The Jeweller's Skin (23 page)

She shook her head, smiling.  ‘Perhaps you have been very’ - she searched for the word - ‘very friendly and open.  This is not a mistake.’

There were noises outside in the corridor.  June got to her feet.  ‘Cook, I don’t have to give you notice straight away, do I?’

‘Only one week.  But thank you for telling me now.’  Though who knows which of us will leave first, she thought.

The door creaked behind them.  ‘Good morning.  You two having a nice little chat?’

‘Don’t tell,’ June mouthed, as Rosaleen Shaw turned to take down her apron.

Anthony Shearer was at the drawing-board, amending the plans for rebuilding a bombed-out school.  The client, surveyor for a London borough, was difficult; or perhaps it was the committee he had to report to.  This was the third time the plans had been returned.  And what were the children doing meanwhile, he wondered.  Did they double them up with the school down the road?  If they’d managed like that for the past four years, was there any reason to go ahead with rebuilding?

The telephone rang in the outside office.  That could be the client, to say the whole job has been cancelled, he thought, still working.  He loved the drawing; he always had, since college.  The fine pencils, the setsquares and rulers, the crisp paper, filled his mind with clarity and precision.  And designing an object on paper: roofs and load-bearing walls and drains, even; it still seemed magical, a kind of language for telling what you saw in your mind to another person.  He stood back to consider the pitch of the school roof.

A knock on the door.  Miss Burns, his secretary.  As usual, she blushed at having to interrupt him.

‘You’re wanted on the telephone, Mr Shearer.’ 

For some reason she never announced the name until he asked.

‘A Mrs Humphreys.’  Miss Burns stood holding onto the door-handle, like a gawky schoolgirl who always felt in the wrong.  ‘I’m afraid she wouldn’t say what it concerns.’

‘That’s fine, thank you.’  He put down the setsquare and went slowly to his desk, aware of trembling.

‘Narcisa.  How nice of you to ring.  Good morning.’  It was the first time she had ever phoned him.

‘Am I interrupting?’  There was that slight roughness, the accent he mostly forgot when he was with her.

‘I’m delighted to be interrupted.  How are you?’

The break in her voice was almost a laugh.  ‘I am feeling very good.  For some reason.’

‘Well, that’s good.’  He realised he’d been assuming some problem.  ‘Keeping that deputy of yours in line?’

‘Deputy - oh, you mean Miss Shaw.’  One of those pauses where she considered her answer.  ‘I think perhaps she is keeping me in line. I will tell you, not now.  But it does not matter.  Or perhaps’ - the half-laugh again - ‘it does matter and I do not care.’

‘That’s good,’ he said again, concerned for her.

‘Anthony, you are working, we will not talk for long.  I telephoned just - well, for no reason.’  He could hear her awkwardness; as if it were a burden for him to speak to her.  ‘Perhaps you are busy.  I am off duty tomorrow evening.  If you are free, I could come to London, or..’

He felt happiness knock him over like a breaker.  ‘Wait a minute.’  With his left hand, he opened his diary, knowing already.  ‘How nice of you to ask.  No, that’s fine, there’s nothing at all.’  Only Mina, he thought: I will have to think what to tell her.  ‘Are you sure you can come up to town?  Is that what you’d like?’

‘Ah, Anthony, I want to be anywhere that is not here.  Yes, I will get the train; you know I can come to Waterloo or Victoria.’ 

‘Come to Victoria,’ he said.  ‘I’ll meet you.’  He could see her already, walking along the platform.  ‘Now what would you like to do?  There is the whole of London waiting to entertain you: concerts, theatre, a film..’

‘Or else..’  she said, and he felt his whole body quicken.

*

His meeting finished early, at half past four.  He came out of the client’s office, in Hanover Square, and started towards Regent Street and the buses; then changed his mind, and set off to walk to Victoria to meet her.  The past few days had been suddenly mild; the trees were in leaf, people were sauntering.  He unbuttoned his coat and strode down the back streets, past St George’s, which made him think of Handel, on a zigzag route by Savile Row and the Burlington Arcade, towards Piccadilly.

