The Hand That First Held Mine (22 page)
Read The Hand That First Held Mine Online
Authors: Maggie O'farrell
Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction
‘I wonder,’ Ted begins, ‘when he’ll start remembering things.’
She turns to look at him. Ted has his head propped up on his elbow and is gazing at the baby. ‘It varies, doesn’t it?’ she says. ‘Around three or four, I think.’
‘Three or four?’ he murmurs, regarding her with raised brows.
She smiles at him. ‘I’m not talking about you, Mr Amnesiac, I’m talking about normal people with normal brains.’
‘What is a normal brain, Ms Insomniac?’
She ignores him. ‘I remember my brother being born—’
‘How old were you then?’
‘Um . . .’ she has to think ‘. . . two. Two and five months.’
‘Really?’ Ted is geniunely surprised. ‘You remember something from the age of two?’
‘Uh-huh. But it was a big thing. The arrival of a brother. Anyone would remember that.’
He curls a hand around the baby’s foot. ‘Not me.’
‘I’ve read that people with younger siblings have better memories because they’ve been, I don’t know, exercised more. They can pin down their memories more easily.’
‘That’s me stuffed, then.’ He grins, lets go of the baby’s foot and lies back on the bed, his hands behind his head. ‘It’s a perfect excuse for my rubbish memory, though. No siblings.’ Elina looks over at him. She sees the tan lines on his arms, around the wrist where his watch goes, the muscles pushing up from under the skin of his legs, the way the dark hair gathers at the navel, the chest. It’s a hot night and he’s wearing only a pair of shorts. How strange, she thinks, that he is so physically unchanged. When I am unrecognisable.
Ted is speaking again. ‘. . . something about having him, about watching you and him together that means I can suddenly almost see these things. Almost but not quite. I remembered this thing the other day – it’s not much, don’t get excited – but I remembered walking down a path and my hand was being held by someone much taller than me, someone in green shoes, you know those high ones, not stilettos, with a kind of thick sole.’
‘Platform shoes?’
‘Yes. Green ones, with a wooden sole.’
‘Really? What else?’
‘That was it. I just remembered the sensation of having my arm straight up above my head.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ she turns over, reaches out a hand and lays it on his chest; he covers it immediately with both of his own, ‘that your memory is improving. Can it be possible?’
‘Apparently,’ he says. He lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it absently. ‘Miracles do happen.’
O
ne night Lexie was left alone at
Elsewhere
. Innes had disappeared, muttering something about viewing a new triptych in someone’s studio, and Laurence had gone to the Mandrake. Lexie was determined not to leave until she had cut a further two hundred words from a rather verbose piece about George Barker. She gripped a blue pencil between her teeth and bent over the closely typed copy.
ne night Lexie was left alone at
Elsewhere
. Innes had disappeared, muttering something about viewing a new triptych in someone’s studio, and Laurence had gone to the Mandrake. Lexie was determined not to leave until she had cut a further two hundred words from a rather verbose piece about George Barker. She gripped a blue pencil between her teeth and bent over the closely typed copy.
‘The quintessential quality, tone and distinctiveness of Barker’s cadences . . .’ she read. Did it need ‘quality’ and ‘tone’? And ‘distinctiveness’? Didn’t ‘quintessential quality’ mean the same as ‘distinctiveness’? Lexie sighed and bit down on the end of the pencil, tasting lead and wood. She had read this so many times that the piece was losing sense, the words so familiar that none of them meant anything any more. Her pencil end hovered over ‘distinctiveness’ and then ‘quintessential quality’, then back, until she sighed again and finally made her decision. She scored out ‘distinctiveness’, on the grounds that it was an ugly word, made up of—
The door screeched open and Daphne stepped in, shaking rain from her coat and hair. ‘God,’ she was exclaiming, ‘it’s a filthy night out there.’ She looked around. ‘Where is everyone? What happened? Are you here all alone?’
‘Yes,’ Lexie said. She and Daphne regarded each other, the desk between them. Lexie put down her blue pencil, then picked it up again. ‘I’m just finishing this and then I’m going to—’
Daphne came to look over her shoulder. ‘Is that Venables’s book review? His copy’s always a dog’s dinner. I don’t know why Innes keeps using him. He’s cheap, I suppose, but that’s all that can be said for him. Hanging clause.’ Daphne pointed with a bitten-down fingernail at the second paragraph. ‘The word “stanza” twice in one sentence.’ She pointed elsewhere on the page. ‘The lazy bugger. Sometimes I wonder if he even reads them over when he’s finished.’
