A Different River

by Jo Verity

  She was getting used to the college’s hustle and bustle; its layout; the faint but persistent smell of glue and paint and sawn timber. When she reached the studio, she was nonplussed to see that a chaise longue affair, draped with a dark green blanket, had replaced the chair on the podium. A couch suggested lying, lolling, lounging – a different proposition from perching primly on a straight-backed chair.

  The model’s room was gloomy, illuminated only by a sliver of window, tight up against the ceiling. To make matters worse, it was glazed with frosted glass as if to foil giant Peeping Toms. The room was furnished with a table and two chairs, the walls lined with shelves stacked with saggy cardboard boxes. It must once have been a stockroom. She hung her jacket on the back of the chair and placed her bag on the seat. Today she was wearing jeans and an old sweater – easy to slip off and on and more in keeping with the ambience of the place.

  The sound of laughter seeped into her cupboard. Students were arriving. She checked the time. Five more minutes. Long enough to go to the loo.

  ‘Hi, Miriam,’ one of the girls called as she attempted to slide unnoticed out of the room.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ She could have been greeting one of her A-level students.

  On the way down the corridor she bumped into Callum. ‘Back in a sec,’ she said, pointing towards the cloakroom door.

  Max had read somewhere that one day an asteroid would wipe out Planet Earth. The idea troubled him and she’d spent some time dispelling his fears but today – right here, right now – annihilation would be a blessing. Get a grip, woman. If she couldn’t hack this, she should walk away. No one – no one she cared about, anyway – would be any the wiser. She fished inside the dispenser for the end of the loo roll. Not true. She would know. This whole business was about being brave and bold. Raising two fingers to her crappy life. Fail at this self-imposed challenge and she might as well abandon all hope of escape.

  Callum was talking to two of the students and he smiled and raised a hand as she disappeared into the room. Right. Okay. She took a deep breath and hastily stripped off her shoes and clothes, dumping them on the table, making a point not to look down at her body. When she pulled on the robe, it felt cold and slippery. She could hear Callum instructing the students. ‘Take a few minutes to find your viewpoint. You can reposition in the breaks if you like but Miriam will be holding the same pose throughout.’

  She opened the door, simultaneously allowing her consciousness to detach itself and fly up to hover above the woman in the shiny robe. There she was. Miriam Siskin. Walking towards the podium. A prizefighter in a shiny robe, heading for the ring. She stepped up onto the podium and, with her back to the room, slipped off the robe. And, believe it or not, the world didn’t end. In fact the students went on chatting and clattering about as though nothing had happened.

  Callum was at her side. ‘If you could sit down, both legs up. Ankles crossed.’

  She sat on the couch, legs extended, crossed at the ankles.

  ‘Perfect,’ he said.

  She smiled, her face feeling stiff as it did when the dentist gave her an injection.

  He coaxed her right hand across her stomach until it was resting on her left thigh. His touch was reassuringly clinical. ‘Just here. Good.’

  He held up a stubby crayon. ‘Face paint,’ he said, tracing swiftly around her hand, marking where it lay on her thigh and where one ankle crossed the other. ‘This’ll help locate your position after you’ve taken a break.’

  ‘Where should I look?’ she said.

  ‘Up to you. Wherever feels natural.’

  She raised her chin so that her body was outside her field of vision. ‘This okay?’

  ‘Spot on,’ he said.

  Every so often he gave a time check, more for her benefit, she imagined, than the students. Her mind and her body took turns to grab her attention. Her feet grew colder and colder until she could barely feel them. She pictured her parents chatting over a late breakfast, wondering how she was getting on in her new job. Her knees ached and the rug she was sitting on prickled the skin on her buttocks. Oh, God. Had this blanket been washed since what’s-his-name – Viktor – sat on it?

  Callum called a break. Her muscles had stiffened in the course of twenty motionless minutes, and when she stood up she couldn’t help letting out a groan. She’d noticed how her parents emitted random moans and groans every time they got up from a chair or climbed the stair. It sounded to her like a constant and irritating plea for attention. Now, heaven forbid, she was doing the same thing.

