David Szalay - All That Man Is

‘Yes, he is,’ she says.

‘Same college? As Simon.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Simon’s at St John’s, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well,’ he says, a little wistfully. ‘It was fun to have them here for a few days. What do you want to do for dinner?’ he asks.

‘I thought we might go out.’

‘Now that’s an idea. Where?’

‘That place in Argenta?’

He knows the place she means — they have been going there for years. ‘Sure. That’d be very nice. I’ll phone them up. Reserve us a table.’

‘Do you want me to do it?’

‘No, I think I can manage,’ he says.

The phone is on a sideboard. Next to it is a tatty little notebook full of handwritten numbers. He turns the pages until he finds what he is looking for. Then he picks up the phone and very slowly and deliberately punches the number into it. While he waits for them to answer, holding the phone to his ear, he inspects his slumped, jumpered image in the dark window.

—

Over the next few days, Cordelia takes things in hand. She gets a man in to look at the damp patch at the foot of the stairs. She finds and installs an ultrasonic device that is supposed to dissuade mice from establishing themselves in the house. She sets Claudia to work on specific tasks, which Claudia seems to appreciate. Within a few days the whole house seems more orderly and hygienic, more inhabited somehow.

Together they look on the Internet at second-hand cars for sale in the area. They find something that she seems to think would be suitable for him — a five-year-old Toyota RAV4, automatic. The next day they drive to Ferrara to have a look at it and she haggles the price down a thousand euros and they take it back to Argenta, she driving the insurance company’s car and he driving his new Toyota. He finds it much easier to handle than the old Passat. And there is something about the way she makes it all seem so easy — on his own, he knows, he would have been terribly daunted by the task of sorting it all out. Somehow she makes it seem effortless. She makes the phone calls. She takes him through the Italian forms, telling him what to write and where to sign. She sorts out the insurance. Yes, he is slightly in awe of her. She has such vitality. She wins at Scrabble when they play, which they do once or twice on those winter evenings that start at four o’clock, when darkness falls outside, suddenly, taking you by surprise.

—

One afternoon Claudia’s son shows up in his IKEA van, to take her home. He arrives early, while she is still working her way through a load of ironing, and waits in the van.

‘There’s an IKEA van at the end of the driveway,’ Cordelia says, having seen it from an upstairs window. ‘Have you ordered something?’

‘No,’ he tells her. ‘That’s Claudia’s son. He works for them. He’s waiting for her.’

‘Shouldn’t we ask him in?’

‘We could. I suppose.’

From the window he watches her tap on the window of the van and say something to the Romanian, who then leaves the van, and follows her back to the house.

He hears her speaking to him in her fluent if English-accented Italian as she leads him into the kitchen.

After a while he joins them and says hello. He only stays for a minute, hovering awkwardly. Then he is back in the wing chair with The Sleepwalkers , though less able to absorb its ideas than ever.

When Claudia and her son have left, Cordelia finds him there, and they talk about them, the two Romanians. Very nice people, they decide.

‘He’s very good-looking,’ Cordelia says.

Her father nods, apparently in agreement. And then says, hurriedly, as if it was not something he had ever thought about, ‘Would you say so?’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘He’s married, I think,’ he says, oddly.

‘Well, so am I,’ Cordelia points out.

‘No.’ He seems flustered. And knowing that he seems flustered makes him more flustered. ‘I just meant…’

‘I said he was good-looking, that’s all.’

‘Okay.’

He tries to smile — knows he doesn’t quite pull it off.

She is looking at him strangely, is how it feels. He says, ‘Well, it was nice of you to ask him in.’

She doesn’t seem to hear — she just keeps looking at him in that strange way.

He has hoisted The Sleepwalkers up in front of him — is staring without seeing it at a map of Europe in 1914.

She knows , he thinks.

What does she know, though? What is there to know? What does he know himself? That certain men…What would the word be? Fascinate him? And that disturbed by this fascination — if that is the word — he is sometimes…What? Ineffably embarrassed in their presence? That’s it, though. That’s all there is to know. Not even in his imagination has he ever…

Finally he lets his eyes leave the page — the same page, the map of Europe in 1914 — and look for her.

She isn’t there.

There is a sense that something has happened. That something has passed between them. He feels slightly sick, as he did when, about twenty years ago now, Joanna said to him that he was ‘obviously queer’. It had seemed an extraordinary thing to say. With Joanna, the subject was never mentioned again, not even alluded to. That was, however, when they started to live more or less separately. He doesn’t know if she has ever said anything to Cordelia about it.

He finds her in the kitchen.

She is holding a framed photo — her parents. The way they live — mostly apart — has always upset her.

‘What’s that?’ he asks.

She doesn’t answer.

And he thinks, standing at her shoulder, sharing her view of the photo of himself and Joanna — She’s thinking it’s all a sham . It’s not all a sham, though. He wants to tell her that. He doesn’t know what words to use.

He is trying to find a way of saying it when it occurs to him that perhaps Joanna does see it as a sham, their marriage, the forty-five years they’ve spent together, and sort of together. And of course Cordelia will see it from her mother’s point of view, mostly. She will pity her mother, for having had to live for so long like that. With someone who is ‘obviously queer’. The words still seem to have nothing to do with him. He wonders if Cordelia knows about Joanna’s affairs. Probably she knows more than he does — he knows nothing specific. It’s difficult to know what information passes between them, his wife and his daughter.

She is still looking at the photo. He’s in morning dress, you can just make out. It’s the day he got his knighthood, twenty-odd years ago.

‘The day I landed the K,’ he says.

It is so obviously not what she is thinking about, so obviously not the aspect of the image that is absorbing her, that to say it makes him sound much less sensitive than he actually is, much less perceptive. He knows that, and knows that it’s the price he pays for steering things away from what he does not want to talk about, or for trying to steer them away.

She seems to have taken the hint, though. ‘Yup,’ she says, and puts the photo down. ‘Is it too early for a glass of wine?’

He looks at his watch.

It’s not even five.

She says that in London it’s office-party season, the Christmas drinking season, liver-punishing time. Afternoons in the pub. All that.

‘I vaguely remember,’ he says.

‘Do you still miss work?’ she asks, obviously not very interested, but knowing that he doesn’t mind talking about that so much.

‘Not as much as I used to.’

He stoops thoughtfully to the wine rack.

‘Not as much as I used to,’ he says again.

He puts a bottle on the table.