Armadillo (25 page)

The Book of Transfiguration

He filled the afternoon with the mundane business of modern life: paying bills, cleaning his home, shopping for food, tidying things away, visiting launderette and dry-cleaner, retrieving money from automated teller machine, eating a sandwich – banal activities that had the curious property of being immensely satisfying and reassuring, but only
after
they were over, Lorimer realized. He telephoned his mother and learned that his father was to be cremated on Monday afternoon at Putney Vale crematorium. His mother said there was no need for him to attend if he was too busy and he had felt hurt and almost insulted at her needless consideration. He told her he would be there.

It grew dark early and the wind angrily rattled the window frames of the front room. He opened a Californian Cabernet, put some meditative Monteverdi on the C D player, then changed it for Bola Folarin and Accra 57. Bola was renowned for his excessive use of drummers, utilizing every combination known to Western groups but supplementing them with the dry bass of the talking drums of the West African hinterland and the staccato contralto of the tom-toms. Something in those atavistic rhythms combined with the wine made him restless, made him indulge in a fit, a seizure of pure painful longing – ‘Sheer Achimota’ at work, he wondered? –and, spontaneously, he hauled on his coat and scarf, corked the wine bottle and jammed it in a pocket, and headed out into the wild night to find his rust-boltered Toyota.

In Chalk Farm the wind seemed even stronger, explained by Chalk Farm being higher, he supposed, and the lime tree branches above his parked car creaked and thrashed in the gale-force gusts. He swigged Cabernet and stared at the large bay windows of what he took to be the Malinverno flat. There was a kind of fretted oriental screen that obscured the bottom third of the window pane, but the head and shoulders were visible of anyone who stood up. He could see Gilbert Malinverno pacing about – indeed, he had been watching him for the last half hour as he practised his juggling (perhaps the musical had been abandoned?), flinging handfuls of multicoloured balls up into the air and changing effortlessly the patterns and directions of their flow. It was a real talent, he grudgingly conceded. Then Malinverno had stopped practising and from the focus of his gaze Lorimer assumed someone else had entered the room. He had been pacing to and fro gesticulating wildly for ten minutes now and at first Lorimer had imagined this was some form of juggler’s exercise, but then had concluded, after a series of angry jabbing pointings, that Malinverno was in fact shouting at someone, and that someone was, doubtless, Flavia.

Lorimer wanted to hurl his wine bottle through the window and take the brute on and break his bones… He gulped at his Cabernet and was wondering how much longer he could realistically spend out here in his car when he saw the front door of the house open and Flavia run down the steps and go striding off down the hill. In a second Lorimer was out of his car and closing on her.

She turned a corner before he could reach her and entered a small parade of shops, going into a brightly lit 24-hour supermarket called Emporio Mondiale. Lorimer followed her in, after only the briefest of hesitations, but she was nowhere to be seen. Blinking in the brilliant white light, he carefully checked a few of the labyrinth of tall aisles – teetering battlements of sanitary napkins and toilet rolls, kitchen towels, disposable nappies and dog biscuits. Then he saw her bent over an ice-cream freezer, rummaging in its lower depths, and backed off, a little breathless, then composed himself, but when he advanced forward again she had gone.

He headed straight to the checkout, where a solitary Ethiopian girl was patiently counting through a mass of brown coins that an old lady was unearthing from a cavernous handbag – but no Flavia. Christ, where was she? Perhaps she’d gone back out the entrance? And he raced back the way he had come. Then he saw her: vanishing down a side alley that led to the newspapers. He decided that a flanking move was the correct choice here and so ducked down breads and breakfast cereals, heading for the spice jar whirligig and the cabinet of dreadful salads.

He turned the corner at the bottom and she fired a blast of air freshener at him.
Pfffft.
He caught a farinaceous gust of sweet-smelling violets full in the face and sneezed several times.

‘I don’t like being followed,’ she said, replacing the aerosol. She was wearing sunglasses and a bulky old leather jacket with a hood and many zips. He was sure her eyes would be red and weepy beneath the opaque green glass.

‘What’s he done to you?’ Lorimer blurted out. ‘If he’s hit you – I’ll –’

‘He’s actually been talking about you, or rather shouting about you, for the last half hour. That’s why I had to get out. He claims he saw you at some smart party.’

