"How could you possibly know?"
"It's all over your face, William!"
"No it's not," I protested. "I've got my poker face on."
"He whose face gives no light shall never become a star."
"Why are you always throwing William Blake at me?"
Antonia leaned over and pinched my knee between finger and a powerful thumb. "You clever bugger! You clever, clever bugger!"
"Hey! Hey! Stop messing! I haven't showed you the cheque yet."
"You don't need to. Here, I'm going to kiss you." She swung her lithe frame across me and sat in my lap. With her hands locked behind my head she planted an impassioned kiss on my lips. I mean a lover's kiss. A power kiss. She was still kissing me when one of her colleagues opened the door.
Antonia broke this kiss. "William has brought us a reprieve, Karen! He's saved us again. As a reward I'm going to fuck him until his dick is blue. Then you can do the same, Karen."
I tried to laugh it off but I was embarrassed. "That won't be necessary."
Karen was a slightly overweight redhead with pale blue eyes and a figure by Rubens. "You won't be able to stop her if she wants to. Or me. Kettle's boiling."
Karen told Antonia something about essential repairs to the heating system. At last Antonia climbed off me, giving me the chance after Karen had retreated to present her with the cheque.
Without even looking at the figure written on the cheque, she fanned it through the air, as if drying the ink. "I've learned not to ask you where this comes from."
"No, don't. Or I would have to lie."
I certainly would. There was no way that I was going to tell her that the cheque she had in her hand came from the money I'd saved on Robbie's school fees plus a sizeable loan I'd taken on my own account. If I had told her she wouldn't have accepted it. I tried hard not to think about what would happen if Stinx didn't come through with the work, or if we didn't make the sale. If either of those things happened I was going to be in a big hole.
"I don't care if it comes from the devil himself." She regarded me steadily. "What's wrong, William?"
"Nothing's wrong."
"You're not happy."
"Of course I am. I've brought you the money I promised. I'm ecstatic."
"Is it that wife of yours? Is that it? You have to let her go."
"She's already long gone, I'm afraid."
"Non-attachment, William. You can't be attached to people any more than you can be attached to things in this world."
Something always happened when she burned her eyes into you, as she was doing at that moment. Her eyes were like flint-stones. I felt like a little pile of dry kindling which she was trying to get to burst into life. It was always deeply unnerving. I got up and made the tea myself, since it was clearly going to be a long time coming otherwise.
"Send him a woman," Antonia said. "Oh please send him a woman. Someone to root out the invisible worm that flies in the night."
"I don't know who you're talking to, Antonia, but I wish you'd stop."
"You know perfectly well who I'm talking to."
I desperately needed to change the subject. "Antonia, you have to be careful. I go to these government offices, you know. Meetings with bigwigs. I hear things. Your name comes up occasionally. You make fools of them. They want to see you fall."
"They've always wanted that."
"They're scared of you. They're out to get you."
She brandished the cheque I'd given her. "But I have the protection of angels."
I wanted to tell her she also had the predatory attention of demons, but I let it pass. Instead I said I had to go. In fact I had to get back to work at the office. But before I went she insisted on hugging me.
The hug went on for way too long. But I let it, because I wanted her warmth and her golden light and her indomitable goodness to sweep through my bones; because her proximity was clean air in a dirty city; her peerless position was a vibrant colour amongst the multitude of rotting grey souls that was all of us in London; because her breath in my ear as she hugged me tight was the whispered promise of salvation.
I don't know why I answered that young woman's email. I don't know if it was Antonia's excessive hugging, or her appeal to the heavens to send me a woman. But answer it I did, if only to say that, no, I wouldn't be able to meet with her.
Hear that? That's an interesting sound. It's the sound of me lying to myself. In fact what I said in my email was that I, too, enjoyed meeting her in the Museum Tavern that day. I said I was pleased we had a mutual connection through Antonia at GoPoint and that I was glad she thought it a cause worth supporting. I suppose I then went on a bit about the plight of the homeless, as if that was really what the correspondence was about. Then I thanked her for the invitation for wine or coffee but pointed out that I was terribly, terribly busy these days and couldn't think when I might possibly find the time.
