When he didn’t expect anyone and the doorbell rang, he crept to the window in the disused bedroom; here you could look down at an angle and see your callers on the doorstep as they stood there erectly blinking and composing themselves…He had often been struck by the fact that people who are monitored in this way tend to diffuse an aura of innocence. Now he thought he knew why: they are at that moment comparatively innocent, innocent compared to their furtive observer. And the woman outside did indeed seem innocent, considering she was Phoebe Phelps.
…And not Phoebe as she would be now, in 2001 (getting on for sixty), but Phoebe as she would’ve been then – in say 1978, or even 1971 (Tycoon Tanya), before he ever knew her. Seen from his vantage, seen from above: the slanted profile, the straight no-nonsense nose, the level chin out-thrust. But it was her shape, her form, her outline that ignited his recognition: she and Phoebe displaced exactly the same volume of air.
He went down and opened the door and said,
‘Hello – I know you. You’re Siobhan’s girl.’ There was an easing, and he continued, ‘Maud. We took you out to tea at Whiteley’s when you were ten.’
‘Yes, that’s me all right. I remember. You had very long hair.’ For a moment she smiled unreservedly; but then the smile was quickly shelved or put aside, and she straightened up. ‘Uh, Mr Amis, sorry to bother, but Aunt Phoebe asked me to pop this round, person to person. She doesn’t trust the post. She says what they don’t lose they steal. Or burn. Or in this case sell.’
‘Sell? Who to?’
‘There was mention of the Daily Mail…’
She held out the envelope and he took delivery – just his name (scornfully dashed off). ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘This’ll be my anthrax.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Anthrax. It’s just hearsay. Last night I talked to a friend who lives in Washington DC, but for now he’s stranded in Washington State. Seattle.’
‘No flights?’
‘No flights. Every non-military plane in America is grounded. And he says anthrax. You know,’ Martin went on (it was a grey morning but harmlessly mild), ‘the first thing they did, yesterday in New York, was test the air for toxins. Chemicals and spores. Anyway it’s just hearsay, but anthrax is meant to be next.’*4
‘This isn’t anthrax. It’s just a letter.’
‘Well, thanks. Thanks for your trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble. My office is just round the corner. But…’ She gave a soft wince. ‘The thing is I’m supposed to wait while you…She expects an answer.’
‘…Oh.’ This was a forcing move, he later realised. He said, ‘Well come on up.’
It was lovely and warm in his flat but it was warm for an unlovely reason. Each September he put the heating on a few days earlier in the month. The flesh thins, the blood thins; the horizons slip their moorings and drift a little nearer; and the creature slowly learns how to cover up and ‘creep into its bedding’ (Saul).
So his kitchen was tepid with the aroma of Cold Old Man – or so he resignedly presumed as he watched Maud slide off her leather jacket and hook it over a chair and blow the fringe clear of her brow. The white shirt, the soon unbuttoned charcoal waistcoat, the mauve skirt – businesswear for another kind of business (she worked for the PR firm called Restless Ambition in All Saints Road). Yes, she was very like Phoebe, very like Phoebe in her movements and address, the light, quiet step, the way she seemed to coast through the air…
He said, ‘I’ll read this next door. How long will I be gone would you say?’
‘Oh no more than ten minutes. Fifteen. But then you’ll have to do your reply.’
‘…I’m sorry – there’s some fresh coffee there.’
‘Ooh, that’d be brilliant.’
‘Take a seat. And here are the papers.’ Headlines were spread out on the kitchen table. TERROR IN AMERICA…A NEW DAY OF INFAMY…ACT OF WAR…BASTARDS! ‘Have you read it? The letter?’
‘I’ve listened to it. A couple of times. There were uh, different versions.’
‘Go on, give me a hint.’
‘Well, the names didn’t mean much to me. But I could see why she was worried about the media getting wind of it.’
He left the room holding the envelope between finger and thumb.
What was he expecting Phoebe to tell him? About the slow-acting but fatal social disease he had unknowingly transmitted, about the college-age triplets he had unknowingly sired…He took out the two stiff sheets and read. And reread. And emerged from his study saying,
‘Maud, Phoebe doesn’t expect an answer. There’s no answer to this. She just wants you to tell her how I took it.’
‘…Your hand.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
The plaster on his knuckle, loosened (again) by the mobility of the joint, now dangled like the tongue of a dog while blood dribbled on to his palm and down his wrist. He woodenly moved to the sink and engaged the cold water, and flapped around with his other hand for the box of Band-Aids. She said,
‘Let me do it…Mm, that looks quite nasty.’
Maud came up and stood close; she scrolled the dressing over his graze, scrolled it tight. Girls’ hands, each finger with its own intelligent life; and his own hands, webbed, quivering, undefined…
He thanked her, and she took half a step back and asked him with a new kind of brightness, ‘Do I remind you of her?’ When he nodded she went on, ‘People say we’re very alike. The figure too, don’t you think? Slim, but…’
‘Vaguely,’ he said – though for a moment he had definitely felt Phoebe draw near (her body weight, her force field with its orbs and planes).
‘What was it you once said? About the wand?’
He turned his head away in a sort of
