The Hand That First Held Mine

by Maggie O'Farrell

  Lexie stops. The young accountant is holding her elbow, imploring her to accompany him to a pub in Marble Arch. Innes looks up. His gaze passes over her and across to the accountant. There is a minuscule alteration in his expression. Then he tosses aside the cigarette and, as he comes over the pavement, he is folding the newspaper.

  ‘Darling,’ Innes says, putting his arm around Lexie’s waist and kissing her full on the mouth. ‘I brought the car. Shall we go?’ He opens the passenger door of the MG and Lexie, stupefied by the kiss, by how fast events seem to be moving, by his extraordinary shirt, gets in. ‘Goodbye.’ Innes waves to the accountant as he slides himself in behind the wheel. ‘So nice to have met you.’

  Lexie is determined not to speak first. How dare this man shoe-horn her into his car? How dare he disappear for more than a week and then kiss her on the mouth?

  ‘Who’s the troll?’ Innes murmurs, as they screech away from the kerb.

  ‘The troll?’

  Innes jerks his head towards the pavement. ‘Your friend in flannel.’

  ‘He . . . I . . .’ She tries to think what it is she wants to say. ‘He’s not a troll,’ is what comes out, rather haughtily. ‘He’s actually a very interesting man. He’s going to buy up as many bombed-out sites as he can—’

  ‘Oh, a businessman.’ Innes lets out a long, loud laugh. ‘I might have guessed. The classic mistake for someone in your position.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lexie shouts, furious in an instant. ‘What mistake? And what do you mean, my position?’

  ‘A young girl just arrived in the big city. Dazzled by the cut and thrust of the business world.’ He shakes his head as they turn on to Charing Cross Road. ‘It happens every time. You know,’ he says, and reaches over to take her hand, ‘I have every right to be offended.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I turn my back for five minutes and you start running about with property speculators. I mean, what about our—’

  ‘Five minutes?’ She snatches her hand away. She is shouting again. She would like to stop but she seems to be unable to speak in a normal way. ‘It’s been more than a week. And, anyway, you have no right at—’

  But Innes is smiling to himself, rubbing his hand over his chin. ‘Ah, you missed me, did you?’

  ‘I certainly did not. Not at all. And if you think—’ She stops. The car has swung into a narrow street with darkened windows and dim signs above the doors. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A jazz club, I thought. But not until later. I need to go back to the office for a bit first.’ For the first time, he looks faintly anxious. ‘Do you mind? I can’t walk out on my staff on distribution day, you see. You can sit and read a book, if you like, until I’ve finished. It shouldn’t take long. There are plenty of books about, unless of course you have one of your own on you. It’s not much of an offer, I know, but I did want to be sure of catching you.’

  Lexie twists a finger of her glove. She looks out at the wet streets of Soho, at the lights from the rooms above as they glide by, at a man on a bicycle with a basket piled high with newspapers. She doesn’t want to admit to him how keen she is to see inside the magazine offices, to be in that frenetic room she caught a glimpse of the other day. ‘As you like,’ she says carelessly.

  The Elsewhere office is quiet when they arrive. For a moment, Lexie thinks no one else is there. But Innes strides through the spaces between the cramped desks and says, ‘How are you getting along?’ to someone, and Lexie moves forward to see three people – a man and two women – crouched on the floor, surrounded by piles of magazines and envelopes. She watches as Innes kneels down among them, reaches for a magazine, stuffs it into an envelope and tosses it on to a pile.

  ‘Innes, for God’s sake!’ one of the women cries, raising her hands to her hair, rather too dramatically Lexie feels.

  ‘Over here,’ the man says, tapping a different pile. ‘The finished ones go here. Daphne’s got the list. She’s got the best handwriting. We did a test and hers was by far the most legible.’

  Innes puts another copy of the magazine into an envelope and tosses it towards the woman with her back to Lexie.

  ‘Can I help?’ Lexie says.

