by S. E. Lynes
‘Bugger.’
If she can’t get hold of the passports, the plan is dead on departure. Her advantage lies in a fait accompli. Peter won’t be able to tell her how to do it if she’s already done it, will he?
There must be some record of the combination somewhere in the house. She knows Peter keeps his bank card PINs in his phone under Caravag1 and Caravag2. It’s possible the safe combination is also in his phone under a similarly stupid name. Something imaginative like, say, Caravag3.
With heavy tread, she takes the steps back up to the ground floor, the carpeted staircase up to the first, where Emily is whining and holding up her arms.
‘Come on, baby,’ she says softly. ‘Let’s get you out for a walk.’
She is wrestling Emily into her padded suit when it occurs to her that Aisha might know the combination, so it is Aisha she calls as she walks down the hill towards the town, Aisha who answers after one ring.
‘Sam, are you all right?’
For a moment, Samantha flounders. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘Nothing. I just thought … after last night …’
‘I’m fine. I … It’s all fine. Listen, are you free now? Do you fancy meeting up?’ She can ask Aisha what she needs to over the phone but it would be nice to see someone, a friend, if only to reassure herself that she still has one.
‘I … I suppose.’
They arrange to meet at the riverside in an hour, on the bench in front of the Pitcher and Piano. In town, Samantha calls in at Courlanders, the jeweller’s. She chooses two plain gold bands, gives them the candle for Peter’s ring size and tells them she’ll pick them up the following Wednesday. She will present them to Peter on Thursday when she announces her surprise. Yet again, she feels a surge of excitement. Taking control is a buzz.
She heads back up George Street and takes the right turn down past the Curzon to the riverside. The bench is empty, so she sits and watches the boatbuilders on the quay. The air smells resinous, the faint whiff of varnish and sawdust, the cooler damp notes of the river. A pale shadow falls.
‘Hey.’ Aisha is standing over her, hands on hips. She is dressed in Lycra sports kit and is even managing to sweat attractively. She cocks her head and pulls out first one earbud then the other, before turning off the iPod clipped to her sports vest.
‘Thought I’d multitask,’ she says.
‘Impressive,’ Samantha replies, aware that on the outside she must appear confident, relaxed, whole, when in fact she is afraid, tense, in pieces. In her belly, a hot flare of nerves rises at the thought of what she must now find to say and what it will mean for her and Aisha. But as of last night, when a plan clarified itself in her mind, her life has been no more than a play; that’s all it is, all it can be for now. She just has to grit her teeth and take it scene by scene.
Aisha plonks herself down on the bench. ‘So you said it was all fine?’
Samantha pauses a moment before rolling her eyes in what she hopes is a self-deprecating way. ‘So, I’m such an idiot. I remembered when I got home that Peter’s niece is in town. He actually told me she was coming and he, like, even said he was taking her to the theatre. But this was weeks ago and I forgot and I don’t think he mentioned which play it was or I would have remembered. I thought he had a meeting but that’s next week. I’d read the calendar wrong.’ She makes herself laugh. ‘I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.’
Aisha frowns, her brow knits. ‘Sorry, I … His niece, did you say?’
Peter has no sisters or brothers. If Samantha knows this, Aisha sure as hell will. Christ, lying is complicated; how do people do it?
‘Niece, cousin,’ she spits out. ‘Something, anyway, I can’t remember. Jen, her name is. Jem. Jemima.’ Shut up, Samantha. Really.
‘Jemima?’
‘Something like that. Gosh, I’m hopeless, aren’t I? Baby brain! Anyway,’ she blusters – horribly, awkwardly, unable to look anywhere near Aisha’s face, focusing instead on her neon-pink running shoes, ‘I do have some exciting news, although maybe I shouldn’t tell you until you’ve processed—’
‘No,’ Aisha says, though her voice is small. ‘You can tell me anything, Sam – you know you can.’
‘You’re not going to be pleased.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Trust me, I do. But remember I said last night not to judge? Well, the thing is, Peter asked me to marry him again and I … I said yes.’
‘You said yes?’
