by Caro Fraser
‘I see.’ Anthony said nothing for a few seconds. ‘I can understand your point of view, I suppose.’
He sounded so morose that she put her arms around his neck and drew him towards her. ‘It’s not because I don’t love you. Please don’t think that. I do - you know I do.’
‘But not enough,’ replied Anthony. ‘If you really wanted to be with me, you wouldn’t hesitate.’
‘Nothing’s ever that simple. I’m only twenty-three. There are things I want to do on my own.’
Anthony kissed her. ‘What if—’ He hesitated, wondering if this was what he meant, wanted to say. He decided it was. ‘What if I asked you to marry me?’
Her eyes clouded. ‘I’m sorry. I know you’ll only say that I don’t love you enough. But it’s not that. I wouldn’t marry you because I’m too young, and there’s so much I want to do first. Besides, I’m not sure you mean it.’
‘Maybe I don’t. But I wish you’d give it a little more thought - about moving in, I mean. If it didn’t work out, then you could always find a place of your own. But why not give it a try?’
‘Look, I’m going abroad for three weeks on Monday. Maybe being away from you for that long will make me feel differently. I don’t know. But why don’t we wait and see?’
Anthony sighed. ‘If you say so, it’s just—’ His eyes searched hers. ‘It’s just I miss you when you’re not here. The nights you’re not here.’
‘Maybe we can work something out when I get back.’ Something at the back of her mind told Camilla that even a separation would not change the truth of the things she had just said. ‘Meanwhile, I think it’s time you went to get that curry.’
Leo got home around nine. It was not his way to drink too much; he regularly and steadfastly stuck to his allotted two or three whiskies in any evening. But tonight he had drunk much more than that, leaving his car in the Temple and taking a taxi back. The uncharacteristic excess was due partly to the inevitable argument which erupted in the pub over the proposed move to Lincoln’s Inn and partly to a desire, a longing, to blot out all thoughts of Joshua.
It couldn’t have succeeded, Leo realised, as he paid the driver and stood, slightly unsteadily, looking up at the darkened windows of his flat. Alcohol might dull the pain of reality, but it couldn’t remove it. He made his way slowly upstairs and put his key in the front door, uncertain what he would find on the other side. He flicked on a light in the hall and wandered into the drawing room. Nothing was out of place. There were no bare patches on the walls in place of paintings, as he had half expected; all his pieces of sculpture stood where they had always done. The drinks cabinet was untouched. There was no evidence that anyone had been in the room that day.
In the kitchen, the only trace of occupation was a mug standing upside down on the draining board. Leo had had nothing for breakfast that morning. Joshua must have made himself coffee or tea, then carefully washed and rinsed the mug. Leo picked it up and stared at it, tracing the rim with a maudlin finger. He flicked open the pedal bin; Joshua’s crumpled beer can was the only thing in it. In the fridge the rest of the beers and what food there was lay untouched. Leo closed the fridge door and let out a long sigh.
He looked around for a few moments, thinking, then went into his bedroom. The big bed, where he had last night tasted such pleasure, was still unmade. Leo stared at the pillow where Joshua’s head had rested, then traced with his eyes the folds of sheets where he had lain, naked. How could absence be so poignant as to possess as much force as any presence? He pulled open the drawer of the tall lacquer cabinet which stood in one corner of the room and in which he habitually left loose money. The neat, thick fold of twenty-pound notes, which he had put there the other day, lay undisturbed.
He wanted nothing of me, thought Leo. Nothing at all. He realised that the whisky he had drunk had eaten away at his control and reserves of dispassion, and that he was on the verge of tears. He lay down on the sprawl of the unmade, empty bed and closed his eyes, listening to the silence of the flat and the steady beating of his own heart.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was hard to be sick quietly. Felicity groped upwards for the little radio that usually hung next to the shower and fumbled to switch it on, hoping that the sounds of Capital FM on a Saturday morning would drown the noise of her own retching. Why was this starting now? She reckoned she must be six weeks pregnant. She had thought that if you were going to get morning sickness, you got it from the word go. Clearly not. She stared dizzily at the white interior of the lavatory, then sat back. At the sound of Vince’s feet outside she pulled herself to her feet and flushed the lavatory quickly.
Vince appeared in his boxer shorts, scratching his chest. ‘Was that you throwin’ up?’ he asked conversationally.
