He called Harmony.
‘Hey,’ he said when she answered. ‘It’s me.’
‘You okay?’
‘I’m good. You?’
‘In the middle of something.’
He tried to speak but the words stuck in his throat.
‘Is it important?’ she said, her voice tight with impatience.
‘Luke emailed me.’
‘Really?’ He heard her voice soften. ‘That’s good, isn’t it? What did he say?’
‘He wants to meet up. Either tonight or tomorrow at ours or his.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘I’m not sure. He’s keen to see me. Refusing seems rude, I think.’
‘Then you should. Do you want me there too?’
‘Yes. If that suits you, of course.’
‘Tonight would be better for me. At ours. I’ve got a lot of work to do. At least if the evening runs on, I can get back to it if I have to.’
‘So you think I should say yes to him?’
‘It’s up to you, Will. But if he’s coming you need to sort the food out. I’m up against a deadline at work. Jacob needs to see my interim draft by the end of the week.’
Will waited after the phone call ended for a moment or two, then took a deep breath and hesitantly typed a reply.
Hey Luke, yes it would be great to catch up. Why don’t you come to ours for 7ish tonight? I’ll cook something. Our address is 146a Hanniker Rd, W14.
Will wasn’t sure how to sign off. Yours sincerely? Kind regards? Best? He scrolled down to see how Luke had done it and saw a simple ‘Luke’. Will added his name and pressed send. Then he stared at his phone in his quivering hand.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ said a worried looking Frank as Will pushed back through the door. ‘A young woman came in asking for a bottle of pudding wine suitable to go with a chocolate roulade. I panicked.’
‘What did you go with?’
‘A bottle of the Estrella Moscatel de Valencia.’
‘Perfect,’ Will lied. ‘I’d have given her the same myself.’
Frank’s face relaxed. ‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘It was a bit of a punt, to be honest.’ Then he picked up his duster and Pledge from the top of the stepladder and went back to his spraying and polishing.
At five o’clock Will told Frank he had to leave to meet a client. Frank didn’t seem to mind; he said he needed some peace to tidy the cupboard in the kitchenette. Will walked down to the Sainsbury’s Local at Fulham Broadway. As he wandered up and down the aisles, memories of Luke bombarded him; things he’d forgotten came back to him as if it were yesterday, like the time they tore pages from their hymn books in assembly and made tiny paper aeroplanes. Then later they’d bunked off cadet training and scrambled up the wooded hillock behind the science block that was steep and overgrown and where nobody else ever went. They’d spent an hour launching their hymn-book planes in fits of giggles as the flimsy things looped and plopped at their feet or flew off in odd directions, both of them as close to happy as either of them could be in their school that felt more like a prison.
Will pushed through the front door of the flat laden with shopping bags and kicked it shut behind him. Harmony’s bag hung on the hook in the hallway.
‘Hello,’ he called, as he walked down to the kitchen. ‘Harmony?’ There was no answer. He put the bags on the worktop and then went back down the corridor to her study. The door was shut. He knocked as he opened it and saw her at the computer, the glasses she wore for close work perched on her nose and her hair tied up in a loose ponytail, revealing the soft, smooth skin of her neck.
‘Good day?’ he said, putting his hand on her shoulder and bending to kiss her.
She tilted her cheek towards his kiss but didn’t look away from the screen. ‘Fine.’
‘I didn’t know you were working from home,’ he said.
‘I came back at lunchtime. I left some notes here and needed them.’ She glanced at him. ‘My head’s all over the place, to be honest.’
‘Luke will be here about seven,’ he said. He paused, waiting for her to say something but she didn’t. ‘I’ll leave you to it and make a start on the supper. I bought steak.’
‘Lovely,’ she said, squinting at the screen. ‘Let me finish what I’m doing, then I’ll have a quick shower and be with you.’
‘No hurry.’ Will turned to head out of the study.
‘Will?’ she said, turning in her chair.
