Inglorious

by Joanna Kavenna

  ‘You know it too,’ he said. ‘We can’t continue.’ Rosa noted the shift. This can’t continue, we can’t continue; the transition from the impersonal to the specific was marked, almost literary in its contrivance. His speech had definitely been rehearsed. There was even a suggestion he had been coached. She wondered briefly which two-bit swine had helped him, but really it didn’t matter. He said, ‘Rosa, you know I love you. I’m really sorry about the death of your mother. But we can’t lie endlessly.’ His face was flushed and he slapped his hand on the windowsill. He sounded angry.

  ‘I know things have been bad. But why now, precisely? Is it because I’ve left my job?’ asked Rosa, weakly.

  ‘Of course not,’ he snapped. ‘That’s just another disaster. I wanted us to split and then your mother died, and so I couldn’t. Now, I suppose, I ought to think that we can’t split because you’ve left your job. But I can’t think that any more. Fundamentally I’m not the right person for you. I feel this now, more than ever before. You must feel it too. There’s a danger because of recent events that you might just cling to me, and that’s a bad idea. That will make things worse, and we’ll be even more trapped. We would have had this conversation ages ago, if it weren’t for your mother.’ His use of the subjunctive was needlessly baroque. It didn’t suit him. He was standing at the window, silhouetted against the haze, looking quite composed. It seemed that he had decided everything. She suddenly understood that there were plans built around this speech, a whole structure of necessary changes. He was far ahead of her.

  He was lucid and, she later understood, dishonest. He told her he loved her. There was a lot of sad talk, and he mustered some tears. It went on for hours. At one stage she even thought he was enjoying it. He said, ‘Rosa, will you be OK?’ and tried to touch her. She brushed him off, angrily, and said, ‘Yes, yes of course.’

  ‘Of course I will move out,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll go as soon as you want me to.’

  ‘Or I can,’ said Rosa.

  ‘No, Rosa, definitely not,’ he said, shaking his head. Again he tried to move towards her and she stepped back. He said, ‘I won’t hear of it. I’ll go and stay with Lorne.’

  At that, she nodded. She had a few ideas in her head, mingling with the glutinous stock of her earlier thoughts. She realised that he was her home, that he had been for years, and so wherever he was not was not her home anyway. Makes this room an everywhere, she thought of saying, but realised it was hardly relevant. For a long time, she had relied on love – her patched up version – to keep her sane. Later, she decided she would be the one to go. They parted at the door of the bedroom, and he hugged her to him. They held each other for a while, though in retrospect it seemed a beggarly amount, after all those years. She was startled and she couldn’t cry. She was waiting for a final confession, but he stepped back, red-faced, and said, ‘I’m just going to sort out a few things. Goodnight.’

  And this time goodnight was absolute, a categorical goodbye, she thought as she undressed and got into bed. She lay there for an hour, listening to his careful motions outside, her stomach making little flutters that stopped her from going to sleep. Rosa – staring at the electronic alarm clock, the pile of books on the bedside table, his and hers, the trappings of their life together – waited while Liam turned the handle of the door. He came quietly into the room. He reached the bed and paused. He was fumbling under the pillow, and she realised he had come in, not to caress her one last time, or to weep for the death of love, but to find his pyjamas. Submerged in bathos, she turned her head to the wall. Liam moved softly to the door, and walked out.

  When morning came, she pushed the curtains apart and watched a low mist tumbling along the tops of the houses. She saw it was a tranquil day, beautiful in the soft shifts of light and the tender moan of planes and cars. She drew the curtains again and waited with her head down until Liam went to work. She hid under the covers when he came to get his clothes. She heard him slide the wardrobe open, and feigned sleep while he rustled through his suits. He was stepping quietly, trying not to wake her. The sheets were clammy with her sweat. When Liam had gone, she walked through the flat touching their stuff. She sifted through the shirts hanging in the wardrobe. She handled the photos scattered on the desk, their books, their CDs. She admired their taste in art. In their years together the boundaries between them had become permeable. Their personalities had combined in some things. In others they were distinct and mutually unintelligible. As she walked through the kitchen she thought there was nothing she wanted to complain about. She smiled as she ate breakfast and watched the sunlight flickering on the floor. She wondered if she should take the milk with her. ‘Now your ties are really cut,’ she said. ‘Quite right too.’ I do not fear to be alone, she thought. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake. But that was hardly true. She was afraid, trembling with a sense of foreboding. So she occupied herself with practicalities. She always enjoyed packing. She spent the morning throwing out her papers, superfluous clothes and books, aged detritus. She took a large suitcase and filled it with things. She bundled the rest into boxes and stuck notes on the top. ‘ROSA’S BOX’ they read. Then she called Sandra Whitchurch and asked if she could stay.

