Mourning Ruby (19 page)

I’ve dealt with the outstanding emails.

With love from

Rebecca

He would know what that signified. We’d talked one day about people who cram the word love on the end of emails to acquaintances whom they don’t love in the least. Mr Damiano said it was just normal, acceptable hypocrisy. I said I wouldn’t write it.

‘So if you write love, then it always means love?’

‘Always.’

He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

‘At the time, it means love,’ I corrected myself.

It wasn’t true that I’d dealt with the emails, but I made it true over the next few hours, while Mr Damiano continued to sleep. It was light by the time I left. The streets were pale and quiet and cleaners were unlocking the outer doors of offices. I went to the studio apartment I rented, not far from the office. Going there was only the first step.

I showered for a long time. I packed clothes. I thought of setting out without sleep and I was sure I could do it, but while I was waiting for the kettle to boil, the long day and the night and everything that had happened
came up and hit me and I was on the bed, flat, falling, with no time to pull the covers over me or take off my shoes.

The sound of the phone pulled me out of a sweet sleep. It was Mr Damiano. He sounded twenty years younger than he’d been the night before.

‘Rebecca. I want you to come to my house. Can you come now?’

I sat up and blinked. Sun was flooding onto the bed. I hadn’t closed the blinds, or undressed.

‘What time is it?’

‘Did I wake you?’

‘Give me a minute.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, it’s OK. I needed to wake up. What time is it?’

‘Nine-twenty.’

I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours, but I felt as if I’d been deep in dreams for a hundred years.

‘What day is it?’ I said suddenly.

‘It’s Friday.’

It had been Wednesday when I got back from New York, I was sure of that. Wednesday night. The time was different, but not that different.

‘Mr Damiano, last night when we were talking in the garden –’

‘Not last night, Rebecca. The night before last.’ I heard the smile in his voice. ‘You’re not awake yet.’

‘No –’

‘I shouldn’t have let you go like that.’

‘But I told you. I can’t keep on working for you. I thought you understood that.’

Mr Damiano made an impatient sound, as if asking himself when I would ever get the point.

‘I don’t mean that. That is all under way. Elena shortlisted for me yesterday, from a pool of contacts she maintains. I saw two candidates for your job yesterday evening. Marina will start work for me on Monday. I am flying to New York tomorrow morning, to the Sidney. Things are not going well there.’

He had his power back. I had seen him as an old man, bowed over and heavy. I was wrong. Or maybe not wrong, but seeing only one way in which the kaleidoscope of Mr Damiano could settle.

‘Come to my house now,’ came his full, strong voice. ‘I am not happy with the way we left each other.’

He gave me the address, and we said goodbye. I already knew where he lived, though I’d never been there. No one in the office had been there. There was a myth in the company that he had no home. He was later and earlier in the office than anyone, and then there were the blankets in the cupboard and the couch where he often slept.

I knew so many separate things about Mr Damiano, but I still wasn’t sure how they joined together. He loved horses, and once told me that he used to bet heavily and that he’d bought a share in a small Italian restaurant with his winnings. He still ate at that small, dull restaurant almost every day. There was no better food in London, he said.

He no longer placed bets. He liked to go over to Ireland, to the races at Leopardstown and Punchestown. He loved the business of it, the thousands of lives, human and animal, knit up on the chance of a horse’s hooves beating on the turf. It was play and he loved play.

‘Play is the best thing human beings do,’ he said to me, smiling.

I had been asleep for twenty-six hours, it seemed. How was that possible? But it felt good as I showered again and put on my jeans and a white T-shirt, to show myself and him that my job was over and the little black suits were tucked away in a cupboard. The sun fell everywhere. I’d never seen a day like it for glisten and dazzle, and this was the dirty heart of London. What would it be like elsewhere? There was dust all over the apartment. I would clean it before I left, I thought. I had enough money to keep paying the rent for a few months, so I could leave my possessions there, but there were not many of them. My working clothes already had the look of garments which could gladly go to a charity shop and be picked up more or less as a bargain by people who more or less wanted them. I would be rid of all of it. Everything I needed for now would go into one bag.

