Slack-Tide, page 9
He gave me what he called ‘cold-weather gifts’: a small cashmere cardigan, and several pairs of thick woollen socks.
‘You shouldn’t have.’
‘It’s nice. It’s nice for me and it’s nice for you.’
In return, I bought him things for his apartment. All of them were small, and inconsequential, but one of them was expensive, so I had it delivered to his office, instead of the communal hallway of my flat at Bethnal Green. When he brought it back already opened, I expressed surprise and he said, ‘Why wouldn’t I open it? It was addressed to me.’
‘To me. Care of you.’
‘It came to my office.’
‘But it was supposed to be a surprise! I was supposed to wrap it up and give you it.’
‘This is a present? For me?’
Inside was a small, rectangular piece of wood. Painted to look like the cover of a book, it had holes drilled into its spine and two screws for attaching it, horizontally, to the wall. The title of the book was painted in bold black letters: Ceci n’est pas un livre. Piled on top of this, a stack of books would appear to be floating on the wall, the pretend-bookshelf rendered invisible.
It made him smile, but instead of fixing it up and stacking real books on top of it, he put it on a bookshelf among his other books and left it there. I mentioned it once or twice, but he changed the subject. I did think about asking for it back, to give it to someone else who might have used it. The way he’d responded to my giving him it, though, suggested I shouldn’t.
Apart from the bracelet from Washington, all of Robert’s gifts to me were practical. Usually he chose things he knew I needed, so that I unwrapped them and used them straight away. There were some bike lights, for example, which he had owned for just a few months and was discarding in favour of newer, sleeker versions. The ones on my bike were less visible than they should have been, so I thanked him and clipped them on to cycle home that evening.
In return for the bike lights, I gave him a novel.
When he unwrapped the slender blue-and-white hardback, he seemed nonplussed. I told him it had been shortlisted for the Pulitzer, and I offered to read him the first chapter. He said, half-heartedly, ‘OK. I guess. Maybe later,’ then he showed me the cover.
‘Train Dreams. You’re giving me a book about trains?’
‘Actually, no. It’s about a guy. A guy called Robert.’
‘That’s why?’
‘Actually, I chose it for the bridges. After you sent me the clip of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, I remembered this novel. There are bridges in it. It’s your kind of book. I think you’ll like it.’
Later, after dinner, he lay back on the sofa with his eyes closed while I read aloud.
When I got to the part where Grainier caught the Chinaman-suspect’s feet tighter and exclaimed, ‘I’ve got the bastard!’ Robert’s eyes opened. Throughout the fugitive’s desperate escape over the side of the half-completed railway bridge, fifty feet above the Moyea River, Robert’s eyes flicked back and forth. When the Chinaman screamed out his curse and vanished, he shut his eyes tight, but I glanced over once or twice and saw they were moving, underneath his eyelids. As Grainier walked home that night, imagining he could see the Chinaman everywhere, Robert’s eyes flicked back and forth rapidly, as though he was there too, watching the woods and the road and the creek.
In the months to come, before our love affair ended, he would read and reread this book, slowly and carefully. I would find him in the bedroom sometimes, falling asleep with it resting on his stomach. In the mornings, if I got up before him and came back to bed with coffee, he’d be buried in its pages and hardly notice me.
He said nothing at all to me about it, and though he was always reading it, never seemed close to finishing. It was only after we split that he spoke about it, on the phone once, when he said he was reading it a third time, and was glad I’d given him it.
March
How to tell if the moon is waxing or waning
If a crescent moon hangs in the shape of a ‘C’, for the word ‘crescendo’, it is waning.
If it is the opposite, and forms the curve of a capital ‘D’, which we might think of as the start of the word ‘decrescendo’, the moon is, in fact, waxing.
So we can remember the rule like this: the moon always lies.
Cedric Chester, A Moon-spotter’s Almanac
For the club’s first birthday, Magali and Olivier booked a trio from New York.
