The Hand That First Held Mine

by Maggie O'Farrell

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, ‘if, well, I got in the way or . . . or . . . or stepped on your toes. With you and Innes, I mean . . . I never meant for it to—’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Daphne flicked her wrist, as if waving away a fly, ‘there’s nothing to apologise for. Me and him were . . . Well, it was just a convenient arrangement. Not like you and him. You and him are different, aren’t you? Anyone can see that.’ Daphne grinned at her, as if pleased by the turn in the conversation. ‘He’s a different man since meeting you.’

  ‘Me too,’ Lexie said. ‘Although, I’m not a man, obviously.’ She was once more struck by uncontrollable giggles. The sight of the Colony Room – the man with the patent handbag in the chair next to her, the old woman rattling her tobacco tin under the nose of the man in the sheepskin coat, the fish doing laps of their murky tank, Muriel shrieking at some hapless member to ‘open up his beadbag’, an artist she vaguely recognised with his arm around the neck of a woman in a tight purple dress – seemed so far from anything her upbringing had led her to expect that all she could do was laugh.

  Daphne rolled her eyes. ‘What’s so funny now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lexie managed to get out, ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I used to live in Devon.’

  ‘What?’ Daphne stared at her, baffled. ‘What’s Devon got to do with anything?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Lexie leant over the table. ‘That’s just it!’

  Daphne put a cigarette to her mouth and lit it, shaking out the match. ‘You’re a strange girl, Lexie.’ Then she slapped the table. ‘Well, more drink, I think. Deakin,’ she called across the table, to the man in the sheepskin coat, ‘lend us a bob or two, there’s a love. I know you can spare it.’

  Deakin turned towards them slowly, his lip curled. ‘Fuck off,’ he drawled. ‘Buy your own.’

  The Elsewhere offices are currently a café. Or a bar. It’s uncertain which. It says ‘The Lagoon Café Bar’ above the door so you can take your pick. The lack of punctuation in that sign would have bothered Innes. It should be ‘Café/Bar’, he would have insisted, or ‘Café, Bar’, or at least ‘Café-Bar’, if you’re using the term in its compound sense.

  Anyway, it’s the sort of place with a planed wooden floor, low lighting, dark blue walls, a candle on every table, sofas at the back. It has books and magazines scattered about, one of which is London Lights, ironically. London Lights is what Elsewhere is now called. A terrible name change. But the people who bought Elsewhere in the early sixties thought the original name ‘too heavy’. It’s unrecognisable as the magazine of Innes’s day, of course. Four times the length, stuffed with adverts, filled with serried lines of listings, interviews with television stars disclosing run-of-the-mill secrets. The arts reviews, such as they are, are given very little space. Only the other week, a National Theatre production of Medea was dispensed with in a hundred words.

  There is a table in the Lagoon Café Bar (or Café/Bar, or Café-Bar), roughly where Lexie’s desk – an old kitchen table, covered with knife scars and ink spots – used to be, by the door, facing down the street. The door is different but this one also sticks in wet weather. The fireplace Innes boarded up – because in winter-time he couldn’t bear the draught that reached down its icy arm – the café people have opened, polished, renovated. How things change. They don’t use it as a fireplace but more as a kind of shrine, filled with candles. A shrine to what isn’t certain. Some of the Elsewhere shelving has survived – remarkably, as it was inexpertly put up by Laurence and Lexie one weekend in 1960. It holds some of the café/bar’s books and, at the back, rows and rows of glasses, inverted and dripping from the dishwasher. What was Innes’s back room, where he kept paintings and his sofa and assorted junk, is now a kitchen. They grill panini, mix hummus and lay out olives in little bowls there – the Lagoon’s cuisine is unspecified Mediterranean, and served by a mix of Bosnians, Poles and Australians. Innes would have loved it.

