The Long Room (9 page)

A time of joy, a time of grief, for the little one who came into the world already tired and wizened and left it with a small sigh ten days later, having seen enough. Lullaby and good night, Henrietta, Stephen’s sister, Stephen’s twin: another waif to join her unborn children. Well, but, Stephen Spencer Donaldson. An August child, a harvest child, as gold and full of promise as a grain of corn. Old enough by his first Christmas to open wide his eyes and reach his hand out for the dancing horses on the carousel.

Hard it had been, very hard, not knowing whether to weep or sing, to celebrate or grieve. But, in the end, you know, there’s no real choice: the babe that lives needs all the strength that you can muster if he is to thrive. Coralie remembers her worries of the first weeks, all the weighing and the measuring – will he grow plumper, longer, stronger or will he wither like his
sister or, like the changeling child of nightmare, wane and fade away? The terror of all mothers – to wake and find your baby lying stiff and silent in his crib. A memory that still has power to send shudders through her decades later: lifting Stephen up one morning, he by now fifteen months old, and his eyes looking into hers completely blankly. Not a glimmer of recognition, a smile or a response. As if the child she’d laid to sleep had vanished in the dead of night, substituted by a stranger. Or as if an evil thing had slunk into his bedroom in the dark and sucked his soul from him.

But, fear and anguish notwithstanding, notwithstanding malign fate, the babe not only lived but flourished. In a manner of speaking, if flourish is a word that could apply to a child who was as narrow as a willow leaf, as thin as the stalk of a dandelion – he could suck his belly into such a hollow you would swear his spine showed through – and who causes to this day outpourings of anxiety in the matter of his diet. It was his mother’s responsibility from his first minutes on the earth to feed and succour Stephen and, as far as she can tell, there is no other woman yet to take that burden from her shoulders.

Spoonfuls of mush ladled into a gummy mouth: Farex, creamed rice, creamed oats, creamed potato. Bottles of sweetened milk. Condensed milk on a rusk. Mashed bananas with brown sugar, extract of malt, sponge fingers and strawberry jam. Thank goodness Stephen comes home at weekends so that she can keep an eye on what he eats; she has a hunch that what he feeds himself is not what she would see as wholesome food, and besides, speaking for herself, meals for one are not the same. Although Stephen had been gone for years now, Coralie has never summoned up much interest in cooking for herself.
An egg on toast will do for her, or a can of soup.

Anyway, so her son survived but he came too late to stop his father straying. Off he went, into the night, like a tomcat on the prowl, Spencer Albert Donaldson. No, let’s be fair; there are always two sides to a story. Maybe he’d had his fill of her, of the scrawny, tearful woman she’d become. The barren wife, already middle-aged while he was young. In bed he’d always been more keen than her, keen as mustard to begin with, she’d be quite bow-legged, but to be honest she could never see the point of it, or get the hang of it, perhaps. And as soon as they started to connect the deed with her need for a baby, that’s when the rot set in. Funnily enough, it hadn’t put her off as much as it had him. She’d even been the one to start things off, or at least to make it clear that she was willing, which she certainly would not have done before. But she had to admit there was something unromantic about urging a man to pump away while you lay stock-still beneath him, desperately trying to keep the seed in, encourage it upwards, having washed yourself with lemon juice, drunk nettle tea, hung mistletoe above your bed and monitored the moon.

He stuck around for a year or two. No, let’s be truthful: he must have been there, in body at least, until Stephen was four or thereabouts; she can remember his fourth birthday, Spencer bought a bicycle, blue, with stabilisers. But he didn’t stay long enough to teach his son to ride it. Coralie did that by herself, running along beside the child, one hand on the handlebars, trying to stop him swerving wildly or coasting down the hill. She had had to buy a spanner when Stephen eventually mastered the art and the stabilisers could come off. Long before that birthday Spencer had left the Army and was an engineer
on Civvy Street; better money, he had thought, a more settled life, less wandering about from pillar to post. That’s why they moved to Didcot, to be close to the Atomic, where Spencer got a job.

