Where to Find Me

by Alba Arikha

  *

  The temperature was below freezing the following day, but when we kissed, my boyfriend Arun’s lips felt warm. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. “We could do something after school. Like a film maybe. Or you could come to my house,” he added, sounding nervous. “My parents will be out.”

  I had met Arun at an afternoon party. He was rumoured to be some sort of maths genius who went to the nearby Latymer School. He was of medium height and very thin. He had deep brown eyes and wore his jet-black hair parted to the side. He had been educated in an Anglo-Indian school in Calcutta. He found it hard to make friends and concentrated on his work instead. Until he met me.

  I was his first girlfriend; he was my second kiss. When we held each other I could faintly smell the brilliantine in his hair. He had a way of telling stories that entranced me, not only because of their exoticism, but because of the rich imagery he used. He described a “moon like ice” above the mountain ridge of the Sikkim Himalayas. He told me about the “shimmering rainbow of saris” hanging from the Calcutta clotheslines, and the way they twirled in the wind. He described his house and how its walls were streaked with rain from the monsoon.

  “One day, if you like, I’ll take you to Calcutta,” he once told me.

  No boy had offered to take me anywhere before, and I could feel my cheeks burn.

  And now, hearing him invite me to his house, I felt them burn again. “Yes, I’d like to do that. You know, see a film or come to your house or something,” I answered.

  The thought of what might happen between us made me feel queasy and elated at the same time.

  “See you,” he said.

  We kissed one last time and parted ways. I walked towards the Tube, my gloved hand clutching the acceptance letter, feeling a heady whirl of giddiness and love.

  By the time the train pulled into Ladbroke Grove Tube station, I realized I had lost a glove and my fingers had become painfully cold. I walked hurriedly home. It was five o’clock, and Oxford Gardens was deep in winter darkness. A prostitute Ben and I called Hairy Mary, because of her unruly mane of thick dreadlocks, was smoking a cigarette on the corner of Ladbroke Grove, wearing a short dress and high heels. I remember thinking how cold she must have been, and wanting to say something empathetic, but was suddenly unsure of the etiquette required when speaking to prostitutes.

  I just lifted my one gloved hand and waved at her quickly, and she waved back. Then she walked away, teetering tentatively towards St Mark’s Road. I could hear the click of her heels in the cold of the night, and I decided that there probably wasn’t such a thing as etiquette with prostitutes, that we were all human after all and therefore next time I would say something to Hairy Mary no matter what.

  By the time I got to our house, a freezing rain was coming down.

  I rang the doorbell, but no one answered. The house was empty. I remembered that Ben was away in France and my parents were out. I fumbled for the keys in my bag, but they weren’t there. I emptied the bag by the front door and searched frantically, my fingers now wet and painfully numb: still nothing. I was drenched. I had no money on me, no way of getting in touch with my parents. We knew other neighbours, pensioners and professionals, who would have been more than happy to let me in. They, unlike Mrs Dobbs, whom they treated with contempt – “She gives herself airs,” they said – had no trouble in accepting and returning our niceties.

  But perhaps because I was in such a good mood, knowing that my future was going to change radically and that a whole new world awaited me, or perhaps because I thought this would make my nosy parents happy, I decided to knock on Flora Dobbs’s door instead.

  I ran across the street, covering my head with my schoolbag.

  I waited, raindrops dripping down my face, my frozen hand more painful than before.

  Then I heard a key turning in the lock: “Yes?” she said in a harsh voice, her eyes peering at me from behind the door, which was held open by a latch chain.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs Dobbs,” I said quickly, “I’m your neighbour and my name is Hannah. I got locked out of my house – well, not really locked out, but I can’t find my keys and my fingers are frozen, and I have no way of getting in touch with my parents. Would you mind if I came in and used your phone and waited till they get home?”

  Her face registered an expression of discontent. I had been too blunt. Yes, she clearly minded. This had been a bad idea. Anything that had to do with this woman was a bad idea. The neighbours were right: she put on airs, and she was also rude.

  But then her face softened. “All right then,” she said. “Come on in.”

  I was so astonished I remained on her doorstep. “Are you sure?” I asked, the rain pouring down my face.

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she answered, undoing the latch and letting me in. “But you’re very wet. Please remove your shoes, leave your coat by the door, and I’ll get you a towel. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  I closed the door behind me and did as I was told. Her hallway smelled damp. I removed my coat and my shoes. My feet were wet, but I didn’t dare remove my socks.

  She came back with a towel and I roughly dried my hair, my hands, my face.

  “Thank you,” I said, handing her back the towel. I was already starting to feel better.

  She opened a door at the end of the hallway. “Follow me,” she said.

  I imagined a room with flowered wallpaper, vases resting on doilies and tired sofas upholstered in canary-yellow fabric. But what I saw caught me so unawares that I gasped.

  There were rows and rows of books, from floor to ceiling. Plush velvet armchairs and a coffee table with intricate carvings. Gilded chandeliers and a life-size African sculpture of a man leaning against a door. Oriental rugs of all shape and sizes covered the floor. On the spare bits of wall were abstract paintings and framed photographs of people and places.

