William Boyd - Restless

I bent down and rapped sharply on the window. She looked round but seemed very unsurprised to see me. She smiled and reached over to open the door to let me in beside her.

'You took your time,' she said. 'I thought you'd be here ages ago – still, well done.' She was wearing her pearl-grey trouser suit and her hair was combed and shiny as if she'd just left the hairdresser's. She was wearing lipstick and her eyelashes were dark with mascara.

I allowed a shudder of anger to pass through me before I clambered into the passenger seat. She offered me a sandwich before I could begin to reproach her.

'What is it?' I said.

'Salmon and cucumber. Not salmon out of a tin.'

'Mayonnaise?'

'Just a little – and some dill.'

I took the sandwich and wolfed down a couple of mouthfuls: I was suddenly hungry and the sandwich was very tasty.

'There's a pub in the next street,' I said. 'Let's go and have a drink and talk this over properly. I'm very worried, I have to say.'

'No, I might miss him,' she said. 'Sunday evening, coming back from the country somewhere – his house or a friend's – he should be here before nine.'

'I will not let you kill him. I warn you, I-'

'Don't be absurd!' She laughed. 'I just want to have a brief chat.' She put her hand on my knee. 'Well done, Ruth, darling, tracking me here. I'm impressed – and pleased. I thought it was best this way – to let you figure it out for yourself, you know? I didn't want to ask you to come, put pressure on you. I thought you would figure it out because you're so clever – but now I know you're clever in a different way.'

'I suppose I should take that as a compliment.'

'Look: if I'd asked you outright you'd have thought of a hundred ways of stopping me.' She smiled, almost gleefully. 'But, anyway, here we are, both of us.' She touched my cheek with her fingers – where was all this affection coming from? 'I'm glad you're here,' she said. 'I know I could see him on my own but it'll be so much better with you beside me.'

I was suspicious. 'Why?'

'You know: moral support and all that.'

'Where's the gun?'

'I'm afraid I rather buggered it up. The barrels didn't come off cleanly. I wouldn't dare use it – anyway, now you're here I feel safe.'

We sat on talking and eating our sandwiches as the evening light seemed to thicken dustily, peachily, in Walton Crescent, turning the cream stucco the palest apricot for a few moments. As the sky slowly darkened – it was a cloudy day but warm – I began to notice a small squirm of fear entering me: sometimes it seemed in my guts, sometimes my chest, sometimes in my limbs, making them achy and heavy – and I began to wish that Romer wouldn't come home, that he'd gone away for a holiday to Portofino or Saint Tropez or Inverness, or wherever types like him vacationed, and that this vigil of ours would prove fruitless and we could go home and try to forget about the whole thing. But at the same time I knew my mother and I knew it wouldn't simply end with Romer's non-appearance: she had to see him just once more, one last time. And I realised, as I thought further, that everything that had happened this summer had been designed – manipulated – to bring about this confrontation: the wheelchair nonsense, the paranoia, the memoir -

My mother grabbed my arm.

At the far end of the crescent the big Bentley nosed round the corner. I thought I might faint, the blood seemed to be rushing audibly from my head. I took a huge gulp of air as I felt my stomach acids seethe and climb my oesophagus.

'When he gets out of the car,' my mother said evenly, 'you go out and call his name. He'll turn to you – he won't see me at first. Keep him talking for a second or two. I want to surprise him.'

'What do I say?'

'How about: "Good evening, Mr Romer, can I have a word?" I only need a couple of seconds.'

She seemed very calm, very strong – whereas I thought I might burst into tears at any moment, might bawl and blub, I felt suddenly so insecure and inadequate – not like me at all, I realised.

The Bentley stopped, double-parking with the engine running, and the chauffeur opened the door and stepped out, walking round the car to the rear. He held the back door open on the pavement side and Romer climbed out with some difficulty, stooped a little, perhaps stiff from the journey. He had a few words with his driver, who then got back into the car and pulled away. Romer went to his front gate; he was wearing a tweed jacket and grey flannels with suede shoes. A light came on in the transom of number 29 and simultaneously the garden lights were illuminated, shining on the flagged path to the front door, a cherry tree, a stone obelisk in the hedge corner.

