by Nuala Casey
5
‘Damn,’ exclaims Stella as she squints to see the road ahead. She hit a patch of heavy rain just outside London and now, as she navigates Earl’s Court Road, her vision a blur of watery car headlights, she hears her phone beep.
‘Not now, Paula,’ she shouts to the empty car. She hadn’t expected this; she had imagined her return to London would be epic, she would sweep into the city like a prodigal child and the great buildings, the statues and monuments would bend towards her in a kind of embrace. But real life is different; real life is sitting in traffic watching windscreen wipers sweep in front of your eyes; listening to the toneless voice of the Sat Nav as it directs you towards a multi-storey car park. Real life is wet and insipid; the golden sunrises, the blazing colours and rhapsodic sounds only exist in the imagined world, the place Stella finds when she writes.
She swings the car into a vacant space, turns off the engine and closes her eyes. So now it begins. All the build-up, all the expectation and this is where it starts, in a grey car park in Earl’s Court. She picks up her phone and smiles. She is ready now, ready to hear Paula’s voice, to take her place at her lover’s side. The solitude is over and she is happy that it is. She types in the security password that until a few weeks ago had been unnecessary and as she presses the call button, she feels a little stirring deep in the pit of her stomach. Paula is there in the hotel room; she imagines her lying naked on the bed, her black, bobbed hair framing her green pixie eyes, half-closed with desire; her beautiful lithe body stretched out, waiting for Stella to come and take her. It has been weeks since they last made love and now Stella feels that absence and wants to make up for it, she wants to drink in every last drop of Paula, to love her until they are both spent.
She holds the phone to her ear and after a couple of rings a terse voice answers: ‘Stella, where the hell are you? I’ve been calling and calling.’
‘Oh, hello to you as well.’ Stella’s erotic thoughts dissolve into the chill evening air as real life returns with a thud.
‘Don’t be sarcastic, Stella,’ says Paula. ‘I was worried sick. I thought you’d changed your mind or worse, had an accident. Really, it doesn’t take much to send me a quick text to say you’re okay …’
Stella holds the phone away from her. Paula always gets shrill when she is agitated. When the voice falls silent, Stella puts the phone back to her ear. ‘Are you finished? Because I’m sitting in a damp car, after driving for two-and-a-half hours in pelting rain and if it’s all right with you I would like to come and join you, have a glass of wine and relax. This is supposed to be a break you know, Paula. We are allowed to enjoy ourselves once in a while.’
Paula sighs down the phone and it crackles like white noise into Stella’s ear. It is the sigh Stella has become accustomed to, the one that says that Paula is disappointed but is swallowing her anger lest it causes an argument. There has been a lot of that lately; the two of them avoiding confrontations, sighing deeply and heading to their respective rooms at opposite ends of the house. ‘Right,’ says Paula. ‘Well, I’m in the apartment – it’s lovely by the way, good choice. I can’t believe I’ve never been here before. The bed’s a bit weird, it’s on a kind of plinth, but it’s a really big space and pretty too. They’ve put some lovely peach roses on the table and the fridge is full of goodies.’
Stella smiles. That sounds like the old Paula, all excited about food and flowers. Stella had booked the garret above The Troubadour – the little fifties coffee house on Old Brompton Road – a few months ago, when they got their appointment at the fertility clinic. It was one of her favourite places in London; a little piece of Parisian bohemian heaven tucked away in a quiet corner of Earl’s Court and she had been so excited to bring Paula along to see it; to show her the pretty coloured glass bottles in the window that always made her think of an ancient, London apothecary
‘I’m so glad you like it,’ she says to Paula. ‘I can’t wait to see you. I’m just going to get a ticket for the car then I’ll be with you. I love you.’
She goes to press the end call button on her phone, then hears Paula say something on the other end.
‘What was that, angel?’ she says softly.
‘I said, don’t forget the plants,’ says Paula, the tenseness creeping back into her voice.
A damp feeling of anti-climax spreads across Stella’s chest.
‘No, I won’t forget the plants,’ she says, as she clicks the phone off and puts it into her bag.