It was one of his pleasures, knowing the streets of London.  He had grown up in Mill Hill, which was too far out, but came in as a boy whenever he could, the interminable bus ride down Edgware Road, and explored whatever he could afford to enter.  A silly thing to be proud of, he thought now: like a boy scout waiting to be asked directions.  But the bomb damage had felt personal to him.  He had come back from Italy, with a minor injury and a loathing of all armies, and found he couldn’t remember what there had been, in the places turned to fireweed and dark craters.

He walked briskly through the arcade, though the chess shop normally drew him at least to its window.  A few couples, arm in arm, were wandering, pointing out antique rings or hand-made shoes.  He tried to imagine bringing Narcisa here.  It would be unfair; to enjoy looking, you had to have the money to imagine making some extravagant purchase.  Though of course, she may have money, he said to himself, and wondered for the first time what she did with the pitiful amount they no doubt paid her.

He crossed Piccadilly, skirting the front of a bus that was slowed in the traffic.  The driver hooted and called out of the window.  Still, he would like to show her London.  He supposed she must have spent some time in town; but there would be places he knew to take her to.  ‘Or else.
.’
she had said.  He would have to book a room.  He would go into the Goring on his way.  No luggage; but he thought they’d remember him.  There were places nearer the station you could go, and rent a room by the hour; but then they would feel tainted.  Or he would at least; hard to know with her. 

In St James’ Park he finally stopped walking.  There was plenty of time: it was still not five, and he’d said he’d meet her at six, at the barrier.  He sat on a bench by the lake, and watched the birds.  Who was it that had brought the flamingos here?  Ridiculous, out of place, the powder-puff pink that he’d heard had to be kept up by feeding them shrimps.  Oh, don’t be so solemn, he told himself, and stretched.

He had wept, the last time making love with Narcisa.  He had found himself full of whatever it was, some tension, some anger that had made him hold her down and fuck her relentlessly; and then he’d wept.  She had shown no surprise, nor indignation.  He’d thought it through several times in the days between.  She aroused something in him, he couldn’t say what it was, but something more than Mina ever had, a person he didn’t quite recognise.   And probably that was a good thing, he thought; no doubt he’d become middle-aged and complacent.  Only..

He watched a family standing at the edge, a small boy held back by reins throwing scraps of bread in the direction of the water, an older girl laughing.  It was all very well to want to open up; easy to say, he thought, feeling querulous: but what about Mina?  Their arrangement, her sophisticated approach, was that he told her nothing about Narcisa; she knew, but didn't want to be made aware.  He wondered again if she had a lover, and if he’d be as generous with her.  Possibly not.  All that was fine, so long as he stayed calm: some tenderness, human concern, and sexual pleasure: nothing that would disrupt his life at home.

It may be all right, he thought, as the family moved on, the little boy waving goodbye to a tufted duck.  But that was dishonest; he knew it wasn’t all right.  He had talked last time about her returning to Prizren; and maybe that had been part of his outburst, the dread that had fallen on him as he spoke, that she would get lost in the new communist state that Yugoslavia seemed about to become.  Well, he told himself ironically, you always did claim to be a socialist.  Narcisa and I, building socialism in one country.

He stood up, impatient, and crossed the bridge, then walked along parallel to Birdcage Walk, on the new green grass, with the planetree leaves above him opening.  Buckingham Palace stood squat and ugly in front of him.  Poor aim, Adolf, he said under his breath.  He reached the station just after half past five.  He bought an evening paper, to keep his thoughts under control while he waited, and stood at the barrier, amongst the crowds of people hurrying home on the suburban trains.

*

In the end they went to a film, in Leicester Square.   ‘I would buy you sweets, if it weren’t for rationing,’ he said; but she shrugged it aside, and watched, sitting quite still, as Humphrey Bogart survived impossible dangers.  Once or twice she leant over to him with a question, and he was amused, translating the deadpan slang in a whisper into respectable English.  She seemed completely absorbed, tense with the drama; like his younger son, who still flinched when the guns were drawn, though he laughed later.

He had planned to take her out to dinner, but it appeared she had other ideas.  ‘I have never eaten fish and chips,’ she said, pronouncing the words with delicate precision.  ‘The girls I work with, when they go into Epsom, they always say they have had fish and chips.  Unless’ – she looked up at him, being careful – ‘it is not something that people like you eat?’

