Wait a minute.
We haven’t got a minute. You said as much yourself.
This is important, Kate.
So’s the guard coming back. Officer. Just a second then.
If you were twenty in the late 1950s…
I must be a dry old bird by now, is that what you mean? How old do you think I am?
Late thirties, I would have said.
Close enough.
You’re chatting breeze, Kate! You can’t be twenty in ‘59 and only forty in the twenty-first C. It don’t make sense!
For the record, I never admitted to forty.
Whatever the weather, Miss. It’s impossible!
Who says?
Fucking nature says, Kate! That’s not how it works!
It’s how it works in the Hola Ettaluun, Billy; and believe me, mine is by no means the weirdest of the time stories you could have found there.
I’ve never been there! I’d have remembered.
You’ve changed your tune from a few minutes ago!
Well, what a difference a minute makes! This is twisted.
Maybe so; but you wanted it point blank, as you guys say. That’s just how I’m giving it to you. Both barrels, nine-mm, rudeboy. Allow it.
Have you been at Angela’s gin, Miss?
No. Drunk on excitement and nothing more, Billy. I should be serious, you’re right. I can imagine—I can remember—how difficult this must be for you. But ask yourself this: what possible advantage have I got in lying?
None. None whatever.
So shall I resume?
Resume.
Okay. The law firm’s name is not important. It was office junior stuff at first, and bear in mind the time we’re talking about. Grey suits and attitudes. Could you make us all a nice cup of tea, dear? Those moustaches. Jesus. Could you run out for a bottle of milk, my angel? Could you pick up the birthday pressie for the wife or girlfriend, or both; it’s all paid for. Actually, there was one guy there who bought exactly the same present for his spouse and his tart, just so he didn’t get confused.
You’re drifting, Kate.
Right. I need a nap. So where was I?
Law firm.
Yes. Law firm, first six months a living hell; but it was a living. I couldn’t afford a place of my own and no human male was taking any interest in me so I stuck it out, me and my double-glazing specs. Picture that! What a fox I must’ve appeared, staring down at each piece of paper, like a giraffe, you know, bending down to chew up some grass. But little by little, I earned a modicum of respect; I picked up speed in my work, got in early, stayed late more often than not. I could type. I could file. Less and less often I was asked to go outside on some silly errand. I knew Pitman’s shorthand; I learned it from a book and some cassettes. Cost a fortune, but it meant I could sit in on meetings and take minutes, or take notes from consultations with clients. You wouldn’t believe some of what I heard, Billy—the divorce cases, the arguments with the neighbours, the violence. Really not much has changed between then and now. It’s just reported differently now. There was one guy, Gerald Barter, I’ll never forget, he used to get his kicks by having a dump in the swimming pool in Swiss Cottage. Five times before he got.
Kate, please.
Sorry. Sorry, I just feel…
Drunk?
No, of course not. I feel…
Kate. Am I making you nervous?
I’ll tell you the truth, Billy. You’ve made me nervous from day one.
But I’m harmless! Ish. Certainly in this shit-hole I’m harmless. What have you got to be nervous about? What happened?
(I stole water, Dott says.)
I heard a particular story, Billy, that’s what happened. Me in that office, with my pen and my spiral notepad, writing nightmare music as fast as I could, according to one of the partners.
Nightmare music?
Oh, it was nothing—a silly joke. His name was Patterson, funnily enough—the partner, not the client. Just like our good lady of the gin bottle. He used to say that my shorthand symbols looked like musical notes, I was writing a symphony, but it was nightmare music. I’ve always remembered that.
I get nightmare music, Kate. The singing of the dead, sometimes.
The Dead were a good live band. Dylan and the Dead.
I’m being serious: ever since Dott arrived. Nightmare music is right.
Anyway. The client’s name was Brian O’Farrell, and he was giving his deposition, pushed into it by his grown-up daughters. And as I’m listening I’m thinking, this isn’t for us. This isn’t law. You don’t need a solicitor, Charlie, you need a headshrinker; you’re nuts. ‘Cause he was talking about a—what do you call it?—a pilgrimage he’d made. To the desert. To the Oasis.
What was he?
A journalist. Travel writing… I think it was February, and the heating was on in the office, but it wasn’t that warm. He was sweating like a racehorse, fidgeting in his seat, wanting to talk about a lawsuit. So he comes to us—to Patterson, be precise—asking if it’s possible to sue a place.
As you would. Sue a hotel, sue a restaurant.
But you can’t sue a body of water, Billy. You can’t sue a township. So he says to his editor at his rag: okay if I go a bit further afield for my next piece? I’ve had it with Venice and Vienna, and so have the readers. What about somewhere a bit further from the beaten track? The Sahara Desert, to be exact. Well, the editor’s not exactly champing at the bit, so O’Farrell volunteers to fund the trip himself and not claim on expenses; all he’s asking for is the usual cheque on publication or a half-rate kill-fee if the piece is spiked; and to cut a long story short, he travels east. Trying to find something he’s only heard about in gossip and rumour.
But what did he want to do there?
Find out if it’s true. Find out if there really is a place on earth—if you’ll forgive the cliché—where time has stood still. Not metaphorically: literally.
And what did he find out?
There isn’t. Or if there is, it’s not the Oasis. Time doesn’t stand still there; that’s way too simplistic. Time there is—it’s like an unfelt storm. You think you’re in the eye of the hurricane but in fact the quiet part is where the forces are raging and infecting worst of all.
Infecting?
Yeah; and everyone in a different way.
Don’t cry, Miss.
Sorry. It’s. Sod it, I’m having another gin; this is hard. Do you want one?
The screw will smell it on my breath, Miss.
Say it’s mouthwash.
Gin-flavoured mouthwash? Anyway, we’re not allowed to have mouthwash: it’s got alcohol in it.
Then I drink alone, Billy? There were children there—babies even!—who were shrivelled up like walnuts. They looked eighty. There were teenagers, their own bodies growing at different speeds, at different times—torsos twice as long as their legs, girls of ten who appeared pregnant with children they weren’t carrying or hadn’t even conceived… great bulky pregnant tummies. Christ, that’s better. Are you sure I can’t tempt you?
You can tempt me. Then I’m piss-tested and fucked.
You get the picture, though?
Sure. It was a freakshow. Any radiation thereabouts?
No. And don’t belittle this, Billy. I think you are. When you’ve seen a ninety year old woman gaining weight to take on her middle-aged spread, mate, it’s no laughing matter. She looked about forty but she was ninety.
Bit like you.
Similar. But more like Dott, Billy: moving backwards through time. Born at whatever age, like he was when he soothed your bee-stings, and getting younger. Younger as we would see it. Disappearing back to the egg. Me, I’m different: I’m going in the right direction. Only slowly. My years are longer—longer than yours. I was twenty in 1960, you think I’m late thirties now. You do the sums!