Felix was in the front room, lounging on the horsehair sofa reading a newspaper.
— Ah, there you are, Grendel, he said. How are you? Sit down, talk to me. We haven’t seen each other for a while, you’ve been neglecting your old friends.
I sat down at the table. A pigeon landed on the sill outside and looked in, the wind ruffling its neck feathers. Felix tossed the paper aside and leaned forward with his hands pressed between his knees. He was wearing his mac, and a flat cap pushed back on his head. There were shallow indents at his temples, I had never noticed them before. Sometimes when I looked at him closely like this he seemed a stranger.
— How goes the great work? he said. Is the prof treating you right? And what about the fat boy, does he stick to you, hey?
Adele came from the bedroom, barefoot, in her fur coat. Seeing him there she paused, then came to the table and searched in her bag for a cigarette with one hand, holding her coat shut with the other. He grinned at her, bending low to look up into her face. She said:
— How did you get in here?
— Ah, he said. Good question.
He went on grinning. There was silence. Adele smoked, frowning vaguely, her eyes fixed on the table. Felix looked from her to me, and then at her again. He chuckled.
— Having fun, you two, are you? he said. Fun and games, yes?
The pigeon flew from the sill with a clatter of wings. Felix leaned back on the sofa, one ankle crossed on a knee, and fished out his tobacco tin.
I said:
— Why did you say that he wanted me to work for him?
He lit up a butt, and blew two thick cones of smoke from his pinched nostrils. He looked at me narrowly and smiled.
— Because he did, he said. Why else?
— He doesn’t say a word to me.
— Ah, but that’s his way, you see.
Adele went and sat in front of the electric fire, holding up one bare foot and then the other to the heat. The last wan light of day was fading in the window.
— It’s true, Felix said, I may have exaggerated a little. But I didn’t say he said it, did I? I only said he wanted you, and that’s different.
He rose and walked to the window, and stood there with his back to the room, looking out into the winter twilight.
— People don’t recognize what it is they want, he said. They have to be shown. I have to … interpret.
He glanced at me merrily over his shoulder.
— Oh, yes, Pinocchio, he said. By jiminy, yes.
Adele suddenly laughed, one of her brief, high shrieks, and threw her cigarette into the grate and lit another. Then she put a hand to her forehead and bowed her head. Felix was smiling back at me still. Darkness advanced into the room.
20
I ONLY WENT TO the hospital now when I needed a new supply of pills. I avoided Dr Cranitch. Matron looked at me with her sad eyes, saying nothing. I gave all my attention to the notices on the walls in the dispensary while she filled up the little mauve phials for me. She put a fresh wad of cotton wool in each one, and wrote out new labels in her neat, schoolgirl’s hand. Miss Barr was asking after me, she said, Father Plomer too. She did not look up. Through the window behind her I could see down into the grounds. A wash of sunlight fell across the grass and was immediately extinguished. An old man on a crutch was hobbling up the drive. I picked up the pills. She watched my hands, and then she turned away.
At the gates a car pulled up and Felix stuck out his head and hailed me.
— What a lucky chance, he said. Hop in, we’re going to a party.
The car was a shuddering, ramshackle machine, coughing and farting in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke. The young man with the shakes was at the wheel. His girl sat behind him in the back seat, huddled against the window. It was starting to rain.
— Come on, Felix said to me, don’t be a spoilsport.
The young man’s name was Tony. When I got in he turned and winked at me.
— Hiya, pal, he said.
There were livid bags under his eyes.
We crossed the river. Gusts of wind were smacking the steel-blue water, and pedestrians on the bridge walked at an angle, their coat-tails whipping.
— There are these people, Felix was saying, we’re to meet them at the Goat …
Tony laughed, a high-pitched whinny.
— The Goat! he cried.
The girl shrank away from me, staring out the window beside her with a fist pressed to her mouth. She had a blank white face and frightened eyes and a tiny, pink-tipped nose. Her name was Liz. Big drops of rain swept against the windscreen.
— Fucking wipers, Tony said.
Then abruptly the rain stopped, and there was sun. We drove along by the canal. The poplars were still bare. Great bundles of cloud were sailing across a porcelain sky. Felix turned around in his seat to face me.
— Seeing the lady in white, were you? he said. Wangling bonbons out of her again? Let’s have a look.
He held the little bottle of Lamias aloft between a finger and thumb, squinting at it as if it were a rare vintage, and shook his head in laughing wonderment.
— Do you know what these things are worth? he said. Do you?
— They’re gold, pal, Tony said, nodding at me in the driving mirror. Pure gold.
He wanted to take one. Felix laughed.
— Anthony, is that wise?
— Fuck wise, said Tony.
Beside me Liz was rolling a cigarette in a little machine. Twice she had to stop and start all over again. Then she spilled a box of matches on the seat. For a moment it seemed she would cry. I tried to help her gather up the matches, but when I put out a hand towards her she flinched in fright and went suddenly still, averting her face from me, her little pink nose twitching.
We were heading towards the mountains.
Tony was bouncing in his seat, beating a tattoo with the flat of his hand on the steering wheel.
— Whoo! he said. That stuff!
He looked at me in the mirror again, his eyes wide and shining bright.
— Gold! he said, and the wheel wobbled.
— Calm yourself! cried Felix, laughing. We’ll all be killed.
We left the city behind, and climbed a long hill, the old car groaning, then crossed a bare brown plateau. Sunlight and shadow swept the far peaks. Sheep fled into the ditches at our approach. Tony was crooning quietly to himself.
— Ah, how good it is to get into the open, Felix said. The mountains, the mountains, I’ve always felt at home in the mountains.
We descended a winding road and stopped at a little oasis of wind-racked pines. There was an ancient pub with fly-blown windows, and an antique petrol pump in front of the door. Chickens scratched about on a patch of oil-stained gravel, among a dozen or more parked cars. I stepped out into the cold, sharp air. Water was running over stones somewhere close by. A flush of wind shook the pines, and all at once it was spring.
The pub was dim inside. A wireless muttered somewhere. Vague figures inhabited the gloom, they eyed us cautiously as we entered. A fat man in a dirty apron emerged from a door behind the bar, chewing. He wiped his mouth on his apron, and put his big hands on the counter and loomed at us with an expression of mingled servility and craft. Felix grandly smiled.
— Dan, my friend …
I was looking at the other customers, gathered there behind us like shades, watching us. They too had come here from the city. They had something about them I seemed to recognize. There were girls who looked like Liz, and ragged young men like Tony, but that was not it. I thought of my time in the hospital, the hours I had spent among the brotherhood of the maimed. That dulled, neuralgic air of waiting, suspended. That silence. They shuffled closer. Felix turned and surveyed them, smiling, one heel hooked on the foot-rail and his elbows planted on the bar.