by Clare Naylor
Kate watched Londoners shedding their clothes in the afternoon heat. From here she could see everything. On building sites shoulders were turning lurid shades of pink, and out-for-a-stroll-at-lunchtime businessmen were rolling up their sleeves. Kate clutched her pencils and stood up to ring the bell. The next stop was the zoo.
“Thanks,” she called out to the driver as she hopped off the bus and onto the soft pavement. Kate hadn’t been to the zoo in months, which only served to remind her how miserable she must have been. She used to come here all the time and laugh at the monkeys or marvel at how sinister and prehistoric the crocodiles looked. But to be honest she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d felt joyful at a normal thing—like laughing at a stupid newspaper headline or seeing a seagull in the city—those sweet, Sound of Music moments like dewdrops on roses. She was a painter, for heaven’s sake, she loved stuff like that. But it really had been ages since she’d been properly happy, she realized with a wave of depression. God, with or without Jake, she didn’t see the good in life anymore. Which was about as bad as it got. Once upon a time Kate would have laughed and called all her friends to tell them that Mirri Moncur and Jonah Sinclair were shagging in her hammock outside her window. Last night she’d simply been a belligerent cow.
Kate took a ticket from the man in the booth at the entrance to the zoo and made a point of smiling at him. Granted, underneath her smile she felt wretched and fearful of what all this thinking was going to mean, but she had to start putting her life right somehow.
“Which way are the polar bears?” she asked. “Only I think it’s all changed since I was last here.”
“Polar bears is still in the same place they always was,” the ticket man said, and bared his crumbling teeth at her in what she took to be a smile. The zoo smelled even more pungent than usual in the heat but was eerily quiet; there wasn’t even a school party of bored teenagers or a huddle of Japanese tourists today. Kate pretty much had the place to herself. As she wandered through the cool darkness of the reptile house, she couldn’t hear even the faintest squeal of a monkey outside, only her sandals tripping on the concrete floor. She stopped and watched as a snake drew his dry scales against the glass of his tank and felt glad that she’d come here. Not only did the zoo remind her of home and the inanimate creatures that had roamed her parents’ house, but she also managed to justify being here to herself as work. Because even though she’d drawn and painted every single animal, reptile, and bird in the whole place at least six times, she never ceased to come away with a sketch that she was happy with.
She’d decided to start with the polar bears because they were the most robust and, she imagined, well adjusted of the animals. The gorillas would have made her sad with their lonely eyes; the monkeys, with all their showing off and flirting, would have made her wish for companionship; and she wasn’t in the mood for docile elephants and their mooning ways. No, she definitely wanted to hang with the polar bears today. She loved their vast size, their elegant walk, and the way they somehow seemed incredibly friendly. Though she wasn’t convinced that if she landed in their den at mealtime this theory would hold much water. When she arrived at the polar bear enclosure she rolled up her cardigan beneath her, placed it on the hard grass, and sat down. She also arranged her pencils in a row next to her and pulled out her sketch pad.
She must have stared at the polar bears for ten minutes with her pencil scratching away at her page before she really noticed that she hadn’t produced anything vaguely resembling a polar bear, and had instead simply been doodling. Not, thankfully, anything as inane as Jake’s name, but rather words like LIFE and LOVE and HOPE and, a little less obviously, FISH and FLASH. She had also been thinking about whether she was a masochist for having hung around Jake for this long. There were, she imagined, all sorts of very lovely men out there who would allow her to use the term boyfriend in relation to them without calling their lawyers to sue her. She remembered when Tanya and Robbie had first gotten together. Not only was he her boyfriend after three dates, he was her fiancé after seven and her husband six months later. When Kate had first gone and had coffee with Tanya and her fabulous new man, Tanya had said, “Oh, Robbie and I don’t mind whether we live in his flat or mine. We just want to be together.” She’d said that in front of him, too. Kate contemplated what Jake would do if she said the same thing in front of him—three years down the line and for a joke. And while she couldn’t be completely certain, she knew that it would involve cardiac arrest and an ambulance.
