Damascus Read online

  Mr Kelly and two of his three children, Spencer (10) and Rachel (8), are standing in the goalmouth of a football pitch in the middle of a municipal sports field. Spencer is wearing a replica Coventry City, Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Queens Park Rangers, Southampton football shirt with the number 10 on the back, and Rachel is wearing the same, but with the number 8. Mr Kelly is wearing his work clothes.

  Spencer clutches the white football high up on his chest and looks across at Rachel, who says:

  ‘Average transfer fee, about 2.75 million, for a midfielder.’

  Rachel’s hair, which could be blonde if it was longer, is cut even shorter than Spencer’s.

  ‘The answer,’ Mr Kelly says, as he paces out the boundaries of their pitch, ‘is lots. Bucket-loads. But you have to be strong. You have to be robust. What do you have to be, Spencer?’

  ‘He has to be robust,’ Rachel says, grabbing the ball. She drops it and starts dribbling expertly across the six-yard box, and her legs look just right, slim and strong. She wears her football shirt outside her white, black, blue, green shorts. Spencer’s legs are thin and very pale.

  Mr Kelly finishes marking out the pitch, determined to prove that Spencer is made of sterner stuff than his brother Philip (13), who because God is cruel to men like Mr Kelly (Mr Kelly thinks), has turned out to be a great wet wimp. Philip likes to read books and newspapers, and always lets a frightening story frighten him. This is his morbid imagination, according to his mother, and Mr Kelly wouldn’t mind knowing where it came from. Not from his mother, anyway. Philip is so old, nearly fourteen, that Spencer rarely thinks about him. Instead, he watches the way Rachel runs, is proud of the way her body-swerve bamboozles imaginary full-backs.

  ‘Last to touch the posts is goalie,’ says Spencer’s Dad, and touches the post which is right beside him. From the middle of the penalty area Spencer runs as fast as he can, enjoying himself and trying hard but not, in fact, going very fast. Rachel calmly cruises past him. She touches both posts and then starts laughing, making champion fists beside her ears. Catching her breath, she leans her hands on her narrow knees, which are bent inwards slightly. She looks up at Spencer and smiles brightly and in that moment Spencer sees clearly that everything, always, is going to be alright. There is no need to worry because it all turns out just fine.

  ‘I’ll be Argentina,’ Rachel says, and dribbles the ball to the edge of the area, turns, flips the ball up for a volley, then flights a beautifully weighted cross to the far post. Mr Kelly meets it with a powerful header which leaves Spencer stranded. There is no net in the goal and the ball stops rolling somewhere half-way down the next pitch. Mr Kelly sighs and tells Spencer to leave it where it is. After a moment of hands-on-hips and significant head-shaking, he fetches a rugby ball and tosses it to Spencer, who drops it but then quickly picks it up again.

  ‘I’m the Australian defence,’ Mr Kelly says, bending his knees and leaning forward. ‘You and Rachel have to get past me and score a try. But remember, no pansying about. This is rugby league, and there’s good money to be earned.’

  Spencer passes the ball to Rachel who shoots out of the blocks and beats Mr Kelly with an incisive left-right sidestep. She dives and touches down, all smiles.

  ‘Give Spencer a go.’

  Spencer takes the ball, and shadowed by his father he runs in a long curve first one way and then the other, but without actually making any forward progress. Eventually he slips in a pool of mud and falls on his bum. He laughs, and Mr Kelly ponders, not for the first time, whether these days babies still get swapped at birth. Is it too late to take Spencer back?

  ‘Rely on your natural talent,’ Mr Kelly says. ‘Get past me once and you’ll never look back.’

  Spencer stands up. Rachel flattens him with a tackle and steals the ball and scores another try.

  Mr Kelly sighs and fetches a cricket bat and a tennis ball.

  Rachel bats first, Mr Kelly bowls, Spencer fields. Rachel scores a brisk 37 off 35 balls. Then she retires and it’s Spencer’s turn to bat but he claims an injury sustained in the outfield: a damaged rib cartilage or a groin strain or severe concussion. It starts to rain. Mr Kelly looks up at the grey heavens, and follows the smooth flight of a seagull before squatting down to put his hands on Spencer’s shoulders. He looks his second son directly in the eye.