‘I did.’ Samantha closes her eyes a moment against the shocked expression on Aisha’s face, opens them to see it still there. Oh God, this is hard, so much harder than she thought. Lying to Peter is one thing, but …
‘Are you sure that’s what you want?’ Aisha is looking out at the river now, her hands clasped in her lap. There is an almost imperceptible film of tears in her eyes. Samantha wishes she could tell her everything, almost does. But it’s best that Aisha despairs of her. It will protect her later.
‘I know you had a rough time with him,’ she says gently. ‘And I know he’s been a shit, trust me, I do. But I have to believe in second chances.’ That’s twice she’s said trust me. It’s the phrase Peter always uses. Funny that it should enter her speech habits now, when she is at her most dishonest.
‘You think he’s changed.’ Aisha’s voice is flat.
‘I think he’s got more to lose,’ Samantha says. ‘I think he’s getting older and his power is ebbing away. Like King Lear, if you like.’
‘Come on, he’s not that old, Sam.’ Aisha is still frowning, but her face relaxes a little. ‘But yeah, he’s vain and foolish, I suppose. Cruel when he wants to be.’
Samantha exhales heavily. If there were a trapdoor to her life before meeting Peter, she would pull the lever and drop through this second. Rewind. Start again. Hold on to her plastic glass of wine and say, Actually, this wine is fine, thank you. I’m staying right here. Meet some skinny, awkward boy, have too much to drink, go home for not very good sex but maybe get the hang of it eventually, together, on equal terms. Except for Emily, of course.
‘I know this is hard for you,’ she says. ‘But I want to book a surprise honeymoon and I think the passports are in the safe. Don’t suppose you know the combination, do you?’
They are both looking out onto the river now, to where a tugboat chugs merrily along, its blades rotating nineteen to the dozen at the back, the water churning white.
‘I don’t know it exactly,’ Aisha says, her voice dull. ‘But I’ve got a strong feeling it’s the year of Caravaggio’s birth. Or death. One of those. Fifteen something. Sorry not to be clearer.’ And with an air of finality that makes Samantha’s guts churn, she stands up and puts one earbud in, then the other.
‘I’ll see you around,’ she says.
They both know that this is it, this is where their friendship ends, but Aisha’s smile is kind, her eyes soft. She is sad too, unbearably so. Samantha has to look away.
‘Good luck, Sam,’ she hears Aisha say, the words a rock in her chest.
She looks up and raises her hand. ‘Bye.’
But her friend is already running away.
Thirty-Five
It’s late afternoon by the time she gets home. She’s exhausted; her legs ache. By the time she’s fed and changed Emily and settled her onto her play mat under her mobile, she wants only to lie down next to her baby and let sleep take her under. But Peter will be back in an hour and, driven by what has become an obsessive desire to get done what she started this morning, she hurries back down into the cellar.
On her phone, there is a screen shot of the Caravaggio Wikipedia page. Two dates: 1571 and 1610. Caravaggio didn’t last long, she thinks. But that’s what happens to bastards who live their lives with scant concern for laws of common decency. At forty, Peter is doing well, considering. But he should watch his step.
She inputs the first number into the keypad, is so far from expecting it to work that when it clicks and the door opens without a
hitch, her mouth too opens, in shock. Bloody hell. Inside is a slim pile of documents, at the top of which are their three passports, and for a moment she panics that it’s all too easy. But it hasn’t been, not really. Who keeps their passports in a safe, for God’s sake? It’s not like they work for MI5.
She runs up the cellar steps and boots up the home computer. The flights are still available; she gives an overenthusiastic whoop and punches the air. She’s always wondered if anyone actually does that, but there, she just did. Frankly, this whole deception thing is proving so much more fun than almost anything she’s ever done before. And if her entire life weren’t in tatters, she’d have to admit that anger is just as good a life force as any other.
She begins to fill in the details. She will have to pay from her account. Peter would notice the money leaving his account immediately, but he won’t check hers until the end of the month, unless she’s really unlucky. Despite her generous allowance, she will have only just enough to cover the flights plus the wedding fee. She will have to pay for the rings in cash, although who can give her a loan, she has no idea. Later. Cross that bridge when you get to it.
