

‘Exactly. It’s reliable. And I can’t afford a new one.’

‘But –’

‘Shut up, Edward. Zip it.’ The car begins to turn.

‘Hold it,’ he shouts, putting up a hand. ‘One last thing before we set off.’

‘What?’ she snaps, braking.

‘Does this place seem familiar to you at all?’

‘What? This hotel?’

‘Yes. I thought we might have been here once, when we were kids.’

‘When?’

‘You would have been around seven. I seem to see a picnic and a big building with a garden in front of it. I thought it might be this one.’

‘Afraid not.’

‘You sure? Have a look.’

‘I’ve had a look.’

‘Have another. Just a quick one. A quick little peek.’

The car moves off at walking pace. ‘Nope,’ she states.

‘Not in the slightest bit familiar?’

‘Never seen it before.’

‘Positive?’

‘Bleeding hell, Edward. Positive.’

‘A false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain.’

‘What?’

‘Shakespeare.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It’s OK. Doesn’t matter.’

‘Don’t be a smart-arse, Edward. Don’t criticise my car and don’t be a smart-arse.’

‘OK. Fair enough. Onward,’ he declares, smacking the dashboard. He opens the window and puts his face into the rushing air.

‘Big kid,’ Charlotte mutters, patting his knee playfully, but she sees nothing playful in the expression that is fixed on her brother’s face: rather, there is anger in the furrows above his eyes, as if she has let him down by not giving him the answer he wanted. She gives him her news about the children, about Lucy’s prize for gymnastics and Sarah’s school trip to Wales. Simon might be in line for promotion, she tells him; her job at head office might be axed, though, and then she’d be back at the Gloucester branch. Edward smiles, nods his head, frowns concernedly, but he is thinking of something else. He seems to have decided that today will not be easy, but she can never tell any more what he’s thinking. It used to be like looking into a darkened cage, looking into his face. In his room, at his desk, he would put down the big lens and wince at her under the glaring light, straining to see. Now he has closed his eyes; he has the appearance of looking inward, making up his mind about something. ‘Try to be patient with Mum,’ she says, and he nods and puts his face back into the rushing air.

In the garden, sitting in the high-backed chair, he is as grim as a judge. Grasping the arms of the chair he tells her: ‘I might go. I might not go. There’s no point getting into a state when she hasn’t even got the job yet.’

‘But I worry, Edward.’

‘As do we all, Ma.’

‘How you’ll cope, I mean.’

‘It’s Italy, not the Siberian tundra. It’s really quite civilised. I’ll cope there the same way I cope here, if I go.’

‘I don’t know, Edward. I saw a story in the paper. Some American boy was kidnapped.’

‘Where, Mum? Where was this?’ Edward demands, almost shouting.

‘In the papers.’

‘Yes, I gathered that. But where in Italy?’

‘Somewhere, Edward. I don’t know. It was awful. Cut off his ear, they did.’

‘Believe me, I am not going to be kidnapped.’

‘Rome, I think it was. Or Naples.’

‘Naples,’ their father confirms.

‘Miles and miles and miles away, Mum. Another country. And I bet your American boy was the heir to a fortune. Not a random impecunious foreigner.’

‘I don’t know, Edward, but it was horrible.’

‘What a catch I’d be. One disabled translator. Any reasonable sum accepted. No cheques. Will consider part exchange. It’s not going to happen, is it? Be sensible, Mum.’

‘He’s right, Mary,’ says their father.

Their mother makes a gesture of woebegone appeal to her husband, miming his name. Looking wearily at Edward, she tallies the beads of her necklace. ‘But it’s a big step,’ she says, passing him another sandwich. ‘You have to think carefully.’

‘Believe it or not, Mum, that’s what I’m doing.’

‘It can so easily go wrong.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ Edward moans, putting the sandwich down before he has taken a bite. ‘Here we go. This is the intro to Ethel, isn’t it? Ethel going bonkers in Winnipeg.’

‘You shouldn’t make fun, Edward. She had a shocking time, she did. Thought she’d be all right, but she needed her friends and her family more than she thought.’

‘Enough, please,’ Edward interrupts. ‘So Ethel went to Canada and became an abandoned wife with a brood of uncontrollable brats and a vicious addiction to sleeping tablets. From this you deduce not that an excitable young woman would be ill-advised, on the basis of a two-week romance, to follow a feckless womanising boozer to a godforsaken dump in the middle of a zillion acres of wheat, but that separation from the home soil brings inevitable ruin to any Brit. It doesn’t follow, Mum, so spare me the heart-rending tale of hapless Ethel and her Canadian purgatory. She is not germane to the case,’ he pronounces, using his words to push her away, and so she never says what she means to say, and what Edward knows she means to say, which is simply that she will miss him if he goes away, and is afraid that she might never see him again. ‘So, Mum, what’s been happening, then?’ he asks when he has finished the sandwich, but there isn’t much to say, because of course nothing much has been happening. They are nearing their seventies; they don’t go out very often; their friends have started to die. Edward knows this, but still he asks that stupid question, as if he were talking to a friend down the pub. If he could only see how he looks, she thinks. If he could only see their mother’s helpless face.

