The Red Room (22 page)

very common for people who've been through experiences like yours
to suffer depression. You feel confused about it, you
may even blame yourself, or be blamed."
I looked at Gabe. "I know what you
mean," he said. "I know we're sometimes a bit
ratty with each other. But I couldn't possibly
blame Bry for anything."
"I didn't mean that," I said. "I was just
trying to say that these things are difficult for you in
ways you don't expect. And it's difficult for
partners as well."
Bryony sat back on the sofa and closed her
eyes. "I just want it all to go away," she
said.
"I think it has, for you," I said. "I
believe that. What we really want is to make it
go away for everybody."
She leaned back against Gabe, who stroked her
hair. Suddenly I felt a bit envious and
entirely unnec and made an awkward exit.
30

When I turned left, off the busy arterial
road and into the cul-de-sac where Will lived, I was
slightly taken aback. His house, as he'd said
on the phone, was a smallish Victorian
semi, the one with a bottle-green door and a
black iron gate, not the one with the straggly
privet hedge and the boarded-up window on the first
floor. What he hadn't said was that these two were the
only old houses in a large new estate, with
high-rise blocks of flats, a network of
walkways and car parks and a small playground
whose roundabout had been chained up. Two teenagers
swung on the swings meant for toddlers, smoking and
dragging their heels on the rubberized Tarmac.
Will's house, with its front garden and neat fencing,
looked quite surreal, as if it had been plucked out
of some middle-class residential street and
been placed here by mistake.
I think I'd been imagining that he would open the
door and draw me inside and we'd gaze at
each other then fall into each other's arms. Of
course it didn't happen like that. Will opened the
door with a cordless phone tucked under his chin, and
beckoned me in without saying anything. 377
Then he disappeared into the kitchen with his phone,
leaving me standing alone in the living room with the
smile dying on my lips.
But at least it gave me the chance to look around
a bit. The room was almost empty. If I
called out, my voice would probably echo. There
were, I saw, precisely four objects in
it: a splendidly large and deep mustard-yellow
sofa; a sleek hi-fi system in the corner; a
revolving CD stack full of discs; and one
of those beautiful apothecary chests with dozens of
tiny drawers that you buy for several thousand pounds in
overpriced antiques shops in north London.
And that was all. No table. No other chairs.
No TV or video player. No
bookshelves. No hooks where coats and
jackets hung. No pictures or
photographs on the white walls. No random
objects scattered round the place. I thought of
my flat: However neat and bare it is, it's
full of odd things--pens and notepads, books,
newspapers and magazines, decorative bowls
with dice or keys or a pair of earrings in them,
candlesticks, mirrors, glasses, flowers. But
here, there was absolutely none of the clutter of
daily life.
I slipped off my suede jacket, slung it
on the sofa arm, and peered at the CD'S. I
couldn't find a single name I recognized there.
I walked over to the chest and cautiously opened
one of the drawers. It was empty. So were the next
three. I found a stash of paper-clips in the
fifth and a broken chesspiece several drawers
later. Nothing more.
"Sorry about that."
I was startled. He'd padded in silently, like
a cat, and caught me snooping among his things,
except that he didn't seem to possess any
things.
"Do you really live here?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, this." I gestured round the room.
"What do you do when you're here? There's nothing in
it. There's no sign of you being here. It's
spooky, really. It's not so much minimalist as
utterly minimal."
"That's the general idea."
"How long have you lived here?"
"A couple of years."
"Two years! You've collected 379
nothing in two years? Where were you before?"
"In a very full house."
"With a wife?"
"That was one of the things it was full of, yes."
"So you walked out on everything?"
"You don't go in for small-talk, do you? Do
you want a drink?"
"Yes. What have you got?"
I followed him into the kitchen, which bore only
a faint resemblance to any kitchen I'd been in
before. There was a sink near the back window, a
large stainless-steel rubbish bin, a fridge in the
corner. But there were none of the usual kitchen
units and surfaces, and I couldn't see a
cooker. Instead, there was an old pine table against
one wall, on which stood a kettle, a toaster,
a coffee grinder and two sharp knives.
"Christ, Will, this is a bit weird."
"Whiskey, gin, brandy, vodka, Campari,
some strange Icelandic schnapps that I've never
opened." He was rummaging in a tall cupboard.
"Or there's beer and wine in the fridge. Or
tomato juice."
