It was 2.30, 7.00 pm in Sri Lanka, an odd four-and-a-half hours difference. He would have had his swim and would be sitting down with a beer and some almonds. I tried him on Skype and a xylophone of clangs and jangles ground into silence. The bleak afternoon light gathered around the glass buildings. It started to rain. I read for an hour and fell asleep. When I tried calling again, the lines were down. It was normal, high summer. Stormy. Singing palms. Lazuline skies.
We didn't speak until the following day. He needed a shave and his head appeared huge on the small screen, hair spiking out at all angles, stripes of sunlight through shuttered windows. Yes, he'd just been swimming. Yes, I was working on my book. I didn't mention the concert, I'm not sure why, and we paused to look, actually look at each other. There had always been so much to say. Now, there was nothing to say, because there was nothing to say. He leaned forward. 'Kiss,' he said, and we grazed screens in a hum of static and dust. I heard a voice behind him.
'Doctor Tom. Look. Doctor Tom.'
He turned away. 'Not now, Darshan, let me finish my call.'
'Is broke.'
'I don't think so.'
'Hurt. Is broke.'
'Sorry, Katie, I'll just be a moment.'
He pushed away on his chair and I could see the rest of the room on my screen, wooden walls, bookshelves, shutters. Behind him, a boy of about nine with Gandhi eyes in a grey shirt and blue shorts was balancing his left wrist in his right palm.
'Let's have a look. What happened? Tom asked him.
'Fell…' The boy shrugged as he searched for the word.
'You fell?'
He nodded his head swiftly up and down. 'Corridor,' he said, rolling the rrs.
'You fell over in the corridor?'
'I fell in corridor.'
'That's because you're always running about, Darshan.'
'In corridor.'
'Go to the kitchen and ask someone to give you a bowl of ice-water.' Tom waggled his finger. 'It's not broken. You have a sprain.'
'Is broke.'
'No. Put your wrist in icy water and it will get better. You understand?'
The boy nodded. 'In the kitchen?'
Tom mimed. 'Put your hand in the icy water. I'll come in a jiffy.' He held up his finger again. 'And don't run.'
The boy grinned and I remembered the man at the airport hotel with his tray of coffee and croissants, two of everything.
'Thank you very much.'
Tom glided on the typing chair back to the computer. 'If he can stop falling over, he's going to be a formidable batsman.'
'Cricket?'
'It's like a religion. We managed to get one of the players on the national side to visit the orphanage and they're still talking about it,' he said. 'It's the sort of thing that helps them bury the past and live in the present.'
'Perhaps we all need to do that?'
'I've got friends ruining their health working to become rich and when they get rich they spend their money trying to get their health back. It makes no sense.' He smiled and leaned forward. 'Listen to me, going on, I'm sorry.'
'Tom, go and make sure the boy's alright. You don't want him his ruin his career.'
'That's true. Kiss,' he said, and we kissed screens again. 'Let's try and speak every day…'
We met in the foyer. Confident voices, undercurrents of French, eddies of Russian. Chandeliers and silvered mirrors. The music crowd, different from the theatre crowd, the film crowd, more intellectual, less arty. We sipped our drinks. Lizzie's eyes ran over me like one of those electronic sensors at the airport.
'Very soigné.'
'Classical music's always a bit posh.'
'You came to my flat last time looking like a hippie who'd just burned her bra.' She paused for another scan and smiled. 'Of course, the competition does have an edge.'
'You always have an edge. Especially in Yves Saint-Laurent.'
'Not me. You know exactly what I'm talking about.'
'If only.'
Lizzie waved her programme with Marie-France on the front.
'Oh, really!'
'If you start looking for motives you're going to find them,' I said.
She thought about that for a moment. 'You're writing again?'
'Yes. And you?'
'Drabbling. Teaching and writing are like fish and vinegar. Only the English put them together.' She waved her programme towards two women who stood at the bar as if posing for a magazine shoot. 'Can you imagine them eating chips from newspaper?'
'Friends of you know who?'
'You're obsessed. Look at the one on the right. The pale green heel on her shoes is exactly the same shade as her necklace. I bet she fucks like an angel.'
