Hawthorn and Child (26 page)

– There’s some people on the pitch. They think it’s all over.

He didn’t laugh. He put his hand to Hawthorn’s throat.

– We need to move on, he said.

Johnson. Sheets. Rafsan.

– What is this?

– Oh shit. I forgot all about it.

– What is it?

– The Oyster Card guy. Rafsan.

Hawthorn was blank.

– Rafsan. You know. Murder in Crouch End. Last year. Rivers. So we need the worksheets from Finsbury Park. Johnson? In the station? BTP? What the hell is wrong with you?

– I remember.

– No you don’t. You’re completely clueless.

– OK. I think I must have been on leave or something. Should we go there now?

Child snapped his fingers a few times and pushed his glasses up his nose.

– No. After. We should probably expedite the suicide. And I want to do the paper on the paedo. And I need a shit.

They stood on the pavement outside the house and Hawthorn could still smell her. Her remains. He raised his hand to his mouth to discreetly sniff his sleeve. Child was watching him. He was on his mobile, talking to Frank Lenton. They were trying to work out whether Child should call Rivers.

– He’ll call me. Frank. Frank. He’ll call me if he wants to know anything. There’s nothing … Frank … there’s nothing to tell, anyway. She killed herself. Painfully. He’s already seen anything I could tell him. No. No, Frank. You call him if you want. Jesus, Frank.

They found a patch of garden grass and stood on it and shuffled their feet back and forth and frowned at their shoes. Those bags are hopeless.

– You don’t like that?

– Not really, no.

– Not at all?

– No.

– It’s a trust thing.

– No, it isn’t. I just don’t like it. It does nothing for me.

– OK.

– That’s going to be a problem.

– Yes.

He left and came back. He went to the referee’s flat and let himself in with a credit card. He sat at one of the computers and turned on bluetooth and turned on his phone and copied one of the pictures of the dead woman to the computer. Then he created a free email account and emailed the picture to the referee. With a message. Then he cleared all traces of it from the browser and securely deleted the picture. He went into the bedroom. There was no one there and the light was off and the bed was made. All these things that happened to other people. They were endless. A parade of disgusting things and he stood and watched it. Nothing ever happened to him.

He left the bedroom. He left the flat.

Nothing ever happened because no one ever heard about the things that happened.

– All that stuff about ghosts, seeing people, all that.

– Yeah.

– That was all a joke.

Hawthorn nodded.

– I knew that.

The referee looked at him.

– You have any stuff here?

– No. I’m good.

– OK. No hard feelings all right?

– Yeah. Absolutely.

– I’ll see you around.

They drove towards Finsbury Park station.

– Rivers call?

– No. He was back in his office though.

They came out through the late afternoon light, a time that lasted nothing, and Child yawned and rubbed his eyes, and Hawthorn leaned into the passenger door.

– It’s a set-up, said Child.

– What is?

– Every single fucking thing.

Hawthorn rang the bell and waited in the street looking at the first things. The sun was starting strong and it would be a good day. The air was fresh and warming, and there was a man running a cloth over a windscreen, and a woman at a window watching him, and there were a couple of teenagers jogging. He was fine. He was happy. This was happiness. It was morning and the sky was blue and he was very happy.

– What?

– Morning.

– What fucking time is it?

– Ten to nine.

The intercom rattled and sicked and the door hummed and he pushed it open. He wandered up the stairs with half a smile on his face. Child opened the door in a bathrobe, his bare chest and legs emerging like scoured ground. His glasses couldn’t focus his eyes.

– Late night?

– Shut up. You’re early.

– You want me to come back in ten minutes?

– We went clubbing. If you can imagine. Last time. Ever.

– Nothing ever happens to us, Child.

– No. Nothing ever does.

They opened the door on to the bus station and a man ran past.

He sat in the kitchen for a moment. He glanced at an old
Evening Standard
. He looked at the cork-board on the wall, at the photographs of Child and her, some postcards, a tube map, scribbled notes. They would want some breakfast. He looked in the fridge. He looked at the pots and pans. He opened a couple of cupboards. He stood and thought for a moment.

He filled the kettle, switched it on. He found a bowl. He took five eggs from the fridge and cracked them on the edge of the bowl. He found some skimmed milk and added a drop. Another drop. He twisted salt and pepper into the bowl. He took a fork and mixed. It made a ringing sound.

She appeared at the door. She looked a lot more clearheaded than Child.

– Hi, said Hawthorn.

– What are you doing?

– Breakfast. I thought you’d like some breakfast.

She just glared at him.

– You like eggs?

She walked off. Under the rising din of the kettle he heard voices in the bathroom.

He found butter in the fridge and put a knob in a pot, and put it on a medium gas ring and looked at it melting. There was bread in another cupboard. He stuck two slices in the toaster. When the butter had melted he poured in the milky eggs. He found a wooden spoon in a drawer and started
stirring.
His eyes looked for a teapot, plates, cups. Every so often he took a break from stirring and did something else. Buttered the first two slices of toast. Warmed the teapot. Put knives and forks on the table. Put out cups and teaspoons. Put out plates. He put more bread in the toaster. He filled the teapot. All the time stirring the eggs.

– What the fuck are you doing?

– Making breakfast.

– You trying to piss her off?

– No. Why? What’s wrong?

– I don’t fucking know, do I? Her kitchen.

He disappeared again.

Hawthorn stirred the eggs and frowned. Maybe she felt insulted. He comes in to their home. This faggot. This queer. Spends all day, all week, with her man, and here he comes first thing on a Sunday morning and wakes them from their bed, and he walks into their kitchen like he lives there.

– You making breakfast in my kitchen.

– I should have asked. Sorry.

She just looked at him.

