– She
– And Martine, the one from Heidelberg. She was nice too.
– Went back to Heidelberg.
Elise laughed as if he was impossible, but also as if it gratified her, that he wouldn’t be drawn into making much of those girls, giving anything away.
– Why doesn’t he stay the night ever? she asked Paul when Gerald had gone to get his train. – It must be awful for him, going back to that dismal flat.
– It isn’t dismal. It’s how he likes it. He likes to keep his own hours, read as late as he wants, make tea in the middle of the night if he wants to.
– He could do that here, we wouldn’t mind.
Gerald had told Paul once that he got panicky in a place where other people were asleep – he had a problem with imagining their breathing or something. This must be part of the story with the girlfriends. If you lived alone for too long, the effort of breaking all your forms of life, to recast them with someone else, might be just too tremendous. Those girls, Katherine and the others, were shaken when they came back from throwing themselves at Gerald with such innocent enthusiasm. There was a cruelty in the blank side he turned to them, when he needed to cut them out.
– It’s restful working alongside him, Elise said. – At first it feels funny not saying anything, then you settle into it. I used to think he wouldn’t talk to me because I wasn’t intellectual.
Paul lied that he needed to go up to London again, to see his agent. He winced at the lie – Elise hadn’t absolved him yet, over the lies he’d told at the time he was seeing that girl in Cardiff – but at least it wasn’t for his own advantage, only Pia’s. Without warning Pia he was coming, he went straight to the flat. All the way there, on the train looking out at the yellowing landscape, and then on the Underground, he was rehearsing how he would persuade his daughter to come home with him. She ought to be looking after herself in her pregnancy, she ought to think responsibly about the future, she ought to be with her family who would love and cherish her best. He might be able to persuade her to pack a bag and leave with him there and then: he would take her home to Annelies, or back with him to Tre Rhiw, whichever she wanted. The idea of restoring her triumphantly made him emotional. His mission sealed him apart from the crowds around him in the Underground, their babble of languages silenced as they swayed together in the heat, strap-hanging, bodies indifferently intimate, faces closed against curiosity.
Arriving at the block, he buzzed the entry phone. Someone seemed to pick up in the flat, but when he spoke into it no one answered, and after a moment it cut off. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of this when he was on his way: that there might be no one at home, or no one who wanted to see him. He rang again, and this time no one picked up. Pia’s mobile was turned off when he tried it. It was absurd that he hadn’t prepared for this eventuality; now he was at a loss. He read the paper for an hour in a dubious cafe somewhere off Pentonville Road, then tried the mobile and the entry phone again. He made efforts to persuade the concierge to let him in. ‘I’m sure they’re at home. Perhaps the phone isn’t working.’ The concierge tried for himself. ‘It working. No one in the place.’
Paul spent the day in the British Library, returning to the block in the evening as the sun dropped and the brilliant daylight thickened and dimmed. As he approached he tried to work out which flat was Anna’s: one on the second floor with its lights on had its blinds skewed at angles halfway up the windows in a sequence he seemed to recognise, but he wasn’t sure it was in the right relationship to where the entrance was, or to the roof garden, whose dead stubble poked above a parapet, a fringe outlined against a sky of deepening royal blue. Again, no one picked up when he tried the entry phone. The traffic roared behind him, a broad river devilish in its night-blare, streams of red and white lights. He crossed to look up from the other side of the road at the lit-up flat. Someone was moving about in there, passing and repassing behind the blinds as if they were tidying up, or getting dressed to go out. If this was the right flat, it could be Pia; but he couldn’t attach his feeling to that shadow, in case it was only a stranger’s. Or it could be Anna, or her brother. It could have been the shadow of a slight young man.
Paul had forgotten about rescuing Pia; instead he only felt shut out from wherever she was, whatever they were doing. He hadn’t been bitten by this anxiety for years, he thought he’d left it behind him with his youth: wanting to be part of something happening, and feeling excluded. He didn’t want to go home from here to the quiet of the country. And yet nothing was happening. No one went into the block of flats, or came out of it, while he watched.
Going to Annelies’s house seemed preferable to catching the train home; he thought he would tell her finally about Pia. It was about time. Perhaps if she hadn’t eaten, he would take her out to one of the Greek places in Green Lanes road. When he arrived, though, she was in the middle of some kind of social occasion. He could smell food as soon as she opened the front door, and hear women’s voices and laughter from the room where she had her dining table. He was sorry when he saw what Annelies thought it meant, his turning up unannounced on her doorstep: she braced herself, as if for some dreadful assault.
– It’s all right, he reassured her. – Don’t worry, everything’s fine. If you’ve got people here I won’t come in, I’ll ring you tomorrow.
– You have news of Pia?
– Not bad news, nothing to worry about.
– Paul! You think I can wait? You’ve seen her?
She pulled him into the little front room that was empty, but tidied ready for her guests to move into later, lamps lit, flowers on a table. There were red and white gingham cushions and a striped rug, framed photographs of Pia were on the mantelpiece.
– What? What news?
Paul told her Pia was pregnant, that he had seen this for himself. He said she was living with the man who was the father of the child. For some reason he spoke as if he hadn’t met Marek, and didn’t mention that he was Polish or say anything about his sister.
– How do you know all this? When did you see her? Today?
– Not today. Last week. But she didn’t want me to tell you yet.
– You’ve known since last week that my daughter is pregnant, and you haven’t told me?
– I was afraid that if I broke my promise we’d lose her again, she’d go out of contact.
– OK, Paul. This isn’t the end of the world. Our GP is Pia’s old friend, he understands everything, we can get her in somewhere straight away, private if it’s quicker. Who is this man, anyway? You know where she’s living?
The crisis, and the idea that Paul had had access to Pia, roused Annelies to defend herself against his way of seeing things, to override it. Her stocky body and stiff wiry curls, her lowered head and shoulders hunched in tension, made him think of a guard dog, loyal to its idea.
– She wants to have the baby. She says it’s too late for a termination.
– This is a joke, right?
The voices in the next room had fallen quiet. A couple of women from the party peered round the door, asking if Annelies was all right, as if she might be at some risk from Paul. Annelies said that her daughter was pregnant, and Paul wouldn’t tell her where she was. Trying to convince her that their link with Pia was too tenuous to risk breaking it, he imagined that all these women, whoever they were – Annelies’s work colleagues or her knitting group or book club – were ganged up against him.
– Who is this man she’s with? What does he want with my daughter?
Paul found himself claiming that Pia and Marek loved one another. As soon as they’d come out of his mouth, he couldn’t believe he’d said the words. Annelies’s contempt was bruising. – You think that makes any difference to anything? What kind of love, if she doesn’t want to tell her mother? Just give me her address. Let me go to her. I beg you. Please.
One of the women suggested that if Pia was experimenting with her freedom, it might be best to respect that. Annelies pushed the idea away as if she was brushing off cobwebs. Paul wasn’t sure why he stuck it out so determinedly, refusing to tell her where Pia was staying. Perhaps he was afraid of her blundering into a situation more risky than he’d quite let her know. Because of her job, she was expert in the conditions migrant workers sometimes had to live in, and in itself the flat was not too bad. But she would react with passion against the mice and the mess and the dope, and Pia getting up in the middle of the afternoon, and the three of them spinning out improbable plans for the future, improvising recklessly.
