Eighty Days Red

by Vina Jackson

  My mind filled with images of his face underwater. Had he had an accident? A heart attack, coincidentally in the same place as his wife died? I doubted it. I had never known Mr van der Vliet to have so much as a cold, I couldn’t imagine him being ill. It must have been deliberate, but he didn’t seem to me like the type to jump. That seemed too spontaneous. He’d choose to go in a manner that was definite, with every moment of his passing firmly within his control. He would have walked in.

  I could see it like a film unfolding in front of me. He’d have worn his Sunday best. Perhaps the suit that he wore to the concert I played in the Te Aroha secondary school assembly hall, when I’d visited a couple of years ago on my Antipodean solo tour. A white shirt with a dark olive-green waistcoat, trousers and jacket. He’d looked like a grasshopper, his limbs folded up uncomfortably to fit within the confines of the small wooden chairs that had been laid out in the hall. His skin as thin as paper, as if he might rustle in the breeze like a leaf.

  He would have just walked in, and relaxed. He must have done it late at night or early in the morning, before the river filled with holidaymakers, bushwalkers and children with their inflated tyre tubes intent on riding the current that ran all the way to Paeroa where the Ohinemuri River met the Waihou.

  Mr van der Vliet must have been one of the only people in New Zealand who couldn’t swim. He said that he had never wanted to learn, always preferring the comfort of dry land even in hot weather. With his total absence of fat tissue he would have sunk to the bottom of the river like a stone.

  By the time I reached home tears were running gently down my cheeks. I was saddened by the news of Mr van der Vliet’s death, but more so by the fact I hadn’t known about the funeral, hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye and thank him for everything he had done for me.

  Simón was sitting on one of the stools at the breakfast counter reading the paper, his long, thick hair framing his face like a curtain. He was wearing a pair of old ripped jeans and an Iron Maiden T-shirt, revelling as ever in an opportunity to dress informally, out of the confines of his conductor’s formal suit and tailcoat which I thought he looked great in – like a cross between a werewolf and a vampire – but which he hated, thinking it as constricting as a straitjacket.

  He turned as I entered the room and was on his feet, wrapping me in his arms immediately. ‘Fran rang,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, baby.’

  I leaned against him and buried my head on his shoulder. He smelled the way he always did,

  like nutmeg and cinnamon, the fragrances that perfumed the cologne he’d been wearing for as long as I had known him. It was a rich, woody odour, a smell that I had begun to associate with comfort along with the feeling of his tight embrace.

  ‘I didn’t think she had our home number,’ I said, dully.

  ‘I gave it to her at Christmas.’

  Simón was much more family oriented than me. He fought with his siblings like cats and dogs, and his parents too on occasion, but he spoke to them all at least once a week. My family and I had a happy enough relationship but I could easily go six months without hearing from them.

  I looked up and kissed him. He had full lips, and most days a smattering of stubble on his jaw. Simón responded to the touch of my lips, kissing me firmly and pulling me gently towards the bedroom, running his hands up under my running shirt as he did so and tugging at the thick clips on my sports bra.

  He had learned one of my peculiarities, there was nothing that I wanted more when I was upset – providing it wasn’t with him – than sex. I knew this was a strange form of comfort specific to me and perhaps only a small minority of the female population. Sex grounded me in the same way that nothing else did, and it was the one thing on earth, second perhaps only to playing my violin, that made me feel at peace.

  Now, he pulled my running trousers down and slid his finger inside me. A familiar bolt of pleasure ran up my spine in response to his touch.

  ‘I should have a shower,’ I protested. ‘I’m all sweaty.’

  ‘No you shouldn’t,’ he said firmly, pushing me onto the bed. ‘You know I like you like this.’

  It was true, and he tried to make a point of it, often. Simón liked me the way that I was, however that was, a fact that he reiterated often by waking me up with his head between my legs or by pouncing on me when I returned from the gym.

  He was a passionate man who loved making love and he did everything that he could to please me, but we had different tastes in the bedroom. Each of us preferred not to be in charge.

  Simón wasn’t a dominant man and I missed that hint of ice, the firmness of Dominik’s touch, and other men like him. I wanted to be tied to the bed and have someone have their wicked way with me. Simón had tried, but he had never been able to reconcile himself with the idea that he might genuinely hurt me. Even in jest, he said, he couldn’t hit or restrain a woman, and that ruled out spanking, one of the things that I most enjoyed.

  He was a good man. I knew that pulling me on top of him was much more his style than the reverse, but that he was doing it this way because he knew I preferred it. The fact that I had spent our entire relationship with a nagging feeling of unfulfilment was a constant source of guilt, like a wound that wouldn’t heal, an itch that I couldn’t scratch.

  I wanted more than anything to be the kind of woman who would be happy with all of the usual things. I had even more than the usual things. Not just a good man but a wonderful man, both of us with good friends, good health and successful careers to boot. But still, a voice whispered in my ear that the life I was living wasn’t the life that I wanted, or the life that suited me.

