A Different River

by Jo Verity

  There was something unsettling about his face. His features were spread out leaving, what seemed to Miriam, too much space between them, these gaps emphasised by pale, uncannily smooth skin. He took off his overcoat and draped it over the back of the chair. Beneath it he was wearing a suit teamed with a black shirt and pale blue tie. He rubbed his hands together and she noticed his nails were painted a matching blue.

  ‘Coffee?’ he said.

  Without consultation he went to the counter and was soon back with two Americanos, a jug of warm milk and a pile of Danish pastries.

  He plonked down the tray. ‘I’m looking for a model. Female. About your age. How old are you, by the way?’

  ‘Sixty-one,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘Much as I guessed.’

  ‘How old are you?’ She knew from her Google research but she could see she needed to stand up to this odd little man.

  He grinned. ‘Fifty-two. Only child. Parents dead. Never married. No children. No pets.’

  And that was all she was going to get out of him.

  He set about an apple Danish as if he hadn’t eaten for days, swilling down each mouthful with a slurp of coffee. He might have been performing for her benefit but it was more likely he gave not a fig what she thought of his table manners.

  ‘Any objection to my sitting in on Callum’s class?’ he said when he’d finished eating.

  She was nonplussed by his request (yet impressed by his handling of the gerund and possessive). ‘I suppose not. If it’s okay with Callum…’

  ‘Good. Now. Anything you want to ask me?’

  She’d jotted several questions on an A4 sheet, but before she could read them, he whipped it out of her hand and rattled through the answers.

  ‘Twice a week. In Torrington Street, near the market. I was thinking fifteen pounds an hour. “How many sittings?” Mmmm. As many as it takes.’ He folded the paper and handed it back to her. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I have sessions at the college twice a week. And I pick up grandchildren from school every day. Would that suit your schedule?’

  ‘We can work around that,’ he said and pointed to the remaining pastries. ‘Help yourself.’

  After he’d gone, she stood for a while studying the ‘Woman on the Stair’. She could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as sexy. Yet it was impossible not to weave an erotic story around her. (Those red shoes?) Bing had said the answer to everything was a few clicks away. But she’d tried that and come up with nothing. It seemed ‘Woman’ was determined to keep her secrets.

  Moat turned up in the same suit. Callum, very properly, checked that she was happy to have him sit in on the session. When he introduced Moat to the students, a frisson of excitement ran around the room.

  Callum had her adopt a sequence of short poses – standing, sitting, lying down. Ten minutes each. He was putting her through her paces for Moat’s benefit. As the students worked, Moat wandered around, looking at her and inspecting the work on the easels, now and then murmuring something or pointing something out. The usual relaxed atmosphere was replaced today by a sense of concentration and eagerness. In her breaks, she retreated to her little room to stretch and warm herself against the radiator. When she came out for the final pose he’d gone.

  ‘He apologised for scooting off,’ Callum said. ‘Optician’s appointment or something.’

  ‘The students were impressed,’ she said.

  ‘He’s something of a star. Anyway, you’ve got the gig if you want it.’ He paused. ‘Do you want it?’

  ‘Can I ask you something before I make my mind up?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘He’s… above board isn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t be put off by the flimflam. You’ll be perfectly safe with Moat.’

  Naomi expressed delight when Miriam told her she was visiting Paul. (She wasn’t ready yet to share his nickname with anyone.)

  ‘How romantic,’ Naomi said. ‘You’ll stay at his?’

  ‘Of course not. I don’t know why you’re getting so exercised about this.’

  Naomi threw her arms around her. ‘You’re allowed to be happy, Mum. None of it was your fault.’

  Miriam dipped her head against her daughter’s shoulder. They rarely mentioned Sam and when they did it tended to be inadvertently, as if the rule of silence had slipped their minds. Occasionally Rosa and Max remembered they’d once had a Grandpa Sam. They appeared to have taken his death in their stride and perhaps that was no bad thing. One day they might be curious about him, and the circumstances surrounding his death and, if the time were right, she would tell them.

  Naomi rubbed her back. ‘If this guy helps you to feel better, that’s fine by me.’

  ‘I must admit it’s a relief being with someone who didn’t know what happened,’ Miriam said. ‘Is that a dreadful thing to say?’

  ‘Surely he’s asked about Dad.’

  ‘He knows he died. That’s enough for now.’

  ‘I miss him, Mum. There were happy times, weren’t there?’

  It was easy to forget that Naomi, too, had lost something but Miriam had to look out for herself. ‘I can’t think about that at the moment,’ she said. ‘One day, perhaps.’

  Naomi pulled away. ‘I’m sorry but I can’t pretend he didn’t exist.’ She tore off a length of kitchen roll and blew her nose.

  ‘I don’t expect you to. But you have to understand I’m not ready to let him back in to my life. Maybe I never will be. Oh, dear. We’ve ended up talking in clichés.’ She went to the sink and filled the kettle. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  But Naomi wouldn’t let it go. ‘I know it’s not your thing, Mum, but mightn’t it be a good idea to talk to someone?’

  ‘We’ve been through this,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it would help. In fact I’m beginning to think things are turning around.’

