Chapter Three #3
altercation, the lengthy exchange of insurance details. He had a
sense of sands running through a glass, time running out. Why? It
was nerves only, the feel of the strange car, ice forming under the
wheels. Sasha must have survived winter nights before. Probably he
had found shelter—sold his soul to Christian Outreach in exchange
for a bed, and maybe not such a bad bargain as Laurie had thought,
not on a night like this.
The
Strand broadened out to the multilaned chaos of Trafalgar Square,
and he concentrated on negotiating around it, keeping to the inside
until he could escape and go back the way he had come. A fine hail
was beginning to fleck the windscreen, bouncing and stinging,
floating veils of light across the square. Nelson’s Column drifted
in and out of view. Just a little farther, indicating left and
moving with the mix of assertion and courtesy he’d learned from
Charlie, lane after lane and back out onto the Strand in the
opposite direction, past coffee shops and all-night grocery
stores.
There. Not Sasha but Gyorgy, barely
distinguishable from the group of black plastic bags where he had
taken refuge. Laurie was sure of it; every detail of that sunny
afternoon on the Embankment was crisp in his memory. Every word.
“He’s one of us.”
Right. Gripping the wheel, Laurie prayed the solidarity extended to
the pavement, to places to get through the night. Snapping the
Daimler’s hazards on, ignoring the chorus of bus and taxi horns
that immediately began in his wake, he pulled to a halt, got out
wearing his mother’s mask of blue-blooded thunder—what Hannah had
once less politely referred to as his fuck-off face—and indicated
to them, with one brusque gesture, that they should just damn well
go past him. Resisting the urge to vault the Daimler’s front end,
he walked around instead, blinking in the rainy headlights, and
cautiously approached the old man.
“Gyorgy?”
He was
sleepy. It took him a moment to look up. Half-blinded by dazzle, it
took Laurie almost ten seconds to work out that he was cradling
Sasha in his lap.
“Christ,” he whispered and dropped to his knees among the bags.
Sasha was barely more than a loose arrangement of bones and old
clothes in the old man’s arms, drained of the bright energy which,
in the riverside sunlight, had made him look almost strong. “What’s
wrong with him?”
Gyorgy
raised an eyebrow. He did not seem much surprised to see Laurie
here. “Cold,” he said simply. “Too much cold for the young ones
tonight.” He made an effort to close the dirty blanket over Sasha’s
chest. “More blood in them to freeze than in old men like me. You
see?”
“Yes. I see.” Laurie barely could, for sudden tears. “Is
he…?”
The old
man made no attempt to reply to the half-formed question but lifted
his burden a little, as if proffering him in Laurie’s direction so
that he could find out for himself. Laurie reached out shaking
fingers to touch the pulse at Sasha’s neck.
Yes.
Alive. Skin like a fridge-cooled peach. Laurie took a deep breath.
“Listen,” he said. “I want to take him away, off the street. I
swear to you, I won’t hurt him.”
Gyorgy’s
dark brow rucked. “Not mine to give or keep,” he said. “But he
won’t sell his soul, gajo.”
“I know. I don’t want it. I just don’t want him to die here.
Help me?”
Together
they got him to his feet. He came around a little at the movement
and regarded Laurie with unseeing eyes. Laurie saw with a pang that
frost had caught in his lashes. Quickly Laurie ducked beneath the
arm Gyorgy was holding and drew it over his shoulders. “There. I’ve
got you. Don’t be scared.” Taking most of Sasha’s weight, he turned
to the old man. “Thank you. What can I do for you? Where can you
go?”
“With you, wouldn’t hurt,” came the rasping reply, and for one
wild moment Laurie considered it. Why the fuck not? The Daimler
would take six, the house in Mayfair probably fifty if it was used
to capacity. Maybe he should just harvest up as many as he could,
drop them at Sir William’s feet, and let him deal with
it.
But
Gyorgy was backing away, grinning, waving a hand. “Tenner keeps me
in St. Martin’s overnight, boy. They let you stay as long as you
can buy their coffee.”
Laurie
handed him twenty, not so much generosity as the fact that he had
nothing smaller—seldom did—that anything smaller felt like loose
change to him, scarcely useful as currency. He opened the Daimler’s
passenger door, pushed it wide with one foot, and eased Sasha in.