Spencer had gone by the time Stephen went to infant school, of that Coralie is sure. She can remember his first day; she was certainly on her own, the lump in her throat when she left him there, trying not to let him see her tears. How he had doted on that teacher! He kept in touch for a while, Spencer that is; he sent money every now and again, and birthday cards, but both dried up eventually. Someone told her he had emigrated to Australia. Whatever the case, she has not heard from him for a long, long time but she bears him in mind, especially on their wedding anniversary, Stephen’s birthday and the anniversary of Henrietta’s death. And maybe other times as well. He’d been much more upset by the little girl’s death than she would have thought. It was as if the loss of his daughter overshadowed the childhood of his son, the baby’s twin.

Stephen says that he doesn’t remember his father. Coralie is not sure if that is true.

That it is better not to look too closely in the mirror when you’re shaving in the morning would be Stephen’s general rule, but on this particular morning, naked in the chilly little bathroom, he inspects himself minutely. How odd it is that his face looks utterly familiar and yet at the same time alien. There are small markings and lines on it that he could swear he has never seen before and the expression is not exactly his.
Mon semblable
, he thinks, again; an alter ego or twin brother? He takes his glasses off and leans over the washbasin until his forehead touches its reflection. His eyes are somewhat bloodshot, as if he has been crying, which he hasn’t, not last night. The line of dry skin along his lower lip is stained by Spanish red, and the wine has also left its dark tinge on his teeth. He stretches his lips and snarls. There is nothing wrong with his nose, except that the cartilaginous bridge of it is slightly crooked. There is nothing wrong with his eyes either, apart from the transitory redness; in fact only the other day Charlotte had told him they were nice. Maybe she was teasing. But they are positively blue, not puddle-water, winter-sky blue, like so many other people’s, which are nearer grey. The eyelashes are long. He looks deeply into his dilated pupils. Will they reveal the new determination that he felt this morning when he woke? Is there anything essentially wrong with his appearance? In the winter his lips are always cracked. His hair is receding at the temples. His complexion
is pale but his skin is clear apart from a spattering of freckles. Perhaps they’re moles. There are a lot of them on his chest and shoulders too, and on his back, for all he knows. He straightens up and steps away to frame as much as he can of his whole self in the mirror.

Fairly narrow shoulders. A concavity between the breasts where flatness might arguably be desirable. A slight protrusion of the belly. The hair on his chest is sparse and sandy but it forms itself into a pleasingly straight line and darkens past his navel to a thicker cluster above his pubic bone. His cock is perfectly normal, as far as he can tell. He lifts it and lets it fall. The line of his groin, where it tapers downwards from his hips, is actually quite beautiful; the skin there smooth and milky. Beyond that point he cannot see in the mirror but he is sure his legs and feet are not remarkable in any way. He is reasonably tall.

So, is there something that he does not have? Is there something that he ought to change? He has never asked himself these questions in so direct a way before; there has been no need to: a man goes into the world completely clothed, not as a bare, forked animal, after all. Today he wants an answer.

He had spent another restless, sweaty night, his heart pounding and his dreams intermingling with his waking thoughts, eliding into meaningless confusion. At an hour long before first light he had given up the fight to stay asleep and had lain in the tangle of his sheets, reliving yesterday. He saw that he had started something which he must follow to its end. He had taken control of the
PHOENIX
case, although he hadn’t meant to, or anyway not so soon, having believed there would be time to see how it played out. But there wasn’t time – Rollo had constrained him to work against the clock. In
any other investigation he wouldn’t have cared, but there was another element here, and that element was love. Until this moment he had not allowed himself to analyse his feelings or define his hopes. He had been afraid to: both were so fragile, so vulnerable and precious. Examining his heart would have felt like wrenching the shell off a live turtle and stabbing the flesh within. Now, though, he must armour that heart, map out his strategies, accept the risks he would incur and take decisive action. The prize that he will win outweighs all caution and all danger. She is there, and he will claim her.

