Thin-Ice Skater

by David Storey

  Yet the apartment we walk into (another lift, after a mezzanine floor) at the top of the building is both light and spacious: views to the south and north: the roofs of the façades opposite (Handel’s presumably somewhere amongst them) the rear of a mews behind. The most curious thing – it isn’t furnished: parquet floors, bare walls, curtainless windows.

  He hasn’t committed us to it yet.

  ‘This it?’

  His other, private address – his ‘screwing-hole’, as Gavin inelegantly refers to it – is nearby: there he’s had his shower and dressed: there he’s lived, I assume since leaving Leighcroft Gardens.

  ‘A lease, in this case, not a freehold.’

  ‘Can’t afford the freehold?’

  ‘It’s not available,’ he says.

  It confirms, if anything does, he’s mad: a mid-Atlantic junkie run out of cash: a foot on either continent and nothing in between.

  ‘It’s no comparison to Leighcroft.’

  ‘Fuck Leighcroft. Why do you go on about that place?’ he says. ‘Out in the fucking suburbs, miles from anywhere,’ he adds.

  ‘You sold me on the place,’ I tell him.

  ‘Now I’m selling you on this.’

  ‘Handel lived two hundred years ago.’

  ‘Fuck Handel,’ he says.

  Up against it, he has no time.

  ‘It was,’ I tell him, ‘a place I liked.’

  ‘A place you hibernated in,’ he says. ‘A place in which you went to ground. All those memos. All those numbers. Obsessional, for Christ’s sake.’ He taps his head: unusual, for him, he’s genuinely frightened.

  We are in ‘international’ space again.

  I feel it circulate around me: characterless rooms, vacuous walls, anonymous furniture (when it arrives): tarmacked streets, flagged pavements, uniform façades: impersonal (I am reporting from a distance: I am what I would be if I wasn’t around).

  ‘This is your room.’

  He strides along a passageway to a flight of stairs: narrow, neat, like you’d find aboard a yacht. He says as I follow, ‘This place gets us into a livelier part of town. No driving in and out each day.’

  Eric, too, no doubt, for the chop. Not all bad news. I wonder if he’s realised.

  I don’t accede to his invitation to mount the stairs.

  ‘You said you liked driving in and out. Gave you time to think.’

  ‘Think?’

  ‘What goes on in normal people’s heads.’

  ‘Okay. It was. I’m not a stand-still merchant.’

  Say that again.

  ‘Does Martha know?’

  ‘Why should she?’

  ‘You were keeping a room at Leighcroft for her.’

  ‘She’ll have one here.’

  ‘She’ll go nuts in a place like this.’

  ‘She’s nuts already.’

  ‘So are you. Thinking I would like it.’

  Tears, embarrassingly, reappear: Clare, I conclude, must have opened me up: all I can think of is crawling home to her.

  ‘Once the furniture’s in you’ll like it.’

  ‘What furniture?’

  ‘The stuff I’ve bought.’

  ‘Hired.’

  ‘Hired. It’s still bought. Paid for. Most of it up front.’

  ‘What about the furniture we had?’

  ‘All right for a house. Not for an apartment.’

  He adds, after a moment, ‘Not for a flat.’

  ‘This,’ I tell him, ‘is like a dream.’

  ‘I knew you’d come round to it.’

  More than pleased, he manages a smile.

  ‘A nightmare.’

  ‘This trip up north hasn’t done you,’ he says, ‘much good.’

  ‘Was it intended to?’ I ask him.

  ‘Okay. I didn’t consult. If I had, we’d still be arguing at Leighcroft.’

  ‘I liked Leighcroft.’

  ‘Why do you keep bringing up that fucking place? All I heard was, “How long do we stay in this fucking hole?”’

  ‘When we started. When,’ I tell him, ‘we first moved in.’

  ‘You resist – shall I tell you? – change. The principle on which the whole of my life is based. Advancement. Challenge! You resist,’ he finally tells me, ‘doing anything at all!’

  Clearly James has not told him about Clare.

  Or has he?

  ‘I’ll die,’ I tell him, ‘in a place like this. I don’t like what it’s doing to me.’

  We have returned to the central room: soulless, empty.

