The Gap of Time Page 9

  —

  And then everything happened in slow motion and too fast.

  —

  MiMi and Pauline driving to the house in Little Venice.

  MiMi running from room to room, shouting LEO! LEO!

  Milo on his own at Pauline’s when the phone rang and it was Tony.

  Milo heard the answer machine: “Pauline, it’s Tony. I can’t go to Kew today. I’m on my way to the airport. Sorry.”

  Milo called Pauline to tell her. He could hear his mother in the background. “Why is Tony at the airport?”

  Milo put down the phone. There was a man lived in an airport.

  Soon after, the doorbell rang. It was Leo.

  “Mummy’s looking for you,” said Milo.

  “We’re going away for a few days. To Munich. See Granddad.”

  “Is Mummy coming?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll stay here, I think,” said Milo.

  Leo was angry. “We’re going together. I’ve packed for you. Get whatever you want from here—not too much—and come on.”

  In the car Milo was silent. Then he said, “Where’s Perdita?”

  “She’s fine.”

  Leo had booked a flight to Berlin. He wasn’t planning to see his father. He just wanted to get away. And when they got back, MiMi would have realised that everything was for the best.

  But MiMi had already called the police to say that her husband was trying to leave the country with their baby.

  “I don’t see how Tony’s involved,” said Pauline. “His phone’s going straight to voicemail.”

  —

  Leo was in the queue at Passport Control. The man checking documents asked him to stand aside a moment. The next thing he knew, three policemen were asking what he’d done with the baby.

  Then it happened.

  Leo arguing with the police. The police arguing with Leo. All big guys. All at the same height. The little Indian passport-checker was trying to pretend that nothing was happening as he processed other people coming through, all staring at Leo.

  The police were confused because Leo had no baby. Leo said his wife had post-natal depression. He was taking their son on holiday to give her a break. The police looked at Milo’s passport—is this your father? Yes.

  The big guys went back to arguing—no one cared about Milo.

  There was a man lived in an airport.

  Milo moved steadily, quietly backwards, away from them, their backs to him in an angry circle. No one would notice.

  Milo was round the corner and going towards the security lanes. There was a family over in Lane Four. He ran over to them—if anyone saw him they thought he was just catching up. He put his backpack on the metal conveyor belt. He walked through the metal detector. He looked round. He was in the airport. Maybe he could find Tony.

  Tony was in New Bohemia.

  He liked the palm trees planted down the middle of the roads. He wondered if there was a botanical gardens. He had a free day tomorrow before his flight.

  The sky was low and overcast. The heat was as close and intense as a sauna. He took off his suit jacket but he didn’t loosen his tie. He didn’t want to look sloppy.

  Supermoon tonight, the man at the car rental told him. She’s closer to the earth than normal—gonna be weather with her. Nice baby.

  Tony got in the BMW. It was not like his Nissan. He thought he might use some of the £50,000 to buy a new car. Pauline had an Audi. She wouldn’t want to be driven about in a Nissan. He had a feeling he should have told Pauline what he was doing.

  Wide freeways. Tall buildings. Billboards advertising prime-time TV shows. Square, miserable social housing hung over the fast, hostile roads. Flophouses on the outskirts of the city. Drive in for $40 a room, 2 sharing. All-u-can-eat breakfast. He idled in traffic on the bridge. The construction work covered his windscreen in cement dust like talcum powder. He could smell fried onions and diesel.

  As he drove into the heart of the city he heard music everywhere—from cars, buildings, street corners, bars. Two boys were washing car windscreens at the traffic lights. One was sitting on an upturned metal bucket drumming on the bucket in front of him with the Squeezee. Tony was nervous and exhilarated; he’d never been out of England. The only holidays he took were walking holidays in Scotland.

  —

  Tony pulled into the car park of the bank. They were expecting him. They took him into a private room, checked his passport and the documents from Leo and gave him the money in a case. He signed for it. He asked them if they could direct him to a particular address. One of the younger men on the team seemed watchful and shifty. He wrote down the address. Said he’d look it up. Tony didn’t like him.

