Think Yourself Lucky (30 page)

David had to struggle to conceal his eagerness. "What point?"

"You can't just say what you think of people. You have to let them know."

David imagined how they would react at work: Helen jerking her head askew as if he'd hooked it by its haughty eyebrows, Andrea bidding to spike his observations with an officious cough, Bill making haste to don his humorous mask. "Who are we talking about?" he said.

"You decide who you have to mean. I'd start close to home."

"You're saying if I tell everybody everything I don't like about them you'll go back where you came from."

"I've been there too often." Teeth glimmered in the darkness beside David's face. "I don't think you've got it in you to keep me there," Newless said.

They'd reached a bridge across the elongated lake. The black water meandered between the trees as though searching for the stretch of road where Stephanie lived. As David halted in the middle of the bridge, all at once anxious to see where she was, a dank chill rose from the water. It felt like an adumbration of the state Newless had hinted at—a threat of glimpsing somewhere so barren of light and warmth that it consisted purely of a yearning for sensation, for any token of existence. Could he condemn even Newless to that? Perhaps Newless had the measure of him, and David was no more able to consign him to such a place than to tell people what he didn't want to admit he thought of them. As David tried to find the strength to do all that if he had to, Newless said "Well, there it is."

David wasn't sure why this made him more nervous. "What is?"

"What brought me to you. You can't still think talking about your pests at work did." When David remained silent, Newless seemed to take his version of pity on him. "Staidfanny," he said.

At once David saw her. Perhaps the insidious voice had delayed his doing so. She was at the bedroom window, just visible by the light from the road. She looked tiny as a vignette framed by the entire night, and even more isolated by the distance to the bridge. David knew she was trying to distinguish him in the park, and he snatched out his phone almost without thinking. "Can you give me a few moments?" he felt worse than absurd for asking.

"You want a private word, do you?"

"I don't need that." If he sent Newless away he might be sending him to Stephanie. "Don't you want to stay with me," he urged, "now we've met at last?"

"We'll have to find out, won't we?" At least this didn't bring the face looming towards David, which lent him a little reassurance until he grasped that it was watching Stephanie. "Fascinate me, then," Newless said. "Keep me that way if you can."

David had to hold the phone close to his face, blotting out Stephanie in order to find her number. He heard the bell start to trill in his ear, but not use phone in the faraway apartment. The bell had rung four times when Stephanie disappeared from the window so abruptly that he could have thought she'd been dragged back into the unlit room. He wasn't far from crying out by the time he managed to discern that he hadn't been left alone on the bridge. Was the dim figure scrawnier than winter twigs, or had it begun some unnatural growth? He had to welcome its presence by his side, but that needn't entail making out how much more there was to it now. The bell finished shrilling, and Stephanie said "Where are you, David?"

"In the park. I said I would be."

Before he'd finished speaking she reappeared at the distant window, shading her eyes withe the hand that wasn't holding the phone to her tiny face. "Where?"

"On the bridge."

She leaned minutely forward—at least, the distance made her movement seem little more than microscopic. "I can't see you."

"I can see you. Can you now?"

He was waving his free hand above his head as widely as he could. Stephanie hadn't answered when the figure beside David started imitating him, making some kind of extravagant gesture in the dark. Might the antics mean that Newless was losing patience with the conversation? I think I see something," Stephanie said.

"Then it has to be me," David said, fervently hoping so. "Anyway, you know where I've got to."

"Are you coming back now?"

"I've only just got where I am." He yearned to keep hearing her voice and watching her at the window, even if none of this was for the last time, but he was afraid to bore Newless. "I'll be gone for a while yet," he said.

"Then why are you calling, David?"

"I saw you and I didn't want you to be worried."

"Oh, David." If this was affection, he felt as though it was out of his reach. "Don't you think I am?" she said.

"No need to be. You can hear I'm all right, can't you?"

"I'm not sure what I can hear."

