by Zoë Jenny
She stopped at the crossroads by King’s Cross Station. There was the tree behind the railing where poems and photos had been posted after 7/7. Only a few weeks ago the little square around this tree had been a memorial. She wondered why there was no plaque with the names of the victims, nothing that remembered the events of 7/7. Historical events were shared with more people then ever before, but at the same time they seemed to be forgotten quicker. The tree was lost, fading in its setting. King’s Cross had moved on, a new act had begun and the tree had become irrelevant; like an old useless prop that had been overlooked and left on stage by mistake.
A young couple were kissing just in front of the railings, on the same spot where she and Anthony had joined the queue to lay down flowers. What had happened on this spot a hundred years ago? The whole city was littered with the scars of history. Every now and then the present was colliding with the past, like when they were digging out the tunnel for the high-speed train and stumbled upon old graves and scattered bones.
Claire drove up Pentonville Road, thinking of the layers of forgotten history beneath her, forgotten lives, the remnants of generations past. Every society leaves its mark on the surface of the city, creating a new layer, just like a growth ring. What would they leave? High-speed trains, silently rushing under sea level, sleek designed buildings of glass and new, light materials. And in the midst of this had been those young men walking around in trainers and FitnessFirst rucksacks, fiddling with pay-as-you-go phones, while their young, clueless hearts were brimming with dark, old crusted hatred.
Claire was taken aback when Nora slung her arms around her. She stepped back instinctively, as if showing affection openly in front of her mother was somehow inappropriate. But Mrs Ross smiled. She didn’t seem to mind that her daughter liked her.
On this particular day Claire was too absent-minded to notice Nora gliding into the water with no hesitation. Only when she saw her swimming in front of her did she realise that Nora had finally conquered her worst fear. It had happened almost behind her back, by accident, just when she hadn’t been expecting it. Claire clapped her hands, told her what a brave girl she was. Nora did it again, swam the whole length of the pool, back and forth. She wanted to please Claire, show her that she was a good girl.
Claire looked at Nora with a sense of achievement; she was kicking her legs confidently, swimming in even strokes without any muddle or panic. Suddenly it looked so easy, but she had only reached this level because Claire hadn’t insisted and because they had actually left the pool and done other things. Now the pool was not a vast ocean where she could drown. She knew she could just swim to the ladder and get out. Claire liked to believe she had given her something for life, the realisation that fear didn’t necessarily mean the end of something – it could just as well be the starting point.
After the class, Claire handed over the certificate to Mrs Ross with a robotic motion. Her job was done; now she would have to let Nora go.
At first she didn’t understand what Mrs Ross was saying. “You know, Nora doesn’t warm to people easily.” Claire nodded; she realised that. “She likes you a lot. It would be just one day a week.” Miss Ross looked at her, waiting for an answer.
Claire tried not to let on how happy she would be to look after Nora. But would Anthony approve of such an arrangement? Probably not. They swapped numbers. Claire promised to give her an answer by the following day. She hopped on her scooter with a sense of relief. Nora hadn’t been taken from her; if she wanted to she could see her once a week.
On her way home she took another route, avoiding the passage where she had been blocked. A group of youngsters gathered outside the housing estate facing City Road. Some of them had their hoods pulled over their heads. They were smoking, dealing drugs that Claire suspected might be crack. Just when she drove past, one of them turned his head in her direction and she heard someone shouting, “There’s that bitch!”
It hit her like a whiplash. They had noticed her, singled her out. Never before had she been so quick to lock her scooter and disappear into the house. Looking through the spyhole in the door, she told herself not to be so ridiculous, not to feel intimidated by teenagers. In recent weeks more cars had been vandalised. Anthony dismissed it as petty crime, but the area seemed to be deteriorating quickly. When they first moved in she had rarely seen broken glass from smashed car windows on the pavement; now it was a daily sight. Hackney’s crime scene seemed to overspill into parts of Islington, slowly swallowing it up street by street. She kept her growing concern to herself, though – it would only frustrate Anthony as they weren’t able to move house. Especially now, when they had to save every penny for the impending IVF treatment. For the foreseeable future, holidays and meals in restaurants were a luxury they would have to do without.
