To Heaven by Water

by Justin Cartwright

‘Goodbye, Josh. I think possibly you should see a doctor.’

  She clicks off her phone. She feels as though she has been kicked, but at least she has no nagging regrets about Josh. How could he have such violent resentment towards her, when he treated her with a kind of contempt and insensitivity which crossed all the familiar existential barriers between men and women? His only ambition, his motive force, seems to be to cause women to fall for him. He rings again almost immediately: she declines the call. Now he texts: Who ladyboy u r having coffee with?

  She calls Ed.

  ‘He’s in a meeting,’ says the receptionist. ‘Who shall I say wanted to speak to Mr Cross?’

  ‘His sister, Lucy Cross. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Of course, Miss Cross. I don’t anticipate that he will be long.’

  She is right. Within seconds Ed is on.

  ‘Hi, Ed, thanks for this. Sorry to bother you.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  He’s perhaps a little brusque, but this is no time to quibble.

  ‘Your friend Josh is harassing me. He just rang me at work and called me a fucking cunt, and now it seems he’s been following me.’

  ‘Jesus, did you see him?’

  ‘No, but he must have followed me from Grimaldi, because he saw I was having coffee with someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who? Now I can’t have coffee?’

  ‘Lucy, just give me the facts.’

  ‘It was somebody from the News, who wrote a feature in yesterday’s paper. Nick Grimczek.’

  ‘I saw it. You look great, by the way.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Can you talk to him?’

  ‘I’ll try. It may be a bit early to threaten him with an injunction. Keep a record of his calls and texts. Was he drunk?’

  ‘He may have been. He was slurring.’

  ‘I’ll deal with it, but don’t speak to him, particularly don’t reason with him or shout at him. Just ignore him.’

  ‘Thanks, Ed. And how are you?’

  ‘I’m a lawyer. Bye now. Leave it to me.’

  On television, people often stare at the phone after a dramatic conversation. She finds she is looking at the phone as though his human warmth is still somehow lingering in the receiver. But she feels calmer now, although not calm enough to concentrate on the power-hungry and murderous Constantine, who had his son killed when he was found dallying with his wife Flavia. Flavia was parboiled when she took her bath. She wonders what set Josh off: he probably saw her moment of fame as a personal slight. Now she looks back on their brief relationship and its violent ruptures and she thinks that maybe she always knew he was unbalanced.

  She tells Rachel that she has to go over to the British Museum to check some sources. Rachel waves distractedly in the direction of Bloomsbury as if she is egging on a sheepdog and says, ‘Go, go,’ without looking up. When she is concentrating, which is very often, her Celtic eyebrows meet darkly. Some in Grimaldi call her Offa’s Dyke, but Lucy guesses she is uninterested in sex. She leaves by the back door, looking carefully to see if Josh is loitering. But out here in the street, a street of expensive art and fragranced men in pale, old-fashioned raincoats and Church’s shoes, men who have enough time and money to perform this art-themed, self-regarding paseo with confidence, she feels the reassuring familiarity and ease with London. She walks past St George’s, Hanover Square, one of the most beautiful churches in London. Near by very thin people often exit from Vogue House, like a delicate forest-antelope emerging from a glade. The sudden change as you cross Regent Street into Soho is always a surprise. She knows the name of every north–south street, the way some people know railway stations. She goes out of her way to calm herself, taking Brewer Street, past the Japanese Supermarket, the hardware store, the health-food place and Randall & Aubin, once famous for its Toulouse sausages, now an oyster bar. Dad loves Soho: he thinks it is the remnant of a lost city, with its small-scale enterprise, crafts, film-production houses, publishers and restaurants, all wrapped in an urban classlessness. He says that, when he lived here for six or eight months as a cub reporter, he knew everybody: it was a village. Where he sees old, sausage-eating London, peopled by friendly prozzies – ‘Lookin’ for a good time, darlin’?’ – and Chianti bottles with candles in their necks lighting dark cellar restaurants, she sees clubs and sushi bars and niche fashion. What we both like is that it is a real and human place in a vast city. Authentic.

