They are back in the room at the top of 17 Grange Road.
The same low ceiling. The same English cold that creeps up on you. The same ancient leaky windows and tired radiators.
The Boy becomes immediately excited. He liked this room.
The Man reminds him that three people once slept here.
Mother, Brother and Boy.
Compressed together under blankets near the wall like Victorian servants awaiting instructions from a family that no longer exists downstairs.
The Boy shrugs.
At the time this had seemed entirely normal.
But children are idiots. We all know that. The red Hamley’s bag remains by the door. The Boy immediately goes to inspect it.
The Man had remembered this as an enormous piece of luggage. It is now revealed to have the approximate carrying capacity of a football kit bag.
The Boy opens it.
Inside there are swimming goggles, a football shirt, a sandwich wrapped in paper and apparently dating from the late 1970s, and an Aston Villa notebook, Andy Gray on its claret and blue front cover.
The Man asks why there are swimming goggles.
The Boy looks surprised.
In case.
The Man accepts this.
Packing resumes, but the journey in the end turns out not to require departure.
The Boy had imagined departure as Airports, trains, a woman arriving late. A final look backwards. Somebody saying take care. Instead the Man wakes up in the same room and realises with slight disappointment that all new lives begin exactly where the old ones ended, among cables, receipts, books and half-charged devices.
There is a suitcase open on the bed.
The boy’s red Hamley’s bag remains by the door.
The Man does not remove it. He has learned not to argue directly with the Boy because the Boy scares him a bit and, more importantly, occasionally turns out to be right.
The Editor arrives carrying lists. He has become practical in middle age. He wants passports, chargers, medicines, insurance documents, clean socks and a proper publishing strategy. He points out that one cannot launch a project, finish a manuscript, start a conversation business and become emotionally mature simultaneously. He proposes sequencing. The Man ignores him because the Editor’s great weakness is mistaking caution for wisdom.
Lacan appears carrying three books and no clothes. And a pack of Gitanes and a lighter.
The Man immediately removes the books.
Lacan looks offended. “What if the journey requires explanation?”
The Man says perhaps it will.
Lacan brightens.
The Man quietly places the books on the shelf.
“They are too heavy. Literally. They’ll take us over the 20 kilos,” the Man explains.
Lacan says something about desire not disappearing simply because one leaves the house.
The Man agrees, but the books stay on the shelf.
He packs a football instead. The football is one of the few things in the house that never lied to him. And it’s lighter and deflatable too. “Space management,” the Man says.
The Night Manager looking remarkably similar to his dad appears briefly.
Nobody had invited him.
He stands in the doorway with a clipboard that appears blank.
He says quietly that check-out is at eleven.
He points at the sandwich. Questionable choice, he says.
He notices the project notes.
Out of the Loop.
He likes the title.
He starts talking.
The Man listens automatically and then stops.
The Night Manager always appeared to listen brilliantly but rarely heard anything but himself.
The new journey cannot work like that, the Man thinks.
The Boy starts putting more things in the suitcase. Photographs of three women he loves, a stone from somewhere, a peacock feather, this manuscript.
The Editor is removing most of it. The Man stops him. “Leave some,” he says. “We are not becoming monks.”
M appears and immediately leaves because she is not coming along. Or if she decides to come, it will be as a real person, not as a character in a book.
“Frankly, I would like to go with someone who wants to go with me,” the Man sighs.
The Man closes the case. Not everything fits.
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