This Must Be the Place

by Maggie O'Farrell

  Then he realised they were photographers, ten or twelve of them, gathered outside her gates and now swarming round his car.

  Lenny was surrounded, lenses aimed right at him, their eyes blacked out, like those of insects. They thought he was Timou. He was driving Timou’s car; they thought she might be in the car.

  His pulse was erratic, tachycardic, as if he was on the verge of a panic attack, but he managed to lower his window to speak into the intercom. The photographers instantly recognised him for the nobody he was and the lenses disappeared

  The intercom emitted a male, Mexican-accented voice, instructing him to drive in, right up to the house, and the gates swung open. Lenny revved the car, once, twice, before seeing it wasn’t in drive. His palm slipped on the stick, sweat gliding between skin and leather, and he had to slow his breathing, look down, focus on the task.

  The driveway was curving, steep, oppressively sylvan. On both sides, sprinklers emitted a noise like air escaping a tyre. The house appeared, through the trees, as retina-searing flashes of reflected light. There was a mower, droning back and forth on a flat, artificially green lawn, a pair of maids in white uniforms, bearing piles of what looked like laundry, traversing the drive; there was a stuttering buzz from the trees at the left of the car and Lenny saw a figure with a chainsaw and visor, lopping off low-growing branches. It turned to watch his car pull up on the gravel.

  The house was glass, with an exposed structure of steel, the windows opaque with mirrored sky, surrounded on all sides by trees. A maid opened the door onto a hallway of blond, polished wood where the doors were concealed, masquerading as walls. It was the kind of place, Lenny thought, you’d have trouble getting out of once you were in. He was shown into a room the size of a basketball court, windows on three sides, thick, ankle-swallowing rugs on the floor, angular chairs set to face the view over the city haze, books lining the whole of one wall, floor to ceiling. The door was slid back, just enough to permit entry or exit, and beyond it, a pool waited, its surface impassive, mercury-still. A man with a necktie worn over a T-shirt, shades pushed back on his head, was speaking in staccato bursts into a cell phone: ‘She won’t do it … Why would she? … I’m telling you now … No way, no way … Forget it …’

  By the window a crop-haired woman, in platform shoes and the merest hint of a dress, was typing very fast on a laptop, frowning at the screen. She acknowledged his presence – sweaty, baggy shorts, hair falling in eyes – with a minor flex of an eyebrow.

  Lenny looked at the humming, implacable pool; he looked at the necktie man; he looked at the tofu steak, limp now and sticky. A person, some kind of gardener, Lenny guessed, slipped in through the door, pulling off visor, gloves, a scarf, and he was thinking it was the same person he had seen sawing branches off the trees and also: they let the staff use that door?

  Then he realised it was her. Claudette Wells. Tossing dusty gloves onto the pale blue sofa, hair pinned up in two woven braids, like an Alpine maiden, a pair of filthy jeans on her, coming towards him with a smile on her face.

  He was instantly amazed and terrified. The emotions surged up in him, vying for supremacy. Was he amazed? Was he terrified? He had no idea. He was neither, he was both. There she was, in front of him, and he had no idea what to say, no idea how to hold himself, how to be, to stand, to breathe. She forced everything out of his head until it was filled with nothing but white light.

  ‘Lenny,’ she said, her head on one side, a slight question in her voice.

  He raised the tofu steak in his hand, as if it was some kind of entry ticket. ‘Uh-huh,’ he managed.

  ‘It’s so nice to finally meet you.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I’ve talked to you so often on the phone it’s as if I know you.’ She was looking at him searchingly, holding his hand in hers. ‘It’s good to put a face to the voice.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Likewise.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, I already … well …’

  She smiled properly, cutting him off, revealing those teeth that he knew casting directors had asked her to fix – the gap in the front – but she had always refused.

  ‘Where’s Timou?’ she asked, still with her eyes on his, still standing very close, disconcertingly close in the enormous room.

  ‘Uh,’ Lenny had to think, ‘swimming.’

  ‘Swimming,’ she repeated. Eyes on his, hand still holding his.

  ‘Or … cycling?’

  ‘Cycling.’

