‘Hello, you two!’ Lucille called.
We turned at the sound of her sunny voice.
‘Sorry I’m late. Thought I’d make something to eat.’ She held up a carrier bag.
‘Ice-cream!’ Asa screamed.
‘No ice-cream, Asa, I’m afraid. Maybe they sell them over there.’ She pointed towards a kiosk and Asa raced towards it.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘They needed a hand with him. I didn’t have a choice.’
‘That’s all right. It’ll be nice to have him along.’
‘You look well.’ I kissed her and felt awkward when she didn’t respond. I glanced round for Asa, but he was still by the kiosk.
‘Something’s different.’ Lucille squinted at me.
‘Really? That’s what Peju said. What is it?’
She pursed her lips, shook her head. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Nothing’s different,’ I said. ‘Everything’s still the same.’
‘It’s 20p!’ Asa shouted, running towards us. ‘It’s 20p! The lady won’t give me any ice-cream if you don’t give 20p!’ He was hopping from foot to foot. Tantrum speak. I gave him the coins and he sprinted back.
The sun reappeared as we strolled under the tidy avenue of plane trees before joining the crowds along the Serpentine. Asa had smeared his Softy across his mouth and T-shirt, then dropped the remainder of it on the grass. He didn’t seem to miss it. He seized the end space on a bench, which drove the other occupants away. We ate a lunch of crisps and tuna fish sandwiches, and watched the pedal boaters zigzag across the water.
‘I want to go on a boat!’ Asa demanded.
‘And what if you fell in the water?’ I said.
He put a finger to his mouth and searched for an answer, but remained silent. He was afraid of water and I knew I could never coax him onto a boat even if I had wanted to.
‘So,’ I turned to Lucille, ‘how are things with you?’
‘I’m seeing someone,’ she said. ‘A lawyer. He’s a lawyer.’ There was no hesitation.
My stomach felt full and empty at the same time.
‘That’s nice,’ I said, without thinking. ‘I mean, that he’s a lawyer. That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Well …Nothing. I’m sorry – I don’t know what I’m saying.’ I fell silent. I hadn’t foreseen this situation.
‘But if I’m on the boat, I won’t fall in the water,’ Asa reasoned.
‘Shut up, Asa,’ I said, but without force, so that he appeared confused by the signals. ‘Lots of little boys have fallen in. Just look at the water. You’ll see them all, lying at the bottom.’
His eyes grew wide.
‘That’s not true, Asa,’ Lucille said. ‘Don’t listen to him. No one’s fallen in. He’s just joking, aren’t you? Tell him you’re joking.’
I looked at Asa, then squinted at the water. ‘I can see one right now.’
‘Where, where can you see him?’ Asa squealed. He climbed onto the bench and put his arm round my neck and peered into the water. ‘I can’t see. Where is he?’
‘Vincent’s just joking,’ Lucille said. ‘Don’t listen to him. Here Asa, have some juice.’
But he was intent on discovering a child’s corpse in the lake. As we got up and walked further along, he pointed to ripples and the lap of the water against the bank as possible evidence of activity beneath the surface.
We held his hands as we crossed the road into Kensington Gardens and watched as he tried hopelessly to imitate a group of teenagers doing cartwheels on the grass.
‘How long have you been seeing this guy then, this lawyer?’ I asked.
She sighed, but didn’t answer and I did not ask again.
‘You were right; something is different,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she nodded, ‘something’s changed.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘I don’t know, Vincent. Don’t ask me that. Don’t be angry. Even if I wasn’t seeing him, we couldn’t have carried on as before, could we? Could we now?’
But I wasn’t angry, only confused and depleted.
We came to a statue and Asa asked, ‘Who’s that?’ and Lucille replied, ‘Peter Pan,’ and we moved on. A knot of tourists took our place, their cameras clicking and flashing. It was a relief for once to be without my own equipment.
On the way to the washrooms I played a game of hide and seek with Asa between a maze of hedges. He ran and hid while I counted to ten, and then tried to find him. He giggled and breathed so asthmatically, it was impossible not to discover him. He found me eventually on two occasions, but I had lost interest by then. I could feel my face beginning to set into a grimace after Lucille’s revelation.