Felicity nodded, giving him a pained little look and going to the sink to splash water on her mouth. ‘It must have been that curry we had last night,’ she said, patting her face with a towel.
Vince leant against the door jamb. ‘Na, can’t have been. We both had the same and there’s nothin’ wrong with my insides.’ He looked at Felicity speculatively as she brushed her teeth. Felicity studiously avoided his eye. Light dawned slowly. ‘Here - are you pregnant? Is that what it is?’ Felicity brushed her teeth harder and debated briefly within herself whether to try and deny it and talk her way out of it. One glance at Vince’s face told her there was no point. She gave a little sigh and let him hug her. As she rubbed her face slowly against his bare muscled shoulder, she was aware of an inner sense of relief, tinged with fear.
‘You are, aren’t you? Aw, bloody brilliant!’ He put an affectionate arm round her shoulder and gave her a squeeze, almost pulling her off balance. ‘I thought your tits was looking a bit on the bouncy side these days. And you’ve been off your drink.’ He pulled away and looked into her face. ‘How come you never told me?’
‘I’ve only just found out. I wanted to be certain.’
‘Fantastic.’ he murmured proudly, and hugged her gently again.
‘Vince,’ she said, pulling away, ‘it’s not as though it’s something we planned. I don’t know why you’re so pleased. Look, come through and have some coffee. I think we have to talk about this.’
Vince made coffee while Felicity sat at the kitchen table, shoulders slightly hunched, hardly listening as he talked. He’d be choosing names next. The horrible thing about morning sickness, she realised, was that, unlike ordinary sickness, you didn’t feel better afterwards. Hadn’t she read somewhere that you should try to eat something dry, like a cracker? What a disgusting thought. Vince put a mug of coffee in front of her and she shook her head. ‘Vince,’ she said, as he sat down opposite her with his coffee, ‘stop going on as though everything’s wonderful. I don’t think you’ve thought any of this through.’
‘What? Course I haven’t. I’ve only just found out, haven’t I? I’m reacting, aren’t I? Anyway, what’s to think through? You’re having a baby, bingo.’ He took a sip of his coffee. ‘We’re having a baby. Fuckin’ great.’
She sighed. ‘I’m not so sure about that. I mean, it’s not exactly an ideal time, is it? You’re still doing your knowledge - and will be for the next two years, if what you said the other night is right. I’m just starting to earn really good money … I mean, what’s going to happen if I have to give up work?’
Vince shrugged. ‘We’ll manage. My mum did. So did yours. It’s only a job. You can always get another one, like when the kids start school, an’ that.’
The kids. Vince had already painted the picture of her future. Not an ambitious man himself, content with enough money for booze and the most basic standard of living, he would be happy to see her life turn into the kind his own mother had led, and hers. Tied to the house, three or four kids to yell at and pick up after, washing, cooking, shopping, ironing, the days turning into months, the months to years. Occasional holidays, family celebrations, eventually the arrival of grandchildren. That would do for Vince. She studied him as he drank his c
offee and wondered if he really had any idea of what she did all day. Probably not. He thought of the people in chambers as a ponced-up set of lawyers, nothing to do with him, just Fliss’s bosses. If he thought about them too hard, his monumental chip would probably appear. By the same token, she guessed that his mind shied away from the thought that her job might in any way be important, valuable. Leaving aside the money she earned, he probably liked to think of her as a kind of secretary. In fact, he doubtless consoled himself with the notion that he could do Felicity’s job any day, if he had a mind to.
‘What if I don’t want to give up my job?’ she asked.
Vince looked up at her. ‘Well, come on, girl, you can’t have a baby and work. I mean, not straight away. Anyway, it won’t be much fun for it all on its own. Gotta have another, to keep it company, like. A proper family.’
‘Vince, Vince.’ Felicity gave a small, despairing laugh.
‘What?’
‘Oh, I dunno … You talk like it’s easy, like we’ll be able to afford things, that everything will go on as before. But it won’t. What are we going to do without my money?’
‘Manage. I told you. It’s just a matter of months.’
She thought for a moment. ‘What would you say if I suggested that I go back to work after the baby’s born and you look after it?’ This was rather more hypothetical than anything else; Felicity was curious to know his reaction.
