Inglorious

by Joanna Kavenna

  When she came up into the sunshine she waited for the lights to change. There was a sign in a shop saying MORE FOR SALE. More and more and more. The water tower stood like a totem. Ritualistically, the cars circled it, lucid strings of red and blue and silver. A man was running quickly towards her, followed by a man with a broom. She stepped aside and let them pass. The lights changed and she crossed in a group, losing the others at the other side. Now she was walking swiftly, realising she was late. There was a brown high-rise block and an immaculate white shopping centre. She passed a jeweller’s and a shop selling Aussie Pies. There was a queue at the bus stop, and a formidable block of banks. Still you haven’t managed to see Sharkbreath, she thought. Plain reprehensible. They have certainly tried to help you. The bank had been sending her sympathetic offers, suggestions for repayment plans, and really it was only recently they had brought on Sharkbreath. It was unfair to demonise them, those legions of lenders and their zipper-mouthed minions. So they had taken an axe to her credit cards? What did she expect? Why would they entrust them to her any more, when she was so clearly incapable of paying them off? She understood the rules, they had been explained clearly to her, and if she was incapable of abiding by them – ‘Well, then you get Sharkbreath,’ she said aloud.

  The green was clad in trees, branches defined against thick clouds. She walked down Shepherd’s Bush Road, where every shop was selling cut-cost bargains, and picked a path through slow-moving children and men like Elde and the disconnected variety of the crowds. A man was shouting at an intercom. She turned left and found herself in quieter streets, so idyllic that the houses had a sense of smugness to them. There were geraniums in the gardens and ivy on the walls. There was a penguin statue on the steps of a cottage. That was a tidy gimmick, she thought. Her footsteps rang out as she picked up speed. She saw a car sticker saying ‘Experience the Meaning of Life’. She turned at a corner where a man with a white beard was brushing the pavement, and a woman was saying ‘C’est catastrophique’ to her friend as they stood in the garden of a cottage.

  At Brook Green she was late and trying to run. Hindered by her stacked-up shoes, shoes made for self-mutilation, she hopped and skipped along the street. There were people playing tennis though the day was cold. She passed them quickly, and ran up Bute Gardens. To the sound of dogs barking she rounded another corner, nearly collided with a group of kids singing, saw the blank glass of an office block and stepped onto the main road. Hammersmith was a woven mass of cars, steady at the lights. Trees, glass, marble and old white stones. A pattern of materials, she picked them out against the cold sky. Behind stood the old shopping centre and the sign of the Underground.

  Now she was cursing as she ran, staring down the lights while they ambled on red, slalom-racing along the road, twisting out of the way of other people. Her hips ached, and she found herself panting along the river, past the backs of quiet pubs. Her head was still sore and she wondered what was ague and could she have it? She thought she might. At the prospect of an interview she felt a mingled sense of joy and death come quickly. She wanted to be saved but the taste was bitter. Acrid air around her and a swelling on her heels. She should stop borrowing Jess’s shoes, she thought, they didn’t fit at all. Then she found she was lost. She was frantic for a few moments, scrambling around dirty streets, finding herself in a housing estate which had a map like hermetic code and she was spitting mad when she found the path again. But other than that it was a fine day. Her suit was tight and she had sweated liberally, but the water glinted in the sunshine. The big old muddy river was tranquil in the afternoon and the sky was clear above it. So she walked more slowly, trying to catch her breath. On the iron bridge a dozen cars coursed along, crossing into the south.