  When Tony got back to the car, Perdita was whimpering in small, exhausted gulps. He had left her on the backseat because he didn’t know what else to do. He had bundled his coat in the footwell in case she rolled over.

  The baby had cried a lot on the plane. The British Airways staff had changed her for him and fed her but she was complaining deeper than food and sleep and wetness. Tony wondered if it was all right to take a baby from its mother so soon.

  At least she would soon be with her father.

  Tony sat in the back of the car and called the number Leo had given him for Xeno. It was disconnected. Tony called Leo. There was no answer.

  Perdita was crying full-throttle now so Tony started to sing to her in Spanish. She seemed to like that. Tony added the velvet bag Leo had given him to the money in the case. And there was a piece of sheet music to go in too. He put it all together, sang a bit more until the baby fell asleep, then he drove to the address in his wallet.

  It wasn’t far out of town. A pretty suburb. The house was old colonial-style with an ironwork balcony over the first storey. There was an SUV on the drive. Tony got out. The rain had stopped. He could hear thunder somewhere but a long way off.

  He rang the doorbell. Xeno must be expecting him by now.

  For a long time no one answered. Tony walked round the back with Perdita, admiring the subtropical planting. Then a woman appeared at the back door. Spanish by the look of her. She didn’t speak English well so Tony spoke to her in Spanish. No, Mr. Xeno not here. Los Angeles. No back till ten days.

  Tony got on the phone again to Leo. Still no answer. He went back to the car, sitting in the front with the door open. He had only enough milk for one more feed. Hospital. He should take the baby to a hospital, just to get her fed and changed and checked out. They would do that. Then he’d go to the hotel and wait till he could speak to Leo.

  It was when he was leaving Xeno’s house that he noticed the car across the street.

  —

  At the hotel they were helpful. Yes, the room was pre-paid. Yes, the hospital was just a couple of miles away.

  Tony was suddenly exhausted. He went upstairs with Perdita. He took off her Babygro, vest, nappy. She was red and chafed between the legs. He thought he would bath her. If she were a plant he would be watering her. Bathing was a kind of watering, wasn’t it?

  He ran the bath, carefully checking the temperature. He swung her in gently, sleeves rolled up, kneeling on the floor. He held her in both hands in the water, swooshing her back and forth. His mother must have done this to him, mustn’t she? Before the water dried up and there was no more love.

  The baby seemed to like being bathed. Maybe I could have been a father, he thought. But that would have needed a mother…

  Once she was dried and changed and fed, Tony lay down with her on the bed. They both fell deeply asleep.

  —

  It was the door to his room opening that woke him. The room was dark. He saw the light from the corridor. A man’s shape. Someone from the hotel? The person was coming in but they didn’t put on the light. “Hello?” he called. “Hello?” He reached out and flipped down the overhead switch. There was a man there in an anorak. The door closed swiftly as he left. What was the time?

  Already midnight.

 
; He checked his phone—nothing from Leo. No messages on the hotel phone either. He sent a text: CALL TONY. URGENT.

  Perdita was stirring. He must get her food. He showered and shaved as though it were morning, even though it was late at night. He put his trousers in the trouser press. Clean shirt. He was about to leave with the sleepy, grumbling baby when he decided to take the attaché case.

  Downstairs it was just the night staff on the desk. He asked for his car to be brought round. Outside, waiting for his car, the baby in his arms, he saw the moon. He had never seen the moon so big. She looked like she was coming in to land. The moon lit up the baby in his arms like a pearl.

  —

  He set off towards the Sainta Maria hospital.

  As he drove away from the hotel he saw that car again. He knew it was the same one.

  At the first red light he tried to see them in the mirror. Two men.

  He tried a few turns—the car stayed with him; yes, this was trouble.

