The Essence of the Thing (17 page)

63

‘Nicola! Are you up there?’

Nicola, paintbrush in hand, went out onto the landing. It was Sam, coming up the stairs with a sizable pot-plant shrouded in florist’s wrapping paper.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Just brought this up for you. Guy delivered it this afternoon while you were still out at work. Dashed useful child, that. Unlike some. Where shall I put it?’

He was invited to come in and Nicola took the plant and unwrapped it.

It was a white pelargonium, perfectly beautiful, with a card from Susannah.

‘What a dear friend she is,’ murmured Nicola.

‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘I dare say she is. You women go in for that sort of thing, don’t you?’

Nicola wasn’t sure what sort of thing was meant here, but said that she supposed they did, and put the plant on the mantelpiece above the unlit gas fire.

Sam looked around the room with his usual beady-eyed glare. ‘Looks all right, doesn’t it?’ he said proudly—his being the least of the efforts which had been expended upon it.

Nicola smiled to herself and agreed with him, and recommenced her painting of the wardrobe.

‘Yes,’ said Sam approvingly, ‘that’s the ticket. If it doesn’t move, paint it white. My father was in the regular army, did you know that? No, don’t get the idea that he was officer class. Up through the ranks. Staff sergeant. Bloody hell. Still, he survived and so did I.’ He looked around the room again. ‘Not exactly overburdened with possessions, are you?’ he said.

Nicola agreed that she was not, and was tempted to leave it at that, but then relented. ‘I’ve abandoned them,’ she explained. ‘But in fact there are a few more to come. I have to fetch them from Notting Hill sometime soon.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Sam. ‘Notting Hill.’

What more need one say? Nicola felt a sudden wrenching in her stomach. Notting Hill. The pain could even now (
it’s over
) intensify in this way, as if renewing itself, as if resurrecting itself, and tighten its grip with a force more terrible still than before.

‘Oh, by the way,’ said Sam—aware, perhaps merely at some subliminal level, of the change in the atmosphere—‘I don’t know if you’ve anything particular lined up in the way of food, but if you haven’t then Helen suggested you might eat with us this evening. We dine at around eight o’clock.’

Nicola thanked him and said that she would bring a bottle of wine which she happened to have handy, and Sam, looking around the room one last time as if to catch sight after all of some enviable item of luxury, some
objet de
—doubtful—
virtu
, withdrew.

Nicola went on with the painting. There was one thing about the smell of fresh paint: even if it reminded one of happier— midsummer-sky-blue—times, it was still an encouraging, optimistic, even joyful sort of smell; she hardly knew how she could have borne her situation, here, now, without it.

64

The note which she received at work on Tuesday morning was hand-written on the firm’s stationery.

Dear Nicola,

The paperwork
in re
the mortgage transfer is now in order, so if you could call in here later in the week and sign on the relevant dotted lines the sale can be finalised. I suggest Thursday at around one p.m.—let me know if you would prefer a different day or time or both.

Yours,
Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,

The time you suggest is as good as any—I will see you then.

Nicola

And now she was on the top of a bus—because it was more amusing than the tube, and there was no other amusement here to be had—crawling through the lunch-hour traffic towards the City, and Jonathan, and the finalising of the sale, and it’s just a task to be performed, she told herself, a mere detail: not the worst, not even the last to be tidied away: it will take only a few minutes.

She was kept waiting for two of these minutes at the reception desk, and then Jonathan appeared. He nodded and did not quite smile, and she followed him down a corridor and into his office. He had quite a large one these days, it appeared. The furniture seemed rather good: a knee-hole desk with a leather top, even a wing chair in a corner. For a dowager, say. Did Jonathan deal with dowagers? It was not altogether out of the question. There was probably a bottle of very dry sherry somewhere but he did not offer it now. He indicated a chair opposite his own and she sat down.

He began to shuffle the papers before him, extracting those which she needed to sign, and looked up.

‘Keeping well?’ he said pleasantly.

She assured him that she was.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now then. If you could just sign here— and again here—where the crosses are.’ And he handed her two documents. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘of course—you’ll be needing a pen.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve got one.’

