Russell Hoban - Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

‘I didn’t think you’d find out.’

‘But the deception itself has consequences — what you were doing had to make you different from the Jonathan I thought was with me. You must have compared me with the others: how I was in bed, how I looked, smelled, tasted, felt; the sounds I made, the things I said while I thought I was alone with the Jonathan I knew. So it was like a cloak of invisibility for you — you knew something that I didn’t — we weren’t both coming from the same place.’

I found nothing to say.

‘And there’s the matter of the contract between us: it wasn’t written down, it wasn’t even spoken. But we did have an unspoken contract: you knew that you could trust me not to have anyone else on the side, and in accepting my fidelity and letting me believe in yours you made a contract with me. But you didn’t honour it. Do you believe in such a thing as honour?’

‘Yes.’

‘And does honour matter to you?’

‘Of course it does, Fina.’

‘Can you explain how you can reconcile that belief with what you did?’

Takemitsu had stopped. There was only silence and the noises from outside. I heard the voices of other women in strange beds. Look at me, said Au Tonneau: empty. ‘You know I can’t explain that,’ I said. ‘You say you’re not attacking me but you’ve demolished me completely. My behaviour was dishonourable and I can’t find any way of justifying it. All I can do is say I’m sorry and hope you’ll give me a second chance.’

‘The thing is, Jonno, I wonder if you’ll ever change. I think maybe you’re afraid of women and that’s why you have to keep knocking them over like tenpins. If you’ve needed to do that up to now, how are you going to stop?’

‘I’ll stop because I want you back and I don’t want to lose you again.’

‘You say that now but can I ever trust you again? If I were to come back, could I ever believe anything you told me? In bed together, could I believe that it was just the two of us alone and private, with no one else getting between us?’

‘We could try making love, see how it feels,’ I said stupidly.

‘“Making love”. There’s a whole lot of making going on but there’s not that much love about. Let’s move on to the Rinyo-Clacton thing. What kills me is that I’d never have gone to bed with him if you hadn’t been unfaithful. Your infidelities made me leave you and my leaving led to both of us ending up with Mr R-C and maybe HIV.’

‘You could have said no to him.’

‘Yes, and so could you. And here we are. I feel so tired — I can’t talk any more tonight.’

‘Don’t go back to Zoë’s,’ I said. ‘Sleep here.’

‘But I want to sleep alone. Can I use the couch?’

‘Take the bed. At least I’ll have the smell of you when you’ve gone.’

So once more we slept our separate sleeps. In the flat where we’d had so many sleeps together.

When I woke up on Saturday morning I felt more myself than I’d done for a long time; then I realised it was because I’d gone to sleep knowing that Serafina was sleeping in our bed, in the bed where she belonged. It was quarter past eight and there were comfortable sounds and the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen. My next thought was, O God, next year at this time — probably sooner — I’ll be dead if I don’t do something about Mr Rinyo-Clacton. And why do I always think of him as Mr ?

Serafina was already dressed, bright-eyed and wide awake, ready for the day. ‘Good morning,’ she said as I came into the kitchen.

‘Good morning. How was your night?’

‘Wonderful. I still haven’t got used to that futon at Zoë’s place.’

‘You can sleep here every night, you know.’ I moved my mouth towards hers for a good-morning kiss. She turned so that I caught her on the cheek. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Will you be around when I come out of the shower?’

‘Yes, I don’t have to leave for a while yet. Bacon and eggs?’

‘Sounds good.’

After breakfast I phoned Eurostar and booked us on the 08:23 from Waterloo on Monday. The telephone is a wall model that I never got round to fixing to the wall. The cord that connects the handset to the base is a thing of tightly coiled ringlets that often get entangled in each other and cause me to drop one or both parts of the telephone, which is what I did after booking the seats on Eurostar. The base fell to the floor and out of a recess in it rolled a small wad of tissue and a little hightech bug — I’d seen enough thrillers to recognise such things. There’d been nothing to secure the device, no glue or tape or Blu-Tack, just that little wad of tissue that would allow it to fall out at the slightest jolt. I took the thing into the bathroom, lifted the lid of the cistern, and dropped it into the water so he could have a good listen whenever the toilet was flushed. Then I phoned Eurostar and changed the booking to Tuesday, after which I phoned Paris and booked the hotel.

‘He’s bugged the phone,’ I said to Serafina, ‘and he wanted me to find it.’ I told her what I’d done about it.

‘Oh God, you mean to say he’s been here in this flat?’

‘With Desmond, probably. I’m pretty sure his skills go well beyond chauffeuring.’

‘But bugging’s illegal, isn’t it? And if he got in here without a key, that’s breaking and entering, right? You haven’t given him a key, have you?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to the police?’

‘Oh sure, and the first thing they’ll ask me is, “Why would anybody want to break in and bug your flat?” and then I’ll tell them I sold my death to some nut for a million pounds and they’ll sort the whole thing out, yes?’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘What I just did — drop the bug in the cistern.’

‘But if he wanted you to find that one, maybe there are others you won’t find. If he’s trying to freak us out, he’s certainly succeeding with me.’

‘Well, I’m not going to turn the place upside-down looking for the others.’ I raised my voice and spoke to the plants, the lamps, the bookshelves, the coffee table. ‘Can you hear me, Mr Rinyo-Clacton? If this is how you get your jollies, be our guest.’

‘This isn’t funny,’ said Serafina. ‘Maybe it doesn’t bother you but I wonder if I’ll ever feel safe here again. Are you going to change the locks?’

‘What’s the point? If these locks didn’t stop him, new ones won’t either.’

‘What about those fancy systems you see in New York flats in films, where these long steel bars slide into place?’

‘He’ll always find a way to get in, Fina. I refuse to panic about this.’

‘He could have been in the flat last night, watching us while we slept. What would you have done if you’d woken to find him standing over you?’

‘If we caught him in the flat he probably could be had up for it. Unless he’s had a key made, in which case he’d say I’d given it to him.’

‘Shit.’

‘You see what he’s doing? He’s making us spend more and more time thinking about him, trying to guess his next move. Please, let’s not do this.’

‘I’ll try not to.’

But we didn’t stop thinking about him.

Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s presence, once I’d discovered that bug, filled the flat like a smog. We saw his invisible shadow huge upon the wall, smelled him in the air, tasted him in our food, heard him in the silence, felt his ugly hands all over us.

Serafina was now back at Zoë’s and I was going to have to make it through the nights remaining between us and Paris alone. Time lay about in lumps and blobs, refusing to move. I went to the National Gallery to check out Hendryk again in Room 18. He was his normal self but gave me nothing. Why, I wondered for the first time, was there a woman in a bed glimpsed through a doorway. Perfectly respectable — just her head in a nightcap showing above the counterpane. Was she ill? Was she dying?