Which it had been, rather. Half a ream of A4 was missing. An alien laptop was connected to Sara’s inkjet, poised to deplete Sara’s cartridge. Printout underfoot was cheerful with Sara’s parti-colored paper clips. Long faxes curled lavishly over the carpet like white chocolate on gateau, so no wonder the machine was out of paper. The scattered felt tips—capless—had once been stored in a “Reservoir Prods” mug, which was now—oh, no!—absent from the desktop. Sara whiffled in an adenoidal panic before discovering the rare evidence of Protestant wit—the mug’s tough-guy silhouettes of Mr. Orangeman, Mr. Union, and Mr. Boyne pointing revolvers in dark glasses—decorously obscured with a hankie.
Numerous pages of the Black ’n’ Red hardback notebook bought in July for the next volume of Sara’s journal (£4.95!) were looped in a conniving cursive. This country is like a mirror, a stray entry began, from which gazes back at us our own reflection. Yet the mirror is warped, and what we see is distorted, a fun-house contortion of either what we wish to see, or what we fear …
Oh, for fuck’s sake, what horseshit.
She collected the books from the floor. Emer hadn’t seized sensibly on hard-nosed references like W. D. Flackes’s Northern Ireland: A Political Directory or Malcolm Sutton’s An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland. Instead, she’d been drawn to the poetry (Ulster’s poets outnumbered its poetry readers by ten to one) and gentle volumes like Dervla Murphy’s sweet but damp-eyed account of a Northern cycling trip, A Place Apart, or yet another Yanks-in-the-bog memoir, O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare (a review copy—Sara had slammed it).
Enough. Time to case the rest of the flat, which, if she didn’t miss her guess, was lacking that jam jar of daffodils. Funny. Emer had sounded so tidy over the phone.
In the kitchen, her precious Belgian beer glass, which Emer had promised to store safely out of harm’s way, was pulpy with orange juice, and tilted by the sink against a mound of potato peelings. The sink itself was crammed with encrusted crockery. From among Sara’s trove of Troubles coffee mugs, the rather prosaic one from the SDLP (good Catholics: no goons, no guns) poked from the sludge. Soaking at the very bottom, rimmed with rust, was the cast-iron skillet. Apparently those water-free heat-and-salt directions had been difficult to follow.
Shoes kissing the sticky lino, Sara surveyed her larder, whose inventory as of early August, from a lifetime of keeping track, she recalled to the bean. The comestibles had been pilfered wholesale. Five formerly unopened bags of pasta were reduced to stray shells. Apropos of the Three Bears, a family-size bag of muesli was down to a handful; Emer had literally been eating her porridge! The six missing tins of tomatoes must have contributed to the industrial-size vat of what looked like vomit in the fridge—a pinkish slop clotted with curdled bits that she theorized from a safe distance was tofu spaghetti sauce. Multiple unopened jars—green olives, dill pickles, gooseberry jam—were now stored in the refrigerator door, in anticipation of many complementary culinary delights to come. The subletter had splurged on her own liter of milk. But the only sign of Emer’s having bought any nonperishables for herself was a single shaker of sea salt.
Eyes slit and jaw set, Sara picked the green olives, dill pickles, and gooseberry jam out of the refrigerator door, thank you very much, and slid the jars back into their cabinet.
Sara dragged her case down the long center room, where dozens of cassette tapes littered the bookcase, out of their cases. It’s altogether feasible to disdain a stranger’s taste in your own music. Emer had been playing Loreena McKennitt, Clannad, and Natalie Merchant—the wick, edgeless singers from Sara’s morose period after breaking up with Arsehole. In the columns of unmolested tapes, the labels of We Hate the IRA and the two-bigotries-with-one-stone classic The Pope’s a Darkie had been turned to the wall. “Sense of humor bypass,” Sara announced aloud.
She stuck her head into the sitting room, hopeful that in the vaulting, underfurnished expanse, with its comely round-topped dormer window, sloped ceiling, and comforting pigeon warble overhead, she might locate her customary serenity.
Pigeons, certainly. Serenity, not quite. More books, everywhere—pulled from the shelves where they’d once been alphabetized by author. But Sara saw red only when she glanced at the far wall, where more precisely she saw nothing.
