The Red Room

by Nicci French

  I didn’t want to go to the meeting. I felt almost physically incapable of it. The previous evening, I’d been out late with Jake for a meal. We hadn’t gotten in until after midnight and hadn’t gotten to bed until one and then hadn’t actually gotten to sleep until maybe two-thirty. It had been an anniversary—our first. It wasn’t much of an anniversary, but Jake and I are short of them. Occasionally we’ve tried, but we’ve always been unable to remember our first meeting. We were around each other in the same environment for such a long time, like bees hovering around the same hive. We can’t remember when we became friends. We were in a fluctuating group of people, and after a bit of time we had reached a stage where if somebody had asked me to write a list of my three or four, or four or five closest friends, Jake would have been on it. But nobody ever asked me. We knew all about each other’s parents, school days, love lives. Once we got horrendously drunk together when his girlfriend left him, sitting under a tree in Regent’s Park and finishing off half a bottle of whiskey between us, half weepy, half giggly, generally maudlin. I told him that she was the one who was losing out, and he hiccuped and stroked my cheek. We laughed at each other’s jokes, danced with each other at parties, but not when the music was slow, cadged money and lifts and advice. We were mates.

  We both remembered the first time we slept together. That was on January 17 last year. A Wednesday. A group of us were going to see a late-night movie, but various people couldn’t go and by the time we were at the cinema it was just Jake and me. At one point during the film we looked at each other and smiled rather sheepishly and I guessed that we were both realizing that we were on a sort of date, and maybe we were both wondering if this was such a good idea.

  Afterward he asked me back to his flat for a drink. It was about one in the morning. He had a packet of smoked salmon in the fridge and—this was the bit that made me laugh—bread he had baked himself. At least, it made me laugh in retrospect, because he has never baked a loaf or anything else since. We are a takeout-and-convenience-food couple. However, I did very nearly laugh then, at the moment when I first kissed him, because it seemed odd, almost incestuous, being such good ordinary friends already. I saw his face getting closer to mine, his familiar features blurring into strangeness, and I wanted to giggle or pull away, anything to break the sudden seriousness, the different kind of quietness between us. But it immediately felt right, like coming home. If there were times when I didn’t want that sense of settledness (what about all my plans to work abroad, to have adventures, to be a different kind of person?), or worried that I was nearly thirty and was this, then, my life?—well, I shook them off.

  I know that couples are meant to make a specific decision to live together. It’s a stage in your life, like exchanging a ring or dying. We never did. I started staying over. Jake allocated me a drawer for knickers and tights. Then there was the odd dress. I started leaving conditioner and eyeliner pencils in the bathroom. After a few weeks of that I noticed one day that about half of the videos had my handwriting on the labels. It’s just that if you don’t write down programs you’ve taped, even in very small writing, then you can never find them when you want to watch them.

  One day Jake asked if there was any point in my paying rent for my room, since I was never there. I hemmed and hawed, worried, and didn’t come to any firm decision. My cousin Julie came down for the summer to work before starting college, and I suggested that she could park in my place. I had to move more of my stuff out to give her room. Then, at the end of August—it was a hot early Sunday evening and we were at a pub looking over the river at St. Paul’s—Julie talked and talked about looking for somewhere permanent, and I suggested she stay there permanently. So Jake and I were together and the only anniversary we had was our first sexual encounter.

  But after the celebration, there was the reckoning. If you don’t want to go to a meeting and you are worried about doing yourself justice or having injustice done to you, make sure that your outfit is ironed and you get there on time. These are not exactly in the managerial ten commandments, but on that dark morning when I couldn’t face anything but tea, they seemed like a survival strategy. I tried to collect my thoughts on the underground. I should have prepared myself better, made some notes or something. I remained standing, in the hope that it would keep my new suit smooth. A couple of polite men offered me a seat and looked embarrassed when I refused. They probably thought it was ideological.

