Russell Hoban - Linger Awhile

PS Locke told the custody sergeant why we’d been arrested, we were booked in, searched, and the contents of our pockets put in evidence bags. Our shoelaces and belts were also taken from us. Grace and I both told the custody sergeant that we couldn’t tell them anything they’d believe and that was duly noted. Our rights and entitlements were read to us and I used my phone call to ring up Artie. ‘Uncle Irv!’ he said, ‘Are you OK?’

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I just wanted you to know where we are.’ Grace didn’t phone anyone. We were questioned about our health and although my chest was feeling pretty dodgy I didn’t ask to be seen by a doctor; I refused to give them the satisfaction.

After being fingerprinted and photographed we were taken to adjoining cells. Mine had a stale smell as if the air hadn’t been changed for a long time. The door was a solid metal thing with a pass-through slot called a wicket. Next to it was a spyhole. The walls were tiled, the bed was a bench with a thin blue-covered mattress, blue blankets and pillow, and there was a toilet. We were given a cup of tea and something out of a microwave. It tasted brown but I don’t know what it was. When I lay down on the bed I saw, high above me, a printed message on the ceiling:

CRIMESTOPPERS 0800 555 111

Anonymous information about

crime could earn a cash reward

‘Look, Ma,’ I said. ‘Top of the world.’

I tapped on the wall but got no response so I guessed it was too thick. I went to the door, put my mouth close to the wicket, and said, ‘Grace?’ No answer.

‘Grace,’ I shouted, ‘can you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ she shouted back, ‘I can hear you.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘one thing leads to another, doesn’t it. You start reconstituting dead movie stars and this is where you end up.’

‘I still can’t believe that I caused Istvan’s death,’ she said. ‘That’ll always be with me, it’ll never go away.’

‘Everything goes away after a while,’ I said. ‘This whole thing started with me. Don’t ask me to explain how I got fixated on Justine Trimble because I can’t. It must have been some kind of senile dementia.’

‘Three more or less intelligent men,’ said Grace, ‘all with the hots for a woman who died forty-seven years ago.’

‘Weird shit happens,’ I said.

‘You think you’re over that by now?’

‘I’ve told you, Grace, that particular folly’s behind me.’

‘Not beside you? Not in side you?’

‘Nope. All gone.’

‘I’m pretty tired,’ said Grace.

‘I think I’ll try to get some sleep.’

‘Me too. Goodnight, Grace.’

‘Night, Irv. See you later.’

I kept my clothes on and covered myself with both blankets but I still couldn’t get warm. I thought of old King David, how he gat no heat even when they put Abishag the Shunammite in his bed. Grace would have made me warm. Eventually I fell asleep but I kept dreaming and half waking and falling back into the same dream.

In this dream I was Captain Bligh at the tiller of the Bounty ’s launch, watching the ship sail away with the mutineers as they threw video cassettes overboard. No, not the Bounty : the name I read on the stern was Body . ‘Wait a minute,’ I said in the dream, ‘I’m not Captain Bligh. What’s this mutiny all about? The crew were always perfectly willing to take my orders. Where am I supposed to go with this boat?’

‘They’ve given you a sextant and a compass,’ said Fallok, ‘and there’s no better navigator than you, Captain.’ How can I suspend my disbelief? I thought. He has such confidence in me as HMS Body sails away and leaves me in command of this overloaded vessel that must face seas too big for it. Smaller and smaller in the distance grows the ship that is no longer mine. And down, down, down goes Justine in the fathomless deep, flickering on the screen of the ocean mind, riding, riding, riding to the blackness and the stillness below the flickering.

I came all the way awake and went to where I’d stood to talk to Grace. ‘Irv?’ she shouted.

‘I’m here,’ I shouted back.

‘I woke up,’ she said.

‘Yes, Grace?’

‘I’m an alone kind of person, really …’ she said.

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘I was wondering …’ she said.

‘Wondering what?’

‘Nothing, really.’

‘Tell me, Grace, go on.’

‘You tell me what you think I was wondering, OK?’

‘OK. You were wondering about me?’

‘Yes. Don’t stop.’

‘Wondering how I feel about you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Grace, when I think about you and me I remind myself that I’m eighty-three years old and I haven’t got a whole lot of future in front of me.’

‘Maybe whatever there is is enough, Irv, if …’

‘If there’s love?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you waiting for me to say something?’

‘I think so.’

‘Fnerg,’ said Inner Irv.

‘I didn’t catch that,’ said Grace.

‘Come on, Grace — I’m too old for this kind of thing.’

‘The question you have to ask yourself,’ she said, ‘is, “Do I feel dead?”’

‘Well, no.’

‘Prove it.’

‘Grace,’ I shouted, ‘I love you, OK?’

‘I love you too, Irv. Well, goodnight then.’

‘Goodnight, Grace.’ We both (she told me later) kissed the air in front of us and went back to sleep.

2 February 2004. I knew I’d have to start catching up with my business and I thought I might as well begin on this quiet Monday. I made myself a sandwich lunch, then on my way out I went into the restaurant where Justine was eating latkes Liu Hai.

‘Enjoying your lunch?’ I said.

For a moment she seemed not to recognise me. ‘Sure,’ she said.‘I’m home on the Jewish-Chinese range.’

‘I’m off to my place to see what needs doing,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘See you,’ she said.

As I was leaving I saw Charles, the black man who works at the restaurant. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there’ve been a lot of dead rats lately.’

‘Why tell me about it?’ I said.

‘Just sharing the local news,’ he said. ‘They’ve all had their heads bitten off. And no blood in them.’

‘Thanks for sharing,’ I said. ‘Mind how you go.’

‘You too,’ he said.

It’s a long slow trip from Golders Green back to town. Some of the people on the train seemed to be staring at me and I tried not to notice but found myself wondering if I’d become someone to be stared at; I knew that I was no longer the Chauncey I used to be before I took up with Justine. My disgust had become depression and my thoughts were dreary. Some things that can be done are better left undone, and Justine was one of them.

I got off at Tottenham Court Road and walked to D’Arblay Street. There were not many people about in that part of Soho and the streets were full of emptiness. When I got to Chauncey Lim, Photographic Novelties, the place seemed small and from another time, as if I’d come back to the house of my childhood. There were a couple of notes stuck to the door and inside there were some letters on the floor. From Everything for the Office in Bangkok there was an invoice for a gross of Whoopee Spinners, and from Educational Products in Akron, Ohio, a cheque for a gross of After-School Pencil Peepshows. The others were from people who wanted to know what had happened to their orders. The place smelled stale, my photographic novelties were rubbish, and the acupuncture chart and Aunt Zophrania’s calendar on the wall looked stupid.

I wrote a cheque for Everything for the Office, locked up, posted the cheque to Bangkok, and went on to Berwick Street and All That Glisters. Grace was alone, drinking vodka and looking terrible. ‘What’s the matter?’ I said.