The dozens of photographs that documented her eleven years in Belfast had all been taken down, and were strewn carelessly on the guest bed: an Irish News clipping in which Sara’s indistinct head at an IRA funeral was circled in highlighter; Sara and Arsehole; Sara at a meeting of the Belfast City Council; Sara aglow at her first loyalist bonfire; Sara’s much younger face smiling alongside her debut “Yankee Doodles” column, yellowed in its frame. At a glance, none of the archive looked damaged, so she was a little at a loss to explain the flash of rage. This was subletting. Still, where would the harm be, keeping that collage in place?
But maybe the bedroom took the prize. Oh, by now she wasn’t surprised to come upon what might have been the aftermath of the famous wire hanger scene in Mommie Dearest—although unnervingly the clothes flung onto every available surface featured not corduroy and flannel, but rayon and silk. The bedclothes snarled in a heap seemed par for the course; after sloshing through that wading pool of stationery in the study, Sara hadn’t envisaged the sheets fresh, the spread smoothed, the pillows plumped. But she had not been prepared for completely rearranged furniture (pushed beside the window, the bed blocked the closet door—now, that made sense). And she had not been prepared for the shrine.
Or whatever it was. On the dresser, a peaked wooden cabinet was faced with two brass-knobbed doors. Ceramic incense holders bristled burnt joss sticks. Strings of fragrant cedar beads looped each knob of the mirror, while around its frame seasonally premature Christmas lights winked in a variety of merry colors. The Cranshaw melon looked like an offering of sorts, circled as it was by candles, which had drooled red wax on the bureau’s veneer.
“Bloody hell,” Sara mumbled. “Not only is she a slob, a cheapskate, and a sponger. She’s a fruitcake.”
The churchy aura of the assemblage made Sara superstitious, and she let it be. But she saw no reason to abide Emer’s launderette decor, and beavered about the room whisking up kimonos, lacy underthings, and posh angora jumpers. Amid one armful, Sara identified her own denim jacket and hand-knit cardigan from Dublin (IR £119). Cheeky bitch! Retrieving the loaners, Sara heaped the rest unceremoniously into the interloper’s open-mawed suitcase. How odd. When moving out for at least three weeks, why hadn’t Emer seen fit to pack it and take some of this frippery with her? For that matter, Sara had yet to come across some scrap scrawled with Emer’s new temporary address. She hoped the girl would ring, since she was planning to give the kid what for.
Collapsed onto the unmade bed—in front of the closet—the rightful owner of 19 Notting Hill grappled with an emerging dilemma. She still needed a subletter, and waiting until she found a more docile, respectful neat freak could terminally delay the trip to Bangkok. Retaining Emer but giving her a hard time about the state of the place would be dangerous; you don’t want anyone staying in your home in your absence who bears you a grudge. The flat had been left in poor enough condition when Emer had, tangibly at least, nothing against her.
Furthermore, the office supplies, the grub, the toiletries and cleaning products—in their totality these moochings constituted a significant financial drain, and together they betokened a rank opportunism. The resourceful Emer Branagh had purchased nothing that she could scavenge from Sara’s flat instead. Yet item by item, each presumption was trivial. What was Sara to do, chew Emer out for using her paper clips? Betray to another living soul a mentality so small change that it detected in a bedside box of coins a significantly lower proportion of 50P pieces?
As for the slovenliness: yes, the carpet was tatty, the lino sticky. There were the clothes, the tapes out of cases, the books in piles. But now that relief was already in sight in the bedroom, she had to
admit that the mess was superficial.
As for the disassembled poster and photo montages—the erasure of Sara’s twisted sense of humor and political tourism was well within Emer’s rights. Excepting these few weeks, the girl had moved in for nine months or more, and quite reasonably wanted to make the flat her own. And hadn’t she, just. The girl couldn’t have arrived with many possessions, so their having been deployed to maximum effect suggested, as Lenore might say, colonial intent. The systematic effacement of Sara Moseley from her own home implied a decontamination, and the perfect absence of any homage to the primary tenant—like, when she’s due home you at least do the dishes—was defiant.
Well, she would efface Emer Branagh right back. Weaving with exhaustion, Sara put a shoulder to the stead and began to shimmy the heavy double bed back where it belonged.
