Читать книгу Another Country - Anjali Joseph - Страница 11

Chapter 7

Rushing up the stairs of the school, she bumped into the wall; she tried, as she climbed, to keep her still-damp hair out of her eyes, also to open her bag and examine its contents. Catastrophically, there wasn’t time to take out and replace each item. She was late, and it wasn’t even her class.

‘Oh!’

She collided with something warm and felty. An arm came out towards her.

Leela, murderous but reflexively polite in this other language, muttered, ‘Sorry! Sorry!’

‘Ça va, mademoiselle?’ The voice was deep, annoyingly mellifluous. She half looked up, as far as his chest, grabbed at her Carte Orange. It fell to the linoleum-covered step; she began to dive after it. The black-clad arm got there first. She noticed the hand: brownish, smooth-skinned, nails neatly shaped. She took a step back.

‘Here.’ The stranger held out the grey plastic case. Leela accepted it, forced herself to look at his face – all she wanted, ever, eternally, and in this specific moment, was to slide round the corner, hair over her face, all her possessions more or less attached to her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. The man smiled. He was in early middle age, dark-skinned, dark-haired, brooding, looked like he’d put his eyeliner on in a hurry.

‘Excuse me,’ Leela said. She smiled, skirted him, and continued to bolt up the stairs to the third floor. She scooted past the staff room; the door was ajar and she feared Mme Sarraute, the coordinator of foreign teachers, would be standing there to watch her arrive late. As she reached room 3.14, she shoved the Carte Orange back into her bag, rooted around for the texts, and opened the door.

Four adults in their thirties and forties looked at her, tolerant but surprised. Leela began to explain herself, first in French, then, recalling the rules, in English. ‘I know you’re expecting Miss Molloy, but she’s had to go to England for a few days. I’m taking her classes this week. I wonder if you’d mind introducing yourselves? My name’s Leela Ghosh –’ she pronounced it correctly, but they wouldn’t ‘– and I also teach here –’ pause for smile ‘– so, shall we begin?’ She turned to the man, suited, crumpled looking, on the left of the semi-circle. The students, or clients as the school preferred to call them, sat on high chairs with a flip-out mini desk. The arrangement made them look like disgruntled toddlers.

‘What’s your name?’ She produced an encouraging smile.

‘’Ello, I am Martin,’ the man in the crumpled suit said. He smiled, first at Leela, then, a little more slyly, at the rest of the group. He pronounced his name as though it were English.

‘Martin.’ Leela smiled. ‘And you?’

The stern looking woman next to him smiled. Leela saw an anxious high achiever. ‘I am Catherine.’

‘Hello Catherine. And –’

The door opened and the man from the stairs came in. He smiled silkily. ‘Excuse me, I am late,’ he said. He made his way to the empty seat near the door, took off his coat, and sat down with an air of contentment.

‘Leela. Have another drink.’ The whisky, golden and vaguely rank smelling, was already gurgling into her glass. ‘It sounds like you need it.’

She smiled, and looked at Patrick, pouring the drink, and Simon, next to him.

‘Totally,’ Stella said. ‘So he just followed you onto the bus? What a weirdo.’

‘I didn’t even realise, till he lurched towards me. I was trying to stamp my ticket, because my Carte Orange ran out this morning. I turned around, and he was leering at me and saying Mademoiselle. The bus braked, and I nearly fell over; he tried to steady me, but I pulled away, and I got off right then, when it stopped …’ She paused and looked around. She was aware of three people paying her attention: it made her stumble. She giggled. ‘But he got off after me and stopped me in this really theatrical way, ‘Mademoiselle, je vous prie!’ and peered at me. You know, one of those people who bring their face really close to yours? He had a very deep voice and he said, “Did my gaze disturb you?”’

‘Oh Jesus,’ said Stella. Leela was aware of Patrick smiling at Stella, though he was still listening.

‘Yeah, it was really cheesy.’

Simon chuckled. ‘Then what did he do?’

‘He said if I didn’t go for coffee with him he’d feel terrible, and he had something very important to ask me, as one human being to another, and would I please just drink a cup of coffee with him for a quarter of an hour. And to be honest I didn’t want to walk home and worry about him following me, because we were so close to my house by then, so I did.’ She closed her eyes for a second. What she hadn’t been able to recount, and felt queasy admitting even to herself, given the loathsomeness of Guillaume, for that was his name – was that when his hand had slid over hers in the bus, her first sensation, and perhaps the thing that had made her lurch, had been of its warmth and heterogeneity – the fact of being touched by someone else, who wanted to evoke something in her body. It had not been unpleasant. And yet, of course, she hadn’t wanted it, a conflict that brought about inner revolt, and made her jump off the bus as it stopped.

