She thought of a few dozen unrelated things, but through them all the idea kept coming back to her, so she walked quickly past the tube and found herself outside the block of flats she once lived in with Liam. It felt strange as she pushed through the doors. She buzzed, she slapped her hand on the buzzer, but there was no reply. In the foyer, she had a lucky break with the concierge. She had known him when she lived there, bought him a few bottles of wine. She had always stopped and talked to him. She put him in the paper once, as a vox pop. He found it hilarious. So today he smiled broadly at her, a thick-necked man, his eyes shrouded in fat. ‘Sorry to hear about you and him upstairs,’ he said. He gestured upwards. For a moment she thought he meant God, and she span round thinking, What does he know? But then she realised he meant Liam. That was kindly, so she smiled and said, ‘Thanks. All completely amicable.’ She smiled through the lie.
‘What have you been doing? Writing stories? The usual stuff?’ he said. ‘Any exclusives recently?’
She laughed uproariously. ‘No no, none at all,’ she said. At least that was honest. He had a shining bald head and an expression of tranquillity. You’ll be less tranquil later, she thought, and she smiled and laughed and went off to the lift. She pressed the button to the eleventh floor, waited while she was carried upwards. Seeing her reflection in the metal walls she wiped a smudge from her nose.
In the silence of the corridor it wasn’t clear why she had come. The place wasn’t as she remembered it at all. Even the corridor seemed indistinct and unknowable. With a patched carpet beneath her, a smell of dust and chemicals around her, she waited. She took out her notebook and wrote: Tomorrow they will be married and this particular small epoch will be over. But the trials will continue thereafter. Yim yam yum. Shantih Shakti Sha sha. She wondered briefly if she might be a prophet, and no one had noticed. She might be the emissary of a banished god. I come to deliver unto you the true divinity, Shakti Yam. They wouldn’t entrust such a thing to a fool like you, she thought. She stood there for a while, counting minutes, feeling really sick at heart and then she heard the grind of the lift. She saw Liam before he noticed her. She stood up, and was about to say something when she saw he was looking at her, suddenly dismayed. His expression was unstudied, quite transparent. After all these months, she could read his furrowed brow, the action of his hands, his unsmiling mouth.
‘Rosa. What are you doing here? How did you get in?’ said Liam, walking towards her. He was certainly horrified. Of course it was the worst time. Anyway it looked as if she had come to beg him. Retract! She suddenly thought that tonight must be the rehearsal dinner, but he hadn’t dressed himself up yet and must therefore be running late. The whole thing was beginning any minute! And here he was, in jeans and a jacket, looking as if he had just come in from the shops.
He wiped his arm across his face and said, urgently, ‘Rosa, what’s up? What are you doing here? My God, I have to get going. What can I do for you? Come on, quickly. What is this?’
He wasn’t sure what to do, no one was sure, but he was weighted down with bags and in a hurry so with a brisk sigh he opened the door. Uncertain, Rosa followed him in. He turned and said, ‘God, Rosa, come on. Christ, can you go? Can we talk when all this is over? Why now? I haven’t seen you for so long? What is it that can’t wait? Come on, because I really haven’t time.’ Really, he seemed quite agitated, and that surprised her. On the phone he was always so buttoned-up, almost laconic. He wasn’t looking at her; he was unpacking the bags, hurling things into cupboards, hanging his suit on the back of the door. His gestures were automatic. Clearly he was trying to work out what to do. Meanwhile, she was struck silent by the flat. The place had been transformed; the hand of Grace was on it all. The white walls had been softened to a pale red. It oozed taste, but the shade was somehow sanctimonious. There were paintings on the walls, proper art, bought from a gallery, contemporary daubs and the rest. The West Country prints had gone. The furniture was still there, all her and Liam’s mismatched articles, but now there was a lot of rustic pine and oak as well. Everything was tidy, though the place was full of colour. The flat had been recast, and now it stood in crisp antithesis to the place as she left it. This seemed significant, almost as if Grace – despite her claims to the contrary – wanted to wipe away all trace of Rosa, obliterate the past, smash it to pieces. In the kitchen, which had been painted too, the surfaces were covered with wine glasses, left over from a pre-wedding party. A half-eaten cheese stood on the hob. It looked like a flat where people had fun.
