David Szalay - Spring

He thought of the night they spent in that hotel in Cambridge, of how he had said, as they lay there next to each other, ‘I think I’m in love with you.’ She sighed as if she wished he hadn’t said it, and several seconds elapsed, each worse than the last. It was a moment when he wished she was more able to pretend, when he wished she was not so painfully honest, so subject to the tyranny of the truth. She said straight out that she was not in love with him, and suddenly he felt very unsure of everything. What had he meant when he said, ‘I think I’m in love with you’? He did not seem to know. Had it been somehow speculative then? Had he just been seeing how it sounded? And then, while he was still wondering what he had meant, she said, ‘This isn’t what I expected.’ This presumably being the fact that he was in love with her. Or thought he was. Or said he was. Or said he thought he was.

In the morning they went to see her alma mater; she persuaded the porter to let them into the wide quad. When they had done that, they went for a walk. Something had stirred up the weather overnight. The tall trees were swaying. They walked up into a small wood, still in the browns and greys of its winterwear, loudly inhaling the wind on its hill.

There are memories that make his heart yurr-yurr like an engine struggling to start. Their setting is uniformly wintry. A few London afternoons of wintry exiguity. Thinking of them, he wondered why they had not been enough, why they had taken him only as far as that hedged, faint-hearted statement in the old-fashioned hotel in Cambridge, with its squeaky floorboards and its tired dried flowers. Something had failed. That was how he felt. Something had failed in him. (It was quite frightening.) The engine of his heart.

He used to eye the men fishing from the towpath with scepticism when he jogged past them. He never saw them enjoy so much as a twitch on their lines. They just perched on stools, and inspected their seething maggot jars. Were there any fish in that oily water? That was what he had always wondered, as he pounded the path with sweat-fogged eyes.

He took the tube home and tried to interest himself in the televised horse racing. There was a meeting at Taunton, and the last there was quickly followed by the first at Wolverhampton. He had by then been sprawled on the sofa for several hours winning and losing pennies, and was wondering whether to nip out to the Four Vintners—a dusty cage of booze on a bald corner—for a half-litre of Jack Daniel’s or dark rum.

He was starting down the metal steps with the blue plastic off-licence bag when he noticed there was someone in the unlit area. It was not Katherine, as for a fraction of a second he wildly hoped. It was Freddy. And ominously, he seemed to have luggage with him.

‘Freddy,’ James said, unleashing Hugo and following him down the steps. ‘What’s up?’ Freddy was looking suspiciously at the inquisitive St Bernard. ‘Um,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bit of a problem.’

‘What?’

‘I need to stay for a day or two.’

James stopped on the penultimate step. ‘Why?’

‘Anselm kicked me out.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well…’ James sighed helplessly. ‘Haven’t you got anywhere else to stay?’

‘No.’

‘What about your parents’ flat?’ James knew that Freddy’s parents had a small flat in Bayswater.

‘Tenants in it.’

Freddy’s father was in the final posting of his career—Her Majesty’s ambassador to Surinam. The previous year a sympathetic superior had taken pity on him and, knowing how important it was to him—as it was to all of them—had looked around the world to see if there was a suitable ambassadorship opening up. Thus he was sent to Paramaribo for twenty months, and would sign off as an His Excellency, which was the only thing, in professional terms, that he had ever wanted. That and the K. Sir Oliver and Lady Munt.

Still standing in the freezing area, their son was now explaining to James that he couldn’t stay in a hotel because he didn’t have any money.

‘What about the money from the touch?’ James said sternly.

Freddy was disinclined to say that he had spent the money from the touch on world-renowned hotels and Michelin-starred meals and €1,000-a-night escorts in Paris. Which was what he had spent it on. And yes, it had been foolish to spend it all. He had not intended to. The fact was, there was one particular €1,000-a-night escort, an American—her work name was Lauren—and he had become… possibly slightly obsessed with her? She had had €4,000 of his money anyway. She was tall and sandy-haired, with freckles on her nose. Twentyish. After the second night he had wondered whether she would see him… He forgets how he put it exactly. Essentially he was asking for a freebie. He had made what he knew very well was the innocent’s mistake of thinking she liked him just because she seemed to when he was paying her €1,000 a night. She handled the situation with typical tact. She said she would love to, but she had a fiancé. ‘A fiancé?’ Freddy said, with mild incredulity. ‘M-hm.’ ‘Does he live in Paris?’ ‘M-hm.’ ‘Is he French?’ ‘He’s French.’ ‘Does he know what you do?’ She fudged on that. However, in her mind it seemed quite simple—if she had sex with someone else without being paid for it (even if she took less than her usual fee), she was being unfaithful to him. Though Freddy tried to shift her from this position, she was sweetly immovable. So finally he paid her another €1,000 and they went to eat. Later, in his splendid suite at the Georges Cinq, he said, ‘So you’re not being unfaithful now?’ The question was slightly unfair, in that she was unable to speak—her mouth was full—but she shook her head.

She was there when he fell asleep, never when he woke. She always managed to slip out without waking him, and he never saw her in the frailer morning light.

Of course, it had been his intention to save something, to leave himself a small emergency fund. Then on his final night in Paris he had found himself scraping together his last €1,000 and dialling her familiar number. Yes, he was possibly slightly obsessed with her. He was still thinking about her now.

He told James he had paid the money to Anselm.

‘And he still threw you out?’

‘I owed him much more than that.’

‘So he took ten grand from you, and then threw you out?’

‘Yes.’

James sighed, for about the tenth time, and shook his head.

Freddy laughed and said, ‘Look, can I at least come inside? I’m fucking freezing.’

So they went in.

It was warmish in the living-room, where the electric fire was on. ‘What have you got there?’ Freddy said, unwinding his scarf. ‘Jack Daniel’s?’ He had dumped the haversack in the hall. ‘Yes, please.’

He sat down on the sofa wiping the freezing moisture from his pate. ‘Fuck me it’s cold,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

‘Okay.’ James handed him a Jack Daniel’s and Coke.

‘Thanks very much. Mind if I smoke?’ He lit a Gauloise filterless—he did have eight hundred or so Gauloises filterless squashed into the haversack somewhere. ‘I find it very nostalgic,’ he said, ‘smoking these.’ There were then some phlegmy noises, which went on for quite a while. ‘Fuck me…’

James stood there watching him, swinging his glass slightly, making the ice tinkle. Freddy did look out of sorts—with a suspicious, unfriendly eye on Hugo, he was sucking saliva thoughtfully through his teeth, which made a quiet squeaking sound. For a minute that and the ticking of the fire, and the tinkling of the ice, and Hugo’s quiet panting, were the only sounds. The television was muted, pictures only.