The Sparsholt Affair

by Alan Hollinghurst

  ‘If we’re going to Bond Street,’ Johnny said, ‘we can get the 14 bus.’

  Francesca blinked distractedly at this. She even ran thirty yards, to catch the eye of a cabbie emerging from the mews opposite, but he turned right, very slowly, ignoring her in his turn. ‘Wanker,’ she said.

  ‘There’s a 14 coming,’ shouted Johnny, running the other way, towards the stop, and raising his hand.

  They sat at the front of the upper deck, the one place of notional privilege on a democratic bus, amid the sour fug of smokers past and present. Francesca had nothing smaller than a five-pound note, but she paid for them both, when the conductor at last came upstairs. ‘This is on me,’ she said. ‘Well, this is fun.’ Of course Johnny felt responsible for the bus, and for the heavy delays it fell into by some clumsy instinct. Francesca watched its progress, and watched the black cabs slipping past it and darting ahead and out of sight. Now the bus lumbered to a bus stop where a large group of tourists in bright rainwear almost blocked the pavement as they massed and funnelled in at the rear. At last the conductor pinged the cord, and they edged out five yards into the traffic backed up at the lights; which, on account of a blockage beyond the junction, changed twice before they passed them, the brief roar of progress braked immediately as they homed in on the person with arm raised at the next stop along.

  ‘I mean, it’s hopeless if they’re going to keep stopping,’ said Francesca.

  ‘Well, it’s sort of how it works, I suppose,’ said Johnny, with a little shrug at its undeniable drawbacks.

  ‘Do you do this a lot?’

  Johnny knew the rhythms and speeds of London transport, knew his Tube lines and four or five bus routes, and in the routines of waiting, letting one bus dismissively go and nodding satirically at the long-delayed sight of another, he still sensed the original beauty of living here. ‘Every day,’ he said. ‘To get to work, you know.’ He was pretty sure Francesca didn’t go to work herself. ‘Do you have a job?’

  ‘Not yet . . .’ she said. She might have meant things were not that desperate, but just possibly that she did have something in view. ‘No, I’m making plans, about various things – you’ll see.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ said Johnny. ‘About work, you mean.’

  She smiled but didn’t quite look at him. ‘You’ll see.’

  It was late for lunch when they got off the bus outside Burlington House, but clearly Francesca had no hidebound ideas about mealtimes. ‘So where do you want to eat?’ Johnny said. He was ravenous.

  ‘We’re going up here,’ said Francesca. And as he followed her up Bond Street, past Asprey’s and other old jewellers whose names he didn’t recognize, past clothes shops English and Italian, the Fine Art Society soon on one side, Sotheby’s on the other, with not a glimpse of anywhere to have lunch, he began to feel not only hungry but resentful. Francesca, striding onward in her scarlet boots and black coat, was the match for any of the mannequins in the windows; men and women coming towards them dwelt on her with just a hint of amusement at her style, and looked at him too to see how he was related. He felt he had to absorb, or share, or repel their varying reactions to her, the penalty of the shy with the un-shy. ‘Here we are,’ she said, leaning suddenly on the tall glass door of Fenwick’s and with a second’s show of weakness as Johnny reached above her to push and hold it open.

  ‘I’ve not been in here before,’ he said, ‘have they got a cafe?’ All he could see was the complicated gleam, mirrors among panels of white and gold, the round and square stations of the cosmetics sellers with their glass display counters and further small angled mirrors, among which you had to thread your way to reach hats, scarves and lingerie. A strolling woman in a wide-shouldered suit offered Francesca a squirt from a tester and as she ignored her Johnny bared his wrist instead. In the fifteen seconds before it dried, flapping his hand obligingly, Johnny caught a sweet stab of freesia – it was a game the assistant didn’t much like playing, with a woman’s perfume. To him it was a memory of a game, with his mother, in Freeman’s at home, or for a big day’s shopping in Coventry, she quite firm, when they went in, about what she wanted, but testing anything on offer. ‘I’ve no space left,’ she would say, ‘try it on him!’ In the car going home he offered her his wrists in turn, she took her hands in turn off the wheel, and they shared a world of sensation and suggestion, not always agreeing. He saw Francesca on the far side of the shop, and went after her.

