The Professor of Truth (24 page)

The contrast with the outside of the shop was remarkable. Inside, everything was neat and ordered. Perhaps it had to be this way, because there wasn’t much space. Deep shelves laden with different fabrics ran along the back wall; three dummies stood in different states of undress in one corner; next to them was a rail of hangers on which various items of clothing in polythene covers awaited collection. An electric fan on a pedestal was sending waves of cool air across the room. Somewhere out of sight a radio or music system was playing classical music. The centre of the shop was taken up by a large, low table for laying out and cutting. Behind it, squeezed in at a smaller table and operating a sewing machine, was a little, neat woman, with short black hair and black-rimmed glasses. She looked up as I entered.

“Yes, can I help you?”

“I have some things to be mended.” I held out the items. “The tourist office said you might be able to do them for me.”

The woman stood, eased herself out from behind the two tables, and came over to me.

“Please, let me see.”

“The shirt needs some buttons sewn on,” I said. “And the trousers have a tear, just here.”

I put the clothes down on the larger table and she picked them up and inspected them.

“Yes, I can do these,” she said.

“Very good.” I reached into the pocket of my shorts. “I have the shirt buttons here.”

She frowned. “This is a new shirt.”

“Yes, but the buttons came off.”

She shook her head. “Not good. You should take it back to the shop.” Then she inspected the garment more closely and made a rough, pulling gesture. “They have been torn off.”

I laughed, embarrassed at having been so easily found out. “Well, yes. It was me, I’m afraid. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I was trying it on in my hotel and I pulled instead of undoing them. Like Superman. Can you put them back on?”

“Yes, I already said.” She picked up the trousers and looked closely at the pocket. “This also is an accident?”

“Yes.” She does not believe me, I thought.

“Okay. The price is fifteen dollars, all right?”

“That’s fine. Do you want me to pay now?”

“No, when you collect.”

She reached for a book of tickets and a pen, and began to write.

“What name, please?”

“Smith. Alan Smith.”

“You have address, telephone?”

“No, I’m a visitor here. I’m staying at the Pelican Hotel.”

I saw the pen hesitate, then write again.

“Okay. You can collect tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Say, after twelve, to be sure.”

“I’ll come in the afternoon,” I said.

“Yes. If not tomorrow, Monday. I’m closed Fridays and weekend.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She nodded, tore a ticket from the book, and gave it to me. “Okay, thank you.”

The business was done. She folded the shirt and trousers deftly, pinned another ticket to them and left them at a corner of the big table. Then she returned to the sewing machine. I had started towards the door but now paused, and as soon as I did so did she.

“Yes?”

I felt a need to draw her out further. “I’m glad the tourist office people were able to send me to you,” I said.

“They don’t know me,” she said, shaking her head.

“But they know of the shop,” I said. “It’s not a big town. I imagine you must often have to do emergency repairs for visitors like me.”

“No,” she said. “Not often. Mostly local people.”

“Well, I’m lucky I found you.”

“You said they sent you,” she said.

I found the literal way she took things, her direct manner, both unsettling and refreshing. The way she spoke too—clipped, precise, almost perfect, not quite naturally imperfect, English as a foreign language—was at once harsh and attractive. I tried to judge her age, and thought she might be about thirty-five. She had sallow, smooth, beautiful skin, and her hair was sheer black and thick, yet somehow it also appeared light of weight. She looked cool and self-possessed, whereas I felt damp and sticky and in the wrong climate.

“That fan must be essential in this heat,” I said.

She frowned again. “Yes, it is why I have it.”

“I find it very hot,” I said. “They say there’s a real danger of bush fires.”

“There is always danger.”

“But especially inland. Close to here, but inland. Places like Sheildston.”

Now she raised her chin to look at me more carefully. “Not especially,” she said.

“That’s what I heard. Ah well. I will be back tomorrow. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” she said, and I heard the sewing machine begin its clatter as I closed the door.

HAT NIGHT THE CLAUSTROPHOBIA OF THE HOTEL
room, the awfulness of the television and the rattle of the air conditioning were all too much. I had brought some books with me—small, handy editions of obscure novels by Trollope and Galsworthy, which I’d thought I might usefully reread, and David Dibald’s last novel,
The Mists of Summer
—but I couldn’t bear even a page of any of them. I changed into a pair of trousers and another of my new shirts and ventured out into the beating warmth of the evening, looking for an unobtrusive place with a decent menu where I could spend an hour or two with a bottle of wine, chat to a waitress or a barman, and watch other people enjoying themselves. I found myself thinking almost enviously of the fun-lovers I had observed and thought foolish the day before. It was strange what coming to a place like this did to you. I felt—almost—not myself. It really was a bit like being on holiday.

The Strand at seven o’clock was loud and busy. Music thudded from open-air bars, crowds of young men and women swayed and yelled and squealed, the smell of frying food was everywhere in the gusty air. I walked through all this to the shore to look at the sky and the sea, both of which seemed to swarm with stars and starlight. A few shadowy
figures were still down on the beach but what they were doing I could not tell. I went another fifty yards and reached the more upmarket run of boutiques and galleries, where I had previously identified a couple of restaurants too expensive to attract the masses. The prices were on the steep side for me too, but I didn’t care. I had my credit card. There was a fish restaurant that looked inviting, but they wouldn’t have a table free for another half-hour. I made the reservation and wandered back along the seafront.

All the shops were closed, but one of the galleries was not. There, some kind of party was in progress. A new exhibition. The door was wide open and a clutch of elegant women drinking from huge wine glasses had come outside to smoke. I murmured my apologies as I went past them into the gallery, in which fifteen or twenty similarly well-dressed men and women were talking loudly, all at the same time. Nobody appeared to pay me any heed. I picked up a price list and a glass of wine from a white-clothed table, and moved round the walls to inspect the pictures.

