One London Day

by C. C. Humphreys

  He was snoring now. It was what had woken her, though she’d barely slept. She looked at her phone. 630. Breakfast would be there at 7. They were three hours ahead back home, so Maria would be getting ready for school, as it was Thursday, which had a late start. It wasn’t one of their days, so it would be nice to surprise her. Also she had texts to check, clients – she hoped - to answer. She kept the phone on silent when she was with Bernard, it was part of the deal, part of the illusion, like the sealed envelope of cash which was always laid out below the television and was now in her bag and never referred to.

  Even though he had turned onto his side, his back to her, he had an arm stretched back, resting on her hip. She lifted it, slid from under, laid it down as she stood. He muttered something, didn’t wake up, pulled his arm in and a second pillow close.

  She wrapped the hotel dressing gown around her, tiptoed to the bathroom. Closed the door before flicking on the light. Took her glasses from her washbag and looked in the mirror. Whistled between her teeth. Bernard liked her not made up when they went to bed, hair back, was fine that she took out her grey contact lenses. Another part of the illusion, as her true eye colour was brown.

  I am not so fine, she thought, studying. She knew that no one looked great under hotel bathroom lights. But this mirror showed the truth of her to herself. She knew she was thirty seven, even though she told everyone she was twenty nine. In a bar, under those lights, with good make up and after some drinks, men would not notice the lines around her eyes. Later, by candlelight, or hotel room lamp, they would not notice that her breasts were perhaps larger than they’d imagined, but not quite so shapely. One businessman, City type, all club tie and rugby playing, had noticed but said later that he hadn’t cared, he’d had his ‘beer goggles’ on. More funny English.

  She dropped the dressing gown off her shoulders, lifted her breasts, pushed them together. She’d thought of having them done but it was expensive and she needed all the money she made for Maria’s procedure, not her own. Besides, after tonight, she was just less than £7000 short of her target. Earn that and she would not need to keep working. Let her breasts go where gravity wanted. Get fat and transform into her mother.

  She looked at the line of scar above the right nipple, a finger’s length of jagged white against her sunbed tan. She told the men who asked that it was a childhood accident, falling through a tree, a snapped branch gouging her. But as she lied she always saw the flash of knife as it cut her, as Ivan raised it to her throat and said that if she didn’t do what he asked, the next cut would kill her. But as he was drunk, he made a mistake by trusting her weeping and put the knife back in his belt. Georgiy had laughed when she told him later, and claimed the victory, as he’d trained her in unarmed combat. “You also trained Ivan” she’d countered, “and look what happened to him.”

  Georgiy. It was six forty now and she should call or her husband would be taking their daughter to the bus. She swept a brush through her hair, washed her face, put her glasses back on, pulled up Facetime, hit ‘Home’. She put down the toilet lid and sat, as the phone rang.

  She heard her voice before she saw her. “Mamochka,” Maria shrieked, there was some jiggling and then she was there. She held the phone up, and Sonya could see Georgiy behind her by the sink, silhouetted against the sun, chopping something. “Why are you calling, Mamochka? Are you ok?”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart. Just wanted to hear your voices.”

  She heard Georgiy’s then. “Set the phone up, Marusya. Finish your cereal. We are late.” His voice was tired. But it was also a little slurred, and Sonya took a shorter breath.

  More jiggling and now Sonya was looking up at her daughter, who picked up a spoon and started shoveling food in, talking all the while. It was prattle, exactly what she needed to hear: a trip to the zoo, school friends, a hip hop class they were starting that Poppa said she could do when she was stronger, and the top she’d bought to wear when she was. But Sonya found she was watching Georgiy’s back more than her daughter’s face. The way his shoulders moved.

  He turned, but the sun he’d blocked streamed full in now and she couldn’t see his face. She heard his voice though. “Bathroom, Marusya, Teeth.”

  “I want to talk to Mamochka!”

  “If you hurry, you can say goodbye. Hurry. Hurry!”

  “I’ll come back, Mamochka. Don’t leave!”

  “I won’t,” Sonya called, as her daughter put both hands on the table top, pushed herself up, took a breath, then turned and moved slowly out of view.