  At the hospital he pulled into the disabled parking right at the door, took Perdita and the case and went in. The bright lights disoriented him but there was a friendly man on the desk, and when he explained and said he would pay, there appeared to be no problem with his strange midnight request.

  A nurse soon came down, swinging up Perdita with expert femaleness. The nurse seemed to believe all his story about being the grandfather, bringing the baby back to his son, son’s flight late, mother unwell. Yes, unwell.

  “We have a BabyHatch here,” said the nurse, “saddest thing you ever saw but better than being left on a street corner or in a tram car, I guess.”

  “A child should be wanted,” said Tony.

  “Yes, sir,” said the nurse, her quick fingers changing and dressing Perdita. The nurse gave Tony a couple of bottles of formula milk to heat up and a spare set of nappies. It would be enough till they got the plane home, he thought. They could go to the botanic gardens after all.

  He was heading down the steps towards his car when he saw them. Two of them. In the shadows near the BMW. They hadn’t seen him yet—they were leaning against a truck, smoking. He knew they were waiting for him.

  He went back in. There was an exit sign pointing to the side of the hospital. He’d go that way. Leave the car. Get a cab.

  As he came out of the hospital the sky split and the rain started. The baby was crying. He took off his suit jacket and wrapped her up. This was crazy. The water was so thick it was splashing up to his knees. He should go back in. He ran back to the exit door but it was a one-way only. He rattled the wet bar, already soaked through. He kept on walking round the building—he couldn’t risk the front entrance. Then he saw it lit up.

  The BabyHatch.

  It was a five-second lifetime decision. He opened the hatch. He could feel the gentle warmth. He unwrapped Perdita from his jacket and put her in. Then he put the attaché case in with her. He could hardly see what he was doing with the rain making him into a waterfall, but he closed the hatch just enough so that he could open it again, wedging his pen in the top where it would have closed shut. All he had to do now was get to the car and come back for her. They were after the money. He’d tell them it was in the hotel. Give them his key. Then he’d drive straight to the airport. He had his passport in his jacket. The rest didn’t matter.

  —

  The hospital car park was quiet. Tony reached his car. There was no one around. He turned onto the street and that was when the headlights hit him from the front. He reversed. The car came after him. He swerved direct again, put his foot down to pull away and heard the shot. Then the wheel jerked out of his hands as the front tyre burst and he hit the wall.

  The men were at the car.

  One of them dragged him out. Hit him. Hit him again. The other one was searching the car. Tony hit back, lost his footing in the water that was over his shoes; he fell, knocked his head. As he was losing consciousness he heard another car. Another shot. Someone took his hand. “Pauline,” he said or thought he said.

  “We should wait for the cops.”

  “He’s dead.”

  So many stories of lost and found.

  As though the whole of history is a vast Lost-Property Department.

  Perhaps it began when the moon splintered off from the earth, pale, lonely, watchful, present, unsocial, inspired. Earth’s autistic twin.

  And all the stories of twins begin. Pairs who can’t be separated but can’t be together. Of shut-outs and lock-outs, and feuds and broken hearts and lovers who think they are immortal until one of them dies.

  Paradise stories—part moon, part womb. Two planets spinning off in space. The mother-ship. Atlantis. Eden. Heaven. Valhalla. Brave new world. There must be another world.

  We set off in boats. The stars were lights on the tops of the masts. We didn’t know that stars are like fossils, imprints of the past, sending light like a message, like a dying wish.

  We set off in boats, thought we’d sail to the rim of the world and slip over the edge like a raft on a waterfall, spinning to the place we knew existed, if we dared to find it.

  It must be here somewhere.

  The missingness of the missing. We know what that feels like. Every endeavour, every kiss, every stab in the heart, every letter home, every leaving, is a ransack of what’s in front of us in the service of what’s lost.

  —

  In the sky, Planet Moon is 239,000 miles away.

  That’s not far when you remember that the sun is 93 million miles away.