  ‘One of the two.’

  She released his hand. Lenny went to rub it, as if he’d trapped it in a door, then stopped himself.

  ‘Well,’ she said, smoothing the placket of her shirt – a ratty denim thing with a missing button at the neck, possibly Timou’s, Lenny thought – passing a hand over her brow, ‘we wouldn’t want to interrupt the training, would we?’

  The man in the necktie had appeared at her side. ‘Claudette,’ he murmured, and Lenny recognised the faux-respectful yet possessive friendliness of a certain type of factotum. This was Claudette’s assistant, his equivalent, and the man did not like the idea of another assistant being in the room, as rival to her attentions.

  She turned. ‘Yes, Derek?’

  ‘I’ve got …’ He leant forward and whispered something into her ear, his lips brushing the whorls of her braids.

  She shook her head. ‘Tell him we’ll call back.’ She looked about her, as if trying to work out where she was. ‘Drink,’ she said to Lenny and, in her clipped British accent, it sounded like a command. Lenny actually looked about him for a glass or even a bowl, ready to do her bidding.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’ she asked, a hint of amusement in the question.

  ‘What? Oh, yes. I am. I mean, please. If that’s OK.’

  Instead of instructing one of the staff to fetch a bottle of water from some chilled cabinet concealed somewhere within the wood panelling, she crooked her finger, beckoning, indicating he should follow her.

  He did.

  In the kitchen, she hauled open the door of a cavernous refrigerator, extracted two bottles of water and a lime. Lenny watched, mesmerised, as she sliced the lime into quarters, then put a glass on the counter in front of him. Her water she swigged straight from the bottle, pushing the lime into its neck only when she’d downed half.

  ‘So,’ she said, standing on one bare foot with such poise that Lenny wondered if she did ballet, ‘where are you from, Lenny?’

  He put down his water, determined not to glance at the plate of pastries on the counter to his left. ‘New York.’

  ‘And how are you finding LA?’

  ‘It’s been …’ the trouble was that the stool he was sitting on had barely enough surface area for one buttock, let alone two, so he was obliged to perform a sort of lopsided crouch ‘… you know, interesting.’

  ‘Good.’ She swapped feet so that she was standing on the other leg. ‘You found somewhere decent to live, I hope?’

  An image of his rented room, glaringly bright without so much as a blind, the woven wall-hangings hammered into the plaster, the row of cacti, with dust held in their spikes, flashed through his mind. ‘Yeah, it’s fine.’

  She smiled, as if to acknowledge – and forgive – the lie. She reached out and prodded the pastries towards him.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Help yourself.’ And she took one, a pain au chocolat, Lenny would always remember, and ate it in five decisive bites. Lenny tried not to watch: did women like her really eat that stuff? He found himself glancing at her stomach: impossible to tell, under that loose shirt, which was in itself a kind of clue, he supposed.

  ‘And tell me this,’ she spoke through the pastry, in the same conversational tone, ‘is Timou sleeping with that art-director woman?’

  Lenny put down his glass with a clash. All he could think was that he had, his entire life, been a terrible liar. As a child, he used to get into trouble for things he hadn’t even done, so badly did he handle interrogation. He could never think on his feet, come up qu
ickly with an excuse, had no aptitude for dissembling. It was a quality that intrigued him in others: how to convince people of something entirely untrue. He looked at her, he looked away, his face and neck hot, steeped as he was in the knowledge of his utter ineptitude with situations like this.

  ‘I …’ he said, gripping the edge of the counter, unable to meet her eye ‘… I really … Not at all … I don’t think … I just—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It was very wrong of me to ask.’

  ‘I don’t know who you mean and—’

  ‘It wasn’t fair of me to put you on the spot like that and …’ she drew in a slow breath, pulling herself up to her full height ‘… I shouldn’t have done it. I apologise.’

  The horror of the moment stretched out before Lenny, like the water of a lake. He hadn’t been able to lie. He had given the game away. He would, in all likelihood, lose his job. Timou, terrifying Ironman, would tear each limb from his body. His career, his livelihood, his ambition – killed, with one simple question.

