The Long Room (24 page)

The white rim of the toilet bowl is cold against his forehead, the floor of the cubicle is lurching, he is sicking up green slime. He must get out of here, he must go home, if he just waits a little while, maybe the world will steady down. No one else is here as witness, he can stagger to a basin, sluice his face and drink some water from the tap. The water helps. The basin is next to a window, he can open it, he does, and icy air flows in on him like judgement.

Later he will not remember how he managed to collect his coat and his belongings from the long room and to leave without a word to anyone, not even a goodbye. He will remember
Charlotte looking bewildered and upset. Even if he could have found the words to tell her why he turned from her abruptly when she was trying to include him in her bantering with Marlow, why he staggered like a man poleaxed straight out of the room, he could not have spoken them. He felt himself to be literally dumbfounded. The ground beneath his feet would never again be solid.

He will remember encountering a security guard at the main door of the Institute and becoming confusedly aware of the top-secret folders he was carrying in a Fortnum’s bag and the orange-label tape in his pocket. ‘Been at the party on the third floor?’ the guard had asked. ‘No need to sign the late list, sir.’

What might have happened on his way home has vanished into a black crevasse of memory but he does recall that as he was fumbling with his keys at his front door, the telephone inside was ringing and ringing. He cannot be sure exactly what was said, though through successive waves of nausea and misery he registered that Alberic seemed rather irritated. He’d been trying to get through to Stephen all evening and he tried yesterday as well; has Stephen forgotten what they have agreed?

Then what else could Stephen do but agree again? And, having concurred with some arrangement, of which the only distinct element is that Alberic will come to fetch him in the morning, he also recollected that he should telephone his mother.

Is there a word for the day before Christmas Eve, or the evening of the day before? There should be, shouldn’t there? – in honour of the mother. He was born at dead of night – well, according to the carols – it came upon a midnight clear, didn’t it? – that
glorious song of old – and everybody knows that first-time mothers tend to take a very long time in labour. For Coralie it was two entire days. Or thereabouts. She’d heard tell that it was quicker next time but as she’d only had one go at it, she couldn’t say, herself. Nowadays they advise you to bide at home as long as you can bear it and only go to hospital when the pains are coming fast. You see them on the telly – women making cups of tea in their immaculate kitchens with nary a groan or grimace until the final moment, when off they trot – no, off they drive, as passengers in reliable cars – escorted by their husbands, to shiny, modern hospitals where they are greeted by beaming midwives and said husbands tenderly massage their aching backs. It had not been like that for her. Spencer, far from kneading the small of her back, was somewhere else at the time: in the pub, perhaps, or in someone’s bed. Someone else’s bed, that is, not hers. All right, that might be a bit unfair, but given what happened afterwards it’s not impossible, although improbable, you’d have to say, and the worst of it, of what happened later, was that little Stephen saw it. God knows what it might do to a child, to see his daddy rutting away, a bare white bottom like a rising moon, bumping up and down above a stranger. Stephen had never mentioned it and she had never asked – well, she couldn’t, could she – I mean, how could anybody talk about a thing like that? Spencer. He said he was at work. He’d turned up when it was done, clutching a bunch of tulips. Tulips never were her favourite flower – too stiff, too upright, reminding Coralie with their buttoned-up cups of guardsmen in their busbies, or regimented rows of graves. If only Spencer had brought armfuls of wild roses, honeysuckle, lavender, flowers that grow shyly in hedgerows and hold the
scent of summer. Coralie had set sweet peas on Henrietta’s grave. And that must have been hard for Spencer too; she must be fair.

Anyway, in all likelihood, His mother must have begun her labour the night before Christmas Eve. Poor thing. Such a hard time she must have had – jolting through the frosty desert on a stubborn donkey, no one with her but her geriatric husband; her mother and her womenfolk a long way off – and then to find no shelter but a stable. They describe it as a stable, which makes it sound reasonably dry and warm but chances are that it was actually a cave. A dark place – lightless except for one dim torch – stony, damp and very cold. And outside, the snow. That star, the bright star shining in the sky, obscured by snow and in any case invisible within the cave. The ox and ass – for all their soulful understanding, and doesn’t legend have it that birds and animals can talk on Christmas Eve? – still having to be true to their beastly natures and standing deep in dung. The stink of it in steaming heaps, the black stone of the stable wall streaming with icy water and in the middle of it all, a maiden labouring on her own. There is no pain in the world to match the pain of childbirth, no matter whether you are giving birth to human twins or to the Son of God.

