Free The Restoration of Otto Laird by Nigel Packer

was easy to forget, sometimes, that he was now elderly. Anika was right in many ways. She didn’t see Otto as Angelo did, as a gifted architect and a man of near-superhuman qualities. Because she was not part of the profession herself, and hadn’t known Otto until his best days were behind him, she saw him for what he currently was: her weak and vulnerable husband, who had very nearly died on the operating table a few months before. Angelo had always thought of Anika as a bit of an obstacle; as someone who didn’t quite appreciate or understand the man she had married. Yet he had been unfair to her.
    I’m the one with the skewed perspective, he thought . She sees Otto as he is, not as he was. She sees the person and not the reputation. I really must make more effort to see it from her side.
    Then Angelo thought of Daniel. Was it he who was bothering Otto? In all their discussions of recent weeks, Otto had never once mentioned Daniel; even here, in the city where his son was born, and where he still lived with his own young family.
    Angelo glanced over at Otto, who remained staring out of the window. The rapidly passing street lights played across an inscrutable face, fluttering between light and darkness in a roll of moving stills.
    They were entering the heart of the Square Mile. There was some interesting architecture in this part of town. Otto looked out for examples now to distract himself from other thoughts. St Paul’s, the Old Bailey, the meat market at Smithfield. He glimpsed a fragment of Roman wall as they swung around a corner of the Barbican. Otto was consciously emptying London of all emotional content, regarding it in purely professional terms, with the detached eye of the connoisseur.
    As they reached the busy West End, his attention broadened from individual structures to the scene as a whole. From the back of the cab it seemed to be a city of shape-shifters. Buildings, traffic, streets and people became hybrid, animate beings in perpetual flux. At night, he thought, new evolutionary orders seemed possible; all types of matter appeared equally alive. The brightly lit advertisements were clearly in rudest health, the species best adapted to this strange primordial world. The figures moving beneath them were at a lower stage of development: submerged beneath the neon’s glare; drifting through the murky depths in states of flickering consciousness.
    Otto suddenly spoke, his gaze not stirring from the window.
    â€˜Where’s Marchmont Street from here? I’m afraid I’m a little lost.’
    Otto had moved into Cynthia’s apartment there the day after they were married at a local registry office. The summer of 1956. He had almost no possessions. The books that filled his rented room were all loans from the college library. On the day of the move he condensed his life to the size of two small suitcases, which Cynthia helped him carry across from Russell Square tube station.
    â€˜Marchmont Street? It’s some way behind us. We passed it a while ago.’
    Angelo was about to ask if they should turn around, but he sensed that this was not what Otto wanted. Instead he sought to draw him out of himself.
    â€˜What was the apartment like?’ he asked.
    â€˜Small, functional, prone to draughts and cold. It was located above a small grocery shop. I would pop downstairs in my dressing gown and slippers whenever we needed milk or bread.’
    Even now he could hear the heavy jangling of the bell; smell the fresh spices as he pushed open the door.
    Angelo waited to see if Otto would expand any further, but he was gazing once more out of the window. A reflective silence returned to the cab. This time, Angelo allowed it to settle.
    *   *   *
    In his hotel bedroom, Otto lifted his suitcase onto a chair. He was feeling tired and not especially looking forward to the lengthy routine of preparing for bed. With a yawn, he removed the various items that were