The Missing World (28 page)

Now, if only she still had his card. Her normal system of conservation had broken down under Bernie’s influence. With apologies to the woman beside her, Charlotte delved into her bag. On and on, down and down, and yes, nearly at the bottom, here was a crumpled rectangle with, praise be, both office and home phone numbers and the office address, which Jason had intimated was close to Baker Street. That it was some distance away made Charlotte happy: a destination. She would change at King’s Cross and go along the Euston Road, or maybe via Holborn.

The glass doors wouldn’t budge. She tried first the right, then the left, before knocking. At last, the young man at the reception desk—she was sure he’d been aware of her struggle all along—raised his head; his voice crackled out of the speaker. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes, with Jason.”

“Jason Holmes or Jason Needham?”

“Needham.”

At a clicking sound, the right-hand door yielded and she stepped into the carpeted room. Nice, she thought, sniffing the warm air.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Charlotte, Charlotte Granger. I may be a little early, so please tell him I’m happy to wait.”

As she spoke, she drifted across the room and leaned over the counter, giving the young man her most intense smile. Idly she picked up a programme schedule, checked the clock and pretended to study it. What would Jason say? She hoped for a whoop of pleasure and a request for her company in some cosy studio with a sign on the door:
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY
.

“Take a seat,” the man said, and she did, as far away as possible to emphasise her secure conviction in Jason’s welcome.

Now, which was his programme? She looked more closely at the schedule:
Art Watch
?
News from Nowhere
? She heard her name, the receptionist talking on the phone. Finally, he motioned her towards a phone at the end of the counter. “Line two.”

Charlotte picked up the receiver, heard the line fizz, and pressed a button. Suddenly her ear was full of noise, which she recognised as the show playing on the radio in the reception room. “Jason?” she said cautiously.

“And now we have a young American writer, a former stockbroker and Wall Street errand boy—”

“Charlotte, hi. Great you stopped by. This is a crazy time. We’re on the air and we have to figure out the second part of the show.”

“Can I—?”

He was still talking. “Give me your number and I’ll call you when I’m done.”

“What about a drink? My treat. I can wait.” The voices echoed around her, disconcertingly stereophonic.

“Sorry, what did you say?”

She repeated her offer.

“No, no, I’ll be at least a couple of hours.”

She tried to say that was fine, she’d be happy to take a little snooze on the couch, but he didn’t seem to hear. “Give me your number,” he repeated and, once the digits were out of her mouth, hung up.

On the pavement again, she was staring bleakly at the bookshop across the street when something made her turn: the receptionist, still with the phone to his ear, was watching her. Propelled by his snotty gaze, she trotted briskly to the corner and came to a halt in front of an old-fashioned linen shop.
TWO FOR
£5, read a sign next to the tea towels.
SPECIAL!
£9.99, claimed the pillows. What in the world am I going to do, Charlotte thought. A passing woman gave her a curious look. Raising her hand, she discovered her face was wet.

She couldn’t have said how long she stood there, or what—a footfall or a voice—made her glance up at that particular moment. With no surprise, she recognised Jason, in his leather jacket and black jeans, and his companion, almost identically dressed, with hair the colour of butter. Laughing, talking, they turned the corner and were gone.

chapter 16

The crack grew like a tree, an oak or a sycamore, something thick-trunked and leafy, splitting the brick from below ground level, forking into thinner, increasingly erratic branches as it rose towards the second storey. Jonathan counted off the glass strips, installed across the fissure last autumn to measure movement and now all broken. Beside him the owner of the house, a forensic scientist named Gerald Finch, hunched gloomily forward to finger a smaller crevice. “Ever since this started,” he said, “I’ve been having dreams of my teeth falling out.”

As he spoke, Jonathan glimpsed his own teeth, splintering and breaking, an image he’d dreamed last week, or the week before. He ran his tongue tenderly over his molars and copied the numbers from the strips onto the form. “The movement has definitely continued. We now have the measurements to complete your earlier report.”

“Measurements?” Mr. Finch said bitterly. “None of my windows or doors close, the ceilings are threatening to come down, my children’s marbles and cars run willy-nilly to one side of the room. The question is how much it’s going to cost, who’s
going to pay, and whether it’s remotely possible that this whole business can proceed at faster than glacial pace.”