‘Please!’ he insisted. ‘Let me find you.’
I feared we would have to continue the game all afternoon if I was to be spared a crying jag.
‘Just one more time, Asa. Then we have to go home.’
He began his feverish count. I squeezed through a gap in a hedge and knelt on the ground so I couldn’t easily be seen. He ran up and down the path, calling for me. I didn’t move. When he walked further away I called his name and he drew near, but I didn’t speak. I thought about Lucille and her lawyer and wondered when it had begun; before her recent trip to Berlin, immediately afterwards? Was he a colleague; had it been going on for years? Asa crept in another direction muttering, ‘Uncle, where are you? Uncle?’ I coughed and he returned to the space in front of me. He stopped and whispered, ‘Uncle?’ a couple of times. He crouched down, trembling quietly. ‘Uncle?’ He was almost crying now.
I was sure he could see me, but his eyes kept darting frantically. I waited a moment longer and stood up and waved. ‘I’m right here. Couldn’t you see me?’
He wasn’t smiling, though, and he did not stand.
‘What’s wrong, Asa?’ I said.
I held out my hand and he seized it. When he stood I saw his shorts were soaked through and his body was shaking. His fingers dug into my palm. I picked him up and felt the moisture seep into my shirt.
‘I’m sorry, Asa. I’m really sorry. I was only there.’ I pointed, but he wasn’t concerned with where I had been. He only wanted to leave. Was this what I was capable of; reducing a child to a shivering wreck? For one dreadful moment it occurred to me I was no better than Uncle Raymond.
‘Uncle scared me,’ he whimpered to Lucille when we emerged into the open again. He reached for her hand and related the incident to her.
‘He’s only a boy, Vincent!’ she flared, before he had even finished. ‘You have to be careful. This isn’t me you’re dealing with. He’s only a child.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘We’ll get a taxi back, okay?’ I was fed up with the whole rotten course of the day, the impromptu decision to fly to London.
They walked ahead of me, hand in hand, in the summer sun. I didn’t think the heat would ever end.
19
CLAUDIA HAD LEFT two messages by the time I returned. B and Marie had called. Tunde phoned to say he’d discovered a new club, and we were going on Saturday night. I had missed it, in any case. I phoned Claudia several times, but there was no answer, not even the machine. I guessed she was probably at her mother’s apartment.
The next morning Clariss was in full regalia as she swayed along the pavement.
‘Hey, Clari!’ I called.
‘Hey there, sugar.’ She waved, but made no effort to quicken her pace, still drunk or high from the previous night. She was staggering down a Kreuzberg street in the daytime, wearing stilettos and chiffon and very little else.
I waited for her to reach the building and she slumped against the wall. ‘Honey,’ she said. ‘This mama is in need of serious sleep.’
‘Wild party?’
‘Wild ain’t the beginning and end of it, sweetpea. I seen some shit a girl ain’t suppose to see, you hearin’ me?’
Clariss had seen and done things in a single hour most people coul
dn’t accomplish in a lifetime.
‘Maybe I’m gettin’ old. Seen too much freakery, child.’ Gone was the composure along with most of her clothes. I could hear Colonel Theodore Cooper in the background of her drug- or alcohol-induced haze. ‘You got your keys, honey? I ain’t got nothin’.’
Clariss was anywhere between thirty and fifty, but with the make-up and demeanour it was impossible to tell.
Heads turned and from across the street several rubbish collectors wolf-whistled, but she paid no attention. Frau Lieser began rattling her window for what seemed an unnecessarily long time before she was able to open it.
‘You had a visitor,’ she called, waving a piece of paper. ‘On Sunday. Three thirty-five. I wrote it down.’
Frau Bowker appeared behind her, blinking into the daylight above our heads before she noticed us below. She was wearing her old quilted pink jacket and she held Schnapps against her bosom as if for the warmth. Her face was obscured by the mass of white fur. She glimpsed Clariss for a nanosecond before propelling herself back into the room. Harsh-sounding words were spoken between the two old women, but we couldn’t hear.
