She is embarrassed about everything – and nothing – but she doesn’t say this. She knows he’s after those scraps she once served up to Dawid, thinking they would make all the difference.
Confession is overrated, she wants to say. It might feel good while you’re doing it, but in the end nothing shifts. People will only carry on loving you for as long as they have the will to love in them. It has more to do with them than with you. We can love almost anyone if we are resourceful enough.
* * *
I suppose I can tell you that I take things.
What things?
Sometimes, I take things from shops.
He looks gratified, as she knew he would.
Like?
Oh, silly things. Nail varnish, lip balm. A pair of tweezers once.
Why do you do that?
It started when we were kids – as a bit of fun, a joke. I suppose an analyst would say I still do it because I feel unworthy. Who knows?
Unworthy – to buy it?
Unworthy ‘of buying it’ for myself.
He probably doesn’t understand much of this, but he nods anyway – perhaps only to keep her talking.
Over the years I have taken many things, she continues. From shops, from places I’ve stayed. From relatives, or friends. Usually, I take things they wouldn’t even miss. Like a comb or a piece of soap. Sometimes, I take a book.
And when did it begin?
Start. You say ‘start’. It started before I can remember – with my brother. We used to nick sweets to see if we’d get away with it. Usually, we did. That was when Mary was still looking after us.
I see.
We could talk about this all day and not get to the bottom of it.
Pierre
Perhaps she is inexhaustible, he is thinking, like the sea. Perhaps he will be able to spend the rest of his life swimming deeper and deeper into her, never reaching the bottom of her.
Is this love?
This plunge into the dark unknown, this thrill of terror?
He wants to disappear into her.
He wants to disappear.
IX
Pierre
When they return to her apartment, every object has gained a new resonance.
So which one of these books did you take? he asks.
* * *
They each had three beers at lunch as well as extra bread with the onion soup. He was surprised she could consume so much – she who claimed to eat no more than half a banana and a ginger biscuit for breakfast.
* * *
She fishes out a book from a row of white Picador publications from the eighties. This one here, she says. Rilke’s Selected Poems. I borrowed it from a lecturer and never returned it.
That isn’t exactly stealing.
It was one of his favourite books. He wanted it back.
What else?
I took Sons and Lovers from a friend who lives in Surrey. From her parents’ house, in fact. I take books whenever I go there. Rebecca’s parents’ place is where I got most of my Virginia Woolf. Would you like me to carry on?
She laughs at the expression on his face.
I worked in a bookshop in London for a while, she continues. On Fulham Road. I stole a great many books from there. All my Everyman’s Library. That entire row.
You must try to stop.
I am.
She is standing in the middle of the room, looking like a young girl. She seems amazed by herself – and yet, it seems, still in need of his approval.
Why do you do it?
I suppose I like the danger, she says, staring at him as if expecting him to try to cover her mouth. Living with the guilt. Having something I can focus on and feel particularly bad about. I mean bad in a particular way, rather than just generally.
Hannah
She leaves him and goes through to the bathroom, where she tugs at that dirty string that ignites the light.
Her face stutters into place at the mirror.
Over the last weeks, her face has arrived there, as constant and familiar as a clock – but now she hardly recognises herself.
* * *
She closes her eyes and still she stands there, a pale and ghostly after-image pulsing meekly inside her head.
* * *
When she opens her eyes again, she finds herself smiling back at herself, laughing as if one of them is still dreaming.
Pierre
He picks out a notebook three from the end and finds the same dense writing inside – the kind of writing a person might produce just before a tsunami strikes. The notebook is marked #53 on the first page and starts on 3 January. It seems too good an opportunity to miss, so before he can think too much about it, he stuffs it into his bag and zips it up.
He feels less now – stealing from someone who steals so lightly.
* * *
Now you tell me something.
* * *
He spins around to find her on the couch. From the look on her face, he can see she has seen nothing and suspects nothing. Her hair is in slight disarray, as if she has just been disturbed from sleep, and he knows then that it will be impossible to leave this room without having sex with her.
* * *
The silence that follows is enough of an invitation for him to go to her couch, so that her feet, which are perfectly attenuated under the black tights, are an inch from his thigh.
* * *
But I have already told you my secret.
Another one then.
But – I can’t think of a small one.
Only big ones? she laughs. All right, a big one then.
* * *
He remembers her dress – bright as a daffodil in the cobbled square.
* * *
Everything around them was the colour of winter, of iron and stone, but she was the beginning of a new season and in that moment she was made only of light.
* * *
I have one that is involved with you?
Oh yes?
It is that I first saw you wearing a yellow dress.
Which yellow dress?
The one that is simple, with your arms bare, going to the length of your knees —
Ah that dress, she laughs. I stole that dress from Le Bon Marché!