“Okay, guys, enough of that,” she said out loud and stood up so she could get closer to the bears for a bit. She walked over to where they were lolling on the wet rocks beside the arctic-cold water. “I love him, you know. Do you think I’m mad?” she asked a bear who was looking directly at her.
“No, you’re not mad. It’s perfectly normal to speak to polar bears about your emotions.” Kate heard a man’s voice behind her. She’d assumed, of course, that she was alone in the zoo apart from a few sweeping keepers.
She spun around. “I was just—”
“It’s okay. I just wanted to let you know I was here before you went any further.” Behind her, standing on the grass next to her dumb doodles, was a man with a gray cotton hat over his head and a huge baggy sweater on, dressed as if he was oblivious to the soaring mercury of the afternoon. She took a couple of steps back, not able to ascertain at this close a proximity whether she should run and scream blue murder or not. “Kate, it’s me, Louis,” the man said.
“Louis?” Kate reappraised the sinister figure and then rushed toward him and gave him a huge hug. “What are you doing here?” she said with a broad grin on her face.
“I’ve got a few issues with intimacy that I wanted to work out in therapy. I thought I’d take the next appointment after yours.” He pulled the hat off his head, and thick blue-black hair spilled down over his face as he pointed in the direction of the polar bears. Kate had known Louis Alcott for years. Well, eight years to be precise. They’d met at art college when they were on the same bench in metalwork class. One day a shard of iron filing from the horse she’d been sculpting had flown up and caught him in the eye, and an unseemly amount of blood had gushed through his fingers as he’d clutched his palm against his face and turned the color of putty. Terrified that he’d been blinded, Kate had refused to wait for an ambulance as the tutor demanded and had instead thrust him into the front seat of her car and driven him on what he still referred to as the most nerve-racking ride of his life, to the local hospital. Then she’d sat with him in the emergency room for four hours while they waited to be seen by a doctor. Kate had tried to distract him by telling him about her father’s taxidermy—about the processes of stuffing and embalming rare species. It was only when he rushed to the nearest rubbish bin and threw up that she realized that she might have chosen a better subject matter to preach to a bleeding man with pending stitches in his eye area. Still, afterward, when it was revealed that he wasn’t blinded, only cut in a gangsterlike way through his eyebrow, and would need only five stitches and an eye patch, Kate took him home and fed him noodles and Ribena. Louis had been slightly baffled by all the attention from Kate, and they’d become firm friends.
She’d encouraged him in his career as a conceptual sculptor even though she didn’t understand the first thing about it, and he always showed up for her private views with one of a string of gorgeous girlfriends who made Kate feel like a frumpy suburbanite with a penchant for paint-by-numbers art. They invariably had golden legs, knee-high boots, and whiplash wit; were ominously intellectual and flashed their wares as a columnist for a national newspaper with a sultry photograph at the top of their page; or appeared on stage as the latest, diaphanously clad Ophelia in a hip North London production of Hamlet. At least that’s how it had felt to Kate. She had never quite understood how Louis, who was painfully shy even with her and hid behind his admittedly very sexy devilish black hair most of the time, was so successful with women. And as she was t
oo intimidated by the hothouse orchids he dated to dig them in the ribs and giggle about what it was they saw in her old pal, she was never likely to find out, either.
“Still in love with that loser boyfriend of yours, I take it?” Louis asked through tightened lips. He’d always hated Jake. Well, not always, just since the day he’d bumped into a sobbing Kate in the car park of Sainsbury’s in Notting Hill after Jake had delivered one of his early flesh wounds over the phone. Louis had picked her up off the pavement she was crying on and taken her to the circus. They’d eaten cotton candy and they’d had a laugh, but the next day, when Kate called Louis to say thank you and announced that she was okay now because Jake had seen the light and was on his way over with a bottle of wine and takeout, he was less than amused. In fact, Kate hadn’t seen much of Louis outside gallery openings for the past couple of years. But she was thrilled to see him now, and indulged his crossness over Jake.