‘You do know that he attacked me. Tried to club me on the head.’ All his old outrage returned. ‘After you had told him about our so-called affair.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your husband tried to hit me over the head with a club.’

‘Gilbert? –’

‘What did you tell him we’d been up to?’

‘He was in a terrible rage and I was frightened. And angry – so, well, I made all sorts of things up, said it had been going on for over a year. Maybe that’s what set him off? He did go thundering out of the house. Was it you who knocked his teeth out? He said he’d been mugged.’

‘It was self-defence. He tried to hit me with one of his fucking juggling clubs.’

‘There’s a lot of pent-up rage in you, isn’t there, Lorimer?’ She took down another aerosol spray from the shelf and enveloped him in a cloud of something piney.

‘Don’t! For God’s sake!’

‘We can’t see each other.’ She glanced nervously over her shoulder. ‘God knows what would happen if he came into the shop now.’

‘Does he hit you?’

‘He’s incredibly fit and strong. Sometimes he gets me in these grips. Shakes me about, twists my arms.’

‘Animal.’ Lorimer felt a form of pure rage sluice through him, of the sort crusaders might have experienced at the sight of a holy shrine desecrated, he imagined. He rummaged in his pockets and took out his bunch of keys, threading two off and holding them out to her.

‘Take them, please. If you ever need a place to be safe, to get away from him where he can’t find you. You can go here.’

She did not take them. ‘What is this?’

‘It’s a house I’ve bought. Pretty much empty. In Silvertown, a place called Albion Village, number 3. You can go there, escape him if he gets violent again.’

‘Silvertown? Albion Village? What kind of a place is that? Sounds like a children’s book.’

‘Sort of development near Albert Dock, by the City airport.’

‘One of those modern developments? Little boxes?’

‘Well… yes. Sort of

‘Why do you want to buy a little cardboard house like that, miles from anywhere, when you’ve got a perfectly good place in Pimlico? I don’t get it.’

He sighed. He felt a sudden urge to tell her, especially as she now reached out and took his keys.

‘It’s… It’s something to do with me. It makes me feel – I don’t know – safe. Safer, I suppose. It’s my insurance. There’s always somewhere I can go and start again.’

‘Sounds more like a place to go and hide. What are you hiding from, Lorimer Black?’

‘My name’s not Lorimer Black. I mean it is, I changed it, but I wasn’t born Lorimer Black.’ He knew he was going to tell her. ‘My real name is Milomre Bloçj. I was born here but in fact I’m a Transnistrian. I come from a family of Transnistrian Gypsies.’

‘And I come from a planet called Zog in a far-flung galaxy’ she said.

‘It’s true.’

‘Piss off out of it.’

‘IT’S TRUE
!’

A few puzzled shoppers looked round. A lanky Pakistani with his name on a plastic badge came to investigate. He gestured at the shelves.

‘All these items are for sale, you know.’

‘Still making up our mind, thank you,’Flavia said, with a winning smile.

‘Milomre?’ She pronounced it carefully.

‘Yes.’

‘Transnistria.’

‘Transnistria. It’s a real place, or was. On the west shore of the Black Sea. My family call me Milo.’

‘Milo… I prefer that. How fascinating. Why are you telling me this, Milo?’

‘I don’t know It’s always been a secret. I’ve never told anyone before. I suppose I must want you to know.’

‘Think it’ll win me over? Well, you’re wrong.’

‘Take your sunglasses off for a second, please.’

‘No.’ She reached for a can of spray starch and Lorimer backed off.

She bought some spaghetti, a jar of sauce and a bottle of Valpolicella. Lorimer walked back up the road with her. A few heavy drops of rain began to smack on to the pavement.

‘You’re not going to cook supper for him, are you?’ Lorimer asked scornfully. ‘After what he’s done to you? How pathetic.’

‘No, he’s going out, thank God. I’ve got a friend coming over.’

‘Male or female?’

‘Mind your own business. Male… Gay.’’

‘Could I join you?’

‘Are you mad? What if Gilbert came back? “Oh, Gilbert, Lorimer’s popped in for a bite of supper.” Crazy fool.’

They had reached his car, which now looked as if it were suffering from a terrible rash, pocked with dark dots where the raindrops had spattered on the light dusty orange of the rust. With the dampness in the air the Toyota seemed to exude a crude smell of metal, or worked iron, as if they were standing in a smithy.

