Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(84)

“What?” I said.

“People are always just some fucking this or that to you.”

“Don’t go.”

She said: “He’s going to help me to fly, China.”

“You always said I helped you to fly.”

She looked away. “It’s not your fault it stopped working,” she said. “It’s me.”

“Christ, you selfish bitch.”

“He wants to help me to fly,” she repeated dully. And then: “China, I am selfish.”

She tried to touch my hand but I moved it away.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” I said. “You want me to forgive you just because you can admit it?”

“I don’t want to lose you, China.”

I said: “You already have.”

“We don’t know what we might want,” she said. “Later on. Either of us.”

I remembered how we had been at the beginning: Stratford Waterside, whispers and moans, You help me to fly, China. “If you could hear yourself,” I said. “If you could just fucking hear yourself, Isobel.” She shrugged miserably and picked up her bag. I didn’t see her after that. I did have one letter from her. It was sad without being conciliatory, and ended: “You were the most amazing person I ever knew, China, and the fastest driver.”

I tore it up. “Were!” I said. “Fucking were!”

By that time she had moved in with him, somewhere along the Network South East line from Waterloo: Chiswick, Kew, one of those old-fashioned suburbs on a bladder of land inflated into the picturesque curve of the river, with genteel deteriorating houseboats, an arts centre, and a wine bar on every corner. West London is full of places like that—“shabby,” “comfortable,” until you smell the money. Isobel kept the Stepney house. I would visit it once a month to collect my things, cry in the lounge, and take away some single pointless item—a compact disc I had bought her, a picture she had bought me. Every time I went back, the bedroom, with its wooden chests and paper birds, seemed to have filled up further with dust. Despite that, I could never quite tell if anything had changed. Had they been in there, the two of them? I stayed in the doorway, so as not to know. I had sold Rose Services and was living out in Tottenham, drinking Michelob beer and watching Channel 4 movies while I waited for my capital to run out. Some movies I liked better than others. I cried all the way through Alice in the Cities. I wasn’t sure why. But I knew why I was cheering Anthony Hopkins as The Good Father.

“You were the most amazing person I ever knew, China, and the fastest driver. I’ll always remember you.”

What did I care? Two days after I got the letter I drove over to Queensborough Road at about seven in the evening. I had just bought the BMW. I parked it at the kerb outside Alexander’s clinic, which was in a large postmodern block not far down from Hammersmith Gyratory. Some light rain was falling. I sat there watching the front entrance. After about twenty minutes Alexander’s receptionist came out, put her umbrella up, and went off toward the tube station. A bit later Alexander himself appeared at the security gate. I was disappointed by him.

He turned out to be a tall thin man, middle-aged, grey-haired, dressed in a light wool suit. He looked less like a doctor than a poet. He had that kind of fragile elegance some people maintain on the edge of panic, the energy of tensions unresolved, glassy, never very far from the surface. He would always seem worried. He looked along the street toward Shepherd’s Bush, then down at his watch.

I opened the nearside passenger window. “David Alexander?” I called. I called: “Waiting for someone?” He bent down puzzledly and looked into the BMW. “Need a lift?” I offered.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

I thought: Say the wrong thing, you fucker. You’re that close. I said: “Not exactly.”

“Then—”

“Forget it.”

He stood back from the car suddenly, and I drove off.

Christmas. Central London. Traffic locked solid every late afternoon. Light in the shop windows in the rain. Light in the puddles. Light splashing up round your feet. I couldn’t keep still. Once I’d walked away from Isobel, I couldn’t stop walking. Everywhere I went, “She’s Always a Woman” was on the radio. Harrods, Habitat, Hamleys: Billy Joel drove me out onto the wet pavement with another armful of children’s toys. I even wrapped some of them—a wooden penguin with rubber feet, two packs of cards, a miniature jigsaw puzzle in the shape of her name. Every time I saw something I liked, it went home with me.

“I bought you a present,” I imagined myself saying, “this fucking little spider that really jumps—look!”

Quite suddenly I was exhausted. Christmas Day I spent with the things I’d bought. Boxing Day, and the day after that, I lay in a chair staring at the television. Between shows I picked up the phone and put it down again, picked it up and put it down. I was going to call Isobel, then I wasn’t. I was going to call her, but I closed the connection carefully every time the phone began to ring at her end. Then I decided to go back to Stepney for my clothes.

Imagine this—

Two A.M. The house was quiet.

Or this—

I stood on the pavement. When I looked in through the uncurtained ground-floor window I could see the little display of lights on the front of Isobel’s CD player.