X
Hannah
This isn’t a bad joke – at least by her standards – but it isn’t actually true. She bought the dress from a shopping mall in Johannesburg for her friend Monica’s twenty-first. It was originally white, but it got stained from some mysterious tropical plant next to Monica’s swimming pool and so she dyed it yellow, in the large cement sink in her mother’s back garden.
Pierre
You told me about a girl you liked, she says. The one you followed in the Luxembourg Gardens. Was that by any chance – me?
Yes.
But I’ve never bought sheep’s milk cheese from Spain in my life!
Haven’t you?
She laughs – detached, it seems to him, and strangely euphoric.
So would you describe yourself as a voyeur?
If I am, he says, it was seeing you that made me into that.
Right – so it’s all my fault?
For being beautiful. Yes.
* * *
As he says this, he wonders whether she is still as beautiful as he originally thought. There is something uneven about her mouth, a slight over-bite that weakens her. It doesn’t make him desire her any less, however, it only makes desiring her more complicated. Almost melancholic, and not so frightening.
* * *
You’re about as dotty as me, she says.
Dotty?
Crazy.
But you aren’t crazy.
You have no idea.
XI
Hannah
She lets him kiss her then and slowly undress her.
He will make love to her slowly and carefully.
She will tell him to come inside her.
Pierre
But no – he’s still
sitting there, quite still, not yet daring to touch her.
* * *
She doesn’t move her feet away from him, nor does she give him permission to touch them. Yet they both understand what this return to the couch means. It is not yet a return to the bed, but it is most probably a move in that direction.
Hannah
My grandmother always said, she tells him, that you can judge a man by his hands and feet. I have already looked at your hands, now I would like to look at your feet.
He stares at her with amusement or disbelief before carefully removing his socks. Then he leans back against a cushion and expands and contracts his pink soles.
So you followed me, did you? With those feet?
With those feet, he says. What would your grandmother think of them?
I say ‘those’, you say ‘these’, because they belong to you.
They can belong to you, if you like.
* * *
She smiles at this – but still she doesn’t move to touch him.
* * *
My grandmother always said you must never trust a man with soft hands or soft feet.
In Pouilly, my feet were hard, he says, but I’m a Parisian now.
A flâneur, yes – with lovely long toes.
Pierre
Now it’s your turn, he says.
Mine?
My grandmother always said that before you marry a woman, you must look at her feet.
Marriage? she laughs. Now let’s not get too carried away!
But instead of moving away, she plonks a foot on his leg.
‘That’, she says, is my foot.
With the tips of his fingers, he feels the bones of her toes, then he presses into the pad of her foot with his thumb – the pad that is connected, Élodie once told him, to the heart.
You must have done this before, she says.
Touched your foot?
Been a bit of a stalker.
She doesn’t move away as she says this. She almost seems to like the idea. Never has she seemed more available to him – and yet so far away.
Did you follow that other girlfriend about?
Élodie?
The one you pretended not to love.
Yes.
Tell me more about her.
XII
Pierre
Élodie toyed with him for most of his childhood. He recalls her in junior school, running away from him after school had ended. He can still see her at the public swimming pool at Seurre, laughing at him from the other side and then diving into the water as if in invitation – but by the time he had dived in after her and was looking around underwater, she had already climbed out of the shallow end and forgotten him.
When he was later given access to her person – in all the senses of that phrase – he could hardly believe she was just another body, made out of the same material as him. It was almost a let-down to discover the normality of her. But as he started to see his own fate reflected in her, this also flooded him with pathos. Perhaps this was when he started to love her as herself – and yet he was once again deep underwater, looking around for someone who had already moved on.
* * *
This time, he tells himself, it will be different. Hannah is more interested in him, more moved by him, than Élodie ever was. He can tell her anything.
Hannah Meade, he tells himself, is not afraid of the dark.
* * *
His fingers stray around her Achilles tendon, which is as firm and slender as a chicken bone, and he holds onto her – as if not wanting her to get away.
Come on, she says, tell me about your Élodie.
Only if I can continue to touch your foot.
If I allow you to touch my foot, you will tell me. Which conditional is that?
The first?
You’re a clever chap.
* * *
His hand moves to her heel and starts kneading her foot as if it’s a worry ball.
* * *
It is late at night, he says, and she is with Étienne. They are kissing under a tree.
She was already your girlfriend at the time – this Élodie?
Yes.
Carry on, she tells him, referring as much to his hand, it seems, as his story.
I only watch, he continues, his hand starting up again. I never confront. But I follow them all the way back to Élodie’s house. I wait there until her light goes out.
And you were friendly with this boy she was with?
Étienne was my closest friend.
