I was stunned. I didn't know whether to feel amazed, angry or perplexed.
"I think it's pretty funny that now you're the one who is broke. Aren't you going to say something?"
All I could think of saying was, "Why?"
"You were my angel. Now I'm yours."
We both got up the next morning like an ordinary couple and made ready for work. In her bathroom I inspected the tip of my penis, sore from an entire night of fucking. And my balls ached. I was a bit shocked to be reminded of the honeycomb where uninhibited sex can take you. I did hope my blood pressure was up to it.
We left her small flat together like Mr. and Mrs. Workaday, taking the Tube together, her to her office, me to mine. Before parting company we arranged to meet up for lunch, in the Jugged Hare on Victoria Bridge Road, an elegant pub of marble and of dark wood, with fluted pilasters and a giant chandelier.
The walls of the pub were full of prints. We sat under one grand painting depicting old-timers slouched in that very alehouse a hundred years ago. The pub was in every sense a fine old historical London alehouse. Except that it wasn't; it was a fake old pub, like so many of them. It was a bank that had recently been converted to a pub. The old-timers loafing in the picture were fakers.
I ordered a bottle of Marqués de Griñón Reserva and poured Anna—yes
Anna
—a glass. As she lifted the glass to her lips I stopped her. I had something for her—a perfectly ordinary dull yellow-gold Yale key—and I placed it on the table with a delicate click.
"What's this?"
"I want you to come home after work. I think my house is more comfortable."
The key glittered faintly on the table, reflecting that dull yellow light from the overhead chandelier. She looked down at it. "Too soon," she told me. "Slow down."
"Why not? You know you want to."
"Yes, I do, but I can't take it yet. Because I'm not sure if I've tricked you. Deceived you in some way. I'm not sure if I'm that homeless girl; or that smart girl who works in an office; or that hippie-chick; or that lap-dancer; or so many others, really."
"Oh," I said, clinking glasses and taking a sip of wine. "I was on to you right from the beginning."
"How?"
"Your demon told me."
"My demon?"
"Oh yes. He was there right from the beginning. Or rather,
she
was. At least, I think it's a she." I squinted at the chair next to her. "You can't always tell. She's sitting there now. At this very moment. Right next to you."
And she couldn't help herself. She couldn't help turning her head a fraction, just to check out the adjacent chair, just to see for herself.
"Just kidding," I said.
These really were Antonia's last days. She'd finally surrendered to her doctor's request and was taken into hospital. Anna—I had to get used to calling her Anna now—and I went in to see her. Anna wanted to tell her story, and I wanted Antonia to hear it, so I left them alone for a while. I wanted Antonia to die in no doubt that
Some Good
could be done in this world. I do believe in the possibility of
Some Good
. Truth was, Antonia didn't need telling that. She was beyond the argument. Perhaps I was still trying to persuade myself.
I don't know: I almost expected her bed to be surrounded by angels and golden light. It wasn't. It was an ordinary hospital bed in a shared ward that badly needed a lick of paint. A screen of curtains on wheels had been pulled around the bed. The odour of chrysanthemums streamed from a vase on the bedside table, skirmishing with the smell of hospital antiseptic.
Antonia was half-propped on a pile of pillows. I kissed her on the cheek. My nerves ached for her. My love for her was a decayed, unconsummated love; a withered-chrysanthemum love.
We'd brought our own flowers. Trumpet lilies. But there was no vase to put them in, and because I knew Anna had some things to tell Antonia I said I'd find one. I wandered the wards trying to locate a receptacle for them. Eventually I unearthed a wine carafe, of all things, and I filled it with water.
When I returned behind the screen, the two women were talking in low voices. I put the carafe on the side table. The lilies were really too big for the carafe. There was a second chair on the other side of the bed so I sat in it, and, without breaking her conversation with Anna, Antonia reached out to hold my hand.
"I'm sorry I didn't recognise you at first when you came to see me," she was telling Anna. "Then again, I'm not sorry. It shows what a long way you've come."
"How could you be expected to remember everyone? There must have been hundreds."