I laughed and caught a glimpse of myself laughing in the glass front of a picture of Benjamin Britten. I had made an effort to dress up without being sure why. I had talked to Tom. He'd shaved. His hair was turning bronze and his eyes were the same colour as the sky framed by the window. Darshan had a sprain. It wasn't serious. He'd been swaggering around like a hero in his crepe bandage and sling, Tom said.
A bell rang. We climbed three flights of stairs and looked down from our seats at the stage with its silent piano and a cello on a stand. I studied the programme, it seemed eclectic, not that I knew anything about cello recitals: Richard Rodney Bennett, Dream Sequence; Tchaikovsky, Alone Again, As Before; Jean-Louis Duport, Romance; Bach's Concerto in C Minor, the so-called Casadesus forgery, 'for which Marie-France Durfort has become famous,' as I had read in Wiki along with a mangled version of her mother's career and death.
People moved between the seats to take their places. I glanced from face to face. I had never seen a photograph of Kamarovsky, but felt certain I would know him if I saw him. My palms were sticky. A man in tails came on stage and made an introduction. The pianist appeared and was applauded. He sat in the shadows and the audience rose clapping as Marie-France floated from the wings in a sleeveless black dress, shiny stilettos, a double string of pearls at her throat, the combination simple but erotic, the bow she carried like a cane or whip. She sat, gripped the cello between her thighs and held the bow motionless on the strings. She remained still for what seemed like eternity. There was a muffled cough, the shufflers grew silent, and she bowed off into Dream Sequence like a fencer in a duel.
Her performance was moving, spirited, emotional. The music got into your head, humming like a bee in a jar. Her skirt rode over her knees revealing shapely legs. She was intense, sensual, complex. Behind my closed eyes I saw flickering images as if from a mirror ball, Tom rising over her, his white bottom like a moon, his waist gripped by her strong thighs, her mouth stretched in a rictus. He was the bow. She was the cello. Richard Rodney Bennett poured from her pink lips.
Applause. A wolf whistle. She stood, turned and directed her hand towards the pianist. She sat again, flicked over the sheet on the music stand, paused for the shufflers unwrapping their cough sweets and closed her eyes. The bow once more wove its spell. Waves of sound slipped from the feminine curves of the cello's thorax as Marie-France unveiled Tchaikovsky in a melancholy mood. I glanced about the auditorium for Kamarovsky as if he were Svengali and she his protégée. They had been lovers when she was a girl. It was clear to me now. Like a novel, each life is a puzzle that can be pieced together. The Russian had seduced her, inspired her. He lit the match that had fired her genius and I remembered a sultry hot day at Black Spires dancing to the silence of butterflies.
My heart raced. Lizzie knitted her fingers in mine. I took a momentary glance. She was wearing glasses with green frames and I didn't recall ever having seen her in glasses before. I had dreamed of Marie-France. I had dreamed of Tom making love to Marie-France. I had dreamed of making love with Tom while Marie-France watched. Envy is a terrible thing. Envy is the ghost that can only be exorcized once seen in the light. My heart rate dropped. Lizzie had lowered her glasses and looked at me over the rims. She leaned closer.
'He made a smart choice, Minnie.'
I whispered back. 'I hate being called Minnie.'
We drank champagne during the interval. After the standing ovation following the Bach Concerto in C Minor, we slipped up the aisle in front of the crowd and crossed the road to Colbert.
After two flutes of champagne, whatever your resolve, you hear yourself asking for a third and order sparkling water to top up the glass. We are more similar than we are different. Colbert was half-full with reserved signs on the empty tables. I enjoyed the ambience, the smell of old brass and savoury sauces, so different from the cafés I had grown fond of in East London. The waiter placed four breadsticks and a bowl of butter on the table. Lizzie ordered eggs benedict.
'I'll have the same,' I said.
She closed her glasses into a slim silver case.
'I didn't know you wore glasses,' I observed.
'An affectation, dear. Like a mask.' She sat back. 'Are you feeling better now?'
'Yes,' I replied.