‘So what did he want?’

Leela sighed. ‘I think he’s just lonely. And weird. He wanted to talk about his wife, who’s leaving him. He can’t see his son and daughter, he’s upset about that, naturally. He tried to persuade me to go for a drink with him.’

‘I hope you didn’t say yes?’ Stella said.

‘No, ugh, no. I told him it’s against the rules of the school. He tried to argue and stuff but I said I had to go. I didn’t want to walk towards my house, just in case. So I came back this way, and that’s when –’ Leela indicated Patrick ‘– I phoned. I hope I’m not intruding.’

‘Leela, not at all. It sounds like a horrible day.’ Patrick was as warm as ever, in as generalised a way; Stella too, in a way that both comforted and desolated Leela, for Stella sat close to Patrick and an unspoken complicity was between them. She was half aware also of Simon, watching her steadily and with some amusement. She looked at Patrick’s hands on the table, square, reddish (‘I have Irish farmer’s hands,’ he would declare) and at Simon’s, curled around his glass. She couldn’t read his expression; it was neither sympathetic nor indifferent, and this drew her to him.

‘Leela, we were thinking of going out for a drink when you called. How does that sound?’

‘Uh, yeah, sure.’

‘We were thinking of going down the road to the Lizard Lounge.’

‘Okay,’ Leela said. She’d passed the bar, and marked it as too fashionable for her. But they walked down in pairs, Stella and Leela ahead, and Patrick and Simon behind, smoking. Leela was aware of Patrick talking and Simon laughing, then responding, and Patrick guffawing. She envied their ease. Stella was being sweet, though. She tucked her hair behind one ear and touched Leela’s arm. ‘I hope you’re not feeling too weirded out by that creep,’ she said. Leela wondered how much to play up the incident. Would it work? Would being wronged or vulnerable endear her to Patrick?

‘It was a bit creepy,’ she said. ‘Especially because it happened near where I live. But I think it’ll be all right.’

‘That sort of thing keeps happening when you first move away,’ Stella was saying as they neared the bar, from which dance music could be heard thumping. ‘I remember when I was in South America –’

They were inside now, looking for a place to sit, and though the bar was dark and the music loud, the atmosphere was essentially civilised. The table was small, and cuboid leather stools were wedged around it. Stella threaded her way in, then Patrick. Leela sat next to Simon, their legs folded like jackknives, knees touching.

‘What are you drinking?’ he asked.

‘I’m not sure. What are you drinking?’

‘A beer.’

‘Is it weird to have a kir after drinking whisky?’

He looked down at her, amused. ‘Not if you want to.’

She asked the waitress for a vodka tonic. Simon and she sat watching her slender back as she walked away.

A song Leela knew came on. She began to hum along indistinctly. Simon grinned. She grinned back. ‘Shit. Shouldn’t sing in public. I may be slightly drunk.’ He laughed, and patted her knee, a brief touch of a warm dry hand. The drinks arrived.

Simon was saying something, and she was distracted, smiling and leaning closer to hear, and also looking across the table where Patrick was partly hidden by Stella. He was laughing. Leela half closed her eyes to hear what Simon was saying. She glanced up to see Patrick looking at the two of them. He smiled at her, a smile so depressing that a hard resolve formed in her.

‘There’s something in your voice – a slight Irish accent,’ she told Simon.

‘Really?’ He looked sceptical. ‘I did live in Dublin for a couple of years, but that was a long time ago.’

‘No, but the way you pronounce some words – something you just said, I can’t place it but it was there. Dublin, how was that? I’d love to live there.’

‘Have you been?’

‘No … I’ve just read lots of books set there.’

‘Joyce?’

‘Joyce, and Beckett, and a couple of more recent things. This writer called Dermot Bolger.’

‘The Journey Home? It’s a great book.’

‘It really is.’ She was carried away with enthusiasm, a quiet part of her noting that the music had faded, and the bar seemed darker, or the lights travelling through space more blurry, slowing on their way to her. But if that’s what he wants, she thought vindictively of Patrick, then decided to forget him. ‘I’ve never met anyone else who’s read it. Such a good book.’

‘It is. And this other book I read when I was there – I suppose a sort of dumbed-down version of Joyce in a way,’ he said. ‘But I had a friend who read a lot and recommended it to me, very funny, The Ginger Man.’

‘I loved it. That scene where he’s trying to leave his wife and he’s wearing her sweater …’

‘And it’s unravelling?’

‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘I read that when he was writing it he went to pubs and cafés with people and wrote down their stories and that’s what he used for the book.’

