Sphinx

by T. S. Learner

  ‘You all right, mate?’ The taxi driver leaned out of his open window.

  I nodded, and turned to lift out my suitcase. The cab drove off, and as I carried my luggage up the pavement I noticed the twins from next door watching from their front garden, one nonchalantly picking his nose while the other scratched a scabby knee. Children of a recent divorce, their working mother was rarely home and Isabella had often brought them up to our apartment for tea and the Turkish delight that Francesca sent from Egypt.

  ‘Mister Warnock!’ called Stanley, the older brother, now hanging from the garden gate, his prematurely aged face peaky and worried. I turned reluctantly: this was the moment I’d been dreading.

  ‘Where’s Issy?’ he demanded, his voice trembling with anxiety. ‘You’ve not gone and got divorced, ’ave yer?’

  ‘Stanley, I’ve just got in from a long flight and—’

  ‘She’s left yer, ’asn’t she?’ Alfred joined his brother on the gate, the two of them glaring at me in defiant accusation, blond hair shaved tight against their narrow skulls, precocious in their distrust of all things adult.

  I hesitated. They had both adored Isabella. She’d even taught them a few words of Italian, which they’d repeated solemnly in atrocious North London accents, captivated by her expressive gestures - buongiorno, buonasera, arrivederci. Momentarily overwhelmed, I sat down on my suitcase, unable to reply. There was the creak of the gate as it was swung open. A minute later I felt small cool fingers slip between my own.

  ‘Mister Warnock, it’s bad, innit?’ Stanley stood in front of me, his eyes wide with a sense of tragedy that belied his age.

  I stared up at him. ‘I lost her,’ I whispered.

  ‘Lost her? How can you lose a whole person?’ Alfred, incredulous, still hovered behind the gate. But one glance at Stanley’s trembling lip and I knew that the older twin had understood.

  ‘C’mon, Alfred.’ With his eyes screwed tight, Stanley led his brother back to their front garden.

  Our flat was in West Hampstead, a suburb filled with the dispossessed middle class: the divorced, the bachelors, the perpetual spinsters alone in their studio apartments huddled around the electric kettle. But it was my favourite part of London; I liked the semi-urban location. The apartment was tiny - I’d purchased it at the beginning of my first job, using the position as leverage to secure a mortgage. It had been a momentous occasion: I was the first member of my family ever to own property, and at twenty-four I felt I was already soaring above a cycle of poverty that went back generations.

  It was a one-bedroom apartment, really a glorified attic conversion. The kitchen was the size of a large cupboard with a view of next door’s concreted courtyard. The lounge, which doubled as the dining room, was split-level; a small set of wooden steps led up to a sleeping area with just enough space for a double bed. The ceiling was so low that I could hardly stand. The best thing about the place was the small roof terrace that lay beyond the double windows of the sleeping area. It was located between two tall Victorian red-brick chimneys: a sanctuary hidden from the windows of the surrounding buildings that offered an unencumbered view of north-west London. When the weather was good, I’d carry out the large telescope I kept folded against the bedroom wall and set it up on its spindly tripod. Beyond the orange city sky, the stars were my metaphysical ladder, a way to escape the claustrophobia of both London and the apartment.

  I pulled my suitcase along the entrance hall and onto the staircase. The paintwork was battered and splintered, the carpet stained and worn by a thousand tenants before us, and the strong smell of curry wafted down from the apartment of the young Indian Sikh couple who lived on the first floor. I paused on the landing.

  ‘Oliver?’ My neighbour peered through his partially opened front door, the door chain still on.

  ‘Hello, Raj,’ I said.

  Sighing with relief, Raj unlatched the chain and stepped out. He was wearing a sweaty vest, a white turban and the trousers of his bus driver’s uniform. His eyes were tired and anxious.

  ‘Just come off the night shift?’ I asked, surprised by the pleasure I felt at the familiar sight of him.

  ‘That is right.’ He reached out, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘Oliver, your brother told us about your terrible loss. My wife and I are most grieved - you know we both loved Isabella very much.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I could see Raj’s sari-clad wife hovering shyly behind him. Shaking his hand, I tried to hold down the balloon of emotion now banging against my ribcage. Embarrassed, Raj tactfully turned back to the apartment.

