The Taxi Queue (23 page)

He had entered the house through the back door. The shower was running upstairs, which meant Vivienne was back. Richard leafed through the pile of post that was lying on the kitchen table. He remained standing, automatically sorting, and making a pile of the flyers and junk mail. He slit open the envelopes that were addressed to him. Everything
was familiar; the fruit in the big blue-and-white bowl, the biscuit tin covered in pink pigs, the girls' homework books with their names in their own particular scripts – Martha's large and erratic, Bethany's neat and square. Even the sun that sliced the table in half in the early evening, making half light, half shade, was domesticated – what he expected at that time of year. These seemed to be visible signs, not of a perfect family, necessarily, but one without loose ends – justified, in every sense of that word.

Richard took out the evening paper – dependable camouflage – and folded it back so that the quick crossword was in front of him. There was a cryptic equivalent that fitted into the same grid but his brain wasn't wired for it. He glanced at the impossible clues as if they were television shots of tribal people wearing bizarre headgear. He wasn't troubled that he couldn't relate to them. The waiter returned with the wine. Richard took a gulp and pulled a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. Short sleep. Three letters. He thought for a moment and put in a word. Within five minutes he had finished the wine. He placed some cash on the table and returned the pen to his pocket. He abandoned the newspaper. The white squares of the crossword were empty – all but the three letters. Better to have left it blank since the word looked ridiculous. The waiter would think he was brain-dead. Richard left the bar and went in search of a taxi.

The direct route from the new development to the north-east of Paddington Station to the taxi queue to the east was only for the airborne – pigeons or seagulls. The railway tracks – an array of them – created an area of flattened, intransigent space that no one but track menders and train drivers negotiated. The planners had not yet devised a way round. Their new walkways by the Paddington Basin petered out and paths that weren't designated paths but gaps between old railway buildings had to be improvised. Richard had managed in the snow – and on this occasion, too, he found
a way. He didn't know what he expected to achieve by retracing his January steps. There was the example of actors appearing at an earlier scene of crime, similarly dressed to the victim, to jog the memories of passers-by who might have been present on the day or night in question. Then there was the example – pre-dating mobile telephones – of getting separated from someone and going back to the place where you last remembered being with them – in the hope that they would do the same. Neither of these examples suited the case, but a fragment of each existed in Richard's mind. At least this was an authentic route, not delusional. Different from his peregrinations through Harrow-on-the-Hill, which had turned out to be based on a trick of the mind. He wondered how else he had been mistaken.

He was still struggling with the notion of Laura McDermott – music teacher, homeowner, possessor of an Egyptian-looking stone cat and a fine singing voice. He had been so convinced that he had found Abe's sister that even now he had difficulty giving up the idea. He had considered circumstances in which people weren't who they said they were, or had multiple names, but Laura McDermott had been so stalwartly herself – whatever she was called – there was no doubting her. She had an integrity that was palpable and showed no sign of turning slippery at the edges. Her eyes – guilelessly – seemed to search him out. Her hands had been less steady, fiddling with the bracelets and the clump of hair. Richard had found her attractive. She was rather too opinionated to live with comfortably but he wouldn't have minded taking part in a quick experiment –
mutatis mutandis
– in which he woke up next to her, or came home to her one evening. Would someone so forthright – such a fearless communicator – not be easier to talk to than Vivienne? He could imagine not exactly confiding in Laura McDermott – she wasn't the cosy type – but laying those things before her which he struggled to forget. Would he not, without writhing in acute mental pain, be able to look her in the eye
and tell her what they were? Because, whatever her reaction, whether she somehow gave him absolution or alternatively showed him the door,
she
would be able to cope.

The alley that Richard was walking along came out by Paddington Station. He went up the sloping ramp that led to the platforms and crossed the station concourse. He passed commuters who waited in front of the departure board and those who had no intention of travelling – purple-faced drinkers and old topers with bedraggled yellow beards. They struck poses with their beer cans, looking as if they had grabbed the cans and ossified. Individual whoops and shouts rose up and echoed in the hollow arch of the roof – the emptiness of homegoing. Richard walked through the covered passage that led to Eastbourne Terrace and out to the taxi queue.

