Jonathan Buckley - Invisible

When the presentation of the room has been completed and the computer plugged in, he unpacks his clothes and eats half of one of the sandwiches he made this morning. He switches the laptop on and immediately switches it off again. Still wearing his jacket, he lies on the bed. His outstretched hands do not reach the edge of the mattress, nor do his feet. The smooth fat pillow subsides slowly under his head, exhaling a fragrance of pristine linen. He flips the face of his watch: it is not yet six o’clock. He is unaccountably tired, but he should at least attempt to work. ‘ Garzoncello scherzoso ’, the phrase that pestered him intermittently all morning, appears in his mind again, pursued by the English words: playful boy; playful lad; larking lad; lively lad. He drowses in the humid air, while the words circle ceaselessly, like flies: lively boy; scamp; lively lad; boy.

Cleaning the mirrors on the balcony, Eloni wonders if the man who has just arrived is somebody important, because there was something important about the way he held his head, in the manner of someone who is used to being treated respectfully. The dark glasses made him look frightening, and it seemed from his expression that he was still annoyed that there was nobody at the desk to greet him, or perhaps David had annoyed him in some way. His slow, stiff-backed walk was like a soldier’s walk, but his hair was longer than a soldier’s would be, and the soft bulge of his belly above his belt wasn’t like a soldier, and his clothes were too messy for a soldier. His shoes were covered in dust, and his denim shirt was black with sweat around the collar. And would a soldier wear a crumpled jacket or have a big brown stain on his sleeve? He is interesting but perhaps not nice, she concludes, whisking the duster once more over the head of Prince Albert, then she hears the double peep of the butcher’s van.

The driver’s surly face, when he sees her hurrying towards him, does not change at all. Reluctantly he climbs down to open the back doors. The hinges crack when he pulls at the handles, making him scowl more sourly. Without a word he hands her the parcels of meat, piling them into her arms without once looking her in the eye. In all the time she has been here, he has spoken not a single complete sentence to her; he has never asked her name, and she does not know his. He pokes a crumpled invoice under the string of the top parcel and turns his back, which has a stripe of sweat right down it.

‘Thank you,’ she says to the stripe.

The driver pushes the doors shut with a slap of both hands. He gives one of them a shove with a shoulder to be sure, and a sound is knocked out of him by the effort: ‘Yup.’

‘Goodbye,’ she says, as the driver gives the door another bang with his shoulder. Clamping her chin on the invoice, she turns round slowly and almost walks into Mr Caldecott, who takes half the packets from her and comes with her to the kitchen.

When she has finished putting the meat into the refrigerator he looks at her directly and tells her again that he is asking about work. ‘But you understand, I can’t promise anything. It’s –’

‘I understand,’ she tells him.

‘I’ll do what I can, Eloni,’ he says. He gives her today’s thin envelope of money.

‘Yes,’ she replies, looking at her watch. She will be late if she doesn’t leave now. Over Mr Caldecott’s shoulder a long string of cobweb hangs from the underside of a rack of pans, with a blue-grey clot of web dangling at its end. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

From a chair by the window Malcolm contemplates the Randall Room, where William Randall was stabbed by his wife one afternoon. And it was in this room that Miss Lavinia Sergeant, the celebrated actress, caused a scandal by attending a song recital without a male escort, a scandal she compounded by smoking a cigarette when the concert was over. He gets up to look at the poppies at the ploughman’s feet and at the shepherdess in the oak grove behind him, whose face is the face of Lily Corbin. She never fails to cheer him up, this girl, with her look of guileless invitation, but will anyone pay any attention to her in years to come, he asks himself, if nobody knows her story?

He wanders back to his office, where the prospectus for the Beltram Highlands Development lies on his desk. An aerial photograph on the cover shows a slender valley strewn with computer-generated bunkers and greens that resemble a string of cartoon amoebas, swimming around the hotel and its lake. Inside, in the computer-generated bar of Scotland’s premier golf resort, a superb selection of single-malt whiskies is provided for the Beltram Highlands’ clientele – the decision makers, the high-flyers, the people who expect the best. Famous international designers have been consulted at every stage in the creation of Beltram Highlands. Only the finest materials and fittings have been used. ‘A perfectionist’s eye for detail characterises every aspect of the Beltram Highlands,’ he reads, and yet the bedrooms could be from any of a hundred business hotels in Frankfurt or Birmingham or Brussels, were it not for the fact that they have no numbers, bearing instead the names of the immortals: Jones, Nicklaus, Hogan, Woods. Throughout the hotel will hang paintings by internationally recognised masters of sporting art, depicting the timeless triumphs of these sporting heroes, whose exploits can be enjoyed once again in the magnificent video library that will be available to guests, either to rent or to purchase from the hotel shop, which will also stock a superb range of top-quality equipment from every leading manufacturer.

‘Give it some thought,’ Giles had urged him, handing him the envelope as if it were a confidential document that could make him millions. ‘Give it some serious thought,’ he said, but it requires no thought at all. ‘Purgatory,’ Malcolm mutters to himself, dropping the prospectus into the bin in his office. He reads – the current economic climate…the ongoing malaise of the domestic tourism sector…a restructuring of the Beltram portfolio – then pushes the letter aside to continue writing to the suppliers who have not yet been notified of the closure. Taking care to phrase each letter differently, in a couple of hours he thanks another twenty people for their services over the years. Intending to write to Mr Ryan of Powerpoint Electrics, he picks up another blank sheet of paper, but as he gazes at the letterhead’s silhouetted oak he begins to think again of his daughter. He tries to envisage her, as she was the last time he saw her. Entering the house where her mother lived, she looked back at him. As the door closed she waved, perhaps because she was told to, and she did not smile. On her purple T-shirt her name was spelled out in silver sequins. That afternoon, he now remembers, she snatched her hand away when he was leading her across Oxford Street.

‘Dear Stephanie,’ he begins, for the sixth or seventh time. ‘Your letter arrived a couple of days ago. I’m sorry I didn’t answer right away, but I had to get my thoughts in order before replying,’ he writes, then crosses the words out. ‘I was saddened to read that you think you can’t talk to your mother. I don’t know what has happened between you, but you have to discuss this with her. Of course I won’t say anything until you tell me to, but she has to know that we’re in contact now,’ he continues, and crosses this out too. Below the cancelled lines he starts another draft. ‘First things first: for years I have hoped to see you again. I do want to see you now – more than you can possibly imagine. You should have seen my face when your letter arrived. I could hardly believe it was from you. If I –’ he writes, but a knock interrupts him and Mr Ainsworth is standing in the doorway.