Invisible. Jonathan Buckley

      ‘Yes, Malcolm. I don’t need your advice.’

      ‘Talk to her and let me know what’s happening.’

      ‘Yes,’ she says, and puts the phone down.

      In the beginning perhaps they had been drawn together by her discontent. He can still see her, in the dining room of the Zetland, standing amid a group of aunts and uncles, her eyes desperate and her smile frozen with boredom. A man with a bright red jacket and a paisley tie put his arm round her waist, and her neck stiffened as he kissed her on the cheek. She would have been fourteen then, or fifteen. He had often seen her walking with her friends, a demure little entourage that moved undisturbed through the mêlée of children around the gates, more like a gang of precocious office workers than schoolgirls. Waiting for the bus, she always stood extraordinarily straight, like a dancer, and she was standing that way at the Zetland, blinking at the cigar smoke that was being blown across her face. She turned and tapped his arm to ask if she could get a glass of water, then followed him to the kitchen. When she took the glass from him and sat down in the kitchen, her hair hid her face from him in a way that made her look more sophisticated than any of the adults. Lifting her head, she put a hand flat against her brow and sighed: ‘Jesus Christ, get me out of here.’ She’d drunk a glass of gin. She was three-quarters drunk, and she really didn’t like it, she said, looking at him, with her head resting on her arms. He told her she should eat something, and made an omelette for her, which she ate in about half a minute. His father called him back out to the party, and when he returned to the kitchen she had washed the plate and pan, and made two cups of coffee. And somehow, before the party was over, they came to be climbing up the spiral staircase to the roof of the turret. The weathervane creaked above their heads as they looked out at the sea, standing side by side, so close that her dress kept brushing the back of his legs. Kate surveyed the whole town in one continuous sweep. ‘What a dump,’ she said. ‘Just look at it. Death.’ She removed the pin that held the paper orchid to her dress and flung the flower upward. They watched it fly over the sea-coloured roofs and fall into the street. The skin on her arms had tightened with the cold. He took off his jacket and offered it to her, but she would not take it.

      Years later she finally escaped, with him, and they had lived abroad and been happy. For a long time they had been happy, most of the time. He knows this to be true, but at this moment, in the grey wake of their conversation, no instance of their happiness shows itself. What impresses itself upon him is that often, even during their first months in Amsterdam, he would see on Kate’s face a look like the expression he had seen that night in the Zetland, and it seems to him now that their marriage was like a path laid upon a marsh, and that the frigid ooze of boredom would well up through it, more and more frequently as the years passed. And boredom became bitterness, became something like contempt. He remembers one afternoon, on a bridge by a bookshop, when he explained why it would be best to stay a little longer in Amsterdam, as Mr Rijsbergen’s assistant. Just three or four months more, then they could go back to England. She listened, watching a police boat moving slowly down the canal. At last she spoke. ‘Whatever you say,’ she said, nothing more, tightening the straps on Stephanie’s pushchair. She walked off without saying another word, and that night, when he came home, he found in the kitchen bin a sheet of the hotel’s writing paper, on which she had written, in lipstick: ‘bored bored bored bored’. He remembers crushing the piece of paper into an empty tin and sitting in Stephanie’s room to watch his daughter while she slept. He fell asleep on the floor beside the cot. When he woke up he went into their bedroom. Kate lay curled on her side, with one hand under her cheek. He was no longer annoyed by the childish message she had left for him to find. Looking at her as she lay in their bed, turned away from him in sleep, in the shadows that the curtains cast like raindrops across the room, he felt something akin to the misery of bereavement, a misery that now, summoned by Kate’s voice, is returning to him, like an amnesiac’s interlude of clarity.

      He rummages through the relics on his desk, with no purpose other than to divert himself from the memory of Amsterdam. Taking up a sheaf of menus, he begins to plan the final night of the Oak. He makes notes on dishes that were prepared in Croombe’s kitchen, and drafts a letter to be sent to his most loyal guests, telling them of the special supper with which the Oak will be ending. He settles some bills, takes a call from Giles Harbison, goes down to the basement to check the gauges in the pump room. He continues down the passageway to the pool, but even the sight of the radiant blue walls, of the burnished pipes and the blooms of electric light within the water cannot bring him wholly into the present. As he stands by the water, breathing the sweetly stagnant air, it is as though he had recently arrived at the Oak, and Kate and Stephanie had departed merely weeks ago.

      Going home, he drives down the High Street instead of taking his customary route. It occurs to him, as he waits for the traffic lights to change, that he needs some cash for the morning. He parks outside the bank. Something here is unusual tonight, he is aware, as he jabs at the keyboard of the cash machine, but precisely what is unusual he does not know. The drums and cogs inside the machine start to turn; he puts out his hand to take the notes, glances to right and left, and then notices that several street lights in a row have failed. A pallid light lies over the dark bricks of the bank’s façade. The road has a complexion of indigo and the clouds around the moon are bordered with dark lavender. At a shriek of laughter he looks to his left. Three teenaged girls are sitting on the steps of the library, passing a cigarette around. They sprawl on the steps, one with a foot resting on another’s knee, the third girl sitting apart, higher up the steps, ruffling her tightly curled hair. The two girls sitting together turn to look at their friend. Taking a drag of the cigarette, she makes a remark, a sardonic aside that makes the other two howl and throw their arms round each other. This is what Stephanie will be like, he thinks, and finally, in the delight of the idea of his daughter, the mood of the afternoon is obliterated.

      

      In the alley opposite the library, Eloni drops a bag of stale buns into the bin. The pubs will be emptying soon, and the day’s last customers will arrive, some of them so drunk that they will vomit onto the pavement outside, and it will be her job to clear up the mess they make. She goes to the end of the alley; if nobody is coming she can stay outside for some fresh air. Three shrieking girls are walking down the street, veering across the pavement arm in arm. By the bank a man is getting into his car, and as they pass behind him one of them makes a remark that makes him turn and smile at them. Recognising Mr Caldecott, she steps back to avoid being seen, even though he knows she works here. In the shadows of the alley she watches his car go by, and her heart seems to clench, as though he had gone for ever and suddenly she is friendless and in danger. She returns to the kitchen. From the grills she scrapes the gritty pellets of meat and the slivers of onion that have shrivelled and hardened so they look like clippings from animals’ claws. She drains the dirty oil into a cut-down pop bottle. Out front, Charlie yells an order. She splays the grainy discs of meat onto the grill, and all the time the heavy small thing is tumbling in her chest.

       four

      At a quarter past one, hearing the front door close, Stephanie gets up from her bed to make sure that her mother is leaving. Pushing a hand into the slats of the blind, she sees her mother reach into her handbag for her sunglasses. It’s the round black-rimmed shades today, the Jackie Onassis pair. Post-workout chic is this afternoon’s look: strappy sandals to make the most of the coral-pink toenails; freshly laundered skinny jeans; and the tight white T-shirt that Robert brought back from New York, which cost a sexily ludicrous amount of money and shows off the high-toned, caramel-coloured arms. It’s the look that suits her best and it’s obvious from her walk that she knows it, just as you can see in the springy movement of her wrist the pleasure she gets when she aims the key fob at the car and all the locks spring up obediently, like tiny servants standing to attention. With poise she steps up into the car, turning at the waist, twisting her hips, dipping her head, reaching for the door in one fluid sequence, like a piece of action that’s been rehearsed and rehearsed until it’s become instinctive. One peep in the mirror and the Jackies are raised upright and jammed into the hairband position. And then we’re off, off to the shops once again, to buy whatever’s