  ‘Do you want to grow up to be a warehouseman? Is that it?’

  Spencer looks at his feet and kicks at the grass.

  ‘Come on, son,’ Mr Kelly says, ‘there must be something you’re good at.’

  Rachel looks up at the gathering cloud, and holds out a hand to catch the early rain. She makes a suggestion, only trying to help:

  ‘Swimming?’

  11/1/93 MONDAY 07:12

  Lying on her side, watching him dress, Hazel was hoping that at last her life had really begun. He wasn’t as gorgeous as she’d sometimes imagined him, but then he wasn’t as ugly either. Instead, like most things, he was somewhere in between.

  ‘You have nice legs,’ she said.

  He found some trousers underneath the space-suit, and while he pulled them on Hazel felt like touching his knees. He also had good muscles in his back, and she liked to see a man’s ribs. He pushed his arms into a dark shirt, brown, with a tartan kind of design, fastened the lowest button and worked his way up. Sensitive hands. He reached for his jacket. His black hair was also nice, rufflable.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘I never imagined you in a suit.’

  ‘It’s a Simpson suit.’

  ‘It’s cool. I like it. I think.’

  It was double-breasted though he didn’t button it. It hung loosely over the pockets of his trousers and it looked alright. It would look better with a tie, of course, and a proper shirt, but she didn’t want to race ahead.

  ‘I bought it in the sale,’ Spencer said. ‘I liked your dress last night.’

  They both glanced at where it lay wantonly on the floor, empty and anybody’s. ‘Earlier this morning,’ Hazel corrected him. ‘It wasn’t really last night.’

  ‘I didn’t realise it was so late.’

  ‘I phoned after midnight. It was well into today.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose it does.’

  Hazel rolled over onto her back and slipped a bare leg outside the blanket. Keeping it straight, she lifted it up like a dancer, moving her foot slowly up and down from the ankle until the bones stood out. She tried to imagine a day in which everything went right, but Spencer kept glancing at her hair, trapped behind her ears by the pillow.

  ‘I hadn’t expected you to be so blonde,’ he said.

  She let her leg drop and pulled the blanket up over her nose. Did it always have to be like this? It wasn’t as if they were complete strangers: they’d already slept together. She wished they could learn everything about each other instantly, or at least in a single day. That might be possible, if it was love, building on the feeling that she’d always known him anyway, which is what persuaded her into bed with him in the first place. She wished she had always known him. It would have made everything so much easier.

  'Tell me about the house,’ she said, pulling the blanket down to her chin. ‘How many rooms?’

  ‘I have to make William his breakfast,’ Spencer said.

  ‘I know, you already told me.’

  Then I have to get a present for my niece. It’s her birthday.’

  ‘And don’t forget your library books,’ Hazel said. She turned towards him and reached up her arm, hoping he’d take her hand. ‘How about making some more babies?’

  ‘William’s breakfast,’ Spencer said. He took Hazel’s hand all the same, and she pulled until he gave in and sat himself down on the edge of the mattress.

  ‘How many rooms?’

  ‘I’ve never counted.’

  'Try.’

  At least eight bedrooms, Spencer tried. Three dining rooms. A gym. A Jacuzzi. There was the swimming pool an
d several different types of marbled bathroom, four or maybe five of them. The main drawing room had wood-panelled walls and a ten-metre-high dome, the main dining room was flanked by columns, and suddenly Spencer seemed relieved just to be talking, as if he found it much easier than actual conversation. The house was eighteenth century, he said, Grade 2 listed, and the swimming pool, did he mention the swimming pool? It was granite-lined and had a glass roof. It connected the main part of the house with the garages and staff apartments, where they were now, and although Hazel was already impressed Spencer thought she’d like to know that Charles Kingsley once lived here. Charles Kingsley was a vicar who wrote The Water Babies, but even so Hazel put her hand on Spencer’s knee, hoping to calm him down.

  He told her the house had the second largest privately-owned garden in London. There were terraced lawns and semi-circular flowerbeds and a mulberry tree planted by Elizabeth the First. Relax, Hazel wanted to say, I feel I know you already so there’s no need to be nervous. But he’d forgotten to mention the walled garden where William lived, as well as leaving out the house’s valuation at twenty-five million pounds, and the billiard room which had once been painted by David Jones. David Jones was a painter.