“Sara? I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Sara was startled, all right. While the intruder could only be Emer Branagh, the woman in the doorway didn’t look like Emer Branagh.
In most cases, a fragile preconception is instantly banished by the overbearing materialization of the real McCoy, but Sara clung so to her fantasy subletter that she might have introduced the figment to the figure before her and asked them to shake hands. For one sustained moment Sara insisted stolidly to herself that plain, dowdily dressed, doggy-eyed telephone Emer was her real subletter, and this slippery, sidling item was an impostor.
The pretender sported hair not a shy brown, but jet black. If anything, she had a couple of inches on Sara, who herself measured a respectable five six. Indeed, the only thing about actual Emer that was short, stylishly so, was that hair, clipped designer-close, with pin curls lifting before pierced ears. Her build was less thin than sleek. While she wasn’t dressed up, she was dressed chic—snug black jeans, low-heeled black boots buffed to a sultry luster, an oversize jumper of the sort imported from South America of late, a weave of bright yellow, red, and green against a black ground—vivid and intense without, somehow, looking loud. Eyeliner, and touches of tasteful jewelry that looked like presents. Presents from men. She had the kind of alabaster skin that might bring pallor back into fashion, treacherously sharp cheekbones, and guarded gray eyes—in all, a face that contained well more than the mere hint of subterfuge that made a woman sexy. A woman. That was the other surprise. This wasn’t a girl.
“I—I’m sorry,” Sara stuttered, nodding to the bed. For Sara, this impulse was typical, compulsively furnishing an apology to someone who owed her one, and obscurely of a piece with her other inane habit of fending off panhandlers in Boston with No, thank you. “I just thought—with the bed here, you can’t get into the closet.”
“I don’t need to get into the closet,” Emer said evenly.
That’s because you keep all your clothes on the floor. Pity—all Sara’s best lines were wasted because she hadn’t the audacity to act on what were in all other respects the splendid natural instincts of a harridan.
“I may need to,” Sara said, furious with herself for this persistent tone of beseechment. Why, in her own flat, when she was moving her own bed to where she preferred to sleep, did she feel as if she’d been caught at something naughty?
“I had this idea you were coming back a different day.” Emer’s own tone was one of quizzical bemusement.
Regarding the shambles, the rampant plunder, the fact that there wasn’t even any fucking loo roll, the most minimal contrition was not forthcoming. As for having got the date wrong, the ploy was inspired. Prepared, Emer might have tidied the flat, but now we’ll never know, will we? Meanwhile all this crap planted in every room like flags on Everest had an excuse, which may have been why a mild little smile now danced on a face that could otherwise appear rather hard to read.
“That’s strange,” Sara said. “Didn’t you email me only three days ago to confirm my plans?” Having skirted as close as she dared to you lying sack of shit, she veered abruptly: “If I’m going to stay awake, I have to make some coffee.”
Sara left the bed in the middle of the room, halfway between where it had been and where it was going, a limbo giving physical expression to an identically neither-here-nor-there uncertainty in the air as to who was in whose flat. As she burrowed into her luggage for a pound of french vanilla roast, Sara swallowed the impolitic lambaste she had entertained earlier, but the voice inside her head was not so easily quieted: What are you doing here, woman? You’re meant to have cleared off. Can’t you see I’m knackered? That I just want to unpack, finish cleaning up your grot so this flat feels like mine again, and zone out with a glass of sherry in front of the Channel Four News? So could we please save this getting-to-know-you carry-on for another time?
When Emer failed utterly to (a) leave, or even (b) fill the conversational void—really, the least she could do as the only person in the room sufficiently well rested to string together a grammatical sentence—Sara solicited with all the decency she could muster, “Is the flat working out for you?”
“It’s quite acceptable.” As Sara swept past, Emer pivoted so reluctantly from the doorway that Sara brushed the South American sweater. The woman seemed put out at having to shift her backside at all in—
In her own flat. Not quite sure of its dimensions, Sara was nagged by the impression of a developing situation here.
