David Szalay - London and the South-East

Watt found this place. His search for low room rates led him here.

Mounting the three chequer-tiled steps (black and beige) up to the unpromising corridor, Paul looks over his shoulder. Andy is following a few metres behind with his overnight bag and suit carrier, looking up and down the quiet square with mild, bloodshot interest. He is obviously stoned. Paul is stoned himself. They were passing through the neighbouring square — Clarence, very similar — when Andy said, ‘Should we have a quick doob?’ The doob had a particularly pungent, skunky odour, and they smoked it quickly, under the uninterested eyes of some scaffolders. Now Paul is sliding in slow motion into the guest house, slowly immersing himself in its stale smell. ‘Oi, mate!’ Andy’s plummy voice. Paul turns. One wall of the corridor is covered with mirror tiles, each an inch square. Pixellated, Andy stands motionless in them. The opposite wall is puffy with old wallpaper. From outside, the sad sound of gulls. ‘What?’ Paul says.

‘Is this where I’m staying?’

‘What do you think?’

Since Paul met him at the station, Andy has maintained an irritating prima donna fussiness. ‘This is where you’re staying,’ Paul says. ‘Yes.’ It is a strange situation. Not having seen each other for so many months, and now here, in Brighton, neither of them wearing a suit. When the late-running ten-oh-six from Victoria finally pulled in, Paul had left his post, and was inspecting croissants under illuminated glass — most of them had lost their pep, they looked soft and greasy under the heat lamps. A voice at his shoulder said, ‘All right, mate?’ Startled, his speech of welcome vanishing from his mind, all he had said was, ‘Oh, all right.’ And then purchased a cheese and ham croissant — he was hungry, had not had supper — while Andy waited with his luggage. ‘How are you?’

‘Yeah. Well …’

‘Oh — d’you want something?’

‘No thanks.’

What Andy did want was to take a taxi to the hotel — his word — but when Paul said, ‘All right, if you pay for it,’ he spent a long time sighing and whining and looking longingly at the green-and-white taxis pulling up outside the station like motorised mints, and then finally said, ‘It better not be far.’

‘It’s not.’

They walked down Queen’s Road. In the distance, the sea glittered like static on an untuned TV screen. The pavement was strewn with rubbish, the businesses were tawdry. Paul ate his croissant from its greasy paper bag while Andy pestered him to take the suit carrier. Andy was wearing jeans and a rugby shirt with wide lateral stripes and brogues. (The only previous occasion on which they had seen each other outside of work was one Saturday in the autumn when they went to the rugby — Murray had been there too.) They passed the clock tower and pushed their way through the Churchill Square shoppers and then, in the quiet of Clarence Square, where the houses were discoloured like old newspaper, Andy stopped and said, ‘Should we have a quick doob?’

Under the stairs — painted black, with a worn blue runner — there is a sort of booth, made of unfinished tongue-and-groove material. There is someone in this booth, a fat woman. Paul does not notice her, however. He is peering into what seems to be a dingy dining room — he sees a toaster on a sideboard — when her voice makes him jump. She laughs — a tinkly, high-pitched laugh — and says, ‘I am sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ Paul says, shock sluicing away as he turns, and smiles himself. His voice is slightly slurred. Still smiling, the woman stares at him from her plywood booth. Seconds pass. ‘Do you want a room?’ she asks.

‘Um … I’ve got … A reservation.’

‘All right. What’s the name?’

‘Well, it’s under … Watt.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Watt.’

‘What’s the name?’

‘The name’s Watt. W-A-T-T.’

She laughs again. ‘Oh, I see.’ She turns the page of a desk diary; her hands seem small at the end of her stout, rosy arms. ‘I suppose you get that a lot.’

‘I’m not Mr Watt.’

‘That’s all right,’ she says, patiently. ‘Just the one night?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Fine …’

‘Actually it’s for this gentleman.’

And Andy steps forward.

The room is on the top floor. It is small and low-ceilinged. The window, hung with a foul lace curtain, overlooks the end of the square. The floor is loud and lumpy, and when Andy sits on the single bed his buttocks sink almost to the level of the cloth-like carpet. There is a tiny sink, heavily infected with limescale, a wardrobe with a single wire hanger, and a kettle — also limescaled — on a sloping side table, the only other piece of furniture in the room. Next to the kettle are a tannin-blackened mug, two tea bags and a doily. The paper shade on the ceiling bulb is tawny with cigarette smoke and speckled with the excrement of generations of flies. ‘It’s not too bad,’ Paul says. ‘Quiet …’

Andy is struggling to stand up from the bed. While he does this, Paul swings the old-fashioned British Airways flight bag from his shoulder. ‘This is the equipment,’ he says.

‘What equipment?’

‘Do you want to get a pint then?’

Having somehow succeeded in standing up, Andy does want to get a pint.

There is a pub more or less next door, the Regency Tavern — a few steps down the alley which eventually opens into the wide seafacing expanse of Regency Square. The interior is kitsch, the walls painted with wide vertical stripes — verdigris and pond green — and the light bulbs shaped like candle flames. Ormolu cherubim support mirrors and hold brass palm fronds in their babyish hands. Paul pays for the pints and they sit themselves down by a large frosted-glass window. It is only just eleven, and they are the only people in the pub. On the windowsill next to their table, an imitation stone urn overflows with white silk roses and lilies; the tabletop is painted to look like malachite. In these surroundings, Paul outlines what is to be done. When Andy laughs, he says, ‘Don’t fucking laugh. This is serious, mate.’

‘Why? Who is this bloke?’

‘Never mind. What does it matter?’ He presents him with Watt’s printed instructions, saying, ‘Study this. Learn it. You’ve got till tomorrow.’

Andy is smiling in a way that does not suggest he is taking the situation entirely seriously. He snickers at something in the instructions. ‘Where am I going to meet him?’ he says. Paul has been wondering about that. ‘Why not here? Here. You know where it is. You’ve got to phone him and fix it up.’

‘ I’ve got to phone him?’

‘Of course. You. Of course. Andrew Smith, of Morlam Garden Fruits.’ He looks at his watch. ‘We’ll try him at twelve. What are you going to say?’

Andy smiles. ‘All right, mate. Wanna buy some fruit —’

‘Stop fucking about! This is serious .’

‘What do you want me to say then?’

Paul sighs, and takes a biro from his pocket. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘We’ll write something down.’

Over the second pint, he finds himself pressing Andy for PLP news. Who’s in, who’s out. Lawrence, it seems, has had a nervous breakdown, and Neil Mellor is now de facto director of sales. ‘How’s he doing?’ Andy does not have much to say on the subject. ‘He’s really stressed out,’ he says. ‘Shouts a lot. Kind of like Lawrence used to.’

‘Lawrence doesn’t shout?’

‘Not really.’

‘What does he do?’

‘I don’t know.’ Then: ‘He’s got an office.’ And finally: ‘I think he’s leaving soon.’

‘Is he?’

With a shy smile, Andy says, ‘What happened to you?’