The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  She spent ages picking through fruit and vegetables, feeling and smelling them, making sure each was perfect. She spent more time choosing a potato than she had moi. She enquired after the provenance of everything – did the stallholder know where they came from or when they were harvested? One suspects that they indulged her only because she was fair of face. At the butcher’s, she deliberated over a fillet of beef but could only afford a cut called bavette, which I now understand is tasty and cheap.

  At least the girl didn’t put the meat, the potatoes or other consumables in my plastic bag; one should be thankful for small mercies. The stallholders put a few things aside for her. I had to admit I quite liked her. She had a pleasant breathy voice caused by sucking in a lot of air before talking. She had never been taught to breathe from her diaphragm and the shallow breaths made me think she was prone to panic attacks. Her accent was classless, definitely English, and at least she spoke in rounded sentences rather than that awful shorthand I had to put up with at Bernoff ’s. She had that terrible modern habit of letting words tumble over each other in the race to finish a sentence.

  Eventually I was pedalled back to her residence. How we made it I don’t know; it was bumpy, noisy; more than once an automobile screeched to a halt to avoid a collision. She was chided for dangerous cycling. She seemed oblivious. One was worried.

  We stopped and she opened the front door. Imagine my disappointment when there were no servants to greet her, not even an aged retainer. A very bad omen. Up and up we climbed. I counted two, three, four and then five floors. Let me immediately disavow you of the romantic idea that artists like garrets. Poppycock. Artists are like anyone else – they want the grandest rooms. By the time you get to the eaves, where the servants live, the running boards can be as little as three inches high and the ceilings slanted and low. That was the first thing I looked at when the girl fished me out of the plastic bag. It was bad news; someone of very low social standing had bought me. As I’ll explain again and again, my survival depends on good circumstances; wars, famine, poverty, weather, fashion and other acts of godlessness terrify one.

  Propped up on a rickety wooden table I was able to get a good look at my new home. The room ran the length and breadth of the house and was painted a vulgar yellow. The ceiling was low; you couldn’t have hung a major Rubens up there, Veronese would have had to be folded into eighths. There were windows on three sides (sunlight for us paintings is another terrible hazard). Behind a partition (you could not call it a separate room) I glimpsed an unmade bed. One side had been slept in; the other was still quite neat. She obviously lived alone. I noticed that the mattress rested on planks and bricks. On a packing crate by the messy side there were piles of books. Though my vision was distorted badly, each and every tome seemed to be about food.

  There was no art to keep me company. At least there were no signs of a child; I cannot abide children. Once the dauphin, that miserable son and heir of Louis XIV, a pudding of a child, a flat-footed numbskull, had a tantrum and threw a ball at moi! As far as I am concerned, children should neither be seen nor heard.

  At the other end of the room there was an alcove with cooking equipment: a white metal box with dials, a stainless-steel sink under a window facing out over the rooftops. Either side were shelves stacked untidily with pots, pans and china. Two old earthenware jugs contained a forest of cooking utensils, knives and forks. Small cupboards either side of the white box held a variety of packets and dry stores. There were few ornaments: a decorative but deeply ordinary chipped china jug with wilting flowers, a framed poster of a movie, Isabella and Ferdinand, and a worn-out teddy bear with one eye and a red bandana around its neck. The floor was wooden, painted white but heavily scuffed and a blue-and-white rug was placed before two small armchairs with blankets thrown over their backs. On another wooden pallet there was some kind of fern in a terracotta pot.

  As she unpacked the shopping, I was able to get a clearer look at my new mistress. She was a slight thing; no more than five foot four. She wore dreadful clothes, those slouchy, pocketed trousers and a jumper, inexpertly darned at the elbows with bright pink thread. On her feet was a pair of pale brown boots with a wedged heel. She had marvellously pale skin and a cloud of dark auburn curls framing her face in a most fetching way. A little later she made a warm drink and sat looking intently at me and I was able to see her better. The girl was not a classical beauty, no Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo, but she had something, a certain je ne sais quoi. Large green almond-shaped eyes, flawlessly arched eyebrows, white teeth slightly chipped in the middle to form a baby triangle. Her mouth was slightly too wide but a good deep plum red. Her skin was so pale that it glowed like a soft marble. A fraction too long in the face, which gave her a rather charming, serious, pensive look. Then she smiled. ‘Cor blimey,’ as the earthenware boys used to say. ‘Mon dieu,’ to quote old Nicolas Poussin. My saviour, I had to admit, was really lovely looking, une belle pépée.

