was Russian, over here studying music. She said Torquil had assured her he could help with her work-permit application. She accepted one of Torquil’s cigarettes and dipped her head to have it lit. She plumed smoke at the ceiling and held the cigarette awkwardly, her beer bottle in the other hand. Lorimer felt her melancholy soul reach out to encircle him. Then she said something but neither of them could hear.
‘What?’
‘I say this is nice place,’ she yelled. ‘Where is ladies’ room?’
She edged off in search of it and Torquil watched her go, before smirking at Lorimer, and leaning forward to put his mouth uncomfortably close to Lorimer’s ear.
‘I thought I’d been a bit grumpy at lunch,’ Torquil explained. ‘So I went back the other day to apologize, asked if I could buy her a drink. She’s a flautist, apparently. Firm, pliable lips I should imagine.’
‘She seems nice. Something intrinsically sad about her, I feel’
‘Bullshit. Listen, Lorimer, you wouldn’t mind sort of buggering off now, would you? I think I’ve done the decent thing. I’ll say you were called away.’
‘Got to go, as it is.’
Relief propelled him out of the bar but Torquil caught him at the door.
‘Almost forgot,’ he said. ‘What’re you doing next weekend? Gome to dinner, Saturday, stay the night. And bring your golf clubs.’
‘I don’t play golf. Look, I –’
‘I’ll get the Binns to drop you a line with the details. Not far away, Hertfordshire.’ He slapped Lorimer affectionately on the shoulder and pushed his way back to the bar, where Irina was now waiting, shrugging herself out of her suede coat. Under the bluey lights of El Hombre Guapo Lorimer glimpsed pale arms and pale shoulders, white as salt.
Chapter 6
That night he slept, even by his reduced standards, badly. Alan had told him he was alone in the Institute and normally that information helped. Also, following Alan’s instructions, he had pondered lengthily on Gérard de Nerval’s fraught and difficult life but his mind refused to obey dithering skittishly between images of Flavia Malinverno and the prospective adjust at Gale-Harlequin. He forced his mind back to poor tormented Gérard and his hopeless love for Jenny Colon, the actress. De Nerval had hung himself one freezing winter’s night – the 25th January 1855. Now that was the sort of fact one read in a biography with little pause, unless you had seen a hanged man yourself. Mr Dupree, Gérard de Nerval. Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, hung himself on some railings, apparently… Jenny Colon broke off with de Nerval and married a flautist. Irina was a flautist…Were these coincidences or signs? Subtle parallels… There was a photograph by Nadar of de Nerval at the end of his life – he’d never seen such a wrecked, ravaged face … visage buriné, the French called it, a whole lifetime of grief and mental anguish etched there… He must have slept at some stage because he did dream… he dreamt about Flavia and Kenneth Rintoul. It was Rintoul who was waiting, dishevelled and glum, at his dinky mews house, Rintoul who ran to embrace Flavia…
Lorimer had woken and had dutifully jotted the facts down in the dream diary by the bed. Then he had dozed and drifted for a while, his mind intermittently involved with pragmatic details of his work, wondering whether to spend more time backgrounding Gale-Harlequin or simply to march in and play it by ear. At around 4.30 a.m. he made himself a strong cup of tea – two tea bags, a three-minute steep – and somehow managed an hour of dreamless slumber.
‘Just the one dream,’ Alan said to him later that morning, disappointment heavy in his voice.
‘I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ Lorimer protested. ‘You’re lucky I slept at all, lucky to have anything. Jesus.’
‘This fellow,’ Alan looked at the dream diary, ‘Rintoul. You don’t like him?’
‘Well, he doesn’t like me. He threatened to kill me.’
‘Interesting. But you couldn’t eradicate him from the dream, this nemesis-figure?’
‘It wasn’t a lucid dream, Alan.’
‘What about the girl? Do you know her?’
‘I’ve seen her in a taxi. She’s in a TV ad. I found out her name.’
‘You couldn’t sexually interpose yourself in this dream?’
‘It wasn’t a lucid dream, Alan. The last thing I want to see is this Kenneth Rintoul bloke with this Flavia Malinverno girl in his arms.’
‘Damn. Damn and shit. These are promising ingredients, Lorimer. Next time concentrate on them.’
‘I gave de Nerval a whirl, like you said.’
‘Leave Gérard on the sub’s bench, next time around. Next