  From the table where Lexie’s desk used to be, there is a view of Bayton Street. It is unseasonably cold for July, grey curtains of rain falling aslant the tarmac, spattering the windows. The tables outside on the pavement are empty, a single abandoned coffee cup slowly filling with rain. The Australian waitress or ‘barista’, as her badge says, has put on an old Edith Piaf recording. It is early in the afternoon, just past the lunchtime rush. And sitting at the table where Lexie’s desk used to be is Ted.

  He comes here quite a bit. The editing house is just around the corner, on Wardour Street. He is eating his lunch, a panini of goat’s cheese and red pepper. His fingers tap along to Edith ever so slightly and the vibrations can be felt through the wood. He seems to be staring at the place where Lexie’s pinboard used to hang. An untidy array of notes, proofs, lists, postcards, transparencies that only she understood. But, of course, he’s just looking at the rain.

  The baby was awake a lot last night, he’s just been saying, which would go some way to explaining his dazed appearance. He is wearing a shirt, the collar of which is skewed, a jumper with a frayed cuff.

  ‘It’s time you gave that child a goddamn name,’ his companion, Simmy, says stridently. ‘You can’t still be calling him “the baby” when he goes off to university.’

  Ted smiles, then shrugs and the skewed collar lifts up and down as he does so. ‘He might not go to university.’ He takes an enormous bite of his panini.

  Simmy rolls his eyes. ‘You know what I mean. What the hell are you—’

  ‘For your information,’ Ted interrupts, once he’s swallowed his mouthful, ‘we decided on a name last night.’

  ‘Really?’ Simmy is so surprised he has to put down his glass. ‘What is it?’

  Ted indicates with a circling gesture that he is chewing.

  ‘Is it some unpronounceable Finnish thing?’ Simmy persists. ‘With seven vowels? Or is it really long, like James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Duwhatsit. Or is it Ted? Ted the Second?’

  ‘It’s Jonah,’ Ted says.

  Simmy considers this. ‘As in the whale?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘You know,’ Simmy says, ‘that people are going to say that to him for ever more?’

  ‘What? The whale thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ted shrugs again. ‘Well. He’ll get used to it. All names have got some associations. Anyway, he looks like a Jonah. And I like the name Jonah—’

  ‘Obviously,’ Simmy cuts in, ‘since you chose it.’

  ‘And,’ Ted continues, as if he hasn’t been interrupted, ‘it works well in Finnish and English. In English it’s, well, Jonah; in Finnish it’s pronounced “Jurnah.” Or “Juor-nah”. Something like that.’

  ‘“Juor-nah?”’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call that working well.’

  ‘Sim,’ Ted says amiably, ‘no one’s asking you.’

  They eat in silence. Ted starts to drum his fingers again on the table and the glasses, the knives, the cups in the saucers set up an answering vibration.

  ‘I like it,’ Simmy mumbles, through a mouthful of breadstick. ‘It’s a good name.’

  ‘ Thanks.’

  ‘How’s Elina?’

  Ted stops drumming his fingers. He fiddles with his napkin, unfolding and refolding it. ‘All right.’ He frowns in the middle of this phrase. ‘She’s . . . you know . . . tired.’

  Simmy puts his head on one side. ‘I expect she is.’

  ‘I wish I could just bag this bloody film and then maybe take some more time off but—’

  ‘There’s really no one else you can get to do some of the editing?’

  Ted scratches his head, yawns. ‘I’m contracted. And, you know, he’s a big client. He wouldn’t like to be passed on to someone else. I have to finish it. And the baby came early and everything . . . I’ve been telling her that she should get in touch with her group.’

  ‘Her group?’

  ‘Yeah. You know. Birthing group, or whatever
they call it. Birthing class. From the hospital. They’re meeting once a week, I think. But she won’t go.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Ted tosses his napkin down to his plate. ‘She’s says she no good at groups, or something like that.’

  ‘Maybe she isn’t. I don’t see Elina as a group person, somehow.’

