David Szalay - London and the South-East

‘No, of course not,’ she says.

He waits alone at the bus stop on Portland Road. The spring evening is mild; ink-blue with cold, wet depths. Only in the last week have vestiges of daylight still lingered in the sky as he makes his way to work. The road is quiet, the shops shut, the many takeaways seemingly untroubled by customers. A few preoccupied cars whizz past. He takes a pre-rolled cigarette from his pocket and lights it — and as soon as he has done so, he sees the lights of the bus as it crests the rise, and snags briefly on each of the two stops visible higher up the road. In the dry peace of the non-foods aisle it is easy to imagine that nothing has happened — that nothing is happening. There, even when it occurs to him — as it frequently does, unpacking dishcloths or spray-headed bottles of shower cleaner — that they might be together, he is strangely untroubled.

A week later, things seem suspended in a sort of limbo — since they do not use the bed at the same time, it has not even been necessary for someone to move to the sofa; since they seldom see each other, the new situation has had little scope for showing up in the transactions of everyday life. It has started to seem as though things might go on as they are indefinitely.

Then one morning Heather suddenly opens final settlement negotiations. She has the bruisy circles under her eyes, the queasy pallor, the long-haul look of someone who has been up all night with her troublesome thoughts. ‘The house,’ she says. It is ten a.m. — Paul is microwaving a curry for his supper. ‘What about it?’

She sighs, slightly impatient. ‘Well, what are we going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you planning to keep it?’ she says.

‘Of course not.’

‘Well, nor am I. We’ve got to write to Norris.’

Norris Jones — the landlord. Paul nods. He wants to ask her where she is planning to live …

‘Where are you planning to live?’ she says.

He just shrugs.

‘You must have thought about it.’

‘No.’

‘You haven’t?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

This is true.

There is a sad pause. ‘Do you want me to write to him?’ Heather says. ‘Norris.’

‘If you want.’

‘It’s not what I want …’

‘Yes, write to him. Where are you planning to live?’

‘I don’t know. Martin wants me to live with him.’

‘Does he?’

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ she says. And then, ‘I’ll write that letter.’

Slumped in the blue flicker of the twenty-four-hour news, Paul wonders whether to write a letter of his own.

When he woke up, he had not moved for a while, spat out by oblivious sleep, and unwilling to leave the limited warmth of the bed. (Which was very stale and human-smelling — discoloured, discomposed, with sulphur-grey shadows on the pillows.) It was only his need to urinate that eventually pulled him into a sitting position — stage one of his self-extraction from the sweaty sheets; the heating was turned up too high, and he had been sweating into his sleep all afternoon. He was on the verge of performing stage two — standing shakily — when he was suddenly aware of an engine ticking over in the street outside. The sound had been discreetly present for some minutes. Standing shakily, he twitched the drape and looked out. The yellow Saab was waiting in the road. As he watched, Heather walked into view — she had shut the front door so quietly that he had not heard it. He saw Martin’s head turn in the shadowy interior to follow her with his eyes. Then he leaned over and opened the door; she said something as she lowered herself into the seat. The door slammed. With a snarl the car surged forward, and was immediately out of sight.

Silence.

Silence except for the low muffled noise of the television from Oli’s room.

Paul let the drape swing shut, wiping the street light from his face. He wondered why he was so painfully stunned. He had seen nothing surprising. It was, however, the first time that he had seen them together. He slipped into the bathroom. He has upped his dose of Felixstat, and taken the subsequent dopiness, the mothballing of most of his mind, without demur. Having swallowed the pills, he turned to the toilet, and making water stared at his face in the mirrored door of the medicine cabinet. It was expressionless, yet somehow the despair — which did not seem too strong a word — was obvious; it seemed to seep out through the pores, through his dead, sad eyes. He flushed the toilet. On his way downstairs he knocked on Oliver’s door, and said, ‘Time for bed, Oli.’ The thought of being separated from the children hurts him surprisingly. Though he and Heather have not spoken of it, there seems no question of his seeing them in the future — why would he? — yet she implicitly expects him to babysit while she is out with Martin. Sometimes — on his own in the lounge while they sleep upstairs — this seems an emasculating imposition. More often, though, he finds himself holding onto the illusion of normality that it lends things. However, what he saw from the window, on top of Heather’s writing to Norris Jones, seems to have kyboshed that illusion, and in the blue flicker of the small hours he wonders whether to write anonymously to Watt; to set in front of him what Gerald said, and see what happens. While he is wondering what to write, he hears the Saab stop in the street outside. He waits, motionless, for several minutes until he hears one of its doors open and slam; it does not move on until Heather is inside, and the squeaky step squeaks under her weight.

IN HIS BLUE uniform, Paul is towing a pallet of products onto the shop floor. The pallet is wrapped in cling film, so thickly that the whole thing is shiny, white, opaque. It crashes and rattles as he pulls it over the uneven concrete of the warehouse — then is suddenly quiet, only whispering on the smooth shop floor. He shoves it into its aisle, and wanders unhurriedly back to the warehouse. Passing from the shop floor to the warehouse always feels to him like exiting a stage; it must be even more like this, he supposes, during the day when the shop is open and the customers, like an audience, are there.

The warehouse is parky enough to turn olive oil opaque in its bottles. In the loading bay it is parkier still. The four-metre-high folding doors are open to the night sky, and outside a fine drizzle is falling through the orange light. The pallets, unloaded from the lorry, stand around and quickly Paul tries to estimate their weight. He does not want one full of pet foods, or detergent, or bleach. Heavy things. (The heaviest ones, of course — the wines and spirits, the mineral waters — cannot be moved without the hydraulic pallet truck, which makes them light work, like pulling an empty; but only Gerald is trained to use that.) Through a tear in its film wrapping, he sees that one of the pallets is loaded with packet soups and noodles — not too bad. His gloved hand grasps the side grille, and with a brief strong tug to start it moving, walking sideways with his pulling arm outstretched, he steers it noisily out of the warehouse. The shop floor seems warmly lit by comparison. Temperate, and almost plush. Posters over the aisle tops show pictures of tasty-looking food and happy-looking people. Everything here is presentation, and precisely fabricated effect.

On Wednesday morning Watt is on duty. From seven o’clock, Paul spies him on the shop floor, wearing a grey suit — a suit the colour of a dark miserable dawn. Looking harassed and slightly irate, he prowls the aisles with one hand stuffed into his suit pocket. Watt never speaks to the night-shift staff himself; whatever he has to say he says to Graham, who passes it on in his squeaky voice. Paul is not in non-foods — he has been sent to help a novice in trouble with the pasta. And he is there, slinging penne onto the shelves, when Watt and Graham walk into the aisle, Graham’s leather jacket shining like wet tar. Watt whispers something to him, and Graham shouts, ‘Move it, move it.’ Looking up, Paul nods — and for a moment, his eyes meet Watt’s. Stuck in his irritable stare, Paul is suddenly unsure of himself. The letter is in his hip pocket — it was dawn when he finished it, and switched off the electric light, leaving the lounge ashen. Watt moves on. Of course he moves on. Why wouldn’t he move on? Nevertheless, the moment unsettles Paul. Watt does not seem the sort of man to take seriously improbable tip-offs; nor to suffer nonsense sympathetically. He seems an unimaginative institutional type to his sturdy bones. Most probably, he would pass the letter straight to Macfarlane, and suggest a thorough investigation to unmask the sender.