Lying Together (17 page)

I'm a bit drunk myself when I come home. I admit it. And it's a bit later than I intended, too. Denise is back. The light's blazing from the bedroom.

She's lying fully dressed on top of the duvet, shoes halfway across the room. She's staring up at the ceiling. She looks particularly small and thin.

I drape myself casually in the doorway: ‘Had a good time?'

‘Thank you. You have too, I see.'

Not-so-silent sarcasm from the little lady. But I let it pass. ‘Only so-so, as matterafact. Got stuck with Nick. Impossible to get away.'

She stares at the ceiling. ‘It's his wife I feel sorry for.'

‘Naturally.'

She turns her head to look at me. ‘What do you mean –
naturally
?'

‘Because – bless her – she's painting her fingernails to the bone to keep a decent home for him, and he's a soak, a lush, an alky. Nuff said.'

She sits up, gives me one of her stares, the sort where she tries to work out if I'm being funny. She can't decide. She lies back. ‘Some people feel sorry for
me
.'

I suppose she's been on about the baby thing again, drumming up some sympathy from the Sisterhood. You'd think she'd let it rest. ‘Never mind, petal. Take no notice.'

She seems to be expecting something more. I smile, try: ‘Just forget about 'em. Don't know what they're talking about. You're okay, Denise, you're okay.'

‘I know I'm okay. It's not me that's the problem.'

‘Oh?' I'm not really following her now. I can see she's upset, though. I need to take it carefully. It's easy to make a mistake in situations like these. Delicate situations. Delicate – things. My head feels blurry.

‘You know what I mean. Please don't pretend.' There's a childish wobble in her voice that reminds me of how she used to be. When she used to tell me about her dad and all the quarrels and how she couldn't bear being at home. And I would listen to her. And put my arm around her. And protect her. I want to protect her now, to love her. She's rolled away from me, now. I can see her dress is undone. The long zip is open all the way down her back. I can see the whiteness of her bra, the top of her pants.

‘Denise. Sweetheart –' I try to move forward, but the room has become suddenly treacherous. I have to hold on to the dressing table. The bottles and jars rattle. My fingers are sweaty on the kidney-shaped glass that covers the surface.

Her back's still turned. Her voice comes out flat. ‘Gill's right. Every bit of my life's been ruined by drink.'

‘Oh, bloody brilliant. As if you needed telling. Didn't you say she's a bit slow off the mark with her amazing insight?'

But I don't understand this ‘
every bit
of my life' angle. After all, it's in the past. Denise is over all that now. Well over. Last time she even saw her father was at our wedding – when he'd grabbed at every passing sleeve to say how ‘bloody, bloody beautiful' she was, before falling under the bar stool for the duration. She hasn't spoken to him since, thank God. And Denise, bless her,
never
drinks, except for silly little things like shandy. Or Babycham. So Gill's just making trouble.

I start towards the bed. I want to make her laugh. ‘Never mind, Denise. You'll be all right, petal. Babycham doesn't count.'

But she doesn't laugh. In fact, I think she might be crying. The sound's muffled by the pillow but the bed's shaking. Her shoulders are shaking too. She's looking tiny and childlike.

I want to hug her, make it better. The bed looks a long way off but I think I can make it. Once I've got her in my arms it'll be all right. ‘Never mind,' I say. ‘You don't need to worry.'

‘You don't understand.' Her voice is thick; she's definitely crying. All this talk has brought it all back. I'll have to speak to Gill, tell her to lay off. Explain that Denise is very vulnerable where drink's concerned. And she gets things all mixed up. Like now. She's murmuring, ‘It's not
me
I'm worried about.'

‘Well, who else then, sweetheart? It's not as if we had any –' I hear the quick hiss of indrawn breath. Bit of a mistake to bring that up, specially this time of night. But it's too late. I see her shoulders tense.

She turns on me. ‘Between you and my dad, it's a good thing we
haven't
got any kids.'