  ‘And she says Jonah will scream the whole time.’ Ted frowns again. ‘He’s got colic, she thinks, and she says she can’t feed him anywhere other than at home because he just screams and struggles and she’s left with her . . . you know . . . hanging out until he calms down, which can take about an hour.’ Ted stops to draw breath. The two men stare at each other.

  ‘Right.’ Simmy nods. ‘Maybe I’ll come over. At the weekend.’

  ‘Most people would say, “Is it OK if I come over?” Not “I’ll come over.” ’

  ‘I’m not asking your permission. I’m not coming to see you. I’m coming to see Elina. And the newly named Jonah. You can go to hell in a handcart.’

  Ted grins. ‘Fine,’ he says. Then he takes a glance at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go.’ He stands, throws some notes on to the table. ‘Sorry, Sim. See you later.’ Then Ted is gone.

  He moves fast, always has done, his walk slightly bouncy, the balls of his feet lifting, propelling him along the pavement. On the way, he pulls out his phone and calls Elina. ‘Hello . . . Yeah . . . How are you? How’s Jonah? Has he fed OK? . . . Oh. Really? Oh, no. I’m sorry. Well, maybe—. . . I see. OK . . . I just saw Simmy. Yes. I told him about the name. He said—. . . Oh. All right. Speak to you later.’ He snaps his phone shut, then turns into his building. In the lift, he stands watching the numbers change, and when he reaches his room, he flops into his chair. He rearranges some papers on his desk, puts a pen behind his ear, puts it down again; he drinks some water from a plastic bottle, adjusts the angle of his chair; he shakes out his right wrist. Then he gets to work.

  In front of him are two screens: on both is the still image of a man, teetering on the edge of a building, about to fall.

  Ted’s fingers move the mouse against the desk and click the buttons with a quaver-crotchet rhythm and the film begins to edge forward, frame by frame, in slow motion. The man’s feet lose contact with the building’s edge, he tips lengthways, the fragile shell of his skull pointing down now, his arms beginning to flail in a circling motion, his clothes flap-flapping in the breeze – we don’t see his face but we can imagine it, that frozen, wide-mouthed horror – as he passes the camera and we follow him, down, down, a dreadful plunge and this man doesn’t have a parachute, there is no cord to pull, no opening silk billowing out to save him; he is heading, head first, limbs windmilling, for the unmerciful ground below.

  Then Ted nudges his mouse again and clicks – three clear quavers – and the man is halted in his fall, just inches from the road. You can see his face now, from this camera angle; his teeth are bared, his eyes are shut, and who can blame him for that, and it’s an expression of extraordinary ferocity and Ted has saved him. He is clicking again, the film is rewinding, the man is being hauled back up through the air, up and up and up, away from the ground and, there, he is back up on top of the building; now he is talking to the other man, a large man, the one who pushed him, and he really shouldn’t get into conversations with large men on the roofs of skyscrapers again.

  Ted rolls the film forwards, then backwards. We see from different angles the man teetering on the edge of the building, then stepping back. Forwards: about to fall. Back: towards the large man. Forward, back. Will he fall or will he stay on the building? Will he die or not? Will he die today or tomorrow? Ted can decide.

  But he doesn’t seem to want to decide at the moment. He is yawning, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands, sitting back in his chair. He clicks again on his mouse and the scene spools backwards. Ted massages the tendons of his right arm as he watches, yawns again, glances at the clock on the wall – the director will be here soon and wants to see this scene. Then he frowns and sits forward. Something has flickered for no more than a micro-second, at the top of the screen. Ted moves the mouse again and the images scroll forward, then back, at inching speed. Forward, back.

  There! He has it! He knew it! A black flicker across the camera. A piece of equipment, a dangling wire, a finger-end, who knows? But he’s found it and, with a swift few clicks of the mouse, eliminated it.

