The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine

by Lythell, Jane

  ‘No, I live here. I’ve been here some years now...’

  ‘This wine is fantastic, Heja.’ Robert looked at me. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Some years ago I made a documentary and it won an award for our station. And my boss, who was a devotee of wine, gave me a case of it. He told me to keep it for ten years and it would get better and better. I have a few bottles left.’

  ‘It’s quite something. Are you keeping it in the right conditions?’

  ‘Probably not; I keep the bottles horizontal and in a cool dark place. Will that do?’

  ‘Sounds fine. What’s your field, Markus?’

  ‘I’m an architect.’

  ‘What buildings do you do?’

  ‘Public buildings usually, libraries, health centres, that sort of thing...’

  ‘Office buildings?’ asked Robert.

  ‘I’ve never done one. They don’t interest me,’ Markus replied flatly, without any further explanation.

  I broke into the frisson that was building up between them. ‘Markus has just won a commission to build a major arts centre with a gallery and a cinema,’ I said.

  Robert raised his glass to Markus. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you. Heja told me you’re training to be an analyst?’

  ‘I completed my training this spring.’ Robert gave an ironic smile. ‘Now I’m let loose on real people.’

  ‘Heja, I must be off. Thank you for the drink. It was good to meet you, Robert.’

  Markus got up and I walked with him to the door.

  ‘Thank you for coming to tell me your wonderful news. I just wish we could have celebrated it over dinner.’

  ‘So do I...’

  I walked out into the corridor with him, pulling the door to behind me.

  ‘Markus, let’s have that dinner, let’s have it in Durham. I have to go there to do some research. We could meet up when you’re next up there. You could show me the site. It would mean so much to me to see it.’

  He agreed to us meeting in Durham. He walked down the corridor away from me. I was happy he had wanted to tell me his news.

  I closed the door and walked back towards Robert, who was looking at me with a slightly aggrieved expression on his face.

  ‘You are a mystery! I didn’t know you worked in television.’

  ‘That was years ago, in Helsinki.’

  Kathy

  JULY

  Markus won the project and I am so happy for him! This means he won’t be able to come to Spain with me in September, he said. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he won a major commission, the most important project he has ever secured. What really excites him is that they’ve supported his innovative designs. It’s going to be a landmark building in Durham. I’ve decided to cook a special Portuguese dinner tonight, for my friends Fiona and Douglas, who are down from Glasgow, and to celebrate Markus winning the project. I’m going to make my mum’s signature cod dish, bacalhau com natas.

  When I was eleven years old my parents sent me to a Catholic secondary school while my all friends went to the local high school. I was unhappy about this and determined to hate the new school. On my first day there they sat me next to a Scottish girl called Fiona. She had light red hair, the colour of barley sugar, which she wore in bunches on either side of her face. We took an instant dislike to each other and she became the focus of my rejection of the school and all it stood for. She hated the school too because she was new to London and missed her friends in Glasgow. She thought I was ‘loud and Londony’ and our mutual antagon-ism enlivened us both.

  When I returned from the Christmas holiday I met her in the corridor. She had had her hair cut into a bob and we stopped in the corridor and started laughing at each other. I found myself delighted to see her again. I realized I’d missed her and from that time on we became the best of friends, did everything together, talked every day and shared every secret. Then, when school was through, Fiona decided to go back to her beloved Glasgow. She took her degree there and lives there now, with Douglas. They’re coming to London for the weekend and tonight they’ll meet Markus for the first time as they couldn’t get to our wedding.

  I took Markus’s car for the day because I had to do meetings all over town and also had to buy the ingredients for the meal. It was hot, even at nine in the morning, as I drove to our printers in Mile End to discuss the printing of the heritage guides. Later I drove from Mile End to a lunch near Islington to talk up the guides to one of Victoria’s advertising clients. The traffic from Mile End was terrible, and the sun was beating down through a pollution-heavy haze.