Who cut the cord of Baby Jesus? Who wiped away the blood? Mary, you must have been so lonely and afraid but be thankful that you never had to worry about Christmas. Not that Coralie is worrying now. It is too late for that. All that can be done is done, and she is glad she had the foresight to extract the giblets from the turkey before it took up its residence in Stephen’s car. Groping in its cavity, now she came to think of it, was fittingly obstetric – but the result is that she has already
made the stock. There it sits, sherry-brown and fragrant, in the fridge.

She has resisted the temptation to prepare the sprouts tonight; she’ll do them tomorrow. It’s too late now or maybe it’s too soon.
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht
, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Stephen will be home tomorrow. Together they will listen to the carols from King’s; at bedtime he will hang his stocking by the gas fire and, last of all, he’ll lay the baby in the manger, according to tradition. Yes, Coralie is looking forward to tomorrow, Christmas Eve. But it is late now, and the snow’s still falling – who can that be, ringing on the telephone? It stops her heart, that shrilling in the middle of the night; in the silence of the night it warns of death.

Another persistent ringing woke Stephen in the morning. The sound had pierced his dreams and snaked deep into them before he came to consciousness, and for some time he could not tell if it was real or not. Then he realised that there was someone at the door: Alberic, oh God. He had forgotten. Even now that he was awake, he could not properly remember. He didn’t think he had invited Alberic to the flat but perhaps he had; he had certainly given him the address. He got out of bed and immediately needed to lie down. His head had never hurt so much and his eyes refused to focus. If he lay down and ignored the doorbell, would Alberic go away?

Evidently he would not. Now, from the bedroom, Stephen heard him rattling the letter box and knocking on the glass of the bay window at the front. There was nothing for it – the upstairs neighbour must have heard him and might come down to find out what he wanted – Stephen would have to let him in. He put on his dressing gown and shuffled to the door.

Alberic was wearing a camel-hair coat, carrying a suitcase and looking very sleek. ‘Rise and shine!’ he said. ‘At long bloody last. Good morning, my friend. You surely took your time about coming to the door; you must have been sleeping the sleep of the dead.’

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s twenty past nine. We should be off if we will make the most of daylight and the birds.’

‘What?’

‘At Orford Ness, of course.’

Memories were slowly filtering into Stephen’s mind, like drops of rain through thickest undergrowth. Orford. Yes. A plan that even in a daze of wine and music he had dismissed as nothing more than a midwinter night’s delusion. And now it seemed the man had really meant it. Fleetingly he thought of making some excuse why not to go; the implausibility of the idea was evident in spite of his befuddled head. But there was Alberic, expectant, standing on the doorstep, somehow credible, and in Orford there was Helen. A fact, whatever else. And otherwise what else was there but vast eternal deserts?

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘I’ll go and get dressed.’

Alberic in his shades of caramel and sand followed Stephen into the front room. Stephen, seeing it through his eyes, was uncomfortably reminded of its shabbiness, of the worn and greasy patches on the sofa, the dingy carpet, the pervasive odour of oven chips and takeaways and the fried fat of past meals that hung there always and was almost tangible, as if the molecules of grease had over time become a sort of net.

‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked, trying to remember if there was any milk.

Alberic looked around him. ‘No thanks. We could stop for breakfast on the way if you are hungry.’

On the way? He hoped that Alberic knew where they were going. Suffolk: country clothes? Still befogged he put on light-brown corduroy trousers, a checked shirt and a tweed jacket; polished brogues. Now at least he looked like the man that
Alberic expected, the man he wanted the world to see, even if his furnishings belied him. He had not anticipated a visitor to the flat so soon.

Had Alberic suggested that they would stay the night? Stephen, slowly reassembling the scattered shards of memory recollected: yes. It was Christmas Eve. He packed his toothbrush, his shaving things and some spare clothes in a bag. He still felt very weak and very sick and the events of last night’s party were as incomprehensible and enigmatic in his memory as a dream.

When he went back into the room he found Alberic intently studying the contents of his bookcase. The Fortnum’s carrier bag that Stephen had brought home was not where he thought he had left it, on the floor beside his coat, but placed neatly on a chair. Catching sight of it he remembered those folders – well, too bad; there was nothing he could do about them until after Christmas. He hadn’t even looked at them last night and he didn’t yet know if the
PHOENIX
papers were among them. He left them where they were. At the last minute he also remembered Helen’s present. Thank heavens it was still safely with the brooch he had bought for his mother, in the pocket of his other suit. He put both small parcels in his bag.

