Jonathan Lee - High Dive

‘You’re right,’ Marina told Engelbert, her mouth hovering close to his ear, her long fingers smoothing his hair. ‘People can be silly, can’t they?’

‘ Him silly,’ Engelbert said definitively. He looked a little put out.

‘He’s right. I’m silly. A note was actually left on my car recently, making a similar point.’

Being singled out for comment by a fresh, miniature human: it was a very special feeling. Moose felt 20 or 30 per cent drunk. The pain massing in his chest as he laughed was not altogether unpleasant.

The three of them watched Nurse Monica Jones folding things, straightening things, stacking things, arranging things, packing things and lifting clipboards from the ends of beds. You could hear a high wind outside and imagine old leaves coming loose from great trees. There was something acceptable about death, something soft and almost amiable, until you considered the very specific inconveniences it would bring about. The fact you’d miss your daughter’s wedding, for example. Miss the chance to remarry yourself. To be a grandfather. He’d never meant to stop at one child.

Marina was speaking. ‘Actually, Adolfa isn’t any big fan of the Humperdinck you were talking about. She named him because she loves the music of Engelbert Humperdinck the composer. The German who did the Hansel and Gretel opera. Our papa was a musician. The Humperdinck you are thinking about actually took his stage name from the German composer, you know.’

‘You have a sister called Adolfa?’

‘Y e s.’

‘And she likes German classical music?’

‘Y e s. Why?’

‘Just wanted to get my facts straight,’ Moose said. ‘Unusual names, in your family.’

‘This is coming from a Moose,’ she said.

He twisted a little in the bed, enjoying the spark in her expression, and propped himself up at a better angle. ‘They tell me I’ll be out of here in forty-eight hours, Mari.’

‘Wow. That is great.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What will you do first, when you are free?’

‘First? First, I guess I’ll take a walk.’

She nodded. ‘That sounds like a good idea.’

A walk. Yes. He missed the greens and blues of the sea, the feeling of the water tickling between his toes on weekly beach strolls, triple-scoop ice cream in one hand — coffee vanilla chocolate, vanilla choc-mint choc-chip — and an enlivening can of Coke in the other.

‘Being ill, Mari. It’s really no fun at all.’

‘Y e s. My sister has diabetes.’

‘Adolfa?’

‘Y e s.’

‘That’s not good.’

‘She qualified for a clinic trial, in London. She will go there two days a week, for three months. So I will get to spend a lot of time with this special small person.’

Engelbert smiled. Milk teeth white and aligned. And had the kid been tanning?

He asked Marina some more questions about preparations for the PM’s visit. They talked for a while about the allocation of staff to different tasks. In the past she’d proven herself to be valuable counsel on subjects as diverse as boiler repairs and British dining-room etiquette. He’d recently found a book confirming her opinion that salt cellars and pepper mills should always be removed from the dining table after the main course. She understood hotel work was about putting on a show. He loved watching her backstage. Often she was drinking a Bloody Mary, the tip of her tongue removing pulp from her gums.

Perhaps the greatest mystery about Marina was her continued status as a single person. Her aloneness was an inalienable right but also a source of mass confusion among the Grand’s male population. Jorge had once told Moose (over a plate of leftovers in Chef Harry’s kitchen) that the game show Marina’s ex-husband used to present on Argentinian television had involved, among other challenges, a segment where audience members had to fart on demand.

Engelbert leaned his head back into Marina’s chest and studied Moose with an intensified, possibly rivalrous curiosity.

‘So,’ Marina said, ‘how do you plan to prepare for the next heart attack?’ It was as if she were asking about a long weekend coming up.

‘Jesus, Mari.’

‘A man must be prepared for the worst thing. When I visited last you looked worse. I didn’t want to ask. But today, cheered up. Colour.’ She smiled.

‘I’m forty-five. I’m young.’

‘My second husband? Forty-six when he finished.’

This interested Moose. ‘ Second husband?’

‘Y e s. I was twenty-five, skinny, full of love. Older men get older, this is the issue.’

‘Right.’

‘He fell out of a window.’

‘Oh.’

‘People bought me these cards, these flowers. Two hundred at the funeral. But it did not matter. He had begun to drink. Drink drink drink. All the time drinking. The pavement was the best place for him, in a way. This is what I came to see.’

‘Well, I’m sure he had his qualities.’

‘He had nothing in his favour. He lacked ambition.’

‘Well, you don’t want a Macbeth in your bed.’

Marina shook her head. ‘He was not Scottish, but the whiskies he drank, the cigars he smoked. They burned at his throat. He sounded like Kermit the Frog.’

‘Do you think … with the window … Do you think it was …?’

‘It is possible. I feel he was trying to cut himself loose from a deep misery.’

‘Oh, so he’d had a trauma?’ For some reason Moose felt deeply relieved.

‘The trauma was his whole life. Once he turned forty-five he couldn’t even get a hard-up.’

‘On.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘He was limp , y e s? You kiss him, you touch his ear with your tongue, your hands stroking him, and nothing.’

‘—’

‘Moose?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘And he didn’t care about my desire.’

Moose swallowed.

‘My desire to make films. Movies. I always wanted to be the woman version of Kurt Land.’

‘Oh.’

‘ El Asalto . Films about people in poverty, trying to make an honest life. People working out who they are in relation to the world, you know? And I was going to do a disaster movie, too. An earthquake in Buenos Aires. But instead of an earthquake happening at the start of the movie, like in every other disaster movie, and people fleeing and some dying and others recovering, you know — instead of that it would happen at the end .’

‘Why?’

She was silent for a moment. ‘Because sometimes the before is more interesting than the after, no? Heading towards the impact. What is beautiful about a dive? It isn’t the splash, is it?’

He thought about telling her a good dive didn’t involve a splash.

‘I wanted to sing about what the lives were like before the quake, the day-to-day, what gets lost — that’s the song I wanted to sing.’

‘Like a musical,’ Moose said.

She blinked. ‘No, Moose.’

‘Have we talked about this? You wanted to direct, to produce?’

‘I went to film school for two years, but then the government changed again. There were the kidnappings. Then Cámpora. The return of Perón. Scholarships for film school was not the priority.’

‘I only ever really read about the Falklands,’ Moose said.

‘Same with everyone. Now I am more keen on photography. I have three photographs in my first show next June, a thing in the gallery on Royal Pavilion Gardens. One is a pair of photos of the islands, in fact. Before the destruction and after. The other is of a pig. It’s almost impossible to get pigs to look up, yes? So, it is an unusual photo. He looked up for me.’

‘Of course he did.’

‘This is why I don’t want to progress higher. I told you this, no? Guest Relations suits me fine. I have time to pursue my interests.’