David Szalay - Spring

His phone let him know, in the usual way, that he had a text message. The message said— I’m home! Where are you?

‘What is it?’ Mike said.

James was staring at the screen of his phone. ‘I’ve got to go after this pint, mate.’

‘Fair enough.’

He phoned her as he walked under the heatless lights of Spitalfields Market—an empty space after dark, except for the metal frames of the stalls and their multiple pale shadows—and said he was on his way to Moorgate tube.

They met in the Old Queen’s Head. ‘I’m working later,’ she pointed out, when he asked if she wanted a drink. He himself was quite tipsy from the two pints he had had with Mike, and perhaps also from the unexpected pleasure of her presence. (He put out his hand and touched her.) Whatever the reason, he was in fine form. He told her about Fontwell Park yesterday—upmarket pastoral, no shortage of men in green tweed suits and fedoras—and about Miller. Miller was one of the green-tweed-suit wearers. He looked, James said, like an ambitious farmer on about a million quid of EU subsidies a year.

‘And what happened to your horse?’ she said.

‘She fell.’

‘She fell!’

Even later, James felt unable simply to ask Miller if the fall—and the nightmarish ten minutes that followed while the screens were swelling out on the track—was planned, was part of the trainer’s plot, or whether it was just something that happened. He found himself unable even to insinuate that it might have been planned. It just seemed too shocking—that that was the way Miller had planned to stop her. And indeed, while the screens were still up and keeping their terrible secret, and James was standing there waiting for the worst with tears in his eyes, Miller had said, ‘Wasn’t expecting that.’ Unfortunately, the way he said it, working a lighter, was not entirely persuasive. ‘Normally she jumps super,’ he said later, when the suspense was over. ‘She’s schooled super. Don’t know what happened there.’

‘No,’ James said. ‘No.’ He tried to inject some scepticism into his voice. It was the most he felt able to do.

In the Old Queen’s Head, Katherine looked at her watch—a pretty little Swiss thing—and said it was time for her to leave.

‘It’s only half eight!’ he protested.

‘I know. I have to go home, eat something, have a shower.’

‘I’ll walk you home then.’

It was a very short walk.

‘How is she now, your horse?’ she said as they walked.

‘I think she’s okay. I phoned Miller this morning. He said she was okay.’

He sat on a stool in her white kitchen, with its sash window overlooking the street, while she ate something. He seemed to have lost his pizzazz. He sat on the stool watching her spread pâté on toast. He just shook his head when she asked if he wanted some. They had sparkled in the pub. They had sparkled easily, without effort. It had seemed then that everything was okay. Now, in the kitchen, a question which it had been possible to ignore in public seemed to be pressing itself on them insistently. She was nervous and impatient with him, as if he had overstayed his welcome. He should not have lingered, he thought.

‘I should be off,’ he said.

Her mouth was full, and she just said, ‘Okay.’

He went to the hall for his jacket. ‘Okay?’ he said when he had put it on.

‘M-hm.’ She had finished eating and was hurriedly tidying up, wiping surfaces near the toaster. When he went to kiss her, she seemed to spot something that needed seeing to on the floor and, stooping, started to mop the old linoleum. He just stood there, waiting for her to finish, until she laughed, while still mopping, and said, ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready.’

Finally she threw the damp sponge into the sink and pushed a stray piece of hair out of her eyes. ‘Bye,’ she said.

Somewhat tentatively, he put his hand on the woolly swoop of her waist. She was wearing a long wool jumper. ‘Will I see you this weekend?’ he said.

‘I don’t know. If you want to.’

‘I do want to.’ To that she said nothing. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘When?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to feel. After the nightshift. Phone me.’

‘Okay.’

He pulled her towards him. She yielded to this pull, though if she was smiling it was the faintest smile he had ever seen—and then, seeming to withdraw even that, she lowered her face. He stroked one of her transparent eyebrows with the tip of his little finger. The neon tube over the sink was humming.

She visited him the next morning, straight from the nightshift. She had phoned in the small hours and said she would. For some time she had whispered into the phone while he lay there listening, half asleep. She told him she didn’t know what she wanted or what she felt. That was why she had kissed him in the kitchen last night, kissed him properly just as he was leaving, her tongue in his mouth struggling, it seemed, to obliterate its own intransigent singleness.

He heard her shoes on the metal steps outside his window. For a moment she seemed to pause in the wet area. He sat up and inspected his watch. It was twenty past eight.

‘It’s sweltering in here,’ she said, ignoring his total nudity, and heading straight for the living room.

‘Is it?’

‘Why don’t you put some clothes on? And turn the heating down.’ As she went through the hall she twisted the thermostat herself. He followed, shrugging on his dressing gown. ‘How was it?’ he said. ‘The nightshift.’

She looked very tired as she stepped out of her wet shoes. With a small sigh, she sat down on the old wooden swivel-chair. Under her weight it too emitted a small sigh. It went with the stupidly huge desk. Its back was a padded U on little wood pilasters. Its seat looked as if it had taken the shallow impression of a sitting arse.

She said there were ‘loads of hookers’ in the hotel overnight.

‘Hookers?’

‘Yes, loads of them. I mean, up-market ones. You know, escorts.’

‘There were loads of them?’

She nodded. ‘I mean, I was expecting some. ’

‘How did you know they were hookers?’

‘Young women on their own. Tottering out through the lobby in the middle of the night. Without looking at me. In dresses slashed up to the hip. Holding sparkly little handbags.’ She laughed. ‘It’s obvious. I kept thinking of their parents,’ she said. ‘I imagine their parents never know.’

‘No, probably not…’

‘Some of those girls must make loads, seriously loads.’

‘I’m sure…’

‘Supposedly they’re all saving up for something. They look quite sensible, most of them. Like the sort of people who have ISAs and things. I suppose it’s just a way of getting where they want to be in life.’

‘And the hotel doesn’t mind?’

‘There’s nothing we can do about it!’

‘Isn’t there?’

‘What can we do about it? We’d lose masses of business if we tried to stop them! Everyone would just go next door to the—’

‘Everyone?’

‘Most of our best customers.’

‘I’m not surprised…’

‘You would be,’ she said. ‘You think you know, but you don’t.’

‘I don’t think I know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know…’

‘There’s some VIP staying,’ she said. ‘Some African president, with a whole big entourage. Maybe that’s why there were so many of them last night.’

‘Which president?’

‘I’m not supposed to tell you.’

She told him.

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

He laughed. ‘What do you mean?’