  Turning away from the students, she pulled on her robe and headed for her little room. Callum was right. She would have felt embarrassed weaving her way between the easels without something covering her nakedness.

  There was a gentle knock on the door. ‘Can I get you anything?’ Callum said. ‘I generally have a coffee mid-morning,’ he said, ‘but if you’d like one now…’

  ‘I’ll leave it a while,’ she said, not wanting him to come in and destroy her illusion of disconnection.

  When she tried rubbing the life back into her feet, she saw that the bottoms were filthy. Next time she must bring her Birkenstocks.

  7

  A tap on the bedroom door and a whispered ‘Miriam? Are you asleep?’

  Her mother was hovering on the landing, holding a cup of tea. She had swapped her beige dress for something identical in bottle green, the marcasite brooch at the neck the only thing that indicated she was going out.

  ‘Lovely. Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘Dad wants us to leave at eight,’ her mother said.

  Miriam didn’t want to go. Really didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to strip off her cosy sweater, her cords, her woolly socks. She didn’t want to struggle into tights, dress, party shoes. She didn’t want to accompany her parents over the road to see in the New Year with a crowd of geriatric strangers.

  ‘Oh,’ her mother said, ‘you haven’t changed yet.’

  ‘Plenty of time.’ Miriam held up a bottle of bath bubbles. ‘First I’m going to have a soak. Rosa gave me these for Christmas.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ The response was potent with reproach and anxiety.

  Her mother never failed to give the impression that she was incapable of working anything out for herself. It made Miriam cross and sad, and she wanted to shake her. But shaking old ladies wasn’t allowed and instead she stirred things a little. ‘Then I have to ring a few people. If I wait until midnight, they’ll be too drunk to make sense. But you two go ahead. It’s you and Dad they want to see, not me. I’ll pop over later.’

  Her mother fiddled with her brooch. ‘I don’t know…’

  She caught a whiff of the floral scent her mother dabbed on her wrists on special occasions and, repenting, kissed her cheek, the skin beneath her lips soft and pliable like putty-coloured chamois leather.

  She lay back in the bath, breasts, belly and knees breaking the surface of the water in a glistening archipelago. Her father’s voice was rumbling on in the kitchen below. Occasionally her mother murmured something. She couldn’t make out what they were saying but she knew they were conducting a post-mortem on her reluctance to conform to their schedule.

  After the first few modelling sessions, nudity had become shockingly easy. Either she’d lost every ounce of self-esteem or she’d gained an astounding new confidence. Whichever it was, she looked forward to her mornings at the college. On the practical side, things were running smoothly. Naomi wasn’t the least interested in how she spent her days as long as she was at the school gates in time to meet the children. Taking a sponge, she trickled water across her neck and shoulders. Forty years ago her future had rested in this body. Love. Marriage. Motherhood. Now her body was a business asset. Her means of income. Compared with her teaching salary, the pay was a pittance but she’d opened an account with the Halifax and was insanely proud of her blue passbook and its mounting balance.

  Something flashed in the darkness beyond the window, followed by a barrage of m
uted pops and crackles. New Year’s Eve. The first of the fireworks. This time last year, she and Sam had been getting ready to go to a party. Full of hope, they’d kissed and raised their glasses to ‘the future’. This evening, the best she could hope was that nothing too awful would happen in the coming year. The odds were stacked against it. This morning she’d spotted her father fiddling with a pill-dispenser. When he saw her he’d shoved it into his sock drawer and when she sneaked back to check, it had disappeared. Her mother had, several times during the course of her week-long visit, stopped mid-sentence and looked around as if someone else had been speaking. If illness or old age didn’t get them, there was always a wonky paving slab or a runaway bin lorry. A wave of non-specific anxiety swept over her.

