‘You don’t seem very keen. Last night when you were talking to Melissa you were all “Lust for Life” about it. Like it had you in its grip. Or was that just for show?’
‘No it wasn’t,’ I said hotly, ‘I’m just a bit… nervous, I suppose. I’ve only just got my mojo back, so the thought of making something that ambitious is a bit daunting. I never really meant to tell anyone.’
‘Not even me?’ His tone was casual, but I could tell he was hurt.
‘Well, I would’ve, I just didn’t think you’d be interested.’
He turned towards me, and after licking the butter off his fingers, gathered my hands in his.
‘How could you think that?’ he said, looking at me reproachfully from beneath his beautiful eyebrows so that I could barely remember what it was I had thought. ‘Do you think I’d have built you a studio if I wasn’t interested? Do you think I’d have brought us down here? I did it for you. So that you could be you again; so you wouldn’t have to feel like everyone was… so that no one need know and you could make a fresh start. Nothing’s more important to me than your wellbeing, and just to know you’re working again… that you’ve got stuff you want to make…’ He pursed his lips and shook his head, apparently at a loss for words.
‘But do you like it?’ I said, squeezing his hands in return. ‘Our life here? Not working as much? The people? The quiet?’
‘God, yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s liberating. I feel so much more…’
Somewhere beside the bed, his phone beeped. He struggled to keep hold of my hands, to stay with his train of thought.
‘… So much more myself, so much more human,’ he finished, but already his left hand was fishing for the outside world.
He looked at the phone and sighed, putting it face down on the bed.
‘Don’t mind me,’ I said.
‘Nah,’ he shook his head, ‘it can wait…’
He lay beside me for a few seconds before emitting a basso profundo fart beneath the bedclothes.
‘I tell you what can’t though…’ He mugged at me and threw back the duvet.
‘Go on, get out!’ I laughed, wafting my hand. He probably thought I didn’t notice him take his phone off the bed as he left.
But I would not listen at the door of the bathroom on my way to the studio. I would not calculate at what point in the day I might sneak a look at his messages without his noticing, because I was no longer that person. I no longer needed to be. Did I pull on my clothes a little more quickly than I might otherwise have done, so as to be passing the bathroom door sooner rather than later? Did I slow down and cock my ear when I passed it? I honestly don’t think so. I was more preoccupied with getting to the studio. Of having left by the time he came back – impressing him not only with my work ethic, but also with my independence, my empowerment. I liked the idea that he would breeze back into the bedroom yacking away and stop in mid-sentence when he found me gone.
I knew even before I’d rolled back the studio door that I must have left the kiln on. The heat in the room was intense. I closed my eyes at my own stupidity. How often had I double-checked the timer, determined not to ruin this first batch of prototype pots? And still I’d messed up. That meant they had been firing for – I cast my mind back to when I had last been in here – three days, which was some kind of record – strange that the override hadn’t kicked in.
I didn’t notice the smell at first – I was too focused on the baked linseedy aroma of scorched pottery – but by the time I was halfway to the kiln there was no ignoring it. It was a rank stench, sweetish and rotten. I lurched for the windows, fumbling to open each one in turn, before sticking my head out and gulping fresh air. Turning back to the room the smell came at me again, humming, singing, so thick I could taste it. Only death could smell this bad. It must be a rodent, I told myself, nothing bigger could have got in. No need to freak out. Just be a grown-up – locate it, get rid of it. I peered beneath my workbench and thought perhaps I could see something in the shadows. Taking the raku tongs off their hook, I got down on all fours and was sweeping them back and forth with wilder and wilder strokes, when my back collided with my wheel and it was on top of me – its blue-black wing across my face, its claw snagging my T-shirt, its body flipping through one hundred and eighty degrees and tumbling tiny maggots into my lap. I flailed my arms to fend it off and it thudded to the floor, face down, leaving a squirm of putrid viscera across my thigh. I scrambled to my feet and ran on jelly legs, casting a dread glance over my shoulder in case the vile thing should have resurrected itself to give chase.
