Another Country (5 page)

When the programme ended, she went to wash the cup and cafetière, and saw the Chinese student in the window opposite. The air outside was dark and stormy; the light in the toilet was on, and while she washed up she glanced across and thought how cold the little cubicle must be. When the man in the facing window made a gesture of privacy – buttoning up his trousers – he lifted his head and turned, as though drawn to the facing light in her window, and she thought their eyes met for a moment before, embarrassed, even slightly sad, both quickly turned away.

Chapter 8

‘Who's there?'

Leela froze, her hand still out, and wondered if she'd forgotten herself sufficiently to have replaced ‘hello' with ‘knock knock'.

‘Um, sorry?' she said.

He laughed. He was dark-haired, slightly lantern-jawed, handsome in the alienating way of Captain America.

‘Just joking. I meant, who're you? I'm Greg.' He was definitely not French; she thought she heard the Home Counties in his accent.

‘Oh, hi Greg.' She felt relieved, as well as shifty, clutching her plastic cup of red wine. She'd helped lug the bottles up when classes ended that afternoon. Attendance at the monthly school social – an opportunity for students to practise their English with teachers in an informal setting – was obligatory. ‘I'm Leela.'

The fluorescent lights were bright, it was seven forty-five, and three of her students were across the room, looking around, diffident but hopeful, avoiding the wine.

‘Hi Leela.' He smiled at her. The corners of his eyes crinkled. Something about him made her feel despair.

Across the room she saw Guillaume, ratty and smooth in his good coat. He was talking intently to a young woman who seemed to want to get away. When Leela's eyes met his, he ignored her.

She wasn't sure Greg wanted to talk to her, but he had begun the conversation. She ought to be offering herself up to yet another dialogue with a stammering, forceful student. But she'd done that for nearly two hours.

‘Do you work here?' Across the room, she saw with envy that Nina and another teacher, an Irish girl called Tessa, were laughing together, again in contravention of the rules, and pouring each other wine.

‘No, I'm living with one of the tutors, I mean I'm sharing his flat.'

‘Oh, who's that?' Leela was having a hard time focusing on his face. Why? It was a well-appointed face. His dark hair, pushed back, made a curl then flopped like a waterfall over his brow.

There's nothing behind his face, she thought, and realised he had been speaking.

‘Where do you live?' He said it patiently, as though speaking through glue, probably for the second time. Must concentrate.

‘Oh, on the boulevard Saint-Denis.'

‘Ha ha, really?'

‘The
boulevard
Saint-Denis,' Leela repeated. ‘Not the rue Saint-Denis. It's perpendicular. At the north end of the rue Saint-Denis.'

‘But it's quite something, isn't it, that street? God!'

His face became earnest, his eyebrows wavered; she noticed his black jacket, well cut, and the thin cotton scarf wrapped several times around his throat, mentally clocked the time and energy he must have put into assembling this look. Again she had the strange, unwelcome sense that behind it all, scarf, handsomeness, jacket, there was nothing: shadows in the sunshine day.

‘How do you mean?'

‘Well, all those ads in phone booths, those little doorways – video parlours.' His eyes bulged at her, and she suspected him. ‘It's pretty depressing, isn't it?'

Leela thought of Baudelaire's consumptive girlfriend; she was still there, but today she lived up a narrow staircase, and had to fuck businessmen and be videoed while she did it, a piece of paper with ‘virgin, just arrived' written on it in the doorway below.

She had an intense urge to get away from Greg.

‘I've got to – excuse me.' She smiled and walked towards Nina and Tessa, who were laughing and drinking across the room in his line of sight.

‘Hm, he's lovely, who's that?' Tessa enquired.

‘Some guy, he's living with Jim Davis.'

‘He's cute,' Nina said. ‘Listen, my brother's coming here for a visit in a few days. Are you free on Sunday? We were maybe going to go out for lunch.'

‘That sounds great,' Leela said.

Nina lowered her voice. ‘Hey, what's happening with that man you met?'

‘Simon? I don't know. I haven't heard from him in a bit.'

