The Improbability of Love

by Hannah Rothschild

  At Marble Arch, she caught the night bus home. Thankfully, there were no revellers, no high spirits to navigate, just other tired people, each locked in their own thoughts. Annie looked down from the top deck into the inky emptiness of Hyde Park and idly counted the street lights flashing past. She wondered if she would always be a stranger in London, a stranger everywhere. Perhaps she should go back to Devon; it was her home, where she’d spent her adult life. Her exile was self-imposed but Annie knew she couldn’t face seeing Desmond once, let alone every day. When their relationship ended, Annie had got on a plane to India because he would never go there. He saw it as the land of disease. He stuck to Tuscany or the Mull of Kintyre. Once she had admired his conviction, his refusal to be seduced by new ideas or faraway places, but walking through the tiny twisting streets of New Delhi, Annie understood that Desmond’s world was limited by fear. He couldn’t bear to step out of the known, the familiar. In Europe he could understand the rudiments of language, the coordinates of the culture, but elsewhere he was flummoxed. The same went, she began to understand, for his absolute reliance on order and routine.

  The bus stopped at the top of Queensway and a group of young Asian men got on. They sat at the back of the bus talking in low urgent voices. Annie wondered where they were from. She remembered lying in her small white room in a guesthouse in New Delhi, realising that it was past nine: time to get up, have breakfast, check the headlines, go for a run, turn on the computer and set the day in progress. Instead she made a break with tradition and lay in bed, luxuriating in her sloth, letting the sounds of the city wash over her. The chatter of boys playing cricket in the street drifted up through the open window; a tea seller called out; strange bird noises rose above the honking cars and bicycle bells; a broom scraped rhythmically in the passage outside her room. Annie lay there, her mind blank and her emotions strangely abated. This abandonment of time felt almost wicked; a new and entirely foreign thought occurred to her – perhaps there were other ways to live.

  She meandered around India for the next four months, whimsically deciding where to go, what to visit, when to eat and where to stay. Constant motion helped her to manage her grief, calm her emotions. Long journeys by bus or train were particularly soporific and restful – the growl of the engine, the passing landscape, snatched conversations; the bustle of human life both inside and out became a form of meditation; thoughts that were once painful floated past and refused to settle. Later, people would ask what she had seen and where she had been, but the specifics of her journey had passed like smudges. She had, of course, seen and remembered the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, the temples of Hampi, the Ganges at Varanasi, the Red Fort in Delhi, the shoreline at Mahabalipuram but could not confidently talk about any of them. For her, the trip to India was a mental escape, a journey from herself rather than an exploration of another culture.

  The bus continued on through Holland Park. From the top deck Annie could see into bedroom windows – a couple reading in bed, a man getting changed, a young girl talking on her phone. Mostly the curtains were drawn against darkness. Annie remembered the moment when the email arrived. She had signed up to a walking tour in Assam when, in an Internet café, she decided to check on her account. The first email told her their house had been sold. As instructed, the agents had taken the first good offer; it was perhaps not the best price but a decent one. Her half of the money had been deposited in her account. The agents would be happy to find her another place to live – indeed there was a ‘delightful’ maisonette in the nearby village of Aston St Peters or a two-bedroom flat in an entirely ‘charming’ suburb of Bristol. Clicking on the particulars, Annie failed to imagine herself in either of these places. The problem was that she failed to imagine herself anywhere but in Rose Cottage with Desmond.

  She looked around the café, nothing more than a back room with two antiquated computers. Next to her was a young woman, presumably on a gap year, shouting into Skype, trying to persuade her father to advance some more money. Paper notices on the wall advertised trips to a nearby river or to a monastery. Annie wondered how long her newly realised cache of money would last and considered trying to find work locally. She knew, though, that this was unrealistic; she could not put life on hold for ever.

  A new message appeared. It was from Desmond and Annie held her breath. Pushing her chair back she took a few minutes to imagine what the message might say. That he had made a terrible mistake, he missed her and loved her and needed her back home? That Liz had been run over by a bus and could she come back home and look after him? That he was really sorry about his behaviour?