I didn't fancy beer or wine, certainly
not tomato juice. I wanted something that I could
feel burning my throat and coursing through my
veins. "I'll try the Icelandic stuff."
"Brave of you. I'd better join you."
I went to the back door and looked out into the
garden. It was dusk, but I could see in the gloom
that it consisted of a small lawn and a large bay
tree set bang in the middle. Will put several
chunks of ice into two tumblers, then glugged in
several fingers of a clear liquid.
"Thanks." I raised my glass to him
formally, then tossed half the drink down my open
throat. "Fuck!" It hit me in the back of
my throat and my eyes watered.
"All right?"
"You haven't drunk any."
He drank without flinching, then set down his
tumbler on the table. Yards of floor separated
us. He seemed miles away and unreachable.
"I don't really know why you wanted to come,"
he said, over the great space that divided us.
I didn't bother to answer. I drank the
rest of my liquor in one. The room tipped then
righted itself again. Who cared what happened? At least
I was here, and something was going to happen. "Do you
want me to go away, then?" 381
"No."
"Good. I'm over the limit anyway. So
what next?"
"Something to eat?"
"No thanks."
"Have you slept?"
"No."
"No sleep, no food."
"I'm not going to make the first move, W."
Drink made me brave.
"All right."
"Because it's your turn."
"To answer your question, I left because one day I
woke up with a hangover and I felt
unutterably sick of it all."
"Of your job?"
"My job, my slickness at it, my amazing
ability to obey the letter of the law and never the spirit,
my petty triumphs and successes, my
drinking, my increasing cocaine habit, my house
with its fine period furniture, my bank
balance, my briefcase and laptop and mobile
phone, which I carried to work early every morning on the
underground, pressed up against all the other men just like
me. Sick to death of all my things. The more you have
the more you find you need. The latest, smallest
mobile, fancy gadgets, a watch that's a
computer. Sick of the fucking trouser press, the
suits and ties, the drinks parties, the meetings
with lots of other men in suits just like mine who owned
trouser presses and period furniture, the
holidays in Cape Cod that people talked about, the
conversations about golf and school fees and fine
wines. I just woke up and knew I couldn't do
it. I couldn't go there for one single day more. It was
a bit like alcohol poisoning. I felt sick
of myself, allergic to the world I lived in.
Disgusted by how oblivious I was to everything around
me. Do you know? Every morning, and every evening, I
walked past these groups of homeless kids, like the
ones I spend my days with now, and past winos and
prostitutes, and I literally didn't see them,
unless they were in my way. I was blind to them."
"Then you suddenly saw them?"
"It wasn't exactly the road
to Damascus."
"But it was your conscience that made you leave and
start the center?" I wanted him to say something good
about himself.
"I don't use that word unless I'm 383
trying to squeeze a donation for the center out of a
businessman who wants to feel virtuous.
Politicians have degraded it. Conscience.
Integrity. Honor. Truth. Sincerity.
Love." His voice was scornful. "It was more like
compulsion. Don't make me out to be a
crusader. I did it for me, to rescue myself.
I'm the only person I'm trying to save. Do
you want more drink?"
"OK. Why not? What about your wife?"
"She stayed."
"In the full house."
"Yes."
"Children?"
"No."
"Do you ever see her?"
"No."
"Do you miss her?"
"No."
"Do you get lonely?"
"No. Or not until now."
"Why now?"
"Why do you think, Kit?"
"Do you do this often?"
"What?"
"What we are about to do."
"No. Do you?"
"No. Can't you tell?"
"People seem one thing and are actually something quite
different."
"How do I seem?"
"Like someone who's scared and making herself do it
anyway."
"What am I scared of?"
"I don't know. Me?"
"Why should I be scared of you?" I was, though
-comdread and excitement filled me.
"The world, then. Scared of getting hurt?"
"I'm the one who's supposed to say trite
therapeutic things like that."
"Drink up."
"Finished. Now what?"
"If I asked you to come upstairs, what would you
say?"
"Ask me, and you'll find out."
"Will you come upstairs?"
"Yes."
He picked up the bottle by its neck and I
followed him out of the kitchen and up the narrow,
uncarpeted stairs into his bedroom: one 385
futon, one wardrobe, a tall standard lamp and
unexpectedly cheery yellow curtains, half
open, that twitched in the breeze from the open window.
"Undo the buttons on your blouse."
"Give me the bottle first. I need Dutch
courage. There. Like that?"
