Inglorious (27 page)

As she waited by the river, she found she was questioning the Romantic assumption that nature was reviving to the soul. It was possible for a particularly dark and miserable soul to resist even the consolations of a perfect view. She thought of
Wordsworth walking the fells. He had gone up – was it Helvellyn? – on his seventieth birthday, limber and bold-hearted. That was a fine man! Hwaer cwom Wordsworth, she thought. Whither Wordsworth. She snorted quietly and held her head. It felt swollen. Swollen with booze, she thought, her capillaries quite flooded with the stuff. The light seeped across the sky. Later, she dragged herself along the bank and threw up. That felt cathartic, so she walked upstream and washed her face. She stood and gripped her bag. Looking at the slender shapes of the winter trees, Rosa understood perfectly well that the scenery was ancient and she was very small. She was adequate to the task of perceiving the beauty around her, the lovely contours of the hills, the cold glinting waters. She saw no one when she raised her head above the bank, so she started to walk slowly. She found the road, no longer mist-clad, and followed it down the valley. She kept low on the ground, hoping they couldn’t see her, and when she lost sight of the farmhouse she began to breathe more easily. Through the gaps in the trees Rosa saw the sky, and then the sky looked like a lake, with the shapes of the hills spread around its shores. Then it started raining, and she turned sharply down the hill towards Broughton, passing a few houses with their curtains drawn. The rain slapped her face, and she held up her hands as she ran; through sheets of rain she could see the valley, grey and wind-blown. She stumbled slightly and brushed against the damp hedges, feeling the branches on her face. She watched the trees moving in the wind. The rain cooled her head, and made her feel better. The sheep were standing on the hills, sheltering under trees. Their funny faces turned towards her. In front of an audience of sheep she went over a cattle grid and slipped on the metal.

Then she felt a low boom of thunder across the valley, she could feel the vibrations under her feet and deep in her stomach. The sky flared, and thunder rolled around the valley, drawing echoes from the rocks. The rain was falling in thick white lines, more like flowing milk than water. She heard a
gate slamming in the wind, and the thunder and the rain. The valley was drenched by the downpour, and now she could smell the bracken. Brackish, she thought, and she noticed the interwoven smells of grass and trees and the taste of dampness in the air. Another flash of lightning, followed by a round ricochet of thunder, and the trees shuddered under the wind and the fresh force of the rain. Now the rain sounded like a river in full flood. Above she saw a chastened sky, and the deep green colours of the leaves, the stained trunks of the trees.

Drenched and weighted down by her clothes, Rosa ran. She was revived by the forces around her, the wind blasting against her, volleys of thunder resounding deep within her. The sky flashed again. She saw a line of oaks bowing and shaking their leaves. Rain hissed at her feet, falling as steam. She darted around a puddle, brushed a wet hedge, lifted her bag higher on her back, heard the all-shaking thunder burst around the valley again, felt the rage of the wind and said, ‘Crack Nature’s moulds!’ Dense shards of rain. White steam and a cold sky. She moved through mud and newly created streams of water. She skidded at a corner and fell against a trunk to steady herself. Ingrateful man, she thought. Everything was monochrome, the trees and low houses dark against the blank sky. She turned onto a road where the cars lashed her with water.

Another throb of thunder, and the rain slapped her face and arms. When a woman in a car wound down her window and shouted out, ‘Do you need a lift?’ she tried to speak and found her lips were rigid with cold.

‘Thank you,’ she managed to say, shaking her head. She stepped aside as the woman drove off. The thunder was rich and raw; she was a sounding block, nothing more than another surface for the thunder to echo from. She saw the dusty sides of the rocks, doused to blackness by torrents of water, and she saw a flock of birds hanging in the air, sweeping a course across the furrowed mass of clouds. Then she felt a sense of great joy, of something glorious and ancient beneath everything. She was beginning to say, ‘But this is the sublime’,
and then she said, ‘You have to be quite determined, not to become ridiculous.’ She shook her head and walked on.