When Anthony came home that evening he was walking on air. Despite the recent mistake, he had been invited on a weekend golf trip to Scotland with senior work colleagues – a sign he was still in the race for a promotion. The Scotland trip was good news, although she couldn’t quite understand what the point was of these ‘away trips’. “It’s all about bonding and team spirit,” Anthony explained. Probably a lot of drinking and cracking sleazy jokes too, she reckoned.
It was just after supper when Dave popped by to watch the Arsenal game with Anthony. But the game was incidental; he clearly wanted to talk with him. Claire could tell from that intense, restless look in his eyes that something troubled him. She went upstairs, immersing herself in a hot bath, leaving the door open so she could eavesdrop. It was too tempting listening to boys’ talk.
Dave hadn’t been invited to Scotland. Claire wasn’t surprised; after all he wasn’t the kind of guy who would get a promotion. He hated the City more than anything, the phoniness, the power games, the greed. He wasn’t comfortable with the survival-of-the-fittest principle that ruled, the kill-or-get-eaten attitude. Essentially he wasn’t a meat-eater, but a fair-haired vegetarian who was exposed to a world of predators. She pricked her ears as he told Anthony how worried he was about losing his job.
“I’m telling you, there will be a reshuffle at the company soon, a big clear out. And I’ll be the first to go. I know it and I’m preparing myself.”
“Man, you are paranoid,” she heard Anthony reply. “How do you know all this shit, anyway?”
“I heard some senior guys talking over lunch... they were serious. The gravy train of economic growth is over. The seven meagre years follow the seven fat years. That’s the way it goes. I’m just saving up some money while I can. We are working in a fucking house of cards on the brink of collapse.”
“Don’t talk like that; I hate this defeatist attitude of yours!” Anthony responded, angrily. “You are worried about losing your job just because you overheard a conversation at lunch? You probably got the wrong end of the stick. Get some perspective.” Usually Anthony was mad with Dave when he knew his friend had a point. Claire had always been fascinated by the way they could be rude to each other, even call each other names and still stay friends. By now she leaning over the rim of the bathtub, all ears.
“I’ve got perspective, believe me,” Dave returned. “More than that, I actually I see the bigger picture. I know what’s important and what’s not and this job is not important.”
“So why don’t you just go to fucking California and play ‘English Dave’ with the babes then?”
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do, mate, and I’ll send you a postcard. I don’t want to sit in your hot seat, not for all the money in the world, and just don’t for a second think I’m jealous of your bloody trip to Scotland – playing golf with the big boys. Phew... How pathetic is that!” Dave laughed out loud.
“Of course it is. Of course,” Anthony agreed in a bored voice that indicated the conversation was over. The steam was out. Like two rutting stags who’d enough of fighting. More beer cans were opened, someone increased the volume of the telly. Claire couldn’t understand what they were talking about now
– for the rest of the evening they would probably be like an old couple, in mutual agreement, focusing their attention on the football.
She wasn’t sure what to make of their conversation; maybe it was time for Dave to move on and do something else. She wished he had talked to her; she knew what it was like to start a new life in a different place. She almost envied him for having that option, and from the conversation it was clear how different his situation was to that of Anthony, who had a house, a mortgage, her, and maybe soon a baby on the way.
Despite their differences, Dave was Anthony’s closest friend. Anthony admired Dave’s laissez-faire attitude to work and life, something Claire found likeable but not exactly manly. She was naturally attracted to ambition and she wasn’t surprised Anthony didn’t mention their IVF plans. Even close friends keep secrets from each other. How little one knows. She realised one never gets the full picture of a person, only fragments, little insights, small concessions maybe. Even in their marriage there were unspoken words, secrets to be kept and guarded.
