David Lodge - Small World (48 page)
Read David Lodge - Small World Online
Authors: Author's Note
“Daddy!”
“My babies!”
“My girls!” Poor Ji-Moon Lee is in danger of being brushed aside, until Angelica stretches out a hand and pulls her into the reunited family circle. “Our second step-mother,” she says, embracing her.
Everybody in the room, it seems, is embracing, laughing, crying, shouting. Desiree and Morris Zapp are kissing each other on both cheeks. Ronald Frobisher is shaking hands with Rudyard Parkinson. Only Siegfried von Turpitz looks cross and sulky. Persse grabs his hand and pumps it up and down. “No hard feelings,” he says, “Lecky, Windrush and Bernstein are going to publish my book after all.” The German pulls his hand away irritably, but Persse has not finished shaking it, and the black glove comes off, revealing a perfectly normal, healthy-looking hand underneath. Von Turpitz goes pale, hisses, and seems to shrivel in stature, plunges his hand in his jacket pocket, and slinks from the room, never to be seen at an international conference again.
Lily came across to Persse. “We’re all going on somewhere we can dance,” she said. “You want to come?”
“No thanks,” said Persse.
“We could just go back to the room, if you like,” she said. “You and me.”
“Thanks,” said Persse, “but I ought to be on my way.”
He left the party a few minutes later, at the same time as Philip Swallow. The Englishman’s eye was moist. “I know what it’s like to discover that you have a child you never dreamt existed,” he said, as they waited for the main elevator. “I found I had a daughter like that, once. Then I lost her again.” The lift doors opened and they entered it.
“How was that?”
“It’s a long story,” said Philip Swallow. “Basically I failed in the role of romantic hero. I thought I wasn’t too old for it, but I was. My nerve failed me at a crucial moment.”
“That’s a pity,” said Persse politely.
“I wasn’t equal to the woman in the case.”
“Joy?”
“Yes, Joy,” said Philip Swallow with a sigh. He didn’t seem surprised that Persse knew the name. “I had a Christmas card from her, she said she’s getting married again. Hilary said, ‘Joy? Do we know someone called Joy?’ I said, ‘just someone I met on my travels.’ “
“Hilary is your wife?”
“Yes. She’s a marriage counsellor. jolly good at it, too. She helped the Dempseys get back together. Do you remember Robin Dempsey—he was at the Rummidge conference.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Persse. “He didn’t seem very contented when I met him.”
“Had some kind of a breakdown last summer, I understand. Janet took pity on him. This is my floor, I think. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Persse watched Philip Swallow walking down the corridor, swaying a little with fatigue or drink, until the lift doors closed.
Persse ran back to the Hilton lobby and pressed a dime into the nearest payphone. He dialled the number and a familiar voice said, somewhat listlessly: “Hallo, naughty boy, this is Marlene. What’s on your mind?”
“Bernadette,” said Persse. “I’ve got some important information for you.”
Persse walked through the Hilton lobby and out into the cold, crisp night. The temperature had returned to normal, and a raw biting wind was blowing down the Avenue of the Americas again. He began to walk in the direction of the YMCA. A black youth sped towards him a few inches above the broad sidewalk. But what Persse had at first taken for winged feet turned out to be attached to roller skates, and what looked like a helmet was a woolly hat worn over a transistor radio headset. Persse, mindful of New York mugging stories, and of the fact that he was carrying two hundred dollars in cash, stopped and tensed in readiness to defend himself. The young man, however, wore a friendly aspect. He smiled to himself and rolled his eyes up into his head; his movements had a rhythmic, choreographed quality, and his approach to Persse was delayed by many loops and arabesques on the broad pavement. He was clearly dancing to the unheard melodies in his earphones. He held a sheaf of leaflets, and as he passed he deftly thrust one into Persse’s hand. Persse read it by the light of a shop window.
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Two
ON the last day of the year, Persse McGarrigle flew into Heathrow on a British Airways jumbo jet. Having only handbaggage with him, his scuffed and shabby canvas grip, he was one of the first of the passengers to pass through customs and passport control. He went straight to the nearest British Airways Information desk. The girl sitting behind it was not Cheryl. “Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”
“You can indeed,” he said. “I’m looking for a girl called Cheryl. Cheryl Summerbee. She works for British Airways. Can you tell me where I can find her?”
“We’re not supposed to answer that sort of question,” said the girl. “Please,” said Persse. “It’s important.” He put all a lover’s urgency into his voice.
The girl sighed. “Well, I’ll see what I can do,” she said. She pushed the buttons on her telephone and waited silently for an answer. “Oh, hallo Frank,” she said at length. “Is Cheryl Summerbee on shift this morning? Eh? What? No, I didn’t. Oh. You don’t? I see. All right, then. No, nothing. ‘Bye.” She put the phone down and looked at Persse, curiously and with a certain compassion. “Apparently she got the sack yesterday,” she said.
“What!” Persse exclaimed. “Whatever for?”
The girl shrugged. “Apparently she tried to get her own back on some bolshie passenger by marking his boarding card `S’, for suspected smuggler. The Excise boys did him over and he complained.”
“Where is she, then? How can I find out her address?”
“Frank said she’s gone abroad.”
“Abroad?”
“She said she was fed up with the job anyway and this was her chance to travel. She’d been saving up, apparently. That’s what Frank said.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“No,” said the girl. “She didn’t. Can I help you, madam?” She turned aside to help another enquirer.
Persse walked slowly away from the Information desk and stood in front of the huge Departures flutterboard, with his hands in his pockets and his hag at his feet. New York, Ottawa, Johannesburg, Cairo, Nairobi, Moscow, Bangkok, Wellington, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Baghdad, Calcutta, Sidney… The day’s destinations filled four columns. Every few minutes the board twitched into life, and the names flickered and chattered and tumbled and rotated before his eyes, like the components of some complicated mechanical game of chance, a gigantic geographical fruit machine, until they came to rest once more. On to the surface of the board, as on to a cinema screen, he projected his memory of Cheryl’s face and figure—the blonde, shoulder-length hair, the high-stepping gait, the starry, unfocused look of her blue eyes—and he wondered where in all the small, narrow world he should begin to look for her.