Daphne drew herself up to sit on Lexie’s desk and Lexie, hotly aware of Daphne’s gaze, began to rearrange the hanging clause.
‘Quite something, though, that you’ve been given that,’ Daphne remarked.
Lexie looked up at her, at her lipsticked mouth, pursed in contemplation, at the green ring encircling a thumb. ‘Do you think?’
Daphne examined a nail, bit it, then examined it again. ‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘If he gives you Venables’s rubbish to resuscitate, he must rate your abilities.’
Lexie yawned, suddenly overcome with fatigue. ‘I don’t know why,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel as though I have any abilities at all.’
Daphne reached out and plucked the pencil from her fingers. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Enough. I think we both need a drink.’
‘I need to finish this,’ Lexie protested, because it was the truth and also because she’d never been out with just Daphne before and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. ‘I’ve still got a hundred and thirty words to cut. I promised Innes I’d—’
‘Never mind Innes. What do you think he’ll be doing with Colquhoun if not downing the best part of a bottle of whisky? Let’s get out of here.’
They tried the French Pub – Daphne’s first choice – but it was so full that people had spilled out on to the pavement. ‘It’ll take years to get served,’ Daphne muttered, as they surveyed the scene from the opposite pavement. They considered the Mandrake, but rejected the idea. At the door of the Colony Room, Muriel Belcher stopped them with a glare. ‘Members only, I’m afraid,’ she rasped.
Daphne removed the cigarette from her mouth. ‘Ah, go on, Muriel, just this once.’
‘You two donnas don’t, as I recall, have the honour of membership here.’
‘Please,’ Lexie begged, ‘it’s late. Everywhere’s packed. We won’t stay long. We’ll be on our best behaviour, we promise. We’ll buy you a drink.’
‘Where’s Miss Kent tonight?’
‘Off with Colquhoun,’ Daphne said.
Muriel raised an eyebrow and looked at Lexie. ‘I see. Going over to the other side, is she?’
‘Um,’ Lexie floundered, not entirely following Muriel’s meaning, ‘well . . .’
Daphne came to her aid. ‘That’s about as likely as the earth becoming flat,’ she interjected.
‘Well, you two should know.’ Muriel cackled. ‘You should know.’
‘So can we come in?’ Daphne said. ‘Please?’ She was pushing Lexie forward so that she was almost on top of Muriel. Lexie had to push back so as not to land in the landlady’s lap. ‘She’s trading with a member,’ Daphne said, still shoving Lexie in the ribs; Lexie trod down hard on Daphne’s toe. ‘Couldn’t that count?’
Muriel looked them both up and down. ‘All right, but only this once. Make sure your dilly boy is with you next time.’
‘Dilly boy?’ Lexie whispered, as they stepped through the tables to the bar.
‘She means Innes,’ Daphne whispered back.
The phrase in connection with Innes struck Lexie as particularly funny and she began to giggle. ‘Why does she call him that? And why does she refer to him as “she”?’
‘Hush,’ Daphne gripped her arm, ‘she’ll think you’re laughing at her. And she’ll throw us out.’
Lexie couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Will she?’
‘Dear God,’ Daphne moaned. ‘And you haven’t had anything to drink yet. She calls all men “she”. Have you never noticed?’
‘But why?’
‘She just does,’ Daphne let out impatiently. ‘Now,’ she said, as they reached the bar, ‘what’ll we have? Gin, I think. I’ve got no money at all – how about you?’
They sat at a table near the bar, squashed between a man in a filthy sheepskin coat, two young men, one carrying a beautiful patent-leather handbag over his arm, and the old woman Lexie had seen in here before.
Lexie pushed a gin towards Daphne, stirred her own and said, ‘Bottoms up,’ before downing the lot. The alcohol flooded the back of her throat, making her cough and her eyes water. ‘Ouf,’ she said, spluttering, ‘ah. Shall we have another?’
Daphne eyed her and took a sip of her own drink. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you, Lexie Sinclair?’
Lexie hooked an ice cube out of her glass and dropped it into her mouth. ‘What do you mean?’