"Yes. You're really very lovely."
"Then why do you look as if you're in pain?"
"Because you're lovely."
"It's all right."
"You don't want to trust me, Kit."
"I don't. I don't trust you at all.
That's the point."
"I'll be no good for you."
"That doesn't really matter at all."

Afterwards, I lay on his futon and stared out of the
window at the gibbous moon in the inky sky. Will
lay beside me, silent, looking up at the ceiling
through half-closed eyes. Then he said, "I'm
hungry."
"I'm thirsty."
"Do you want something to eat?"
"It didn't look as if you kept much food
here."
"I don't. I could get us a takeaway.
Italian, Indian, Chinese, Thai,
Greek. Or there's even a Japanese not so
far off."
"I don't mind. Anything."
"I won't be long." He pulled on his old
jeans and a gray sweatshirt. "Don't go
away."
I lay on the bed and listened to his footsteps
clattering down the wooden stairs; heard the
front door open and close. I was all alone,
in Will's house. After a few minutes, I went
into the bathroom. Very clean and functional. I
washed myself and put on the thick blue toweling
robe that was hanging on the back of the door, then
I wandered into the second upstairs room, a
square room overlooking the back garden. All
there was in here was a grand piano and a piano stool.
I touched one of the ivory keys and a single note
hung in the air. It sounded a bit out of tune.
I opened the lid of the stool and found a few
dog-eared pieces of music with penciled
instructions scribbled across the top and a can of beer.
I went downstairs to find something to drink, for
my mouth felt dry after all the 387
alcohol. In the hallway, the phone rang and
an answering-machine clicked on. "Will," said a
man's voice, in a stage-whisper. "Will, it's
me, mate. I need to talk to you. Will, are you
there? Please? It's urgent." There was a
silence, during which I could hear him breathing
heavily. Madly, I held my own breath, as
if the caller could somehow hear me too. Then the
machine clicked off.
I took a bottle of fizzy water out of the
fridge and drank two glasses of it. It was
nearly eleven. In the past forty hours, I'd
had about two hours' sleep, if that. But I
didn't feel tired, not exactly; I felt
strangely over-focused. My skin tingled; my
heart pounded; my brain raced; all the objects
in the room seemed unnaturally clear to me, as
if they were back-lit. I went into the living room
and sat on the soft, deep sofa with my feet
curled up under me. That was how Will found me, when
he returned fifteen minutes later. He
came into the room carrying a large bag and his
face looked preoccupied and wearily bleak--the
face he wore when alone. Then he saw me.
He didn't smile, but it was as if a shadow
moved away from him. I did that, I thought, as I
moved up to make room. He didn't say
anything, but put his arm around me and pulled me
against him. His cheek was cold from the night air.
Then he sighed and leaned forward to pull two
black trays from his bag.
"That looks beautiful, like a work of art. It's
a pity to wreck it."
"We should be drinking sake with this."
"I don't want anything more to drink."
"Here, eat this."
He fed me a chunk of raw tuna smeared with a
hot green paste and dipped into soy sauce, and
I chewed it obediently. It didn't taste of
fish or brine. It just tasted of freshness.
"Nice."
"And another."
"Mmm."
"Don't close your eyes."
"No, of course not."
"Eat this. Kit, Kit."
I tried to keep my eyes open, but it was all
too lovely for me to bear any longer--the warm
room, the deep sofa, his dressing-gown with his
smell on it wrapped around my naked 389
body, the unfamiliar food, the vague
prickle of fear somewhere in my belly, the feel
of his hand stroking my hair, the sound of his voice
in my ear, calling my name. His breath on my
cheek. I felt myself sliding into a blissful
darkness.

31

I looked at Michael Doll for a minute
before I approached him. There was a line of men
along the edge of the canal. It was a Wednesday
morning. Didn't these people have jobs to go to? A
couple of radios were tuned to different stations and
turned up loud. The fishermen's telescopic
rods were enormously long, sometimes extending
back across the towpath and forward across to the far side
of the canal. As I stood there a young cyclist
came along the path, forcing much grumbling and moving
of rods out of the way.
There were one or two clusters of fishermen,
huddled together over a cup of something warm poured from
a Thermos flask, but mainly they sat alone.
