After the Storm (37 page)

Tonight he was sitting as usual on his high stool in the arc of light thrown by the lamp onto the sloping plane of his drawing table. I joined him in there after Billy was asleep because I do love to watch him draw. He is such a perfectionist in his work. I’ve learned not to talk to him while he works. So I sat there correcting proofs, looking up from time to time to watch and admire him. His concentration is so intense that he creates a kind of force field around him that cannot be crossed.

MAY

Kathy is a creature of habit. Every day she arrives at work with a small polystyrene cup of cappuccino. She carries a soft red leather pouch bag worn across her body. I have watched her take out her office keys. The bag has zipped pockets on either side and she keeps all her keys in the left pocket. As soon as she has unlocked her glass-panelled office she lifts her bag over her head and places it on the lower bookshelf at the side of her desk. Then she comes out with her coffee and talks to Aisha, who sits outside her office. They consult the diary and then, usually, Kathy walks over to our section. We are herded together in a group of five desks with our terminals emitting faint radiation over our breasts. She is always friendly in the mornings, chirpy I think is the right word. She asks us how we are getting on and makes encouraging comments.

The more I watch her the more I learn.

Today something had happened to throw her routine. As she came up the stairs she did not have her little white cup with her. She rushed into the ladies toilet. She came out some minutes later. Her trousers were wet and stained. It looked as if she had bled onto them. She walked awkwardly to her office and fumbled to open the door. I walked over to get a better view. I saw Aisha go through to her and close the door behind her. They had an animated conversation for a minute or two, Kathy gesticulating. Then Aisha took off her long black cardigan and gave it to Kathy. She put it on and buttoned it up carefully. She rummaged through her bag, pulled out her wallet and then dropped the bag in its usual place by the side of her desk.

I was walking back to my desk as I heard her say to Aisha, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. Thanks so much, Aish.’

She hurried down the stairs to the exit with barely a nod in our direction.

I knew this was my chance. I walked up to Aisha’s desk, waiting until she was on the phone.

‘I need to borrow the
Who’s Who
.’

‘Sure,’ said Aisha, putting her hand over the receiver. ‘You know where Kathy keeps it?’

I nodded. The
Who’s Who
sits with the other reference books in the bookshelves by the side of her desk. I walked over slowly and bent down to pick up the book. My back shielded my hands from Aisha’s view. As I bent down I reached over to her red bag, unzipped the left pocket, took out the keys, zipped it up again, stood up and slipped her bunch of keys into my jacket pocket. I walked out of her office holding the
Who’s Who
. Aisha was still talking on the phone.

I had very little time. I flipped through the
Who’s Who
for a few minutes. Then I got up and walked down the stairs and out of the building. Our offices are in Primrose Hill. We are close to a parade of shops. I did not want to use the first place I came to, a shoe-repair bar. I walked further down the road to the hardware shop. I waited while an Italian woman spoke at length to the man behind the counter. I could feel the tension mounting in me so I started to do my breathing exercises to keep calm. Finally he turned to me.

I took her keys from my pocket and said, ‘I need a set of these, please. Can you do them straight away?’

He fingered the bunch and said it would take half an hour. I hesitated. She might be back before I had them. I would have to replace them later in the day. I could do it as long as she did not leave for meetings all day, as she sometimes did. And then it came to me. Even if I did not replace the keys it would not matter. She would think she had misplaced them. She had been in a state when she arrived at the office this morning and she would blame herself. I handed the keys to the man, left the shop and crossed the road. I decided to sit on Primrose Hill while I waited.

It was a windy day and the trees surged and dipped. I fastened the buttons on my jacket. My fingers were cold and stiff. A young mother hurried by with a wailing child kicking and struggling in his buggy. The child wanted to get out and arched his back in fury. The mother’s face was tense. The child’s cries reached a crescendo and she looked as if she wanted to slap him. Instead she pushed faster, her face contorted.