There were only half a dozen people waiting. The evening was fine – still light – and there were no obvious problems with the transport system. The line wasn't long enough to have reached the sign that said,
‘QUEUING TIME APPROXIMATELY 8 MINUTES FROM THIS POINT'.
Richard couldn't remember having noticed the information in January, nor the pinkish electric bulbs that hung from the underside of the station canopy. The dimensions of the place were also somehow different; the distance between the ground and the apex of the canopy – the relative position of the brick wall opposite. Did his lack of observation, on that winter night, mean that he was already in an unreal state, his feet frozen and his senses engaged by the man standing next to him? He felt stupid not knowing the answer. Over the last months the timescale of the episode seemed to have unravelled into moments so distinct that he could walk all round each one and examine it. But now he perceived unevenness.

He had, in a sense, lost Abe for a second time. Believing he knew where Abe lived had soothed him. He could go to the house in his thoughts. Richard half suspected that if he hadn't been so asinine as to force the issue by returning to
‘Abe's' road, Abe would somehow still be there. By behaving like a stalker, even for half an hour, he had done Abe and his sister, Kirsty, out of a nice little property and himself out of a consoling fantasy.

He joined the queue. The couple ahead of him had their arms round each other. Richard shifted away, not wanting to be too close, and looked towards the turning point where the taxis swung round. He watched as one made the turn and approached down the slope – headlamps and orange ‘for hire' sign on, engine modulating as it came to a stop. A man at the front of the queue climbed in. The people immediately behind moved up, but not the couple. They remained clasped together. The shuffling of their feet and their abrupt lurches to one side then the other made it an odd-looking embrace. The woman's hands were kneading the man's hips, plucking at his jeans. Richard moved back a step, but not fast or far enough, because the man broke away from the woman, like a ladder tipping over, and pitched into him. Richard held his balance against the sudden weight. The woman was left beating the air. ‘Give it me,' she shrieked, the sound as unrestrained as rapture. She lunged at the man's pockets. Richard brushed himself down and retreated further. The people ahead in the line shoved closer together, leaving a space round the couple the width of a boxing ring. The woman grappled with the man, trying to prise her hand in to his jeans pocket. ‘Tell me, then. Tell me. What's it say? She text you, didn't she?' she said. The woman got hold of the phone. The man yanked her arm behind her back. The woman screamed and carried on screaming. Richard looked away and then, within seconds, found himself watching again, mesmerised.

A taxi pulled up with another following close behind it. They swallowed up what remained of the queue and drove away, leaving Richard alone with the couple. The pair were locked together, scuffing the ground, swaying to and fro. The man grabbed the phone back and held it high above
his head. The woman jumped up to reach it, bouncing on the balls of her feet, twisting and turning, like a dog after a ball.

Another taxi turned into Eastbourne Terrace. Richard watched with apprehension as it came down the ramp. He took a step forward, full of scruples about going out of turn. He cleared his throat. ‘Do you two want this cab?' he said in a voice barely louder than normal volume, addressing the space below the straining arms. Why he bothered to speak or why – since his mouth opened – he couldn't speak up enough for the pair to hear him he didn't know. He might as well have been a talking fly – an inhibited talking fly.

The taxi juddered to a stop. The driver hooted. Richard eyed the couple and decided to chance securing it. Dodging round them, with a hope for inconspicuousness that recalled afternoons on the school playing field, he arrived at the passenger door. He reached for the handle, but at the moment his hand closed over it another stronger one folded over his. Richard kept momentary contact with the metal, then, as the immovable weight eased him to one side, he teetered and landed clumsily on his left elbow and knee. The wheel of the taxi, the sole of a large trainer and the edge of the kerb all swam together in front of him. An unpleasant, sweetish smell of tobacco and aftershave lingered. Richard heard a door slam and, in the few minutes it took to regain his balance, he saw the taxi's red tail lights at eye level – stationary, then receding.

