Girls' Night In

by Jessica Adams

  Sydney sunshine. You and I and the antipodean sky, lost in the sharp blue, astounded by the fierceness of the sun, astonished that while it burnt my skin, you burnt my lips more, branded ourselves with each other. My body was made to hold yours. There were wonders to see and you ignored them to look at me. We were not good tourists, I could send home no postcards of the fine sights they offered us, I had no ‘wish you were here’ when I was with you. Your topography was more than enough.

  There is a man here, also alone. I think the breakfast waitress would like us to talk to each other. I think she is more interested in the morning ease of having to clear just the one table, than the possibility that this man and I might find conversation possible. We don’t talk, but I do begin to watch him. He eats toast and marmalade, no butter, as you did. But his toast is cut into quarters, eaten carefully, he does not crush a slice in half as you did and finish one piece in three mouthfuls. He seems to have more time than you did. I’d steal it from him if I could, give you his time. Your death has made a murderer of me. The man is slow and deliberate. Every morning he sets out, walks the mud flats of the shallow tide. He has binoculars and telescope. It is a wet summer, he watches shore birds, writes them down in a notebook. At least that’s what I imagine he’s doing – sighting, writing. As if simply seeing is enough. He does not need to touch as well. It’s a skill I would do well to learn.

  Hot Paris summer. All the Parisians have left, abandoning their over-heated city to we foolish tourists. You and I are over-heated and weighed down with shopping and crowded by jostling Italian school children. We fight on the Metro, an argument about nothing, escalating to everything. It is not unusual for us to fight and even so, every time we do, I think it means the end. Still I cannot stop myself. Run up the stairs and into the sweltering city and far from you. Will not back down, don’t remember where this began, probably don’t care, and yet am so caught up in the emotion, the wave of your fury and my anger, that I have no way of coming back to you. You come back to me instead, remind me that however much I hate you, you are going nowhere without me. That I can push you away as much as I want, beat you off with my violent words, but you’re not leaving. I glare at you and refuse to admit my relief, my gratitude at your astonishing staying-power. It’s impressive. And I do believe you. Believe I cannot push you away. That night we lay in a hot bed, desultory ceiling fan stirring humid air around our dark-painted room, sticky skin making the slow approach, remembering who we are because we are with each other. And I did believe you when you said I couldn’t send you away. You were right, of course, it wasn’t me who sent you. It was summer.

  On the third morning the sun was shining when I awoke. I was surprised by the brighter light through the heavy curtains. Did not understand the faint ease of spirit, tried to banish the half-smile playing with my features, but it wouldn’t leave my face. It was late when I woke, two solo wine bottles conspiring in my hot, heavy slumber. I’d missed breakfast, missed the man with his carefully quartered toast. I dressed without showering first – you’d have been appalled – pulled on yesterday’s tired clothes, dragged my matted hair back into a careless ponytail. There was a new urgency, I didn’t know why or what for, I did know I’d better get out there and use it before my inebriate brain woke up properly and grief lethargy hit again.

  The sun was hot on my covered arms, your old jumper that I’ve been wearing half the time for most of a year was not meant for summer, not even British summer. I pulled the sleeves up to my elbows and looked at my pale arms, thin since you. Bony fingers reaching out for a hand to hold. I stopped on the road above the shore and saw the man, his telescope trained on a rock far out, exposed by the low tide, I saw wheeling dots around the rock, no doubt he saw and knew his prey, jotted notes on salt-damp paper, categorized, called and caught. He watched the birds for an hour or so, I watched him for almost as long.

  It was peaceful and warm, not enough tourists had lasted the wet week for the remaining few to disturb me over much. Those who had stayed were families with too many small children and too few large bank balances to move on to the next place the sun might be. The shore was blessedly free of hand-holding couples who might have rubbed sea-salt in my fresh wounds. It is close to a year, I know, but the wounds are as fresh as the day you made them, ripping yourself away from my grasp. They stay fresh, I like them that way. I understand them that way.

  The man began to pack up his equipment and I quickly moved on, up the hill, beyond the headland where the wind is fresher and cooler. I did not want him to see me watching. He might equate distraction with interest, and I can no longer manage polite conversation. Strangers are not usually equipped to deal with unexpected tears. I never used to cope so well either. Now the salt-flow is my norm. You always preferred sea water to fresh. How nice to know I am still pleasing you. (I would rather not please you.)

