‘Sleep,’ said Astrid. ‘I want Naomi.’
‘It’s two of the toughest, fullest-timest jobs in the world, being a mother and being a drunk,’ said the manager. ‘I know plenty have tried holding the both of them down at once and it’s pulling day shift and night shift, one after the other.’
Astrid mumbled a set of disconnected abusive syllables and Kellas tried to get her to drink. She gulped down a few swallows, trembled and leaned forward. Kellas got the bucket under her and vomit splashed into it with force enough to spray back over the rim.
‘That’s the way, honey,’ said the manager. ‘Come on, sir! You were enough of a gentleman to cheer her on when she was putting the drink in, you can give her a bit more of a boost when she’s trying to get it out.’
‘Drink some more, Astrid,’ said Kellas, holding the glass up to her mouth. ‘It’s better to be as sick as you can.’
Astrid sipped some more of the liquid, spat it out, and looked at Kellas. A thread of saliva spooled from the corner of her mouth, which hung open. She was covered in drying mud and puke and her hair looked like a bittern’s nest. Her eyes were dull and tarnished, her skin was waxy and she moved clumsily, like a puppet hanging from a single string.
‘Naomi,’ she whispered.
The manager was standing watching them with her hands on her hips. The doors of her car stood open.
‘Are you sure that’s the same girl you wanted so bad last night?’ said the manager. ‘Are you sure? Maybe they got switched.’ She laughed. ‘That’s what you’re thinking, ain’t it? Took your pretty girl away while you were sleeping and left you with some crazy shrew lady from the swamp.’
‘Give me a break,’ said Kellas.
‘You’ve had your breaks,’ said the manager. ‘Get in, the two of you.’ She put Kellas and Astrid in the back of the car, Astrid with the bucket on her lap, Kellas instructed to keep her on target if need be. They drove off. Kellas’s hangover was now in place and the smell of sick from Astrid’s bucket made him fear that he might have to add to it. He looked at Astrid and looked away. He didn’t see Astrid in this one. What he’d thought was her was a costume over a husk of a woman. Bastian! Sly, wanting this to happen, the self-made monk. And where had the other Astrid gone? She’d seemed so real. He remembered her so well, and yet it turned out that she did not exist. He’d been in love with her. He still was in love with her, and he could never find a woman to love in the broken sot on the seat next to him. It was hopeless. He’d never entered into Astrid and had never left himself.
‘You need that bucket?’ said the manager, who’d been checking him in the mirror.
‘No. I’m fine.’
They arrived at the house and the manager left them standing a few yards from the door. Kellas thanked her and the manager bade them look after themselves and not to come back to her hotel and drove away. As they walked towards the door, lights came on and the door opened. Bastian had been listening out for a car. He reached into the border between the darkness and the light spilling out of the door and took Astrid from Kellas, easily and lightly, and began to lead her away. As Kellas followed inside, he heard Bastian murmur to Astrid that Naomi was sleeping and Astrid saying, with a rising, petulant note which nonetheless contained a note of submission, that she wanted to see her. Bastian looked over his shoulder and asked Kellas to shut the door.
‘Don’t you want to know what happened?’ asked Kellas.
‘If you tell me now, will it get you or Astrid cleaned up quicker?’
‘Where are you taking her?’
‘To get her cleaned up.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘You need to take care of yourself first.’
Kellas went after them. He followed them to a bathroom and watched Bastian lead Astrid in by the hand and sit her down on the closed seat of the toilet. She slumped and her head fell forward.
‘How much did she have?’ asked Bastian, starting to take off Astrid’s clothes.
‘Three and a half bottles of Merlot.’
‘And you?’
‘One and a half. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why didn’t I tell you what?’
‘That she was an alcoholic.’
‘I don’t care for that word.’
‘Fastidious, aren’t you? If you’d told me, this wouldn’t have happened.’
‘You mean you would have left straight away, like you were asked to?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Kellas saw Astrid stripped of her underwear in front of him till she sat there, thin, white and naked in bright light, her hands clasped between her thighs, her vertebrae sticking out of her hunched spine like the buds on a twig in winter. Her filthy clothes were piled on the glossy white floor tiles. ‘Should you be doing this? You’re not her father. You’re not her partner.’