She opened her handbag and took out a pen and removed the cap. He sat back as if, rather self-consciously, relaxing: determined that she should understand that this episode was all in a day’s work. He could hardly not watch her, as she cast an eye over what she was signing her name to before actually writing: it would have been artificial to have looked in any other direction.

Of course she had dressed rather carefully for this occasion. It was a fairly warm day, summer clothes were no longer a sign of naivete or bumpkin-like over-enthusiasm; she was wearing a very pale linen skirt and a silk jersey. Immaculate, that was the idea. She finished signing and handed the documents back to him.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘And here is your—’ but he didn’t finish the sentence; there wasn’t a way of doing so which wasn’t too unspeakably crude: he simply handed her the cheque.

She looked at it: it meant absolutely nothing to her. She had done no calculations; she barely even remembered the amount of the valuation that he’d arranged.

He began to explain. ‘There’s a run-down here of the actual figures,’ he said; ‘here it is.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I really don’t need to see them.’

‘As you like,’ he said, replacing the sheet of paper. He closed the folder. The business was done.

She put the cheque in her handbag and he looked at his watch.

‘I’d offer you lunch,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid I’m rather pushed for time—I’ve got a client due in half an hour.’

She got up. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘I didn’t for a moment expect it.’

She turned towards the door and he came around the desk to meet her.

‘I’ll see you out then,’ he said, and she followed him down the corridor and through the reception area.

The office seemed still to be deserted, everyone except the relief receptionist, who was busy typing and hardly looked up at them, still at lunch. He held open the outer door for her and followed her into the lobby. He was seeing her off the premises good and properly. She pressed the lift button and heard the sound of its ascent from perhaps two floors below.

‘Well—’ he said, his face having at last, her departure being imminent, brightened, ‘good—lu—’ but he never completed the ill-chosen (but none would have been better) word: for, as the lift arrived, in the instant before the doors opened to admit her, she turned around towards him, standing there, relieved, so very, visibly, relieved, and she slapped his face.

The last thing she saw, as the doors of the lift closed between them, was his greyish-blue eyes staring at her, sharp with fright and shock, above the hand (very slightly sunburned, its long fingers splayed) which he had raised to cover the appalling, angry, crimson mark which already burned his fair-skinned cheek. It had made a most discernible sound, that slap. She’d been as gratified as surprised at the sound it had discernibly made. If the relief receptionist had stopped typing she’d very possibly have heard it quite clearly. Nicola hoped most sincerely that the relief receptionist had not in fact stopped typing.

65

‘You didn’t,’ said Susannah. ‘I mean, you
didn’t
. Never! Tell me you’re making this up.’

‘I can’t,’ said Nicola. ‘Because I’m not. I
did
.’

‘My God,’ said Susannah. ‘If I had some champagne in the house I’d open it now. I’ve got a good mind to go out and get some.’

‘Better not. I mustn’t get squiffy, I’m minding Chloe this evening—I should be getting back about now, really; I just thought I’d pop in very quickly on the way. Oh—and furthermore: I had that Scunthorpe interview today.’

‘Oh, really? Whereabouts?’

‘They borrowed a room at the Arts Council.’

‘Was it awful?’

‘Yes; horrible. Four of them. Perfectly charming and utterly steely-eyed.’

‘So long as you haven’t got it.’

‘Not the slightest chance. But it’s great to have made the shortlist. I might add it to my CV next time. “Shortlisted for position as Assistant to the Director, Scunthorpe Literary Festival.” That should jack up my employment profile. Now I’d better get back to little Chloe.’

‘I must say they were dashed quick off the mark there.’

‘What did you expect?’

Chloe was in the kitchen with her mother eating fish fingers and carrots.

‘Oh, there you are,’ said a harried-looking Helen. ‘Brilliant. Look, you wouldn’t mind finishing off her tea, would you? I’d have a chance to bathe and change. She’ll just eat this lot, more or less, and then she can have some of this yoghurt and go to bed. Wonderful.’

She vanished and Nicola sat down beside the child and began to converse with her. The fish fingers lost their appeal after a while and had to be abandoned—Nicola, eating one, could quite see why—but she ate all the yoghurt. Then Nicola took her upstairs to play for a spell.