  Lenny gripped his water with a profound unhappiness. Claudette balanced on one foot, gazing out at her trees.

  Without warning, a power-tool of some sort started up outside the house, a thin mosquito drone. Claudette tilted her head, as if its sound held some kind of meaning for her, then ran a finger through the chain about her neck. Lenny picked at the label on his bottle, his mind still scanning for things he should have said: what art-director woman, what are you talking about, what a ridiculous idea, of course not, whatever gave you that impression? Any of these, he told himself miserably, would have done. What kind of an idiot can’t drum up a single platitude in this scenario?

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said, in a casual voice that wasn’t fooling anyone, consummate actress though she was. ‘I knew anyway.’

  ‘If you think Timou would ever,’ he tried, ‘do anything like that, then—’

  She turned upon him a look so piercing, so wounded, that he immediately fell silent.

  Lenny stood abruptly, the stool he’d been perched on crashing backwards to the floor. ‘I should go,’ he announced, groping to reinstate the stool. ‘I need to … I should let you …’

  She said nothing, but nodded, putting down her drink.

  In the hallway, as she walked ahead of him towards the door, he watched the soles of her bare feet, revealing and concealing themselves to and from him, in turn, over and over. He caught hold, briefly, of what it would be like to live in this house, with her as your girlfriend, your wife. Just for a moment, he could feel it, that life, as closely as something you might wear: these rooms, those yellow oblongs of light thrown along the floor, that pool there waiting for you in the morning, the murmur and chatter of the sprinklers outside, the restless stirring of the trees, the drone of the mower and her, turning towards you, one of her braids escaping its pins, holding out her hand to you at the open door.

  Show Me Where It Hurts

  Marithe, Donegal, 2010

  Tables are useful, Marithe thinks, for a number of reasons. She draws her feet towards her so that she is entirely tented inside her nightdress and counts off these reasons on her fingers.

  You can eat off them. You can draw and cut and glue on them. You can stand on them, although that isn’t allowed unless you’re a grown-up and you’re putting up Christmas decorations – great swatches of green-smelling fir branches to be pinned to the beam. You can also hide under them.

  People, Marithe knows, tend to forget you’re there.

  She lifts her eyes to the underside of the table above her head. On it, she knows, are the scattered remains of breakfast: coffee cups, plates, bowls, spoons, knives, breadcrumbs, Calvin’s bib, encrusted with porridge, the salt cellar, her uncle’s elbows.

  Marithe knows this last one only because her grandmother, who must always be called Pascaline – not Granny or Nana or even Grandmère or any of those other names – keeps stopping her flow of conversation to say, ‘Lucas, tes coudes!’

  Pascaline is Marithe’s mother’s mother. She never wears trousers or shoes with laces. She doesn’t put her arms through the sleeves of her cardigan but wears it draped on her shoulders like a cape; she has a special chain with clips at either end to keep it from slipping. And she always talks French when she tells people off.

  They have been talking in low voices, her uncle and her grandmother, since her mother left the room. Her mother, Marithe knows, has gone outside and, from the sounds of hammering and bashing, has started mending the outhouse roof.

  They appeared yesterday, these visitors, and it seems to have been a surprise: usually when people are coming, Marithe’s mother will draw her a calendar so that she may cross off the days until they arrive. But this time, no calendar. Just a hurried dash into the car to collect them from the airport, through the gates, her mother toiling out into the rain, on her own, driving the car through, then getting out again to shut them, on her own, while Marithe and Calvin waited in the car.

  ‘This much is clear,’ Marithe hears her grandmother say, from across the room. ‘It is not good.’

  ‘Come on,’ Lucas says, through a mouthful of food, probably bread, ‘we’ve got no reason to think that yet.’

  ‘I am not so sure,’ Pascaline says. ‘It is bound to be another woman. Why else would he suddenly take off like that? To England, he says, but can we believe that? He could be anywhere. Old habits die hard, especially in a man like Daniel. When you think—’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Lucas interrupts, ‘when you say, “a man like Daniel”, do you mean American? Because I’m not really in the mood for sweeping racist statements and—’

  ‘No, of course I don’t mean American. I mean …’ Marithe’s grandmother hesitates, turns her head to gaze out of the window and sighs. ‘I mean someone who is so … different on the inside from how they are on the outside. Is there a word for that?’

