The Fly Guy (26 page)

Then she outlined the advantages of the spacious fifth floor two bedroom flat with
en suite
bathrooms and a hallway with generous storage space. She gestured out the window and said something about parking, but she lost her thread and her hand waved around. Now his eyes seemed softer as he saw her, and she walked toward the bar. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and his smile opened up again. When they greeted each other she felt awkward, she couldn’t call to mind anything to say.

“Are you here alone?” he asked. She nodded. He was taller than she was. Taller than Martin. She was going to make a lie about her friend cancelling at the last minute, but it seemed superfluous. His chest was well defined in his t-shirt, and a light dusting of stubble crept down his neck. Everything about him seemed in sharp focus.

“So am I. Here grab this stool, it’s going to get full in here.” He pulled a tall stool over to them. “Hang on,” he said. He tapped someone at the bar on the shoulder. When he spoke it was confident and clear. The man nodded and said,
Of course,
and stood. He took the tall stool from the man and exchanged it for the one she had been about to sit on.

“Here,” he said, “this one has a back to it.” She sat. He offered her a drink and she accepted. All of the tables were full, and people coming through the door were moving in around the walls, standing in front of the pictures.

“Nearly show time,” he said as he handed her her drink. “I got you two.” His eyes gestured toward the bar where another two drinks waited, one more for her and one more for him. “They close the bar during the performance.”

She thanked him and said, “You must come here a lot then?”

“No, but I always enjoy it when I do. Cheers.” They clinked glasses.

Alison took her phone from her bag and checked to make sure she had put it on silent. A text. From Martin. She didn’t read it. She turned her phone off.

As she put it back in her bag the lights dimmed. A hush moved through the room from the front to the very back. Alison looked to the stage. There was a drum kit, a piano, a double bass, and an electric guitar. Men in dark suits were taking their places at the instruments. The light at the bar went out and she was in the shadows. He was standing behind her.

There was an expectancy in the air; everyone was waiting for something to happen. In that moment she wanted to lean back and feel his arms around her. She felt protected just being close to him. There was a silent strength within him. He stood straight with his shoulders back. Martin, when he spoke, hunched forward. He scratched his face, rubbed his hair, folded and unfolded his arms. All of the artistry she had been attracted to when she first met him was still tangled up within him, keeping his head bowed.

In their years together he had not grown stronger, he had retreated further and further into himself. She felt the age difference between them now more than ever. In those years she had supported him, and he had become weaker. The way he used to speak to her, the insights, the poetic images, perhaps they had all been used up. Like the stories he wrote when they first met. Those were what had got the interest of the agency. But since then he hadn’t been able to find the formula of words that had come so easily to him at the start. Maybe it was all gone from him. He couldn’t see things the way he did at the start, his vision was all focused inward.

Alison knew she had more within her than Martin could ever see, and now in the hushed anticipation of this crowded room she felt such strength emanate from the man behind her; and this man, she was sure, could see everything she could be. She turned around and he leaned close to her. She thought again how good it was to be with someone her own age, but someone so solid and defined that he might have been carved from marble in the time of the great masters. The lights went right down, the stage was in darkness, and the only lights in the room were the low table lamps, around which dark shapes waited.

“Mr. Alskev,” she whispered, as the club held its breath, “I feel such a fool, I don’t know your first name.”

He smiled and whispered in her ear, “Gregor.”

A spotlight hit the stage and Nisha Taylor, a beautiful black woman, appeared from the wings. She wore a long sparkling silver dress, cut low to her breasts, reaching elegantly to the stage. Behind her neck was affixed a collar which rose up behind her head like a silver backdrop, accentuating her noble poise.

A release of applause and cheers clamoured the air as she surveyed the room like a queen viewing her subjects. She did not greet them with hello, but instead sang a single note so clean and soaring that it took flight around the room and lifted the heart of everyone who heard it. A space which had never been before was created. There was a moment when she stopped and the note hung in the air.… And in that gap between the note and the silence, in that newly created space, Alison’s future changed. Nisha Taylor counted the band in, and with a cymbal crash that new future began.