  Hurrying.

  Georgiy stepped closer. He blocked the sun again now and she could see his face. He was unshaven, the stubble like his hair, more grey than black and spread over jowls that seemed to have gotten fuller, even in the three days since she’d last called. But it was the bags under his eyes that alarmed her most. They were also fuller, and pasty white. “You look tired, Gosha,” she said.

  He shrugged. “I’m not sleeping so good.”

  She bit back her response – that he’d sleep better if he didn’t drink so much. But she didn’t want him angry. She wanted to hear about their daughter.

  Maybe he sensed her concern. “Petya and Artem came round last night to play cards. We had a few beers.”

  It was a lie. His old army comrades would have brought vodka. In one way she didn’t mind. If that was all they were doing…

  Perhaps something showed in her eyes. His hardened, and moved over her. “Where are you?”

  “Nowhere. Hotel.”

  “Hotel Nowhere.” He licked cracked lips. “Have a good time?”

  “Don’t, Gosha.”

  “ ‘Don’t, Gosha.’ ” He peered. “The gown looks expensive. Is it?”

  He almost never talked like this. He knew what she was doing and why. The why in the other room, going as fast she was able, so not very fast. And she knew what he was doing now too. Preparing excuses for when he fell. Then he’d say again what he’d said once before, when he’d gotten drunk, the week after she’d gotten to London. “What do you expect? My wife is a whore.”

  He didn’t say it now. Instead, “I hope you are sending money today?”

  “Some. Later today.”

  “Some? More than last time?”

  She bit back a yes. If the look and the pain in her husband’s eyes meant what she feared, more would only go one way. And they’d be back to the beginning, where Maruscha could not afford to be.

  “The same as last time. For groceries, rent. It’s been slow - ”

  “Then fuck faster,” he snarled, his face contorted with rage. Then it sagged, all the fury left it, and his voice too. “It’s so hard, Sonechka,” he whispered. “She’s - ”

  “Tell me.”

  “She’s getting slower. The painkillers are not working so well. At night she - ”

  Her voice. “I’m done, Mamochka.”

  Georgiy’s face masked over. “Quick goodbye, Maruscha. Don’t want to be late for the bus. I need to pack your lunch.”

  He turned, became a silhouette against the sun again. She and her daughter did their farewell - three kisses, two in the air, one right on the screen, lips to lips. Then the screen went blank. Sonya always let her daughter ring off.

  She pulled the phone to her chest, did not move, eyes unfocused. For the moment, she wasn’t in a hotel bathroom, but back on the parade ground. The first time she’d seen Georgiy. In his dress uniform, the chestful of medals he’d won in Afghanistan. His black hair, lean face, fire in his eye. Seen him, not spoken to him; did that for the first time three weeks later when he was her instructor in unarmed combat. He was twenty years older but she didn’t care. He didn’t either, she made him laugh, he was proud of her. She won her own medal that year – she was the fastest Kalashnikov stripper in the whole Russian army! Crazy! Kneeling, he’d proposed on the podium. She’d hesitated only because of one thing – the scars on his arm, not got in a war. Well, perhaps because of the war. But he said he was five years clean an
d done with it forever.

  Forever had lasted nearly a decade, till the first fall, when Maruscha was nine and the tumour was found on her spine, and the army discharged him, and the economy tanked, and there was no work, and his wife took the decision that needed to be taken. He’d tried again. One year clean this time, she thought, since she’d left for London. But she could see the signs now. The drinking. The choice of comrades – Artem especially. Anger as excuses.

  They were close. Less than £7,000 to go, for the flights to Baltimore, for the best surgeon at John Hopkins, for the recuperation. She thought she could earn that in two weeks. But not if he started using again.

  Seven thousand. She shook her head. The first sixty had come easy enough. She didn’t spend much, only on the clothes, the uniform she needed, and even those she bought in consignment stores and altered herself, her mother’s daughter. Lived cheap, in an immigrants’ ghetto in Peckham. The last ten though had been hard because the pound had crashed with the Brexit shit, the Yanks wanted dollars, with the City types who were her main clients jittery because of it. Smaller bonuses, less frivolous.

