Slack-Tide, page 7
In the morning Robert asked me to put a pillow beneath my hips.
‘It means I can go deeper. I think you’ll like it.’
I didn’t, but the physical sensations were intense enough to stop me feeling sad. Afterwards, I looked for the condom.
‘Did you wear one?’
‘You put it on me.’
‘Did you keep it on, I mean?’
‘Of course I did. Stay calm. It must be still inside you.’
‘It’s not.’ I knelt up on the bed. I felt inside myself again. I was crying. ‘It must’ve come out. It must’ve come off when you started. Or you took it off when you went in. I had my eyes closed. Where is it? Show me it.’
‘Don’t say that. I wouldn’t do that. We made a deal.’
He got off the bed and started moving the pillows, the sheets. Then he knelt on the floor.
In the shower, I stood under the hot water and breathed too fast. I turned over the idea that I might be pregnant, and that that was what I wanted more than anything. Then straight away there was another idea, which was that Robert didn’t make me happy in the way Stefano had described, and that the reason I hadn’t been able to admit this to Stefano was that I was barely able to admit it to myself. Then I felt the condom slip out of me and slide down my leg to the shower floor. Picking it up, I squeezed it empty, then I dropped it in the bin.
It had been pushed, I supposed, right inside me. With my hips raised up on the pillow, he’d slid himself in and pressed with his full weight. When he’d come, he’d lain in me until he was limp, and it must have stayed there when he pulled out.
In London again, I bought a morning-after pill.
At the till, I hesitated, but there was Stefano’s warning.
That evening, I helped Magali and Olivier at the club. When we were done they made coffee, and asked me about my weekend. I told them we’d walked to Grantchester, which was something I’d always wanted to do.
‘He taught me how to stroke a horse,’ I said. ‘I’ve never done that before. I’ve seen them up close. But I’ve never touched one.’
‘A new thing,’ Olivier said.
‘He showed me how to know if it was comfortable.’
‘How?’
‘You watch its ears. You can tell from how its ears are moving. It’s not hard. You just have to know what to do. You have to trust they’re going to like it, then you touch them.’ At that field gate, I had felt the animal’s warm breath on my hand and felt the same warmth in my stomach.
While Olivier was cashing up, Magali asked me, ‘Any other new things?’
‘Sex with my hips up on a pillow. Better for him than for me, I think.’
‘It’s good, the sex?’
‘Usually. This was the first time I didn’t like it. I mean, it was fine, kind of.’
‘Any other new things?
‘A vintage carpentry shop.’
‘Carpentry? For sex?’
‘No! For wooden things. Faux vintage. Tools. Domestic equipment. Antique-style dishwashing brushes, you know. Robert looked at the tools. He bought himself a lathe. I looked at toys.’
‘What kind of toys?’
‘For babies. And very small children. Wooden spinning tops, and rattles.’
‘Did he look at them?’
‘I tried to show him. It was as though he didn’t see them. He doesn’t want – You know, I know he doesn’t. He’s playing with me. He wasn’t interested. He went back to the tools. He didn’t want to look at children’s toys.’
‘Of course he doesn’t, not yet. He’s still thinking of different ways to have sex. Give it time.’
‘How much? I want a child. When do I give up?’
‘You’ll know when.’
Coming out of the faux-vintage shop, we’d bumped into Stefano.
I was as delighted as him by the chance encounter. Disengaging from our embrace, I saw Robert’s face darken. Stefano put out his hand and said, beginning to laugh, ‘You must be Robert!’
Robert, keeping his hands behind his back, inclined his head. Raising it, he smiled, tightly.
London that night was just a stopover for Robert. I said goodbye without having told him about the morning-after pill. When I emailed him in Doha to tell him I was ill, he emailed straight back to ask why. I said it must have been something I’d eaten, or maybe I was just overtired. His reply, which came within minutes, attached a reservation for a massage.
