The Missing World Read online

  “Where’s Flopsy?” he demanded, unzipping his anorak.

  His father said something about a meeting in Glasgow.

  “But what about Flopsy?”

  His father puffed on his inhaler, a habit Jonathan hated, and stretched out a hand. “She disappeared. I’m sorry, Johnny, there was an accident, six cars in the fog. She bolted. I called and called but she never came.”

  “She’ll be all right,” his mother added quickly. She was at the sink, peeling potatoes. “She’ll find a family who’ll take good care of her. Would you like some cake?”

  “We have to go and fetch her,” said Jonathan, struggling back into his anorak. “She’ll come if I call. I know she will.”

  “Our car’s at the garage.” His father kept looking not at Jonathan but at his mother.

  “We can borrow one. The Dawsons will lend you theirs. We have to go now, before it gets dark. She’ll be scared all alone.”

  But his parents had refused, stubbornly and absolutely, and at last grown so angry that they sent him to his room.

  “It was the worst night of my life,” he had told Hazel over supper at Standard Tandoori. “Every half hour I tiptoed downstairs to see if Flopsy was on the doorstep. In the morning, I pretended to go to school and caught the bus to Hawick and then on to Glasgow. I asked the driver to let me off at Sutra. Whereabouts, he said. The beginning, I said, the very beginning. So he set me down in this godforsaken place, bleak grassland as far as the eye could see, and I started walking, calling for Flopsy. After about five miles a policeman picked me up.…”

  To his surprise and embarrassment, he had been unable to continue.

  “You poor boy,” Hazel said. “She was probably killed in the accident, wasn’t she?”

  “Killed?” Gazing into her clear blue eyes, Jonathan had thought, of course. What else could explain his parents’ hardheartedness? They’d blurted out the lie to make him feel better and been too ashamed to take it back. Meanwhile, month after month, he had waited. He’d heard of animals finding their way home over hundreds of miles; why not his beloved Flopsy a mere thirty?

  As he reached across the papadums for Hazel’s hand, not only his parents and Flopsy and his younger self were illuminated by the light of her understanding, but also his older self, of whom, so often recently, he had despaired.

  By midnight the crowd in Accident and Emergency had thinned. The bearded man had sauntered off, still singing, and most of the pubgoers had mysteriously vanished. Those who remained seemed to wait with neither hope nor expectation. When Jonathan tried to picture Hazel now, all he could see was her turning away as he entered a room; shrinking at his touch; muttering into the phone, I have to go, he’s home. Better not to think of her at all, if this was the best he could do. Better to say multiplication tables or recite the names of rival insurance companies than to recall the aberrant Hazel of these last few months.

  He was debating whether to check with reception again when the outside door opened. A gurney appeared, propelled by an ambulance man, followed by three policemen. Wheels squeaking, it swept past within a yard. Only the feet, clean and remarkably white, were visible beneath the grey blanket. Jonathan stared at the neatly cut toenails. My god, he thought almost aloud, those are the feet of a dead man.

  chapter 2

  Jonathan glimpsed a field, stone walls, and sheep before the present rushed in, obliterating the dreamscape. While he was dozing, something dreadful had befallen Hazel; his inattention had been fatal. The awful thought of never seeing her again paralysed him. Then another part of him emerged from the fear. They would have woken me, he told himself, if anything had happened. He struggled out of the orange chair and went over to the water fountain to rinse his mouth with the dirty-tasting water. Back in his seat, he saw that Accident and Emergency had filled up again, a greyer, quieter crowd than before. Only one other person from the previous evening was still there, a middle-aged woman in a puffy purple jacket. Unblinking, unyawning, she sat poker-straight, gloved hands clasped in her lap. Perhaps her vow, Jonathan thought, had been not to move until good news arrived. Her angular features suggested furious concentration.

  The whoomf of the double doors interrupted his speculations, and a white-coated man headed for reception. Jonathan leaned forward—“Hazel,” he murmured—but after a brief exchange the man loped away with a snort of laughter. In his wake, Jonathan approached the desk and discovered that the television watcher had been replaced by a woman his own age. A plume of frizzy brown hair waved over her formidable horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Hazel Ransome … I’m afraid she hasn’t recovered consciousness yet. Why don’t you go and get a cup of tea?” Her plume bobbed. “I’ll page the cafeteria if there’s any change.”

