On the Floor (17 page)

‘Ever been to Hong Kong, Faustino?' He looks over my head into the middle distance and shakes his head.

‘So if somebody asked you to go and live there, would you go?'

‘Hwat peoples ask?' he frowns.

‘Oh, say your boss, your client. All the people who own you.'

He takes a deep breath, holds it as if testing his lung capacity. ‘No peoples hown Faustino.'

‘So you would say no.'

‘Hi go home to Bilbao,' he taps his chest. ‘Hi promise.'

‘Who did you promise? Your girlfriend?' I picture a sultry barefoot vixen standing outside a dusty casa.

‘Mama. Hi promise my mama.'

‘That's great Faustino. You promised your mum.'

‘For sure.' He picks up the white napkin and snaps it like a whip. ‘Familia, no?'

‘Yeah right, familia.'

The door swings behind me. Faustino places a double espresso in front of me, watches over like a granny while I drink it. ‘You hwan more?'

‘I'm going to the airport,' I point to the silver Merc idling out beyond the concourse. ‘I'm going to Hong Kong.' He nods in grave commiseration.

There is a spreading puddle by Rex's bowl as he slops in that chaotic way he has of drinking water. He is delighted at my unexpected daytime return and the little play we've had out in the courtyard. He trots over to his bed in the hall, flops down on a squeaky toy and stares up at me. ‘Good boy,' I say and he grunts, settles his head on his paws. He has seen the suit carrier on the bed, he knows I am going to leave him, and I am hijacked by these sudden tears. I mean, how would a Labrador exist in Hong Kong, let alone like it? Even the plane journey would be a trauma.

‘Look,' I tell him, ‘you're going to stay with Pie Man, so lots of food. And I'll bet he'll let you sleep on the couch.' Rex closes his eyes. He knows all about abandonment.
You should've got a cat, Geri
, said Rob.
They couldn't give a shit if you're never there. They don't get attached to you
. Zanna too has been hassling me.
Just find a home for him
, she said the other night when I mentioned Rex as another reason why I couldn't relocate to Hong Kong.
You never liked him anyway
, I told her and at least she had the good grace not to disagree. Rex could sense it even when he was a puppy, some invisible force field that has always kept him from jumping up at her like he does with everyone else; he knew his place.
He is your surrogate child. Dogs are meant for ranches and farms. Rex should be
living in Richmond or Wandsworth or somewhere, with a stay-at-home mum, kids, garden, the whole deal. You should be out in the world, not spending quality time with your pet
.

The fridge contents stare glumly back at me: balsamic dressing and cocktail cherries of a certain age. The vodka and a Sapporo, which I like to keep because the can has a military style.

14.3 days out of each month
, I say now into the open fridge,
is how often we've been in the same country so far this year
, which is exactly what I said when Stephen once yawned that we saw each other all the time. He was reading
Companies News
while I looked for eggs to make pancakes, because they reminded him of home weekends from school. Rex was stretched out in a sun spot on the floor by his bare feet. When I replay these exchanges now I hear them as if through a voice distorter where all the frequencies have been adjusted, like fiddling with an equaliser, the bass boosted and ominous and the words heavy with a foreboding I had never previously heard. A remix of a favourite song where you hear the imperfections, the flatness of the high note, the muffle of a guitar string when the finger touches the fret, a certain looseness about the timing.

I meet a washed-out starved looking version of myself in the bathroom mirror. Even my freckles seem to be fading.
Thirty-two
, I told Stephen as he stroked the side of my face in the early dawn of our first morning together.
They're very endearing
, he smiled. But that was long before a lopsided asymmetry crept into the photos, contaminating every shot we took, not that there was time for many pictures in the hurried exhaustion of our time together. Once in an uncharacteristic wash of spontaneity, Stephen stopped a passer-by in the Tuileries and we posed in the biting February cold. I was leaning into the arm that Stephen raised to pull me close, but in the seconds between the opening and closing of the shutter, it looks as if I am clinging desperately to his chest, my mouth gaping on some unrecorded afterthought, half my face
obscured by a thick lock of hair. Stephen's arm is slipping away out of view and he is smiling straight into the lens, meeting his separate future head on. The five-year documentary of our coupledom, a handful of memories re-shot through the filter of breakdown. Hyde Park, framed in a late summer afternoon, Rex puppy-playing on the grass between us, and with the skinned finality of hindsight, Stephen's wide smile seems taunting and mine naïve, both of us framed in a memorial to the sham we were becoming.

In the early days when Stephen still found my personality intriguing, I would rest my head on his naked chest while he toyed with my numbers thing, trying to define its boundaries. Those days before he stumbled on the outer limits of our relationship, before the rain came through our waterproofed park walks and Rex seemed to smell and I stopped buying new lingerie every weekend and we were both able to fall asleep in the same bed without touching. Negotiating our way out of the skipping couple advert, where the walk-by suggestion of his scent on some other guy could make me wet between the legs, sliding down the waterfall of passion that was supposed to ripple out into a mature and enduring intimacy. If I hadn't missed a few signposts along the way.

There are ring marks on the bottom shelf of my bathroom cabinet where Stephen used to store his customised Penhaligon's, and I am still finding things: Day 123 and the shock of a black tie at the bottom of a drawer had me standing again in between Stephen and the mirror, his chin tilted upwards in studied concentration while expert fingers knotted the silk strip round his neck.
I suppose you learnt how to do that when you were five
, I smiled.
Eight actually
, he said, in that manner I would now call self-congratulatory. I stood transfixed by the taunting reflection of his competence, the perfection of our public coupling unzipped to reveal a hideous bubbling beneath its shallow surface. What is he doing with me? I thought, retreating from the mirror with the loose bundle of answers unravelling in my arms.

