Read The Hand That First Held Mine Online
Authors: Maggie O'farrell
Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction
The Hand That First Held Mine (14 page)
Sometimes they went for walks on the Heath in the dusk. Sometimes they went to the cinema. They talked about the films. He lent her books. They talked about the books. He cooked for her, if she was in; if she was out, he left a note for her, saying that supper was in the fridge. She picked up the shoes he left in the sitting room, lined them up in pairs on the shoe rack. She replaced his keys on the hook. She liked to draw on the mirror in the steam of his morning shower, after he’d left for work – abstract lines that flowed to a single centre. She liked coming down in the morning and finding the water in the kettle still warm from his cup of tea. Once, finding herself cold in the late afternoon, she put on the first thing she found – a jumper of his left on the stairs – and returned to work. But she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t make the paint work the way she wanted it to, couldn’t be anything other than what she was: a woman in a room with a brush in her hand. She flung down the brush and stalked to the slanted window and there she discovered she was holding up the jumper sleeve to her nose, breathing in, breathing in. The smell of him filled her face, surrounded her. She yanked the jumper over her head, shocked, and dropped it down the hatch to the floor below. For a week she avoided him, made sure she was out, lived her evenings in cafés, in bars, in galleries. She ate his dinners in the middle of the night, slept until lunchtime, worked in the afternoons. She collected the notes he wrote her, cooking instructions, a request for the gas money, a phone call she’d missed, and shut them inside the pages of her books. She began a series of smaller paintings, all in blacks and reds. Then one day, another note, longer this time, saying he was going to Berlin, to the film festival, had an extra ticket and did she want to come? She went. Berlin was cold, the air filled with sleet, the trams powering through mounds of dirty snow. They ate apple cake in cafés, saw films in the afternoons, went to look at the remains of the Wall. They stayed in a hotel with twin beds and tinted-glass windows that made the sky appear tea-coloured. The bedcovers were nylon and slid off in the night. Elina listened to his breathing as he slept. She peeped at his passport photo while he was in the bathroom. She looked at his empty clothes, crumpled on a chair. They went to the art gallery, more films, some parties where people were drinking frozen vodka that Ted said made his teeth ache; she watched as he chatted to a producer from Canada called Cindy and as they exchanged email addresses. Elina got drunk. Elina fell down. Ted helped her back to the hotel and put her under the bedcovers. He brought her water to drink in the morning. They went to find Potsdam Square and found only a shopping arcade. They ate tortillas that were too greasy, they wrote postcards. She asked Ted who his were to and he told her; he didn’t ask about hers. They saw another film, they ate more apple cake, they went to another party. She listened to his breathing as he slept. Both their bedcovers slid off during the night, into the space between their beds. Elina woke early, the sky a dark tannin brown, to find them there, jumbled together. They went home. Back in her attic room, she propped the black and red paintings against the wall, facing in. She mixed some paint but let it dry on the palette. She shook the notes out of the books into the bin. She lay on her bed, head tipped over the end, smoking, looking out of the skylight. She was smoking in the garden when Ted got back. She heard him come in, heard him move through the house, turning on lights, opening the fridge. After a while, he came out into the garden. He called her very softly, Elina, with a lilt at the end, which made a question of her name. But she didn’t turn round. He said: I didn’t think there was anybody here. He came across the lawn, his bare feet soft in the grass and he picked up the end of her belt – a long, fabric belt it was, connected to her top, that wound round and round her, many times – and he pulled her towards him, hand over hand, like a man hauling himself from deep water.
So they were not always like this. Elina tells herself this as she watches Ted tip out the washing-up water, as she coaxes the baby towards sleep, as she surveys the wreckage of the room.
L
exie doesn’t hear from Innes as soon as she thought she might. At the end of their dinner, he had walked her to Leicester Square Tube station, talking the whole way. He was still talking – about a painting he’d bought once in Rome, about a flat he’d lived in near here, about a book he was reviewing that he thought she ought to read – as he kissed her cheek, the lightest possible kiss, a graze of his mouth on her skin, as he adjusted the scarf about her neck, as she waved goodbye and walked down the steps to the Underground.
exie doesn’t hear from Innes as soon as she thought she might. At the end of their dinner, he had walked her to Leicester Square Tube station, talking the whole way. He was still talking – about a painting he’d bought once in Rome, about a flat he’d lived in near here, about a book he was reviewing that he thought she ought to read – as he kissed her cheek, the lightest possible kiss, a graze of his mouth on her skin, as he adjusted the scarf about her neck, as she waved goodbye and walked down the steps to the Underground.