  “Thank you,” he said, relieved to be told what to do, and gave his name again.

  Turning, he caught a trace of perfume and almost collided with the sleek-suited woman waiting to take his place. Her perfunctory smile, a mere twitch of the lips, brought home his own dishevelled state. His denim shirt and black cords, perfectly acceptable yesterday, were now not only crumpled from his night in a chair but also, mysteriously, ill-fitting. His slippers did nothing to help. And of course there was his fast-growing stubble, which in happier times Hazel had claimed made him look like an American film star.

  In the cafeteria a slight, turbaned man presided over an immense teapot. Using both hands, he poured a cup and, after studying it, added more hot water to the pot, as if constant titration were the essence of his job. To his own surprise Jonathan asked if it was still snowing.

  “I think not.” The man lowered the pot. “Rain as usual.”

  “The papers claim we’re having a drought.”

  “Drought,” the man sniffed, suggesting a superior and very different understanding of the word.

  Another customer appeared. Jonathan helped himself to a scone and moved on to the cashier. Most of the people in the low-ceilinged room were hospital staff chatting over what was either breakfast or supper. He chose a table with a single nurse, slender, mousey-haired, eating a yoghurt in tidy bites. Jonathan eyed her longingly; could he ask her about Hazel? He was poised to introduce himself when the PA growled—“Nurse Granger to orthopaedic … Nurse Bernadette Granger to orthopaedic”—and she was on her feet, licking her spoon and picking up her bag.

  At last the sky began to lighten and the tea was gone. Jonathan stopped at a phone to dial Steve and Diane’s number.

  “Hello, Steve. Sorry to ring so early.”

  “Who is this?”

  After nearly twenty years Steve still did not recognise his voice on the phone. It doesn’t mean anything, Hazel used to say, but Jonathan could never quite banish the idea that this failure in his oldest friend proceeded from a secret wellspring of dislike. Now he identified himself and, cutting through Steve’s exclamations, summarised the last twelve hours.

  “Tell me again,” Steve said. “You were talking and … did she have a stroke? This is terrible.”

  “Not a stroke. Seizures. They’re still trying to find the cause.”

  “Poor Hazel—don’t do that, Katie. Sorry. Have you rung her parents?”

  “Her parents?” His gaze fell on a notice next to the phone. IN CASE OF FIRE DO NOT PANIC. DO NOT RUN. PROCEED CALMLY TO THE NEAREST EXIT, CLOSING WINDOWS AND DOORS BEHIND YOU. “Of course not. Hazel speaks to them twice a year and that’s when things are going well. Besides, it’s not like they could help, up in Kendall.”

  “Phone them,” said Steve. “Don’t be a martyr. I know you’d do anything for Hazel, but she isn’t your responsibility. There might be decisions.… Hang on.”

  Jonathan watched the pence tick away: fifteen, thirteen. At nine Steve was back. “Sorry. Give a shout if we can help. Anything. Any time.”

  In his address book Jonathan turned to the Ransomes’ number. How happy he had been when Hazel gave it to him and urged him to call when she went to stay for the weekend. She had started, he remembered, to di
ctate the number but, eager to possess another small piece of her, he’d passed her his book. I have a terrible scrawl, she said. In China I would’ve been an old maid. During the last few months he had scarcely known whether to welcome or repudiate these memories, they came barbed with such pain. Now, gazing at her untidy 5s, her tipsy 7s, he thought life was once again making sense.

  Back in the waiting room, the receptionist shook her head. He sat down in the nearest chair and picked up a discarded newspaper. Satellite observation showed that spring in the Northern Hemisphere was arriving a week earlier. What effect, he wondered, would this have on his bees? An insurance scam was likely to give some of the frauds he dealt with fresh ideas. But after a couple of paragraphs his concentration fizzled. All he could think of was Hazel clawing the wall, her skin jumping beneath his touch. Surely there would be news soon.

  At nine o’clock, desperate to pass five more minutes, he went to ring his office. The manager, an elfin woman he’d never seen without a cup of Earl Grey, answered. Even the syllables “Com-et In-sur-ance” seemed to carry a whiff of bergamot. Over the years he had watched her listen to countless tales of ruin and disaster with implacable calm—You need to fill out section 18c, sir; That’s dealt with in the appendix to G6—but as soon as he said that his wife had been hit by a car, she burst into a flurry of commiseration. He started to explain about his appointments and she chased him off the phone.