Simon smiled at her. She smelled something, perhaps his scent – cologne, and under that, a fundamental smell of musk and perspiration, not unpleasant. An excited if uninvolved part of her noted it: You are smelling a new man. Another part, more sceptical, preserved a silence. Meanwhile, she was still talking. ‘… when I was younger, I mostly used to read American writers. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joseph Heller. A bit of Saul Bellow. I loved Salinger.’

‘There’s a perfect age to read all of that,’ Simon was saying. She looked up at his face, skin a little tanned, lines around his eyes and mouth; he had delicate European skin that couldn’t stand the sun. And his hair, sandy and thick, was tangled, a bit dry. His shirt looked unironed. But he was tall, broad-shouldered. She made these observations to herself, and a delight rose up in her: this was a reasonably handsome man, and he appeared to be interested in her. She coaxed herself: isn’t this a good thing?

‘So what were you doing in Dublin?’ she was asking him, but the bar was closing. Or they were leaving. Definitely they were leaving. The bill appeared, and Simon, still talking to her, paid it. They were now outside, where the air was colder. Patrick lit a cigarette. He and his dark woollen jacket made a tall, familiar presence that caused Leela to ache.

Stella came up and patted Patrick’s elbow. ‘You’ll walk me home, won’t you?’ she said.

‘Of course.’ He took a puff of his cigarette and smiled at Simon.

‘I’ll make sure Leela gets home,’ Simon said.

How well they were arranging everything. Leela smiled, unsure whether to feel touched or irritated.

Stella came forward, smiling with genuine warmth. She kissed Leela on both cheeks, and said, ‘Bye. It’s been a horrible day, but it’s over now. Just forget it.’

How does she know? Leela wondered, then remembered her earlier story. Oh yes. ‘Thanks,’ she managed.

Patrick patted her on the shoulder. ‘Bye Leela. Call me, or I’ll call you.’

‘Sure.’

‘Goodnight!’

‘Goodnight!’

‘Goodnight!’

Leela looked back. The figures of Patrick and Stella, seen from behind, were far away, self-contained as though in a painting. A fine drizzle began to fall, giving the air a lovely indeterminacy.

‘Brr!’

Leela smiled. She pulled her thin jacket around her. They carried on walking, away from the others and into the pools of light under streetlamps. And now, nagged a voice inside her, now what will you do? She ignored it.

The pavement glittered with moisture.

Simon put a hand on her shoulder; she tried not to jump. He smiled. ‘What were we talking about, anyway, before we were so rudely thrown out of that bar?’ He released her shoulder, but not before his hand had been there long enough to signal deliberateness. It was a charming gesture, and made her nervous. She took refuge in seriousness.

‘I guess the waiting staff wanted to go home …’

He shrugged. ‘Oh well. It’s not like we didn’t leave in time.’

‘No.’

They walked on. She made an effort. ‘You were telling me about when you lived in Dublin. What were you doing when you were there?’

He smiled. ‘Work, for the company before this one. I do some consultancy, you know. It’s business development essentially. Boring, boring –’ He waved it away. Leela was still examining him; it struck her there was something grave, disciplined about him, perhaps also something adamantine. She scolded herself: there was no need to narrate the experience before it happened. Her feet, in sandals, were cold; she stumbled. Simon put out a hand and caught her elbow. The hand rubbed her back between the shoulder blades, rested on one shoulder. He was good at doing this, she noted – touching in an exploratory fashion that managed to seem merely friendly. Perhaps, argued her brain, it is merely friendly. ‘Dublin,’ he said. The hand cupped her scapula and smoothed it out, let it go, rested warm and innocuous on the muscles aside it. ‘It’s a great city, we had some really good times there.’

‘Where else have you lived?’

The hand smoothed the side of her upper arm.

‘Lisbon for a bit – a long time ago. South America for a while.’

‘Where?’

‘Rio … Here.’ They turned up the rue Vieille du Temple. It was late, a weekday evening, and the bars and cafés whose life bloomed onto the narrow street in the day were shut now, pulled into themselves. The pavements were clear, only lamplight shattering on damp macadam. She followed its Deco starbursts. They passed the café called Les Philosophes, and another place she and Nina had once gone, an odd little bar with sun lamps, where Belgian white beer was served in litre tankards.

‘You’re quiet,’ Simon said. ‘Here, we should take another right. I’ll show you where I live, then you can drop in if you’re passing.’

Up a silent street, where old buildings leaned into the darkened road. They passed massive doors. Simon paused outside one. A traffic sign, a white circle ringed in red, said ACCÈS with a red diagonal crossing it.

