She said, ‘I thought: what would I do here? Where would I hide? And there you were.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Do I look conspicuous?’
‘Only to me. Anyone try to pick you up yet?’
‘I’m too much of a tragic figure.’
‘A tragic figure with most unladylike hairy ears,’ she said. We had coffee together. She said, ‘You’re running.’
‘Time to move on. Did you enjoy it last night?’
‘Something strange happened. I’ll tell you about it another time.’ Then she said, ‘I won’t be staying at the Centre much longer. Patricia will be after me, when she finds you’ve gone. I’m disappointed you’re fleeing like this.’
‘I’m sorry if I have made things difficult for you, but she’ll never leave me alone.’
‘It’s the price the beautiful have to pay. Aren’t you used to it yet?’
Watching the boat being loaded up, I was getting nervous; I asked if she minded getting me a ticket from the harbour office. I could see several likely candidates for Matte’s men.
On the ship, I hid in the women’s toilet. After, when people started to bang on the door, I had to come out. I thought I was done for. I made my way to the car deck and hid under a blanket on the back seat of an old Mercedes. The boat docked and the driver got in without noticing me. Outside, as the traffic queued to leave, I hopped out of the car and ran for it. I sprinted out of there and into the crowd, and got a taxi.
7
I’m not sure why, but I returned to the part of London I knew. I felt safer, and more at ease in my mind, in a familiar place. In your own city, you don’t have to think about where you are. Being pursued had frightened me; I was scared all the time now. I had no idea whether Matte would still be following me. I must have convinced myself that he’d lost interest in me. Perhaps his brother had died; maybe he’d found another body. I am, however, old enough to know how few of our thoughts bear any relation to the way things are.
I checked into the same dismal hotel as before. When I needed money I worked in a factory packing Christmas toys. Perhaps Matte was right, and it had been a mistake to ‘hire’ a body for six months. I didn’t have time to begin a new life as a new person, and, expecting to go back, I missed my old life. I was in limbo, a waiting room in which there was no reality but plenty of anxiety.
One morning at eight, there was a knock on my door.
In this hotel, there were always knocks on the door — refugees, thieves, prostitutes, drug dealers; people who would never be able to afford new bodies or even to feed adequately the one they already had; people looking for other people and no one wanting to do you a favour, if it wasn’t in exchange for another one. Usually, though, they would declare themselves. This time there was no reply.
Maybe Matte had come for my body. I’d seen the movie. Men in dark suits were outside. While they were kicking the door in, I’d hide in the shower with my gun, or climb out of the bathroom window and down the fire-escape. That was the young man’s route, and I wouldn’t be a young man in my mind, however lithe my body. For there was another part of me, my older mind, if you like, which was, by now, outraged by the violation, the cheek of it. My body wasn’t for sale, though I had, of course, purchased it myself.
‘How did you find me?’
Alicia was sitting on the bed; I stood looking at her. She had shaved her head and put on weight. She wore a top with a bow at the front.
‘Why have you grown a full beard?’
‘Alicia, I am hoping to be taken seriously.’
I’d forgotten how nervous she was. ‘Leo, it’s good to see you. How much do you mind me coming to see you?’
‘Not as much as you might think. I do need to know how you tracked me down.’
‘I haven’t told Patricia — she isn’t downstairs, if that’s what’s bothering you. I looked through your things one time … trying to … I wanted to know who you were. You do know, I guess, that you’re as elusive as a spy. It turned me into a spy. I found a receipt for this hotel and wrote the address into one of my poems. Still,’ she said, ‘if you want to be private, why shouldn’t you be? Do you want me to go?’
‘I’ll come with you. Let’s get out of here. I never stay in this room during the day.’
I was putting on my coat.
She said, ‘You’re writing.’
In the corner of the room, on a small table, were some papers.
‘Please don’t look at that,’ I said.
‘Why not?’
‘Leave it! I’m trying … to do something about an old man in a young man’s body.’
‘You’ve done a lot. Is it a film?’ She was turning the pages. ‘There’s dialogue. It’s professionally laid out. Have you written before?’
‘You encouraged me, Alicia.’
‘It was the other way around. Will you try to sell it?’
‘You never know. Give it here now.’
‘What a strange boy you are!’
I took the papers from her and put them under the bed.
In the café, I asked, ‘How is my friend Patricia?’
‘What a trouble-maker you are. People had paid to attend her classes but she refused to get out of bed. You showed her something was possible, some intensity of feeling with a man, and you took it away again. She would send for me and we’d talk about you for hours, wondering who you were. She would rage and weep. The only relief was when that man from the boat came to see her.’
‘Man?’
‘The playboy. Matte.’
‘Alicia, what happened?’
‘I was sent out of the room. I heard everything from outside the window.’
‘And?’
‘You owed him something, he said. He wouldn’t say what it was. You didn’t borrow money from him?’ I shook my head. ‘He wanted to find you, wanted to know whether there was anyone who knew you.’
‘Did he threaten Patricia?’
‘He didn’t need to. She was delighted to talk about the intricacies of your character, in so far as she understood it, for hours. Not that this interested Matte. Of course, she doesn’t know where you are. I left the island a few days later and went to Athens.’
‘Were you followed?’
‘Why would I be? What’s going on?’ Alicia said. ‘You know what Patricia wanted? For you to run the place with her.’
‘I’d have liked to do that,’ I said. ‘For a while. It would have been fun. Impossible too, of course, with her attitude towards me.’
‘You’d have done it?’ she said. ‘Don’t you have any doubts?’
‘What?’
‘About yourself. About what you are capable of? That makes you different to a lot of people. Different to most people, in fact.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I do have doubts. I just don’t want them getting in the way of my mistakes.’
She said, ‘Something else happened. I haven’t told you the whole story. When you disappeared from the boat that last night —’
‘Yes, sorry. I couldn’t stand it —’
‘Some people went back to the Centre. But I was hanging around to see whether you might return. A lot of our group stayed on the boat until after breakfast. The dawn was lovely. Matte came to me. He realised I was from the Centre. I don’t look like the other people he knows, with their perfect bodies. He took me to his room. He wanted information about you.’
‘What did you say?’
‘He was sitting there opposite me, opening and shutting his legs like a trap. He looked almost as handsome as you. I promised to tell him everything I knew about you if he fucked me. I told him I was an unorgasmic virgin. It was time, you see. He was amused, and seems to have looked into these things. “Apparently, the use of virgins”, he told me, “prolongs life. The headmaster of a Roman school for girls lived to one hundred and fifty. Rather that than ingesting the dried cells of foetal pigs, or drinking snake oil.” He seemed to think it was a decent exchange. He fucked me hard, right there on the floor. It was wonderful. Is it always like that? I’m pregnant.’