Russell Hoban - Angelica's Grotto

‘You fell asleep after killing a man?’

‘Well, I passed out, actually. Listen, can I get back to you on this? I’m really knackered and I’ve just had a hypo and I’ve got an awful headache. What I need right now is a little lie-down, so if you’ll excuse me …

‘Oh shit,’ said Klein, ‘this is really boring.’ Melissa was still snoring. He watched her for a while until Hannelore entered his mind and looked at him sadly. ‘Where have you been all this time?’ he said. ‘Look at what’s happened to me. Did it have to be like this? I know I wasn’t as good a husband as you were a wife and I know you wanted children but you oughtn’t to have killed yourself. Surely the life we had was better than being dead.’ He thought of their early years when he was middle-aged and she was young, how they had kissed shamelessly in public and held hands when they walked. He saw her face by candlelight in Le Bistingo in the King’s Road. He looked at her coming towards him, he looked at her walking away. ‘If you were still with me all this would never have happened,’ he said; ‘you would have rescued me from the rock of my aloneness and the monster of my impotent lust.’

Steady on, said Oannes. Be a man, for Christ’s sake, and stop embarrassing me.

You’re embarrassed! I’m kind of tired right now, Oannes, and I need to be alone for a while, OK?

Do what thou wilt, old chum. Catch you later.

The room was full of winter rainlight. Across the common the District Line trains rumbled eastward to Tower Hill, Upminster, and Barking; westward to Wimbledon. Klein’s headache wasn’t too bad; it was as if all the nuts and bolts in his head had been tightened a little so that he was able to think more clearly. With this new clarity he picked up the kitchen knife from the floor and took it back to the kitchen. He discarded the gloves, put on his outdoor-man waterproof jacket and his bush-ranger hat, and went out into the rain. The trees on the common were black and bare. The sky was dark but he heard the whisper of the light behind the darkness.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘people grow old and die but every morning is a whole new thing, every morning never happened before.’ He walked down Moore Park Road to Harwood Road, up Harwood Road to Fulham Broadway, where he turned left into the Fulham Road. Footsteps and umbrellas hurried past him. ‘I’d really like to excuse myself from the sexual scene,’ he said. ‘Maybe if I bring a note from my mother.’ He thought he heard laughter. ‘Yes, the whole thing’s pretty funny, really.’ He was silent as he passed the Blue Elephant restaurant and Oza Chemist, contemplating the lights reflected in the shining street and listening to the hissing of tyres.

‘Things are always much simpler than they appear at first,’ he said. ‘You do something and that’s what you’ve done. If it’s a police matter you tell the police about it.’ He was standing at the pedestrian crossing waiting for the green man when he saw a woman waiting at the central divider. She was wearing a yellow mac and a short skirt.

‘Great legs,’ he said. She turned and it was Hannelore. ‘Hannelore!’ he shouted. ‘Wait!’ The little man on the pedestrian light was not yet green but Klein saw a clear space in the traffic and started across the road just in time to catch the full impact of the 14 bus that loomed above him, its redness heightened by the rain.

Fuck with me, will you, said the bus.

‘He stepped right in front of me,’ said the driver to the crowd that gathered around the body. ‘I’d no time to stop.’

‘I saw it,’ said a man. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘What could he have been thinking of?’ said a woman.

Shit happens, said Oannes, and moved on.

For accuracy of detail I am indebted to the following people,

listed here in alphabetical order: Jo Barnardo; Gordon

Beckmann; Isabelle de la Bruyère; Michael Hardwicke; Ben

Hoban; Ruth James; Sion Lewis; F. J. Lillie; John Naughton;

Doris Patterson; Thomas Seydoux; and Linda Wheeldon.

I am grateful to Dominic Power and Phoebe Hoban for

comments and encouragement on the manuscript. Lastly, my

special thanks to Rebecca_______, whose face I borrowed

for Melissa. The George III Mental Health Centre is

imaginary.

Russell Hoban (1925–2011) was the author of many extraordinary novels including Turtle Diary, Angelica Lost and Found and his masterpiece, Riddley Walker. He also wrote some classic books for children including The Mouse and his Child and the Frances books. Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, USA, he lived in London from 1969 until his death.