Antonia laughed, a tiny laugh; but it made her cough. "Over a thousand. I keep count. But not everyone is a success story, like you."
"You rescued me."
"No, you rescued yourself. Has William told you about his demons?"
"Oh yes."
"And do you see them, too?"
"No. At least not quite in the same way that he does."
"No? Well, I do. But I never admitted it to him. I didn't want to encourage him. William, do you see any here now?"
"No," I said. "They don't seem to like you, Antonia. I've told you that before."
"Anna," said Antonia, "I'm going to tell you what it is he sees."
"What does he see?" Anna said.
"Suffering," Antonia said. "He sees other people's suffering. And his own. He sees it as demons. Real demons."
"But I don't see yours, Antonia," I said.
"No. That's because I trick them. You know you once asked me what it is they seem to be waiting for. Always waiting. You know what it is they wait for? Permission to leave." She shook her head at me. "I love you, William, because for you life has never stopped taking your breath away. Because you are generous to all its creatures. You give them a home. But sometimes they don't want one. I'm dying, William—I had to say this to you."
"Antonia," I said. "Antonia."
"Shhh! Listen to this," she said. "Anna is going to take over the running of GoPoint."
"What?" I said. I looked at Anna, who nodded back at me. "When was this decided?"
"Just now. While you were looking for a vase," Anna said.
After leaving the hospital I desperately needed a drink. I couldn't face the braying, cigar-smoking demons of Chelsea so we headed up to the Embankment, to the more civilised caves of Gordon's Wine Bar, where they play no music and serve only wine.
In Gordon's low-cellar bar you need to stoop to get to a table. The light from the candles doesn't even penetrate to the dark corners and everyone in the place seems to be engaged in either a tryst or a conspiracy. Samuel Pepys lived in the building in the seventeenth century; Rudyard Kipling wrote
The Light That Failed
in the parlour above the bar. It's one of my favourite bars in all of London, but it didn't do much to lift my spirits.
"She's only got weeks," I said. "Maybe only days. You're full of surprises, you know that?"
"That's me," Anna said.
"The funding is a constant nightmare."
"You'll help us." She knew all about the antiquarian-books racket, because I'd told her.
"I'm having trouble funding myself just now. You'll be exhausted. It will drain all your energy."
"I'll have you to comfort me."
"It would be easier just to pass on the assets to one of the neighbouring agencies. St. Martin-in-the-Fields. They do good work."
"What's easiest is not always what I want."
"You'll be broke all of the time."
"Yeh. Could be."
I looked around the cellar bar, casting an eye over the gloomy corners and the huddled couples, as if a spy or an enemy might be in the bar, listening to us. But everyone had their own private conspiracy to worry about. I thought Anna's idea to keep GoPoint open was crazy, even though I would support her if I possibly could. All this made it more crucial than ever for me to get hold of Stinx, to find a new buyer to step in for Ellis. The truth was I didn't know where to begin.
I didn't have to ask her why she wanted to do it. Because while the world is filled with people who just need to let their demon go, there is another group who need to find themselves one.
Just three days before Christmas, Antonia died.
When someone dies—someone whom you love—the world is a changed place. A distinctive light has gone out of the world. Nothing puts the world back as it was. I've said before that these lies are told as a kindness and a sedative, but they don't help. They are demonic, actually. They cheat our humanity. They take our attention away from the true value of the fleeting moment. It's a value only people like Antonia ever learn: the briefer the life, the more precious; the more certain we are that life is a sealed unit in time, the more we should celebrate its infinite space; the more dark and absurd, the harder we should strain our eyes to peer into the miracle of it.
I didn't cry when I heard about her death. There was no need to. She'd led an impeccable life. I would more likely cry for myself, for my stupidities, vanities and wasted time.
But even though I didn't shed a tear I did feel adrift. I desperately wanted to have people around me, and I suggested to Anna that we get a big silly dinner going for Christmas Day: invite everybody and half of hell. She was all for that.
