The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher(13)

Anyway, it was becoming academic now. She had reached that stage in her fertile life when genetic strings got knotted and chromosomes went whizzing around and reattaching themselves. “Trisomies,” he said. “Syndromes. Metabolic deficiencies. I wouldn’t put you through that.”

She sighed. Rubbed her bare arms. Phil leaned forward. Cleared his throat, spoke to the driver. “My wife is chilly.”

“Wear the cardigan,” said the driver. He slotted another cigarette into his mouth. The road now ascended in a series of violent bends, and at each of them he wrenched the wheel, throwing the car’s back end out toward the ditches.

“How long?” she asked. “About?”

“Half hour.” If he could have concluded the statement by spitting, she felt he would have.

“Still in time for dinner,” Phil said encouragingly. He rubbed her arms for her, as if to give encouragement. She laughed shakily. “You make them wobble,” she said.

“Nonsense. There’s no flesh on you.”

There was a cloudy half-moon, a long scoop of fallen land to their right, a bristling treeline above them, and as he cupped her elbow, caressing it, there was once more a skid and slide, a rock shower rattling inconsequentially to the road before them. Phil was just saying, “It’ll only take me two minutes to unpack.” He was beginning to explain to her his system for traveling light. But the driver grunted, wrenched the wheel, stabbed the brakes and brought them lurching to a halt. She shot forward, jarring her wrist on the seat in front. The seat belt pulled her back. They had felt the impact but seen nothing. The driver swung open his door and ducked out into the night. “Kid,” Phil whispered.

Gone under? The driver was pulling something from between the front wheels. He was bent double and they could see his bottom rise in the air, with the frill of tartan at his waist. Inside the body of the car they sat very still, as if not to draw attention to the incident. They did not look at each other, but watched as the driver straightened up, rubbed the small of his back, then walked around and lifted the tailgate, pulling out something dark, a wrapping, a tarpaulin. The chill of the night hit them between their shoulder blades, and fractionally they shrank together. Phil took her hand. She twitched it away; not petulant, but because she felt she needed to concentrate. The driver appeared in silhouette before them, lit by their own headlights. He turned his head and glanced up and down the empty road. He had something in his hand, a rock. He stooped. Thud, thud, thud. She tensed. She wanted to cry out. Thud, thud, thud. The man straightened up. There was a bundle in his arms. Tomorrow’s dinner, she thought. Seethed in onion and tomato sauce. She didn’t know why the word seethed came to her. She remembered a sign down in the town: The Sophocles School of Motoring. “Call no man happy…” The driver posted the bundle into the back of the car, by their luggage. The tailgate slammed.

Recycling, she thought. Phil would say, “Very laudable.” If he spoke. But it seemed he had decided not to. She understood that they wouldn’t, either of them, mention this dire start to their winter break. She cradled her wrist. Gently, gently. A movement of anxiety. A washing. Massaging the minute pain away. I shall go on hearing it, she thought, at least for the rest of this week: thud, thud, thud. We might make a joke of it, perhaps. How we froze. How we let him get on with it, what else could we … because you don’t get vets patroling the mountains by night. Something rose into her throat, that she wanted to articulate; tickled her hard palate, fell away again.

* * *

THE PORTER SAID, “Welcome to the Royal Athena Sun.” Light spilled from a marble interior, and near at hand some cold broken columns were spotlighted, the light shifting from blue to green and back again. That will be the “archaeological feature” as promised, she thought. Another time she would have grinned at the exuberant vulgarity. But the clammy air, the incident … she inched out of the car and straightened up, unsmiling, her hand resting on the taxi’s roof. The driver nudged past her without a word. He lifted the tailgate. But the porter, hovering helpful, was behind him. He reached for their bags with both hands. The driver moved swiftly, blocking him, and to her own amazement she jumped forward, “No!” and so did Phil, “No!”

“I mean,” Phil said. “It’s only two bags.” As if to prove the lightness of the load, he had gripped one of the bags in his own fist, and he gave it a joyous twirl. “I believe in—” he said. But the phrase traveling light eluded him. “Not much stuff,” he said.

“Okay, sir.” The porter shrugged. Stepped back. She rehearsed it in her mind, as if telling it to a friend, much later: you see, we were made complicit. But the taxi driver didn’t do anything wrong, of course. Just something efficient.

And her imaginary friend agreed: still, instinctively you would feel, you would feel there was something to hide.

“I’m ready for a drink,” Phil said. He was yearning for the scene beyond the plate glass: brandy sours, clanking ice cubes in the shape of fish, clicking high heels on terra-cotta tiles, wrought-iron scrollwork, hotel linen, soft pillow. Call no man happy. Call no man happy until he has gone down to his grave in peace. Or at least to his junior suite; and can rub out today and wake tomorrow hungry. The taxi driver leaned into the car to scoop out the second bag. As he did, he nudged aside the tarpaulin, and what she glimpsed—and in the same moment, refused to see—was not a cloven hoof, but the grubby hand of a human child.