“It’s a bit bare at the moment,” said Toy. “So do whatever you want with it. If you’ve got photographs-”
“Not really.”
“Well, we ought to get something on the walls. There are some books”-he nodded to the far end of the room, where several shelves groaned under a weight of volumes-“but the library downstairs is at your disposal. I’ll show you the layout sometime next week, when you’ve settled in. There’s a video up here, too, and another downstairs. Again, Joe doesn’t really have much interest in it, so help yourself.”
“Sounds good.”
“There’s a small dressing room through to the left. As Joe said, you’ll find some fresh clothes in there. Your bathroom is through the other door. Shower and so on. And I think that’s it. I hope it’s adequate.”
“It’s fine,” Marty said. Toy glanced at his watch and turned to leave.
“Just before you go . . .”
“Problem?”
“No problem,” Marty said. “Jesus, no problem at all. I just want you to know I’m grateful-”
“No need.”
“But I am,” Marty insisted; he’d been trying to find a cue for this speech since Trinity Road. “I’m very grateful. I don’t know how or why you chose me-but I appreciate it.”
Toy was mildly discomforted by this show of feeling, but Marty was glad to have it said.
“Believe me, Marty. I wouldn’t have chosen you if I didn’t think you could do the job. You’re here now. It’s up to you to make the best of it. I’m going to be around, of course, but after this you’re more or less your own man.”
“Yes. I realize that.”
“I’ll leave you then. See you at the beginning of the week. Pearl’s left food out for you in the kitchen, by the way. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Toy left him alone. He sat down on the bed and opened his suitcase. The badly packed clothes smelled of prison detergent, and he didn’t want to take them out. Instead he dug down to the bottom of the case until his hands found his razor and shaving foam. Then he undressed, slung his stale clothes on the floor, and went into the bathroom.
It was spacious, mirrored, and seductively lit. Freshly laundered towels hung on a heated rack. There was a shower as well as a bath and a bidet: an embarrassment of waterworks. Whatever else happened to him here, he’d be clean. He switched on the mirror light and set the shaving implements down on the glass shelf above the sink. He needn’t have bothered with his search. Toy, or perhaps Luther, had laid a complete shaving kit out for him; razor, preshave, foam, cologne. All unopened, pristine: waiting for him. He looked at himself in the mirror-that intimate self-scrutiny which was expected of women but which men seldom practiced except in locked bathrooms. The anxieties of the day showed on his face: his skin was anemic, and the bags under his eyes full. Like a man searching for some treasure, he plundered his face for clues. Was his past written here, he wondered, in all its grubby detail; etched, perhaps, too deeply to be erased?
He needed some sun, no doubt of that, and decent exercise out in the open air. From tomorrow, he thought, a new regime. He’d run every day till he was so fit he was unrecognizable. Get himself to a proper dentist too. His gums bled worryingly often, and in one or two places they were receding from the tooth. He was proud of his teeth: they were even and strong, like his mother’s. He tried his smile on the mirror, but it had lost some of its former sparkle. He’d have to exercise that too. He was in the big wide world again; and maybe in time there’d be women to woo with that smile.
His surveillance shifted from face to body. A wedge of fat was sitting on the muscle of his abdomen: he was easily a stone overweight. He’d have to work at that. Watch his diet, and keep the exercise up until he was back to the twelve stone three he’d been when he first went to Wandsworth. The extra weight apart, he felt quite good about himself. Maybe the warm light flattered him, but prison didn’t seem to have changed him radically. He still had all his hair; he wasn’t scarred-except for the tattoos, and a small crescent to the left of his mouth; he wasn’t doped up to the eyeballs. Maybe he was a survivor after all.