Inglorious (10 page)

Andreas was explaining that he was naturally idle. It was only by an effort of will that he made himself do things. The key was to set yourself small goals, he said.

‘So there’s one thing we must establish – what are your small goals?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing much. Avoid the onslaught. Stay out of trouble.’

‘Well, that’s not quite what I meant. As goals, I am not sure they work. Because eventually something will come to you, debt or death, or something anyway. This onslaught, you can’t really avoid it.’

‘Why?’ she said.

‘Why can’t you avoid death? I don’t know, for pity’s sake,’ he said. He raised a long, thick arm and slapped his hand on his forehead.

‘No, I mean the everlasting why,’ said Rosa. He yawned, and turned onto his front. He crossed his hands above his head, defensively.

‘I thought it was an everlasting yes,’ he said into the pillow.

‘No, that must be something else.’

‘Anyway it’s not a goal.’ He scratched his arm. He had a
hand on her back, she could feel the warmth and pressure of his hand.

‘Why?’

‘Let’s not go round again.’

‘No, I mean why is “why” not a goal?’

Now his head was buried in the pillow. His voice was muffled. ‘In the name of God,’ he said, ‘in the name of God in Heaven, “why” is a question, not a goal. It’s a goddamn question!’

‘Huh, profound,’ she said, but it wasn’t fair to mock him. Now he sat up and took her hand.

‘You say you are tired. Well, give yourself a few weeks, and then really get cracking.’

‘Get cracking?’ she said.

‘Is it not a contemporary phrase?’

‘No, it’s perfect,’ said Rosa. ‘It’s just the right phrase.’ And she kissed him, though she knew she was wasting his time.

He was vain, and his motions were sometimes contrived, the studied flick of his head, the way he moved his hands. She could see his health was immanent. She was sure any woman would like him. Because they saw each other so seldom, she was convinced he must have another lover, a batch of them. This made her distant and sometimes preoccupied. It wasn’t jealousy she felt. It was a relief, if anything, that he wasn’t hanging around expecting love. Still, in a few weeks she knew a lot about him. He filled her in on the basics, meticulously, sparing her none of the details. He came from Berlin. His father had been a diplomat, and had been posted to China and Morocco when Andreas was a child. So by the age of seven he spoke German, English, French and a little Mandarin Chinese. His English was grammatically impeccable, but his idiom was inconsistent. It was a sort of cinema slang, derived from English-language films. He was tall and pale, with a smooth, line-free face. His hair was slightly curly and he wore it long. He had fine muscular legs; he liked to run. He walked with
great confidence; he stood upright with his hands resting in his pockets. He was rarely pensive or demoralised, as far as Rosa could see. In fact he seemed to possess a blissful sense of optimism that Rosa dimly remembered, and felt was bound up with youth. He always dressed well, in smart, freshly ironed clothes, and his underwear was striped. He had a slight accent, but it was not immediately possible to place him. Initially she had thought he might be American.

For all this, she wasn’t quite sure what he wanted from her. What meaning did he attack to their liaison? She hadn’t got round to asking him the question, but she was sure she should. He was far too robust to lie around droning on about the self. He was too young, too optimistic, too fixed on his as yet nonexistent career as an actor. He was reasonably interested in the contemporary novel, he said. He was good at entertaining himself. Other than jazz he liked Wagner and The Pixies. That seemed a contrivance to Rosa, but she didn’t mind. He moved with the grace of someone whose gestures have not yet become habitual, as if he would be quite capable of casting off his ways of speaking and moving, switching them suddenly for another mode.

Now she was at the peeling door of his flat. There was a Moroccan sitting on the balcony above, smoking a cigarette. She nodded at him, and he bowed his head. A mother and child were playing in a multicoloured playground behind her. She heard childish squeals, adult congratulations. ‘Very good!’ ‘Very very good sweetie!’ A TV was on in the flat next door, and she saw the colours shifting in the glass. She waited while the day continued, and when Andreas answered the door he said, ‘ROSA!!’ and weighted the word with exclamation marks. ‘It’s so nice when you come round,’ he said, smiling and kissing her cheek. ‘How are you? And what, what has been happening?’