‘Yes?’
‘We really do need to talk soon. About trying for another baby.’ She smiled at him and his stomach turned over.
Before he began to unpack the shopping, he opened the bottle of Italian red he’d brought back from the shop. He always took a bottle home when the occasion deserved it, and this was one of his favourites. He poured himself a large glass, which he drank as he set about making French dressing and a salad, laid the table, put out salt, pepper, mustard, both English and French. A heaviness, a solemn resolution, had settled over him and he felt as if he were preparing a wake. When he’d finished, he topped up his wine and went outside. He sat at the wrought iron bistro table they’d found at a salvage yard a few years back. They’d planned to revamp it, rub the rust back, repaint it in a vibrant colour, something unusual, but it had never been done. Truth be told, Will liked the rust and chipped paint, it suited the garden – the rampant weeds that ate up the terrace, the overgrown shrubs that threatened to suffocate the small patchy lawn area.
Will sat for a while, nursing his glass of wine, his thoughts drifting to the conversation he’d had with Frank about his mother. However distant he’d been from his father, he forced himself to remember how lost she must feel without him. He tried to recall the last time he’d seen her. It was months ago.
The sound of the doorbell startled him.
Just be pleasant, he thought. Be pleasant and get it over with.
‘He’s here,’ he called in to Harmony as he passed their bedroom. He paused to draw a breath then opened the door.
Luke held a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine.
‘Hello, Will,’ he said, holding out the bottle.
Will took the bottle and glanced at the label. It was a Saint Emilion, a good year; he’d spent some money on it. ‘That’s a very generous gift,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s hard to buy wine for an expert,’ Luke replied. ‘The flowers are for your wife.’
‘That’s kind of you.’
They stood either side of the threshold. Neither moved or spoke. There was a palpable tension between them, thick with conflicting emotions. They held each other’s stare until it became uncomfortable and Will was forced to step to one side and welcome Luke in.
‘You have a nice place,’ Luke said, as he followed Will into the flat.
‘We’re happy here.’ Will cast his eye over the living room, filled with the assorted bits and pieces they’d collected over the years. It was like a shop of curiosities, cluttered and eclectic. There was a lot of kitsch Americana they’d bought while living in the States when Harmony had taught at Stanford for two years; Coca-Cola cool she called it: a battered bubblegum dispenser, an imitation Route 66 road sign, vintage baseball cards pinned along the mantelpiece like cardboard bunting. There were things they’d picked up while travelling in their early twenties: the statue of the elephant-like Hindu goddess, the name of which Will could never remember, some Indian and Balinese throws, a wooden frog from Thailand. Then Will’s photographs, which patchworked the walls with arty landscapes, cityscapes, and portraits of Harmony. Luke walked over to one of the pictures of her at the foot of a looming Mayan temple. She wore a turquoise vest top and a pair of safari shorts, her hair held off her face with a red and white bandana, a water bottle resting on her thigh, her skin tanned and smooth as caramel. As Luke looked at it Will recalled making love to her later that evening, how they’d talked about the approaching end of the world, the Mayans’ prophesy, how he’d kissed her from head to toe, and ho
w she’d tasted sweet with coconut oil and bitter with citronella.
Luke finally drew away from the photo and smiled at Will.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Will said.
‘Yes, please. A beer if you’ve got one.’
Will fetched a glass from the cupboard in the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Becks from the fridge. Back in the living room he found Luke studying a photo of them on their wedding day as if trying to memorise it.
Will poured the beer and handed it to Luke who thanked him and sat in the armchair by the window.
‘So,’ Will said, sitting on the sofa opposite, trying to think of conversation as far away from Farringdon Hall as possible. ‘You were saying at Ian and Emma’s that you work with Ian?’
Luke nodded.
‘His lawyer? What sort of thing do you do for him?’
‘I shouldn’t really talk about it.’ Luke fixed his eyes on Will. ‘I’m sure Ian will tell you if he feels the need.’
