Mr Rinyo-Clacton's Offer

33. Wimbledon Train

Early dark, November dark, November lamps and faces and shop windows and footsteps sharp and cold. People bursting from the silent-roaring ocean of the day and swimming upstream like salmon into the November evening. The finale of the Pathétique, the adagio lamentoso that I hadn’t listened to at home, was playing in my head and it seemed to me the proper soundtrack for Pizza Huts and Taco Bells and big red 74 buses novembering down the Earl’s Court Road. Fifty-three years old he was when he died, Pyotr Ilyich, nine days after conducting the première of the Pathétique in October 1893. Where was that court of honour now, that told him death would be a good career move?

I’m always early for every appointment, I can’t help it; it was only twenty past five when I reached the tube station and stood there smelling roasted chestnuts and waiting for Mr Rinyo-Clacton. ‘This could be the last time,’ he kept saying in my mind. How? Was it possible that he was dying, that he had tried to shelter from his own death in mine and now was relenting? I saw myself visiting him in hospital, being his comrade in his last moments. But the awful things he had done — his calculated seduction of Serafina and his various intrusions into our lives! How could I be the comrade of such a man? Whatever was about to happen, I felt now that he was the weak one and I was the strong one, and I liked that feeling.

Suddenly here came Katerina looking like a storm-driven ship about to smash itself on rocks. ‘Katerina!’ I said. She seemed not to hear me, but hurried into the station and down the stairs. I followed as she went through the turnstile with her travel permit; when I saw her go down to the westbound platform I bought a ticket to West Brompton and went down the stairs after her as a Wimbledon train pulled in.

Katerina made her way through the crowd, moving quickly past the refreshment kiosk, past the board that showed the incoming trains, past the Piccadilly Line stairs. She stopped by the next stairs as I caught up with her. The doors of the Wimbledon train stood open; passengers getting on pushed past those getting off as Mr Rinyo-Clacton stepped on to the platform and found himself face to face with Katerina.

‘Kandis?’ she said. She passed a hand over her eyes and shook her head in evident disbelief. ‘No, not possible — Theodor, is it you?’

Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s eyes opened very wide, his mouth was a silent O. He stepped back, the doors of the carriage closed on his coat, and the train moved out, dragging him along the platform and into the tunnel as people shouted and pointed. ‘No!’ I said. ‘Wait!’ But he was gone, and never said a word.