  QUEST

  Then it was October, four months had passed, and she was really out on a limb. Things had followed a clear course. She was persistent and she stripped herself down. It was amazing how quickly it happened. All those years on the train, rushing in and out of the city, and before long much had changed. Once you cut a thread, the tapestry unravelled. They waved you off – no one minded at all. Sure, they were saying, laughing into their hands, go off and find yourself. Whatever, excavate that navel of yours. Delve deeply into your inner being. Try to grasp the secret of the universe, find a reason for all this perversity and violence and chaos. Oh yes, you take as long as you like! We’re sure you’ll crack it! You were free, of course, free to sink. She had a few fathoms to go; she hadn’t plunged the furthest depths. Still, she had not quite managed to float. Revelations had been withheld, yet she was still ambitious. Meanwhile she had drifted into a state of insolvency, and that had become the most pressing element of her life and a burden on her thoughts.

  She was out on the street because she was going to the bank. It was early and she was walking slowly with her hands in her pockets. In the half-light of a misty morning, she saw the concrete buttresses of the Westway and the shining hides of successive cars. Beneath it she saw – at first indeterminate and then coming closer – the shape of Sandra Whitchurch. Whitchurch was walking towards her, blameless in a grey suit. She was walking with her feet turned outwards, it lent a waddle to her motions, and she still had her hunted look. It was strange she was there, on the wrong side of town, clearly late for something. She was moving steadily, looking at her watch as she walked. She looked nervous, it was something in the motion of her head. Rosa had always liked Whitchurch’s nerves. Whitchurch was the sort who trembled when she smiled. She poured you coffee, her hands shaking. If you looked at her too long, preserved a pause, she shivered. At the sight of her, Rosa tried to run. It was poor behaviour, but she couldn’t help it. Certainly it was futile, she got stranded in the middle of the road and knew immediately the game was up. She was preparing an innocent phrase as Whitchurch raised her head and saw her. It crossed her body, a spasm of fear. It was clearly ironic to think about Whitchurch’s nerves when she was trembling at the prospect of a conversation. It was an overreaction. Irrational, of course.

  Whitchurch had only been kind to her. After she crept out of her office and crawled out of her flat, she spent some time on the sofa in Whitchurch’s flat, in a sliced-up house in Angel. The sofa was clearly the axis mundi, Rosa realised, as she lay there day after day with her eyes on the ceiling. She found she was nervous and excited, and in the mornings she was so tired she could hardly stand. This made her think she might have something, some explicable disease that could be treated with drugs, but after
a few days she felt OK again. Then she tried to sell her possessions, putting adverts in shop windows. No one really wanted used clothes and books and CDs, unless they were antique or collectible. In the area she lived in, people gave things away, offered them out like indulgences, so she did that too, taking stuff in big black bags to Oxfam. She didn’t mind losing some of the clutter she had been dragging around. She had given away all of her books, except Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women and the complete works of Shakespeare. When she wasn’t reading these, she sat in the library using the Internet, typing in web addresses. This didn’t do much, but it made her feel industrious. Before it got so cold she had spent the summer sitting in parks, and that had been much better. Really it had been like a holiday; it had lulled her into a false sense of security. She had thought she could do it for ever, passing days in Regent’s Park, watching people pushing prams and rabbits scuffling on the grass and squirrels moving along the branches. She was all for aping Rousseau, marshalling her thoughts in a series of walks. The marshalling hadn’t happened, but she had at least walked. It had been a proper summer Eden, but the autumn cast her out.

