by Caro Fraser
‘Why not?’ said Anthony. ‘He can look after the place for you, see that you don’t get burgled.’
‘What? He’ll probably invite a load of his hippy friends over, and I’ll come back to find syringes and the furniture all broken.’
‘Well, that’s hardly likely,’ said Anthony. ‘He hasn’t got any friends. Not any with enough money for drugs, at least.’
Chay chose that moment to make his entrance. He came in looking gentle and Jesus-like, and carrying two Safeway’s bags full of groceries and wine, bought with his dole money. He had thought that regular small offerings of this kind might obviate the need to pay Bridget any rent.
‘Thought I’d make us some supper,’ he said, taking his bags into the kitchen, giving them his kindest, wisest smile.
‘He can’t do any harm,’ said Anthony in a low voice. ‘And it really will be safer if someone’s staying here while you’re away.’ There was something in this.
‘Oh, I suppose so,’ grumbled Bridget.
That night Anthony made love to Bridget out of some strange sense of duty. It was what people who lived together did, and he couldn’t stay there on false pretences. But weren’t these utterly false pretences? He stroked Bridget’s hair absently and wished she were Julia. God, this was awful – this was probably the worst, the most duplicitous thing he had ever done in his life. He’d just made love to Bridget, without wanting to, knowing that she expected it, and because he felt he had to say some sort of ‘thank you’ for letting Chay stay in the flat over Christmas. And all he could think about was some girl he’d kissed once and who probably wouldn’t even remember his name if she saw him again.
Anthony was quite wrong about Julia, but far too inexperienced in the ways of the world to realise the beneficial effects of his apparent lack of interest.
Julia was a young woman who was intensely aware of her own worth. She came from a wealthy family, she was clever and beautiful and charming, and she led much the same sort of life as Edward Choke, expecting pleasure as her due. Unlike Edward, however, she was intelligent and single-minded, and was prepared to work hard to achieve her pleasures. But she was also very vain, as beautiful, intelligent young women invariably are, and her vanity had been wounded by the fact that Anthony had not taken the trouble to call her. At first, she had not really cared very much whether or not he did – he had been exceptionally pleasant to kiss, but then so were a lot of men, all just as attractive as Anthony. But as the days went by, and he didn’t ring, the thing began to nag at her. Her irritation was compounded by the fact that she saw him once or twice round the Temple, although he failed to see her; the sight of the back of his unheeding head added to the impression that he had not thought of her since that Friday night, and was not likely to do so in the future.
This idea was more than Julia could bear. She was not accustomed to indifference. Men paid attention to her, sought her out; now she was being ignored. She had anticipated that she would see him from time to time in the bar, and intended on any such occasion to act coolly and distantly by way of retribution. But the opportunity never came; she found herself going there in the evening in the hope that he might appear, turning to glance at each tall, dark-haired figure that came in. It was never Anthony. Once or twice she had been about to ask Edward about him, but she succeeded in maintaining the appearance of rigid indifference that was her code. Julia found herself, uniquely, wounded and confused.
Anthony, unaware of any of this, spent the larger part of Christmas worrying about Chay, and what to do with him. He went round to Bridget’s flat every other day over the holiday to make sure that he hadn’t sold her furniture, and would find Chay drifting around in his preoccupied way, eating muesli, meditating, or rubbing ointment into the fading scorch marks on the soles of his feet. He seemed happily unperturbed by the prospect of the court case coming up in a few weeks’ time. It perturbed Anthony, however. Things couldn’t go on like this indefinitely. He couldn’t go on living with Bridget, that much was certain.
But three days after the start of the Hilary term, Chay resolved matters by disappearing. It was Anthony who noticed that his father’s few belongings had vanished from the spare room. And it was Bridget who discovered that the seventy pounds that she had tucked away in her tights drawer had vanished, too.
‘Your bloody father!’ she stormed.
‘He must have done a bunk,’ said Anthony lamely. ‘I’ll pay you back.’ Bridget was not impressed by this unlikely offer.
