Inglorious (33 page)

She came round; it was as if she had returned from a deep trance. She found she was sitting in Jess’s flat, in the pink living room, with her face to the wall. She was confused for a moment, and she wondered whether Jess was there too. Then she remembered it was the night before Liam’s wedding and that Jess was at the rehearsal dinner. She was beside herself and didn’t know what to do. She must have been crying for a while, sobbing like a child or a fool, because her eyes were stinging and she had a thick headache. She allowed herself another bout of tears, but it hardly helped and she began to writhe at the sight of herself, sitting in a borrowed room crying about what? Her sense of time wasted? The whole thing was absurd, she thought, pressing her hands to her eyes. She was acting like a sap! The most sap-like she had been in months, and that made her shudder with shame. She was adrift in a small room, and she felt alone and despised this sense of solitude. She thought of the rehearsal dinner, everyone in a pool of light, smiling and shouting greetings to each
other. But that was ignominious; she understood it was too predictable that she would sit there sobbing to herself while Liam and Grace got themselves hitched in a whirl of bows and satin. Even in her confusion, she despised the cliché, the sense that her life was playing itself out in so generic a fashion. She was fodder for a silly story, a basement piece in the middle of August, a missive from the world of nothing. And that made her stir herself. With her hands trembling, she wrote to Martin White.
Thanks again for the commission.
I’ll try to have the article with you by the end of the week.
He hadn’t even set a deadline. That was fortunate, though she had to force herself to write.
You must galvanise yourself.
That’s really the thing.
She called Andreas, and he picked up the phone, half asleep.

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice muffled.

‘Andreas, hi, it’s Rosa,’ she said.

‘Rosa, dear girl, it’s the middle of the night.’

‘I’m very sorry. Very sorry indeed. I forgot the time,’ said Rosa. And he was right, she saw it on the clock, 2 a.m. blinking a reproach at her.

‘Well, tomorrow. Talk then. I have to rehearse all day. Evening. Speak evening.’

He was friendly, but exhausted. He could hardly speak. Fundamentally, he was asleep.

‘OK, speak to you then,’ she said.

‘OK,’ he said, and she thought of him dropping the phone and reclining again. He would be asleep in a second, and she counted him down, thinking of him drifting into sleep, falling, and now, Andreas was unconscious, she thought. Then she kicked the phone cord out of the socket, went to her room and whined herself to sleep.

She was woken by the buzzer. It jolted her into consciousness. She waited for Jess to take it, thinking she should stay as still and quiet as possible. She sat hunched on the bed, her chin on her knees, then the buzzer disturbed her again. There was no
sign of Jess as she walked through the living room and found the intercom in the half-light. She pressed the button.

‘Delivery for Rosa Lane,’ said a voice. It was so unexpected that she didn’t know what to do. She paused before she answered. A delivery? A book from her father? There was a danger it might be. A guide to being. Something benign and essentially unhelpful. Another of his articles, stapled in a neat folder? Or something else, some sort of punitive measure? A summons from Sharkbreath! Perhaps it was today she would be set upon by Sharkbreath’s gang, toad-faces the lot of them. Still, she pushed a button and heard the door click open. She saw the messenger’s head vanish inside. Then there were footsteps on the stairs, and after a while he hammered on the door.
My God,
she thought. And she felt entirely resigned, really they could take her, she didn’t care any more. It’s all become quite too much, she thought. Existentially, she had become supine. Besides she was half-asleep and her face was stiff from all her sterling efforts of the night before. She found a jumper on the sideboard and put it on. Then she switched on the light. Opening the door she was surprised to see a courier, wearing leathers. He had a slim envelope in his hand, which he held towards her.

‘What is it?’ she said.

Of course he didn’t know. ‘You’ll find out when you read it,’ he said, with a friendly nod of his head. You’ll find out later, all of it, she thought. Then he went away and she heard him thumping down the stairs.