  Victoria had booked us into a fashionable Lebanese restaur-ant in Exmouth Market and thankfully it was cool in there. The waitress was a tall, striking Arab woman dressed in a billowing white blouse tucked into black satin trousers. She wore a gold chain-link belt low over her hips. The advertising client was a real creep, who leered at the waitress as he ordered arak for the three of us. Victoria suggested we get the meze and she chose nine small dishes, falafel, and kibeh, bright green tabouleh, baked aubergine and Lebanese salad, which had this crunchy bread in it. The food was delicious and decorative. The waitress kept whipping the plates away as soon as we had eaten the offerings, as if she wanted us out of there. The creep had clearly annoyed her.

  I did as Victoria had asked me to do and described the guide in glowing terms. I mentioned the most glamorous sites that we would be covering and emphasized the quality of the photographs and the production values we would achieve. There would be a dedicated website too where he could advertise. Then I left Victoria and him before the coffee as I still had to buy the ingredients for the celebration dinner. I didn’t envy Victoria her job that afternoon; she had to be nice to guys like that.

  I reached the car just as the meter had run out and a traffic warden was lurking. He looked hot and uncomfortable in his uniform and I wondered if he was going to book me. He let me get into the car without writing a ticket and I thanked him through my open window. I drove to Highbury where there’s a really good fishmonger and a delicatessen that sells Portuguese cheeses. I needed cod for the main dish and then bought some Azeitäo, Serra and Castelo Branco for the cheese board. I put the ingredients in the boot and drove back to Primrose Hill. The sun was still blazing and the tarmac of the car park felt slightly soft and sticky under my feet. I imagined the cheeses sweating and the fish going off in the furnace of the boot, so I carried all the ingredients into the office and asked the receptionist if we could store them in her drinks fridge.

  For the next two hours I rushed through my tasks because I wanted to get home early, if possible, to start cooking the meal. Just as I was clearing my desk Philip called me and said please would I join him in his office as he wanted to know where we were on the heritage guides schedule. He kept me in there for over forty minutes, cross-examining me on which writer was doing which site, and how much was this going to cost the magazine? That is his way, to summon you out of the blue. If he’d given me any notice I could have prepared a spreadsheet for him. I left his office feeling flustered and cross.

  When I got to the car park I saw Heja in front of me, getting into her car. She has this beautiful dark green convertible and she had put the roof down. Now I understand how she affords such an amazing car. It must be from the days of her TV work. You could never buy such a car on our salaries. She looked as cool as ever, her blouse uncreased and her hair neat in its French plait. I waved to her and followed her out of the car park. She turned right towards Belsize Park and I headed left to Camden Town. I still needed to get some parsley and there’s a stall I go to in Inverness Street market.

  The market was closing down and there was more than the usual pile of rotting fruit and vegetables in cartons at the side of the road. I saw a man in oil-stained trousers, rummaging through the discarded fruit, looking for something to eat. Then he turned his attention to the waste bins. He plunged his hand into one of the bins and pulled out a half-eaten baguette. W
ithout a moment’s hesitation he put it in his mouth and started to chew.

  Finally, I was on my way home. I was driving down Park Street towards Baker Street when I noticed that the right-hand lane was closed for roadworks and there was a worse than usual bottleneck going into Baker Street. I stayed in my lane, cursing the delay.

  A small red car drew up on my left and started to try to move in front of me. I glanced at the driver. He gestured rudely at me to pull back and let him in. I was hemmed in by the car behind so I just shrugged at him and stayed in line, looking ahead at the lights. My windows were open to try and let in some air and the man in the red car started to shout at me. I turned to look at him. He had a shaved head and a thin, pointed face that was tracked with lines of resentment. A woman was sitting next to him and a teenage girl was seated in the back. Both women had their hair scraped back in high ponytails and they were staring at me in a vaguely hostile way.

