The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (22 page)

She quietly withdrew her auction catalogue from her handbag.

The catalogue was her comfort. It was one inch thick. It cost $50 through the mail. Its glossy coloured pages had a slightly soapy smell which always produced in her a feeling of rather dreamy well-being.

She took out her pen. The pen joined her to the catalogue like a needle to a thread. She brought it back and forth across the pages, pausing here and there, at the seventeenth-century dragoon in the uniform of captain, which she estimated at $350, at the complete eighteenth-century regiment, all in the uniform of the Royal Scots Guards, which might reach anywhere up to $5000. These last pieces were crude and eccentric in design and, although they had ‘Made in England’ on their bases, they had probably been produced by French convicts in Chemin Rouge in the second century (EC).

It was now six days until the auction. She turned the glossy pages slowly, breathing the smell, thinking of a park with peacocks. She let her lashes down, got herself to the point where she could smell mown grass, hear water falling in a fountain. Then his voice slammed against her eardrum.

‘What’s the book?’

He was
dressed
– shirt, trousers – had been naked in the room beside her, was pulling on his socks. He had been
watching
her.

She turned to him, her hand to her breast.

‘Don’t you be so
tense
,’ he said. ‘No one’s going to hurt you.’

She was wearing a T-shirt but she felt exposed, as if he could see, not her body, but what she had been imagining.

He smiled at her.

She tried to smile back but could not.

‘You were a million miles away,’ he said.

He held out his freckled hand and at first she thought he wanted to touch her, and then she saw that he expected her to show him what she had hitherto kept hidden from him – the catalogue. He had no idea what an intimate thing that was. She was embarrassed – she held the catalogue up, just enough so he could read the cover, but then he sort of
tugged
it from her and sat back down on his mattress and leafed through it.

‘This is worth three-fifty?’ he said, holding up the plate depicting the dragoon.

She just wanted to ask him: please give it back.

He kept turning the pages of the catalogue, not like the poor man he was, but like a rich man, someone with an education – gently, respectfully, sliding his big hands between the shiny surfaces. But whatever he really thought of it he did not say.

When he gave the catalogue back, she slipped it into her handbag and changed the subject to something less tender. ‘What you doing today?’

‘I don’t know. What are you doing?’

‘Sleep. Read. Same as yesterday. There’s not much I can do until you get your money.’

‘It’s just the sort of account,’ he said. ‘I told you that.’

‘I know.’

‘If I gave it to you now, I’d lose my interest.’

I know all that. So what are you doing?’

‘Well, first I’m going to clear the stuff out of the tower,’ he said, sitting down on his mattress and resting his long wrists on top of his knees. ‘And then I’m going to figure out how to build a pigeon loft. No,’ he said, although she had not done anything except fold her arms, ‘no, just imagine it from Tristan’s point of view,’ he said. ‘It’s like a schoolroom. He can learn about biology, genetics, mathematics.’

He was repeating bullshit things she had told him when she was selling him the birds. She felt herself blushing.

‘I know you don’t like the pigeons,’ he said. ‘No, that’s fine, but you just imagine, how a rikiki like Tristan … There’s all sorts of stuff he’ll learn … magnetism.’

‘Magnetism?’ She wondered if he was teasing her.

‘It’s how they navigate. You must know that.’ Was he sending her up? ‘Woman like you, surely you know that? That would be an advantage to owning pigeons.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

He smiled, but not much more than a creasing of the eyes.

‘Well, your big bazooley is tin soldiers,’ he said. ‘It’s more artistic than pigeons.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Nothing to thank.’

Tomorrow is my pigeon day,’ she said. ‘I’m going to help you set up the automatic watering.’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘A promise is a promise,’ Roxanna said, pulling her skirt on underneath the blankets. ‘Ask anyone who knows me. I always keep my word. That’s one thing about me you couldn’t have known.’

‘Oh, I knew it.’

‘Well, tomorrow I’ll set you up. Soon as I’m finished, you’re going to the bank and I’m going to buy a little suit for Rox.’ She threw back the covers and dusted down her skirt. ‘Next week I’ve got serious business to attend to. But today,’ she stretched and yawned, ‘I’m still on holiday. I’m sleeping in.’