She works on Monday and Tuesday: going up, going down, going up again, and again, and again. On Wednesday, she accepts a lunch invitation from a man in Accounts. He tells her he is about to leave to work for a company that is buying up the City’s remaining bombsites. They go to a café – an Italian café, and Lexie thinks of Mrs Collins as she orders – to eat cutlets smothered in gravy. The colleague drops gravy from his fork on to his suit and enumerates the different types of bombs used during the war and the particular sorts of damage caused by each. Lexie nods as if interested but she is thinking about the bombsites she has seen around London – blackened craters choked with nettles, terraces with a sudden raw gap, windowless buildings with that sightless, vacant appearance – and she is thinking she wouldn’t go anywhere near them, wouldn’t have anything to do with them.
She works some more. She ferries people from footwear to electrical goods, from millinery to corsetry, from gloves and scarves to the café on the top floor. On Thursday, she gets out Innes’s business card from her bag and looks at it. She puts it into the pocket of her uniform. She touches it, every now and again, between operating the lift’s machinery. At the end of the day, she puts it back. Friday, she refuses another invitation – for a walk in Hyde Park – from the man in Accounts.
At the weekend, she goes to the Tate Gallery; she walks along the river. She goes to the pictures in Hampstead with Hannah. She rearranges the furniture in her room again, polishes her shoes, writes a shopping list. The weather turns humid and heavy, and Lexie sits at her open window, her stockings drying on the ledge, staring up at the sky, struck by how oddly like the sky at home it looks.
At five past six on Monday evening Lexie walks out of the doors of the department store with the accountant and there, parked half on, half off the kerb, is a silver and ice-blue MG. Its owner is leaning against the bonnet, reading a newspaper, cigarette smoke drifting from him like a scarf. He is wearing curious pointed boots with elasticated sides and a turquoise shirt.
Lexie stops. The young accountant is holding her elbow, imploring her to accompany him to a pub in Marble Arch. Innes looks up. His gaze passes over her and across to the accountant. There is a minuscule alteration in his expression. Then he tosses aside the cigarette and, as he comes over the pavement, he is folding the newspaper.
‘Darling,’ Innes says, putting his arm around Lexie’s waist and kissing her full on the mouth. ‘I brought the car. Shall we go?’ He opens the passenger door of the MG and Lexie, stupefied by the kiss, by how fast events seem to be moving, by his extraordinary shirt, gets in. ‘Goodbye.’ Innes waves to the accountant as he slides himself in behind the wheel. ‘So nice to have met you.’
Lexie is determined not to speak first. How dare this man shoe-horn her into his car? How dare he disappear for more than a week and then kiss her on the mouth?
‘Who’s the troll?’ Innes murmurs, as they screech away from the kerb.
‘The troll?’
Innes jerks his head towards the pavement. ‘Your friend in flannel.’
‘He . . . I . . .’ She tries to think what it is she wants to say. ‘He’s not a troll,’ is what comes out, rather haughtily. ‘He’s actually a very interesting man. He’s going to buy up as many bombed-out sites as he can—’
‘Oh, a businessman.’ Innes lets out a long, loud laugh. ‘I might have guessed. The classic mistake for someone in your position.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lexie shouts, furious in an instant. ‘What mistake? And what do you mean, my position?’
‘A young girl just arrived in the big city. Dazzled by the cut and thrust of the business world.’ He shakes his head as they turn on to Charing Cross Road. ‘It happens every time. You know,’ he says, and reaches over to take her hand, ‘I have every right to be offended.’
‘Why?’
‘I turn my back for five minutes and you start running about with property speculators. I mean, what about our—’
‘Five minutes?’ She snatches her hand away. She is shouting again. She would like to stop but she seems to be unable to speak in a normal way. ‘It’s been more than a week. And, anyway, you have no right at—’
But Innes is smiling to himself, rubbing his hand over his chin. ‘Ah, you missed me, did you?’