‘Super!’ said Alberic. ‘Thunderbirds have go? Where do you leave your car, then? Is it on the street?’

‘My car?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I think I thought we’d go in yours.’

‘The brakes are making trouble in my car. It’s better that you drive.’

‘But I don’t know the way.’

‘No problem! We will follow signs and it will be straightforward, totally.’

Miserably, shakily, Stephen locked his front door and unlocked the passenger door of the Datsun, which was parked outside where he had left it on Sunday morning.

‘Your car is the colour of my toothpaste. Maybe I would put my suitcase in the boot?’

Stephen opened the boot for Alberic. Inside it was the turkey bought with his mum on Saturday that he had completely overlooked. There it squatted, pallid and peculiarly baleful, like the complicated residue of an act of necromancy. Alberic said nothing but set his suitcase down beside it. Stephen could only hope it would survive the journey. It would get rather warm, being driven about all day – might it start to rot? Should he ask Alberic to wait while he tried to stuff it into his fridge? No, it would never fit even if he took out both the shelves and the other contents; the fridge was tiny, otherwise he’d have stowed the turkey there before. He looked at it helplessly, enquiringly, as if it might be able to suggest its own solution. But it could not and he was in no state to find one either.

Abandoning any sense of autonomy, he got into the driver’s seat. He needed a rest, he was suffering from the aftermath of shock and it was easier to let Alberic take charge. But for a terrifying moment he could not remember how to start the car. Which was the brake and which the clutch? What should he do when he had turned the key? The close proximity of Alberic was disconcerting; he was not used to passengers, apart from his mother, and the interior of the car felt very small.

They set off, jerkily. ‘North and east,’ said Alberic. ‘North-east.
Turn left at the end of the road. We head for the North Circular, is my guess.’

North and east. The maze of outer London’s roads and Stephen blindly trusting to an internal compass that had mostly been untested, to steer round Wormwood Scrubs, over railway lines, through Willesden, Harlesden, Stonebridge, Brentfield, past factories and houses, office blocks and shops; death has undone so many; Craven Park. He met the main road with relief: keep to it and carry on. You couldn’t go straight on a circular road, that’s a contradiction in terms. Who are the people living in these places where the snow is falling softly: Chadwell Heath and Romford? At Colchester there are signs to Ipswich.

Alberic’s eyes were closed, he might be sleeping, it was hard to tell. The snow had given way to rain and Stephen went on driving east as if dreaming, guided by the signposts. He barely noticed the other traffic on the road. His windscreen wipers were inadequate but he could not stop to clear the glass: he must go on because otherwise he would not be able to start again, because the rolling of the wheels, the roar and rush of cars and lorries round him, the staccato rhythm of the wipers – Marlow-Marlow-Marlow – filled his head and drove out thought. At any cost, he must not let his mind retrieve more memories of the night before. His heart was beating irregularly, but sickeningly fast, and the fuel gauge was showing that he was running low but he’d take a chance on that, as he must on so much else. He had no idea how many miles there were to go: three-score miles and ten? Can he get there by light of day? Yes, but it’s anybody’s guess if he’ll get back or what he’d find when he arrived.

Towards Woodbridge it was as if he and Alberic had crossed
into another world. Suburban sprawl and main roads ceded to fields and woodland, the rain stopped to catch its breath and pale sunshine streaked the clouds. Stephen wound his window down and scented saltwater on the breeze. A faint trace of a childhood pleasure stirred in him: anticipation of the sea. The incoming rush of air woke Alberic or made him open his eyes.

‘We’re nearly there,’ said Stephen.

‘Oh, tally-ho! What a great driver you are. From now on you will be known as Sterling Moss.’

The closer they got to Orford, the more animated Alberic became. ‘There’s a song,’ he said. ‘Do you know it? “
Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside
” – how does it go on?’

‘I hope you’re not going to be disappointed,’ Stephen said, noting the flat land, the absence of sand or beach.

‘Ah no, it is truly delightful to be here. We will walk to Orford Ness and quickly spot the birds. Look, the sun is shining on us, what a sign that is. It’s a perfect day for your lady-love to be going for a stroll.’

‘And there’s a rainbow to the west.’ A rainbow, that’s a covenant – if only that were true, if only you could still believe in promises, in God.