  ‘That’s wonderful but maybe talking to someone would speed things up.’

  ‘You mean a psychiatrist?’

  ‘I mean someone who understands what you’ve had to deal with.’

  ‘I think you’ll find the only person who understands that is me,’ she said.

  ‘No need to snap my head off. I’m trying to help.’

  ‘I know. And I am grateful. But everyone seems to think we can all – every one of us – be happy all of the time. Well we can’t, and perhaps the sooner we accept that it’s okay to be sad or angry or whatever, the better.’

  Bing persuaded her to drive up on Friday evening.

  ‘No need to disturb your parents,’ he said. ‘Come straight to mine. I’ve got stacks of room.’

  He had a point. Turning up after dark on Friday would raise too many questions. She’d join them for coffee on Saturday morning and let them assume she’d just arrived. She told Naomi her plan. This seemed wise on three counts. Naomi could cover should her parents phone after she’d left. The shared confidence would act as all-girls-together olive branch following their prickly conversation about Sam. And whatever resulted from her reunion with Bing would stand a better chance were Naomi part of it right from the off.

  By Friday lunchtime, she’d arranged with Moat to be at his studio on Wednesday morning at nine-thirty for the first sitting, and packed and repacked a weekend case. For a brief visit like this she would normally take a couple of changes of socks and underwear, jeans, a spare shirt and an extra sweater to combat her parents’ stinginess with the heating. Today her case was full to bursting. Pyjamas and the sexy nightie. Jeans and neat black trousers. The linen suit she’d worn to her art college interview. A casual shirt and a silk blouse. And the heels Naomi had insisted she take. Clothes to suit all eventualities. Tonight she would spend with him, of course. With him. The English language was at times extremely coy.

  Whilst the children were eating supper, she phoned her parents.

  ‘Still okay for tomorrow?’ she said.

  ‘Your mother’s baking,’ her father said as if that were irrefutable proof of her visit
. ‘You’re phoning at peak time.’

  ‘I’m going out later so I thought I’d best do it now. But Naomi will be here if you need to pass a message.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘No reason. I’ll see you tomorrow. In time for coffee.’

  11

  she couldn’t stop her thoughtsdrifting to what lay ahead and she had little recollection of whole stretches of the journey. After the second near miss she pulled in to a petrol station and bought a double espresso from the machine, pacing the forecourt, waiting for caffeine and the sub-zero temperature to revive her. She glanced up at the spatter of stars. Orion’s Belt? Ursa Major? On one occasion Sam had lost patience with her when she’d said it was possible to join a few random stars and call it anything you liked.

  Were she to draw a Venn diagram of her life, it would consist of two circles. Family and Modelling. The circles would not overlap, a fact she found empowering. Sam must have persuaded himself of the same thing. In his case there would have been three circles. Family, Work and Gambling. The difference being, of course, that Gambling had expanded until it not only overlapped with but consumed the other two. His secret had demanded every ounce of his energy. And his cunning. That was what got to her. His ruthless cunning. By comparison, her secrets were harmless.

  She shoved her empty cup in the bin and returned to the car, unable to resist etching ME ♥ PC in the rime on the windscreen, swiping it away before fate or a CCTV camera had time to register it.

  She called him. ‘I’ll be about forty minutes.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘So when you reach the ring road, go straight across the roundabout—’

  ‘And take the second left, past B&Q. I know. I have your email on the passenger seat.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m fussing.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t have snapped.’

  His painstaking directions led her to a development of small, pinched houses, each detached from its neighbour by no more than a couple of metres. Street View had shown houses grouped around cul-de-sacs named after birds. She parked outside 5, Sparrowhawk, switched off the headlights and unclipped her seat belt. A niggling pain had started up where she imagined her appendix to be and she shifted in her seat, hoping it would ease. While she waited, she checked her phone. go for it mum x. (No capitals, no punctuation.)

  Naomi had said she was allowed to be happy, as if she were constantly punishing herself. Was that the impression she gave? A flagellating widow? That wasn’t her intention. All she wanted was to sever connection with the phoney life she’d lived with Sam. To start again. Ambitious, perhaps, but her expectations of this born-again life were modest. It was too late to embark on a different career even if she were able to summon the energy. But, thanks to Callum, she’d set off in an unforeseen direction – one that Sam couldn’t, in a million years, have imagined her taking. That, in itself, made it a victory. She’d been edging cautiously but steadily into her new future when Bing turned up. The past made flesh, as it were, phoning and texting and pressing her to visit. Surely they couldn’t pick up where they left off? And yet. Here she was, along with her fanciest underwear and sketchiest nightie, her stomach aflutter.

  She glanced at the house and saw a figure silhouetted in an upstairs window. She waved and by the time she’d unloaded her case and locked the car, he was halfway down the front path.

  ‘Hello, you,’ he said and kissed her lightly on the lips.

  The house was welcoming, filled with the smell of cooking. She shrugged off her coat and he hung it next to his. He was wearing the same navy sweater and brown cords he’d worn last weekend.

  ‘Journey okay?’ he said.

  She yawned and shivered. ‘Not too bad.’

  ‘You’re bushed,’ he said.

