Thomas put down the phone, unplugged it for removal to his bedroom. He had left two messages: any more would be redundant, until, perhaps, she had found her car. The telephone was by his leather wing armchair, a high-backed chair in which he could almost conceal his small self, facing the other, identical chair on the far side of an elegant fireplace. The apartment, top floor on the corner of the block, had two living rooms. A night room and a day room, he called them. One faced north, one south and that was the room with the turret and the high windows. Both had the same wooden floors and the same chairs, the same dimensions and thick rugs. This room in which the fireplace formed a focus was vast and faced north, the walls cream, the paintings many. Three hot Tuscan landscapes compared themselves with the grey sky which was all he could see over the rooftops on the other side of the back road. The other room, across the corridor, had cream walls and no pictures hanging. It had been extended into the turret and thus boasted high windows on one wall and low windows with a view on to the road below on the adjacent wall, light from two sources. Far too light for him to sit in there by day.
‘I don’t suppose you’d think of moving? To somewhere smaller, where you might make friends? Really, you are ridiculous. Oh God, I didn’t mean that. Not ridiculous as in, Ridiculous. I mean your situation. You’re so incredibly stubborn. You pursue a perfection you will never find.’
‘No, I don’t think of moving. I have plans. This is my inheritance, all this space, and I have plans.’ Thomas looked at his feet. Well shod in slip-on shoes, one slipping off. He bent to tidy himself, smiling. Thomas had reaIized from frequent glances in the mirror that one of his afflictions was the inability to conceal a look of amusement. Or any facial expression. His smiles were far from subtle, all expressions exaggerated, forehead never quite in repose, except when Thomas ceased to struggle with speech when his whole face lapsed into something unfathomably sad, bitter or grim, depending on the angle of his smoked-glass spectacles, worn to rakish effect. This was equally uncomfortable for the uninitiated: it was almost preferable to make him talk, not that his speech was poetry in sound, either. He often consulted a photograph to wonder at how much and how dramatically his appearance had changed, aware that it had never been memorable in the first place and now bore no resemblance to the younger man. He looked far older than he was.
‘Of course. You meant what you said. You have that tendency, admirable in you. I am quite ridiculous in all respects. Perfectly ridiculous.’
The words, hesitating and then rushed, emerged before a small bark of laughter and a smile of such width it consumed discomfort. He looked back towards his shoes and the saffron rug which had slid into ripples beneath his feet.
‘Self-deception: an art form,’ Thomas said suddenly and apologetically. He was able to speak with clarity although the words were like shots from an ancient gun; he could not always control their speed or emphasis. He always knew exactly what he was saying and was able to correct.
‘I meant, I should have to develop self-deception into an art form to make myself believe I was anything but ridiculous. If you see what I mean.’ He grunted and waved a hand in vague explanation, grinning again, that boyish grin which belied his physical condition, a condition more appropriate to ripe old age. Thomas had been forty-two when he had suffered the stroke: the other accidents were earlier. He was now forty-eight, a parcel of gross and bitter irritation, a real hair shirt of a man to himself, charming to others.
‘You’re looking well, Tom: healthy and fit.’ Thomas spoke in a high voice heralded by an arc of spittle as he leant forward to the chair opposite across the empty fireplace.
‘What absolute rubbish you talk. Would you like a gin? The room’s ready, any time you like. The room’s been ready for a long time. I simply want you to restore perfection to my life. In return, I shall give you a perfect life, perfect opportunities and you will understand this bargain, won’t you? People rarely understand the gift horse, you see. They expect it to bite. You’ll understand, though. You were always highly receptive.’
At his feet the dog stirred. An ugly dog, black and white with a grey muzzle, the colour mimicking the mottle of Thomas’s own hair, where the grey blonde was artfully streaked with black. The door opened to a timid knock. Maria came in with his coffee, glanced as she often did towards the pictures, checking for changes, smiling but not quite approving. He smiled back automatically as she left. Dear Maria: she liked only the icons. Those contrived images which were part of his inheritance too, the few remaining relegated to the hall because he did not enjoy them; living in shadow, they were, long since.
The chair opposite Thomas was empty.
