She moved slowly, looking everyone up and down. At the corner she saw a preacher with his hands full of papers. But she didn’t want to listen to him and she kept on walking. She turned onto Blagrove Road and walked under the Westway. A STAR IS GOING TO FALL. Of course, the shudder of trains, the rumble of cars. She heard the skaters in their fenced-off compound. A sign said MUGGERS BEWARE. She wondered at that and moved on. Opposite were the yellow bricks of a complex of flats. The skate kids had helmets on, and when they fell they laughed. Where the Westway seemed to curve above her, spinning its sides like a bowl on a potter’s wheel, she crossed the bridge. The underside of the Westway was still eloquent. She saw TEMP and something next to it, something she hadn’t seen before, SOPH. SOPH, marvellous, she thought. She had failed to understand the TEMP and now they had slung her another clue. That made her shiver. SOPH. SOPH. SOPH? Sophisticated. Sophistry. Sophos. It might be wisdom. Of course, she was lacking in it. They all were, wasn’t that the point? TEMP for SOPHOS – it was certainly time for wisdom. Sometime soon, she hoped. She simply couldn’t carry on in this state of foolishness for ever. And now she wondered why she was thinking about these words that some drunken man had scrawled and perhaps fallen to his death before finishing them. Abbreviated, that was all. Perhaps they meant very little in the end.
TEMP and SOPH she thought, moving on. Now a woman passed by holding an umbrella. She heard the clatter of the trains, the staccato thud of wheels on the track. She saw the rusted underbellies of the carriages and watched as they swung past her, moving out of sight. The motion soothed her; she thought of boarding a train and sleeping until she arrived – wherever, at the terminus, somewhere far away, waking to a still sky. As she walked she remembered a journey she had once made on a night train through France, and how she had seen the moon obscured by clouds, and listened to the breath of a stranger in the bunk beneath her, a polite woman who had asked her which bunk she preferred. Through the night the train accelerated and slowed again, the scream of the brakes disturbed the woman below, and her breathing changed. There was a clash of wheels on metal, and a sound of low speech and laughter, and Rosa had thought the voices sounded like people she knew. Some of them were English travellers. She remembered lying on her side so she could stare through the window. Waiting at the stations for the grinding of the wheels to start again. She saw lights in rows whipped backwards as the train moved faster. The train roaring at the oncoming blackness, emitting a low groan as it sank into a tunnel.
She had always had a passion for travel, for the steady progress of a train along a track, or better still the dream-stupor of a long-haul flight, the dimness of the cabin lights as the plane surfed on the air and blackness stretched away, the hum of the engines as the plane descended, moving towards land portioned into patterns of fields, sliced by roads. She was thinking that she must really get away, travel somewhere and start again, take a trip to mark her resolution, draw a line under this period of her life. You must get out of this square mile, she thought, you must change your mode. That was surely a good thing to do. As soon as she got her hands on a bit of money, that bit of money Liam owed her, she would take a trip elsewhere, try to start again. She walked onto the footbridge. She saw the pale sun. It looked like a theatre prop, it was so plain and perfect. Everything was still and yet as she walked she – who wandered around London all the time – felt afraid. She began to pick her feet up faster, slapping them down and trying to hurry. Her hair was blown about by the wind and she heard footsteps behind her; they rang out clearly. Rosa kept her eyes firmly on the street beyond the bridge and thought it wasn’t far now, just twenty metres or so and she would be on the other side. She kept looking up at the sun, like a beacon beckoning her on. The noise of footsteps coming closer made her heart beat faster. There was someone behind her, someone she couldn’t quite turn round to look at because she felt something might happen. Someone was right behind her, snuffling and grunting. She was almost at the end of the bridge, she could see Tavistock Crescent in front of her, and the snuffling was getting louder and now she thought she could hear words, a low murmur. She became quite rigid and superstitious, thinking she couldn’t turn round, so she quickened her step, and the steps behind her seemed to follow. She could hear them, ringing out on the bridge. And in the background, distant now, she could hear cars and trains, rattling and grumbling, and now on the arches she saw TEMP in the guttering, sprayed uncertainly, this TEMP had almost faded. A wrong turn? she thought. She saw houses silhouetted against the sky. She heard her breath quicken, and found her hands were drenched in sweat. Her skin was prickling with fear. She was trying to walk faster but her legs were stiff and heavy. She said ‘Hello?’ in a tentative voice. She turned suddenly, saw a man dragging his heels in the leaves. He was walking towards her. It startled her, and for a moment she couldn’t get her breath. When she looked at his face she saw a bloated jaw, eyes set close together. A toad-face, certainly, she thought. The same one as before? Or another one? The bridge was empty and beyond that was the quiet road. He was staring straight ahead, not seeing her at all, intent on following a straight line across the bridge. Feeling foolish she quickened her step and walked on. Behind he was still grunting to himself, muttering words she couldn’t hear. She craned her head round again and saw him staring at her, nodding his head. That was enough for her, and she turned on her heels and started to run.
