David Szalay - Spring

‘What the fuck are you going to do?’ James said, not unsympathetically.

Freddy had enormous faith in his own powers of sorting something out. He had been able to sort something out in the most unlikely situations in the past. His present situation had seemed pretty tricky, however—it had seemed frankly intractable—until, waiting for a Piccadilly-line train at South Kensington, he had thought of something.

‘Looking forward to Sunday?’ he said.

James shrugged. ‘I s’pose.’

Sunday was Plumpton, and Absent Oelemberg’s next outing. (Her final outing under their ownership—they needed to sell her just to pay Miller what they owed him in training fees.) Ten days ago she had won at Towcester under a penalty. The plan had been to turn her out quickly under a double, but she had emerged sore from the Towcester win, so Miller had let her have a fortnight off. On Sunday she would run from her new mark, which was eighteen pounds higher than her old one. Miller said he still thought she would win.

‘Planning to lump on?’ Freddy said, matter-of-factly.

‘I don’t know,’ James said. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

‘Mm.’ Freddy nodded.

‘Shame you missed her last time.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where were you?’ Freddy had never properly explained why he couldn’t make it to Towcester that day. (He was in Paris.) He just waved a hand in the air and said, ‘I had some things to do. I was wondering,’ he went on. Then he stopped.

‘What?’

‘If you could lend me some money.’

When they spoke, some seconds later, it was simultaneously. James said, ‘How much?’ And Freddy said, ‘I mean, to bet with.’

‘To bet with?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much?’

‘Five thousand?’

James laughed. ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘Why do you say that?’ Freddy said, impressively straight-faced.

‘I’m not going to lend you five thousand pounds to bet with. ’

‘Why not? I’ll be able to pay you back on Sunday…’

‘You will if she wins. What if she loses? Then what? Then I’ll never see the money again, will I? Why would I do that? Don’t be a fucking idiot, Freddy.’

Freddy looked away. He was sucking his teeth again—it was a habit he had had since school.

* * *

Later he finally spoke to Katherine. She finally answered her phone. He was standing in the living room, in the Gauloise smoke, slightly drunk. Freddy was out procuring more Jack Daniel’s.

‘Hello,’ he said, surprised. He had lost count of how many times he had phoned her since Sunday—he had stopped even hoping that she would answer. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m okay.’ She didn’t sound okay. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

They talked for while. This and that. He did most of the talking. Then he said, in an offhand way, ‘What were you doing last weekend?’

‘I saw Fraser.’

‘Did you?’ There was a silence which started to stretch out. ‘And?’

‘And it’s over,’ she said simply. ‘The love is dead.’

His instinct, since she was obviously in some sense in mourning, was to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ That seemed just too dishonest, though. He was not sorry. He was not sorry at all. The way she put it was so wonderfully absolute. It was dead. Her love for Fraser King was dead. He tried to keep his voice sombre when he said, ‘Well… how are you feeling?’

‘Very sad.’

‘Mm,’ he murmured as sympathetically as he could. ‘What did…? Where did you…?’

‘We went to Scotland.’

‘Oh. Well…’ And then finding himself with nothing else to say, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

She said nothing, so he went on. ‘And what have you been doing? For the last few days. I’ve been trying to call you…’ He was irritated to hear the querulous note in his own voice.

‘I know you have. I’m sorry.’

‘So what have you been doing?’ he said.

She said she had been shopping with her mother—furnishing the house in West Kensington.

‘And what are you doing for the rest of the week? At the weekend?’

‘I don’t know.’

He heard Freddy unlocking the front door. ‘Will I see you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, as if it was something she simply didn’t know.

‘Well,’ he said slightly exasperatedly. ‘Do you want to see me?’

She sighed. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

‘Do I want to see you?’ she said, as if putting the question to herself out loud would help. ‘I just don’t know. Maybe. Maybe if you think of something fun to do…’

Freddy was there, taking off his overcoat. James waved him away.

‘Do you want to come to Plumpton on Sunday?’

‘No,’ she said without hesitation.

‘That isn’t fun?’

She laughed—a weak laugh, like someone ill. ‘No.’

If he had not managed to feel very sorry when he heard of her sad weekend, he did feel something like joy when he heard her laugh. ‘No,’ he said, smiling. ‘Okay. I’ll try and think of something fun to do. I’ll be in touch. Okay?’

‘Who was that?’ Freddy said, unwinding his long schoolboy’s scarf.

‘Um.’ James seemed to be somewhere else. ‘It was Katherine.’

Simon were well aware that he were sweating. He wishes it weren’t so hot in the hall. Staring out at the local membership with an impassive expression on his face, percolating in his tweed three-piece, he slides a hand through his hair. He had it done specially this morning, at the place in Trumpington. While he outstared himself from under the smock, the lass laboured over it for an hour with all the tools of her trade, and now it is a magnificently perfect peruke in silvered sable. The upper part looks like silky racoon fur. It is short at the sides—with flashes of wisdom at the temples, like the president in an American film—and neatly squared off on the pink neck. He knits his fingers in his humid tweed lap and tilts his head thoughtfully. They are on a makeshift stage, himself and the other VIPs, sitting in a line under the important lights, facing the party faithful. Politics.

On his feet at the podium, Nigel has been speaking for some time. Simon long ago lost the thread of what he was saying. From the stuff they send him in the post, he is familiar with Nigel’s positions on more or less everything. On Europe anyway. They are the same as his own positions. That was the point. (Mechanically, he joins in an episode of applause, without having heard the line that set it off.) What’s more, he is nervous about his own speech. He is up next.

For a long time, from his oblique angle of view slightly behind and to the left of him, he had kept his eyes loyally fixed on Nigel. He had noticed, staring at him for minutes on end from only a few yards away, how his dark hair, dense as fungus, tapered into two prongs on his thin neck. He had noticed the organic debris on the shoulders of his suit. The long fleshiness of his inelegant ears. He had noticed the way he kept flexing and straightening his left leg. After a while, however, it was a strain keeping his neckless head turned to two o’clock like that and, hoping that no one would notice and overinterpret the movement, he had let it find a more natural position facing the audience. They’re an elderly lot. (‘Half of this lot’ll be dead at the next election,’ he had whispered out of the side of his mouth to Mossy as the VIPs made their way through the hall and onto the platform, to pleasing applause. Mossy laughed at the impiety. ‘The ones that aren’t will definitely vote, though.’ When Mossy said ‘vote’ it sounded like ‘volt’.) What Simon would have liked to see is a few more people of his own vintage—serious men in their prime, mature and experienced, and deeply worried about the future of their nation. They all seem to be up on the platform, while what he sees in front of him puts him in mind of an old folks’ home. They are not of the present, these blue-veined people. They very obviously have nothing to offer the future. And the future is what is at stake here—the future of this island as an independent nation, and what the fock was more important than that?