  This house belonged to a woman with expensive, refined taste. My father’s assumption had been correct: her life must have been special. And then there was the piano. A shiny baby grand with the words Bösendorfer inscribed on its ebony lacquer. I knew about Bösendorfers. A friend of my parents had one in his sitting room. He was a famous pianist and was paid large amounts of money to perform to packed audiences. I also knew how expensive they were. This had to be the piano Henry Dobbs had played on. I wondered if she knew our famous friend, but didn’t dare ask her.

  “Do you play?” I asked her instead.

  She looked at me and shook her head sadly. “My husband did. But he died a few years ago. I used to a bit, but I no longer do.”

  I wondered what her husband had looked like. Had they had children?

  “It’s so beautiful,” I couldn’t help but murmur, running my fingers on the cool surface of its black veneer; I wondered why she still kept it if she didn’t play.

  “Is your hand all right? Would you like to rest it on the radiator?”

  I looked at it. My skin seemed to have turned a pale white. The pain was still there, though it had slightly abated. “That’s very kind, thank you,” I said.

  I placed both my hands on the radiator, but felt self-conscious. What an awkward thing to be doing in a stranger’s home, I thought. But then again, I could feel the heat restore movement in my frozen fingers, so I kept it there a while longer.

  “My husband suffered terrible frostbite in Sweden once,” Mrs Dobbs volunteered. “We had to go to the hospital. We thought he might actually lose his hand.”

  “Oh, that’s horrible!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes,” she answered calmly, “it was. But in the end he was all right. Now, would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, that would be lovely,” I answered, taken aback by the friendliness of her tone.

  In truth, I was taken aback by almost everything in the room, including Flora Dobbs herself.

  I had been mistaken about
her. We had all been mistaken. She wasn’t rude at all, just guarded. But about what? Underneath her perfect English, I had detected the faintest of accents. Where was she from? Would it be rude of me to ask? And she was elegant too. I could see it clearly now. She wore a ruffled blouse with a dangly necklace and a paisley skirt. She had high cheekbones and wore the faintest of make-up. She must have been pretty once, not so long ago.

  I asked to use the bathroom. Mrs Dobbs pointed upstairs. “One flight up, first door to the left,” she said.

  The door was a faded green, and its knob had fallen off. There was a poster, Hommage à Claude Monet, Grand-Palais, 1980, on its frame. It pictured a sailing boat, with trees in the background. There were ripples of light on the waves. I wondered if she had seen the exhibition and brought the poster back with her to London. I walked into the bathroom, turned the light on and closed the door.

  The wallpaper was a faded toile de Jouy, featuring a pastoral scene. There was a large, rusty bathtub with black cast-iron legs and a cracked ceramic basin, its surface decorated with printed flower tiles. I used her loo and went to wash my hands. I sighed with relief as the hot water restored my hand to its previous colour. Her soap, old and hardened, had lost its lather. There was no hand towel to dry my hands, so I had to use a bath towel – hers presumably – which felt improper. A set of slippers – small, pale blue – stood in the corner of the room, yet another unsettling glimpse into the more intimate side of Mrs Dobbs.

  I quickly turned away and looked out of the window. I could see our street and the front of our house. Someone had forgotten to turn the light off in the attic bedroom. Or perhaps my father had left it on for a reason: there had been a spate of burglaries in the area. “We need to be aware,” he had said. Was Mrs Dobbs aware? I wondered.

  A strong wind was cutting through the air, making the windows rattle. The branches of the trees were swaying. A car drove by, then disappeared. I could hear the distant sound of music, but I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. As I was about to leave the bathroom, something made me look up: there, right above my head, was a collection of seated, antique porcelain dolls. I gazed, wide-eyed. There were five of them, looking at each other as if they were friends deep in conversation. I had seen dolls like this before. On Portobello Road and in French flea markets my parents used to drag us to when we were younger. But never had I seen a row of them in such good condition. They were beautiful, with combs and jewels in their locks, miniature flowers and feathers on their clothes: petticoats and silken dresses, varnished shoes and lace cuffs, and I gazed at them in wonder.

  Why had she chosen to put them in such an unlikely room? Had it been me, I would have displayed them proudly. Perhaps she was embarrassed, I reasoned. After all, there was something incongruous about collecting dolls, wasn’t there? Or perhaps not? Perhaps they weren’t even hers?

  I returned to the sitting room, my head filled with those dolls and how beautiful and strange they were. I found Flora seated, pouring some tea from a flowered teapot. I was about to ask about her collection, but something held me back. She looked at me and smiled. “How do you like your house?” she asked, sipping her tea. “The man who used to live there before you was a friend,” she added. “He lived there for nearly fifty years.”

  “Oh really? Wow… What was his name?”

  “Bert Moser. He was a painter. A good one. He and his wife had four children. They’re all big now.”

  “Wow,” I repeated. “Well, I like the house very much. We all do.”

  “Where did you live before?”

  “In Hammersmith. We sold our flat because there was an accident.”

  “I see,” she answered slowly. “What accident?”

  I backtracked, my heart beating quickly, as it always did when the recollection slipped into my thoughts, like a contaminated letter.

