The Good Mayor (34 page)

Hektor was anxious and jumpy when she returned. She opened her purse and said, “How much do you need?” but his hand snaked out and dipped away with every note she had.

“Is that it?” he asked. “It’ll do, I suppose.”

“Hektor, that’s all the money I’ve got.”

He snatched the purse from her and looked inside. “There’s the tram fare in there still. You can get home. Whaddya need it for anyway?”

“What do
you
need it for?”

He suddenly chilled. His eyebrows knitted and his mouth formed into a hard line. There was a movement, just a slight twist of his hand that made her gasp and draw back and, inside his glass booth, Peter Stavo dropped his newspaper and stood up.

“So that’s how it is, is it? You grudge it. I’m grudged a few coppers. I’m like a little kid, waiting for pocket money from Mummy, is that the story? Have it back. Have the bloedig lot!” And he flicked the money at her with his thumb so it exploded against her chest like a bullet wound and the notes fluttered to the floor.

“No,” she said, “I didn’t mean that. Hektor, I just asked.” Agathe crouched on the floor, picking up the cash but, by the time she had gathered it together, the door to City Square was banging and Hektor was gone. She hurried after him and he had slowed down enough to let her catch him at the corner, by the letter box, just where she had run into him that first day. “Hektor, Hektor,” she tugged at his thin black coat. “Hektor, I’m sorry. Of course you can have it if you want it.”

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Hektor, please, take it.”

She made the notes into a bundle and pushed them into his coat pocket. She felt his fingers close around them. She felt his hand make a fist.

“Well, so long as you’re asking,” he said. “Just don’t do me any favours.”

“No. No. It’s not a favour. We share. It’s your money too. I want you to have it.” Agathe put her face up to be kissed.

He did not kiss her. “Right, then. So long as we’re clear. So long as it’s sorted out. I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, for Chrissakes, Agathe! I’m not a bloedig puppy. I’m not on a string. Is that what you think, is it? That what you think of me? You want another Stopak, is that it? Is that what you want?”

“No, Hektor. No. I want you. I just asked. Hektor, don’t be like this. I’m sorry.”

“I can’t come and go? It’s like you think you own me or something. I’m some bloedig toy.”

“No. It’s not that way.”

“I’m not clocking in and clocking out for you.”

“No. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Right.” That was all he said and he turned away towards the tram stop with his head down and never looked back but, before he was out of the square, she saw him reach into his pocket and hunch over the bundle of notes and spread them flat and count them and shake his head and walk on.

Agathe turned back towards the Town Hall where Peter Stavo was waiting at his open door. “Coffee’s about ready,” he said.

“Thanks. I’d better get back to work.”

“Everything all right?” he asked.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“He’s a wrong’un, that one.”

“He’s not. He’s all right.” She plodded up the stairs.

At the door to the mayor’s office, she met Tibo hurrying out. He had taken the chance to leave when she was away from her desk
and, meeting her like that, he was suddenly dry-mouthed and awkward. He pushed a hand through his hair. He spun on his heel to go back to his desk, realised he was trapped, spun round again to face her. He said, “Good morning, Mrs. Stopak.”

“You’re going to sack me.” Agathe’s lip trembled.

“Should I sack you? Have you done something that deserves sacking?” He might have said something kinder, something gentler, something a bit reassuring like, “Don’t be silly. Why should I sack you? Of course I won’t sack you. I love you.” But that sort of thing had been beaten out of him—she had beaten it out of him—and now he was more inclined to come out fighting and save himself from more beatings.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think I’ve done something?”

Tibo tightened his tie into a pea-sized knot and said, “I’m not going to sack you.”

“You called me ‘Mrs. Stopak.’ You haven’t called me ‘Mrs. Stopak’ for a long time. I thought you were working up to something. I thought you were going to sack me.”