Will looked down at his drink. His hand was trembling and the dark red wine wavered gently in the glass, the reflections from the light overhead dancing on the surface. The living room felt hot and stuffy suddenly. Will stood and went to open the sash window.
‘Did you take the photographs?’ asked Luke. Will nodded and sat down again.
‘They’re very good.’ He turned and looked at the picture of Harmony on the steps of the temple again. ‘Especially those of your wife.’
‘She’s very photogenic. An easy subject for anyone to photograph.’
‘Yes, the camera seems to love her, but the way you’ve framed them is impressive, your sense of space and balance.’
Will cast his eye over the photographs, which were as familiar as his own reflection; each one he remembered taking with crystal clarity. ‘It’s my passion.’
‘You’re lucky to have a passion,’ Luke said.
He stared at Will so intently that Will had to look away.
‘You did it professionally, didn’t you?’
Will furrowed his brow, taken aback by the question, wondering how Luke knew. He shifted in his seat. ‘For a while. It was a few years ago now. I did a couple of weddings and some portfolio shoots. But there’s a lot of people doing the same and when the recession hit the work dried up. When things pick up, I might try again.’ He smiled and lifted his glass to his lips. ‘That’s the plan anyway.’
‘I remember that Polaroid camera you had at school,’ said Luke, leaning forward to put his glass on the coffee table. ‘You were always snapping something.’
Will’s heart missed a beat as a recollection of that afternoon caught him unawares.
Luke laughed, the noise incongruous and unsettling. ‘Always slung around your neck, that camera.’
Will thought about the camera gathering dust in a box above the wardrobe. He hadn’t used it since school, but Luke was right, when he was young he rarely went anywhere without it. He’d been given it by a little-known uncle, his mother’s bachelor stepbrother, who lived a reclusive life with three boisterous chocolate Labradors in a cottage on the edge of a Scottish loch. They had visited him once when holidaying near Inverness. Will had found the camera on a shelf and been fascinated by it. The uncle apparently never used it and sent it home with Will. From the very first photo he’d taken – a picture of his mother at the sink filling the kettle with water – he was hooked. Watching those images develop, turning from ghostly white to brilliant colour before his eyes, was like watching magic. There was something about preserving a fleeting moment for eternity that bewitched him. His mother had encouraged him, and on those days when his father was in one of his black moods, ready to fly off the handle at anything Will might do or say, she’d pack him a bag with some lunch – a cheese sandwich, an apple and, if there was some in the battered royal wedding biscuit tin, a piece of fruit cake – and send him off to take photos. On one of these trips, not far from the stream that ran through a wooded glade about half a mile from their house, he found a dead shrew. It was half covered with leaves and had been dead some time. Its eyes had rotted away or been eaten by insects and were just empty hollows, with its brown velveteen fur frayed around the socket edges like ragged fabric. Its tiny body was stiff and dry. Its feet were curled into tight balls, its mouth open a fraction to show sharp yellowed teeth. Will had taken a photo of it then sat cross-legged in the long grass and watched the picture emerge like a mirage from the whiteness. When it did he smiled; it was a brilliant photo. Everything was captured. There was even a mini-insect crawling across the shrew’s shoulder that he hadn’t noticed when he’d taken it. He sat beside the animal and stared at its death portrait, the sun warming him in dappled patches as it shone through the trees. Eventually, when the rumbling in his tummy became too loud to ignore, he said a solemn goodbye to the tiny corpse and walked home. He couldn’t wait to show his mother the photo, but when she saw it she’d recoiled in shock.
‘I hope you didn’t touch it! Good God, child, you’ll catch rabies or bubonic plague or something! Go and wash your hands and make sure you scrub under your nails with the soap and brush.’