Liam took off his jacket and put it over the back of a chair.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said, turning to Rosa. She could see he was angry. He never liked being put under pressure. It was his controlling instinct; he felt it as an assault. ‘Come on, Rosa, what is it? What do you want?’
‘I apologise for intruding,’ said Rosa, getting her breath back at last. ‘I’m aware of course, momentous things are happening. Love and the celebration of love. Marriage. A culminating rite! In honour of the profound shift, I have one last request. Then I won’t bother you at all. I’m quite spun out. Really, as I said to you on the phone, I’d like to go away. Try harder, fail better next time, the rest. So, I just want the money for the furniture. It’s not much. Just a token. Look at it all, arraigned around you.’ And she waved an arm at it, though seeing it now in the sallow light of a dying day she nearly saw what he meant. The sofa was wrecked, and the table was stained with grease. The bed she imagined in a similar state. They had bought it years ago. It had lasted longer than their love, of course, and she briefly considered the nature of transience, though she knew that was hardly the point. The point was how much money she could get. It was her last chance to salvage something. That sent her muttering about the need for a gesture, to close things between them. ‘A final act,’ she said. ‘A denouement.’ Meanwhile, Liam was positively pacing around, really focused on his interrupted evening and the ticking of the clock. He was thinking of Grace, of course. Perhaps he expected her any minute, and Rosa thought that would be a shame because the scene would shift and gain a different theme. Grace would add her own variety of needless talk, and then Rosa would have to leave. Even now, Liam was trying to shunt her out. ‘Rosa, you can imagine that now is not the best time,’ he was saying. ‘But I promise we’ll sort this out soon. Not today, obviously. Or tomorrow. But I’m aware it’s a question you want to discuss.’ He wanted to sound strict. ‘I’m going to call you a taxi. It’s either that or I call the police.’ He was trying to look imperious, drumming his fingers on the back of a chair.
‘The police?’ said Rosa. ‘What the hell would the police do? Put you in prison for stealing my furniture! Call them!’ But that fell flat. Liam looked her up and down and said, ‘Now, Rosa, don’t get upset.’ On further scrutiny, he looked careworn. She thought he might have put on weight. Apart from all that, his presence was quite superb. He was lovely to observe, with his careful gestures, his delicate eyes. He was standing there, uncertain amid all this elegance, but still he was a coward, that hadn’t changed. He was so thin-skinned and sedentary. The man was a tent, letting just anyone pitch him and set up camp in him. Tent-like, he said, ‘There’s no need for a fight. We will get you your share of the furniture money. It’s no big deal.’
There was a flicker in Liam’s eyes which Rosa couldn’t understand. For a minute or so, she waited. She eyed the bouquets on the windowsill. Deep red carnations, very fine, a bucolic cluster of them. She wondered what Grace was wearing for the wedding. She thought the bedroom must have changed too. She imagined Grace’s shoes on the floor, her clothes in the wardrobe and her books by the bed. The complete diaries of Virginia Woolf – of course she would have those, and an edifying biography or two, something about Amelia Earhart or Rebecca West. Books that said she was a strong and forthright woman. The flat was familiar and yet disconcerting, like a dream. Everything had been displaced. She turned towards the sofa and said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?
’
Before Liam came she had been frightened, but now she was quite calm. Liam, however, was looking incensed, even stricken with rage.
‘Rosa, it’s so ludicrous, you being here. It’s so sad and strange. Can’t you understand?’ He hissed that; he couldn’t restrain himself. Was it excitement or fury? It was hard to tell. ‘You must get out,’ he said. ‘I can’t even think about this now. Whatever you want. I’ll give you some money. What do you need? Come on, they’ll be arriving soon.’