Before the end of the evening, Leela, now much drunker, sought out Greg again. His eyes flashed alarm when she approached, but she talked to him for ten minutes, discovered that they had grown up not far away from each other – though he must have had a genteel, quite English set of parents, and, she thought, a minor public school education – and discussed with him his interest in amateur theatre. Like her, he felt he didn't see enough plays. There was Shakespeare in the twentieth somewhere that week. She gave him her telephone number.

‘I'll call you,' he said, his eyes frightened.

She went home inebriated and truculent, and stayed up too late.

In the morning, the day was clear and mild, and the flat was filling with water. Her green television bobbed on clean water; sun spilled into the room and refracted from small waves; water rose towards her platform bed. She sat up, slid down the ladder, and dipped in a toe. It was warm. She sighed, slid in, swam to the kitchen, out of the front door, down the corridor, and out of a window. Paris was submerged. The sun shone. She swam towards the top of the Tour Saint Jacques. Prostitutes from the rue Saint-Denis swam past, and a bus driver. She knew she was dreaming, but felt she was about to find out something important; she tried to stay in the dream even as she woke. Rain was beating on the heavy glass window; her fingers were chilled and slow.

That night, she couldn't sleep. Disoriented, she walked to the kitchen, got water, turned down the blast of the heater, wondered, and silently enquired of her surroundings, like the white-glaring kitchen tiles, What do you want from me?

She turned on the television: nothing; turned it off, sat exhausted on the floor cushion. The space was snug around her, a small cabin in a large ship.

She got up and put on a cassette, the first of two in a neat cover printed: ‘Le Nouvel Italien sans peine'.

Paolo was telephoning Marco.

Marco non è a casa.

‘Marco non è a casa,' repeated Leela joyously, freed from embarrassment. It was three in the morning; the world was closed for business.

‘Who's calling?' the woman who had answered asked.

Sono Paolo.

Ciao Paolo. Sono Francesca.

‘Ciao Francesca!' Leela repeated with Paolo.

Marco was not at home, but Francesca would tell him that Paolo had called. He would be back later; he had gone out. How long was Paolo in Milan?

Leela rewound the dialogue. Though she had moved on to other lessons, she remained attached to the simplicity, perhaps the stupidity of this one, which constituted its sweetness. How transparent they were, Francesca and Paolo! Francesca in a householderly way withheld her identity until she'd verified Paolo's. The two of them shared their Dantesque names without chuckling over the fact; and Marco, ineffable, slightly mysterious, yet obviously lovable and loved, Marco was not at home.

She spent the next five minutes replaying in her head the conversation she, after a pause of hesitation, had had with Simon's answering machine two days earlier. At the start of the week, he had telephoned, said that ‘the other night' had been fun, asked what she was doing at the weekend, and said he had to go to Dijon for work but would be back on Friday. ‘Maybe we can do something?'

Why had his apparent diffidence not rung true?

‘Yeah, sure, I'm around,' she'd said quickly.

‘Great, give me a call.'

She'd called on Friday afternoon and left a message; it was now Saturday night, and she hadn't heard from him. Perhaps he'd stayed in Dijon for the weekend? Perhaps he had friends there? Perhaps he'd met someone, or he wasn't interested. But he'd said – he'd asked her. But his tone of voice –

She didn't want to think about this, and would think about it for hours tonight while time failed to unspool under the fluorescent light. She searched for a cigarette and found one with a baggy fold. She lit it at the cooker and began to smoke without pleasure. The tape whirred and clicked. She pressed play.

‘Premier dialogue. Un appel de téléphone.'

Pronto.

Buongiorno. E possibile di parlare con Marco, per favore?

Marco non è a casa.

The next day at twelve thirty she came out of the métro at Saint-Paul. The carrousel was still and the day cold, the light sharp. Nina arrived, rosy and pleased, with a tall blond young man who smiled. He said hi to Leela and performed the cheek-kissing with her and Kate, who arrived a minute later. They went to the café nearby that Nina liked.

Leela enquired about the quiche of the day.