  She was standing with her hand on one of the tall stools where customers perched for consultations, and gazing at a woman on a similar stool two counters across. The intervening displays half-concealed her, though the young woman in a black frock who was applying the make-up was perhaps aware they were being looked at. The customer was a woman of about fifty, in a green floral dress – she had taken off her coat, which lay on the counter beside her handbag. She had something awkward but committed about her, greying hair fiercely permed, the fading discomfort of someone still hot from the dryer. Francesca said nothing, but her raised hand brought Johnny under the puzzling spell of the moment – were they avoiding an encounter, or springing a surprise, or simply spying? He wondered for a minute if the woman might be a member of the Memo Club (but he didn’t think so); a friend of Iffy’s, perhaps . . . ? The girl moved round to fill in the merely sketched make-up of the left eye and eyebrow and Johnny saw her now full on. Framed by the upright of a cabinet on one side and by a pillar on the other the cosmetic artist was a work of art in herself, her large oval face burnished with graded layers of pink and something close to gold. Her eyes glittered between long black lashes, her mouth was a glossy purple red. It was flawless, a make-up for the camera, a diva on a box set, and with something underneath it pressing through none the less, a certain heaviness of resistance. She glanced across at them now – with a twitch of the mouth which might have been amusement or irritation at being watched.

  Perhaps the customers were stirred by the glamour of the staff, who were advertisements as well as artists. Johnny felt unhappy watching, with other shoppers passing by, but Francesca’s outstretched hand made him play the strange game. The woman raised her chin and turned her head patiently, as prompted by the large girl in black; when she could, she glanced in the mirror on the counter. She was unaware of the spectators, but determined to present a new face to the world, to the street, when the session was done. She looked somewhat anxious, but the session itself was a treat, and not to be rushed. There was a sense besides that the girl had nothing else to do, and was lazily stretching the job out, anchoring her customer’s attention with a raised knuckle under her chin, two fingers at the temple to steady her as she darkened the doubting lashes into beating signals of attention. She said things to her, barely audible, now and then, calming and convincing her. When the woman looked down, the girl turned to Francesca and Johnny, stared for a second, and stuck out her tongue.

  At last it was done, the customer stood, looked quickly in the mirror over the counter, put on her coat. She didn’t want to stare at herself, transformed now like the assistant, a Turandot among the Thursday afternoon shoppers. She bought a little box, like Johnny’s watercolour tin, coloured squares, and took her purse from her handbag. Francesca came forward, smiling like a waiting customer, her impatience concealed in a cool concern for the customer before her. ‘You do look nice,’ she said.

  ‘Oh . . . !’ – the woman looked at her uncertainly, almost touchily, but a compliment had to be taken for what it was. ‘Thank you.’ The girl gave her her change, which she put into her purse, and then, very quickly, as if forced to perform some intimate act in public, she took out a pound note, folded it, and slipped it into the girl’s relaxed but retentive hand. ‘Till next time,’ she said.

  They watched her go, her tight-curled head passing out into the street.

  ‘Lovely,’ said the girl.

  ‘Wasn’t she a darling,’ said Francesca.

  ‘Mrs Tucker,’ said the girl, ‘from Guildford.’

  ‘Mm, an
d where is she going now?’

  ‘She sees her friend Sylvia in Clapham once a month. She always comes to me first.’

  ‘Wise woman,’ said Francesca, with a funny chuckle.

  Johnny was aware the girl was looking at him, as she tidied the counter. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  ‘Johnny, this is Una.’ Una put her hand out coyly, but when he shook it her grip was firm. He stood there in the well-meaning uncertainty of introduction to the friend of a friend.

  ‘Johnny Sparsholt,’ he said. She studied him, as she must have studied strangers twenty times a day, with the still competence of the professional. She saw problems and possibilities.