“Unfortunately yes. And for the record, you and the polar bears aren’t the only ones who think I’m mad. I think that I’m mad, too. But it doesn’t seem to change things.”
“Yeah, well. I’m prepared to overlook your terrible taste in men for the moment.” He smiled. “So what are you up to, kitten?” He always called her kitten because there had been two Kates in their year at art college. And even though it was only Louis saying it, she always had a feeling of loveliness when he did.
“This and that. Actually I’m doing a portrait of a lion cub, believe it or not.” She shrugged. “Oh, and I’m miserable, broke, and living in a shed. How about you?” she said blithely.
“A shed?” Louis looked genuinely alarmed. “You’re serious?”
“It’s okay. It’s Leonard’s shed so it’s very high end,” she reassured him. “What about you? Shouldn’t you be having some amazing exhibition soon? It’s been a while. Well, that is, unless I’ve fallen off your invitation list.”
“What, for keeping bad company?” He smiled wanly. “No, I’m just a slow worker. I’ve got a show opening at Tate Modern next month, though. It’s a retrospective with a couple of new pieces, too. That’s why I’m here. Looking for inspiration.” He nodded at the polar bears.
“God, Louis, don’t tell me that you’re going to take up animal portraits. I’m not sure that there’s room for both of us in the marketplace and as living in a shed’s about as rock bottom as I can stand . . . ,” she pleaded with a smile.
“Don’t worry, I’m just thinking of doing a big piece. Not sure yet, though, what it’ll be. I wanted to look at huge things. I’m into messing with perspective at the moment.” He gestured to the polar bears, who were sunning themselves on a rock in the blazing afternoon.
“So are you, you know, married yet or anything?” Kate asked, in what she thought would pass for an adult tone. But just as Louis pulled off his sunglasses, clearly preparing an answer for her, there was a fantastic crashing sound behind Kate as one of the bears, in a bid for attention, stood up and dived into the water. Kate felt an enormous splash crash over her and then water seep through the back of her T-shirt. She screamed as the cold hit her warm skin, then laughed and pulled at her wet top to investigate just how soaking she was.
“Holy shit. I’m drenched.” She laughed, then looked up and saw that Louis was smiling shyly, trying to look at his feet but clearly unable to resist the lure of her translucent top. He was swinging his sunglasses in his hand, and through the slivers of bangs she could see his deep, bottle-green eyes flicker to hers as he finally managed to avert his gaze.
“Can I help?” he asked.
“I think I’ll survive,” Kate told him. “It’s quite refreshing actually. “
“Damned right it is.” He winked at her then hastily added, “So where were we? Oh, yeah, me. No, I’m not married. Only to work. You know how it is.”
“I wish I did,” Kate said, as she was forced to recall her financial woes, which always made her stomach lurch as surely as hurling herself from a moving train might. “Still, at least I’ve got this big commission for the lion cub. Could be worse.” She forced a cheerful face.
“Come on, kitten, it can’t be that bad. You were the most talented painter in our year.”
Louis was looking intently at her. She’d forgotten how penetrating he could be when he looked at her. It had been so long since she’d been alone with him. She felt slightly uncomfortable, because even though Louis was sweet he wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with. It wasn’t as though conversation just flowed.
“It’s not at all bad.” She batted the black cloud away. “So why don’t you come by and have a cup of tea one day soon. We ought to catch up properly. When I’m not wet,” she added, and tugged at her T-shirt to make it dry out more quickly.
“Sure,” Louis said, and was about to shuffle from one foot to the other when he noticed Kate’s sketch pad at his feet. “So, you’ve been sketching today. Can I have a look?”
