All That Man Is (32 page)

‘Aren't they paid for by dee oil companies?'

Murray sighs. He has heard this shit before, and he won't have it. The fact is, Murray feels a profound sympathy for ‘the oil companies'. He feels, somehow, that he and ‘the oil companies' are on the same side. That is, they are the successful ones, the winners of this world, and therefore envied no doubt by losers like Hans-Pieter – Hans-Pieter, who still lives in a youth hostel, while Murray, like some fucking oil company, occupies a well-appointed flat in one of the most elegant Habsburg-era streets of the town. It is his understanding, in fact, that Hans-Pieter is on the Dutch equivalent of the dole, which stretches a lot further here than it does in Amsterdam or wherever he's from.

‘Do you not understand,' he says, taking a more indulgent tone with his slow-witted friend, ‘that the whole thing's a plot
against
the oil companies? A left-wing plot. Against the market economy. Against individual freedom.'

‘You think that?' Hans-Pieter says.

‘I know that, pal. They lost the Cold War,' Murray explains. ‘This is their next move. It's fucking obvious when you think about it.'

A large drop of sweat falls from the end of his nose.

Hans-Pieter says nothing. He turns his head to the hot square. He has a little earring in his left ear.

‘Anudder one?' he asks, noticing Murray's empty glass.

‘Go on then,' Murray growls.

Surprisingly, after that one, only their second, Hans-Pieter makes his excuses and leaves Murray there on his own, to have another half-litre of Pan, the local industrial lager, and survey the square in unexpected solitude.

That Hans-Pieter has something else to do is a surprise. The underlying premise of their friendship is that neither of them
ever
has anything else to do. No one else to see. There
is
no one else. That's why they are friends. Take that away, and it's not obvious what would be left.

Actually, it's not quite true that there is no one else. There's Damjan. An acquaintance of Hans-Pieter, a native. Damjan has a job though – he works at a tyre-fitting shop next to the train tracks. He has a family. He has, in other words, what passes for an ordinary life.

Murray meets him later in the bar of the Umorni Putnik.

Murray is disappointed, arriving there, that Maria isn't around. Inasmuch as Murray has a purpose in his life now, that purpose involves Maria, who serves drinks in the youth hostel. She is not, he feels, out of his league. For one thing, she is not very attractive. She is young and friendly, and her English is excellent – she even understands Murray when he speaks. He has had his eye on her for some time, since last winter. All year he has been planning to make his move.

He was particularly hoping to find her there this evening. He feels down. Outside, it is already dark. The evenings are shortening now. The nights, as they say, are drawing in.

He sees Damjan arrive.

‘Damjan, mate,' Murray says, standing eagerly to shake the tyre-fitter's hand.

Damjan is short, muscular, untalkative – the sort of man that Murray instinctively defers to.

Damjan, while still shaking Murray's hand, looks around. ‘Hans-Pieter?' he asks.

‘Not here,' Murray tells him. ‘I dunno where the fuck he is. Lemme get you a drink.'

‘So,' Murray says, when they are sitting down. ‘What you been up to then?'

‘What you been up to?' Murray asks again when Damjan says nothing. ‘What you been doing?'

Damjan, perhaps still not understanding, shrugs, shakes his head.

‘You're okay, though?' Murray asks.

‘Okay, yes.'

This is in fact the first time they have had a drink together without Hans-Pieter being there. It turns out to be surprisingly hard work.

They end up talking about tyres.

‘So what about Pirelli?' Murray finds himself asking. ‘How do they compare? With Firestone, say.'

Increasingly, there are long silences, during which they separately survey the room, trying to find a woman worth looking at.

Then Murray asks another question about tyres, which Damjan dutifully answers.

They have been talking about tyres for almost an hour.

‘I had Mitchell-in on the Merc,' Murray says, after a long pause. ‘Top quality.'

Damjan just nods, drinks.

‘D'you think we're going to see Hans-Pieter tonight?' Murray asks.

Damjan shrugs.

‘You don't know where he is?'

Damjan, lifting his drink, shakes his head.

Which, it turns out later, is a sort of lie. He knows more or less where Hans-Pieter is. Hans-Pieter is at Maria's flat, naked, watching an episode of
Game of Thrones
dubbed into Croatian on Maria's squat little TV.

