Текст книги "Kingdom Come: A Novel"

Автор книги: James Graham Ballard

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

17
THE GEOMETRY OF THE CROWD

THE POLICE WERE withdrawing from Brooklands, climbing into their patrol cars parked in the perimeter road and driving away from the mall. I walked through the huge crowd in the Metro-Centre plaza and filled my lungs with the sooty air, trying to expel the tang of dust and burnt rubber. The night hung heavily over the sullen faces, the darkness stained with the sweat of athletes’ bodies, the scent of chewing gum, bottled beer and anger.

Deep in the crowd, I stood on the running board of an unattended Land Cruiser and raised my head to a brief eddy of cooler air. Tom Carradine had gone, ending his frantic tennis game with himself, no doubt working on a flurry of cheerful press releases. The citadel had been breached, but the police were going, leaving the defence to a scratch brigade of PR executives, floor managers and secretaries.

Two officers in the last patrol car watched as a group of ice-hockey supporters surrounded a forgotten Volvo and drummed their fists on the roof, the familiar tribal tattoo. The windscreen shattered, but the policemen ignored the incident and drove away.

Only the forensics team remained in the basement garage of the Metro-Centre, picking through the debris of my car. Already I missed the classic Jensen, with its elegant body and huge American engine. I found it hard to believe that Geoffrey Fairfax had set out to kill me. Conceivably the solicitor had seen the bomber planting the device in my car, and tried to defuse it before I returned.

Or was I being framed by Fairfax and his shadowy group, set up as the likely bomber, obsessed by my hatred of the Metro-Centre? These were cold questions with even colder answers. The half decanter of Laphroaig I had downed in the penthouse had evaporated from my bloodstream the moment I recognized the shattered Jensen.

I watched the perimeter road, waiting for police reinforcements to arrive. A restless crowd several thousand strong surrounded the Metro-Centre, moving in vast currents within itself. Sports groups circled the mall, football and ice-hockey fans pushing past each other as they roamed the darkness. There was no hostility between the groups, but I could almost smell the anger, the coarse breath of a disturbed beast searching for an enemy.

An ice-hockey cheerleader, the blond thug who had attacked Duncan Christie, strode through the press of people, his fists punching the air. He was moving at random, gathering more and more spectators into his train. Then he lost them when they peeled away and followed a pair of huge weightlifters whose rolling gait cleared their way through the throng.

Family groups, fathers with teenage sons and wives keeping watch on their daughters, still gazed at the Metro-Centre as the last smoke rose through the fissure in the roof. But most of the spectators had turned their backs to the dome. The crowd was watching itself, a congregation of the night waiting for the service to begin.

The Land Cruiser heaved sharply, and a window pillar struck my cheek. I gripped the roof rack as the vehicle rocked from side to side. A group of athletics fans, middle-aged men in team shirts, surrounded the Land Cruiser and tore off the aerials and wing mirrors. People turned to watch them, with the detached stares of office workers viewing the excavation of a building site.

I stepped down from the running board and joined the crowd. A cheer went up as the Land Cruiser tilted on its offside tyres, received a final push and fell heavily to the ground like a stricken rhino. Its alarm lights came on, blinking in panic. Expert hands reached behind the petrol tank, and a clasp knife severed the fuel line. Petrol pooled around the rear tyre, a stench that made me gag.

A cigarette lighter flared in the darkness. There was a flash of light, and miniature flames glowed on the ground, racing around each other. The spectators moved back, hundreds of faces lit in a campfire circle. Then a single flame ten feet high lifted from the vehicle, and within an instant the Land Cruiser was an inferno of seared paintwork and exploding glass.

WHEN I REACHEDthe perimeter road, still waiting for the police to arrive, three more cars were burning. Smoke drifted over the heads of the crowd, and a few people followed me, shadowing my footsteps and changing direction as I did. Three ice-hockey supporters strode on my right, while an elderly couple in St George’s shirts kept in step on my left. Behind them came a large group of supporters, silently drinking from their beer cans. When I turned to avoid a traffic sign the entire column swung after me. I stopped to pick a strip of burnt rubber from my shoe, and they marked time without thinking, then resumed their strolling pace when I set off again.

None of them looked at me, or seemed aware that I was leading them. They followed me like commuters in a crowded railway terminal, trailing anyone who had found a gap through the press of travellers. The unique internal geometry of the crowd had come into play, picking first one leader and then another. Apparently passive, they regrouped and changed direction according to no obvious logic, a slime mould impelled by gradients of boredom and aimlessness.