  We stand, marooned, in the centre of the floor, gleaming wood on every side, the murmur of traffic several floors below (the emptiness, even, of the sky).

  ‘Did Jimmy,’ he asks, ‘talk about me?’

  ‘In the most commendable fashion,’ I tell him.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘With admiration. Regret for the past. Hope for the future.’

  ‘And Clare?’

  ‘She, too. Even more. They’re two,’ I tell him, ‘of your greatest fans. And Martha’s. James doesn’t show it, but evidently he’s very proud of you.’

  He gazes at me, in that instant, as he might at Gavin. As if, without saying, he’s concluded he can’t trust him another inch.

  ‘They haven’t seen Martha for fifteen years.’

  ‘That long?’

  He can’t be sure (he doesn’t care): suspicion dominates his thoughts, colours his features: a reddening in the region of his neck extending to his cheeks, his forehead: I’ve rarely seen him so ill-at-ease. Even his fragrance appears to fade.

  ‘Since we can’t or don’t live here, where do we live,’ I ask, ‘in the meantime?’

  ‘I’ve borrowed a place in Chelsea.’

  ‘Chelsea?’

  ‘Close to the river. You’ll like it.’

  He’s moving me around like a piece on a board. The thought – the awful thought – occurs: he’s run out of cash (and credit) entirely: the lease on this place must be short indeed (it may even be in the name of Gavin).

  He watches me busily shaking my head.

  ‘What’s the matter with Chelsea?’

  ‘What’s the matter with anywhere?’

  ‘I’ll give you the keys. We’ll get you a cab. You’ll like it. It belongs to a friend. I haven’t committed to this place yet,’ he adds.

  ‘Lose it.’

  ‘Think about it.’

  ‘I’ve thought.’

  ‘No hurry.’

  ‘What about school?’

  ‘You’re too fucking bright for school. Dover used to say it was like having an adult in her class. You walked all round her. So she said. They never taught you a thing, she felt.’

  ‘I liked her.’

  ‘As sure as hell she didn’t like me.’

  ‘She blames you for fucking up Martha.’

  ‘Me?’ He appears, for the first time, shocked. Alarmed. ‘She – Martha – was nuts when I met her. At the time it seemed like stardom. Who she was. Dynamic.’

  ‘I just feel lost.’

  ‘Lost?’

  ‘I haven’t a home. I don’t belong. Nothing is real. It’s all passing through. I’m passing through. We never stop.’

  The thin-ice skater wheels again.

  Rocks back on his heels: ‘You still have me. You still have Martha. You still have Jimmy – and Clare – for fuck’s sake, Rick!’

  ‘I just want somewhere,’ I tell him, ‘where I’m known for five consecutive minutes.’

  ‘You are known. Gavin knows you. Jimmy knows you. We all know you.’

  He is beside himself with rage: mercurial: he’s never still a single second: ‘the ungrateful cunt,’ he’s thinking. ‘I’m not his fucking father. Martha is not his fucking mother. What does he fucking want? Can’t he see we’re all orphans?’

  Only, he says, ‘I’ll come to Chelsea with you.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘We’ll get you a crammer. Get you into Oxford. I kn
ow one or two people there.’

  ‘Fuck Oxford.’

  ‘Or Cambridge.’

  ‘Fuck Cambridge.’

  ‘Yale.’

  ‘Fuck Yale,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not going to a fucking college.’

  No point, his manner suggests, pursuing it at present: Chelsea enough to be going on with: get the sonofabitch out of the fucking street, Handel or no Handel: get him out of his half-brother’s coiffured hair.

  ‘I’ll get back early this evening. We’ll have supper together.’

  ‘Don’t bring Eric.’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘I don’t need him any more.’

  Since when? Last night!

  ‘Because of me?’

  ‘I can travel more easily by cab. I don’t need a car. He and the Rolls came together.’

  He’s pissed-out, I’m sure, in New York. And LA. Twice before he’s been broke – on both occasions breaking the one rule he’s adhered to from the start: use only other people’s money – like, I assume, he used Martha’s (paying her back later).

  Or did he?

  Have we?

  What do we owe?

  Who do we owe?