‘That’s right, I must get out! GET ME OUT!’ said Rosa, but now she was talking too loudly. She wondered who were ‘they’ and when were they coming? What did they want? Liam observed a silence, looking uncomfortable. He had his hands clasped together, and he was hunched over at the breakfast bar. More than uncomfortable, he looked agitated, as if her presence was disturbing to him. She paced towards the bookshelf, looked out over a stack of books, the combined collections of Grace and Liam, lovingly merged together. That made her fret, and so she said, lying, ‘It’s not a question of need. It’s a question of justice.’ The phrase meant nothing, and Liam shrugged. Of course he knew her well enough. He could spot her empty rhetoric as soon as she spilled it out. He said, with his hands outstretched, as if he was trying to stop her, or at least slow her down, ‘Rosa, come on, let’s try to get through this. Tell me what you want?’
She wasn’t relaxed; there was so much to see, and she kept glancing around at the exhibits, finding a shocking display on the kitchen wall, photos of Liam and Grace together in a series of places, on European holidays, in New York, standing on the Staten Island ferry with their arms around each other, in a desert, their faces oiled with sweat. There was something appalling about it, now she confronted it. Really it was tacky, quite disgraceful! It meant nothing to them, the past. They were mutable, in love with mutability, they accepted that things moved on. The essence of time is flux, the dissolution of the momentarily existent, and the essence of life is time. Absolutely, she thought, that doesn’t help at all. Now she felt tired and she sat down on the sofa. She stared up at the ceiling, wondering if they had painted that too. She picked up a book and tried to read the title. Nothing registered, and she set it down again.
‘Come on, Rosa,’ said Liam. He wasn’t relaxed at all. He was holding himself very straight, preparing to act. He walked towards her, lingering above her. Really he was quite fixed on his theme, determined that Rosa should leave. He was always monologic. ‘I just want a token payment. It’s not much,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing at all. Closure, you know.’ And she grimaced. She could see his nerves and rage. It meant little to her, that she had the power to worry him. It was a pyrrhic victory, to turn up and convince Liam just how much he dreaded her. She saw another picture of them on the mantelpiece, Grace supreme in a little red dress and Liam in cords and a blue shirt. On that one she was wearing a sparkling ring. They were a beautiful couple, of course. They were setting such store by this small thing their wedding. It was touching how much it meant to them. And for this reason, and for many others, they must be happy together, thought Rosa.
Suddenly Liam turned towards her, trying to look friendly. He had gained an air of slyness. He had always been cunning, but now it was sketched on his brow. ‘Rosa, please cut me some slack here,’ he said softly. He was leaning towards her. ‘I know you don’t want to wreck my wedding. I understand. It should never have dragged on like this. I just thought what you were asking was too much, and then I didn’t think the furniture was actually worth anything. But today – well, it’s a good day to come! Quite the best day to get me to agree to a deal! So why don’t we say I’ll send you a cheque? I’ll have a look at the stuff again and work it out. I’ll do it before I go away on the honeymoon. OK?’ He was speaking through gritted teeth. Really he wanted to bawl her out, but he was trying to coax her. He was furious, she could see just how furious he was. She wished she could have been more magnanimous. For a moment she wanted to say that she was sorry, make a pact, resolve it all. She longed to do that, to forget every slight and say she was sorry for everything. She would have blamed herself, if she could just get the words out. Still she couldn’t do it. What was it, defiance or a petty sort of pride that had such a grip on her?
‘Good to see you, so set up,’ she said. That was the best she could do, and it sounded hollow as she said it.
