I examined the belt. He had worn it knotted. It had a perfectly good buckle, if you have to wear a belt with your raincoat, but the buckle wasn't good enough for Larry. He had to knot his belt like a gigolo, which is why I had taken such pleasure in seeing my gloved fists clutching it as I dragged him along the ground, with his head going bumpety-bump and his grin switching on and off in the moonlight.
It's a different coat, I thought. Then I thought: When did Larry ever have two of anything except women?
* * *
Beneath the kitchen sink I had found a roll of black plastic bin bags. Tearing one free, I stuffed the mail into it, making no distinction between printed and personal letters, As I did so I saw the bayonetted children again, and remembered Diana and his perfect note. What was perfect, I wondered, about the screams of dying children? On my knees before the fireplace, I scraped together the charred paper in the grate and with huge care laid it in a second bag. I filled a third and fourth with files and papers strewn around the desk. I tossed in an Esso diary, and a singed account book that somebody had attempted to burn but failed, and a forties pop-up Bakelite address book I associated with neither Larry nor Emma which seemed to be some foundling in their lives, until I realised it was Russian. I extracted the tape from the typewriter, pulled the plug out of the socket, and set the typewriter on the kitchen table on its way to the side door. And that was for the seeming, because I had told Phoebe I needed to collect Sally's typewriter. I put the tape in the third bin bag.
I returned to the drawing room and made to unplug the answering machine, but on second thoughts picked it up, base and receiver both, and by the glow of the street lamp identified the redial button on the telephone, lifted the receiver, and pressed redial. A number rang out. I heard a man's voice, soft, foreign, and well-spoken like Mr. Dass: "Thank you for calling the offices of Hardwear Carpets International. If you wish to leave a message or place an order, kindly speak after the tone...." I listened to the message twice, unplugged the machine, and set it on the kitchen table beside the typewriter. My eye caught sight of a set of car keys hanging from a nail. The Toyota. I put them in my pocket, grateful that I wasn't going to have to jump the wires in a dark side street late on a Saturday night. I rushed upstairs. There was no hard reason for this excessive haste, but perhaps if I hadn't run I wouldn't have found the courage to walk.
I stood at the bedroom window. Cambridge Street was deserted. Waiting for my head to clear, I stared out over the grass platform at the rivers of railway line. The night was darker. Bristol was putting itself to sleep. This is where Emma stood when she was waiting for him to arrive, I thought. Naked, as she used to wait for me when she had decided we would make love. I stood at the futon. The pillows were stacked to one side, for a single head. What was she thinking as she lay here alone?
Leaving the door ajar, I walked down the pavement to the car, pulled off the cover, and saw Larry's buckskin boots lying on the back seat. I determined to make nothing dramatic of the boots. They were Larry's boots. and Larry was alive. What was so remarkable about his damned boots, made to measure by Lobb of St. James's and paid for to screams of pain from the Top Floor, all because Larry had decided that it was time he put our love for him to the test?
I noted the caked mud on them, as one notes mud on anything: take a wire brush to them, do it later. The hatred in me was aflame again. I wished I could call a rematch, go back to Priddy and finish him off.
I walked to the kitchen, collected the typewriter and answering machine, and walked back to the car with them, agonising about whether it was intending to start. I made some fanciful calculations about how long it would take to push the car to the top of the hill so that I could roll it down to the station and, if it still didn't start, transfer my new possessions to a cab.