  I shrugged my shoulders again as if to say I couldn’t let them in, and this seemed to infuriate him further. As the lights turned green and we all inched forward he moved even closer to me so that our wing mirrors collided with a small crunch and his smaller mirror was bent back by the sturdy one on Markus’s Saab.

  He screamed at me, ‘Look what you’ve done. You’ve broken my mirror, you cunt!’

  I quickly closed the windows and pressed the car locks down. The lights were turning amber and I was indicating to turn right. I stopped now to let him get in front of me. He revved in front of me then braked hard and leapt out of the car to look at his mirror. He was a short, wiry man, dressed in pressed jeans and a sweatshirt. It didn’t look to me as if the mirror was broken as it snapped back into place, but he made a great show of examining it. The lights turned red and I was trapped behind him now. He spoke to the woman in the passenger seat and she shook her head at him. Then he looked back at me and I avoided his gaze and thought, Please, let this be an end to it. It was so hot in the car and I could feel my face and hands sweating.

  The lights were changing. He got back into his car and turned right too and parked his car on the corner. I drove past him and was heading up the road, then had to stop at the lights again. I saw that my hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly that I’d left sweat tracks on the wheel. I tried to loosen them and took a deep breath. I was about to open the window for some air when he was there, right at my window, his face close to the glass as he screamed at me.

  ‘Open the window. Open the fucking window. You broke my mirror.’

  I would not acknowledge him. I knew if I looked at him it would only make things worse. Then he started to thump his fists on the roof of the car. He hit the roof with such force that I could feel the vibrations shiver right through the bodywork.

  ‘Stop the car. Stop the fucking car,’ he shouted.

  The lights turned green. I put my foot on the accelerator and roared ahead into Dorset Square. He leapt back on to the pavement. In my rear-view mirror I saw him run back to his car. I realized he was going to chase me! I sped down Dorset Square and jumped the lights into Rossmore Street. This is not the way to my flat, but the road was empty ahead and I wanted to put as much distance between him and myself as I could. I kept checking the rear-view mirror, expecting to see the bonnet of his red car behind me. I was breathing short, shallow breaths and felt dizzy. I turned left then left again. Finally I parked and waited, my heart hammering. I had shaken him off.

  ‘People are so damned angry these days. They don’t know why they’re full of murderous rage,’ Douglas said.

  We were sitting in the kitchen over dinner with Fiona and Douglas. ‘Things are tough out there now, for many people, and, yes, people are turning against each other,’ Markus said.

  ‘You know I’d had a bad day,’ I said. ‘These things seem to happen when you’re already wound up. I guess I could have let him overtake me...’

  ‘Oh, the smallest thing can trigger it,’ said Fiona. ‘I mean, what was at stake? Being one car further up the line.’

  We had just eaten my bacalhau com natas, layers of cod and onion and fried potatoes in cream. Usually cooking calms me down. Tonight it hadn’t worked and I was still hot and headachey. I got up to clear the plates away. Fiona helped me, and then I heard Billy grizzling in his room.

  ‘I think I’ll get Billy up,’ I said to Markus. ‘His cheeks were really red this evening and I’m sure he’s teething again.’

  I brought Billy into the kitchen and he stretched out his arms towards his dad and Markus took him on to his lap.

  ‘He didn’t want to miss the party,’ Fiona said.

  I brought the salad and the cheese board to the table.

  ‘Three favourite Portuguese cheeses,’ I said.

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Fiona. ‘Where do you find all this stuff?’

  ‘There’s a great place in Highbury, and they do the best olive oil too.’

  Markus passed Fiona the salad bowl. He had made the dressing for it and it was very garlicky and almost startling to eat.

  ‘This is so good,’ she said, piling radicchio, cress and rocket, viscous with his dressing, on to her plate.

  Douglas spread thick butter on his water biscuit and then piled a wedge of Serra on top.

  ‘Douglas, you don’t need butter as well as the cheese!’ Fiona wailed.