  It was Whitchurch’s honesty that had done for her. Better had she lied like the others. Poor Whitchurch, blushing and talking very fast, had told her just what Liam and Grace were doing. It was the greatest revelation Rosa had so far experienced, this jangling echo from the life she had left. In August, good kind Whitchurch had spilled it all, supplied some surprising details, and then she had walked with Rosa to Tottenham Court Road asking her if she was going to be OK, apologising so sweetly and sadly for being the one to bring her the news. Liam and Grace were in love. Better still, they were getting married, in a public ceremony. No one had condemned them! Rosa was naturally surprised, and then she was incoherent and eventually silent. She knew that she had been deceived, but she was dull-witted and she couldn’t remember much. She restrained herself in Whitchurch’s presence, and this sterling repression left her spitting choler after Whitchurch had shot her a final look of compassion and gone back to the office. For a week Whitchurch’s compassion was so mighty and terrible that Rosa thought she might be crushed by the weight of it. Then she heard that Jess had a spare room, so she offered Whitchurch thanks, and moved to Kensal Rise.

  Now Rosa felt a brief pang, thinking of how her life had thinned out, how she had whittled it down to the basics. She had lost sight of Whitchurch and so many others. For a while she had missed her, and yet now she fled when she saw her. Would it be so terrible, to meet a Whitchurch, she wondered? The woman looked benign, moving purposefully, checking her watch. She was carrying a heavy bag, leaning slightly to one side. Here she came, lugubrious with her heavy limbs. Moving to her own personal pace, in her own decelerated version of a hurry, Whitchurch walked on. She nodded to Rosa and Rosa nodded back. Then they were a foot away from each other, and someone had to speak. So Rosa said ‘Hi, Sandra’ thinking it was best to start.

  ‘Rosa, how are you?’ Whitchurch wasn’t sure whether to kiss her or clasp her hand, so in the end she did neither and they stood with their arms at their sides.

  ‘Very well, how are you?’ said Rosa. She was determined to be jovial, and so she managed a smile and stood there, quite lock-jawed with the strain of holding it. Whitchurch was equally determined, her eyes wide open, nodding vividly.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Just off to a meeting. Somewhere around here. At Westbourne Studios, is it far?’

  ‘No,’ said Rosa. ‘You’re very close. Just a few streets further and then cross a footbridge.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ said Whitchurch. ‘I’d begun to wonder if I’d be wandering around all day.’

  Rosa laughed too loudly, lifting her head and catching an observant glimmer in Whitchurch’s eyes. Indeed, as she laughed, she noticed Whitchurch looking her up and down, aiming to assess her. ‘So, what are you up to?’ said Whitchurch.

  With unconvincing nonchalance, she rubbed her eye with a finger. That smudged her mascara, and Rosa wasn’t sure if she should tell her.

  ‘Oh, you know, looking for work.’

  ‘Are you still living up in Kensal Rise?’

  She meant it well enough, so Rosa smiled and said, ‘Yes, still with Jess. She’s been very kind. Her boyfriend is great too, very welcoming. They seem a happy couple.’ That was flannel, superfluous to requirements. She was trying to emit bonhomie, but something wasn’t right.

  ‘Good,’ said Whitchurch.

  She screwed up her face so it cratered like the moon. She was sweating at the collar. Whitchurch was like a beast, come out to graze in the morning light. She had the thick thighs of a venerable woman, the sort of woman who does a lot of work and never has time for the gym. Rosa appreciated the ample curves of Whitchurch, and then, aware that they had both paused, silence had slung a lasso around them, she said, ‘And how are you, Sandra? How’s work?’

  Whitchurch moved towards her. Now her large, friendly face was close to Rosa’s. She had healthy red skin, freckles on her nose, and a few white blotches on her neck. Her brows had been plucked into oblivion, her follicles had been purged. Her skin was lined, but the lines were soft, quite pretty, and they bracketed her mouth and set off her eyes. She was a handsome woman, but the sight of her waggling her pruned brows, smiling urgently, unnerved Rosa and she stepped back.

  ‘Work is great,’ said Whitchurch.

  ‘Why great?’

  Whitchurch shrugged her shoulders. This she did with some effort, because her bag looked heavy. Rosa thought she wouldn’t stop for long.

  ‘Oh, everything’s going well, as ever. Lots of big clients in town this week, so it’s very busy.’

  ‘I should let you go,’ said Rosa.

