The hay seemed to absorb the sun, and after a while I put my book down and undid my hair, which was knotted in a loose bun, and let it cover my neck, which I worried might start to burn.
‘Comfy?’ a man walking a dog on the other side of the street called. I shrugged and smiled.
The exchange was never going to be more than that, never long enough to explain what I was doing there or tell the dog-walker that I, too, had wondered at the presence of the bale, propped against the wall of a terraced house in east London. Walthamstow was at the end of the Tube line but not so far out that you expected elements of the countryside to encroach.
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ A man on a bicycle was cycling towards me. He looked to be in his early thirties, around the same age as me.
‘You must be Ivy,’ he said, as he stopped alongside and dismounted. ‘I’m sorry I’m late. I got tied up with work. Have you been here long?’
‘Only about five minutes.’ I stood up so he could prop his bicycle against my makeshift seat while he rooted about in a backpack, looking for keys.
‘They’re in here somewhere,’ he said, pushing a tuft of thick, unruly hair off his forehead.
He was dressed in the kind of smart-casual way that was becoming more common: a pair of navy trousers and a grey cotton shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. I guessed he might be a teacher, or a journalist, or maybe a doctor.
‘I should have been back an hour ago,’ he said, putting his bag on the ground and bending down to release his trouser leg from a bicycle clip. He opened the bag a little further. ‘Ah, here they are!’
‘Where do you work?’
‘Only about a mile away,’ he said, unlocking the door and gesturing for me to go into the house.
He pushed the bike in after me, leaving it in the hallway and showing me through to the kitchen, which was small but had been designed to maximize the space. The kitchen units were arranged along one wall and French windows opened out into a small courtyard.
I noted the piled-up crockery and wine glasses on the open shelving, and on a higher shelf an arrangement of tiny model buildings that might have been made with Lego but in black and white bricks. ‘Work.’ He saw me looking as he opened the French windows.
‘What do you do?’
‘Architectural model-making,’ he said, stepping out into the courtyard, which was bursting with fuchsias, geraniums and busy lizzies. ‘For a local firm. Here’s the bike.’
It was propped up against the only bit of free wall.
‘You’ve picked up a bit of hay,’ he said, as I went ahead of him to look at it.
‘What?’
‘On your top.’ He nodded to the long, loose shirt I was wearing over cropped trousers, ready to cycle back if I liked the bike. It was printed with a red and grey geometric pattern.
‘Oh,’ I said, slightly put out that he’d noticed.
I brushed myself down as he moved the bike away from the wall and stood it for me in the middle of the courtyard.
‘Have you had many other enquiries?’
‘A couple, I think,’ he said. ‘It was Lucy, my girlfriend, you spoke to. It’s her bike.’
I’d picked up a copy of Loot at lunchtime and called from my desk about the three that seemed suitable. I hated travelling to work by Underground and thought cycling would make me feel less deskbound, if I topped and tailed each day with a ride in the open air.
‘I’ve given it the once-over and everything seems to work,’ the man was saying. ‘Do you want take it out and have a ride?’
‘Yes, please.’ I watched as he lifted it over the back step into the kitchen and wheeled it through to the hall.
‘Can you hold it for a sec,’ he said, ‘while I move mine out of the way?’
He pushed his into the sitting room. It was a tiny house, two up, two down, not really big enough for one bike in the hallway, let alone two.
It would give them a bit more space if I bought it.
‘Thanks.’ He smiled, took it from me and carried Lucy’s bike out into the street where he held it for me as I mounted, as if I was a child learning to ride. ‘There’s six gears,’ he said, touching my hand, which was now resting on the handlebars, as he indicated the dial. The brief contact didn’t seem to bother him, because a moment later he put his hand on my arm, as I was about to cycle off. ‘I’ll wait here,’ he said.
There was nothing flirtatious or forward about the gesture, he just appeared to be tactile. And charming, I thought, as I pedalled around the block, changing gear and shifting ahead in my thoughts too. It’s a shame he has a girlfriend.