Yet as it turned out she helped him clear out the tower, not because he asked her to, but because she had already slept two days and could not sleep any more. There were still six days to go, time to fill without spending her money.

At first she enjoyed the work. All she did was lump wine cartons full of Madam’s personal effects down one floor to the next. They did it together. They carried the cartons down the steps and then stacked them in the corridor. At first it was companionable. But as the morning went on, something soured inside her, not toward Wally, whom she had, against her better judgement, begun to like, but –
here she was again, a servant to some frigging pigeons.

He was a decent man, she did not doubt it, but decent was not what she was looking for. She began to go up the stairs too quickly, her mouth open, the little bracelet jingling on her ankle.

She was doing what she always did – she was attaching to this dump because she feared that if she didn’t she would end up somewhere even worse. She had been inside for three whole days. She was attaching to it, to him, one more poor bozo, because he was here. She could feel herself doing it. She became angry with the building, with the birds. She had that feeling again: like bubbles in her blood.

She felt the flames flicking around, tickling the edges of her vision, and God knows where this feeling – itchy, irritating, more-ish – would have led her had she not, in stooping to pick up the twenty-first box, caught her fingernail and torn it to the quick. The pain was like iced water. It snapped her out.

That’s it,’ she said. ‘That is
it.’

‘What’s it?’ he said.

Once again: she had not even known that he was in the room. ‘I don’t have to stay here,’ she said.

‘No one’s asking you to.’

All his hidden hurt was suddenly as clear as freckles. She laid her hand on the back of his wrist, the only apology she could make.

‘You could stop right now.’

‘I think I will.’

‘You could take a break.’

‘Yes.’

‘You could just do me one favour.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘I need to go out for an hour,’ he said, ‘and … I’m expecting a delivery.’

‘I got to be honest – I’m getting tired of being cooped up, you know?’

‘It’ll be fifty minutes, maybe less.’

‘I got to be honest – I just can’t baby-sit your pigeons.’

‘The pigeons will be with me, sweets. I want to show them to a mo-ami.’

‘You’ll be back in fifty minutes?’

‘I’ll be back by four o’clock. I promise. You could sit outside, on the steps.’

She looked at his face, the pale lips, the hurt grey eyes. ‘You’ll be back in fifty minutes?’

‘In an hour, easy.’

She did what he said: sat out on the front steps, in the air. It was not so creepy out there. She bought a sandwich at the Levantine shop across the street. She watched some black ants crawling across concrete.

At half past four there had been no delivery and he was still not back. She was going to take a walk, but then the evening thunderstorm arrived and she retreated inside and sat on the unmade bed and waited for him. There were books there but she did not look at them. There was a radio too, but she was apprehensive about being alone inside the big old building and didn’t want anything to interfere with her hearing. She sat cross-legged on her mattress listening for noises. She did her nails, and when they were done
she let her hands sit limply on her knees, waiting.

At six o’clock it was pitch dark outside. The bastard was still not back. The rain had stopped and she would have gone out, except now she was scared to walk down the damn corridor alone.

But finally she was more mad than scared. She took her shoes off and crept down the dark stairs to the foyer.

She opened the velvet curtain which shielded the foyer from the theatre and there she found Wally standing on a high ladder, fixing a blue gel on to one of the lights.

‘Want to know what I’m doing?’ he called down.

She could have had great satisfaction in pushing his ladder over. Once upon a time she would have done it, and he would have found out, faster than a blink, what he had not noticed about her in the two days until now. But she sat down instead and he could not guess, grinning down at her from the top of his ladder, his great good luck.

‘Guess,’ he called. ‘Three guesses.’

She shrugged. There was a six-pack at the base of the ladder. She leaned forward and ripped one off.

‘Setting up a show,’ he said.

‘That’s nice,’ she said. The beer was warm.

Six nights from now, all this would seem like a bad dream. She would be in an auction room with all her funds invested in a nice dress and some shoes.