  Simón wanted to get married and have children, and I didn’t. It was the only thing that we had truly disagreed on and never been able to resolve, and I felt a stabbing sensation of horror each time I saw him glancing into a jewellery store window at the engagement rings, or smiling at a toddler that he bumped into on the street. All of the things that would make him happy and contented for ever were the things that terrified me, and in the dead of night when I wasn’t distracted by work or social occasions or running in cold weather, I felt as though someone had attached an iron weight around my neck, or had hung a halo above me that was so heavy I couldn’t keep it in the air. I sometimes felt as though I would be crushed under the weight of my own life.

  Two weeks passed, and my dreams were filled with crashing water and the sound of Dominik’s voice.

  I woke up in the mornings with a start, as if I’d been dragged from sleep by a lion. Despite my fears and worries, time passed, as it always would. I ran every day, rehearsed,

  attended soirées with other couples, mostly on the musical scene. But I felt purposeless, like a ship without a rudder, as though my life was gradually dissolving into nothing one moment at a time.

  Fran continued to call at odd times of the day and night. She was checking up on me I thought, in her own way. We’d always been close but neither of us was overtly emotional and most of our conversations only lasted a few minutes. She was still set on leaving Te Aroha. Had handed her notice in, she said, to her work, and she was applying for her UK visa.

  We had UK ancestry so were lucky in that respect. My grandparents on one side were Ukrainian, and on the other, English. We were pioneers, travellers on both sides. It ran strong in our blood, the desire to be on the move to places unknown.

  ‘You’re not coming to New York then?’ I asked her one night, after she’d told me that she had booked her flights to the UK.

  ‘I think London is in my blood. Anyway, I can’t get a US visa.’

  ‘You can live with me, you don’t need to go searching for work. Come as a tourist.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know as well as I do that I wouldn’t last a minute if I wasn’t earning my own keep, any more than you would.’

  ‘Fine. Come and visit me though?’

  ‘Of course. Come and see me in London?’

  ‘Sure. I’m due a visit.’

 
; The more I thought about it, the more I missed it. Cold weather, the gloom of old buildings, streets leading here, there and everywhere, pathways running like tentacles throughout the city, not the square blocks lining avenues rigidly like they did in New York.

  I’d been back once since I’d been dating Simón but only for a flying visit, as we were both working. I kept in touch with Chris, my best friend who I’d met when I first moved to London. His band, Groucho Nights, were just beginning to make it. He and his cousin Ted, the band’s guitarist, had come across Viggo Franck, the lead singer of The Holy Criminals, at a party one night and they’d hit it off. Subsequently, they’d been offered a spot opening for the famous rock band at the Brixton Academy, the sort of gig that bands like Chris’s spent their lives dreaming about.

  Chris and I had actually met in the front row of a Black Keys gig at the same venue. I’d gone on my own as I didn’t know anyone, and we’d bumped into each other as we both leaped to catch the lead singer’s guitar pick. Ever the gentleman, he’d let me have it, and I’d bought him a drink after the show to thank him. We’d bonded over the fact that we were both new in London, and we were both string musicians. I played violin and he played viola, though he’d switched to guitar as his main instrument to appeal to the rock crowd. I had played the odd gig with his band, when the vibe was right to include a violinist.

  I decided to give him a call. It would be late in London, but Chris was a musician, he’d be up.

  His voice was bleary.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re asleep. Not very rock star of you.’

  ‘Summer?’

  ‘The very one. What’s new?’

  I could hear the rustling of blankets as he sat up, presumably still in bed. ‘We got the gig.’

  ‘With The Holy Criminals? Amazing. Did you have to sleep with Viggo Franck to get it?’ ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘So what’s he like?’ I probed.

  ‘Viggo?’

  ‘Of course Viggo. I don’t fancy the drummer, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Oh you’d like him. All the girls seem to. I don’t really get it. But hey, that’s the trouble with being the nice guy, isn’t it – always the friend, never the boyfriend. It’s the bastards who get it all.’

  ‘Simón’s a nice guy,’ I said, teasingly.

  ‘Yes, he is.’ His tone became suddenly serious. ‘But are you happy with him?’

  I paused, unsure of how to phrase it. How could I possibly admit to anyone that I was considering breaking up with the nicest guy in the world because he was too nice?

  ‘What’s up, Summer? You never call just for a chat.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been out of sorts. My violin teacher died. Mr van der Vliet. I don’t know if I ever told you about him.’

  ‘Yeah, you did. He was getting on a bit though, wasn’t he? He had a good innings. And he was proud of you.’

  ‘I think he might have killed himself.’ The words came out in an awkward rush.

  ‘Oh. God. I’m so sorry … Are you OK?’

  ‘Not really … I … I don’t know what I am. I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be here for you whenever you need me, you know that.’

  ‘Yeah. I know. Good luck with your gig then – is it soon?’

  ‘Next month. We’ll miss you though. It’s never been quite the same without you there.’ ‘Oh, rubbish.’

  ‘No, it’s true. You added something. Hey, maybe we’d all be already famous if you hadn’t left.’