  But if you were standing on red Mars it would look as though blue earth and pale moon were twins sitting side by side, heads together, bent over a book. Never separated in time.

  The moon controls earth’s tides. The daily ebb and flow of our life here. And because of the moon, earth’s climate is stable. Moon’s gravitational pull means that earth doesn’t wobble too much. Scientists call it obliquity. The moon holds us fast.

  —

  The early separation of earth-moon, hundreds of millions of years before life of any kind happened on earth, has no reason to be the grand motif of our imagination. But it is.

  —

  There are thirteen moons every calendar year.

  They measure time differently on the moon.

  The moon orbits the earth once every 28 days

  As though she’s looking for something she lost.

  A long time ago.

  Saturday morning. Spring day.

  —

  The Fleece occupied a high plot of ground with a long view down to a small road that led, winding and particular, to the highway. Beyond lay the river, like possibilities, like plans, wide as life when you are young and don’t know that plans, rivers, possibilities must sooner or later empty into the ocean beyond.

  But today there is no beyond.

  The long tables in the garden were spread with white cloths. Over the tables were light steel frames hung with Chinese lanterns to be lit when the sun went down.

  Clo had repainted the peeling benches, burnt and sweated in the heat, and spliced new ropes on the swingboats where the couples liked to sway, lazy in the lowering sun.

  —

  Perdita had kicked Clo out of his bed early that morning and sent him shopping.

  “What am I supposed to buy him?”

  “Use your imagination!”

  “That’s real cruel because I don’t do imagination!”

  Clo was over six feet tall and built like a wrestler. Baseball cap on backwards, shades slotted down the front of his T-shirt, jeans stuffed into oversized skater boots, he was throwing cushions around searching for his phone when Perdita handed it to him. “I put the list of stuff in your phone,” she said. “Buy what we need, and then—just see what happens.”

  “You’d better pray for me that something happens.”

  Perdita poured him coffee. Clo drank it down. “How come you run this household?”

  “You want the job?”

  Clo looked down onto the top of
her head—he was at least a foot taller than Perdita. He gave her a hug. She hugged him back. He was turning to go. “Hey—what you get Dad for his birthday?”

  “A harmonica,” said Perdita.

  “Why didn’t I think of that?”

  —

  Clo got into his Chevy Silverado, dropped his shades, turned up the music, slid down the window and set off along the winding dust road to the highway. The skyline of the city broke the horizon line in the distance. The early sun reflecting off the steel and glass turned the buildings into gold ingots. The air was fresh and starting to warm.

  Saturday morning. Spring day.

  EXIT HERE FOR AUTOS LIKE US:

  It was the first turn off the highway as you left Bear County.

  There was a sign:

  PICK A CAR! ANY CAR!

  Autolycus was a dealer. A wheeler-dealer. A dealer in wheels. A soapbox salesman with a silver tongue.

  Autolycus. Part Budapest, part New Jersey. Chutzpah of Old Europe meets chutzpahdick of the New World.

  Autolycus: ponytail, goatee beard, cowboy boots, string tie. Part crook, part sage.

  —

  It was the up-wing doors of the DeLorean that Clo saw as he drove along the highway in his Chevy. Clo pulled in ahead of the DeLorean and got out. Autolycus was bending over the rear engine. Steam from the radiator and gasket head hid what was left of his tiny body not concealed by the up-shot gull-wing doors of the car.

  “Is that the car from that movie Back to the Future?”

  Autolycus straightened up, his eyes reading Clo’s amiable, open face as he stood, sunglasses in hand, tall over the low-slung car and its high-strung owner.

  “You got a hammer?”

  “You want to use a hammer on a car like this?”

  “I want to use it to smash my head in. I was screwed by the guy who sold it to me. I’m too honest.”

  “I can give you a ride if you want.”

  “That’s a pretty truck you got there. I like a Chevy. Brand-new.”

  “Yeah—we had a good year last year at the Fleece. You been there?”

  “The Fleece? That’s your place?”