The phone trills.

‘Oh, I was expecting the machine.' I picture Aunt Joan in her hallway gloom, standing rod-backed like it's a deportment class, like she's still carrying the book on her head. ‘Your office told me you were off on some trip.'

‘I'm just about to leave for the airport.'

‘I was going to leave a message, so.'

‘Well, I can always hang up and you can leave one if you'd prefer.'

My smart remark is met with dignified silence. No matter how many resolutions we always find a way to fail at the first conversational hurdle.

‘Sorry. So what's the message?'

There is an audible sigh. ‘Your mother's had a turn.'

‘What is it now?'

‘Ah, she won't eat a thing.'

‘So what's new?'

‘Your dad is worried. I wouldn't call, only you know what he's like, not wanting to upset you.'

‘He's used to it.' I can hear the dental edge in my aunt's voice, the niece who is always off gallivanting around the globe instead of hand-holding by her mother's bedside.

‘She hasn't had a bite since Saturday.'

It is only three weeks since Christmas morning when I lay in my old bed listening to the sound of radio hymns down below in the kitchen and Aunt Joan opening presses and rattling cutlery, her practised moves about the place that is a second home to her, reminding me of whose space she is trying to fill.
In God's name, what would a person be doing in an office at that hour of the morning
, she said when I mentioned my usual 7 a.m. work start in passing.
So is it like they show on TV when all the men are in their shirtsleeves waving their arms and shouting?

I said,
Yeah sometimes
, then she was quiet for a bit, turning the cup on the saucer.

Not many girls then, I suppose
. She looked down into the bowl of her teacup, I flipped the lid on my cigarette pack.

And what's wrong with that?

And she said,
Nothing
, and stood up from the table trailing the unexplained remark behind her while a sudden rage at my mother rose in my sleep-filled mouth.
She
should be here, fussing over porridge, patting my cheek like a TV mum, telling me I don't eat enough, telling me I look a bit worn out and should have a lie down. She should be here, not holed up in the hospital a mile down the road, behind a heavy screen of medication, letting herself go, shuffling around in terrycloth, no longer caring about appearances for one who was always so fussy when we were small.
Comb you hair, now, Kieran and straighten out that dress, Geraldine. George, let me do that tie for you. And mind your good shoes now, Geraldine, don't be scraping them on the gravel
. Kieran up front, me in the middle and my parents bringing up the rear. Picking at the front garden hedges on the way along the road, Mum telling me off for damaging the plants.
Hello there, how are you, grand morning
at least ten times before we even get to the church. Grey stone pile at the crest of the hill, the slow tide of cars in the park ebbing and flowing in the window between ten and eleven o'clock mass. And afterwards in the car park I would swing around with the other girls, admiring each other's Sunday dresses, all of us enveloped in one big state of grace, having just eaten the Body of Christ. Dads lurked in the near distance, exchanging the odd word, while our mothers chatted over kicking babies in rocking prams and the occasional dog slunk past. And then off into the car with the hour's drive to Granny's. My mother fiddling with the radio, Kieran reading his stories while I counted receding pylons set against the grey and the car settled into a stillness, none of us knowing or guessing or having any idea of the shadows gathering up ahead – of what was to come, and how there would be no going back.

‘Anyhow, there it is.' Aunt Joan sighed again.

‘What d'you want me to do? I'm just about to leave for the airport.'

‘You could call your father now and again, Geraldine.'

‘It's just attention-seeking. She'll get over it, just like before. Or they'll have to do the tube thing.'

‘She's after losing a lot of weight.'

‘That's what happens when you don't eat. Anyway, you know what I think. The mistake was putting her in there in the first place.'

‘Ah, well now, that was all a long time ago and you were only a girl.'

‘She never should have stayed there, drugged up to the eyeballs.'

‘Easy to be wise in hindsight.'

‘I've got to go. The car's outside.'

‘Always on the move. Where to this time?'

‘Hong Kong.'

‘Oh, it's well for some.'

‘It's my
job
.'

‘So you'll call your dad.'

‘Yes.' Though the truth is that I won't.

In her silence I hear the tumultuous roar of all the things Aunt Joan longs to say: how I have a heart of stone, how selfish I am, how my father suffers in silence, how I rarely visit and hardly ever call, et cetera et cetera. All the accusations I read each time I look her in the eye, the struggle to keep them in.
A terrible extravagance
, she said as I packed up the dripping boot of the hire car on St Stephen's Day.
So I should have taken an airport bus?
I snapped and we were toppled as usual at the final hurdle. I stooped to kiss her dry cheek and she raised a hand to pat my head but got my neck instead.
Drive carefully now, dear
.

I WAKE INTO A WALL OF HUMIDITY
, the hotel balcony doors open so that the curtains billow lightly over my bed. A band of pain shrinkwraps my forehead while Baker and Aziz, the double act, walk left to right across the silent screen for the hundredth time. I hit the volume button and the CNN anchorwoman looks straight into the camera and says: John Holliman joins us live from Baghdad. John, now that President Bush has secured Congress's approval for the use of force to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, do you think it's just a matter of days before we see military action?

John nods enthusiastically and reminds us all that we are just 48 hours away from the UN deadline for Saddam to pull out. The scrolling ticker on the bottom of the screen confirms yesterday's market closes that I already know. I play with the white paper cap on the juice glass wondering if a shot of vodka would make it more palatable.