The Boy That Never Was (9 page)

I gazed at the mummy for a long time. For a while I could not understand why it commanded my attention, why it caused my heart to quicken. The placard said the portrait had been done in tempera on linen. The large eyes and dark hair were spellbinding. And then it dawned on me: it was the portrait of the boy’s face that took my breath away. It was
astonishing. The boy’s face was so similar to Dillon’s that I felt as if someone was playing a cruel joke on me. The universe, the cosmos, what was it saying to me? I don’t know. But maybe not; maybe it was a reassuring message. I wanted to reach through the glass and touch the child’s fragile bindings.

I looked about myself, as if to say,
Do you see this, do you see the boy prince from Hawara?

He is my son.

I felt elated. My mind raced. My hands shook. I caught sight of my reflection in the glass case and saw tears coursing down my cheeks.

I read the placard again, hungrily this time, scouring it for information, for some kind of pointer or clue. I don’t think it was any coincidence that the man who’d discovered this child mummy, a man called Petrie, had described Egypt as ‘a house on fire, so rapid was the destruction’. A house on fire. If that wasn’t a sign, then what was it? It was all coming together. Petrie also wrote: ‘I believe the true line of research lies in the noting and comparison of the smallest details.’

The smallest details. I thought of the DVDs, which, without realizing, I had slipped into my bag, and felt them drawing me back to them like a magnet.

I was ready to give up on the gallery when Daphne texted a confirmation through to my phone.

I took a photo of the child mummy with my phone and tore myself away from that bright face. On my way out, I bought a postcard of the child and placed it in my jacket. I walked to the gallery with a strange sense of elation and desertion. It felt like I was floating.

Daphne was charming, all lovey-lovey and full of yes, darling, of course, darling, let me give you a tour of the gallery,
darling. There wasn’t that much to see, but I suppose I was seeing history, or at least that’s what they kept telling me. History, they seemed to be clinging to history, her and her assistant, Ian. This building … blah blah blah. I heard none of it. Dillon and the child mummy of Hawara were melding in my mind.

I sat in the boardroom with Daphne, Ian and a man named Clive to talk about the future, my future. It was flattering how seriously they were taking me. My head was pounding. I tried hard to pull myself together. They dithered about, getting coffee and notes and slides and other nonsense while I plugged my computer in and went through another section of CCTV. I became engrossed. I was back there on the day. The light, cold and heavenly. The strange and ghostly movement of the people up and down O’Connell Street. It looked almost funereal, a great procession for the dead or of the dead.

‘New project?’ Clive asked, leaning over me, watching the footage on my computer screen.

‘I love it,’ Daphne said. Clive and Ian were quick to join in.

‘You’re moving into video.’

‘Good choice.’

‘A collage?’

‘CCTV.’

‘Big Brother.’

‘Genius.’

What the fuck?! I looked at them and closed over my PC. ‘Let’s get down to business,’ I said.

They all sat back down at the oval table and began their agenda. The shows, the rights, the sales, the cut, the five-year plan. Ian went to get more coffee. Daphne suggested wine, and I nodded my consent. I drank, and they kept talking.

‘Harry?’

‘Yes?’

Jesus, had I fallen asleep? Were they waking me up? What had they been talking about?

‘You were considering?’

‘Yes, yes, I was.’

My phone rang. It was Robin. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Good, yes, very good.’

‘And you’re –?’

‘At the gallery. Long meeting.’

‘Late night?’

‘Well –’

‘Harry?’

‘I’ll call you back.’

‘Are you okay?’

The concern in her voice touched something deep inside me, and I hung up quickly, afraid that if I held on, she might tap into some well of pain within me.

Daphne, Ian and Clive brought me to a posh restaurant after the meeting. I struggled to be sociable and say the right things. The bottle of wine at the gallery had levelled me off, but I needed something else to give me a second wind.

Not long into the appetizer I excused myself and went to the bar, where I ordered a brandy and then an espresso. I was under the impression that this might keep me awake. I was wrong. Daphne prodded my resting head with her finger as the main course arrived. ‘Come on, sleepy, wake up and eat.’