  She cuts up Frith Street and on through Soho Square, where there is a sense of stillness, pigeons foraging calmly on the dead, dead soil, and two of those thin, thin junkie girls in tight jeans which emphasise their flat, flat, spatchcocked buttocks, walking aimlessly and one man with that detached feral look rocking slowly in a breeze directed only at him. They are all silent, but there are times of the day when these people burst into emotional raucous laughter or violent abuse, with the suddenness of budgerigars. At other times – this is one – they are weighed down with the understanding of their true position, as people who have a morbid relationship with oblivion.

  Now she’s trotting across Charing Cross Road, up through Coptic Street, where Ed works, maybe talking even now to Josh, and on into the vast forecourt that leads to the museum. She has no real need to be here; as she pauses on the broad steps up to the portico, she hears a strange pounding, a city clamouring, but she thinks it is maybe from within. She goes quickly up to the room which holds the statuette said to be of Helena: there is no resemblance to the image on the coins, although the period is right. Actually, it’s not too important: she’s only writing up the catalogue, adding a little sonorousness to the description of the images on the coins, but she thinks, as she stares at this Helena, that she does look like the picture of her on the ceiling of Constantine’s palace in Trier. In that image she is surrounded by a luminous nimbus, a little personal halo of sanctity, a bit like Dan Dare’s space helmet in the vintage comics they auctioned. Big business. Ed used to collect comics and also Star Wars figures, and the attic in Camden is full of these, which, he still claims, will one day be priceless. Here in the museum she regains some calm, although she’s still shaken by Josh’s explosion of hatred. She feels a loss of innocence. At twenty-six, she sees that innocence is not about sex but about a state of not knowing: and life, it turns out, is a process of wising you up.

  She goes to see the frescos from Lullingstone, some of the most moving things in the museum, early British Christians praying – orans – with their arms outstretched like The Angel of the North; they are the deceased praying for their friends on earth. Evangelicals are fond of this posture: perhaps they believe they are already in heaven. These people have none of the imperial confidence of Constantine and his familia: they look more traditionally humble, with low self-esteem. They are the forebears

  of Anglicans; it can only be jam tomorrow with these folks.

  When she leaves the museum the sky is violently disturbed by grey clouds rushing at different levels in opposite directions, passing each other distractedly like commuters on a busy platform. London clouds, like the skin of trout, have subtle variations of light in them, which they pick up as they pass overhead, as though escaping gases and stray reflections reach them.

  She decides to go to Camden rather than to her flat; the last thing she wants is to find Josh waiting for her. He still has a key. She rings Ed to see if he has spoken to Josh, but his phone is on message. She rings his office and speaks to the receptionist, who of course now sees her as an obsessive, and she says that he has had to go to Geneva unexpectedly. She rings Dad, but he’s not answering either and now she wishes that Mum were alive, always available, keen for a chat that would restate first principles in an irritating but reassuring fashion. She took endless pleasure in any account of her children’s lives and the domestic detail was a kind of litany that needed diligent recital.

  Lucy lets herself into the house, which is acquiring a bachelor aroma, of embrocation and fruit on the turn and the staleness of
air which has not been sufficiently stirred. Although the cats are missing, their presence remains. She wishes she had brought some flowers as an antidote. Mum loved simple arrangements of tulips and daffodils and – only in season – garden roses. She tidies up a bit: it’s probably a feminine thing, an atavistic reaction, but it’s also in honour of her mother. She sits in the armchair where her mother used to read, and suddenly she finds that she is weeping, despite having brains and beauty. Then she gets up and makes some coffee, nothing fancy from Turin – Torino – just some Nescafé. She wipes her face with the scrap of kitchen towel left on the roller.

  She hears a noise at the front door: an animal is scratching and whimpering. She looks out of the window and sees Ms Jiggly Tits. She walks into the hall. She can’t remember her name. She opens the door.

  ‘Oh, hello, Lucy. Is your dad in?’

  The dog’s nose is already in. Some way behind, its owner is fighting a losing battle to keep it from taking possession.

  ‘You remember her, don’t you? From the Heath?’

  ‘Yes, I do, Wolfie, come in, bring Wolfie.’

  With a rush Wolfie tows her owner into the hall.

  ‘I’m really sorry, I can’t remember your name.’

  As Lucy says it, she realises that this is a serious gaffe: she has remembered the dog’s name, but not its owner’s.

  ‘Sylvie.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I am terrible with names.’

