35
The Sir Richard Steele
Gabriel doubled back on the Northern Line, a trip no Northern Liner truly enjoyed: down to Camden, then across the platforms, and then up again to Chalk Farm. Felt like treachery, somehow, going up the other branch. He broke ground, the swarming city there to greet him, walked left around the sharp corner, and so set off up Haverstock Hill. He was looking forward to drinking, Sunday or not. He bent forward as the incline bit. The morning’s frostiness had been replaced by an unusually strong wind; it was one of those dark and low-skied cloud-scudding London nights when the windows rattle in their casements and the tarpaulin that hangs on the scaffolding flaps and slaps as if it might fly away at any second. Sudden gusts snatch at scarves, toss careful hair awry, or chivvy at the cracked chimneypots and threaten to tear the roof tiles loose, and the forgotten trees sway and creak, heavy branches bending hard upon their natural snap.
He was late. He reached the cheerfully ever-empty Chinese restaurant and the off-license, passed the tall, amber-lighted, stained glass windows, walked beneath the old-fashioned lamps that hung from the side of the building, under the old sign (swinging heavily) on which Sir Richard Steele himself (a little drunk in the wind) continued to watch the footsore folk of London making their way up the endless hill away from the cramp and toil of their city, and so he entered the pub, tousled and ruffled, through one half of the oddly narrow double wooden door.
The noise rose to greet him like a friendly dog as he stepped into the fug. Just inside, to the left, a two-piece band was playing—or rather had that very second finished a song, which Gabriel recognized as “It’s Alright, Ma.” He excused his way through their audience (all standing and trying to clap with their drinks in their hands) and made for the bar. He took stock a moment and then eased his way along, checking the huddles and clusters sitting cozily in the deep red seats at the tables on his right.
He had the impression that he was moving amid an old, old scene. The pub, proudly named after a fourth-rate playwright, had stood in much the same aspect as he saw it now for some three centuries, a wayside host to countless conversations, fights, kisses, partings, declarations, collapses, dances, intrigues, songs, jokes, and tears—everything but work in fact, and therefore everything important in the lives of its denizens. He loved the place—as did his sister. The Steele’s great secret being that it never allowed any one deputation of humanity to get the upper hand. Indeed, he sometimes thought that it was as if the very wood of the long crook-shaped bar held it a truth that any section of society quickly becomes unbearable if left to congregate and fester unchallenged among its own.
There was no sign of Isabella. He had the feeling that she would be in the back room, so he edged around the narrow end of the bar, past the turtle-backed stool-sitters (whose drinks arrived without their seeming to make the slightest movement by way of an order), and then ducked left again, around by the big old table that was really the heart of the place, and so came through the low doorway to the semisecret snug at the rear of the building. In here were four or five homely wooden tables, an aged iron brazier in which a fire glowed, a tall mantelpiece on which several candles burned in empty gin bottles, a high mirror above these, and rows of unread books on either side of the chimney breast. For reasons nobody could quite remember or guess, there was also a life-sized mural of a seminaked and rather camp-looking Christ on the interior wall—he was standing entwined in what appeared to be vines, an expression neither particularly ecstatic nor redolent of recent crucifixion on his face. Isabella was sitting at Christ’s feet, poring over a printout of some description.
“What you reading?”
She looked up and raised her eyebrows in greeting. “Dylan interview off the Internet.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Not really—more or less says that he can’t understand why anyone would want to bother interviewing him when everything that is important is right there, clear as day, in his songs.”
“I could have told you that.” He smiled and came around to her side of the table to put his arm around her for a moment.
“You have. Many times,” she said with mock-weariness. “And you will again.”
“They were playing ‘It’s—”
“I know.”
He eyed her glass. “You want another drink?”
“Six vodka and cranberries—easy on the cranberry and as much vodka as they can spare.”
“You as well?” Gabriel smile became a grin.
“I blame the parents,” she said.
He set off back to the bar to find himself a Guinness to go with his sister’s request. It was always good to see her. He had missed her when she left. And he missed her still. She looked as sharp as ever. Though he was not sure quite what he was expecting—her jet-black hair suddenly gray, her brown eyes red with sleeplessness and grief? It had been nearly seven weeks. Was it just his imagination, though, or was she looking thinner since the funeral? Hard to tell. The minute he saw her, he felt that it was his responsibility to ask, his responsibility to look after her. More so now than ever. A strange feeling, because of course she could look after herself in all the obvious ways… But still, he had always felt as if it were his duty to keep watch on those deeper parts that she herself did not even acknowledge or recognize.
“So you’re at Susan’s?” He dropped into the chair she had been saving for him.
“Yeah. Just for a while. I was wondering if I could come to you for a few days, actually. Next week.”
“Yeah. Of course.” He sipped his Guinness. “You on holiday? What’s going on with work?”
“Actually, I have taken a bit of a sabbatical… Well, they have let me have a sabbatical.”
Gabriel observed his sister closely. Yet another contradiction that Isabella had inherited was that though she was almost clinically obsessed with knowing the whole truth about everything, she herself was one of the world’s foremost tellers of halves.
“You mean you sacked it? Or they sacked you?”
“No.” Isabella’s eyes met his, absorbing his sarcasm. “No, really, I am on a sabbatical. I told them about Mum and that I had stuff to sort out and that I was leaving and that they could either take it as a resignation or whatever but that if they didn’t mind, I’d look in on them again when I got back.”
He considered. “Sounds like you just walked out and they’ve no obligation to you—”
“Forgot you were an expert on corporate obligations,” she said.
He made a have-it-your-own-way face. But it was principally a way of avoiding taking her on. He considered the wall and Christ’s ever-increasing gayness thereupon, then asked, “Are you all right for money?”
“Yeah, for a while. A month or so. I’ve got a few thousand in the bank, but obviously I’m going to have to sort something out.”
“So… what are you planning? Coming back to London?” He looked at her. “Or staying in New York?”
“I don’t know.” She met his eyes.
“Jesus.”