“Help,” a voice says.
The voice sounds strangely normal, like someone just neutrally saying the word.
Maybe it’s for that reason that he does nothing for a second or two.
Then he starts to move toward it, past the weakly lit display windows of the bookshop.
“Hey!” he shouts.
Which seems to be enough. Two figures separate themselves from the darkness. He sees them as short-lived silhouettes against the end of the alley, where there’s the light of some other street.
The alley is actually more of a tunnel.
There’s something on the floor there.
It’s a person.
“You all right?” he asks.
He stoops and says it again. “You all right?”
He takes out his phone and makes the screen light up and shines it.
The man dislikes the light on his face.
He’s quite old. He looks dazed. There’s some blood.
“You all right?”
The man, after a few moments, just shakes his head.
István says, “I’m going to call an ambulance. Okay?”
He takes a few steps away with his phone to his ear.
The ambulance arrives ten minutes later. There’s the approaching sound of the siren, and then, suddenly, the blue lights at the end of the street.
István smokes a cigarette while the paramedics attach the man to a stretcher.
“Is he going to be okay?” he asks one of them, when the man is in the ambulance.
“Think so,” the paramedic says. “You coming?”
It hadn’t occurred to István that he would do that. The paramedics, though, are unaware that he doesn’t know this man. There wasn’t time to explain.
“Up to you,” the paramedic says, when he just stands there.
“Where you going?” István asks. “Which hospital?”
When he hears it’s the Royal London he says he’ll come with them, since it’s on his way.
He sits next to the man’s head as the ambulance surges and sways through the streets.
Although he seems dazed the man is conscious.
Their eyes meet for a moment.
“What’s your name?” the man asks him.
“István,” he says.
“Isht-van?” the man repeats.
“Yes.”
“You’re not English,” the man says.
“No,” he says.
“Where are you from?” the man asks.
“Hungary,” he says.
“I’m also from Hungary,” one of the paramedics says, after a few moments, in their own language.
To hear it takes István by surprise. There’s something almost disconcerting about it. “Oh yeah?” he says.
The paramedic nods.
Neither of them says anything else until the ambulance arrives at the hospital, where the paramedics take the stretcher out.
Then the man says he wants István’s mobile number.
“It’s okay,” István says.
“Please,” the man says.
The Hungarian paramedic writes it down on a scrap of paper and puts it into the man’s hand. Then they take him inside, and István walks away. It’s five o’clock in the morning, and already fully light on Whitechapel Road.
A few days later the man phones him. At first he has no idea who it is. There’s just this voice saying, “Is that István?”
He says it is.
“I’m the poor bastard you saved from being murdered the other night,” the man says.
“Oh yeah,” István says. He’s not sure what else to say. “How you doing?” he asks.
“They tell me I’ll live.”
“Okay.”
“No, I’m fine,” the man says. “I wanted to thank you.”
“No problem,” István says.
He’s on the street. There’s a lot of noise, lots of people walking in all directions, and it’s hard to hear what the man’s saying. “Sorry,” he says. “Can you say that again?”
“We’d like to invite you to dinner,” the man says.
“Dinner?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s okay,” István says, starting to wish that he hadn’t picked up when he saw the unknown number on his phone.
The man is quite insistent though, and in the end István accepts the invitation.
When the man suggests Friday, István tells him that he works on Fridays.
“I work on Saturday as well,” he tells him.
He has stopped walking. He’s on the pedestrianized part of the High Road, in front of Shoe Zone.
“Sunday?” he says, when the man asks him which day would suit him. “Or Monday?”
They settle on Monday, at seven.
“Do you have a wife?” the man asks. “Or a girlfriend?”
“No,” István says.
“Well, just bring yourself, then,” the man says.
On Monday evening he takes the Tube in. It’s twenty stops from Gants Hill. He’s on the train for nearly an hour.
On the pavement in front of Holland Park Station he looks at his pocket A–Z. He has some trouble orienting himself, and then he takes some wrong turns, but eventually he finds the place. It’s an enormous apartment block, made of red brick. It takes up the whole street. It is the street, effectively. Above each entrance, stenciled on glass, are the numbers of the apartments to which it provides access. He finds the right one and presses the doorbell, which is a small brass button.
“Come in!” a voice says before he’s even had a chance to explain who he is, and he makes his way through the silent entrance hall to the elevator at the far end.
The elevator ascends, slowly and quietly. It has wood paneling and dark blue carpet, the same carpet that was in the entrance hall. It also has a polished wooden outer door that you have to push open yourself when you arrive at your floor. It takes him a moment to work that out, and then he’s on a landing, where there are the doors of several apartments, one of them open.
The man, standing in the open doorway, is somewhere in his mid-sixties probably.
Thickset and not tall, he’s smiling, and exuding a strong smell of expensive perfume. “István,” he says.
“Hi,” István says.
“Mervyn,” the man says, introducing himself.
István nods.
“Come in,” the man says. He still has some yellow bruising on his face.
In the entrance hall he asks István if he can take his jacket. Once that’s done he leads him farther into the apartment, into a living room where he invites him to sit down.
István sits on one of two opposing sofas in the middle of the room.
There’s a TV on, showing what seems to be golf.
The man asks him if he wants a drink.
“Sure, thanks,” István says.
“I’m having a G and T,” the man says. “Is that all right?”
“Sure, thanks,” István says again.
“Fine,” the man says, and addresses himself to some sort of drinks tray.
There’s the sound of ice ringing into glasses, and a ripple of applause from the TV as some golfer succeeds in doing something.
“Do you follow golf?” the man asks, with his back to István.
“No,” István says.
“No,” the man repeats. There’s something about him, István thinks, something that doesn’t quite fit with these surroundings—with the pictures on the walls and shelves full of books and polished surfaces with framed photos and other objects on them.
The man turns with the drinks in his hands. “Fair enough,” he says, handing one of them to István.
Having done that, he picks up a remote control and kills the TV’s sound. Then he sits down on the sofa opposite. “So,” he says. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” István echoes.
They taste their drinks. They’re mixed very strong.
Even so, the man asks if István’s is strong enough.
István just nods.
“I don’t see the point of a gin and tonic that hardly tastes of gin,” the man says.
“Sure.”
István’s eyes wander to the TV, which is still showing silent pictures.
“The Memorial,” the man says, noticing.
“Yeah?”