Greyglass Page 12

  Unenlightened, shopping not unpacked, Susan wondered whether she wanted the girl to go, or to stay.

  By daylight she looked even younger. Her skin had no markers, not the faintest frown-line, or infinitesimal lapse.

  She was moving, leisurely, back towards the corridor and the front door.

  “Would you like some tea?” said Susan. “I’ve just made some.

  “I’d love some.”

  “It’s not normal tea – I mean, it’s mint tea-bags.”

  “Even better.”

  In the kitchen, Crissie picked up a lemon, and then a lettuce, from the kitchen counter, and examined them reflectively. “The shape of fruit and vegetables is so intriguing. Everything is, really, when you look at it.”

  They went back to the main room and Crissie sat on the couch, kicking off her shoes so her clean, exquisite feet could burrow in the carpet. There was black nail-varnish on her toenails.

  “How long have you been in this flat, Susan?”

  “Not long. A month or so.”

  “I’ve only been in mine a few months too. Do you want to change a lot? Because you’re an artist, aren’t you? I noticed the easel and canvases in the other room.”

  “Sort of an artist. I do book-jackets, sometimes.”

  “That must be fascinating, to be able to do that.”

  Susan said, politely, “What kind of work do you do?” She was curious as well, she half expected Crissie to say she didn’t have to work.

  Crissie smiled her sweet and amiable smile. “I’m a prostitute.”

  The months had gone by after R.J. Foolishly, believing the propaganda, Susan anticipated constantly that the hurt and sense of desolation would ease. They did not do so.

  “Susan, you seem to need a break.”

  “I’m sorry about not getting this done on time.”

  “It’s okay. I understand. But well. Why not take some leave?”

  Near Christmas, Susan saw his book in the display at Paragon. Then in the shops. The jacket illustration was very ordinary. She ordered a copy, but then, having got it home to Brashspeare Road, found she couldn’t read it.

  She put it in the bookcase with his other eleven novels, the ones he had given her, and the one with her cover. And then in the New Year, she pulled them all out and took the books to a charity shop.

  But it didn’t help. Of course not. Nothing could.

  It was not that she thought of him, longed for him, every minute of every day and night. It was that a kind of sludgy darkness hung over her. She couldn’t be happy, even in little ways. And if ever she managed to be, for a moment or so, the darkness shifted and made a strange sound in her brain, resettling itself, reminding her.

  She went through stages of misery and anger, sarcasm and self-dislike. She drank too much. Stopped drinking alcohol altogether. None of this led anywhere, except back to R.J.

  In February there was a party Paragon gave, and she was asked and expected to go, but he might be there, so she didn’t.

  However, she finished two covers on time that were all right.

  Anne called and said she might come over in the summer, (alone, Wizz was always busy) but Anne had said this before at least ten times.

  Anne now and then sounded old. Certainly sometimes elderly. Her voice would suddenly croak on random words. She was over sixty. Her laughter, too, was finally very American. She said, “Oh, boy, is Wizzy fat. He has to diet. What a blimp.”

  Susan found she was oddly shocked. Never before had Anne said anything so derogatory about Wizz.

  Anne said, “So, you’re still in that dump you told me about in Shakespeare Street?”

  “Brashspeare. Yes.”

  “Look, honey, I’m going to send you some money.” This too had often been said, but recently nothing much had evolved from it. “I mean, this fat guy of mine is making millions. You should see this place. Wall to wall everything. He’s in Hollywood right now, would you believe it. He wouldn’t take me, he says I complain. It’s only for three nights, and I admit I hate L.A. I’ll send you something, okay?”

  This was incoherent, seemingly, but then the money came, a dollar cheque now, which Susan’s bank would not baulk at, since she had for years been receiving U.S. dollars for some of her work. The bank did baulk slightly, however, because the cheque was substantial. It was for thirty thousand dollars, about eighteen thousand pounds.

  What was she supposed to do with it?