  Venice. They all said not to go in summer. They were right. Would have been all right if we had been tourists, clammy bodies cramming St Mark’s Square, over-flowing flesh flooding into the Lido overflow. But we were not tourists you and I. I had not travelled to the lagoon to marvel at Tintoretto or applaud the bravery of the Guggenheim collection. Instead I took a hotel room-bound long weekend to marvel at the delicate flesh tones of you, to applaud the priceless modern collection, astonishing bravery of spirit, the audacity and shock that was only you. Your body offered to me on cool white sheets, your self laid out with room service care, the touch and taste of you making a bland white bread of their coffee, biscotti, bruchetta, prosecco, proscutio, prandial-offered prospect. Childhood-myth and long awaited Venice lay before me, open plate, offered wide. I closed the shutters on the grounded visitors of the grand vista, Grand Canal, you were all the view I needed. I toured you that weekend. Unlikely rest weekend away, I went home exhausted and thin. Who could ask for more?

  Since then I have been offered another chance to view you, laid out on equally cool white sheets. They said it might have helped. But I wasn’t interested in making it better. They could not make you better, you were my very best, so why bother? I closed the wide eye-shutters on their kind offer. Some sights should remain unseen wonders; wonder-full, awe-full. Awful.

  You and I swimming. You have always swum further, faster, deeper than me. I would struggle to keep up, against the current, against the waves, against my grain. I am really a land person, understand dirt, rocks, hills, mountains, prefer my horizon bordered with recognizable jigsaw edge pieces. You like a long straight line of water against the sky, would swim far out until I was left behind, bobbing in the shallows, straining salt-splashed eyes for your return. No change there then. But I always enjoyed the intensity of your enjoyment, happily lay hours on the beach, leathering my skin as you watered your parched soul, several summers of block-buster reading discarded for the better-seller option of reviewing you.

  Fifth morning and I found myself watching the man again. This time from my bedroom window, wet day, no sleep, no energy to make the dressed politeness of dining-room breakfast, I sipped already cold tea with UHT milk and couldn’t taste the difference anyway. He walked through the morning drizzle, apparently untouched by the disgruntled irritation of bed and breakfasters all along the coast, their one-week-a-year panic settling and sending out just-suppressed fury, a heavy wave of pissed-off mist lining the damp shore. It seemed though that perhaps this was just what the man wanted. Empty coastline, morning haze, ugly mudflats of low tide exposing the bird breakfast smorgasbord. Like him, you wouldn’t have cared about the weather, might even have welcomed the rain, clearing the sea for your endeavours alone. But you wouldn’t have seen his sights. Your eye would have been trained on the fuzzy horizon, the thin grey line blurred by the cool land and the warm rain. You would have walked right past him, run even, to get into the water, drench your skin in its welcoming cold. But I watched him searching carefully, patiently training his eye on something too far to touch, too wild to get close, yet there. Within his sights. Watching and noting and
writing down the real.

  And then I found I’d been watching the man for three hours. He’d been watching the birds for three hours. It was almost midday, the clouds began to clear and the beach-bound families re-found their summer resolve – we will play on the beaches, come rain or shine. The shine finally came and so did they, deserting the indoor shopping malls for the outdoor version. The bird man turned away. Clearly needed fewer people for his telescopic foray. It seemed that perhaps no people might suit him better. Made sense to me. And I began to think about what he was looking at, that he seemed to have made it his job to view what was actually there.

  When they told me what had happened, it was impossible to believe. Not that I chose not to believe, or couldn’t understand, simply too far-fetched for truth. We’d talked about it. Late-night lover conversations, ‘How will I survive without you?’, ‘You won’t ever have to.’ ‘I’m never leaving you.’ ‘I’m never leaving you.’ ‘If anything ever happens to me I’ll come back.’ ‘Promise?’ ‘Promise.’ But it wasn’t something else that happened to you. Not something outside, beyond our control, no freak accident, creeping disease that took you. They told me that you took yourself, the creeping disease of accidental freak. You should have come to find me, confided in me. You should have cooled yourself swimming in me, but while I could always lose myself in you, soothe myself in you, it seems the reverse was not true. In summer, in London, sweltering city of land-locked people and grid-locked cars, you could find no water-marked horizon to cool yourself, so you swam out into the sky instead. Diving towards a sharp line horizon that could not be real, swimming yourself to the same place.