'She's not my taste, not at all,' she continued.
'Beauty is everyone's taste.'
'Beauty has to be interesting; interesting without being intimidating. A little country church can be beautiful. You look at most cathedrals and you think, if God walked down the street he'd throw up his breakfast.' She sipped from her glass. I could see the bubbles bursting in the light. 'I've never seen you like this.'
'Like what?'
'Irrational,' she replied.
'I've always been irrational.'
'Yes, but not in an irrational way.'
Two couples from the concert were edging into the room with that look people have after an emotional experience. The women wore long dresses; the men were in dinner suits.
'I saw you doing that in the concert, looking about all the time. Who are you looking for?'
'Kamarovsky.'
'Who?'
'Her stepfather.'
'I didn't know you'd met him?'
'I haven't. You know what it's like when you create a character. They have this tendency to come to life.'
'Has he come to life?'
'I do believe he has, lived and died like someone in an Agatha Christie mystery.'
'There's nothing wrong with a touch of jealousy, you know. It's good for the soul. You could say it's a sign of love.'
'You could say it's pretty pathetic, too.'
'That's up to you to decide.'
'Thank you for coming tonight. I feel, I'm not sure…'
'You feel great, that's how you feel. She's just a French tart who plays the cello. So what? You're an English tart who writes books and will write better books. This is what you've been waiting for.'
'I didn't know I'd been waiting for anything.'
'Everyone's waiting for something.'
20
London
Everyone's waiting for something. If that's true, we have to make sure we know what we are waiting for, or we won't see it when it comes.
If it comes.
Lights flash. A bus groans as it curves around Sloane Square. Lizzie leaves the table for the loo and comes back with her lips repainted. She has the knowing look of the femme fatale, striking more than beautiful. At Colbert they maintain an old-world ambience, the décor, the food, the waiter leading us out with an umbrella and waving down a cab.
London flows by in its suit of lights. Hyde Park Corner. Piccadilly. Romilly Street. We step out into the smog drifting from the chop suey stands on the south side of Shaftesbury Avenue, slanting rain, the sizzle of neon. Boys with pony tails pedal by on rickshaws. Men in sleeveless shirts. Runaways. The anonymous theatre fans setting off for the suburbs with another programme for their collection.
Soho is a stage set, a place apart. Another country. At night, while the visitors journey home, creatures allergic to sunlight surface to feed, male, female, girl-boy, boy-girl; trannies, drag queens; the schizophrenics enjoying care in the community; pimps and gangsters; drug pushers with baggies of smack, crack, scag, and one guy selling his dreams. Lizzie doesn't break step.
'Been there. Lost my map,' she says.
'Cool,' he calls as we hurry towards Dean Street below my yellow umbrella with the cold rising under our coats.
Prostitutes, too young to be sour, gather in doorways feeling free, unaware in their tiny clothes that they are already in captivity. Greasy paving stones underfoot, a bitch in heels. The smell of kebabs outside the mini-cab office where drivers who know the broken streets of Iraq and Afghanistan wait for a fare. Girls in jean shorts and bras shiver under red lights at the entrances to strip joints owned by Albanians, and I wonder how they got to London, how they had replaced the local villains.
A man roasts chestnuts on a brazier. Porn shops, BDSM suppliers, the French House, where writers will be talking about the books they plan to write; Groucho's, where I had listened to actors talking about the roles they just missed, missed by a whisker; Jacques, where the shadow of a girl sits at the bar with legs crossed scribbling in a notebook.
We tap-tap-tap along the wet street, the phosphorescent sign 'Pink' hanging in the cold air like a memory. The hat-check girl displays long cylindrical breasts like weapons in red latex. She takes our coats.
'Raining still?'
'In gilded showers,' Lizzie says, and the girl's breasts wobble as she laughs.
'God hates us.'
'God is dead,' says Lizzie.
I run my fingers through my hair and turn with dog-like familiarity into a silver-walled tunnel. Tables lit by candles stand at one end in nests of red armchairs, the shifting flames, like orange sails, mirrored on the shiny surface of the back wall. The music is loud, the usual, pounding mix of KD Lang, Melissa Etheridge, Tribe 8.