Trying to lose them, I crossed the perimeter road. Ahead lay the Brooklands main thoroughfare, a high street of office buildings, shops and small department stores that led to the town hall. At least five hundred people were following my lead, though a few had overtaken me like pilot fish. Together we had drawn off other sections of the crowd in the Metro-Centre car parks. Groups of several hundred supporters crossed the perimeter road and set off through the side streets. Gangs of young men in St George’s shirts playfully rough-housed with each other. The Metro-Centre was forgotten, the last smoke rising from its dome, a mournful Thames Valley Vesuvius.

I walked on, keeping as close as I could to the office entrances. Within fifty yards I realized that the crowd had forgotten me. Forced together by the narrow street, everyone moved shoulder to shoulder. I had served my role, and the logic of the crowd had dispensed with me.

I RESTED INthe entrance to an insurance company and watched the people passing by, cigarettes glowing in the darkness, spray confetti arcing across the shop windows. A sound system blared out bursts of rock music. I was breathing rapidly, and felt strangely excited, as if about to make love to an unfamiliar woman, in charge of myself for the first time since my arrival in Brooklands.

And still there were no police. I passed a small car forced to stop on the pavement, roof dented by heavy fists. The grey-haired driver clutched his steering wheel, too shocked to step from his vehicle. Gangs of youths hurled beer bottles at the upstairs windows of a local newspaper, and the sound of falling glass cut through the jeers. A trio of eastern European men emerged from the doorway of an agency recruiting night cleaners for Brooklands Hospital. They were quickly set upon. Noses bloody, arms shielding their faces, they fought their way into a side street through a gauntlet of kicks and punches.

Fifty yards ahead was the main square, spotlights playing on the balcony of the town hall. A celebratory dinner for the winning sports teams was being held by the mayor and his councillors, and a film crew waited on the balcony, lights in place.

Within minutes a huge crowd of supporters filled the square, whistling and shouting at the town hall, overrunning the municipal gardens and trampling the flowerbeds. A modest cordon of uniformed constables guarded the steps of the town hall, but no other police had been drafted in, as if the near-riot moving through the streets, the burning cars and vandalized shops, were part of the evening’s festivities.

New arrivals pressed into the square, athletics teams carrying their banners, ice-hockey claques wearing their helmets and elbow guards. I edged around the fringes of the crowd, and climbed the steps of Geoffrey Fairfax’s law offices. The premises were dark, with steel grilles bolted across the doors and windows, as if the staff had been aware that a riot was scheduled for that evening.

A cheer went up from the crowd, followed by a din of hoots and whistles. Brooklands’ mayor, a prominent local businessman who was wearing his insignia and chain, came onto the balcony with the captains of two football clubs. Confused by the restless crowd, and the sight of a car burning in a nearby side street, the mayor made an effort to call for quiet, but his amplified voice was drowned by the boos. Beer bottles flew over the heads of the nervous police and shattered on the civic steps.

Then the boos ended, and the square fell silent. People around me were clapping and whistling their approval. A huge cheer went up, followed by a medley of hunting horns, good-humoured hoots and shouts.

Two men stood on the balcony behind the mayor. One was David Cruise, dressed like a bandleader in white tuxedo and red silk cummerbund, grinning broadly and raising his arms to embrace the crowd. He bowed his head, a show of modesty that struck me as odd, given that his giant face with its unrelenting smile presided over Brooklands from the display screens at the football ground. In reality, his face seemed small and vulnerable, as if the effort of shrinking himself to human size had exhausted him.

The mayor offered him the microphone, clearly hoping that Cruise would calm the crowd and defuse its anger after the attack on the Metro-Centre. The cable announcer ducked his head and tried to leave the balcony, but found his way blocked by Tony Maxted. Thuggish in his dinner jacket, shaven head gleaming in the camera lights, the psychiatrist held Cruise’s arms and turned him to face the crowd, like the senior aide of a president with the first signs of Alzheimer’s and unsure what audience he was meant to be addressing.

Scarcely loosening his grip, Maxted prompted Cruise with a few lines of dialogue, shouting them into his ear as the crowd began to jeer. Behind the two men was William Sangster, a leather bowling jacket over his evening wear. He was strained but smiling, puckering his plump cheeks as if trying to disguise himself from those in the crowd who might recognize their former head teacher. He and Maxted pushed Cruise to the balcony, each raising one of the announcer’s hands like seconds rallying a boxer who had stepped uneasily into the ring. They seemed to be urging Cruise to assume the leadership of the crowd and challenge the powers of the night who had defiled the Metro-Centre.