‘Nothing at all. And to you?’ That was their chaste opening,
and they stood in the hall with their hands in their pockets. He was wearing the whitest shirt she had ever seen. His body felt warm, and she grasped his hands. There was the cuckoo clock behind him and she saw her face was red in the distorting mirror.

‘It’s so boring, but I have to go out any minute,’ he said. ‘So boring. Just to the dentist, but I have to go. I’ve waited a month for the appointment and I’m in agony. My mouth is disgusting, I’m ashamed.’ He gestured at a tooth, and made a grimace. ‘But can I walk you some of the way home? The dentist is just by Ladbroke Grove. So you see, it’s perfect, if you don’t mind going back that way? Did you have something else to do over here? Are you on your way somewhere?’ A few stories came to mind, but she said, ‘No, I just did some shopping on Portobello Road, and thought I’d drop by.’

‘What did you buy?’ Her hands were empty.

‘Oh, window shopping, nothing.’

‘So you’ll walk back with me? As an unexpected treat before I go to my torture.’

‘OK, that would be nice.’

‘Just wait here, wait here just a second.’

He vanished along the corridor, and she heard him switching off a radio.

Hand in hand for a while, and then walking apart, they passed along the crescent of balconies, satellite dishes hammered up on the walls and washing floating on invisible currents of air. They neared the metal haunches of Westbourne Studios. She thought of Whitchurch at her meeting, speaking in a soft voice. She would be poised, convincing. Then she would leave, safe in the knowledge of her continued relevance.

She said, ‘How are you?’ and he said, ‘Good, good. I’ve been thinking about you this week.’

‘That’s kind of you,’ she said. ‘Depending on the way in which you have thought of me, of course.’ They arrived under the concrete slur of the Westway. She saw the sign scrawled on the bricks.
TEMP
– it ran over and over again –
TEMP TEMP
TEMP TEMP
– in red spray paint. Next to it were some stencils of a man walking backwards.
What the TEMP,
she thought. She saw the day spread out, the trees and the sky.

‘Oh, mostly about the curves of your ass, I’m joking,’ he said. ‘But how are you? Are you tired? You look a bit tired.’

‘No no I’m fine.’

He kissed her nonchalantly. He had a hand on her back, and she could feel his breath on her skin.

‘I was thinking that when I have more money, we should go away,’ he said. ‘You’d love it. A weekend in Berlin. We should go when my parents are away and we can have the run of their flat. It’s a gross place, in many ways, terrible furnishings, but you’d probably enjoy it. We have a few really dreadful family portraits, painted by my sister, who has no artistic talent at all.’

‘Of course,’ said Rosa. But that made her laugh. ‘Well, that sounds good.’

‘Would you really like to come?’

‘Oh yes, that sounds great.’ And she thought she would.

‘When?’

‘Well, soon. Soon would be great,’ she said.

‘Soon, well, I’ll check my diary and see what I’m doing. Anything more specific?’

‘You know, I’m between jobs, I can fit in almost any time. You’re the one with the packed schedule,’ said Rosa.

‘Yes, I’m pretty in demand. An audition here, a phone call here, another rejection here. Though I do have a job – I’ll tell you about it later. Not now though, it’s a real yarn.’

‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘A job, that’s great!’

‘Great!’ he said, mocking her. ‘Great!’ and now he seized her arm again. Here they were trimming the trees, and their conversation was drowned by the sound of a chainsaw. Anyway it was a very short walk, hardly supplying enough time to pose the question. She was wondering if she could slip it in. It would change something, if she said it. She wasn’t even sure how she could phrase it.
Andreas, funny thing to ask. Bit of an
embarrassment. Row with my flatmate. Just need a place for a
few days, until I sort myself out. You can say no.
But that would involve a full-on confession, revealing much that she had not yet told him, the fact that she was debt-laden and generally adrift, more adrift than he thought she was.

