David Szalay - London and the South-East

It had been a long, smoky, beery afternoon, and Paul had not been in the mood for it. He had worked his way joylessly through the pints and a whole pack of B&H, occasionally trying to make conversation with the Pig, who showed no sign of nervousness or sentimentality in view of the fact that this was, as he must have known, the last day. The only time a melancholy note entered his voice was when he murmured, staring after his wife as she minced to the Ladies, ‘She used to have an arse like a little boy.’ He then told the story — which they had all already heard — of how, when she had been out visiting her family in the Philippines, he had sent her a photo of himself being fellated by her, which her father, a devout Catholic, had found. He had no way of knowing that the man in the photo was Mortished — only a central tranche of his doughy Caucasian body was shown — but even if he had known, it is unlikely to have made a difference. When he threw her out of the house (seeing her emerge from the Ladies, the Pig wraps the story up quickly, in a low voice) she returned to London, and fellated him in the toilets of the arrivals lounge at Heathrow, as she had promised she would if he met her at the airport. Andy laughed heartily and said, ‘Excellent,’ as though he had never heard the story before. Paul merely smiled.

Whenever he saw Michaela’s little ski-jump nose — and he often turned his head to look for it — he experienced a surge of sentiment, triste and soggy. It saddened him that he would not see her any more. Sometimes it seemed to undermine the whole point of the move. It was already dark outside when he found himself facing her — he was buying a round, having to half shout to make himself heard. And he found himself telling her that he was moving on — it was madness, madness , Lawrence was in the pub — telling her that he was moving on and up , and inviting her to join him for a drink at Number One Aldwych. ‘We should go for a drink sometime, Michaela,’ he was saying, trying to sound as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him, sorting through the coins in the palm of his hand. She laughed — a slightly forced, uneasy laugh. ‘What about the bar at Number One Aldwych? I hear that’s quite nice.’

‘Yeah, I hear it is.’ Her eyes were on the filling pint pot. ‘Quite pricey, though, isn’t it?’

He shrugged, as if to say, ‘What of it?’ And she laughed again — exactly the same slightly forced, uneasy laugh. ‘Well?’ He was not joking. She turned and stretched her key out to spring the till (the key was attached to the waist of her skirt with a tight flex like that of a phone’s handset) and as she did so she dropped one of the coins. She stooped, and Paul saw a narrow ellipse of ivory skin open between her black skirt and white blouse. She seemed to be able to feel his eyes on it, and put her hand over it for a second, until she stood up. She passed him his change with a short smile, and immediately started to serve someone else. Did she not understand? he thought, manoeuvring his way through the Friday-night mob. Did she not understand that this was it ?

Unless — he thought later, in the dripping peace of the Gents — unless of course it was not it. Unless he returned next week, even in the new year, pulling up in a taxi outside, entering the pub in a pinstriped suit and ordering a bottle of champagne — they keep a single bottle of Dom Perignon, he has noticed, in the window-fronted fridge under the till … He would be transformed then — that transformation the whole point of the move he was making — a new Paul to present to her, to take her away from this unpleasant place. And he smiled and washed his hands.

Only when they left the pub, at about eight thirty, in search of a restaurant, did the meagreness of the party become apparent. While they were still in the Penderel’s Oak, and especially after five o’clock, various people had attached themselves, temporarily as it turned out, to the occasion — Simona, Neil, some members of the Pig’s team whose names Paul did not know, even Lawrence — giving the impression that there would be a sizeable group going on to the meal. In the end there were only five of them. They waited for a few minutes on the pavement in front of the pub, as if expecting others to follow, but when it became obvious that this was not going to happen — Andy went in to hurry them up, and came out, still alone, shrugging and shaking his head — they wandered off. The Pig and Angel walked ahead, Paul following with Murray and Andy — forced until the very end, he thought, to live out a hypocritical show of mateyness. It was exactly what he had not wanted. They walked in silence — and Murray, Paul felt, was pointedly ignoring him. So much so that he wondered whether he knew something — had someone told him what was going to happen? Had Michaela said something? It had been stupid — so stupid — to tell her. For whatever reason, something seemed to have changed that day, because since the sharp exchange in the smoking room, the past two weeks had been more or less normal. ‘Where the fuck are we going?’ Paul muttered. Neither Murray nor Andy made any reply. They were trudging up Gray’s Inn Road, trailing Angel and the Pig. Murray did not look well — though he strode with drunken assurance, his world was disconcertingly fluid. Andy was smoking a spliff, which he passed first to Murray, whose face turned noticeably paler with each inhalation, and then to Paul. The traffic poured past. Ahead of them, the others had stopped, and were waiting at the cola-coloured glass front of an isolated curry house.

Paul looked at his watch. It was quarter to eleven. They had been in the dead, velvet interior of the Indian for nearly two hours. Having finished, the Pig slowly reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, which was slung over the back of his chair, and withdrew his cigarettes. He opened the pack and extracted one, and then reached into the other pocket of his jacket for his lighter. Unhurriedly, he lit the cigarette, and savoured the grey smoke. ‘Should we go then?’ Paul said, twitchy with impatience. The sitar music, though almost inaudible — or perhaps for that reason — had long been playing havoc with his fragile nerves. The Pig shook his head, and said, ‘We can’t.’ And there was something about the way he said it — the immovable grim finality — that took Paul to the edge of panic. ‘What do you mean, we can’t ?’

‘We’ve got to wait for Jaw.’

‘Eddy Jaw? Is coming here?’

‘Yeah,’ the Pig said.

Andy seemed to be falling asleep. Murray, too, was vacant — inscrutable with post-emetic exhaustion. Even Angel had stopped.

‘When?’ Paul said, moving in his seat. He had, he noticed, lit a cigarette.

‘He said about eleven.’

The waiter started to go round the table, piling up plates and metal balti dishes in the crook of his arm. The Pig ordered another pint of lager, and another vodka and Coke for Angel. The waiter nodded humbly. ‘And then what?’ Paul said.

‘And then what? What do you mean?’

‘Have you got any plans for later?’

The Pig just shrugged. No doubt there would be a taxi. Eddy might have some coke. There might be pole dancing. A dark, airless, deafening club. Murray was staring with bloodshot eyes at the shadowy right angle where the floor carpet met the wall carpet, as if wanting to lie down there and sleep. ‘I might go, mate,’ Paul said. ‘I’ve got to get back. You know.’ Again the Pig shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said.

‘Yeah, I’m gonna go.’

‘You gonna leave some money then?’

‘Of course.’ Paul took out his wallet. ‘How much is it going to be? Let’s just split it. Could we have the bill please?’ he called, with some urgency, to the waiter loitering by the kitchen door, who nodded and disappeared somewhere. For a few minutes, they waited in silence.