  Hi Annie,

  I hope you are pleased with the sale of the house.

  I have some wonderful news. One week ago today I became a proud father to Magnus Rory Andrew. He weighs nine pounds and has lots of blond hair like mine. Baby and mother are doing splendidly. It’s been a bit of a shock but I am coping and am very proud. I hope that you can find it in your heart to be happy for me.

  Desmond

  Happy for him? Struggling to keep a torrent of tears at bay, Annie clicked the computer connection off and staggered out of the café into the damp mountain air. Walking down the tiny high street past the gift shops and guesthouses, she made her way out of the village and plunged into the forest. Earlier that day, the huge rhododendron trees dripping with red flowers, the magnolia grandiflora and paths lined with daphne bushes had seemed romantic and inviting. Now the wind shimmering through leaves and branches made an eerie sound and the night birds and tree frogs mocked her with screeching calls; be happy for me.

  Annie started to cry. Where, she wondered, did all these tears come from? Were they sitting in pools inside all of us just waiting for hearts to break? Had they been there all the time, collecting behind dams of resolve, waiting to burst? Convinced that she was completely alone, Annie sank to her knees and wailed. Be happy for me. Did he know her? Had he ever known her? What kind of person was he? Perhaps their life had been a sham, two people living in unconnected parallel universes, each unaware of the other’s dreams and fears. She replayed a particular conversation in her head. She’d told him she wanted children, his children. He said it was a deal-breaker. He would never bring a child into this wicked world; he would leave her before having a baby. Annie had fled the house and gone to Megan’s to try to hide her devastation. A life without children? Was that really possible? Was he right to ask that of her, of anyone? Megan said not. Megan said she should leave before it was too late to start another relationship. Annie was nearly thirty. Time didn’t wait for women, only for men. Several times over the next year she thought of leaving Desmond. Once she even packed her bags and wrote a note explaining her actions. Love held her back. She muffled her body clock under work, exercise, anything else to hand, reasoning that Desmond was her friend, her business partner, her past and future.

  Annie sat on the floor of the forest rocking backwards and forwards. The light had fallen abruptly, the sun dropping like a stone over the brow of the mountain. Bathed in sudden darkness, Annie realised that she was lost. One tree looked just like another. She couldn’t be more than twenty minutes away from the village; perhaps her guesthouse would send a search party looking for her. Perhaps she would smell wood fires or hear idle chatter. She wondered whether to stay put or try and find a way out. She had been warned that the temperatures fell during the night and there were tigers and other wild animals in the forest.

  Behind her was a crackle of twigs. An animal? A snake? She turned around to see a wizened old woman dressed in a long tunic holding a staff and a torch. Her face was as wrinkled as a walnut but her eyes were as shiny as newly minted copper coins. She walked right up to Annie and looked into her tear-stained face. The old lady raised two fingers and gently pressed the tips into the corners of Annie’s eyes. This gesture, this tiny mark of human empathy made across cultures, religions and age, profoundly moved the younger woman. It was the moment when Annie knew with a deep sense of certainty that she wante
d to live and start again. The old lady held out her hand and, with fingers entwined, led Annie back to the village.

  The following day Annie booked a plane back to England. It was time to re-engage with life. Finally she had a destination and the beginnings of a plan. She had something more important too: hope. For the entire sixteen-hour bus ride to Delhi, Annie thought about where to go, what to do next. Her younger self had dreamed of a place that was all hers, that no one could take away, where the ownership wasn’t shared and the front door had one key – hers. That younger self had hankered after life in London, which she imagined would offer a network of friends and events. After the mortgage on their Devon house was repaid, her share was not enough to make a down payment on even a tiny shoebox in the capital, but it could buy her a bit of time, a rental deposit, a fresh start. In Delhi, she signed up online for eleven agencies offering any kind of catering work and combed the ’net’s classified ads. Before her London-bound plane took off, she had found employment as the catering assistant for Carlo Spinetti. The pay was lamentable, but it was a beginning.