  “Oh, nothing serious. My father wasn’t feeling well, but now he’s fine. He’s a theatre director,” I added proudly, trying to conceal the tremor in my voice.

  I couldn’t tell her the truth: that my father was only a small part of it. None of us had felt well for a while; some of us still didn’t.

  “Yes, I know about your father,” she declared, slightly cryptically. “You wanted to ring your parents, didn’t you?” she added, smoothing her skirt around her knees.

  I jumped up. In all the excitement, I had forgotten. “Yes, please.”

  She pointed to a small table, behind the piano. I rang my mother, hoping she wouldn’t be with a patient. Ever since becoming a therapist, a few years back, she seldom got home before dinner time.

  But she did answer, and I explained about the keys. “Where are you now?” she asked. “I have a patient coming in five minutes, I can’t really talk.”

  I told her where I was. There was a silence on the line. “You’re where?” she repeated. Then she cleared her throat. “All right, we’ll discuss it later. Your father should be home in about forty minutes. I’ll find a way of letting him know.”

  She hung up immediately.

  “Everything all right?” Flora enquired.

  “My father will be home in forty minutes,” I replied. “I hope that’s not too long,” I added, suddenly worried.

  “Not at all,” Flora reassured me.

  I picked up the teacup and took a few sips. “Your tea tastes good,” I said.

  “It’s Darjeeling. I like it too.” She looked at me inquisitively. “Tell me, how old are you, Hannah?”

  I told her that I was sixteen, and had just been accepted at St Paul’s.

  I described my current school and my parents, my brother and my friends. I’m not sure why I did, nor what prompted me to tell her my life story. One explanation is that I tended to speak too much when I was nervous. And she made me nervous.

  The other explanation is that I wanted to impress her and, in doing so, hoped this would result in her inviting my parents over for tea.

  Whatever the reason, I spoke freely. I told her that I loved books and wanted to become a writer. That one day I hoped to go and read English at Oxford. I nearly told her about Arun, and how he wanted to go to Cambridge and study astrophysics, but then I decided against it; if I hadn’t told my parents about my boyfriend, I certainly could not tell her. Or could I?

  I found it difficult not to think about Arun all the time. It was as if he had lodged in my mind, like a secret guest. Sometimes I felt I had to shoo his image away, because it was blurring my vision. And now, just thinking about him was blurring my vision again, especially because I was going to be alone with him tomorrow. So under those circumstances it was definitely not a good idea to discuss him with Mrs Dobbs, who thankfully didn’t seem to notice anything was amiss. She looked at me and smiled. “I hope your wish will come true,” she said, and for a brief moment I had to gather my thoughts. “My wish?”

  “Yes, Oxford. It’s a very good place to study.”

  “Oh, I know. I can’t wait.”

  I looked at her. Something in her tone made me wonder whether she’d been there herself. But again, I didn’t dare ask. I would do so at the next visit, I reasoned. Somehow, it seemed obvious to me that there would be a next visit.

  “I see that you have many books,” I ventured instead, pointing at her collection. “Do you write as well?”

  This time, the words slipped out of my mouth before I could control them. She had a way of making me feel comfortable and intimidated at the same time.

  Mrs Dobbs stirred her tea with a silver spoon. “I suppose I do,” she said quietly. “I’m working on a book now.”

  “Really? What’s it about?

  “It’s about the composer Robert Schumann. Do you know his work?”

  I thought quickly. Did I? No, I didn’t. Or perhaps yes, I did.

  “I think I do,” I answered firmly. “He’s very good.”

  She nodded. “He is in
deed.”

  “Is it being published?”

  “I hope it will be,” she answered, after the briefest of pauses.

  “That would be so nice,” I said. “I mean to be published.”

  “It would be,” she smiled.

  I cast a glance at her bookshelves again. “Have you read all of these?”

  I didn’t want to spend too much time talking about her book and Robert Schumann, because I wasn’t sure what questions to ask about him.

  “Not all, no, but many.” She dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Are there any particular authors you like?” she asked me.

  I mentioned a few books, and the conversation started to flow. She told me that she was particularly fond of French literature, and that she too had wanted to become a novelist when she was younger. Then the war had broken out, and life as she knew it had changed.

  “How did it change? Your life I mean?” I was hoping she would answer.

  “Well,” she said slowly, “I left France and came to settle in England. That was many years ago.”

  I tried to contain my excitement. “So you’re French?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “From where? From Paris?”

  “Yes. From Paris.”

  “That’s really nice.” The news made me happy. I couldn’t explain why, but it did. Sitting there talking to her also made me happy.

  “Do you know Paris?” she asked me.

  “Not really, no. I mean I’ve been there, like twice, but I don’t really know it. My parents do, though. My mother used to live there. She speaks a bit of French. She went to a cooking school there. She’s a really good cook.”

  “I see.” She didn’t appear particularly interested.

  I took a sip of my tea, then placed the cup on its saucer. Pale violets dotted its surface. “I like French literature too,” I ventured. “We read Victor Hugo at school. And I love Marguerite Duras. I thought The Lover was really good.”