by Clare Pooley
Hazard took a seat at the café and, feeling reenergized by his new mission, surreptitiously checked out the other guests. As far as he could tell, he was now about the fourth-longest-standing resident. Most people stayed no longer than five days or so.
Neil, Hazard’s neighbor at number 9, had been here the longest. Nearly a year. He had invented some sort of app, which he’d sold to a big tech company and, ever since then, he’d been indulging his inner hippie. He’d tried to teach Hazard to meditate, perhaps sensing his inner turmoil, but Hazard had been unable to clear his mind from thinking about Neil’s feet, which were covered in yellowing, dead skin, his toenails thick and crusty, like hooves. This put Neil out of the running in Hazard’s new game. However desperate Monica was, those feet wouldn’t wash. Actually, he thought, a wash was exactly what Neil needed. Monica struck him as someone rather hot on personal hygiene.
Rita and Daphne were the two other relatively longtimers; both retired, one widowed, one never married, both ferocious sticklers for good manners. Hazard watched Rita glare at one of the guests, who’d reached rudely across her for the water jug. They each had their own hut. Daphne, in theory, lived in number 7, but Hazard, who had become an early riser, had only ever seen her entering her hut in the morning, rather than leaving it, leading him to suspect they were enjoying a Sapphic fling in the autumn of their years. And why the hell not?
Andy laid a dish containing a large baked fish, big enough to share among three or four of them, in front of Hazard with a flourish.
Hazard’s practiced eye scanned down the long table, discounting all the couples, in various stages of loved-upness, and any men under the age of thirty. Even if one of them were open-minded enough to cop off with an older woman, they weren’t likely to be ready for that whole procreation thing, which was, for Monica, a bit of a deal-breaker.
Hazard’s glance snagged momentarily on two California girls. They were, he guessed, no older than twenty-five and had that peachy, innocent, box-fresh glow about them. Hazard wondered, idly, if he should make a play for one of them. Maybe both. But he didn’t think he was ready to try to have sex without the false confidence of a drink, or a line, to chivvy him along.
Hazard hadn’t, now he thought about it, had sex since Blanche. Actually, he hadn’t had sex sober since . . . He rewound his memory back further and further before settling on forever. The idea was terrifying. How was it possible to be so present during something so intimate and revealing? Surely all that squelching and thrusting and groaning, and sometimes even farting, would just be deeply embarrassing without the numbing effect of narcotics? Perhaps he’d never have sex again. The thought was, strangely, almost less terrifying than the thought of never having a drink or a drug again, and that one he’d already been contemplating for weeks.
Hazard turned to the Swede on his left, offering his hand. He looked like a good place to start.
“Hi, you must be new here. I’m Hazard.”
“Gunther,” he replied, with a smile that displayed some impressive Scandinavian dentistry.
“Where are you from, and where are you going?” Hazard employed the standard opening gambit on the island, a bit like discussing the weather back home. No point in discussing the weather here, since it was invariably the same.
“I’m from Stockholm, on my way to Bangkok, Hong Kong, then London. You?”
Hazard gave himself a mental high five at the mention of London. This could work.
“I’m from London, just out here for a few weeks while I’m between jobs,” he replied.
Hazard chatted to Gunther on autopilot as he ate his fish. He was finding it difficult to concentrate on the conversation as he was mesmerized by Gunther’s ice-cold beer. Condensation dripped down the side of the glass bottle. Hazard worried that if he didn’t find some other distraction, he might just wrestle the beer from him and down it.
“Do you play backgammon?” he asked as soon as they’d finished eating.
“Sure,” replied Gunther.
Hazard walked over to one of the tables in the corner, which was inlaid with a chessboard on one side and a backgammon board on the other.
“So, what do you do back home, Gunther?” asked Hazard as they set up the pieces.
“I’m a teacher,” he replied. “What about you?”
This, thought Hazard, was extremely good news. An easily transferable skill, good with children, and, he noted looking at the Gunther’s large hands with clean, nicely trimmed fingernails, acceptable levels of grooming.
“I was a banker,” Hazard replied. “Equity trader. But I’ll be looking for a new career when I get home.”
Gunther threw a six and a one. Hazard waited for him to make the classic blocking move. He missed it. What an amateur. This would, for Hazard, be a red line. He quickly reminded himself that he was not looking at Gunther as a life partner for himself, and that Monica was, presumably, less fussy when it came to the ability to play a good game of backgammon.
“Do you have a wife back home, Gunther?” asked Hazard, cutting to the chase. He’d not noticed a wedding ring, but it was always sensible to double-check.
“Not wife. Girlfriend. But how do you say in English? What goes on tour stays on tour, right?” He nodded conspiratorially over at the two California girls.
Hazard felt his mood deflate like a popped balloon. Impressive use of English idiom, perhaps, but terribly loose morals. Gunther, he concluded, with a sense of paternalistic protectionism that surprised him, just wasn’t going to make the grade. Monica deserved better. Now, how quickly could he wipe this board clear of all Gunther’s pieces and go to bed?
