How to Stop Time(25)

‘I didn’t know this.’

‘You’re not meant to.’

I noticed that the park was cluttered with fallen trees.

A bird landed on the windowsill.

I didn’t recognise it. Birds were different here. A small robust yellow creature with dull grey wings, it jerked its head towards the window. Then the other way. I never tired of the way birds moved when they weren’t in flight. It was a series of tableaux rather than continuous movement. Staccato. Stuck moments.

‘Your daughter could be in danger. We all could. We need to work together, you understand?’

‘I do.’

‘There is one last question I need to ask you,’ Hendrich said, after a sip of whisky.

‘Please do.’

‘Do you want to survive? I mean, really? Do you want to stay alive?’

I had long asked myself this question. The answer was usually yes, because I didn’t want to die while I still had a daughter, possibly still alive, and yet it was very difficult to say I wanted to survive. Ever since Rose, it had been a pendulum between the two possibilities. To be or not to be. But in that lavish apartment, with that yellow bird still on the ledge, the answer seemed clearer. From this height, with the hard blue sky and bold new city in front of me, I felt closer to Marion. America made you think in the future tense. ‘Yes. Yes, I do want to survive.’

‘Well, to survive we must work together.’

The bird flew away.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Right. Work together.’

‘Don’t look so worried. We are not a religious sect. Our aim is to stay alive, yes, but only so we can enjoy life. We have no gods here, save maybe Aphrodite. And Dionysus.’ He looked wistful for a moment. ‘Agnes, are you heading up to Harlem?’

‘Yes. I’m going to see an old friend, and then sedate myself and sleep for a week.’

Light gleamed like a jewel on the decanter. The sight made Hendrich happy. ‘Look! The sun is out. Shall we take a walk in the park?’

An uprooted maple tree was in our path.

‘Hurricane,’ Hendrich explained. ‘Killed some people a few weeks ago, sailors mainly. The park keepers have been a bit slow to do the clear-up.’

I stared at the roots, spreading like tentacles. ‘Must have been ferocious.’

Hendrich smiled at me. ‘It was quite a show.’

He stared down at the scattered earth and leaves on the path.

‘The immigrant experience. Right there. The wind comes and suddenly you’re not in the ground any more. And your roots are out on show and looking strange and unfamiliar. But you’ve been uprooted before, right? You’ve uprooted yourself. You’ve had to, surely.’

I nodded. ‘Many times.’

‘It shows.’

I was trying to take this as a compliment. It was difficult.

‘The trick is to stay upright. You know how to move and stay upright?’

‘How?’

‘You have to match the hurricane. You have to be your own storm. You have to . . .’

He stopped. His metaphor was running out of steam. I noticed how shiny his shoes were. I had never seen shoes like them.

‘We are different, Tom,’ he said eventually. ‘We are not other people. We carry the past with us. We see it everywhere. And sometimes that can be dangerous, and we need to help each other.’ His hand was now on my shoulder, as if he was telling me something of the deepest importance. ‘The past is never gone. It just hides.’

We walked slowly around the maple tree.

Manhattan rose out of the ground, ahead of us, like a new type of storm-proof forest.

‘We have to be above them. Do you understand? For our future survival, we have to be selfish.’

We passed a couple wrapped up in overcoats, laughing at some secret joke. ‘Your life is changing. The world is changing. It is ours. We just have to make sure most of the mayflies never know about us.’

I thought of a body floating along the Thames.

‘But to kill Dr Hutchinson . . .’

‘This is a war, Tom. It is an unseen war, but it is a war. We have to protect ourselves.’

He lowered his voice as two smart-suited men with identical moustaches rode by us on black bicycles. The bicycles had equal-sized wheels, which seemed a very modern development to me.

‘Who is this Omai?’ Hendrich whispered. His eyebrows raised like sparrow wings.

‘Sorry?’

‘Dr Hutchinson wrote about him. From the South Pacific. Who is he?’

I laughed nervously. It was strange having someone know your biggest secrets. ‘He was an old friend. I knew him back in the last century. He came to London for a while, but he doesn’t want to be found. I haven’t seen him for over a hundred years.’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Fine.’

Then Hendrich opened his jacket and pulled out two beige tickets from the inside pocket. He handed me one.

‘Tchaikovsky. Tonight. The Music Hall. Hottest ticket in town. You need to see the bigger picture, Tom. All this time alive and you still can’t see it. But you will, you will. For the sake of your daughter. For the sake of yourself. Trust me, you will . . .’ He leaned in and grinned. ‘And if not, well, you might find yourself out of time altogether.’

We sat in the plush red seats, and when the woman with the extravagant claret-red dress – puff-sleeved, high-necked, bell-skirted, ornately embroidered décolletage – next to Hendrich stood up and left for the restroom, he tilted his head towards me and surreptitiously pointed out a celebrity in attendance.