  The bus continued its journey past the vast silent mansions of Holland Park and into Shepherd’s Bush. There were few cars; gloomy orange street lights cast pools of tepid light on to the pavement. A young man pushed his knee between the legs of a girl, who looped her arms around his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist, and he carried her across the road, looking into her smiling face. A car braked hard to miss them, the driver leant on his horn. The girl flicked a V-sign.

  Getting off the bus at the corner of her road, Annie walked to her building. She climbed the stairs and let herself into the studio, where she found Evie asleep on the sofa and an empty bottle of wine at her feet. Annie covered her mother with a blanket. Tomorrow was Friday – a weekend of nothingness hung like a heavy cloud on the horizon. Worse still, she had Evie to worry about.

  Looking at the clock on the kitchen wall, Annie caught sight of the Wallace postcard propped up against the fruit bowl. There was a telephone number and a name: Jesse. Above this Evie had written in heavy red pencil, ‘Call him. I dare you.’

  Chapter 9

  Annie sat on the concrete walkway by the River Thames, her legs dangling over the side, and looked at the dirty brown water lapping the pockmarked mud. Debris had been left by an outgoing tide: an old trainer, a handleless frying pan and stones streaked with green algae. A dead fish floated past, bloated and tailless. Within seconds a gull hopped over the mud and pinioned it with his bright yellow beak, beady eyes looking right and left for other predators. Annie’s thoughts turned to the clear-bottomed river at the end of her garden in Devon, the constant background sing-song of her former life. Were the kingfishers still nesting in the bank and had the otters had another litter of pups? She thought about the wild ponies fording the river at the end of her lane and the heron, a ghostly grey killer, waiting patiently to spear a salmon.

  She and Evie had argued again that morning; the simple act of making the bed had escalated into a vicious tirade, stray remarks flaying old wounds. Annie wondered if Evie would keep her promise and be gone by the evening. Annie laughed at herself. How many times had she heard that over the years? Too many to count. Threatened suicides, broken assurances and false proclamations sat like scars on the face of their relationship. Annie prayed for the courage to change the locks and mobile numbers, to bar her mother from her life.

  Annie rang Jesse’s number on an impulse. She had nothing else to do and at least someone was pleased to hear from her and happened to be free on a Saturday. She brought the picture as an alibi, something for them to talk about, and it sat beside her in a plastic bag. A weak winter sun peeked through a chink in the clouds, making the muddy flats glisten. She noticed tiny crabs scuttling and emerald-coloured weeds wrapped around rocks.

  The man who walked towards her was in his early thirties, slightly long in the face with a broad infectious smile and deep-set blue eyes. He wore a crumpled linen suit, combat trainers and a faded red T-shirt with ‘Van Morrison’ written across the front. It took Annie a moment to realise it was Jesse.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, holding out his hand. It was covered in paint, so he wiped it on his trousers, leaving a yellow and green smudge, and offered his hand again. Annie shook it.

  ‘Your suit,’ she said nervously. Jesse looked down.

  ‘Damn! Bit of turps is all that’s needed.’ He grinned. ‘I’m glad you have brought the picture – I thought we could go to a place near here.’

  Annie started to climb down off the wall. Jesse held out his hand. Annie hesitated and took it.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you a painter?’

  ‘Painter by night; guide by day. I have a show next year and they need fourteen canvases; I’m ten short. For reasons that no one really understands, including myself, I paint variations of one field in Shropshire.’

  ‘One field?’ asked Annie.

  ‘I suppose I am trying to paint my childhood. The field is some kind of visual metaphor for memory. It’s not that unusual – Delacroix became obsessed by one particular landscape, as did Constable, Bonnard and Cézanne. Not that I’m comparing myself to them,’ he added quickly.

  Annie had heard of Constable and Cézanne but not the others.

  ‘My brother saw my painted field – I have six brothers, I’m the youngest – he said it was nothing like the place we grew up in. Different visions. Funny thing memory, isn’t it? Look, I’m talking too much. It’s not far now.’

  Annie quite liked his soft, lilting voice.