“Ach, I tried to warn you over the phone that the place was falling to bits,” Sara prattled after Emer trailed her to the kitchen. “The plaster’s crumbling, and splinters of frame come off in your hands if you’re not gentle with the windows. You must have noticed that evil black fungus on the sitting room ceiling—it wipes off, but comes back. Damp … And the decor is desperate really,” Sara blithered over the coffee grinder after Emer contributed nothing. “This floral wallpaper looks like a dog’s breakfast, and the furniture is shite …”
At last Emer submitted soberly, “I don’t care about any of that.”
Springing to the defense of a flat Sara adored this was not. She would have to do the honors herself. “I guess I mustn’t either, because the place suits me down to the ground. Quirky, offbeat. Quiet, a good place to write. I like the skewing of right angles with the slanted ceilings …”
They both seemed to notice at once that Sara was making only one cup of coffee. The mere two tablespoons of dark roast, the smaller-sized Melitta cone propped over a single An Phoblacht mug—in Sara’s own book, this was the height of rudeness, the very sort of slight that, in Emer’s place, she herself would have added to the List: Wouldn’t Even Offer Me a Cup of Coffee.
Accepted: she was being horrid. And make no mistake. Under ordinary circumstances, Sara would spare anyone, a plumber, a cup of coffee. But just here and now, the last few shells of pasta seemed to rustle in their ravaged bags, restless for retribution. A muffled rattle exuded from the cabinet behind her, where the green olives, dill pickles, and gooseberry jam trembled like newly sprung kidnapping victims. And when Sara had scrounged through the breadbox for Melitta filters—there were three left, out of a nearly full box of forty—one of the subletter’s sole contributions to the Notting Hill larder had crackled inimically against her hand: a cello bag labeled Muesli Extender.
Specifically, it was the muesli extender that ensured Sara would grind no more than two tablespoons of french vanilla roast this afternoon, for the premeditation its purchase implied had evaporated her very last modicum of hospitality. Forget a groggy mumble the Sunday after Omagh’s town center exploded along the lines of, Dear me, nothing to eat but that nice Sara Moseley’s cereal. Maybe she wouldn’t mind if I made myself free this one time—gosh, I’ll try and remember to replace it when I’m out and about … Oh, no. We see Emer Branagh stalking the aisles of Framar Health plotting how to make her landlady’s unopened two-kilo bag of Marks & Spencer Luxury Almond and Apricot Muesli stretch to an extra fortnight. Having already been taken soup to nuts, Sara could not, absolutely could not bring herself to be taken for another coffee bean more.
Once Emer notic
ed that the welcome wagon was not being rolled out, rather than (a) leave, or (b) at least make a little headway on that mountain of smelly dishes, the subletter reached for Sara’s tin of Twinings Earl Grey, in which a handful of tea bags had survived. Since the lithe young memoirist’s punctuational punctiliousness appeared less powerful than her aversion to washing up, she gave the scummy SDLP mug in the sink a miss for the clean ulster say’s no one, into which she ladled three teaspoons of Sara’s demerara sugar with a feline smile. Helping herself to water from the electric kettle, she glided to the fridge, shook the Dale Farms carton at her ear, whitened her tea, and flipped the carton in the bin.
Sara took her coffee with milk. But the benefits of handing off a kitchen did not, apparently, work both ways. Coffee black, mood blacker, she launched to the sitting room to dispatch this impromptu klatch as expeditiously as possible.
If Emer’s manner was dominated by a single quality, it was indiscriminate gravity. A contemplative lag seemed to precede anything the woman did or said. Hence only after two minutes’ reflection did she decide on the weighty matter of taking her refreshment in the sitting room, too. Meanwhile, anxious to mark out the most rudimentary of territory, Sara had successfully staked claim to her usual cream-colored armchair, whose left-hand arm had gone a satisfying gray from propping a balanced representation of Protestant and Catholic newspapers.
Emer assumed the matching armchair opposite, knees together, ankles demurely crossed, one hand laid funereally on the other in her lap, back straight, head bowed—not so much in shyness as in reproof. Composed and reserved, she quaffed her Earl Grey with the solemn, sedate sips of a Japanese tea ceremony. Sara had the sick-making suspicion that this was not a woman who intended to go anywhere any time soon.
“Sorry to displace you like this.” Taking a slurp, Sara winced; the coffee was bitter, and she had just apologized again. “But I should be buying that plane ticket to Bangkok within the week, which will give you a firm date by which you can have the flat back.”
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