by Sam Baker
For a second a shadow crossed his face, hooding his eyes. I recognised it suddenly for the look I’d seen in London eight years earlier. Although I didn’t realise it then, it was one I was to see many times in the future.
Then it passed. His brown eyes softened, tiny lines radiating outwards where the skin was slightly lighter from his sunglasses.
‘Too true, Lawrence,’ Art said. Grinning, he drained his bottle and signalled for two more, even though I’d barely started mine. ‘But then, from what I remember, you never were much of a team player, were you?’
I frowned.
‘Admiral Duncan?’ His smile dropped slightly.
‘What a memory,’ I said. ‘I didn’t recognise you until this morning.’
He looked taken aback, but let it pass.
We talked all evening. It was one of those nights when one beer turns to five and seven o’clock turns to midnight in the blink of an eye.
There didn’t seem to be anything we couldn’t talk about. Art seemed interested in me. More interested than anyone had been in a long time. And the result was intoxicating. I found myself telling him things I hadn’t told anyone since Tom. Stupid things, significant things, tiny details. He knew quite a lot about me already, as it turned out, could name several of my pictures, knew what I’d been doing since that night at the Admiral Duncan. His irritation at my insistence that I hadn’t immediately been able to place him passed as quickly as it flared.
It was as if he’d taken off his other self – the competitive, angry, brooding, resentful one – with his flak jacket. This was the real him, I decided. The one under the reporter’s armour. He was divorced, he said. He’d met his wife at university, they’d split up, got back together, there’d been others for both of them, and then she’d got pregnant and they married. He was twenty-five and she was twenty-four, his daughter was fourteen, almost fifteen, his son twelve. The kids lived with their mum. He didn’t see them as often as he should. He gave me an abashed look and told me he knew what I’d think of that.
‘That marriage was a mistake from day one,’ he told me. ‘That’s not just me saying that. Angie would agree. Well, maybe day two. Textbook fuck-up. So here I am, nearly forty, two kids, one ex-wife and maintenanced up to my eyeballs. How about you?’
I shrugged. ‘No kids. No ex. No maintenance.’
‘Come on, Lawrence,’ he snorted. ‘No one? Don’t give me that! There must be a trail of broken-hearts in your sordid past.’
I laughed. ‘Not really. Nothing serious. Not for a long time, anyway. Ever since then, ever since I picked up my first camera, I’ve been married to that.’
‘Know what you mean,’ he said. ‘Sometimes there just isn’t room in one life for two great loves.’ He paused, eyes locking on mine. ‘Or that’s what I used to think …’
Somewhere between the beer and the vodka, the bar emptied and Art and I moved to a booth. Around about the fourth vodka I noticed his hand had slipped from the shelf of the banquette and was resting lightly on my back. Somehow it had found its way under my shirt. I had no interest in removing it. It was hardly professional, but I was leaving in the morning and since we hadn’t found ourselves assigned to the same city before, it was unlikely we would again. It had been a while and I was lonely. I needed to lose myself in someone else’s body. And I’d decided that body would be Art’s.
There was another reason, too. I didn’t want to sleep, and I certainly didn’t want to sleep alone, because I knew every time I closed my eyes I would see a small boy, huge brown eyes staring at me. In his hand a red plastic Power Ranger.
It was gone midnight when the barman started turning off the lights around us. Art got up, tugging me with him, and led me towards the lift.
‘Uh-uh,’ I said, heading towards the stairs instead. ‘I don’t want to be stuck in a brown-out with you.’ He followed me into the stairwell, letting the door clang shut behind us. The silence was absolute.
‘Really, Lawrence?’ he said, his whisper echoing off concrete. ‘I can think of worse things.’
‘Helen.’ It came out almost a gasp. My cover, such as it was, blown. ‘Not Lawrence. Helen.’
‘Helen?’ His face collapsed into a smile. It was, I realised, the first time I’d seen him really smile.