  What were they all going to do, my fellow passengers? I bet myself silently that it wasn’t as odd as what I was going to do. I was going to the office of a small division of a very large multinational drug company in order to have a meeting about a small plastic-and-copper object that looked like a New Age brooch but was in fact the unsatisfactory prototype of a new intrauterine device.

  I had seen my boss, Mike, being successively baffled, furious, frustrated, and confused by our lack of progress with the Drakloop IV, Drakon Pharmaceutical Company’s IUD, which was going to revolutionize intrauterine contraceptives if it ever made it out of the laboratory. I had been recruited to the project six months ago but had become gradually sucked into the bureaucratic quagmire of budget plans, marketing objectives, shortfalls, clinical trials, specifications, departmental meetings, regional meetings, meetings about meetings, and the whole impossible hierarchy of the decision-making process. I had almost forgotten that I was a scientist who had been working on a project on the fringes of female fertility. I had taken the job because the idea of creating a product and selling it had seemed like a holiday from the rest of my life.

  This Thursday morning, Mike just seemed sullen, but I recognized the mood as dangerous. He was like a rusty old Second World War mine that had been washed up on a beach. It seemed harmless, but the person who prodded it in the wrong place would get blown up. It wasn’t going to me, not today.

  People filed into the conference room. I had already seated myself with my back to the door so that I could look out of the window. The office lay just south of the Thames in a maze of narrow streets named after spices and distant lands where they had come from. At the rear of our offices, always on the verge of being acquired and redeveloped, was a recycling facility. A rubbish dump. In one corner there was a giant mountain of bottles. On sunny days it glittered magically, but even on a horrid day like this there was a chance that I might get to see the digger come along and shovel the bottles into an even larger pile. That was more interesting than anything that was likely to happen inside Conference Room C. I looked around. There were three slightly ill at ease men who had come down from the Northbridge lab just for this meeting and evidently resented the time away. There was Philip Ingalls from upstairs, my so-called assistant, Claudia, and Mike’s assistant, Fiona. There were several people missing. Mike’s frown deepened, and he pulled on his earlobes furiously. I looked out of the window. Good. The digger was approaching the bottle mountain. That made me feel better.

  “Is Giovanna coming?” Mike asked.

  “No,” said one of the researchers; Neil, I think he was called. “She asked me to stand in for her.”

  Mike shrugged in ominous acceptance. I sat up straighter, fixed an alert expression on my face, and picked up my pen optimistically. The meeting began with references to the previous meeting and various droning routine matters. I doodled on my pad, then tried a sketch of Neil’s face, which looked rather like a bloodhound’s, with sad eyes. Then I tuned out and looked at the digger, which was now well at its work. Unfortunately, the windows cut out the sound of the breaking glass, but it was satisfying all the same. With an effort I tuned back into the meeting when Mike asked about plans for February. Neil started saying something about anovulatory bleeding, and I suddenly and absurdly got irritated by the thought of a male scientist talking to a male manager about technology for the female anatomy. I took a deep breath to speak, changed my mind, and turned my attention back to the recycling center. The digger was retreating now, its job done. I wondered how you could get a job drivin
g something like that.

  “And as for you…” I became aware of my surroundings, as if I had suddenly been disturbed from sleep. Mike had directed his attention to me, and everybody had turned to survey the imminent damage. “You’ve got to take this in hand, Alice. There’s a malaise in this department.”

  Could I be bothered to argue? No.

  “Yes, Mike,” I said sweetly. I winked at him though, just to let him know I wasn’t letting myself be bullied, and saw his face redden.

  “And could someone get this fucking light fixed?” he shouted.

  I looked up. There was an almost subliminal flicker from one of the fluorescent light tubes. Once you became aware of it, it was like having somebody scratch inside your brain. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

  “I’ll do it,” I said. “I mean, I’ll get someone to do it.”

