Damascus (27 page)

Behind the kitchen door, Grace screamed.

Grace wished. And she carried on wishing, moving her lips slightly, making sure it was clearly spelt out for whoever took charge of birthday wishes. She wished for a little baby brother called Sholto and one of those footballs on a string which comes back to you after you kick it. She wished for the part of leading lady in the school's Christmas production of
Cinderella
, and that if she was ever followed home by a man like her friend Nadine was followed home by a man, then that he wasn't really following her. She didn't wish her parents were dead, just changed overnight into people like Hazel and Uncle Spencer. She made a wish for William not to get any older, and wished a long life for her favourite German fish, Herr Trigger. She wished for world peace, and for River Phoenix to be allowed into heaven. And lastly she made a big secret wish for herself, wishing she could be just like everyone else, but not like anyone she actually knew. Amen.

All this counted as one single wish, because obviously everything was connected.

It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere else, in Naples or Srinagar or Riyadh or Hong Kong, in Geneva or Akrotiri or Istanbul or Los Angeles, Hazel Bums is a long way from home, preparing a violent death. A warm breeze brashes her hair against her neck, and inside a rained villa she inspects a mosaic floor depicting a broken Roman river scene. An American Vietnam-veteran dentist now limps towards her, stopping as instructed when his left foot covers the fishing nets flying off to the side of a leaning skiff. A gloomy Mafioso wearing a suede suit creeps up on him from behind.

'Trick or treat?' he whispers.

The dentist turns, smiles. ‘You must be joking,' he says, and the gangster pulls a gun from his pocket and shoots him. The victim falls, shudders, dies, stands up, brashes himself down, asks if he did okay.

‘Great,' the director says, ‘most authentic.'

This last comment is slyly intended as praise for Hazel, who is the film's research assistant and therefore responsible for making it life-like. The director then adds to the compliment by summoning her to an important meeting in his customised Cadillac. He and Hazel have already worked together on /,'
Balcone
and
Hell of a Ride
and
Clarissa
Explains It All
, and at the age of twenty-one, only recently released from University, this all counts as valuable experience. Hazel quickly leams, for example, that every film ever made has to be finished today, and no later. ‘Come on in,' the director says. ‘Sit down.' The enlarged space in the back of the Cadillac feels like a small room. They settle themselves on the back seat, which is like a bed, and the director unexpectedly wipes his eyes. His upper body begins to shake. He openly weeps. He mumbles a heartfelt 'Ciao, Federico,' and Hazel's experience of the film industry tells her that the unexpected loss of a great hero like Fellini can be made bearable only by sex with a blonde British research assistant.

‘Il Maestro would have wanted it that way.' And Hazel, not for the first time, remembers that she could have been a doctor or a lawyer. She should have listened to her mother, but she was terrified of making wrong decisions simply because she was frightened. Just in time then, and provoked by a stranger in a swimming pool, she made an effort to retrieve her dreams of glory. Examined closely, these came down to books, films, sport, and love. She quite fancied having well-respected novels published by Viking or Flamingo or Hamish Hamilton. But whenever she thought up plots the stories sounded familiar, and she worried about how qualified she was to claim they were true. It seemed almost dishonest to present the plot of a life as a simple story, when her own life had never felt as simple as that.

Far easier to act out the lives of other people and aspire to glory as an actress in films or the theatre, but then she worried about losing herself in the unnatural quest to be convincing as other people. Better then to express her essential self in sport, in Netball or Hockey or Ironman Triathlon, but here the problems were chronic injury and early death and unfair competition from her sister. She uncovered so many worries she might just as well have been her mother, whose only access to glory was love.

Love: either it was Damascus and you had no choice. Or somewhere the faith could be found to make the step and move on. The director says:

‘Fellini was a film-maker with a zest for life.' In a compromise which made sense at the time (now he slides himself towards her along the seat), Hazel becomes a research assistant for a production company. It involves travel and occasional professional politeness, such as attending functions in blouses not shirts. At company parties she's expected to occupy the director's children by asking them what they want to be when they grow up. But essentially, as a research assistant, she's in the business of making films real.

She mostly researches violence. She learns the trajectories of spent bullet cases or how to torch a locked Cadillac or the best way to conceal offensive weapons. She finds out how it's done in real life, and then hands over the information for a film to be made from it, even though once it's in a film it may not turn out to be true anymore. All Hazel can do is make sure it starts out true at the beginning.

‘Like II Mago, I have the most lavish psychic fantasies.' Film people. An example: Hazel's mother has been ill. Whenever Hazel plans a visit she's tired of having to explain that some people live in the provinces all year round, and not just at Christmas. As for her mother, she now takes enough pills to convince herself that she lives life to the full. Marriage is like Jerusalem, she finally decides, two nations one capital city.

'In Jerusalem the two nations stone each other, Mum.'

‘A little adjustment is sometimes necessary.' She's usually curious to know which of the film stars Hazel meets in real life, but Hazel doesn't like to name-drop. ‘Self-indulgent was the word of reproof most frequently thrown at Fellini.'

