I turned on my heels and hurried back to my room. I grabbed my jacket and my keys and I locked my door behind me. Then I dashed out into the sunlight, and went looking for Mandy.
This is nice!" Sarah said, sitting down and unwinding her long, long scarf in a manner that reminded me of myself. She wore a pullover, threadbare at the elbows and with the over-long arms reaching down to her black-painted fingernails. My eldest daughter, home from Warwick University, was very keen to see me. She also wanted me to meet her boyfriend, who was called Mo. I tried not to think about why. Anyway, I offered to treat them to lunch in town. I suggested a Thai place in Soho.
Sarah was a joy to be around. Always was. Always will be. I think I'm in love with my own daughter—not in any erotic sense, my name's not Sigmund Freud—but in the sense that I love her company best of all people and miss her when she's gone.
"Is it okay for you, Mo?" I said
"It's more than okay," said Mo, settling in and grabbing a menu card. "It's good of you to bring us here."
Mo didn't look like Nosferatu at all. Well, he had the shaved head and either he'd been working down a coal mine or he applied a bit of black eye-liner. But so what? Same with the two silver rings through his eyebrow: so what? He wore what we used to call a donkey jacket over a white t-shirt; that and some very impressive Dr. Martens boots, just like Antonia did at GoPoint.
"I'm ordering wine," I said. "I bet you'd rather have a Thai beer, Mo."
"No, wine's good for me."
"You've got something in common," Sarah said. "Mo is a connoisseur of the grape."
I set down my chopsticks in surprise.
"I pretend to be working class," he said apologetically, "but my dad owns a vineyard in France." There was something wonderfully kissable about Mo, the way puppies are kissable.
"He is working class," Sarah said. "His dad's a bookie. Shall we get loads of dishes and share?"
"Really? A bookmaker? They are kind of the aristocracy of the working class, aren't they? Yes, order loads. I'm all for it. How's Mum?"
Sarah shook her head rapidly and made a vibrating noise with her lips. Mo snorted. A tiny, sweet waitress with scintillating black eyes came, and Sarah sang out the names of several dishes. "Is it too much, Dad?"
"No, keep going. You both look like you need a good meal. Ah, here comes the wine. Thank God."
I let Mo taste the wine and imitated the thing she'd just done. Shivering my lips. "What does that mean?"
Sarah shrugged. Mo pronounced the wine acceptable and said, "Sarah's Mum gave me the impression you were a kind of down-and-out. You don't look like that to me."
"A down-and-out?"
Sarah shot him a warning look, but he ignored it. "So did Lucien. Well, he said you were a loser."
"Mo and Lucien didn't exactly hit it off," said Sarah.
"No?"
"Lucien keeps having a go. About his clothes, anything he says. He can't seem to resist having a dig."
The food arrived, steaming, scented with glorious spices. I wondered if the pair of them were doing a number on me. Mo liked wine. Mo didn't like Lucien. I do tend to gulp at my first glass of wine, and I noticed that Mo was carefully keeping pace.
"Well, tuck in," I said.
We all did, and were pretty soon emptying our second bottle of wine. Behind us one of the Thai waitresses attended to the spirit house at the rear of the restaurant. She rearranged the model birds on their perches, relit a candle and put a tiny vase of flowers inside it. Mo was interested. I told him that in Thailand most people have a spirit house somewhere in the garden, and that tending it regularly keeps the spirits in good favour.
"So are there spirits in this restaurant?" Mo asked lightly.
"Yes, several," I said. "In fact there's one standing right behind you at this moment."
Mo dipped his fork and looked behind him. Sarah glanced up at me and shook her head quickly, a warning.
"Ha!" said Mo. "Ha ha!"
"Do you know what that tattoo on your forearm represents?" I asked Mo.
"What, this one?"
"Yes, that one."
"No. I just thought it looked good."
"It's a protective amulet."
Mo looked at it now as if someone had tattooed it on his arm without his permission. Sarah stepped in. She didn't seem keen on the way this conversation was going. "Mum thinks you're having some kind of breakdown. I'm supposed to report back."
"Well, as you can see I'm a fully integrated, high-functioning human being who is ready to order another bottle of wine. With the approval of you young things, of course."
