The Road Home (32 page)

Now, an arm on his, helping him up. Bright light, hurting his skin. A voice very close to him, but not unkind: “Right, sir. You okay now? You’ve been sick. Do you want me to call an ambulance?”

Lev looked down. He’d puked all over his suede jacket. But why was he here, in this harsh daylight, in this street he’d never seen before?

A woman’s voice now, high and anxious. “Can you get him away now? Please take him away.”

“He’s going, love. He’s on his way.”

Lev saw the woman now. She was standing on her front steps, regarding him with a look of terror. He was led toward a police car. Two police officers with him.

“Do you have a home to go to?” asked one of them.

Lev nodded. Slowly, agonizingly, it was creeping back into his memory: the hurtful play, his fury in the theater bar . . .

He began hitting his head. “Sir,” said the second policeman, “I wouldn’t do that to yourself if I were you. Suggest you go home now, right? Go along quietly, or we’ll have to charge you with causing alarm and distress.”

Alarm and distress.

He understood the words.

He walked away. The street seemed to tilt under him, like a boat on a queasy sea. He had no idea where he was walking to. Which way was north? He knew he had to walk north, but how far? In this labyrinth of London, where was the haven of Belisha Road?

He had no idea. He was lost once more. He’d brought this dereliction on himself. He’d sworn, in England, to keep his temper under control, but he’d failed. Now he was cast out.

He came level with a garbage bin, overflowing with the obscene bags of someone’s leavings, and he thought, I’ve made my life obscene. He kicked out at the bin, wanted to see it fall, wanting to see everything spill out onto the pavement, but it didn’t fall. He began swearing. He snatched the lid off the bin and hurled it into the road. Heard footsteps thundering toward him.

The policemen seized his arms. He felt the icy pain of handcuffs going on. Then hands searching his pockets and one of the voices again, loud in his ear: “Right. You are now under arrest. We warned you. We suggested you go home without causing any more trouble, but you didn’t listen, did you? So you are under arrest for an offense under Section Five of the Public Order Act.”

In the police car now. Unfamiliar streets going by in the still-early morning. An ache in his skull. Shivering with cold and fear, yet finding it difficult to bear his suede jacket on him because he’d fouled it. Unable to take it off because of the handcuffs.

The voice of the law saying what the law required it to say: “. . . detained to enable the investigation of this offense. You do not have to say anything . . . anything you say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”

Lev shook his head. He had no idea what law he’d broken. He’d thought he was free and walking away, and suddenly he wasn’t free but handcuffed and pressed into the back of this car.

The two policemen were talking to each other now. Lev strained to hear, couldn’t understand them, but knew that his fate was in the hands of the law and things might go better for him if he was contrite.

“I am sorry,” he said.

One of the heads turned. Lev saw the face close up, death pale after winter, scarred with old acne burns.

“You speak English, then?”

“Yes.”

“How much English?”

Lev stared out at the traffic and at the gray sky.

How much English?

Enough to understand a play. Enough to know that his girl with her strawberry curls was no longer his girl . . .

“I speak good English,” he said carefully. And he heard something peculiar in his voice: a kind of inappropriate pride.

He was led into a police station, still clutching his fouled jacket. He saw flecks of vomit on his shoes. He tried to cradle his aching head.

He was told to wait on a plastic chair in a drab corridor. The door to the toilet was pointed out to him. Near him, three youths, two white and one black, also waited, glancing up at him from the depths of the hoods of their fleece jackets, giving him a stare of pure indifference, a stare that said, “We’re on our own chairs, motherfucker, with our own reasons for being here, locked away in our skulls, and we don’t give a fucking toss about you or anyone else.” They were half Lev’s age.

Lev got up and went to the toilet and pissed, then ran hot water and washed his hands. He turned on a cold tap, stuck his face underneath it, and drank, prayed this was drinkable water and not tainted.

His suede jacket hung over the edge of a washbasin. Lev looked at it, all £170 of it. He emptied the pockets of everything they contained, which turned out to be nothing at all except a comb. Then he rolled up the stinking jacket and put it into the plastic waste bin, knowing that, even if it could be cleaned, he’d never wear it again. Never.