***

Chapter Thirty-Six

In the morning Martin sat in front of his cereal. He didn’t eat it, just watched as the cereal absorbed the milk and became sticky in the bowl.

Through the rain-flecked window he saw the trees at the back of the garden, bushy and thick, their branches reaching low to protect what was in their shadow. He went back upstairs and into the bedroom to kiss Alison goodbye. He moved her hair gently from her face and kissed her on the cheek. Without opening her eyes she mumbled, “Have a good day,” before putting her face back into the pillow. He wanted to ask her where she had been, but instead he just looked at the back of her head for a moment before walking quietly out the door.

It was cold outside. As he sat in his driver’s seat waiting for the car to warm up he noticed words written in the condensation on the windscreen. NOT HER. Then the condensation was gone and so were the words. It was seven fifty-six. He pulled out of his driveway. He pushed the accelerator down quickly, reached the roundabout, and then everything slowed.

In the car next to him on the dual carriageway there was a woman in her forties and a woman in her early twenties. The older one was looking out the window with her chin on her hand, and the younger had earphones in and was flicking through her phone looking vacant. Martin looked ahead again, craned his neck to see if there was any movement in the queue of cars, and there in the distance he saw the dark suited figure of Henry, coming toward him. Martin watched as Henry walked along the middle of the road between the steel and glass carriages, between the lives living in a hurry moving slowly. The road stretched on and inside the cars there was no colour amongst the dark shapes. Everyone was facing the same way. Only Henry was moving against this steel tide. As he got closer Martin could see that his suit was creased and his hat was pulled low over his eyes. He looked even older than the night before, as if years had passed. The cars moved slowly forward, closing the distance between Martin and Henry.

When he reached the car Martin leaned over and opened the passenger door. Henry sat in. He didn’t look at Martin. He put the seat belt on, clicking it into place, and then sat looking out the window of the car. Martin looked at Henry’s profile. His skin hung from his cheekbones and his chin, like an old sheet hanging out to dry.
His face had dropped from his skull,
Martin thought. He is coming undone. Henry tapped the window next to him with a bony finger, pointing at the car alongside.

“Mother and daughter?”

The traffic slowly moved forward again. Martin closed the gap between his car and the car in front. The gap behind him closed just as fast. Martin didn’t reply. Henry said, “Must be, otherwise that would be just rude.”

“Am I just going to have to get used to you?”

“I’m here, you’re here, we might as well talk. This where you live? These your neighbours?”

“I live back up the hill.”

“Nicer than Lomax.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Lomax. You were busy when you lived there. How about up at New Acre? You keeping busy?”

“What do you want to talk about? You trying to pick me apart? With questions that don’t make any sense? I don’t know what you mean. If it’s about those girls, I don’t know any of your girls, so you can keep your pictures. I’m not going to answer questions about people I don’t know; girls I’ve never met.”

“I’ve read some of your stories.”

“Ha, ha. Well, what do you think of that?”

“I think you’re sick, Martin. I think that you have a lot of questions to answer. I think you’re desperate. Desperate to change because you know you’re sick.”

“Well, fuck you, I’m not answering anything.”

“What about god? Are you into that? A creator?”

“What? What the fuck? You don’t care about god.”

“Is god on the inside or the outside?”

“I’m too busy to think about god.”

“Too busy? Isn’t that what these books are going to be about that you’re going to print? God, a creator? The power of god and the responsibilities of man? Is it that way round?”

“Well, okay. God has got to be on the inside, if it was on the outside everyone would know for sure. But nobody really knows. There are interpretations of god, but it’s not observable like the outside. Nobody knows the inside.”

“Especially not you.”

“Especially not me.”

“Too busy looking up your own inside.”

“Very good. And why are you here again?”

“To see how much you remember. To break your denial. So, on the inside anything is possible?”

“Shit, I’m in the wrong lane.”

“You didn’t indicate.”

“Come on, no-one’s moving anywhere, there’s no surprise.”