‘You all right there?’ his father asks him. Assured that Edward is content to bask in the sun and listen for a while, he excuses himself for a minute or two, to go to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, declining her help, Edward goes to find him.

Following the hum and whine, Edward climbs the stairs. He knocks and opens the door, as a chisel shrieks on spinning wood. ‘Is it safe?’ he shouts. ‘May I come in?’

The lathe winds down with a slumping sound. ‘Hello, son,’ says his father, as though Edward still lived at home and had casually wandered into the room. ‘Careful there,’ he says, as his toe comes into contact with the foot of the bench, but he stays where he is. ‘Clear on your right. Chair just beside you.’

‘So this is the shed?’ he asks, moving crabwise across the hardboard floor until he touches the chair. ‘That’s it.’

‘You’ve got the bench set up, then?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Must be really popular with the neighbours,’ he says, and his father makes a soft snorting sound that may signify a smile. ‘What are you making?’

‘A stool. A footstool. For your mother,’ says his father, putting a piece of wood into his hand. ‘That’s a leg for it.’ The leg has a cube at each end and is ringed with deep grooves which are warm and furred with fine shavings. ‘The ankles need a rest,’ his father explains, taking it back. ‘Not as nimble as she was.’ The lathe restarts; the dab of the cutting tool raises a cry and a whiff of hot wood.

Perceiving a difference between the sound on his left and on his right, he advances a hand across the wall. His hand encounters a low shelf, and another above it, and a third. ‘What’s here?’ he asks.

‘Hm?’ responds his father, though he heard the question.

‘Is this your pots and stuff?’

‘The cars,’ his father tells him.

Walking his fingers along a shelf, he locates one of the model cars. ‘I’ll be careful,’ he says, supporting the car on his flattened hand. He can feel the ridge of the exhaust pipe on his palm. ‘What’s this one?’ he asks.

‘Hm?’

‘What’s this one?’

‘A Bugatti. Show me? T55 Coupé.’

With his index finger he circles the spare wheel on the outside of the boot. He sweeps the wave-like running board, taps the conical headlamps, but he cannot remember anything of the Bugatti T55. His father’s models used to be kept in a mighty cabinet in the dining room, a cabinet of open decks, like a miniature multi-storey car park, painted white. He remembers a section reserved for illustrious older marques: a silver Auto Union car was there, with a scarlet Maserati and a green Vanwall. Concentrating on the name, he recovers the shape of the Vanwall, its thick blade of a body and the cockpit lodged behind the elongated bonnet, and, from this, momentarily, occurs an evanescent bloom of the Vanwall car’s deep green.

‘So, son,’ says his father, fitting another piece of wood to the lathe. ‘They keeping you busy?’ he asks, as if his translations were the benefaction of some charitable committee.

‘I’ve plenty of work, Dad, yes.’

‘Articles and stuff?’

‘That type of thing. Bits and pieces. I’ve a bigger project starting soon,’ he says, meaning the Stadler book, then it occurs to him that he has another book in progress, which it has never seemed appropriate to mention. He waits for another question, but none follows. ‘It should arrive next week.’

‘Good,’ says his father.

‘A book about someone called Jochen Stadler. A German chap. He went to South America as a missionary, then became an anthropologist-ecologist. He lived in the forest for years, in the Amazon, and married a girl who had looked after him when he was ill. When his wife died he came back to Germany, to his home town, and became a professor at the university, and a politician. His father had been a member of Göring’s staff,’ he perseveres. ‘A forester. Looking after bison in a Polish forest, until the partisans shot him.’

‘Had enough of the Nazis by now, I’d have thought.’

‘Not quite yet, Dad. Nazis, cooking and gardening – the three guaranteed sellers. Eva Braun’s Kitchen Garden would be a sure-fire hit,’ he jokes, but neither he nor his father laughs. His father is taking a tool from a rack; he hears the slither of steel on oiled stone.

‘Hotel’s OK?’ his father asks.

‘It’s fine. Very comfortable.’

Rhythmically the steel grinds against the slickened stone. ‘Your mother can’t see why you’re not staying here,’ his father remarks. ‘She’s put out, you know.’

