How to Stop Time(68)

‘The woman who called for Abraham. That’s your dog’s name, right?’

Hendrich has a thousand symptoms of old age. I curse that one of them isn’t hearing loss.

Camille clips on Abraham’s lead, then looks at me again. She is ready to go.

‘Woman?’

Now Camille is listening to me.

‘Who is it?’

‘No one,’ I say. ‘She is no one at all.’

The mouth I had just been dreaming of kissing is now agape with disbelief.

‘She?’ she whispers, but it is one of those whispers that is more a voiceless scream.

I don’t mean it, I mime.

‘It’s just someone I see in the park. Our dogs know each other.’

Camille is furious.

Hendrich sighs. I have no idea if he believes me or not, but he returns to his main subject. ‘If it isn’t you, there will still be someone seeing your old friend. A stranger. I have been recruiting quite heavily recently. This is what gives me faith I will find Marion. The point is: I have lots I could send, but they might not be able to persuade him, and then . . .’ His voice trails off. ‘So it is up to you. It is completely up to you.’

The myth of choice. Classic Hendrich. Either I go and talk to Omai, or Omai dies. That is essentially what he is saying. If it isn’t someone from Berlin who gets to him, it will be someone else. And, even more horribly, I know he is right. Hendrich may be a manipulator, but he very often has the truth on his side.

Camille has handed me the lead and now she is walking out of the park.

‘I’ll phone you later. I need to think about it.’

‘You have an hour.’

‘An hour. Fine.’

Once off the phone, I call to Camille. ‘Camille, wait. Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘Camille?’

‘Who was on the phone?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Just as you couldn’t tell her who I was.’

‘It wasn’t a her.’

‘I can’t do this, Tom.’

‘Camille, please.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Camille?’

‘I pour my heart out to you and get close to you and imagine there is something between us for you to deny we know each other. Jesus fucking Christ. I could have ended up sleeping with you! That’s probably what you do. Manipulate people. I’m probably just like another dog for you to train.’

‘Abraham isn’t trained. Camille, please, wait—’

‘Fils de pute!’

She walks out of the park. I could follow her. Every atom of me wants to follow her. I could talk to her and explain about Hendrich. I could quite possibly make everything all right. But I stay standing there, on the grass, under a purple sky, with the day dying around me. I calculate that pissing her off is better than endangering her. It is a total conundrum. The only way to protect her is to have as little to do with her as possible.

I know I have already done too much damage. Hendrich has heard her voice. He could have detected a French accent.

Shit. This is what happens when you drink wine. And when you try to get close to someone. You get trapped. But it is the same trap I’ve been in since 1891. As always, it is Hendrich’s trap. I feel literally immobilised. I will never have a life. And now I have upset the first new person I have really cared about in what feels like eternity. Shit. Shit. Shit.

‘Shit.’ I tell it to Abraham too.

Abraham looks up, panting his confusion.

For centuries I have thought all my despair is grief. But people get over grief. They get over even the most serious grief in a matter of years. If not get over then at least live beside. And the way they do this is by investing in other people, through friendship, through family, through teaching, through love. I have been approaching this realisation for some time now.

But it is all a farce. I am not going to be able to make a difference to anyone else. I should stop being a teacher now. I should stop all attempts at conversation. I should have nothing to do with anyone. I should live in total isolation. I should go back to Iceland, doing nothing except the tasks Hendrich asks of me.

It doesn’t seem possible for me to exist and not cause pain – my own, or other people’s.

Abraham whimpers a little beside me, as if feeling my pain.

‘It’s all right, boy. Let’s go home.’

I put some biscuits out for Abraham and drink some vodka and sing Carly Simon’s ‘Coming Around Again’, repeating the title of the song until I think I’m going insane.

Seeing there is ten minutes before I must call Hendrich I click on YouTube and type in ‘Sol Davis’. I find footage of waves and a man in a wetsuit on a board, carving his way across the water.

It cuts to this same man coming out of the water and walking over the sand, addressing the camera, with a smile but also a frown, and he shakes his head.

‘Hey, man, don’t do anything with that,’ he says. He has an Australian accent and his head is shaven and he looks, in normal terms, nearly twenty years older but there is no doubt about it: it is Omai. I freeze the frame. His eyes stare straight at me, his forehead beaded with saltwater.

I pick up the phone, cradle it in my hand, go into ‘Recents’ and press my thumb on ‘H’.