Arcadia

21

Using the information available, Chang got some money and then a room in a hotel for the night. The operation shredded his nerves but he was desperate by that stage. He needed rest and shelter. He could not risk eating in public again until he had a chance of keeping the food down. He could not go into any public place if the inhalation of tobacco was going to make his head spin.

What did he need? Somewhere to sleep and eat and clean his clothes; cigarettes; wine, beer and whisky so that he could practise. Illustrated magazines and journals so that he could see how people dressed, moved and talked.

He also bought a local newspaper, which advertised accommodation to rent and in which, in due course, he could place a notice himself disclosing whether he had found Angela Meerson or not. He examined it carefully. Paper, print; he imagined men laying it all out by hand, huge presses rolling around, the paper being cut and folded, put on lorries in great stacks, taken to shops, then exchanged for money. With the money then moving back from buyer to shopkeeper, to the company, then to the workers, who went out and bought...

Extraordinary system. All that effort so that he could discover that two rooms (with bathroom available — hot water five shillings extra) were available at twenty-five shillings a week. He had no idea whether that was expensive or not, but it seemed to be well within his means now he had tested the theory of crime on the collection box of St Margaret’s Church and placed the result on Fire Boy at eighty to one in the 2.30 at Doncaster. The voice in his head told him it was a sure thing.

So he set off the following morning. He was less frightened now by the disorder of life. Everything — roads, buildings, cars and bicycles — fascinated him. He went slowly, taking an indirect route, until he came to the run-down house with a garden that looked as though it had not been tended for years. The windows were filthy, the paintwork peeling off, and it had a general air of poverty that was most evocative.

He was tired. He was unused to walking long distances, while all around people were striding along or pedalled past on bicycles. There were hundreds of them, thousands. Much of the town was on the move, and most were on bikes. Already Chang was beginning to pick out distinctions — soft caps and rough brown coats meant workers of some sort. Dark material and hard hats meant the richer sort.

Big old houses needed to be cared for, and that cost money, so many of the occupants rented out rooms. His prospective landlady was one of these. Being alone and lonely, she liked to talk. That he had not bargained for. Within a few minutes of knocking, he was deep in a conversation. His first real one, and a terrifying experience it was.

It was exceptionally difficult, not least because it became clear that different things were communicated simultaneously — negotiating the rental of a room, obviously, but also who and what you were, whether you were honest and pleasant. Were you the sort of person who could be called on to change a light bulb? What were your interests, background, tastes? Were you — and this was the most important — respectable, itself a concept that was so complicated it was impossible to define.

The subject of the room did not crop up for some time; much of it was spent telling him things he did not see why he needed to know. She showed him pictures of her grandchildren. He had, he told her, been travelling abroad after a recent illness.

‘Oh, dear! Nothing serious, I hope?’

‘No, no,’ he said casually. ‘Brain tumour.’

The stunned look on her face showed him he had made another mistake. ‘Only a little one,’ he added hastily. ‘Hardly anything, really.’

‘You must tell me all about it,’ she said brightly, and his heart sank at the very idea. ‘Perhaps you want to see your room?’

Chang nodded eagerly, anything to bring his ordeal to an end, and she led him upstairs, then upstairs again. As he followed her frail form, he eagerly drank in every detail — the brown paint, the wallpaper peeling charmingly off the wall, the smell of damp exuding from the carpet. The aroma of old food hanging in the air...

There was a bed, a desk, a little heating device, a couple of chairs with the stuffing coming out of them, dirty yellow linoleum on the floor.

‘I should have it all painted, I suppose...’

‘It is perfect. Perfect. Just what I wanted.’

She seemed quite surprised by his response. ‘Well, if you’re sure...?’

Chang sat on the old bed, his feet tapping on the cold linoleum. He found it helped him think. He could feel a thin gust of wind coming in through the ill-fitting sash window, and he was cold. He sat perfectly still for many hours, digesting and sorting information, occasionally getting up and distracting himself by switching on and off the taps in the small cracked ceramic sink on the wall.

He was fairly confident that everything he needed had now been restored; the transmission had wiped his memory, and it had taken time for the information to seep back to a place he could access. He was fully himself again, and he even knew what he needed to do.

His job was to find Angela Meerson, and he had to do that by finding Henry Lytten. His secondary task was to find and recover the manuscript known as the Devil’s Handwriting. Then... what? He had no idea.

He did some breathing exercises to achieve a measure of concentration and slowly wrote down a list on a piece of paper. He could not yet rely on being able to remember efficiently. As fast as his memories had come back, he had jotted down notes. Angela. Henry Lytten. Rosalind in that article. Not much, as he found writing incredibly hard, but enough to help him recall the details.

Then he went shopping, which took much of the afternoon because every item was sold in a different shop, and in each one he had to wait his turn. He returned home with three pounds of carrots, some bread, a packet of sugar and some baby food. Not perfect, by any means, but not bad for a first go. He also bought a bottle of whisky, one of beer, one of gin, two cigars and a packet of cigarettes. The baby food was delicious.

Well, he said to his memory, tell me. What do I do now?

There was a long silence until the response came back. ‘You might as well get on with finding this Henry Lytten.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘Ask your landlady if she has a phone book, and look him up. Then I can give you directions. Will you want the pretty route or the quick one?’

Did he want to go home? he thought as he walked cautiously down the street the next morning. Could he survive here? Perhaps he could use the knowledge he had in his head to make some money, settle down. He could blend in. Get married, join a darts club or play snooker on a Friday. Buy a car, and wash it on a Saturday morning. Have children and worry about them. Go on holiday to the seaside every August. Could be worse.

He crossed the road (narrowly being missed by a bus) then, with increasing confidence, walked north until he came to Polstead Road, where the directory said Lytten, Dr H., lived. He was red-faced and puffing from the effort, but walked until he stood outside what was supposed to be the house. Now what? Should he just ring the bell? Was that allowed without an appointment? The idea frightened him. What would he say? He stood in the entrance to the scruffy little front garden as he thought through all the options. As he stood, the door opened and a man came out. Chang stared, fascinated. He was of middling height, with thinning hair, a portly look about him. Perfectly ordinary face. He wore those strange trousers with a ribbed effect and a green checked jacket. Chang watched as he bent down and put on a pair of bicycle clips, then grabbed a bike and, with a mighty push, began to wheel it towards the road, and towards him. He spoke, but Chang was too flustered to understand.

‘Are you Henry Lytten?’

‘Yes. Can I help you?’

Chang panicked and ran.