  ‘We’re going upstairs, dear,’ said Francesca.

  ‘OK,’ said Una, turning to replace her pencils and brushes beneath the counter.

  ‘Who’s on this afternoon?’

  ‘Not sure – Greta?’

  ‘Oh, I love her.’ Francesca drew him on, with a hand for a moment under his upper arm. ‘See you in a bit.’

  They went through to where the steep-stepped escalator trundled untiringly upwards.

  ‘Is Una coming up here?’

  ‘She’ll come up when she finishes. She’s meant to have forty minutes, but if they’re busy . . .’ – she looked at him, on the step below but level with her: ‘Poor thing, she works so hard.’

  In the cafe everything was small and expensive, a menu of items you didn’t precisely want; he ordered fish pie. As the waitress turned away Francesca excused herself and went off to the Ladies, and Johnny sat back and slipping the coloured band off his wrist pulled his hair into a bunch and snapped the band around it. He looked blankly at the menu in its stand, and was sunk for a minute in the department-store mood, the dim murmur of voices beyond rhythmical escalators, the air of refuge from the street, the interest and tedium of shopping for clothes, toiletries, soft furnishings. It was his own school holidays again, only child of a mother who didn’t work, but kept busy, who took him in with her through glass doors, over flashy marble downstairs, along carpeted perspectives above, where men in late middle age fussed for you over measurements and checked on the phone about discontinued lines. All the shop’s promise of abundance was pinched and sorted into lines, things in stock, or on order, or no longer available. The most imperious shopper must adjust herself to the available, fall in with the range, the season’s styles, become in a way the servant of the shop – or of course take her custom elsewhere.

  ‘Ah,’ said Francesca, settling as the waitress brought their drinks. ‘No, it’s not Greta . . .’

  Johnny turned in his seat. ‘What is it . . . ?’

  ‘I admire her, though, don’t you?’

  At this late hour for lunch only half the tables were taken, shopping bags tilted against chairs, and between them, moving patiently and courteously, strolled a tall young woman in a beige tartan suit with a short matching cape and a pillbox hat. With raised hands turning and pointing as if discreetly undecided about which way to go, she gave the sense, none the less, of having a clear purpose. She smiled at the lunchers, her gaze dropping across the tables, as though to note what they were having, but not meeting their eye. She engaged them and released them in a passing moment of goodwill and just perceptible embarrassment: it was odd to be invited to stare – though she was too polite, in her serene revolutions, to stare at them.

  ‘They don’t still do that . . .’

  ‘Don’t you love it?’ Francesca did stare, a calculating look, with a sly lift of an eyebrow when the woman came alongside. ‘Is it available in other colours?’ she said.

  The young woman stopped, though a tendency to revolve still showed itself above the waist. There was a consciousness of drama in asking her to speak. ‘Yes, love – I think there’s sort of a reddish one? Maybe a blue, but I’m not sure we’ve got it.’ She snubbed her nose. ‘Do you like it then?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not for me,’ said Francesca. ‘Do a turn for me?’

  And with a subtle feeling, not unwelcome to either, that the rules had been broken, the girl turned her back on them, lifted the cape and angled her bottom first one way then the other.

  7

  He met up with Francesca and Una again at six thirty, outside Liberty’s, and they took him to a small bar in a side street off Regent Street, where you wouldn’t have expected a bar to be – was it a new arrival or a survivor? Beyond the pub door with its small opaque window was a heavy curtain that kept the draught from the drinkers and his main effort once they’d skirmished past it was to seem unfazed, even happy, at being the only man there. Una pushed her way through to the bar, though it wasn’t a struggle, she was greeted and patted by two friends as she pressed past, and she leant across the counter, unsmiling, for a kiss from the barmaid – if that was the right word. Johnny did spot a grumpy-looking man with short grey hair in the corner, who suddenly got up and came to the bar with the unmistakable arse of a woman. His main worry was that they would object to him, and he nodded his hair forward to conceal himself, without supposing it would fool them.

