The Innocent Sleep (11 page)

“—and that will all happen at your first appointment. Now, let me write the date down on your appointment card, so you won’t forget.”

I handed it to her, watching her neat writing fill up a white square, still thinking I should say something to clarify things, something about Dillon.

“So, when you come back for your appointment, go straight up the stairs there, and the nurse will see to you. Okay?”

“Right. Thanks.”

I left her to her cheerful administration, still chewing my lip with indecision and regret, and that is when I heard my name being called.

“Robin? Is it you?”

A woman in a blue dress with a neat, round bump like a Christmas pudding was approaching me with a hesitant, timorous smile. Her auburn hair was swept over one shoulder. Her face was crazy with freckles. It was a face I knew but couldn’t locate in memory.

“It’s Tanya,” she said. “From the Sitric Gallery? We met at your husband’s exhibition some years ago?”

“Tanya. Yes. Yes, of course. I’m so sorry.”

“That’s all right!” she laughed, adding, “Pregnancy has a tendency to scramble your brain, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does. When are you due?”

“March. And you?”

“Not till the summer. I’m actually just here to register.”

“Ah,” she said.

For a moment, neither of us said anything, both tacitly acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation. It is something you hope won’t happen—bumping into someone you know when going to register your pregnancy. Not yet ready to share your news, and yet there is no denying it once caught on the premises of a prenatal clinic. I had the strange, almost shamefaced feeling of being caught with my hand in someone else’s purse.

“How is Harry, anyway?”

“He’s good, thanks. Busy,” I added, remembering now what Harry had told me. “He mentioned that you might be interested in looking at some of his new work.”

A look of mild consternation crossed her face.

“When he met you last weekend,” I went on. “He was quite excited, in fact, although he’d kill me for saying as much. But you know he’d love the chance to exhibit again at the Sitric.”

The look on her face stopped me. Consternation had changed to genuine confusion and she was shaking her head slowly.

“You must be mistaken, Robin. I haven’t seen Harry in ages. In fact, it’s a good two years, at least, since we last met.”

“Oh,” I said, momentarily thrown. “Well, perhaps it was someone else from the Sitric Gallery that he was referring to. There’s another girl who works there—Sally or Sarah? I forget!”

I laughed, yet still she looked at me strangely.

“The Sitric Gallery has closed,” she said softly.

“What?”

“Another victim of the recession,” she continued with a little mirthless laugh. “No one has money to spend on art anymore.”

My mind raced. The Sitric had closed? My thoughts whirred back over what Harry had said—Tanya from the Sitric. The day of the march. I was sure that was whom he had mentioned.

“Well,” she said, shrugging. “It was nice to see you. And please give Harry my best. Perhaps, when things pick up, our paths might cross again.”

“Yes,” I said with a smile. “Good luck.”

As I walked away, picking my way carefully through the snow, I thought about Harry, about what he had said, and wondered why he had lied. And if he hadn’t seen Tanya the day of the march, then whom had he seen, and why did he not want to tell me?

Perhaps I was mistaken. I told myself that it was possible he had meant someone else from a different gallery and I had just misheard or misinterpreted his remarks. But even as I turned the thought over in my mind, I knew it wasn’t true. He had lied to me. And I remembered how he’d been that day—agitated, distracted—and the memory stayed with me on the long, slow walk back to the office, creasing itself into a little furrow of worry: one more to add to the rest.

CHAPTER SEVEN

HARRY

I
woke up to “Fairytale of New York” playing on the radio. That was it. As soon as you heard “Fairytale,” you knew Christmas was on its way. I felt rough. I felt like the scumbag in the song. The strung-out tones were fitting. Nothing like Shane MacGowan singing how he could have been someone on a bleak Monday morning in December to make you think of taking to the drink again. Hair of the dog was on my mind.