‘But there’s no space, is there, Dad? Unless I’ve missed a room somewhere.’

‘As far as she’s concerned there’s plenty of space.’

‘And where would that be?’

‘I’m not arguing with you. Just telling you what she thinks.’

‘And I’ve work to do. There’s nowhere I could work.’

‘She thinks there is. Charlotte’s room.’

‘Dad, there’s not even a table in Charlotte’s room.’

‘The living room, then.’

‘It has to be quiet for me to work. I’m fussy. I’m easily aggravated by noise. Honestly, it’s better for everyone if I stay where I am.’

‘You know best, son, I’m sure,’ his father concludes, as the lathe begins to spin once more.

Exploring again the curves and details of the model car, he recalls how, late in the evening, before going to bed, he would go down into the cellar of the old house, where his father would be working. He would walk towards the ball of light and his father would take his hand to guide him to the stool. A sheet of wallpaper, reversed, always covered the bench, and on one part of the paper the husk of the car’s body would be laid. The metallic pieces for the chassis and engine were arrayed around it. Some were so small, like rat’s bones, he had to lower his nose to the paper to see them. His father used needle-thin screwdrivers and delicate little knives and drills that he turned between his finger and thumb. Sometimes it made him think of the hospital, and he would secretly become upset. He liked the names: Studebaker, Hispano-Suiza, Mercedes-Benz, Panhard-Levasseur. They connoted ingenuity and high craftsmanship, and he always enjoyed listening to his father as he worked, extolling a beautiful Ferrari engine, or the functional purity of the 2CV, which could seat two farmers with their hats on, and transport them and their pig over a rutted road, and was so simple a machine that the local blacksmith could repair it, should it ever break down, which it hardly ever would. Through his father’s words he came to share something of his admiration for these cars and their creators, but things changed as his eyesight worsened and it gave him pain to use the immense lens that his father used. So in the evenings he would go to Charlotte’s room and she would read the pages he had to study for homework, while his father worked for hours in the cellar, assembling his little cars. They won prizes, his father’s cars, at events they used to attend together, in high-ceilinged buildings with rough wooden floors and toilets outside. Then one year there was an exhibition, in Bristol, to which his father went without him. Sitting in the living room, with the TV on, they all agreed that it was best if he stayed at home. His mother stroked his hair while his father was speaking, but by then he was beginning to find his father’s hobby ridiculous, which perhaps his parents knew. When this was, exactly, he cannot remember. He must have been thirteen or so, around the time that he became ‘son’ rather than ‘Edward’.

His father’s appearance in his mind, the last image of him before he became a ghost with his father’s voice, comes from around this time as well. Concentrating, he can see a white shirt and broad brown tie, and an unfocused face with wide sideburns and a drooping moustache. He remembers him smoking a cigarette at his desk, waving an arm as he talked to his secretary, who brought tea for them all. One wall of the office was glazed, and the cars in the showroom on the other side made a pattern of soft rectangles, like an abstract design in stained glass. And his mother: he sees her wearing a yellow jumper, and he can make out her soft, lineless skin and her eyes, which are surprised-looking and very dark. Her feet now drag when she crosses the room, and her cup chatters against the saucer when she sets it down, but her face when he thinks of her is this one, a face that is dissolving year by year but never ageing, fading on the brink of middle age, where she will stay until she dies.

‘I’ll let you get on,’ he says.

‘OK, son,’ his father replies, stopping the lathe.

After the evening meal they all go into the living room, for a film-length episode of his parents’ favourite programme. He sits beside his mother on the new settee, which is too large for the room, so whenever anyone opens the door it bangs against the thickly padded arm. There is a new television, which would seem to be as wide as an armchair. The room still bears a smell of new carpet and wallpaper paste and emulsion. Nothing has any familiarity, other than the cushions with the brocade borders. For his benefit his mother provides a commentary on the action. ‘Another body,’ she tells him, at a doomy chord. ‘Killed like the first one – bag over her head.’ Feet sprint heavily on waterlogged grit: ‘Someone’s up to something in the alley.’ From time to time she puts a hand on his; he can sense her turning from the screen to his face. He is waiting for the programme to end, for Charlotte to take him back to the hotel, and he feels ashamed at his irritation with the cadence he hears so often in his mother’s voice, his impatience with her pity for him and for herself. Only by talking can he resist the oppression of her pity, but there is little he can talk to her about, other than the possibility of his leaving the country. He is ashamed of betraying what he thought of his father’s childish hobby, if he did betray what he thought of it. And now he finds himself thinking of the day he left home, the day his father took him to the hall of residence. On the steps they embraced. His father clapped him on the shoulders, then drew him close. Now they shake hands, that’s all.