  * * *

  I was drafting a report that Mike could send to Pittsburgh at the end of the month, which left plenty of time, so I was able to spend the rest of the day doing not very much. I spent an important half hour going through two mail-order clothes catalogs I’d been sent. I turned the page back on a pair of neat ankle boots, a long velvet shirt that was described as “essential,” and a short dove-gray satin skirt. It would put me £137 further into debt. After lunch with a press officer—a nice woman whose small pale face was dominated by her narrow rectangular black-framed spectacles—I shut myself into my office and put on my headphones.

  “Je suis dans la salle de bains,” said a voice, too brightly, into my ear.

  “Je suis dans la salle de bains,” I repeated obediently.

  “Je suis en haut!”

  What did “en haut” mean? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t even remember why I’d started learning French, except I’d had vague dreams of buying a simple white house near Nice, strolling to the market in the Mediterranean morning and discussing the ripeness of tomatoes, the freshness of fish. “Je suis en haut,” I said.

  The phone rang and I pulled off the headphones. I was away from the world of sunshine and fields of lavender and outdoor cafés and back in dockland in January. It was Julie, with a problem about the flat. I suggested we meet for a drink after work. She was already meeting a couple of people, so I rang Jake on his mobile and suggested he come to the Vine as well. No. He was out of town. He had gone to look at progress on a tunnel being dug through a site that was both beautiful and sacred to several religions. My day was nearly done.

  * * *

  Julie and Sylvie were there at a corner table with Clive when I arrived. Behind them were some wall plants. There was a vine motif in the Vine.

  “You look awful,” she said sympathetically. “Hangover?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said cautiously. “But I could do with a hangover cure anyway. I’ll get you one as well.”

  Clive had been talking about a woman he met at a party last night.

  “She’s a very interesting woman,” Clive said. “She’s a physiotherapist. I told her about my bad elbow, you know…”

  “Yes, we know.”

  “And she took hold of it in this special grip, and it immediately felt better. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “What does she look like?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What does she look like?” I insisted.

  He took a sip of his drink. “She was quite tall,” he said. “Taller than you. She has brown hair, about shoulder length. She’s good-looking, tanned, she had these amazing blue eyes.”

  “No wonder your elbow felt better. Did you ask her out?”

  Clive looked indignant, but a bit shifty as well. He loosened his tie. “Of course I didn’t.”

  “You obviously wanted to.”

  “You can’t just ask a girl out like that.”

  “Yes you can,” Sylvie interrupted. “She touched your elbow.”

  “So? I don’t believe this. She touched my elbow as a physiotherapist, and that means she’s asking for it, does it?”

  “Not as such,” said Sylvie primly. “But ask her. Ring her up. She sounds desirable to me.”

  “Obviously, she was… attractive, but there are two problems. One, as you know, I don’t feel that I’ve got over Christine properly. And secondly, I can’t do that sort of thing. I need an excuse.”

  “Do you know her name?” I asked.

  “She’s called Gail. Gail Stevenson.”

  I sipped my Bloody Mary reflectively. “Call her up.”

  A look of alarm passed comically over Clive’s features. “What would I say?”

  “It doesn’t matter what you say. If she liked you, and the fact that she took hold of your elbow at the party means that she may have, then she’ll go out with you whatever you say. If she didn’t, then she won’t go out with you whatever you say.” Clive looked confused. “Just give her a ring,” I said. “Say, ‘I’m the person who had the elbow that you manipulated at whatever-it-was party the other night, would you like to go out?’ She might be charmed.”

  Clive looked aghast. “Just like that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What should I ask her to?”

  I laughed. “What do you want me to do? Fix you up with a room as well?”

  I got some more drinks. When I returned, Sylvie was both smoking and talking dramatically. I was tired and only half listening to her. Across the table—I wasn’t sure because I only heard fragments—I think that Clive was telling Julie about the secret meanings hidden in the pattern on the Camel cigarette box. I wondered if he was drunk or mad. I lingered over the last of my drink, feeling fuzzy round the edges. This was part of “the crew,” a group of people who, mostly, had met at college and stayed together, looking out for each other, spending time. They were more like my family than my family.

  When I got back to the flat, Jake opened the door as I put my key in the lock. He was already changed into jeans and a checked shirt.