Lev returned to the corridor, where the youths still lounged, airing their groins. He turned away from them and counted four fire extinguishers bolted to the gray wall. A digital wall clock told him that the time was 9:47 a.m. Six hours before he had to go to work at GK Ashe. Six hours before he had to see Sophie again . . .

A door opened and a fair-haired constable beckoned Lev forward. He got up and was shown into a room with no window, furnished only with a table, two chairs, and a radiator that gave out heat of a disproportionate intensity, as though it were filled with burning sulfur.

The constable set up a laptop computer on the table and, without glancing at Lev, without acknowledging by a single gesture that there was another person in the room, began to punch in codes or numbers. Lev waited. He noticed that the only object on the table, aside from the constable’s laptop, was a box of Kleenex tissues.

“Okay,” said the constable, looking up from the laptop at last. “You speak English, I gather?”

“Yes.”

Lev was asked to give his name, age, country of origin, and address in the U.K. While the constable typed these in, a robust-looking black woman in a green overall came into the room and put down a cup of tea in front of Lev. He thanked her. On the saucer were four sugar lumps and Lev put all of these into the tea, stirred it, and began to drink. As he drank, the woman, pausing at the open door, winked a seductive brown eye in his direction. Then the door closed.

“Date of entry into the U.K.?” asked the constable.

Lev thought that this should have been engraved on his memory, but the date felt so long ago, it had gone from his mind.

“July last year,” he said. “I can’t remember which day.”

The constable’s hands caressed the small black keyboard. “What means of support do you have in the U.K.?”

Lev began to feel the blessed, sugary tea enter his bloodstream.

“I work at GK Ashe,” he said.

“
Cheeky Ash?
What’s that?”

“The restaurant,” said Lev. “GK Ashe. You don’t know this?”

The constable didn’t reply or move a muscle of his face. He disregarded the question and just went on typing, with diligent care, as though the computer were the vulnerable living thing and Lev the inanimate piece of technology.

“What’s your wage at Cheeky Ash?”

“Not Cheeky. Letters: G.K.”

“I didn’t ask for comments, sir. Please tell me your weekly wage or your hourly wage.”

“Seven pounds an hour; two hundred eighty pounds a week after tax. I send money home to my family.”

More typing. More communing with the clean, obedient little machine. Then the constable looked up at Lev, face to face. His pale eyes held Lev in a steady, unfrightened gaze. “Right. So, you understand that you are being issued with a PND: a penalty notice for disorder.”

“I told the policemen in the car I was sorry.”

“Yes? Well, I’m sure they were glad to hear that. Now, a PND carries with it a fixed fine of eighty pounds, which must be paid now. Are you with me, sir?”

Lev was silent. He wished there was a window to look out of, a view of the sky or birds coming down to settle on a tall roof. His mind made a terrifying addition: £170 for the suede jacket; £42 for his unnecessary shirt; now an £80 fine. A total of £292
wasted.

“Are you listening? Did you hear my question?”

“Yes,” said Lev.

“Then answer it, please. Do you understand the charge and the fine accruing?”

“Yes.”

“So how are you going to pay?”

Now a terrible image swam into Lev’s mind: his wallet on the bar counter, and near it, among the beer slops, his precious picture of Maya . . . He began to search the pockets of his trousers. Side pockets. Right. Left. Hip pocket. Side pockets again. Right. Left . . .

“I’m waiting, Olev. Just tell me how you wish to pay. Cash or credit card?”

Nothing in any pocket. Only a few coins, some crumbs of tobacco, and an old packet of Rizla papers.

Lev put his head in his hands. No money. No picture of Maya. No credit card. No phone. He felt a sob welling up in his chest, pressed his palms into his eyes.

No Sophie.

He let the sob break. It reminded him of a wolf cry.

“I don’t know how to pay,” he stammered.

“Cash or credit card.”

“I have nothing. My wallet is gone.”

The constable waited, staring at Lev’s distress, as though it might have been a TV program that bored him. He pushed the box of Kleenex toward Lev and sighed and said, “If the accused is unable to settle the fine, we suggest recourse to a third party.”

“Sorry?” said Lev.

“We call it ‘phoning a friend.’ ”

“Sorry?”

“
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,
on TV. Don’t you watch it?”

“No. I work in the evenings.”

“Never mind. Want to phone a friend, d’you?”