Tibo looked over her shoulder at a spot on the wall just on the other side of the passage. “Yes,” he said. “Mrs. Stopak, I’ve been meaning to … Well … After some thought, I decided that it would probably be for the best if, in the light of the circumstances, we reverted to a more formal style of address. If it’s all right with you, I will call you ‘Mrs. Stopak’ and I’d prefer it if, from now on, you were to call me ‘Mayor Krovic’ or just ‘Mayor.’”

“So you’re not going to sack me?” Her shoulders slumped. “Mayor Krovic.”

“No, I’m not going to sack you.”

“Or transfer me?”

“No.”

“I like this job.” That was a lie. She hated it. She hated the atmosphere that had hung about the office for weeks, the embarrassment, the pain, the coldness.

Tibo said, “You are an extremely competent and efficient secretary. I can’t think of anybody who knows the job better or who could do it as well. Things have been difficult this past while—
there’s no point pretending otherwise—but we are both adults and we can find a way to … Yes … Quite.”

His eyes were hurting from staring at the same bit of wall. He might have said, “I have no reason for getting up in the morning except for the thought that I can be near you all day and it’s killing me but being away from you would kill me quicker,” but he didn’t.

“Thank you, Mayor Krovic,” Agathe said and she walked on slowly towards her desk. “School party visiting the Town Hall at three o’clock,” she said. “Don’t forget. You wanted to greet them personally.”

“I won’t forget. Thank you, Mrs. Stopak.” Tibo stumbled down the stairs as if he had been shot and had not yet plucked up the courage to die.

And Agathe, when she sat down at her desk, empty and exhausted, was astonished to see that
The Rokeby Venus
was still pinned up there, a little dusty and lopsided, forgotten. She pulled it down and read it once more. “More beautiful than this. More precious. More to be desired. More to be worshipped than any goddess. Yes, I AM your friend.” Then she tore it into pieces and dropped them in the bin. The drawing pin stayed stuck in the wall but it wasn’t worth gambling a nail on and she decided to leave it there.

Strangely, though the postcard had hung there, unnoticed, for weeks, that drawing pin seemed to catch her eye all the time and, when it did, the torn picture came back to life—the postcard, the message Tibo had written on it, what it meant, Hektor’s version of it, what that meant, what she thought it meant. It was there when she came back from eating her sandwiches in Peter Stavo’s glass booth—too cold to eat them in the square now. It was there just before three when she looked up from her work and went to the door of Tibo’s office to knock a reminder of the visiting school party, it was there when she sat down again and there at five when she cleared her desk and turned out the lamp.

“Dammit,” she said and left.

GATHE BOUGHT A PAPER FROM THE ONE-
LEGGED vendor who stood at his usual spot, on the corner next to the bank, roaring slurred and unintelligible headlines at the passing crowds. He was dirty and a bit smelly, standing there in the same thick coat he wore, winter and summer and wearing a cap that gave off fumes of creosote as she dropped a coin into his hand. “Somebody’s baby,” she thought. “Somebody’s baby. Like my baby. Poor baby.”

Waiting in the queue for the tram, Agathe saw Tibo leave the Town Hall, heading for Castle Street and home. She watched him for a moment until he turned his head and looked towards her. Quickly, she glanced down at her paper and buried herself in an article on record-breaking cabbage exports at the docks. She read the headline and then, without moving her head, she flicked her eye back to where Tibo had been standing a moment before. He was still there, still looking towards her. She turned her back and bored into the evening paper again, hating him. “Mr. High-and-Bloedig-Mighty Call-Me-‘Mayor’ Krovic. My baby, my poor baby.”

Her eye caught on “sauerkraut” and she read it, that same word, over and over again until the tram came and the queue shuffled forward.