  In fact when they’d been there ten minutes, and Una had introduced him to one or two of them, he had a feeling he’d been briefly admitted to a more civilized place than usual – a kind of high-minded solidarity, untouched by any sexual interest, seemed to support him, without going quite so far as to welcome him. He felt it would be bad manners to stay too long. He saw too that Una, who said almost nothing, was a figure in the bar – not far from where she worked, on the hinge between Mayfair and Soho. Francesca this evening was decidedly Mayfair, played up to her poshness and temperament, and drank beer from the bottle with just a bit too much carelessness. Una and Johnny had gin and tonics. A friend of theirs called Mary, small, dark, beautiful, in tweed jacket and brown jodhpurs, asked him what he did.

  ‘I’m an artist,’ he said, ‘yes, I’m a painter,’ in the palpable spirit of the bar of being what you wanted to be.

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  He sensed the question was clever, not philistine. ‘At college I was an abstract expressionist,’ he said, ‘well, lots of us were, not just me! Now I’m hoping to focus on portraits.’

  ‘Not abstract . . . ?’

  ‘That’s right.’ A quick flirty calculation was allowed in his study of her head, and her clothes. She seemed wittily to be a lesbian now and also forty years ago, but he wasn’t sure. ‘Have you been painted?’

  ‘Oh, not yet,’ she said, as though she had a proper sense of when such a thing should happen. But also as if some proposal had casually formed. In the first small lift of the gin, a pub measure, not much, but nicely unfixing, he felt (what he wasn’t of course) in love with her, and watching her then, as she drew out a soft leather pouch and constructed a roll-up, was abashed by her quiet authority. ‘You wouldn’t have so much freedom, of course,’ she said, ‘being a portrait painter. You have to please people who often have no idea about painting.’

  ‘I hope once I’ve got started they’ll know what sort of thing they’re in for.’

  ‘That’s true. And it’s certainly a more dependable source of income,’ Mary said. ‘I only say all this because my grandfather’s a painter. You may not have heard of him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ He sat forward on the low stool and twiddled the ends of his hair.

  ‘You don’t have to pretend you’re a woman,’ said Una.

  He blushed and laughed, on his mettle not to take offence. He never thought of himself as feminine, though women looked at him and spoke to him, in rivalry and understanding, on the street, or in the disordering gale of the Underground. And at that moment someone touched him on the shoulder, he turned apologetically, and she said, ‘I like your hair!’

  ‘Oh, thank you . . . very much,’ said Johnny, and kept on blushing, the centre of all this chaste female attention.

  ‘I’ll do it for you, if you want,’ said Una.

  ‘Oh . . .’ said Johnny, flattered, and unnerved a little, as he hadn’t thought it
needed doing. Then he played up, shook it back. ‘That would be great’ – he tried to hold Una’s eye as she studied him, speculatively, biting her lip at the scale of the task.

  In the restaurant Fran and Una spoke about the Sol y Sombra with a mixture of excitement and scepticism Johnny found hard to follow. ‘You’ve been to the Solly, haven’t you?’ said Francesca.

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Johnny said. ‘That’s the thing.’ It had been dangled in front of him for the past two months; he’d stood outside its door.

  ‘I thought you were going with Ivan?’

  Johnny shook his head. ‘Well, we went. But the power went off that night. We got there and they’d put a sign up – they’d had to close.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll love it,’ said Francesca.

  Una didn’t seem so sure. ‘It’s somewhere to go,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we’ll be all right now.’

  ‘You mean, now the power’s back on?’

  ‘Oh god, do you think Audrey will be there?’ Una said.

  ‘God,’ said Francesca. ‘I don’t believe she’d dare.’

  ‘I think she will,’ said Una. And they talked to each other about Audrey for a bit, while Johnny’s smile faded. The girls were taking him out and showing him life, and he felt a small shameful reluctance that he didn’t have a man to explore with. Well, Ivan was supposed to be turning up later, but he was a worry as much as a help. ‘So shall we get the bill?’ he said.

  Francesca looked at her watch. ‘You are keen,’ she said.