Elisabeth left the rug at the dry-cleaners on the way home. The smell of it, inelegant even before the pungent deposits of the cat, which Enid had displayed that morning with ill-concealed triumph, afflicted several nostrils on the Underground train and allowed Elisabeth, who never cared much for such sensitivities, inured as she was to strange smells, the privilege of space. She knew she was only requesting the express cleaning of the rug in an unstated desire to infuriate Enid. Enid with her constant notes, her pernicious cleanliness, nosiness, open-door policy, the unofficial concierge of the house who trapped them all as they came indoors and expected nothing back in exchange but tea and company, entry into all their apartments for gossip. Which was too high a price, far too high. No one else minded paying it when they were there, but Elisabeth did not share the view of Enid as godsent and made that clear. She never let Enid past her portals, and Enid was bitterly hurt, encouraged herself in the impression that the highly coloured Miss Young, whom she judged as being half her age, with twice her opportunities, serenely free of tragedy, was a person who never opened her door to anyone who was not a man. The fact that Enid was both wounded and envious did not impinge on Elisabeth, who simply considered her domineering, a power-hungry old woman who deserved no more than please and thank-you. Enid considered Elisabeth a walking indictment of everything she was not: free, beautiful, loved; one from whom she had begged affection only to be slapped in the soul. Sharply. Misunderstanding had grown to virulent dislike, unhinging now into something more because of the corrosive effect of Enid’s loneliness. On Sundays the loneliness drove Enid mad. She was not herself on the Sabbath.
Elisabeth stopped on the corner, decided to postpone checking her car. It would be a waste of precious daylight and the ambivalence, and occasionally snobbery, with which she regarded her small store of possessions depressed her. She hesitated, dazzled by the leaves beginning to fall in a green and gold litter which would soon become a carpet. There were times when she wished she could paint instead of labouring so assiduously to present what others had done, but that was no more than a passing thought. Then, without her knowing whether the sound was fact or fanciful, she heard the footsteps again, one two click, one two click, slowly, the sound muffled as the stick touched on the cushion of leaves. Without looking round, Elisabeth ran to the door of the house.
Pattering up the street with two large bags of groceries and her mind divided equally between a new home perm to save on the nightly ritual, and the grocer who had tried to cheat her out of two pence, Enid saw the door of her shared house open and close. As soon as the door slammed, a sound she recognized as the product of Elisabeth’s carelessness and contempt, another figure came from the opposite direction, crossing the man who had followed Elisabeth up the street, twenty yards distant like an Indian servant. Really. Enid watched the taller figure bounding up the steps. One of the young men: delivery man, customer, friend, foe or relative, Enid did not distinguish. Elisabeth had more visitors a month than herself in six. Enid, the abandoned one who drove herself out of doors each day to work in a job she had loathed for years, while Elisabeth need not. She stiffened and readjusted her shopping. If that rug was back in the hallway, she might well scream. Politely, bitterly, Enid paused until the door was once again closed. No one ever waited for her. The one consolation she knew in that tide of deferenti
al, viciously curious dislike, was the fact that Elisabeth’s visitors might also fall on the rug in the hall. So would Enid’s son and daughter if they ever visited, but that was another, long forgotten story.
‘You’re very trusting, Lizzie. How did you know it was me? What happened to the rug in the hall?’
‘I saw you from the window. Your feet, anyway. The rug’s at the cleaners.’
‘I see,’ said Francis, disbelieving, but cheerful. ‘You weren’t expecting anyone else, then?’ This last with the merest touch of jealousy.
‘Nope. I was going to do some work.’