  Lucas turns a page of the newspaper he is reading. ‘Don’t know,’ he says, with a yawn. ‘Anyway, what makes you say that about Daniel? I don’t think he’s like that at all. I’ve always thought that, with him, what you see is what you get.’

  Pascaline is silent for a moment. Then she says, in a voice so quiet that Marithe has to strain to hear it, ‘On the surface, Daniel is so charming, yes, so charismatic but underneath it is a whole other matter. Lucas, tes coudes. I have always felt that Daniel has a … how do you say it? … a strong streak of destroying himself. A—’

  ‘A self-destructive streak,’ Lucas corrects, mumbling through another mouthful.

  ‘Yes, that. I can see why Claudette fell for him, of course I can, but he is the archetypal self-destructive charmer. He cannot help himself. He feels on some level he doesn’t deserve her, doesn’t deserve all this. I have seen the type before.’

  Several things happen at once. Her uncle shifts irritably in his seat, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, the edge of his socked foot coming into contact with Marithe’s arm. He says something to Pascaline, very fast, in French and Marithe catches the words l’enfant and ici and Marithe knows she has been found.

  But Pascaline doesn’t stop. She merely switches into French. ‘Évidemment cela veut dire qu’il y a une autre femme. Qui vit dans le Sussex peut-être. L’homme ne –’

  ‘Oh, arrête,’ Lucas grumbles, ‘arrête.’

  ‘– peut pas résister. Nous devons nous demander comment protéger Claudette. Et s’il a dit à l’autre femme qui elle est et où elle habite. As-tv pensé à ça?’

  Marithe sees that Pascaline doesn’t know or has forgotten that Claudette and Ari speak French together all the time. Marithe has grown up hearing the language, imbibing it from birth; it has spooled through her head for as long as she can remember. It is the secret language of her mother and her brother, that older, darker, almost-adult, who has suddenly gone from their house when he used to be here all the time, in the room opposite Marithe’s, and the pain of that disappearance, which she hadn’t known was coming, is so severe that she cannot alwa
ys keep it in. She is sometimes compelled to stamp into the garden and fling clods of mud at the garden wall, hurl rocks at the old well, which her father hammered shut with planks of wood, but you can still hear its depth, its existence, in the echo, if you hit it in the right place, with the right stone.

  Marithe shoots out from under the table, a blur of nightdress, socks, unravelling plaits and, ignoring the cries and admonishments of her uncle and grandmother, runs across the room, weaving through furniture, past playpen and stove, past the dog, who has caught something of her motion and thinks that an adventure is in the offing, past the stacked dishes of the kitchen and out of the back door.

  She leaps from the worn stone of the step, stamping on some wellington boots, and stands for a moment, poised at the edge of the lawn. The air is moist, heavy with unfallen rain. The tops of the mountains are swathed in scarves of soft grey.

  What to do, which way to go? Climb the aspens, splash through the stream, feed the hens, visit the treehouse, head for the tyre-swing, build a fire, go to the fairy den that Ari made for her last summer, search for smooth pebbles in the water butt, find one of those reeds that Lucas knows how to pierce in the right place to make a music pipe. The world seems to Marithe to be suddenly crammed, overloaded, a spectrum of possibilities. How can she choose just one, how can she ever decide which way to turn, when the place is so full, so teeming with choice? There is a fire raging somewhere within her, it seems, and none of these things can put it out.

  She moves sideways along the path, one foot crossing over the other, ‘sidling’, it’s called, her father told her – ‘Good word, huh?’ he had said, with a wink – and she takes care that the dew-drenched flowers don’t catch and clutch at her hem. Nothing slows you down like a wet nightdress. At the corner of the house, she pauses to do up every last button of her cardigan, right to the top. It doesn’t seem so long since it was summer, since she was out here in the garden in nothing at all, since her mother sat feeding Calvin on a rug on the lawn, but now the air is sharp, her breath leaving her in white explosions.