  All heads turn to look at her. Daphne, the woman with the list, takes the pen from her mouth.

  ‘Everyone, this is Lexie,’ Innes says, gesturing towards her. ‘Lexie, this is everyone.’

  Lexie raises her hand in a wave. ‘Hello, everyone.’

  There is a short pause. The man clears his throat; the woman glances at Daphne, then away. Lexie straightens her lift-attendant jacket, pushes the hair off her brow.

  ‘Come and sit here.’ Innes pats the space on the floor next to him. ‘You can help me stuff envelopes, but only if you want to. Lexie is a slave within the machine of a department store,’ he says to the others. ‘We don’t want to wear her out but we never knowingly refuse assistance, do we?’

  Lexie and Innes put the magazines into the envelopes, Daphne addresses them, working her way down her list. The man who introduces himself as Laurence sticks on the stamps. The other woman, Amelia, fetches more copies, more envelopes, makes everyone cups of tea, gets the bottle of ink when Daphne’s pen runs out. Innes tells them a story about a gallery owner he had lunch with the day before and how the man had dyed his hair since Innes last saw him. Laurence asks Lexie about her job and where her digs are. Innes gives them all a description of Lexie’s rooming house, saying it’s like something out of Colette. Laurence and Amelia get into an argument about an exhibition in Paris. Daphne tells them they’re both talking rubbish. It’s one of the few things she says, and Lexie takes the opportunity to give her a covert examination: a petite woman with a head of neat, dark hair, she’s wearing a long, loose, dirndl dress. She turns her head and catches Lexie looking.

  When all the envelopes are addressed and all the stamps stuck, Laurence slides them into a big mail sack. He then puts on bicycle clips over his trousers and waves goodbye. Amelia’s boyfriend meets her at the door. Daphne takes a long time to collect her things, pull on her coat, slide a comb through her hair. Lexie and Innes are silent as she does this, Lexie staring at the grimy blue flowers on the carpet. Just as Daphne is about to go out of the door, she turns. ‘By the way, Innes,’ she says, a slight smile on her face, ‘your wife telephoned today.’

  If Innes is disconcerted by this, he does not show it. He is shuffling through a file. ‘Thank you, Daphne,’ he says, without looking up.

  Daphne steps a little further into the light. ‘I meant to tell you earlier,’ she says, chin raised, ‘but I forgot. She said could you please phone her.’

  ‘I see.’ He turns a page in the file. ‘Well, goodnight. Thanks, as ever, for your hard work.’

  She leaves, her coat flapping out behind her. Innes replaces the file on a shelf. He runs a finger along the mantelpiece. He sits down in a chair, then gets up again. Lexie continues to sit in her chair, legs crossed, hands in her lap. She stares at the blue flowers, which seem to be moving of their own accord, petals trembling against the grey background, the blue stamen quivering.

  She is aware of Innes coming to sit opposite her, a desk between them.

  ‘So,’ he says, in a low voice, ‘cards-on-the-table time, I think.’ He takes a stack of business cards from the desk and starts to shuffle them as if they are about to play a game. He does it well, the cards whirring and clacking as he stretches and pulls them between his palms.

  He places a single card on the desk, face down. ‘Number one,’ he says, ‘I have a wife. I was going to tell you but Daphne, minx that she is, got in first.’ He pauses for a moment, then continues, in a careful voice, ‘I married Gloria when I was very young, as young as you, in fact. It was during the war and it seemed a good idea at the time. She is . . . How can I put this without sounding ungallant? She is the most monstrous person you could ever have the misfortune to meet. Any questions so far?’

  Lexie shakes her head. Innes deals another card.


  ‘Two,’ he says, ‘you should know that there is a daughter. Mine in name only.’ He places a third card on the desk. ‘I have very little money and I rarely sleep.’ A fourth card is laid alongside the others. ‘I’m told I work too hard, too much of the time.’ He puts a fifth card close to Lexie’s hand. ‘I am completely infatuated with you and have been since I first saw you. You may have noticed this. I think the word is “struck”. I am Lexie-struck.’