Stephen stopped the car next to a church and they both got out. Alberic, it seemed, was determined to stride out at once in the direction of the sea but Stephen was not sure if he could stand unaided, far less walk. ‘I think I need something to eat,’ he begged.

Alberic looked a bit annoyed. ‘There don’t appear to be any restaurants here,’ he said.

‘There’s a pub over there.’

‘Okay, but will they make food today, on Christmas Eve? I
imagine not but if you really want, we’ll see.’

It was a nice pub, warm, with woodsmoke sweetening the usual smells of beer and cigarettes. Walking into it was like walking into a party – no one was drinking on his own and everyone was talking to each other as if they were old friends. Stephen felt a strong desire to be befriended by them. They were welcoming to strangers; from behind the bar a woman smiled.

‘You place the orders,’ Alberic insisted. ‘I’ll take a bitter lemon.’ Unaccountably he did not seem to be his usual self and he chose to sit at a table as far away from the people round the bar as possible, in the dimmest corner.

Consulted about food, the landlady looked doubtful. ‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ she said. But, seeing Stephen’s stricken face, she proposed a round of sandwiches and soon enough they came: satisfyingly thick ham in buttery white bread. With a Bloody Mary they worked like medicine and Stephen at last began to come alive. In spite of the wretchedness that was silting up his veins, it could almost be enjoyable, this seaside jaunt with Alberic. He would shut out of his mind his shattering mistake, for now; he would seal it up like radioactive waste encased in concrete and it would not undermine him. Just because he had been wrong about identifying
PHOENIX
did not mean that he was wrong about everything else. Although he might not know what
PHOENIX
looked like, he could still maintain he was a double agent. He’d be able to explain his reasoning to Helen, gently, carefully, when the right time came. And, although he might not have come to Orford of his own accord, lacking an address for Helen or a confident plan of action, he now felt sure that it was right to be here. In this
misty, watery place he was near to Helen, and any minute now she could walk in through the door of this congenial pub and say hello to him.

But Alberic rejected his offer of another drink and made it clear that he did not approve of Stephen having one. Like a man with an appointment he constantly checked his watch. As soon as Stephen had finished, Alberic bustled him back into his coat and out of the pub door.

‘That way,’ he indicated.

They walked down to a quay. From a tall flagpole a Union Jack was flapping in the breeze and the wide river at their feet was khaki-brown. Across the water, over the gracile masts of sailing boats, they saw a desolate place of shingle and a collection of strange buildings – a tall black tower and barrack-blocks, two flat-roofed open structures that looked something like pagodas, listening masts, and a lighthouse in the distance – but it was immediately apparent that there was no direct way to it except by boat. Alberic cast wildly around and tugged uselessly at a lifebelt hanging on a wooden post as if he hoped to use it as a float. There was no one else about.

‘Is there a ferry, do you suppose?’

‘If so, there are no signs.’

‘Maybe, if we go that way, we will find a bridge,’ said Alberic, pointing to a path that led up onto the river wall and downstream to their right.

Stephen followed him. The sickly sun had long since changed its mind and bowed out in favour of dark cloud but its brief spell of warmth had begun to thaw the topmost snow to slush. Alberic, pausing only to re-light his pipe, ploughed on. Grass patched with ice on both sides of the footpath, and to their left
the salt marshes and the shingle of the Ness. At the river’s edge a heron, standing as absolutely still as if it had been sculpted out of stone, and staring at the water. While Stephen watched, it all of a sudden darted its beak downward and withdrew it; something trapped in it writhed in a silver flash.

The river did not narrow. After less than a mile Alberic and Stephen reached a point at which the boundaries of land and water became still more confused: before them lay what might have been an island, and the path curved back inland; evidently there would be no bridge.

‘We must return,’ said Alberic. ‘We must find a native to show us another way.’

Rain that had begun tentatively and softly, a scattering of drops that might have been sea spray, now grew more determined and a wind blew in from the North Sea.

‘It’s cold,’ said Stephen. ‘Why are we are trying to get there, what is there on the other side?’

‘We’ll see. I must say I am surprised you do not know. Now, hurry up. You will be warmer if you walk faster and you do not complain.’

They retraced their steps, huddled now against the driving rain. Alberic’s camel-hair coat was pocked with mud, his city shoes presumably soaked through. In this weather there will be no one in the streets or on the quay, thought Stephen; even dedicated walkers will be sitting by their fires, at home or in that cosy pub. What hope is there of finding Helen now, in this place of marsh, mud and saltwater, where nothing but a belt of stone restrains the terrible sea?