‘Doing fine,’ said Liam, in an embarrassed way. He clenched his fist. ‘So that’s everything settled then. I’ll put a cheque in the post. I’m sorry not to have sorted it out. Things just got hectic.’ He looked at the door. That was too prompt and final, and it made her remember that the last time she was here he had been lying fluently, preparing to sling her out. Now he was doing it again, saying anything he could think of to make her leave. It was his fixed and constant aim, and this shattered her good mood, stopped her feeling contrite. He looked at the door again. ‘Liam, no,’ she said, and suddenly she felt a sense of aversion, a rich coursing sense of disgust about the whole furniture debate, continued conversation between Liam and her, any reference to their former flat, the rest. She understood it was undignified. Kersti had been quite right. Odd, really, that Kersti had even called him up. She thought, suddenly, that Kersti must have made a joke of her. ‘Hi, Liam, had another call from poor old Rosa. Yep, still nattering about the furniture. I can’t stop her. What can you do? Can you help her?’ A collective conspiracy, they had been working together all along. It made her feel ashamed. And so you should be, she thought. More than anything she wanted to leave, but leave with an assurance, some sort of quid pro quo, rather than being pushed out again by Liam triumphant. It was childish, but she minded losing every time. It got her in the guts, made her want to spit and cry. ‘I don’t care, I’ll take whatever you want to give me. I don’t care. It has enraged me, that you’ve made such a fuss about this. But I’m sick of feeling so angry. Anything, a couple of quid, fifty, a hundred, anything. It’s better if I never speak to you again. Really, now I don’t care about the money. Just give me something, and I’ll go. Anything, a token, just to demonstrate you haven’t lost your sense of –’ She stopped. She couldn’t think what she wanted to say. Everything sounded overblown. She let the sentence drop.
It surprised her, how weary she was feeling. And Liam was standing there, uncomprehending and distracted. Of course, the wedding! He was looking creased; he had dragon skin around his mouth. His skin was worn. Had she grown used to him when they lived together, stopped really seeing him? She had never noticed how close together his eyes were. He seemed birdlike, afraid.
Then the buzzer went.
‘Fuck,’ said Liam. ‘Fuck, that’s the others. Rosa, come on, let’s go. Definitely time for you to go. We’ll talk more as we go.’ Suddenly, he dragged her off the sofa. Then he started pulling her through the door. At first she shook him off, quite lightly, though she was confused. His touch was strange to her, redolent, of course, of long ago, but different again, like the flat. Something in the atmosphere had changed. It was the sternness of his touch that made her uneasy. All the time they had lived together, he had never touched her like that, even when everything started to slide. It felt so curious; she couldn’t quite absorb it. I am finding this a fundamentally alienating experience, she thought, with a nod to Freud. That was the sort of cant he liked. I feel I cannot integrate myself into this moment. I suspect I am emotionally arrested. Was that it? And what about you, Liam, she thought? She caught a glimpse of his eyes, staring ahead. He had her arm in his hand again, and they were moving through the door. She shook him off, but he grabbed her again. ‘Come on, Rosa,’ he said. ‘Time to go.’ Now he was pulling her along the corridor. Though she was reluctant, he was stronger and of course he had the stark motivation of his wedding, the people in the lift, his best man, his brother perhaps, all of them in smart suits, preparing their speeches. He moved her quickly along the hall. His grip was firm and quite detached. As they went she said, ‘Liam, there’s no need to be so smug. I was being qui
te reasonable. That was what I said. Pay me a token. A bit of cash, that’s all. Something that makes me hate you less. Otherwise, think of me festering away, cursing you. It can’t be what you want on your wedding day!’ She raised her voice. She was shouting randomly as she was pulled along and every so often she would say, ‘Come on, Liam, what about the money!’ ‘The damn money! The fucking ducats!’
‘Rosa, that’s enough,’ he was saying. Already he was out of breath. ‘Really, you need help.’ They passed the lift, and because his friends were in there he dragged her further to the stairs and banged open the doors.
Rosa was pushing at his arms. ‘Gold!’ she was shouting. ‘The fucking gold!’ For a moment she was in a blind fury; not just about the money and her sense of panic but about their wasted life together, his betrayal of her, this rage she had been trying to convert into something else but which had sapped her energy and made her hopeless, a whole host of things she had failed to manage. She was stumbling under the weight of her anger, quite reeling with it, and that gave him a chance to bump her down a few more steps while she shouted words, though she was hardly noticing what she said.
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