Opening the link, I saw that it was a spa I’d walked past with Magali a hundred times, on the way to the club. The scent that came out onto the street, if someone was leaving as we passed, was heady and exotic. The massage he’d chosen for me was ‘aromatherapeutic’ and would take an hour. Within two seconds I’d compiled a list of reasons not to go. Trying to find a way to accept his kindness, I set aside the first three (I didn’t have an hour to spare; I’d only ever had one massage in my life and it had hurt, terribly; I felt too ill to even get there) and looked at the description again. Then I thought of Magali and the black crêpe scarf, and of what she’d say if I didn’t go.
After it was over, I took a bus home.
The woman sitting next to me woke me just before the bus reached my flat, laughing. I’d rested my head on her shoulder, she said. She didn’t mind especially, but she’d been about to get off, and hadn’t wanted to leave me sleeping, in case I missed my stop.
I ran a bath and emailed Robert to thank him. I wrote that it had made me feel more relaxed than I’d ever been, and I was about to take a long soak. He called just as I got in. We spoke for a half-hour, or rather he did, only letting me go when I’d answered all his questions about was it a full body massage, and had I undressed completely, and was the masseur male or female, and had I had one of those beds, he wanted to know, where you put your face on a padded ring and looked at the floor, and weren’t they strange?
Before going to sleep that night, I opened the link again and read the price list. For the same amount of money, apparently, I could’ve paid a week’s rent. I wrote again to thank him, and asked him not to call in the morning; I wanted to lie in. Falling asleep, I thought of my friends, and tried to decide which of them I’d do that for, if I was ever rich: send an email with a reservation at a smart London spa, telling them to take an hour off work, and be aromatherapeuterised.
Our respective financial situations were just as soon glanced at as they were glanced away from.
By the time I met Robert, I’d published some novels and had found a way of living which I was able to sustain. If I taught a little, marked papers a little, worked the occasional shift at Magali’s and Olivier’s, and had no expectation of owning a property, I could do what I wanted and spend most of my time writing.
When, at the end of January, I’d been told I had to move because my landlord was selling up, Robert had offered to help.
‘You’re leaving it so late,’ he said in February, as the date neared and still I hadn’t found anywhere. ‘How can you just not know where you’re going? It’s two weeks away, honey. You’ve got to get ready.’
The first advert he forwarded me was for a one-room place in Primrose Hill. On the market for six times what I was paying, which was already a little too much, it was half the size of my place. Then a friend of a friend got in touch about a flat he owned on the Bethnal Green Road, not far from Victoria Park. I could see from the photos that although it was too small for all my things, it was right for me in every other way. We agreed a lower rent for the first few weeks, until I could find a flatmate to move in.
‘You’re taking it?’ Robert said on the phone from Vienna one night. ‘Just like that? Are you crazy? You haven’t checked out anywhere else!’
‘I don’t need to.’
‘Are you even going to –?’
‘Of course I am. I’ve got a viewing Friday. I’ll measure up, meet the neighbours, do all that stuff. Then if everything’s OK, I’ll sign. Wanna come? Will you be back by then? You could pretend to be my architect!’
When he played along with my game and asked me to email him the photos, I did, saying I would sleep and work in the top room, up in the eaves. It was wide and long with wooden floors, and a large skylight, so I’d be able to watch the stars at night. He asked for floor plans and measurements, and, later that night, sent by return three or four JPEGs of pages torn from his sketch pad. He’d drawn several plans in miniature, with sharp black lines delineating his vision for my writer’s garret. He noted the extra pieces of furniture I’d need to buy, and the sort of desk he thought would work. He showed me where on the walls he would fix hooks, ‘for your dresses’. Laughing, I printed the JPEGs and the emails, and stuck them in my notebook: ‘By Robert, my American architect’.
That Friday at the new flat, I waited with Mike, my landlord-to-be. Robert was slightly late and didn’t smile. I stepped towards him to ask, was he OK, but Robert stuck out his hand.
‘I’m Robert. You must be Elizabeth. We spoke on the phone. I’m so sorry I’m late, I was held up on a conference call.’
I looked at him, confused.
