The Professor of Truth (25 page)

As I edged my way past the gallery party, the short, bald man in the linen suit pushed his chair back and stopped me.

“What did you make of the show?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You were in earlier, taking advantage of the free wine. I don’t mind, but you weren’t invited. What did you make of the show?”

Half of the table was oblivious to this challenge, if it was a challenge, but those seated nearest to the gallery owner, including the turbaned artist, fell silent, waiting for my answer.

“Well …” I began.

“A good start,” the man interrupted. “Diplomatic. Buys you time. I don’t mind you gatecrashing, but I’d like to know what you thought. That’s only fair, isn’t it?”

“Interesting,” I said weakly. “I thought it was interesting.”

“He didn’t like your work, Maureen!” the bald man shouted, and everybody laughed. “That’s what ‘interesting’ means.”

I made to get past, but the bald man’s chair was in the way.

“Maybe you’ll come back and have another look,” he said. “You might change your opinion. You might even
have
an opinion!”

This was greeted with more laughter. Everybody was watching now, to see what would happen next.

“You might even want to buy something, instead of just taking without so much as a please or thank-you.”

All at once I felt very tired.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Please,” the gallery owner said.

“Leave it, Johnny,” somebody said.

“Let me past,” I said.

“Please,” the man said again.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by a desire to hit him as hard as I could. I felt the weight of the wine bottle in my grip. I said, “Get out of my way,” and pushed the man half off his chair as I went past him.

A woman’s voice yelled, “Look out, he’s got a bottle!”

I had the bottle half-raised. What, if anything, I might have done with it I have no idea, but the next moment the young waiter was behind me, very smoothly and efficiently ushering me to the door. “All right, all right, everybody cool it!” a man shouted. “Don’t be such a tit, Johnny,” said another. And a third, whose comment cut so deep that I might have turned back but for the waiter’s restraining arm, called, “On your way, Grandpa.”

It was hotter out on the pavement than it was indoors. I was confused, not sure what had happened. Had I been in a fight? I saw that the waiter had somehow got hold of the bottle, and was offering it to me.

“Bloody idiots,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. You all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“You get on home now. You know where you’re going?” “Yes. Can I have my wine?”

“Sure you can. It’s hardly worth it, but there you go.”

It turned out that I had already drunk all but a last half-glass or so. I didn’t remember how or when I’d done that.

“You’re right,” I said, “it’s not worth it.” But I took it anyway.

“Good night,” the waiter said.

“Good night. And thank you.”

I stumbled off in the direction of the hotel. I had enough sense to decide that it might be wise to avoid the busy main street, and got lost finding a quieter route. At some point I stopped to fill my lungs with the night air, and imagined
myself exhaling smoke and sparks like a dragon. I might have tried a roar or two. A little later, or possibly a little before, I drained the rest of the bottle and very carefully placed it on somebody’s doorstep, as if I were doing them a favour. Then, locating the hotel key in my pocket, I made my way to the Pelican.

WOKE LIKE SOMEONE I DID NOT KNOW, A MAN SPRAWLED
half-undressed on the hotel bed, head pounding, dry-mouthed, and with a tight, evil knot in the stomach. Gradually the scattered parts of the previous evening—the starlit sea, the kindly waiter, the exhibition, the absurd stand-off with the man from the gallery, the wine bottle—reassembled themselves. I recalled what I’d eaten, could taste or smell or feel a fishiness in every breath I exhaled. Sickness threatened, but did not come. I looked at my watch. It was nearly eleven—too late to phone Carol even had I been fit to do so.

I couldn’t understand how I had become so rapidly and thoroughly drunk. I’d only had a bottle of wine, which hadn’t seemed particularly strong. Two glasses at the gallery as well—it was quite a lot, but hardly extreme. Lying there, trying to find a cool patch of sheet on which to rest my cheek, I considered the possibility that I’d not been so much drunk as out of control, out of character. To have even momentarily entertained braining the bald man with the bottle! Thank God for the waiter, or I might now be languishing in a police cell.

I remembered paying for the meal with my credit card. If they were trying to track me down, they would find me now. How little I cared!

I sat up suddenly, to check that I wasn’t actually in a police cell. The movement pulled at the knot in my belly, and I went to the bathroom to try to loosen it, but without success. I collapsed back on the bed with a moan. The bowlful of mussels, and one slyly winking mussel in particular, kept swimming into view. I got up, drank some tepid water from the tap, lay down again. I told myself to try to sleep. I had to go to see Kim Parr that afternoon.

The next time I came to, my sore head had eased but the stomach cramp was worse. Slowly I got myself ready, showering gingerly, patting myself dry, easing my limbs into my clothes. Any sudden or vigorous action hurt. I was by now pretty sure that, whatever had got into me last night, I was suffering more because of that evil mussel than because of the wine.

I put on my hat, made sure I had money in my pocket, and went out into the day. The wind was as hot as a hairdryer, the sun like a grill. The short walk to
KIM TAILORING
was a major exertion. I paused beside the red scooter, as if to run through a plan of action, but I did not have one other than to collect the mended clothes. I had no idea what would happen when I went in.

Kim Parr was in the same seat, working away at the sewing machine, with the radio playing as before. When she saw me she immediately stopped what she was doing, fetched the things from a shelf and showed me the repairs. The shirt looked as new, and I could not detect that there had ever been a rip in the trousers.

“Thank you,” I said. I handed her twenty dollars and she
went to get change. In that brief interval nausea surged in me, and my face broke out in a sweat. I fanned myself with my hat but the shop’s atmosphere was already cool from the electric fan. I staggered slightly. Black shapes like mussel shells broke up my vision.

“I need to sit down,” I said, to no one in particular.