‘What? As well as wait in hope for me? Too dark for your kind of work, isn’t it? Especially in here? Why on earth do you live in a basement? Thought you might like a drink instead. Fine Rioja.’ He had been trying to educate her palate, which seemed geared to quantity rather than quality. ‘Come on, Lizzie, you look as white as a sheet.’ Work was the only occupation which defined her life, the only thing which would distract her sufficiently now to quell the fear. Elisabeth did not begin to explain that it was perfectly possible to work all night, dark or not, provided she used the lights in her studio room. The daylight bulbs, clever neon tubes to simulate morning, swamping the canvas with a chilly glow like a bright dawn, also used for cold colours. Or the warm lights, tungsten, for earth colours, illuminating each tone of flesh and soil. Possible to work like this, but not comfortable for long: she had come to crave natural daylight more than she craved food. Francis enjoyed the end product of her labours, without any real curiosity about how anything was actually done: mercifully never interfered. There were four rooms in this small rented apartment which he had needed to see in their three-month affair: the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen the better to find a corkscrew, and the bathroom, in that order. He cavorted in front of her, danced back with a glass, presented it full with an elaborate flourish. He was a mimic, a raconteur, a natural cheerer, waiting his chance to tell the tales of his days and make her laugh. Francis tried to make people laugh: it was one of his talents.
‘What’s the matter, Lizzie?’ he repeated. ‘How was yesterday?’
‘Oh, fine.’ She seemed mesmerized by his constant activity, his presumption of welcome, his determination, his simply being there. All energy and optimism: she could hear it in his step, remembered instead the other footsteps, one two click, one two click, hounding from the distance of her imagination, all the way up the street, still in her ears like the buzzing of tinnitus.
‘Good,’ he said comfortably, making himself at home on the leather wing chair which Elisabeth seemed to supply solely for guests, battered, festooned with fine spots of white emulsion paint; nothing in here was unflawed. ‘So you had an easy day, then.’
She sat, wearily, the eyes straying to the naïve paintings she had propped against the wall of the living room, detesting those innocent faces, wishing she were alone, but grateful to be otherwise. How unreliable was this need for company, an unstable addiction. Francis was the last of a succession, the man she loved with a quiet desperation because he so loved life. She envied him nothing, rejoiced in his uncomplicated enthusiasm. She loved his body, too, which gave and received with such abandon and then slept its sound, uncluttered sleep like an athlete after a race. She loved him for his look of surprise on waking, the artless anticipation of another day, the sheer youthfulness of him which seemed to have died in her own soul but fell from his like a blessing. But she endeavoured, successfully with her disciplined mind, not to need him, because he clearly did not need her. She was not fit for this golden boy, who loved her back, but only as a bee might relish a flower. He was like all the others, come to take honey, because she could be relied upon never to criticize, always to encourage, rarely to refuse, succumbing to an endless desire to please which was not the same thing as a graceful welcome. She should work, subdue this longing.
‘I wish I were like you. You never worry,’ was all she said. He does not need me, I must not need him, was what she thought.
‘Of course I do!’ He was indignant. ‘Of course I have to worry about work, I never know from one day to the next, shows how little you know …’ He paused, aware, with a strictish regard for truth, that this was not entirely accurate; he might not have known exactly what he would have to do, but employment was guaranteed. ‘Well,’ he continued, defensively, ‘you don’t have to worry, either, do you? You’re a qualified scientist, and if you’re stuck on your beam ends, wouldn’t your parents help?’
Elisabeth shot him a look of withering scorn, quickly translated into a half smile. That look of contempt for his ilk, no explanation ever forthcoming; an accusation of his lack of knowledge of the real world. He resented the element of condescension. She had a father, hadn’t she? Families like theirs were always supportive, however complicated.
‘Oh, come on, Liz; you don’t have to live on the breadline. You could teach, or become a famous fraudster, make a fortune. The choice is yours.’
‘Please don’t call me Liz, and yes, I do. Need to live like this. Where I come from, you got beaten for stealing, thrashed for cheating.’
‘It all depends on whether you get caught.’
He sat beside her, put his arm round her without response or resistance, kissed her neck. She smiled, felt warm, but did not move. Her eyes had gone back to the staring canvases which awaited removal to the scene of work where Francis never went, nor herself, either, if there were someone else on the premises: her secret studio, her preserve, her room with insufficient light. She was one long tunnel of closed doors, Francis thought, suddenly vile-tempered, full of his own news, remembering her running away at the station, wanting one-hundred-per-cent attention and realizing in the same awful moment of knowledge that she might not have given him that, ever. Even in bed: it was the same in bed. She let you take her; she would lie with you; she was kind and attentive and affectionate, stroked your back, responded in a passionate, pliantly animal and silent way: you would leave semen traces on her sheets and not a fingerprint on her soul. In the early regions of Saturday evening he could already imagine Sunday morning, when this woman would make him coffee, and then, ever so politely, hang round him until he left. Never push or a shove; never a word to say, I wish you would leave, or I wish you would not leave; never anything which might provoke argument. Simply Elisabeth returning to her own private self, needing you to be gone so she could resume exactly where she had left off with a sigh of relief.
