The Missing World (17 page)

As they crossed the threshold, the phrase “pied-à-terre” died on her lips. She saw the flat for what it was, a tip. All the more reason to sparkle. “My humble abode, but I think you’ll find it has everything you need.” She pointed out the TV, the kitchen area, the armchairs, the lamps.

“Where do you eat?” asked Renee.

Pizza Hut, Charlotte wanted to say, the Trumpet, then realised Renee was enquiring about the lack of a table. “I loaned it to a neighbour, for his daughter’s birthday party. He’ll bring it back this evening.”

“And … where … you …?” said Ian.

“Mostly in Gloucestershire. I’m doing a film for the next few months. Otherwise I’ll be with my sister in Barnsbury. She’s a single parent, and I’ve promised to help out when I can.”

Like the woman at British Telecom, Renee seemed impervious to the word “film.” “So what exactly do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to sublet from this Sunday until the end of June. I’ll pay the utilities, except for the phone.” She faltered and went on to detail rent, security deposit, and the importance of forwarding mail and messages.

“We need a few minutes.”

“Of course.” Charlotte settled back in one of the armchairs
only to catch Renee’s pointed stare. Already they were taking over. She huffed into the bathroom and leaned on the edge of the bath, absentmindedly arranging bottles of shampoo and bubble bath, blue and pink, amber and snow. Now, who could she borrow a table from? Maybe Louis would lend her one from the Trumpet.

“Ms. Granger,” called Renee, and dutifully she trooped back to her own living-room.

“We’ll take it,” said Renee. “It’s a bit primitive, but the dates are perfect.” She got out her cheque book. “Who shall I make it payable to?”

Hastily Charlotte explained that given how soon they were moving in, she would need the security deposit and at least part of the rent in cash. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she said, and it wasn’t. For Renee to bounce a cheque was as unthinkable as for Bernie to wear an unironed blouse, but offering a cheque to her overdraft was like spitting into the Thames.

So it was decided. Charlotte put on her coat and walked with them to the hole in the wall, where they each received enviable wads of fresh notes. Whoopee, thought Charlotte. She was slipping the money into her purse, already planning lunch, when Renee asked for a receipt.

“A receipt?” She seemed to be surrounded these days by people who believed in pieces of paper. “I was going to do that on Sunday, but of course if you’d be more comfortable, I can scribble something now.”

“We would,” said Renee. Ian murmured a few words which she translated as a suggestion to go into the nearest pub.

While Charlotte leaned on a sticky table, Renee dictated a monotonously explicit account of their agreement. Each of them signed and Renee pocketed it, claiming she’d make a copy for Charlotte. Outside on the pavement, another murmur
from Ian interrupted their handshakes. “About the phone?” said Renee.

And there was half the money gone as Charlotte assured them that it would be back on by Monday. “The whole street’s complained, but you know British Telecom.”

Walking home, somehow she had lost her desire for lunch, Charlotte caught sight of the row of rubbish bags and, pacing beside them, a tall, thin man in a bobble cap and anorak. Of course, Mike, the other would-be tenant. She stopped, wondering whether to introduce herself and buy him a consolation drink. He could be sex on legs, from this distance it was hard to tell, though the bobble cap was not encouraging. Just as she rehearsed her opening lines—“The daughter of a friend, I couldn’t say no”—he bent to prod one of the bags. Charlotte turned and fled.

“Lovely,” Hazel said. “If it’s not too …”

From the landing Jonathan assumed she was talking to herself, perhaps practising a conversation she planned to have later, with Maud or with him, but as he crept down the stairs, hoping to hear more, the rhythm of her remarks alerted him to another possibility. He hurried into the living-room and found Hazel holding the phone. Since the hospital it had been an unwritten rule that she did not answer calls.

“No, no one can say for sure if it’s permanent. I do get …”

Not Maud, not Nora. Diane, perhaps, or a colleague? An editor named Lucy had called twice in the last week. He strode across the room, hand outstretched. “Who is it?”

“So you’ll come about four,” said Hazel. “Yes, I’ll tell him.”

She replaced the receiver and, misunderstanding his gesture, reached for his hand. Her lips parted when he snatched it away, then she grasped the arms of the chair and said nothing.

“Who was that?” he insisted. “Who’s coming at four?”

“Mrs. Craig.” She looked deliberately past him.