‘What? Me?’ He laughed. ‘You are joking, aren’t you? How could I do me knowledge and look after a baby? Strap ‘im on the pillion, or something? I don’t see it. Anyway, that’s what mothers are for. Gotta have your mum.’ He shook his head. ‘I just can’t believe it. Me, a dad.’
‘Yeah,’ sighed Felicity. ‘You, a dad.’
Leo woke early on Saturday, his mind as tormented by thoughts of Joshua as when he had fallen asleep. He shaved, showered and dressed. He could eat nothing. He went out and drove to Earl’s Court. There he parked and began to walk the streets. They were only beginning to come to life at nine o’clock. By lunchtime, when Leo was still walking, they were crowded. People spilled in and out of the tube station; the shops and supermarkets were teeming. Part of his mind was suspended in disbelief at what he was doing - the futility, the stupidity of it. But the other part was too filled with feeble hope to care, too busy scanning the faces, the random knots of young men passing by. The merest glimpse of hair the same colour as Joshua’s set his heart racing. But nowhere, nowhere did he see the face he longed for. The hours drifted by, his heart and mind were sick and weary with it all, but still he looked and walked and hoped. What else could he do? All he knew was that Joshua lived in Earl’s Court. That was as much as he had told Leo. And Earl’s Court, of course, was thronged with itinerant young people, moving from job to job, bedsit to bedsit, country to country. What hope had he of finding him? None. None, he knew, none. But even the most minuscule possibility seemed, in Leo’s state of mind, too precious to abandon.
By two thirty he gave up. Heartsore, hungry, savagely ashamed of himself, he drove to the Galleria where Joshua had worked. Maybe there was some chance … He ordered a ham and cheese croissant and coffee, eating and drinking mindlessly, his eyes moving to the door every time it opened. He had no idea why he was there. After a while he noticed the Australian girl behind the bar, polishing glasses. She was big, rather plain, wearing a shapeless black T-shirt, her hair tied back. Leo paid the bill and went to the bar. ‘You had a boy called Joshua working here, I believe?’
She looked up, her expression indifferent. ‘Yeah. For a few months. He left last week.’
‘I need to find him. I’m a friend of his.’
‘Yeah?’ The girl shrugged. ‘Can’t help you. Sorry. I didn’t know him that well.’
‘Did he have any friends - people who used to come and see him here?’ The girl looked infinitely bored, and Leo added, ‘It’s really very important that I find him.’
She began sliding the clean glasses into the rack above the bar. ‘Well, he had this mate who used to come when we were closing up. They’d go off together. Damien, his name was.’ She gave a little smirk at what she clearly thought was a daft name.
‘Anything else? I mean, could I find this Damien?’
‘All I know is that he worked at some art cinema. Camden, I think it was. Don’t know the name. He sold tickets and coffee and stuff like that.’
‘Thank you,’ said Leo. ‘Thank you.’
Leo left the Galleria and went to the nearest newsagent’s and bought a copy of Time Out. In his car he riffled through the pages, conscious of a disproportionate nervous excitement. Camden, Camden … There was only one cinema that he could see listed - the Odeon. The girl had said an art cinema, though. Still, maybe she had made a mistake. Or maybe she had meant around the Camden area. That could include Hampstead, Swiss Cottage, even Islington. He glanced through the Hampstead listings. There were three that he could see, two of which looked more promising - the Everyman and Screen on the Hill. They were roughly what one might call art cinemas. A Pasolini double bill presumably ranked as art. There was the ABC, of course, and the Swiss Cottage Odeon, and the Screen on the Green in Islington. He would try them all.
Leo threw the magazine on to the passenger seat and started the car. As he checked in the rear-view mirror before pulling out, his own eyes looked back at him. For a moment he paused, appalled. What was he doing? What did he hope to gain from all this? Suppose he did track down this Damien. Was he likely to tell him where Joshua was? Leo had no idea. None at all. He only knew that he felt for the young man who had slipped in and out of his life something bordering on obsession. If there was the faintest hope that he might find him, just to talk to him and look at him, and perhaps persuade him to come back, then it was worth it. What else was he to do with his time, anyway?