I was ready. My heart beat hard, as if something frightening or wonderful was about to happen. It was a long time since it had beat like that. I had been calm for so long now. Nothing had brought tears to my eyes since I’d sat in Ruby’s bedroom and found the scent of her still there, like treasure. Nothing, until I saw her again, on the runway. My heart beat and I felt afraid. I didn’t know where this would lead me. I walked to the window and the light dazzled me and prickled my eyes. There was the bright sky and the trees shaking their electric green leaves in the morning wind and the rush of London and I was not separate from it any more. I could not
hide in the stiff, chill pocket where I had hidden since I left my home.

It was a narrow, white house in a narrow, white, quiet street. It had an old iron bell-pull and when I pulled it down I heard the sound in the heart of the house, and then Mr Damiano’s tread. He opened the door to me. He was dressed in one of those pale linen summer suits that English men can’t wear. It looked fine on him. He was upright and smiling.

The house was everything I hadn’t expected. Beautiful rugs criss-crossed each other, trees stood about in the corners of rooms, the walls were covered with fine, silky Turkish carpets, there were piles of cushions and low divans. It looked like the tent of a travelling merchant.

‘Sit down. We’ll have coffee.’

A woman I had never seen before brought in the coffee. She was dressed in black, with a broad strong face, and she looked about fifty. It surprised me when she spoke in English.

‘Angela is my housekeeper,’ Mr Damiano explained.

It struck me that he had layer upon layer of lives. Maybe there were other houses, quite different, in Rome or Alicante or Berlin. More housekeepers.
More Rebeccas
, I thought. It was a thought that chilled me. But his smile was real. Even if it was only an illusion, his skill was wonderful.

Angela served the coffee and went out. All the doors of the house were left open and soon we heard her begin to sing. The volume rose and fell. She must have been moving around, working. Her voice was strong, not sweet, but true. She was singing ‘Blue Moon’.

‘She has a good voice,’ I said.

‘We go to Covent Garden together. Angela has to explain the stories to me. They are so far-fetched that they must be true, I think.’

I drank my coffee. It was very peaceful here and I noticed that my hand holding the cup was perfectly steady.

‘You slept well,’ said Mr Damiano.

‘Yes.’

‘Because you had come to a decision.’

‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t asked you here to make you change your mind, Rebecca. I asked you because I wasn’t satisfied with the way we parted. I was too tired to think of you properly, as I should have done. You are leaving my employment, and I have been very happy with the work you’ve done. I intend to give you something.’

‘But I’ve left with no notice – I’ve made things difficult for you.’

‘No. You have made me see that I should go to New York. That’s good. This business was not built by sitting in an office in London. I have been behaving like an old man. You’re laughing at me, Rebecca. You think, “Of course he is an old man. He should behave like one.”’

‘I don’t think that today. Maybe I did think it last night, just for a while –’

‘You mean the night before last –’

‘Yes. But you have renewed yourself.’

‘Aha! You found the right word, Rebecca! That’s because you are a native speaker. That is the word I wanted to find for you, after what you told me about your aeroplane, and that you saw Ruby in the fire-truck. But I
am not a native speaker and so I have to say it like this, with words that aren’t quite right. Because I don’t know when a horse should be a horse and when it is a mount. So. I will say it in my way and you will understand me.

‘I look at your face, Rebecca, and I see that the worst thing that can happen to you has happened to you. It’s there, look. Anyone can see it. It has made its mark on you and the mark will never come off.

‘You take it with you wherever you go. But maybe you renew it.

‘No, I am not explaining this right. My horse has turned into a mount. What I want to say is, you take it with you, Rebecca. What you are now is the woman that Ruby’s death has made. And with that – well, that’s enough.’

He paused. There was a film of sweat on his forehead. For a moment he looked drained and old, as he’d done in the garden. But then he gathered himself and shook off his age.

‘Eat one of Angela’s almond biscuits. They are excellent. And then I’ll show you what I have for you.’

After we’d drunk our coffee and eaten the biscuits, he rose and went out. I heard his voice and Angela’s from the kitchen. I couldn’t hear the words. Suddenly her voice rose in protest but I still couldn’t understand. They were not speaking English.

