Part 27 (2/2)

The woman screamed again.

'Don't,' Sarah said.

Michael stopped.

's.h.i.+t, feller,' said the man on the floor.

'It's just people,' said Sarah. 'Only people . . .'

Michael lowered his arm, and put the ashtray down.

'Wrong room,' said the man on the floor. He was young, American, slightly drunk, or had been. 'Sorry, man, but Jeezus, what's your problem?'

There was activity outside now, as the hotel responded to the woman's screams. She had quietened down; came a timid two steps into the room and said, 'Sorry, we thought this was . . .'

'It's okay,' Sarah said. 'You scared us.'

Michael allowed his captive to get to his feet, then dropped back to his hands and knees as if the effort had all but killed him. He started to cough. The American staggered up and backed away 'We scared you?'

just as a man in hotel uniform turned up, carrying for some reason a torch. 'What's the problem here?'

Michael was still coughing. Sarah dropped to the floor, and touched him on the arm. 'Are you okay?' But he couldn't stop.

The hotel man asked what the problem was again, and the two Americans both tried telling him at once. 'We're next door. We got the wrong room, that's all, but '

And then they all shut up as Michael spat loudly into the ashtray: a bright red stream of b.l.o.o.d.y phlegm that, once it started, didn't look as if it was going to stop . . .

'Jesus,' said the American.

Sarah gripped Michael's arm, and held on tight.

And Crane let himself silently out of the room, and padded back to the stairwell.

It was as well to be philosophical about such things. Hadn't Axel once accused him of philosophy? So he would be philosophical this once, and practise one of its rare consolations: just imagine, he told himself as he slipped into the quiet of his own room, what it would be like to be somebody else. A Smithson, for instance. Lying asleep downstairs right now, unaware of Crane's brief joyless visit. They'd never know how close they came, or that the rest of their lives were a gift from him. Perhaps he should have left a card for them. I think, therefore you are.

Worcester had been a mistake, though, he told himself as he undressed. He should have gone to Malvern.

III.

Light again. Light playing over furniture in patterns she already recognized: Sarah had lived in houses where she'd not been as familiar with the way light swam across the arrangements in its path. She imagined an old age in which she looked back and reconstructed all of this, including the trouser press; an age in which she mulled not at all over a forgotten home in Oxford. These were tricks her brain played on her to pull her out of the present, which comprised Michael lying on the bed once more, his coughing fit pa.s.sed but his face pale, his eyes watery not knowing what else to do, she had placed a wet towel over his forehead and made him drink water. He wasn't asleep. There was a trace of fever, though, or had been: it seemed to have faded with the dawn. Now he had removed his sweats.h.i.+rt, and she could see the red blotches on his arms that matched the weals on his stomach. It was a piece of corroboration she could have happily done without.

I don't have a normal life any more. I won't ever have one, if we don't finish this.

He would try to get rid of her now, she guessed, because she'd told him all she knew, which was nothing. But she couldn't stay here and she couldn't go home, because when she thought of all she might find there Wigwam, Mark her future dissolved in a watery mist.

Michael turned his head to one side; laid his forearm across his eyes. When she was sure he was sleeping, she left the room quietly. All she had brought from Oxford was her purse, and as she waited for the lift she fished in it for what change it held: a small handful of silver, some useless coppers. The lift took her down to the lobby. In a cubbyhole by the entrance to the bar, she found the phone, and piled money on the shelf while she ransacked her memory for her own number: a sure sign of guilt that she couldn't recall it, but knowing that didn't help much. Let your fingers do the walking, she decided, and shut her eyes and punched in the number by touch it came automatically, and her hand shook as she heard the connection made, and the ringing begin in her own front room, so many miles away. But nothing. But not even the answer machine. As if she were a ghost, thwarted in the act of haunting; unable even to leave her voice floating in an empty room.

She should call Wigwam, she thought, hanging up. Wigwam would be home. But her heart gave way at the prospect, and she knew that she couldn't talk to Wigwam yet.

But her fingers were dialling again, as if they'd adopted a dangerous habit of their own volition. It was almost with surprise she heard the voice in her ear, reciting the partners of The Bank With No Name as if it were a mantra enjoyed by the holy: so much surprise she didn't respond at first, not until the woman on the switchboard repeated the magic words. Then she asked for Mark.

'I'm sorry . . .'

'Mark Trafford. It's his wife.'

There was a long moment of silence which stretched nearly to breaking point. Then: 'Putting you through.'

For a while there was only s.p.a.ce noise, as she travelled the loops and whorls of the bank's system. She would hear Mark's voice any second, and just the thought of it was like imagining walking on the moon being somewhere totally familiar and utterly strange all at once. Would he already know it was her when he heard the phone ring? Once, he'd been able to do that; they both had. Or had told each other they had. But even when it had seemed to happen, it was just another trick the mind played: and this time, if Mark knew who it was, it was because a switchboard operator had told him.

'Can I help you?'

It wasn't Mark's voice anyway.

'h.e.l.lo? Can I '

'I'm calling for Mark Trafford. Is he there?'

The woman didn't respond. And Sarah had the sudden crazy notion that all these events, even this one, were part of some raddled, toxic dream: that she wasn't who she thought she was; there was no Mark; she had no life. That the woman down the line would disconnect her any moment, and she would wake into a world completely different.

'Is he '

'Is that his wife?'

'I yes. I'm his wife. Yes.'

There was another strangled silence. Jesus Christ, it's not just me, thought Sarah. Everyone is totally round the twist.

'You . . . don't know?'

'Don't know what?'

. . . There was no sense of panic, eerily enough. Instead a deadly calm, and a s.h.i.+ft in her perspective, as if the cubbyhole had suddenly become very distant from the rest of the lobby. And the woman had sounded almost close to tears . . .

'Don't know what?' she repeated.

'He doesn't work here any more.'

She had been so sure he was dead that she almost laughed.

'Is that all?'

'. . . I don't . . .'

'Who'm I speaking to, anyway?'

'My name's Treadwell, Emma Tre'

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