*
Mark stands holding onto a metal rail as the packed Piccadilly line train hurtles towards Russell Square. He left King’s Cross later than planned after eating a cheese-and-tomato baguette and a plate of spiced potato wedges under the great golf-ball dome of the newly refurbished station. He didn’t recognise the place as he came through the ticket barriers and turned left, expecting to see the usual dirt-encrusted gloomy pubs and half-hearted burger bars. It was so slick and shiny, like some futuristic airport lounge, and, for a moment, Mark imagined he was heading off on holiday; that this trip was about pleasure rather than anger and pain. As he headed towards the Underground, curiosity got the better of him and he decided to get something to eat. Hunger is bad for concentration and he wanted to have all his wits about him once he got to Soho.
The next station is Holborn. Change here for the Central line.
The voice fizzles through the carriage like static electricity. As the doors open and release a smattering of passengers, Mark spots a vacant seat towards the middle and lifting his rucksack off his back he flops down as the doors start to close. A rotten smell wafts under his nostrils and he looks around the carriage trying to locate the source of the stench. His eyes rest upon the woman sitting opposite him. She is in her late-fifties, dressed in batik print scarves and a long, brown woollen skirt. Her black hair is threaded with grey and she wears no make-up on her thin, sallow-cheeked face. She is reading a copy of the Evening Standard and on her knee rests a plastic tub containing a hard-boiled egg which she is taking bites out of in between reading. The egg smells putrid and stale, rather like the air in the carriage.
He stares at the woman. She looks like a teacher he once had at school – Mrs Rogers, that was her name, miserable old bitch – who took him for English and History and made his life a misery for five years because he didn’t understand the meaning behind books like Lord of the Flies. She would make snipey comments as she handed his homework back to him: ‘Well, Mark, what can I say? Your essays are a masterclass in completely missing the point!’ Dried-up old cow. He wonders what became of her; she’s probably sitting in some nursing home dribbling into her tea. He shudders. The thought of Mrs Rogers and the smell of the woman’s egg makes him feel nauseous. He shakes his head and looks around the carriage. There is a young man standing by the door wearing low-slung skinny jeans and a skin-tight leather jacket, giving his arse a good old scratch as he scrolls through his phone with the other hand; in the seat next to him, an old man in a blazer and slacks is hacking up phlegm while opposite, the woman bites into her egg with a slapping, slurping noise. People really are repellent, thinks Mark. They are just a mass of stinking, putrid waste.
The next station is Piccadilly Circus. Change here for the Bakerloo line.
Mark stands up as the train slowly pulls into the station. As he waits by the door, his eyes meet those of the woman with the egg. He stares at her and suddenly he is back twenty years looking into the eyes of his nemesis. The woman in front of him is chewing the last mouthful of egg and she looks vulnerable, pathetic somehow, but her eyes bore into Mark as though she is reading his thoughts, as though she knows what he is going to do and is making her judgement. As the doors open with a screech, he looks again at her but she has returned to her newspaper. He steps down onto the platform and as he hoists his rucksack onto his back and picks up his black bag, the train starts to pull off. He looks up and sees the woman staring at him again; there is something about her expression that fills him with rage and
he contorts his face and mouths the words ‘fuck off’ at her departing form. He tries to shake it off, the strange encounter, but her face is still in his head as he turns the corner and heads up the escalators and the noise and bustle of Piccadilly Circus.
*
The rain has stopped and the air smells of soil and grit as Stella turns the corner into Old Brompton Road. A small figure slowly walks towards her; its hand waving like a pearly white globe against the darkening sky.
Paula. She has changed out of the jeans and jumper she was wearing earlier and put on the pretty green silk tea dress that Stella bought her last Christmas.
A deep feeling of desire washes over Stella as she approaches. In the distance she can see the mottled lights of the Troubadour; can hear the clinking of glasses and the light chatter of people gathered outside for drinks.