  ‘I like it like this. I like the taste of butter under the cheese.’

  ‘Think of the cholesterol!’

  I gave Billy a piece of bread to chew on.

  ‘I was in Finland a few years ago, on a research project,’ Douglas said. ‘We were trying to gauge attitudes to change; mainly in Helsinki, which I really liked. I also spent some time in the villages along the coast. I think small communities can be pretty angry places too.’

  Markus nodded his agreement.

  ‘Oh, yes, angry and narrow and mean-spirited,’ he said.

  ‘When were you there?’ I asked Douglas.

  ‘About four years ago.’

  ‘Well, one of my team used to be a well-known TV presenter in Helsinki – Heja Vanheinen.’

  Markus stood up and said to Fiona, ‘Will you have Billy? I need to get more wine...’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ she said, taking Billy on to her lap and bouncing him up and down gently.

  Markus picked up the empty wine bottle and took it to the recycling box.

  ‘What does she look like?’ Douglas asked.

  ‘Very blonde, high cheekbones...’

  Markus got down another bottle and started to tear off the foil.

  ‘There’s one cooling in the fridge,’ I said.

  He nodded and turned towards the fridge and I wondered why he was looking a bit grim.

  After Fiona and Douglas had gone I scraped the plates on to a spread newspaper before putting the leftovers into the bin. My head was pounding from the heat and stress of the day. I watched the oil from the cream sliding into the newsprint and felt a wave of disgust and weariness.

  Fiona rang the next morning.

  ‘Thanks for last night. That was a fantastic meal.’

  ‘It was great to see you, and Markus really liked you both. Sorry I was a bit on edge.’

  ‘You were fine. I see why you fell for Markus. He’s gorgeous!’

  ‘He is easy on the eye, isn’t he?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was famous?’

  ‘Famous? What do you mean?’

  ‘Douglas said it was niggling him all night because Markus looked familiar. Then this morning he remembered. Apparently Markus was a well-known radical in Finland.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes! There was some big student protest and Markus led a mass demonstration in Helsinki. It got nasty and he was arrested. Hundreds of students marched to the police station and demanded his release.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘It’s true, you know Douglas and politics. Your Markus was a pin-up for thousands of university students!’

  ‘I
ncredible. I knew none of this. Nothing... it would explain a lot.’

  So ask him about it.’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s touchy about talking about his past. I’m almost scared to raise the subject.’

  ‘You should be able to talk to him about it.’

  ‘I should but... well... things aren’t perfect, Fiona. Markus can be so reserved and some days I find his coldness really gets to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘I keep thinking give it time. It’s been a major adjustment for us both. I just wish he’d be more open with me.’

  ‘You should have called me.’

  ‘And Eddie pitched up here the other night.’

  ‘Oh, Kathy you’re not...’

  ‘No, no, of course not; he just turned up out of the blue.’

  ‘His drinking made you very unhappy.’

  After our call was over I did something that it hadn’t occurred to me to do before. I looked up Markus on the internet. I typed in ‘Markus Hartman Finland’ with a feeling of guilty apprehension, as if I was doing something mildly stalkerish. What would I discover? Five photographs of a much younger Markus came onto my screen. Three of the pictures looked like a student demonstration as there were banners and a crowd and Markus was at the front of the crowd. The text was all in Finnish, from various newspaper reports, so I couldn’t get a lot of information from it, only the dates and that these demonstrations had happened years ago. There were also two solo shots of Markus, a head-and-shoulders shot and one of him standing in front of a building. Again there was no English text so I couldn’t establish where these had been taken.

  It seemed that what Douglas had said was true – Markus had been involved in student politics and had been a kind of leader. Could this be what he was keeping quiet about? It was nothing to be ashamed of. Or had something else happened to him that made him reluctant to talk about his life in Helsinki? I stared at the photos and he looked so young and fired up and handsome and I knew I wouldn’t ask him about them.