In the morning, autumn has arrived. The temperature has fallen twenty degrees overnight. Surveying it from his window, in pants and vest, Murray is triumphant. He looks forward to shoving this turbulent autumn day, full of wet leaves, in Hans-Pieter's face and saying, ‘So what about this then? You fancy an ice cream now, ya fucking parasite?' He starts to smile, until an eruption of coughing knobbles him and he turns from the window trying to force out the word
Fuck
as he doubles over and the veins in his temples swell and throb.

‘FUCK!'

‘Fuck.'

Silence settles on the flat, like dust. He found it, the flat, with Hans-Pieter's help, about a month after arriving in the town. His landlord is a middle-aged man whose mother lived here until she died, and most of her stuff is still in place – vast dark wooden furniture looms in the two rooms. Down at floor level Murray lurks among the old lady's pictures and knick-knacks, her pedal-operated sewing machine, her damp bedding. He had wanted it fully furnished. He uses her old steel knives and forks, her stained plates. There are even, on the walls, some framed photos of people in old-fashioned clothes, strangers with grave sepia faces.

The flat is still full of warm, stale air. The flapping grey scene outside its two grand windows seems disconnected from the tepid silence of the interior. It seems weird, histrionic. Rain comes at the windowpanes like handfuls of pebbles. Murray lights a cigarette. He smokes a local brand now – to that extent he has gone native. He sits in the hot shaft of the bathroom, surrounded by rust-furred piping, discoloured tilework, a light bulb burning high overhead.

Afterwards, he dresses, and wrestles an umbrella the short distance to the Umorni Putnik.

Hans-Pieter is there, having breakfast at a table in the shadowy bar. A coffee, a buttered bread roll. He seems to be staring at a point about two feet in front of his eyes.
Fucking space cadet
, Murray thinks.

Without acknowledging his friend, he addresses himself to the bar, where Ester is on duty. Ester – she
is
out of his league.

She's pals with Maria, though, so it's probably worth keeping in with her: Murray smiles.

He feels the insufficiency of that smile himself, sees its insufficiency for a moment in the deep murky shadows of the mirror behind her. (The price list is written directly onto the mirror – his face peers out from among the numbers.)

‘Yes?' Ester says.

‘Cappuccino,' Murray's face says, in English.

While she works the machine, he looks at a local newspaper. The words mean nothing to him, his eyes drop from picture to picture. Pictures of local politicians – mean-looking men with terrible haircuts trying to smile, as he has just tried to, and with, for the most part, a similar lack of plausibility.

When he has his cappuccino, he joins Hans-Pieter. ‘Morning,' Murray says, mutters, taking a seat opposite his friend.

Hans-Pieter, his mouth full, just nods.

He seems to be force-feeding himself a bread roll.

Murray regards him with distaste for a few moments. ‘Where were you last night then?' he asks finally.

Hans-Pieter is swallowing the bread in his mouth. He tries to speak prematurely and the words are indistinct.

Murray squints at him irritably. ‘What was that?'

‘Ammarias,' Hans-Pieter says, swallowing.

‘What?'

Hans-Pieter swallows properly. ‘Maria's. At Maria's flat.'

‘What d'you mean?'

Hans-Pieter is unable to hold Murray's stare. ‘You know – Maria?'

‘Maria,' Murray says, struggling, it seems, to understand who they are talking about, ‘who works
here
?'

‘Yes.'

You were at her
flat
?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why?' Murray asks, sincerely puzzled.

‘Well.' Hans-Pieter laughs shyly. ‘You know …'

‘No, I don't know.'

‘We've … We've got something going,' Hans-Pieter says.

Murray, for a moment, looks totally nonplussed. ‘What –
you
?'

Hans-Pieter nods.

‘You and Maria?'

Hans-Pieter looks down. ‘Well, yes,' he admits. He seems embarrassed. And it might be that he misunderstands Murray's perspective. Maria is twenty years younger than Hans-Pieter, more or less. She is overweight and unattractive. Things that are, potentially, sources of embarrassment.

‘How did that happen?' Murray says. He has turned quite pale.