  Most of the houses she could see from the bedroom window were still festooned with Christmas lights. No inflatable Santas or flying Rudolphs in this staid street. God forbid. Yet there were elements of one-upmanship in the tasteful displays. And so many lights. All those the meters whirring round. Npower must love Christmas.

  The children had persuaded David to decorate the trees in their front garden. Watching him gather up tools, duct tape and such like, Miriam had been filled with sadness. When he’d finished, Rosa had pressed him to stay for lunch. ‘I don’t want to impose,’ he’d said, his eyes fixed on Naomi who had seemed happy – well, not unhappy – to go along with it. The children had hopped around the kitchen, screeching with delight. In that instant she had become an outsider in their little family unit and, leaving them together, she’d gone out for the afternoon.

  Earlier on, she’d lied to her mother. She wasn’t planned on calling anyone this evening – mainly because she had no one to call. She’d already spoken to Naomi. Finding a babysitter for tonight had proved impossible and her daughter was hosting a party for similarly stymied friends and their offspring. Naomi promised to keep the door to the ‘granny annexe’ closed but with a house full of sugar-high children it was hard to see how her domain would escape invasion.

  There must be someone who’d appreciate a New Year greeting. She scrolled through her contacts. Who would she choose from the ‘old days’, Stephanie? Louise? Their old neighbours? Too weird, too needy-seeming after her long silence. And from the ‘new days’? Callum was her only recent contact and, although he saw her naked twice a week, phoning him didn’t seem quite the thing.

  She crawled under the duvet and pulled it over her head. She missed Sam but she hated him, too. Deceiving her was one thing, but killing himself – that was indefensible.

  It was well past ten-thirty by the time she got there. A wisp of a woman opened the front door. ‘Come in, dear. Here, let me take that.’

  She took off her coat and handed it to her hostess. ‘I’m Miriam. Lionel and Freda’s daughter.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t introduce you to everyone. I don’t remember who half of them are.’ The old lady seemed proud of her deficiency.

  Her parents were in the far corner of the living room, talking to an elderly woman who appeared to be dressed for the opera, right down to velvet choker and fur wrap. When her father spotted her he tapped his wristwatch but she waved, pretending not to understand, and went in search of a drink.

  She spent the next hour doing the rounds, explaining who she was and how she came to be at the party. The guests were diminutive and insubstantial, clones of her parents, and amongst them she felt like a giant. They all seemed to know Lionel and Freda Edlin which she found surprising. Whenever she pictured her parents, they were in their house, alone.

  ‘Shall I tell you a little secret, dear,’ her hostess said when Miriam returned to the kitchen for a refill. ‘My husband and I spent the whole afternoon in bed.’ She tittered and held arthritic hands to her cheeks.

  Whether the memory was hours or decades old, it still delighted the old lady and Miriam smiled. ‘Good for you.’

  She watched her parents and their friends, doggedly partying on whilst all she wanted was to sleep. In the course of her many conversations with Doctor Tate, he’d spoken of a study showing that if you made it beyond seventy-two there was no reason why you couldn’t live to be a hundred. He’d probably imagined this would be a comfort to her.

  The kitchen door led into the garden and, lured by the sound of fireworks, she ventured outside. Rockets burst across the sky, shooting fiery tadpoles in all directions. Bangers carumphed like artillery shells.

  She checked her phone for the umpteenth time. David had texted – H N Y Dx. A sign that matters were improving between him and Naomi? More likely he felt sorry for her on this, the trickiest of nights.

  The door opened and a woman came out. ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘I’m watching the fireworks.’

  ‘Terrible waste of money,’ the woman said. ‘You’d think we’d have had our fill of explosions, wouldn’t you? Iraq. Afghanistan.’

  ‘True. But they are lovely, aren’t they? And the smell. It takes me right back.’

  They stood without talking. Watching and listening.

  ‘What’s the time?’ the woman said after a few minutes.

  Miriam glanced at her phone. ‘Four minutes to midnight. I suppose we should join the party.’