A kind of hot fog formed about me. I heard the woman’s voice say, “Here, sit here,” and felt her fingers pushing down on my shoulders—the lightest of touches but I gave way at once. Somehow a chair was under me. I put my head forward, almost between my knees, and groaned.

“I get you water,” she said.

Sweat poured from my head on to the floor, which I could dimly see was some kind of linoleum, the colour of red earth.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Drink,” she said, and held a plastic cup full of ice-cold water to my lips. I took a sip.

“More.”

I drank again.

“You want doctor, ambulance?”

“No, no,” I said. “Just let me stay here a minute. I’ll be all right.”

“You don’t look good,” she said.

“I don’t feel good.” But my vision was clearing, and the pain in my stomach was not so cruel. Perhaps the outpouring of sweat had got the poison out of me.

“You stay there,” Kim Parr said. “You going to fall? Faint?”

“No,” I said, although I was far from certain.

She went away briefly, and returned with a roll of paper towels. She tore several off, knelt down and wiped the floor around my feet.

“I’ve made your floor very wet.”

“Like a swimming pool,” she said. “Don’t want you slipping.” She tore off some more towels and handed them to me. I began to wipe my head and neck. Then I felt a churning, urgent prelude in my belly.

“Is there a toilet?” I said. “I need to go.”

“You going to be sick?”

“Maybe. No, not sick.”

She understood my predicament. “Okay, this way. Take it easy.” In a manner not unlike that of the waiter guiding me from the restaurant, she helped me past the hangers and dummies to what looked like a cupboard but was in fact a tiny toilet.

“Don’t lock the door,” she said. “Just in case.”

She went back to the shop. I made it to the toilet and sat down heavily, holding on to the edge of the seat with both hands. Everything gushed from me. I heard the sewing machine going again, and the radio, and hoped they covered the noises I was making. I thought again that I would faint, but held on and the feeling went by like an out-of-service bus. I wiped myself, and immediately a second and then a third evacuation happened. I don’t know how long I was there. I cleaned myself again, and flushed the toilet twice. Dispersing the smell was a different matter: there was a can of air freshener, which I used liberally. The sweat was cold
on me now, but I no longer felt giddy. When I thought of the bad mussel it was not leering at me. The crisis, I thought, still not entirely confidently, was now past.

“You okay?” Kim Parr called.

“Yes,” I croaked.

After a little longer, having washed my hands and splashed water on my face, I went back through to the shop.

She stopped her sewing. “You better now?”

“Yes, thank you. I ate something bad last night. A mussel. I’m sure that’s what it was.”

She shook her head. “Sometimes they don’t clean the fish enough. It only takes one little bit. Very dangerous.”

“I suppose there’s always a risk with seafood.”

“You don’t eat anything today,” she said. “Give your body time off.”

“Yes, that’s good advice.”

“Your five dollars is there,” she said, pointing to the big table. I saw the note sitting on top of the plastic bag that contained my folded shirt and trousers.

“Keep it,” I said. “It’s the least I can do. I’ve put you to all this trouble.”

“No trouble,” she said. “Someone gets ill in my shop, a customer, what am I going to do? Charge him for it?” She let out a little trill of laughter. Her smile—it was the first time I had seen it—was like an open flower.

Five dollars was such a tiny amount.

How could I say what I had come to say, after that smile, after what had just happened? What words could I lower myself to, in order to get to Parroulet?

I started for the door, then remembered the bag of clothes and the money and came back for them. I lifted them, put them down again.

Frowning, she watched my indecisiveness. She understood that I had something else to say.

She said, “What is it? What do you want?”

“I don’t know where to start,” I said.

She stood up, away from the sewing machine. She was a small, delicate-looking woman, but strong too. I could see this. She went to the door of the shop and flipped a
CLOSED/OPEN
sign that hung on the inside. Then she locked the door. This, it struck me, showed great self-assurance, a lack of fear. She switched off the radio.

“Why not start with your real name?” she said.

I sat on the folding chair she had brought me earlier, taking occasional sips of cold water. She was back behind the big table, defended by it, very upright, hands folded on the table surface. The kindness that had been in her smile and her earlier actions was gone.

“My name is Alan,” I said, “but not Smith. My name is Alan Tealing.”

“Tea-ling,” she said, stretching the name out so that it sounded like two words, oriental. “Yes.”

“Does my name mean anything to you?”

“Nothing.” But her answer was too sharp, and she tried to soften it. “Maybe I have heard it before. I knew Smith was not your name.”

“How did you know?”

“When you came yesterday I saw you are trouble. You had torn the clothes. You didn’t come to have clothes mended. So what did you come for? I don’t know, but your face was like one I’ve seen before. And now your name, maybe I know it too.”

“You’re right. It was a pretext. I came because I want to talk to your man, your husband.”

“What man? There is no man. Do you see a man?”

“Not here. In your house in Sheildston. I know that is where he is.”

Her face, when animated, was attractive—beautiful even—but now it was a mask, blank and without emotion.

“You asked me my real name and I have told you,” I said. “
His
real name is not Parr. It is Martin Parroulet.”

Her eyes conceded nothing.

“What are you, a journalist?”

“No.”

“Then what? Why do you come here to bother me? Why do you come to be ill in my shop?” Her voice quickened as her anger grew.

“That was not meant. You have been very kind. I am trying to tell you.”

“Tell me what? I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know you. You are trouble.”

“I lost my wife and my daughter many years ago. They were killed in a plane crash. The bombing. You know what I am talking about.”

She stared sullenly at me.

“I was a husband and a father. If my face looks familiar it’s because you’ve seen me on television or maybe in a newspaper. Not for a while now, but after the trial at which your husband was a witness. And my name too. That’s why you know my name.”