  And it seems I’ve been doing the same. Training my telescopic eye on the not-there. Scanning impossible horizons for a blessed untruth, notebook and pen poised to record the self-created hope.

  The next day, a solid night’s sleep for the first time in nearly a year, and again I am up before the sun has made it through the thick morning drizzle. My bags are packed, my room tidied, and I’m on the shore before all the other visitors who have learned to wait until at least five hours of daylight has burnt away the rain. I carry you to the shore as you sometimes tried to carry me. Picking me up and stumbling a few feet to dump me in the water, both of us tumbling in the waves and each other. I carry the full urn and take this chance to look at you, really see what is here, not my dream of you. The truth is that you are ashes. That is all you are. And ashes cannot come back to me.

  I can see the bird man, maybe three hundred feet away, his telescope trained on the high cliff to our right. The breakfast waitress told me he had hoped to sight a pair of gannets this week, that someone had told him they had been seen around here recently, staying on too long into summer, a special treat for the watcher. She told me gannets mate for life. It’s a nice idea, but I don’t know much about birds, don’t care much about birds. It turns out the hope of flight was your thing, not mine. The man raises a hand to wave to me, after all, we’ve seen each other every morning, every day, for almost a week now. But I don’t respond. I have a job to do. Something real of my own to view. I have the truth of you to concentrate on.

  The water is warmer than I had expected. I walk out to almost waist deep. There is very light rain, a thin horizon of pale grey, the certainty of bright sunshine in another hour or so. I’m training my vision only on what is here, now. I’m holding the urn that is holding you and walking out to do the right thing.

  Mid-summer, warm water, me flesh, you ashes. Midsummer, warm water, me here, you gone. Mid-water, hot summer, you’re gone, I’m here. Mid-me, then mid-you, scatter the summer of you in the warm water around me. Swimming with summer you in the warm water, scattering around the swimming me. Me swimming in you, in letting go, leaving you, swimming around, scattering in me. You and me and summer water, the warmth of the waves and a thin grey horizon that is growing stronger with the hotter sun, bluer as the bright light burns off the misty grey. I am letting you go. Like the bird man, I will concentrate only on what I can see. Breathe in deep only what I can see. Breathe in. I can see you. Sea me. We too are warm. We two are warm.

  Later, the bird man, unfortunately not much of a swimmer himself, said it had certainly looked as if the woman knew where she was swimming to.

  Isabel Wolff

  Isabel Wolff was born in Warwickshire and read English at Cambridge. A Sunday Times bestseller, she is the author of ten novels, all published worldwide. She lives in London with her family.

  Post Haste

  Isabel Wolff

  He was certainly clever, Jane thought as she pulled navy mascara through her pale lashes. Oh yes, she thought as she appraised her reflection, Gerald was clever all right. That’s what she liked about him. That’s what had drawn her to him that Saturday afternoon three months ago. In the Friends Room at the Royal Academy. In the queue for coffee. That’s how they’d met. They’d both reached for the cream jug at precisely the same second. And they’d laughed, then blushed, then politely murmured, ‘after you’, and then he’d suddenly looked her in the eye and said, ‘Don’t you find early Kandinsky a little … jejune?’ Jane had been too taken aback to reply straight away. And too busy surveying this strange man who was now calmly whitening her Kenco as though they’d known each other for years.

  ‘Jejune? Well …’ she gave an amused little shrug, ‘I’m not sure I know what that means.’

  He dropped first one pale brown sugar lump into his coffee, and then another.

  ‘It comes from the Latin, jejunus,’ he explained as he began stirring vigorously. ‘Meaning fasting.’

  ‘Fasting?’

  ‘Insubstantial. Intellectually thin. Feeble,’ he added, confidently. He chinked the spoon three times on the rim of the cup then said, ‘Would you like to sit down?’