There was no Damien to be found at any cinema. Leo tried them all. After drawing a final blank at the Swiss Cottage Odeon, he got back into his car and picked up the copy of Time Out again. Maybe the girl had got it wrong. Maybe the cinema was in another part of London altogether. He began to go through the listings, then stopped. He couldn’t go on with this. It was more than pride and reason could bear. Defeated, Leo flung the magazine aside and drove home.
On his answering machine, Leo found three messages, all from Melissa Angelicos. The first had been left at twelve, inviting him to an impromptu dinner party she was having that evening. Short notice, she knew, and Leo was probably already busy, but if he could give her a call … The second had been left later in the afternoon, just calling to see if he had got her first message, she did so hope he could make it, waiting to hear from him, bye. The third, which had been left just shortly before Leo got in, was short. Melissa. Still hoping to see you. Call if you can.
Leo played back the messages as he mixed himself a drink, moving from drawing room to kitchen and back again, the sound of her cultured, slightly rasping tones following him. How the hell had she got his home number? He had known the other night that she was attracted to him, but hadn’t expected her to make her next move quite so quickly. At Melissa’s age, perhaps you couldn’t afford to hang around. He had no intention of going to her dinner party. Under other circumstances, and purely for the amusement value, he might have gone as a means of passing the evening and escaping thoughts. Melissa’s friends were possibly worth meeting. But he had no wish to escape his thoughts, painful as they were. His feelings for Joshua were so deep and so new that he simply wished to contemplate them, to nurse them. He wasn’t fit for company. Besides, he had no desire to give Ms Angelicos the slightest encouragement. Rude though it doubtless was, he didn’t even intend to answer her calls.
Throughout the evening Leo sat watching television, drinking Scotch, the answer phone switched on. It rang three times. Each time the caller hung up and left no message. Perhaps it was Melissa, perhaps not. His heart gave a little flip of fear. What if it had been Joshua? But it couldn’t have been. Joshua didn’t know his number, had no
means of finding it out. More depressed than he had felt in his life, Leo switched off the television and began to read, conscious of a dull, whisky-induced headache. He mustn’t drink any more. He had told Rachel he would pick Oliver up around ten, so he would have to be up early.
Just before midnight the phone rang once more. Leo hesitated, about to cross the room and pick it up before the answering machine cut in. But he left it and went to bed.
Joshua put the phone down and crossed the lobby of the club to where Damien was waiting for him.
‘I don’t know why you keep ringing him. What’s the point?’
Joshua shrugged. ‘I don’t know … feel a bit bad about the whole thing. Maybe I should have left him a note. I don’t know what he expects.’
‘I’d forget it, if I were you. That kind of thing is seriously bad news. I reckon you should try pulling some girl tonight. That’ll take your mind off it.’
‘Yeah, maybe you’re right.’ He put the piece of paper back in his pocket, the one on which he’d copied down Leo’s phone number from the bill which he had come across when riffling through the contents of the hall table the morning before he’d left. What Damien said could be true. Maybe it was bad news. But he’d got nothing out of it. He’d thought he hadn’t wanted anything - money, that is. Leo had plenty to spare, Joshua had seen that from going through his drawers. It was just that he couldn’t get Leo out of his mind.
Melissa closed the door on the last of her dinner party guests and let the smile slip from her face. She sighed and slid on the chain bolt, then went back through to the dining room, where the remains of the meal scattered the table and the air was pungent with cigar smoke. Melissa pulled back the curtains and opened a window, letting the air billow in. She stood there for a moment, breathing in the chilly freshness of it. He hadn’t even rung back. Bastard. Something small and dark and very close to hatred crept from her soul and nestled next to all her mixed-up desires and hopes. She liked him. She liked him too much. And if he was going to let her down like this, then it was all going to get very painful. Of course, she had plenty of men friends. Friends were fine, in their way. But in Leo Davies she had detected something for which she longed, lusted. Now she had her sights fixed on him she could not let him elude her. It did not cross her mind for a moment that perhaps Leo had been out all day and all evening, or that he might be away for the weekend. In the scenario she had constructed he had become, from the first moment when he had cold-shouldered her, an object, a target, a being whose motives and strategies must be bound up with hers, in order to make the game worth playing. She was convinced he had received her messages and ignored them. The cold air made her shiver. She closed the window, drew the curtain again slowly, and went to pour herself a small brandy. Then she sat in an armchair, thinking, for a long time.