“No.” Kate jostled past him and dived onto the book. If he saw FISH and FLASH and her lunatic scribblings he’d think she’d really lost her mind. Then she noticed, as she hugged the incriminating page guiltily to her chest, that he looked slightly hurt. “Well, what I mean is, best not look as they’re not all that great.” She tried to smooth over the crack she’d just driven through their conversation.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” Louis said shakily.
“Actually, Louis, they’re hardly sketches. They’re the musings of a half-wit,” she confessed.
“No problem,” Louis said gently. “Well, I’d better head off. Leave you and Percy the Polar Bear to your important discussion.” He shrugged and gave her the trace of a smile.
“It was great to see you, Louis,” Kate said overeagerly. “You will come around for coffee, won’t you?”
“Yeah, ’course I will,” he promised. Though Kate suspected that he wouldn’t. He waved and walked away.
“ ’Bye, then,” Kate said to herself as she sat back down on the grass. Once again she picked up her pencil, but still she didn’t draw anything. And she was so distracted by guilt and how messily her chat with Louis had gone that it was a whole fifteen minutes before she remembered to check her phone for missed calls.
Chapter Six
“Okay, I’ll do it.” Kate sat down heavily on Tanya’s sofa and tossed her sketch pad on the coffee table.
“You’ll do what?” Tanya and Robbie had just gotten back from Robbie’s parents when Kate had rung their doorbell and demanded entry. She’d come straight from the zoo to tell them about her decision.
“We finally get to adopt you?” Robbie asked as he put his jacket over the arm of a chair and made for the drinks cabinet. It had long been a joke among the three of them that if Kate never found a husband, she would just come and live with Robbie and Tanya. They would keep a spare room and en suite bathroom for her, she’d bring them cups of tea and newspapers every morning for the rest of their lives, and they’d all get to lounge around on the duvet gossiping until Robbie went to work and the girls went to yoga. Any babies born would be communal, and Kate’s lovers would be welcome on the understanding that they were quiet and didn’t waste water. Sharing baths was very much encouraged in the Hirst household.
“Actually, no. You might finally get to marry me off, though,” Kate said as Tanya sat down wearily in the chair opposite.
“Has this got to do with the phone call earlier?” Tanya asked guiltily. “Only if it does I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean that you were delusional, only that, well, Jake isn’t always as nice to you as he should be.”
“You’re not getting married to him, are you?” Robbie suddenly stopped pouring gin into a glass and turned to Kate.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kate said sadly. If she were she’d be shouting from rooftops and pole-dancing around chimneys rather than calmly imparting her news like this. Then she quickly added, “I’ve decided to take you up on your offer to set me up on a date.”
“Oh, darling, I�
�m sorry. I’m already married.” Robbie handed Kate a generous gin and tonic with a slice of lemon.
“With your friend Joss. You know, the guy who’s kind and sweet and clever and good at cooking.”
“The one you think is dull,” Robbie teased.
“I don’t think he’s dull. I just think he’s . . .”
“Great news. I’ll call him.” Tanya said, reaching for her phone. “He’s so kind and sweet and clever and . . .”
“Good at cooking,” Robbie and Kate said at the same time.
“But what about Jake?” Tanya suddenly remembered that this was Kate she was talking to, not some normal person who was longing to meet a Joss.
“I went to the zoo and I’m over him,” Kate declared theatrically.
“I see,” Robbie said. “Nice work.”
“What happened?” Tanya said as she sipped at her tonic and abandoned her phone for the moment.
“Well, I had this conversation with the madwoman in the attic and she told me that she thought Jake was a slug and treated me like dirt and then, even though I hate her and thought she was talking out of her overexposed backside, I called you and you said that I was delusional, too. Anyway, I went to the zoo, realized that I didn’t get excited by the smell of cut grass anymore, and then I bumped into Louis Alcott in the polar bear enclosure and I realized that by persisting in living the same nightmare over and over with Jake that I’ve lost the sympathy of a lot of people I love . . . so I decided that I ought to at least try to get over Jake because while he’s still around I’m not open to good things.”