The couple of days following Chay’s disappearance were passed in stony rage on Bridget’s part and perplexity on Anthony’s. Then Anthony received a telephone call from Chay in chambers. He was in the States, he said, with Jocasta.
‘We’re preparing to go into retreat,’ he told Anthony in holy tones.
‘But you’re on bail!’ exclaimed Anthony. ‘Graham’s going to have to pay out if you don’t show up in court!’
‘Look,’ said transatlantic Chay calmly, ‘he’s a friend. It’s cool. I’ll be with him in spirit. Don’t tell him where I am,’ he added quickly. ‘He might accidentally tell the police. I’ll square it with him when I see him.’
‘What about Bridget’s seventy pounds?’
Either Chay didn’t hear him or decided to ignore the question. ‘Got to go. Peace.’ And he hung up.
As he put the receiver down, Anthony discovered that he felt quite relieved. Thank God he was gone. At least he was off Anthony’s hands. He could stay in America, for all he cared, although that, unfortunately, seemed unlikely. The police could extradite him if they wanted to, although that was even unlikelier. After the last few weeks, Anthony felt he’d had enough of his father. He was no longer interested. Now he could concentrate on his work. And, oh, joy of joys, it came to him suddenly that he wouldn’t have to go on living with Bridget. In a week’s time his scholarship money would come through, and he could ring Julia. If she still remembered him.
Anthony’s phone call to Julia could not have been more perfectly timed. After four weeks of wounded pride and faint nervous tension, Julia’s original idle supposition that he would certainly ring had been replaced by an avid wish that he would. The obscure object of desire had become clouded by longing itself.
She felt her heart tighten as she recognised his voice. ‘Oh, Anthony,’ she said as casually as she could, ‘How have you been? Good Christmas?’
‘Not bad. A bit – busy. What about you?’
He’d been busy, had he? With whom, she wondered.
‘Oh, so-so. Lots of parties.’
‘Great.’ There was a pause. ‘Listen, I wondered if you were doing anything on Saturday. Whether you’d like to go out, or something.’ He found himself wishing that he could sound less clumsy, less offhand.
‘Saturday,’ she said thoughtfully. She had already been invited to a dinner party, but now she dismissed it from her mind. ‘No, I don’t think I’m doing anything.’
‘Fine,’ he said, ‘I’ll pick you up around seven-thirty. Where do you live?’ She gave him her address in Kensington. ‘I thought we might go out to dinner,’ he said, ‘but I don’t really know any restaurants in your area. Why don’t you think of somewhere and book it?’ God, he shouldn’t be asking her to do that; it sounded as though he really didn’t care where they went.
‘All right, if you like,’ she said, thinking that he might at least show a little less indifference about the whole thing.
‘Right.’ Anthony wished he could think of something else sensible to say. ‘I’ll see you on Saturday, then. Bye.’ He hung up. Julia sat looking at the phone. He’d been abrupt, almost casual; but at least he’d called.
The problem with Bridget was one he kept putting off. Nothing had been said since his father had left, but it was clear that Anthony hadn’t moved into the flat quite as wholeheartedly as Bridget had imagined he would. Now, as he told his first downright lie, Anthony resolved that he would tell her the next day that he would not be staying.
‘Why on
earth is your pupilmaster taking you out to dinner?’ asked Bridget, as Anthony shaved on Saturday evening.
‘He’s not. I said, invited me round to dinner.’
‘Oh. Does he know you live with me?’ Anthony met her eye in the mirror.
‘I haven’t mentioned it.’ He rinsed his razor and pulled out the plug, wiping round the basin with a cloth.
‘That’s my facecloth! Don’t use that!’ She made an exasperated little noise as she snatched it from him. Anthony thought with dread, and not for the first time, what it would be like to be married to her. ‘Don’t you think you should? It would be nice to go to things together.’
In view of what he intended to tell her the next day, this made Anthony feel like a complete heel. And since, buried beneath what he admitted was a veneer of guilt was an irrepressible, surging joy at the thought of seeing Julia that evening, he felt that he was behaving as badly as it was possible to behave. But he hadn’t wanted to get himself into this situation. It had been forced on him. In response to Bridget’s remark, Anthony made a non-committal noise into the towel as he dried his face.