The sight of her passport mugshot catches her off guard. Her eyes fill with tears. She renewed her passport the year she came to uni, convinced that she would travel during the holidays. But the student loan was so intimidating, the rental on the flat had to cover the entire summer, not just term time, and her parents couldn’t help. Her holidays weren’t holidays at all but spent working in bars and cafés, putting every last pound not towards a trip around Europe but towards her degree, her future, which is now ruined. But it is not this that makes her cry. It is the expression of hope on her face; her own youth makes her feel like a bitter old crone in comparison. Two years ago. Not even that. She worked so hard to escape the ugliness of her life in Yorkshire, only to end up here, in a life so beautiful on the surface but beneath, uglier still.
Her fingers curl into fists, nails digging into the palms of her hands, and she lets out a cry of rage.
Use it, she tells herself. Use the rage. Control it. Small steps. Small, careful steps.
She slides Peter’s passport across the desk and opens it. His photo is uncanny – he looks exactly the same as he does now. Peter Pan. Like Lottie’s piece of flash fiction said. No, you’re not Peter Pan, she thinks, running her finger beneath the passport number. Peter Pan was nice. Dorian Gray is what you are, a beautiful, beautiful monster.
She types the passport number into the booking form, followed by Peter’s date of birth, 5 February 1978. Glancing back at the passport, she pauses. His date of birth there is given as 1968.
Her head throbs. There is a mistake on Peter’s passport. She will have to call the passport office and find out how to correct it. Peter is forty. They celebrated just last month. He made no secret of it; just didn’t want a big fuss. Rustic candlelit dinner for two at the new pizza place, bottle of fizz, bottle of red. Low-key, he said, if there’s a zero on the end. Why on earth would anyone want to celebrate being a decade older?
Reeling, she reads the date again and again, willing it to change, for her eyesight to prove her wrong, for the numbers to melt and re-form. But they won’t. They won’t ever. Of course. Peter’s particular brand of the truth: present a little, let whoever hears it complete it.
There is no mistake.
Peter is not forty.
Peter is fifty.
‘No,’ she shouts at his unchanged, uncanny, unbelievable passport shot. ‘No, no, no.’
But it makes horrible sense. Every event of her recent life lines up with grotesque precision, drops into an ordered row of slots, the click of the correct combination on a safe door, the rush of two-pence pieces in an arcade waterfall. Lottie is a nearly middle-aged woman. Peter must have been around thirty when he left that school; Lottie was just sixteen. He said he was a couple of years older but he was twice her age! For Peter to be forty, Lottie would have to be in her late twenties now, not her late thirties.
‘For Christ’s sake, Samantha,’ she shouts at no one but herself, tears of frustration at her own stupidity running hot down her cheeks. Why didn’t she see? Why didn’t she think clearly? Too busy, once the seamy details began their oozing leakage, trying to figure out whether he’d changed, if he was a better man now, if there was a way to put his past behind them, if she, Samantha, could be that way, that person, that saviour. Second chances. Redemption. Bullshit.
There is too much past. Too much of it.
‘The hair dye,’ she wails into her fingers. ‘Oh God, the hair dye.’
She is on her knees on the floor of his study. She is banging her fists against the Moroccan rug, the story of the purchase of which was one of his early anecdotal flirtations. He has never told her, not in numbers, how old he is.
‘I’m older than you,’ he has said. And, ‘Trust me, I’ve been around a little longer.’
A few too many careful owners. Vintage. Mature. Experienced. Trust me. You’re safe.
‘Fuck.’ She is sobbing now. Too much, too much, too much deception masquerading as transparency. There is no point challenging him. ‘What?’ he will say. ‘I never told you I was forty.’ Because he didn’t. He didn’t say the actual words. Peter’s words, she thinks, are as slippery as snakes on the Medusa’s head.
Thirty-Six
A week later, Samantha arrives at the university at one thirty. She trips up the stone steps and swipes Peter’s card at the black entrance door. An electronic click. The door opens. She makes her way up the stairs to his office, where she swipes his card once again. She has only been to his office once, with him. It is larger than she remembers, lined with books, of course. On the wall are his certificates, photographs of ceremonies, university visits and socials. His leather desk sits adjacent to the window, which looks out over Gordon Square. But she is not here to look at the view.
