David Szalay: Spring

And she sighed and said, ‘I’m tired. Let’s do something tomorrow.’

He slings the tennis ball in the twilight under the trees, slings it with all his strength, twisting his torso and whipping into the throw, trying to find the trajectory that will send Hugo furthest over the still-wintery lawns. His excitable voice as he pursues it punctures the low moan of the traffic endlessly orbiting the square. Something is not okay. He is thinking again of that strange moment on Monday afternoon at the poolside. Something happened in Marrakech, something he does not know about. When they leave the square it is evening and the signs on the hotel fronts are illuminated.

On Sunday there is this lunch at Isabel and Steve’s. ‘No Katherine?’ is the first thing Isabel says, opening the door to see her brother standing there on his own. He wishes she hadn’t mentioned her. Everything is pretty fucking far from okay.

He spent Saturday morning under the skylight in the living room, seeing what films were on, interrogating the Internet in his seldom-used spectacles. Surveying the listings he felt lost, ill-equipped to find something that she would like. He does not yet have any sort of instinct for her taste. It is not easily predictable. Miriam, for instance, only touched unimpeachably art-house films, made him sit through the plotless offerings of French and Russian men, whose names still affect him the way memories of lessons at school do—a trapped mind-numbing feeling, a surly sense of personal insufficiency, and a quiet thankfulness that he is not in the experience now. Though Katherine sometimes shows an interest in such films too—he has noticed some DVDs lying around her flat with titles like Andrei Rublev and Tokyo Story —she is more omnivorous, more promiscuous in what she enjoys. This does not make working out what she will enjoy any easier. Quite the opposite.

He had just finished making an eclectic shortlist when she phoned. Almost as soon as he started talking about what films were on and where, she interrupted him. ‘James…’

‘Yes?’

‘Um.’ She seemed stuck. She said, ‘I don’t…’ then stopped again.

‘What?’

‘You’re not going to like this,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I don’t want to see you today.’ Silence. ‘I just… I need to spend some time on my own. Is that alright?’

‘If that’s what you want,’ he heard himself say.

‘Phew,’ she said. She sounded less nervous. ‘I was worried you’d be angry.’

‘I’m not angry. I’m…’

‘Disappointed?’

‘I wanted to see you.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Why…?’ he said. ‘Why don’t you want…?’

‘I just need some time on my own,’ she said. ‘I need a weekend on my own. I need to get my head together. I haven’t stopped moving since we got back from Marrakech. I haven’t had any time to myself. I still haven’t finished unpacking… I’m sorry.’ Then she said, ‘Thanks for understanding. Thanks for making it easy for me.’

Later he wondered whether he had made it too easy for her. What should he have done though? Made a scene? Tried to force her to see him? Even if he had wanted to do that, he just didn’t seem to feel enough at the moments when it might have been a possibility. He felt only a kind of numbness, and the infantile frustration of not getting what he wanted. And then the moment had passed and she was saying, ‘What are you going to do tonight?’

‘Well… There’s this party. You know—the one I told you about.’

Yes, there was this party.

And now, on Sunday, he is hungover. There is a painful-looking sty, Isabel notices—a vivid purple, like a Beaujolais nouveau—just under the lip of his left eye.

‘No,’ he says, in answer to her question about Katherine. ‘She couldn’t make it.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Isabel says. ‘When are we going to meet her?’

‘I don’t know. Hi.’

She kisses him. ‘Hi.’

He hands her a bottle of wine wrapped in tissue paper and follows her in. She and Steve have the lower half of the house, with their own entrance at the side—97A—and what is by London standards a huge garden with (they are widely envied for this) a wooden door leading directly onto Hampstead Heath.

‘How are you?’ she says.

‘I’m fine.’

He takes off his jacket in the pale grey entrance hall next to the pair of Banksy prints in white maple frames which match the white maple floor. It sounds like there are quite a few people in the living room—more than he expected. The whole event is on a larger scale than he expected. He knows the sort of people they will be. Some lawyers from Isabel’s firm—Quarles, Lingus—and their spouses. A selection of her university friends, mostly media types now. A few friends of Steve’s perhaps, smoking in the garden in jeans and trainers. Probably that vegetarian architect who always seems to be at things like this. There will be some pregnant women. A smattering of noisy toddlers. A shocked-looking, marble-eyed baby.

Entering the living room—long and high-ceilinged, with a large sash window at each end—he wishes he had stayed at home. He feels like he has only just woken up and, in spite of the Nurofen, he has a nagging headache. He has not even surveyed the room to see who is there when he finds himself face to face with Steve.

‘Alright, mate,’ Steve says. ‘How’s things?’ Though he is smiling, Steve seems nervous. He is wearing a brown T-shirt with a technical-looking drawing of an open-reel tape player on it and holding a glass of prosecco. Without waiting for James to answer his question, he says, ‘I hear you got a new lady-friend.’

‘Yeah…’

‘That’s fantastic. How’s it going? I hear you took her to Morocco.’

‘Yeah…’

‘That must have been brilliant. I love Morocco. Do you want a drink? What do you want? Prosecco?’

‘Uh, just a glass of water actually…’

‘Sure.’

James follows him through the talking people towards a table on the other side of the room. Halfway there, he squeezes past the vegetarian architect, whose name he has forgotten, and who is earnestly listening while a middle-aged woman lectures him about something. ‘Oh alright, mate,’ the architect says, with a sudden smile.

‘Alright, mate,’ James says, also momentarily smiling.

Steve is pouring him a glass of Perrier. When he has poured it he looks up and hands it to him. James thanks him. Steve smiles. He is a head shorter than James and wears glasses with heavy oblong frames. ‘So,’ he says. ‘You took the lucky lady to Morocco.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Where… where was that exactly?’

James is about to tell him when Steve, whose eyes immediately wandered, sees his four-year-old son, Omar, looking lost in the forest of legs. ‘Sorry mate, just a sec,’ he says, and leaves James standing there while he sweeps Omar up and takes him out of the room.

While he waits, James turns to the sash window overlooking the street and has a sip of prickling Perrier. It is a quiet, tree-lined street, on a steep slope—and he sees, walking up the slope, looking slightly lost, just as Omar had a few moments earlier, a smartly dressed man, probably in his seventies. At the sight of this man, James wishes, even more than before, that he had stayed at home. The man is obviously looking for a specific house. Finding number ninety-seven, he first walks up the steps at the front. The door there, however, is only for the two flats on the upper floors, and after peering puzzledly at the nameplates for a few moments, he looks around—as if hoping to see someone who will be able to help him—and then returns to the pavement. He looks up at the house. Then he notices the sign saying 97A, and pointing to the path at the side.