Cruise, however, refused to give in. He waved to the crowd, but he had switched off his smile, a gesture that seemed to say he was switching off his audience. He turned his back on the noisy square, forced his way between Maxted and Sangster, and left the balcony.

There were catcalls as the mayor took the microphone. Football rattles whirled, unheard in any stadium for years, their grating clatter like the chitter of monkeys. The crowd was restless and on the edge of its patience. Beside me, a woman and her teenage daughter, both in ice-hockey shirts, began to whistle in disgust. They needed action, without any idea what form this might take. They had waited for David Cruise to tell them and lead them forward. They would follow him, but they were just as ready to jeer and deride him. They needed violence, and realized that David Cruise was too unreal, too much an electronic illusion, a confection of afternoon television at its blandest and sweetest. They hungered for reality, a rare event in their lives, a product that Cruise could never endorse or supply.

Hoots and cheers rose around the square as Tony Maxted spoke into the microphone. But he was too thuggish, with his Roman head and mask-like face that revealed everything. The crowd wanted to be used, but in their own way. An ironic Mexican wave moved around the square in a blizzard of whistles trained by years of practice at the decisions of blind referees. A group of youths set fire to a park bench, tearing branches from the municipal shrubbery to feed the flames.

A blow struck the side of my head, almost knocking me from my feet. A huge explosion sounded from a nearby street. Everyone ducked as the flash lit the trembling windows around the square. The aftershock thrashed the trees, sucking at the air in my lungs and straining my ribs. A vacuum engulfed the night, then hurtled back into itself.

18
A FAILED REVOLUTION

EVERYONE WAS RUNNING, as if trying to chase down their fears. Panic and anger raced in a hundred directions. Within a minute the square was empty, though the town hall and nearby law offices were unharmed. The explosion jarred clouds of dust from the elderly pointing, and wraiths of vapour floated like the palest smoke, the bestirred ghosts of these antique piles.

The bomb had exploded in a narrow side street of lock-up garages, but no one was hurt, as if Brooklands was a stage set, an adventure playground haunted by malicious and incendiary children. I listened to the ambulance sirens swerving through the streets, the seesaw wail of police klaxons. Beyond them rose a louder and deeper sound, the baying of a crowd around an enemy goalmouth.

RIOT STALKED THEstreets of Brooklands for the next hour. It wore two costumes, farce and cruelty. Gangs of football supporters broke into every Asian supermarket and looted the alcohol counters, making off with crates of beer that they stacked in the streets and turned into free bars for the roaming crowd. The riot soon began to drink itself into befuddlement, but bands of more determined ice-hockey followers joined forces with track-and-field supporters and marched on an industrial estate in run-down east Brooklands, a night-time wilderness of video cameras and security patrols. Frantic attack dogs hurled themselves at the chain-link fencing, driven to a frenzy by the banner-waving marchers who tossed their looted burgers over the wire.

Waiting for the police to arrive, I followed this barely disciplined private army to a gypsy hostel beside a bus depot. The aggressive whistles and chanting terrified the exhausted Roma women trying to restrain their husbands. I left them to it, and walked back to the town hall. An overturned car burned outside the ballet school as a breakaway group of boxing supporters tried to provoke the students, whom they saw as a pampered and idle breed of dubious sexuality.

Beyond the football stadium a hard core of violent demonstrators invaded a Bangladeshi housing estate. They burned a football banner in the garden of a shabby bungalow, a fiery cross doused in petrol siphoned from the old Mercedes in the drive. When the bungalow’s owner, an Asian dentist I had seen in the hospital, opened his door to protest, he met a hail of beer cans.

Through all this pointless mayhem moved Dr Tony Maxted in his Mazda sports car, still wearing his dinner jacket like a playboy revolutionary. Whenever the riot seemed to slacken he left his car and roamed through the crowd, sharing a can of beer and leading the singsongs, filming the scene on his mobile phone. As I expected, few police appeared through the smoke and noise. They remained on the perimeter of Brooklands, keeping out any curious visitors. On the roof of the town hall I saw Sangster standing beside Superintendent Leighton, surveying the riot with the calm gaze of landowners observing their tenants at play, as if burning cars and racial brawls were boisterous recreations that suited the brutal peasantry of the motorway towns.