Simon wasn’t holding her arm any more. He stood in the street, not far away, his face more than half in shadow, and his voice slightly nervous. ‘Come in for a drink?’ he said. ‘See the flat?’

She hesitated, but the next day was a respite without classes; she always timed a weekly adventure or crisis for this night, and slept half the free day away, as though from nerves, or loneliness. ‘Sure,’ she said.

He grinned, she thought, in the dark, and turned to put in the digicode. The lock clicked, and he pushed one of the great doors. Leela stepped over the threshold.

The stone stairway was cold and damp; the flat was on the second floor, with a burgundy door. Simon used his key, and Leela went in. A dark crowded hallway – a small wooden table, boots near a closet with a half-open door, and, ‘Here,’ said Simon, ‘come into the main room.’

It was very large, with two big sofas, and a white wall of shelving, in which were neatly arranged paperbacks, and various other objects: cigarettes, a road map of the Île-de-France, a glass ashtray, a box of mints, black and grey plastic film canisters, keys, coins, and a scuffed copy of In Cold Blood, splayed open on its front. The room reminded Leela of a larger, airier version of an Oxbridge fellow’s study, and she felt impersonally indulged, welcomed in the way students always were in those rooms – seated on a sofa and given coffee or a drink to sip.

‘Beautiful room,’ she said. She looked up at the high ceiling.

‘Isn’t it great?’ Simon’s hand rested briefly on her shoulder. He walked past, to the coffee table, and removed a mug, piled up a few large books, flicked at a cushion. ‘This room is really why I took the flat. Well, that and the upstairs. Come with me, I’m going to the kitchen to get us a drink.’

He walked out, and Leela followed him, into the hallway and then a small, plant-filled kitchen. ‘The lady whose house it is asked if I’d be willing to look after the plants,’ he said, smiling at Leela. She brushed gingerly past a large spider plant, whose leggy babies, each on a long stalk, were reaching for the floor tiles.

Simon was opening a cupboard. ‘Would you like a drink-drink? A gin and tonic, or a vodka?’

Leela hesitated. He grinned, his hand on the cupboard door. ‘You can have anything you like. Even if it’s non-alcoholic.’

‘Do you – can I have some tea?’

‘Tea?’ His grin was wide, but not without warmth. ‘Sure you can. With milk and sugar? Real tea?’

She nodded. He smiled to himself as he filled up the kettle. ‘A cup of tea.’ While it was boiling, he got out tea bags – Assam, she noted sadly – a jar of sugar, and a tall glass. She watched him move around the kitchen, and, looking at the red melamine counter, scored in places, she felt a fleeting affection for the family life that might have gone on here earlier.

Simon worked methodically, unhurried: he took tonic out of the fridge, and a lime, sliced it, got the ice cubes and so on as he made his drink. Leela watched. She was aware that he didn’t really care whether or not she had been there, and this made her relax and warm to him in a way she would have found difficult to explain.

He took out the tea bag, smiled at her, put in milk, and – which also made her warm to him – two and a half spoons of sugar without comment, stirred it, gave her the mug. He picked up his own glass.

‘Let’s go through to the other room.’

Leela followed him, and he put on a floor lamp near the back sofa and sat down. The room was dim, hospitable. The enormous windows gave onto a damp, dark blue night.

Leela sat on the same sofa, and sipped her tea. It was too hot. She put it down.

‘Just a second.’ Simon got up and went towards the kitchen. He was gone for a little while, and she reached for the heavy art book in front of her, a collection of photographs entitled Doorways. She leafed through it randomly: entrances in what looked like Mexico, some that seemed to be here in Paris, London, she thought …

Simon returned, smoking, carrying another ashtray. He stood looking down at her. ‘Like the book?’

She smiled at him. ‘It’s interesting. Lots of, well, doorways.’

He laughed, and ruffled his hair. It made him look older, and slightly wild. ‘Yeah, it’s always good to have an eye at the exit, isn’t it?’ He put the cigarette in the ashtray, put the ashtray down, eyed Leela with a quick calculating glance that the quiet part of her consciousness noted – but wait and see what happens, urged the rest of her mind – sat down, leaned quickly over and kissed her. He took one shoulder to keep her steady, and she cooperatively kissed him back, noticing that his lips were soft, that he pushed his tongue into her mouth too soon but withdrew it as quickly, that he was good at this, that it wasn’t having any effect on her beyond the most automatic physical arousal, and that he tasted of both cigarettes and mint.

He pulled back, smiled at her, a smile of elation with himself. ‘Stay here tonight?’

Leela, the eternal wanderer with no destination to aim for, said, ‘Okay.’