Ecce homo
. Behold the man. Out loud Stephen speaks the words. I am a man and I know exactly what it is that I must do. There has been altogether too much wasted time. He is twenty-eight years old; already he is older than Keats was when he died. In five years’ time he’ll be as old as Christ when crucified. A man whose name was writ in water? Think of all that Keats had felt, had truly experienced and expressed, in his short span on earth. Time is not an infinite resource and Stephen can no longer squander it away.

But where to start? The obvious place is where
she
starts: from her flat in Battersea in the mornings. Stephen knows where Helen lives because he has heard her name the road and the mansion block. He knows what time she normally leaves for work. But even if he were to leave his own flat now, right this very minute, he would not make it to Battersea in time. Of course he has studied her part of London in the A-Z and is aware that there is no Underground station anywhere nearby. From East Acton he’d have to go to Victoria, take the overground to Battersea Park, and walk. Or catch a bus – but bus routes are a mystery to
him, who still feels like a stranger in this city. He has seen how easily people like Damian and Charlotte, who were born here, move around. Envying their command of London’s topography, he confines himself to the Tube, on which it is difficult to get lost, although he dislikes the blackness of the tunnels and the sense of being leagues below the surface. If ever one allowed oneself to think of the weight and depth of water above those lines that snake beneath the Thames, one would never make a single sub-riverine journey. That great mud-swollen mass of water, limb of a monstrous reptile extending through the city, stretched above the feeble little carriages shuttling below, poised to rupture the tenuous layers of brick that keep it from them, waiting to claim back those narrow tunnels and refill them with cold tides, the jetsam of ancient bones. But most of the time there’s no alternative. Driving in London is even more nerve-racking. Stephen was never an enthusiastic driver; he had to take his driving test three times and did not acquire a car of his own until his mother gave him her old Datsun when arthritis made it hard for her to grip the steering wheel. The journey from Acton to Didcot is one thing, negotiating the labyrinth of London’s roads quite another. London’s drivers are so confident and brash, hurtling into unbroken streams of traffic, flinging themselves round Hyde Park Corner. Do they not know how vulnerable they are in their flimsy shells of steel? And, worse, how frail the skull, the small soft bones, of the child who happens to step into the road without remembering to look left, right and left again, just as the car bears down at breakneck speed. It’s another of Stephen’s recurring dreams: the head pulped like a ripe peach; blood and bone and particles of brain spraying across his windscreen.

‘You’re looking a trifle flushed,’ Louise said to Stephen as he arrived for work that Thursday morning. ‘Are you quite well?’

‘Diddums,’ exclaimed Charlotte, who was perched on Louise’s desk, swinging her legs to and fro.

‘I have excruciating toothache,’ Stephen said. ‘It came on all of a sudden in the middle of the night.’

‘Oh you poor love,’ Louise cried sympathetically.

‘Were you eating sweets in bed?’ asked Solly.

‘Louise, would you mind awfully if I left the office early, so that I can see my dentist?’

‘No of course I wouldn’t, petal. But I can’t imagine you’ll manage to get an appointment with your dentist today? Might it not be wiser to go straightaway to Casualty at St George’s? They do teeth, I think.’

‘My man keeps a slot free for urgent cases every afternoon.’

‘Coo. You must let me have your dentist’s name some time. To see mine, you’d probably have to wait a week, even if you were dying of the pain!’

‘Even if you had an abscess? Have you an abscess, Stephen?’

‘I do hope not. But it is frightfully painful, all the same.’

‘Toothache is the worst,’ Solly agreed. ‘It’s because the nerves run so close to the brain.’

‘Worse than childbirth, my mum says,’ interjected Charlotte.

‘Poor you,’ said Louise. ‘I was meaning to ask if you would have lunch with me upstairs today; it’s moussaka on the menu, something new, which makes a change! And we could take the extra hour that we’re owed. But you won’t feel much like eating, will you?’