But the outside world had begun to take notice. Behind the town hall two police motorcyclists intercepted a BBC news team setting up their camera. They ordered the crew back into their van, told the driver to reverse and escorted the vehicle back to the M25.

A small crowd watched them go, disappointed that the Brooklands riot, the town’s only claim to fame since the 1930s, would not be on the breakfast news. In the brief silence before they found something else to attack I listened to the latest bulletin on a radio shared by two teenage girls in St George’s shirts. Street fights between rival sports fans were taking place, the reporter noted, an outbreak of England’s traditional pastime, football hooliganism. The town’s police force, he added, was on alert but was being kept in reserve.

Disappointed by their enemies, the rioters began to turn on themselves, and the night wound down into a series of drunken brawls and bored attacks on already looted premises. Turning my back on all this, I set off through the quieter side streets. I was lost, and I wanted to be. I hated the riot and the racist violence, but I knew that the crowd was disappointed by the failure of the evening to ignite and set the motorway towns ablaze. Already I guessed that the bomb placed in my Jensen had been an attempt to light a fuse. But a vital element was missing from the minds of the bored consumers who made up the Brooklands population. Marooned in their retail paradise, they lacked the courage to bring about their own destruction. The crowd outside the town hall had wanted David Cruise to lead them, but the cable presenter was too unsure of himself. The riot had ended with the frustrated mob glaring at itself in the mirror and breaking its bloodied forehead against the glass.

I knew now that we had all been manipulated by a small set of inept puppeteers. A group of prominent local citizens who felt threatened by the Metro-Centre had mounted an amateurish putsch, an attempt to turn back the clock and reclaim their ancient county from a plague of retailers. Geoffrey Fairfax, Dr Maxted, William Sangster among others, probably with the connivance of Superintendent Leighton and senior police officers, had seized the chance given them by the Metro-Centre shooting that led to my father’s death. Only a direct attack on the great shopping mall would rouse a deeply sedated population. No vandalized church or library, no ransacked school or heritage site, would touch a nerve. A violent revolt, the cordite of civil strife in suburban Surrey, would force the county council and the Home Office to react. The retail parks would close, the fox would return to his haunts, and the hunt would gallop again over abandoned dual carriageways and through the forecourts of forgotten filling stations.

Meanwhile, my martyred Jensen was on its way to the police forensics lab, and I might find myself arraigned as the instigator of a failed revolution . . .

19
THE NEED TO UNDERSTAND

A LINE OF AMBULANCES appeared through the smoke and haze, waiting outside the Accident & Emergency entrance of Brooklands Hospital. The rioters had moved down the street facing the hospital, wrecking several of the shops. The broken windows of a travel agency lay on the pavement in front of me, a glass snare ready to bite the ankles of any incautious stroller.

I picked my way through the ugly needles, and noticed a woman in a white coat who stood beside a parked car, gesturing in a vague way at the drifting smoke. Recognizing Dr Julia Goodwin, I felt a rush of pleasure in seeing her, and for a moment the whole disastrous evening fell behind me.

‘Julia? What’s happened? You look . . .’

‘Mr . . . Pearson? God, everything’s happened.’ She seemed confused, fists drumming on the car as if haranguing an obstinate patient. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve been taking part in a riot.’ I tried to calm her, holding her wrists in my hands, a pair of pulses that seemed to throb to a different beat. ‘Are you . . . ?’

‘All right? What the hell do you think?’ She wrenched her hands away from me, and noticed an ambulance driver stepping from his cab. She waved to him rather giddily, and lowered her voice, eyes swerving across the haze. ‘Richard, you’re pretty sane, some of the time. What exactly is going on?’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I haven’t the least idea.’ She stared at the car, and said matter-of-factly, as if not wholly believing herself: ‘Geoffrey Fairfax is dead.’

‘The bomb at the Metro-Centre. Tragic . . . I’m sorry for him.’

‘He was a bit of a thug, actually.’ Saying this seemed to revive her. ‘He tried to defuse the bomb.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Sergeant Falconer. An odd little fish; I wouldn’t like her interrogating me. Geoffrey must have seen the device in the bomber’s car. She says they’ll trace the owner. Who drives around with a bloody bomb in the back seat?’ She turned to me and without thinking brushed the soot from my shoulder, as if grooming a neighbour’s cat. ‘Richard, this whole place is going mad.’