‘You’re kidding,’ I said when she told me who. ‘How?’
‘I called up their agent and I hustled. They’re playing Ronnie’s the next two Thursdays so they’re over here anyway. I want to make some noise. Shout about it. We’re celebrating.’
By the time I arrived, she’d sent out for more champagne, twice, and crates of Havana Club Gran Reserva, which her father had ordered for everyone.
‘Limes,’ Olivier said, passing Magali the phone. ‘We need more limes.’
‘Are you warm enough?’ she asked me. I nodded, and took off my jacket. ‘Heating’s fixed,’ she smiled. ‘I think that’s made me happier than anything. Limes.’ She headed for the office. ‘I’m going to call a guy about limes.’
I was at the bar when Robert arrived. He’d told me he would bring someone, and when I saw her first of all I thought I knew her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me,’ I whispered to him while her coat was checked, ‘you were bringing a celeb?’
‘Hardly.’
‘Well, she is, you know, known. I’m so sorry but I can’t actually remember her name.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Please tell me. I’m too embarrassed to ask.’
‘She’s called Juliet. She’s well known, honey, but she’s not a celeb. You’ll get to meet her properly next week.’
‘I will?’
‘Wednesday evening? You said you’d come. I hope it’s OK to have brought her tonight. I’d forgotten I’d told her we’d go for drinks, just the two of us. Didn’t want to let you down, so I just asked Juliet along.’
‘Of course. The more the merrier. Rum?’ I suggested, as a tray of cocktails went past.
‘No thanks.’ Then the well-known actor came back and she and Robert were absorbed. I walked the room, embracing my friends, and Magali’s and Olivier’s. I looked over at Robert, thinking I should be taking him around with me, introducing him. Then I realised it was better this way. I liked being ostensibly single. It was how I’d always related to the people who were there that night, and with each embrace I hoped that Robert and Juliet would remain engrossed.
When they found me, an hour or more on, I’d had too much rum to be able to have the kind of conversation Robert wanted.
‘What about a drink?’ I said to him.
‘You have one already, honey.’
‘Juliet doesn’t,’ I smiled. ‘Do you like cocktails, Juliet?’
‘I do, as a matter of fact.’
‘There you are, see? Go to the bar and get your friend a cocktail, Robert. Or she’ll feel awfully left out. I can personally recommend the Po-littles, Juliet. Really gorgeous.’
‘Po-littles?’
‘Oops. Li-tans. Cosmo-po-li-tans. Robert, get me one too, will you?’
In Robert’s absence, Juliet and I had very little to say to one another. The musicians were taking a break, and the fill-in records were too loud for chatting in any case. Robert arrived with the cocktails and the musicians returned to the stage. In the second’s silence before they started up, Juliet whispered to Robert that she wasn’t sure, but was that an ant in her cocktail? Or two, maybe?
‘Oh, you lucky thing,’ I whispered. ‘Here, let’s swap. D’you mind? I love ants. They’re my absolute favourite.’
At 1 a.m., Robert kindly, sweetly, gently, helped me into a cab.
‘Where’s the well-known lady actor?’ I said. ‘Isn’t she coming home with us?’
‘She left two hours ago, honey. When you were hugging the small number of guys in the room who hadn’t already hugged you.’
In the morning, I found it hard to sit up.
‘There was nothing nice about it, that’s all I’m saying.’
I opened my eyes. Then I opened my mouth to answer but my eyes hurt, and my head hurt. Sitting up for a second, I saw the room move, so I closed my eyes again and lay back down. I wanted to speak, but my lips were too dry, and when I tried, my tongue stuck to them.
Robert carried on. ‘I just don’t see how you can expect me to think of you as a maternal person.’
‘Hmm?’ I could say that without opening my mouth, or my eyes. I said it again, a little louder. ‘Hmmm?’
‘It’s not the kind of behaviour I’d expect from someone who wants to be a mother, that’s what I mean. Do you have any idea what being a parent would actually involve?’