  ‘I wonder what your story is?’ She spoke to me in a way I haven’t been spoken to for a long time. My craquelure shone with pleasure. ‘I wish I could see you better. Is it age or dirt? There’s something so touching about the man lying on the grass staring in wonder at the dancing woman. She’s not that interested in him, is she? She’s looking at us looking at her and hardly knows or cares what he thinks. She is capable of inspiring great love, isn’t she? Where are they? It looks like a clearing in a wood. But the sun is coming from stage left, a beautiful dappled light. Is that a ghost in the corner? Or is it a cloud?

  What could I say? She has the eye. The heart. She may be bog poor but she knows, doesn’t she? She can feel and sense my greatness. Like anyone, I need to be loved and admired.

  She looked at the clock on the wall and jumped up, chiding herself. There was work to be done. It was clearly an occasion. She reached in the back of a cupboard and brought out a large white sheet. Not linen or damask. Placing it on the table, she smoothed the edges down carefully. Fishing some knives and forks out of a pot she wiped them on the underside of the tablecloth. Pretty slovenly, you’ll agree. Taking four small enamel cups from the shelf, she arranged posies of paper whites in each. Marie Antoinette was partial to narcissi – it took me back. Two wine glasses were polished and placed opposite each other at either end of the table. Taking some pink napkins and wrapping each in scarlet ribbons, she placed them in between the knives and forks at a jaunty angle. What is wrong with the young? What is wrong with classical arrangements and doing things correctly? Still, it had a creative touch and looked festive. I had to give her that.

  Taking the beef out of a bag, she rubbed powders into its surface, placed it in a bowl under a cloth. Then she went off into the little side room and soon I heard the noise of water. As she stepped out of the bath I saw flashes of naked pale flesh – long honey-coloured limbs that would have seen off a Titian, let me tell you. Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus would have had conniptions if she’d seen this competition.

  I watched her dress. She chose a white silk shirt and purple velvet trousers, worn at the knees and patched on one flank. What is wrong with a nice dress? She twisted and tamed her long hair into a knot and secured it with a chopstick. What is wrong with a brooch? Still, she looked better.

  I have had the odd spell in a banqueting hall, state rooms and boudoirs (ooh la la, the stories I could tell you – the sex lives of kings and queens) but I have never ever been consigned to a kitchen or seen a domestique at work. It was, one must admit, enjoyable watching her; she cooked as if she were conducting an orchestra, except that in the place of a baton there were glinting knives and wooden spoons. Her hands flew like swooping swallows sweeping over saucepans and a heavy wooden board. Vegetables were sliced into narrow juliennes and the eggs whisked in stiff peaks. My girl kept one eye trained on her sauces, teasing, stirring and occasionally sprinkling a pinch of salt or some finely chopped herbs. Eventually something frothy and glossy was teased out of eggs and spooned on to slivers of ruby-coloured beef. />
  My erstwhile mistress, Marie Antoinette, used to employ scores of pastry chefs; there was a girl just to watch a gateau rise. Her remark about letting them eat cake was taken entirely out of context. It was a form of flattery. So what if there wasn’t bread? Cake was more delicious. It was a little preposterous in the circumstances, I admit, but things were different then.

  Placing candles on all the hard surfaces around the room, on the window ledges, a side table, on the mantelpiece and in the hearth, Annie lit them one by one and flicked off the lights. Outside, dusk was falling and there was only the faintest orange glow of the street lights coming through the window.