The show comprised some twenty oil paintings by an artist who, I assumed, was the woman in the turban and ankle-length dress holding court in the middle of the room. A short, imperious, bald man in a cream linen suit was assiduously attentive to her, and I took him for the gallery owner. The artist wore bright shades of reds, yellows and blues and she seemed to like using the same range in her paintings. They were mostly described as still lifes but I found them distinctly unstill. They were very abstract too. The titles usually explained what fruits, flowers or other
objects were being depicted, which was just as well or I would often have been struggling to guess. I had a sense that the artist started quietly and then got carried away: every painting had its dark vortex or black hole out of which—or perhaps into which—swirled or burst countless vivid splashes and blotches. The actual forms of the things depicted—an apricot, a vase, a teapot—seemed completely random and diffuse. The smaller pictures cost $1,000, the larger ones twice as much. They were repetitive, pointless, messy and disturbing. I could not see any of those small red stickers that indicate a sale. Perhaps not enough drink had as yet been consumed.

Behind my back the braying chatter continued, inane and—to my ears—incongruous when uttered in down-to-earth Australian voices. I checked myself, as Emily would have. She would have called me reactionary. Carol might have agreed with her.

At the rear of the gallery was a second, smaller room containing other works for sale by local artists. Here were things more to my liking: more figurative works, some fine photography and a series of playful, surreal, mixed-media collages. And there were two quite beautiful seascapes, not very big yet capturing the immensity of ocean and sky that I had glimpsed from the hills. They were quite different—one of a sunset and the other of a dull, grey day—but both somehow contained a sense of vastness as well as, and not just because they were unsigned, the insignificance of the artist. I admired them, and felt consoled by that fact.

Having killed most of the half-hour and a second glass of wine, I made my way back to the fish restaurant. A waiter led me to a small table to one side. The place was not big. Five couples and a party of four were the only other diners, although several tables had been moved together in the middle, and were reserved for ten or twelve people. The menu was short and to the point. Everything was expensive. I ordered mussels followed by grilled sea bass, and a bottle of Sauvignon.

I’d been thinking a lot about Kim Parr. I was intrigued by her, and ashamed of my clumsy attempts to engage her in conversation. I’d liked her quick, imperfect but completely confident speech, with its sing-song Australian intonation that still retained the vowels of her native tongue, whatever that was. It was as if she had stitched together her own voice from whatever materials she had to hand. She was certainly a cool one. How had Parroulet got her? I thought of Parroulet as sleazy, shifty, the kind of man a woman like that would see through in a minute. Of course he had money. That would be his principal, perhaps his only, attraction. But if there was money, why did she drive around on an old scooter, and why did she spend her days sewing and mending for other people? What would a house like that, up on the heights, have cost? Maybe by the time he’d bought it, spent more doing it up, made their life comfortable—maybe there hadn’t been much left of Parroulet’s two million. Maybe he had had to send Mrs Parr out to work.

The waiter, young and genial, came back with the wine. He asked—seemed genuinely to want to know—if I was on
holiday, if I was having a good time, how long I was in Turner’s Strand for. I told a couple of lies, and said I wasn’t sure when I’d be leaving.

“You may not have a choice,” the waiter said. “Did you hear about the highway going north? Been closed since lunchtime. Big fire right across it, ten miles up the road. And it’s not the only one. We’re almost surrounded. A ring of fire,” he said with a laugh. “At least here we can go and stand in the sea if it gets too hot. So long as the sharks don’t get us.” He shook his head. “It’ll be all right, I’m sure. Everything’s so dry, that’s the thing.”

“I was up at Sheildston this morning,” I said. “I could see a fire burning in the distance.”

“Yeah, you would do up there. Think I’ll stay put, myself.” He laughed again. He didn’t seem much concerned at the possible danger. Nor did anybody else in the restaurant, or for that matter anyone on the Strand.

The mussels arrived. They were delicious.

I refilled my glass. I decided it would be good to speak to Carol, and to hell with eavesdroppers. She’d be at work right now. If I phoned early in the morning I might get her at home.

The foursome had finished their meal and got up to leave. The two couples were of different generations. The younger woman looked like the older woman. Mother and daughter. The younger man was being polite and deferential, trying to impress. It wasn’t hard to work out the likely scenario: boyfriend’s first meeting with girlfriend’s parents. Just then the boyfriend said something and everybody roared with laughter. It seemed he’d passed muster.

Mother and daughter. Emily and Alice. They’d hardly been in my mind at all since I’d arrived in the town. They were the reason for my coming, yet I’d neither dreamed nor thought about them. Were they still the reason? Or were Nilsen and Parroulet and Khalil Khazar the reason?

If the latter, what on earth was I doing there?

The sea bass came. It was beautifully cooked. The waiter returned after a few minutes to check that everything was all right, and took the opportunity to top up my glass.

“I don’t think I’ll manage the whole bottle,” I said.

“That’s all right. I’ll put the cork back in and you can take it with you.”

The party for the reserved table made their entry. It was made up of most of the people from the exhibition opening. Another waiter tried to get them settled. First there were too many seats, then not enough. My waiter said, “I better give him a hand. I’m sorry, I think it’s about to get a bit raucous.”

It did. They were still spouting the same rubbish. I fortified myself against the din with more wine, ate the rest of my meal, paid the bill and, clutching my bottle, stood up to go. I felt not unpleasantly unsteady.