A train slammed under the bridge and for a few steps she could hear nothing but the thud of wheels on tracks. She half expected to feel a hand on her shoulder, and that made her shiver and pick up speed. She kept running, determined to get to the end of the bridge. She had an idea that she would be safe then, optimistic and plainly irrelevant though it was. She was so convinced about this that when she came to the end of the bridge she breathed more easily. But she was still afraid and she kept walking until she had rounded a corner and stepped into a broad and populated street. Then she turned her head and saw there was no sign of him behind her. She only saw the trees bowing in the wind and the pale sun.
*
She knocked on Andreas’s door, preparing for an awkward pause, but he wasn’t there at all. As she waited she saw a mother and child in the playground behind her. ‘Good, darling! Good!’ She smiled at the mother, but the mother was busy with her child. As Andreas was nowhere to be found, she felt in her pockets for a pen and paper and left him a note.
Dear Andreas, Hope you’ve had a good couple of days. Me, it’s been bliss. The gyre, whirled in the gyre, something like that. Anyway, psychological onanism aside, may I have a bed for a few nights? I promise not to linger. All was black and entombed but now – but now …? Speak to you soon, Rosa.
She tore that up.
Andreas, hope you’re well. Just dropped round. You’re rehearsing, most likely; give me a call when you can. Wanted to ask you something. Love, Rosa.
She stuffed that through the door, as a compromise solution, and then she decided to go to Kensington Gardens and sit there until she came up with a plan. And if she failed then Kensington Gardens was a better place than most to abandon hope. Keeping an eye on the crowds, she walked slowly. Hordes of people were drifting in and out of organic food shops, designer boutiques. She darted round a family group, the mother with her hand on the shoulders of her children, staring into the window of a health food shop. She was walking towards Bayswater, muttering into her collar, saying, ‘These are the things you have to do. They’re all extremely simple. A fool could do them. This means you are worse than a fool. Your phobia of the telephone, your inability to ask for help, are quite pitiful. As if you can afford to be so reluctant! It’s quite simple, what you must do, and do now, today, before another night falls. Ask Andreas for a place to stay. Ask Liam to sell the furniture. Now!’ Muttering along Bayswater she turned into Palace Green and stared like a child at the high houses with their electronic gates. A few were embassies, flying flags, and the rest were the anonymous homes of the wealthy. ‘But don’t start on that theme ag
ain,’ she said. ‘No point in craving luxury. Merely desire something better than debt.’