Jonathan suddenly caught the man’s
r
’s. “Are you Scottish?”

“Perth. Yourself?”

“The Borders, near Hawick. I was stung,” he added, feeling the need to explain the swellings on his nose and chin.

“Scott country.”

“Almost, but not quite.”

“Could be the claims adjustors’ motto.” Mr. Finch gave a little laugh and aimed a kick at the base of the crack. His appearance, Jonathan thought, was the opposite of his name: tall, burly, broad-shouldered. “Sorry, I don’t mean to take it out on you. I’m sure you’re a perfectly decent chap who’ll file the proper forms and whom I’ll never hear from again. We’d planned to move last summer, for the schools, but no one will make us an offer until we get this sorted. Do you have kids?”

“No.”

Mr. Finch nodded, as if the denial had confirmed all his suspicions. “Tell me, as one Scot in exile to another, is there anything I can do to speed this business along? My dad used to dish out the whisky. If it would help, you’re welcome to my entire stock: a bottle of Glenfiddich and the dregs of some Dewar’s.” He smiled, revealing two rows of excellent teeth, and settled back into gloom.

Jonathan had a vision of walking him down to the local, buying him a dram, and telling him everything. Last autumn, my girlfriend moved out after a row. A few months later she had an accident, lost part of her memory, and moved back in. I’m taking care of her, and we’re going to get married. The only problem is she’s fallen victim to delusions; every day she “remembers” something else about me she doesn’t like. Now she leaves the room when I enter and refuses to discuss our wedding plans. Ghastly, Mr. Finch would say. Appalling.

The front door flung open and a red-cheeked boy in tartan trousers yelled, “Dad.”

“Alex, I’m busy. Ask Mummy.” Then, to Jonathan, “I’m putting you on the spot.”

“No problem. What you can do is get the estimates. You need three, in writing. I’ll file my report this afternoon, then it has to be okayed. That happens at a meeting on Wednesday. Call this number on Tuesday, ask for Alastair Stevens, and tell him what you’ve told me. He’s from Edinburgh, so it wouldn’t hurt to stress your origins. Phone back on Thursday and, whatever you do, don’t lose your temper—Alastair tends to put people who blow their stack to the back of the queue. Keep phoning until you get an answer.”

“Thank you.” Finch turned with outstretched hand. “My whisky is yours. And if you ever need advice in forensic matters, which I hope you won’t, I’m your man.”

Driving back to the office, Jonathan thought that with luck, by this time next year, Mr. Finch’s children would be able to roll their marbles in both directions. I’m not a terrible person. People like me. A bus lurched past in a smear of exhaust. But not the ones I want or need to. Hazel, Hazel, Hazel. For a few seconds, the surrounding vehicles disappeared; he guided the car to the kerb and rested his head against the steering wheel.

“Are you okay, lad?” A traffic warden with a burgeoning white moustache was peering in the window.

“Something in my eye.”

“Short of being struck blind, you can’t stop here.” He stepped back. “Try the car park second on the right.”

Jonathan blew his nose and, for form’s sake, peered in the rearview mirror. His eyes, at close range, did have a dull, unhealthy look, the whites laced with blood. Was there really a
problem? Some invisible worm eating away inside of him, like a wax moth devouring the honeycomb? But the presence of the warden, still standing nearby, precluded further examination. As he pulled out behind a motorbike, Jonathan remembered Maud’s demand for a meeting. Perhaps they could have a drink after work this evening. Almost anything seemed preferable to going home.

In his car opposite Plantworks, he watched the late customers emerge with bunches of flowers wrapped in shimmering paper. The apology trade, Maud called it, those last-minute purchases made to head off disaster or put a dodgy evening on a more secure footing. How often had he brought Hazel flowers in their years together? Frequently at first, but only sporadically after she moved in, when the bouquets she brought home from Maud’s had seemed to render such gifts superfluous. Probably a mistake, he thought, gazing at the miniature orange tree in the window, its fruits glowing like tiny lanterns, to neglect the romantic gestures.