  ‘I saw your picture in the paper. You looked lovely.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  In the hand that is not restraining the dog, which for the moment is galloping on the spot, unable to gain traction on the French-oak floorboards Mum had put down, Sylvie holds a parcel, wrapped in soft tissue paper of pistachio hue. It has a little card attached in a pink envelope, with elaborate script.

  ‘Your dad came and spoke to our book club – maybe he told you? – and we always give the speaker a gift. Not that we always have a speaker. And this is it. Will you give it to him?’

  ‘Of course. If he’s coming home. He’s a bit of a dirty stop-out these days.’

  This is not true, but she wants to check, for a moment, the emotional energy rushing from Sylvie and her dog, a spring tide of enthusiasm and eagerness, which is threatening to inundate the place.

  ‘I had better be going,’ Sylvie says unconvincingly.

  ‘No, no, come in.’

  She leads the way down to the basement and the kitchen.

  ‘Shall I put the gift here, on the table?’

  ‘I am sure that would be fine.’

  ‘It’s nothing special, just a token. It’s the thought that counts, don’t you think? David, your dad obviously, was absolutely amazing.’

  ‘Yes. He’s surprisingly lucid still, isn’t he?’

  ‘He had us eating out of his hand.’

  ‘What about a drink?’

  ‘I would love something.’ She fans her face briefly with her hand. ‘It’s hotter than you realise. Do you have any white wine?’

  ‘Probably. I’ll have a look.’

  ‘And perhaps Wolfie could have some water? To be honest her coat is a little thick for this weather. Normally I can’t have her stripped until June.’

  ‘Sure. She can have my old Peter Rabbit bowl. I hardly ever use it, as you can imagine.’

  Lucy fills the bowl and then finds a bottle of Chardonnay, already open, in the fridge. After its loud drink, the dog subsides, its moist needy eyes firmly on Sylvie. As she pours the Chardonnay – cold, straw-coloured – she wonders if Sylvie has dressed up for this encounter with her father. She is wearing a sort of peasant blouse out of The Bartered Bride, which allows her breasts considerable free range. Below that she has a long skirt, possibly Anatolian, with threads of light sewn into it, and her hair is falling artlessly and abundantly below her shoulders. Long and abundant hair, Rapunzel hair, is traditionally the mark of the free spirit.

  ‘What did Dad talk about?’

  ‘Oh, he was just brilliant. The thing that I found most moving was his trip to Afghanistan. The poor women being shot and lashed in the Football Stadium; I wonder how seeing something like that affects you in the long term. I should have asked.’

  ‘He never spoke to us about his feelings in that way. I don’t think he wanted us to be frightened when he was out of the country. But I know my mother was always terrified that she would get the dreaded phone call. His favourite cameraman was killed in the Sudan, but we had to read that in the paper. So he kept fairly quiet.’

  ‘I can imagine. What do you do, Lucy?’

  Lucy explains that at the moment she works on catalogues for Grimaldi, the auctioneer, and that she is very busy with a new catalogue right now, but Sylvie misses any hint contained in the information.

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘I work, at the moment, in an organic café in Highgate, but I am really an artist. Unfortunately, I can’t sell enough of my paintings to live on.’

  The world seems to be filled with people who see personal salvation in an artistic or literary career: life is a project of self-development. Her favourite saying of Camus is Life is not to be built up but burned up. Although of course Camus had a pretty good career himself saying this sort of thing.

  ‘What kind of painting do you do?’

  At this point the dog growls and Lucy hears the key turning in the lock. She goes to the front door.

  ‘Hello, Dad. Your friend Sylvie is in the kitchen.’

  ‘Hello, sweetheart. How nice to find you here.’ He kisses her. ‘Sylvie?’

  ‘With dog. Come down. We’ve started on the Chardonnay. Sylvie was telling me that she works in an organic café but is a painter at heart.’

  As they enter the kitchen, Sylvie is calming the dog, which is suspicious of intruders. Sylvie stands up, Venus from the waves, and extends both hands like a charismatic offering a blessing.

  ‘Hello, David. Forgive me. I just came to drop in a gift from the book club, and Lucy dragged me in.’

  ‘Oh, hello. How are you, Sylvie? I enjoyed the book club...’

  As her father speaks the dog wags its low-slung tail. It knows him, Lucy thinks.