Uncertainly, she opened the envelope. There was a piece of paper, a note in Liam’s writing. Written in haste, it said:
Dear
Rosa, Here it is, and that really has to be all. Sorry, and love as
ever, Liam.
And there was a cheque for five hundred pounds. That made her sit down suddenly on Jess’s sofa. For a while she held the cheque and couldn’t understand it at all. She kept looking at the cheque, then looking again at the note. She read
love as ever
again and found it was an odd thing to write. Really he had stopped loving her long ago. But he was sentimental.
The cheque proved that. She hadn’t turned to look at him as she walked away, but something in that final scene made him rush for his wallet. It was his guilty conscience that made him sign, or perhaps he was paying her off, bribing her not to cause any more trouble. It was for Grace’s health; he saw it as an investment. Money was nothing, for that sort of thing. He wanted to cleanse himself, enter the holy state of matrimony absolved of his sins! He signed it in a hurry and sent it over, because he was late. While he was tying his cravat he asked his best man – who was that? Lorne? Or some friend of his from school? – to phone the courier. ‘Bit of trouble at work,’ he said, lying into his top hat. Well, it was characteristic. He wanted her tidied up, the swine. Still, he didn’t want to pay what she had asked, and he couldn’t resist a self-righteous flourish.
That really has to be all.
Who said so? Liam, and no doubt Grace too, if she knew about it. Both of them so reasonable, they thought, gatekeepers of the rational world. That made her angry for a while, and she thought of a dozen ways to spite him. She screwed up the cheque – but not too much – and threw it on the floor. She stood and walked to the tap, drank down a pitcher of water, dribbled most of it out because her lip was swollen and her tooth ached, said, ‘The cunning cunt’, and then she sat down on the sofa again. Then she bowed her head suddenly because she thought it might be compassion. She read
Sorry, and love as ever.
Sorry for what? Sorry it wasn’t more? Sorry for everything? Sorry that she had made such a fool of herself, one last time? Of course things had been bad between them. She had loved him, and now the old sense of him came coursing over her; she was quite aware of Liam as she had known him and longed for him daily, and this made her want to cry out. She understood that things had become bitter. He was so closely associated with it all, her lost mother, the blankness that descended and a lot of accompanying mental debris. She had focused it on him, weighted him down with it. They had both been imperfect, hopeless. She couldn’t know for certain. Then she thought if it was so easy
for him to do it now, why had he waited so long, why had he forced her to produce a haphazard entreaty? Once she had emerged, humiliated herself, he scrawled a cheque. The note was scribbled, too; she knew his writing well enough. He had been in a frantic hurry. For a moment she thought of the heroic gesture; she had a full-bodied, fleshed-out vision of herself marching to the church, tearing the cheque up on the steps, throwing it in with the confetti, then she picked up the cheque, smoothed it out and put it in her bag.

Indifference is the thing,
she thought. It hardly mattered what she had done to get this money. It was hers, and she had achieved it. It was a scabrous small triumph, and it wasn’t enough, but it was hers all the same. Liam is sorry, she thought, and then she thought, Sorry for what? Then she shook her head. As if it mattered what he was sorry for! As if it mattered at all, as he wrote the words, hardly thinking about what he was writing, and ran out of the door in his morning suit. She stood in Jess’s living room, in a valedictory mood. Now it came to it, she thought she was sad to go. She had always liked the steady drift of the familiar. As she picked up her clothes she found an interwoven pattern of coffee stains on the carpet in her bedroom. That was a further shame. Now she dressed quickly. She cleaned her teeth, checking herself in the steamed-up mirror. Her eyes were baggy and she had looked better. But that would change, she thought. She wrote:
Dear
Jess. Thanks again for your hospitality. I took a lettuce leaf and
a bit of tea, for which my apologies. In general I have committed
several crimes which will weigh against me in the final
reckoning. Recently I bled liberally into your shoes. I twice
used your shampoo. I ate your chocolate yesterday and I drank
a glass of your orange juice. Really, I ripped through your cupboards
like a locust. Yours, Rosa.
Then she smiled and ripped up the note. She wrote:
Jess, thanks very much indeed. Now
I’ve really gone. Send me any further bills – I’ll email details.
Vade in pace, Rosa.
She was propelled by an urge to escape. She felt them all around her, the ambiguous hordes, bank
tellers and all the rest, offering maxims, telling her what to do. She simply had to shake them off. She packed her bag – her clothes and boots and her couple of books and all her unassembled papers – in an instant, and walked through the flat. She tidied the hall, and pulled on her coat. She picked up her bag, and walked out into the daylight. She posted the keys back through the letterbox, and heard them clink onto the mat. Then she started moving along Ladbroke Grove, breathing in the fumes of the morning, dragging her bag behind her. The Westway was full of cars and the clouds were scudding above her. She raised her head to watch the cars and clouds.

At the bank they wanted the money to be deposited, used to sop up some of her debt, but she talked them into doling out cash. With the posters behind her ARE YOU MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR MONEY? ARE YOU PILING IT UP AND COUNTING IT DAILY? DO YOU DREAM OF PILES OF GOLD? she explained that she would be working again soon, and this money was required ‘to supplement my business wardrobe,’ she said, smirking and biting her nails. The kid sniffed, a new kid called Dave, and slapped the notes down. This meant her wallet bulged attractively, giving her a powerful if fleeting sense of security. She was leaving Sharkbreath far behind, but one day she would go and see him. She would walk in and announce triumphantly to the sceptical zipper-priestess Mandy that she had a deposit to make. She would clasp the toad-faces by the hand. Not now, but some time soon, and if not soon – Well, then she would consider it later, she thought.