Nick put down his coffee cup and thrust back his chair.
‘Hey, hey, hey. What’s this?’
I buried my face in the rough towelling of his dressing gown and shook and cried.
‘What…? Tell me! Karen!’
I moaned and gestured feebly in the direction of the back door.
‘There’s a thing, a bird, a crow, in the studio. It’s disgusting. It went on me… look!’
I held my hands out to him, expecting the maggots and feathers and entrails to be there, still, like stigmata, but my hands only looked a little grubby.
Nick met my gaze with cartoon compassion.
‘Oh, sweetheart. Poor you. Don’t worry I’ll just throw on some jeans and then I’ll come and get rid of it for you. It’s more scared of you than you are of it, remember…’
‘No, you don’t understand,’ I shook my head, ‘it’s dead; at least I think it is. It must have been on my wheel… I bumped into it and it fell on me…’
‘A dead bird fell on you?’
Big eyes; sympathetic, pitying, amused.
‘Yes, it was horrible, Nick! One minute it wasn’t there and the next it was all over me, on my hands, on my clothes…’
My body convulsed again at the memory and Nick drew me close.
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’
‘Nick…’ I murmured, my voice muffled against his chest. He patted my back consolingly.
‘Nick!’ I pulled abruptly away, as the thought solidified in my head, ‘Someone did this. They must have. It couldn’t have got there by itself.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said, ‘everything’s fine.’ He encircled me in his arms again, patting, patting.
‘It’s not fine,’ I mumbled into his chest, ‘the place was baking hot – my kiln was going full blast. My pots will be ruined. I set it to go off, Nick, I know I did.’
The patting stopped for a second and he drew a deep, martyred breath.
‘Of course,’ he said – pat, pat, pat – ‘of course you did.’
‘You don’t have to work you know, if you’re not ready.’
We were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. I was towing my Earl Grey teabag around my cup by its label.
‘I am ready.’
‘Just because I made you a studio, you don’t need to feel obliged.’
‘Nick, I really, really want to work.’
‘I don’t care if you never use it. We can convert it into a self-catering chalet. Rent it out through Airb—’
‘Do you think I’m making stuff up to avoid going in there? You do, don’t you? You think I’m that warped.’
He had been as good as his word. He had taken a bucket of hot water and a mop and gone striding down the garden in my Marigold gloves. If I thought that was bad, he’d said, rolling his eyes, I should have seen the state of Gabe’s guinea pig when they got back from a fortnight’s holiday and realized the neighbours had forgotten to feed it. I smiled wanly at Nick’s idea of consolation.
‘Hey, come on, it’s over now,’ he said, drawing me to him. ‘I know it gave you a fright, but these things happen.’
‘Do they?’ I said, doubtfully. ‘All by themselves…?’
‘Oh, come on. You seriously think somebody’s sneaked in and put a dead blackbird on your…’
‘It was a crow, not a blackbird, Nick. It was absolutely massi…’ my voice trailed off.
‘Karen, swe
etheart…’ He’d adopted that tone now; the one he used to use on the ward when I’d get things back to front – gentle and patronising, with just a hint of impatience. ‘I know you’re upset, I appreciate it, I do, but you’re getting this – literally – all out of proportion. It was a blackbird. It hopped in when you weren’t looking and you shut the door on it without realising. No one is doing this. No one is out to get you.’ He clasped my shoulders, stooped and smiled in my face. ‘I’m afraid you’re just not that important.’
12
I watched Ethan make his way back from the buffet car, a paper cup in each hand and a packet of crisps clenched between his teeth. He sidled into the seat opposite, handed me my tea and pulled a cellophane-wrapped muffin from his pocket.
‘Thought you might be hungry.’
I wasn’t, but I opened it and took a bite anyway. The least I could do was keep up the pretence that we were off on a spree – Ethan to replenish his wardrobe with an uncharacteristically lavish float from Nick, me to meet up with Jude for an afternoon of pampering. In fact, we both knew that Ethan was my chaperone and Jude my counsellor, enlisted by Nick to probe my state of mind and feed back her impressions later in a phone call. ‘Is it just me, or is she losing it again?’