‘I think that’s the idea. It didn’t really work, though.’

‘What are you talking about? Have you seen Tony Maxted and Sangster?’

‘All over the place. They’re everywhere. Practically cheerleaders.’

‘They’re trying to lower the temperature. Calm people down, and head off anything really ugly. The police are backing them.’

‘Is that what Sergeant Falconer said?’

‘More or less. She was a bit shaky, as you’d expect. I don’t know what Geoffrey Fairfax saw in her . . .’

I held Julia’s shoulders, trying to steady her when she stumbled against the car. I pointed to the hospital, as an ambulance driver switched off his engine. ‘Shouldn’t you be in—?’

‘A&E? My shift ended ten minutes ago.’ Reminded of her professional role, she eased me away and straightened her gown. ‘Thanks for the help. You’re very sweet. It’s amazing there aren’t more casualties. Kicking in windows, setting fire to cars—people in Brooklands seem to have the knack. I want to get home, but look at this . . .’

She pointed to the shattered windscreen, a spider’s web of fractured glass left by a baseball bat. Raising her head, she began to wail softly to herself.

‘Julia, we’ll call a taxi.’ I tried to take one of her hands. ‘Listen, I’ll walk you back to the hospital. Perhaps you should see someone?’

‘Who?’ My inept question stopped her in mid-breath. ‘One of the medics? Holy Jesus!’ She blew the hair out of her eyes, genuinely amazed by me. ‘Richard, I work with them all day. There isn’t one of the little shits I’d trust myself with . . .’

‘Fair enough.’ I leaned over the windscreen and used my elbow to force in the glass. ‘You can still drive the car. Just keep the speed down.’

‘Good.’ Brightening, she said: ‘I’ll give you a lift. Where’s your car?’

‘It . . . the engine blew up. They’ve taken the car away to have a look at it.’

‘Too bad. I know the feeling.’ She opened the door and swept the beads of glass from her seat. Settling herself behind the wheel, she said: ‘In the end, the street is all you can trust.’

WE DROVE THROUGHthe empty town, fragments of windscreen glass blowing onto our laps. The Metro-Centre was quiet, the last smoke rising from the overturned Land Cruiser. A fire-engine crew were hosing down another gutted vehicle in the deserted plaza. The riot had ended, as if full time had been called by a referee. A few supporters walked home, St George’s shirts tied around their waists, bare-chested husbands arm in arm with their wives. A police car cruised past them, quietly retaking the night.

Driving calmed Julia. She peered through the hole in the windscreen, and whistled at the burnt-out cars.

‘Richard, what happened here? Something new and very dangerous is going on.’

‘You’re right. The bomb at the Metro-Centre was the signal. The damage to the dome was supposed to trigger a general uprising.’

‘It did.’

‘No. Tonight was just another football riot. Maxted and Sangster are being used. I don’t know about Geoffrey Fairfax. The real people behind the bomb want street revolution, something violent and ugly, spreading to all the motorway towns. With David Cruise as the Wat Tyler of cable TV, leading a new peasants’ revolt. Then the police and Home Office will move in. Close down the dome, wheel on the cucumber sandwiches and relaunch the kingdom of Surrey.’

‘It nearly happened.’

‘Not quite. David Cruise wouldn’t take the bait. He hasn’t spent all these years in television for nothing. He could see it was a set-up.’

‘But why? I hate the damned dome, but I don’t want to kill anyone.’

‘You’ve still got your job. There are people who were doing very nicely and feel left out. Power has moved to the Metro-Centre and the retail parks along the M25. It’s a new kind of consumerism—sponsored football teams, supporters’ clubs, marching bands, stadium lights blazing all night, cable TV. A lot of people don’t like it. The police, the local council, old-style businessmen who can’t get their noses in the trough. They want to discredit the Metro-Centre, and they’ll do anything to harm it.’

‘Tony Maxted? And Bill Sangster?’

‘They’re too amateurish. For Maxted the whole thing is a case study. One day he’ll write a book and get it adapted on BBC2. Sangster is different, how and why I don’t know.’

‘I do. Listen, he’s drawn to the madness of it all. Every day he has to hold his school together, a huge effort of will. Why bother? Secretly, he’s tired. He wouldn’t mind if the whole bloody place was flushed down the loo . . .’ She reached out to grip my hand. ‘Richard, I’m sorry about Brooklands, it’s been a nightmare for you . . .’