‘Will you come into the ring a moment, sweets?’

‘Why?’

‘Please. Just be careful of the wires. I’ve got the mixing console up there.’

She shrugged, and stood up and stepped on to the damp sawdust in her bare feet.

‘A smidgin to your right, careful of the wires, now a little further forward. Great.’

He shone the light right in her face. She held her hand over her eyes.

‘Now what?’ she asked.

‘Now go back and sit in your seat. Just watch out for the wires.’

When she was out of the ring, the lights still dancing in her eyes, he sat beside her. Smelled of toothpaste again.

‘Here.’

She took the package.

‘Choccies for the show.’

And then he was over at the wall, flicking the house lights off.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said. She was scared now. She could see his bare knees shining in the gloom over by the curtain.

‘It’s a show, Roxanna.’

‘Well, come and sit by me.’

‘I’m in it,’ Wally said. ‘It’s me.’

And then the theatre plunged to black.

He had taken off his shirt and put on a white T-shirt, a pair of khaki bloomer shorts, a red pre-tied bow tie. He had knobbly knees showing at the level of his shorts. He had a wooden box which he had painted in brilliant green and sparkling silver stars. At first, as he put his foot delicately on the mixing panel and faded up the lights, she thought it was, like, magic. She was charmed, well maybe not exactly charmed, but touched by what she saw as nerdy but good-hearted. She started to unwrap the chocolates, smiling in the darkness.

But then, before she had the first chocolate in her mouth, he put his liver-spotted hand in the sparkling box and pulled something out. She saw what it was, but her brain would not let her believe it. Her brain did not want to be the bearer of bad tidings. It gave excuses, alibis. Her brain told her the thing in his hand was a glove, or a puppet.

Then she finally realized what it was.
God damn, God damn his fucking freckled eyes.

It was not a glove – it was a pigeon. HE WAS TRYING TO CHARM HER WITH THE FUCKING PIGEONS.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Oh no no no.’

She spat the chocolate into her cupped hand and dropped it underneath the seat.

He did not know what he was fucking with. He left her locked up in a room. He shoved pigeons in her face. He did not know her
history.
He could not see her for what she was: a bonfire in a starbuck.

‘Oh no,’ she said, but he was oblivious. He picked up the bird
and whispered to it, kissed it, for Jesus Christ’s sake, on its bony beak. He looked it in its one mad eye, eye to eye.

It was like something in a crappy cambruce circus. Something the Voorstand Sirkus had long ago driven out of business.

Then he started to fold the bird up in his hand. She could not believe what he was doing. He folded it in half, like origami. He was killing it, for her, on stage. He was
not
killing it, but he
was
folding it. She watched the way he did it – how he held it up and, with his other finger, pointed out into the air above her head.

He threw the pigeon towards her. It was like a yo-yo on a string, except no string. It flew out, up, it rose, tumbled, spread its wings to show bright red undersides. Good Christ almighty, it was like a dream. The bird returned into his hand. He held it, and took out another. He folded it like the other, and did the same. This one looped, arced, tumbled, fell, revealing blue under the wings.

And then he bowed.

She sat with her mouth open.

‘No applause?’ he said. He stepped forward and, with his toe, brought the house lights up.

She really could not speak to him. She could not believe the stupidity of men.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘say something.’

She shrugged. ‘They’re your pigeons,’ she said with great restraint. ‘They’re none of my business.’

‘No, no.’ He held his hand up. ‘These are not the pigeons.’

These are not the
pigeons?’
She felt her voice rising.

He stepped out of the ring. ‘Not your pigeons. I got rid of your pigeons. I traded. These are tumbling pigeons,’ Wally said.

‘You don’t know who I am,’ Roxanna said.

‘I think you’re a businesswoman. You can say I don’t know you, but I see it in you. You think about money. You’re smart about it, so you’ll see what we have here. It’s the beginning of a bird show, like the one you saw with the toucan. A real old-time petite tente. We’ll get another toucan.’

‘Stop. Stop right there.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t stop. I know who you are.’

‘You don’t know who I am.’