I let him manoeuvre me into the corner behind the door, so our bodies were wedging it shut. Not that we were likely to be interrupted. Vodka coursed in my veins and all I could feel was the heat of his fingers through the thin cotton of my shirt as he clasped my arm; firm, proprietorial. His physical proximity. Taller by five or six inches. Broader. Warm, strangely. That was my overriding impression. Heat. Then he put his other hand on my other arm, pinning me to the wall, and stepped in close.
He dipped forward, brushing his lips against mine, his breath hot on my face. ‘I can think of worse things. Lots of them.’ When I didn’t resist he moved back in, his lips harder now, his tongue easing my mouth open as his hand grazed my nipple.
‘Like what?’ I managed, feeling my body make its decision long before my brain.
‘Come and get in the lift,’ he said, releasing his grip slightly, my skin still prickling under his touch. ‘And I’ll show you.’
When I woke the next morning, sun blazing through half-open curtains, head pounding and my mobile vibrating relentlessly on the desk to tell me the taxi for the airport was waiting downstairs, Art was long gone. Fifteen minutes later, so was I. I can’t honestly say I expected to hear from him again. One-nighters weren’t a frequent occurrence. But they had happened before, and part of me expected this one to follow the usual pattern.
One long, steamy night thousands of miles from home.
A memory, for when the need arose. Another part of me hoped it might be more. I was thirty and there’d been no one who mattered in over ten years. No one, really, since Tom, my first and last almost serious boyfriend. As my family never tired of reminding me. So when Art called a fortnight later and invited me for a Friday-night drink that turned into two that turned into dinner that turned into a whole weekend, we fell into a routine.
It wasn’t what my sister would have called a relationship, at least not at first, but it worked for us. We were both away a lot, we both had our own places (although Art was always on at me to move in with him), but when we were both in London, we were a couple.
22
London 2010
For the first couple of years everything seemed fine. We were successful, we were in love, we were greater than the sum of our parts, as Art never stopped telling me. We were golden. My career, which had been on the up before Iraq, went stratospheric. I had more commissions than I could cope with and the awards came thick and fast. Art had had his moment several years earlier in Afghanistan, but still, he was enough of a name for it not to be a problem.
Or so I told myself.
The pregnancy changed everything.
I was sick as a dog the whole time I was in Haiti. In itself the nausea wasn’t that odd. It had been coming in waves like a migraine’s outriders since Iraq. So much so, I’d been put on medication that wiped me out almost as much as the attacks themselves. But this felt like more than that. On my way back through Heathrow, I bought four pregnancy tests in Boots and went straight to the Ladies in Arrivals. But once there, with the packet in my hand and my knickers round my ankles, I couldn’t face it.
Instead, I stopped for a long overdue skinny latte in the Starbucks round the corner from my flat, and peeled the foil from one in the loos there. As I hovered over the bowl, I hesitated and looked around me. Not here. The floor was slightly sticky and the basin needed wiping. Do it at home. Talk about delaying tactics.
That was why the first one gave a false positive, I told myself. Carrying it home in my coat pocket, it had become contaminated. The second one? Well, it might have been faulty. I knew it wasn’t. Just as I knew the first one wasn’t contaminated. I was pregnant and I didn’t need a test to tell me. But still I did another, just to be safe; to try
to convince myself that what I already knew to be true was a lie. No, not a lie, simply a mistake.
‘I don’t know how it happened …’
I tried the words aloud for Art, my voice puzzled, a little shocked, almost apologetic. I don’t know how it happened …
It was true; I didn’t know how it had happened. We’d stopped using condoms years ago and, thanks to our schedules, hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months. But it was his, no question. I hadn’t slept with anyone else since we’d met, and the last time we had sex I’d had a migraine the day after and must have thrown up my pill. Thanks to the migraines, I was always throwing up.
It didn’t help that we’d argued just before he left. I’d been setting up a small exhibition at a gallery in Shoreditch, my first. Art had been sent to Afghanistan to cover the elections and wanted me to go to Heathrow to see him off. I thought it was obvious why I couldn’t. He thought the only thing that was obvious was how selfish I was. ‘I thought we were supposed to be a team.’ Those were the last words he said before he slammed the door.