I roused myself and went to the gents and splashed water on my face. When I returned, everyone looked surprised to see me. Pretty quickly, Ian and Clive excused themselves. ‘Have to be up early,’ they said. Daphne dangled her gallery credit card and suggested a cocktail bar. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘because we both really need another drink.’

I felt wretched. A text from Robin said she was missing me. I tried to text back; I typed that I had had a good night
and was on my way back to my hotel room, but for some reason, the text would not send. Then I said I was in bed. Didn’t send. Then I rang. Bad idea, but no answer. So I left it. Face the music tomorrow.

Lloyd Cole was blasting through the speakers of the cocktail bar we walked into. He was asking us all if we were ready to be heartbroken.

‘Your show is going to be great,’ Daphne slurred into my ear. She ordered a bottle of champagne. The lights were kaleidoscopic. The music was so loud it pounded in my chest. And then I thought of the child mummy, alone now in the dark, echoey space of the deserted museum, its mother in another sarcophagus in a glass case with thousands of miles separating them. My heart brimmed with a new and sudden grief. Then Daphne looked into my eyes and said, ‘Are you ready to be heartbroken?’

When I woke up, two texts were waiting. One from Daphne. It said sorry. The other was from Robin: ‘You probably know this already, but your flight has been delayed. You’ll be lucky to get home today or tomorrow.’

I swallowed some painkillers and crawled back into bed. Images from the night before flashed in and out of my mind. Daphne might as well have been Diane. I tried to lose myself inside these meaningless trysts, as if such a loss of control could help me forget about Dillon. But it didn’t help. It just made everything worse.

When I woke again, it was dark.

I showered and went out to get more booze. There was no point in trying to work through the hangover; I needed the hair of the dog. I needed the dog’s bollocks.

Back at the hotel,
The X Factor
was on TV. The world was falling apart. Ireland was bankrupt. I had seen my dead son. But all the whole of fucking Ireland and the UK were talking about was
The X Factor
. So I sat there, sipping from a bottle of no-name whiskey, guilt scratching around inside me, ill to my core, watching a flurry of lights and hysterical voices.

It was all too much – too loud and too bright. I flicked off the TV and went back to the CCTV footage. I had to. It was what I was there to do, in a way. I took the postcard of the child mummy and stuck it to the wall by the desk. I ordered room service and watched another two hours of footage, barely touching the food. All I was good for now was alcohol.

I drank whiskey and watched. At some stage, I checked my e-mail. In my inbox, I recognized the usual slew of gallery invitations and junk mail. There was an e-mail from Diane, too. I didn’t open any of these. But one e-mail stood out. Under Sender it read, ‘COZ’. In the subject heading were the following words: ‘Tangier Manifesto’. The message was to the point: ‘Daphne tells me you’re in London. It would be lovely to see you. – C.’

I hailed a taxi and handed over the slip of paper.

The car drove carefully from one traffic light to the next, its headlights ghosting through the snow. The streets were almost deserted. I wasn’t sure where we were going. The roads seemed to narrow and twist. I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep.

When the taxi stopped, I thought there must be some mistake. It was not what I had expected: a housing estate in the East End.

‘Are you sure this is right?’ I asked.

The taxi-driver nodded his head and pointed to the meter.

When I paid him, he handed the piece of paper back to me, and I stepped out into the cold again.

I checked the number on the door and shook my head. This couldn’t be right, could it? A small, terraced house. Cozimo here? I was perplexed.

I rang the doorbell.

‘Harry, you are most welcome.’ It was Cozimo; his face was in shadow, and he seemed to be shorter than I had remembered, but there he was, beckoning me to follow him, repeating to me, ‘Most welcome.’

The voice was as grandiloquent as it had been in Tangier, but it was also more shrill somehow. I followed him down the narrow passageway, listening to the
shush shush
of his leather slippers, the weary drag of his feet over the tiled floor. We entered a cluttered living room where a fire was lit, but I felt little heat from it.

‘It’s good to see you,’ I said.

‘And you, my friend.’ I was expecting an embrace, but instead Cozimo held out his hand with the old grandeur I remembered, the way a king or pontiff might. And sure enough, there was a dazzling ring on his hand. I was going to make a joke about kneeling and kissing the stone when I saw the speckled and frail hand tremble. I took his hand gently then and held it for a moment.