  In the bright kitchen, she had a chance to study her companion. The woman was roughly her age. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, she looked as if she should be gardening or walking the dog.

  ‘You don’t have a glass,’ Miriam said.

  ‘I’m driving. Who’d have thought the day would come when I’d be collecting my mother from a party?’ The woman peered at her. ‘Don’t I know you?’

  Before she had time to answer, a chorus of voices began the countdown. In the living room, a ragged circle had formed and Miriam was in time to link hands with her parents as they broke into Auld Lang Syne. After the first round, the tempo increased and they started careering in and out, welcoming in the coming year, recklessly challenging it to finish them off. The circle finally disintegrated and Miriam hugged her parents.

  ‘You cut it fine,’ her father said.

  ‘And a happy New Year, to you too, Dad,’ she murmured.

  As if someone had blown the end-of-play whistle, the guests set about rummaging for coats.

  ‘I do know you,’ the woman said as they were making their way out. ‘You’re Miriam Edlin.’

  ‘I used to be. Sorry but—’

  ‘You wouldn’t. I was two years below you at school.’ She held out her hand. ‘Angela Terry. Used to be Fielding.’

  Miriam shook her hand, trying and failing to picture her as she might have looked forty-odd years ago.

  ‘I hated you,’ Angela said, smiling.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. In fact I wished you dead.’

  ‘Gosh. Any particular reason?’

  ‘I had a massive crush on Paul Crosby. I couldn’t bear that he was going out with you instead of me. Of course he was unaware of my existence, but we’re not rational when we’re fifteen are we? And he was incredibly handsome, wasn’t he?’

  Paul Crosby. Paul. Her Paul.

  ‘I suppose he was.’

  ‘Have you kept in touch?’

  ‘No,’ Miriam said. ‘Paul went to med school in London and… it sort of petered out. I’ve no idea what happened to him after that.’

  Angela raised her eyebrows. ‘So you haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘He’s joined a GP practice. Here. In the city centre. I know because a friend of a friend is the practice nurse. I gather he’s recently divorced.’

  Her parents were heading for the door, signalling her to get a move on.

  ‘I’m sorry but I have to go,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Angela said. ‘Why don’t we meet for coffee? Are you around tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m off home. But maybe next time I’m here.’

  She scrawled her number on a scrap of paper and gave it to her new acquaintance.

  ‘Who’s t
hat woman you were talking to?’ her father asked when they got back to the house.

  ‘Angela Terry,’ she said. ‘We were at school together.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ her mother said, unpinning her brooch.

  ‘Are you alright, Miriam?’ her father said. ‘You look drawn.’

  ‘I’m tired, that’s all. I’m off to bed.’

  Her mother patted her arm. ‘Sleep well. No need to rush off in the morning. Have a lie in.’

  She hurried up to her room and, without undressing, got into bed.

  Paul. Here. In this city.

  8

  It was dark. HER DRESS was tugging beneath her arms. Her skin itched where her tights gripped her waist. Pushing away the duvet, she groped for her phone. Six-forty on the first day of a new year. Desperate for a cup of tea, she tiptoed past her parents’ door and down the stairs. The house was chilly but were she to advance the heating, the noise of the ancient system bursting into life would wake them. Taking her coat from the hall stand, she shoved her feet into her father’s slippers and, whilst she waited for the kettle to boil, she pondered Angela Terry’s revelation.

  Her iPad lay on the worktop where she’d left it charging. Sitting at the kitchen table, she typed ‘Paul Crosby GP UK’ into the search box. A list of links came up suggesting she check LinkedIn, Facebook, Wikipedia and the like. Scrolling down she spotted something promising and a tap on the screen took her to an announcement in the local online paper. ‘Dr Paul Crosby has joined Monkton Square Surgery as a general practitioner’. A few sentences followed explaining that ‘Dr Crosby was a pupil at the local grammar school before going on to study medicine in London. He has worked all over the UK, most recently in Scotland’.