David Szalay - London and the South-East

It is the first time that Paul has seen Mike or Joan since starting his new job — initially its precise nature was kept from them — and he finds, to his irritation, that they now treat him as if he were seriously ill. ‘I’ve worked nights,’ Mike says sympathetically, sad-eyed, as they sip their aperitifs. ‘It’s not as bad as all that. It’s not so bad.’

‘That wasn’t in a supermarket, Dad.’

‘No,’ he says, judiciously. ‘No, it wasn’t.’

And it is not mentioned again, even when Paul dozes off over his crescent of melon and rag of Italian ham.

In the sweltering room, everything seems so slow. The successive procedures of the meal. There is an extended, inexplicable lull between the starter and the main course, during which he goes out into the garden for a cigarette to try and wake himself up. On his own, watching the planes scream over, he sees them all sitting there one cloudy Sunday, Mike with his hands over his eyes, smiling; Heather holding Marie; himself, somewhat younger, listening politely to Joan. ‘The thing is,’ she is saying, ‘you just can’t let it get to you. If you let it get to you, if you become obsessed with it, it becomes a nightmare. Doesn’t it?’

He falls asleep with a plate of roast lamb in front of him, and it is then that he is told to leave, and wanders upstairs. And he wakes, several hours later, in Heather’s old room, on her old single bed, wondering what time it is. Through the window the sky is listlessly ambiguous. Descending the stairs in his socks, he hears voices indistinctly from the lounge. And then, when he is halfway down, he hears Martin’s voice. He stops. The drive from Hove — though he knows of course that it happened — had seemed, when he woke and sat for a few fogged minutes on the edge of the bed, like an unpleasant dream. Now Martin is there — he is in the house — and Paul feels that this finally is too much.

When he appears in the doorway, frowsy and thunder-faced, Heather says, ‘Oh there you are. I was just about to wake you up. We’re going.’ She sounds drunk.

‘Well, I’m up,’ he says. ‘All right, Martin?’

Martin just nods. He is looking through some photos.

Joan brings Paul a coffee, and he sits down. Martin is looking through the photos — which are of Mike and Joan’s narrow-boat holiday — as if they were the most interesting things he has ever seen, examining each one for ten or twenty seconds. Paul enjoys his obvious unease and embarrassment. He should not have showed up there. It turns out, however, that Heather more or less invited him in. She phoned to say that they were leaving soon, and since he was sitting in his car two streets away, she suggested — with voluble encouragement from her parents — that he join them.

It is nightfall when they leave. Heather, Paul notes, is totally drunk. When they finally slip onto the M25 near Staines, it is night. Not long after this, however, they have to pull over onto the hard shoulder. Heather falls out. In silence, Oliver and Marie watch her stagger towards the undergrowth, while Paul and Martin sit in their seat belts, staring straight ahead. She has not made much of an effort to hide herself, and waves of headlights wash her squatting form. ‘Sorry about this,’ Paul mutters. Martin — keeping an impudent eye on her in the mirror — says nothing. This offish silence, and the way in which he is openly staring at her, make Paul furious. In a quiet voice he says, ‘What did you get up to this afternoon then?’ Still staring at Heather as she wobbles towards the car, Martin just shakes his head.

Thereafter, an icy silence sets in until he parks the Saab in Stoneham Road. Heather is asleep, and when Paul tries to wake her, she shrugs him off. As soon as Oliver and Marie were out, she slid into a horizontal position, and now seems intent on staying there. They wait on the pavement looking nervous while Paul, in an increasingly savage whisper, tries to persuade her to disembark. Standing next to them, Martin wears a look of extreme, sober seriousness, like a politician on TV in the midst of a natural disaster. Squashing herself into the leather of the seat, Heather shoves Paul with a stockinged foot — her shoes have fallen off — and he hisses, ‘For fuck’s sake, get out .’ He takes her arm and tries to pull her into a sitting position, but she wrestles it free and slithers further in. He sighs and stands up, with a sort of shrug. For a moment, humiliated and at a loss, he just stands there. Then he fumbles the house keys from his pocket and hands them to Oliver. ‘Mum’s not well,’ he says. ‘We’ll be along in a minute. Go inside.’ Without a word, Oliver takes the keys, and he and Marie walk away — Marie looking over her shoulder.

In the few seconds that this has taken, Martin has insinuated himself into the situation — perched on the ledge of the seat, leaning into the car, he seems to be whispering something to Heather. Paul wonders what to do. It does not seem to be Martin’s place to try and wheedle her out — except that it is his vehicle and he, Paul, has already tried and failed — and the impulse to seize his suede shoulder and say, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ quickly evaporates in the face of these observations, and of Paul’s weariness and wish to end this situation as quickly as possible. He looks along the quiet, terraced street.

Something seems to be happening, some sort of movement, and for a nightmarish moment he thinks that Martin is kissing her. Then he withdraws slowly from the interior and sighs. ‘She’s been sick,’ he says.

They stand there.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Martin,’ Paul says. Martin, touching his palms tenderly together, seems to be pondering something. Paul assumes — wrongly — that it is something to do with the vomit in his spotless Saab. ‘I really am,’ he says. ‘We’ll pay for it to be valet-cleaned. You know …’ Seemingly lost in thought, Martin shakes his head. Paul wonders whether he is dismissing the offer. Martin sighs again — a great heaved sigh; he is shaking his head with a sort of weighty sorrow. Suddenly wanting a cigarette, Paul takes one out of his pocket, and is about to light it, when it occurs to him that Martin’s pensive, sorrowful immobility may just be a matter of waiting for him to deal with the situation, so he shoves the cigarette into his pocket and hurriedly inserts his head into the now sourly unpleasant-smelling interior of the Saab. ‘Come on, Heather,’ he says. ‘Let’s go. You’ve puked up in Martin’s car.’

Very pale, she sits up. For a moment she does not move. Her face is expressionless and at the same time utterly miserable. Slowly, in silence, she manoeuvres her way to the open door and steps out, moving past Paul as though he were not there. ‘Your shoes …’ he says.

She is already walking away, tiptoeing with drunken single-mindedness in a wavy line up Lennox Road. It is Paul’s turn to sigh now, fiercely. He stoops into the car and takes her shoes. One of them has vomit in it. While he is doing this, Martin is watching Heather walk away. And he is about to speak, to say something, when standing up, holding her soiled shoes, Paul speaks first. He says, ‘I’m sorry, Martin. I really am. We’ll be in touch, all right?’

Martin just nods, and Paul starts to walk away.

‘Paul.’

He turns. ‘What?’

Martin is not even looking at him. He is staring at a spot on the pavement, with a strange little smile on his face.

‘Look, we’ll be in touch,’ Paul says, and walks on, only stopping momentarily when he is some way off to turn and shout, ‘Thanks for the lift.’

He waits for Heather in the kitchen from first light. In fact, he is in the garden when she emerges. Through the window, he sees her enter the kitchen with her tawny hair trailing over her face. Her face is lifeless and ugly. With a final leaf through the notes in his head — fizzing with indignation, he has spent the night preparing this talk — he opens the door and steps inside.