скачать книгу бесплатно
‘You are very lucky, I think. Everybody else in London talks only about the prices of houses and which of their colleagues they dislike.’
‘I know. Sometimes I think it would be better to be deaf.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, but you love London too?’
‘Yes, I do. Half the time.’
‘For me, it’s good to be here for a while but when I have finished my training, I am going to Martinique to teach real boys who want to know.’ Keeping her eyes on me, she twisted her hand so that she could lick between her fingers where some stray sugar had settled. ‘A lot of the boys here – I think they don’t want to learn. A lot of boys do not have the way to become real men.’
She sunk her teeth halfway into her last strawberry and left it clamped between her lips.
After Cécile had bathed, we stood together in my studio, and considered my week’s work. Although, admittedly, there were only a few lines (I was still going slowly back then, feeling my way) I could tell she was impressed. Perfectly defined, clear and elegant upon my board was the first verse of ‘The Sun Rising’.
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys, and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
This, as I had said to Cécile, was the first poem that I had tackled – my first hand to hand with Donne’s style, my introduction to the man. (It was also one of the five poems on Wesley’s must-include list; the other twenty-five I was at liberty to choose myself – one for each year of her life, I guessed.) And what a piece of work it is: rigorously intellectual and yet all the while artfully erotic; full of swagger but the speaker still the supplicant; simultaneously contemptuous and craven; relentlessly bent upon making that lover’s bed the centre of the universe, while irascibly conscious of the rest of the world; the verse swathes back and forth through its paradoxical business like a wrathful snake through dewy grass. Truly Donne is the great antagonist, the undisputed master of contrariety – his antitheses reversing into his theses, his syllables crammed with oppositions, and every clause sent out to vex the next.
Of course, back in March, I saw only a fraction of what I find in The Songs and Sonnets these days. In truth, at that time, standing with Cécile, both of us barefoot and tasting of coffee, I admit my response was rather linear. I was distracted by my professional eye, which had been drawn to the dimensions of the gap that I had left for the first letter of the first verse, the versal – my glorious, decorated ‘B’, which would only be added when I had finished the rest of the poems. Now that I had completed a stanza, I was beginning to feel that I hadn’t left quite enough space: the verse-to-versal proportion looked wrong. I would have to rethink and start over.
Cécile spoke up. ‘So it is a poem about a man waking up and thinking: fuck-off Mr Sun, I am not interested in today, I want to stay in my bed and make love with my woman – right?’
I nodded. ‘I think that’s pretty much exactly what it’s about, Cécile.’
Like all calligraphers, I hate mistakes with a vehemence I can hardly describe. And my abhorrence leads me to dwell with a vagrant’s fixity on the reasons for my downfall – but my primary mistake was not, I think, that I misjudged Cécile. Because she was so incontestably at home in the ‘Nude Action Body’ department (which was, after all, where we had met), I think I could have relied upon her not to behave inartistically had she known what devastation her actions were going to cause. But, alas, she did not. No – my primary mistake was to let her stay another night. We didn’t discuss it out loud. But come five, I found myself stepping out to the shops and begging Roy, my excellent local supplier and a man who looks as close as is possible to an obese version of Hitler, to let me have one of his brother’s fresh salmon. It cost me more than any other human being in the history of mankind has ever paid for a single fish, but life is short and inconvenient and there is no sense protesting.
Perhaps it was the light that day – bright, sharp, enthusiastic, a real rarity – or perhaps the spirit of the poem with its heavy insistence on the altar of the lovers’ bed as the only dwelling place of truth worth worshipping.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.
Either way, I was scarcely conscious that the afternoon had given way to a wine-suffused evening. I had recruited two bottles of the crispest Sauvignon Blanc and a handful of haricots verts to go with the salmon and, at seven-thirty, we were still fooling around together in my kitchenette (already quite drunk) as I prepared the creature in lemon and tarragon before wrapping it in foil and placing it carefully in the oven.