I stare at her. She has got it so wrong. ‘Look, I may overdo it sometimes – but I'm not an alcoholic, for God's sake!'

‘Nobody ever is.' Her mascara is smudged, streaked down her cheeks. Her panda eyes look ridiculous with her blond hair. ‘How many have you had tonight, for example?'

I can see where she is going wrong. Tonight wasn't typical. Not typical at all. That's where she's making her mistake. She just can't compare me with her father. There's a world of difference; she needs to get that straight. I tell her: ‘Not all that many.'

She continues looking at me, so I give in a bit. ‘Well, perhaps a few more than usual. You know what Nick's like. Won't take no for an answer.'

‘Shorts, I suppose?'

‘A coupla whiskies. So what? Nick was paying. You know what he's like.'

‘I know what
you're
like.' The same old record. She turns away again, wipes her eyes on the duvet cover, leaving black smudges on the pink candy stripes. ‘They all know.'

This is a new one, a new development. ‘All who?'

She doesn't answer.

‘All
who
?' I'm beginning to get annoyed. This is typical of Denise. She starts things, then goes all silent on me.

‘They all feel sorry for me. The way you carry on. Arguing and drinking.'

I get it. The bloody Sisterhood. They've got their knives out, as per usual. Nick, me, any poor bloke in their sight'll cop it. Oh yes. I don't know why I let her go out with them. Poisonous bitches, the lot of them.

‘What do
they
know about it then? Unless a certain little birdie has been flitting around saying a whole lot of things she shouldn't?'

She laughs. Her lipstick is all smeared, like jam against the pale pastry of her face. ‘Lies! That's a good one. The girls don't need me to tell them anything about you. They can see it for themselves. You're a drunk.
A self-righteous, self-pitying, and depressive drunk
– that's what Gill said.'

I see Gill saying it. They're just her kind of words. And I see the rest of them, heads together, mouths opening and shutting like some bloody chorus. I'm enraged. I'm incandescent: ‘That's nice. That's bloody nice. So they think they know me, do they? Think they know what makes me tick? I'd like to have them here. I'd wipe the smile off their bloody faces. Who do they think they are, bloody Gill and Co., some kind of bloody psychol-ologists?' I have difficulty getting the word out.

Denise laughs again. ‘There you are! Can't even talk properly!'

She lies there on my bed. In the house I pay for. In the dress I bought her. Laughing. She has no right to laugh. A skinny, panda-eyed woman who can't cook, can't have babies, won't have sex. What kind of woman is that? She's making a fool of me, I can see that now. It's gone on too long. Far too long.

I lurch towards her, tripping over her shoes, her stupid high heels catching on the shagpile. I kick them out of the way. She sees me coming and starts to scramble off the bed on the other side, dragging the duvet with her. But I'm there already. I grab her by the wrist and pull her back on the bed. She's light, like a doll, like a dummy. Her dress is coming off. She's starting to scream.

Afterwards, I'm sorry. I tell her that. I put her back on the pillow, wipe her eyes, stroke her hair. I love her really. I tell her that too, and she seems to be listening. Her eyes are swollen, but she seems to be looking at me. I keep telling her I just had one too many. I keep telling her it won't happen again.

She doesn't move but I think she understands. I think she's smiling.

ROOM FOR MANOEUVRE

I
t was a single room – a servant's room – up on the eighth floor in an unfashionable quarter. It was a very small room and very plain. I hated it. But Paris was expensive and it was all I could afford.

When I'd moved in I'd had plans for redecorating. Nobody, I thought, could live in so hideous a room for long. High cold light came in from a high cold window. A large ornate wardrobe gave a semblance of style, but it had doors that refused to stay shut. The rest of the furniture was cheap and ugly – a narrow bed, a trestle table, a wooden chair, a cramped miniature cooker. Opposite the wardrobe, over the mantelpiece, was a small mirror. It was badly cracked, as if a former tenant, driven to despair, had savagely attacked it. The world it now reflected was jagged and prismatic and the face that looked back at me was disjointed and crazy. That object at least I felt belonged to me.