Then he shook Mike’s hand. ‘Robert. I’m the architect. Mind if I take a look upstairs? That’s the room you’ll have as your study, right, Elizabeth?’
I nodded, too stunned to speak. Mike said, ‘Sure, go ahead,’ then he smiled at me, raising both his eyebrows.
I shrugged, then I blushed, deeply.
Robert pulled a pad and a pencil from his bag, a tape measure from his pocket, and disappeared upstairs.
Mike said nothing about it, nor did I. We walked the rest of the apartment, running through windows and locks and spare keys and utilities providers. When we’d finished, I said, in passing, that Robert was a friend of a friend, and was doing me some sketches for free, just for fun. Neither of us referred to my rent reduction.
Robert jogged down the stairs, tucked his notebook in his pocket and said, ‘I think that’s everything. Good to meet you.’ He shook hands with both of us, then he said to me with a half-smile, ‘I’ll be in touch,’ and went.
When I left a little later, leaving Mike to lock up, I got a text from Robert telling me to meet him at a bar in Shoreditch.
‘Are you crazy?’ I said when I found him. ‘What was that?’
‘I thought that’s what we were doing! You said, I could pretend –’
‘I was joking. We were joking. It was a joke.’
‘I know. So was I.’
‘I didn’t mean, pretend to Mike. I meant, pretend to each other. What does that look like? He’s given me a rent reduction and I show up with my architect.’
‘Relax. He won’t think about it like that. Everyone has architects.’
‘Everyone who?’
‘Come on! It was fun.’
‘For you, maybe. You know what, you’re a very good liar.’
He would be in Oman the weekend I moved. He felt bad, he said, and asked if there was some other way he could help.
I joked that he might cancel his flight and skip his conference.
‘Errr –’
‘I’m kidding, Robert. Have a good trip. Come and see me when you’re back.’
Mike had recommended a man with a van for the move, who charged by the hour. Magali and Olivier helped me with the smaller things, which we drove over in their car. When we were done, Olivier went to the club, and Magali and I took a bottle of wine to the attic room and cleaned the soot from the skylight. Opening it right back, we stood on my bed and hung half out, looking north-west. We drank our wine, and saw the sun set.
‘Are you in love yet, or what?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are you gonna be?’
‘Maybe.’
Robert came back from Oman and offered to help dispose of the things I had no room for.
First, he contacted the council, who arranged to take some spare furniture, for a family without any. The rest, he said, I should sell.
‘Lena used this site when she was moving to Primrose Hill,’ he emailed. ‘She said they were good for downsizing.’
Opening the link, I found an eBay middleman for the wealthy. Items of clothing, for example, with a minimum value of £1,500, could be collected and sold on for a small commission.
‘How about you just come to my housewarming tea?’ I wrote back the next day, when he asked if the site had proved useful. ‘Come and celebrate. Come and meet some more of my friends.’
On the Sunday morning, I told him I was going to the supermarket. ‘Before it gets busy. I have to come back and bake before three. People are coming at four.’ He got his jacket. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘I’m coming too.’
‘What for?’
‘I’ll help.’
‘Help with what?’
He reminded me that he’d accepted my invitation conditionally: he would come as co-host, rather than guest. ‘Co-hosts get to go shopping, too.’
At the supermarket, he made suggestions, but was happy in the main to hold the baskets, and watch me tick my list, and listen to my plans to bake scones and cupcakes. Outside, I let him take the bags but said, ‘What do I carry? What am I supposed to do?’
‘Nothing. That’s my job. I’m the guy. You just get to walk.’
My hands felt empty. My arms light, and slightly useless. I could see him sweating, just a tiny bit, and could see the bag handles straining. ‘Let’s get the bus. It might be quicker. It’s not such nice weather for walking, anyway.’
The bus stop was next to a vintage dress shop. Looking in the window, Robert asked what I’d be wearing.
‘What do you mean?’
‘For your tea party. What’ll you wear?’
‘This!’ I laughed, looking down at my jeans. ‘What else? It’s just tea. We’re just hanging out.’