  There were lions by the gates, grim-faced, chipped by age. She stepped past them, her heart thumping. She saw pebble borders containing sumptuous flowerbeds and a big wooden door. She adjusted her shirt, tucked it into her belt, noticed she had scuffed Jess’s shoes, blew her nose on her hand and wiped her hand on a hedge. She saw a gargoyle doorknocker and used it. There was a pause, and then Rosa found she was being drawn inside by a woman with long thin hands and a bony face. She was admitted to a long grey corridor where the walls were decked with portraits. It was clear that Mrs Brazier had been a handsome woman until she had her skin tightened. She had shining auburn hair, in abundance, and her face had been stretched behind her ears. Her breasts were made of marble, or some modern equivalent. She looked pretty surprised about all of this, but that didn’t help her much. She had an ironical voice to match her ironical face, and she never smiled. Insistently thin, she had made herself still more angular by squeezing everything into jodhpurs and stiletto boots. Her hair was curly and she looked like a Corinthian column. This unnerved Rosa, and she stumbled as she went to shake hands. Rosa said, ‘Hello’, and Brazier said, ‘You must be Rosa.’ She had a cool, manicured hand. Anointed with expensive oils. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Rosa, smudging sweat onto la Braze’s pearly hand. Further platitudes followed, which Rosa failed to commit to memory. Mrs Brazier wanted a tutor for her children, who were small and apparently gifted. Rosa wanted a shot of adrenalin and a large gin and tonic, but she sat there nodding politely, raising her accent with every syllable.

  She noted that the doors were arched, and found bouquets arranged on the tables. The house was clad in lustrous flora, and every piece of wood was recently polished. The floors shone. Paintings were hung in hammered silver. The chair Rosa sat in, like a tarnished throne, was – said Madame Braze – a family heirloom, which went back to the Tudors. She stroked the arms and felt the shock of the old.

  There was some talk of pay. It sounded good enough for Rosa. She quickly came to understand that Mrs Brazier was a flinthead who despised the younger frau. She emanated an air of refined selfishness. She offered Rosa tea in so reluctant a way that Rosa knew she had to say no. So she said no, though her mouth was dry after running from Shepherd’s Bush station. She kept her lips pursed and hoped she didn’t smell too foul. Brazier explained in detail what she wanted, and said that Rosa would have to start on Monday. Rosa said that would be fine and clamped her mouth shut. The children came in, Tabitha and Harry, and they were spoilt little darlings kitted out for luxury. At forty-five or so, which Rosa thought la Braze must be behind her face, she had two children of five and seven. Must be tiring, thought Rosa, but la Braze treated her infants like members of her retinue. Little Tabitha ran for mummy’s pashmina and little Harry was told to take the dog to Nanny. So the dog and Harry trotted off, leaving Rosa and Madame Braze looking at each other across a luxurious room. Cream cotton and rouge silk, thought Rosa. Taffeta, a word she hadn’t thought for years. The table was crystal. The fireplace was original. There was a Regency mirror which reflected Rosa half her girth. Madame la Braze said she felt the secret of good parenting was discipline. This was Rosa’s cue to agree slavishly, so she did. She nodded like a nodding dog, and said she couldn’t wait. They talked about qualifications, Rosa had few, but she held out her degree like a votive offering, and la Braze nodded curtly. Rosa said she loved children, loved them passionately. ‘They are the future,’ she said, with what she thought was an eager smile. La Braze didn’t respond. ‘It’s very important to educate them well,’ said Rosa, pushing on, and Brazier snapped out, ‘Of course it is. They have to be taught how to think.’ Interesting, thought Rosa. Very interesting. Then Rosa took the hand that was extended to her, received a still more stony nod, and turned to leave. She tripped again on a Persian rug, steadied herself on a plinth, and skirted round a statue of Athena. By then old Braze had gone off to slap another layer of acid on her face. Smiling at the retreating form of the nanny, Rosa walked out onto the river path.