– I thought you’d like it. That’s all. I just thought it would be nice. You don’t like eggs?

She shrugged. She was wearing Child’s bathrobe. Or they had matching ones. She sat down.

– You want tea?

– Sure.

He poured her a mug of tea. Child appeared. Jeans and a T-shirt now.

– OK?

He sat down. Hawthorn put toast on plates and spooned the scrambled eggs on top. He put one in front of her. She just looked at it. He put one in front of Child. He nodded.

Hawthorn sat down. He had the smallest helping. The others said nothing about that but they noticed. They ate. They all ate. Child nodded. Nothing was said for a while. All they could hear was the world outside and their cutlery.

– Good, she said, eventually. Good eggs. Thank you.

Hawthorn nodded.

She looked at him and he didn’t know how to look back.

– Cheer up, man, she said. It might never happen.

He closed his eyes and swallowed as slowly as he could. This is a good morning, he kept telling himself. A good morning. Stop it.

– Sweet, said Child. Great eggs, Hawthorn.

He leaned across the table. Punched Hawthorn lightly on the arm.

– Just don’t fucking do it again.

Hawthorn thought it was funny that no one laughed. They ate in silence and the windows rattled as a bus went by, and in the time they shared there was no time. No time at all. He could remember nothing of what had gone before, and he could think of no possible future.

And why did he never dream of this?

I am a writer. I have no money.

There you are. That explains most things.

People are suspicious of writers. We sit there silently, watching and plotting, our sweaty eyes on the room, on the street. Reducing you, summing you up. Writing you off.

Arrogant lot, writers.

I’ve got a story for you mate. Make a great fucking book it would I’m telling you. Problem is no one would believe it. Not a word.

I was a writer. I had no money.

I’m not a writer any more.

I left my wife.

Or, she told me to go.

I moved in to a little flat in Crouch End. Roughly Crouch End. The Archway side of it. Up the hill there.

My landlord was a small, gregarious, exhausting man called Malik. Mr Malik. He owned a pharmacy somewhere, he told me – though it was his wife who was the chemist, not him. And he owned my building, with its five flats and its tiny mess of a garden and its incomprehensible plumbing. He had other buildings too, though perhaps he just managed those. He would show up in the evenings or at the weekend to supervise the shifting of furniture, as if there was in his empire of rooms some sort of internal market for bed bases, wardrobes, kitchen tables. He moved gossip around with as much application, standing in my kitchen slapping dust from his sleeves and washing his hands in my sink, offering me basic data on the nice couple on the ground floor, the French girls on the first floor (very pretty, he said) and the gay couple above, in return for bits and pieces about me – always with the hint that there was all kinds of information I could access if I
reciprocated
, contributed, got into the eavesdropping spirit of things. He’d never had a writer before. I should write a book about him. About his youth in Lahore, his uncle in politics, the rumours about the death of his aunt. Mostly though about the beautiful love story of him and his wife. Their passion, their struggle, their children.

– Not about tenants though Mr Drayton. I will not let you write about my tenants. There is nothing here that your readers need know. I’m like a doctor, an imam, or, for you … what? A clergyman? A priest? A rabbi? I have three Jewish tenants Mr Drayton – in another house, not here. All good people, and everyone is a Londoner, that’s the truth. All my tenants. The French girls, my Sudanese friend, all my Punjabis – every one of them a Londoner. All Londoners here. You must tell me the names of your books Mr Drayton and I’ll maybe read one. My wife is the reader though. My wife is the brains Mr Drayton, I admit it. A chemist. Books. She has two degrees, she speaks four languages, she reads, she is a loving mother, what can I tell you Mr Drayton? I don’t deserve her. I will bring you a bigger desk. This one is too small for a writer. A new chair. A swivelling chair. I have one. Namjeev will come this evening. Or tomorrow.

The son, by contrast, was a taciturn bearded youth who seemed to consider my attempts to help him carry the desk up three flights of stairs contemptible. His father materialized later on to see how it looked.

– The view, Mr Drayton. The new desk. The new chair. You see that tree? It’s a poplar. A poplar tree. So tall. Very pretty. The view of the poplar tree. How pretty that is. It will inspire great things in you. I know it. I look forward to reading the masterpieces you will write here.

Last night I woke up because I thought that there was someone in my room. I lay there, terrified, in the dark, not moving, convinced that there was someone in my room. There was someone in my room. It took me twenty minutes of sweat and paralysis to work it out. It was me. I was in my room.

I had lunch one day with my agent, Stanley Whitmarsh. I see him once every six months or so and he explains to me why I have no money. I travel west to eat and drink with him – into that strange part of London, the comfortable, monied, afternoon London of Notting Hill and Holland Park. It is not really London at all. Publishers and agents live there.

The books I write are well reviewed. Nobody buys them.

It looked like it would rain and we trotted under the black sky to a gastropub and Stanley chose the wine. He wanted to know what I was working on. I made something up. The truth was that every sentence I started bored me half to death, despite the poplar tree. Who gives a damn, frankly, about novels?

– Rosemary left me, I said.

– Oh God. Oh Clive. Oh I’m so sorry.

He put his hand over mine. I was embarrassed.

– It’s fine. It’s OK. It’s mutual.

I extracted my hand awkwardly. Stanley’s remained there like a vacated shell.

– She left you, you said.

– Yes, but. We both agreed that she should. That I should, I mean. I’ve moved out.

He inclined his head a little and took his hand back.

– What happened?

– Nothing happened. I should give you the new address.

– Are you OK?

– Yes, I’m fine. Really.

He wanted to talk about it and I didn’t.

I imagined people noticing us. There is the writer Clive Drayton, having lunch with his agent Stanley Whitmarsh. This has never happened.