It occurred to her that Anthony would almost certainly be a different person when he was in Scotland with his workmates, living out a side she maybe didn’t even know existed. Just as he had once told her that her voice had a different sound when she talked to Anne. Apparently she changed it according to who she was talking to without even noticing it. She too was made of facets and wasn’t even fully aware of it. If she didn’t know herself entirely, how much did she know Anthony? He was her husband, she slept next to him every night, breathing the same air; she could rest her head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat; she could take his cock into her as deep as she possibly could and, yet, did she really know what was going on with him?
“You remain a mystery,” Anthony had said shortly before their wedding day. Maybe that’s as close as it gets, accepting that one never fully understands the other person and ‘sharing everything’ is an illusion. Everything? In that moment she decided not to let Anthony know about Miss Ross’s offer. It would be her little secret. As he would almost certainly be against it, why not avoid the stress by just not telling him.
Claire leaned back in the bathtub, relaxing her shoulders. She looked at her kneecap emerging from the foam, a little white island. At times she could still feel a dull pain, especially when the weather changed. She rubbed her knee. There was a long scar from the kneecap all the way down to the middle of her shin. The scar would never fully disappear. A constant reminder of that doomed day which had changed her life forever. Whenever she tried to remember how it all happened, she could follow her memory only to a certain point and then it broke up abruptly, a mental blank.
What she would never forget was how happy she was that day, walking down Neal Street, humming the tune of her favourite song, A Perfect Day by Lou Reed. As usual after her new training, she was almost euphoric; her cheeks still blushing from the exercise, she felt light-headed as the endorphins flowed through her veins. She was more than happy with how things had turned out. Only a few weeks before, she had been chosen to dance for the company, and it was as if she was at last doing what she was supposed to.
The first six months after her arrival in London she had been throwing herself into taking classes and going to auditions and finally she had pulled it off, convincing a choreographer that she could do more than classical ballet. All those years of ballet had given her a sound foundation on which she could build and break away from at the same time. Gradually she stepped out of the corset of strict rules, dancing outside the box of tradition, embracing new steps and movements. The choreographer, a Nigerian who had grown up in London, praised her technique and, even more, her passion. “The bit you can’t learn,” as he put it – words that resonated with her. His dance company was young and increasingly popular, with sold-out performances all over London. It was a colourful mix of people, all from different backgrounds, some older then her. Immediately she felt at ease with them; they asked her about life in Berlin, a city everyone seemed fascinated by. For them, she was exotic, the lanky Swedish girl with the German accent and the impeccable technique who had to learn to loosen up a bit.
On that fateful summer day, as she walked down Neal Street, the sky had cleared from the morning thunder and changed into a polished blue, she felt a rare and deep sense of contentment. Everything had fallen into place. All her fears and doubts had resolved, and not for a second did she regret her move. Whenever she reported back to Anne and her parents she couldn’t help but enthuse about it all.
“You sound like Sinbad the sailor, who has found the way to open the door to the treasure,” Anne joked on the phone when she’d told her about the successful audition.
“That’s exactly what it feels like,” Claire had responded.
Although she lived in a much smaller flat than in Berlin, in a constantly littered, run-down street in Holloway, she felt liberated as if a huge space had been opened before her. Sitting on top of a bus she realised how much at home she felt. It was packed full and she could make out about four different languages at one time. Everyone on the bus was a stranger, just like her. As she listened to this babel of voices, permeated with foreign sounds, she was in the cocoon of this bus, thrown together with all these people driving in the same direction, and she felt at home. All on her own and yet mysteriously connected to everyone around her, a rush of happiness flowing through her, almost lifting her out of her seat.