  Then he went to the bathroom. Wife, he thought, I’ve got a nerve. But she hadn’t called him on it. He was not, as Steve suggested, pursuing martyrdom—quite the contrary. The Hazel who tore at the walls, foamed at the mouth, and said “caracals” was closer to his beloved than the harsh, strident woman who had moved out of their house and threatened to get an unlisted number if he didn’t stop calling. As he rubbed the soap between his palms, Jonathan allowed himself to hope that at long last the cloud of rage which had settled over Hazel, distorting everything he said and did, was lifting.

  A few miles away, in another part of the city, Charlotte stared at her visitor, aghast. Ever since her sister dropped in last autumn, she’d had a firm rule about uninvited callers, but at least she need not compound the error of opening the door by allowing her landlord even one step inside. Barely taller than she was, with a belly as high and round as if he’d swallowed a beach ball, Mr. Aziz was smiling in a way that made her clutch her coat more tightly over her nightdress.

  “Miss Granger,” he said with a little bow that somehow did not involve his belly, “there seems to be a problem with the post.” In his hand he held a stack of envelopes, presumably collected from the ledge in the hall where mail for Charlotte, and the house’s three other tenants, piled up.

  Ignoring the envelopes, Charlotte began to babble. “I’ve been away, doing the Christmas pantomime in York—Peter Pan. I was Wendy. Didn’t you get my note?”

  “Oddly, no, but here we are. It’s four months since you paid rent. Am I to assume”—his small brown eyes grew even smaller—“that you are moving out?”

  Would crying help? Or was the high road of indignation better? Her heart was pounding so violently it was all she could do to hold her ground. “No,” she managed, and louder, firmer, “No, I’m not.”

  “So I will have a banker’s cheque by the end of the week?”

  “I swear.” Then, as her hand closed around the letters, she realised the recklessness of her promise. “The end of the month,” she amended. “When the theatre pays me.”

  Mr. Aziz, frowning, reached into his pocket and produced a diary. “Three weeks. You are asking me to wait three weeks for four months’ rent, five by that time.”

  “Please, I’ve been a good tenant. No fuss, no repairs. If I get the money sooner, so will you. But by the end of the month, for sure.” Cross my heart, she almost added. Instead she concentrated on parting her lips and letting her coat fall open, just an inch, a damsel in distress.

  For a long moment Mr. Aziz continued to regard her. Then, with the briefest of sighs, he closed the diary. “I suppose I’ve waited this long. But I warn you, Miss Granger—”

  “No need,” Charlotte interrupted gaily. “Thank you, thank you. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I was about to take a bath.” In one swift movement, she stepped back, closed and secured the door. Heart still pounding, she pressed her ear to the wood and listened to his footsteps, oddly light and regular, descend the stairs.

  An hour later, having skipped the bath but fully dressed, Charlotte had something that resembled a plan. All this kerfuffle, she thought, reaching into her bag, past a National Theatre brochure, a free sample of soap, an apple core eaten down to the pips, and a hairbrush, was simply a matter of sums. In the seam of lint at the bottom, her fingers rooted out a coin, several coins, but not, alas, the pleasant chubbiness of a pound. She laid the two fifty-pence pieces and a ten on a corner of the futon. If she sublet her flat to a student—better still, two students—and moved in with her sister, just until summer, she would be able to catch up on the rent, get a good haircut and new publicity photos, pay off her debts. Well, not the bank maybe, but interest rates were down, and surely the manager could see his way to extending her loan. Amortising: it had such a nice solid sound.

  Picturing Bernadette, Charlotte felt some of her satisfaction slip away. Bernie would lecture, she would scold, she would carve out her kilo of flesh, but Charlotte, for once, would hold her tongue. With Mr. Aziz at the door and Bernie her only living relative, what choice had she? Not my only living relative, she corrected. She had, once again, forgotten not merely their impossible parents but the rug-rats. That Bernie’s bonking Rory had somehow created two new people with a claim on her was hard to keep in mind. Aunt. The very word was a wail of pain.

