by Alice Jolly
Slowly, slowly. I kiss her everywhere. The bliss is in the waiting. She holds my hands. When I enter her my face is close to hers, so that I can hear that small gasp she makes. The angle is right. I save up the moments. Turn her around. Kiss the top of her spine, where her hair starts. Shut my eyes. Then just for a moment I’m back in a rooftop room in Spain, holding a girl with the same smell of lemon and sour white wine.
Afterwards, in a grandiose bedroom, we lie side by side and look at the coved ceiling, miles above. She tells me this and that. A trip to the theatre. The opening of a photography exhibition. I nod and laugh. Blah, blah, blah. But I’m not really listening. All I want to know is whether she’s got another man. I’m tortured by that, hypocrite that I am. But I’m not allowed to ask. So all I can do is listen for clues. Who did she go to the theatre with? I’m desperate to ask but it’s against the rules.
And that’s how it’s always been. Just an occasional afternoon or evening. A moment outside real life which leaves the rest of the world looking small and drab. But I want more. I always want more. The life that she and I could have is always running parallel in my head. As soon as I see her, I’m close to the end of when I’ll see her. Then I’m waiting again. She doesn’t return my calls. She’s too busy to meet me. Her petty, stubborn displays of independence drive me mad.
‘You know, Rosa, you could come and live out here.’
‘Don’t be daft. I don’t want your life. I’ve got mine.’
Her life. A rented cupboard in Newington Green, odds and sods of photography jobs. Part-time teaching, an ageing mother rotting in Ruislip. Thirty-seven. No husband. No flat. No children. She says she doesn’t want any of that. But it’s no way for her to live. I want to buy her jewellery, roses, silk underwear. Or even a car or a flat. But she doesn’t want that. Every six months I pay for a new camera lens, or a gas bill. That’s the limit of it. Never was a Pygmalion so thwarted.
‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘What about Fiona? Doesn’t she want to come here?’
‘No. She can’t. It’s not really possible, with James and all that. Anyway I’ll be back at the weekends and pretty often during the week as well.’
Rosa always talks about Fiona as though she’s a good friend. Someone we’ve got to look after. Makes my hair bristle. I don’t want her being pleasant about Fiona. Makes me wonder, of course, why I didn’t marry Rosa instead. I often ask myself that. Sounds strange but I wanted to save her from being married to me. I didn’t want her poured into a mould. Anyway it was too late. Fiona and I were already engaged. Marquee booked, wedding dress bought. Such are the instruments of our love.
‘What about Maggie?’ Rosa asks. ‘Have you seen her yet?’
‘No. She doesn’t seem to have a phone. Inability to have a telephone and answer it seems to run in the family. But I suppose she’ll come round some time.’
‘Do you think she’s OK?’
‘No, not really. But what can I do?’
‘Do you worry about her, or about what she knows?’
‘Both.’
‘I could always ring her,’ Rosa says.
I’m surprised by that. Very.
‘Yes, you could,’ I say. ‘If you wanted.’
But really I don’t want her to. In my experience, divide and rule is an important principle where women are concerned.
‘And Gus?’ Rosa asks.
‘Oh, he’s in fine form. The Continent seems to suit him. He’s a new man, with a new image. We must meet up with him some time, you’ll find it terribly funny. No more brown trousers and stains on his shirts. Now it’s waistcoats and bow ties. And his skin is getting better. About time too – you can’t be having teenage acne all your life.’
‘You are horrid about him,’ Rosa says.
We make love again, then Rosa sleeps. But I can’t sleep. Finally I get up, try to open one of the three long windows. But it seems they’re nailed shut. I sit in an armchair which looks out over the square. I was trying not to wake Rosa but she sits up, puts on my shirt, comes to sit beside me.
‘Max, what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me.’
I laugh and she laughs as well. Usually we don’t have this kind of conversation. Usually she doesn’t bother me. And that’s one of the reasons why I love her. The truth is that women complain a lot about sexual harassment by men, real or imagined. But men could equally complain about intimacy harassment. That need women have to open a window into your head. To know what you’re thinking about. Everyone maintains a core of mystery, a place they share with no one. If you love someone you don’t try to break into that.