My mother gave me a shove and I opened the door.

'Lord Mansfield?' I called and stepped out on to the road. 'May I have a word?'

Romer turned very slowly to face me.

'Who are you?'

'I'm Ruth Gilmartin – we met the other day.' I crossed the road towards him. 'At your club – I wanted to interview you.'

He peered at me. 'I've nothing to say to you,' he said. His raspy voice even, unthreatening. 'I told you that.'

'Oh, but I think you have,' I said, wondering where my mother was – I had no sense of her presence, couldn't hear her, had no idea which way she'd gone.

He laughed and opened the gate to his front garden.

'Good-night, Miss Gilmartin. Stop bothering me. Go away.'

I couldn't think what to say next – I had been dismissed.

He turned to close his gate and I saw behind him someone open the door a few inches, left ajar for easy access, no bother with keys or anything as vulgar as that. He saw I had remained standing there and his eyes flicked automatically up and down the street. And then he became very still.

'Hello, Lucas,' my mother said from the darkness.

She seemed to materialise from around the box hedge, not moving – just suddenly standing there.

Romer seemed paralysed for a moment, then he drew himself erect, stiffly, like a soldier on parade, as if he might fall over otherwise.

'Who're you?'

Now she stepped forward and the dusky late evening light showed her face, caught her eyes. I thought: she looks very beautiful, as if some sort of miraculous rejuvenation were taking place and the intervening thirty-five years of ageing were being erased.

I looked at Romer – he knew who she was – and he kept himself very still, one hand gripping the gatepost. I wondered what this moment must have been like for him – the shock beyond all shocks. But he gave nothing away, just managing to produce a small erratic smile.

'Eva Delectorskaya,' he said, softly, 'who would have thought?'

We stood in Romer's large drawing-room on the first floor – he had not asked us to sit down. At the garden gate, once he had recovered from the shock of seeing my mother, he had composed himself and his old bored urbanity re-established itself. 'I suppose you'd better come in,' he'd said, 'no doubt you have something you want to tell me.' We had followed him up the gravel path to the front door and into the house, where a dark-haired man in a white jacket stood waiting cautiously in the hall. Down a corridor I could hear the sound of dishes clattering in a kitchen somewhere.

'Ah, Petr,' Romer said. 'I'll be down in a minute. Tell Maria to leave everything in the oven – then she can go.'

Then we followed him up the curving staircase into the drawing-room. The style was English country house, 1930s: a few good dark pieces of furniture – a bureau, a glass-fronted cabinet with faience inside – rugs on the floor and comfortable, old sofas with throws and cushions, but the paintings on the wall were contemporary. I saw a Francis Bacon, a Burra and an exquisite still life – an empty pewter bowl in front of a silver lusterware vase containing two wilting poppies. The painting looked lit but there were no picture lights – the thickly painted gleam on the bowl and the vase did that work, astonishingly. I was looking at the paintings as a way of distracting myself – I was in a strange giddy panic: a combination of excitement and fear, a mood I hadn't truly experienced since childhood when, on those occasions when you wilfully do something wrong and proscribed, you find yourself imagining your own discovery, guilt and punishment – which is part of the heady appeal of the illicit, I suppose. I glanced over at my mother: she was looking fiercely but coolly at Romer. He would not meet her gaze, but stood proprietorially by the fireplace, looking thoughtfully at the rug at his feet – the fire laid, unlit – his elbow resting on the chimney-piece, the back of his head visible in the tarnished freckled mirror that hung above it. Now he turned to stare at Eva too but his face showed no expression. I knew why I felt this panic: the air seemed thick and curdled with their crowded, turbulent, shared history – a history I had no part of, yet was now compelled to bear witness to its climax: I felt like a voyeur – I shouldn't be here, yet here I was.