more than once to Justin, without great effect. Every so often, Ken disappeared to conferences in Stockholm, Orlando, or Istanbul. Justin, an older man, considered his days of wandering were done. The recession proved a godsend as an excuse. Justin lingered, hands in pockets, wondering about the present moment in English life. No one seemed to think it odd that the village had acquired its ration of Latvians, Muslims and Chinese. Yet it was hardly a rational process that brought them here. Some came by reason of wealth, some by reason of poverty. It was just – well, just Chance. Someone ought to do something about it.
The two friends lingered on the corner in silence, contemplating the Latvian woman’s sorrows. The sun was low, dusting the quiet street with nine-carat gold. The atmosphere was heavy and becoming thunderous, to celebrate the summer solstice. The Anchor was a large building, built of brick, tall and unwelcoming, whereas most of Old Headington was built from venerable stone; with their low roofs they showed no particular wish to dominate. This modesty included the Anchor’s better situated rival, the White Hart, just down the road, opposite the church and almost as ancient as the church itself, both in its stonework and its aspirations. After a while, the friends parted by mutual consent. Ken turned back to rejoin his wife at home, a short way down Logic Lane. The crown of the great green oak growing in their garden could be glimpsed from the main road. Justin trudged slowly towards his house, careful of the uneven pavement. The birds sang under the street lamps. His way lay past the White Hart, across the road from the church whose origins dated from Saxon times. Justin was no great frequenter of the Hart. He had heard that the owners had engaged a new foreign waiter. He hoped that waiter might prove more effective than the foreigners who had closed the Anchor. At the church gate, the vicar, the Reverend Ted Hayse, was standing listening to an earnest young man, hanging on to his bike, as if in unconscious fear that the parson, forgetting his trade, might nick it. Gripping a handlebar, this youth was leaning towards Ted Hayse, and intensely pouring out his tale.
‘Good evening,’ said Justin as he passed the pair.
‘Good evening, Justin,’ said Ted in response.
‘And even then, even then,’ the young man was saying, emphatically, ‘it was simply an accident—’
‘Talking about Chance again,’ said Justin to himself. ‘But no good speaking of Chance to the Reverend Ted. He’d naturally ascribe whatever it was to the Will of God …’ He shuffled onward, came to his gate and went into his little house. He hung his hat on a convenient peg. The house smelt comfortably of burnt toast, coupled with the elusive fragrance of the clothes Justin had washed that morning, setting them to dry on various radiators.
‘I’m home, Maude,’ he called. ‘Are you okay?’ After a pause, reply came. ‘Is Kate there? She could find it.’
‘You know Kate’s in Egypt.’ He entered what had become known as Maude’s room. Maude, his mother-in-law, was a small, stringy, bespectacled lady with a whiskery pale face and a hearing aid. She was surrounded by piles of books she had pulled off the bookshelves.
‘What are you looking for, dear?’ he asked.
She turned her dim gaze towards him, eyes grey and watery through her rectangular lenses, looking vexed. ‘Dash it, I’ve forgotten. I know it was a book I wanted.’
He was used to Maude’s fits of vagueness. ‘I’m going to pour myself a glass of something. Would you like one?’
‘Certainly not. I had one earlier when my friend from the pub popped in.’
‘Oh, the Russian woman?’
‘She’s Latvian, so she says. They are selling up, you know. Such a pity.’
‘I did know.’
‘It was called Best Behaviour in Baghdad. Grey cloth, I think. About a conversion to Islam.’
‘Not much good behaviour in Baghdad now.’ He grinned at her and left her to it, amid the increasing piles of books.
In their shared kitchen, he found a bottle of Chardonnay standing open. It had lost its chill but he poured himself a glass, to retreat to his living room. A last beam of sun filtered into a corner behind the sofa. Here he kept his art books and a small hoard of DVDs. Justin, nursing the wine glass, sank into his favourite armchair. It was the armchair Janet, his late wife, had liked. After sipping the wine, he set his glass down on an occasional table and rested, closing his eyes. ‘She have so clean floor,’ he murmured. Within a minute, he was asleep. He did not dream. These daytime sleeps, of increasing frequency he thought, more closely resembled unconsciousness. They were places, being empty, of some indefinable alarm. He heard Maude talking, or perhaps chanting, to herself. She had arrived to help look after her dying daughter and had stayed ever since. She was eighty-nine and, he considered, increasingly eccentric. He feared he must nurse her to the end, as he himself felt his faculties crumble. A genuine horror of human life gripped him.
He recalled that Gustave Flaubert, on whom he had once made a TV documentary, took a dislike to a female friend when it became evident that she put happiness above art. Perhaps Maude was sinking into a similar madness, putting religion above sanity. He stared down at his clasped hands; the freckles of old age were apparent. He was already in decay like an old tree, and had scarcely noticed the encroachment. He still relished life even if, like the Chardonnay, it had gone a trifle flat.
Maude and Justin supped together on pasta, followed by rice pudding with raspberry jam. Later, he tucked her into bed before returning downstairs and reading an old hardbound copy of Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Kate Standish, his lady friend, was away in Egypt, working on her good cause again. Justin was unhappy that Kate was away so frequently. He felt that the Aten Trust for poor Egyptian children was taking precedence over their love for each other. In the night, a short sharp thunderstorm broke out with a resounding crash. Maude cried out, but he did not go to her; he thought instead of his son Dave, who might have been frightened, with no one interested in comforting him. He found in the morning that his BT answerphone no longer worked. Fortunately, he also possessed a digital phone which was functioning. Kate had given it to him as a Christmas present. But it was a bugger about the answerphone. He would have to do something about it. Some time. Everything was an effort. Maude had found the book she wanted. He would be the one who would put the piles of books back on the shelves.
At twelve noon as usual, he boiled water in his kettle and made two cups of instant coffee. He called Scalli to join him. When he had first employed Scalli, he had tried to avoid the woman, and had left her to drink her coffee alone. But gradually he realized it might be pleasant to get to know her, particularly when he was missing Kate. They sat facing one another at the kitchen table as usual. He liked talking to Scalli. Although her main topic of conversation was her dog, on which she doted, she was an intelligent woman, and he imagined there was little intelligent conversation in her life.
‘I read in The Times that Syria has held a general election. What do you think about that?’ he asked her. Scalli said that one of her cousins had written from Damascus to say all was peaceful.
‘He tells that they suffer many fears and shut up their shop with boards, but nobody did not riot. He has an Iraqi young man to work for him which came across the border in fear of the war which you wicked Britishers make. My daughter is sick in Aleppo – made worse by the election.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ Her hair was pale and cut short. She wore a faded blue dress with a high neckline. Her chin receded while her nose compensated by being rather long. Her skin was slightly withered. For all that, Justin was pleased by her blue eyes and dark eyebrows, and a general alertness. She gave him a doleful smile, accompanied by an inclination of the head.
‘To make the phone call to Syria, it’s so much expense.’
Maude looked round the kitchen door. She was wearing her old brown hat. ‘I’m just going out. I shall be back in time for lunch.’
Justin said with a touch of sarcasm, ‘So, another lesson on being Islamic?’
‘Whatever you may think, my decision is between me and my soul.’ She nodded towards Scalli, as if for confirmation.