Martin eased the car from the body of the steel snake onto the slip road. The radio announcer ran through the headlines again, and promised more detail on the hour. Then they were on the long avenue of the Crown Estate.

Martin said, “I’m late.”

“You need to remember what you did with these girls.”

“I don’t know anything about any of those fucking girls! I told you that last night.” Martin was shouting. He realised this and lowered his voice. “I don’t know anything. Whatever you’re into has nothing to do with me. I need to get to work.”

He pulled into the parking lot and got out angrily, slamming the car door.

* * *

When Martin got in he went straight to Beth at the desk.

“Has anyone been in for me?” he asked.

“No,” she said, “but a courier did drop these off from
Goodbooks
.” She handed him three large heavy envelopes. “And who is this? Your father?”

Martin looked at Beth and then looked to where she was looking, beside him. There was Henry, who took his hat from his head and smiled and said, “Yes, Henry Tripp, nice to meet you.”

“Yes, yes, sorry, Beth, yes my dad popped in to see me, so I thought I’d show him, well, show him Spiral. He won’t stay long. Could you sign him in please?”

Beth handed over the signing-in folder and Henry smiled and filled it in.

“Well, lovely to meet you, Mr. Tripp. You were here the other day, too,” she said. “I can see the resemblance, I knew it as soon as you walked in.”

Henry handed back the folder and they walked through the foyer and to the lift. Martin didn’t speak. Henry put his hat back on and followed Martin as they walked to his office. When they got there, Martin went in and slammed the door closed. The envelopes were prints of the cover and illustrations that
Goodbooks
wanted for their first print. There was an email waiting for him, sent the evening before, from Susan Purvis. The attachment was a proposed contract.

Martin drank his coffee and settled into his chair before opening it. As he read, it felt like caffeine spreading through his system. His skin felt electrically charged. The contract looked good.
Goodbooks
had secured a release for extracts to be published in a Sunday paper and were ready to go with the first two books:
The Old Testament Today
, and
The Koran for Everyman
. He prepared his response. Martin sweated.

Hi Susan, thank you so—

He deleted.

Miss Purvis, it is with gratitude—

He deleted.

Susan, I have read the contract and—

He pushed his chair back and stood up.

He thought about Alison. He pictured her at home, getting ready for her work day, looking at herself in the mirror, pulling in her belly, and flicking back her hair. She picks up her work folder and handbag and checks herself once more before leaving the house.

* * *

Lucy lies in a cold dark room, waiting for someone to save her. Her breath is shallow. Her pale skin is almost transparent and her lips have turned blue. She tries to make a fist, but her fingers will not respond. Her eyes are closing.

* * *

Susan Purvis is in her office. She’s on the phone. She is speaking with clarity and conviction. Outside her closed office door someone is waiting to see her. As she speaks she moves her hands, rotating from her wrist open palmed, wide fingered in a circular motion, creating momentum. Things, unseen, are changing.

Martin sat back down and typed the acceptance of the
Goodbooks
contract and requested a meeting to sign the contract.

* * *

When Alison got to work, there were two messages for her. One was from a Mr. Bloomburg, requesting a meeting. The other was from Gregor Alskev. He wanted to view more properties, and was interested in office properties in the docklands project. Alison returned the calls. She left a message with Mr. Bloomburg, and spoke to Gregor Alskev and arranged to meet him in the city centre.

When she saw him again, suited so smartly and walking through the street with such confidence, she felt a rush to her heart. Surely the timing of this man’s entrance to her life was no accident. Perhaps all of her time with Martin had just been preparing her for this moment. All of the romanticism in which she wrapped Martin, the creativity which she once admired, she now saw as a force that was binding him and making it impossible for him to move on.

She had stopped reading his work a long time ago because she saw how he took what was real and bent and coloured it to fit within his fictional design. It disturbed her to see what was recognisable distorted in such a way; it felt as if he was using his life and hers to embroider an elaborate lie.