The waiter looked down at her hand. ‘Don't forget to buy your ticket, Mademoiselle,' he said.

Leela glanced down at the writing on her left hand and grinned. ‘I have to buy a train ticket. I'm going home to London for Christmas.'

The world of the café opened out; indistinct but loud, she heard the conversations of others, and felt the daylight filtering through and reflecting from the large plate glass windows. Nina's brother smiled at her.

Chapter 9

He carried on moving his mouth in sleep, Simon, as though saying unknown words to absent people. It amused Leela, and alarmed her, a moment of what might almost have been intimacy. She'd woken a few minutes earlier, beginning to be conscious that sleep was still near. From the skylight the grey morning flooded in. She sidestepped the accumulation of encouraging things she'd said to herself last night about Simon, about Simon and herself. In the first instant of waking, her mind sharpened itself, and began by distinguishing itself from everything else: the pale light, the bed sheets, the body next to her. The self examined itself and found no rancour: simply, it noted, this wasn't it.

Leela squirmed. ‘Why not? Why not this?' she pursued.

Silence.

She put an arm under her head, slid a little away from Simon, and examined him. The skin around his eyes frightened her in the mornings; it looked so old and belaboured. When they were both awake, cooking, drinking, talking, even in bed, the presumption of parity in their ages held; she was never certain enough of herself to know how they related to each other. Now, though, she was appalled by what time could do: how it gathered and stayed in the skin.

Simon woke and sighed. He lay gazing at the skylight then suddenly put a hand on the far side of Leela's waist and rolled her over. He looked into her eyes, closed his, sighed, kissed her, felt her bottom.

‘Morning,' she said self-consciously.

‘Morning,' he said at length, the dry politeness of his voice a considerable interval from what his hands and body were doing.

‘Right,' he said, swinging up and out of bed. He began to dress at once. Now she saw him wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, a flannel shirt on top. He frowned, sitting on the bed to put on socks, his shoulders tense. The abruptness with which he peeled himself away from her, and the way her skin, which had been warm against his, was left exposed to the cold air, disconcerted her.

‘I'm gonna make some coffee,' he murmured, and began to disappear down the stairs.

Leela, alone under the skylight, picked up her clothes then went to the bathroom to shower – the water was never quite hot or plentiful enough – and dress. She examined her face in the mirrored bathroom cabinet and was surprised by its youth, how unmarked it was. Her hair sat flat. She fiddled with it and gave up.

In the kitchen, she found Simon plunging the top of the cafetière. Seen from behind, he in every way signified a man: his height, the dishevelled hair, his wide shoulders and the swoop of his back and shirt into his jeans.

She came to rest at his side, and he handed her a cup of coffee. She followed him to the living room, and remembered with a movement of shame, but also amusement, her relief of the evening earlier this week when he'd phoned, his voice both lazy and nervous, to ask if she were free. Leela, clutching the blue receiver, had been abruptly lightened: the world had become less cruel.

She carried an immoderately-sized bag and struggled through the Gare du Nord, away from the suburban trains and the orange 1970s decor and with relief onto a sleek glass-sided escalator, towards the Eurostar. A ticket slid into a machine at the turnstile, a space-age version of the métro. She queued along airport-like corridors and passed shining pillars, walked down a smooth cream slope into the train.

She heaved the holdall into a luggage rack and slid into a seat at the window. Its partner remained empty for a long time, and she adjusted her consciousness with pleasure to the unexpected space. Just before the train left an attractive young black woman appeared, toting a toddler and various bags. She accepted aid from a male passenger to stow her things, and sat down next to Leela, sighing. The train moved out of the station, through wrought-iron arches. Then they were in open country.

But the baby soon shat itself, and the mother, despite having smiled at Leela and returned her greeting when she sat, despite being young and well-dressed and attractive, if a little harried, merely sat there for two and a half hours, not changing his nappy. Leela considered moving, or going to the dining car – something, anything. The infant squirmed, and periodically cried, but he and certainly his mother appeared to bear it all stoically. Leela, uninvolved in their arrangement, resented having to do the same. It smelt. You smell, she thought, regarding the pretty little boy with some distress. He cried and held out his hands to her, I'm sitting in my own shit, help me. No, no, she thought. His mother shrugged and laughed, charming but implacable. Leela tried to read her magazine.