I sat back, glad to be with this spirited and chaotic young woman, even in this shambles of a night, which had left me more confused than ever. Part of me wanted to confront Julia Goodwin about my father’s fatal injury and the mysterious role played by Duncan Christie. She wore her unease over the old man’s death like a badly tailored shroud. Emotions crowded her face, competing for space among its frowns and grimaces. Like a child, her guilty feelings played around her mouth and bared teeth, fretting her tired eyes and the muscles of her cheeks. At times, her entire personality was a courtroom sitting in judgement on herself.

When we reached my father’s flat she turned carefully into the drive, then lost her bearings in the darkness. A privet hedge thrashed what was left of the windscreen, sending a shower of sharp beads across us. I took the wheel, forced the gear lever into neutral and let the car freewheel across the gravel. Julia peered into the driving mirror, wincing at a tiny nick on her forehead.

‘You ought to look at that.’ I helped her from the car. ‘There’s an old airline first-aid kit. Have a drink while I call a taxi . . .’

I HESITATED BEFOREopening the front door of the flat, unsure how Julia would respond to my father’s presence in every leather armchair and ashtray. At first she was stiff and awkward, as if expecting him to appear and challenge her. But she seemed at home when she emerged from the bathroom, a plaster over her eyebrow. She circled the living room, warming her hands around the tumbler of brandy, smiling at the pipe stands and the chorus line of framed photographs. Had she been the last of my father’s lovers? I could imagine her in the kitchen, reminding him about his next flu jab as he cooked an omelette for her.

Surprisingly, she was at ease with me, and sat on the arm of my chair, a hand on my shoulder.

‘Richard? Are you holding on?’

‘Just about. That was one very bizarre day. I’m glad you’re here.’

‘I wanted to see it.’ She winced at the tireless seesaw of a distant alarm. ‘Richard, I warned you strange things are going on.’

‘I’m not sure what is going on. After lunch I met the local wild man of the desert—your friend Duncan Christie. Completely mad and completely sane at the same time. Then Maxted locked me up in his loony bin. I got out thanks to his blonde stooge, Sergeant Falconer, and the next thing I knew I was leading a riot. For ten minutes this huge crowd was actually following me.’

‘We have to follow someone. Poor devils, there’s nothing else in our lives.’

‘Not much, anyway. That’s why I made a very good living—everything we believe comes from advertising. Tonight was different, though. The Metro-Centre bomb was supposed to light a fuse, but it didn’t work.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t advertising anything?’

‘You’re right. There needs to be a message. Next time I’ll remember.’

‘Another wild man from the desert. Dear Jesus . . .’ She took her drink and sat on the coffee table facing me. ‘Listen, Richard. You’re waking up into the nightmare you helped to script. Go back to London. The suburbs are far too weird for you. Why did you leave your job?’

‘It left me. To tell the truth, I was sacked. Pushed out by a rival who knew all my weaknesses.’

‘How come?’

‘She was my wife. In fact, I’d reached the end of the road.’

‘With her?’

‘And with the advertising business. The economy is rolling along an endless plateau, and consumers are bored with the view. Something strange is needed to get them to sit up.’

‘How strange?’

‘Strange, and more than a little mad. That was my big idea. We even had a slogan—“Mad is bad. Bad is good.” We tried it out once, with a new micro-car, but people got killed. No one liked it after that.’

‘Terribly dull of them.’

‘That’s what I thought. Another of the great advertising breakthroughs that got nowhere.’

‘Its time will come.’ She brushed her hair back from her face, as if exposing herself to me, the removal of yet another of the veils that hung between us. ‘How well did you know your father?’

‘Hardly at all. My mother never got over his leaving her. For years she told me he had died in an air crash. Cheques would arrive on my birthday and she’d claim they came from the other side. I always thought high-street banks were outposts of heaven. The curious thing is that I’ve got to know him better since he died.’

‘I’m sure he was a fine man.’

‘He was. With one or two odd ideas.’

‘Interesting . . .’ She moved around the living room, and peered into the corridor that led to the bedrooms. ‘Can I snoop around? These days, you don’t see where your patients live.’

I followed her into the kitchen, and watched as she glanced at the modest array of herbs and spices. She patted the basil plant I had bought, tore off a leaf and raised it to a nostril. She was tired but stylish, clearly moved by the memories of the old man she had tried to keep alive for a few last hours. I trailed after her, already roused by her scent, a perfume of her own distilled from beauty, bloody-mindedness and chronic fatigue.