When I got back to the house a heavily pregnant blonde woman was talking to him in the street. ‘How did you get on?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I like it.’
‘Ivy, this is Lucy.’ The man introduced her.
‘Abe’s probably shown you everything there is to see,’ she said, smiling and touching her stomach as she spoke, as if to reassure the baby that was pushing out the fabric of her dress. ‘Do you want to ride it any further or do you want to come in?’
‘I’m happy with it. I’ll take it if you’ll let me have it,’ I said, delving in my bag for the money I’d already got from the cashpoint. ‘Oh, that’s great,’ Lucy said. ‘I wanted it to go to somebody nice. Would you like a cup of tea or anything while you’re here?’
‘I’d love a glass of water, if that’s okay?’
‘Of course, come on. Abe, will you put the bike inside while I get Ivy a drink?’
‘It’s not the roomiest of houses,’ Lucy said, putting her bag on a chair in the kitchen and fetching me a glass from the shelf below the miniature houses. ‘Getting rid of the bike will give us a bit more space. And I can’t ride it now.’ She patted her stomach, this time inviting me to comment.
‘When’s it due?’
‘Six weeks,’ she said. ‘You’d think it was any day now, judging by the size of me, wouldn’t you?’
‘You’re not that big,’ Abe came into the kitchen and grinned at her, running his hand along her shoulders briefly as he stood next to her. ‘My bike’s going to have to go out the back now so we can get a pram in the hallway.’
‘Honestly, Abe. I’m sure Ivy doesn’t want to know all this.’ Lucy gazed at him adoringly as she spoke, and I drained my glass, thinking I should be gone.
‘What’s with the hay bale?’ I asked, as Lucy opened the front door and I wheeled my new bike past her.
‘Oh, Abe saw it in the middle of the road when we were driving back from my parents’ house. It must’ve fallen off one of those lorries. He was worried it might cause an accident if we left it. I did tell him he could have moved it to the side.’
‘Well, it gives people somewhere to sit while they’re waiting.’ Abe followed the two of us out into the street. ‘And read,’ he added. ‘You left your book.’
‘Oh, how stupid of me.’ I must have put it down when he arrived and forgotten about it.
‘Babette’s Feast,’ he said, as he handed it to me. ‘Any good?’
‘I’m enjoying it.’ I put it into my bag and thanked them both, as I got ready to ride off in the direction of Tottenham Hale.
‘Good luck with the bike,’ Lucy said.
‘Good luck with the baby.’
They stood outside the door, waving to me, the way my parents used to wave off guests. Abe had his arm around Lucy and she was leaning back against him, allowing him to take some of her weight.
I thought about them as I cycled across London. There was something about them. I felt slightly jealous – not of either of them, just of the way they were together. They seemed so right for each other.
London, 1983
The multiverse, she said, was like an old library whose shelves were packed with books arranged by a cataloguing system that ranked them according to similarity, each book containing within its covers a story that varied only slightly from the stories of its immediate neighbours, but by increasing degrees from those of incre
asingly distant books.
Paul McAuley, Evening’s Empires
‘And where exactly is that?’ I asked, when he called me at the office and suggested a picnic after work.
It was June: the days were long and, for the past few days anyway, seasonably warm.
‘You know the Ready Money fountain,’ Abe had replied, as if I would, as if everybody did. I suspected that most people had probably walked past as many times as I had without realizing what it was called or why.
One of the things I loved about Abe was that his outlook on the world was different from mine. He knew things and absorbed details that seemed to pass me by. I loved living in London but for me it was about forging my career and meeting people. The details of the city, which I would have read about if they were in another country and stopped to photograph if I was there, I allowed to escape me. But Abe drew my attention to them. ‘Those bollards are made from Napoleonic cannons,’ he’d say, as we strolled along the South Bank. ‘That raised kerbstone was Wellington’s mounting block,’ if we were wandering along Pall Mall, and ‘This is where they used to watch cock fights,’ as we climbed the steps in a small passageway near St James’s Park. We would often meet after work and stroll around the city together, stopping off at a pub for a drink or a restaurant for a bite to eat.