* * *
• • •
WHEN HAZARD GOT back to number 8, clutching an oil-fired hurricane lamp, since the generator was now off for the night, he found he wasn’t tired. He didn’t, however, want to join the crowd at Monkey Nuts; the idea of watching other people drink alcohol while he sipped a Diet Coke was just too exhausting. He looked at the books on his bookshelf. He’d read them all at least once, apart from the Barbara Cartland that Daphne had given him. He’d tried the first chapter in desperation yesterday, but it had made his eyeballs bleed. Then he spotted Julian’s little notebook poking out, as if begging to be picked up. Hazard took it off the shelf, picked up a Biro, turned to the first clean page, and began to write.
TEN
Julian
Julian woke up with a sense that something was different. It took him a while to work out what it was. These days he felt like his mind and his body were running at different speeds. First thing in the morning, his body would wake up, but his mind would take a little while to catch up, to work out where he was, and what was going on. This was odd, as he was always in the same place, and there was never anything going on. There would be a brief moment of intersection, of synchronicity, then—for the rest of the day—his body lagged several steps behind his mind, struggling to keep step.
While he thought, Julian stared at the lines of green on the wall next to his bed; different shades, like blades of grass dappled in the sunlight. Mary had painted these when she was trying to decide how to redecorate their bedroom. In the end, none of those colors had been chosen, and the room remained the same grubby ivory. Perhaps Mary had known by then that there would be no point.
Eventually, Julian realized what was new about this morning: a sense of purpose. Today he had things to do. An appointment. People were expecting him. Relying on him. He threw back the covers with more gusto than usual, hauled himself out of bed, and walked carefully down the spiral staircase that led from the mezzanine floor, where his bedroom and bathroom were, to the open-plan sitting room and kitchenette. There, pinned to the fridge door, was his list.
Choose outfit
Collect materials
Art shop
Props
Be at Monica’s 7:00 P.M. prompt
He’d underlined prompt twice. Not because he was likely to forget, but because he hadn’t had to be anywhere, with the possible exception of his dentist, prompt for years, and it was giving him a curious thrill.
Having drunk his first strong coffee of the day, Julian walked into his dressing room. It had, in the days when he and Mary had had overnight visitors, been the guest room, but now it was filled with rows and rows of Julian’s clothes, all hanging on metal rails, with boots and shoes lined up underneath. Julian loved his outfits. Each one held a memory—of an era, an event, a love affair. If you closed your eyes and inhaled extravagantly, some still held the scent of a bygone age—Mary’s homemade marmalade, the cordite from a firework display at a masked ball in Venice, or the rose petal confetti from a wedding at Claridge’s.
The chaise longue in the corner was draped with a variety of potential outfits for today, which Julian had decided to sleep on (not literally; that would just lead to more ironing). Getting dressed took so long these days that it was crucial to get the wardrobe selection absolutely right before he started, or he could be there all day, doing up and undoing buttons with increasingly uncooperative and arthritic hands. He cast a critical eye over the various options, before deciding to go with the understated one. Professional. Workman-like. He didn’t want his clothing to distract from the matter at hand—the art lesson.
Next, Julian went into his studio, double height and flooded with light from the glass roof and the floor-to-ceiling windows, and opened the drawer marked PENCILS. Julian was not, by nature, a tidy person. His cottage was, by anybody’s standards, rather a mess. But the two areas of his life that were beautifully maintained and arranged were his clothes and his art materials. He carefully selected a range of pencils, graphite sticks, and erasers, some fairly new, some dating back to the Beatles era, and everything in between. Julian’s favorite pencils had been sharpened so many times that they were barely long enough to hold, but he couldn’t throw them away. They were old friends.
Julian was rather chuffed that he could still pull a crowd. That nice lady, Monica, had told him ten people were coming to that evening’s class. She’d even had to turn people away! There was, it appeared, life in the old dog yet.
Julian moved around the studio, collecting things that might be useful for his new students. He found a selection of boards for them to pin their sketches to. He pulled an assortment of fabrics from the mannequins they were draped over, for use as a backdrop. He rifled through his lovingly curated reference books to find the ones that might be most inspirational for the ingénue. He tried not to get distracted by his chronologically arranged collection of exhibition catalogs, which could so easily transport him back to the London art world of the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
Monica was charging fifteen pounds per head for the two-hour lesson. He’d thought that was rather a lot, but she’d pooh-poohed him, saying, This is Fulham. People pay their dog walkers more than that. He was being paid seventy-five pounds for the session (a small fortune!), and Monica had given him what she’d described as “petty cash” to spend on any extra supplies he needed from the art shop.
Julian checked his pocket watch. It was 10:00 A.M. The art shop would just be opening.
* * *
• • •
AS JULIAN WALKED past the café, he could see Monica negotiating her way around the queue at the counter, carrying a tray of drinks. Monica, he had noticed, was never still. Even when she was sitting, she was animated, her jaunty dark ponytail swinging from side to side. When she was concentrating on something, she’d twist a strand of hair round and round her index finger, and when she was listening to someone, she cocked her head to one side, just like his old Jack Russell had done.
