Inglorious (29 page)

‘Let’s have a look, well, we have Mr Brick who is due in now and then Mrs Watson and so he could see you in half an hour?’

It made her nervous, but she said, ‘Yes, thanks, half an hour.’ She took a seat and, defying anyone to question her, picked up the
Financial Times
and waited.

Then she found she was shaking her head.
Get a job. Go to see
Liam. Andreas. Simply you must act. JUST ACT!
She was trembling as she waited, wondering if the bank might finally grant her a reprieve. But Justin was nothing more than a thin-bearded official, younger than her by many years. He had other appointments scheduled; he hadn’t much time. At first this made him efficient. He slammed the door behind her, shook her hand quickly, and sat her down. He had her details on the screen in an instant. He spun his chair and said, ‘And what is it you wanted to discuss?’ He was wearing a grey suit that was too short in the legs and shiny black shoes. He had lank hair, tendrils of it falling over his ears, and a faceful of compelling moles.

Frankly, without any introductory flannel, no sort of prolegomena
at all, to begin with the beginning and not to exceed
the bounds of your patience, well, really to start, to render the
inchoate accessible and splendid, well, Justin, if I may call you
by your first name? I come in fear and trembling to ask you in
your munificence if you could help me.
She swallowed hard and said, ‘I’m trying hard to get a job, to pay off my debts, but this mounting interest saps my resolve. I realise it really ought to have the opposite effect, it should really give me a sense of urgency, but I find it makes me feel the whole thing is impossible.’

Justin stared at her for a moment, then said, ‘What exactly can I help you with?’

Lucidity!
she thought.
The Grail, the crock of celestial energy!
The human divine!
‘Justin,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘I’ve banked here for years. Most of that time I wasn’t in debt. It’s only in the last few months that I’ve been racking it upwards. The credit card was the first thing – the credit card I couldn’t pay off, and the interest on that is pretty dirty, and then there is the overdraft. Initially Mr Shark – Mr Rivers – was quite happy about the overdraft, because I have been such a solvent customer for so many years, but then I racked that up too. Now there’s no more overdraft, and this haemorrhaging credit card. I have work, but I won’t earn enough to pay off the
debt for a while. So I wondered if we could come to an agreement. If we could stop the interest from rising at such a startling level each month. I don’t want more debt to wallow in, not much more anyway, just for the interest to stop going up.’

Justin shrugged. ‘We have to service the debt. You know the rules when you take a credit card.’ He looked at the screen again. She wondered, did it have a special note to bank staff?
This woman has been cast out. Do not give her mercy. Ignore
everything she says. Sharkbreath will deal with her.
Of course he saw it all on the computer, her history of former solvency and recent fraud. She had been promising she would soon have a job for months. She imagined it looked bad on his side of the screen. Still she pressed on.

‘Yes, but do you think you could possibly reduce the interest on one or the other, or just stop the interest altogether? Or extend my overdraft so I could pay off my credit card? You know, I’ve been with this bank for years, and while I understand the rules, I wondered if you could possibly cut me some slack?’

‘I can’t authorise anything,’ said Justin, who had clearly not been listening to much of what she said. ‘I see that Mr Rivers has been corresponding with you about this. I suggest you talk to him.’ He was friendly enough, but he raised his hands towards his sparsely bearded chin and said, ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

‘I’ve tried to talk to Mr Rivers. He’s simply never here! It’s quite impossible,’ said Rosa. She was gripping the table, holding on as if that would help.

‘Mr Rivers is of course here regularly; he just happens not to be here today. But I can make you an appointment with him,’ said Justin. ‘Perhaps next Monday?’

We can do you a stripping of the self on Tuesday, a moment
of epiphany on Wednesday, a spot of time on Thursday, but
Monday – Monday we have to see Sharkbreath.

‘Well, fine, next Monday. Fine,’ she said, weakly. ‘Good, count me in for Monday.

Justin rustled through his papers and gave her a piece of card.

‘These are the contact details for our debt management counsellor,’ he said. ‘I suggest you talk to her. Or to Mr Rivers. Try him first thing on Monday.’ He nodded her away, and started typing on his computer as she said goodbye.