He took my arm and pulled me into the shop. ‘Choose a dress. Any dress. Let me see you try them on.’
Straight away, he set down the bags and was pulling dresses from hangers and calling over the assistant and I was being led into the changing room and he was lifting aside the curtain to watch.
Each time I was ready, he let the curtain drop and I walked around the store.
There was one dress he liked more than any other.
‘Why?’ I asked. To me it was nondescript, or even bag-ish.
‘I like your shape in it.’
‘But you can’t see my shape,’ I said.
‘I can see it when you move.’ He came over and tied the tiny belt a little bit tighter, so it cinched at my waist. ‘It’s very, very sexy.’
Still I didn’t get it, until the assistant handed me a necklace and a short-cut cardigan, and it made sense: I could see the kind of woman he wanted me to be.
On the bus, he held the bags, and slung the one from the dress shop over his chest. Hanging on to the passenger rail, I swung gently, looking at this man who had bought me a dress, and was travelling with the crowds on a lunchtime bus, because I’d said no to a cab.
Before anyone arrived, Robert hoovered the apartment. He said he had to, and how could I think of letting people see it in that state? He went back over the stair carpet again, then he asked if I’d spoken to my landlord about getting it replaced.
‘The stairs just are that colour,’ I said when he said he would make a third attempt. ‘Why not leave it? No one who’s coming will notice. Though, actually, maybe it’s good for you. Is this your first time with a Hoover?’
I made cupcakes, and wore the new dress he’d bought me. I liked the unfamiliarity of the silk, and the way it felt against my skin.
In the afternoon, I invited my friends to sit at the table in the window, looking out at my new neighbourhood: there was a fruit and flower wholesaler, managed by a boy who looked to be no more than fourteen, and a launderette which had retained its 1950s sign.
Robert had aligned everything so perfectly, though, and pushed every chair in so tightly, it was impossible to pull one out. Everyone laughed, then they stood for a while looking at the fruit boy, while I rearranged the room.
In the photos he took of that day, I am wearing an apron over my new silk dress. On the work surface behind me there are yellow tulips in a vase, loose and tumbling. I’m holding a mixing bowl against my hip, and a wooden spoon, and the sun slants across me and some flour is rising from the bowl and I am laughing. My apron, with its small, pink flowers, sits against the pale green silk and my belly rises softly.
‘Was it nice,’ Olivier said at the club the next evening, ‘to have someone to carry your bags?’
‘It was strange. I didn’t know what to do.’
‘You’d rather do everything for yourself?’ A series of images flashed through my mind: late nights back from the library, bike paniers full of books or groceries, balancing my bike while I unlocked the door. I didn’t answer.
‘It’s just a strange idea. I’m well. I’m strong. I’m fit. I don’t need anyone for that.’
‘For other things?’
‘I have friends if I need someone. If I’m ill I mean. If I fall off my bike. I can ask people. I can ask you and Magali.’
‘Do you always want to ask?’
On the 14th, Robert took me for a Valentine’s Day breakfast at Delaunay’s.
The waitress recognised us from our first date, and asked us how we were.
In our response, we played the parts of a married couple, or a pair of long-term lovers. While he smiled at her and made small talk, I smiled with him. Half liking the lie, at the same time I half hated it, and wanted to say to her: we barely know each other; I will be surprised if, within a month, we are still together; I don’t think I’ll ever see you again.
‘No bike helmet today?’ she said to me, and I remembered having balanced it on the back of my chair on our first visit.
‘Ah!’ I said, gesturing to my green silk dress. ‘Wrong gear for cycling!’
She left, and I reached into my bag and gave him my Valentine’s gift: two tea-light holders cut from tin, with tiny holes punched in them, to form hearts for the lights to shine through.
He looked a little embarrassed, and gave me a pair of leather gloves in return: lined with fur, they were cut for a man and two sizes too big. They were wrapped in newspaper, and I remembered having seen them at his apartment once, when I’d looked in a cupboard to borrow a jumper.