Mo drained his glass, and so did Sarah. I only had to mention more wine and they behaved like it was their birthdays. Though neither of them could hold it well. By the time we hit the fourth bottle Sarah was getting her
gang kiew wan gai
all over the tablecloth.
Suddenly she tossed down her fork. "For fuck's sake, Dad, we can't stay a fucking day longer with that fucking awful pastry chef. We'll just have to crash at your fucking place. Won't we, Mo?"
Well, that was that. I must have agreed. Then this lunch that was going so well, so swimmingly, took a nosedive when Sarah blurted out, "Mum says you've got a fancy woman."
I said nothing.
"Have you?"
Mo, who was less pulled around by the wine than Sarah, registered the irritation on my face. He looked a little nervous.
"Well? Have you?"
"No, I haven't. Okay?"
"It's no big deal, Dad. If you have or you haven't."
"Can we drop the subject?"
"What's to drop? I mean, it's not like it's a big deal either way! I mean, why be so cagey? Why be so secretive? I mean, fine, if you have you have if you haven't you haven't; I mean, it's not like world news; I mean it's not like anyone gives a damn; I mean, I'm old enough to be told, but if you don't want to tell me what the hell do I care if you tell me or not?"
Mo kicked her under the table, but in a way that I was meant to see.
Sarah turned on Mo. "Why are you kicking me? He's my fucking dad! He's always like this. Big secret out of nothing at all. Am I in the wrong now? Am I?"
I threw down my napkin. "I'm just going to the loo," I said.
On my way back to the table I went to the cash register to settle the bill. My credit card failed. I hadn't made the repayments. I had to pay on my debit card, and every time I did so I was going deeper into overdraft. When I got back they were both silent. I explained I had to get back to work.
Outside the restaurant they asked me to direct them to a decent pub. I suggested coffee might be more in order but since they were having none of that I showed them the French House on Dean Street, where Dylan Thomas once famously inserted his middle finger up the anus of someone's pet monkey. No, that doesn't sound right. Anyway, before I left them and without saying anything about our spat, Sarah embraced me mightily. I left them wobbling along Dean Street, having doubtfully entrusted them with a key to my place. They had threatened to return home to get their stuff.
I promised I'd square it all with Fay.
Well, that's one way to describe the shrieking, high-decibel telephone call I got from Fay later that evening. It seemed that Sarah and Mo had returned home in a state of total inebriation, airily gathering up their bags while making insulting remarks about Lucien's pastry. Words were exchanged. Doors were slammed. Parting shots turned into grenades.
I was to blame, apparently, for "winding Sarah up." I protested that this was unfair. Fay asked me what I thought of "Nosferatu" and when I reported that I found him to be a very personable young man she became even more enraged. She wanted an apology, from someone, and so did Lucien.
I promised that I would ask Sarah to call Fay when she and "Nosferatu" had slept off their afternoon.
In fact, I'd arrived home from work to find my kitchen looking like a badger had rifled through the rubbish bin. A half-finished attempt to make a sandwich lay on the floor along with the knife used to butter it. A quarter-pound of cheese lay on the table bearing the impression of someone's teeth. Sarah and Mo had found their way to my bed, upon which they both lay snoring heartily, having been unable to remove their boots. I felt not unlike I was in that story about the girl and the three bears.
I wasn't
too
bothered by this mess in my otherwise rather obsessively tidy home. In fact, the sudden appearance of a little chaos was almost welcome. It reminded me of the time in my life when the kids were toddlers and I couldn't get out of bed without screaming as my foot descended on a sharp Lego brick or some other unnecessary plastic toy. But what did upset me was that my bookshelves had been ransacked.
When I say ransacked, I mean that four or five books had been pulled out of the middle shelf and had been opened or casually tossed on the sofa. The secret hiding place for the scribbled exercise book written by Seamus had been disturbed and the exercise book itself dislodged. It lay on the sofa, open, on the third page. Whoever had started reading it—Sarah or Mo—had abandoned it early before dragging their monkey boots onto the snow-white duvet of my bed. I returned the books—and the exercise book—to the shelf. Then I made some strong arabica.
They were still fast asleep when I went into the bedroom with the steaming coffee.
