Square was gridlocked, and empty of pedestrians. I was looking for a pair of white shoes, trainers with red laces. I threaded quickly among the jammed vehicles throbbing patiently. I knew exactly where I myself would have stood to keep the library doors covered: on the northeastern corner across from the old Libyan Embassy. As I went, I glanced to my left up Duke of York Street. The pavements were empty, the streets were full. Cars were our citizens now. I reached the corner, by the railings. There was no one, not even a drunk in the park. I stood there awhile, looking about me and getting my breath. I was right on the spot where the policewoman Yvonne Fletcher had been shot dead by a Libyan from a windowacross the road. At my feet was a little bunch of marigolds tied with wool, such as a child might bring. The jam jar they had arrived in had been knocked over and had a little water inside. Still glancing about me, I knelt and returned the flowers to the jar. I couldn’t help feeling as I pushed the jar closer to the railings, where it might escape being kicked over again, that it might bring me luck, or rather protection, and that on such hopeful acts of propitiation, fending off mad, wild, unpredictable forces, whole religions were founded, whole systems of thought unfurled.
Then I went back indoors to the reading room.
Five
I had a second meeting that day—I was on a jury judging a science book prize—and by the time I got home Clarissa had left to meet her brother. I needed to talk to her. The effort of appearing sane and judicious for three hours had rather unhinged me. In our comfortable, almost tasteful apartment, the familiar mass and tone of the rooms looked tighter, and somehow dusty. I made a gin and tonic and drank it by the answering machine. The last of the messages was a breathless pause followed by the rattle of a receiver being replaced. I had to talk to Clarissa about Parry. I had to tell her about his call the night before and how he had followed me into the library, and about this discomfort, this apprehension I had. I thought of going to find her in the restaurant, but I knew that by now her adulterous brother would have begun the relentless plainsong of the divorce novitiate—the pained self-advocacy that hymns the transmutations of love into hatred or indifference. Clarissa, who was fond of her sister-in-law, would be listening in shock.
To calm myself I turned to that evening clinic of referred pain,the TV news. Tonight, a mass grave in a wood in central Bosnia, a cancerous government minister with a love nest, the second day of a murder trial. What soothed me was the format’s familiarity: the warbeat music, the smooth and urgent tones of the presenter, the easeful truth that all misery was relative, then the final opiate, the weather. I returned to the kitchen to mix a second drink and sat with it at the kitchen table. If Parry had been trailing me all day, then he knew where I lived. If he hadn’t, then my mental state was very frail. But it wasn’t, fundamentally, and he had, and I had to think this through. I could put down his late-night call to stress and solitary drinking, but not if he had been following me about today. And I knew he had, because I had seen the white of his trainer and its red lace. Unless—and the habit of skepticism was proof of my sanity—unless the redness was imagined, or visually conflated. The library carpet, after all, was red. But I had seen the color woven into the glimpse of shoe. I had sensed him behind me even before I saw him. The unreliability of such intuition I was prepared to concede. But it was him. Like many people living a safe life, I immediately imagined the worst. What reason had I given him for murdering me? Did he think I had mocked his faith? Perhaps he had phoned again …
I picked up the cordless and dialed last number recall. The computerized female voice intoned an unfamiliar London number. I called it and listened and shook my
Then I went back indoors to the reading room.
Five
I had a second meeting that day—I was on a jury judging a science book prize—and by the time I got home Clarissa had left to meet her brother. I needed to talk to her. The effort of appearing sane and judicious for three hours had rather unhinged me. In our comfortable, almost tasteful apartment, the familiar mass and tone of the rooms looked tighter, and somehow dusty. I made a gin and tonic and drank it by the answering machine. The last of the messages was a breathless pause followed by the rattle of a receiver being replaced. I had to talk to Clarissa about Parry. I had to tell her about his call the night before and how he had followed me into the library, and about this discomfort, this apprehension I had. I thought of going to find her in the restaurant, but I knew that by now her adulterous brother would have begun the relentless plainsong of the divorce novitiate—the pained self-advocacy that hymns the transmutations of love into hatred or indifference. Clarissa, who was fond of her sister-in-law, would be listening in shock.
To calm myself I turned to that evening clinic of referred pain,the TV news. Tonight, a mass grave in a wood in central Bosnia, a cancerous government minister with a love nest, the second day of a murder trial. What soothed me was the format’s familiarity: the warbeat music, the smooth and urgent tones of the presenter, the easeful truth that all misery was relative, then the final opiate, the weather. I returned to the kitchen to mix a second drink and sat with it at the kitchen table. If Parry had been trailing me all day, then he knew where I lived. If he hadn’t, then my mental state was very frail. But it wasn’t, fundamentally, and he had, and I had to think this through. I could put down his late-night call to stress and solitary drinking, but not if he had been following me about today. And I knew he had, because I had seen the white of his trainer and its red lace. Unless—and the habit of skepticism was proof of my sanity—unless the redness was imagined, or visually conflated. The library carpet, after all, was red. But I had seen the color woven into the glimpse of shoe. I had sensed him behind me even before I saw him. The unreliability of such intuition I was prepared to concede. But it was him. Like many people living a safe life, I immediately imagined the worst. What reason had I given him for murdering me? Did he think I had mocked his faith? Perhaps he had phoned again …
I picked up the cordless and dialed last number recall. The computerized female voice intoned an unfamiliar London number. I called it and listened and shook my
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