  But weren’t the rug-rats grist for her mill? She picked a pair of tights off the floor by the television and draped them along the bookcase. She could hear herself telling Bernie, in crisp Oxbridge tones, what a good thing it would be for Oliver and Melissa to have their aunt around during this difficult time. Stability is so important for children. She would take them to museums and matinees, encourage their artistic pursuits. Oliver, at eight, was a bit of a bully, but Melissa, six and a half, had real dramatic talents and, so far, seemed to have escaped Bernie’s suffocating neatness of spirit. “Order,” Charlotte announced to the cluttered room, “is the enemy of art.” She turned her attention to the armchairs, in whose crevices the odd coin sometimes lurked.

  The bus for Oxford Circus was pulling away as she reached the stop. Bollocks, and all her own fault for being seduced by a cushion in the skip at the corner: red embroidery, African looking, probably thrown out by the tasteful lawyer couple two doors down. Not daring to leave it until later, Charlotte had dusted it off and carried it home. Now a good ten minutes passed before another bus came shouldering through the traffic. Only to Marble Arch, but on she hopped and, good news, the conductor was upstairs. Maybe everything did have meaning. At first there seemed to be no seats. Then she spotted one next to a schoolgirl.

  The girl gave a little sigh and drew close to the window. Nicely making room, Charlotte chose to think. She settled her capacious bag on her lap and glanced over at the notebook the girl was holding. Why does Iago hate Othello? was written across the top of the page.

  “Are you doing Othello?” she asked.

  “Yes.” The girl leaned even closer to the window.

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “I know it,” the girl said sharply. “I just can’t think how to put it.” She twisted the point of her Biro into the page.

  My younger self, thought Charlotte. The bus braked abruptly and jerked forward. “If I were answering,” she said, “which, thank goodness, I’m not, I might say, ‘Iago claims to hate Othello because of a rumour that Othello has slept with his wife, but that does not entirely explain his vehemence. There is an unreasoning quality to his hatred, perhaps inspired by Othello’s nobility.’ ”

  The girl was scribbling furiously. “A what quali
ty?”

  “Unreasoning. You might mention race, but I’m not sure I remember what Iago says about that. Are there more questions?”

  “Two. ‘Why does Othello believe Iago’s lies about Desdemona?’ And ‘What does Othello realise after he’s killed Desdemona?’ ”

  “Who on earth gave you these? They’re pathetic.”

  “Miss Groper. Do you have the answers?”

  “Groper!” Charlotte stifled the jokes everyone else must have made. “I can certainly come up with something.” As with many plays, she was much more familiar with the second half of Othello than the first, owing to her habit of slipping into theatres at the interval and settling herself, sans ticket, in an empty seat. “The real reason Othello believes Iago is that that’s the plot and Shakespeare needs to get on with the play, but Groper would probably have a fit if you said anything so postmodern. Maybe, ‘In spite of Othello’s protestations that he is not jealous by nature he experiences twinges almost as soon as Iago hints at Desdemona’s infidelity. He is subsequently convinced of her guilt by seeing Cassio with the handkerchief.’ ”

  Before she could launch into a disquisition on Act V a cry came: “Fares, please. Fares.” Charlotte sat very still, but as the conductor approached she felt the girl’s eyes upon her. Caught between the two, she handed over a precious fifty pence.

  “What handkerchief?” the girl said, closing her book. “This is my stop.”

  Charlotte quickly listed the handkerchief’s various owners. “Can you remember all that?”

  “Of course.” With a shy smile, the girl squeezed past and was gone.

  Alone, Charlotte allowed herself and her possessions to sprawl across the seat. A cushion and Othello before ten in the morning; surely such good fortune justified the dearer coffeehouse. Then she remembered Mr. Aziz, his absurd belly and small brown eyes, his diary ticking like a time bomb.

  On their rare previous visits to London, Hazel’s parents had struck Jonathan as out of their depth. Brisk, upright country people, the pointless busyness of the city stymied them. What was it all for, this huddling together amidst noise and litter, they seemed to ask. They endured the activities Hazel organised—an exhibition, a play—dutifully expressing pleasure but never losing the air that the zenith of their visit would be the moment at Euston when they boarded the train back to the Lake District and their useful lives.