She grabbed her coat and a scarf and left the building. When she was on the street she ran along panting like a hound. The bus passed as Rosa ran up to the stop, and she saw the road behind was clogged, so she clenched her fists and carried on. LYLA, said the sign. A STAR REALLY WILL FALL. And soon. THE KILLS were still celebrating the launch of their single. Looking up at the sky, she walked along the street where everything moved too slowly and the cars got wedged in queues, and the buses shambled through it all, creaking and groaning. She was passing a herd of diggers breaking up the road, and a grey house with a view of the shattered street. She was passing the late-night shop and the funeral parlour and the cars were queuing at the lights but now there was a sense of elegy to it all because she knew she was leaving soon. The departure made her mark time. Nearly three months since she had come here. She shook her head. Celestial Stairs. Equal People. Pink and blue houses. Sketchy cab company. Handsome trees. Demoralised fast food restaurant. Crumbling high rise. Factory wasteland. Metal grilles. Pile of rubble. And the billboard and HERE COME THE TEARS. Her head ached, and she wondered why she was going back to Jess’s flat.
To do what?
she thought. She stopped on the street, uncertain, panic making her guts churn. If she went back, what would she do? Make calls, stare at the street, commit resolutions to paper.
It was better to stay outside,
she thought. And she thought she should go to see Andreas.
No
conceivable reason
why not
, she thought.
He told you not to go away. He could be
pleased to see you. Go and ask him.
She gritted her teeth, clenched her fists. It was of course necessary. A simple question, and then she would earn, she hoped, a reprieve. She was
bold and if not resolute then at least she was moving again, cutting away from Ladbroke Grove, turning onto quieter streets. How well she knew these shadow-brushed streets, her refuge in the evenings. She told them off, one by one – Chesterton Road, Oxford Gardens, Cambridge Gardens. On a corner she passed two lovers, kissing and holding hands. Then she saw a woman standing at her front door, waving at a friend who was walking away. A man parked a car, laboriously, tugging it backwards and forwards. It had been raining and there were still puddles on the roads. The cars splashed through them, dispersing water. Rosa said, ‘You’ve really been handling things badly,’ quietly, keeping her face behind her scarf. Then she said, ‘No more fooling around. You have to find a place to stay. You have to get a job. In the short term, you have to get that money from Liam. You don’t want it? Of course you don’t. You don’t want anything! But I insist you go and get it. You’ll have to be very calm and quite purposeful, and there’s no point trying to scuff your shoes like that, dragging them along in such a childish way, because that won’t make any difference at all. You’re just slowing yourself down – of course you want to miss out again! I insist you turn up there, prepared to give it your all. Otherwise, what will you do? Do you have a plan B? There’s no fairy godmother preparing to save you. No one will help you! You have exceeded the proper bounds of debt. That’s the brutal truth of it …’ and now she dropped her voice, because she was passing a woman and some children. They all walked up the steps of a house, and disappeared inside. ‘They won’t help you either,’ she said. ‘No point staring over at them. You understand the situation, don’t you?’ A taxi went past her, and to her left was a large church. Her limbs were heavy. If she could just sit down, if there was just a bench she could sit on, she thought. A quick rest and then she would go and sort everything out. She would do everything she had to, happily, after a pause on a bench. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘Come on, no tricks. It’s too late. Remember?’

She moved slowly, looking everyone up and down. At the corner she saw a preacher with his hands full of papers. But she didn’t want to listen to him and she kept on walking. She turned onto Blagrove Road and walked under the Westway. A STAR IS GOING TO FALL. Of course, the shudder of trains, the rumble of cars. She heard the skaters in their fenced-off compound. A sign said MUGGERS BEWARE. She wondered at that and moved on. Opposite were the yellow bricks of a complex of flats. The skate kids had helmets on, and when they fell they laughed. Where the Westway seemed to curve above her, spinning its sides like a bowl on a potter’s wheel, she crossed the bridge. The underside of the Westway was still eloquent. She saw
TEMP
and something next to it, something she hadn’t seen before,
SOPH. SOPH
, marvellous, she thought. She had failed to understand the
TEMP
and now they had slung her another clue. That made her shiver.
SOPH.
SOPH. SOPH? Sophisticated. Sophistry. Sophos.
It might be wisdom. Of course, she was lacking in it. They all were, wasn’t that the point?
TEMP
for SOPHOS – it was certainly time for wisdom. Sometime soon, she hoped. She simply couldn’t carry on in this state of foolishness for ever. And now she wondered why she was thinking about these words that some drunken man had scrawled and perhaps fallen to his death before finishing them. Abbreviated, that was all. Perhaps they meant very little in the end.