He had to hope Stephanie meant him. Newless had snickered at David's question, but surely she hadn't heard that. He didn't want to think what happened to anybody who became too aware of Newless, and he was about to end the call for fear of endangering her when she said "What are you actually doing now?"

"Just trying to sort out my thoughts. I promise that won't do any harm."

"I don't like to think of you trying out there all by yourself."

"Honestly, you shouldn't let it bother you." David glimpsed a restless movement near him and was afraid how much impatience it might betray. "See if you can't be thankful instead," he tried saying.

"Thankful for what, David?"

"For how things have worked out. For your new job." There was no mistaking the restiveness beside him now. "You could even thank me," he said, "if you like."

"I'll thank you for coming back to me."

"I will as soon as I can." He could tell she didn't simply mean returning to the apartment. "You try and catch up on your sleep," he said.

"I'll do that when I know you're coming back."

"Be sure I am, then," David said almost passionately enough to convince himself, and watched the tiny isolated figurine's hand sink away from her face.

She was lingering at the window, shading her eyes while she peered into the night, when Newless said "Not enough. Nowhere near."

"What isn't?"

"Can't you be honest about that either? What you told the ungrateful cunt to do."

"Don't—" David started to protest, and then he wondered if he had an insight. "You want to make her do more, do you? No, you want to make me."

"You mean you don't want it."

"The point isn't whether I do. We're talking about you." David's thoughts were developing almost too swiftly for him to articulate. "There isn't a lot to you, is there?" he said. "Not much more than words."

Newless gripped the low railing of the bridge as if to demonstrate he could and loomed towards him. "Quite a few people would tell you the opposite, but they can't tell anybody anything."

Stephanie's window was deserted now. David hadn't noticed when she'd left it, and his rage at having had to leave her anxious made him fiercer. "They may be dead, but you didn't really kill them, did you?"

Newless thrust his face at him without making its features clearer. "Then let's hear who you think did," he said, and his eyes glinted like his teeth.

"They killed themselves. That's as much as you could make them do. No wonder you have to rant like that every time. You've got to exaggerate to impress yourself."

The rudiments of a face encroached on the edge of David's vision—a dark shape not quite so featureless as a silhouette. "You'll be impressed," Newless said, "when I've paid Staidfanny a call."

David was overwhelmed by a loathing he lacked the words to convey. "What do you think you're going to do?"

"You won't know till I've done it. You never have. Not so unimpressed now, are you? You won't even know when till it's done. Have fun waiting and trying to guess what she's earned herself."

"She's safe from you. I'll never think of her that way."

"Now who's nothing but words? You can't even admit you've condemned her. That's why you're here."

"Then I'll admit it. I'll tell her everything if that'll keep her safe."

"It won't," Newless exulted, and David felt a snigger like frost sprinkled on his cheek. "You'll never be able to tell her enough. Now you know it you won't be able to stop thinking about it. You'll want to and that's why you'll fail."

David's abhorrence came close to choking off his speech. "You're relishing this, are you?"

"You wouldn't deny me my amusement. That's what keeps me alive."

"Alive," David tried to scoff. "I wouldn't call you that. You couldn't even open the door when we came out here. I wouldn't say there's much to you at all."

He had a sudden sense of being close to an edge far more perilous than the low railing. He had to use exactly the right words, or was it that he mustn't use the wrong ones? The uncertainty felt capable of robbing him of breath. "Wait till your cunt finds out how much," Newless said and leaned more of a face around David's.

Was there something David mustn't even start to think? "All you keep doing is telling me to wait," he said as if he had to be quick to outdistance his thoughts. "You can't show me to my face. You're just words in the air."

He was terrified this might send Newless to demonstrate his powers on Stephanie, but all he could do was carry on his mockery without knowing whether this was the right approach. "You can't touch me, can you?" he jeered. "I can't see anything worth seeing either. Maybe there isn't really anything to see."