  Some time later I’m sitting in the back of a cab, an address written for me on a piece of paper (the Gerry Audlin logo on top) – watching the streets of Belgravia give way to Sloane Square and, from the shopping conduit of the King’s Road, turn south towards the river.

  He’s seen a guide book once again: a plaque to Oscar Wilde along the street, another one to Whistler: the key lets me into a white-tiled hall, hung with reproductions (of Ravenna mosaics): broad, full of light (the building several stories high). A lift is available to the second floor: ignoring it, I choose the thickly-carpeted stairs, the ascending walls hung with (Victorian) reproductions: Alma-Tadema, Leighton: the place, if nothing else, has other-than-Gerry aspirations.

  A formidable door which requires two keys to release it (the stairs winding overhead): the lift clicks and moans behind my back: ahead an even more thickly-carpeted hallway, stairs ascending in a spiral, a room, beyond, of considerable proportions illuminated by a large, single-paned window: a view across roofs to Westminster: immediately below, the rear of a military museum (vehicles and guns mounted in the forecourt). From the back of this interior rooms overlook the Chelsea botanical garden: somewhere to the left the river.

  The rooms are sparsely but expensively furnished: paintings (abstract, of no distinction) hang, less on than from the walls – large, overbearing. Stairs, in the principal room, lead to a gallery, its rear wall lined with books: once a studio, its function has long since been abandoned.

  It exudes ease, informality, composure: rooms I might, other than the paintings, have put together myself: the view reassures, the height and breadth of the window, the expanse of sky, the movement of cloud and birds and aircraft: the distant fluttering of a flag: the irregularity of the horizon. This I wouldn’t mind living in (I decide), though what I’d do here I have no idea: someone else’s conception, not mine, let alone Gerry’s: few signs, for instance, of the owner’s occupation: clothes in the principal bedroom at the head of the stairs, several scripts (Gerry has been here, I calculate, several days), a smaller bedroom at the rear which I assume – the furniture impersonal here – is mine. A bathroom, tiled, generously provisioned with towels and toiletries (not Gerry’s either).

  This, I conclude, for what it’s worth, is ‘home’.

  I get a bath and, refreshed, wander to the kitchen: two fridges, one large, one small, both full: a clinical atmosphere not unlike an operating theatre: tiled, metallic, gleaming.

  With no thought other than suspension in mind, I return to my room, its window overlooking the botanical garden a block away, and, lying down, in no time, am fast asleep.

  Clare comes to mind, I recalling this, pleasurably, when I wake.

  Someone is in the kitchen.

  A woman, slim, middle-aged, dark hair, wearing a white overall, is preparing food at a central table: a pan simmers on one of the two stoves behind her back.

  Everything, I conclude, is on the move (the likening of the building to a ship has already come to mind: the accessibility of the sky, the nearby river): the next thing, I reflect, Martha will appear.

  ‘You’re Richard,’ she tells me: a narrow, ascetic face, dark eyes, olive skin (could well be a nurse): a foreign accent. Slender, practical hands protrude from the sleeves of the overall (or, conceivably, a surgeon). Vegetables, in separate piles, are arranged before her: a knife flicks busily at several. ‘I’m Mrs Seagrove’s cook,’ she adds, irony, facetiousness, even, evident in her voice. She has clearly been bedazzled (enraptured) by Gerry. Maybe – not impossible – something more. ‘I’m here to get your dinner. Are you hungry? Will you eat a lot?’

  Something is cooking in an oven, its smell drifting out to the room.

  ‘I have also something here you could have for lunch. Tonight!’ she raises her arms, the knife gleaming in one hand, ‘it will be something special! The prodigal’s comeback, Gerry has told me.’ She is smiling, small, even, widely-spaced teeth: everything about her, like the flat, is embracing. ‘You sleep.’ Injunction or comment.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘I not wake you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I get you lunch in a minute. Unless you get it yourself.’

  ‘I don’t know where to start,’ I tell her.

  ‘Everything here,’ she waves the knife again: an immaculate clinician. ‘I know exactly. Mrs Seagrove asks me do everything. Order the food. Cook. I not let Mrs Marshall in the kitchen. Or Mrs Seagrove when I’m working. You an exception. Mrs Marshall clean everything. But not in here.’