There's the truth of it. I didn't say yes and I didn't say no. I merely complained that I couldn't think where or when. Then I told myself that was an end to it. But in fact, and without knowing it, I'd merely set her a little problem to solve. And through these tiny, tiny openings do demons fly.
The following day she responded to my email. In it she recalled that I'd mentioned to her that my place of work is in Victoria (I'm sure I hadn't); that she was working at a temporary job over there that very week (what a coincidence); and that she even knew a nice pub that served a very fine range of La Belle Dame Sans Merci (had she nailed me so quickly?). I assumed that last touch was to let me know she'd been all ears that day I met her in the Museum Tavern.
What the bloody hell does she want?
I thought.
I let another day go by before replying. Somehow I ended up arranging to meet her one lunchtime.
Meanwhile I was worried about Antonia. Though her warmth and light still flowed, I thought she looked tired. I mean, she was always completely knackered by the way she lived, and she wouldn't allow herself a moment's respite from the battlefield. I wondered what it did to her, when her inmates drew goodness from her every day like that; or even when I lingered over a farewell embrace, sucking the virtue from her, sucking, always taking.
It made me remember the Bible story of Jesus and the woman who can't stop her period. She reached out to touch the hem of his garment and Jesus said he felt the power flow out of him. I never understood whether that meant the unfortunate woman's menstrual blood was so bad that it acted on Jesus like green Kryptonite does on Superman; or whether it meant that the good stuff had jumped from him to her; or whether he was at first reprimanding her because he didn't want to be touched by an impure woman. And it's no good asking someone who claims to know about these things, because they don't. The Bible itself is an amorphous creature remade by every new reader into images of themselves. The point with Antonia and people just like her is: Do we steal their goodness?
Before I left GoPoint she said something odd. "Hey, you threw me a strange one the other night."
"Huh?"
"Seamus. The old soldier. Gulf veteran."
"Oh yes. You didn't mind?"
"Of course not. But he's in a bad way."
"Yes."
"Wakes up screaming the house down every night. Pisses himself with fright. Keeps calling someone a liar."
"Oh. That sounds bad."
"Worse than bad, actually."
"Fuckin' awful."
"Yeh, but we in the West have our oil from the Gulf, so it's okay that he has nightmares. When will it end, William?"
"It won't end. We'll continue to do evil and to tell ourselves we're doing good. It's called being rational."
She stared at me with the eyes of William Blake looking at a seven-year-old chimney-sweep. She is on fire with love. Sometimes I can't even stand to look at her. I waved farewell and walked back to work.
On my return to the office, Val handed me my telephone messages. "Are you all right?" she asked. "You look exhausted."
"I've been up to GoPoint. Always makes me feel drained." The truth was I was worried sick about the risk I'd taken with my bank loan.
"There was an article about Antonia in one of the tabloids on Sunday. Said she has a criminal record. And was in a psychiatric ward for three years."
"Did it say she was a former girlfriend of the current Home Secretary?"
"Really?"
"Oh yes. They'd leave that out. Until it suits them."
I retreated to my desk. There was a message from the junior minister's office, wanting to confirm my support for the government youth initiative. Bollocks, that could wait. There was also that crazy book-launch invitation card. I had no intention of going along. Charles Fraser was nowhere near the top of my list of college chums with whom I might have enjoyed being reunited.
In fact, there was always something unpleasant about Charlie Fraser. Right from the off I saw the words
suicide nominee
scribbled on his forehead in worry-lines. The thing about associating with Fraser was that the condition could become contagious. Back in my college days, I had no interest in spending any more time with him than it took to find out what the hell he was up to.
I fetched him a tissue for his bleeding nose, just as he asked. Though he hadn't commanded me with any confidence, he was a shrewd judge of psychology, and he'd correctly assessed that no further blows would follow the first. He'd spotted that I instantly regretted punching his face. He sat down and held his head back, stemming the flow of blood with the paper tissue I'd just handed him.
