Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

I went back to the title page: Derek Engel, Bedford Square. ‘Tomorrow, Derek,’ I said. I looked at the author’s photograph on the back of the dust jacket: bald and bearded. Was there something familiar about him? How would he look with a wig and a military moustache? Yes? No? Difficult to be certain.

It was time to leave this place of dead air; I packed my bag and made ready to climb back aboard my Patna. Without looking in the mirror I left the room, went down to Reception, and said to the beautiful black-haired girl, ‘This is goodbye.’

‘I still have to charge you for tonight,’ she said. I nodded, paid up, and left.

‘Be nice,’ I said to the plants when I got back to my flat, ‘this is a tough time for me.’ I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face — the moment seemed to require it.

At half-past ten I turned up at the Vegemania and found Serafina waiting outside while Zoë and Rima finished up. ‘Do you mind if we go to Zoë’s place?’ she said. ‘I’ve been staying with her and I’ll feel more comfortable there than anywhere else right now. It’s near Fulham Broadway, in Moore Park Road.’

‘Fine,’ I said. As we walked towards the tube station she took my arm, then realised what she was doing and removed it.

‘Those notes on the envelope —’ she said, ‘is he writing a factual account or is he plotting a novel and acting it out? What do you think he’s doing?’

‘The telephone number with the notes was for Derek Engel — he’s a publisher who does a lot of offbeat stuff. Knowing Mr Rinyo-Clacton I’d guess he’s planning a novel with real people and himself as the hero. Tomorrow I’ll ring up Derek Engel and ask if they know him. Rinyo-Clacton is obviously a pseudonym; maybe he’s got others. Maybe he hasn’t even talked to them yet.’

‘But buying someone’s death for a million pounds — do you think that’s real?’

‘I know it is,’ I said as we entered the station and went through the turnstiles.

‘How do you know?’

‘I know whose death he’s buying.’

Her eyes were on my face and she grabbed my arm as we went down the stairs to the westbound platform. ‘Whose is it?’

‘I’ll tell you in a moment, but first I want to know if he told you his first name or did you call him Mr when he was humping you?’ She was still holding my arm; it felt like old times, almost, except that old times were never quite this weird. The station seemed bright and exciting, a good place to be, maybe there were other good places ahead. Maybe I could make the picture of the two of them in bed go away.

‘He said his name was Tod,’ she said. ‘And what did you call him when he was doing you?’

‘I didn’t call him anything. He told me his first name was Thanatophile.’

‘Death-lover!’

‘That’s his game and that’s the name he wants me to know him by.’

‘OK, now tell me whose death this weirdo is buying.’

‘Mine.’

‘Yours!’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘You’re the other in his notes?’

‘That’s right, Fina.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Are you telling me that he …’ She lowered her voice. ‘… took you back to his place, buggered you, then offered you a million pounds for the privilege of killing you in a year’s time, and you said yes? You agreed to that?’

‘Yes.’

She was squeezing my arm so that it was pressed against her; it felt good. ‘In God’s name, why, Jonno?’ She hadn’t called me that since she moved out.

‘I don’t know, it seemed a good idea at the time.’

‘Tell me, for God’s sake!’

‘Fina, I’ve told you how I’ve been feeling since you left me. The night I met him I didn’t really care all that much whether I lived or died and when he made his proposition I thought I could at least leave you a million pounds and you could buy your own restaurant and have quite a nice life.’

‘Oh, you stupid Jonno, you stupid, stupid Jonno!’ She hugged me then. We stood there holding each other while Richmond and Ealing Broadway trains came and went; our side of the platform grew more crowded but the Wimbledon arrow on the board remained dark; Wimbledon trains are always in the minority at Earl’s Court.

‘Let me see that envelope again,’ she said, and I gave it to her. ‘ “Other’s wife or girlfriend — will R-C sleep with her, spread his death around?” she read. ‘That bastard! That man is evil. Has he given you the million?

‘Oh, yes, he’s done his part.’

‘My God! A million pounds! Cheque or cash?’

‘Cash.’

‘You’ve held a million pounds in your hands?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then he really intends to kill you?’

‘It’s a jungle out there, Fina.’

‘How can you be so nonchalant?’

‘When you hug me I feel that nothing bad can happen to me, besides which I’m half out of my mind so it’s easy to be nonchalant.’

‘What about this: “ Will other take £1m try to kill R-C?”’

I put my finger to my lips. ‘Let’s not think about that just now. Please hug me again.’

She did, but she turned her face away when I tried to kiss her. ‘I still can’t,’ she said in a very small voice, ‘I don’t know where I am with you any more.’

Earl’s Court station encloses many volumes of echoing space and many lights and shadows, all of which pressed in upon us now and intensified the distance between us even though our bodies were touching. ‘Strange,’ I said, ‘to be together and not together like this.’

‘Everything is strange now,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing familiar any more.’

Eventually a Wimbledon train arrived and we took ourselves and the distance between to Fulham Broadway. We came out into a lot of noise and people outside the pub next to the station, then crossed and went down Harwood and turned right into Moore Park Road. Walking down that road to a house where Serafina now lived apart from me I felt that my life had flown away in all directions and left me behind.

Zoë’s flat was in a house at the Eel Brook Common end of the road. On the far side of the common an eastbound District Line train rumbled past with golden windows. In the dim pinky-yellow of the street lamps I looked at Serafina and saw tears running down her face. We went up the steps, she unlocked the front door, we climbed the stairs past the smells and sounds of unseen — strangers and arrived at the top and Zoë’s place.

Serafina didn’t switch on the lights immediately. I smelled cat and in the darkness of the sitting-room I saw on the mantelpiece the glow of a lava lamp in which ghastly red shapes like frozen damned souls huddled in their violet night. ‘The cat switches it on,’ said Serafina. ‘It must have done it just a little while ago — those are its warming-up shapes.’

She turned on the other lamps to reveal a large black tomcat who was sitting on the floor contemplating the lava lamp; the flex trailed across the carpet and there was a cat-operable switch on it. There were a couple of wicker chairs and a low table, a brownish depressed-looking couch with some colourful cushions, a wall of well-stocked plank bookshelves supported by bricks, a poster of Leon Trotsky, and another, for In Your Face, featuring the rear end of a baboon. A beaded curtain separated the room from the kitchen.

‘What’s the cat’s name?’ I said.

‘Jim.’.

‘I was expecting something with a little more political resonance.’

‘Jim has no politics, he’s more into meditation.’

‘Neutered?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’ll make anybody meditative.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Will Zoë be coming directly home from the Vegemania?’