Ethan devoured his crisps greedily, like the child he once was, and then wiping his hands on a paper napkin, reached for his phone. He caught my eye and turning it guiltily face down on the table, searched very conspicuously for something to say.
‘Lucky it’s not raining…’
I smiled and nodded. Seconds dragged by.
‘When did you last see Jude, then?’
‘Month or so ago. We had a housewarming.’
‘Oh… nice…’
There was a pause. I took a dog-eared paperback out of my bag and opened it pointedly, smiling to myself when he reached once more for his phone. I read half a chapter without taking in a word and then stared aimlessly out of the window, watching the telegraph wires rise and fall over the fields and housing estates, the goods yards and retail parks. When I looked up again, Ethan had nodded off; head slumped against the window, a bead of drool gathering at the corner of his lip. He had always had the knack, I mused, seeing his forehead bump gently against the glass; had always been an easy baby, contented, smiling. We’d been able to take him anywhere – at least until his father had become squeamish about my breast-feeding in public. And later, a childminder being, according to Nick, beyond our budget, I had simply hoiked the toddler Ethan onto my hip and carried him down to the basement to keep me company while I potted. Turned out Ethan and clay were a match made in heaven. I had only to dump a wodge in a washing-up bowl on the floor and while I worked mine up to throwing consistency on the bench, he wrestled his around the lino until he looked like he’d crawled out of a swamp. Then I’d put him in his bouncy chair with a bottle and the hypnotic thrum of the wheel would send him off to sleep. That had been the start, I supposed, looking back. Me and Ethan, Ethan and me; joined at the hip from infancy, Nick somehow cut adrift. Did that make it all my fault?
The train entered a tunnel and jolted him awake.
‘Your tea’s gone cold,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘do you want me to get you another?’
He looked at me for a moment, as if trying to recollect who I was, then shook his head pleasantly.
‘’S’all right,’ he said.
A fine rain was falling as the train pulled into Paddington, and the platform was teeming with not especially good-tempered people. I had lost the habit of negotiating crowds – that instinct that enables you to swim in them like fish. Ethan still had it. He had to keep hanging back for me, his exasperation thinly disguised with a cocked head and a patient smile. A man swore at me under his breath and a porter driving a wagon along the platform blared his horn as I stepped momentarily into his path. I jumped and clasped my hand to my breast and then I started laughing and couldn’t stop. I still had a stupid grin on my face as we moved through the ticket barrier and out across the concourse.
‘Are you OK with the tube?’ Ethan asked and I frowned at him comically. What other mode of transport would a Londoner take? All the same, as we made for the entrance, I found myself turning my old Oyster card over and over in my pocket, as if it might let me down. What if I were turned back at the border? What if they recognized me for the interloper I now was? But the gates slipped back, just as they did for everyone else.
I had never noticed before how beautiful the Tube was. In the brief phase during my early twenties when I had commuted to a poorly paid administrative job with a theatrical outfitter in Covent Garden, I had moved through its windy corridors with the same air of world-weary indifference as my fellow travellers. Only now did I see it in all its Brutalist splendour. The soaring arched ceilings and the majestic sweep of the escalator, the Soviet-style brick tiles and the clinical white down-lights, the digital adverts for tooth-whitening gel and executive recruitment services. And the people. I couldn’t take my eyes off the people: metropolitan sophisticates staring vacantly ahead, gawping tourists annoying everyone by standing on the left, gangs of giggly teenage girls with armfuls of carrier bags. All of them pleased me – their proximity, their remoteness.
‘Are you feeling OK?’ Ethan asked, as we shuffled along the platform.
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘why?’
‘You just look…’
‘Happy,’ I said. ‘I’m happy.’
The train arrived with a gusty moan of its brakes and we surged forward and crammed in as if it were a children’s party game.