‘Someone’s following the policewoman,’ his mother tells him.

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘It’ll be her boyfriend. It’s bound to be. Remember what she said to him, in the pub, when he –’

‘Don’t spoil it,’ she says, taking his hand. The policewoman reaches her car before the stalker can strike; jingly music begins, like synthesised wind-chimes. ‘You’ll visit us again, soon?’ his mother asks.

‘Of course,’ he says, and she squeezes his hand so tightly that the trembling in her fingers stops.

Malcolm looks into the bar, where a young woman in a rhinestone tiara is sitting amidst a dozen friends. On the other side of the room a smartly dressed young man sits in the attitude of Rodin’s Thinker, possibly asleep, with a mobile phone on his knee, and two women who may be sisters are tearfully hugging each other. He withdraws to the garden and strolls for a while, before resting on the bench by the night-scented stock. The weather will break tonight: the air is damp and inert, and a greenish tinge is seeping into the sky on the horizon. A canopy of cloud is sliding forward slowly over the hill, occluding the stars. The trees are motionless for now, but soon they will begin to stir, and then the rain will come. Watching the fans of light rising and falling on the bypass, he breathes the perfume of night-scented stock. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the day after, he will speak to Stephanie. He presses a hand against the pocket in which he carries her letter. The leaves are so still it’s as though the garden were encased in glass.

A taxi draws up and he looks back over his shoulder. The young woman with the tiara is standing at the window of the bar, and at the sight of her he experiences a sudden upswelling of happiness, an ambivalent happiness, which vanishes almost at once. He looks at the sky, then again at the hotel, and immediately he understands: what he had seen when he glanced at the windows of the Oak was a vision of the Zetland, at night, when the windows would blaze gold against the sky. Crouching under the sill, he would peer into the smoky room, marvelling at the bottles that were ranged on the glass shelves behind the bar. Indescribable tastes must come out of these bottles, he used to think, because their colours were so extraordinary: a fragile butterfly blue, a radiant amber, a green like new leaves. He would wait, kneeling by the gutter of the terrace, and sometimes his father would appear, setting things right, exchanging a word with a member of his staff. They were like the crew of a ship, each with his role to perform, and the Zetland did resemble a ship, when you looked at it from below the road, especially when it was dark and the mist had risen, and the turret looked like the bridge of a liner, with the slender flagpole on its roof, half hidden in the mist, as though it were emerging from a fog-bank. Sitting on the bench, he gives himself up to his memory of his father’s hotel, to the image of the buildings of Saltburn’s seafront as it appeared from the pier, with the flat spools of foam unwinding on the black water below his feet. The beach was clammy under the light of the moon and the far-off street lamps, and he would stare to find the place where the sand blended into the water, or the seam where the sky became the coal-coloured sea. Some nights, looking out to sea, he could not tell which lights were stars and which were tankers, and the lights of the Zetland were almost extinguished by the mist that flowed around its windows. Before going home to prepare his father’s meal, he might stop at the terrace steps, lured by the burnished interiors of the hotel. Hunched on the terrace, he would gaze at the glossy wooden panels of the walls, at the lift’s dark veneered doors, at the wide stone fireplace of the lounge, at the waitresses who carried tureens and covered dishes as big as rugby balls to a dining room that had a Turkish carpet and a chandelier like a bush of ice hung upside down. Often, when he glimpsed his father moving purposefully across the foyer, alone, like a ship’s captain making sure that all was in order, he would try to imagine how it would be to follow his father around the building, becoming familiar with every room and corridor of it, learning how the Zetland worked. It would be better than any other job he could do, helping to run a building that existed only to give pleasure, a place to which people would return year after year in the certainty of being happy there. Everything seemed well made in the Zetland – there was that as well, and the sense that something of the town’s history was kept alive there, while everything around it changed at a faster speed. But now the Zetland has become apartments and the station is used only by a two-carriage train that shuttles along the coast to Darlington, where Stephenson’s Locomotion stands like a dinosaur in the museum.

The roar of tyres on the gravel eradicates his reminiscence. Headlight beams swing across the grass in front of him and splay against the hotel’s façade. He sees Mr Morton get out of the car, smack the roof, and remain standing where he’s been left.

‘Mr Morton, good evening,’ he calls, crossing the lawn.

‘Mr Caldecott,’ Mr Morton replies pleasantly, raising a hand to give an incomplete wave.

‘Going in?’

‘Presently, yes,’ says Mr Morton, turning away again.

‘I’m sorry. I thought – Shall I leave you be?’