‘People be beatin’ down doors to see me,’ Clariss complained. ‘I need me an office … And a secretary.’
‘And a job,’ I suggested.
‘Not you!’ Frau Lieser said. ‘You.’ She pointed to me. ‘Pretty girl. Lots of hair.’ She made a show of patting invisible curls around her ears. We knew she was concealing a balding pate beneath her floral scarf, but it didn’t matter; she seemed like a young girl then.
Clariss stared at Frau Lieser as if she had been slapped. She slid against the main door and I let her in. ‘Only pretty girl in this town is me,’ she muttered. ‘Me! Don’t let nobody tell you no different.’
The door crashed behind her and Frau Lieser sighed, more in anguish than anger. Clariss was her longest-serving tenant. She was the most unreliable payer of rent, but she was also her favourite. She hated to see Clariss drunk and dishevelled, especially when Frau Bowker was visiting.
‘Did she leave a message?’ I asked.
Frau Lieser shook her head. ‘No name, even. Just asked for you. Then “poof”, she’s gone. Lots of hair. Pretty girl.’
I called Claudia again, but there was no answer.
I took the U-Bahn to Off the Wall. Marie and her secretary, Elena, were hunched over Elena’s desk, sorting through correspondence. I could see them both, standing side by side, one tall and gangling, the other petite and voluptuous, with calves and a backside that could ruin a man.
‘The very man who turned down Kid Creole and the Coconuts,’ she said, turning to me.
‘I’m too late?’
‘Not too late, but it’s tonight. I’ve asked Ernst to do it. You didn’t inform me about your return date. I can’t very well tell him to drop it now, can I?’
‘Is there anything else?’
‘Not until the end of next week. How about Thomas?’
‘I’ve only just got back,’ I said. ‘I’ll try him later.’
‘You been away?’ Elena asked.
‘Mystery weekend,’ Marie said, tapping the side of her nose.
‘Always the best kind,’ Elena sighed. ‘Champagne, romance, dinners. Did you have a marvellous time?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Oh, that’s rotten,’ Elena pouted and continued sorting through the letters.
‘Anyway,’ Marie steered me towards her office, ‘I’ve made some decisions regarding the Andreas Grob exhibition. We’re going for a cover and a few feature snaps.’
‘A cover?’
‘Yes, why not? It’s different. One of the most unusual features we’ve done. The photograph we’ve chosen is striking. It’s bound to drum up a lot of interest.’ She pointed to the prints on the wall opposite her desk. There were several photographs with numbers attached to them, arranged numerically from left to right. The one with Claudia and the child at the piano was number two. The cover was of a boy peering into one of the holes in the wall, not the boy I had carried, but an older, taller child.
‘I’m thinking of making some kind of reference to the Wall – “Peering into the Future” – something along those lines,’ she explained. ‘Elena and I are working on the theme. Jochen is no use. He thinks it’s a daft idea, but then he’s never any good in that department anyway. If you have any suggestions, don’t hold back.’
‘Of course. I’ll think about it.’ I wasn’t too sure about her plan myself, but she usually had a good sense about issues. ‘What about that one?’ I pointed to the second photograph.
‘I like that too. Not strong enough for the cover, though, but I like the juxtaposition – the child, the big child, the grand piano. Looks much better in black and white, don’t you think? It’ll make a perfect counterbalance against the opening feature.’
‘The whole page?’ I said. It was a mystery how Claudia was leaking into areas of my life.
‘The other three we’ll sprinkle across the rest of the feature. If you could write something about what’s going on in each, I’ll get Elena to phrase the captions.’
I left the magazine perturbed, but pleased I would be paid extra for the cover.
When I returned home I phoned Thomas, who said it must be serendipity because he needed someone to photograph the jazz singer Bessie Corday. She was appearing in concerts over two nights in Berlin before flying to Hamburg. It was only the one commission, but it would be a full-page spread in Zip. I told him I would collect the brief, then tried Claudia again, to no avail.