‘Ah,’ said Sam, poking his head around the sitting-room doorway, ‘you’re both in here, are you? Good. Is she behaving herself? Good. Don’t take any nonsense from her, mind. Give her an inch and she’ll take an ell. Whatever that is. Won’t you?’

Chloe looked up at him in understandable amazement.

‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

This time she did not say
yeah
, but continued to stare at him wide-eyed, and then she nodded as if in summary dismissal of both the question and its author, and turning crawled away across the floor.

‘Still, at least she’s got blue eyes,’ he said resignedly. ‘I suppose that’s something.’

‘I should say so,’ said Nicola, with only a hint of sadness.

Ah, but it was. It was certainly something. There was unquestionably something magical about blue eyes.

‘Well,’ said Sam, ‘I’d better get cracking or I’ll be in trouble. Again. Excuse me.’

Nicola picked up the baby and sat her on her knee and began to sing to her:

                              Mares eat oats

                              And does eat oats

                              But little lambs eat parsley

while holding her hands and clapping them together on the down beat. Soon the child was enthralled.

‘Dozey!’ she cried. ‘Darzey!’

Sam and Helen, coming in to say goodbye and seeing all this, exchanged looks of massive self-congratulation as they left the house. How anyone not the responsible parent could possibly be prevailed upon to look after, let alone play with, an infant child was entirely beyond their comprehension: but never mind that: the freak had come to them, and life had taken on a whole new iridescence.

66

Nicola was sitting in a brasserie in Soho with Lizzie drinking vodka and tonics.

‘Listen, darling,’ said Lizzie, ‘Alf saw your friend the other evening. Ran into him in the Middle Temple or somewhere.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Nicola. ‘I’m glad to know he’s still around and about.’

‘The thing is, why don’t you tell me everything that’s happened since I last saw you—if you like, that is. I’m not trying to pry.’

‘Of course not.’

‘I ought to have been in touch much sooner but you know how it is.’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Henrietta’s had chicken pox.’

‘Oh dear. Poor Henrietta.’

‘She got it from Fergus.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘At Easter.’

‘What a drag.’

‘Children are funny that way.’

‘Poor little things.’

‘Have you been all right then?’

‘Mostly.’ She began to give Lizzie a résumé of the events of the past several weeks, ending up with the Scunthorpe interview.

‘But that’s extraordinary,’ exclaimed Lizzie. ‘I’m producing a program about the Scunthorpe Festival for Channel Four. How marvellous to have you on the spot.’

‘But I won’t be.’

‘You might be.’

‘Hardly.’

‘We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll have a word with—’

‘Don’t you dare!’

‘All right. Whatever you say.’

‘Not that I’m ungrateful, but—’

‘No, you’re right of course. Still it might be rather interesting, as these things go.’

‘Yes, I’m almost sorry I won’t be involved. I only applied on a sort of bloody-minded whim. Just after Jonathan sacked me, you see. I was feeling rather mental.’

‘Poor Nicola. Was it really that bad, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then perhaps I can offer some consolation.’

‘How’s that?’

‘As I mentioned, an eminent member of the junior bar, not noted for any tendency to embroider or otherwise obscure the truth, has reported your friend—’

‘Ex-friend.’

‘—your ex-friend, sighted earlier this week in the environs of the Middle Temple—I
think
it was the Middle Temple—where was I up to?’

‘The subordinate clause following your, that is,
my
, ex-friend.’

‘Oh, yes. Well, the ex-friend gave the impression—so I’m
told
— that life had lost all its sweetness. He appeared to be both careworn and melancholy, in a tight-lipped sort of way. My silks and fine array/My smiles and languished air/By love are driven away/And mournful lean despair/Comes with yew to deck my grave/Such end true lovers have, sort of aspect.’

‘Gosh. Are you
quite
sure?’

‘That was pretty much the look of it.’

‘What bloody cheek.’

‘Still, better miserable now, and through his own fault, and therefore deservedly so, than not at all.’

‘Poor Jonathan.’

‘You don’t still—’

‘No. No no no no no!’