X20 (23 page)

They're absolutely brilliant.'

'So I looked ugly in my glasses?'

‘No, but now. You look completely different.'

In her new contact lenses, even in the subdued light of Cosini's, Ginny looked a credit to her bones. Actually, without her glasses she looked slightly startled, but her bones were just the same. She took off her denim jacket. Underneath she was wearing a short summer dress the colour of vanilla icecream. Small strawberries wandered across it.

‘Being a singer,' she said, ‘in Italian restaurants I usually have the alveoli.'

She was wearing red lipstick. ‘Let's order some wine.'

The contact lenses were stage one of Ginny's plan for life without the consolation of an English boyfriend. The dinner in Cosini's was stage two, although she'd made it quite clear in accepting the invitation that it was only because I'd been a good friend to her. Not content with this formula, she wanted me to know that she wasn't attracted to me at all, or in fact to any man just at the moment. I shouldn't worry, therefore, that she would try to seduce me. My relationship with Lucy was quite safe.

This was unfortunate because I know knew for certain that Lucy didn't plan a love-lorn move to Paris. It was Julian Carr who'd told me so, in a throwaway line between his exam results and the fact that Lucy had passed on my address. His letter had briefly revived the part of my mind reserved for miracles, and I waited for him to end the letter with a plea for forgiveness and a passionate appeal on Lucy's behalf. No doubt she'd been too emotional to write to me herself. In fact, Julian was only interested in telling me about his career, and how it was all progressing according to plan. Apparently Buchanan's wanted to give him a taste of commercial research, so they'd offered him a sandwich year in Hamburg.
But no monkeys!
he wrote. I didn't reply.

‘Because what does it all mean without love? What is there to defend?'

'Sorry?'

‘You ought to listen, Gregory. I don't like repeating things. It puts unnecessary strain on my voice. On my throat,' she said, ‘and my vocal cords.' She did that thing where she tracked her body with her hands, ‘and my lungs.' It wasn't just her bones. Under her dress she had beautiful lungs, rising and falling.

I watched her breathe and asked her if she ever had the impression that anything we could do in Paris had been said and done before.

‘Yes,' she said, ‘of course it has. But not by us.'

Two smartly-dressed women settled themselves at a neighbouring table. One of them selected a cigarette from a silver case, tapped it on the table, and then lit it, and even though I said a silent prayer begging her not to, she exhaled the smoke in Ginny's direction.

‘I thought you said this was a non-smoking restaurant.'

I shrugged, weakly, ‘Cosini must have changed his mind.'

Ginny stared hard at the woman. Then she pushed back her chair and tossed her napkin onto the table.

‘Well we can't just ignore it,' she said.

‘Why not?'

‘My larynx, Gregory, my vocal cords.'

‘I know,' I said, ‘your lungs.'

Walter is in no better mood than he was yesterday, probably because yet again none of the Suicide Club has turned up. Emmy is here instead, and Walter, sulking in his chair, pulls the brim of his Homburg over his eyes. After yesterday's outburst he makes me nervous, but Emmy has had to live with him between then and now, and perhaps as a kind of revenge she seems determined to talk about love, a subject we both know that Walter hates. She reminds me of the very first time she came here, when she wanted Theo to know she had nothing to do with the petrol-bomb thrown over the fence of the Research Unit, LUNG had been disbanded when the Estates business finished, and it wasn't her fault if various idiots still wore the T-shirts. She'd also wanted Theo to know she was sorry he'd lost his job.

In actual fact, all this was an excuse to see him again.

There is no immediate reaction from Walter, who has at least refilled his tobacco pouch. He has a pipe on the go.

‘I loved him very much,' Emmy says, and Walter snaps open the
National Geographic
he's already read. He lifts it up to hide his face, and the dark eyes of a Yecuana woman stare out at us from the cover.

‘I'm not listening,' Walter says. I'm not even pretending to listen.'

‘Good,' Emmy says.

The unique details of Theo's life seem to reassure Emmy that he really existed. She tells me that the scar on his upper lip, for example, came from a game of roulette when the ball flew off the table and hit his lip so hard it pushed a tooth through from behind.