She arrived in the village of Broughton as the clocks chimed 10 a.m.. She had lost a lot of time, hiding by the river and walking in the rain. She hadn’t noticed how far the morning had advanced. Now the rain was easing off. Her clothes were wet; her bag was heavy on her back. The local baker was just opening her shop, and Rosa briefly explained her predicament – terrible mess – she had come to borrow a friend’s house, forgot to bring the key, no one had it, would have to go back home to get it, have invited friends for the weekend, can’t break in, tragic start to a holiday. Never mind, she said, stoical in response to polite sympathy. Yes, it was a bit of a fuss but it would be fine in the end. The baker – a woman called Sue with perfect teeth and a thick Lancashire accent – called a taxi. Rosa waited in the shop, sipping coffee. She found herself writing in her notebook, though the pages were greasy with rainwater.

Then she shivered violently and moved closer to the fire. She wrote:

 Then the taxi came.

She woke again before dawn and stood by the window, staring out at the shadows. The dawn was later by the day; the year was drawing to an end. A coarse wind had ruined the trees; leaves gusted along the pavement. It was Thursday and she had wasted too many days. All through the previous day she had fleeced the clock of minutes, bartering them down. On the journey home, she had found herself thinking of the things she had to do. At Manchester she thought
furniture
from Liam find a place to stay get a job
and as the train eased through the suburbs of Birmingham she thought
explain everything to Andreas
but by Luton she was thinking
leave the country
and that insistent thought – escape/retreat – brought her to the outskirts of London. There she watched the city seep towards her. The train ran through rising districts of concrete and steel. All around was incessant motion; she was moving against the current, heading towards the centre while the commuters were going back to the suburbs and their well-earned homes. She saw banks of glass reflecting the sunset. At King’s Cross the crowds moved beneath a giant display. Details changed, platforms were announced; the process was continuous. After she had waited in the tube, dimly aware of her reflection swimming in the darkness, she walked from Ladbroke Grove to the flat. The living room was dark and quiet.

Now she stayed in her room until Jess went out to work. She heard the assertive slam of the door and breathed more easily. When she rose and walked through the flat, she found a note on the table in Jess’s handwriting.
Dear Rosa, Hope
you had a good trip. Let me know if you need any help with
the move. Jess.
That was definitely a reminder, tactful in the
circumstances, but firm enough. The day felt different. She heard a humming in the distance. It was necessary to be resolute. As she sat at the window she tried to think what to do. She crossed her legs and noted the fleeting progress of the street. As she sat there a car was revving up the scale, from gear to gear. A man stubbed his toe and hopped a step. He glanced up, his mouth rounded in a whistle. A woman walked below, holding a bag of shopping. Rosa pushed up the window and stuck her head out to breathe the air. The sky had been tousled in the night and now she saw the ragged folds of the clouds. And the street, this noisy, random street she knew so well.

She went into the bathroom and found it had been cleaned. Purged by Jess. She was an eternal swab, always dousing something, tidying something else. She opened the cabinet – its newly wiped mirror gleaming smartly – where she found a stash of painkillers. She took a couple, bending her head to the tap and scooping water into her mouth. She remembered a few cursory things, and then she remembered she had to get the furniture money from Liam. That was a certain goal, and one she was sure she could achieve. She thought it mattered for reasons beyond the fiscal – though it mattered for reasons entirely related to the fiscal too. She washed her face and blew soap bubbles at the mirror. When the bathroom was steamed over, furred up, she dried herself and walked back into the living room. In a fit of fleeting courage she dialled up Mrs Brazier, that iron bar of a woman. La Braze answered the phone in a strident voice, suggestive of self-love. That made Rosa nervous, and her hands were trembling as she said, ‘This is Rosa Lane. I came for an interview the other day.’

‘Ah yes, Rosa Lane.’ The voice was businesslike.

‘I just wondered if you had made a decision yet. Not wanting to overstep the mark,’ she said.

Fortunately Frau Braze was quick and to the point. She was sorry but she didn’t want Rosa after all. ‘I’m afraid the children
didn’t like you,’ she said. ‘I thought you were fairly suitable.’ But her little darlings, the pashmina-touting infants, hadn’t wanted Rosa. Balanced in the scales, she had been judged unworthy by children!

‘Well, I understand,’ said Rosa. ‘I understand. Of course, it wouldn’t work, if the children didn’t like me. Thanks for letting me know.’ She kept her voice quite firm and relaxed. Just before she hung up she thought of saying, ‘I could try, I could try to make them like me,’ but stopped herself in time.
Please
ask your infant bastards to give me another chance!
she thought, but instead she said, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Brazier. So nice to have met you.’