‘It’s been too long, Coz.’

‘It has,’ he said, somewhat out of breath. He wore an old paisley dressing gown and seemed somewhat lost within it. ‘Please sit.’ He went to shift a stack of yellow newspapers from the couch on to the thinly carpeted floor. I noticed that his face was marked with deep grooves; it looked like a map of wrong turns, detours and cul-de-sacs. I felt as if you could almost trace its contours of sadness, joy and disappointed ambition. There was only a faint glimmer in his eyes, no
sparkle. The mischievous joy had gone. As if to accentuate the loss, the low hum of a cello came from a stereo buried in one corner of the room.

‘Here, let me,’ I said.

He took a step back and let himself fall into an old, dark-red leather armchair.

‘You must tell me all your news, but first let me get you something to drink.’ He tried to hoist himself up.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’

He did so and placed a fresh cigarette into a gold cigarette holder.

There was a bottle of gin on the table, but there was not enough for two glasses. ‘The fridge,’ he said. ‘There’s another bottle and some tonic in the kitchen. Do you mind?’

Gone were the martinis; it was gin and tonic now.

I walked into the dark and cold kitchen. The fridge was almost bare. A carton of milk, some soft cheese and a tub of yogurt. Jesus, I wondered, was this the same man at all?

The soles of my shoes stuck to and unstuck from the linoleum. On the yellow wall by the fridge, there was a dust-covered mirror and, next to it, a collage of framed photos. Many were of Cozimo looking dapper and smiling, cheering or lending his salutations to the company at hand. One Polaroid showed a group of us: me and Robin, Cozimo, Simo, Garrick, and Raul. It looked ancient and faded, as if the sun had shone too long on its flimsy surface. What struck me most was how happy Robin looked. I didn’t know why, but something about the photograph bothered me.

Without wanting to dawdle, I found the bottles and brought them back to the living room. Cozimo’s eyes were closed. His skin had lost the tinge of the sun and gained the hue of jaundice. His head swayed back and forth in a gentle motion – to the music, I supposed, though his syncopated
nodding was not keeping time. He opened his eyes as I started to pour the gin.

‘No ice, I’m afraid.’

‘Not to worry,’ I said and sat down. Much of the clutter in the room looked like it had come from Tangier: trinkets, souvenirs, paintings – one of the casbah and the complex of castles on the hill overlooking the city. Another painting displayed three figures at dusk; they stood, facing the viewer, as if the painting were in fact a photograph. Was it one of Robin’s? It must have been – the deep ochre hues were all hers, and she’d gone through a period when she’d etched her paintings with words. Somewhere in this painting, in its skyscape, were the words ‘love’ and ‘dusk’. I had a vague memory of Robin giving the painting to Cozimo after he had first let us stay at the apartment. It took me unawares. It had been so long since I had seen it. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied a tarot deck on the table, too.

‘You have a show?’

‘Upcoming.’

‘
The Tangier Manifesto
?’

‘A sequel.’

‘I will be a guest of honour.’

I smiled, and he reached out to hand me his glass. ‘This time make it a double, Harry, for God’s sake.’

I laughed.

I wasn’t sure what to say or how to ask – but I desperately wanted to know how he had found his way back to London. I was about to pose the question when he must have read my mind, because he said, ‘There’s something about returning to where one first started, I suppose.’

I nodded.

‘You know, I remember less and less of Tangier, but I can’t get its smell of sulphur out of the nostrils. Strange, isn’t it?’

I was going to say something about Tangier, something about the earthquake, when he asked about Robin.

‘She’s … good, very good,’ I said, looking toward the painting. Cozimo seemed to smile, but I couldn’t be certain. ‘We have a nice place in Dublin, not far from the sea.’

I wasn’t quite sure what to say. Do I tell him she is pregnant? I wondered. At the same time, I felt like he was going to tell me something, something important. He hesitated, dithered and gulped down his drink with awkward, uneven breaths, wheezing heavily. He was like an unwell, lame dog, lapping at his gin and tonic.

I, too, felt on the brink of divulging something. The something of my year. I felt that, unlike Spencer, he would not make fun of me or doubt me. I felt that, unlike Robin, I could trust him fully to understand what I had seen. I knew he would understand.