He remembers the rage swelling insider him like an oncoming storm. But the experience feels far off now, like someone else’s problem.
When I saw them together, he says, something inside me – broke.
Poor Pierre, she tells him, parting her thighs fractionally. And you have had no other girlfriend since?
Only one other woman.
Oh yes?
She was a prostitute.
I see.
And it was right here – in Paris.
XIII
Hannah
Hannah extricates herself from him and returns to the bathroom.
* * *
Under the image of the Modigliani – the girl with the brown hair and the dead eyes – she kneels and purges herself of the beer and soup. It comes up easily, inevitably, as if it never expected to remain there for long.
* * *
Afterwards, she rinses her mouth and dries her lips. The girl in the mirror, she is interested to note, has been restored to herself.
* * *
She flushes her meal back into the intestines of the city and returns to the room.
* * *
Pierre is still sitting on the edge of the couch, looking lost, like a kid left alone on a bench at a train station. His black canvas bag is propped at his feet.
I’m sorry, Pierre, but I’m not feeling so well.
You aren’t?
Actually, I’d like you to go.
I must go now?
Yes – please. Right away.
Because of the prostitute? Because I was only with her the twice.
I really don’t need to —
What?
I have no interest in any of that.
But you said I could tell you anything!
Well that was clearly a mistake.
XIV
Pierre
But he does not leave her room.
XV
Hannah
Instead, he picks up his bag, unzips it and takes out a book – a notebook that she can see belongs to her.
This is yours, he says unnecessarily. And I took it.
Why would you do that?
I don’t know. To find out more about you?
He looks at her stubbornly, wilfully, still like that boy at the train station. She realises then that she knows nothing about him. This boy from the Congo who carries a story whose maths doesn’t work, this boy who followed her about and visited a prostitute – twice. This boy who comes into her room and steals her notebook and then pretends to look proud of it.
Please put it back, she tells him, doing her best to sound angry. That is my private business.
I’m sorry, but I can’t.
You what?
I want to read this book, he says. I want to know all about you.
Believe me, you don’t.
What is it you are afraid of?
She doesn’t know how to answer this – and so she doesn’t.
Pierre
When he opens the book, she doesn’t move to stop him, she just slips into the other couch, tucks her knees up, and watches him.
Her whole body is trembling, but she doesn’t again ask him to stop.
* * *
The notebook begins with grammar terms, with examples and explanations: ‘indirect object verb’, ‘copular verb’, ‘modal auxiliary verb’. This is followed by a shopping list and a series of densely scrawled entries – as before, most of the entries are written in the more measured
second person.
Dawid: Hundreds of times, in his basement flat in Auckland Park, usually stoned, never been as good.
Brendan: Ended halfway through, he was hurting her, in a flat in Yeoville, followed by bladder infection, peed blood for the first time, first after O’s death.
Simon: New Zealander, violet eyes, dark hair, her bedroom when her mother was at work, a few happy days before another infection.
Ian: First in London, moustache like the hair on pork crackling, older, several times over several months, ended it because he was dirty. Ironically, no infection from him. Repulsive, but with a very considerable vocabulary.
Brett: A stupid, sweet Australian surfer type. Once, friend to Monica, no infection.
Neil: English banker, some months, looked like an elf, kindest of the lot, infection ended it.
Stephen: Scottish, blond, older, theatre producer, once, never answered her calls afterwards, infection.
Collin: South African, plump, pleasurable, rich, once, drunk, infection.
Andrew: White Kenyan travel writer, handsome, wasted, much older, cynical, once, never returned her calls, infection.
James (I): English academic, preppy, childish, surprising, several months, peed on her in the bath, infection ended it.
Nimrod: American actor, Jewish. He didn’t like it that he made her pee blood. It made him weep real tears. In the end, he gave her a large purple dildo and went back to America. He has since become a huge success, according to the internet. The dildo still lies in tissue paper in its box in her cupboard. Tissue paper? Seriously?
Santiago: Spanish, happy, all weekend, drunk, probably a bit slow even in his own language, crappy apartment with excellent potential, infection.
James (II): Fellow TEFL student in Stoke, son of a surgeon, younger than me, dyed reddish hair, a history of depression. The father, quite rightly, wanted me out of his house.
Dragan? Filip?
You wanted to forget your country. The smell of the past clinging to you like something you had eaten the day before. Onion soup?
In Africa, you failed at being African. In England, you failed at being English. In France, you can now fail at being French.
You woke up to find the two Serbs as hounds, gorging themselves on your flesh. Your innards were spilled – dark velvet and mottled purple – all over the bed. They were nudging and snuffling their way into you, their teeth pink, their whiskers dripping.
The White Room Page 11