TEMP
and
SOPH
she thought, moving on. Now a woman passed by holding an umbrella. She heard the clatter of the trains, the staccato thud of wheels on the track. She saw the rusted underbellies of the carriages and watched as they swung past her, moving out of sight. The motion soothed her; she thought of boarding a train and sleeping until she arrived – wherever, at the terminus, somewhere far away, waking to a still sky. As she walked she remembered a journey she had once made on a night train through France, and how she had seen the moon obscured by clouds, and listened to the breath of a stranger in the bunk beneath her, a polite woman who had
asked her which bunk she preferred. Through the night the train accelerated and slowed again, the scream of the brakes disturbed the woman below, and her breathing changed. There was a clash of wheels on metal, and a sound of low speech and laughter, and Rosa had thought the voices sounded like people she knew. Some of them were English travellers. She remembered lying on her side so she could stare through the window. Waiting at the stations for the grinding of the wheels to start again. She saw lights in rows whipped backwards as the train moved faster. The train roaring at the oncoming blackness, emitting a low groan as it sank into a tunnel.

She had always had a passion for travel, for the steady progress of a train along a track, or better still the dream-stupor of a long-haul flight, the dimness of the cabin lights as the plane surfed on the air and blackness stretched away, the hum of the engines as the plane descended, moving towards land portioned into patterns of fields, sliced by roads. She was thinking that she must really get away, travel somewhere and start again, take a trip to mark her resolution, draw a line under this period of her life.
You must get out of this square mile
, she thought,
you must
change your mode.
That was surely a good thing to do. As soon as she got her hands on a bit of money, that bit of money Liam owed her, she would take a trip elsewhere, try to start again. She walked onto the footbridge. She saw the pale sun. It looked like a theatre prop, it was so plain and perfect. Everything was still and yet as she walked she – who wandered around London all the time – felt afraid. She began to pick her feet up faster, slapping them down and trying to hurry. Her hair was blown about by the wind and she heard footsteps behind her; they rang out clearly. Rosa kept her eyes firmly on the street beyond the bridge and thought it wasn’t far now, just twenty metres or so and she would be on the other side. She kept looking up at the sun, like a beacon beckoning her on. The noise of footsteps coming closer made her heart beat faster. There was someone behind her, someone she couldn’t quite turn round to look at because she felt something might happen. Someone was right behind her,
snuffling and grunting. She was almost at the end of the bridge, she could see Tavistock Crescent in front of her, and the snuffling was getting louder and now she thought she could hear words, a low murmur. She became quite rigid and superstitious, thinking she couldn’t turn round, so she quickened her step, and the steps behind her seemed to follow. She could hear them, ringing out on the bridge. And in the background, distant now, she could hear cars and trains, rattling and grumbling, and now on the arches she saw
TEMP
in the guttering, sprayed uncertainly, this
TEMP
had almost faded. A wrong turn? she thought. She saw houses silhouetted against the sky. She heard her breath quicken, and found her hands were drenched in sweat. Her skin was prickling with fear. She was trying to walk faster but her legs were stiff and heavy. She said ‘Hello?’ in a tentative voice. She turned suddenly, saw a man dragging his heels in the leaves. He was walking towards her. It startled her, and for a moment she couldn’t get her breath. When she looked at his face she saw a bloated jaw, eyes set close together. A toad-face, certainly, she thought. The same one as before? Or another one? The bridge was empty and beyond that was the quiet road. He was staring straight ahead, not seeing her at all, intent on following a straight line across the bridge. Feeling foolish she quickened her step and walked on. Behind he was still grunting to himself, muttering words she couldn’t hear. She craned her head round again and saw him staring at her, nodding his head. That was enough for her, and she turned on her heels and started to run.