In her pocket is a bag of pills. A bag once empty, left on the kitchen table. Peter saw it, picked it up as she knew he would and put it in the bin. Latex-gloved as a surgeon, Samantha retrieved it, put four pills inside, part of the stash Marcia got for her at the weekend from a friend who bought them from a guy in a club. She owes Marcia big time, and that’s without even mentioning the cash for the rings.
She closes the office door behind her. The latex gloves have come in handy. This morning she used a pair to remove Peter’s little stash from its hiding place, tip it into a tiny travel shampoo bottle and replace it with washing powder. The shampoo bottle is in her handbag, where it will stay until she needs it. Now she pulls on a new pair as she slips the plastic bag out of her pocket and winkles it to the back of the top right-hand drawer of his desk. Shuffles various pens, articles and official-looking letters in front and, satisfied that he won’t see it, at least not today, closes the drawer. That’s all she has to do for now.
She takes off the gloves and wanders over to Peter’s bookshelf. As at home, the books are in alphabetical order. At the Gs, she stops, a title catching her eye: Artemisia Gentileschi: Images of Female Power. She pulls the book out. The cover shows a painting at once familiar and unfamiliar – she’s pretty sure it’s Judith beheading Holofernes. It looks very like the image Peter showed in that first lecture. But this is not Caravaggio’s painting, she’s almost convinced; there is something even more shocking about this one.
She takes the book to Peter’s desk and sits down. Flips through, and yes, she was right, here is the Caravaggio picture, for comparison. Beneath, she reads: Judith Beheading Holofernes, Caravaggio, c.1598–9. Intrigued, she finds the cover version on the next page with, beneath it: Judith Slaying Holofernes, Gentileschi, c.1614–20.
She skim-reads, flipping back and forth between the two images. Gentileschi was younger than Caravaggio – her painting came later. She was ten when she first met him, and Caravaggio’s version is believed to be the main influence on her later work. But in the Caravaggio, the murder appears almost effortless. The image is still bloody, of course,
but Judith looks unsure, worried perhaps, standing at arm’s length from her victim, her servant almost cowering behind her. Gentileschi, by contrast, has both her women bearing down, working as a team, the physical effort much more obvious in their poses, their faces determined, focused. It has taken two women to overpower this guy, whoever he is. And from the expression on his face, he knows they will not stop until his head has been severed. This is the better painting, Samantha thinks. Why has she not heard of this woman?
She reads on, willing Peter to be late while she finds out more. Gentileschi’s work was a protest against the abuse she suffered at the hands of men. Rape, repression, injustice. She used her own face in the painting. Just as Caravaggio was his own Medusa, Gentileschi is Judith. Holofernes … Holofernes is someone called Agostino Tassi. Samantha’s eyes scour the page, find the name once again, lower down. Tassi, she reads, was Artemisia’s rapist.
‘Whoa,’ she whispers.
Of course Gentileschi’s work is more violent than Caravaggio’s. This woman was working from a place of deep visceral fury. She was exacting her revenge.
The door flies open. It’s a little after one forty-five. Peter’s face is flushed, his hairline damp with sweat. He has clearly run through the campus and, judging by the look on his face, is surprised to see her there. But he soon rearranges his features.
‘You’re early,’ he says and smiles, almost shyly. She wonders why he has felt the need to run. Perhaps he wanted to take something before she got here, get himself in the mood. Who knows? Who knows how much, how often he takes this stuff? He might simply have rushed so as to see her all the sooner. That’s the problem with a loss of trust: everything that comes after is loaded with suspicion; the ninety-nine per cent trust becomes one. The one per cent doubt becomes the ninety-nine.
And so here they are.
Peter stands on the other side of the desk, as if he is the student and she the tutor. For a moment neither of them says a word. She wonders if either of them will be able to go through with what they have planned without embarrassment. But then she remembers the play. This might, she thinks, be Act Two.