Then Haiti had happened and a week later I’d been on a plane out myself.
Art’s emails, usually frequent, were infrequent in the weeks we were away. The few there were, were cold and brittle. My replies were friendly at first, coaxing and cajoling, and then cool and finally as terse as his. Until he wrong-footed me by sending me an essay he’d written on refugees. There was no indication who it was for and I wondered if it was on spec, something the agency had suggested he do. I made as many suggestions as I dared, said how much I liked it, how unlike his other pieces it was, but how I’d really liked those too, and got an email almost by return saying he was flying home at the weekend and was looking forward to seeing me.
Would I be back by then too?
Did I mind coming to his? he added. He’d probably need a bath, a shave and long sleep, but then I would too. He didn’t mind where he was so long as he saw me.
‘Your place is fine,’ I replied, adding more xxxx after the H than I’d done in a while, already suspecting I was pregnant and wondering too late whether it was safer to have this conversation on home territory or neutral ground? Maybe, for something like this, I should have suggested we meet in Antonio’s, the Italian place in Soho we used to go to in the beginning. Art’s concession to my intolerance of the scene at whichever restaurant was of the moment this month, and the way his cronies at the Groucho Club slapped him on the back and looked right through me, unless I dressed up, in which case it wasn’t my opinions or talent as a photographer that drew their attention.
‘Your face,’ Art would say, half-affectionate, half-mocking.
‘They’re important,’ he’d add occasionally. ‘They can help you.’
I just grimaced. Said nothing. I’d helped myself this far. I didn’t need their help now.
The problem was, I knew that if I suggested he drop off his luggage and come on to Antonio’s, Art was more than capable of suggesting we go to the Groucho instead. So Art’s flat it was.
I showered, washed my hair, upended my rucksack of filthy clothes into the washing machine and then did one more test in the hope it had changed its mind in the last hour. It hadn’t. I would have taken a taxi but there weren’t any, and I was between stops when a number 73 passed, so I ended up walking. As I was passing the Tesco Metro on the way I realised Art wouldn’t have any milk, let alone food. Filling a basket with Tesco Finest – Art didn’t really approve of Tesco – I added a bottle of good Chilean Merlot to the bread, tomatoes, cheese, olives and posh crisps already in my basket.
If Art wanted real food we could call out or drop down to the pizza place on the corner. Art’s flat was on the top floor of a sixties block between Soho and Regent Street, an area they’d just started calling West Soho. The porter, a sweet old Irishman with a face like a scrunched-up flannel and swept back white hair too thin for its length, smiled and told me Art was in. He watched me choose a lift, since all three were at the bottom, and smiled again as the doors closed, leaving me to the slow hum of the winch above, my reflection and my bag of shopping. I checked my hair, my clothes, my make-up from habit. I’d made an effort in that I had actually applied make-up, but that was about it. Art could live with me in jeans and a T-shirt and my old black leather jacket. He’d seen them often enough.
‘You’re …’ Art paused. ‘I was expecting you earlier.’
‘I stopped off at the shops.’
He caught me as I slipped past him on my way to his kitchen, wrapping his arms tight around me, so the Tesco bag was trapped at my side, and leaned his forehead against mine. I closed my eyes and when I opened them he was smiling.
‘Let me,’ he said, taking the bag from me.
Art raised his eyebrows approvingly at the Merlot, which cost more than the rest of the shopping put together, and nodded towards a cupboard when I suggested olives. I knew where the little bowls lived. They were a Christmas present to Art from my mother the Christmas before, along with a cashmere jersey, which he admired at length and then put in a drawer, complete with its label, where to the best of my knowledge it was still languishing. The bowls were Spanish pottery translated by Marks & Spencer. Faux Spanish, Art called them.