  Whitchurch glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, well, a couple of minutes will be all right,’ she said. She licked her lips, her malleable mouth. A couple of minutes – time for what? A bus moaned past, causing Whitchurch to raise her voice. That tightened her consonants, made them sibilant. Time for a quiet confession. ‘I haven’t seen you for a while, since you moved out. I felt like the messenger who got shot,’ said Whitchurch.

  Well, it was true. ‘No, no, Sandra, not at all,’ said Rosa, trying to smile. ‘I’m glad you told me. At first I was surprised, but now I’m well on the way to understanding.’ Quite en route to something like acceptance, though her hands bled sweat as she talked. She understood that Grace had merely been a purgative. She had forced the issue. That was the best way to think of it, and, in her finer moments, Rosa did. There was something about it that concerned her, all the same. It was a sense of coincidence, the curious chances of their meeting, that if Rosa’s mother had never died then Rosa would never have talked drunkenly to Grace and embarked upon such an intense friendship with her, and Grace would never have come round to the flat all the time and Liam would never have fallen in love with her. It was a shocking run of coincidences, as if the fates had been conspiring. But Rosa, unsure if there were fates anyway, couldn’t unearth it, and this was what perplexed her. There were days when she thought that Liam must have been looking for a way out, to fall so deeply in love with the first new friend who came to their flat. She couldn’t work it out, though undoubtedly it lent another layer of significance to those evenings when Grace sat in their flat, telling them they were ‘fatally stuck’, that they needed a ‘swift transition, a mutual release’. Grace with her legs curled up, toying with her food, because Grace was so full of ideas that she hardly ever ate. Rosa had believed it all. She wanted Grace to tell her what she was. And Liam was just a sucker for a beautiful woman who spoke in whirling subordinate clauses.

  Whitchurch was waiting, and Rosa said, ‘I’ve just been hiding out from everyone. I set myself some ambitious targets. Initially I was whipping through them, but recently I’ve had to focus on work, jobs, you know. My money ran out. The rest is ignominious.’

  That made Whitchurch nod in a distracted way.

  ‘Good, good,’ she said. ‘Beca
use I wouldn’t want to think you blamed me for anything.’

  ‘No, no, I only blame myself.’ And Liam, Grace, my parents dead and alive, Yabalon and the laws of the universe. But mostly myself. ‘Really, I’m sorting things out. Perhaps we could meet up, when everything’s less chaotic. I can explain it all in tedious detail.’

  Whitchurch nodded again, and scrutinised her watch.

  ‘Same numbers, you know how to reach me. Are you – perhaps you aren’t – are you going to their wedding?’

  ‘Their wedding,’ said Rosa, aware of her voice rising, tightening, for all her efforts to suppress the signs. Shrilly, squawking like an exotic bird, she said, ‘No no, I won’t be going. They did invite me. But I have to go away on Friday. It is this Friday, isn’t it?’ she added, wanting to sound uncertain. Whitchurch nodded. ‘Well, other things to do. You know, send them my best. I have already, but you know, never hurts.’ And she laughed. She laughed as if she might be about to choke.

  ‘OK, of course,’ said Whitchurch. Now she was turning to leave. Whither Whitchurch, thought Rosa, and then she thought hwaer cwom Whitchurch. She had treated Whitchurch badly. It would be impossible to reignite that friendship. For death, people made allowances. But only for so long. And for the rest, the rest was chaff. Rosa’s crustacean mores hadn’t impressed them at all. She had kept herself under a rock and now they had stopped trying to prise her out.

  ‘You know, everyone misses you,’ said Whitchurch.

  ‘I miss them,’ said Rosa.

  ‘They feel awkward, of course.’ That was because of Liam, she thought. Really he had made the whole thing like a gladiatorial contest. She had been preoccupied and she hadn’t bothered to state her case. Meanwhile, he had conducted a briefing campaign against her. He was guilty, or angry she had wasted so many years of his life, anyway he had been telling everyone she was crazy and sad. It made them reluctant to see her. And if by chance they did see her, it made them look holy, which was what Whitchurch was doing now. Whitchurch was a font of holy-watered concern. ‘I’ve been useless, I know,’ said Rosa. ‘I’ve been out of touch with everyone.’