  ‘Dad, I have to go home to finish some work.’

  ‘OK, sweetie. You’re welcome to stay the night, as you know.’

  ‘Another time. Bye, Sylvie.’

  ‘Oh, bye.’

  As she leaves by the front door, Lucy hears laughter from below, her father’s slightly mechanical but professionally charming laugh, and Sylvie’s excited giggle, almost a yap.

  13

  It happens in films but almost never in real life: when David wakes he reaches across the bed and finds she has gone and he has no idea when she left. He looks at his watch. It is seven-thirty. The space next to him where she lay is fragranced, but the warmth obviously departed some time ago. The thought that she may have crept out disturbs him. Perhaps she was embarrassed and feared that he might say something dismissive, or perhaps she was feeling guilty and couldn’t wait to get home to the security and familiarity of her own bed. He has had that feeling himself. He gets up and looks in the mirror, which Nancy had fixed behind the bathroom door. He realises, perhaps for the first time, that he wants to get out of here because of Nancy, because of her presence. His breasts are slightly puckered, despite all his running and rowing. His efforts to cross the Atlantic single-handed. I am not exempt from delusion. Far from it. He wonders if she noticed his obdurate nipples and the threads of grey on his chest. He tries to recall the number of separations he has had from women in the night, in places like Damascus and Ho Chi Minh City and Johannesburg, but none is as charged as this separation. He wonders how Nancy felt when she had to leave her lover in the night to get back to the children.

  All he feels now for her is sympathy; the little coal in his heart that he kept fanning for so long is suddenly cold. In the popular wisdom you cannot live without loving. Perhaps it would have been possible, but when Jenni drowned – when h
e drowned her – he limited the range of his heart deliberately. He had overreached himself, like Faustus and Burton, and he wanted, in some way, to atone by becoming a regular Joe. For a long time he told himself that he had made sensible decisions, but he knows that he lost something along the way, what his brother would probably think of as the possibility of transcendence. Mutely, he has always carried with him a sense of failure. It seems almost crazy: in anybody’s estimation he has had an astonishing life, even achieved some acclaim without looking for it – finding without seeking – and yet he can’t shake this sense of disappointment in the personal realm, where we live.

  He goes to the kitchen to make coffee. He has a scoop that measures precisely and neatly the amount of coffee he should put in the Pavoni, but he can’t find it and tries to use a teaspoon unsuccessfully, so that half the coffee spills. More and more, small actions cause him difficulties. As he struggles with the coffee, he thinks that his life, like his father’s, will end in aimless pottering. His father was forever making repeat trips to his storeroom or the garden shed or the kitchen, trips that started with promise and ended in confusion. As he looks around in the dull Camden morning light that finds its way via the damp bricks into the basement, he sees what Lucy has been hinting at, the grimed surfaces, the broken hinge causing one of the cupboard doors to limp, a missing light bulb; he realises that she has been too tactful to tell him directly that he is neglecting the place. Everyone has always had undeserved respect for my feelings. He knows she feels unease not so much because of the neglect, but because she sees the state of the house as evidence of his detachment. Nancy said that houses always need attention and he hadn’t realised that it was literally true. The place is crumbling in front of him. I’ve been in this murk too long. It’s better for everyone if I get away.

  He takes the coffee back to the bedroom. The sheets are stained. There are different kinds of stain, invested with significance, sometimes of happiness, sometimes of guilt. These are evidence of something ecstatic. It’s as if he had never had sex before. He remembers how it was: before you have done it you only have a vague notion of what it’s like, but immediately afterwards you cannot imagine how you lived your life without it. He drinks his coffee. For forty years he has relied on coffee in the morning to produce a little murmur of optimism. Now he feels keyed up by his decision to go, and he will take the memory of this night as a benediction, a charm. Fucking. A word of Germanic origin, which sounds mechanical, but hides an infinite variety of delicate meaning. In families, ancient taboos survive. The older generation – he is the sole survivor in this family – is not expected to show any direct interest in fucking, although it is permitted some ironic references, e.g., Dead birds never fall out of the nest. Older women sometimes make ironic reference to the need for a toy boy, but they are forbidden to abandon the code and say what they really mean, that they want to enjoy the rite of fucking, which somehow will confirm their relevance.