She has missed this: the sounds of London in the early evening. It’s like the first sip of wine; the prelude to something wonderful. Other cities, other towns, don’t sound like this. In St Leonards, the genteel enclave of Exeter where Paula and Stella live, early evening is heralded with the clattering of shutters going down over shop windows, a collective sigh that the working day is done; in Vejer de la Frontera, the little white town in Southern Spain where Stella and Paula spent the first eighteen months of their relationship, early evening sounded like midday anywhere else: the shouts of street vendors and stall holders, children’s laughter and the ring of the cash register in brightly lit shops; while in the small Yorkshire village where she had grown up, early evening was a pure white blanket of silence, broken intermittently by the swish of curtains being drawn, the growl of a wheelie bin being dragged down a driveway and the collective switching on of television sets.
She had forgotten this feeling; had, over time, attributed the buzz to Soho, but it is the same all over the city. London at this time of day truly is the best place on earth to be. She could have this again; just like that she could come back …
‘Hello, you,’ she says, dreamily, as Paula draws closer. ‘You look beautiful.’
Paula smiles then gives a little shiver. ‘Well, I thought I would make an effort just for you,’ she giggles. ‘Although I should have put my jacket on, it’s getting quite cold now.’
Stella leans forward and kisses her on the mouth. Paula, as always, smells of orange blossom. It is a fragrance she concocted herself as a teenager and is now such a part of her that if one day she decided to wear another perfume something fundamental, something distinctly ‘Paula’ would be lost for ever.
‘Have you got the plants?’ Paula asks as she gently releases herself from the embrace.
‘Oh, they’ll be okay in the car for tonight, won’t they?’ says Stella, not wanting to walk all the way back to the car park now she is within spitting distance of a comfortable chair and a large glass of wine.
‘No, they can’t be left in the car,’ says Paula. ‘I won’t rest tonight if they’re not within sight. I did ask you to bring them. Do you know how much those plants are worth? If the car was stolen, I would be in deep trouble. Yasmine Bailey is expecting them tomorrow for her launch on Wednesday, plus she’s already paid for them.’
Stella sighs. There is always something. ‘Look,’ she says, placing her hand on Paula’s shoulder. ‘I’ll just put these bags into the room then I’ll go and get the plants, okay?’
Paula looks pensive, like she is imagining all the potentially catastrophic things that could possibly happen to her plants: a drug-fuelled joy ride across Earls Court; a smash and grab in Mayfair.
‘Give me the keys and I’ll go and get them,’ she says, holding out her hand.
‘Oh, Paula, for goodness sake,’ says Stella. ‘I’m talking a matter of minutes. I wish you would relax. They’ll be fine. It’s a secure car park.’
‘It would just put my mind at rest if I go and get them,’ says Paula, softly. ‘Then I can enjoy our evening. You go and freshen up, it’s been a long drive. Go on and I’ll follow you up.’
‘Okay,’ says Stella. ‘If you’re sure.’ She retrieves the keys from her coat pocket and hands them to Paula. ‘It’s just round the corner, first left. The car’s on the ground-floor level, right by the entrance.’
Paula takes the keys and nods. ‘Oh, you’ll need this as well.’ She opens her handbag and pulls out a large, Alice in Wonderland-style key with a big square wooden key ring attached.
‘Wow,’ says Stella, taking the key. ‘It must be a big door.’
They both laugh, then Paula leans towards Stella and strokes her cheek. ‘I can’t wait to be with you these next few days,’ she says, tenderly. ‘It’s been so long since we’ve had a proper break. I love you so much, you know that don’t you?’
Stella nods her head and smiles.
‘It feels good to be back,’ she says, looking beyond Paula, into the darkening night sky.
Paula flinches; it’s a miniscule gesture but Stella notices; it’s Paula’s worst fear: that London will reclaim Stella, will drag her so far back into its folds that Paula won’t be able to hold on to her; that she will lose her control.
‘Now go on and get the plants, you little worrit,’ says Stella with a giggle. ‘I’ll see you in the bar.’
Stella stands and watches as Paula disappears into the darkness, then she turns and walks briskly towards the Troubadour.
6
How could I have been so stupid? thinks Kerstin, as she sits at her desk furiously speed typing data she knows so well she could recite it verbatim.
When she got back to the office after buying the purse, she had clicked open the document containing the Delta report and found that the whole section she had completed that morning was gone.