Patrick McCarthy was on a train too, but he was already in England. He opened a letter from his sister, already read, and reread a particular paragraph. The train shook its way through East Anglia. He leant back, breathing in air that was stale from the heaters, and sharp when it mixed with cold air from the windows. Fields in winter, the stubble razed and the ground hard, unrolled in a fine golden light.

After all, he felt affection, a stirring in his self, for this soil and this country. He denied it when he was away, even as far as London, but something in him was content to be at his parents' and do simple things: walk to the pub for Christmas Eve drinks, get in the car and drive to the supermarket, or have a pointless argument with Camille, wind her up over nothing. It was getting harder to do that: she stopped herself even as her cheeks began to redden, and laughed at him.

Hampstead, the attic room last night. He'd slept just next to the bookshelf, which made a partition in the room; the eyes of that girl, blue but bordered with something darker, and her loose red mouth as she talked, the way it appeared to move wildly, unrelated to the words he heard in her voice, Simon's arm and his white torso, the conversation yesterday when they started on the whisky, his feeling of warmth, the creakiness of the floorboards on which his mattress rested, the quiet in the morning, his headache, the light and bustle at the station, a peculiar smell of winter, even of Christmas, again Simon and one of the jokes from last night; he'd forgotten the punchline but he remembered their laughter and someone else's face, Simon's mouth, that girl's eyes, smoke around the table, his own warmth inside (the whisky) and cold in general (the flat), the sense of London spread out around them in the dark, a darkness into which their own names, particularity, importance at this social occasion, their place, in short, completely disappeared: all these and other impressions lay jumbled untidy like dirty cards from a pack that he would have to keep seeing until he could put them in some sort of order. For he'd been drunk, and tired, and so although he had been there, gathering these images, apparently he had also been absent. Where had he been then, while the images were impressing themselves in a store, now to reappear and shuffle randomly until they could be viewed, classified, and put away? It was this he liked least in a hangover.

The train stopped at Manningtree, then started again: a dirty, wide estuary opened under the sky.

No one was home. Fresh from the exertions of lugging her bag through the underground, Leela knocked on different parts of the door, tried the bell. She put down the bag, walked round the house, on a street stacked with other such houses, under a plain east London sky, all air and greyness. She sat on the bag. An elderly man in a long collarless coat passed, seemingly raising an eyebrow; his white geometric beard turned away from her. She saw the hem of his kurta emerge from his coat, and felt embarrassed. Another pair of younger, bearded men. Leela looked away.

‘Ah!' Amy's cry was all of pleasure; it was nonetheless formidable. Leela allowed herself to be swept into a hug, then led to the door.

‘Oh no, oh no,' Amy murmured as she attacked the door and rummaged in her bag. ‘Aaah. Thought I'd lost the keys again.'

They went in, Leela behind her friend, a flurry of voice and red hair, and then the house, surprisingly modern: steel and leather furniture, expensive sofas.

‘It's very plush,' Leela said.

‘Uh, well, I think it's a bit fucking expensive. I'd rather live somewhere grottier and cheaper, but the boys found it.'

‘Well, at least it's nice.'

‘Let's get a cup of tea. I told them I was sick at work, to get out in time for you, and now I think I actually am feeling sick.'

‘Oh no!'

‘Boring, boring,' agreed Amy viciously, whacking tea bags into not very clean mugs. ‘It's disgusting here, disgusting. No one's washed up in weeks. We're paying a cleaner a hundred quid to come round and sort it out. I'd do it myself for that much money but I can't suggest that.'

They took their mugs up the stairs, into a room that was warm and furnished with all the items Leela recognised as characteristic of her friend: a thick duvet, crumpled into a strange shape; clothes on the floor; black shoes of two types, either high-heeled and intimidating, or flat and mannish, all scuffed and tossed on the ground.