Beside me, the bed was stone cold. Robin must have been up for a while. I stumbled into the bathroom and got the water going. Standing under the shower with the jets of water spraying painfully across my face, I thought of what my life had come to, the point in the path that I was at. I thought of my work, the opportunities that were opening up to me now with this trip I was about to take. I was off to London for a meeting with a gallery about a show I might do, a follow-on from
The Tangier Manifesto
. A part two, if you like. I was nervous but excited, too, conscious of all the possibilities swirling about me. I thought of Robin and the baby growing inside her. I thought of this old house and the future that lay within it. All of these things flitted across the corridors of my mind. But a shadow was cast over them. The shadow of the boy I had seen. His face rose up amid the steam of the hot water, and I turned away from it, flicking off the water and stepping out of the tub. I did not shave, just dressed quickly, grabbed a few things, and threw them into an overnight bag.

Robin called up the stairs to me:

“Harry? Are you ready?”

“Yep,” I said, taking the stairs two at a time, pressed by a sudden need to get going.

“I’ll drop you at the airport.”

“What? In this snow?”

“It’s not too bad. We can go for breakfast in the airport before your flight.”

“Okay. If you’re sure?”

She gave me a warm smile of reassurance, then skipped past me to the van. As I locked up, I could hear her turning the engine over, bringing it to life.

“Tickets? Passport? Wallet?” she said as I got in beside her.

“Check, check, and check.”

She seemed so breezy that morning. An air of optimism hovered around her, giving off warmth on that cold, cold day. I felt so grateful for it in that moment that it was enough to dispel all my thoughts about the boy, about what I had seen or what I thought I had seen. Delusions, that’s what they were, brought on by guilt or fatigue or a combination of both.

Robin had turned her head to back out the driveway when I saw the expression on her face change, the frown forming on her forehead. I turned, too, and saw the long snout of the old Jag pulling up, blocking our exit. I heard the creak of a hand brake and watched as the door opened and Spencer stepped out, fag clamped in his mouth, loose strands of uncombed hair lifting in the breeze.

“Great,” Robin declared in a flat tone as he raised a hand in salute.

“I’ll get rid of him,” I said.

She looked at me with a weary expression. “If only it were that simple.”

He was at the driver’s window now, tapping on the glass. Dutifully, she wound it down. I could smell his breath cutting across her, bitter and sharp.

“Where are you off to?”

“Airport.”

“Come on. I’ll give you a lift.”

He turned and stalked back to the Jag, not waiting for an answer.

Robin stared at her knuckles, her hands still gripping the steering wheel.

“Sorry, love,” I said, and I kissed her good-bye. She sighed. “I’ll make it up to you. Forget breakfast at the airport—I’ll take you out somewhere nice when I’m back.”

Robin didn’t respond. I climbed out of the car, feeling like I had let her down again, and stepped into Spencer’s. He had on a camel’s hair coat. Peeking beneath the lapels was a flash of black silk: he was still wearing his robe. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he had not slept in a month.

“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”

“What? Course I am,” he said, holding up a Breathalyzer. “I have the system sussed.”

He drove so I had to clutch the door handle. My foot pressed to brake more than once. But we made it with time to spare.

“I have talked with McDonagh, my mate in the Guards, and he has managed to source the CCTV for the hours in question. It’s all digitized these days.”

“Oh. Right. Excellent.”

“The man owed me a favor, so here, my friend, are half a dozen DVDs.”

I looked at the stack of them, bound with an elastic band, and a tide of embarrassment and regret washed over me. Why had I asked him for these? What purpose could they possibly serve? At that moment, my suspicions seemed so patently absurd, let alone my desire for some amateur sleuthing.

“These were not easy to come by, favor or no. Seems like they are hot property. Austerity measures, protests. Forget
The Tangier Manifesto,
that’s what you should call your next show.”

“
Austerity Measures
?”

“Bingo.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Listen, you’ll have to analyze those discs yourself. McDonagh may have owed me one big favor, but he was not about to look through three hundred hours of people walking up and down O’Connell Street.”

“Three hundred hours?”

“Give or take. There’s, like, three or four cameras, so … I don’t know, you do the math.”

“Right you are. Thanks again. You’re a mensch.”

“I’ve been called worse.” He parked. “Look, are you going to buy me a drink or what?”

“What about the car?”

“I’ll leave it. And…”

“And what?”

“Say it was stolen or something, I don’t know.”

I checked in, and we went to the nearest bar.

“So?” Spencer said, an expectant look on his face.

“What?”