At Kensington Gardens the light was trickling through the branches of the trees, and even the dullest objects, benches, bits of bollard, had a halo around them. She crossed a wide lawn with the palace at her back. She walked around the perimeter of the lake, eyeing the white water. She was walking towards the sculpture of a man leaning backwards on a horse. When she came closer she saw it was called Physical Energy, and someone had written above that, Human Imagination. She heard the slurred whisper of wind in the grass. It really was an ending, she thought, with Liam walking down the aisle and her overdraft so seriously gone. There was a definite sense of culmination to the day. A phase was passing, in her own unique and miniscule life. She stared across the park, at the lines of oaks and trees with their branches pruned into stumps. The solid trunks, matted with moss, made her happy for no reason at all, except that they were old and grained with age. It’s the irregularity of the trees that makes the park so beautiful, she thought. If they were standing in rows it wouldn’t be as fine. That decided, she walked along a thin path, and found herself at a crossroads. The signs said: Peter Pan. Italian Fountains. Serpentine Gallery. Queen’s Temple. Flower Walk. The signpost made her smile, with its careful options for pleasure, and she crossed the road and stood above the river, looking over a pavilion with white columns and the slung ring of the memorial fountain. In the background, above the buildings of the centre, she could see the London Eye. There was a Labrador running along the path, and behind it ran – more slowly – a batch of aged joggers. They went past her on sinewy legs. She heard distant sirens and the background hum of traffic, planes whining in the clouds.
It was getting late already, and she couldn’t think where the day had gone. Her panic had propelled it forward, this sense of culmination. The park was almost empty. She passed a flock of geese, and some grebes – the word came to her, though she wasn’t sure what they were – with white faces. For quite some time she sat on a bench, staring at a blank page, pen in hand. The ducks were dipping their heads in the water, spinning slowly around. Temp for Soph, she thought again, and wondered if that was what it meant. Or was it TEMP of SOPH? Then TEMP wasn’t time, it was temple. TEMPLE OF SOPHOS, she thought. TEMPLE OF WISDOM? All this running around and it was under the bridge, in the folds of the Westway, all along! The entrance to the meaning of things – she only had to find it. She only had to furnish herself with a few of the basics, and then the sign was there. Displayed vividly, hardly a cryptic clue at all! She was trying to convince herself, but something didn’t work. She couldn’t think clearly at all; her thoughts couldn’t alight on a single theme. Always there was the sense of the day drawing on. While you wait for Andreas to get home, write this article for Martin White. At least do that, do that now. So she stayed there with her pen and paper and after an hour she had made the startling discovery that she couldn’t write the article. The same old problem. She sat there, livid with frustration and then she wrote: I suppose I thought I should understand things better. I spent my time explaining things to other people. It seemed ridiculous, to trot out other people’s ideas while having none of my own, no sense of things at all. And I was concerned with strings of life, she wrote. In the universe, there is dark matter, they have little idea what it is. Imagine! No idea at all! This substance, quite beyond us all. That troubled me and I wanted to find out more. But I’ve realised that if you really want to do this – really want to strip yourself down and plunge into the depths – you have to be prepared to be Diogenes, or worse. Worse than him, even! You have to be prepared to become a real old tramp on a bridge. And she wondered if the toad-face was Diogenes; she wondered that while she tore up the piece of paper and scattered the pieces on the floor.
TEMP is the TEMP that means nothing at all, she thought. SOPH means the SOPH that is Stop Oh Please Help! Stop now! Temple of Wisdom. Something on the stones. There was a burst of music from inside a car, and she heard the sound of hooves on the riding track. Now is definitely the time, she thought. Surely now, you can think of something? She sat for a while longer, and then she wrote: Really, it’s the furniture that will save you. The rest you can try – Jess, Andreas, your father, but that furniture money is the only actual claim you have. It’s a just claim, and Liam has been inexplicably reluctant. It’s not as if the man lacks money! Just go and see him. Be very calm. Present a coherent petition. But the thought of that made her palms sweat and she lost her grip on the pen. Still it was a fine day. She looked across at the taut shapes of the trees and the water glinting like hammered steel. In the distance she saw the Albert memorial, newly repainted, bright with gilt. A man stood and stretched. He had been slumped on a bench, reading a paper. Now he shook out his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He had a small face, his features packed close together. He looked happy enough. Really it was impossible to tell. Blurred and in the distance she saw a woman coming along the path. As she approached, Rosa heard her shoes. She was tapping along like a bird. The sun was shining on the windows of the houses and she stared up at the patterned blue and white of the sky, clouds moving slowly. When she looked again the woman was still tapping towards her. The sound stopped Rosa’s thoughts. All she could hear was this rhythmic tapping and she noticed the woman was drawing a dog along with her, a small black and white mongrel which was snuffling into piles of leaves and litter. The dog snuffled under a rubbish bin, and the woman yanked it away. Then they came along again, each with their own sound, the dog panting and the woman murmuring to it in a low voice.