  Well, la Braze was truly spoilt, she thought. So terribly spoilt. What the hell did Brazier ever do for her cash? She hadn’t met Mr Brazier, but she imagined him louche and resilient, big-boned, with deep pockets. They were both rich, both steeped in wealth. She envi
ed them their house, their fine little kids, and their view of the river. They woke to the sound of cars and planes all the same, but they walked into the sun-striped beauty of their living room, sat on the ancestral furniture, everything dusted by the cleaner, gazed out over the garden as the nanny made them coffee. She imagined Herr Braze coming home from his office, finding his wife had been under the knife again. ‘Darling, new face?’ he would ask, as he picked up the newspaper and rustled it open. ‘How do you like my eyes?’ la Braze would ask, as if she had just bought a new dress. ‘Love your eyes,’ il Braze would reply, scanning the stocks and shares. There would come a day when Lady Braze would stop talking for fear of sagging back the latest stretch. She would stand, immaculate and eternal, nodding imperiously at her children. Did it frighten them, thought Rosa, to see mummy in so many guises? But she was being cruel. She could hardly judge others. They were all scrambling away, filling time, and if la Braze wanted to tighten her face who was Rosa to tell her not? She walked slowly back to Hammersmith, because Jess’s shoes were too small and had carved off the skin on her ankles. She was hobbling along, breathing deeply, enjoying the distilled smell of city breath, and she heard a low humming in the air. The light was fading behind the houses. And then the lighting of the lamps, she thought, and wanted to laugh. His soul stretched out against the sky. Anything but that! she thought. It was a bad business when you thought Modernism could help you. I am a bat that wheels through the air of Fate, she thought. I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of Disillusionment. I am a despairing toad. I have got dyspepsia. Now she smiled. That wasn’t what she meant at all. There was much she couldn’t remember and her efforts kept her stationary on the corner of Brook Green for a few minutes, as she rocked backwards and forwards, trying to summon whatever it was she had forgotten. She stared at the sky. Clouds scudding. Later it might be fine. Then she abandoned the attempt, and retraced her steps past the green, noticing the tennis players had gone. The last ball had been thwacked, and now they were heading home for tea and buns. She knew full well there were places in London where people did just that, sustaining their perfect rituals, bestowing gifts upon themselves. She passed a crowd of kids, hissing on a corner, eyeing her with practised stares of contention. She smiled weakly and shuffled on.

  She thought of her childhood and her parents who taught her to read themselves, of course, without any hired help. The idea would have been inconceivable to them, to invite someone in and pay them to take their child in hand. She remembered her parents reading to her in the evenings and she remembered a few early books they had read. Susan Cooper, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien – who taught her about death – Joan Aiken, the rest. She remembered being taken to a mobile library by her mother, and told to choose some books. Then there was the city library, a place with a bright inflatable caterpillar and rows of splashy children’s books, and she remembered her mother guiding her through the shelves, suggesting books she might enjoy. Her parents liked to read, and their house was full of books. Rosa tried to climb up the bookshelves as a toddler, and was grabbed and rebuked by her mother. Always in these scenes it was her mother in the background, teaching her, telling her how to do things. With Liam she had considered the question of motherhood, and was never sure how to weigh it against her career. That had caused her to delay matters, though she knew that Liam had been urgently waiting for fatherhood – the next stage. It was curious to Rosa that she was the last of her line – her parents both only children – and yet she had postponed and postponed for a job she now realised she couldn’t do. And if she couldn’t do that job, tot up alleged facts and feign them into coherence, then she could hardly presume to bring up the young! And now she wondered if she was merely a coward, afraid of the pure biology represented by pregnancy, the immersion in the body it required. Or that was blather, and she was only trying to step aside from adult responsibility, the subjection of her own desires. Trapped in analysis, Rosa stared around, saw the street as a succession of indistinct shapes, colours shifted by sun and shadow. Her mother had never said a word, but Rosa knew she was expectant. Well, there was another thing, that if she ever came to terms with procreation, and found a partner in the act, her child would never know her grandmother, and that was the sort of thing Rosa would have cried about, had she not been gritting her teeth and trying to quash another sort of feeling, a plaintive cry, the cry of an abandoned child, Mother! Mother! Entirely impotent, and she started to move onwards again, feeling the pain in her feet like a slap in the face, bringing her round.