His father had come up behind him and grabbed the photo before Will had a chance to hide it. Given the mood he’d been in at breakfast, Will had half-expected an impromptu hiding, but instead he rested a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘That’s a good find,’ he said. Will still remembered the astonishment he’d felt at the note of pride in his father’s clipped words. ‘Did you bring the thing back with you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, run back and find it,’ he barked. ‘We’ll leave it in a box in the shed to rot down and then I’ll show you how to bleach its skull.’ Then he patted his shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze. It was one of the only times he’d touched him with any sort of affection.
‘Oh, Phillip!’ his mother cried. ‘That’s revolting. I don’t want him doing any such thing.’
And then his father had looked at him with a brief flash of collusion and Will had felt as if he might burst with pleasure. He dumped his rucksack and camera on the kitchen table and charged out of the house like a greyhound out of the traps. His heart hammered in his chest as he ran. He scrambled over the fence at the bottom of their garden, ignoring the sting of brambles as they tore at his legs. When he reached the glade, out of breath and lungs burning, he dropped to his knees to look for the shrew. But there was no sign of it. Will frantically searched the ground, snatching at the grass and leaves in desperation.
‘Where are you?’ he wailed, tears stinging his eyes.
After half an hour of searching he fell back on his haunches, sweat streaking his dusty face, and looked at the darkening sky through the trees. He would have to go home empty-handed. He pulled the Polaroid out of his pocket and stared at the picture of the shrew for a few minutes before ripping it into tiny pieces and throwing them like useless confetti into the undergrowth.
‘How are your parents?’ Luke asked, breaking into Will’s thoughts. He picked up a frame from the small table beside him. It was another picture of Harmony, taken about ten years before. Her hair was kissed golden by the sun, fine grains of sand lay in her eyelashes and dusted her cheek, and her eyes matched the sky behind her perfectly. She smiled back at the camera, back at Will, and he recalled the sound of her laugh just before he had taken the shot. He’d told her a joke. A bad one.
‘You fool,’ she’d said through her giggling.
Then snap, snap, snap: three photos, one of them the best he’d ever taken. Will wished Luke would put it down; the way he looked at it unnerved him.
‘My mother’s well. My father died last year.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, finally taking his eyes off the photo.
‘Well, we weren’t close.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I remember. I remember it all.’
Luke stared at him with unfaltering eyes and Will wondered if the discomfort he felt was from Luke’s implied judgement or his own overwhelming shame.
Harmony stood in her towel, damp and warm from the shower, and looked in the mirror. Her heart sank a little. Age had crept up on her, sallowed her skin, folded fine wrinkles and creases around her tired-looking eyes, and dotted her hairline with grey. She sighed and rubbed some tinted moisturiser over her face, dabbed Vaseline on her lips, then applied some mascara. She went back into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe. She had no idea what she should wear.
Why do you even care? she thought.
She was surprised how nervous she felt knowing Luke was in their flat. She reached to open her top draw and then paused, hesitating, her fingers resting lightly on the drawer handle. She glanced at the bedroom door and listened. She could hear the men talking in the living room, their voices low, words indistinct. She reached into the back of the drawer and felt for the cardigan. When her fingers found the soft wool her stomach knotted. She pulled it out and held it up, brushing her thumb over the little brown teddy bear stitched to its front. She brought it up to her face and breathed in its smell, closing her eyes as she did so, pretending for a few moments her baby was back, that it was still growing inside her. She pushed it against her lips. This cardigan was the only thing she’d bought for her unborn child. She didn’t believe in superstition. She was a scientist and knew better. She walked beneath ladders and thought nothing of black cats crossing her path, but even so, something had stopped her buying things for her baby. Emma had turned up a few days after Harmony told her the news, her car jam-packed with baby paraphernalia, tears of joy in her eyes. But Harmony insisted she take everything back with her; she didn’t want anything to do with the baby in the house. Just in case.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to ease Emma’s disappointment. ‘It just feels wrong to jump the gun until the baby’s here.’
The Judas Scar Page 7