‘I certainly did not. Not at all. And if you think—’ She stops. The car has swung into a narrow street with darkened windows and dim signs above the doors. ‘Where are we going?’
‘A jazz club, I thought. But not until later. I need to go back to the office for a bit first.’ For the first time, he looks faintly anxious. ‘Do you mind? I can’t walk out on my staff on distribution day, you see. You can sit and read a book, if you like, until I’ve finished. It shouldn’t take long. There are plenty of books about, unless of course you have one of your own on you. It’s not much of an offer, I know, but I did want to be sure of catching you.’
Lexie twists a finger of her glove. She looks out at the wet streets of Soho, at the lights from the rooms above as they glide by, at a man on a bicycle with a basket piled high with newspapers. She doesn’t want to admit to him how keen she is to see inside the magazine offices, to be in that frenetic room she caught a glimpse of the other day. ‘As you like,’ she says carelessly.
The
Elsewhere
office is quiet when they arrive. For a moment, Lexie thinks no one else is there. But Innes strides through the spaces between the cramped desks and says, ‘How are you getting along?’ to someone, and Lexie moves forward to see three people – a man and two women – crouched on the floor, surrounded by piles of magazines and envelopes. She watches as Innes kneels down among them, reaches for a magazine, stuffs it into an envelope and tosses it on to a pile.
Elsewhere
office is quiet when they arrive. For a moment, Lexie thinks no one else is there. But Innes strides through the spaces between the cramped desks and says, ‘How are you getting along?’ to someone, and Lexie moves forward to see three people – a man and two women – crouched on the floor, surrounded by piles of magazines and envelopes. She watches as Innes kneels down among them, reaches for a magazine, stuffs it into an envelope and tosses it on to a pile.
‘Innes, for God’s sake!’ one of the women cries, raising her hands to her hair, rather too dramatically Lexie feels.
‘Over here,’ the man says, tapping a different pile. ‘The finished ones go here. Daphne’s got the list. She’s got the best handwriting. We did a test and hers was by far the most legible.’
Innes puts another copy of the magazine into an envelope and tosses it towards the woman with her back to Lexie.
‘Can I help?’ Lexie says.
All heads turn to look at her. Daphne, the woman with the list, takes the pen from her mouth.
‘Everyone, this is Lexie,’ Innes says, gesturing towards her. ‘Lexie, this is everyone.’
Lexie raises her hand in a wave. ‘Hello, everyone.’
There is a short pause. The man clears his throat; the woman glances at Daphne, then away. Lexie straightens her lift-attendant jacket, pushes the hair off her brow.
‘Come and sit here.’ Innes pats the space on the floor next to him. ‘You can help me stuff envelopes, but only if you want to. Lexie is a slave within the machine of a department store,’ he says to the others. ‘We don’t want to wear her out but we never knowingly refuse assistance, do we?’
Lexie and Innes put the magazines into the envelopes, Daphne addresses them, working her way down her list. The man who introduces himself as Laurence sticks on the stamps. The other woman, Amelia, fetches more copies, more envelopes, makes everyone cups of tea, gets the bottle of ink when Daphne’s pen runs out. Innes tells them a story about a gallery owner he had lunch with the day before and how the man had dyed his hair since Innes last saw him. Laurence asks Lexie about her job and where her digs are. Innes gives them all a description of Lexie’s rooming house, saying it’s like something out of Colette. Laurence and Amelia get into an argument about an exhibition in Paris. Daphne tells them they’re both talking rubbish. It’s one of the few things she says, and Lexie takes the opportunity to give her a covert examination: a petite woman with a head of neat, dark hair, she’s wearing a long, loose, dirndl dress. She turns her head and catches Lexie looking.
When all the envelopes are addressed and all the stamps stuck, Laurence slides them into a big mail sack. He then puts on bicycle clips over his trousers and waves goodbye. Amelia’s boyfriend meets her at the door. Daphne takes a long time to collect her things, pull on her coat, slide a comb through her hair. Lexie and Innes are silent as she does this, Lexie staring at the grimy blue flowers on the carpet. Just as Daphne is about to go out of the door, she turns. ‘By the way, Innes,’ she says, a slight smile on her face, ‘your wife telephoned today.’
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