  When I got home that night, it was late, and Simón was up, waiting for me, sitting at the breakfast bar, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He was hunched over and staring at the bench, though he didn’t have a newspaper in front of him. Something was sitting on the counter. A book, but it wasn’t open. Dominik’s book I realised, with a prickle of horror, as I got closer.

  He didn’t leap out of his chair to greet me, as he usually did. He looked as though he was cloaked in a heavy veil of exhaustion.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, breaking the ice.

  He looked up and smiled at me wanly. His eyes were warm but he had the look of a sick horse that sees its owner approaching with a shot gun.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ he said. ‘Give me a hug.’

  He opened his arms wide and I stepped into his embrace. He was crying. I could feel the shuddering of his chest against his shoulder and my neck was damp with his tears.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked him gently.

  ‘You’re still in love with Dominik.’ It was a statement of fact, not a question.

  ‘We haven’t seen each other for two years,’ I replied.

  ‘But you don’t deny that you’re in love with him.’

  ‘I …’

  He gestured to the book on the table.

  ‘It’s about you. Another place, another time, but it’s still you.’

  ‘You read it?’

  ‘Enough. I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have been looking in your things, but you haven’t been yourself. I was worried.’

  ‘It’s OK. I shouldn’t have kept the book.’

  I’d tried to throw it away, knowing that there was always a possibility Simón would find it. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. But he had this way of clutching after me as though he knew that I didn’t belong to him somehow, as if he was always trying to find proof that I didn’t really love him. I did love him, but it was more of a deep affection than a romantic love.

  He took my chin in his hand and brushed a lock of hair from my face.

  ‘This is never going to work,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  A dull ache began to spread through my chest.

  ‘We want different things, Summer. I love you, but you’ll never be happy with me. And I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to catch hold of something that I never had.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I protested, a hint of panic finding its way into my voice. ‘It’s just a book, it doesn’t mean anything. We can talk it through, find a way—’

  ‘I want to have children, a family. And you don’t. You know what they say: a bird and a fish might fall in love, but where will they build their nest?’

  I sputtered, trying to find a reason to disagree with him, but there was none.

  ‘I spoke to Susan,’ he continued.

  ‘You told my agent you’re going to break up with me before you told me?’

  I could feel my face turning red, anger bubbling up inside in the absence of tears. I balled my hands into fists and pressed them against his chest. He took hold of my wrists and held me against him.

  ‘Of course not. I was just suggesting that you need a break. I can see you’re getting bored, frustrated. Even the best musicians need a holiday, a change.’

  I couldn’t argue with that either. I’d been playing the same tunes over and over for years now, even wearing the same dresses to my concerts. It was becoming old. I was getting tired, jaded. Even the album we’d just recorded of South American tunes hadn’t had my heart in it. That was his homeland, not mine, and though I could imagine the country that Simón told me so much about in the melodies that I played, I didn’t have the passion for it that I had for the New Zealand composers, or even the rock songs that I used to play with Chris when I jammed with his band in bars and pubs in Camden. I suppose that’s the problem when you begin making money from something that you love. Music had become my career, and gradually, my job, and I was beginning to tire of it.

  ‘You want me to move out?’

  ‘No, I want to keep you by my side for ever. But that’s not going to work for either of us,’ he said prosaically. ‘I’m taking a break myself. Going back to Venezuela for a fortnight to see my family. My flight leaves in the morning. I’ll let you decide what you want to do.’

  We made love again that night, and then again, in the middle of the night after he woke me up with a savage kiss at three in the morning and fucked me with a ferocity he had never shown
before. We spent the few hours before his flight tangled in each other’s arms, talking and laughing like old friends.

  ‘If only it could always be like this,’ I said, as he untangled himself from my limbs to begin getting ready for his departure.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve ever been right for each other,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t want to admit it. We like things the same way …’

  I watched him dress, pulling his ripped jeans straight on without bothering with underwear. His thick brown hair covered his face as he fastened his belt and adjusted the silver skull that adorned the buckle. His muscles flexed as he pulled a tight white T-shirt on over his chest, hiding his thick swatch of chest hair from view. He added a silver feather pendant on a chain, one that I had bought him for Christmas the previous year, and fastened it around his neck. He loved clothes, and consequently was the easiest man to buy gifts for that I had ever known.

  I wrapped my thighs around his waist as he sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on his snakeskin ankle boots with the red soles.

  ‘You can’t hold on for ever, you know,’ he said, ‘I’ll never get my shoes on.’

  He gave me another long kiss outside the taxi he’d ordered to take him to the airport, embracing me until the driver began to look impatient.

  ‘Don’t be a stranger. Keep in touch.’

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  Then watched as the car pulled away and took Simón out of my life.

  I trudged back into the apartment and sat back down at the breakfast counter. Dominik’s book was still resting in the middle of the bench. I picked it up and flicked through it again, skimmed through lines about the red-haired heroine who had evidently experienced no shortage of lovers in Paris. Dominik and I hadn’t managed to stay living together. Domestically, we were wildly unsuited. But sexually we were a perfect match. And whilst that seemed a ridiculous and terrible thing to build a relationship on, maybe that’s just who I was. You can try to escape your nature, but it catches up with you in the end.