Here's Looking at You

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Harris was their lidless, unblinking eye and was due to give them their monthly update soon. ‘Lead swingers and piss takers’ were obviously going to form a reasonable part of his report and James was already on Harris’s Watch List because Harris knew James couldn’t stand him.

  Ah, wait. The Theodora project. He had a note scribbled here that he needed to run the items they’d picked for the app past Anna thingy from UCL.

  Did he want her in his house? Not really … but it should only take an hour or two, tops. And she’d been fine last time at the British Museum.

  He decided to wimp out and send an email, penning an apologetic request to her to relocate to his house due to plumbing woes.

  ‘What can you tell us about your new woman then, Jay Fray?’ Harris asked, behind him. Harris adjusted his electric blue velvet fedora, complete with a feather in the hat band. It was only Harris’s third worst hat.

  ‘Hmmm?’ James said, feigning absorption in his work.

  ‘Your human woman you’re bringing to the fifth do.’

  ‘Ah. Mmmm. Early days.’

  ‘Come on, you can tell us something …’

  Harris really was a little tit. He was obviously fishing for no other reason than he’d sensed James didn’t want this particular stream fished in.

  ‘Meet her with no preconceptions!’ James tried for fake friendliness.

  ‘What’s she called? How did you meet her?’

  ARSE OFF, KING OF ARSES.

  ‘Friend of a friend.’

  As James was weighing up how the hell to bluster his way out of having an imaginary girlfriend, Harris’s eyes lighted on something on Parker’s screen and he let out a bloodcurdling howl.

  ‘Parker, are you on Google Plus?! Who’s on Google Plus? You must be talking to yourself because you are the ONLY PERSON ON GOOGLE PLUS.’

  ‘No, your mum’s on here too,’ Parker said.

  ‘Hahaha, your mum uses Google Plus,’ Harris said. ‘Create a Google hangout for your MUM. Your mum has a circle and you are in her circle.’

  ‘Your mum uses Outlook Express at the weekends,’ Parker said.

  ‘Your mum uses Pegasus mail!’ said Harris.

  ‘Your mum has a FAX machine that she FAXES people on …’

  Their delighted tones of voice revealed they thought this was a comic double act that could echo down the ages. A Pete and Dud, Morecambe and Wise standard of free banter improv.

  James put headphones on.

  Imagine what it must be like to work with grownups, he thought. Imagine. His mind returned to poring over those antiquities with Anna at the British Museum. Given how she’d reacted to the website larks, James couldn’t begin to imagine her contempt if she spent an afternoon in this playpen.

  The annoying thing was, as he’d conveyed in a slightly too aggressive outburst, he heartily agreed with her.

  28

  Anna rapped the metal knocker on the black glossed door and felt a flicker of curiosity about James Fraser’s domestic arrangements. It was an ordered, quiet street of Victorian villas with white eaves, fronted by neatly clipped box privet hedges. Properties here were too expensive not to be well-kept. James’s mid terrace had the mandatory blank white blinds, the front bay window ones at half mast, and tiled porch with repro gas lamp.

  He answered the door in dark blue shirt sleeves, cardigan mercifully MIA. He looked less guarded and more approachable than he had done before. Inevitable on home turf, she guessed.

  ‘Thanks for schlepping out here,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

  ‘No problem. It’s not far from home. I’m only in Stoke Newington. Hope the washing machine’s sorted?’

  ‘Ah. Yeah.’

  Anna followed him into the dining room off the hallway. In the narrow kitchen beyond she could glimpse a black Smeg fridge, a range cooker and lots of spotless chrome. Wow. He must never come to hers. She heard an inner voice saying: done.

  ‘Cup of tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Tea would be nice, thanks.’

  ‘You drink raspberry, right? I think I have some.’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ thinking that was more observant than she expected.

  A tatty, tufty throw on a stud-back leather armchair squeaked, unfurled, sat up and blinked.

  ‘Argh!’ Anna cried, before she could stop herself.

  James laughed. ‘Anna, Luther, Luther, Anna.’

  ‘It’s a cat? It’s huge.’