‘Please,’ I whispered. ‘Please could I have some water? A really large, really cold glass of water?’
When he’d gone for the water, I stood up. Sitting down again, I tried to work out how close I was to vomiting, and what I’d do it in if I did. I opened the skylight, but the sun was too bright to keep my head out for long, and the height made me dizzy. I took a sip of water from a bottle on my desk, and practised saying a word, then a whole sentence. When he came up again, I was in bed, under the sheet.
‘I’ve got to leave, Elizabeth. I’m going to be late for work.’
‘OK, babe,’ I said. ‘Thanks for coming. It was so –’
I heard him dressing. When I opened my eyes, he’d gone.
In the afternoon he emailed, and asked if he could come to dinner at my place.
He arrived, and I apologised.
‘It’s OK.’ The flowers he gave me were tall white roses and purple irises. ‘Let’s not talk about it. Are you OK? Are you –?’
‘Hung-over? Yes, of course I am. So will everyone be. Apart from you. I imagine even Juliet might have a small headache.’
‘It’s OK. I know, I overreacted. I’ve never seen you like that before, that’s all.’
‘Of course you haven’t. I hardly ever get “like that”. I should tell you that most of the people there last night happen to be parents. And pretty much all of them had more to drink than I did. It was a celebration, Robert. A big deal. Do you know how hard it is to open a club in London and make it work for a year? They’ve done brilliantly. Everyone wanted to have a good time.’
‘OK. I said, I know, I overreacted. Do you like your flowers?’
‘I love them.’
After dinner, he worked on a talk he was due to give in Frankfurt. Every now and again I put down the book I was reading, and made a note in my journal. Later, when he asked about the journal, I showed him a few of the pages. There were poems I’d liked and copied out, and sometimes a photograph Sellotaped in. Once or twice, I’d stapled in a ticket or a programme, to remind me of a show. On another of the pages was a pencil sketch of Highbury Fields, which I’d cycled past one evening. The sky to the west had fallen that night into a broad purple band which sat on the roofs of the houses. The crescent moon was high above this band, in a part of the sky which had remained a pale grey-blue. I had drawn the roofs and the sky and the trees as childishly geometric shapes, and the moon as a single curved line. Beneath my sketch I had written: ‘The new moon is a baby’s fingernail, thrown into the sky.’
He studied the words, then he asked me to describe the scene as though I was telling a story. ‘Wait, wait a second.’ He took his artist’s sketchbook from his pocket and flipped it open. As I began to speak, with his pocket watercolours and working fast, he recreated what I’d seen. I said the final word, and he tore the page from his sketchbook and, before the paint had dried, made me a present of it. It was my sketch but in colour, and with perspective: he had made it real.
‘Might not have been a new moon, though,’ he said.
‘Hmmm?’
‘Which way was the crescent facing?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Know how to tell if a moon is new or old?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It just looked new!’
‘It might have been dying, not newborn. Let me tell you how.’
He suggested we spend the following Saturday walking the Regent’s Canal from King’s Cross to Limehouse. On the Friday, I bought a new coat. For the first time in my life, I chose one that wasn’t blue or black, but instead, dark red. It was cut close to my body, with sleeves that were ruched on the shoulder. For our walk, I wore it with a black cloche hat and black gloves, which my brother had given me for Christmas. I tied Robert’s black crêpe scarf high on my neck.
We met by a bridge, at exactly the point where the path comes up at Granary Square. The sky was bright, and the air cold. He wore a thick wool jacket and a brown felt trilby, and we stood in an embrace for some time, our two hats together.
When he let me go I showed him the patterns on the water. He took my hand and moved it, so that I pointed instead to where the shaft of sun was playing onto the underside of the bridge, flung back from the canal, then he explained the angle of incidence. We sat on the steps for some time in silence, holding hands and watching passers-by. In the square we saw the fountains. He took photographs and made me laugh, pushing me away and pulling me into him.