‘I suppose questions this journalist asks have set me thinking.’
‘Which journalist?’
‘The one who’s writing this book. What’s his name? Adam Somebody. Can’t remember. Anyway he was asking about the Citadel Club, of course. And I’ve tried to explain, but I don’t think he really gets it. He’s rather a literal-minded sort of lad. He doesn’t seem to find the complexities of life at all attractive.’
‘So what did you say to him?’ Rosa asks.
‘Oh, not much really.’
I start to tell her. Of course, she’s heard it all before but she’s kind enough to let me blather on about the same old things again and again. Blah, blah, blah. The problem is she knows that isn’t all. So finally I say, ‘You know, just before I left England I was talking to Geoffrey and he told me that I might yet finish up in court.’
‘But you can’t.’
‘Yes, I can.’
I explain it to her. She sits very still on the arm of the chair, holding my hand. She knows it all, of course. I told her everything. She’s never doubted me.
‘Max,’ she says. ‘Wouldn’t you do better just to tell the truth?’
Just tell the truth and everything will be all right. That’s what they tell you at school. But in the world of judge and jury, the truth can be fatal. I’ve spent enough time defending rogues and chancers myself to know that justice and truth are not the same thing. ‘No,’ I tell her. ‘No. In my case the truth is too improbable. I wouldn’t be believed. A reasonable man would convict me. There’s no doubt about it.’
‘But you didn’t do anything much,’ she says.
‘That’s not the point. The point is that I lied and that’s all that matters now. If I explained what happened, I’d be finished. Not because of what I did or didn’t do but because of the lie. If you’re a politician then you’re tried by the press and by public opinion. I’ve seen what happens often enough. Look at poor old Robson. Remember him? My former colleague. His career came to an end over two hundred quid. No one cared about the money, of course, but he lied about where it came from. That’s what finished him. In my case everyone would assume there’s something more to know. Because why lie to hide nothing?’
We sit together in silence, then she shivers and I take her back to bed.
Always I remember the moment of my arrest. It came out of nowhere. I thought I was a witness, not a suspect. In fact, I’d been helpful. I was the one who provided all the information needed. Went to Geoffrey’s house that morning. I was the one who helped him with all the form-filling and telephoning that accompanies any death. I fought off the press, got Tiffany’s brothers over from America. Went to the police station to give a statement.
So much time had gone by since the fire. Four weeks. So when the police came to Brickley Grange, just before Saturday lunch, I was worried but not that worried. Fiona opened the door to them, showed them to my study. I was looking out of the window. The terrace, two urns, the path to the swimming pool, the garden wall. Then beyond, miles of open fields. There was a bird sitting on top of one of the urns. Its head cocked to one side, listening or watching. Then suddenly it flew away. When I turned around to greet the police, they said they were arresting me. No handcuffs, no hard words.
I had to go to the kitchen to tell Fiona. She was there with James. So I pulled her into the hall.
Shut the door on James. Told her what was happening. Her eyes opened wide and she swallowed hard. But she was calm and I was grateful for that. For her, dignity is everything. One must not make a scene. She asked me what I would need to take with me. Just like a film. The Gestapo knocking at a door. Five minutes to pack. Both of us knew it wasn’t like that. Except in a way it was. I went back into the kitchen. James looked up from his aeroplane model. I bent over to kiss him. I’m just popping out, I said. All very calm and quiet.
Except that for no reason James suddenly grabbed a handful of my hair and kept it gripped in his fist. Then he grasped my shirt collar in his other hand. He couldn’t have heard what Fiona and I said. He knew nothing about anything. We hadn’t even told him much about Tiffany’s death. Usually he’s an easy child. Yet he clung on and I could see his eyes – so very close to mine, and so very like my own. Like looking into a mirror. He just gripped my hair in silence, so that I couldn’t raise my head. Fiona snapped at him far louder than was necessary. Behaving like a savage, she said. She wrestled his hands away from me. A chunk of hair went from my scalp. I couldn’t look at him. So I went out of the kitchen. I wanted to take my car. The Jag. But the police wouldn’t let me, so I went with them. The world looks different from inside a police car.