  She looks at him, his hand gripped in his hair, his shirt collar all skew-whiff. ‘Are you?’ she says.

  He sighs. ‘Yes.’ He puts his hand over his heart. ‘Absolutely yes.’

  ‘Tell me something.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Have you been to bed with Daphne?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replies instantly. ‘Any other questions?’

  ‘Were you in love with her?’

  ‘No. And she wasn’t with me.’

  Lexie frowns. ‘I think you could be mistaken about that.’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Daphne’s been in love with Laurence for years. But Laurence isn’t inclined that way. He doesn’t go in for girls.’

  Lexie says: ‘What about Amelia?’

  He gives a minute, telling hesitation. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Have you been to bed with her?’

  He looks gloomy for a moment, then nods. ‘A long time ago.’ He seems to brighten with a sudden thought. ‘And it was only once.’

  Lexie gathers up the cards he has laid on the desk. She turns them over in her hand, looks at his name printed there, thinks about a dense green hedge hundreds of miles away. She lines them up long-ways and then again sideways. She looks at Innes, who is lighting a cigarette. She notices that his hands are shaking slightly. She looks again at the cards.

  She places one on the desk and lays another over it, at an angle. She is relieved, at that precise moment, that last year she went to bed with a boy she knew at university. Virginity had always seemed to her an inconvenient, unenviable state, something to be got out of the way. She had chosen the boy on the criteria that he washed frequently, that he was funny and that he was keen. She lays a further card on top of that one, and another and another, forming a fan shape. In a way, they had both been satisfying their curiosity. Her memory of it is of something earnest and brief, achieved and negotiated through complex layers of clothes, in the long grass of a damp meadow. She remembers a prolonged struggle with the unfamiliar straps and fastenings of each other’s underwear, the way her hair got caught on his shirt button, the not unpleasant rocking, sliding sensation of it, eventually. But something tells her the experience with Innes will not be the same at all. She pushes the cards together, closing the fan, so that they all align underneath the top one.

  ‘Look here,’ he says, dropping ash over the desk, ‘this has been a very poor sort of evening for you. What must you think of me? I take you out and make you work like a dog in my office, then I reveal my sordid past to you. It won’t do at all. You haven’t even had supper. Shall we go to this club? I’m sure we can get something to eat there. Or, if not, on the way. What do you say?’

  ‘I say . . .’ She considers him, for a moment. He looks wretched, his hair disarrayed, his cigarette burnt down to a stub, his eyes anxious, on hers.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he bursts out, ‘you’re not going to run out on me, are you? I’ve completely messed it up, haven’t I? I mean, I bring you here and then you have to listen to all that.’ He gestures wildly around him. ‘You probably think I’m a depraved, immoral idiot, don’t you? And you’re still a child, really, an ingénue, an—’

  She is riled now. ‘I am no such thing,’ she snaps. ‘I am twenty-one and I am not an ingénue, I have—’

  ‘She’s twenty-one,’ he appeals to the ceiling. ‘Is that old enough? Is that even legal?’ He leans over the desk towards her, close enough so that she can catch the scent of him – hair-oil, a whiff of soap, fresh cigarette smoke. She sees the way his hair grows straight up at the front, the emerging stubble on his chin, the widening and narrowing of his pupils. ‘I am thirty-four,’ he murmurs. ‘Is that too old for you? Do I still have a chance?’

  Her heart is hammering so hard it feels painful in her chest. The proximity of him is making her think about that sensation of his lips pressed against hers, and she finds she wants to feel it again, but harder this time and for longer. ‘Yes,’ she gets out.

  He smiles, abruptly and broadly. ‘Good.’ He seizes her hand in both of his. ‘Good,’ he says again.

  ‘I think,’ she takes a deep breath because her throat feels so tight that the words will hardly come out, ‘we should skip the jazz club. Let’s go to bed instead.’