We walked for hours that day, our words falling over one another and our hands entwined.
That evening I emailed Susie, who had written to ask how my writing was going, and how things were with Robert, who she hadn’t seen at book group for a while.
‘Don’t worry!’ I wrote. ‘He’s alive and well; I haven’t done away with him. I haven’t been writing, or not enough, but he has made me smile again. Really smile, I mean. I think my face had forgotten what it felt like. My cheeks hurt from smiling.’
Looking at the photos of that day I see myself clasped to his chest while he holds the camera out. When he held me like that, right in close with my head leaning into him, my cloche hat was tucked just under the brim of his trilby. He had been playful, so that some of the pictures are of just the tops of our faces, or of just the bottom half. In one picture, at his suggestion, our eyes are shut tight on purpose and we are smiling.
In the last two, I am sitting on a stone bench in the square, half turned away from him. There are clutches of small children playing by the fountains, just to the right of me. My gaze is trained on them.
I thought that’s what he was seeing too, when he took those pictures.
I thought that’s why he was taking them.
The children had been laughing and running into and out of the jets of water. One of them, a girl of perhaps four or five, had run past me and brushed against my knee and I was close enough to have reached out and caught her in my arms and picked her up and held her.
When I turned and saw that he was taking a picture of me and the children, I felt quite sure that we would be a family, and that we would bring our children to the square one day and watch them play in the water.
He stayed over at my apartment that night, before going straight to the Middle East.
I set my alarm for 5 a.m. to make him breakfast, ahead of his early Tube to Heathrow.
He looked surprised when I woke him to say it was ready, but he padded downstairs and ate with me.
Afterwards, he took my hand, to lead me back upstairs. ‘Shall we?’
‘Don’t you have to pack?’
‘We have an hour, honey. More.’ He slipped his hand between my thighs.
‘It’s just after six.’
‘Even better. So we have nearly two hours.’
‘You’re kidding. Why are we awake, then? Why aren’t we sleeping?’
It was a misunderstanding, he said. His flight had been changed and he’d forgotten to tell me.
‘That’s not a misunderstanding, Robert. That’s you not thinking of telling me. That’s different.’
But he was pulling at his pyjamas, and taking my hand to feel how stiff he was. ‘This way we get longer for sex.’
I pushed him away. I said it was an ordinary day for me. I’d made my plans around his early departure, and I had a new chapter to start. I’d use my extra hour on that, and would be grateful if he could pack and leave.
‘Are you serious, Elizabeth?’
‘When you go to work in London, on an ordinary day, you leave first thing, right?’
‘Of course.’
‘You never linger.’
‘Right.’
‘Even if I asked you to, you wouldn’t, would you?’
‘But it’s different for me,’ he protested. ‘There are other people involved. I have meetings.’
‘And I have characters, waiting for me to tell them what to do. I have a contract for a book I haven’t written yet.’
‘Come on, honey. I’m leaving soon. I won’t see you for a week. Your characters can wait an hour, can’t they?’
I half let him pull me upstairs, then I stopped.
‘I can’t keep changing things to suit your work. You have to go. The only difference between my “other people” and your “other people” is that I have to make mine up. Every thought they think, every word they speak, and every single thing they do. You’re lucky, Robert. You pack your case, get on a plane, and when you get off at the other end, your “people” are waiting in arrivals, holding up a little sign with your name on. I’ll be home from the library by about seven. If you miss me too much, fly back from Doha. Drop your “other people” like you’re asking me to drop mine.’
He went to take a shower. Later, I heard the front door, and realised he’d gone without saying goodbye.
I phoned him, but he didn’t take my call.
That night, I emailed.
I wrote that when I’d asked him to leave, what I’d really wanted to say was, stay. I wished he was still there. I missed him, I was sorry to have been bad-tempered, and please would he remind me about the angle of incidence, from our canal walk? I’d been thinking of what he’d told me, and couldn’t quite remember.
In the morning, I was woken by the rain on my skylight.