An elegant older woman walked by with her dog. The woman was probably in her mid-sixties and dressed all in soft grey. In contrast her dog was a scruffy-looking piebald mongrel and I wondered at her choice. She must be an animal lover. She would have gone to the rescue dogs’ home and asked for the plainest dog, the dog that had suffered the most, the dog that no one else would choose. Certainly the dog looked back at her with adoring eyes, not quite believing his good fortune. I looked at my watch. Give it fifteen minutes more then go back to the shop.

Toiling up the hill to my right, a middle-aged man was pushing his wife in a wheelchair. He stopped at the summit and tucked a tartan blanket more securely over her knees. They talked briefly. Her face was lined but not unhappy. He started on his way again, holding the wheelchair steady against the downward incline of the hill and the suck of the wind.

When I was nine years old my great-aunt Tanya died at the age of forty-seven. She was my grandfather’s younger sister and he adored her. She was a famous singer until she was paralysed by her illness, a muscle-wasting disease. She had been forced to stop performing at the height of her fame. It was a rare genetic disorder. My ancestors had a very high opinion of themselves, of the purity of their bloodline. They rarely married outsiders as no one in their small community was good enough for the Vanheinens. Usually they married their first cousins. And Tanya paid the price for their pride.

She had an exquisite voice and would sing hymns and carols for us at Christmas. When she became weaker she moved into my grandfather’s house and I remember her sitting in her wheelchair in his garden, always with a book on her lap.

My parents decided I should go to her funeral. On the morning of the burial my father came into the breakfast room at my grandfather’s house. He sat down next to me and stroked the hair
back from my face.

‘Heja, my sweet, Tanya was such a special person and Granddad loved her so much. He is very sad and I want you to sit still and be quiet in the church today.’

‘Why did she die?’

‘She’d been ill for many years.’

‘Why didn’t the doctor make her better?’

‘He tried. They all tried. Granddad even arranged for her to go to New York, but they couldn’t help her.’

‘Why not?’

‘Some illnesses can’t be made better, sweetheart.’

‘I liked it when she sang to us.’

My grandfather walked in just then. He bent over and kissed me on my cheek. There were tears caught in the swollen pouches of his lower lids that looked as if they were about to spill over.

‘Yes, my darling, Tanya sang like an angel.’

The funeral frightened me. The coffin was highly polished and set up on a table at the top of the church. I knew that my great-aunt Tanya was lying in there. I remembered an incident with her one summer when we were staying at Grandfather’s house. It was a dazzling day. I was lying on my stomach with my book in the long feathery grasses beyond the vegetable garden. It was so bright. The sunlight was bouncing off the pages and the black print crawled in front of my eyes like a procession of ants. I could smell the life in the earth and hear tiny scratchings and scurryings going on around me. I took my glazed pottery mouse out of my pocket and stroked its curved back. I decided to make a home for my mouse in a cave of the shimmering grasses. I would leave my mouse there overnight. I knew that after I was gone it would uncurl and skitter off through the stalks.

Just then I heard the whisper of wheels on the path that ran down the centre of the vegetable garden. It was Great-Aunt Tanya wheeling her chair towards where I was hidden. Then the wheels stopped at the end of the path, by the strawberry beds, and I heard her crying. I lay flat in the grass, my heart throbbing against the warm earth, thinking, She’s a grown-up; she won’t want me to see her crying, she will see me and be angry. I lay there unmoving as long as I could. Still she cried. Then I had to sit up to breathe deeply and she saw my head bob up above the grasses. She looked startled for a moment. Then she smiled tremulously and beckoned me over to her. I picked up my book and my pottery mouse and walked slowly towards her wheelchair.

She took my free hand in her cool hands that always shook slightly and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, darling Heja. Sometimes tears are good. They make new life grow.’

After the hymns and the speeches four men, including my father, carried Tanya’s coffin on their shoulders out of the church. They walked slowly and stiffly down the aisle. Why were they carrying her coffin on their shoulders? It looked so uncomfortable. Why didn’t they carry it with their hands? We followed them out of the church across the graveyard to the hole in the ground. The mound of freshly dug earth next to the hole was like a blanketed body. I watched as my grandfather threw a clump of earth on to Tanya’s coffin. Tears were running down his face.