Bastian turned on the shower. ‘I offered you the choice to come or go before you crossed the causeway,’ he said. ‘And Astrid told you that you had to leave.’ He took Astrid’s wrist. The casual way that the knuckles of his big weathered old hands touched and pressed into Astrid’s upper inner thighs as he pulled out her hand caused Kellas’s heart to begin to thud and the anger begin to rise in him.
‘I should be doing that,’ he said, as Astrid stood up and tottered towards the shower, led by Bastian. Bastian was wearing a baggy old sweater over a pair of striped pyjamas.
‘Go upstairs and get yourself cleaned up,’ said Bastian. ‘Think it over. Come on, sweetheart. Put your head under it.’ The water hit Astrid’s head behind the half-closed shower curtain. Bastian unhooked a bottle of shower gel from the rail and flipped it open with his thumb. Kellas couldn’t see what he was doing with his other hand through the curtain. He saw a beast in the mirror and it was himself.
‘Not a fucking alcoholic!’ yelled Astrid through the steam and water.
‘I’m coming back down,’ Kellas said, and went upstairs to the room where he had slept the previous day. He took off his clothes, made a bundle of them and put them by the door. He showered and watched the dissolved swamp mud and flecks of dried blood spin into the drains. The water flowed through his matted hair for minutes before it ran clear, and he put shampoo on. His headache had settled to a clear, simple pain. He drank a glass of water and put on a black towelling dressing gown he found hanging on the back of the shower room door. He gathered up the dirty clothes, added the shirt he had left London in, and went downstairs. The bathroom where he had left Astrid and Bastian was empty, the light switched off. Kellas listened. There was no sound in the house. He went to the kitchen; it was dark. A digital clock on the stove read one-forty-five.
Still carrying the clothes, Kellas padded down the hallway in his bare feet. The bare, varnished floorboards yielded and creaked. He opened doors and felt for light switches. He found Bastian’s library, a broad room on two levels, lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. It had a window seat and leather armchairs, with patches worn pale, by an open fireplace. A single live ember glowed in the ashes on the grate. There was no desk. A laptop lay charging on a rug. He found Astrid’s study, with framed A4 photographs
of refugees in Kosovo on the walls, piles of magazines and open notebooks that looked as if they were being transcribed onto the computer. In the clutter on her desk he saw the electric blue of an uncut, unpolished lump of lapis lazuli. He found the utility room and saw Astrid’s clothes in a laundry basket on top of the washing machine.
He went back upstairs and found the room where Astrid and Bastian were sleeping. It was at the far end of the hallway from his room. The door was not completely shut. Kellas pushed it open and when his eyes had adjusted to the darkness he saw a double bed with two figures under a quilt. He moved closer and stopped to listen. He could hear them breathing. He couldn’t tell how close they were to each other. Why did it matter? He was leaving. He would leave now, if he had shoes.
He found the switch and pressed it. Astrid whimpered, rolled over and pulled the quilt over her head. Bastian sat upright, blinking. Now that the light was on, Kellas could see that there had been space between them. Bastian was wearing his pyjamas.
‘I was looking for the washing machine,’ Kellas said. ‘I couldn’t find it.’
‘It can wait until tomorrow,’ said Bastian, rubbing his eyes.
‘Astrid said you didn’t sleep together.’
‘We don’t.’
‘You shouldn’t take advantage of her.’
‘She needs to be watched.’ Bastian yawned. ‘There’s still a lot of alcohol in her body.’
‘I should be sleeping with her, and not you.’
Bastian’s eyes widened a little and he looked at Kellas, awake now. ‘Seems to me you wrote my friend and roommate off tonight as an alcoholic.’
‘You’re not denying that’s what she is?’
Bastian swung his legs out of bed and went past Kellas, nodding at him to follow. Kellas went after him to the utility room and they put the dirty clothes in the washing machine and switched it on.
‘I’m going back to bed,’ said Bastian. ‘If I were you, I’d do likewise.’
‘I’m not tired. I was asleep most of the evening.’
Bastian regarded Kellas. ‘I know it’s tough for you,’ he said. ‘It’s tough when someone isn’t the way you imagined. It’s a powerful temptation to believe that the deficiency lies in the object of your plans, and not in you.’
‘You’re full of wiseassness tonight.’