  ‘Stop,’ Hazel said. ‘Just stop a minute. Tell me what’s wrong.’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong. I have to make William his breakfast.’

  ‘Come on, Spencer. You can do better than that.’

  Spencer reached under the chair for his shoes. He turned his back to Hazel as he put them on and laced them, very slowly.

  ‘Let’s not fool ourselves,’ he said. ‘We hardly know each other.’

  ‘We’ve just spent the night together.’

  ‘It was very late.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to?’

  ‘Yes,’ Spencer said, ‘I wanted to.’

  ‘And?’

  He let himself fall back across the bed, as if it was all suddenly too much. Hazel’s stomach became his pillow and he stared up at the ceiling, shading his eyes with his hands. Hazel stroked his hair.

  ‘We ought at least give it a chance,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This might be it. This might be the one moment which changes everything.’

  ‘That’s why it frightens me.’

  ‘Let’s give it a day. One day. Today. If it doesn’t work out then no hard feelings. We can pick up where we left off yesterday, living very happily and very far apart.’

  ‘Don’t you have to go to work?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How will we decide?’

  ‘Decide what?’

  ‘If this is it’

  ‘If we end up back in bed,’ Hazel said. 'I don’t know. Look out for signs, omens, anything that says in the grand scheme of things we fit together. I mean other than the fact that I don’t have a boyfriend, you don’t have a girlfriend, we’re both twenty-four years old, speak the same language, and have recently had totally amazing sex.’

  ‘I really ought to be making William his breakfast.’

  Spencer sat up, stood up, and Hazel grabbed hold of a turn-up on his suit trousers. ‘So it’s agreed then, we have the whole day?’

  ‘I still don’t see how we’ll know,’ Spencer said. ‘We’ll probably go back to bed anyway, just because we feel like it, or because it gets dark.’

  ‘Alright then. Pretend we’re vampires in reverse. We’ll make the decision in daylight.’

  ‘Okay,’ Spencer said. ‘Let’s do that. Sex isn’t everything.’

  ‘Stay a bit longer.’

  ‘I can’t, really. I’m already late. William.’

  ‘Your niece.’

  ‘My library books.’

  2

  Real people are endlessly complex and quite beyond the comprehension of others.

  THE TIMES 11/1/93

  11/1/93 MONDAY 07:24

  Henry Mitsui had run out of money, almost lost contact with the woman he loved, and was about to be deported. He turned up the collar on his white raincoat, even though it was warm in the hotel room. Things could be worse. His father could be awake.

  Henry’s long-fingered hands searched deftly across the dark surface of the dressing table. He found his father’s Rolex and transferred it silently to his pocket. He’d been hoping for the wallet. He took a step towards the window and eased the curtains apart. Overcast sky, soft dawn light, London. A songbird made itself known and Henry recognised it instantly: mistle thrash. At this time of year, with winter coming on, they were already defending their store of mistletoe berries (An Introduction to British Birds and Trees, Week 2).

  In the light let in between the curtains he could make out the shape of his father in the further of the twin beds, lying on his back, his hands crossed over his chest. He was fatter than when Henry had last seen him, more than two years ago in Tokyo, and then Henry saw the wallet. He memorised its position on the table between the beds, let the curtain fall closed, stepped lightly to his own bed, rolled across it, plucked up the wallet, rolled back and returned to the window. He nudged the curtain open with his shoulder to see what he was doing.

  He took out the cash first, folded it, and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then he flipped through the cards, noticing his father was much thinner on his identity card. His hair wasn’t grey and he didn’t have two chins and he wasn’t balding. He didn’t have that worried look in his eyes. He had it on his Toyoko Metropolitan corporate card, Vice-President (Design), but then that was much more recent. Henry selected American Express, Access, Visa, but ignored the frequent flyer cards from major airlines because he wasn’t planning on going anywhere.

  Right at the back of the wallet, behind all the plastic cards, he found a passport photograph of his mother. She was looking to the side, and upwards, as if planning an exit now that the photos were finished. Her blonde hair was about to sweep across her face. Her eyes were very blue and her thin arm as it reached up to open the curtain had caught the flash, and was instantly pale and very white. Henry squeezed the photo between the credit cards in his pocket.