The facilities of the room were as limited as the furnishings. There was no basin, no tap. All water had to be collected in a tall enamel jug from the communal sink on the landing. The management had, however, provided me with a portable bidet so difficult to conceal that I gave up any pretence of doing so, using it as a prop to keep the wardrobe doors closed. But it was rather too light for the purpose, and at regular intervals it would crash to the floor as the doors returned to their preferred position obstructing the middle of the room.

* * *

When I'd got on the boat train at Waterloo two months before, I'd still been in the artificial high spirits which had buoyed me up since walking out of Gerald's life. I was exuberant. I'd freed myself of two whole years of subjugation, of moulding all my thoughts and actions around one man's desires and preferences. London was Gerald's city: but Paris was mine. It was where I'd been happiest and where I'd first led an independent life. It was the obvious place to go. And there had been one of those moments of serendipity when it feels that Fate is on your side. A bursary had become available from the Photographic Society, and I'd got it with hardly any effort. I'd never done such a brilliant interview; never been so assertive, so confident. I'd convinced them that, given a chance to spend six months wandering the lesser-known streets of Paris, I would bring home a portfolio of pictures to rival Cartier-Bresson.

But all that manic energy had broken down once I'd arrived. I realized too late that it was one thing to be wretched; it was quite another to be wretched in a foreign city without friends. I lost my briefly acquired nerve and drifted into isolation – or what passed for isolation, because Gerald was always in my thoughts. I kept wondering if I could have acted differently if there had been another way out. I even asked myself if I'd been fair to him; if I had behaved unreasonably – high-handedly even – in walking out the way I did and not giving him another chance. I was in the right, I told myself. But every night I lay awake until the small hours, re-enacting that final disruptive scene, trying to give it a more satisfactory ending.

I'd been in the flat when Gerald had come back from work. It was only three-thirty, and although he finished early from time to time, the moment I saw him I sensed that something serious was wrong. His skin was puffy and his eyes were too bright. I knew the signs of heavy drinking in Gerald by then, though they were not easy to detect. To anyone else he would have simply seemed a self-possessed man with more than his fair share of energy and vigour. He threw down his keys and stood for a moment in the middle of the room, giving me a long look. Long looks in the afternoon usually meant sex, but not this time. This time he seemed almost stunned. ‘Oh, Jenny,' he said, shaking his head sadly, tears starting to his eyes. ‘Something's happened. I can't really believe I've made such a fool of myself. But I want you to know – and believe – that I still love you.'

‘Well, that's good.' I said, trying to sound light-hearted. I'd never known him to be maudlin before. He always held his drink remarkably well.

He came forward and almost fell on me. I could smell his sweet winey breath, the aftermath of a rich meal. ‘You have to forgive me,' he muttered.

‘For what?' I laughed, trying to fend him off. I felt embarrassed. But underneath my embarrassment was a cold, lurching fear. Gerald never admitted guilt for anything, and certainly never asked for forgiveness. Things didn't trouble him the way they troubled other people. He only acknowledged problems in so far as they offered an opportunity for solutions, and he never voiced regrets. (
What's the point?
he'd say.) So for him to be even the slightest bit emotional was unusual. And it couldn't all be down to drink.

Eventually he let me go and fell back on the sofa, sinking his face in his hands in a gesture that seemed too theatrical to be sincere. He gave a long sigh and paused, as if expecting me to say something. Something soothing, no doubt, something that would make him feel better. But I was at a loss, my mind spooling out wildly like a broken film. I could only think that he'd been found out in some kind of fraud; something the gutter press would latch on to, something that would mean the end of his career. I discounted as a matter of course that it might be a love affair. After all, I knew Gerald wasn't faithful, and he knew I knew. Although we never spoke of it, on certain days I could tell that he'd taken another woman to bed because of his heightened animation and effulgent vivacity. I never made even an oblique comment. As long as he came back to me I decided I wouldn't stir up trouble. Gerald hated women who nagged and fussed.