‘I pressed “save”, I know I did,’ she had cried, as she desperately scrolled down the page. Cal had overheard and was there in seconds, standing by her elbow, offering help, pressing her keyboard. Please get off, she had willed him. By touching her computer, by tainting the space around her, he was just making things worse, much worse.
‘Nah,’ he had said, after five minutes of clicking various help settings on the computer. ‘It’s gone. You can’t have saved it, you plonker. Still, you ran out of here in such a mad rush, I’m surprised you remembered your own head.’ He had then offered to stay behind to help her, but that was the last thing she wanted and she had fobbed him off saying he would be a better help if he got started on the Gonshalff Report the next day, which would give her a head start. And now, at last, she is alone in the silent gloom of the office.
She presses ‘save’ after each paragraph just to be sure and after the fifteenth ‘save’, leans back in her chair, her eyes sore from staring at the screen. It is then that she notices the picture on the wall opposite.
Last week there had been a photograph in that space – a grainy print of a firework igniting; sparks of light flickering from its mouth. It was a menacing picture, not helped by the fact that the firework in extreme close-up rather resembled a gun. Now the picture has been removed and replaced with an Impressionist-style painting of a man sitting in a boat on a lake of lily pads.
Kerstin does not understand this sudden vogue for ‘office art’; the idea that employers can somehow control the moods of their workers through the images they display on the walls. Sircher Capital signed up to the scheme at the beginning of the year and now each month a new piece of original artwork appears on the walls, seemingly by magic. The fact that a man called Colin Andrews from the Essex-based Art Works company comes to the office after hours and discreetly hangs a new piece is less intriguing than the thought of the pictures just appearing. But Kerstin finds the ever-changing view disconcerting and rather than speeding up her productivity it saps her, makes her feel tense and uncertain.
She looks at the picture; it is a pastiche, a badly executed piece of nothingness; ugly, like everything else in this place. The office, with its pine table and beige rugs is dry and anaemic; like a body drained of its blood. The flowers on the win
dowsill look artificial, even though they are delivered twice a week from a florist in Mayfair. Their colours – pale lemon and lilac – are insipid and drab and they melt into the beige walls and window blinds like spilt tea on a dirty carpet. The leaves are compressed against the clear glass vase, dead and motionless like they are stuck in formaldehyde. The air they breathe is static, the oxygen being sucked up into the lungs of the traders as they shout out the minute-by-minute fluctuations of the stock market. The flowers should not be here, she thinks. They should be in a beautiful garden with moist soil to drink and fresh air to keep them alive.
Kerstin stands up and walks over to the flowers. Instinctively she bends her head to smell them but there is nothing, no fragrant flower smell just a dusty half-scent like cardboard or used money. Maybe that is it, she thinks. Maybe that is what happens inside these four walls; all that is natural and alive becomes tainted with the very thing that is being cultivated in this hothouse; maybe the only thing that can survive here is money.
The apartment building in Cologne, where she grew up, had been designed to bring in the light. She remembers an abundance of pale wood and glass, the scent of fresh flowers and plants, alive and green and thriving. At this thought, she steps away from the flowers and returns to her desk and the report accumulating on her computer screen.
Delta, a Cologne-based construction company with a €10 billion portfolio are slowly changing the landscape of Kerstin’s home-city. Known for their elaborate high-rise constructions; concave behemoths of coloured glass where young, wealthy professionals can buy pod-sized one and two bed apartments for the same price as a detached house with land, the Delta brothers caused controversy a couple of years ago when one of their proposed developments, a helter-skelter shaped apartment block known as ‘The Snake’, had threatened to block out a substantial part of Cologne’s most famous building, the historic cathedral whose mighty spires can be viewed from almost any point in the city. After huge opposition from various heritage bodies, the brothers had to modify their plans and the view of the great cathedral remained intact. Kerstin’s mother, Eva, a leading art historian and the daughter of Klaus Engel one of the team of stonemasons and wood carvers who rebuilt the cathedral after the Second World War when the city had been reduced to a pile of rubble, had been one of the loudest detractors.