  ‘Aisha, he is back.’

  His wife, her slim figure radiating a glasslike fragility, offered me a biscuit tin. ‘Please, you must be tired and hungry, and your fridge will be empty. I made some samosas for you. Please?’

  Thanking them both profusely, I slipped the tin under my arm.

  After the door closed behind them, I stood staring up at the next landing, my own front door, achingly evocative with its blue paint and brass doorknob, beckoning through the banisters. Clutching the biscuit tin as a drowning man might hold on to a buoy, I made my way up the stairs.

  The flat was a darkened cavern that stank of stale cigarette smoke and frying bacon. With all the curtains drawn, it held the gloom of somebody else’s life, a past I now barely recognised. Even in this dim light I could see several dirty plates on the floor, a dressing gown thrown across the television. A lava lamp glowed in the corner, its nebulous wax mass congealing in slow motion like an alien fungus.

  Isabella had insisted that Gareth should have a set of keys so he could use the flat as an occasional retreat from the frenetic world he existed in. It was obvious he’d stayed over and failed to clean up after himself. I picked up the plates and carried them into the kitchen. Well, at least he’s eating, I reassured myself. The task of dealing with my brother’s latest bout of addiction loomed; a depressing prospect.

  I turned off the dripping tap and went back into the lounge. It was a time capsule, the objects within which might themselves have been submerged - the dust and microscopic human debris from a lifetime before, a lifetime suspended in the still air.

  I climbed the wooden steps to the sleeping area. Isabella’s dressing gown hung on a hook on the wall. Burying my face in the silk, I breathed in deeply. The smell of our sex still lingered in the folds, the love twistings of leg and skin.

  Kneeling on the floor, I buried my head in this tent of memory, wondering if I could go on. I was free-falling in her absence. If I was entirely honest with myself, I think I might have been waiting for some kind of external sign to give me a reason to continue, for Isabella to talk to me from beyond that invisible wall that divided the dead from the living.

  There was nothing but silence. Then, slowly, the sound of a distant ice-cream van playing a tinkling ‘Greensleeves’ and the roar of a plane passing overhead came into focus. And suddenly I wanted to wipe all of it away - the clinging labyrinth of Egypt, the astrarium, the incessant misery of loss.

  I grabbed the steel waste-paper bin, pulled open the chest of drawers and began to pull out Isabella’s clothes: sweaters, blouses, skirts, lingerie - all ghost clothes now, a ghost I was determined to exorcise. I stuffed as much as I could into the bin, then carried it onto the roof terrace. I emptied a bottle of lighter fluid over the clothes and held a match to the pile.

  Sliding down, I sat with my back to the wall. As each item crinkled and then burst into flames, I remembered the occasions when she’d worn it: an Indian cotton dress flying around her tanned legs as she danced at a rock concert; a business suit she wore for her lectures; a nightdress she would put on, without consciously realising the signal she was sending, when she wanted to make love.

  Emotionally exhausted, I curled up and closed my eyes.

  The sound of footsteps woke me. Silhouetted against the afternoon sky was a young woman, her wild hair framing her face like a mane.

  ‘Oliver?’ she said.

&nb
sp; Disorientated, I stumbled to my feet. I must have slept for hours.

  ‘I’m Zoë. Gareth’s girlfriend. Sorry.’ She indicated the open window that she must have climbed through to reach the roof. ‘I was audacious. I let myself in. Gareth had the keys. He doesn’t know you’re back or anything . . .’

  ‘You’re forgiven. So you’re the person who rang my office in Alex?’

  Zoë stepped into the shade and finally I could see her clearly. She wore Dr Martens boots, purple fishnets and a blue lurex ball gown that flared from the waist, her hennaed hair fell to her shoulders, and her face had a Pre-Raphaelite beauty that formed a jarring contrast with her dress. Despite the heavy purple eyeshadow, she looked ridiculously young.