The leather-scented warmth breathing out into the night was
suddenly intoxicating to him, even after such short exposure to the
bitter dark. Sasha took a startled breath and opened his eyes wide,
stiffened from head to foot in a kind of convulsion of terror, and
tried to launch himself straight back out onto the street, as if
the night, however deadly, must be preferable to falling into a
stranger’s hands. God alone knew what he thought was happening to
him—abduction, arrest…
“It’s just me,” Laurie said helplessly.
The
confused gaze found him and focused. “Laurie!”
“Yes. Just hang on. I’m going to get help for you.”
But where from? Laurie thought a normal person might know, one
who went to ordinary hospitals from time to time instead of
discreet private healthcare clinics in leafy suburbs. He glanced
around for signs that might jog his memory. Charing Cross was
nearby, but the station and the hospital were in two different
parts of the city, weren’t they? A choking panic rose in him. He
had only thought as far as getting Sasha into the car—that fantasy
of transfiguring cold into warmth for him, giving him refuge, like
Laurie was some alchemical magician or god. He hadn’t thought what
he would do with a dying boy in the passenger seat beside him. He
put out a hand. He remembered how Sasha’s had closed on his wrist
beneath the bridge. Fuck, Sasha didn’t
have to think twice, did he? He knew what
to do to protect people. He wasn’t useless, not like Laurie, who
didn’t even know quite what he was looking for, the right place to
feel for the pulse.
But Sasha stirred and suddenly clasped his hand hard in
return. “Laurie,” he repeated, as if it was the only name that
could mean anything to him. He twisted around in the seat—almost
too weak to fight the belt that Laurie had automatically fastened
for him, just as he always did for Clara—and stared at him,
wide-eyed. “It is you. I was on the pavement, and…I saw lights. I saw my mother,
and then…I saw you.”
“You’ll be all right,” Laurie told him past a raw, dry pain in
his throat. “You’ve got hypothermia. I’m going to get you to a
doctor.”
“Oh, God. No hospitals.”
The grip
had tightened. Laurie was grateful for the Daimler’s automatic
gears; he couldn’t have brought himself to break free if both their
lives had depended on it. “Look, I don’t think…I don’t think you
have to hide, Sasha. It’s what I came out here to tell you. You
don’t need a visa to come to the UK anymore. Did you know
that?”
Sasha stared at him. His pale face began one of its slow,
compelling transformations, from stoic stillness to the broad,
loving grin Laurie couldn’t work out what he’d done to deserve.
“Of course,
stupid. But you do need a passport. Papers of some
kind.”
“Oh.”
“Or I wouldn’t have come over the Channel in the back of a
container truck full of frozen yogurts. It was”—he trailed off and
shuddered, eyes becoming distant even while he took in Laurie’s
face with that loving hunger—“it was colder than I am now. There
were twelve of us. Five of them died. I ran for it while they were
checking the corpses at Dover.”
“Oh, God.”
“I tried to tell you. I’m not legal. I’m no good. Let me out,
Laurie. Go home.”
“We’re both going home.” Laurie heard, with surprise, the snap
of decision and authority in his voice. What made him think he
could do this, or even that it was right? It was as if Sasha’s grip
on his hand could squeeze out of him all uncertainty, all mistrust
in himself. “If you won’t go to a hospital, you have to let me take
care of you.”
“Your father…” Sasha paused, caught in a fit of coughing as the
Daimler’s warm air fought the chill in his lungs. “Your father will
take me by the hood of my coat and hang me from the nearest
lamppost.”
“Oh, screw my father,” Laurie said with a brave insouciance,
smilingly undermining himself a second later with, “Anyway, he’s
out. I won’t let him anywhere near you.” He hesitated, knowing what
it was to be without choice, even in the best gilded cage. “Okay.
Look, I’m sorry. Just say the word and I’ll stop. I’ll take you
back to Gyorgy, or anywhere you want to go.”
A
purring silence fell inside the opulent car. No word came. After a
moment, Sasha relinquished Laurie’s hand, placing it carefully back
on the wheel. Still no word. At the next junction, Laurie took the
turn for Mayfair.