Chapter 29
When he awoke, it was late afternoon and the scene that greeted him was like a battlefield after the armies have left.
Smoke rose into the air, a cloud of mist hanging above the park, men and women aimlessly wandering about, dragging stuff – rugs, bottles, bags, bits of wood – behind them.
Lots more people were on the ground, as if they’d been knocked out.
It was warm, too warm for March. He talked to a young girl and her best friend for a while, but they both kept miaowing like cats.
On the bench next to him, a girl and a man were beginning to make it, she sitting on top of him, wiggling slowly around, he fumbling with his jeans.
Tom didn’t want to watch. Other people were watching, though.
He was so hungry he felt pretty weak. The sight in his good eye was blurred and scratchy and he could barely see anything. When he stood up, he stumbled slightly, and that’s when he heard her.
‘Let’s go,’ she was saying in that gentle, husky voice, and he knew it was her, instantly. ‘I want us all to be turned on, sure, but first I want a meatball sub.’
Her hair was in her face, and besides he couldn’t see much, and he didn’t know what she looked like anyway. But he knew her voice. He sat up.
She was tall and slim, with golden hair that shook around her shoulders, and she wore wide torn jeans held up at the waist with something like a red tie. Her top half was a silk patterned wrap top with wide sleeves, red with coral and blue and green shapes, casually knotted at the midriff.
There was something about the style with which she carried herself that was utterly unlike most other girls. Like she knew something no one else knew. In spite of her height and slenderness, she walked with a long, slightly awkward stride, her hands stuffed deep into her pockets.
‘You’re strung out, Alice. You’re not hip to what that whole Be-In was about,’ the man with her said as they passed by.
‘I was, promise,’ she said, and he could hear the humour in her voice, and the gentle censure in his. ‘But I want a meatball sub too.’
The man had his arm hooked round her neck, like she was a possession he had to carry, a barrel, or a box.
He wore a sheepskin waistcoat and jeans and was bare-chested, with a collection of what looked like feathers and beads tied round his collarbone.
His hair was long, like snakes, or waves, his beard stiff with dirt, sand, smoke, the city.
Tom stood up, his kitbag now a dead weight, and walked up towards them.
‘Hey,’ he said, his voice sounding ludicrously high. ‘Are you Alice Jansen?’
She pushed a lock of hair out of the way and looked at him calmly.
‘Who’s asking?’ She didn’t stop walking, and he had to scurry alongside them.
He wished he had his magic glasses, the ones that had made the optician’s receptionist purr in her small suburban flat when he’d put them back on for her, the morning after he’d met her for that one drink.
Instead, he used his most English, charming voice. ‘Might I have a minute of your time? Alone? It’s quite important.’
She didn’t look as impressed as he’d hoped. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh?’
‘I came to America to find you. You might remember me – my name’s Tom. Tom Raven –’
‘I don’t know you, sorry.’ But he was certain he heard a change in her voice. ‘What do you want?’
‘I spoke to you last year, before you left for the city.’ He peered into her face, but the smoke, the haze, the sun shining in his eyes, his terrible vision meant he still couldn’t see her properly. ‘Don’t you remember? My aunt, Jenny –’
‘I said I don’t know who you are, friend.’ She started walking away, chewing at a piece of skin on her finger.
‘What’s the problem, brother?’ said the man. ‘We’re all friends here.’
Alice moved closer to her companion, nestling against him and sliding one slim hand into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Anything you can say to me, you can say to Merlin. He’s my guy.’
‘But we spoke –’
‘I said I don’t remember you,’ she replied, and he blinked, hearing the rage in her voice, and he knew straight away that she was afraid, of something or someone.
‘Okay,’ Tom said. ‘I’m sorry. I wanted to ask you about Teddy.’
‘Teddy?’ the guy with her said. ‘Who’s Teddy?’ He scratched his head. ‘Allie, wasn’t that weird –’
‘Merlin, brother?’ Someone came up to Alice’s companion and clapped him on the back; he released his grip on Alice’s shoulders and hugged him. They smiled at each other, nodding, as Merlin said, ‘Alice and I were looking for some tabs. For later.’
The other guy pointed, slightly indistinctly. ‘Gerry,’ he said. ‘Come here, I’ll –’
They wandered off, and there was an awkward silence. Alice tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled politely, arms folded, but her eyes were downcast, fixed on the cigarette butts on the ground.