There then followed nine truly Caligulan hours, during which several really good things happened including, I think, Cécile finding an old cigarette-holder that William had left and an attempt at a bilingual game of pornographic forfeit Scrabble which I very happily lost.
When, finally, I fell asleep, the sun was rising.
4. Love’s Exchange (#ulink_2c5ae122-0c28-5952-9967-ce52df29d0ea)
Love, any devil else but you,
Would for a given soul give something too.
And then my entryphone buzzed.
Jesus Christ.
I squeezed my eyes shut. But the racket persisted – on and off, on and off, on and off. Cécile shifted. I turned to look at my clock: five to seven on a Sunday morning. I could scarcely have been asleep for more than an hour and a half.
Semi-conscious, panicking, I thrashed my way out of the wound-round sails and rucked-up rigging of my bedclothes and stumbled towards the window. I hoist up the frame and stuck out my head.
‘YES! WHAT?’
There, four storeys below me, her hand raised like a peak cap to shield her eyes from the sun, Lucy stood waiting.
I confess: this was not an eventuality I had anticipated. Indeed, during the past twelve months of our relationship, I had devoted a tremendous amount of energy to preventing situations of exactly this kind.
Lucy’s voice rose from the pavement below: ‘Jasper? For God’s sake, open the door! I’ve been ringing for ages!’
With my head still stuck out of the window like some early-disturbed village idiot, gaping down from his hay loft, and conscious all the while that at my back, and doubtless speculating from the cool vantage of her many pillows, Cécile was also roused, I took a moment to consider.
Lucy was moving her stuff out of her flat today. The plan was that she would store it at her mother’s while she looked for somewhere to buy rather than sign down for another twelve months renting her current place. This much I knew and understood and even accepted. But my presence was not required until lunchtime, or so I had thought. And yet here she was – six hours early. What – for fuck’s sake – was going on?
‘Jasper? Come on. What are you doing?’
‘I’ll be down in a second, Luce,’ I said, as loudly and as quietly as I dared. ‘The electric lock is broken.’ I took a deeper breath of air. ‘The lock is broken … I can’t let you in from up here. Hang on. I’ll be right down.’ And with that I pulled in my head, shut the window and returned my attention to the room.
Time cleared its throat and tapped its brand-new watch. If Cécile had been listening, she gave no sign. She was lying with her face turned away from me, one lithe and sculpted leg brandished across the sheets. The room smelled sweetly of her warm body. I could tell she wasn’t asleep but there was a thin chance that she had heard only confusion in the conversation rather than deducing the full horror. Truth be told, I did not care what Cécile may or may not have been thinking. My main concern was to spare Lucy.
Once in my little hall, I stood, hot-breathed, arid-eyed, parch-tongued, leaning on the banisters by the entryphone, trying to wrest my mind into clarity. (My hangover, like a drunken Glaswegian in the opposite seat at the beginning of a long train ride, sweating and swearing and wanting to be friends.) My thoughts were confused and came in crimson flashes. I did the only thing I could: I went into the bathroom to empty the bubbling cauldron of needles in my bladder. After this there really was no more time. I grabbed a pair of jeans that were loitering by the bath, squeezed a measure of toothpaste into my mouth, and set off down the stairs.
Now, in the normal run of things, I am an absolute master of the old Cartesian pack drill: if ‘a’ is the case, then ‘b’ must surely follow, et cetera, et cetera. But I would be deceiving you if I were to say that I had anything quite so formal in my head as I rushed headlong down the five flights of doom that morning. My lock ruse was as far as I had ever planned ahead. All I recall thinking was ‘I’ll think of something’ every seventh step, whereupon I would instantly forget that I had settled on this as my strategy and panic all over again on the eighth. Worse still was my anger, my rage, at having allowed such an oversight. I was furious. How could I have forgotten that she was coming in the morning? Beyond all question, this was the most shameful and disorderly fuck up in my entire career. I hated myself.
I thumbed the red master button that popped the lock and, grinning a grin calculated to convey a hopeful blend of benign insouciance and penitent disarray, I swung open the mighty front door to greet the waiting Lucy.