“Are you going to tell me what the fuck this is all about?” He pointed at the discs, then reached for his pint.

I knew I couldn’t tell him. Mostly, because I was embarrassed—afraid, perhaps, of the conclusions he might draw from my behavior, the references he might make to all the trouble in my past. Besides, he had not known Dillon. Not really. He had visited Tangier once, shortly after the birth, and we had spent a memorable weekend wetting the baby’s head. He had been the only friend to make it over, and he’d seemed genuinely happy for us. After that, he’d doted on Dillon but from afar, sending gifts and cards. He hadn’t been anything as official as a godfather, but he’d held a special status for Dillon. He’d been “Uncle Spencer.”

Before I had a chance to dodge the question, Spencer butted in: “You know there’s more than fifty fucking CCTV cameras in the city center? Not to mention the rest of the country. Big Brother is watching you.”

“You said it.”

“What about our civil rights?”

“Spencer, you don’t give a fuck about civil rights.”

“How do you know? How do you know I don’t care about my civil rights?”

“You are just looking to pick a fight.”

He glared at me as if I had insulted his mother.

“You’re contrary today,” I added.

“No, I’m not.”

My phone rang. It was Diane. She knew about the Golden Clock gallery in London, but I did not really want her involved. I did not want her on the scent, representing me as if she owned me. The more distance I had from her, the better. I let the phone keep ringing. Spencer picked it up and saw Diane’s name. He pressed the Reject button. “The less said, the better.”

I agreed.

More beers arrived.

“You’re in a generous spirit,” I said.

“It’s my Christmas cheer.” He picked my phone up again and logged on to the web comic Wheel Spinning Hamster Dead. “That’s us, my friend. That’s Ireland.”

“Yeah, that’s hilarious, Spence. Really charming stuff,” I said.

“There’s no app for loneliness,” he quipped.

“You’re jealous you don’t have an iPhone,” I said, but the truth was, I couldn’t afford it myself. Money was tight. My overdraft had an overdraft. We had been given a house, but it was a poisoned chalice of sorts. The place’s upkeep threatened to wring us dry. It had leaks and drafts. This was broken, that was malfunctioning. I’d never say this to Robin, but we had inherited a wreck. “It’ll make a good home,” she’d said. “It’ll serve us well. Why can’t you be more excited?” I know I sound like a miserable sod, but it was the sense of not having earned it, or made it ourselves, that sat uneasily with me. We’d even taken out a mortgage to buy Mark’s half, to do the place up; taken out a mortgage on a house that had been given to us. Utter madness. And yet, mortgages, phones, none of it mattered—not right then. The glimmer of possibility still flickered and shone. Hope, I suppose you might call it.

“You realize all the music you own is from the 1980s?”

“Yeah?”

“You sad fucker. Your music-listening life ended in 1989.”

“Well, they are the vintage years.”

“Howard Jones, Nik Kershaw. Please.”

“The Cure, The Smiths.”

“Lloyd Cole.”

“Fucking love Lloyd Cole.”

“Lost weekend in a hotel in Amsterdam.”

“Story of my life.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two figures—a woman and a child—and I spun in my chair to look at them. But the boy was younger than he should be, only about three or four, and the woman was different too, the wrong hair color, the wrong height.

I turned back and saw Spencer staring at me.

“What is with you today, bud?” he asked, looking me square in the face.

“Nothing.”

“You’re twitchy as hell.”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. Every time someone walks past, you’re swinging around in your seat. Are you expecting someone?”

“No!” I said, indignant and flustered. “Here, finish this for me. I’ve got to head out.”

*   *   *

The
flight boarded after a delay. The holdup had something to do with de-icing the runway and the wingtips. If you thought too much about it all, you’d never go anywhere. I got onto the plane and sat down beside a woman whose first greeting to me was: “Cold enough for you?”

Her perfume was so strong I could taste it. Even the gin and tonic I ordered did not help. Across the aisle, a man was coping with a crying child. He dipped the child’s pacifier into his drink and popped it into the child’s mouth. The child stopped crying. The man saw me watching, smiled, and gave me a wink. I turned away. It seemed that everywhere I looked, there were children. I couldn’t escape from them.