Julian still missed his dog, Keith. He’d gone just a few months after Mary. He blamed himself for being so wrapped up in his grief about Mary that he didn’t pay enough attention to his pet. Keith had just pined away, gradually becoming less energetic and less animated, until one day he’d stopped moving at all. Julian had tried to emulate this slow, determined manner of checking out, but in that, as in so many things, he’d failed. He’d carried Keith’s body into the cemetery in a Waitrose reusable bag for life (ironically), and, when no one was looking, had buried him next to the Admiral.
Monica always appeared to know what she was doing and where she was going. Whereas most people seemed to be swept along by the vicissitudes of life, Monica looked like she was directing, or even fighting, it, every step of the way. He’d only known her a week or so, yet already she seemed to have picked him up, rearranged everything around him, and put him down in a strangely, wonderfully, altered reality.
Yet, while Monica had already had a huge impact on his life, Julian was aware that he barely knew her. He really wanted to paint her, as if his brushes might be able to uncover the truths beneath the protective barrier she seemed to have erected around herself. Julian hadn’t wanted to paint anyone for nearly fifteen years.
How many times in the last few years had Julian walked down this road marveling at all the people rushing past him, wondering where they were going and what they were doing, while he was just putting one foot in front of the other for no particular reason at all, apart from the fear that if he didn’t he would completely seize up? But today, he was one of them; someone with somewhere to be.
Julian started humming to himself, causing a couple of people to turn and smile at him as he passed by. Unaccustomed to eliciting this reaction, Julian glared at them suspiciously, at which point they picked up their pace and hurried on. At the art shop, he picked up twenty large sheets of high-quality drawing paper and took them to the till. There was, he mused, nothing more exhilarating, nor as terrifying, as a blank sheet of paper.
“I’m buying supplies for the art class I teach,” he told the cashier.
“Uh-huh,” he replied. He was not what you’d describe as a conversationalist.
“I wonder if there’ll be any budding Picassos in the class this evening,” Julian said.
“Cash or card?” replied the cashier. A badge on his lapel displayed five stars for customer services. Julian wondered what the one-star cashiers were like.
Next stop: props.
Julian paused at the corner shop, where large baskets of fruit and vegetables spilled out on to the street. A bowl of fruit perhaps? No. Dull and clichéd. Even a beginner’s class could be more adventurous than that, surely? Then, much like being slapped in the face by a wet kipper, he was hit by the smell of the fishmonger. He looked in the window and there it was: just the thing.
ELEVEN
Monica
Monica looked at the clock. Two minutes to seven. Most of the art class were here already, firing up their creative juices with glasses of red wine. Monica had offered the first glass for free as an extra incentive to get people to sign up. Finding students had been a bit of a nightmare. She’d had to call in a few favors. She’d cajoled a couple of her suppliers into joining up, as well as Benji’s boyfriend, Baz. She’d even stooped to flirting with her window cleaner in order to fill the last place, apologizing as she did so to the memory of Emmeline Pankhurst. Needs must. Now, if she included herself, there were ten participants. A respectable number. If Benji managed to flog enough additional glasses of wine and other refreshments, she might just (after paying Julian and Benji, and buying the materials) break even, despite reducing the price of the first lesson to ten pounds. She glanced at the clock again. She did hope Julian hadn’t lost his nerve.
There was a buzz in the room, as the students competed to tell each other quite how artistically untalented they were. Then, the door opened and everyone fell silent. Monica had told them all that Julian was a little eccentric. She’d also bigged up his CV just a bit. She was pretty sure that he hadn’t actually painted the Queen’s portrait. But nothing could quite prepare the class for Julian’s entrance. He stood in the doorway, in a billowing artist’s sm
ock, a burgundy red fedora, an extravagantly patterned cravat, and clogs.
Julian paused, as if to let the class drink him in. Then, he reached under his smock, and, with a flourish, pulled out a large lobster. Baz choked, spraying red wine all over table ten and Benji’s brand-new SuperDry T-shirt.
“Class!” said Julian, with a small, but theatrical bow. “Meet today’s subject.”
“Christ!” spluttered Baz, under his breath. “Is it still alive?”
“He’s pretty old, but not dead yet,” retorted Benji.
“I meant the lobster, obviously,” said Baz, rolling his eyes.
“Don’t be a pillock. It’s red, which means it’s been cooked.”
“What’s a pillock? Some kind of fish?” asked Baz.
“No, that’s a pollock,” said Benji.
“I thought Pollock was an artist,” Baz replied, now totally confused.
Benji and Baz were both sitting on the same armchair, as there hadn’t been enough smaller chairs to go around. Baz was on the cushion, and Benji was perched on one of the arms. They were both in their midtwenties, had names that fitted together in a pleasingly lyrical, alliterative fashion, but physically they were complete opposites. Benji was a redheaded Scot who, on a bad hair day and facing into the wind, looked like you’d imagine Tintin would if he’d grown up and reached six foot tall. Baz, of Chinese heritage, was short, dark, and wiry. Baz’s parents ran the Chinese restaurant, which had been opened by his grandparents, opposite the Broadway, and all three generations lived in the apartment above the shop. Baz’s grandmother was constantly on the lookout for a nice girl for her grandson, who would, eventually, take over the busy kitchen.