Who shall I rouse first?
I thought. Yes, Nosferatu.
He woke with a sudden snort and sat upright, sweeping a large hand across his shaved head. Sarah blinked her eyes open, too. "Oh God," she said. "Oh God."
Mo looked deathly. He blinked at me. "I'll leave this here," I said. "See you downstairs."
About half an hour later Sarah appeared having showered. She was wearing my white towel-robe and she'd fashioned a turban from another towel, in that provoking way that women do. She blinked at me.
I raised my eyebrows at her. "Your mother wants you to call."
"Oh God."
"Something about an apology."
"Oh God."
Mo joined us. He didn't say much. Just kept touching the ironwork in his eyebrows, as if to check no one had removed them while he'd been sleeping.
"You've tidied up," Sarah said. "You shouldn't have. We left a mess."
"It's fine."
"No, it's not. I know you: you'll put us in a taxi and send us back to Mr. Pastry."
"Really, it's okay. Look, I have to go out."
"Where to?" Sarah whipped off her turban towel and started to vigorously dry her wet hair.
"Help yourself to anything in the house. There's wine under the stairs. Just don't touch my books, okay? I'm very fussy about my books."
"Cool," said Mo.
"That was me," Sarah confessed. "Sorry."
"What made you go for those books in particular?"
"No idea. Where are you going?"
"I have an appointment. I mean, why grab those books out of all of them? I'm just interested."
She shrugged. "Maybe they were sticking out. What appointment?"
"They don't stick out. Not a centimetre. I'm an obsessive and I keep them all in line. It's a kind of illness."
"Look, it's fine by me if you're going to meet someone," she said.
"Shut up," I said rather sharply, "or I really will send you back to your mum's." I wondered if some demon had guided her towards that particular bookcase.
"Cool," she said, chastened. "Cool. No problem."
I reached the bathroom door and closed it on her. I let the shower run and run.
We met next at the Windsor Castle in Notting Hill. Her choice of venue, though it was familiar enough to me. In fact, I know all the pubs. I could tell you everything about the recent history of London by its inns and hostelries, but you wouldn't want to hear it. I could explain its geography by the routes picked out by draymen. I'm a bit of a connoisseur of the alehouse shadow, too, so I knew perfectly well, before she mentioned it, what's buried in the cellars of the Windsor Castle.
Every pub has a shadow. Well, not every pub; but if it doesn't have a shadow it's not worth drinking there. I have a theory that all the pubs in aggregate are themselves an encyclopaedia of demons. The Windsor Castle is indeed shadowy, moody; all wood-panelling and sectioned off with bulkhead-type doors chopped out of the wood, through which one has to step.
I waited for her in the second section, at a corner table under some framed pictures. As soon as I saw her enter I felt a flush of holy terror. The demon within her was no longer hiding.
They become brazen, you see. When they know that you know.
She arrived in a high-collared black silk cheongsam dress embroidered with red. Wonderful red, like the lipstick on an oriental courtesan glimpsed through the flimsy veils of a passing sedan chair; the red of the victim's torn throat in a grey, fog-bound Victorian London. That red. She stepped through the bulkhead doors in sheer, platinum-grey nylons and spike heels. Over all this she wore an ankle-length double-breasted gold-buttoned Cossack coat. If I had previously persuaded myself this was not a date, the illusion was now over.
I got up too quickly to greet her, aware of other men's heads turning. Their eyes raked her but I was gratified as I helped her off with her coat that she failed to reward them with a single glance. Maybe they were speculating about the mythical secrets of an older man. If she were to even peep in their direction they could relax and believe that money, or fame, or power or some other trite formula had her yoked to me. But these men knew nothing of the ways of the demon. They had no idea what was at stake.
"I'm so sorry I'm late."
"You're not late. It's fine." I draped her coat on the bench and she swayed into a chair across the table from me. "You look stunning."
"You've made an effort, too."
Maybe I had. I'd gone out and bought a linen jacket and a powder-blue shirt. I'd trimmed some of the wilder hair of my eyebrows. These were all things ridiculous to me, but I suppose one has to groom the inner troll. "I started drinking already." I felt tense and she picked up on it. "You hungry?"