‘You don’t really want me here, do you, Liz?’
‘I love to see you,’ she was saying, avoiding his eyes as Annie the bargainer had avoided hers. Thinking of footsteps, she knew she could not tell him and risk his contempt; risk the rejection which might follow such needing. Better stay silent.
‘No, you don’t love to see me,’ he said, working himself into righteous anger. ‘You don’t at all. Sitting here, and going to bed with you is like snuggling up to some nice soft cushion. Which you knock back into shape as soon as my bum has left it. You do everything to please; you never say no, but you never say yes, either.’ Elisabeth began to shake.
‘Don’t get angry,’ she pleaded. ‘What is it? What do you want me to do? Kneel?’ Francis paused but only briefly. It was not him who was under attack for being a lazy, incurious lover; it was her, for being so diffident, deliberately leaving him ignorant. He did not treat her with public generosity or regard her as a major commitment: so far, she was too eccentric. Nor could he describe himself as a man in love, only a man wanting to be loved, choking on the huge but subtle insult of not being indispensable, being welcomed because he was there, no other reason. Anger returned in full force. He sat with his arms crossed, a man unloved, ready to shout.
‘I’ll tell you what you are, Elisabeth. You’re a cold fish, pretending to be a warm fish. You look like the Venus de Milo in the flesh, but you’ve already lost an arm. You couldn’t give a shit. And I suppose I might be one of many. It’s all an act with you. No wonder you could never keep a man. T
hey’d just give up. They’d go out and get an inflatable rubber doll.’
She was cringing slightly, enough to let him know he was hitting some raw nerve, and the pleasure of the stroke encouraged him. He was sick of the passivity of calm Elisabeth who never lost her cool or lost track of anything: he wanted to see what she did in the limelight of his retaliation. Gentleness, avoiding conflict, was part of the problem and the sharp suspicion that he, too, might have been the disposable man who was drawn from a closet whenever he should happen to open the door, his ego inflated and then put tidily away. The vision was insupportable: he got up in a state of delighted disgust.
‘Cold fish, Elisabeth. Oh, you’re wonderfully warm on the skin, but the rest of you’s an emotional frost. What happened to you? Come on, why?’
‘Could it be something to do with you? Why accuse me? You never asked, you know. You never really asked. Please don’t –’
‘Talk to you like this?’ he finished for her on a whining chant, remembering not her but some other woman who had nagged him for his ambivalence. Elisabeth never whined. ‘Mustn’t talk to Lizzie in any way which might get a reaction? Oh, no, no, no. Why should I bother?’
Francis was on his feet by now and the last outrage he could perceive was the fact that she still looked away from him, into the corner where stood three musty canvases, the smell of which had assaulted him as soon as he had reached the room, not a smell he would otherwise have minded, but one which was offensive in a place where his body was supposed to be welcome. Oil paintings, absorbent, taking in the smell of where they had been. She sat very still: the limits of her ability to respond even to insults and challenges were quickly exhausted. There was no point. In all the acuteness which dizzied him this evening, Francis knew that however much she shrank, she was already planning what she would do when he left, wanting no more than an end to this confrontation, and, what was more, he could envisage the same scene enacted by a dozen different men of the past or future. He crossed the room to the three stacked canvases, kicked the first savagely on the stretcher side, forgetting all his respect for the art of paint. All three fell with a crash, bringing her to her feet with a whimper of pain, over to his side in one ungainly stride to lift her arm and slap his face. Not a hard slap; it faltered in the execution, stroked the side of his lips, her open palm apologizing for the action even as it was made. They were both embarrassed.
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