But this sadness is quickly outstripped by another, more local, sadness. A dirty gypsy girl and a tall fella doing the herky-jerky dance by the self-service machines. Pauline breathes on Leah’s ear.
— I’m grateful no child of mine ever did any of that.
A quick parade of past delights flicks through Leah’s mind, the memory of which is almost intolerably pleasurable: white and brown, natural and chemical, pills and powder.
— I don’t see that there’s anything funny about it. Ach, I can’t believe I left it at home. I always have it in this pocket.
— Wasn’t laughing at that.
Travelcardtravelcardtravelcard.
— What’s she saying, poor love?
— Selling their travelcards, I think.
Very sad, but also an opportunity for a saving. Pauline reaches up to tap the fella on his shoulder.
— How many zones? How much do you want for it?
— One day travelcard. Six zones. Two pound.
— Two pounds! How do I know it’s not some fake?
— Mum. It’s got the date on it, Jesus!
— I’ll give a pound, no more.
— All right, Mrs. Hanwell.
Look up. A jolting form of time travel, moving in two directions: imposing the child on this man, this man on the child. One familiar, one unknown. The afro of the man is uneven and has a tiny gray feather in it. The clothes are ragged. One big toe thrusts through the crumby rubber of an ancient red stripe Nike Air. The face is far older that it should be, even given the nasty way time has with human materials. He has an odd patch of white skin on his neck. Yet the line of beauty has not been entirely broken.
— Nathan?
— All right Mrs. Hanwell.
Good to see Pauline flustered, the sweaty tips of her hair curling up her face.
— Well how are you, Nathan?
— Surviving.
The shakes. Been sliced, deeply, on his cheek, not long ago. It’s an open, frank face, still. Not pretending anything. Which makes it all much harder.
— How’s your mother, your sisters? You remember Leah. She’s married now.
— Is it. That’s good, yeah.
He smiles shyly at Leah. Aged ten he had a smile! Nathan Bogle: the very definition of desire for girls who had previously only felt that way about certain fragrant erasers. A smile to destroy the resolve of even the strictest teachers, other people’s parents. At ten she would have done anything, anything! Now she sees ten-year-olds and cannot believe they have inside them what she had inside her at the same age.
— Long time.
— Yes.
Longer for him. About once a year she sees him on the high road. She ducks into a shop, or crosses, or gets on a bus. Now missing a tooth here and there and there. Devastated eyes. What should be white is yellow. Red veins breaking out all over.
— Here’s that pound. You take care of yourself now. Remember me to your mother.
Quickly through the barrier, bumping into each other in their haste, and then quickly up the stairs.
— That was horrible.
— His poor mother! I should stop in on her one of these days. So sad. I’d heard, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
The train pulls in and Leah watches Pauline regard it calmly, step forward to the yellow line. This realm of Pauline’s — the realm of the so sad — is immutable and inevitable, like hurricanes and tsunamis. No particular angst is attached to it. Normally, this is bearable; today it is obscene. So sad is too distant from Pauline’s existence, which is only disappointing. It makes disappointing look like a blessing. This must be why news of it is always so welcome, so satisfying.
— You carried a torch for him, I remember. Went inside for a few years, later on, I think. He’s not the one who killed somebody, now, no, that was somebody else. Sectioned, was he? At one point? Beat his father to a pulp, that much I’m sure of. Though that man had it coming or something like it.
Leah lifts two free papers from the pile as the train pulls out because reading is silent. She tries to read an article. It is about an actress walking her dog in a park. But Pauline wants to read an article about a man who was not really who he said he was, and she wants to talk about it, too.
— Well, if you will claim to be infallible! Say what you like about our lot but least we don’t claim to be infallible. Men of God, are they? Those poor children. Lives ruined. And they call it religion! Well, let’s hope that’s an end to the whole business once and for all.
Seeing as how they are speaking to the whole carriage, Leah mounts a mild defense, thinking of the smell of the censer, the voluptuous putti babies, the gold sunburst, cold marble floor, dark wood carved and plaited, women kneeling whispering lighting candles InterRailing nineteen ninety-three.
— Wish we had confession. Wish I could confess.
— Oh grow up, Leah, will you?
Pauline turns the page with violence. The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety rollercoaster. Higgledy piggledy rooftops and chimneys, some high, some low, packed tightly, shaken fags in a box. Behind the opposite window, retreating Willesden. Number 37. In the 1880s or thereabouts the whole thing went up at once — houses, churches, schools, cemeteries — an optimistic vision of Metroland. Little terraces, faux-Tudor piles. All the mod cons! Indoor toilet, hot water. Well-appointed country living for those tired of the city. Fast forward. Disappointed city living for those tired of their countries.
— Vol-can-ic air-borne ash man-i-fest-a-tion?
Pauline enunciates each syllable carefully, doubtful of its reality, and brings the photo too close to her daughter’s nose. Leah can make out only a great swirl of gray. Maybe this is all there is to see. The matter is also discussed by the hipsters opposite. Gaia’s revenge, says the girl to the boy. Give it out long enough you get it back. Pauline, always alive to the possibility of a group conversation, leans forward.
— No fruit or veg in the shops, they’re saying. Makes sense if you think about it. Of course, it’s an island we’re on here. I always forget that, don’t you?
13
— Finished with the computer?
— Need to wait till they close.
— It’s almost seven o’clock? I need it.
— It’s not seven online. Why don’t you get on with your own things?
— That’s what I need it for.
— Leah, I’ll call you when I’m done.
Currency trading. The exploitation of volatility. She can only understand words, not numbers. The words are ominous. Add them to that look Michel has, right now, of arrested attention. Internal time stretched and stilled, inattentive to the minutes and hours outside of itself. Five minutes! He says it irritably whether thirty have gone by or a hundred or two hundred. Pornography does that, too. Art, too, so they say.
Leah stands behind Michel in the darkness of the box room. Blue shimmer of the screen. He is two feet away. He is on the other side of the world. Why don’t you get on with your own things?
She has the idea that there are a lot of things she has been waiting for weeks to do and now she will do them with the bright quickness of montage, like the middle section of a movie. In the living room the TV is on. More blue light in the hallway. In the box room, the computer plays angry hip hop, a sign that things are going badly. Sometimes she says to him: have you lost it? He becomes furious, he says it doesn’t work that way. Some days I lose, some days I win. How can he be losing or winning that same eight thousand pounds, over and over? Leah’s only inheritance from Hanwell, their only savings. The money itself has become notional, a notion materialist Hanwell — who kept his real paper money in a cardboard box in a mahogany credenza — would never understand. No more does Leah understand it. She sits on a chair in the open doorway between kitchen and garden. Toes in the grass. The skies are empty and silent. Outrage travels from next-door’s talk radio: It’s taken me fifty-two hours to get back from Singapore! A new old lesson about time. Broccoli comes from Kenya. Blood must be transported. Soldiers need supplies. Much of the better part of NW went on holiday, for Easter, with their little darlings. Maybe they will never return. A thought to float away on.