‘I really don’t think you’re being entirely honest,’ he was saying, which made her snap her head towards him. Now the sound of the saw had died away.

‘Why?’ she said, caught out.

‘I think you’re just fobbing me off, and thinking you’ll find an excuse another time. Is it my sister’s art that’s putting you off? We don’t have to look at her portraits, I promise. I know I haven’t really made the flat sound so nice. But it’s fine really.’ She realised he was joking, and smiled.

‘Really, it sounds fantastic. I can’t wait,’ she said.

‘Still not convincing. Perhaps it’s me? You’d like someone older and fatter, some ancient relic, really yellow in the gills?’

‘Green about the gills,’ she said, automatically.

‘Thanks, thanks so much.’

So she laughed like a drain and turned away. She stared out at the patchy, greying branches of the trees, the pale washed sky.

‘Do you really mean it?’ he asked. ‘Would you like to go away?’

‘Yes, I always mean what I say,’ said Rosa. That really was a lie. With Andreas, she almost never meant what she said. It was a shame, but she had discovered that when she spoke to him she was usually incapable of telling the truth. She saw the word again,
TEMP,
sprayed on the stone rafters. And she saw billboards with words on them – THE KILLS: LOVE IS A DESERTER. HEY LYLA – A STAR’S ABOUT TO FALL. Vowing readily, she followed him along.
Ask Andreas. Clean the
kitchen. Explain to Jess. But ask Andreas. Ask him for somewhere
to stay. Get a job. Read
History of Western Philosophy.
Read the later plays of Shakespeare. Clean the bathroom and
scrub the toilet. Really, explain everything to Andreas.

At Ladbroke Grove station she felt a low sense of disappointment because she had failed to ask. Something in his cordiality prevented her. He kept it all humorous, and she was forced to play along. He made jokes and laughed loudly and she thought,
A BED!
Still she couldn’t summon it, and he pushed his hair out of his eyes, wrapped his arms around her and said, ‘So I’ll see you later?’

‘Later?’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Is that why, or the everlasting why?’ he said. He had been making this joke for a few weeks, ever since she had mentioned it. Still, she laughed politely. ‘I’m proposing that we meet again later. Because I haven’t enjoyed enough of your company just now. How about it? Dinner? Something? Drink?’ He shrugged his shoulders at her.

A place to stay?
she thought. Anyway it was a reprieve. She could go round and ask him over a bottle of wine. Casually, not urgently and in the harsh daylight. So she nodded. ‘That would be great,’ she said.

‘Always great, this word, great.’

‘It is all great,’ she said, and he smiled a thin determined smile and said, ‘See you later. Any time. Drop by. I’m just learning lines,’ he said. ‘Any old time.’

‘OK,’ she said.

‘Ciao bella,’
he said.

They kissed at the entrance of the tube, surrounded by the milling floods of people and then she turned and, like a villain thwarted, walked home again.

When she got back she saw the answer-machine light was flashing, and in the hope that one of the messages might be for her, she pressed the button. Eternally optimistic, she was thinking the flashing light might save her. If she had been offered a celestial helping hand, she would have grasped it. But instead there was a computer pretending to be a man: ‘HELLO, THIS IS DAVE CALLING TO TELL YOU THAT YOU HAVE WON AT LEAST A THOUSAND POUNDS’ it said. ‘CALL THIS NUMBER TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE. MANY CONGRATULATIONS!’ The computer pretending to be a woman said ‘To listen to the message again, press one’, and Rosa pressed two instead.

‘This message has been deleted.’

‘Hello, this is Jackie from the bank calling for Miss Lane. Can you give me a call when you have time.’

An emissary of Sharkbreath, so Delete! DELETE! Rosa instructed the friendly computerised voice, and the message vanished for ever.