Arcadia

33

Over the next couple of days, Chang tried to summon the courage needed for another approach to Henry Lytten. Several times he walked down the road and gazed at the house. Once, heart pounding, he even rang the doorbell. No answer, though. On another occasion he thought he saw a curtain twitch but, if the windows fitted as badly as they did in his own house, then that meant nothing.

All the while he was getting used to his new situation and even began to feel tolerably optimistic. That was possibly because he was also starting to sleep properly, undisturbed by nightmares or worries generated by the sheer strangeness of it all. When he got out of bed, he would sit at the little table next to the sink while he waited for the kettle on the hob to boil. Then he would spoon some Nescafé into a mug, add the water, and listen to the sounds of life outside the window, trying to pin down each one and identify it.

It was early, no more than seven, but there were the noises from the room underneath, where the spotty young man who worked in the haberdasher’s was getting up. He heard the padding of feet as he went to the bathroom at the end of the corridor, wrapped in his dressing gown. The clopping of horses’ hooves from the milkman in the street; the tinkle of bicycle bells as the first people pedalled off to work in town.

Then came an unaccustomed noise. A doorbell; the front door opening and shutting; the sound of feet — heavy feet, clumping up the stairs; a pause outside his door; a hard, repeated knock, one which could not be ignored.

He put on his dressing gown and walked to the door. He wasn’t expecting anything, as he didn’t know what to expect: he had no friends, no associates; no one knew where he lived, or cared; no one had cause to visit him at any hour, let alone at seven in the morning.

‘Yes?’

‘Would you come with us, please?’

Two men came into the room. One was large and burly, far larger than Chang; the other was slighter. He was the one who seemed to be in charge.

‘Who are you?’ he asked the quiet one.

‘Detective Sergeant Maltby. Special Branch.’

‘Does that mean you’re a policeman?’

‘No. I’m the window cleaner.’

‘That’s good. The windows are really dirty. I can hardly see out of...’

‘Very funny. Now if you’d come with us?’

‘But if you are window cleaners, then...’

Maltby held up his hand. ‘Just stop there, please. Don’t make my life more difficult. We don’t wish to make a fuss if this turns out to be a misunderstanding.’

Chang scanned his memory but there were no briefings which allowed him to interpret what was going on. He knew, of course, of accounts about knocks on doors but he had been told that was associated with an earlier period, or different countries. He knew about police forces, but they wore uniforms, he thought.

‘What is this about?’

‘We will explain later.’

They didn’t seem threatening. That is, they didn’t behave like people who were about to kill him or attack him or anything like that, but Chang had too little information to come to a reasoned conclusion. He was simply not yet prepared for any interaction as complex as this one. He began to feel anxious, and knew the policeman had noticed.

So he made an effort. ‘Super!’ he said as brightly as possible. ‘Will you give me some breakfast?’

‘Just get dressed, sir.’ They stood and watched as he did so, then, one in front and one behind, they trooped down the stairs.

‘Your name?’

‘Alexander Chang.’

‘Date and place of birth?’

‘Ah... 28th June 1930, Uganda.’

‘Where did you go to school?’

He hesitated again; he had been prepared for casual conversation, but not for a detailed interrogation. If this Maltby man was going to take him through his entire life — his supposed life — it wasn’t going to be difficult to find huge gaping holes. His memory had quickly prepped him on his biography and briefed him on interrogations during the short trip to the police station and the result wasn’t encouraging.

‘A mission school run by my father.’

‘Where?’

‘It moved around with him.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You don’t remember where you lived when you were fourteen? Fifteen?’

‘No.’

‘Did you go to university?’

‘No.’

‘When did you come to England?’

‘I arrived about a week ago.’ That was true, at any rate.

‘How?’

A pause. ‘By boat.’

‘Which one?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘What port did you arrive at?’

‘Ah... Liverpool.’

‘Which port did you leave from?’

‘The main port. You know...’

‘The main port of Uganda?’

‘Yes.’

‘I find that surprising.’

‘Why?’

‘Uganda has no coastline.’

‘Why are you asking me all this?’