Somehow Michael Doll was even more alone,
further along the bank, away from the others. Had
they heard about him? His dog sat beside him,
motionless except for the saliva that dribbled from between
his yellow teeth. I walked toward him, stepping
over rods and between plastic boxes of hooks,
reels, maggots. Although it wasn't a cold
day, Doll was wearing a red and black checked
coat like a Canadian lumberjack and a rather
jaunty navy blue cap. He was looking
directly ahead, and as I got closer I could
hear that he was singing under his breath. Then it was as if
he had felt my gaze on his face, like a breath
of wind, and he turned. He smiled, but not with
surprise. He had an air expectancy that
chilled me. "Hello, Kit," he said. "How
are you?"
"Fine," I said, pushing my hands into my
pockets and looking around. "I've never actually
seen you fish before."
He gave a little throaty chuckle. "It's a
good life down here," he said. "Good people." He
lifted up the rod. There was nothing on the hook.
"They nibble the worms off, canny blighters."
Another chuckle. He moved the rod so that the
hook swung toward him and he caught it
deftly. He was sitting on a 391
fold-up camp stool. Down by his left boot
there was a tobacco tin full of earthworms. He
sorted among them with his fingers until he had
apparently found one with which he was satisfied.
"The others seem to be using maggots," I
said.
"Maggots is a waste of money," he said.
"You can dig up the worms round the back. Many as
you want. Besides, worms is more meaty." He
almost closed one eye and narrowed the other as he
lined up the unfortunate worm so that it could be
impaled on his hook. "You know, it's a funny
thing, people worry about foxes and baby seals but they
don't worry about fishes or worms. I mean,
like, look at this worm. People say a worm don't
feel pain but look at this worm." He pushed the
point of his hook through the worm. Some gray
liquid came out. Did worms have blood? I
thought I'd done it in biology when I was about
thirteen but I couldn't remember. "Look," he
said unnecessarily, "it's wriggling more. You'd
think for all the world that it was in pain and trying
to escape, wouldn't you? Steady now." This last was
addressed to the worm. Far from escaping, the worm
was now impaled a second time on the barbed
hook. "Who's to say that a worm don't feel
pain like you or me do?"
"So why do you do it?"
Doll swung the rod again and the worm disappeared
into the dark waters of the canal. The little float
tipped and bobbed and finally settled in an upright
position. "I don't think about it," he said.
"Yes, you do. You were just talking about it."
He frowned with concentration. "Well it goes
into my brain, if that's what you mean. But it
don't bother me. It's just a worm, isn't
it?"
"I suppose so. Do you catch many fish?"
"Sometimes I get ten. Sometimes I sit the
whole day in the rain and get nothing."
"What do you do with them?"
"I just throw them back. Except sometimes the
hook's in too deep. You pull the hook out and
it rips their mouth or pulls their guts out with it.
Then I snap their neck and give them to a cat that
lives round where my flat is. Loves them, he
does."
I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets and
tried to maintain an expression of polite
interest. I could hear Doll muttering 393
to himself, but then I listened more closely and realized
he was talking to the fish, the invisible fish down in
the oily dark water, trying to coax them onto his
hook. "There you are," he whispered. "Come on,
my beauties. Come on." He lifted the hook
out of the water. There was no fish but half of the worm
was gone. He gave a wheezing laugh. "Crafty
buggers."
"Michael, I'm really here to talk about what
happened on the canal." He murmured something
unintelligible. "Didn't you think it was strange
that you should be here when this happened?"
He looked round. "Not strange," he said.
"I'm always here. It's my patch. If he
wants to kill girls on my patch then I'm
here."
"All right," I said. "This is your patch. You
know it. Did you recognize the man? Was there
anything familiar about him?"
"Nah," said Doll. "It was all on top of
me so quick. Dark. Saw nothing."
"Are you all right, Michael? You haven't
been attacked again?"
"Nah," he said, smiling at me. "It's
all forgotten. Forgotten and forgiven."
I looked warily at his float. The worm
would have been chewed about three-quarters of the way
down by now. I didn't feel I could face the
torment of a second worm at this time of the morning.
"Try to think, Michael," I said. "If you
remember anything, anything at all, just get in
touch with me. You can get in touch with me via the
police."
"Nah, I got your number."
"All right," I said doubtfully.
"I know where you live."
"Or you can tell the police."
"Look, a fish, a bloody fish."
There it was, flashing silver dangling from
Doll's line. I left at speed before there was
any chance of watching its intestines pulled through its
mouth.