  Ted sits back, pleased with himself. He hates dirty shots, hates to miss them. Then he yawns again. He slaps his cheek gently, three times. He needs to wake up before the director gets here, he needs to get some coffee, he needs to call his father back, later maybe, he needs to—

  For no reason at all, he suddenly thinks of his father. Pulling him down a street as a child. He, Ted, is dragging his feet, letting his legs buckle under him, in that way children do, and he is wailing, no, no, no. In that way children do. And his father? His father is saying, come on and you have to and don’t be silly and all those other things fathers say. He must have been taking Ted somewhere without his mother because Ted can feel the sensation – so distant now – that consuming urge, that overwhelming need to see her, to go back to her, to grip and hang on to that metal railing until she hears him crying, until she comes for him.

  Ted looks at the screen, the man suspended in the air like a dark angel. He looks at the postcard of Elina’s painting. He shakes his arm, which feels stiff and is prickling with pins and needles – maybe it’s time to go and see that osteopath again – and he stands. He looks at his hands, the scar on the back of his thumb, the numbers on the phonepad. He picks up the phone and holds it. He should call his father back. Or maybe he should call Elina again to see if she’s OK. But Ted doesn’t punch in any of their numbers. He sits at his desk, holding the receiver to his ear and listens to the sonic pulse of the dial tone, soothing in its monotony, like the wind through trees, like the sea over pebbles.

  The doorbell is ringing, on and on. Elina is folding things in the spare room, small things – tiny vests, bodysuits, miniature socks. ‘Ted?’ she calls. ‘Ted!’

  There’s no reply. The bell goes on ringing. She puts down the vest she’s holding and leaves the room.

  When she opens the door, Simmy is standing on the path. ‘Little My,’ he says, ‘I’ve come to take you away.’

  Elina laughs. She can’t help herself. Simmy is wearing a straw hat and an enormous shirt printed with coloured deck chairs. ‘You look . . . I don’t know . . . like you should be appearing in a musical,’ she says.

  He opens his arms expansively. ‘My whole life is a musical. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Go?’

  ‘Out. Hurry, hurry.’ He jangles his car keys. ‘Haven’t got all day.’

  ‘But . . .’ Elina tries to think ‘. . . where are we going?’

  ‘Out, I told you. Where’s that man of yours? Is he in?’

  ‘He’s in the garden with the baby.’

  ‘You mean Jonah,’ Simmy says severely, stepping into the hall, starting to rummage through the things on the coat rack. ‘You’ve got to drop this habit of calling him “the baby”. I don’t call you “the woman”, do I?’ He hands her a jacket and a sunhat.

  Elina takes them, helplessly, then lowers herself to the bottom step. ‘What are you doing, Sim?’

  ‘Don’t you have a bag?’ he demands, holding up a small green leather pouch with multiple zips, then casting it aside. ‘One of those proper suitcase-like things. With stuff in.’

  ‘What stuff?’ she asks, as Simmy continues to ransack the coat rack.

  ‘Baby stuff. Nappies, et cetera. You know. Those quilted monstrosities you people cart about.’

  Elina points at the canvas bag beside the door.

  ‘That?’ Simmy says, poking it with his toe. ‘You can’t be serious. It looks like the thing my mother keeps horse-feed in.’ He pulls it open. ‘Hmm. Let’s see. Nappies,’ he says, ‘check. Cotton wool, check. Bottom-wipes, check. Unidentifiable small whi
te things, check. What else do we need?’

  ‘Sim, I can’t just—’

  ‘Bottles. How about bottles? Don’t we need those?’

  ‘No.’ She gestures towards her chest. ‘I’m—’

  ‘Oh,’ he wrinkles his nose, ‘of course. You’re doing all that business. Well, you can carry those yourself. Where’s Ted? Ted!’ Simmy shouts. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’

  Let’s go, Elina thinks, as they whiz in Simmy’s car through streets full of people, of children on bicycles, of teenagers in groups, of trees in full bloom. It is one of her favourite expressions. Let’s go. It seems to call to her from her other, old, life, when she was always arriving or departing or somewhere between the two. She feels sessile now, like a mussel shell, welded to the house, to the few streets around it. Let’s go.