Reaching awkwardly across my fellow passengers to claim my few precious inches of hanging rail, I jerked and shimmied like a puppet as the train rattled along. It heaved perilously over the points and I stumbled, but Ethan took my arm to steady me. I thought I might burst with pride then, even though no one in the carriage seemed to notice. This is my son, I wanted to tell them. This tall, self-assured young man may be on his way to Topman now, but he has come via Phnom Penh, Chiang Mai and Myanmar, so a little respect, please.
In the ticket hall at Oxford Circus, Ethan slowed down to work out which exit we needed, but I took his arm and led him decisively to the correct one.
‘You’ve done this before.’
‘Just a few hundred times.’
‘God, you’re so…’
‘Knowledgeable?’
‘Old.’
It was true. I had been coming here most of my life. I had seen retail empires rise and fall. C&A, BHS, Freeman, Hardy & Willis. Even after I got together with Nick, and he used to try and drag me to the more exclusive environs of Kensington and Chelsea, I would sneak back here, given the choice. I found the high-end shops intimidating and the few items of designer clothing I had bought to please him always made me feel, when I was wearing them, as if I had raided the dressing-up box. Nick never said anything and neither did his friends, but I always felt, entering a room on his arm, as though the ghost of his first wife came with us – poised, elegant, effortlessly stylish. There was always that moment of frozen politeness on people’s faces, as they tried to disguise their surprise and disappointment that Nick had exchanged that for this.
No, I was a chain-store girl at heart. That’s why I gravitated back here. I liked the buzz, the sleaze, the sense of anonymity. I knew all the back streets and short cuts, could get from John Lewis to Soho in ten minutes flat.
As we emerged from the Tube, a ray of sun, hot as an electric fire, hit the sodden pavements and made them steam. I took Ethan’s arm and steered him past Muji and River Island towards the Levis shop.
‘Woah,’ he said.
‘I thought you wanted jeans.’
‘Yeah, not from here, though. They’re crazy expensive.’
‘Dad’s paying,’ I pointed out.
‘Even so…’
Everything was too dear all of a sudden – even a multipack of boxer shorts at nine ninety-nine. As we left Primark with one flimsy carrier bag, containing less than thirty poun
ds’ worth of clothing, it occurred to me that he was probably squirreling the money away to pay back the Aussie girl. I felt a little indignant on Nick’s behalf, then realized it was really on my own behalf, before finally acknowledging to myself that whatever the motivation for his new-found thrift, it was none of my business. Nevertheless, once I’d had that thought, it took a supreme effort of will to keep up my stream of friendly prattle all the way to Soho, especially as I could tell he was only half listening. I suppose I was conscious that this might be the last afternoon we would be spending together for a while, and I wanted to make it count. I felt slightly manic, truth be told, the energy of the city buoying me up, but never quite rescuing me from an undertow of melancholy, which, were I to yield to it, I knew might drag me under.
‘Are you hungry?’ I said on a whim, as we passed a trendy new eatery calling itself The Soho Refectory.
‘I doubt we’ll get a table,’ Ethan shrugged, but we did. A hipster waiter showed us to a booth, took our drinks order and then disappeared for twenty minutes to chat to his friends.
We pored over the menu, discussing how rare was rare, and whether blue cheese dressing would be nice or not, and then Ethan ordered the Wagyu burger with the lot, and mindful of the full body massage to come, I went for a salad. While we waited for the food, I watched Ethan study the other diners – a couple of tourists Instagramming their latte art, a handful of geeky creatives on their iPads and a table of young women, so preternaturally beautiful that they could only have been models, picking at a shared bowl of fries.
‘What?’ he said, defensively, when he saw that he’d been rumbled.
‘Nothing,’ I said, with a smirk. It would have been unusual, I suppose, for a heterosexual nineteen-year-old not to ogle beautiful women, but it felt like a minor triumph nevertheless – one in the eye for her in Queensland.
‘You know you could always stay on in London for the weekend,’ I suggested casually, as the waiter served our food. ‘It might be fun. I bet some of your mates’d be glad to see you. What about that girl, Sophie, you used to hang out with. Didn’t she take a gap year…?’
The Move Page 10