‘What kept you?’ She stepped up and hugged me tenderly.
It was enough to make you weep.
‘What’s wrong with your buzzer?’ she asked, changing tone, leaning back and looking up, meeting my eye.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, in a voice as blank as a pure white page. ‘It’s the lock that’s gone. The buzzer works fine and I can hear you through the intercom but I can’t unlock this door from my flat. I have to come down. I’m not sure what’s wrong. I was going to find out if it’s the same for the other flats later today – when they all get up.’
‘You don’t exactly look ready to go,’ she said, her head moving safely back towards my chest.
‘No. Yes, I am. What time?’
‘Now, idiot. The van has got to be back by one.’
‘Now. But Lucy …’ – exasperation to cover feverish brain-ransacking – ‘… it’s not even seven o’clock yet and it’s … it’s Sunday and –’
‘Oh Jasp, you are hopeless. I’m moving today, remember?’
I blinked.
‘You know – moving house – when a person takes all their things out of one place and drives them to another.’
‘I know. I know.’
‘Well, don’t act all surprised about it then.’ She rocked back on her heels. ‘Oh, come on stupid, let’s fix you some breakfast and then we can get on the road.’ She glanced over her shoulder down the street to where a white removals van waited menacingly. ‘The van will be OK over there for fifteen minutes, won’t it? I saw them towing someone away when I was coming over. Is parking still all right on Sundays around here?’
‘The van?’
Another change of tone, concern perhaps. ‘Are you OK, Jasper? What did you get up to last night?’ She broke away and put her hand up as if to take the temperature of my forehead.
I moved slightly to block the entrance and hoped that the black clouds of adversity that were scudding across my face were being interpreted as evidence of the earliness of the hour rather than the deepening crisis.
Businesslike now: ‘Jesus, Jasp, come on, let’s get you washed and dressed.’
‘We can’t,’ I said, a beat too quickly.
That was it. She was about to catch the insinuating scent of betrayal wafting down the stairs behind me. I could not hug her again. I had to act.
‘I’m not sure about the van,’ I said. ‘We had better check the parking restrictions. I think they’ve changed them because of the Heathrow link and the Paddington basin stuff … and I don’t think you can park here without a permit, even on Sundays. It’s because all the people coming in from the airport started leaving their cars and choking up the whole area. And now they’re just – you know – towing everybody away right, left and centre. Round the clock. We’d better check.’ I shook my head. ‘Did we really agree seven?’
Before she could get a word in, one arm around her waist and the other holding up my jeans, we were off to get a closer look at the nearby lamp-post with the parking notice on it. Three steps away from the door and it clicked shut behind us. Locked.
We stood together, bereft in the early morning street. How I berated myself. Shut out of my own home! How I cursed. And yet how adamant I was that I would not wake my neighbours to get in. Lucy, no! At this hour of the morning? No! Even if we are let into the hall, I’m not sure I left my own front door open! And the only person who has a spare set of keys is the Roach – but he’s a DJ and he doesn’t get up until mid-afternoon and there’s no way I am waking him up now: he’s probably not even home yet! I’ll sort it all out later. Then, how suddenly enthusiastic I became, how eager to be off. Hey, come on Lucy, what’s the problem? I’ll get a shower at your house, borrow some clothes … we might as well get on with it now you’re here. No sense hanging about. I’m up now! And, finally, how quietly apologetic: I’m sorry I forgot. Luce, I really am. I’m such an idiot sometimes …
So, five past seven on a Sunday morning: I had only been awake for less than ten minutes and already I was half-dressed, grinding through the rusty gears of destiny up the hill towards St John’s Wood.