Now here was a man whose strength was there for all to see, who was not afraid of money, whose ambition was not cloaked in some elaborate artistic ideal, someone who lived in her world, the real world. When she had been preparing the folders on each property, she had been imagining Gregor in them, and then imagining her with him. Sitting at the four-point black tiled breakfast island as he walks through the spacious hallway furnished with exotic wall hangings lit by adjustable in-wall lighting; or standing at the triple glazed full wall tinted window of the sixth-floor open plan apartment with the view of the river and the south-end markets the morning after a festival when the city is waking up slowly and the barges are moving sleepily down-river, sending shivers through the gold ribbon reflection of the morning sun, and him standing behind her, wrapping his arms around her, gently moving her hair aside and kissing her neck, thanking her for a fantastic night. Alison smiled as he approached and his smile beamed back at her.

Over the afternoon they attended four different properties, all bigger than the previous day, before Gregor invited her to lunch. They sat opposite each other in the little Italian restaurant and Gregor encouraged her to try some of his. As they ate they swapped dishes back and forth, and the textures and tastes of fried calamari, roasted artichoke heart, strascinate in tomato and chilli, seasoned flatbread with wild boar pâté, and rich red wine filled her senses.

Gregor asked her about her life, where she lived, who she lived with. She told him about Martin. She said he was a novelist. She didn’t say he’d never been published. He asked would she marry him. She said no. She asked him had he anyone.
Once,
he said,
but she had drug problems which made the relationship impossible.
Although he felt bad about the ending, there was nothing he could do.
You can’t change people to be what you want them to be. There comes a time,
Gregor said,
when it is impossible not to make a choice. Life stands in front of you and challenges you and the things you once decided were the most important become the things you can’t carry with you any more.

* * *

That night in bed Martin listened carefully to Alison’s breathing. It was slow and regular. He thought about what she might be dreaming and then about the futility of that.

He opened his eyes and looked into the darkness of the room, closed them again and looked into the darkness behind his eyelids. Two small pieces of skin to separate the outside from the inside, but in the dark it made no difference. The rumble of the motorway was there in the room with them.

Alison had stayed out late again, not coming back from work until nearly nine.
Meetings and administration,
she said,
very boring stuff.
Martin had spent the time cleaning, wiping the counter tops and the table, sweeping the floors, adjusting the edges of the sofa throw, and placing and replacing the cushions. He had turned the TV on and off and on again. He felt like he was only touching the surface, like an insect sitting on the water of a stagnant lake, just light enough not to break the thin film.

Alison turned over in her sleep, throwing an arm over him. He carefully lifted it from his chest and got out of bed. Without turning on a light, he stepped into his office room. The curtains were open. He stood at the window and looked onto the garden.

When he had moved in with Alison they had spoken about putting in a little fish pond near the end of the garden and a patio area by the house, big enough for a table and chairs, somewhere to sit out in the summer. A bird table and a flower bed. How they had imagined all that would fit in that little patch of grass. It seemed too small for anything now.

He turned and switched on the computer. He looked again at the message Susan Purvis had sent at six forty-three. She was going away on business on Friday morning but had time tomorrow evening to sign the contract.
How about a celebratory dinner at Twin70?
Martin had replied:
Seven thirty at Twin70 was fine. Looking forward to seeing you then. Regards.
He read through the correspondence once again, then turned the computer off. He lay back in bed. He didn’t sleep.

* * *

In the morning he kissed Alison goodbye and left the house without eating. He took his suit, still on the hanger, and put it in the back seat. The emptiness which had become a part of him now reached through to the tips of his fingers, right to the backs of his eyes. There was nothing inside him anymore.

When he got to the roundabout he took the third exit instead of the second. He sat in another queue of cars, just facing in a different direction. For the next eight hours Martin drove around the bypasses, ring roads, and industrial estates of the city. He didn’t want Henry to find him again, so he went where he had never been, taking turns he had never taken before. All of the roads led him past iron fences to roundabouts and car parks, business estates just like the Crown Estate, all of the buildings named with a letter and a number, rows and rows of cars outside buildings exactly like his printing building. He drove and drove. The warmth of the car, the traffic so slow, the radio turned way down low, and the decision that he had made to go nowhere at all comforted him as he drifted in and out of semi-sleep.