  ‘Yeah he is quite huge, isn’t he? Though I suspect if you shaved all the hair off, you’d be left with Gollum.’

  ‘Why’s he looking at us like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like … he’s plotting to kill us all.’

  Anna was relieved that James grinned.

  ‘He does look like he’s plotting an extinction event doesn’t he? I’ve been trying to sum that expression up for ages, well done. Never mind North Korea, when the nuclear mushroom plume shoots into the sky, there will be a grey paw on the red button.’

  ‘Is it Luthor as in Lex Luthor?’

  ‘Haha! Sadly not. Luther as in Luther Vandross.’

  Anna wasn’t sure if the form was to touch it or not.

  ‘I’m not a cat person,’ she said apologetically.

  ‘I’m not smelling a lot of Doctor Doolittle here, no,’ James said, folding his arms, still smiling. ‘Prefer dogs?’

  ‘No, no pets ever. Oh, other than my hamster when I was a teenager,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘Chervil.’

  ‘Chervil? What, the herb?’

  ‘Yes. It … suited him. He had big cheeks. Cheeky Chervil.’

  ‘Bizarre. If you went for Basil it’s a herb but at least it’s a male name,’ James said, smilingly.

  ‘Well … thanks for the advice. He’s dead now.’

  ‘Of shame,’ James said, and Anna laughed despite herself. ‘Luther’s got a lot of problems but at least we didn’t call him Clary Sage.’

  James leaned over to stroke the cat but it shimmied away.

  ‘Aw Luther, we were only kidding!’ James called, as Luther flumped off the chair and lolloped into the kitchen. ‘He was my wife’s cat,’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’

  She noticed he’d used the past tense and he noticed that she’d noticed.

  ‘Eva and I split up a few months ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said. This wasn’t what she’d imagined. James Fraser being single seemed unlikely. No doubt he’d frenetically nobbed a fashionable friend of hers in the toilet while high on a wrap of cocaine at Cargo in Hoxton. Or whatever heartless mid-life hipsters did these days. James wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, she saw now.

  He followed Luther into the kitchen and assembled the cups, flicking the kettle on.

  ‘I’ll grab the files,’ he said, returning, while Anna stood awkwardly. ‘Do you want me to hang your coat up?’

  ‘Oh … thanks …’ Anna handed him her grey duffle coat.

  James bounded upstairs noisily on wooden stairs.

  Without him there, Anna was able to have a good flagrant gawp at her surroundings. She’d never been in a home like this before, with rooms that had sprung from the pages of magazine shoots in Living Etc.

  The wooden floorboards were molasses-dark, the Chesterfield sofa covered in rose velvet, the delicate pink of nipples in a Rosetti painting. There were curved, silvered glass lamp stands and stray splashes of colourful shabby chic, like the leather chair. A Venetian mirrored coffee table bounced light at another giant over-mantel mirror, above the original fireplace. All in all, a lot of reflective surfaces.

  He didn’t need to tell her they had no kids. She could imagine a toddler running through the scene with a jagged piece of glass like a lightning bolt stuck in its head.

  A battered stripped dresser in the dining space displayed a forest of photos with heavy silver frames. As expected, they were a hymn to the beauty of the occupants, and extravagant holidays.

  The backdrops ranged from continental cobbl
ed streets, tropical foliage, balconies in Manhattan, to one where the estranged wife was waist-deep in steaming water, clad in a white triangle bikini top. No way would Anna have a behold-my-norks photo on display in a reception room, but then she’d never had a body like hers. Eva was lovely, of course, absurdly so. Spectacular but also toothpaste-wholesome, the kind of woman who made spirits as well as penises rise.

  One photo in particular caught her eye and she stepped closer to peer at it. James was gazing into the lens, smiling over a large coffee cup at a bistro pavement table. He looked nice in it. Exceptionally nice, actually. Not handsome-nice; that was easy if you were born with the right flesh and bones. It was his expression. She’d never seen him look like that: confidential and affectionate and wryly amused. Maybe a bit post-coital.