I took the U-Bahn to Krumme Lanke and tried to remember the route Claudia had taken that evening. I must have used the wrong exit because I found myself in a completely different area. There were apartment blocks and shops here and it was slightly less exclusive. I returned to the station and tried another exit. There was the kiosk I had seen that first day and further along the road, a house in the process of being renovated. Two teenaged boys played with a concrete mixer in the driveway until a woman appeared at a first-floor window and shouted at them to leave it alone. Her shrill voice pierced the tranquillity of the neighbourhood.
By the time I arrived at Frau Schlegel’s building my shirt was wet with perspiration. I pressed the buzzer and waited and pressed again, but there was no response. I crossed the road and looked up at the balcony. The sliding doors and all the windows were shut. I tried the buzzer a final time. As I was about to leave, a woman answered, ‘Who is it?’ in a gruff voice.
‘It’s Vincent. Is Claudia there?’
‘Claudia?’ she said. ‘She’s not here.’
‘What about Frau Schlegel?’
‘No, they’re not in,’ she replied. ‘I’ll tell her you came. Vincent, you say?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
I walked away and looked up at the apartment one last time. A curtain shifted in one of the rooms, but I couldn’t make out a face.
I swam for an hour in the late afternoon. I hadn’t kept it up since school and I was only able to swim ten laps. I needed to clear my head. I didn’t know why I was pursuing a woman I felt indifferent to, who seemed impossible to reach.
Paint was peeling off the walls and ceiling. The viewing stand was like a mouth, gap-toothed and miscreant, where plastic chairs no longer sat. The pool wasn’t crowded, though; I was able to swim several laps without once being interrupted. Later on a section was cordoned off for an aerobics class. As evening approached more people arrived and the pool lost its sense of calm.
Claudia phoned five minutes after I returned, but there was nothing unusual in her tone.
‘I came to see you today. At your mum’s,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you get the message?’
‘You did? Oh, yes. Yes. I almost forgot. I was at the university all day. Mum must have been out.’
‘Who was that woman in the apartment?’
‘Woman? What woman? Oh, you mean the cleaner?’ She sounded unsure and hesitant.
‘I was in London at the
weekend,’ I said. ‘I should have told you. You came by the other day?’
‘Me? No, not me. I’ve never been to your place, remember? I don’t know where it is.’
‘Oh, I thought … Never mind.’
We met in a bar off the Ku’damm and moved to a restaurant a few doors along. The food was cheap, targeted at tourists – spaghetti Bolognese and Wiener schnitzel on the same menu – but we were too hungry to care.
Claudia had loosened her hair, combed it out in a would-be Afro, but it was lank and fell across her shoulders and around her face. Eventually she gave up and tamed it in a ponytail. Her mood seemed loose and wild, like her hair, and when I asked where she was staying tonight, she arched her eyebrows.
‘You could come back to my place – you haven’t seen it yet,’ I teased. I was sure she had lied about her visit, but I didn’t persevere.
‘There’s always my apartment,’ she said. ‘I’d like to see yours, but it’s so far away.’
‘Far away from what? It’s closer than yours is.’
‘I mean … my place is closer to Mum’s. I don’t feel comfortable about being miles away from her.’
‘What’s this with your mum, then?’ I asked. ‘I don’t understand. She can take care of herself.’
‘Of course she can,’ she laughed. ‘It’s just that she’s alone now. Ever since Dad left and I moved out, I sort of feel responsible for her.’
‘It’s not as if you can’t see her whenever you want. You’re in the same city – you can phone or take a taxi anytime.’
‘Well, maybe we’re closer than that,’ she said. ‘It’s difficult to explain.’
She was wearing the denim miniskirt she had worn at the Atlantic the last time, and a long-sleeved cream blouse through which I could see her bra. She stumbled occasionally in a pair of knee-high red boots, as if she had never worn them before. I liked it when she dressed this way. Trashy. This was the Claudia I had first encountered. The one who was easy and relaxed, who didn’t stack up her principles, then reel them off on her fingertips for all the world to hear.
At first I didn’t recognize her building, but the interior was vaguely familiar. I remembered fleeing the lobby the morning after our drunken encounter.
Goodbye Lucille Page 16