At the station they told me about the Fire Officer’s Report. My jacket was at the cottage, they said. There were also the remains of some photographs. And in my jacket pocket there had been a condom. I laughed about that. They even smiled a little. I was relieved that was all they had to say.
I pointed out that I had actually told one of their officers that my jacket was in the cottage. I’d had a coffee with Tiffany earlier in the day. Only later did I realise that I’d left my jacket behind. They knew that. The photographs were also my photographs. Just holiday snaps. My wife and I at Abu Simbel in Upper Egypt. I’d lent Tiffany the photographs because she and Geoffrey also wanted to go on holiday there. As for the condom, it had been there years. It had been forced on me at some AIDS awareness event. I’d never bothered to throw it away.
Then they asked about Tiffany. Yes, I knew her well. Yes, I spent a fair amount of time with her. Yes, I sometimes met up with her without Geoffrey. Of course I did. For God’s sake, we’re grown-ups, aren’t we? It was good that I admitted that I saw Tiffany without Geoffrey. Because the police had been speaking to a lot of people. They could cite times and places where we’d been together. Amazing what apparent friends will say. I rang my solicitor, smoked, drank bad coffee, waited. I was careful not to get angry, not to shout. I was frightened, but not that frightened. I kept clinging to the thought that really they had no information of importance.
The questions went on for hours. Don’t ever think you’ve got any civil liberties. You haven’t. There was nothing they didn’t know about me. But a simple story, resolutely maintained, is hard to crack. They tried every way. I refused to elaborate. Yes, she and I were friends. Yes, I went to the cottage earlier in the day. The fire? I don’t know. No idea. Paraffin in the cottage? Almost certainly she’d used it to light the log fire. Yes, I’d seen her do that on other occasions. I’d seen Geoffrey do the same. People often use paraffin to light log fires. Then why was there paraffin in the kitchen? How should I know? I wasn’t there.
Maggie
I love you.
That’s what his e-mail says. He sent it two months ago but still I open it every day. Sitting in my office in Brussels, I click on that message and read those three words again and again. I love you. No one has ever said that to me before. Then I go through his other messages. Occasionally there are spelling mistakes and I’m glad about that.
I shut my eyes and think of those shadowed eyes, that one chipped tooth, the tender feel of that cropped head. I remember last weekend, in London, staying in his flat. On Saturday morning I tried to cook breakfast for him, except that having been trained in the Thwaite Cottages School of Domestic Economy, I made a total mess of it. Then suddenly it turned out that the fact that I’d splattered oil across his pristine kitchen, that I’d set fire to one of his tea towels and that I’d scraped the non-stick surface off his frying pan with a metal spoon – all this was suddenly terribly charming and sweet.
And so now I understand – that’s how love works. It means that someone looks at you and to them you look good and, for them, whatever you do is fine. Then after a while you begin to see yourself as they see you. You begin to like yourself. Your mop of fuzzy hair becomes luxurious, your lumps become curves, your sharp tongue turns into wit, your funny clothes become stylish – or at least endearing. You are quite changed. At least for as long as that person is looking at you.
Last weekend, after the frazzled bacon and eggs, he gave me a present – a small box wrapped in black and white striped paper. He watched me open it, amid charred tea towel and blackened pan. I was nervous, thinking I might not like whatever was inside. Layers of tissue paper unfolded to reveal a bracelet made of fine gold wires and beads of glass. Tame good taste but I love it because he gave it to me. I look at it now, twisting the wires and beads against the skin of my wrist.
Before, life always felt like a spectator sport. My world was untethered. I used to ask myself – am I a person or just a place where other people’s expectations meet? But those three words have enabled me to take possession of my life. Two people have got more weight than one and they take up more space. I feel anchored. My life is substantial. A boyfriend, a new career, my own flat. But isn’t it odd that this should happen now? It seems that when one thing is terribly wrong, then other things are miraculously right. Rotten fruit often has a particularly shiny skin.