I emptied the olives into a bowl and tore off two sheets of kitchen roll to act as napkins. Behind me I heard a slight pop as Art uncorked the Merlot and a clink as he took two glasses from a different cupboard.
‘To us,’ he said, raising his glass.
As we toasted each other I watched Art suck air through the first slight sip of wine and smile. I returned his smile and drank mine down, aware the wine was smooth and more than drinkable but not appreciating it in the way he seemed to.
‘Glad to be back?’ I asked.
‘Happy to see you,’ he said. ‘Always happy to see you. But this city … After Afghanistan … Most of the people here don’t know how lucky they are to be alive. You know, over there, tribal feuds are obvious. Someone dumps an IED beside the road and blows up their neighbour’s truck, you’re not left in much doubt. Where you come from matters. What you believe matters. Here, we’re still pretending it doesn’t.’
‘Still …?’
‘World’s changing, babes.’
He knew I hated ‘babes’.
‘It’s getting harder. We were better off when the wall was up. At least no one pretended the Soviets were our friends. It was tough for the poor bastards they ruled, of course. But they had their rules and we had ours and everyone understood how it worked. America arming the Afghans was bloody stupid. I know it brought down the Russians, but now it’s just a mess. And we sit here, letting our boys get killed in the name of democracy, and half the people we’ve made government ministers out there couldn’t run a village council.’
‘You don’t think they deserve democracy?’
‘I’m not even sure we deserve democracy.’
I sighed and didn’t challenge him further. It was best not to when he was in this mood.
Perhaps my news should wait until tomorrow.
He nodded towards the Heal’s leather sofa which I’d gone to buy with him and ended up wishing I’d simply let him make the choice himself. I was more of a distressed leather, collapsed cushions, sloppy enough to look as if it had been there forever kind of girl. Art wanted chrome and white and let himself be edged into cream and wood. Neither of us was happy with the result, but it was Art’s money, and it was a lot of money, and every time I saw the sofa I wished I’d been out of the country that Saturday.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s been happening in your life?’
I paused too long and Art’s eyes narrowed very slightly, his gaze hardening.
‘Well?’ he said.
He was sitting into the corner of the sofa, his hair in need of a cut and his stubble at exactly the right length to make him look piratical. He was wearing chinos and a pale short-sleeved shirt that looked expensive. It suited him and he knew it. He always knew it. His clothes were mean
t to look thrown on while on his way to do something more important. Art was never one to underestimate his own attractiveness; and he’d mastered the subtleties of appearing famous, even if no one could quite put their finger on who he was. In restaurants, bars and private members’ clubs you could see people feel they should recognise him and compensate accordingly. It had happened more when we were first together. He’d thickened at the waist in the three years since. But he still, just about, had his looks. When I looked up, he was staring at me and there was a tightness to his eyes.
‘Thinking about when we were first together.’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘All those glamorous clubs and restaurants.’
‘And all you wanted to do was go to that pizza joint in Soho.’
‘They do—’
‘Yeah, I know. They do pasta too and salads. I half expected you to suggest we meet there tonight. So, what’s been going on? How was Haiti?’
‘Grim. I’m pregnant.’ I stopped. That wasn’t how I’d planned it.
Art blinked like someone had just turned on a floodlight. ‘How did that happen?’
‘The usual way.’
He wasn’t amused.
I shrugged apologetically.
‘How pregnant?’
I looked at him. ‘You left what, eight weeks ago, nine …? That pregnant, I imagine. When I missed the first period I didn’t think much of it. You know I’ve always been irregular.’
‘And then you missed a second?’
I nodded.
‘I thought you were on the pill?’
‘I am … Well, I was. I stopped taking it when I started to suspect.’ I’d stopped the migraine pills too, but I didn’t mention that. Art took a dim view of my migraines. ‘You remember I was sick the morning you flew?’
‘I thought that was …’
‘An excuse for not seeing you off?’ I ventured a smile. He didn’t return it.
‘Nerves, at the gallery thing. How did that go?’