Walter mutters something from behind the magazine.

'Sorry, Walter?'

He lowers his screen. ‘Drivel,' he says. ‘Think of the chances against something like that.'

‘I miss him,' Emmy says.

‘We all miss him,' Walter says. ‘Let's talk about something else.'

‘Which is why we should all try to keep busy. Stella says she'll take you hang-gliding, to say thanks for the theatre.'

‘I haven't decided if I'm going yet.'

'She's looking forward to it,' Emmy says.

And I know I shouldn't, because it's exactly what Emmy wants and all I have to resist is temptation, but I ask her about Stella anyway. Emmy is ready.

'She's a proficient parachutist, parascender and hang-glider,' Emmy says, knowing this isn't what I mean. I mean is she nice-looking and what kind of bones does she have. ‘She also wind-surfs, scuba-dives and pilots microlights.'

'Superwoman,' Walter says. ‘Even better, Lois Lane.' He flips back the pages of the
National Geographic
and starts again from the beginning.

‘And to relax she likes to climb mountains.'

‘It sounds very dangerous.'

'She's always funny and she's about your age and she has a fat black cat called Cleopatra.'

‘Anything else?'

‘What else is there?'

‘I don't suppose she smokes?'

Walter says: ‘Some people are never satisfied.' He drops the
National Geographic
onto the floor, just for effect. ‘You don't stand a chance,' he says. He shakes his head. ‘Ex-smoker. Homeboy.'

At which point I summon all my strength as a non-irritable non-smoker to confront this severe challenge from Walter's delinquent temper. I ask him very nicely and politely if he isn't a little hot under his Homburg.

‘No,' he says, ‘I'm not.'

‘Isn't that your funeral hat?'

‘Well spotted,' he says. ‘It's because all you two ever talk about these days is dead people.'

‘He means Theo,' Emmy says, ‘in his uniquely sensitive way.'

‘Well in that case,' I say, ‘we'll talk about something else.'

I ask Emmy how she knew it was love.

Julian tapped something into the computer on his desk. It was summer outside and he'd taken off his jacket. His pale blue shirt had white cuffs and castanet cufflinks in black silk.

‘My computer tells me you're in excellent health.'

‘You know it's for Theo,' I said. ‘I'm not going to beg.'

‘I know that, Gregory, but you still haven't brought me a tobacco plant. You've been less than helpful.'

‘If you're still upset about the Suicide Club, I'm sorry. It wasn't my fault.'

‘I only wanted to join in. It's not a crime.'

‘You failed the test. There was nothing I could do.'

‘They didn't want me to pass. How was I supposed to know what they used to call smoking clubs in London? In the
nineteenth century,
for God's sake. How was I supposed to know the connection between John Wayne and Edward Duke of Windsor?'

Because to anyone but an impostor it was obvious. They both died of lung cancer, which in the Duke of Windsor's case meant he never grew up to be a King Edward. He also married a Mrs Simpson, but as she was no relation to the famous tobacconist Simpsons this wasn't relevant to the question.

‘Why didn't they want me?'

‘You didn't get the answers right.'

‘And now you won't bring me a tobacco plant because Theo doesn't want you to. Why not just take one? He probably couldn't care less.'

‘I doubt that. You don't know him as well as I do.'

Referring to his monitor, Julian then made a big show of telling me that Theo had worked at the Research Unit for twenty-nine years, eight months and seven days. In that time he had progressed from research assistant to project supervisor.

‘It's just facts,' I said. ‘It's not the whole story. And anyway, you know what I mean.'

‘Alright then,
you
tell me the title of his PhD thesis.'

I didn't want to argue. Most of the time, Theo was confined to his chair, even though the doctors said he would get better before he got worse, if he was lucky.

‘Deception Patterns in the Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
Did you know that? I know that. It says it here on my screen.'

Every other day we helped him into a taxi and he went to see Emmy. She was the one who took him for his cortisone injections.