They sleep together, I thought. They got out of the same bed this morning. There was that feeling about them, and Angela was one of those women with a face that could lighten with her mood and a fine body under that dull dress.

Well. He was not mine after all, my Mr Damiano. He had another name, in Angela’s language.

Her voice was quieter now. They’d resolved whatever it was.

It’s not possible to listen to a couple talking privately in another room without a pang of some kind. But I didn’t need to say to myself what the pang was. He was coming back.

He held out a small, flat, brown-paper parcel.

‘Open it, and see if you can tell me what it is.’

The parcel was tied with string. It had been tied up a long time ago and the knots were difficult, but I picked them loose. The paper was old and fragile. I unwrapped it carefully and there was a folded piece of cloth.

‘Take it out,’ said Mr Damiano.

I unfolded the cloth. It was made of strong, silky stuff. A panel of blue and a panel of gold were stitched together. The piece of cloth was about a yard square. Mr Damiano looked at me expectantly.

I stroked the cloth. Blue and gold, different pieces of fabric sewn together into one… I had it.

‘Your mother sewed it,’ I said. ‘It’s the tent of your first Dreamworld.’

He slapped his hands together. ‘I knew you would remember! It’s for you, Rebecca, to mark the time we’ve spent together. And your excellent work for me.’

‘I can’t take it from you. You’ve kept it all this time.’

‘Of course you can take it, if I give it to you. Take it with you. Put it in your bag. It doesn’t take up much space, and feel how light it weighs. My mother chose material which was tough and would survive use. It has barely faded. Take it.’

I folded the cloth carefully, corner to corner. He was right. It folded almost to nothing. I thought of the queues outside the first Dreamworld, waiting to come in, and how Bella had told fortunes.

‘I’ll keep it for ever,’ I said.

Mr Damiano shrugged expansively. ‘Of course you will. And if you lose it, never mind.’

It was time to go. Angela remained in the kitchen, singing and clattering plates. Mr Damiano came into the hall. As he reached to open the door for me, I reached for him. I felt the weight and bulk of him for the first time, the shock of his body after so much of his mind and voice. His warmth and smell enveloped me. This close, the colour of his hair had a certain deadness which made me know for sure that Mr Damiano tinted his hair. We held each other, not moving, locked together, while Angela sang in the kitchen. And then the door opened and I was gone.

23

The Deep Blue Sea

We dip our heads in the deep blue sea

The deep blue sea the deep blue sea

We dip our heads in the deep blue sea

On the last day of September

Dearest Rebecca,

It was an email from Joe. I sat in the internet café and read it through once, and then again. St Ives had an internet café now. The town was so much changed from the days when Adam and I first came. Everywhere, the differences between places were being smoothed out.

He had always begun with those words when he wrote to me.
Dearest Rebecca
. I’d taken it for granted, but now I wondered. Right from the beginning, Joe’s endearments had made me feel that I had a place in the world.

Dearest Rebecca,

I am on Vancouver Island now. I’ve begun a new book, but this time it’s not going to be history – or, if it is history, it’s of a different kind. I don’t know if I’ll ever publish it. It’s just a story. I’ve never written anything
like it before. I think it’s for you. It’s been strangely easy to write, as if the story was there all the time, waiting for me to notice it.

No more Stalin, Rebecca. I’m finished with that. I’ll never get to the end of that book about Stalin’s fugue.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Nadezhda Alliluyeva and her death. You were right, Rebecca, when you saw the horror of how she left her children. I couldn’t let go of her, even after I’d finished the book about her. But now I have, and it’s killed the book I was trying to write. It was always Nadya who interested me, not him. Strange, isn’t it? The mark Stalin makes on the world is so great. A stain, a mark that spreads like a greasy fingerprint on papers in an archive. We’ll never get rid of it. And yet as a subject he is barren. I can rehearse everything he did and everything he was, and it comes out dead on the page. It’s the effect he has on other people that matters. I try to see him alone in a room, eating or sleeping or whistling a tune he likes, and every time I fail.