‘No, no. Please don’t. Just taking a last dose of country air,’ Mr Morton explains, with an appreciative sniff.

‘Same here,’ he says. ‘It’s been a fine day, hasn’t it?’

‘It has,’ Mr Morton distractedly agrees.

‘The storm is on its way, I think,’ he remarks. ‘A day behind schedule.’

‘I think so. Yes. The air’s very thick tonight.’

‘It is. Very heavy.’

Mr Morton raises his face, smiling slightly, as if the moonlight felt as good as sunlight on his skin, and then he yawns. ‘I do apologise. It’s been a long day. An early start.’

‘Yes. I’d hoped to catch you after breakfast, but you were leaving as I arrived.’

‘My sister’s clock runs on medieval time. Her day starts at sunrise.’

‘Ah, your sister. I see. I had wondered. Sister or cousin, I thought. There’s a resemblance.’

‘Poor girl.’

‘So your visit to the Oak –?’

‘Filial duty, partly,’ Mr Morton replies, addressing the earth at his feet. ‘A family reunion.’

‘I see, I see.’

Another taxi is coming up the drive; Mr Morton turns to track its progress to the porch. ‘Rarely satisfactory, family gatherings, don’t you find?’

‘I don’t think I’m in a position to comment.’

‘You have no family?’ he asks bluntly.

‘Not much of one. The parents have long gone. An aunt in Rhyl. That’s all for the older generation.’

‘And are you married, Mr Caldecott?’

‘Not any more.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘Quite all right. I’m thoroughly divorced. And you?’

‘No wife. Father, mother, sister, a phalanx of aunts and uncles, but no wife.’

‘I see,’ he says. They stand a yard apart, both facing the portentous expanse of slate-green cloud, as though they were awaiting together the appearance of something in the sky. ‘Is the room to your liking?’

‘Very comfortable,’ says Mr Morton.

‘Good.’

‘Positively sumptuous.’

‘Good.’

Mr Morton takes a deep, relishing breath. ‘Very tranquil here,’ he observes.

‘It used to be quieter.’

‘Yes?’

‘Before the bypass was cut. When I first came here you could hear owls across the valley. Not any more.’

‘Believe me, this is tranquil compared with where I live,’ says Mr Morton, and no sooner has he said it than the tiara girl and three of her friends come out of the hotel, laughing raucously. He smiles towards the porch, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Goodnight, Mr Caldecott.’

‘Goodnight. Sleep well,’ he replies, as Mr Morton strides off, plainly not in need of assistance. He waits until Mr Morton is inside, then follows.

A tinny arpeggio announces that a message is waiting. ‘Get next unread message,’ Edward states to the microphone. ‘Speak all,’ he orders, and the machine dictates:

Dear Mister Morton,

Thank you for your message. I tried to phone you last night but you were not home. You must buy a cellphone, or I will buy it for you. You are the only person in the world who will not have one.

I am sorry about the trouble with Mike. I did not like the look of him: he has a silly pattern on his arm, one of those swirly things that is meant to make you look like a Maori or something, and he thinks he’s a man for ladies, it is obvious – he does a Hey baybee thing with his eyes, but his eyes are too small and close together and they are not a nice colour – yellow-brown, like the skin of a potato.

So what is there to tell you? The trouble between my parents is ending. There is still a strange atmosphere between them, but the trouble is ending and now I know the reason for it. It is a good story and I will write it for you, but not now. I am too tired. Tomorrow.

Other news: Pierluigi is not any more with Laura. She is forgotten now. There is a new girlfriend, called Graziana – Graziana Vitelleschi. The same family name as a bishop of Recanati from a long time ago. He was a very famous man. It is not the same family, I am sure. Luigi met her in a shop in Macerata, in a shoe shop. That is funny, yes? You, me and a shoe shop; Pierluigi, Graziana and a shoe shop. She works for a lawyer in Macerata – she is his secretary. He also has a new car – a new old car, because it is older than Pierluigi. A rare Alfa Romeo, he says. It has horrible leather seats, greeny-white, like milk that has been in the sun too long. But he is in love with it, almost as much as he is in love with Graziana.

This morning we have azure over most of the sky and white clouds dotted on the horizon, tiny small clouds, you could not hide a house in any of them. It would be good here, Edward, for both of us. You must come with me. You must. You must.

I keep thinking of things I should have said in my interview. There is a clever way of saying this. A special phrase, in French. What is it? Today we will be at my aunt’s house – she is ill again. But I will find some time to write the story for you. I hope you get some quietness today. I am very sleepy, so this is my ending. Baci, baci, baci. Your Pavolini.