‘Forgive you for what?' I said again. He rubbed his hair with his hands and in bits and pieces began to bluster his way through the explanation. I stood like stone as the story came out. It seemed he had ‘somehow or other' got engaged to be married. That very lunchtime, in fact, in a restaurant in Soho. To a woman called Sarah Latimer whom he had been meeting on and off at ‘various events' for the last six months. She'd taken quite a shine to him, he didn't know why. In fact, she had called the shots and more or less made the proposal herself. She was a nice girl. A very nice girl, so that Gerald had been taken aback. Caught off-balance. Made to feel sorry for her. Agreed to it in a kind of whirl without thinking of the consequences.

I stood in front of him, astounded. ‘Jenny darling –' He raised his big puppy eyes to me. ‘I didn't mean it to happen this way – well,
any
way, in fact. But she's very sweet, and I can't get out of this without a hell of a lot of bother. Damaging bother. And it needn't be that way. If you stick with me, I'll make it up to you. Because you're the only one who matters to me. Sarah will help me get on, of course. She's been brought up to this sort of life and can only do me good, but that will help you too.' He paused. ‘Look, I know it's not ideal, but we could make this thing work. It could be great for both of us …'

I could see it all – Gerald weekending in the country with Sarah, weekdaying in Whitehall with other up-and-coming men, and popping back to see me about bedtime. I was enraged. How dare he propose such a shabby second-rate relationship for both us women? I told him he was contemptible. He winced: ‘You're right. I don't deserve you – either of you.' And then he threw himself back on his plump silk cushions in a gesture so tragic that it almost made me laugh. He had nerve, Gerald. He really thought he'd get away with it.

But he didn't. I packed and left him the same day. All my friends said I was doing the right thing, cheered me on, patted me on the back, gave me tea and sympathy and lots of vodka:
The cheek of him,
they said.
You're far better off on your own
.
He was just holding you back. You can follow your own career now.
But I was used to Gerald, to his expansive nature, to his ability to make decisions, to take me places, and to make me laugh. I was miserable without him. And Paris and that wretched room was making everything worse. I had hardly spoken to anyone since I'd arrived. Some days I'd go and sift through the archives in the library, or shut myself up in one of the Academy darkrooms, passing only the time of day with the curators or caretakers, asking brief questions as to where I might find fixing solutions or developing trays. Most days, however, I walked about on my own, trying to collect material for my projected exhibition back in London. In spite of my big talk about following in the footsteps of Cartier-Bresson, I felt inhibited by the Master as I wandered the very streets he had wandered. I'd hoped to see French working life from an outsider's point of view, but I found myself photographing the same old clichés of Parisian life as I sat on park benches in the Tuileries watching children at play in sandpits, or sailing boats in the
grand basin
across the river, supervised by foreign au pairs. And everywhere I looked there were promenading lovers. I photographed waiters in pavement cafés in the Latin Quarter, street cleaners in Porte de la Villette, and streetwalkers in Pigalle. But everything seemed hackneyed. My eye and hand felt dull. I was wandering about like a ghost, covering a great deal of ground but not making much headway. Each night I would return, jaded, to the dreadful room.