Hunched over her notebook, Rosa wrote: there’s a tendency – we all share it – to invent a false image of ourselves as an exceptional phenomenon in the world, not guilty as others are, but somehow justified in sinning because one is inherently good. Everyone else is damned and fallen but one – me, myself – is good. This is quite self-righteous, it leads to misunderstanding, not only of oneself but also of the nature of man and the cosmos. The goal is to disperse the need for such life ignorance, by reconciling the individual consciousness with the universal will. This is effected through a realisation of the true relationship of the passing phenomena of time – you, this woman, her dog – to the imperishable life that lives and dies in us all.
Then she wrote, Dear Rosa, This won’t help you at all. Stop writing immediately, close your notebook and go and get some money. She saw a flock of geese honking on the path, aware of the approach of the dog. The dog was moving towards them, and though the woman tugged him backwards, the geese, honking violently, vituperative with panic, lifted themselves into the air and flew across the water. They settled on the other side. Governed by instinct alone, she thought. Their own imperative. Doing precisely what is expected, acting in accordance with their conditioning. When Tolstoy watched the peasants, and found faith, it was something like that he saw. He understood it as faith, but it was an assessment of the real bounds of life, of life lived without comforts, or illusions, rather than in the pampered reality-denying rooms of St Petersburg society. Because these peasants lived this life lacking in artifice, or the degree of artifice enjoyed by a Russian aristocrat, Tolstoy assumed that faith must be a natural condition of life. She saw his logic, though she couldn’t follow it. She felt there must be a way of living that was germane and inevitable, some natural mode she and the rest of the toads had forgotten. The woman walked past, tapping her heels along the concrete and dragging her dog behind her. ‘Come now,’ she said to her dog. ‘Come immediately, now.’
A rite, she thought. A culminating rite! And Rosa stood and walked away. She swung from optimism to foreboding as she walked, oscillating like a pendulum. Her gait was uneven as she went towards Bayswater. She passed the long lawn and saw it was scattered with a few people. They were walking on the paths, not saying much. At the road she emerged into a lingering cloud of car fumes. A bus rattled past her. A cyclist dashed past, almost hit a lorry, swerved around a car, and turned right suddenly. All the c
ars honked. She had hurt her back carrying her bag the previous day, and she found she was limping slightly. But the thought that Jess was eagerly awaiting her departure, that her father was worrying about her, even as he played a lento game of tennis, that Andreas was puzzling over her note, made her pick up speed. Rocking a little from side to side, hardly graceful but still going forwards. She trod steadily, engrossed in her thoughts. At Notting Hill station she found another payphone. She spent a while in the phone box, fending off all comers, the tourist with a map, the backpacker wanting a hotel, but gone were the days when countless dozens bawled each other out of phone boxes. She called Whitchurch and Kersti, but they weren’t answering their phones. She called Andreas a few times, and every time it switched to his cheerful message, optimism coursing along the line. He’ll think you’re mad if you call him again, she thought. One side of her brain was trying to persuade her to desist, but she was bi-cameral with desperation, and when she had been standing there in the phone box for a good few minutes thinking about pressing the numbers again she realised she was being a fool. Now she wanted to bawl, stand in the phone box weeping like a child. She gripped the phone and dialled half of Andreas’s number. She slapped down the receiver, then picked it up and dialled half of his number again. Then she stopped. She prised herself away, and walked onto the street.
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