‘Yah, herum,’ said Brazier.

Then she put the phone down. She was aiming for stoicism as she snagged it on the cradle. And now the children hadn’t liked her. The mini-Brazes had seen straight through her. They knew she didn’t care a hoot about them, couldn’t care less if they lived or died so long as she got money in her hand each month. The profundity of children, she wanted to raise a glass to them, those clever kids! Anyway, they had sniffed her out. The question of money was as pertinent as ever, quite as harsh and pressing, though she had definitely had a go at solving it. She had gone along, ripped her feet to shreds, inhaled a few pints of lung death and sat there talking in a measured way. Now she took her notebook and sat down. The birds were still singing in the silver trees. The trains still shuddered on the tracks. A car stalled on the corner and was answered by a choir of horns. A cacophony of rage. Outside, the denizens of
TEMP
were waiting. Then the car revved up again, revved away, and the horns abated. She had to think more clearly. She had the interest to pay, she had to service her overdraft or watch as everything came crashing down on her. So she wrote a pared down list. Economy, she was thinking. The basics. These small things you can do!

She looked at it admiringly for a moment. It was certainly succinct, expressive mainly of the essentials. She really had to find a place to stay. She phoned Whitchurch and found she wasn’t in her office. Then she tried Jess, who was in a meeting. She was tapping her fingers and then she found she was dialling Andreas’s number. She wasn’t sure what she would say to him if he picked up the phone. Calmly and at a moderato pace, she would unfurl it all.
Nothing sensational. The starting point is
a place to sleep. I have options, of course.
Of course I have
options!
And the rest, the whole rest and nothing but the rest. Much in her approach was foolish, that was plain to her. Andreas was genuinely relaxed.
Of course he is. It’s only you
with your tone of melodrama, trying to sweep the boy into a
farce of your own devising. He doesn’t much mind! Things
should be easy, if you just accept Andreas as a nice kid with a
big heart and a surprisingly consistent way of being. That’s all.
No need for further talk.
Yet she couldn’t stop it. It was absurd to be so reticent, when the man even liked her. But he liked her because he hardly knew her. That was far from the point, she thought. Why would he care, if she was slightly in debt? Everyone was in debt. The entire world was in debt, whole countries, economies, why, the whole thing could collapse tomorrow. If she was lucky, it would. Her debt would be wiped out in an instant. Wishing for a global recession was unkind, hardly fair to those who worked so hard amassing
money. But anything, thought Rosa – a lightning bolt, a fire in the vaults, the banks destroyed. A collective realisation that money was meaningless! It was a blank wall.

She thought all of this, while the phone rang into empty space and then Andreas’s voice said, ‘Hi there, leave me a message. If it’s work then call my agent on –’ She was clandestine and didn’t leave a message. She dialled another number. A few rings, and she had conjured the voice of Kersti, though it was peremptory this morning, rich in reluctance.

‘Yes,’ said Kersti. ‘Yes, Rosa, don’t you know it’s Thursday?’

‘And Thursday is?’

‘The worst day, after Monday. Full of disorganised fools who should have called me earlier in the week.’

‘But I did call you earlier.’

‘Not you, Rosa. I can never complain about you failing to call me.’

‘You sound a bit spun out.’

‘You know, Rosa, it was strange, yesterday the birds were singing, the sky was blue, I felt a great sense of joy and couldn’t work out why. And now I realise, it was because I hadn’t heard the word furniture for the whole day.’

‘I went away for a night,’ said Rosa.

‘Sounds nice,’ said Kersti.

‘Though perhaps you mean undeserved?’

‘I mean I really don’t have time to talk. Yes I’ve phoned Liam. Yes the guy’s busy. Yes he’s getting married tomorrow. He says, and I understand his point, can’t it wait? He appreciates you want to sort it out. But it’s a load of mouldy old furniture. He’s not going to sell it, so you have to come to an arrangement. He thinks a thousand is probably too much. So he says when he’s finished with the wedding chaos he’ll talk to you.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten,’ said Rosa. ‘I’d forgotten the wedding was tomorrow.’ But those words sluiced down the phone, saturated with improbability.

