Transit(26)

He smacked his lips while Louis watched with a guilty, cowed expression. When Julian had withdrawn his hand Louis held out his in turn.

‘Goodbye,’ he said, with what was either gravity or its imitation.

They turned to leave and I was surprised to see the Chair return to the table and sit down. I said immediately that he mustn’t feel he had to stay and keep me company. If he wanted to go with the others I was quite happy to go back to the hotel.

‘No, no,’ the Chair said, in a tone that failed to clarify whether he would have preferred to go or not. ‘I’ll stay here. You were talking to Oliver for a long time,’ he added. ‘I was getting quite jealous.’

I did not reply to this remark. He asked if I had read Julian and Louis’s books. He had unbuttoned his jacket and was sitting back in his chair with his legs crossed, swinging his foot back and forth. I noticed his shoe as it came towards me and receded again. It was a lace-up boot, new, with a long pointed toe and holes punctured in the brown leather. The rest of his clothes were expensive-looking too: perhaps it was the flamboyance of Julian’s attire that had prevented me from noticing the Chair’s well-cut, slim-fitting jacket, his clean dark shirt with its sharp collars, his trousers made of some soft-looking, opulent material. His face was alert and he moved his small head often, watching me.

‘What did you think?’ he said.

I said that I liked them, though their differences suggested there was more than one way of being honest, which I wasn’t sure was true. I hadn’t expected to like Julian, I added, any more than he had expected to like me.

‘Julian,’ the Chair said, ‘or his book?’

As far as I was concerned, I said, they were the same thing.

The Chair looked at me with an ambiguous glint in his button-like eyes.

‘That’s a strange thing for a writer to say,’ he said.

I asked him about his own work and he talked for a while about the publishing house where he was an editor. Next week the editor-in-chief was going away for a few days: the Chair was being left to run things on his own. It happened two or three times each year, which was enough to convince him – or rather to remind him, since he required no convincing – that responsibility was something he ought to avoid. Likewise, his sister would sometimes ask him to look after his little niece for a day or two, which gave him as big a dose of parenthood as he needed, as well as having the immense advantage that the child – who he liked a great deal – was returnable.

I asked him what he used his freedom for, since he defended it so assiduously, and he looked somewhat taken aback.

‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ he said.

He’d have to think about my question, he went on. There was probably an element of selfishness to it, he could admit, as well as immaturity. But really, if he were honest – honesty being tonight’s theme, he said, with a barking laugh – it was fear.

Of what? I said.

He looked at me with a strange grimacing smile.

His father, he said after a while, had had a propensity to behave in public situations in a manner that caused the utmost embarrassment to the people with him. In restaurants and shops, on trains, even at school parents’ evenings: there was no knowing what he might do. Any such occasion could only be viewed in advance with dread by the members of his family. But the Chair had dreaded it more than the others.

I asked what exactly it was his father did that was so embarrassing.

There was a long silence.

I don’t know, said the Chair. I can’t explain.

Why, I asked, did he think he suffered more anxiety than, say, the sister he had mentioned earlier?

I don’t know, the Chair said again. I just know that I did.

He didn’t know why he had told me that, he added after a while. It was something he didn’t usually talk about. His foot was still swinging back and forth and I watched the slender, beak-like toe as it advanced and retreated. All this time the Chair had been pouring wine into our glasses and now the bottle was empty. I said that I ought to be going back to the hotel: I had to catch an early train the next morning. The Chair reacted to this news with obvious surprise. He looked at his watch. His wrist, I noticed, had strong knuckle-shaped bones and the white skin was covered with vigorous black hairs. I saw thoughts passing through his mind but I didn’t know what they were. I guessed he was calculating whether he was too late to join the others at the club. He stood up and asked which hotel I was staying in.

‘Can I walk you back there?’ he said.

I repeated that there was no need, if he had something else to do.

‘You haven’t taken your coat off all evening,’ he said, ‘so I can’t even help you on with it.’

Outside it was so dark that it was barely possible to see the pavement in front of us. The rain had stopped but water dripped thickly from the foliage overhead. In the darkness the mass of heavy trunks along the roadside with their serpentine roots seemed impenetrable as a forest. The Chair took out his phone and used the light as a torch. We had to walk very close to one another to be able to see where we were going. Our arms and shoulders were touching. I felt a realisation begin to arise, a dawning of understanding, as if some incomprehensible component had suddenly slotted into place. We crossed the road into the brighter light that came from the hotel. I opened the gate and the Chair followed me into the gravelled courtyard. There was a flight of wide stone steps that rose to the front door. I paused at the bottom. I thanked the Chair for bringing me back and I turned away from him and walked up the steps. He followed me up; I felt him just behind me, a dark attendant shape, like a hawk hovering and rising. When I turned around again he took two rapid strides towards me. He seemed to be crossing some unfathomable element or chasm-like space, where things fell and broke far down in the darkness against its deeps. His body reached mine and he pushed me back against the door and kissed me. He put his warm, thick tongue in my mouth; he thrust his hands inside my coat. His lean, hard body was more insistent than forceful. I felt the soft, expensive clothes he was dressed in and the hot skin beneath them. He moved his face away from mine for a moment in order to speak.