  Jane had smiled her assent and followed him to the black leather sofa by the door. She’d heard about this, she reflected with wry amusement. The Friends Room was a notorious pickup place. Everyone knew that. And this, she presumed, was a pick-up. Really! she’d thought. What a nerve. And then she’d remembered that that was precisely why she’d joined. The man was still talking about Kandinsky – ‘Middle period … Cubism … superior to Picasso … Klimt …’ – and as he did so Jane had sat there half smiling, and nodding politely while she discreetly took him in. Bookish. That was it. Owlish, even. He looked a bit like Stanley Spencer. Round, horn-rimmed specs. A mop of thick brown hair. Small features which seemed to crowd into the centre of a soft, round face. Not a handsome face she’d thought with a pang. No. Not handsome at all. But not hideous either, she reflected judiciously, and at this she’d felt a sudden rush of hope. She’d casually let her gaze drop a little to scrutinize his physique. He wasn’t slim. Nor was he fat. He wasn’t tall. But his shoulders were broad. Chunky. That’s what he was. And smartly-dressed, in a navy blazer and grey casuals. A chunky, well-spoken forty-something man. Single, she presumed.

  ‘Do you come here … ?’ she began, then stopped herself just in time. ‘I mean, have you been a Friend of the RA long?’ The man sipped his coffee, then lowered his cup.

  ‘Years,’ he replied. ‘I’m a friend of the Warburg too. And the Tate.’ At this Jane had felt something within her stir. Oh yes. She adored clever men …

  … Jane dabbed on a smidgen of blusher, drew a brush through her short blonde hair, then sprayed a mist of ‘Allure’ on to her lightly powdered throat. She looked at her watch. Ten to seven. As usual, she was going to be late. She was always late for Gerald. She knew it didn’t do to be prompt. Usually, it was a question of five or six minutes. Sometimes, when she was feeling more confident, she might be eight minutes late, or even ten. For Jane had been playing Gerald carefully, like an angler with a large trout. Tickling him. Taking her time. Doing nothing to startle or rush him. Because Gerald was clearly not the kind of man who could be rushed. She walked slowly downstairs, took a final check in the hall mirror, then picked up her bag and stepped outside. She thought of the cultural eve
ning which lay ahead. There’d been so many since she met Gerald. They’d been to King Lear at the Barbican, and Edward Lear at the Tate. They’d been to Hodgkin at the Hayward and Shostakovich at the Festival Hall. They’d seen Pinter at the Almeida, and Ballet Rambert at Sadler’s Wells. And she was beginning to think that, after three months, it was time that he … Yes, it was time.

  Jane’s heart began to pound a little as she turned into Kentish Town Road. Tonight was the night that she was going to move things on. Give him a gentle prod. After all, he’d already agreed that they had lots in common. Like her, he loved the opera – he went to Glyndebourne every year. Jane had a sudden, happy vision of them there, sitting side by side on a mohair rug, laughing, and sipping champagne. Gerald liked the theatre too, and films, as long as they were of the highbrow kind. And concerts of course. He went to lots of those. And he was passionate about the visual arts. Oh yes they had so much in common she told herself again as she entered Kentish Town tube. Naturally there were some differences. For example, Gerald was brilliant at maths and she … but then everyone had agreed that the O-level questions had been particularly tough ones that year. But Gerald was a genius at maths. He had a double first in it from Oxford. One of his favourite hobbies, he told her, was ‘thinking about the universe’. Another thing they didn’t have in common – television. He didn’t have one; ‘Nothing to watch!’ he’d say. But Jane worked in TV. As a freelance producer. Another point of departure – he was a humanist, and Jane was a Catholic. A half-hearted one, admittedly, but she knew she could never give it up. It was ineradicable. It ran through her like the lettering in a stick of seaside rock. But Gerald was devout in his unbelief – evangelical almost. ‘Look, I know for a fact that God does NOT exist,’ he’d announce, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘Absolutely not. No way!’ This slightly dismayed Jane, who thought there was an outside chance He might. But then you can’t expect to have everything in common with your potential partner, can you, she told herself philosophically as she slipped her ticket into the automatic gate. And Gerald was interested in her. That was clear. She knew this because after each date, he would phone her the following morning, without fail, and say, ‘Well, Jane, go and get your diary.’ And they’d pencil in the next time – usually four or five days hence.