‘OK, Rosa, I’ll call you if there’s anything to say. So you’re not going to the wedding, I assume?’

‘No, not,’ said Rosa.

‘Well, speak to you later.’

‘Sorry. Thanks for everything. Goodbye.’

Rosa put down the phone. Now she was gritting her teeth, feeling a sturdy sense of her impotence. Her moods were shifting from one extreme to another. She had returned with a sense that she must progress somehow, that she had finally plumbed the depths and formed a resolution – desperate, tenuous, but a resolution all the same – to reach, if not the surface, then a point less deep than the depths. But the waves were strong and she couldn’t break the water. She was struggling with this heaviness, weight of water, something was pulling her down even as she struggled.
At the surface you’ll
breathe better.
She stood by the radiator and thought how fine it was to be inside on a day like this, casting a glance at the window which was slurred with rain. Bent trees beyond, a dancing row. Green and grey, the slick sky flooded with clouds. She had failed to have breakfast, so she ate a bowl of cornflakes and drank one more cup of tea. The stuff keeps you happy, she thought as she drank. She rang Liam at work. He wasn’t there. ‘He’s gone to a meeting,’ said a secretary. She was determined and so she left a message asking him to sell the furniture. The secretary said, ‘What?’ and Rosa said, ‘The furniture. F-U-R-N-I-T-U-R-E. Tell him thanks. From Rosa.’ Still she was sounding reasonable, even as she dictated the sentences. She couldn’t quite explain about her cash-flow crisis. It was definitely none of his business, and she hardly thought he would reach into his pockets. Would he? Sudden hope, and then she thought it was impossible. Call up Liam and ask for money! It would never happen. Better call up Grace and – and she wondered – could she? – but that was a poor idea. She had to come up with something much better than that.

So she called her father. She heard the phone ringing through the rooms of his large house, and she imagined him
setting down a piece of work, a Spanish translation or something in the garden, or apologising to his bridge partner and rising from the table.

‘Father,’ she said, when he answered.

‘Rosa, my dear. How are you?’

‘Thanks very much for lunch the other day.’

‘That’s fine. It was good to see you.’

‘I wondered if I could ask something?’

‘Yes, of course. I’m just here with some friends, and we have to go to play tennis now. Will it take long?’

‘I’m not sure. Depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On your response.’

‘I see. Well, now you’ve whetted my appetite, come on, be quick now. Bernard will be round any minute and I have to feed the dog before I go.’

‘How is the dog, Dad?’

‘The dog is very well. Is that what you wanted to ask?’

‘No. You know it isn’t.’ She laughed, but there were days – today one of them – when her father’s jocularity seemed like nerves.
Keep cracking the gags, Dad, that’s just fine. That’ll
steel you nicely against the inevitable.

‘The thing is’ – her father was clearing his throat impatiently and so she said, ‘I wondered’ and cleared her throat back at him. That made her think of their shared genes; she could sense them working away in her reluctance to come clean.

‘Rosa, come along, dear,’ he said, kindly but briskly.

‘OK, Dad. Well,’ she said.

Then there was a pause, while Rosa experienced a brief moment of illumination, a glowing, flushed with dawn colours realisation that there was something else stopping her tongue, something more than native cowardice. Her father was a crumbling column, succumbing to the elements; she wouldn’t rely on him any more.
And finally, at the age of thirty-five,
deep in the forest, profoundly lost in the thicket, you decide
that your father isn’t the man with the answer to the riddle of
the Sphinx or your cash-flow crisis, or any other problem. And
that
, she thought, with a nod to Dr Kamen,
could be a step
forward.
She saw that it wasn’t a question of genes or any such thing, but that coming clean to her father was not part of the process. She had hardly helped him at all, this bereaved and antique father of hers, and this was one thing she could do. She could keep it all quiet, omit to tell him any of it. That was something she could do for him. This made her feel much better, though it hardly helped her. She was uncertain if this was her best conspicuous rationalisation yet, as she said, ‘I just wanted to say how good it was to see you, and how glad I am you are happy with Sarah.’

‘Well, thank you, Rosa.’ He sounded hesitant, as if he suspected something else might be coming. Then she heard a bell in the background. ‘That’s Bernard,’ he said.