  He put the emptied wallet on the dressing table, then checked the pocket of his raincoat for the reassuring plastic envelope of powder. It was still there, jammed underneath his telephone, and his long fingers were suddenly tempted by the phone’s raised rubber buttons. It was far too early to phone the woman he loved because she’d still be asleep, or reading, but he took out the phone anyway and turned it on, hiding its green light by pulling the raincoat over his head. He keyed in the number he knew several times over by heart, not necessarily to speak to her but just to hear her voice and know that another day was worth living.

  No connection. Henry rearranged the collar of his raincoat and moved soundlessly towards the door, which was when the bedside light snapped on. His father, wide awake, was sitting up in bed with his hands folded over his stomach. He smiled sympathetically. He leant his head to one side, paternally. He said something in Japanese, tolerantly, and Henry stared back at him as if he didn’t understand a word.

  His father leant his head the other way, smiled again, then spoke in English with a faint New Jersey accent.

  ‘Henry,’ he said, ‘you’re not well.’

  ‘I was going outside to make a phone call.’

  'In your coat?’

  ‘On the portable. In the hotel garden.’

  ‘With all my credit cards?’

  Henry sat back on the dressing table, and his father told him if he ever wanted money all he had to do was ask.

  ‘All right then, Dad,’ he said. ‘I want some money.’

  ‘You’re not well, Henry. Tomorrow we’ll be back in Tokyo and you’ll soon be better.’

  ‘I’m not going back.’

  'The tickets are all paid for. I’ve made appointments with Dr Osawa.’

  His father had always called Osawa a neurologist, never quite finding the right word. This might have been deliberate, but even so Henry added it to other evidence which proved his fathe
r consistently misunderstood the essential nature of his only son, the world about him, and everything. There was nothing wrong with Henry. He was in no need of rescue. He was twenty-three years old and could take care of himself.

  ‘You’ve been studying too hard,’ his father said.

  ‘I’ve been furnishing my mind.’

  His father stopped smiling and his round face suddenly looked pained, long-suffering, resigned. He said something in Japanese which Henry stubbornly ignored.

  ‘We’re leaving this evening.’

  ‘You just said.’

  ‘You’re ill, Henry, but you mustn’t be frightened. I’ve forgiven you for what happened in Tokyo.’

  ‘I’m not frightened and I’m better now, I promise. Britain has made all the difference.’ It is the first of November 1993, and somewhere in Britain, just outside Penzance or Edinburgh or Hastings, close to Southampton or Newport or Torquay, it’s the holiday season for the families Burns and Kelly.

  Another bright and sunny interval but Philip Kelly (16), Spencer’s elder brother, claims a weak chest and lingers in the town arcades playing car-racing games like Hell of a Ride or Racing Demon or TOCA Shoot-Out Touring Cars. Mr and Mrs Kelly play miniature golf (Mr Kelly has a three-shot lead but Mrs Kelly, a great lover of cinema, is playing well below her best because she is mourning the death of Fellini. She keeps saying ‘Ciao Federico’ under her breath until her husband tells her to stop mumbling. He then takes a four-shot lead and punches the air because if this was a real tournament, like the Madrid Open say, or any leg of the PGA tour, he’d be close to earning hundreds of thousands of pounds.).

  Mr and Mrs Burns on the other hand, not very far from the miniature golf, have hired a fisherman to take them out for a day’s crab-catching. Mrs Burns is not happy. If only her husband wasn’t so busy they could take a holiday in the summer like everyone else, and then her children wouldn’t have to miss school, damaging their prospects. Nor does she like the look of the weather, which the fishermen describe as changeable, nor the idea of boats generally and their obvious temptation of a terrible fate. Most of all she doesn’t like to leave her children, even though her husband tells her that Hazel is twelve now and almost grown up and perfectly able to look after herself. Eventually Mrs Burns has no choice but to step onto the boat. Her husband might be having an affair and if she never spends time with him then who can blame him? As the boat slips away from the jetty Mrs Burns makes Hazel promise not to swim in the sea.