Last Friday night, Hans-Pieter tells him, he was there in the Umorni Putnik until it shut, as he usually is, and it was pissing down outside, and she didn't have an umbrella – she was waiting for it to stop, so he suggested she come up to his room and wait there, have a smoke, and she did, and they ended up spending the night together. Since then, he tells Murray, he has twice spent the night at her flat.

‘That's it,' Hans-Pieter says.

He starts on his second bread roll.

For some time Murray says nothing.

The little trees in the street outside shake and sway.

At the shadow-draped bar, Ester is talking to someone on her phone, laughing.

And I was at Beckie's place, Murray thinks, trying to sleep. The Spider-Man duvet. And they were. At that same moment. Last Friday.

He is staring at Hans-Pieter with an expression of shocked loathing. ‘What the fuck does she see in you?' he says.

What does she see in Hans-Pieter? The question keeps Murray awake that night. He sits there, in the tall mausoleum-like spaces of his flat, smoking in the darkness. What seems obvious to him is that if he had only made his own intentions plainer, sooner, he and not Hans-Pieter would have her. That thought torments him for a while. Not that he even particularly wants to have her in any physical sense. There was something limply sentimental, something vague, something almost like pity, about his feelings for Maria. And what she sees in Hans-Pieter is obvious enough – Hans-Pieter is just a lesser version of himself, a poor woman's Murray. A foreigner from somewhere further west, with at least
some
money. Hans-Pieter even has a car – an old rust-perforated 1.2 litre Volkswagen Polo, leaking oil in a side street. In the context of the Umorni Putnik, that makes him a more or less plausible sugar daddy.

He's welcome to her, Murray decides.

He's welcome to the fat tart.

And the good thing is, this will give him more time to focus on his business interests. Which is what he
should
be doing anyway, not messing about with floozies. His business interests. Airport transfers. Minibus to Zagreb airport. Blago has the drivers lined up. He has the advertising lined up. The website is ready to go. He just needs the minibuses. He has enough for one, he says, but he needs four to make the business viable. So he offered Murray the opportunity to invest. They talked about it in Džoker, and then over lunch. Put in the money for the minibuses, get a fifty per cent stake, was Blago's proposal. And sitting in an HSBC in Kingston upon Thames last Wednesday, Murray had finalised the loan, against the house in Cheam, and transferred the money to the account of Slavonski Zračne Luke d.o.o., the details of which – IBAN number and so forth – Blago had provided for him. Blago has shown him the minibuses he intends to buy – ex-police vehicles he found online, for sale in Osijek. Said he'd be going down there to get them just as soon as the money arrives. Murray said he wanted to come with him, to see the vehicles for himself. ‘I know a thing or two about that,' he had told Blago. He had insisted on having a veto, if he didn't think they were up to scratch.

He has tried Blago's phone once or twice since he got back from the UK, to find out if the money has arrived.

No answer. That was typical Blago.

*

The most pressing issue, he finds, is the Hans-Pieter-shaped hole in his own days, which he now mostly drifts through alone. They used to meet every morning in the Umorni Putnik. These days, most of the time, Hans-Pieter isn't there. Murray drinks his cappuccino, while pretending to look at the paper. He stays there for more than an hour, sometimes.

Occasionally Hans-Pieter does show up. One morning, when he does, Murrays says to him, ‘What you up to later then?' Which is what he always used to say – and the answer would always be words to the effect of ‘not much', and they would agree to meet at Džoker ‘later', meaning some time fairly soon after lunch.

Today, however, Hans-Pieter just shrugs.

When Murray suggests a drink in Džoker ‘later', Hans-Pieter is initially evasive, and then says something about a film he's planning to see.

‘Oh?' Murray says. ‘What you seeing?'

Iron Man 3
, Hans-Pieter tells him.

There is a silence. Then Murray says, ‘Mind if I come along?'

Another silence. Hans-Pieter says, not particularly warmly, ‘If you want.'

‘If it's okay with you,' Murray says.

Hans-Pieter looks down at his Adidas trainers. ‘It's okay.'

‘Where shou' we meet then?' Murray asks.

‘Here?' Hans-Pieter suggests, without enthusiasm.