‘Come and see the bedroom.’ He jumped up, pulled her with him, raised his eyebrows, mocking the moment. She laughed. He came back for his drink. The cigarette had gone out. Leela followed him, turning at the door to look at her abandoned mug of tea.

The staircase was narrow, the carpet plush and thick; she followed Simon up it, looking at his bum and wondering with the usual self-amusement if she was really about to become better acquainted with it. His trousers looked vaguely dad-like, she worried. Atop the stairs was an opening. She stepped into a large attic, with two skylights and pale blue walls. The bed was a white, messy island.

‘It’s a lovely room,’ she said, but Simon was bending to kiss her again, more intent, and his expression – she kept her eyes open, alarmed at herself – was completely serious, admitting of no humour. She felt self-conscious, she wanted to make a joke; she put up her arms to hold his upper arms, and he put a hand up her top, moved aside her bra to rub her nipple, a gesture that made her flinch, or shiver, she wasn’t sure.

When she woke it was early. Cold morning came through the skylights. Simon slept on his back, his breathing audible, like a standing fan. One arm came out of the covers. His hair was rumpled. She felt no desire to touch him, and recollected their long and exhausting feints in bed – the various things he’d done, with which she’d cooperated, increasingly wishing she’d gone home: his putting his fingers roughly into her to feel her wetness, then licking her, something she found intensely embarrassing, and this time, not particularly arousing, and finally sex. She had thought she might come, but hadn’t; had wondered whether to pretend, however that was done, but hadn’t; he had persisted for a long time before finishing. After that he’d tried to touch her, instructing her to move against his hand, but she’d said instead that she was tired, and he had rolled over. How was it possible, when you’d had an apparently urbane, socially competent time earlier, to find yourselves behaving so ineptly when unclothed? She had failed, she supposed; yet, obstinately, she still wanted to be loved.

Confused, parched, and with an incipient headache, she got up from the edge of the bed where she’d lain all night for fear of being caressed in sleep, or the desire that if this happened it should be done deliberately. There were her clothes, strewn about the floor. She picked them up, looked back at Simon, who snuffled and moved the arm that hung off the bed. There was a book on the floor. She moved it to the armchair, then tiptoed down the stairs with her clothes clutched to her. In the beautiful living room, hunched near the bookshelves where she was least visible from the street, she put on her clothes, first her bra, then her pants, wincing at the slight soreness. She looked round the room when dressed, as though to gauge its expression – would she and this place meet again? In the bleached light, the furniture was impassive.

Near the hall table, next to Simon’s desert boots, she found her shoes and pulled them on. She managed to slide back the door bolt, and shut the door behind her. The landing and stairwell were now those of many Parisian buildings. As she walked through the cold interior courtyard, the stone was slimy with dew; black plastic bags gave off overripe odours.

She briefly feared the outer door wouldn’t let her leave, but she found the button to press and slipped into the street. It was raining, and cold. She walked slowly home, reassured by the quotidian misery of the Monoprix, with its fluorescent lights on against the dim day. It was eight o’clock. She bought bread, milk, and coffee. As she crossed the road towards her building, she saw in the alcove of the Crédit Lyonnais the mad old woman, wrapped in her layers of clothing, sitting on the stone ledge. She held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in claw-like fingers. Leela walked towards her, trying not to look, and angry eyes burned into hers. The old woman spat.

In the studio, Leela took a shower, then made coffee. She turned on the television, the lights, the electric heater, and sat on the floor cushion. Late episodes of The Bold and the Beautiful, dubbed into French, were airing, and she watched one, depressed by the huge jaws of the men, their suits, the women’s heels and tans and bouffant hair. The rain became louder, smashing on the thick pane of the single window. Leela imagined floods, people’s cold, wet stockinged feet on the tarmac outside, bus horns, Paris cursing. She didn’t have to go to work. She thought of Simon, when they’d been chatting in the kitchen, saying he kept his car in a garage nearby, that they should take it out and go for a drive in the country one weekend, and she wondered abstractly and yet inquisitively, as a child to whom something has been promised, whether this would happen. Maybe Simon would be her boyfriend? She imagined them doing the things couples did – being seen here and there – and she pictured Patrick’s face when he saw them. But she could see it as nothing other than pleased, if surprised, and she stopped thinking of it and hunched tighter on the floor cushion.

When the programme ended, she went to wash the cup and cafetière, and saw the Chinese student in the window opposite. The air outside was dark and stormy; the light in the toilet was on, and while she washed up she glanced across and thought how cold the little cubicle must be. When the man in the facing window made a gesture of privacy – buttoning up his trousers – he lifted his head and turned, as though drawn to the facing light in her window, and she thought their eyes met for a moment before, embarrassed, even slightly sad, both quickly turned away.