She felt in love without knowing with what or whom; just to be one of the people on this bus was enough to set her alight, and she realised that this was only possible because she had taken a risk; it would never have happened if she had stayed in Berlin, and the complete freedom she experienced in that very moment was exactly the way she wanted to live and dance.
Helena, her Swedish flatmate, was in her second year at RADA. They shared two tiny rooms, a shower and a kitchenette. “In London people live like rats,” Helena said, but she said it matter-of-factly, as if she didn’t care. She too was in love with the city and she would have put up with anything just to be there.
Claire liked her at once. Helena was just as devoted to her acting as Claire was to dancing. Her passion for acting was profound and she certainly didn’t waste her time. Every free minute she rushed off to see a play somewhere. Claire liked to watch her when she was learning a new role, and Helena liked being watched.
“Take me under you microscope,” Helena said, learning her first Shakespeare role, and there in the kitchenette she immersed herself in her character, playing it all out. Claire looked at her in awe as she was turned into Ophelia. The role suited her northern beauty, although her waif-like appearance became more and more dishevelled as she started to lose weight, living on lingonberry jam and krisprolls. After two weeks she looked perfectly suicidal. Sometimes Claire wasn’t sure whether Helena was in character or herself anymore. She heard her moaning in the shower, talking to Hamlet and ghosts. Her eyes got bigger as if they had seen too much, widened to the verge of insanity.
One night, Helena crept into Claire’s bed. “I am so glad not to be alone,” she said, squeezing her hand. “Soon I will be dead and buried.”
Claire was surprised how tiny her hand felt, like the hand of a scared child. She looked at her from the side, at her delicate profile that seemed even more fragile, porcelain-like in the dark, and it was as if Helena was just a reflection of herself. There they were lying in bed, in a city of eight million people and eight million dreams, holding on to each other, stranded by the tide of the night.
Listening to the noises, relentlessly permeating their bedroom, emergency sirens, the drunken shouting of late pub-goers and the permanent murmur of traffic, Claire couldn’t sleep. She was thinking of all the new steps she had learnt, like the words of a new language that put together in the right order finally made sense. She had the urge to get up and dance in the dark of the room, her heart beating fast with excitement, synchronised to the rhythm of the city that was forever moving, self-engrossed in its own ete
rnal dance, never coming to a halt.
When Claire thought back to those early days in London it was with a sense of nostalgic sentiment and gratitude. After all, it was because of Helena that she had met Anthony. Helena had literally dragged her out that evening, waving film tickets at her while she was doing yoga on the living room floor. Claire left the house only reluctantly. And it was there in the dark of the cinema that they realised that their seats were double booked. There were two young men already sitting there. Claire remembered them wearing suits, as if they had just come from work, somehow looking smug, giving off an über-confident, annoying vibe.
They were comparing the tickets that had the same seat numbers but, “Sorry girls,” was all they could come up with. As all the seats were occupied, all they could do was get their money back and leave. Helena was furious. “City boys,” she said dismissively, storming out the cinema. “They could have offered us their seats!”
Thinking back to how Anthony and Dave were sitting there, holding on to their tickets resolutely, made her laugh. Never in a million years would she have thought to hook up with one of them.
However, a week later at a Wagamama restaurant in Islington, as she was eating her favourite noodle soup, someone tapped her on the shoulder. “I know your friend was really mad at us but frankly, you didn’t miss anything. The film was rubbish.”
She recognised him immediately. The bottle-green eyes and dark hair. Anthony. She liked his name. He sat next to her and two hours later they were still there, talking. He insisted on inviting her and Helena to a film, to make up for their ruined evening.
She didn’t fall in love with a bang. It was a smooth transition, a gradual development. The sex was relaxed and grown up, no fumbling and gawky gestures. No blush with shame. He was a good cook too, which Claire was convinced came with being a good lover. Maybe she fell in love as she watched him filetting that turbot, his hands disappearing in the cavity of the fish, stuffing it with lemon and herbs. He was different, not the dark arty type she usually went for.