It was a baneful day writhing with the horrors of which nightmares are made. And help, too, was thin on the ground. As usual, Lucy’s elusive sister, Bella, with whom Lucy shared her flat (and whom I had never had the pleasure of meeting in any of my scandalously few visits) was nowhere to be seen – away on holiday again. According to Lucy, Bella also wanted to ‘take the plunge’ and so hadn’t wished to sign another year’s contract either – although, clearly, she was some way behind Lucy in the property-hunting business. ‘Bloody Bella hasn’t even started looking so God only knows what she is going to do with all her stuff when she gets back tomorrow – probably ship it over to Mr Wonderful’s.’ (It may have been my over-zealous imagination but I couldn’t help but feel that the barb of this comment was intended as much for me as for Bella’s boyfriend.) Neither, I might add, were any other of Lucy’s many reported pals in evidence. In fact, the only other assistance was provided by Lucy’s nice-guy landlord and would-be best friend, Graham, a merchant banker with pretensions to photography, whose daily scratchings in that latter-day Golgotha that Londoners call the City had yet to reduce his towering smugness by so much as an inch. (Hey, watch out ladies, here comes Mr Right … and guess what? He’s single! And very nice manners. And so tall.)
Six foot two and boasting of some feeble drink-induced discomfort, Graham appeared shortly after eight, bringing with him – following a quick call on Lucy’s mobile phone – an old Oxford shirt, a pair of jogging trousers and running shoes. Though everything was too big (I am a lean five eleven), I was grateful all the same. Graham, I sensed, liked to inhabit a sartorial Hades all of his own and his charitable offerings could have been a lot worse. Not that this excused the poverty of his mercantile soul.
While Lucy wrote labels and Graham wrapped crockery, I dutifully showered and changed before rejoining the fray, manfully ignoring the toxic Armageddon taking place inside my head.
In what was left of the kitchen, Graham was now pouring lukewarm water on heavily brutalized bags of sawdust and po-facedly serving the results up as ‘cups of tea’. Lucy, meanwhile, was outlining the latest plan: as the van had to go back at one, we would have to make sure that all the remaining bits of furniture were moved first. After that, we were going to be limited to the use of Lucy’s Renault for odds and ends and Graham’s four-by-four LandWaster for the bigger boxes.
‘But I’ll have to be off to meet some of the lads around three, Lucy, I’m afraid,’ Graham said, loyalties already torn so early in the morning. ‘Although I can come back this p.m. if there’s any more needs shifting … and bring a couple of the lads with me – if you want us to tackle the dining room.’
Lucy smiled. ‘No, it’s all right, Graham. That’s very kind. But I really just want to move my desk and that big bookcase out there before you go. My dad did the bed and my sofa yesterday. And the table and all the chairs in the dining room are Bella’s.’
‘Well, tell her she can give me a ring tomorrow when she’s home if she requires –’
‘She’s not getting back till very late but I’ll let her know you’re up for helping when she needs it.’ She turned to me. ‘Are you OK, Jasp?’
‘Yes, I’m fine, thanks.’ I smiled weakly.
Lucy put a hand on my head. ‘Sorry – don’t you like the tea?’
‘No. Yes. It’s OK. I’ll be OK. Just a little …’ I cleared my throat.
She made a face at Graham and then lowered her voice. ‘Jasper is a bit of an arsehole about tea and things. Spends a lot of time on his own.’
Graham shrugged, charitably. ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with being an arsehole. Plenty of people are arseholes. Just got to make the best of it is all.’
‘You’re right,’ I nodded.
By nine, we had set to – hefting and heaving, staggering and swaying, pushing and pulling, levering in and out and round about, and pounding up and down and up and down and up and down the bastard stairs. Did ever a woman have so much stuff? And to what end? Rails and rails and rails of clothes and shoes innumerable; and then the mutinous fucker of a dressing table and more boxes of clothes (now neatly labelled ‘keep for two years’ or ‘winter’ or – most gallingly – ‘don’t keep’); and then the bookcase and another mirror, complete with a maddening brown blanket that seized every opportunity to embrace the floor. And then the desk. The bloody desk.
The only respite was during the few intermezzi of trundling back and forth across the city in the removal van, knee-deep in the cabin detritus of crisp packets, burger cartons and chocolate wrappers left behind by generous generations of amateur shit-shifters before us.