  Whoever my girl was waiting for was late. Then later. She couldn’t settle. She rearranged the knives and forks. She opened the bottle of wine and poured herself a glass. And another. She opened and closed a book. I lost count of how many times she went to the window and squinted down at the street below.

  My master was just the same waiting for ‘her’ to come. She was always late, if she turned up at all. My master would try to paint, taking up a brush and stand before his easel. You could see him attempting to regain concentration but he would dash between his palette, the stairs and the window.

  The girl looked at her watch. She paced. Frequently she picked up the telephone and started to press the numbers, and stopped. She poured a third glass of wine and then a fourth. In the candlelight I could see a flush in her cheeks, an added glitter in her eye. She rummaged around in a drawer and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. My heart sank. I didn’t have her down as a smoker. She lit one and drew the smoke deep into her lungs. Coughing wildly, she threw the stub into the empty hearth. The candles had burnt low. One or two had even gone out. Her guest was not coming. I didn’t need three hundred years’ experience to work that out.

  She stood in the middle of the room and started to sway from side to side. Her legs began to move and her arms came out beside her and it was as if she was pushing air away. An awful mournful groaning wail came out of her mouth, gently at first but rising to an animalistic howl. As the noise grew louder, her movements sped up and soon she was moving and twisting like a young sapling in a high wind. I stared, transfixed. As she danced, her shadow whipped around in the candlelight and spun off the walls. Faster and faster she went, with her hair flicking this way and that, spinning around and around as if her head was going to fall off. Flashes of light caught on her bangles and reflected in the whites of her eyes. Her breathing became more and more intense. Then she stopped as suddenly as she’d started and sank to her knees, resting her head on the floor. I heard this strange and eerie sound, like wind whistling under a door or a child playing an oboe. I realised it was her. Crying. It was a heart-rending noise. I had heard it once before, from my master, when ‘she’ told him she would never marry him.

  The girl lay on the floor rocking from side to side, still clutching her knees or putting her arms over the back of her head. She cried until the soft light of dawn broke over the rooftops and a lone bird started to sing.

  Chapter 3

  Annie woke in the late afternoon and, opening one eye, watched the rays of a setting sun creep through the window, across her bed, turning the white counterpane a golden red. If I don’t move, she thought, perhaps my head will hurt less. She ran her tongue over the roof of her mouth – it tasted furry and metallic. She checked her phone – it was already four o’clock and there were no missed calls, no emails, no texts. At least there were only a few more hours of Sunday, she thought, stumbling towards the bathroom. She stood in front of the basin mirror; her reflection mocked her. No wonder he didn’t show up, no wonder they all leave you, she decided, staring back at her lank hair, bloodshot puffy eyes and mottled complexion. Who in their right mind would want you? Running the tap until the water was biting cold, she splashed her face. Using her elbow, she coaxed the last squirt of toothpaste out of its tube and brushed vigorously.

  She saw the picture in the mirror, propped up on the chest of drawers. It was both inanimate and mocking. What was I thinking? £75? Insanity. Pull yourself together or check into an asylum. First thing tomorrow I will take it back, put Robert behind me and kick Desmond even further into the deep recesses of my memory. Brushing her teeth with renewed vigour, Annie made, not for the first time, various vows; number one on the list was chastity. She would cancel her subscription to the ‘Art of Love’ dating agency, remove her ad from all lonely hearts columns and accept that she was a happily single woman. Number two: she would stop drinking; she was clearly about to turn into her mother. Number three: from now on she would only eat healthy foods and cut out caffeine and sugar. Her mind and body needed a pleasant shock. Yes, a fresh start. Use negative experiences to catapult one into positive change. Number four: stop being so self-critical.

  Her body cried out for carbohydrates to mop up the hangover. Spotting the remains of last night’s dinner on the table, she decided to delay the new resolutions until Monday morning. Perhaps it will taste better cold, she thought, spooning lumps of potato dauphinoise and a silver of bavette into her mouth. He would have left me if he had eaten this, she thought, picking a bit of hardened beef out of her teeth. She ate it quickly, reasoning that speed would cover up quality.