  ‘I think I am. May I use the bathroom?’

  ‘Top of the stairs. Your room’s to the left.’

  She’d forgotten what a child-free bathroom looked like. No soap splashes on the mirror. No bin brimming with heaven knows what. No slimy flannel on the rim of the bath. No fleet of plastic toys, puddled with last night’s bath water.

  After using the loo, she washed her hands and splashed water on her face. The strip light above the mirror was unforgiving, lending her skin a sallow cast. Her scarf failed to disguise her scrawny neck. Leaning in closer she saw that her right eye was bloodshot near the tear duct. If she closed her eyes, she was floating on a gentle sea swell.

  Her suitcase was waiting for her on the bedroom chair. She glanced around. Double bed. Sharp creases in the plain white, obviously-new linen. Blue towels – also new – on the bed. Unopened box of tissues and, a bizarre touch, the current issue of Homes & Gardens on the bedside table. Immaculate yet lifeless, like a hotel room. She flipped back the lid of her case. Everything she needed for tonight was to hand – toilet bag, nightdress, underwear for tomorrow, book (she’d chosen Dr Zhivago – a doctor, star-crossed lovers, a reunion).

  His voice drifted up, easy and familiar. ‘I’ve poured your wine.’

  ‘Down in a sec.’

  Pulling the tortoiseshell slide from her hair, she brushed it until it crackled. Loose or pulled back? The latter. (Nothing worse than pretending she was still a schoolgirl.) To counteract the schoolma’am look, she opted for frivolous earrings – cascades of silver stars and turquoise beads. She aimed a squirt of scent at each wrist and, lifting her chin, pulled herself up to her full height. Last night she’d scrutinised her body in the mirror, as she had before accepting Callum’s job offer, this time assessing the woman staring back at her as a potential lover. Bing had last seen her naked when she was twenty and blossoming into womanhood. Now here she was – skinny and slack – sliding into old age. An artist might consider bare flesh as ‘the body’s history’ – Callum’s words – but to lovers, it was foreplay not backstory.

  The door across the landing stood ajar and she pushed it open. A reading lamp shed low light across a smallish bedroom. Clothes heaped on a chair. Mug, spectacles and a remote control on the bedside table. Television on top of a chest of drawers. Desk strewn with papers and journals. Laptop. Brief case. Pretty much what she’d expected – but for the single bed.

  Bing’s room in the Crosby house had been her favourite place in the world. Once they were inside, door shut, no one else existed. But it was more than a hideaway. The room was enchanting and enchanted. Shabby furniture that might have started life in Russia or Morocco – certainly not the department store where her parents went for their prosaic G Plan stuff. The mishmash of games kit and schoolbooks, fossils and beer mats. A record player and records stacked upright in a wicker hamper. Sports trophies. Photographs of the Crosby family on the beach or in the garden. They’d lain on his double bed, dreaming of making this room their home – all they’d need was a kettle and a gas ring. (The room was never dusty although it had been hard to imagine Julia Crosby wielding a duster.)

  Bing was in the kitchen humming along to Radio 3, surrounded by fallout from his cooking efforts.

  ‘Find everything?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, thanks. The room’s lovely.’

  ‘I can’t take the credit,’ he said. ‘Jenny sees to all that. She’s my cleaner-cum-miracle-worker. I couldn’t function without her.’

  How he coped with the daily round – shopping, cooking, washing, cleaning – hadn’t crossed her mind. She felt an instant and fervent dislike for this indispensable Jenny who changed his sheets and tidied his underwear drawer.

  He handed her a glass. ‘What shall we drink to?’

  He would be expecting something consequential but all she could come up with was ‘To us.’

  ‘To us… and to the future,’ he said.

  The future. They weren’t youngsters, starting from scratch. At their age and with their history, bumbling along, seeing how things panned out, wasn’t the way to go. Before long they would need to have a frank conversation about this, this… whatever it was.

  ‘Can I do anything?’
she said.

  He patted the seat of a chair. ‘Talk to me.’

  She sat at the table whilst he sliced carrots, occasionally reaching across to steal a piece from the colander, all the time watching and remembering. Flat, square finger nails. His habit of whistling through his teeth when he concentrated. The scar across his eyebrow. There was something of his father about him which hadn’t been there when he was nineteen. Maybe it was more in his manner – his confidence – than his anatomy.

  He moved on to shredding cabbage, his knife tapping rhythmically on the chopping board. On the radio, a string quartet playing something slow and sad. Haydn? Schubert? Her hands were beginning to disconnect from her arms – the not-unpleasant sensation that sometimes preceded sleep.

  ‘Hey.’ He touched her shoulder. ‘Dinner’s ready.’

  ‘Resting my eyes,’ she said.

  She hadn’t realised how hungry she was until she was well into her second helping of beef bourguignon. As they ate, the conversation jumped from this to that. Rosa and Max. A film they both wanted to see. A cold-calling scam that was causing a rumpus. Blizzards in America.

  ‘How was your week?’ he said.

  She’d deliberated long and hard over what to tell him about her job. He knew she worked a couple of mornings at the college and how she spent her time there made no difference to anything. She would let it ride for a while longer.