He felt his eyeballs grow hot. “This afternoon isn’t convenient.”

“Did I forget something?”

Her gaze swung back to him, defiance gone, and again he thought, this is easy. He noticed her hair straggling over her shoulders. “You’re having your hair cut,” he said.

Before he could elaborate a time and place, Hazel was on her feet moving towards the door. Well, it wouldn’t be hard to get an appointment on a weekday. His hand closed around the still-warm receiver and, to his surprise, Mrs. Craig’s number appeared in his head. He had phoned her once from the hospital, to ask if she could take in some files the office were sending, and blurted out the plans for Hazel’s convalescence. Poor Hazel, Mrs. Craig had said, but is that wise, after last year? Furious, he had explained that her return was her parents’ suggestion and hung up.

Hazel reappeared. “It’s not on the calendar.”

“What’s not?”

“The hairdresser. Maybe I didn’t forget after all. Maybe you forgot to tell me.” Her smile was somewhere between appealing and accusing. As Mrs. Craig’s answering machine came on—“You have reached the Golden Road”—she shook her head. “If you’re calling Mrs. Craig, she’s doing massage this afternoon. We can rearrange the hairdresser. Anyway, I might like to let my hair grow. I could braid it again.”

Massage, christ. He gave up and went over to the window. The sky was the colour of the pavement, bitter grey, and so was everything in between. Hazel had said rain was forecast, but no rain fell. Who knew what Mrs. Craig’s jibe about last year referred to—he wouldn’t put it past Hazel to have told her everything—yet, as their immediate neighbour, she was certainly
privy to the crucial fact: Hazel had moved into her own flat. He had done so well with her parents, with Maud. Were his hopes about to founder on some indiscreet middle-aged woman? He stared at the pavement, fissured with dead grass, wondering if he could intercept her. But Hazel might catch him. And you couldn’t dodge a visit from someone next door indefinitely.

A red trolley rolled into view, followed by the postman, a spindly, ginger-haired boy racing through the second post. That was it. He could write Mrs. Craig a letter and slip it through her door, even better than talking; no interruptions, no contradictions. He turned from the window meaning to be jolly, apologetic—“You know how she gets on my nerves”—to find Hazel gone.

The light was off in the kitchen, but he walked down the hall to be sure. The yellow walls, normally so welcoming, had succumbed to the universal gloom. The new calendar lay on the table. Under today’s date, Hazel had scrawled,
Mrs. Craig—4 o’clock
. She must’ve gone upstairs, another bad sign: Hazel venturing the stairs alone.

The bedroom, too, was empty. He touched the sheet, as if it might hold a trace of her. Then he checked the bathroom, chilly from an open window and smelling faintly of sandalwood soap and shit, Hazel’s. How startled he’d been, when they first lived together, by her lack of embarrassment about such matters. Give it a minute, she would say. Gas-mask time. In the spare room, the bed was neatly made save for the hollowed pillow. For one dreadful moment Jonathan thought she had gone outside. Scratching his palms, he stepped back into the hall. And there she was, in the study, sitting on the floor, a book open on her lap.

“Hazel,” he said gently. “What are you doing in the dark?”

“Oh,” she shrugged, “wandering. Sometimes I feel so
cooped up. Were you reading this?” She held up the book about memory.

Odd how one became inured to danger, like a fireman whom only a raging inferno can startle into fear. He nodded. “I thought it might give me ideas how to help you. Anyway, shall we go for a walk? We could stop at the bakery and get something for tea.”

“Crumpets,” she closed the book. “We haven’t had those in ages. Crumpets with honey.”

Dear Mrs. Craig,

I’m sorry I wasn’t available when you phoned. Much though we’d love to see you, I would certainly have said that Hazel isn’t up to visitors yet but I know she’ll be disappointed if you don’t come in for a quick cup of tea.

I do want to explain that her condition is precarious. She still has frequent seizures and stress is a major factor. In view of this we (her doctor, her parents, and I) have been at pains not to bring up our difficulties of the last year. Like many couples, we’ve had our ups and downs, but I can confidently say our affection for each other is stronger than ever.

Please keep this in mind for the duration of your visit.

Jonathan Littleton           

Not bad, he thought, rereading his briskly typed words. Firm and not neurotic, the cadences echoing one of his insurance reports: claims of subsidence at number 41 are greatly exaggerated. Doors and windows still function. The reference to the doctor was inspired. And if Mrs. Craig did let something slip, he’d be there to practise damage control.