Daphne shrugged. ‘You throw yourself into everything.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes.’ She sucked meditatively on her swizzle stick. ‘It’s obvious why you and Innes are . . . you know . . . a success. He’s just the same.’
Lexie crunched down on the ice cube, feeling it splinter between her teeth. She ground it into smaller and smaller pieces. She looked at Daphne, at the green thumb ring, the smooth skin of her brow, her wide mouth as she sipped from her glass. She was presented, for a fleeting moment, with an image of Innes above Daphne in bed; she pictured his hands, his lips touching that skin, that hair, their mouths meeting. Lexie gulped down the particles of ice and took a deep breath. She felt that the time had come to speak, that if she and Daphne were to continue, the thing needed to be said.
‘I’m sorry,’ she began, ‘if, well, I got in the way or . . . or . . . or stepped on your toes. With you and Innes, I mean . . . I never meant for it to—’
‘Oh, please,’ Daphne flicked her wrist, as if waving away a fly, ‘there’s nothing to apologise for. Me and him were . . . Well, it was just a convenient arrangement. Not like you and him. You and him are different, aren’t you? Anyone can see that.’ Daphne grinned at her, as if pleased by the turn in the conversation. ‘He’s a different man since meeting you.’
‘Me too,’ Lexie said. ‘Although, I’m not a man, obviously.’ She was once more struck by uncontrollable giggles. The sight of the Colony Room – the man with the patent handbag in the chair next to her, the old woman rattling her tobacco tin under the nose of the man in the sheepskin coat, the fish doing laps of their murky tank, Muriel shrieking at some hapless member to ‘open up his beadbag’, an artist she vaguely recognised with his arm around the neck of a woman in a tight purple dress – seemed so far from anything her upbringing had led her to expect that all she could do was laugh.
Daphne rolled her eyes. ‘What’s so funny now?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lexie managed to get out, ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I used to live in Devon.’
‘What?’ Daphne stared at her, baffled. ‘What’s Devon got to do with anything?’
‘Nothing!’ Lexie leant over the table. ‘That’s just it!’
Daphne put a cigarette to her mouth and lit it, shaking out the match. ‘You’re a strange girl, Lexie.’ Then she slapped the table. ‘Well, more drink, I think. Deakin,’ she called across the table, to the man in the sheepskin coat, ‘lend us a bob or two, there’s a love. I know you can spare it.’
Deakin turned towards them slowly, his lip curled. ‘Fuck off,’ he drawled. ‘Buy your own.’
The
Elsewhere
offices are currently a café. Or a bar. It’s uncertain which. It says ‘The Lagoon Café Bar’ above the door so you can take your pick. The lack of punctuation in that sign would have bothered Innes. It should be ‘Café/Bar’, he would have insisted, or ‘Café, Bar’, or at least ‘Café-Bar’, if you’re using the term in its compound sense.
Elsewhere
offices are currently a café. Or a bar. It’s uncertain which. It says ‘The Lagoon Café Bar’ above the door so you can take your pick. The lack of punctuation in that sign would have bothered Innes. It should be ‘Café/Bar’, he would have insisted, or ‘Café, Bar’, or at least ‘Café-Bar’, if you’re using the term in its compound sense.
Anyway, it’s the sort of place with a planed wooden floor, low lighting, dark blue walls, a candle on every table, sofas at the back. It has books and magazines scattered about, one of which is
London Lights
, ironically.
London Lights
is what
Elsewhere
is now called. A terrible name change. But the people who bought
Elsewhere
in the early sixties thought the original name ‘too heavy’. It’s unrecognisable as the magazine of Innes’s day, of course. Four times the length, stuffed with adverts, filled with serried lines of listings, interviews with television stars disclosing run-of-the-mill secrets. The arts reviews, such as they are, are given very little space. Only the other week, a National Theatre production of
Medea
was dispensed with in a hundred words.
London Lights
, ironically.
London Lights
is what
Elsewhere
is now called. A terrible name change. But the people who bought
Elsewhere
in the early sixties thought the original name ‘too heavy’. It’s unrecognisable as the magazine of Innes’s day, of course. Four times the length, stuffed with adverts, filled with serried lines of listings, interviews with television stars disclosing run-of-the-mill secrets. The arts reviews, such as they are, are given very little space. Only the other week, a National Theatre production of
Medea
was dispensed with in a hundred words.
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