After ten minutes, maybe fifteen, a slight, androgynous figure stepped out of the shop, paused in front of the window display, and sauntered towards the bus stop: Grant, Maud’s assistant and the best wreath maker, she boasted, north of the river. Surely she would follow soon.

The car radio nattered on about fox hunting, the pros and cons. As with the teeth that morning, Jonathan felt a fragment or premonition surfacing. The last time he saw them, nearly two months ago, Steve and Diane had talked about foxes and the dwindling supply of lion shit. That was the evening, he recalled, of the amazing day when Hazel had opened her eyes and he had begun to hope. He rubbed his hands against the growing cold. Five more minutes, he promised, and he would
let Maud know he was here. “It’s easy to romanticise the fox,” the announcer claimed, “as a beautiful, wild animal. But foxes, by their very nature, are wanton killers.” The shop door opened, and there she stood. At first he barely noticed that she wasn’t alone. Then, when Maud stepped to one side, he recognised Mrs. Craig’s shining hair.

He was out of the car, fury spewing through him. “Maud!”

She turned and something clattered to the pavement. He caught the glint of metal and bent to retrieve what became a pair of secateurs. As he straightened, he found himself looking into the familiar face of the roofer.

“Jonathan,” Maud said. “Is Hazel all right?”

With the hand not holding the secateurs, he grabbed her wrist. “What’s going on?”

She made a small sound.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. “You’re hurting her,” the roofer said.

“Take your fucking hands off me.” After all his restraint, it was a relief to be shouting at last, but he did let go of Maud.

“Jonathan?” Mrs. Craig stepped forward. “You seem upset. Has something happened to Hazel? Can we help?” She was regarding him with her usual calm demeanour, arms outstretched, as if to offer support.

Steady, he thought, steady. Grabbing people, shouting on the pavement, wasn’t going to help. “Hazel’s fine,” he said. “I need to talk to Maud.”

As he moved towards the shop, he heard the roofer and Mrs. Craig, almost in unison, ask if she was all right and Maud say of course. “Don’t worry about Jonathan,” she added. “He’s just overwrought.”

In the cool, sweet-smelling shop, he shivered. A bird-of-paradise winked at him, and the buckets of spring flowers—daffodils,
narcissi, tulips, irises, freesias, lilies, baby’s breath, roses, anemones—made him think of his bees. This would be their Eden, so many blooms so close together. But no, their ideal was singularity, one species at a time.

He heard footsteps, the door being closed and locked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Maud took the secateurs from his hand. “You can’t storm around, behaving like a wild man.”

Over her trousers and pullover she wore a striped butcher’s apron with a row of pockets. The stark shop lighting made her skin creamier and her eyes darker. Or perhaps that was anger. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was waiting for you, and when I saw Mrs. Craig, I panicked. What was she doing here, and with the fucking roofer? Everything’s getting in such a muddle. Hazel keeps finding out more and—”

“Jonathan, not everything is about Hazel.”

Something soft lay beneath his right heel: a pile of clippings, leaves, flower stalks, ready for the dustpan. “But,” he started and, at the sight of her lips tightening, stopped. He imagined the secateurs stabbing into her cheek, her breast. “Is there anywhere we can sit down?”

She led him through the shop to a small office lined with counters and filing cabinets. Seated, they were almost knee to knee. Jonathan pressed back in his chair, a fruitless effort to increase the distance. The silence quickly passed from possible to bearable to impossible. Maud was staring at him, and he was suddenly conscious, again, of his stings.

“How do you feel about me?” she said.

If she’d spoken in Urdu, or demanded the formula for a complex protein, her question would have made more sense. “I’m fond of you. Very fond.”
More
, he thought desperately. “You’ve been marvellous with Hazel. I admire your energy, your—” he
groped—“business acumen.” He waved at the rows of labelled files, the Interflora directories, the fax machine. No, wrong, still not enough.

“What about what we did on the living-room floor?”

Christ. “That was wonderful.” Their knees were virtually touching. If only he could stroke her breasts, stick his tongue down her throat, but his body, from toenail to forehead, was beyond movement, as if the winking bird-of-paradise had shot curare into his veins. “Maud.”

Her eyelids dipped. In the silence he heard ticking: her watch. Again he thought of his bees, and the faint noise of the hives in winter.