  “I thought you’d be late,” I said.

  “The problem went away,” he said. “I’m cooking you dinner.”

  I looked on the table. There were packets. Spiced chicken. Taramosalata. Pita bread. A miniature steamed pudding. A carton of cream. A bottle of wine. A video. I kissed him. “A microwave, a TV set, and you,” I said. “Perfect.”

  “And then I’m going to have sex with you for the entire night.”

  “What, again? You tunneler, you.”

  BENEATH THE SKIN

  In the summer, their bodies catch heat. Heat seeps in through the pores on their bare flesh; hot light enters their darkness; I imagine it rippling round inside them, stirring them up. Dark shining liquid under the skin. They take off their clothes, all the thick, closed layers that they wear in winter, and let the sun touch them: on the arms, on the back of the neck. It pours down between their breasts, and they tip back their heads to catch it on their faces. They close their eyes, open their mouths; painted mouths or naked ones. Heat throbs on the pavement where they walk, with bare legs opening, light skirts fluttering to the rhythm of their stride. Women. In the summer I watch them, I smell them, and I remember them.

  They look at their reflections in shop windows, sucking in their stomachs, standing straighter, and I look at them. I watch them watching themselves. I see them when they think they are invisible.

  The ginger one in an orange sundress. One of the straps is twisted on her shoulder. She has freckles on her nose; a large freckle on her collarbone. No bra. When she walks, she swings her pale, downy arms, and her nipples show through the tightened cotton of her dress. Shallow breasts. Sharp pelvic bones. She wears flat sandals. Her second toe is longer than the big one. Muddy green eyes, like the bottom of a river. Pale eyelashes; blinking too much. Thin mouth; a trace of lipstick left at the corners. She hunches under the heat; lifts up one arm to wipe the beads of moisture from her forehead, and there is a graze of ginger stubble in the scoop of her armpit, maybe a few days old. Legs prickly too; they would feel like damp sandpaper. Her skin is going blotchy; h
er hair is sticking to her brow. She hates the heat, this one; is defeated by it.

  The one with big breasts, a squashy tummy, and masses of dark hair, you’d think that she’d suffer more—all that weight, that flesh. But she lets the sun in; she doesn’t fight it. I see her, opening out her big soft body. Circles of sweat under her arms, on her green T-shirt; sweat running down her neck, past the thick, straight braids of her hair. Sweat glistening in the dark hairs on her arms, her strong legs in their high shoes. Her underarm hair is thick; I know the rest of her body when I see it. She has dark hairs on her upper lip, a mouth that is red, wet, like a ripe plum. She eats a roll that is wrapped in brown, waxy paper with grease spots on it, sinking white teeth into the pulp. A tomato pip is caught on her upper lip, grease oozes down her chin and she doesn’t wipe it away. Her skirt catches in the crease between her buttocks; rides up a bit.

  The heat can make women disgusting. Some of them get all dried up, like insects in the desert. Dry lines on their face, stitching their upper lips, crisscrossing under their eyes. The sun has sucked away all their moisture. Especially the older women, who try to hide their crepey arms under long sleeves, their faces under hats. Other women get rank, rotten; their skin can barely contain their disintegration. When they come near, I can smell them: Under the deodorant and soap and the perfume they’ve dabbed on their wrists and behind their ears, I can smell the odor of ripeness and decay.

  But some of them open like flowers in the sunlight; clean and fresh and smooth-skinned; hair like silk, pulled back or falling round their faces. I sit on a bench in the park and look at them as they walk past, singly or in groups, pressing their hot feet into the bleached grass. The light glistens on them. The black one in a yellow dress and the sun bouncing off the shining planes of her skin; rich, greasy hair. I hear her laugh as she passes, a gravelly sound that seems to come from a secret place deep inside her strong body. I look at what lies in the shadows; the crease in the armpit, the hollow behind the knee, the dark place between their breasts. The hidden bits of them. They think no one is looking.