  ‘Is Mrs Seagrove at home?’ I enquire.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Seagrove are in the West Indies. They have another home. They ask me to go. I say no, my place here. I do not like the sea.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I tell her.

  Fact is, I get by by liking nothing: a dictum that allies me to everyone – at some point.

  ‘You and I will get on,’ she says. ‘You are a mother’s boy. When you grow up you will have lots of babies. I can tell. I have two children. In Canada, one. In Australia, the other. But they and their children and wives come to visit. Or I go see them. My family, like Mr Seagrove, much travel. My name is Mrs Shapiro.’

  ‘Shapiro,’ I repeat.

  Lunch is produced on a tray and laid on a low table in the former studio: at the opposite end to the gallery is a marble fireplace: from the books I choose one with reproductions: Victoriana: virtue assailed, moral outrage, final victory: classicana in marble-textured surrounds, water reflecting figures, flowers – a dream-like atmosphere (the room): I wonder if the Whistler plaque is on this façade or the one next door.

  My cook-attendant comes in and out, enquiring of the food – its quantity, its quality, its taste (‘good?’), removing one plate, presenting another: ‘Eat to be big.’ She flexes her arm. ‘Mr Audlin is strong. A good friend of Mr Seagrove. And Mrs Seagrove. A friend of everyone!’ She laughs, her eyes raised upwards, plainly including herself in Gerry’s orbit. ‘He make me laugh. He make everybody laugh. He make Mr Seagrove laugh. He a very funny man!’

  Something, I have to confess, I’ve never found: away from home, no doubt (away from me), a different person.

  Something new comes up each day.

  Rarely of any interest.

  Mid-afternoon she leaves: reassurances of a return in the evening (she wouldn’t miss Mr Audlin for anything). ‘You have a good time. What life for if not a good time?’ and she’s gone – I, disinclined to follow, remain in the one-time studio (the challenge of what you would do in a place like this), art subsumed by domesticity, as it is – a telephone ringing at intervals in what I discover to be a study at the end of the hall: a panelled desk, an upholstered, swivelled chair, and – again, evidence Gerry has spent time in here – scripts spread on the otherwise unclutte
red desk and floor: a filing cabinet, drawers, and, once again, not abstracts but Victorian reproductions (Dante and Beatrice, one).

  The hall door has opened: Gerry appears: red-cheeked, breathless, alert: predatory (prepared, at this moment, for anything): I am reminded (prompted, perhaps, by Mrs Shapiro) what a strikingly good-looking phenomenon (no other word for it) he is.

  ‘Okay?’ His coat – not unlike the one I’ve been wearing – he’s dropped, as his habit, on the floor behind. A briefcase lies beside it: Eric dispensed with, he must have come in a cab.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  We enter the studio-room together: the phone rings once more in the study.

  ‘Meet Mrs Shapiro?’

  ‘She got me lunch.’

  ‘Nice woman.’

  ‘Very.’

  He matches my look.

  ‘I asked her to look out for you.’

  ‘She did.’

  He looks round for a drink: reminded of its location, he goes to a cabinet beneath the gallery.

  ‘Want one?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  What the fuck are we doing here? I want to ask.

  ‘Like your room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looks out to the West End view: signals I look also.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Evidently a painter built the place. Four large studios on top of one another. Maybe a hundred years ago. Whistler painted somewhere round here. Turner, too. Though long before this building.’

  ‘A cultural tour,’ I tell him. ‘Literature in Hampstead. Art down here. Music in Grosvenor Street, assuming we take it.’

  I wait for him to respond.

  ‘Jack and Elise are in the Pacific’ He gestures at the room. ‘I’ve stayed here once before. When you were on vacation.’

  ‘Mrs Shapiro said the West Indies.’

  ‘After the Pacific. They have a house there. Another in Shropshire. We might go there. To either.’

  ‘Wealthy.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Films?’

  ‘Inherited. The Seagroves owned hotels. Jack is one of the nephews. We go back a long way. We met in the States. He wanted to be a director. Still does. In an amateur way. Documentaries. That’s what he’s doing in Thailand. Temples. He also writes. Monographs. Victoriana. Published privately. They’re around here.’ He gestures at the books in the gallery.