The director's bronzed hand slips to the inside of Hazel's knee, and she wishes her remaining phonecards worked in foreign countries. More than anything, she'd like to talk to Spencer. Nobody else seems to match up, because the people she meets now are old enough to have far more memories than can be fitted into the space of meeting them. She knows where she is with Spencer, as if they indirectly spent their formative years together, and despite the distances between them he is the person who feels most real to her.

‘Like Federico, I also have the most outré erotic fantasies.' Any second now, back here in the real world, Hazel is about to get herself fired. She calmly lifts up the director's hand, holding the wrist disdainfully between her thumb and finger-tips, already seeing herself with her nose in
The Times
, looking for a new job.

'I can give you dollars or francs,' he says, ‘whatever you want.'

She drops his hand back into his lap, where she has no doubt it belongs.

‘Deutschmarks? Yen?'

This is what comes from sitting back passively and waiting for life to start, as if for a long time nothing at all happens and then by some miracle it all of a sudden starts happening. When in fact it doesn't happen like that at all. It's about time Hazel took her destiny into her own hands, although somehow that doesn't sound quite right. How can you lay hands on destiny? It's supposed to swagger up all by itself (7ft 1 inch tall and 21 stone) and say here I am. This is the way it is, destiny says, so take your filthy hands off me.

11/1/93 M
ONDAY
14:48

‘What flavour is it?'

‘Chicken.'

‘It doesn't smell like chicken.'

William sniffed at the pale surface of his mug of soup. ‘And there's no bread,' he said.

Grace offered him another Jaffa cake, candle removed, while Hazel wondered if she could escape Henry Mitsui forever by going out to buy bread and never coming back. They were all sitting round the kitchen table, mostly in silence, like a family. They each had a mug of instant chicken soup and all the mugs were identical, from a matching white set. They felt like blank pieces of paper, waiting for messages. T could go and get some bread,' Hazel said. ‘We could all go out and get some bread.'

A street full of strangers seemed a more likely defence against Henry than this unknown house with its acres of empty rooms. He never stopped looking at her, and in a way so unapologetic and out of date it was almost criminal. It wasn't a crime, of course, she knew that, but he wasn't eating or drinking he was just relentlessly
looking
at her, and maybe it was already too late. He never blinked. He sometimes smiled. He looked and looked at her, and her skin prickled beneath the wool of the dress.

Her chair screeched horribly as she shoved it away from the table. She'd been doing so well, but now she'd had enough. She was, in fact, a neurotic paranoid just like her mother. This is what her whole life had been leading up to, and it was the hidden truth behind all her behaviour at all times up until now. Henry was going to kidnap her, rape her, kill her. His only reason for living was to do her harm, and life turned out to be full of terror and trouble just like her mother had always promised. For the first time in her life, Hazel insisted on her right to be frightened.

‘He asked me to marry him,' she said. She had everyone's attention.

Henry placed his plastic envelope of powder on the table. He was going to give her one last chance.

‘Will you marry me?'

‘No, I will not.'

And this, surely, was when Spencer was supposed to do something, anything. In the absence of Hazel being swallowed up by the floor (Damascus!) or finding the uniquely correct words to say (Damascus!), Spencer could take the situation heroically in hand and instantly prove himself by throwing Henry Mitsui out on his ear (also Damascus).

Henry said: ‘We're destined for each other.'

‘And if I still say no, what then? Are you going to shoot me?'

‘He doesn't have a gun,' William said. ‘Does he?'

‘Of course not,' Spencer said, standing up at last.

‘So who's going to shoot who then?' Grace said.

‘Nobody,' Spencer said, pretending to be calm, hoping his pretence was a calming influence. It was like a surprise audition for the voice of reason, and Spencer was still working out an approach. ‘Nobody ever gets shot except in films, and in America.'

‘And in Belfast,' Grace said.

‘Yes.'

‘And maybe in places where they take drugs.'

‘Yes, Grace.'

‘And anyway,' Hazel said, ‘I'm with Spencer.'

Spencer smiled weakly. ‘In a manner of speaking.'

Grace fed some birthday Jaffa cake to Trigger, crumbling tiny amounts of sponge biscuit onto the surface of the water. William examined his plate, and then dabbed up some splinters of chocolate with his fingertips. Spencer. Hazel. Henry stood up and held his small packet of powder out in front of him, at the same level as his eyes. They were hard, excited, shining like stones.

‘Nobody move,' he said.

Reflected in the overhang curve of the fruit bowl, his face warped and flattened by the water, Spencer remained a failure, unable to decide, act, rescue Hazel the woman he wanted to love, had loved, almost loved, had he really ever loved her? He loved her, he loved her not, he loved her but. Stunned by the sight of Henry Mitsui gone mad, threatening them all quite sincerely with a small plastic packet, Spencer found himself hoping for some kind of interruption. That would be the easiest way out. The Italians would arrive to look at the house, or there'd be a late Hallowe'en trick or treat. Two escorted youngsters in the afternoon daylight, perhaps, forbidden to parade in last night's darkness by paranoid parents. Late but determined, they insist on the door being answered, breaking Henry Mitsui's spell. Or Spencer could do something himself, of course. He himself could be the interruption.

‘It's poison,' Henry said. ‘It's English name is ricin. I made it myself from castor-oil seeds.'