At ten to four the bell rang. “Sorry to be early.” Mrs. Craig held a jar of something purple in one hand and what he identified, at second glance, as a ginger root in the other. “For once all my appointments were on time.” Her silver hair was pinned up in the style that Hazel claimed made her look especially like Virginia Woolf, though he’d never seen the resemblance.

Before he could ask about his letter, Hazel appeared from the living-room. “Mrs. Craig,” she exclaimed.

Her hands full, Mrs. Craig inclined gracefully into Hazel’s embrace and made the little humming sound Jonathan remembered as one of her most irritating habits. “You look radiant,” she said, and, including both of them, “I see you still haven’t finished the hall.”

“Still?” said Hazel.

“Come in. We’re in the kitchen.” He gave Hazel a nudge in that direction. “Didn’t you get my letter?” he muttered.

“Yes, I got it,” Mrs. Craig said in a normal voice. She regarded him calmly until he turned away.

In the kitchen he put on the kettle and tore open the packet of crumpets, not a minute to lose. Hazel and Mrs. Craig sat down. “It’s so good to see you,” gushed Hazel.

“I should’ve come sooner,” said Mrs. Craig, “but I worried about intruding while your parents were here. Tell me how you are. That’s the important thing.”

To the thrum of the kettle, the little pings of the toaster, Hazel described her seizures, her memory loss, her unsteady convalesence. “Wretched,” said Mrs. Craig. “One minute you’re walking down the street and the next—”

“I can’t even make a cup of tea.”

“Do you know when a seizure is imminent?”

“Sometimes.” Jonathan watched her uneasily. “Last week there was a moment, a millisecond, before everything disappeared, when I understood what was happening.”

“You saw an aura?”

Hazel reached for the sides of her chair. “Not exactly, but I could see the drip on the faucet, the filament of the light bulb, the whoosh of gas in the cooker.” Her hands thrashed up and down. “That’s not quite right, either. Seeing things separately wasn’t so important. It was the connections between them.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Whatever that means.”

“More than most of us ever get,” said Mrs. Craig. “That’s what I tell my clients who’ve been injured: there
are
compensations. Illness shows us the world from a new angle. We can’t dismiss that.”

“I don’t dismiss it. I hate it. Not the seizures so much, I could live with them, but the forgetting.”

“But there’s lots you do remember,” said Mrs. Craig, “because here we are.”

Knife pressed to crumpet, Jonathan froze. Should he stage a distraction, maybe drop the plate? All his anxiety had been focussed on what Mrs. Craig might say. He had not thought to worry about confidences in the other direction. Looking up, he found Mrs. Craig’s eyes upon him; she raised a finger to her lips.

“That’s true,” agreed Hazel. “Nowadays I live in three worlds. There’s the world I do remember. I can tell you about the Christmas I spent in Bombay, the day I met Jonathan, no problem. Then, the world I don’t remember but where people and events linger like shadows. It’s as if I’m wandering through one of those surrealist paintings with the wrapped statues, only I can’t lift even a corner of the wrapping. Awful. But worse, much worse, is the notion of a third world where everything has vanished. The missing world.”

Her hands had fallen still. She drew a shaky breath. Was she about to cry, Jonathan wondered. Please.

“I remember,” she said softly, “lots of things. Just not the ones that matter. Sorry, minus ten for self-pity. When I’m better,
I’m going to design a board game called Convalescence, a cross between Snakes and Ladders and Monopoly.”

“I’d buy that.” Mrs. Craig hummed. “My son gave me Therapy for Christmas. We won’t speculate why.”

“Have a crumpet,” said Jonathan. They busied themselves with passing jam and honey, last year’s crop. “If you pay attention,” he told Mrs. Craig, “you can taste the lavender from your garden.” She asked after his bees and nodded at his account of how well the hives were wintering.

“I bought you some beetroot,” she said to Hazel. “It fortifies the blood, and the ginger will help with dizziness and nausea. Grate half a teaspoon to make tea. Do you have a good doctor?”

“He’s doing his best.” Hazel took another bite. “Sometimes, though, I can almost see him contemplating the article in the
BMJ
that will clinch his reputation. The Elephant Man, the Seizure Woman.”