I hated it every time I opened the door. It was so awful it was not even worth decorating. I took to flicking through the pages of
Le Figaro
to see what other rooms might be to let, but all the ads were for two-room apartments and always too expensive. There was a crisis among the
immobiliers
I was told. Rents in Paris were sky-high, especially if you wanted to live in the central arrondissements. So I resigned myself to sticking it out. It was only for another four months after all, and I was away most of the day. I'd taken to eating at a little café on the corner – almost as cheap as cooking my own, and a good deal better. And I'd found somewhere to wash – a hall of residence for Catholic students. They didn't seem to mind that I was not, strictly speaking, a student or indeed a Catholic. They were happy to take my one franc fifty for the use of their showers and laundry room. I could thus avoid using the unspeakable encrusted lavatory on the eighth floor, which could only be opened by the insertion of a portable doorknob into the spindle-hole, and which, once entered, gave off a smell that made the gorge rise. I had only used it once and couldn't help wondering how the other tenants managed to cope with it every day. Mademoiselle Regnier, for example. She had the room opposite mine, a single servant's box room (as they all were on the eighth floor), and she was old and frail. I'd sometimes see her in the dim corridor, painfully dragging the enamel jug to and from the tap. I'd never spoken to her. She avoided my glance. I only knew her name by the faded white card pinned to the frame of her door by a rusty drawing pin.
Mademoiselle Regnier,
it said in full.
Sonnez fort S.V.P.

The sad but assertive singularity of her title made me curious about her, as did the odd hours she kept. Sometimes if I was awake at night, I heard her emerging from her room, breathing heavily, walking slowly down the creaking stairs. Once, coming home in the early hours, I'd seen her emerge from the shadows of the entrance arch and set off into the dark street. Sometimes her solitude reinforced mine, and I saw myself foreshadowed in her existence. I wanted to know more about her.

This curiosity was quickened when I had a conversation with Cherbal. He was the unofficial caretaker of the flats. There was no concierge – the apartments were too lowly for that – but Cherbal, who was a fruit porter, undertook the general maintenance of the building. Every morning he hosed down the courtyard and once a week he saw to the collection of the bins. He was a big, muscular man with flashing white teeth and the air of a circus performer. He lashed the water from his hose around the walls and windows of the courtyard like a lion tamer. Whenever he saw me coming, he would pretend to direct the hose at me, then turn instead to flush out some rotten cabbage leaf from a corner.
Passez! Passez, Mademoiselle
! he would shout urgently, as if his ringmaster skills would soon fail and the wild water hose get the better of him.

However, one day he'd stopped me in the courtyard for more protracted conversation. He wanted to know if I had the key to the top-floor lavatory. It was important to keep it locked, he said, so it would not be rendered unfit by unauthorized users. A propos of this I expressed sympathy with poor little Mademoiselle Regnier, so old, and with so many stairs to climb. Cherbal shook his head and lifted an admonitory finger. ‘Keep away from that woman,' he warned me, his eyes fierce. I expressed surprise. She seemed such a sweet little lady, I said. But Cherbal repeated the head-shaking and the finger-wagging. ‘
Méfiezvous, Mademoiselle
,' he reiterated. ‘
Méfiez-vous de cette femme.
'

I decided there was something unstable about Cherbal's flashing eyes and flashing teeth and general air of performance, and that I would make my own mind up about Mademoiselle Regnier. But moments later she became of marginal interest to me when I unlocked my letterbox and found a letter from Gerald. I'd taken great care to pass on my address to all the friends whom I'd thought Gerald might approach for information. I'd been quite depressed when I'd heard nothing. Two years of being a mere appendage to Gerald had made me angry. But not angry enough to do without him entirely.

His letter was humorous, decisive and sure of itself. A wave of physical desire came over me as I stood reading the confident, well-formed handwriting. I leant up against the wall, my hands shaking. Gerald made no mention of Sarah or the engagement. He simply said he had an appointment in Paris the following Saturday and would like to come and see me in the afternoon
– ‘chez toi
unless you tell me otherwise'.

I decided I would not reply. I wanted Gerald to think that the strong and self-confident woman who had rejected his shoddy compromises and walked out of his flat to make a life for herself was still strong and self-confident; that she was too absorbed in her work, too busy (or too disdainful) to reply. I knew he'd come all the same. And I would be ready for him.