Today Abe had suggested meeting in Regent’s Park for a picnic ‘by the Ready Money fountain’. He’d had to explain that this was the drinking fountain in the middle of the Broad Walk, and I circled it, as I waited for him, admiring its granite spire and marble columns and reading the plaque in one of the arches above the water spouts. It had been donated by Sir Cowasjee Jehangir, ‘a wealthy Parsee industrialist from Bombay who donated it to The Regent’s Park in 1869 as a thank you for the protection that he and fellow Parsees received from British rule in India’. No mention anywhere of Ready Money.
‘You found it!’ Abe came up from behind and kissed me.
‘Who knew this was a gift from Sir Cowasjee Jehangir?’ I said, putting my arm around his waist, beneath the bulk of the rucksack that I imagined was filled with food. ‘And why is it called the Ready Money fountain?’
‘It was Sir Cowasjee’s nickname. I guess he always had it and was generous with it,’ Abe said. ‘Are you going to have a drink while we’re here or shall we find somewhere else for this?’ He held up a carrier bag and I could see the foil-covered top of a champagne bottle poking out of it.
‘You got the job?’ He’d been for an interview earlier in the week. ‘I thought they weren’t going to let you know until after the weekend.’
‘Let’s find somewhere to sit first,’ he said, smiling in a way that told me he’d got the job but that I’d have to wait for the details.
We walked through the park to the boating lake and Abe laid out his jacket on the bank beneath an alder. The park was busy with people trying to capture a bit of the weather after work, and young families packing up after a day out. There were several pedalos and rowing-boats crisscrossing their way across the lake, disturbing the ducks and swans that lived there.
‘It’s not Cordon Bleu,’ Abe said, unpacking bread, cheese, cold meat and tomatoes from his bag, along with a couple of plates and plastic cups. He took the bottle from the carrier bag.
‘Go on, then.’ I was all eager anticipation. ‘Tell me the good news.’
‘Well,’ he said deliberately, ‘I got the job.’
‘I knew it!’ I threw my arms around him and hugged him. ‘I knew you’d get it. That’s so brilliant. I’m so happy for you.’
He’d applied for a job as a model-maker with a good firm of architects.
‘Thank you,’ he said, allowing the smile he’d tried to contain earlier to spread across his face. ‘I’m really pleased.’ He popped the cork and filled the plastic cups.
‘To you,’ I said, attempting to chink but foiled by the plastic.
‘It feels as if everything’s falling into place,’ Abe said, sipping his drink. ‘No more temping, no more job applications for a while. It’s nice to be able to feel a bit more settled.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ I said.
Since graduating from art school, he’d had a series of temporary jobs, ranging from paint-mixing, van-driving and office admin to wrapping-paper and greeting-card design. At the same time he’d been looking for something more permanent, without being sure what he wanted to do.
When he’d seen this job advertised, it had appealed to him but it wasn’t until he’d applied for it that he decided he really wanted it. He’d liked the people he’d met on the day of his interview, the projects they’d shown him and the opportunities it offered someone like him, with an interest in buildings and an eye for design but no architecture degree.
‘I’m so pleased for you.’
We sat, sipping our champagne and discussing the new job. After a while, Abe asked if I wanted to eat. ‘I’ve got a knife,’ he said, delving into his bag again. ‘It’s in my pencil box.’ He carried with him a small wooden cigar box filled with charcoal pencils and in idle moments he would bring them out and sketch something he saw. He handed it to me. ‘I’ll unwrap the cheese,’ he said, picking up a wedge of Brie and watching me strangely as I opened the cigar box.
The knife was not immediately apparent. In fact the box appeared to be entirely empty. But when I shook it something rattled.