In the Underground she thought of herself a few months ago, going in the opposite direction, having walked out of her job. It was nine months since the death of her mother. She marked that blankly, trying not to think beyond the facts. The months coursed on; she had lost a lot of time. The train was looping round towards Waterloo. She had missed the rush hour and the carriage was half full. A sign above her said LET US HELP YOU TO HELP YOURSELF and there was a picture
of a woman smiling broadly. She wasn’t sure if she was running away or regaining something. She had in mind what she wanted to do, to return to a state she had previously accepted as ordinary, a state in which she could think quietly about things. It was a long way back, she thought, recalling her desperation of the night before, her drooling incontinence and plain despair. Then, she had certainly been incapable of moderation. She had failed entirely to set aside the concerns of the self. There had been that period of blankness, when she couldn’t remember what she had done at all. That frightened her a little, and she turned to stare at the man to her left, a shiny-faced man of fifty or so, wearing a shabby mac; his shoes dirty. He flicked a glance towards her, cold-eyed and indifferent, and she dropped her gaze.

Everything was going well enough, until at Waterloo she suffered a moment of indecision. She stood under the clock, watching the lines of people moving across the forecourt and she thought of going home to her father, and then she thought of leaving the country. Andreas was in her mind, too. She saw these choices like paths in a forest, and she was unsteady for a while, not sure which way to turn. She had her bag behind her, her pared-down possessions, and she felt suddenly tired and as if she could hardly stand. She wanted to lie down and sleep. She was being scuffed and buffeted by the crowds, people moving past her, constant motion, and each person who pushed past glanced back at her, as if her stasis was a crime.
The condition of everything is flux,
she thought, and then she shook her head. She thought of calling Andreas but then she remembered she had woken him, left obscure messages, hoping he would supply her with something, a bed for a few nights, another temporary solution. Anyway, it was too much to ask; he was a kind, loving man, but he wanted to act and he wanted to enjoy himself, be young, live well. She couldn’t go back and lean on Andreas, assuming he even wanted to serve as a crutch. She was banged hard in the shoulder as a man rushed past her, hurrying to catch a train. He was late and he
didn’t turn back. She was a rock in the current, she thought. You couldn’t stay here for ever. Eventually they probably winched you out, or poked you with a cattle prod. She was standing there, martyring herself to the ebb and flow, still nervous and undecided, when she saw a billboard high above her saying TEMPERANCE. That made her crane her neck and stare. It summoned something, another strand she had failed to develop. It was noon and Rosa was thinking of Liam and Grace and the whispering church.
TEMPERANCE,
she thought.
Was that the meaning of TEMP? TEMP
means
Temperance, that was what the taggers had been saying. And
then what about SOPH?
And she thought of the vicar and the church and ‘Do you?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Do you?’ ‘I do.’ Well, that was it, rings exchanged, a kiss, the rest. They would be delighted, of course. Everyone, and she thought of Liam’s mother wiping tears from her frosty cheeks. Flowers – of course there would be a lot of flowers. The altar would be decked. Garlanded the pews. She could imagine a fine bucolic row of them, chosen by Grace’s mother. It would all be sublimely tasteful. Beautiful, if you liked that sort of thing. She wondered at it all, and then she stopped and thought,
But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps
, she thought,
TEMP could be Temperance
. SOPH would mean Sophrosyne which meant
temperance, or moderation. Wisdom
in moderation.
The right way to live – moderately, temperately – she remembered it now – it was Socratic, and came from ‘Charmides’, she thought. She was standing in Waterloo station as the crowd swelled around her, realising she had forgotten about Zalmoxis.
How could you have banished Zalmoxis
from your mind?
she thought, Zalmoxis who said that
temperance
is a great good, and if you truly have it, you are blessed.
She gripped her bag and with her swollen mouth she said, ‘Sophrosyne’ loudly to the air around her. ‘And to you too,’ said a commuter with a flushed face, as he pushed past her and descended into the scrum. That gave her another jolt, and she tried to remember what she had been thinking.
Temperance,
she thought again, but she wasn’t sure. Was that it, she thought?
It was impossible to know for certain. Well, she thought, if it was
SOPH
or something else altogether, how the hell was she to know? She had been worrying away at those signs, the
TEMP
and the
SOPH,
and now she thought she would take Sophrosyne as the meaning, or decide that was what it meant today. She didn’t have to know it objectively; she only had to reach a compromise, a solution that meant something to her. The debate had only ever been hers anyway; there was no one begging her to give them an answer. Civilisations were not hanging by a thread, awaiting Rosa’s pronouncement on the definitive meaning of
TEMP.
She looked up at the sign again. Still she was tired, and if there had been a bed for her somewhere, she would have retreated back to it.
TEMP meaning
temperance or something else altogether. SOPH meaning
Sophrosyne or nothing at all. Something to her alone. A small
signal.
Be moderate. Well, it was a mantra she needed well enough. Of course she should be more moderate, and she thought of the people around her colliding and smashing a way past each other, going somewhere, she didn’t know where. For a brief moment as she looked across this seething tide of people going to work, wearing their smart clothes, abandoned to the immutable system of money and the city, it seemed to make a sort of sense. Moderation, of course, she thought. The world kept on going and she only had a small part to play. She saw the Ferris wheel turning slow circles beyond the hangar of the station and the crowds flowing towards a train and she stepped onto an escalator, her heart thumping in her breast. And she thought to herself,
TEMP
means you are going to take the train. SOPH means you are going to leave the city. There wasn’t really anything else to do.