  Innes became very brisk, very efficient. He led her into the back room, he cleared all the papers and coffee cups and pens off a sofa in there. He sat her down. He kissed her, lightly but firmly. Lexie imagined that it, the act, would commence quickly and soon. It had been like that with the boy in the meadow – as soon as she’d proposed it, the boy had started yanking off his shoes. But Innes seemed in no hurry at all. He touched her hair, he stroked her neck, her arms, her shoulders, and he talked, keeping up his usual stream about nothing and everything. And while he talked he removed her clothes, the lift-attendant uniform it was, piece by piece: the jacket with brass buttons and the name of the store embroidered in gold, the red scarf, the blouse with the itchy neckline. It was all done so gradually and so nicely. They chatted some more, about the magazine, about where she’d bought her shoes, about how she’d got to work that day – there had been some problem or other on the Tube – about a leaking pipe in his flat, about a bookshop he was planning to approach about stocking Elsewhere. At the time it seemed so natural. There they were, talking as people usually did, and it seemed oddly not at all odd that she had no clothes on, that he was nearly naked, that he was – my God – completely naked, that he was there, beside her, around her and inside her. He cradled her head in his hands. He said, ‘my darling’; he said, ‘my love’.

  Even afterwards, he kept on talking. Innes could always talk. Lexie listened to him describing one of his mother’s Pekes, the way it used to be allowed to wander over the table-top during dinner; she crossed the room to find a blanket because that back room was draughty. She returned, and pulled it over them both. He settled his arms around her again, asked if she was comfortable, then returned to a story about a visiting Russian who offered to shoot the Peke with a cap-gun. He lit two cigarettes, passing one to her, and as she took it from his mouth and put it to her own it was as if, in that moment, the magnitude of what had happened caught up with her. She felt tears stand to attention in her eyes. What was she doing, lying naked on a couch with a man? A man with a wife and daughter? She had to swallow and pull at the cigarette.

  He must have noticed because the arm around her waist tightened, pulling her closer. ‘You know something?’ he said, and he kissed her hair. ‘I think—’ He broke off, adjusting his position on the sofa. ‘This thing is damned uncomfortable. We’ll make love in a bed next time. It’ll have to be my place. I doubt your landlady would allow such things.’ He paused to kiss her temple. ‘I think you should come and work for me.’

  She sat up, spilling ash all over them and the blanket. ‘What?’

  Innes smiled and took a long draw of his cigarette. ‘You heard me.’ He extended an arm and, twitching the blanket off her shoulders, exhaled a happy sigh. ‘You know, I’ve been dying to know what your breasts look like naked and I have to say they by no means disappoint.’

  ‘Innes—’

  ‘Not too small, not too large, they have the most perfect under-curve – did you know that? I had a feeling they might. I’ve always been an admirer of breasts that tilt up to look at the ceiling, like yours. Never been fond of floor-gazers.’

  She touched his arm. ‘Listen—’

  He instantly put his hand over hers, trapping it there. ‘You should come and work here,’ he said. ‘Why not? You’re wasted on t
hose purveyors of luxury tat. Anyone can see that. And I don’t like the way that colleague of yours looks at you.’ He pulled a grotesque face, like a bulldog’s. ‘It wouldn’t be terribly stretching work, at least not at first. Girl Friday things, you know. Typing and running about the place. How is your typing, by the way?’

  ‘It’s better,’ she said. ‘I’ve been practising. I’m on chapter four of my manual. I’ve been learning to set margins for laundry lists.’

  ‘Perfect. That’ll come in handy at Elsewhere.’

  She leant forward so that her face was close to his and he held her gaze steadily. ‘Don’t say no,’ he murmured. ‘I hate being turned down, you must know that by now, and I never take no for an answer. I’ll pester you and pester you until you agree. Let’s ring the tat purveyors in the morning and hand in your notice.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, sitting upright again. ‘Maybe.’ She cleared the hair from her face, swung it over her shoulder. ‘It depends, though.’