‘Open it further,’ he said, and I slid the box away from its lid to reveal a gold ring, set with sapphires and diamonds, five stones in all.
I wasn’t sure as I looked at it, frozen with a mixture of emotions, until Abe started gabbling: ‘As I said, I feel settled now. Everything seems to be falling into place – being with you, getting the job, and I wondered …’
‘Yes?’
‘If you’d consider marrying me.’
‘Yes.’ I didn’t need to consider it. ‘Yes, I will.’
‘Really?’ He looked as if he didn’t quite believe me.
‘Really, absolutely. There’s nothing I’d rather do.’
‘The ring might not fit,’ he said, gabbling again. ‘It was my grandmother’s and she left it to Auntie Katrina and she gave it me when I was twenty-one for just this purpose. But if you don’t like it …’
‘I love it,’ I said, slipping it on my ring finger. ‘And it fits perfectly.’
‘Oh, Ivy,’ he said, a little tearful, leaning forward to kiss me.
Three weeks after I’d met him, I woke up in the narrow single bed in Abe’s room. It wasn’t really conducive to sleeping but we weren’t doing much of that. I opened my eyes and looked through the gap in the curtains. I could just make out the façade of the British Museum. Abe lived in a large shared house which backed on to the building, with a clutch of people doing jobs that all seemed interesting.
One of his housemates had invited me to a party there, Chris, who’d designed the logo for the fledgling travel company I worked for. After a couple of years’ teaching English abroad, I’d wanted to come home. Mum’s condition hadn’t got any worse but I knew she wasn’t going to be around for ever. I wanted to be in the country so that I could visit her and Dad, see more of Jon and Cathy, when Cathy was around, to acknowledge that maybe my restless period was over and I wanted something a bit more settled.
I signed up with a temping agency in London and had only spent a couple of weeks with them when I saw the job advertised: assistant to the managing director of Voyager Travel. I imagined a huge organization but it was just the two of us, Alex and me, in a tiny office in Hammersmith. Alex had been running guided tours in four different European countries from his bedroom for the past two years. The office, the assistant and the newly designed logo all amounted to expansion.
‘We’re having a party at the weekend,’ Chris had said casually, as we signed off on an image of the earth unravelling, as if it were an orange that had been peeled. ‘You two are welcome to come.’
I wondered if he thought we were a couple and hadn’t realized Alex was gay.
‘Maybe I’m not looking to meet anyone.’
‘Ivy, everyone wants to meet someone. Do me a favour. Go to the party.’
If I hadn’t gone, I’d never have met Abe.
‘This is such a lovely place to live,’ I said, pulling the curtains open a little more. My own shared flat in Stoke Newington paled in comparison.
‘Well, you can stay here now.’
We’d known each other just a few weeks but it felt longer. There seemed to be a tacit acceptance that our relationship had the potential to go somewhere but I wasn’t going to voice that for fear of spoiling things.
‘Coffee?’ Abe didn’t need to get up but I had to go to work. He went downstairs, returning a few minutes later with two mugs. He put them on the bedside table. ‘Shove up.’
In his absence, I’d allowed myself to take up most of the tiny bed. Now I squashed myself against the wall, watching Abe as he took off his dressing gown and climbed in beside me. ‘Come here.’
I moved into his arms.
We lay there for a moment, knowing it wouldn’t last or turn into anything else.
‘I’d better have my coffee now.’ I broke the quiet. ‘Or I’ll be late for work.’
Abe removed his arms and half sat, propping up the pillows and passing me a coffee. ‘What are you up to today?’ he asked.
‘Flights to book, visas to sort, phone calls to make. I really should get up.’
He took my cup, put it on the table next to his, then held my face and kissed me. ‘Go on. Get up!’
‘Let me past then.’ I nudged him.
He twisted round throwing his legs over the edge of the bed and ran his hand across my buttocks as I stood up.
Ivy and Abe Page 21
