David Szalay - London and the South-East

‘This must take up half the garden,’ Paul says. ‘How’d you get planning permission for it?’

Martin is watching him with smiling satisfaction. When he smiles, his mouth seems in danger of widening beyond the limits of his face. ‘Like it?’

‘It’s great,’ Paul says. He stares at it for a few more seconds — longer than is natural, in fact, out of politeness. ‘Can’t be cheap to heat.’

Martin smiles steadily — his smile even widening, as if to say, ‘No, it isn’t. Why?’

‘Is Eleanor in?’ Paul asks.

Which literally wipes the smile off his face — though it reappears instantly in a much more muted, diffident form. ‘Um, no, she’s out,’ he says. ‘She’s away, actually.’

‘Oh. Where? If you don’t mind my asking.’

‘Visiting family.’

Paul nods. It is obviously a sore point, and while it would not be socially unacceptable to ask one or two further questions, he desists.

The state of the Shorts’ marriage is a subject on which he and Heather often speculate — it is a subject which makes them feel warm and secure in their own togetherness. That people who do not know them would probably assume that Eleanor was Martin’s mother must be a strain, Paul thinks. He is under the impression that they have been married a long time — since Martin was a student, perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two — and suspects that she might even have been his first girlfriend. Sadly, with her huge, utterly pendulous breasts, her swollen limbs, her natty grizzled hair, she has not aged well. Her face retains some feminine prettiness in its features, but between them the flesh has lost its tension. When Paul sees her in the street — and even more when he sees them together — he feels sorry for Martin. Embarrassed for him, too. And Martin himself — it is obvious — is embarrassed. Paul finds it a depressing situation to think about. Whenever he and Heather talk about it, he says — hopefully — that he is sure it won’t last, while Heather warbles dutifully about love, and insists that it will. Well, it seems that she was wrong. It had always been Paul’s assumption, of course, that when it ended, it would be Martin who ended it. He looks shell-shocked though. Perhaps, after twenty years, Eleanor has walked out on him .

Martin interrupts his musing — Paul is actually quite stoned — to say, ‘What, what can I do for you, Paul?’ He still seems nervous.

‘Oh, it’s just about this job,’ Paul says, snapping out of his stupor. ‘The job you told Heather about, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, um.’ Martin seems to flounder for a moment. Why is he so flustered? ‘On the night shift.’

‘Yeah,’ Paul says.

And Martin, embarrassed, says, ‘Yeah.’

It strikes Paul how pathetic, how humiliating his situation might seem — must seem — to Martin, from whose perspective the shelf-stackers of the night shift are down in the murk somewhere, so low as to be out of sight. They do not even have names. Martin in fact finds it painfully distressing even to imagine himself in Paul’s position. And suddenly understanding this, Paul is dry-mouthed with embarrassment himself. It happens instantaneously, strikes him suddenly — Martin’s dismay is on account of …

HIM.

This dismay, this embarrassment of Martin’s — which overwhelms, without quite obliterating, his well-meaning struggle to hide it — is infinitely worse than the sort of sly sneering that Paul had prepared himself for. It has such sincerity — a naturalness which sneering, any sort of nastiness, would never be able to have. It is involuntary. And it is not without sympathy, which is perhaps what makes it so peculiarly painful. As soon as he sees this, Paul wishes that he was not there. ‘So …?’ he says, feeling the heat flaring in his face.

‘So, um …’ Martin is making an effort to be ordinary, level, his hands trapped in the tiny pockets of his jeans. ‘Did …’ He hesitates on the name. ‘… Heather give you Sally’s number?’

Paul nods. ‘She did, yeah.’

‘You should just call her,’ Martin says. ‘Just call her.’

‘Sure. And …’

But there is no ‘and’. There is nothing else to say. There never was anything to say.

‘And you reckon they’re looking for people?’ Paul says.

‘They are. I know they are.’

‘Okay.’ It is obviously time for him to leave, but Paul feels he has to explain. ‘I just need some money to tide me over,’ he says.

Martin smiles. ‘Sure. Of course. I understand.’

And as if it were his duty, Paul looks again at the lofty space of the extension. Only for a second or two. ‘Well, cheers, Martin,’ he says, turning.

‘That’s okay.’

Martin leads him to the front door and holds it open for him.

‘And say to hi to Eleanor from me,’ Paul says, stepping into the cold. Did he say it, he wonders, out of spite? Or just unthinkingly? He is not thinking straight.

‘I will,’ Martin says.

Paul hesitates, expecting him to reciprocate and offer his regards to Heather, but he does not.

ALONE IN THE bedroom, under the yellowing ivory scattered by the ceiling bulb, light the colour of his teeth, Paul pulls on the blue trousers of his uniform. He tugs the polo shirt over his head, and shoves his arms through its little sleeves. He is nervous. It is twenty-five to ten. Seeing the light still on in Oliver’s room, he slips over the landing and tiptoes downstairs. In her coat, Heather is sitting on the sofa, with a magazine. ‘Should we go?’ Paul says quietly. The car has a damp smell, and seems irked when she wakes it with the key. They drive in silence to the Old Shoreham Road. Heather’s silence is so weighty, so pointed — she sometimes holds her lower lip in her teeth, as if something were imminent — that Paul says, ‘You all right?’

‘M-hm,’ she nods, staring straight ahead through the wipers’ sleepy to and fro.

‘Thanks for driving me, by the way,’ he says a few minutes later.

There are few other people out — unsurprising on a rainy Sunday night in January — and it only takes five minutes to get there. It seems to take no time. Paul leans over, his left hand opening the door — the kiss is a formality — and says, ‘See you in the morning,’ with a weary shot at a wry smile. He is early, and sitting alone at a table in the staff canteen, he feels odd in his ill-fitting uniform. He is also surprisingly tired — and it is only ten o’clock. Downstairs, he identified himself to Graham, the nightshift manager — a short, obese black man with a medicine-ball-sized head and fat-lensed spectacles that magnified his eyes. Wearing a leather jacket, he sat on the rubber conveyor belt of a dormant checkout, singing quietly to himself, and tapping his clipboard with a biro.

Paul cleared his throat. ‘Hi, um. I’m Paul Rainey?’

‘All right, Paul,’ Graham said, with unwavering, wide-awake smiliness. ‘Why don’t you go and wait upstairs with the others? Do you know where the canteen is?’

‘No,’ Paul said.

Graham looked around, his jacket creaking as he twisted his squat trunk. One of his feet — in a petite leather shoe with two buckles — maintained tenuous toe-contact with the floor. ‘Someone’ll be along in a minute,’ he said. Unselfconsciously, he resumed his singing, while Paul stood there. The last stragglers of the day shift were trickling out in their coats, going home to late dinners and TV.

‘Gerald,’ Graham shouted. ‘Gerald!’

A tall, espresso-skinned man of about forty-five lifted the headphones from his ears with leisurely slowness, a sloth-like absence of haste. They were very old-fashioned, the headphones, linked by a narrow steel band over the crown of his woolly hat, and padded with orange foam. ‘This is Paul,’ Graham said. ‘He’s starting tonight.’