  It was the way you only stared at someone you were mad about, someone who could turn your guts to goo. For a moment, Anna was in the place of the person behind the lens. It gave her a funny pang of memory of youthful infatuation, like a shadow passing over her. She shook the feeling off.

  A centrally positioned wedding day portrait showed the newlyweds in a hailstorm of confetti on registry office steps, laughing uproariously about being fabulous and in love.

  James was in an ink-blue suit and floral tie, staring down at his feet, smiling, the sculpted planes of his face so photogenic. His wife was looking off to the right, at some unseen well-wisher. Her bridal gown was simple, fitted lace, designed to display narrow shoulders and a swan neck. Her hair was held off her face with a slim jewelled band, her eyes had a flick of liquid eyeliner, and there were pearl studs in her ears. The whole look was ultra-tasteful retro – Elvis Lives, And Marries Grace Kelly. They were perfection.

  What would a couple like this do if they had an ugly baby? Fire bucket time? Anna winced at her savagery – for all she knew, they’d split up over the children issue.

  There was a scratching noise in the kitchen, like mice inside a skirting board. Investigating, Anna found Luther stood beseechingly by the back door.

  ‘Mwowh!’ He put a tufted paw on the door and batted it several times to make his point. Then he went for an even more baleful: ‘Mwowh.’

  ‘Oh, you want to go out?’ Anna said, feeling glad she could make up for her ungenerous thoughts by performing a small domestic task.

  There was a key with a gold tassel hung on a hook above the work surface. Anna pushed it into the lock, turned and the door snapped open.

  ‘There you go.’

  Having bleated to go out, the cat looked unsure, loitering and staring up at her with spacey eyes, whiskers the size of porcupine quills. Anna bent down and gave him a gentle shove. It was like the daft dust ball had never seen its own back garden before.

  29

  They were in the middle of leafing through large floppy colour photos, Anna penning notes on the back, Roberts Radio on Classic FM softly in the background, when James did a double take in the direction of the sitting room window.

  ‘Woah. That’s weird. That cat outside looked like …’ James’s line of sight darted around the floor. ‘Luther! Luther?’

  Anna looked up in time to see a flash of grey fur move away from the pane of glass.

  ‘Can he not get to the front garden from the back one, usually?’

  ‘What?’ James said, absently, standing up. ‘Luther?’

  He bounded over to the bay window and leaned on the window frame, peering out.

  ‘Ahhh … the cat’s gone. Am I going mad? That looked exactly like him …’

  ‘Is he OK?’ Anna said, startled by James’s reaction.

  James ducked past into the kitchen and returned, looking perturbed. ‘He’s not in there … maybe he’s upstairs. He can’t have got out …’

  Anna stood up, as her stomach plummeted to her feet.

  ‘Uh. I let him out.’

  James turned to her, eyes wide. ‘What?’

  A pause and he turned and darted down the hall, Anna in pursuit.

  ‘Luther … Luther!’ James called, as they burst through the front door.

  ‘Can’t he cope with outside?’ Anna said, following James around the front garden, feeling very foolish and more than a little apprehensive.

  ‘Luther can barely cope with inside,’ James said, rumbling a wheelie bin forward, checking behind it.

  ‘Why did you let him out?’ he said, restraining the degree of baffled irritation in his voice quite manfully, as he glanced up. ‘He doesn’t go out.’

  ‘He was scratching at the door. I just assumed … I’m so, so sorry,’ Anna said.

  ‘The little swine was trying it on. It’s not your fault. Normal cats do go out,’ James said, with far more graciousness than she would’ve expected. At this moment in time he’d have been well within his rights to flame her like a Whopper.

  ‘Luther!’

  James hopped the small wall between his property and his neighbour’s, then having ascertained it was Luther-less, went into the street using their gate.

  Anna did another pointless scan of the empty front garden and joined him.

  ‘It definitely seemed as if he went in this direction,’ James said.

  It was rush hour and although it was a residential street, cars were passing at a steady rate.

  ‘This is a not very nice game of trying to find him before he finds the road.’

  ‘He wouldn’t know how to cross?’

