Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

‘It never happened before,’ I said, ‘with us, I mean.’

Mrs Briggs was a good-looking woman in her thirties in tight jeans and a black sweatshirt that said SHIT HAPPENS in white letters. She had black hair cut short, a husky voice, and the sort of face favoured by rock stars who sing of loves that end badly. Serafina was elsewhere in the clinic talking to another health adviser.

The room was bright and warm; I’d have liked to stay there for a long time. I thought fleetingly of Hendryk, the reality/illusion dog in Van Hoogstraten’s peepshow. ‘There are several possibilities here,’ said Mrs Briggs: ‘maybe you’ll both test negative when the time comes; on the other hand we can’t rule out a result with both of you HIV-positive; or one of you positive and the other not. Have you thought of how you’d deal with either of those last two scenarios?’

‘This is a strange time for us — we’re not actually together right now.’

SHIT HAPPENS said her T-shirt.

‘I see,’ said Mrs Briggs. ‘That doesn’t make things any easier, does it. The three months’ wait before the test can be a pretty tough time to get through, and if there’s any possibility of the two of you sorting out your problems this would be a good time to do it.’

‘What about it?’ I asked Serafina later. We were over the road at The Stargazey drinking gin-and-tonics. Dusk outside. Dusk — the word has in it the sound of night impending, descending, owl-light in the city. The place seemed full of darkness. ‘Are we going to get through this together?’ I said.

‘In sickness and in health, eh? You and me together, right, Jonno?’

‘Don’t take cheap shots, Fina — it’s too easy.’

‘I’m not strong enough for quality shots right now, OK? You want clever remarks, try somebody else in your wide circle of acquaintance.’

Where was the Serafina with whom I’d made it through the night? ‘I can’t believe that everything we had is gone,’ I said, recalling Piazzolla’s Tango: Zero Hour that tried to move forward while pulling itself back.

‘I don’t understand you, Jonathan. First you piss all over what we had, then you get yourself buggered and bring this weirdo into both our lives, and now for all we know we’re both HIV-positive; and you reckon this should bring us together?’

‘Tell me what to do, Fina.’

‘Give me some time to get my head around this (pause), Jonno.’

Thursday night I spent at my flat, alone. I got a fair amount of whisky down my neck to ease the pain of Serafina’s absence and hoped that it would make me sleepy but it only sharpened the pain and made me wakeful; I found that there was no side of me that was the right side to fall asleep on. At first there was too much noise from the street — cars starting up or parking and people chattering loudly; then there came a silence that seethed in a sinister way; then a dream in which Hendryk kept trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear him. ‘What, Hendryk?’ I kept saying until I heard myself and woke up and it was Friday.

In due course I stepped out into a harshly sunlit day, went to the tube station and headed for the National Gallery. As always, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery steps, and the rooms inside were dense with tourists and clamorous with foreign tongues. With scarcely a glance at the masterworks of centuries, I went directly to Room 18. As if by special dispensation it was empty.

I looked through the peep-hole in the near end of van Hoogstraten’s perspective box and there was the skeleton of Hendryk looking at me. ‘Jesus!’ I said. I blinked, and when I looked again I saw nothing but blackness. ‘Give me a break!’ I said. I kept my eye to the peep-hole but there was nothing to see and the room was full of people waiting to peep. ‘I have to go now, Hendryk,’ I said to the blackness. ‘I’ll get back to you.’ The Japanese couple behind me looked at me quizzically and I realised I’d been speaking aloud.

In Trafalgar Square there was no rain to ease the sharpness of the day; the sunlight was coming down like splinters of glass on Nelson and the lions, on the fountains and the tourists and the pigeons, on the pavements choked with people and the cars that choked the road. I hurried to the darkness of the underground and went home.

I went to the Vegemania at Serafina’s quitting time, not knowing if I’d be welcome. She saw me through the window and came to the door. The evening was a brisk one, and she was wearing a long dark green homespun-looking skirt, a black polo-neck, and a baggy grey pullover probably knitted by an old woman who smoked a pipe and gathered wool from mountain bushes. She wore a tiger-striped scarf round her neck and her favourite steel-toed anti-rape boots to complete the effect. She had a big leopard-spotted bag slung from her shoulder. A great wave of desire swept over me at the sight of her. ‘Got your head around things a bit more?’ I said.

‘Not really. Let’s walk.’ She took my arm (yes!) and we started down Earl’s Court Road. ‘I won’t say I’m sorry for being unpleasant yesterday,’ she said, ‘but I do see that it wasn’t useful in any way.’ All around us people were eating, drinking, provisioning themselves at nocturnal greengrocers and supermarkets, laughing, cursing, arguing, embracing, and planning the rest of the evening or the decade while moving purposefully or weaving randomly towards whatever came next.

‘I have a useful idea,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Let’s go to Paris for a couple of days, eat high-cholesterol things and get pissed in parks.’

‘What will that achieve, except to remind us of happier times?’

‘It’ll achieve not being here, and maybe if we put ourselves in a receptive state of mind we’ll have some kind of epiphany.’

‘We’ve already had a couple of epiphanies, wouldn’t you say? Right now I think I’m only about half an epiphany short of a nervous breakdown.’

‘Well, actually, there’s something I want to see again.’

‘What?’

‘Do you remember that place in Pigalle, Au Tonneau? Shaped like a barrel, looked as if it’d been shut down for a long time — Harry Belafonte posters on the doors?’

‘Of course I remember it: the little train from Sacré-Coeur stopped there, the sky was very grey, the place looked haunted. There were sex shows and dirty cinemas all around there. Why do you want to see it again?’

‘I don’t know. Sometimes a thing that I’ve seen comes up in my memory and wants to talk to me — nothing I can explain, really.’

Her arm was still linked in mine, her breast rubbing against me. ‘Can we go to the flat?’ she said.

‘Zoë’s?’

‘I said the flat.’

‘OK. The plants have missed you.’ We turned around and went back up Earl’s Court Road to Nevern Place. When we reached the house I unlocked the front door after a few fumbles, stood aside to let Serafina in, and followed her up the stairs to the top floor, hearing in my mind the Ravel trio of our first night. She took out her own key and opened the door of the flat.

As the door swung inward all our nights and days, our sleepings and our wakings, all the everything of our four years together rushed out at us. Serafina covered her face with her hands and I took her in my arms but she kept her hands over her face. ‘Bear with me, Jonno,’ she said. ‘It isn’t easy.’

I switched on the lamps. ‘The plants don’t look too happy,’ she said.

‘I’ve been watering them but you have to remember that they were hooked on you and it’s been cold turkey for them. What’ll you have to drink?’