Before he could take a breath Newless reared up in front of him, between David and the rail, which David was gripping in both fists. "Tell me this is nothing," Newless said like a wind from the black lake.

David saw eyes no less empty than the sky and in some sense as remote. Otherwise the face that blocked his view of Stephanie's apartment was too close to his own to distinguish, though he had the impression of an image in a distorting mirror. A shiver shook him from head to foot, and he barely managed to speak in order to head off his thoughts. "Still not impressed."

Newless lurched forward and wrapped his arms around David. "Now tell me I'm not here."

"Maybe you are," David gasped and tried to think no further. Could he do what he'd realised he must to keep Stephanie safe? Was anyone worth that? His doubts made him embrace Newless as if this might squeeze them both out of existence. The body felt like bones imperfectly covered with flesh, and so did the arms that clasped him. Too fast to reflect or to take back the action he toppled himself and his companion over the railing into the lake.

"Let's see who comes out." He wasn't sure which of them said that as they fell. He was dismayed that the thought had been put into words, and even more distressed to realise what he'd done his utmost to avoid thinking—that the disgust he felt was at himself, not Newless. Could this destroy Newless only as long as it stayed unacknowledged? These were all the thoughts he had before he struck the water. It felt like being seized by ice, and drove the breath out of him. In a moment he was underwater, clutching his companion to him as the scrawny arms hugged him, and he couldn't have said whether he or Newless was dragging the other down to the bottom of the lake. He had no more time for words, and the breath he attempted thoughtlessly to take felt like swallowing the dark.

"Was everything all right for you?"

"Surprisingly good."

"Don't take too much notice of him, will you? He just says these things. We thought his saganaki was delicious, and so was my lamb shank, and Alan's aubergine was especially tasty, wasn't it, Alan?"

"Indeed it was, and I'll second Susan's comments. As we say, don't mind our son too much. He has an image to maintain."

"Does anyone object if I speak for myself? Maybe all your dishes are the next best thing to the authentic article. Pass everyone's verdict on to the chef so long as you don't forget mine."

"You can tell her if you like," the waiter says to David's parents. "When there's a birthday she always brings the cake out herself."

"Oh, does she still do that!" David's mother says and blinks at David. "There isn't going to be a problem, is there?"

"Not for me."

"I think Susan means with you, David."

"Not as far as I'm aware of it's hardly only up to me." When his parents look reproachful David says "Do you think I'm the kind of person to spoil a birthday treat?"

"We used to think we knew what kind you were."

"I'm sure we do really." Nevertheless David's mother says to the waiter "Better tell her she's got all the Botham family here."

As the waiter heads for the kitchen David's father murmurs "I sincerely didn't know who the chef was when I booked."

"I did when I said I'd join you," David says.

His mother gazes at him. "I hope that means—"

"I've already given you your birthday present, mother."

She seems anxious to believe she doesn't understand. Neither of his parents has found any more to say by the time Stephanie appears from the kitchen. The candles on the cake she's bearing lend her face a glow, which is one reason he's put in mind of an actress. Her face is a little too carefully composed, an aspect of a performance. It takes on more life as she begins to sing the standard birthday ditty, and David wonders if she'll be paying the copyright owners a royalty; would Frank Cubbins have warned her she should? Placing the cake in front of his mother doesn't require Stephanie to look at him. As his mother blows the flames out Stephanie leads the cheers and applause, however equivocal David's may be. She's still facing his parents when she says "How’s everyone?"

"We're doing well," David's father says, "and you certainly seem to be."

"And you deserve it," says his mother.

"Everyone should get what they deserve," David contributes. "Is that what we're saying?"

There's a silence apart from the churchy murmur of diners until Stephanie looks at him. "Don't you think I have?"

"I never said that, did I? More like the opposite. You were the one with the problems about how you were helped."

"You're still keeping that up, then."

"It must be your talent that got you the top job in less than a year," David's mother says, "but wasn't David some help?"