‘His work for Buchanan's has been an extension of his thesis, in which he noted that the symptoms of TMV remain dormant at temperatures over 27 degrees centigrade.'

His face was thinner and his hair was crazier than ever. He'd recently developed a new pain in his leg.

‘His subsequent research has been designed to deceive tobacco plants into thinking that the temperature is always above 27 degrees, even when it isn't.'

Theo had no illusions about his illness. In the evenings, after everyone had gone home, he would explain to me that the problem with cancer cells was their ignorance. They had no specialization. They didn't even know how to die, which meant that they simply took over the space vacated by healthy cells. They were essentially immortal, and useless. Theo knew how it would end, with a haemorrhage or failing lungs or a fatal infection, but he still managed at least a couple of cigarettes every day.

‘His final report before leaving Buchanan's suggests he was on the point of producing an inoculated strain. There's some formulas and things but I'm not a botanist, I'm just a doctor.'

‘You're a PR man.'

‘I'll ignore that. At the end of the report Barclay reminds us that the defeat of TMV represents an almost alchemical discovery for the tobacco industry. It makes all sorts of other advances feasible, and might even be the first step towards the development of a leaf free of the toxins which sometimes make people think that cigarettes are dangerous. Or in other words, a totally safe cigarette, which would be of incalculable benefit to the industry.'

Theo deflected sympathy by dismissing his illness as nothing more than a lost bet. God had run out of remorse for the death of his mother. God had forgiven himself. ‘I feel quite flattered by how long it took,' Theo said.

‘A safe cigarette,' Julian reminded me. ‘Think of all the lives you'll be saving.'

‘He said no.'

‘One tobacco plant, just to check how close he is. Otherwise we can't help him. It's your call.'

The bed sagged alarmingly in the middle so we both sat on the floor, our knees pulled up to our chins.

‘Your language was a bit strong,' I said.

‘Well how was I to know she was English?'

‘I thought she took it very well, considering.'

'Some people are so easily offended.'

After Cosini threw us out it seemed like a good moment to remind Ginny that I only lived round the corner. On the way we passed a shop which sold cooked chicken and wine, so we ended up eating in my place after all. I offered Ginny a guided tour of the room, and she suggested we skip the chair section if it looked like over-running, so all things considered it was turning out rather well.

We were down to the last third of the wine when Ginny said: ‘You don't have any pictures on your walls.'

I wasn't really paying attention. Instead I was wondering how to direct the conversation towards the subject of destiny, especially as it might apply to me and Ginny.

‘You don't even have any photos,' she said. ‘Don't you like to look at photos of your family?'

I said it had never really occurred to me. Perhaps she liked poetry.

‘What about Lucy?' she said. ‘You must have photographs of Lucy.'

I said of course I did. Perhaps she was still hungry.

‘Can I see her?'

'Sorry?'

‘Lucy, I'd like to see a photo of Lucy. You know, the woman you love.'

‘Oh,
that
Lucy,' I said. ‘No. Actually, I. Not
here,
exactly. And she looks better in my head than she does on Kodak.'

‘You mean she's plain?'

‘No,' I said, ‘of course she isn't. She just gets a sexier wardrobe.'

‘What?'

‘In my head.'

‘I do believe you're embarrassed.'

‘I'm not embarrassed.'

‘Then why hide her?'

Ginny pretended to look under the mattress, which meant I had to lean away. Avoiding the chicken carcass, I banged my head against the door. She rolled forward onto her bare knees and the skirt of her dress flapped around her thighs. She opened the top drawer of my chest-of-drawers.

‘Not in there, then,' she said. She inspected the balls of my socks.

‘You have beautiful hands,' I said.

‘Or you use it as a bookmark.' She picked up a couple of the larger history books and fanned the pages.

‘Ginny, really, I don't have a photo.'

‘Of course you have. You're in love with her.'

Eventually she seized on the Helix tin, which was the only place left I had anything to hide. She opened it up and I couldn't tell whether she was disappointed or not. She stepped her polished fingernails through the HB pencils and picked out Julian's cigarette.