  She looked me up and down candidly; to my annoyance I found it a disarming sensation.

  ‘You look like him, only older,’ she said.

  I moved the subject onto safer ground. ‘Is Gareth all right?’

  ‘Depends on what you classify as all right. He’s playing tonight so I thought you could come and see for yourself. Personally, I’ve never seen him so self-destructive.’

  ‘In what way?’

  She looked me fully in the eye, then decided to be honest. ‘Speed. I mean, we all indulge. It’s just that with Gareth it’s got so bad that he’s frightened to sleep. Like really frightened, as if it might kill him to close his eyes. Most of the time he’s rational, but then he’ll start talking about people coming to steal his soul.’

  ‘That isn’t rational.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Zoë replied with a nonchalant irony.

  Reaching into the still-smouldering bin, she pulled out one of Isabella’s half-burnt bras, all underwiring and lace, and held it up. ‘I don’t think everything is rational.’

  She waited for an explanation of the burning clothes; I didn’t give her one. She dropped the smouldering bra back into the embers. ‘I think we have a few things in common.’ She flung out the remark as if it were a paradox.

  ‘Apart from my brother?’

  ‘An interest in stone, rock . . .’

  I glanced at her quizzically.

  ‘Didn’t Gareth tell you?’ she continued.

  ‘Afraid not - we’ve never talked much, my fault as much as his,’ I replied, wondering now how much he’d told her about me.

  ‘I’m a sculptor - I work in marble.’ Zoë’s earnestness was endearing. ‘You’re a geologist, aren’t you?’

  ‘A geophysicist, that’s far less romantic.’ I smiled. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Does my age preclude the possibility of being taken seriously? ’

  ‘As an artist or a woman?’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  ‘I think’ - I leaned forward to emphasise the point - ‘I’m old enough to be your father.’

  ‘But you’re not my father. And, if you have to know, he died last year in a road accident and I suspect he was several years older than you.’

  Suddenly her façade of hardened indifference slipped away. I fought the impulse to hug her.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Zoë flinched. ‘So, you see, we have something else in common.’ She glanced out at the rooftops before turning back towards me. ‘I met your wife once, at the squat. She told Gareth to break it off with me - she thought I was too intense, and probably too young.’

  I laughed. ‘That sounds like Isabella - she was always giving him advice about his love life.’

  ‘It’s okay, she was right. I am too intense . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she indicated the smouldering bin. ‘It’s hard to find the words . . .’

  ‘That’s because there aren’t any.’

  She nodded and, squatting down against the wall, lit a cigarette.

  ‘Marble’s made from seashells crushed together over millions of years, isn’t it? That’s why it has that translucency - the light of all those ancient oceans.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I answered, smiling. ‘And oil is made from organic matter crushed together over millions of years, and that black-gold tint is the treacly light of money shining through.’

  ‘But isn’t working just for money ultimately corrupting?’ Zoë persisted.

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret. It’s not the money but the hunt that gets me excited. Finding something I can sense is there.’

  She nodded. ‘I feel that when I look at a piece of marble. I see the shape hidden in the rock, then release it by carving. ’

  ‘Bingo, that makes three things we have in common,’ I joked.

  Zoë’s expression wavered, then settled into seriousness. ‘So what do you think happens to us when we die, when we’re crushed together over millions of years?’

  I stared out over the languid summer evening; the laughter of children playing below floated up with the faint scent of mown grass. ‘We become one with the universe, nature recycling itself. It’s that simple,’ I answered finally.

  ‘Nothing’s simple.’ Zoë threw her cigarette away. ‘I’m eighteen, in case you’re wondering.’ She stood up. ‘She’s still here, you know.’

  For a moment I thought I’d misheard. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your wife, she hasn’t left yet. She’s still here, all twisted up in your shadow.’

  ‘Look, I hardly know you—’

  ‘Oops, I’m being audacious again, sorry. Sometimes I speak out of turn. You’ll have to put up with it. Come to the gig tonight - please. Gareth really respects you. He’ll be thrilled if you are there. I wouldn’t have rung if I didn’t think the situation was serious.’

