David Szalay - London and the South-East

Mounting the linoleum stairs on eight o’clock, Paul is more or less persuaded of the wisdom of taking it home and disposing of it. Then he notices who he is following. Ten steps further up, he sees the square heavy-seated form, one hand still stuck in his suit pocket. Quietly, Paul follows him along the windowless corridor — past the locker room, where he had been headed. Past the notice-boards. Past two girls, teenagers, laughing in their blue uniforms, smelling of cigarette smoke. Watt mutters good morning to them. Then he pushes through the swing door into the staff canteen. Paul stops. Through the pane of strengthened glass in the door, he can see that the canteen is quite full. Watt goes over to the managers’ table — it is exactly the same as all the other tables, and its status is entirely unofficial, but no one except managers ever sits there. And managers never sit anywhere else. Taking off his suit jacket, Watt places it over the back of one of the moulded plastic chairs. Then he moves to the food servery, takes a brown tray, and in an egalitarian spirit joins the line of staff queuing for breakfast. There is no one else sitting at the managers’ table, which is in the sun, near the windows.

Paul waits outside in the corridor. He does not know what to do. (In the queue, Watt is laughing with some hair-netted girls from the bakery.) The jacket is there — he simply has to stuff the letter into one of its pockets. There will never be a more propitious opportunity. (Now Watt is talking to the serving woman, telling her not to give him too much scrambled egg.) Paul seems unable to move. Some people — men from the meat counter with brown bloodstains on their aprons — stand up from a table, tucking their tabloids under their arms, and walk towards him. He will have to move, one way or the other … The door swings open. The men are pushing past him, and at the same time, without thinking what he is doing, he is pushing past them, into the canteen. It is the first time that he has been in there in the morning and it feels foreign to him, the levels of light and noise much higher than he is used to. Taking the letter from his pocket, he forces himself towards the managers’ table. The thing is not to try and be too subtle about it — is just to do it quickly . Quickly, and then walk — at an ordinary pace — straight to the smoking room. No one will notice if he does it like that. He is already there. He feels very prominent in the white sunlight. And already he is fucking it up. He has stopped. He is standing next to the jacket, looking out of the window. Why? No one ever looks out of the canteen window; there is nothing to see except car park and sky. And then into the car park slides the yellow Saab.

With quickening urgency, Paul turns, and sweating freely starts to fumble with the jacket. He cannot find the pockets … He cannot find the pockets! How is that possible? How is it …

He finds one — it is heavy with objects — and shoves the damp letter in.

Then he sees Watt. Preceded by his tray, he is only a few metres off, his face fixed in an expression of incredulity. No longer smiling, standing stock still in the warm sunlight, Paul is mute. ‘What are you doing?’ Watt says. ‘What have you taken?’

Paul shakes his head.

There is a strange quiet in the canteen.

Watt puts his tray down on the table, and with his eyes still on Paul stoops slightly and pulls his jacket from the back of the chair. Still staring at Paul he searches slowly through the pockets. ‘What did you take?’ he says again.

‘Nothing.’ The sun is surprisingly strong. Frozen peas of sweat slide down Paul’s sides. With a look of distaste — pulling something nasty from a plughole — Watt produces the envelope. He looks at Paul, and someone laughs. Without putting his jacket down, Watt tears open the envelope, and unfolds the letter. When he looks up, his expression — a sort of suspicious outraged squint — seems to precipitate more widespread laughter. Paul is silent, sweating in the sunlight like a suddenly illuminated herbivore. Seemingly oblivious to the surrounding laughter, Watt feels his jacket for something. A pen — a proper ink pen. Unsteadily, using his left arm as a writing surface, he scribbles something on the letter and holds it out. Paul’s mouth is very dry. Watt has written Call me (underlined) and a mobile number. He is already in his seat, having a sip of sour orange juice and eyeing his wet slices of scrambled egg with a shrunken appetite. Paul takes a step towards the smoking room; then — suddenly remembering who and where he is — performs a U-turn, and heads for the exit as the volume of voices swells.

For a few minutes, he hides in the locker room, pulling himself together. Then, on the lookout for Martin, he slips out into the morning. With shivering hands he lights up. He did not want to involve himself in the situation — that was the whole point of the letter. Now that Watt knows his identity, however, he is terrified that he will take it to Macfarlane — or worse, to Martin himself.

His first plan is to phone him at noon. He does not. Tonight , he tells himself, as he undresses, tonight when I get up . Heather’s presence in the lounge provides all the inhibition he needs to prevent him from following through on this second plan, and he leaves for work with an unpleasant sense of omission. It is mainly to disperse this feeling that, when he finds himself with a few minutes at the bus stop, he tries the scrawled number. With his eyes on the murky point where the bus will appear, he listens to the pulses, hoping for voicemail. If it is voicemail he will not leave a message …

‘Roy Watt.’

For a second or two Paul says nothing. ‘Who is this?’ Watt says.

‘It’s … Paul Rainey.’

‘ Who? ’

‘You know — the letter …’

‘Oh.’ Watt pauses. ‘Yes. What’s your name?’

‘Paul Rainey.’

‘Well, Mr Rainey,’ Watt says. Paul sees the bus in the twilight, two stops away. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Not in the store, of course.’

‘No.’

‘So …’ There is a short silence, then Watt makes an uneasy suggestion: ‘Perhaps if I could buy you a drink?’

The Stadium is a sprawling pub on the Old Shoreham Road. On Friday night the car park out front is full, and a cobwebbed yellow garden spot stares up at the swaying sign. Inside, Paul feels vague and sleepy. He has not had breakfast. The hubbub of the pub sounds muffled to him, and he experiences his own presence there as something strange. He has never been in the Stadium — an unusually large local — until today; having to pass through the foot tunnel under the railway line, and over the mini-motorway of the Old Shoreham Road, makes it seem further from Lennox Road than it is. It is only for this reason that he feels safe meeting so near the houses — his own and Martin’s. He wanted somewhere within walking distance — and both he and Watt wanted somewhere where they were unknown, and unlikely to be seen. He yawns — a huge, hollow, face-twisting yawn.

Watt is standing at the bar. When he turns he is smiling like a maniac, showing the wide spaces between his teeth. He is wearing a concrete-coloured jacket with a brown corduroy collar and shapeless, high-waisted, low-seated jeans. His hands shaking, he sets the drinks — his pint of Guinness and Paul’s Bloody Mary — down on the table.

‘Thanks,’ Paul says.

‘That’s okay.’

Paul is sitting on a padded bench. There are no other seats, and with a sort of desperation, Watt scans the room for a moment, and then — unleashing a strange little laugh — sits down next to him. Paul pretends to move up, but there is nowhere to move to. ‘Well,’ Watt says, still smiling, ‘here we are.’ An ex-ex-smoker, he takes a pack of ten Silk Cut from his pocket, leaning ostentatiously out to the side as he does so. While he lights his cigarette — seemingly out of practice, he puffs at it furiously, as if it might not take, singeing it halfway to the filter in the lighter flame — Paul tastes his Bloody Mary. The vodka and tomato flavours seem separate in his mouth; the vodka very unpleasant, the tomato squash only slightly less so. Watt inspects the Silk Cut now smouldering satisfactorily in his hand. He seems to have mastered the worst of his nerves, and is more like the man Paul sees in the supermarket. ‘So …’ he says, looking up, straight ahead over the small oblong of the table. ‘What makes you think Martin’s been using unlisted suppliers then?’