So, here it is. Freedom to do anything. Of course, he could blow the lot in a few weeks. Move from the canal to an exquisite little flat here in Mayfair. Buy a more appropriate car, a few knick-knacks from these dimly-lit boutiques that stink of more money than sense.
Will they make him invest some of it in the Box? Alignment of interests. He’d rather not. Perhaps a token hundred k. He tucks the letter back in his pocket and looks around. The naff winter fairground rides have been taken down and the enclosures cleared away, leaving a few roped-off acres of mud. Above a smokescreen of bare trees, the naff London skyline, just as perfunctory, remains.
Yes, he could spend it easily here. Waste it. But out there in the world beyond — out there, it’s a fortune, and he could do anything.
Anywhere. Anything. Absolutely anything. But what?
Round one is electric shocks, round two is needles. If Dan didn’t have a serious neurological condition when he walked in here, he will by the time these inquisitors have finished with him. He really shouldn’t be squeamish about needles. He recognises that a conflict arises between the instinct to defend the territory demarcated by his skin, ancient and unthinking, and the judicious invasions of medicine: the surgical strike. But old instincts die hard, and there are a lot of needles, and these ones hurt. He focuses his gaze on the intersection of walls and ceiling, and takes slow breaths.
Round three is a blood sample, and round four — he did ask to have all the tests at once — is the MRI scan. Dan and the radiographer recognise each other at once.
‘You’re the man who tripped over on Friar Street.’
‘Wearing a dressing gown, yes — not unlike this. And you’re my Samaritan. Thanks for helping me that night.’ Dan can see that she’s trying to figure out whether the fall and this scan are related in some way, and is about to conclude that they aren’t. ‘I’d locked myself out,’ he explains. ‘That trip was — well — they think I might have a neurological condition.’
‘Right. Yes.’ She smiles, nods, very professional. But she grasps his meaning: she was there at the very beginning. Of whatever this is. A disconcerting note of intimacy chimes.
‘Three Tesla,’ says Dan, to change the subject, peering at the controls of the giant glossy polo mint. ‘That’s a strong magnet.’
‘This is the strongest magnet you’re ever likely to meet,’ she proclaims, brightly. ‘Any metal objects in this room have to be bolted down.’ The pen in her breast pocket is a plastic felt-tip. ‘But don’t worry, it won’t hurt you. It’s just a bit noisy. Let me explain how it works—’
‘It’s okay,’ says Dan, with a modest smile, ‘I know how it works.’ His mind’s eye peers into the moist, fibrous internal structure of his body, zooms in to its fabulous, soaring architecture of cells, zooms in again to its molecular frogspawn, again to a single atom of hydrogen, and again, past his little familiar, the orbiting electron, to the spinning proton at the atom’s core. Not really spinning, of course — spin is just a parameter in the elegant magic of the maths of Pauli and Dirac — but it’s an effective visual metaphor. ‘I’ve worked with superconducting magnets up to twelve T,’ he adds, ‘but I don’t usually lie inside them.’
The scan’s nightmare symphony is performed by an orchestra of monstrous sirens, frenzied ringtones and frantic assembly-line machinery. Dan stares at the blank casing inches from his face and thinks of mashers and slashers and bone-pulverisers, of barbed wire and searchlights, of Pink Floyd and late Radiohead, and of every alarm clock that ever snatched him from a beautiful dream.
14. Blank page
‘These are not matters about which it is wrong to be ignorant.’
James F. Saunders had a job delivering pizzas before he came to Merryman’s Bay. Logistics, he told his father. Menial jobs a long-established literary tradition, of course. It was always on the scooter that his flashes of self-confidence struck — glimpses of the unrevealed truth that would be his raw material, of the glittering style that would be his vehicle, of the fame and prizes that would be his inevitable destiny. Back at the keyboard, at the blank page, this intricate tissue of hope disintegrated in his hands, dissolved, drained into the gaps between the keys, only to rear up again, shimmering, on his next ride.
It was partly to break the cycle of delusion and despair that James moved to Bay. That, and the lure, the quickening influence, the fecund promise of the elements: the sea, the sea. His lodgings are in an ancient cottage called The End House, named after something he has never yet reached in his many abandoned novels. This time, this novel, will be different.
Mrs Peacock has given James a vase of cheap flowers to brighten his desk, and he is sitting staring at these, tonguing a mouth ulcer and recalling Lawrence’s ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’, when his phone buzzes and makes him jump. It’s Brenda. Hi. I have a computer now. Connection is slow but maybe we could catch up by video? Might be fun xxx
James is submerged in a reverie so deep and viscous that he has to read this through several times, but as he finally surfaces his heart burns for those three little xs. He has, of course, no internet in his room or on his phone. He imagines sitting in a quiet corner of Whitby library, angling his laptop screen away from the toddlers and grannies, sound switched off, while Brenda teases him, stripping to that lycra underwear of hers that looks like a running outfit, sticking her sporadically-pixelated arse in the camera. Oh god, it would be torture — furtively hunched with his trousers like a tee-pee. He has to see her.
He’s been putting it off. He can’t decide whether Project Q has run its course or whether it has more to give. But after this message arrives he surprises himself by writing a paragraph of unsurpassed elegance. Heaving with intensity, yet technically flawless. Lawrencian.
Over Christmas, Natalie Mock’s curiosity regarding her ex-boyfriend was dimmed by worries about Dan’s health. But he seems almost back to normal. He’s lost a little weight, perhaps, and still has that odd limp. But it’s hardly a limp — just a slight stiffness in his leg. He doesn’t have any family history of those horrible illnesses. She has a hunch he’s just overworked, and is going to be fine.
So curiosity about her ex was dimmed, but not extinguished. She remembers the moment when their two futures, previously assumed — by her, at least — to be indivisible matter, revealed themselves as distinct. He’d borrowed some money — eighty pounds, to be precise — and she’d asked for it back. He explained at length why money isn’t real. She said, that’s fascinating, but I’d still like it back. He talked, but no wallet emerged. Nowhere, she realised at that moment, was it decreed that she must spend her life with a man disinclined to grow up. This man, she thought, will hinder my dreams.
Ah, yes: her dreams. She teamed up with Dan instead — older, more reliable, more supportive. She got her degree. Before her master’s she needed a year in industry, but struggled to find a job — the jobs were in London, and Dan was in Sheffield. She got some short placements, then answered a graphic design ad just to pay the rent. Then Dan turned down his postdoc offer in Sheffield to accept one in Bristol. Just like that. More relevant, he said. She made a late application to Bristol, was advised to get more professional experience. Somehow, Plan A retreated behind blurry obstacles, and Plan B presented itself: a large aid organisation. A steady job with the feel-good factor.