  Robert must have heard back from his wife: the longed-for reconciliation. All he ever wanted was to be reunited with her and their children – he had made that clear from the start. She should try and feel happy for him; Robert had been a body to put between her and Desmond.

  Taking her small battered silver coffee pot from the cupboard, Annie unscrewed the lid, filled the lower part with water and carefully spooned freshly ground coffee into the upper section. The threads of the join between the two halves had worn thin and had to be turned tightly to prevent boiling water from bubbling out of the sides. Desmond had often told her to get another or, better still, to stop drinking coffee. It was bad for her, he claimed. He didn’t want ‘his love’ to damage her health. To appease him, Annie kept her coffee habit in check and the old pot was pushed to the back of the cupboard. When she left, it was one of the few items she had brought to London from Tavistock. It made the cut only because it was not stained with his memory.

  There had only been sixteen years of life before Desmond and then another fourteen with him. Her whole adulthood spent with one person. Until their separation twelve months earlier, he had been her only lover, her best friend and her business partner.

  Did she know how lucky they were, Desmond used to ask every single morning, to have found each other? Did she realise that most mere mortals didn’t find true love; they just stumbled around compromising and making do? I am the luckiest man alive, he told her every night.

  The coffee pot began to gurgle, steam and boiling water pushed through the coffee grounds, staining the water black and scenting the air. Annie lifted up the lid to check on its progress. A drop of boiling coffee spat on to her cheek. She jumped back and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Where were those cooling tears when you need them?

  What was Desmond doing now? Only a few months ago they would have been sitting at the kitchen table reading the papers while listening to Dylan or Neil Young. You could set your watch by his habits. Sundays always started with a familiar run that took them down the River Tavey, past the bridge at Grenofen and along the top of Lady’s Hill; first one home got the first shower. Normally Desmond won; of the two, Annie was the natural athlete, but Desmond’s long legs gave him an advantage. After ablutions and breakfast they got back into bed and made lazy love until lunchtime. Could you run with a small baby? Annie wondered.

  The coffee pot made a final gurgle. This time Annie was careful. Wrapping a cloth around the handle, she poured the steaming thick black liquid into a cup. Blowing on the surface to cool it down she walked over to the window and looked out. A ginger cat picked its way over a ledge, a streak of colour in the grey cityscape. The rooftops of Hammersmith, the sludgy layers of colour, were so unlike the view over the treetops to
Dartmoor with its shades of green flecked with red and yellow apples yielding to the soft browns and oranges of autumn, constantly moving in the breeze. Watching the cat threading his way around the chimney of the next-door house, Annie thought about the barn owl that nested in the solid wooden box she had made seven years earlier and placed in a tree near their house in Devon. Was he still there? Had the moorland ponies, desperate for something to eat in the barren winter months, broken through the fence again and destroyed the sleeping hydrangea? Here in Hammersmith, the only wildlife she saw were pigeons, a mangy fox with a straggly tail and the odd mouse.

  She wondered who lived in their old house now. She had asked the agent not to tell her – just put 50 per cent after fees into her account. Her only instruction was to get the transaction done as quickly as possible. She would stay abroad until it was all sorted.

  In the distance Annie could see the first lights on the Westway beginning to pop on, the tungsten flickering as dusk faded. In the street below, a man and a woman were having an argument; a few blocks away a car alarm whined insistently. The coffee was cool enough to drink but so thick and bitter she could only take tiny sips. Would it cut through her hangover and break through the heavy fug of stale red wine? At least her headache dulled the pain of rejection. It had been stupid to think that it would have worked with Robert.

  She looked over at the picture. It mocked her. The absurdity of her actions made her smile and she began to laugh. A slow chuckle at first, followed by a guffaw. Blowing a bomb on a dirty old painting for some bloke you met at a speed-dating party in a London museum? What next? You are a lunatic, Annie McDee, a genuine 100 per cent loon. She wondered idly if the owner’s horse had won. What was it called, the Ninny? Ninnifer, or something like that.