  She wouldn’t suffer the scrutiny of the tube, so she walked home. Because her heels were raw and bleeding she took off Jess’s shoes and trod on tiptoe along the streets, stepping from light to shadow. Her hands were pearled by the sunlight. It was a hazy, gauzy afternoon; the sunshine was grated by the shadows of the trees, falling in flakes on the grass. She whistled ‘Ode to Joy’. She was impressed by her composure. She had out-brazened the Brazier. She had spoken through her teeth, keeping her face in a constant smile. She had managed to look thin by luxury gym not thin by nerves and overdraft. She was now within grasping distance of a job. It was a spitting mockery of a job, but it might be hers. It was better than some of the rest. Today, she thought, you may have won the chance to sell yourself again!! Sold in a better way than before! Perhaps this was it – pure compromise, the thing they had all been telling her to do. She was sure Brazier had wanted her! La Braze had praised her, high praise indeed, from a taut-skinned millionaire with a palace by the river. And suddenly she felt sick and found she was clutching at a wall, her eyes swimming and a cold fog closing around her. The noise receded, all the intertwined sounds of the street, and she put her hands out, holding onto the wall behind her, quite sick and bemused by it all. Now she looked she saw her ankles were stained with blood. Yes, she said, that must have worked in my favour! ‘Second candidate, the one with the bloodied leg, like a girl who shows a bit of gore, let’s have her.’ She saw herself, here, a dozen years ago, working as an amanuensis for an old journalist – he had lived just round the corner, on Milson Road, in a tall, narrow house with a grand piano. He sat at a desk layered with papers. He went out early and bought all the newspapers, sifted through them for material for his columns. He liked to drink wine at lunchtime, and he had taken her to the local pub and paid for her to eat. He had been kind, she thought, but she had barely noticed it. Then she had really thought she was an aesthete. She had been reading Oscar Wilde and hadn’t had a chance to adjust to the real world. It took her years to understand that there was no bohemia to find and anything she did would be assessed for its financial worth. She sat in the journalist’s basement struggling under the weight of her ambition and she stared at the walls, the rust on the drainpipes, the paving stones, the pale bricks and the low green hedges. There was a ladder with broken rungs, and a set of shattered plant pots, like broken relics. The journalist was always at his desk, peering at the screen of his computer. She had sat in the basement of his house, with ivy at the window, and a view of a long garden, running towards a pond. He was a kind man.

  So she walked on slowly, Jess’s shoes pressed to her chest. She rounded a corner and saw a church silhouetted against the sky. There was a faint smell of carbon lingering in the air, but the square was quiet. The sports cars, Volvos, 4WDs and Rovers were parked, each next to their respective mansion. Everything was quieter for a few streets, as Rosa passed boutiques selling brightly coloured children’s clothes and a restaurant with its tables full. The evening rush was beginning, and the hum of cars from Holland Park was constant. Rosa trotted down a few more mews streets, past neatly painted houses. On Holland Park Avenue everything was blurred. She walked faster, hoping to tire herself out. She turned uphill to take a look at the park. The winter was sitting hard on it, and the fronds had withered. She stood at the edge, watching squirrels. So much bounce, she thought, in your average squirrel! But that was plainly irrelevant, so she turned to the pond and watched ducks paddling around a small lake. A f
ew geese stood on the side, emitting sporadic honks. It was almost the end of the day, and the park was emptying out. The benches were empty now. On the surface of the lake she saw the reflected forms of the buildings, the abandoned tearoom, the ice-cream shop which was closed for the winter. She stood at the gates for a while, passed by successive mothers with pushchairs, and then she turned away.

  She crossed the main road and saw everything the same as she had left it. At St James’s Place the houses were immaculate, still in their undivided forms. Each mansion was supplied with its own single buzzer, the badge of the millionaire. The windows were lit up, a halogen glow, showing rooms clad in books, everything plush. Rosa liked a spot of lecher les fenêtres, it was modus vivendi for those who could never buy. London spun you out like that, made you envy wealth. You envied it because it seemed like freedom – the freedom to choose where you lived, to travel as you liked, to conduct research and leave London, if you wanted. This hyper-wealth was everywhere, impossible to ignore. In one room, a man sat at a fine oak desk, leafing through his papers. In another, a woman read by a fire. She caught a glimpse of flames and a lustrous hearth. Still you must get a job. Get a place to live. Ask Andreas. Talk to Jess. Talk to Liam. Beg the bank. Collate your papers. Read Shakespeare, the works of Proust, the plays of Racine and Corneille and The Man Without Qualities. Read The Golden Bough, The Nag-Hammadi Gospels, The Upanishads, The Koran, The Bible, The Tao, the complete works of E. A. Wallis Budge. Read Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the rest. The TEMP. A JOB! Really! NOW! Soon she discovered she was walking swiftly; she was hastening along with her chin into her collar. And then she thought, If you don’t get this job then what will you do?