  James threw her a look. ‘He’s never done it before. Did he strike you as a cat with its Green Cross Code? He’s as thick as mince, I’m afraid.’

  Anna’s stomach sank even lower at his choice of words. She was about to watch a cat get turned into a hairy frittata under the wheels of a Vauxhall Zafira, and know it was entirely her fault. Oh God, this was awful …

  ‘If I go this way, will you look that way?’ James asked.

  Anna nodded emphatically and struck off in the opposite direction, copying James by ducking to look under parked cars and over hedges, calling Luther’s name as she went.

  In the light of this development, her interference with the door seemed less charming initiative, more officious interference.

  She considered how she might look through James’s eyes, for the first time. Given he didn’t appear to remember her from school, or know she overheard him disparaging her appeal at the reunion, he was only going by their most recent direct interactions. Judging by those alone, given he’d been polite enough, she guessed she had come across as a pretty snippy bitch. Now she was about to murder his pet.

  With a start, she spotted a flash of smoky fluff emerging from behind the back wheels of a parked car opposite. With a sickening inevitability, there was the engine growl of a car approaching to Anna’s left.

  ‘Luther!’ she called, glancing towards James, hoping to alert him and have him handle this, but he was momentarily out of sight.

  The cat seemed as if he was crouching, not sitting – deciding when to make a dash for it, high on the excitement of newfound freedom.

  ‘Luther, no!’ she called, as if she might turn him into a small, biddable dog, who understood English. Luther shuffled another inch or two into the road, unsure.

  Anna’s gorge rose and her mouth went dry. She was no feline behavioural expert but she judged the chances of the animal colliding with this oncoming hatchback were fifty/fifty. It was as if Luther was using his gap of opportunity to weigh up his options, and when the car was right on him, then he would move.

  Luther waddled forward even further and began to rock back and forth, preparing to pounce. His next movement would take him into the road.

  Anna panicked and ran out in front of a car that was only 100 yards or so away, putting both her hands up, palms facing outwards.

  ‘Stop!’

  The middle-aged female driver, eyes wide, slammed the brakes on. It felt as if the car took ages to come to a halt, stopping just short of her.

  When Anna looked down for Luther, amazingly, he was a short distance from her feet. D
amn, this cat was dumb. Even the squeal of the tyres hadn’t put him off. She bent and grabbed him, no longer tentative in her handling. She’d just had a crash course in cat wrangling, luckily without the crash.

  She indicated her thanks to the driver with a wave of her hand, from under Luther’s soft bulk. The driver’s aghast expression dissolved into something more like understanding, and she put a conciliatory palm up in return to communicate: oh I see. Phew.

  As she returned to the safety of the pavement, she saw James a short way down the street, presumably witness to the rescue.

  ‘Luther,’ Anna said unnecessarily when she reached him, gripping the squirming beast tightly.

  ‘What in the hell were you doing? You could’ve been run over!’

  James had one hand on his head and was noticeably pale. Anna was surprised at the idea that the risk she took might’ve bothered him, beyond the obvious unpleasantness of gore and paperwork.

  ‘I felt responsible.’

  ‘You felt responsible? My cat … your life. Doesn’t quite equate. God almighty Anna, I thought you were heading for intensive care and I was going to be calling your parents, saying you were dying for the sake of a bad-tempered hot water bottle cover. I don’t know whether to thank you or shout at you,’ James said, moving his hands to his face then moving them away again so he could speak. ‘I didn’t make you feel that bad about letting him out, did I? You weren’t to know.’

  ‘God no! I didn’t think about it.’ Anna had simply seen a solution and thrown herself at it, literally. It was fairly stupid, with hindsight, to gamble everything on the brake-power in a Nissan Micra.

  Anna bundled Luther over, her hand brushing James’s chest briefly as she made sure he had firm hold of him. Luther’s angry little face crumpled and he started quacking with annoyance that his adventure ‘Operation Certain Death’ had been cut short.

  ‘That’s thanks for you,’ James said, and bent his head slightly towards the animal. Anna sensed he didn’t want to do anything as unmanly as nuzzle him, in front of her.