With a mounting sense of guilt, Anthony changed into the new red silk shirt that his mother had given him for Christmas, and a tolerably new pair of brown corduroys.
‘You look very nice,’ said Bridget in a small voice, as she watched him from the bedroom doorway. He felt he could say nothing, and gave her a fleeting kiss as he brushed past her to fetch his jacket from the hall. I’m a brute, he thought, as he checked his pockets for keys and change, and rummaged in his mind for something conciliatory and kind to say. He turned and smiled at her.
‘Don’t wait up,’ he said, and left.
It took him the better part of an hour to get to Kensington, and he arrived at Julia’s fifteen minutes late. The flat stood in a large, quiet, tree-lined street, whose houses, all now converted into expensive flats, were imposing Victorian buildings set back from the road. The air was cold and sharply still, and the solitary sound of his footsteps on the pavement made Anthony’s throat tighten with nervousness. He pressed the doorbell and a buzzer buzzed; he let himself into the cavernous hallway and mounted the stairs to the second landing.
The girl who opened the door was not Julia but her flatmate, another blonde, but tall, and with ragged hair and a chilly smile.
‘Hi, I’m Lizzie,’ she said in a lazy voice. ‘Come in. Julia’s busy fixing herself.’ She sauntered into the living room and Anthony followed her, introducing himself as he went.
‘Drink?’ she asked.
‘Please. D’you have a beer?’ Lizzie said she would go and look in the fridge. She came back with a can of low-alcohol lager, which Anthony accepted, not wishing to appear rude. Girls’ flats were like that, he thought. He sat down at the end of a long, enormously plump sofa and gazed round the room. It was the kind of room that Anthony associated with other people’s parents, not the kind of place that twenty-two-year-olds lived in. Lizzie followed his glance.
‘Nice flat, isn’t it?’ she said, with her slow smile. ‘It’s my mother’s. She and my stepfather have gone to Brazil, so she’s let me have it for a year.’ Anthony murmured that it was very nice indeed, gazing at the bookshelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, and the long, expensive curtains and deep carpets. They talked in a hesitant fashion, with long silences, of their respective jobs, and then Lizzie excused herself and wandered out to the kitchen.
Although Anthony thought that he remembered Julia quite well from the last time he had seen her, the reality of her when she entered the room stopped his heart. Everything about her, the blonde hair, the grey eyes and slender body, seemed suddenly intensely vivid and fresh. She was wearing grey jeans and some sort of blue top, low cut and in a soft, silken material; and some jewellery – Anthony was too dazzled to notice what.
‘Let’s have a drink before we go,’ she was saying to him. ‘What on earth has Lizzie given you?’ She picked up the can of Kaliber and made a disgusted little face. ‘Have a proper drink,’ she said, pouring him a gin and tonic. Anthony didn’t really like gin and tonic either. Julia’s voice sounded casual, but she, too, was nervous. She, too, had forgotten quite what Anthony looked like, and how attractive his dark, clear-cut features and deep eyes were. She handed him his drink and they sat down.
The imposing surroundings, the altogether grown-up nature of the flat and its furnishings, put a constraint upon them that they would not have felt in a more cheerful, untidy setting. This room called for low voices and discreet movements. Their conversation was almost as stilted as Anthony’s and Lizzie’s had been.
Julia glanced at her watch and drained the contents of her glass. ‘We’d better go,’ she said, rising. ‘I booked the table for eight-thirty.’ Anthony had scarcely touched his drink; he looked around and set it down gingerly on a small, polished table. His spirits were somewhat dampened. He felt quite remote from this lovely creature; he couldn’t believe that they had ever kissed, that his body had ever been pressed close to hers. The idea of such intimacy was almost embarrassing. She was probably regretting the whole evening, he thought.
They made their way downstairs and out into the bitter January air.
‘Where’s your car?’ asked Julia.
‘I haven’t got one,’ replied Anthony, startled. Each looked at the other in surprise.
‘How did you get here?’ she asked.
