David Szalay - Spring

It was at this point, pulling on the spunk-stiff shorts, that he remembered the wash he had put on yesterday morning, and that it was still sitting wet in the machine.

The music of the rain was less lovely now that he was no longer in bed. It seemed to lay siege to the flat’s ill-lit interiors. Hugo greeted him in the hall, in the grey light that leaked through the small pane of glass over the front door. His white tail waved like a shredded flag. When he yawned the sound was like something moving on unoiled hinges. James patted his head, and scratched his ears, and in the windowless vault of the kitchenette put on the kettle. While it was heating up he opened a kilogram tin of offal and fish-meal and forked the pinkish paste into the St Bernard-sized feed-bowl. He washed the fork while Hugo set to without finesse.

‘Do you want something to eat?’ he said to her.

She shook her head.

He told her about the stuff in the washing machine. ‘I think I’ll have to wash it again.’

She didn’t seem terribly interested.

‘I might as well do that now.’

The old washing machine was in the kitchen, the hard plastic hook of the outflow pipe still secured on the edge of the sink. When he had started it, he went back to the bedroom. She was moving about, picking up her things from the floor, putting them on. ‘Are you leaving?’ he said.

‘M-hm.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Why don’t you stay?’ he said. ‘For a while.’

‘I want to have a bath,’ she said. His tiny bathroom had only the mouldy shower stall.

‘Stay for a while. It’s pissing down out there.’

‘I know,’ she said, sorting her tights out. ‘Have you got an umbrella?’

For a few seconds he said nothing.

‘Have you got one?’ she said, looking up.

‘Yes.’

‘Is it okay if I borrow it?’

‘Of course.’

He fetched it from the living room, where the rain was thrumming noisily on the skylight.

‘Why don’t you stay?’ he said, even though she was now dressed and looking for her shoes.

‘I want to go home. I want a bath.’

They were standing in the hall. He switched on the overhead light and she put her shoes on. ‘Is everything okay?’

Without hesitation, she shook her head and said, ‘No.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. When he hugged her she just stood there. He handed her the umbrella. Then he opened the front door and she stepped out into the puddled area.

‘I’ll phone you later,’ he said, as she shoved the umbrella open.

‘Okay.’

‘See you.’

Without turning as she started up the metal steps, she kissed her fingers and waggled them in the air.

*

In the early evening he took the Number 19 to Highbury and Islington. From his seat at the front of the top deck as it plied its way through the wet twilight, he tried Freddy again. He needed to pass on what Miller had said. Miller had said, first of all, that the mare had been assigned a mark of eighty by the handicapper, which he thought was a touch on the high side. ‘Shouldn’t stop her, though,’ he said. (And James was worried by that shouldn’t — he would very much have preferred won’t. He was planning to wager every penny he had left on her, and was attached to the fantasy that it was impossible that she would lose.) And then Miller said, ‘Listen, I don’t think you should be at Huntingdon tomorrow. Not your mate either.’

‘Oh?’ James said. ‘Why not?’

‘Looks like you weren’t expecting it to win that way.’

‘I see,’ James said. He wanted to be there when she won, however, so he said, ‘Is that necessary?’

There was a stubborn silence.

Then Miller said, ‘I think it is.’

‘You’re sure?’ James said.

‘I’m sure. So give Huntingdon a miss tomorrow. Okay?’

James needed to pass this on to Freddy. He also wanted to emphasise to him, not for the first time, the importance of putting the money on properly—meaning in small quantities throughout the London area. Not all in one place. And not on the Internet, that was very important. Freddy said he understood. When he had finished speaking to him, James pocketed his phone and stared at the blue perspective of Theobald’s Road.

He was on his way to a dinner party in Highbury Fields. It was in a small first-floor flat that had been done up like a large house, so that it felt like a doll’s house, a very expensive one, obsessive in its attention to detail. The hostess—an ex of his from long ago—was trying to live, and entertain, like her parents. Thus the ten diners were squeezed into the little living room, in which there was also—somehow—a table set for ten. When they sat down to eat, it was extremely hot. Faces shone with sweat in the candlelight, and people kept apologising for elbowing each other. Shoehorned in next to a man who used to be in the army and was now in insurance, and a woman whose face was vaguely familiar from somewhere, he was not properly engaged with the situation. He talked a lot without any interest in what he was saying or in what was being said to him. While the main course was being served, he manoeuvred his way out of his place and withdrew to the minuscule loo. On his own, it struck him that he was quite drunk. He made some excuse and left straight after dessert, and it was like a liberation to walk out into the fresh night air and unurban quiet of Highbury Fields. The old street lamps made pools of pale light in the wide darkness. And now that the day was done, now that all the last preparations for the ‘touch’ were in place, his mind was empty except for one insistent thing—

Is everything okay?

No.

Everything is not okay. Standing in Highbury Fields—he has stopped walking and is just standing there, listening unsoberly to the wind in the trees—he feels a terrible need for things to be okay. From where he is, he would be able to walk to her flat in twenty minutes. Less.

‘I’m in Highbury,’ he says. ‘I’ve just been to a dinner party. Is it okay if I come over?’

‘Of course,’ she says.

And now he is walking quickly towards Essex Road. The way she said Of course —that on its own has helped immensely. He is practically jogging towards Essex Road now, through the Islington streets and squares he used to know so well.

He finds her watching television with Summer. They watch television for an hour. Later, when they are in bed, he starts to talk about last night. She says, ‘I was upset because you didn’t say anything. That’s why I was upset.’

He says, ‘I didn’t say anything because I felt so bad.’

‘Well…’ She seems exasperated. ‘ Say something! Maybe if you said something you wouldn’t feel so bad.’ He just stares at her. She touches his face. ‘I don’t care about what happened. I don’t care about that! If you don’t talk to me, though, if you don’t say anything, if you just go to sleep… How do you think that makes me feel?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘You’ve been feeling bad about it all day, haven’t you?’ He nods and she strokes his hair. ‘I’m sorry I was mean with you this morning. That wasn’t very nice of me.’

‘It’s okay. We had such a lovely time on Friday,’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘Why was that so lovely and yesterday such a fucking disaster?’

She laughs. ‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘I don’t know either.’

‘You see, I didn’t even know that you thought that!’

‘Thought what?’

‘That yesterday was a fucking disaster.’

‘Of course it was.’

She shoves him playfully. ‘Well, how do I know you think that if you don’t say anything? I thought you thought everything was okay.’