I knew that Fay would want Sarah at home with her for Christmas dinner and that Lucien would want to blowtorch a live goose or whatever was fashionable. However, I had no objection to the kiddiewinks staying with me and Anna. Neither of us were great cooks but we could probably stick a feather in a dish of pâté and call it Norwegian Woodcock, à la Lucien.
Sarah was passionately against catering Chez Lucien. There was a third option of their spending Christmas with Mo's mother and father. In response to this suggestion, Mo said nothing, but looked like he'd rather scalp himself with a chainsaw.
So it seemed to me that Sarah and Mo would be there, and Jaz didn't have any better invitations. "As a Sikh I'd be very glad to join in with your Middle Eastern shepherd-cult-of-death festival. By the way, I've got some news about Ellis. He told me he still wants the book. But he's refusing to deal with '
that loony.
' I think he means you."
"Oh," I said. "Yes, I was a bit brusque with him."
Jaz also revealed that Stinx had once given him a key to his studio apartment. I was pretty tied up with work, what with all the administrative oversee of the GoPoint, not to mention chairing the first meeting of the government's useless Youth Homelessness Initiative, but I did manage to go round there one evening.
I didn't find Stinx, but under the workbench I saw a rat the size of a small dog gamely chewing on a green loaf of bread. I had to throw a toaster at the rat to chase it away. I saw not a trace of the work I'd hoped was nearing completion. Nothing. I washed up some dishes before leaving, and left a note pleading with Stinx to get in touch.
Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday and Anna and Sarah together came to the startling realisation that we hadn't got a tree. They determined to fix that, and out they went to kidnap one from somewhere. While they were out I received an unexpected visitor.
"Robbie! Come in, come in! What a surprise!"
He was wearing this long, black trench coat, like one of these schoolkids hell bent on peer-assassination. He looked over my shoulder. "Is Sarah here?"
"Cool coat! She's out looking for a Christmas tree."
"Is Mo here?"
"He's out with her. Are you stopping?"
"What about your new girlfriend? Is she here?"
"Anna, she's with them. They seem to have formed a posse."
"We don't say posse any more, Dad. Or cool."
"No, of course you don't. Come on, let me help you off with that lovely coat."
We went through to the lounge and sat down. I offered him a beer—I know I was trying too hard. He opted instead for a glass of pop. I found some age-old stuff but he complained that all the fizz had gone out of it. I asked him how his mum was, and how Lucien was and how Claire was, and he answered me rather formally. He kept rubbing the sides of his shoes together. Despite the fact that I work for a youth organisation I'm not great at talking with teenagers, even my own. In fact, I'm useless at it: there, let it be said. They hit thirteen and they are swallowed up by the Valley of Demons for seven years. I do know that some people don't emerge until they are thirty-three-and-a-third, but most come out from the undergrowth clutching, by the time they are twenty, a shiny nugget of reasonableness.
Then Robbie astonished me by blurting out, "Can I stay here over Christmas?"
"Here? You want to stay here?"
"Yes."
"Of course you can, Robbie. Of course. You're very welcome, you should know that. What's gone off at home?"
"Nothing. But last year was a nightmare, right? Lucien and all his cooking, right? He gets all worked up for three days. He's started already. You can only eat what he says when he says. Even if you want cornflakes, right? Everything has to be a perfect Christmas and he gets me to video it all? I don't want a perfect Christmas. I want to be somewhere where it won't be. Won't have to be perfect."
"Well, you've come to the right place."
"I don't mean that. I just mean, right, that like, it's a nightmare, right?"
I heard the door open. The tree-hunters had returned with an enormous blue-green Serbian Spruce. There was some excitement as to how we were going to get it in the house and when we did it was of course too tall for the room.
"Anna, this is my son Robbie. Did you have to get such a big one?"
Anna kissed Robbie on the cheek and wished him a Happy Christmas. He couldn't take his eyes off her. "It was that one or a real scrawny, tiny, tired-looking thing, wasn't it, Sarah?"
I was sent to get a saw so we could hack a foot off the bottom of the tree. While I was working away at the trunk, I told Anna that Robbie wanted to stay.
"Good!" she said. "But have you told him what we're doing tomorrow?"