I look at that message one more time. I love you.
Then I switch off the computer and find my coat. Time to go home.
Apparently elsewhere it’s the beginning of summer, but here they don’t do seasons, just grey perma-drizzle. This city was built on a marsh and everywhere you can feel the damp rising. I walk through streets that are dirty, disorganised and derelict. When I first arrived here I thought I’d come to a war zone. The whole place looks like Bosnia or Beirut on the television. Battered buildings with broken windows are covered with grime and in the cobbled streets there are water-filled craters and construction work sprawls along the pavements. It’ll be a nice city when it’s finished, that’s what people always say. A smell of oiled metal rises from the streets, brakes screech and cars rumble over cobbles. It’s as though a piece of the Third World has been transported to the damp plains of Flanders.
I walk under bridges that smell of piss and through a Moroccan area that smells of spices. Little girls in exotic silk stand at front doors, watching with shuttered eyes. I reach the square near my house, which is lined with red-brick gabled houses. Tram wires and unused Christmas lights loop overhead. My flat is in a street like all the rest, dark and deep as a trench, narrow and lined by once-elegant houses, with doors and windows two metres tall. I open the front door and pull back the grille of the antiquated lift. My flat is not exactly the all white space I imagined but it does have a marble fireplace, radiators like toast racks, a parquet floor, and French windows leading onto a curling iron balcony. Above the fireplace is a long mirror and the rooms are joined by double doors, like the set of a farce, so that you expect a maid waving a feather duster to appear, pursued by a man with no trousers.
I drop my bag on the floor and light the gas fire. When I first arrived there was nothing in this flat at all. No fridge, no oven, no curtain rails. Nothing in the sitting room except a pile of telephone directories and a bare light bulb on a twisted wire poking out from a jagged hole in the ceiling. For ages I did nothing to the flat at all. Then Adam started to talk about coming to stay for the weekend, so I had to make an effort. I painted the hall bright pink, which the landlady won’t appreciate, and with drawing pins I stuck up curtains made of thin white gauze, which cost the equivalent of a pound a metre in the square. In the kitchen I put a red and white gingham cloth over a flea-market ta
ble, and stuck Cartier Bresson posters at angles on the wall, which creates a good accordion-playing-black-beret-and-striped-shirt look.
Nanda says there are three essentials of life – a bed, a bath and bookcases. I’ve now got all three. And I went out and bought new white sheets, the kind of sheets I’ve always wanted, part of the all white flat in my mind. Something for Adam, and for me.
A message flashes on my answer machine. Adam. My finger pushes the button. But it isn’t Adam, it’s Dad. How did he get my number? I walk away from the machine and go into the kitchen. I can’t hear his words but the sound of them is slurred and rambling. Clearly it was a very good lunch. I can just imagine him out all afternoon with Gus, drinking, joking. A man of principle, Adam says. A man who has stood up for what he believes. Oh yes, but you should see him when he’s been on a bender. One night he jumped out of a first-floor window. As luck would have it there were thick bushes beneath. It’s a miracle he’s never killed himself.
When the voice comes to an end, I go back to the sitting room and delete the message. So many cities in the world, why did Dad have to choose this one? Before, this felt like my city, a place where I could start again. A place where I could see myself as Adam sees me. Happiness seems to me like a small umbrella. If one person is underneath it, then another person has to be out in the rain.
Tonight I was meant to be going out with two English girls from work. They’re the chunky-but-fun types, normally called Pippa or Polly, but in this case called Sarah and Jane. They’re coping awfully well with the natives. They organise all sorts of jolly japes, which I find rather hard work, as I don’t really do organised fun. They take me to parties in sparsely decorated flats with crooked self-assemble furniture. People from all over Europe are there, partying with a Titanic desperation. Everyone is just passing through. Homesick city. There are sad Scotsmen in kilts, and Spaniards drinking sangria, and Sicilians yearning for the South and the sun.