Jonathan Lee - High Dive

He put down enough cash to cover the bill and a large tip. He rushed outside. She was in the street. He saw the dress first, then the hair. The hair was moving in the wind and she was trying to hail a taxi. The frailty of her wave made him think of his mother hugging him before he left for Brighton, scrabbling at his shoulders like a climber on a rock face, bound to nothing, bound to fall, knowing nothing, knowing something — but how much did she understand?

When he was close enough for Lena to hear him he said, ‘I’ve been up since quarter to four. Not sleeping. I’m sorry. Fatigue makes me more prick-like than usual. My name’s Dan … Forgive that stuff.’

She didn’t turn round. She didn’t flinch. Nothing seemed to surprise her. Maybe that’s what real happiness was, he thought: the inability to feel surprised. But it could just as easily be a definition of misery.

The road was distinctly lit. Lamp posts were queuing up a hill. He could take it all in with a flicker of the eye: the closed-up shops; the railings; the metal bars guarding windows.

‘I’ll walk until I find a lift,’ she said.

‘Let me walk with you, help you get a taxi.’

‘No. Yes. If you like.’

They walked side by side. The pavement was peaceful. The only movement was the flutter of litter. A Lilt can rattled at the kerb.

The list of things they didn’t discuss was long. Children, relationships, hopes, regrets, favourite foods, views on sex, friends alive, friends dead, break-ups, disease, famine, love, all the different kinds of leave-taking that make up a life. They exchanged maybe a hundred words, but the silences between felt special. He tried to hold her shoulder but she rolled it away. Cold and pebbled, her skin; he’d expected it to be warm. He looked at the shine of her eyes and sensed there was nothing he could do.

Maybe I should just ask, he thought. Would I be able to kiss you? Would that be OK? He wasn’t sure how it would sound. Like a fourteen-year-old’s zitty plea, probably.

They were perfectly still, facing each other. He looked down at his watch, registered the time. A bus stop. She decided to take a bus. A bus came and she moved towards its hissing doors.

He gave her a half-smile as they parted. That he could manage even that was a credit to his ability to pretend. This was nothing. It didn’t matter. In a few hours it would be a well-lit morning and he’d read the newspaper, see the accounts of the bombing, and accept that this moment on this street with this stranger was never a part of the story. She doesn’t like you. Move on.

On the walk back he laughed at himself. The idea that a cold brute, a prizefighter, needed the warmth of a good woman. It was the saccharine stuff that Hollywood sold and he wasn’t a prizefighter, was he? He was an electrician and what he needed was sleep.

He’d get into bed is what he’d do. He’d get home and sleep soundly. He wouldn’t wake to the letter box tonight. If they wanted to put something through the letter box, let them. He wouldn’t wake in the night and think how noisy the bed sheets were, a crashing sea all around him. He wouldn’t wake like he had these last three weeks with the dippy idea of the ocean in his mind, mouth dry with dread, hand grappling for a glass of water. He simply would not wake.

MOOSE FELT DAFT with adrenalin. One hundred per cent alive for the first time in weeks. Finally it was happening: light laughter; gaps in chatter. Silence was smoothed by classical music. The old gramophone had been procured with events like this in mind. He was circulating through the bar area with a silver tray balanced on the splayed pads of his fingers. The more competent of the summer girls were doing the same, weaving tactfully through gaps in the partygoers. Twenty elegantly dressed men and women. Thirty. Forty. The space was filling up nicely. Tories, lords. The accident-prone staff he’d tidied away backstage: restocking chiller cabinets, fuelling security staff with coffee.

Freya’s allocated task in advance of the Prime Minister’s arrival was to keep champagne topped up. She was being rheumy-eyed and unhelpful. Already she’d dropped two flutes. The first mistake sent champagne splashing up Sasha’s legs. He needed her to be on top of her game. After sweeping up fragments from the second glass he asked her what exactly was wrong.

‘What do you think?’ she said.

‘I’m supposed to know?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not?’

‘No.’

‘Is it because I rushed you, getting ready?’

‘No.’

‘Are you trying to annoy me by overrelying on the word “no”?’

She lifted an eyebrow at this.

‘What exactly, or just vaguely, is wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

Since then he’d been intermittently trying to get his daughter to talk, but her only concession to reciprocity had been to take a bowl of nuts from his hand — nuts that had, after a dozen tiny sampling sessions, left telltale hints of glitter on his fingers. She gave him, in lieu, a side plate of carrot sticks. Each stick radiated outward from a central ramekin of taramasalata. He resented her for being a blot on his happiness, and hated himself for thinking of his own daughter as a blot. He relocated her to the reception desk. She stood behind it, shoulder to shoulder with Surfer John, silent. What came to mind was a Christmas where he and Viv had sent her upstairs to think about why torturing Grandpa was bad.

‘Caroline,’ he called.

‘Yes, Mr Finch?’

‘Be great if you could help Elena top up the champagne.’

‘Sure, no problem.’

If they were all like Caroline his job would be easy-peasy.

Did the salmon blinis need a little squeeze of something? Would it not have been better to serve them with precise little slices of lemon? He was sure he’d requested lemons. He wondered whether the volume on the gramophone was pitched just a little too high.

He moved between groups, hoping key individuals noticed his name badge. He was being hands-on, a boss who wasn’t afraid to get involved. He was serving up miniature fish cakes with a self-deprecating air, a years-since-I’ve-done-this-type smile, but was nervously aware that the point of such self-deprecation was that other people should notice and appreciate it, thereby balancing the ledgers of modesty and praise in his favour. The ministers each had in their information packs a handwritten note signed by Moose. Printed at the bottom was his full name and title, but you could never be sure, could you, what people read and what they skipped. This was his show and he had to have faith.

Some of the men and women were raucous already and others were whispering in corners, exchanging hushed thoughts about the PM, placing stress on unremarkable syllables. ‘I just think un less the Lady can pull something exceptional out of the bag, something out of the ordinary, then what we might be looking at tomorrow is, you know, don’t you think, if we’re to tally honest …’ Fifty of them now? Sixty?

Marina was with a PR woman. Both of them were holding hefty Filofaxes. A call Maggie would need to make to Scargill. This evening, from this hotel, a call that could change the course of history. He loved overhearing little titbits like this. In hospital he’d felt the press of cancelled life all around him. Tonight put him back in the world.

A lady with a sequinned neckscarf was contemplating a selection of soft cheeses.

‘Pursuit of income equality!’ someone said.

Over there, by the painting of Harold Wilson, a Welshman was telling Jorge that politics was a matter of give and take — ‘we give the English our coal, and the English take our water’ — and Jorge was giving him the kind of smile that succinctly expresses complete and utter incomprehension.