  Zoë smiled; a poignant half-smile that softened the ferocity of her make-up. There was an unnerving maturity about her despite her youth, and her beauty was hard to ignore.

  ‘He doesn’t know you’re back or that I rang you,’ she continued. ‘Proud family, your lot - Gareth would rather die than ask for help. I’m sorry about your wife. She must have been amazing. Gareth took the news really badly.’

  ‘They were close.’

  ‘The band’s playing at The Vue. They’re on in an hour so we should get moving.’

  I hesitated. I hadn’t reckoned on the possibility of actually seeing my brother sing. In fact, I’d never seen Gareth’s band play - that had been Isabella’s domain, and I’d semi-consciously avoided the gigs, a part of me terrified that he might not be as talented as I hoped. I needed to believe in his future in the way my parents had never believed in mine, which meant I needed him to be good, really good.

  I glanced out over the rooftops, the urban regularity jarring after the skyline of Alexandria. The sun had begun to slip behind the horizon.

  ‘Come on, come with me,’ Zoë said. ‘It’s got to be better than hanging around here. But there’s no way you’re wearing that daft suit.’

  18

  The Vue was an old ballroom that someone had decided to recreate as a rock-music venue. Apart from some fluorescent ceiling hangings and a stage backdrop with a massive black ‘A’ on a red background ringed by a circle, the original decor looked relatively intact. Ornate plaster reliefs decorated the balconies and a huge crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, imaginatively strung with pink electric lights, while a strobe painted the walls in blindingly blue-white staccato flashes.

  The bar, located on an upper balcony, was encircled by large booths and had a neon sign depicting Betty Boop having sex with Mickey Mouse pulsing over the counter. I pushed my way through the crowd, cradling a vodka and four pints of Guinness. By the time we’d arrived, the band were backstage preparing to go on and the bouncers wouldn’t let us see them. Zoë had guided me to the bar, pointed to where Gareth’s housemates were waiting, and told me to buy the drinks. I reached the table, self-conscious in the battered leather jacket that Gareth had left at the flat and which Zoë had forced me to wear.

  I felt I’d entered some kind of Hieronymus Bosch netherworld populated by young women and men dressed in the most fantastical outfits and hairstyles. They lounged against the walls and on the chairs; a couple even appe
ared to be having sex on the table of one of the booths, oblivious to the incurious bystanders. Another couple sported bright pink mohawks over a foot high; the man, a good deal shorter than his girlfriend, reminded me of a bizarre peacock. His eyes were carefully outlined with black kohl and eyeshadow, while the shaved halves of his scalp either side of the stiff pink spikes glistened like a pale pancake. A torn T-shirt held together by oversized safety pins sat under a black leather jacket covered in zips and studs, and his skintight trousers were made of rubber. His girlfriend wore a leather bra - the kind of thing one might purchase from a sex shop - and a tartan miniskirt, under which the suspenders holding up her fishnet stockings were clearly visible. The two of them had a tribal grace, and the male youth particularly, with his long naked skull and aquiline features, reminded me of a pale version of some of the Nubian tribes I’d seen in central Africa. I’d never thought the English could be capable of such decorative and imaginative dressing, and for one bizarre moment I speculated whether such fashion wasn’t a brilliant fusion of colonial-era Britain and the urban dispossessed.

  Gareth’s housemates were seated in one of the booths, Zoë beside them. I placed the drinks down on the table, then sat opposite. They looked as out of place as I did, I couldn’t help noting with some relish. They were a curiously eclectic group who looked like they had nothing in common except the squat they lived in - in Harlesden, a semi-industrial, unprepossessing suburb on the outskirts of north-west London. The narrow Victorian terrace was one side of a whole cul-de-sac that had been marked for demolition until Gareth and his friends had taken illegal occupancy eighteen months before. Despite my disapproval, I couldn’t help admiring the energy they had poured into repairing the place - clearing the ancient sewage drain that led under the street, emptying the back garden of litter, replacing the shattered windows.

  ‘Excellent, my friend - the beverages have arrived intact despite the unruly herd,’ Dennis announced.