‘Good lord, look at your car,’ Flavia said. ‘It looks worse.’

‘It rusted up almost overnight.’

‘They were cross with you, weren’t they?.’

‘It was a job I was on –’ He paused, something suddenly occurring to him. ‘They blamed me for their troubles.’

‘While you were adjusting loss.’

‘Yes, I was adjusting loss.’

‘I’m not sure if you’re cut out for this life of loss adjusting, Lorimer. Very hazardous.’

‘Hazardous in the extreme,’ he said, suddenly feeling very tired. ‘Can I see you next week, Flavia?’

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘You do know, you must be aware, that I’m passionately in love with you. I’ll never take no for an answer.’

‘Suit yourself She shrugged as she walked backwards a few paces. ‘Goodnight, Milo whatever-your-name-is.’

‘Use the house,’ he called after her. ‘Any time, it’s all set up. Number 3, Albion Village.’

She turned and trotted across the road to her house and scampered up the steps. He felt like weeping: something important had happened – tonight he had told someone else about the existence of Milomre Blocj. And she had kept his keys.

*

He went to sleep at the Institute, hoping he would dream lucidly and lustily of Flavia, that in his dream she would be naked and he would be able to take her in his arms. Instead he dreamt of his father, lying in bed, ill. They held hands, interlacing their fingers, exactly as they had done the final time they had seen each other, except that on this occasion Bogdan Bloçj raised himself on one elbow and kissed him on the cheek, several times. Lorimer could feel the neat white bristles of his beard sharp against his skin. Then he spoke to him and said, ‘You did well, Milo.’

Lorimer woke, drained and vulnerable, and wrote the dream down in the diary with a trembling hand. It was a lucid dream because something had happened in the dream that he had wished for but had never happened in his life, and for the duration of that dream it had seemed real.

As he dressed later, preparing himself for Sunday lunch with Stella and Barbuda, he reflected that this was one reason why dreams were so important in our lives: something good had happened in the night while he was unconscious – he had achieved and expressed an intensity of relationship with his father that he had never experienced while the man had been alive. He was grateful to his extra dose of REM sleep. This, surely, was the consolation of dreams.

Barbuda looked at her mother pleadingly and said, ‘Please may I leave the table, Mummy.’

‘Oh, all right,’ Stella said and Barbuda left with alacrity. Stella reached over and poured the rest of the Rioja into Lorimer’s empty glass. She had had a lighter blonde rinse put through her hair, Lorimer thought, that’s the difference; she looked healthier and she was wearing all white, white jeans and a white sweat shirt with an appliquéd satin bird on the front. And did he detect a sheen of sunbed bronze?

Barbuda had left the room without a backward glance, a further sign that she had returned to her familiar mood of sour hostility. The Angelica name-change had finally been vetoed and the moment of solidarity that had existed between daughter and her mother’s lover appeared forgotten. As far as Lorimer could recall she had not addressed one word to him throughout the three courses of Sunday lunch – smoked salmon, roast chicken and all the trimmings and a bought-in lemon meringue pie.

Stella recharged her coffee cup, reached over and took his hand.

‘We’ve got to have a serious talk, Lorimer.’

‘I know,’ he said, telling himself there was nothing to be gained by further procrastination. He liked Stella, and in a way the mutually beneficial, respectful nature of their relationship suited him ideally. But its continuance presupposed a world without Flavia Malinverno in it, and thus it was impossible and would be best concluded in as decent and hurt-free a way as possible.

‘I’ve sold the business,’ Stella said.

‘Good God.’

‘And I’ve bought a fish farm.’ ‘A fish farm.’

‘Near Guildford. We’re moving.’

‘A fish farm near Guildford,’ Lorimer repeated gormlessly as if he were learning a new phrase in the language.

‘It’s a going concern, guaranteed income. Mainly trout and salmon. Fair amount of prawns and shrimps.’

‘But, Stella, a fish farm. You?’

‘Why should that be any worse than running a scaffolding firm?’

‘Fair point. You’ll be closer to Barbuda’s school, as well’

‘Exactly’ Stella was running her thumb over his knuckles. ‘Lorimer,’ she began slowly, ‘I want you to come with me, be my partner, and my business partner. I don’t want to get married but I like having you in my life and I want to share it with you. I know you’ve got a good job, which is why we should set it up properly, as a business venture. Bull and Black, fish farmers.’