They were sitting in a small, grey room in the police station. Chang had been led down the stairs and put into a car. Under normal circumstances, he would have been excited: he had never been in a car, and was fascinated by the experience.

‘A Rover, no?’ he said. There was no reply. ‘P80 straight-4 overhead valve engine. Designed by Gordon Bashford. African walnut dashboard. Not a great success, I believe. Twenty-three point five miles to the gallon, nought to sixty in twenty-two seconds. Fewer than six thousand produced before it was cancelled.’

‘They’ve only just been introduced.’

He lapsed into a chastened silence. So much for small talk. Never volunteer information, never take the initiative. His head was full of information that he could call on at will. He could, had it been needed, give the complete specifications of the car, compare it to other models, recite newspaper articles reviewing its performance.

All this he knew. What he didn’t know was much about his own history. There hadn’t been time. He knew quite well that what he said was riddled with contradictions and outright absurdity. Even a seven-year-old child would have been suspicious of a man who did not know precisely where he was born or where he went to school, was decidedly hazy about his work and could not name a single friend, acquaintance or family member who might vouch for him. How did he get into the country without a passport? A good — no, an excellent — question. Why had he been standing outside Lytten’s house the previous evening? Another good question.

The two policemen went to get him a cup of tea, which was nice of them, he thought. In their brief absence, he scanned through his briefing papers. ‘Lying,’ he said out loud, hoping no one would hear. ‘I need to lie. Teach me, quickly.’

I wouldn’t if I were you, came the response. For a start, it’s a variable concept here. You are in a culture where ambiguity has been raised to a high level. Let me give an example: depending on phrasing, circumstance, expression, body movement, intonation and context, the statement ‘I love you’ can mean I love you; I don’t love you; I hate you; I want to have sex with you; I do, in fact, love your sister; I don’t love you any more; leave me alone, I’m tired, or I’m sorry I forgot your birthday. The person being talked to would instantly understand the meaning but might choose to attribute an entirely different meaning to the statement. Lying is a social act and the nature and import of the lie depends in effect on an unspoken agreement between the parties concerned. Please note that this description does not even begin to explore the concept of deep lies, in which the speaker simultaneously says something he knows to be untrue and genuinely believes it nonetheless: politicians are particularly adept at this.

What I am trying to say is that lying is a linguistic exercise of extraordinary complexity. It is better at your stage to tell the truth, although this may also have unintended consequences.

There we are, it concluded after its recitation was done. Does that help?

No, he thought.

As Chang sat trying to find something useful in the torrent of information, Maltby returned with the tea, handed it to him and sat down opposite him. They were interrupted by a man who brought in a large envelope. ‘That’s all,’ he said, and left.

He pulled out the contents and Chang saw that they were bits of paper from his room, mainly his efforts at handwriting, which he still found difficult. He had spent many a long hour clutching a pen tightly in his hand, scrawling on the paper, trying to acquire the sort of ease, fluency and legibility that most people around him could manage as second nature. He had tried English, and Cyrillic and Arabic. He found the Cyrillic easiest and had begun to take notes to fix his still erratic memory. That, he thought, might not be good.

‘There are several words of Russian here,’ the man observed. ‘Why is that?’

‘Just notes,’ he replied.

‘You speak Russian?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Really? Now how did the son of an African missionary learn to speak Russian?’

‘I taught myself.’

‘Why were you watching the house of Henry Lytten?’

Chang began to sweat. ‘I wasn’t.’

‘Then would you care to explain this, sir?’

Maltby held up a piece of paper that had been collected from Chang’s little desk. On it were written three names. Henry Lytten. Angela Meerson. Rosalind.

‘Lytten. You have been watching his house. Meerson? Who is she? Then there is Rosalind. A young girl called Rosalind briefly disappeared two days ago. Her parents are convinced she’s been seduced by an older man. She’s only fifteen. A serious crime, that would be.’

Chang’s mind went into panic.

‘Anyway,’ Maltby continued. ‘We’re done with you here.’

‘Really? Thank heavens for that!’

Maltby smiled in a cold sort of way. An hour later, Chang was put back into the car and driven to Henry Lytten’s house.