  She looked again into the mirror. And then there are my breasts, she thought, and the lines around my eyes.

  Noises came from the bedroom. Room service had arrived early. She could hear Bernard’s voice. He paid her a thousand, but she owed rent, tax on the job she didn’t have. He wouldn’t see her for another month anyway. But he had recommended her to a couple of friends, the first time he’d ever done that – she supposed it took away from the fantasy he’d made up for her. But he’d asked about her daughter, and she’d said that Maria wasn’t getting any better, that she needed to earn more, quicker. Perhaps that was why he’d passed her details on. Neither man had called her yet, but when they’d talked last night, Bernard had said he’d remind them.

  She put the phone by the sink, lifted the toilet lid, pee-ed. As she was doing so she grabbed the phone again to check texts.

  The first was from her daughter, on the school bus. Only a GIF, a girl dancing to hip-hop. The second was from someone called Patrick.

  ‘Heh! It’s me, from Soho House, remember? It’s on. Tonight. Venue TBA. Let me know if you’re free and you got this. I’ll send coordinates. P.s. Lottie’s excited.’

  It was Lottie that brought it back. Patrick was the handsome black guy she’d met in the bar in Shepherd’s Market. An actor. Lottie was perhaps his girlfriend. There was something about her, in her smile, that had made her name stick.

  A threesome, she thought. How much had she quoted him? £1500, she thought. More than usual. To be earned tonight.

  That would leave five thousand five hundred or so to go.

  As Bernard called her from the bedroom, she texted a thumbs up and a kiss to Patrick.

  6

  Later that morning…

  Joe Severin sat in the Residents Parking Bay outside the Portobello flat. His Guest Permit was on the Audi’s dash, clearly displayed, but the warden had to be short-sighted and have memory loss, because every time she passed she leaned into the windscreen to peer at it. It made him even more nervous. It made him feel guilty. Even though he had nothing to feel nervous or guilty about.

  OK, he’d made a mistake. A hot day, a pretty girl, memories of Cassidy, all the pressure in his life, he’d blurted an offer to let this Lottie Henshaw stay in the flat, rent free. He’d have to honour it, he kept his word. But he could bend it a little. He thought he’d told her a couple of months but he’d drop it to one. Give him time to find a suitable tenant to pay the ridiculous rent – five grand a month. A month to hide that five thousand he’d get from the Shadows for doing their books, in his own books.

  He didn’t truly know what he’d been thinking. He wasn’t an adulterer. Fifteen years of marriage, barely a glance elsewhere. Kinda like drugs. He’d had his time fucking around. He’d settled down. He was responsible.

  As this Lottie clearly was not. He’d read her letters the previous afternoon, all ten of them. He was still undecided whether they’d ever been sent, or were just her… venting. Quite the vent. For a girl from the Home Counties – the way she’d said, Buckinghamshire! - she had a pretty foul mouth. Well phrased though, she was well educated; mentioned Epsom College, her time at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Her fury with this ‘fuckhead’, this ‘total cunt’, this ‘Patrick’ was beautifully rendered in a mad, right-slanting cursive that at first he’d found hard to decipher but, like a code cracked, he had suddenly got.

  He looked at his phone. Five seventeen. When she’d re-arranged the meeting from the morning – sudden audition, she’d texted – she’d said five. Late again. He’d nearly cancelled, especially when Vicky gave him grief for missing a meeting with the new caterers. But he kept his word to tenants, to anyone. It was who he was.

  He was tempted to open his trading app, check again. His mining shares had jumped another five per cent in the last three hours alone. Coltan was the new gold. But the excitement still gave him the pip. Burping, he tucked his phone away and reached for the plastic bag on the passenger seat. He’d decided he would give the letters back, tell her that his inventory company had found them. He wouldn’t say he’d read them, of course.

