Snowstorms in a Hot Climate (35 page)

Next came the packing. I had known the books would be too small to take all the cocaine. But the bags were tightly packed, and with pushing and persistence I managed to get three into Oliver and four into the Carolingians. It was enough. I didn’t want to be greedy. The drugs weighed less than the words, but not so much as anyone would notice. I closed up the books and secured them with their Blackwell’s label and rubber band. Cromwell’s face regarded me with a cold, unforgiving stare. Lenny would have approved: a man of will and substance. I put both books in their bag and stapled it closed, using, as far as
possible, the original holes. It looked, I thought, a very academic package.

Then I sat down with a pile of old newspapers and magazines and began cutting out words: enough words to write two letters. It took a long time. At some point during the afternoon the radio played the National Anthem, and Her Majesty told me of the pleasures of grandchildren and the Commonwealth, with rounded vowels like pebbles in her mouth. There followed more carols and another concert, and eventually I finished. There was one last task.

I took the rest of the plastic bags into the kitchen and poured the contents into the sink. I did this carelessly, deliberately without ceremony. Then I turned on the hot tap. The mound of white powder disappeared slowly down the plughole, all two hundred thousand dollars’ worth. Outside it was dark. The wind rattled the windowpanes, and the central heating grumbled its way warmer. I opened a bottle of wine saved from my trip to Paris and toasted myself. Merry Christmas, Marla, and goodwill on earth to all men. Except for one, that is. Then I took a sleeping pill and went to bed.

During the night of January 4 it snowed. I woke to feel its haunting stillness, muffling the city sounds. I got up, packed the books into the faithful canvas bag, and called a cab. Outside it was bitter cold. We crawled along gritted roads to Paddington, where trains to Oxford were running late. At midday I caught the 11:05, clutching a cheap day return in my gloved hand. The journey was dazzling, miles of white fields shimmering under a winter sun. The city center still had its Christmas decorations up, and the streets had turned to slush under the feet of an army of bargain hunters in the New Year sales. I pushed my way through them to the main post office, where I stood patiently in line. The man took the Blackwell’s parcel without comment, weighed it, then counted me £8.45p of stamps. I moistened
them on the little piece of sponge provided—I would not be identified by my saliva—then stuck them on, with as much care and symmetry as my gloved hand would allow. On the customs declaration form, I wrote the word
BOOKS
in childlike capitals with my left hand. I handed him the package and watched it disappear into a sack behind him. If there was a moment of glory, I expect that was it. From another queue nearer the door I posted the letters. Special delivery. Guaranteed to arrive within four days. It was pension day, and the place was packed. If the woman had time to read the addresses she certainly didn’t seem interested. Head of the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington and the Chief of Police for the City of New York. Both had names as well as titles. Names I had checked through international telephone calls made from my office. You couldn’t be too careful. Which was why both envelopes had been typed on a machine from the Geography Department.

It was midafternoon. I stood outside and wondered what to do next. I felt suddenly numb, as if all the anticipated triumph and pleasure had been used up in the waiting, and now there was just the anticlimax of it all; the beginning of the rest of my life. I walked through the town and down to the river. From pavement to earth. On the ground, the snow had frozen into a thin layer of ice, which cracked and crunched under my feet. The backs were deserted, no one mad or sad enough to brave the cold. I began walking. And as I walked I thought of Elly. For the first time in many months. Not since the cemetery, when I had banished all memory of her for fear of the pain it would cause. Instead I had fed on hatred, and the promise of revenge, and that had been enough for me. But now all that was over, I opened up and let her in.

At first it hurt so much I couldn’t bear it. The sight of her, the memory of her tearstained face in a darkened hotel room on that last afternoon, all hope and optimism splintered and gone.
But then the picture changed: another Elly in another climate, sitting in the California sunshine, smiling and sure. From there I traveled further back, back beyond the time of Lenny to the years when she was exclusively mine. And as I thought of her in that crisp, clear winter’s afternoon, I realized I was feeling something else, something as well as the grief, something that soothed and quietened. There was, inside me, almost a sense of her again. The images were familiar ones. This was the Elly I had cultivated over two years’ absence: a deliberate attempt to construct a companion out of memory, a way of living without her. I had, during that time, almost acclimatized myself to memory rather than reality. Maybe, just maybe, I could do the same again. In which case she would always be there for me, at least through a past if not a future. It was better than nothing. Because without her what was there left?

I imagined her walking with me along the path, head down against the wind, hands clutched under her armpits for warmth, scuffing ice and leaves with the tips of her boots. She hated the cold. Always had done, even when we first met: would do anything to avoid hockey practice on a winter’s day.

“You should wear more clothes,” I said under my breath. “No wonder you’re freezing.”

I heard her groan softly, wind in the trees. “God, you sound just like my mother.”

“I know. That’s why I said it.”

Above, a blackbird burst out of the tree and took off over the fields. I stopped to watch him go, lazy winged, a speck of black against the gray snow sky.

“Wouldn’t you have liked to go to Oxford?” she said suddenly. “We came here once, remember? On a school outing. I was sick on the coach. You spent the whole time mooning around the cloisters like some female Rupert Brooke. In anyone
else it would have looked like affectation. With you it just felt like destiny.”

“I remember doing it.” I did. “You were right. It was affectation.”

“Poseur.” She laughed, but the sound was whipped away by the wind. The cold bit into my face. “Come on,” I said, turning back along the path. “We’ll freeze to death out here. Let’s go back to the central heating.”

And so I took her hand and led her back through the streets of Oxford to the station. And she sat next to me all the way home.

S
ummer in the city. The students are long gone and I am adrift on an ocean of time. I have not been well. It was such a long winter. I forsook scholarship for current affairs and spent my life scouring back copies of New York newspapers. It was late May when I came across the following short piece in the
New York Post
.

Poor Lenny. Those sculptured fingers and sleek cheekbones. Such poetic revenge. The image haunts me still. I suppose it was not quite the triumph I had been looking for. So many versions of the truth. Who killed him? Was it Tyler or J.T.? It hardly matters. I have tried explaining that to Elly, but I’m not sure she understands. We don’t spend much time with each other now. I’m having trouble sleeping again. I put my flat on the market. It didn’t seem safe anymore, too many noises in the night. I spend so little time there anyway. I work every day in the London Library, burying myself in the past. But there are shadows there too, and people’s footsteps echo so on the metal floors.

I have been offered a year’s teaching post in Dublin. The head of my department is very keen for me to take it. He has shown unexpected interest in me recently, hinted that I had been overworking and maybe I should see a doctor. I think there may have been a few complaints. Of course there is nothing really wrong with me. Except perhaps an overactive imagination. And that will fade with time. I might take the Dublin post. There is a girl in the records department at work. She is small and dark and laughs a lot. Reminds me of Elly. Sometimes I find excuses to go and talk to her. Dublin would be good for me. Don’t misunderstand me. I am not dodging the issue. And
I’m not sorry for what I did. He deserved to die. That’s what I think. It’s just I need a change of scenery. Somewhere people don’t know me. And I do so like that rush you get when you first arrive at an airport, bound for wherever it is you are going. Don’t you?

ALSO BY SARAH DUNANT

The Birth of Venus

Mapping the Edge

Transgressions

Under My Skin

Fatlands

Birth Marks