"I don't care what that shit is up there," I said, "but I want to know what it's got to do with me."
He shook his head slightly. His voice was distorted. Blood was trickling back from his nose into his throat, so he now had to lean forward. "You wouldn't begin to understand," he said. Or something like that. "It won't come back on you."
"What won't? What won't come back on me?"
He waved a hand through the air. "You're going to have to drive me to hospital. I need to get this looked at."
I stepped across the room and squinted at his nose. There was a lot of blood, most of it down the front of his shirt, but his nose looked pretty straight. I touched it with my forefinger.
He screamed the house down. It was obvious he was faking it now. There was nothing wrong with his nose, and I told him so. I grabbed it and gave it a waggle.
This scream, much louder than the first, left me in no doubt that he was just playing for sympathy.
"I'm going to faint. Call me a cab, then. It's the least you can do."
"Fuck off, Fraser! I don't punch people on the nose only to phone them a cab five minutes later."
He got up, wavered to one side and then staggered out of the room, still nursing his nose with the sodden, bloody tissue. It was easy to see this was all theatre. If I'd had an ounce of vindictiveness in me I would have clouted him again, harder. I followed him out into the corridor.
I thought he was headed back to his own room, and I intended to pursue him. Instead he went to the back door of the Lodge and out into the car park. "Where are you going?" I shouted.
Again he waved me away. He had a Fiesta with multiple dents and a holed exhaust pipe and he climbed in and started the engine. Working the gear stick with his free hand and steering with the crook of his elbow, he roared the throaty vehicle out of the car park.
I returned to my room. Blood had squirted up the wall in a precise diagonal. There was also blood on the carpet. I spent the next forty-five minutes cleaning it all up with an almost forensic care. I do wonder, in retrospect, if I had intuitively felt that Fraser's blood was contaminating.
I tried to put it all out of my mind by going down to the Students' Union bar and drinking six pints of bitter. "What's that on your neck?" said the girl behind the bar. It was Lindi, a half-Chinese student, one of the girls in the photographs.
"What?"
"On your neck. Looks like blood."
"It isn't blood."
"What is it then?"
"Blood."
I turned away from Lindi and within five minutes got into a senseless and aggressive argument with another student about whether Bob Dylan was fundamentally any good.
When I got back to the Lodge, I saw light leaking under the door to Fraser's room, which incidentally was located directly beneath mine. My dander was still up, and fuelled by the beer I decided to go and have it out with him again. I went to hammer on his door, but something made me tap very gently, almost furtively.
There was the sound of a brief scuffle from inside the room, and then silence. I listened at the door. I could hear things being packed away. I tapped again.
"Just a minute."
Soon enough, Fraser opened the door. He beckoned me in and closed the door behind me.
Something about the room took me by surprise. All sorts of crap was pinned to the walls: yellowing pages torn from books; newspaper articles; photocopies with lines illuminated by a highlighter pen. But distracting me from it all was the fact that his nose was up like a prize-winning tomato from the horticultural tent. Perhaps it was the beer but I had to suppress a snigger. He saw it.
"Glad you think it's funny. And the hospital confirmed that it is definitely broken, so I'd be glad if you wouldn't touch it again. They said it will heal on its own but it's still very painful."
"Sorry," I said.
"Apology accepted."
"I'm not apologizing!" I said.
"You just did."
"No, I said "sorry," but I'm not apologizing. That is, I'm sorry I'm not sorry I broke it. The waggle yes, the break no."
"You're pissed."
I sighed. He was right, I was: I'd drunk six pints of wallop on an empty stomach. I looked round for a chair and let myself collapse into it. "Talk," I said.
He put his hands on his hips and looked hard at me. "I will talk. I'll tell you everything. In fact I desperately want to tell someone, so I'm glad it's come out. But I'm not telling you while you're drunk."