I walked back to the hardware shop and picked up my new set of keys and felt that my power had grown. In the event it was as easy to put her keys back as it had been to take them. Aisha is the same kind of trusting fool as Kathy.

Tonight Robert came over. He has been in New York, visiting his mother and sister. When he arrived he handed me a black box sumptuously gift-wrapped with yards of silver ribbon.

‘I saw this and had to get it for you,’ he said.

I opened it carefully. Inside the box there was thick white tissue paper folded around a full-length, black silk crêpe kimono. I lifted the kimono free of the paper.

‘It’s lovely.’

‘I bought it at a vintage shop. It’s eighty years old. Put it on and see if it looks OK.’

He held it up for me and I put it on over my clothes and pulled it around me. It had a thick sash belt and wide sleeve cuffs.

‘The material is so fine,’ I said, stroking the sleeves.

‘It does suit you.’

‘It is perfect, Robert. Thank you so much.’

‘My pleasure.’

He embraced me and stroked my bottom through the material of the kimono. Then he put his hands beneath the kimono. He pulled my skirt up and stroked the backs of my thighs. He pushed my mouth open with his tongue and his hand moved round between my legs. Then he put his third finger right up me. His face got very hot and he pulled his mouth from mine, then took his finger out of me and put it in his mouth. His thick fleshy lips closed around his finger, right up to the knuckle, and he slowly pulled his finger out, watching me closely all the time. He repels me when he does this. I have never said anything about it to him. I do not let him see my repulsion.

I often think that Robert has a transactional attitude to our sex life. He gives me an expensive gift and he expects good sex in return. I am using him too. He has a large, sturdy penis and sex with him helps me to sleep. It stills my mind for a few hours. It never moves me, as it did with my true love.

The next day, and the day after, I waited in my car in her street during my lunch hour. I watched the building closely. I was anxious to try out the keys to see if they worked and to get into her flat at last. On the third day the childminder came out of the block with Billy in the buggy. She set off in the direction she had gone before, no doubt off to that housing estate again to meet her boyfriend.

I know the precise position of their apartment in the block. They are on the third floor, the left-hand corner. The first key into the entrance hall worked perfectly. It slid into the keyhole and turned with a satisfying click. I pushed open the heavy wooden door into an entrance hall that was larger than I expected and that had a decayed grandeur about it. It was high ceilinged and painted a dull cream. There was a long marble-topped table along one wall with letters stacked on it. The letters had an abandoned look, creased and curling up at the edges: to tenants who had gone away or who had died. On one wall a huge, slightly spotted mirror gave me back my reflection. As I looked at myself I saw again how my descent into depression and my sessions with Arvo Talvela have somehow changed me permanently. This was not the face that Markus loved.

The lift has a metal grille door that clanks as it concertinas open and closed. I must remember this. I took the lift to the third floor. The second key worked as well as the first. You had to turn the handle too. I opened the door slowly on to a long corridor. There was a russet-coloured carpet that ran along the centre of the hall, with polished wood on either side. A small round table held a lamp with a dark red shade. Off this long corridor was a series of doors. I walked into what must be their sitting room. I was surprised at the heavy old-fashioned furniture. There was so much inlaid walnut, a patterned sofa and a standard lamp with a dull gold shade with a fringe. The flat was a puzzle.

There seemed to be no trace of Markus. Then I found the room that had to be his workroom. It was opposite the sitting room and it was white and uncluttered and functional. There were well-made bookshelves with his books arranged in immaculate order. I looked along the shelves. I had given him some of these books. I recognized one on an upper shelf, the first book I had ever given him: a collection of photographs from The Hermitage. I reached up and took it down and opened the book. I read my loving inscription to him, written with a flourish on the flyleaf. The book had cost me a lot at the time. Then I pushed it back carefully into pos-ition. Markus would notice if it was at all out of place.

In the centre of the room there was his drawing table with an Anglepoise lamp clamped to its side. I touched the high stool that stood by the table. It was made of wood and smooth to my hand. His plan chest stood by the wall. I wondered if I would find the plans to our house in there, the house we had wanted to build.