‘Some food sounds great,’ said Tom hopefully. ‘Could I buy you one of those meatball things? If you show me –’
‘No, sorry. Look, I’d – I’d love to help you, but I – I can’t. So good luck, okay?’ She turned to leave.
‘Alice – hi.’ Tom caught her on the shoulder. ‘Sorry. We did talk about Teddy, I’m sure. You know her, from home?’
‘I don’t know her, brother. You got the wrong person. Sorry.’ And, just as Tom was about to protest this, Merlin reappeared and she said, ‘So – let’s go, shall we, honey?’
‘Sure,’ said Merlin brightly. ‘Hey, good to meet you – friend.’
Tom’s head swam, both from the events of the day and the feeling he’d hit a brick wall. He took a step back, into a guy in an army jacket decorated with peace symbols, and then sank down on to a bench.
‘Hey,’ Alice said instantly, and she crouched down next to him. ‘You okay?’
‘Just hungry. And tired. And stoned, really stoned,’ he whispered, then added, even more quietly, ‘Hey. I don’t want to cause any trouble, but I flew from London, Alice. To find you. To see –’ He closed his eyes. ‘To see her.’
‘Come back,’ he heard her say after a pause. ‘Just till you find your feet, you can rest, have something to eat, okay, Tom?’ And she put her hand on his shoulder, the other hand chewing at the nail again.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Here. Drink that,’ Alice said flatly, when they were back at the apartment, and he had been shown down into a dark, dank basement, which appeared to be a kitchen that doubled as a bedroom.
Merlin had vanished again. Alice slid a brown bottle of something over to Tom and pulled out a stool, gesturing for him to sit down.
She lifted a bag of bagels she’d got from the bakery out of a string bag, then pushed them towards him.
He stared at it – he knew what they were from a walk he and Gordon had taken over to Brick Lane years ago, when they’d sat on a packing crate in Petticoat Lane Market, eating them.
That time, they’d been filled with salt beef and pickles.
He took one, nodding thanks, his hands closing gratefully over it, and ate it almost frantically, the smooth exterior and chewy, yeasty bread perhaps one of the most delicious things he’d ever eaten.
For the rest of his life Tom would remember that first New York bagel.
‘Hungry, huh?’ she said. He nodded, cramming the rest of the bagel into his mouth, so that he could not speak. His jaw worked up and down, but he couldn’t swallow the large, hard bolus it formed in his mouth.
‘Yes,’ Tom tried to say, but he couldn’t speak, and it came out as Uechh . He opened his mouth, and shut it, then swallowed frantically.
‘Are you okay?’ she said with concern. She turned on the tap and gave him a glass of water.
He drank, but it wouldn’t dislodge, so he carried on gurning and swallowing and chewing, and it was mortifying.
As he did so, he saw her long, slender hands, the faint welts on her wrists from her leather bracelets and bangles.
She tucked her hair behind her ear and turned away, and he liked her so much for that, for not watching him embarrass himself.
He cleared his throat, but instead the last piece of bagel got stuck in his throat, and he started choking.
A piece of slimy, half-chewed dense white bread shot from his mouth, ricocheting off the wall on to the floor.
Alice turned back in alarm, eyes widening. ‘Christ, are you okay?’ she said again.
Tom drank some more water, recovering, utterly embarrassed by now. He nodded, and rolled his eyes, and drank again, swallowing slowly. ‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘Anyway. Ask me about something else. Anything.’ He felt equilibrium return.
‘Sure.’ She folded her arms, head on one side and said, ‘Okay, then. What’s up with your eyes?’
‘I had an accident when I was a kid. I lost most of the sight in one eye. I wear glasses, but I lost them this morning so the good eye’ – he pointed to the left one – ‘doesn’t work terribly well when I’m tired.’
‘Sure.’ She nodded, considering what he said carefully. ‘For what it’s worth, I didn’t notice until you walked into that tree on the way back.’
‘Good to know.’
‘Can I ask you something now?’
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘I recognized your voice,’ he said simply.
‘Oh,’ she said. She kind of bowed her head. ‘I recognized yours too.’
‘You did?’
‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I – wasn’t sure back there. You kinda surprised me.’
‘But you knew it was me.’ Tom didn’t feel cross.
He was intrigued as to why she’d lied. She wasn’t a liar; he knew that.
He cleared his throat, trying to work out what to say next.
‘When we spoke, back in November, you said you were coming here. You seemed to be having a bad time. I hope everything worked out all right.’
He didn’t say that he’d spent five months saving up the money from his job to fly here, that he’d thought about her, wondering whether she was okay, every day since then.