‘Well, I got the train and the tube,’ said Anthony. How did she think he’d got here?
‘How awful for you,’ said Julia, and they walked on. ‘Well, it’s not too far, so I suppose we can walk. Unless we see a taxi. It’s a new French place, La Poubelle. Lizzie’s boss says it’s really good.’
Anthony hoped they wouldn’t find a taxi, and reflected that if it was the kind of place Lizzie’s boss went to, it would probably cost an arm and a leg. When they got there, Anthony saw, with a sinking heart, that his surmise had been correct. The restaurant was small and smart, decorated in pastel green with dark wooden chairs and tables, and was very full. When they were seated and Anthony looked at the menu, he saw a few figures in the region of four or five pounds. Maybe it wasn’t going to be too bad, after all. Then he realised that those were the starters. He looked up and his eyes met Julia’s. She smiled at him, her gentlest, most private smile, and suddenly he didn’t care. He didn’t care how much it cost or whether he had to starve for the rest of term. He was having dinner with Julia, and she looked glad to be there.
With the wine and the cheerful surroundings, they became more relaxed. The conversation was easy, general, and then, as the evening lengthened, grew more personal. Anthony told her about his father, which she seemed to find far more amusing than he did.
‘He sounds much more fun than my father,’ mused Julia, twisting the stem of her wine glass. ‘Fun’ wasn’t exactly the word he would have used about Chay, reflected Anthony.
‘My father’s deadly dull,’ she went on. ‘An old sweetie, but quite deadly. He’s the chairman of a pharmaceuticals company. Can you imagine anything more stultifying than that?’
Anthony, at that moment, was studying the bill with care. ‘Did we have salads? I mean, did we both have salads?’
‘God, I don’t know. Does it matter? Let’s just pay it and go,’ replied Julia cheerfully. She stretched across the small table to peer at the bill in Anthony’s hand; the movement pressed her small breasts together as she leant forward, and Anthony was shot with a sudden longing to slip his hand into the top of her blouse and caress her breast.
‘You’re right,’ he said, with difficulty. ‘Let’s pay it and go.’
Outside, they had walked no more than ten yards down the street when Anthony found himself kissing her. He wasn’t quite sure whose idea it had been, but he supposed that it had been on both their minds for some time. Someone walking past bumped against them, and they parted regretfully and walked on.
‘Would you like to come back for coffee? Or there’s some brandy that Lizzie’s
brother brought back from Greece. Metaxa. Just the thing for a January night.’
They walked back in silence.
In the flat, the dignified, grown-up hush intimidated Anthony once again. Julia brought the brandy in crystal glasses, and he wished that they were paper cups. But when she switched all the lights off in the room except one small lamp, and came and curled up in his lap on the sofa, the imposing shades retreated, and all that existed for him were Julia’s warmth and loveliness.
After a long time, Julia opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘Would you like to see my etchings?’ she whispered.
‘What?’ he whispered back. She laughed and pulled him to his feet. He followed her down the corridor to her room; he could hear the sound of Lizzie’s radio, and Lizzie moving about in her bedroom.
‘Fortunately, she’s miles away from my room,’ said Julia. Certainly the flat seemed to Anthony to be very large and the passage very long. Julia turned the handle of her door and Anthony went in with her. He wasn’t quite sure what he felt; terrified, slightly drunk, completely in love.
‘Julia,’ he said quietly. He couldn’t see her in the darkness.
‘What?’
‘Where are you?’ They both giggled stupidly. She put her arms around his neck.
‘Here.’
His eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. She stopped kissing him and moved across the room. He stood uncertainly, and then a glimpse of the long, pale loveliness of her legs told him that she was undressing. The white glow of her skin in the darkness seemed to be the most tantalising, sexy thing he had ever seen. With shaking fingers he undressed, found the bed, and slid beneath the sheets to encounter her soft, slim nakedness.
‘God, you are the loveliest thing I ever saw,’ he breathed, pulling her towards him. ‘Ever, ever.’
‘You can’t see me,’ she said softly, shivering, and laughed.