He laughed, and led her up to Tottenham Court Road, and took pleasure in explaining the more arcane dishes.  In the fug of chip fat and cigarette smoke, the man behind the counter cheerfully pointed to saveloys and roe.  ‘Rock is rock salmon?’ she asked, and was proud to be right.  ‘I order this sometimes.’

They settled for haddock and chips, on his recommendation.  He sprinkled vinegar on his chips and let her taste. She was in a mood he’d never seen before, reckless, exploratory, saying what she thought, and laughing suddenly.  ‘You mean you don’t serve them fish and chips?’ he asked, and she threw out both hands in an unfamiliar gesture.  ‘Fish yes, potatoes yes, but Anthony, there are two thousand people, how can it be the same?  It is hardly food.’  He felt a danger behind her honesty: as if she were jettisoning the way she had lived, and might be left with nothing at the end.  So that’s two of us, he thought briefly.  But it was too much fun, sitting opposite her, amongst the working men in overalls hunched over their suppers.

‘Well,’ she said, her dark eyes glittering, her mouth shiny with fat, at the end of the meal.  ‘This week I have been very clever.  Very active.’

‘Yugoslavia?’  he asked, apprehensive.

‘Yugoslavia?  Well, I will tell you about that.  I have been to the library.  But no, something else.  I have been to an employment agency. And it seems’ - she leaned back in her chair and smiled  - ‘it seems there may be people who will employ me.  Ladies who want a cook to come in the morning and go away at night.  Or what did she say?  Gentlemen’s clubs.’

‘So you would have a place of your own?  To live in?’

‘Precisely.’  She leaned towards him, across the table.  Her sleeve brushed the side of her empty plate.   ‘I thought it is time I live like other people.  Rooms, or a house, I do not know.  I can finish work and leave it, and go and do whatever I like at home.  Have a cup of coffee at two in the morning; imagine.’

He imagined the rigour of her life for all these years, and took her hand.  ‘Here, watch it, you two,’ an old man called from the back of the shop, and roared with laughter.

‘And have visitors?’

‘Of course.’  He wondered if she’d thought about it.  ‘You can stay with me and nobody will be watching.  At least,’ she added, ‘if I have a house, or a flat.  With rooms I don’t know.  So it will be a house!’

He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

Over white cups of milky coffee, he asked again, not wanting to but compelled, ‘So you’re not planning to go back home?’

‘Really, I do not know what I am planning.  To stay, to go - the asylum, a private house - nothing.  Perhaps even I will stop work, and sit at home playing the piano.’  He could see something wistful in the way she smiled.  ‘I went to the library and read some books, and newspapers, there is much in the newspapers.  But really it does not help me at all.  And then..’  She drew back into some private train of thought.  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘simply I do not know how I can write to them.  What I can say, I mean.  So much has happened, probably they cannot understand.’

Can I? he wondered, and made himself think from her point of view.   ‘But they are your family; they love you, don’t they?  I would think they would be delighted - overjoyed - if they have not heard from you for so long.’

‘I don’t know.  Perhaps you are right.’ Some of her earlier gaiety returned.  ‘Oh, I think it would be easier simply to go, to get on a train and whatever there is, a bus, a taxi, anything, a cart; and arrive and say Here I am.  To whoever is there.  Writing a letter, I don’t think I can do it.’

‘Narcisa,’ he said, and traced the lines of her palm with his middle finger.  ‘I don’t want you to go back.’  He held her gaze.  ‘I know this is not what matters most - I mean I know you must decide what is best.  You have all these choices.  But I don’t want you to go away.’

She took it calmly, her hand relaxed in his.  Oh God, he thought, I have made a terrible mistake.  She doesn’t need any more claims on her.  There was a long pause.  He saw behind her head the man lifting a metal basket of chips, and setting them to drain on the edge of the fryer.

She laughed quietly.  ‘This week I told someone I have never made decisions.  A girl -  well, I will tell you some time, perhaps.’  She smiled up at him, so he wondered what was coming.  ‘Anthony, thank you.  It is a long time since anyone said that.’  She stood, and leaned over to kiss him on the forehead.  ‘Now I would like to go to this hotel.  We will be smelling of fish and chips and vinegar, perhaps they will refuse to let us in?’