Spring was still a long way off and the six dim bulbs that lit the inside of the tram turned the windows to blank sheets. The passengers sat ignoring one another, reading their papers, looking out
the impenetrable, steamy windows, studying their gloves or pretending to read, over and over again, the coloured cardboard adverts for Bora-Bora Cola stuck along the edge of the ceiling. At the back of the tram, face-to-face across the aisle, there were two bench seats lengthways, along the sides of the tram. Agathe hated sitting there, forced into confrontation with whoever was sitting opposite. She looked down at the floor, she riffled pointlessly through the contents of her handbag and then, at the second stop along Ampersand Avenue, when the conductor yelled, “Ash Street! This is Ash Street!,” the tram filled up.

Almost a dozen passengers squeezed in from the cold and damp of the riverside and seven of them had to stand. They shuffled along the aisle, reaching up for the red leather straps hanging from the brass rail that ran the length of the tram and there, right in front of Agathe, looking right at her, was Mrs. Oktar from the delicatessen.

They each did exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. They each looked at one another, they each recognised a nice woman they knew and liked, a neighbour from Aleksander Street, somebody they hadn’t seen for a while and they each smiled and they each said, “Oh, hello” happily and then they remembered why they no longer saw one another and embarrassment fell across their faces.

“Mrs. Stopak,” said Mrs. Oktar.

“Mrs. Oktar,” said Mrs. Stopak.

“Keeping well?” said Mrs. Oktar.

“Fine, thanks.” Agathe nodded. “You? Keeping well?”

Mrs. Oktar managed to move her lips a little but, beyond a faint “Hmmph,” nothing came out.

There was nothing left to say. Mrs. Oktar pretended to look out the window. Agathe unfolded her newspaper and pretended to read.

“Sauerkraut, sauerkraut, sauerkraut,” she read and the tram wobbled slowly onwards as she fumed silently. “She has no business judging me. I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t. I am not ashamed. She doesn’t know a thing about it.”

Mrs. Oktar’s hip was pressed against Agathe’s knee. The coarse weave of her winter coat was making Agathe’s skin hot and itchy. She imagined the raised pattern forming there, like the mark of a waffle iron, and it made her angry. She tried to make little jerking movements with her knee, enough to annoy Mrs. Oktar or perhaps even dislodge her but not so much as to appear rude or difficult and she fumed.

The conductor was squeezing through the tram, demanding fares, churning change around in a horseshoe-shaped leather satchel that hung from his neck. Mrs. Oktar needed two hands to open her purse and pay him. She let go of her strap and leaned forward for balance, nudging Agathe’s paper aside as she picked out a few coins. They exchanged frosty smiles and they arched eyebrows at one another. Agathe noticed, tucked inside Mrs. Oktar’s purse, was a coloured card with an image of me on it and she felt a little pang.

“Green Bridge! This is Green Bridge!” the conductor called and he clanged the iron bell.

“This is mine,” said Mrs. Oktar.

“Yes,” said Agathe.

“You go on a bit further,” said Mrs. Oktar.

“Yes,” said Agathe.

“Well, bye, then,” said Mrs. Oktar.

“Yes. Bye,” said Agathe.

Mrs. Oktar gave another of her icicle-thin smiles and walked down the tram for the pace or two that took her to the back platform. And then, just before she stepped off into the darkness and disappeared towards her neat, bright flat above the delicatessen, all smelling of cinnamon and good bacon, she glanced back and found Agathe looking right at her.

“What you did,” said Mrs. Oktar, “I wish I’d done it years ago.” And she walked away.

The rest of the way to Foundry Street, Agathe sat, slack-jawed, looking at the place where Mrs. Oktar had been standing, wondering at the amazing, unknown strangeness of other people’s lives. She was so astonished that she forgot to brace herself for the horrid
walk round the corner and through the tunnel to the flat in Canal Street.

Agathe hated walking down Canal Street. Without the coating of snowflakes it wore on her first night there, it had lost its romance. The cobbles were old and broken and dirty, the railings along the canal-side were chipped and rusty and, although she had reported the broken street lamp to the Department of Works, nothing had been done. Somehow, Canal Street never seemed to get to the top of anybody’s list and she could hardly go to the mayor to demand action.