The van went back and we switched to the car. But it was nearly six by the time we were finished.
At six thirty-nine, I awoke for the second time that day. And for the second time was plunged head first, without apology or warning, into die Scheisse.
I suppose that I must have drifted off to the underpowered lull of the Renault as we pulled away from Lucy’s mother’s Fulham address for the last time; and I suppose that the sudden silence, as she turned off the ignition, must also have woken me up.
Naturally, I had long ago discarded all thought of risking a return to my own flat and had begun instead quietly to look forward to a night with Lucy at her father’s Bloomsbury pied à terre. (I should say that Pa and Ma Lucy – David and Veronica – had been separated many times but had recently started living together again in Fulham, though Pa Lucy warily continued to maintain his bolthold of old. Thankfully, they were both in Scotland that weekend – on some sort of reconciliatory whisky-tasting tour – and so were unable to witness their daughter’s boyfriend’s multi-layered distress as he hobbled devotedly in and out of their garage.) Bloomsbury was not an unreasonable expectation since Lucy has been using her father’s as her base these last few weeks, while various estate agents wasted her time and lied to her about the properties she saw or liked or thought she might buy. If pushed, I suppose I had anticipated that we might slip off to some resuscitative little brasserie by way of a prelude to an early night of muted caress beneath the guest-room duvet. But that was as far as I got. I was too tired to plan. I was exhausted.
Imagine, then, my horror when I opened my weary eyes, stretched, gathered my sluggish bearings and realized that Lucy had pulled up outside … my own flat. For yes, we were, it pains me to relate, right back at number 33 Bristol Gardens. Square one – in all its recalcitrant glory – belligerent and incontestable.
My single point of honour was that I did not flinch. Not a giveaway muscle did I move. In the leering face of disaster, I merely yawned: ‘Luce, I think I fell asleep.’ Then I let a pulse or two pass before adding, as though it were a matter of supreme indifference: ‘Oh, why’ve you brought us back here?’
‘Pick up your keys for tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Everyone will be at work otherwise and you won’t be able to get back in.’
I glimpsed the passing of a fleeting chance – a short solo sprint across the road, a ding on the Roach’s ding-dong bell, a beckoning voice from the basement, a hasty thumbs-up to Lucy from across the street, a swift ascent, a covert collection of my own keys, a rapid verification of the general health of the premises, an expeditious gathering of clothes and then an equally pacy descent back down to the Renault, whereupon Lucy would hit the gas and we’d be off … But too late! Lucy’s door was open and the cold air was coming in.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, trying to hold her with my voice. ‘I’ll only be a second.’
‘Might as well come with you,’ she replied, ‘you’re going to have to change if you want to have dinner with me.’
It wasn’t so much that I was worried that Cécile might still be hanging around smouldering. No – the sad and sour truth was that with or without the corporeal evidence of la fille française in person, I knew the bedroom would give the game away. Wine glasses, supper, bottles, everything on the floor, a hat, the cigarette-holder, make-up on pillows … oh God. Events were conspiring against me. No time to prepare or launder. No time to arrange or devise. A single uncharacteristic lapse of the memory and suddenly all etiquette had been breached and a squalid face-to-face with the loathsome banshees of moral outrage was pending.
Towards the big black front door of the old Georgian house we now trod. We stood on the steps. The Roach wasn’t answering. Good news. We might not be able to get into my flat after all. Hopefully Cécile had shut my internal front door and – without my keys – we would be stuck in the hall. If not, if Cécile had left my door open, my best chance was that one of my other neighbours (contrary to all previous form) might start such a riveting conversation that Lucy would be rendered quite immobile for a few crucial minutes while I slipped up the stairs and sorted things out. So next I chose Leon, the cellist who lived directly beneath me and the neighbour with whom I was most friendly. He kind of owed me for listening to him practise.
‘Hello, yes?’ came the lugubrious voice through the intercom.
‘Leon, it’s me, Jasper.’