  ‘I had a holiday job down here once,’ said Jesse, pointing towards Tower Bridge. ‘A relief caretaker in Butler’s Wharf. It was empty; the stevedores had long gone. No more deliveries of grain and flour, gold, spices, wool and wood making their way from far distant corners of the world and no more barges. In the nineteenth century there were so many boats that you could walk to the other side without getting your feet wet. Look at the Thames now, just a slip road for pleasure boats.’ As he talked, he swung the painting, still in its plastic bag, backwards and forwards. Every now and then he glanced at Annie; she looked so different today, hair hanging loosely over her shoulders with sunlight occasionally catching hints of red and gold. She wore a T-shirt tucked into silk combat trousers over a pair of battered but polished brown cowboy boots. In place of an overcoat she’d flung a brightly coloured blanket around her shoulders. Jesse wondered if the strings of beads round her neck were bought during exotic adventures and who those were taken with.

  An elderly Citroën car backfired as it drove past. For a brief second, Annie thought it was Desmond’s DS, a car he called Monty that pre-dated their relationship. Suddenly, she was flooded with thoughts of Desmond and remembered her twenty-first birthday. Desmond had borrowed a friend’s apartment in Rome, two large rooms in an old palazzo overlooking the Spanish Steps. The only furniture was a bed and a grand piano; the walls and ceilings were covered in frescoes: maidens carrying water jugs, men with lyres, skipping fauns. They rented a scooter and drove up the Appian Way to a neon-lit restaurant: pasta for the gods, Desmond claimed, as dish after dish of steaming spaghetti was brought out. It was her most romantic memory. Please, Annie prayed silently, take Liz anywhere but Rome.

  ‘All the wharfs were called after their imports,’ said Jesse, glancing in her direction. ‘Did you know that Thames means “dark river” from the pre-Celtic tamasa? The same man who built most of these buildings also designed Dartmoor Prison.’ He knew that he was babbling but, like an incompetent, hungry fisherman, he hoped to catch a passing thought in a wide conversational net.

  ‘When I worked here the spirit of Turner obsessed me: he spent his youth sketching the ships and barges and died looking over the river in Cheyne Walk,’ said Jesse. ‘Oh, to be able to paint like Turner.’ He strode along beside Annie holding an imaginary brush in his left hand, making vast sweeping strokes as if the air in front of him was a giant canvas.

  Annie was hardly aware of
Jesse’s words. Her eyes were fixed on her own feet, brown boots padding on pavement. Like ghoulish stills from an old black-and-white movie, she imagined Desmond kissing Liz, saw his full, soft lips brush the inside shadow of her elbow; the tip of his tongue exploring her breasts. She tried to turn off the images, but the control button was jammed. Perhaps I loved him too hard, she thought.

  Jesse and Annie stopped halfway across the bridge. Below a small tug boat made slow headway against a strong tide, bobbing determinedly towards Westminster. Coming the other way was a large rusty red barge; its long deck was covered in twisted bicycles, shopping trolleys and, on top of the heap, a splendidly red motorcycle. The boat’s driver stood under a small plastic awning, slapping his arms against his torso to keep warm.

  ‘Stevedores – a great word. Comes from the Saxon, stevadax,’ said Jesse. ‘My job at Butler’s Wharf was unbelievably dull. I sat in this huge white office, with windows on three corners, just watching the tide come in and out. In and out. Relentless and magisterial. The highlight of the day was seeing what the tide left when it ran out: a spare tyre, an old bottle. Do you know the lowest suicide rates come from those who live near water? The highest is people who live near railway lines.’

  Oh do shut up, Jesse said to himself. He couldn’t believe the amount of drivel coming from his mouth; couldn’t believe the effect that this girl was having on him or, for that matter, the lack of effect he was having on her. Was this love? She hadn’t spoken for the last fifteen minutes and the longer she was silent, the more idiotic he sounded. Glancing sideways, he noticed that her focus was far away. The combination of her disinterest and palpable sorrow hit him like a punch: he wanted to help her, hold her, make love to her.