‘He's gone,' the woman said mildly. ‘Bastard,' she added in the same neutral tone.

Richard scrabbled to his feet. He retrieved the briefcase that he had let go in the fall.

‘You all right?' the woman asked. She brushed her hair out of her face and Richard could see that she was young, no more than a girl. Her expression was calm. She fished around in the bag that hung over her shoulder and took out
a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She offered the packet to Richard. ‘Want one?'

‘No thanks,' Richard said.

She lit the cigarette and took a drag on it, then held it in the V of two fingers, away from Richard. ‘Do you know if there's a cash machine near here?' she asked.

‘No, sorry.'

‘I'll get the cab to stop off somewhere.'

They waited for about ten minutes. The girl finished her cigarette, leaning against the barrier between the pavement and the road. Richard walked up and down, testing out his left knee. The twinge that spread through the nerves, every time he landed on his left foot, was sometimes sharp, sometimes dull.

‘Hurts, does it?' the girl asked.

‘A bit.'

‘Stop still. Give it a rest.'

After her advice, Richard felt he couldn't move. Although the girl wasn't paying him much attention he stood, balancing his weight evenly on his feet, turning his head from time to time towards Eastbourne Terrace to see if a taxi was coming. Surprisingly, the twinges stopped. He felt no pain. When the cab finally arrived Richard motioned towards it. ‘That's yours.'

‘Cheers,' the girl said.

Richard left Paddington soon afterwards. He collapsed in the seat of the cab, exhausted. He closed his eyes but remained awake throughout the journey. He felt as if he were following himself through the streets, a self who was approaching his own territory and knew the way as well as he knew his own breath in the night. But he lacked a sense of homecoming – perhaps because Vivienne and the girls were, for once, not at home.

At the bottom of Sudbury Hill Richard opened his eyes. Of course, the driver didn't stop. There was no snow on the
road. The taxi carried on up and deposited Richard outside his door. Vivienne's car had gone. Richard's was in the garage. As soon as he had changed out of his suit he would drive down to Sussex.

AT AROUND MIDDAY
on Saturday morning Abe left his room and careered down the front stairs two at a time, causing the hall light bulb to sway. His steps on the bare wood made echoes and the traffic hummed, but within itself the house was quiet. The two bicycles had gone, revealing scuff marks on the wall and drifts of dust that collected between the skirting board and the wheels. Luka had left – and Kirsty too, it seemed, on Declan's bike. There was a white envelope and a couple of flyers on the mat. Abe picked up the envelope, saw the giveaway window and dropped it on top of the other letters from the bank that were heaped in a pile. The pile was tall, heading for a tower. He gave it a kick and the letters scattered over the floor.

Abe went back upstairs. He finished the mug of tea he had made earlier and picked up the A4 notebook that was lying next to the swivel chair. Page one was torn out, but on the next page he had drawn a circle with lines radiating from it, beside which he had written ‘sun disc'. Another page was full of scarabs. They were neat drawings with the divisions of the beetle form in the right places. Some of the creatures appeared to be smiling. Some had big eyes. On Thursday afternoon, after calling Richard's office, he had filled half the book. He had started to make notes on incorporating fitness into the Egyptian religion. Exercising for Osiris. Spin-offs had kept occurring to him. Government grants for combating the obesity epidemic. Backhanders from health clubs. He
had fleetingly considered reintroducing the old religion to the Middle East and winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but had shied away from the trouble that that would involve. He hadn't planned to have Gloria as a partner in the enterprise, though he was sure that with more focus she could develop the business potential of her musical/spiritual interests. She was tough as a person, but not commercial and rarely left south London. Abe had broken into a cold sweat as he jotted down headings, worried that the competition had already got hold of his ideas and was at that very moment infiltrating the market. Yet, even as he had despaired of leading the field, the ideas had gone flat and he had remembered that no part of them was real.