  His hand was on the bag. He reached in, pulled the bottom one out. His favourite, the last one. They were dated, which helped him keep them in order. With a place named too. Properly laid out. He wondered if his daughter at Channing was taught how to write a proper letter, rather than just how to deal with online shaming, or how to raise her Emotional Intelligence, whatever the hell that was. He’d heard that most schools didn’t even teach cursive anymore.

  He laid the paper on his thigh, bent, read.

  Venice Beach, CA.April 22nd 2018

  Dear Wanker,

  So I’m off. I thought I wouldn’t like it here and how right I was. Hate it, in fact, for all the reasons you love it. The view to the boardwalk and all those roller-blading beauties with the perfect bellies under their sports bras. The casual eccentrics and the true casualties. Venice just edgy enough still to make you think you’re real. But you’re not, mate. Real is Tufnell Park on a Saturday night, stepping around the puke. Nah, scratch that, this isn’t about nasty.

  Try this instead: real is us on the road, living off our touring allowance, staying in crap digs to save our pennies for our upcoming conquest of London. For the place we’d get together.

  Never happened though, did it? The play at the Donmar, the low budget Indie that wowed the festivals, the agents begging you to come here. The excuses that followed. Later, Lots. After.

  I just wish you’d had the balls to tell me straight, not drag me out here. The Patrick I knew had balls. I remember them well.

  So I am going, before new shitty memories totally replace the old. Besides, there’s only so much spirulina a girl can eat. I’ll leave you to the parties, the powdered nostrils, the toned-borderline-anorexic bodies that fall into your grasp. Patrick I knew liked a bit of heft, a bit of belly.

  I’ll leave you with this memory.

  We’d played Birmingham, had the Sunday off. Drove to Shropshire for a walk in the hills. Late October, but weirdly warm, some breeze from the West. That pub for lunch, the landlord with the one eye which he kept on us, we were giggling so much, must have thought we were high. But we weren’t, unless cider counts. High on life. Fondling each other beneath the table. You were hard from the moment we sat down and roast beef au jus, Yorkshire Puddings and two pints of Strongbow did little to diminish that. I thought you were going to kill me when I asked for the dessert menu! Finally done, drove Daphne up the narrow lanes, parked but I was out the car before you could grab me, running up the footpath. You caught me at the top of the hill, we laughed, wrestled, fell over. A view of some turf ramparts, no one about and one of the best blow jobs ever, you claimed, though I just thought it was one of the swiftest. Your recovery time was impressive, no coke needed to sustain you then. You led me off the path, not far, you laid me do
wn in the gorse where you were not swift at all. Afterwards we lay silent and staring at these wild clouds, boiling across the sky. Lay there till the sheep found us, and we shrieked, panicked, ran.

  Best fuck of our many fucks? Maybe. Would Edinburgh run it close? Backstage at the Crucible, for sheer bravado?

  Better than anything here in this City of Dreams and Angels.

  So see you, mate. Have fun, if you call it that. And remember Shropshire, ‘cos that was real. You were real.

  You’re not real now.

  L

  Joe looked up, startled by a figure pausing near the car. The myopic traffic warden again, glancing at him. He shrugged ‘what?’ at her, she moved on and he looked down at the letter. What was it about outdoor sex? Some legacy in the blood from hunter-gatherer days? Just that sense of freedom? When had he last made love outdoors? He couldn’t remember. Yes he could. The last time with Cassidy, on a beach near Santa Cruz. Eighteen years before. Terrible. Farewell fucks, in his small store of memories, were nearly as bad as first ones.

  He heard the car before he saw it, same growl he’d heard pulling up outside the flat in Tufnell Park. Saw a flash of red as it passed him, saw her manoeuvre into the space ahead. She bumped his bumper – cheeky cow, he was sitting right there! As her door opened, he remembered the letter, and shoved it back into the bag. Out of order, on top. He didn’t want her to see it till he was ready. So he pushed the bag behind his seat, grabbed the parking pass for her, got out of the car.

  She started when she saw him. “Oh,” she said, “there you are.”

  She was wearing the same clothes she had yesterday – blouse, skirt to mid thigh, Blundstones on bare feet, though she was holding the faux fur. “Do you always park like that?” he said, aggrieved, looking at his bumper.