There are no men, just women looking pretty, women looking butch in neck ties and Brylcreemed hair, women half-naked, women in fetish clothes, piercings, inked flesh, a forlorn pursuit of the anarchic, the extraordinary, when the arrangement of lines and colour on canvas or walls or bodies can only be a rearrangement of all that has gone before. They dance, kiss, stroke each other, their shadows rising over the sloping roof. My head spins; too much champagne. Or, too little. The dance floor sways and I feel as if I am on the deck of the Santa María, sailing into the unknown.
Lisa Lundt is shell-white as if there is a light behind the surface of her skin, eyes the colour of summer fjords, her red dress tight as a tango dancer's. Her voice tinkles, like hand bells playing a tune.
'You are Katie. I have heard so much about you.'
'Nice things?'
'Lizzie only says nice things.'
We kiss.
Lizzie's eyes are on me.
Lisa obviously doesn't know you, I thought. Ray is an addiction. The masochist in her craves his attention.
They touch cheeks. They are happy.
We enter a passage lined with Helmut Newton photographs of languid women with aloof expressions, and pass under a low arch into another tunnel with saffron walls, the colour of my bedsheets. The air is sweet with the perfume of candles that burn on pyramids of wax melting at the centre of long narrow tables. Hundreds of candles had been sacrificed to create surreal sculptures like stalagmites in an ancient cave.
The music has grown soft, repetitive, a bass and drums. The couples on the oval dance floor move as if making love. A naked girl in a cat mask puffs on an electronic cigarette. They'll ban those, too, eventually, I thought. Egg-shaped niches with curved banquettes are inset along each side of the cave, those furthest from the dance floor a sanctuary for couples ready to become more intimate.
As you sit inside the egg, it's like returning to the womb, the helixes of your DNA still forming. In Pink you can open doors like shutters on an Advent calendar and find aspects of yourself that may have remained hidden. I can't imagine it is possible to describe a journey across the Sahara desert by camel without doing it, feeling the heat of the sun, the sway of the beast, the taste of grit in your mouth, the smell of baked air, a sense that time has lost its urgency and meaning. I knew when I
wrote my second essay at Cambridge that I was going to write and to write, you must open the shutters and let the light in.
Lizzie catches the eye of a waitress, a girl in black suspenders with a tiny waist, breasts like fruit cupped in a bra, one strap off her shoulder. I watch the flirting couples, women who carry their sexuality with confidence, indifference. Images of the images by Helmut Newton. It is de rigeur to drink pink champagne. The tunnels are hot, the bubbly freezing.
The waitress emerges through the candle smoke with an ice-bucket and glasses. She smiles with her eyes, not her lips, and reminds me of me when I was eighteen, soft-edged, two steps from Saint Sebastian. The girl has green eyes, dark hair, pink lips, white teeth many in that room of women would have enjoyed being sunk into their necks and drawing blood.
After setting down the bucket with champagne, she juggles the glasses like a gunslinger as she transfers them from the tray to the table.
'Bravo,' says Lizzie, applauding. Lisa joins in.
The naked girl releases a jet of vapour from her e-cigarette and laughs, her voice shrill, a nail on a blackboard. A woman in white on wings wearing a mask floats across the room with a woman in black, a zip tattooed in loops from her ears to the corners of her lips.
Pink is a dream. A fantasy. It was where I had first met Lizzie.
She turned with a bewildered expression as I placed one of the glasses back on the tray.
'I should go,' I said.
'We've just got here.'
'I have a lot to do tomorrow.'
'Katie, it's barely gone midnight. Have a drink, for heaven's sake.'
'No, I really do have to go.' I stood and bent to kiss Lisa's cheeks. 'It was so nice to meet you. We will see each other again.'
She shook her head. 'Do you think so?' she said.
'We shall see.'
Lizzie eased herself out of the egg. She took a deep breath as if the effort was exhausting. I could see by her rapid eye movement that her brain was clicking and calculating.
Katie In Love: full length erotic romance novel Page 24