‘Not really,’ Stephen said.

Without listening to the Wednesday 00.00–12.00 tape, without even unsealing it, knowing that the truth was unlikely to be helpful, Stephen wrote the following report:

Then, to be on the safe side, Stephen played the tape. There were no telephone calls at all. Helen and Jamie did come home well after midnight, at 00.47 to be precise. They were tired, they hardly spoke, she made a cup of tea, they went to bed. Obviously they had already discussed the play over dinner in the restaurant with the other couple; there was nothing left that needed to be said. They did not talk about the dinner they had had; people don’t on the whole dissect or even describe the dishes they only finished eating an hour or so ago; at least not when it is almost one o’clock on a weekday morning. Nor did they mention the name of the restaurant. Why would they, when both of them knew it anyway? Jamie muttered something about the cost of the taxi and the absurdity of living out there in the sticks at Greenwich. That was all. Later that Wednesday morning husband and wife got up and went to work as usual.

Having filed the carbon copy of the report, Stephen placed the top copy in an envelope, sealed it, marked it
PERSONAL
for RMEB/Dept Six BY HAND
, and took it up to the seventh floor. Rollo Buckingham was not in his office but the other man was, the nameless dark-haired colleague. He looked up enquiringly at Stephen hovering by the open door but neither spoke nor smiled.

‘Rollo?’ Stephen asked.

‘Out. Back this afternoon.’

‘Would you be most awfully kind and give him this as soon
as he gets in?’ Stephen asked, handing over the envelope. ‘It’s urgent.’

The nameless man received the envelope with nothing but a nod.

Stephen spent the rest of the morning with his other targets. He listened to their talk of miners’ strikes, of Solidarity, of shootings reported in Poland: Lech Walesa may have been detained; Margaret Thatcher has been voted the most unpopular prime minister in the history of Britain; mountainous waves thrust forward by the gales have broken through seawalls in Somerset. The weather is set to continue cold.
ODIN
’s daughter is going to see a heart specialist on Friday;
VULCAN
’s cough is splintering his chest.
GOODFELLOW
, an investigative journalist, is trying to have a meeting with an Argentine army officer for reasons that remain obscure to Stephen. He reported that.
OBERON
’s strategist dropped in to check his travel itinerary; they’ll switch that line off until he comes back from Jamaica at the end of January. Greta knows someone who lives near the Bristol Channel; she has had a foot of water in her kitchen. Louise has written names on scraps of paper and jumbled them into her hat; passing it around she invites each member of her group to pick one. ‘If you pick yourself,’ she says, ‘fold the paper up and put it back.’ This is the fairest way to deal with Christmas gifts, she thinks; better than everyone having to buy eight individual presents or thinking that they have to – not that
everyone
does – and she has imposed a strict financial limit. Stephen picked Christophine out of the hat.

When the others went up to the canteen at lunchtime, Stephen crept out to Shepherd Market. As he had permission to leave early, he would be expected to work throughout the break
but he was hungry and he needed a drink. A sandwich was not enough. He quite often went to pubs in the area of the Institute, having found them to be safe retreats for drinkers on their own. Too late, when he had already ordered a double whisky and a sausage, he remembered that this particular pub, the closest to the Institute, had recently been put on the proscribed list. It didn’t really matter; he wouldn’t be there long. Security couldn’t possibly patrol every banned place every day, and here at least he would not be spotted by anyone else from the Institute. He looked round to see if there were any identifiably hostile operatives in the bar but, as far as he could tell, the other drinkers were ordinary men like him, in working clothes, by themselves or in small groups. There were a few women, each with a male companion. No one showed any sign of interest in Stephen. He relaxed, hid himself behind the
Guardian
and drank a second whisky to numb the toothache he had almost convinced himself he had. The sausage came unaccompanied and foot-long. Pink innards poked through its brown skin. He cut it into segments and ate them one by one. He was back at his desk well before the other listeners returned.