Lev blew his nose. The bitter dregs of his sickness seemed to be lodged there. He wanted to throw the tissue away, but there was nowhere to throw it. He saw the constable pick up a clear plastic envelope and take a mobile phone out of it. He set the phone down in front of Lev. By its turquoise casing, Lev recognized it as his.

“Or don’t you have any friends in England?” said the constable.

Lev stared at the phone. Then he picked it up and held it tenderly in his hand. “I have friends,” he said.

“Right. Suggest you call right away.”

Lev drank the last of the tea. He punched in Christy’s number at Belisha Road. He heard the voicemail click in:

Hello there. You’re through to Christy Slane. Try not to hang up before you’ve left a message or, if it’s urgent plumbing work you’re after, call me on me mobile, 07851 6022258. Be back to you shortly.

“Christy,” said Lev. “It’s Lev. Got a bad problem. I try your mobile.”

But Christy wasn’t picking up his mobile, either. Lev figured that he was probably still asleep, or else already gone out on one of his infrequent jobs. He left another message.

“No luck?” said the constable.

“He will call back.”

“What? In five hours’ time? Okay. Up to you, if you want to spend them here. I don’t know what time you have to be at work, but if it were me, I’d try another number.”

Lev was sweating now in the tropical heat of the room. He wiped his forehead. For a moment or two, the temptation to call Sophie visited him with a sudden stifling of his breath. But the knowledge that she’d probably refuse to help him made him lay this temptation aside. Sophie was with Howie Preece, anyway. Lev was sure she was. The whole
Peccadilloes
evening had been leading her there. She’d be lying next to his big, ugly head. His huge hand would be kneading her breast in his sleep . . .

“Come on,” said the constable, “stop daydreaming. I’m beginning to be tired of you, Olev. Make another call.”

Lev was back on the plastic chair in the corridor when he saw her arrive: his habitual savior, the plain woman whom two pampered English kids mocked with the cruel nickname Muesli. Here she came again, wearing a new beige coat, with her hair stylishly short but on her face the familiar, persecuted look, the look that said, All right. I forgive you one more time, Lev. But soon, very soon, you will have tested me too far . . .

She sat down beside him.

Aware of his ghostly appearance, of the smell of puke still on him, he hung his head, said, “I’m so sorry, Lydia. I’m sorry to have asked you to do this. I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

“Well,” said Lydia, with a sniff, “I don’t know when you’re going to pay me back. I leave for Vienna tomorrow. You were very lucky to find me still here.”

He looked at her profile, held aloof from him, then at her feet, neatly arranged side by side in their black court shoes. Tenderness toward her suddenly choked him. Only the thought that she’d soon be embarked on her new life with Pyotor Greszler and gone from his altogether prevented him breaking down into tears of shame at his own repeated and unsavory betrayals of her loyalty.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “All I do is cause you grief. I know. If only I hadn’t lost my wallet . . .”

“It’s all right, Lev. Now, where do I pay the eighty pounds? I have a lot to do today, all my packing, then I’m going over to see Tom and Larissa to say good-bye. So . . .”

“Did you bring cash, Lydia?”

“Yes. I’m not an idiot, you know. Now, where do I pay?”

They walked out into the rain.

The Chelsea streets were unfamiliar to them both. Lev, shivering again, clung to Lydia’s arm, holding a flimsy umbrella. He walked without seeing, hoping vaguely that she knew where they were going, but she soon stopped and declared herself lost. She looked all around her, at the street of smart, white-painted houses, at wrought-iron balconies ornamented with topiary.

“Pelham Crescent,” she said. “I don’t recall it.”

To be warm again. To be clean. To eat something bland and sweet. To sleep for a while. These longings preoccupied Lev’s mind to the exclusion of all other thought. He saw Lydia staring at him, and perhaps she understood this, because she let go of the umbrella and ran toward a woman emerging from a Range Rover outside one of the fine front doors with its sentinel bay trees, and Lev heard her say, “Excuse me. Can you help me? Where is the tube, please? My friend is ill.”

Lydia came back to Lev and led him forward like a child, found an Italian café near South Kensington Underground station, and sat him down on a wooden chair. She took off her beige coat and put it round his shoulders, and he felt the warmth of her body, still, in the silky coat lining. He heard her order coffee and pastries.