Dr Anderson led a busy social life, and I was able to see Bridgitte nearly every night. In our carefree rapture we humped around on the matrimonial bed, though it needed all our stern persuasion to stop Smog joining in. As long as we promised to let him come in the kitchen afterwards he didn’t mind, happy to lay on his bed playing with bricks and rockets. But once he strayed out and stood in the doorway while I had my arse in the air, and later I had to tell him what we’d been doing. Bridgitte turned away laughing as I explained about playing at love — which was what grown-ups often do. He wanted to know if Mummy and Daddy did it too, and I said I expect they did now and again, because it’s also a way of making babies. Then I had to tell him how babies were made, and he took to me for this, sitting affectionately on my knee while he thought up other intelligent but embarrassing questions. When he finally did go back to his room he went to sleep happy. Bridgitte hadn’t done any wiping-up work since I’d rubbed his nose in it, and whenever I saw him now there was something about his earnest, unprotected face that made me feel sorry for him. I wanted him to grow quickly to be eight years of age, safe out of this vulnerable age. I knew he was all right in the way he lived, but nevertheless I was impatient and wanted to be sure, to see him suddenly older, with his face maybe cruder and tougher against the world, his body more stalwart.
There were only a few pounds left in my pocket, so I had to get out of the hotel. I owed a bill of about ten days, though this put me in some danger because I had nowhere near enough funds to pay if the manager should demand it. As far as I could make out he never slept, which maybe was why he was so thin. Even when I came in at midnight or later he’d be sitting behind the desk, and whenever I got up early in the morning he was sure to look in through the dining-room door while I was having breakfast. The idea of getting out unseen with a bulging suitcase seemed impossible.
The day I chose for my lift-off was very cold. I sat at breakfast with the Scandinavian journalist, and wondered how I would be able to say goodbye to him without betraying my intended flit. This was out of the question, so I just made polite inquiries about the article he was writing on sex and vice in London. The work itself didn’t seem to be going well, but he was nowhere near so melancholy as he had been at first, because he had become totally immersed in the subject itself. He preferred to live, he said, rather than write. It was cheap in London, but he was sending home for money till he had exhausted his subject, or until the subject had exhausted him. He’d been a different man of late because he now consumed the whole of his breakfast and, on occasion, had even tried to encroach on mine. The more his cheeks sank, the more he stooped when walking, the more he ate, the happier he felt. I asked what place he found so convivial in London that he liked so much, and he told me about The Golden Frog, so I said I might see him there some night. ‘I’ll buy you a girl,’ he said, a wide thin-lipped smile as he reached out for a piece of my toast. ‘Myself, I sometimes have two girls. Better.’
‘I always thought you were a bit of a Turk,’ I said.
In my room I stripped off and started to put my luggage on. There were three sets of clean underwear, which padded me fairly well so that I’d at least save another shilling if the gas ran out. Then there were my three best shirts, which was awkward, for I could barely fasten the buttons of the top one. Luckily, walking such distances over the last month, not to mention my antics with mistress Bridgitte, had thinned me down a bit, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It was more difficult to get on two pairs of trousers. The first I fastened into my two layers of sock, and drew the second over them. The zips didn’t quite come up to the top, and when I tried to stand up from sitting on the bed I fell back again. Sweat was pouring off me, and it all seemed doomed to fail because once I got in the fresh air, if I ever did, I would be sure to get triple pneumonia. I pulled myself up by the bedrail and felt my face puffed out like a red balloon. Then I almost wept, because my shoes had still to be put on, and I’d have to sit down again for that. But I pulled the chair over and jerked my foot on it. This was by way of an experiment, to see whether it could actually be done, and when I saw that it could, I slid my foot down again. As the shoes were on the floor I let myself subside gradually to them, holding the bedrail and bedleg to stop a bump on to the threadbare carpet.
So far so good. I smiled at the achievement, reaching for a shoe. That was easy, but the next step was to get at the foot, when my arms and legs were encased in wood. The shoes were several paces away, so I rolled on my side and crawled, till I held them triumphantly in my hands. This, I thought, pondering on how to get them on, is real life, a test of ingenuity that one might be asked to do at any time in the future. It’s as well to get it over with, to suffer the experience once. The first time is always the hardest, I’ve no doubt of that. I could too easily have given the whole thing up, gone out in one set of clothes and abandoned the rest, but with tears of effort and frustration I was knotted in the stomach with the obstinacy to get one shoe on at least. I could always hobble to the Tube station. I smiled with relief. I would get the other one on as well.
There was a knock at the door. Faces flashed through my mind: Claudine, Miss Bolsover, my mother, Mr Clegg come for his watch back, Bridgitte, even Smog to ask more questions on how babies were made, all or one of them at this crisis of my life intent on passing the time of the day. ‘Who is it?’ I croaked.
It was the voice of the Scandinavian: ‘Kundt,’ he said. That’s what his name always sounded like to me, though I’m sure he wasn’t one — certainly not more of one than I was.
‘I’m washing at the sink. Stark naked,’ I cried. ‘See you later.’
He opened the door and walked in, looking down at me: ‘Oh, you’ve fainted, Mr Cresswell. I’ll tell the manager to get a doctor.’
‘No,’ I said, trying to smile, ‘I’m all right.’
‘You look all crimson.’
‘Put my shoe on,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be eternally grateful. But close the bloody door first.’
He did so, and laughed. ‘You Englishmen wear too many clothes. Not like the women. They have very little. I get too quick to it’ While he talked about submissive English women he rammed my shoe on and tied it, then lifted me upright like a slab of timber. He sat down. ‘I’m in love with a woman,’ he said, as if holding back gallons of melancholy tears, ‘and she went away last night. I didn’t know I was in love till this morning, and I want to write her a letter. You can help me with that.’
‘Why don’t you just go to her?’
‘She’s with her husband. But she’ll be back in a week.’
‘Your English’s good enough to write a letter,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know, Mr Cresswell, but I want to talk to you about it.’
‘I’ll see you at the Tube station at ten o’clock,’ I said. ‘We can have a cup of coffee over it.’
‘All right. I’ll go now, and wait for you. But first I must shave and need one razor blade.’ I told him to take one and he went away smiling.