‘Having you as a guest in this house is hard merit to acquire.’ Bastian clenched his fist, held it up to his face and turned it in the light, as if appraising an antique. ‘I used to use this,’ he said. ‘I had two of them, and I used to use them both. That’s not a threat. I don’t use them any more.’
‘Try me.’
‘No. With a man like you here, I remember what I used them for, and how I used them.’ He looked at Kellas. ‘I really think you should go to bed. Otherwise, sooner or later, Naomi will wake up, and I’ll get up to look after her, and we’ll see each other again.’ Bastian turned his back and went out. Kellas put his hands in the pockets of the dressing gown and leaned his back against the machine. He was a little sleepy. His eyes hurt now as well as his head. If he went to bed, he would wake up after an hour. Locked into a cold, heavy suit of fear, the suit they fitted you with for the nights after you had lost everything, your hope of love, your hope of good work, your money and your friends. Your dignity and decency. No matter what Kellas did now, it could never be said that Kellas had been decent in the face of his host’s merciless charity. Men started out looking for love, and ended up looking for dignity.
He wandered out of the utility room towards Astrid’s study. He would not try to sleep, but waking was no comfort in the rural small hours. He was shaking inside, almost trembling, like in the aftermath of some angry, meaningless altercation with a stranger in the street. Like the aftermath of the Cunnerys’. He was unsure
what day it had been. He could make himself sure, he could work it out, but he would rather it was on no particular day. He’d been in that state, with the jitters, when he came out of there and wrote to Sophie M’Gurgan. He pressed his eyes shut and bared his teeth. He opened his eyes and began to look through old numbers of
DC Monthly
for Astrid’s articles. He found several and took them to the kitchen. He sat down at the table and read through Astrid’s reports from Afghanistan. There were four; each, except for the last, was some five thousand words long. One was about the women of the Panjshir valley, all they had endured and lost during the wars against the Soviets and the Taliban. Another was from inside an American unit hunting for Osama bin Laden in the southern mountains. The third was about an Afghan soldier, a Dari-speaking Tajik from the north, who had travelled to the Pashtun realm of Kandahar for the first time in his life as the Taliban retreated, and then returned to his home village, where his uncle had taken up opium cultivation.
Kellas heard Naomi crying. Bastian brought her into the kitchen and made her up some formula and fed her. Neither man spoke. Kellas read Astrid’s fourth story, a short sketch at the beginning of the magazine about the experience of giving birth in an Afghan maternity hospital, where ‘everything was fine, except for the swaddling’ and how hard it had been afterwards to get the documents to prove that Naomi was her own, American, baby. Nothing was said but some kind of companion was implicit in the last, and perhaps the third article. There was reference to ‘a friend’.
Bastian took Naomi away and returned, alone. He filled a glass from the tap and put it down at the far end of the table from where Kellas was sitting. He sat down, took a drink of water, folded his arms and looked at Kellas.
‘I was reading Astrid’s articles from Afghanistan,’ said Kellas.
Bastian nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘They’re great. The last one, about getting Naomi home, it was pretty funny. I guess she could have written a lot more.’
‘She could have. Taking Naomi out of Afghanistan was nothing compared to getting her into the country. She was launched home by the helpful side of American bureaucracy but when she landed it happened that she got caught by the suspicious side. Then social services got involved. There were calls to Nasa, blood tests, affidavits FedExed from Australia. By the time they believed it was her baby, they’d come across Astrid’s other files. Two DUIs, damaging property, discharging a firearm in public.’
‘Did she hurt anyone?’
‘It was ten years ago. She emptied a gun into a guy’s car, outside a bar, to stop him following her. There wasn’t anyone in the car when she did it. He’d been hassling her all night. She never went to jail, but social services didn’t like it. The righteous superstitions of the enlightened. They knew her mother. They whispered about bad blood. It was a hard summer, what with bringing back Naomi, and Jack dying. And from the day she came back from Kabul until tonight, she’s stayed on the wagon.’
‘You’re trying to make me feel bad.’
‘Do you feel bad?’
‘Of course I feel bad. I know that if I hadn’t come here, your commune would still be ticking along.’
‘I don’t like to call Astrid an alcoholic because it sounds too much like the end of the story.’
‘Isn’t it supposed to be the beginning of—’