  Find a new flat? Eighteen thousand wouldn’t be anywhere near enough, obviously. Visit her mother and Wizz? No.

  Susan had been working an extra day a week at Paragon, to make up the money for her slippage over covers. Coming back from London in March on the train, she picked up a local paper discarded on the seat beside her. She had decided to look for a new flat after all, the eighteen thousand providing some sort of down-payment. The flat in Brashspeare Road was where she had been in love with R.J.

  The local paper covered an area she knew. She had lived there once, with Anne.

  The carriage was fairly full. A man with a penetrating voice kept talking on a mobile phone, arch insults bounced off his (presumably) girlfriend, but it was more a display apparently intended for the uninterested and resentful other passengers.

  Rain smashed into the windows, trying to get at him, but failing.

  In the colour photograph, it looked a sort of salmon shade, the house, the deep green trees grouped selectively and graciously, as in a theatre set. Where the drive had been widened was an ornamental thing, perhaps a fountain.

  (“Yeah, Donna, I ain’t saying you ain’t a sharp dresser. I mean I ain’t saying it, Donna.”)

  Tower Gardens. ‘A fine and large house, of great character, parts of which were built prior to 1900, but all extensively modernised in its conversion to self-contained flats, with gas-fired central heating and double-glazing throughout.’ Two of the sought-after flats were now on offer.

  One of these was spacious, the lounge twenty-seven feet by thirty-six, and having two bathrooms and four bedrooms. The other flat was two-bedroomed, with bathroom and cloakroom, and modern fitted kitchen. Both flats had ‘beautiful views of secluded communal gardens.’

  She could afford neither, even with Anne’s (Wizz’s) money.

  I’m thirty-two, she thought.

  She felt old and dry. How long before her voice began to crack?

  (“Donna, just don’t push it, girl. No,” he was stern now, “just watch your mouth.”)

  Old enough to saddle herself with a mortgage.

  Perhaps strangest of all, when told, Anne had never queried the new address, which might, surely, have rung some sort of bell with her – Tower Gardens etc: coupled with the known area. Could Anne have forgotten? But then, Susan had never said just which house she was thinking of living in.

  Susan waited. She said, “Yes?”

  I didn’t mishear. I know what she said. She said she is a prostitute.

  “Funny, isn’t it,” said Crissie, drinking her mint tea. “Actually, it’s quite a good job. I mean, if you like it.”

  “Do you… like it? No, sorry –”

  “Why? I wouldn’t have told you if I was upset about it. I don’t tell everyone, obviously. But we’re – neighbours.” Still carefree, lovely, smiling. “I’d better reassure you though, I work through an agency, and I never bring my work home.”

  VI

  Summer came and went. Autumn arrived, turning much of the rich green of the garden to ochre and sallow red. In the autumn, they repainted Crissie’s ceiling, perched up on a couple of high ladders, dust sheets everywhere, rollers, and pale peach emulsion. It was the second repainting. She had wanted to try coral before.

  Crissie’s flat was, Susan supposed, what might be called minimalist, but without that spindly starkness she, Susan, associated with the term.

  Crissie had kept the ivory walls, hanging in the main room only two faded prints, one seeming to be Pre-Raphaelite, and one of a drawing by Mervyn Peake, representing
a curious elongated child. There was also a big mirror in a black lacquer frame. The floor was the bare polished wood, which someone came in to ‘do’ at regular intervals, with a couple of rather tattered but glorious gold and maroon rugs with gold fringes. There were also two armchairs, narrow, old-fashioned wingbacks, in a dark coppery velvet. No couch. The French window had rough blanched muslin curtains, which at night, when the four side lamps were switched on, would hide nothing. There was also, despite the lack of noise, an involved music centre with four speakers, and a smallish TV.

  This was really all.

  Sometimes two tall blue willow pattern vases manifested, holding up flaming gladioli or vermilion lilies. There were hardly any ornaments – a misted-glass apple, the slim figure of a Greek god, perhaps Apollo, nearly three and a half feet tall and done in white marble. On the polished table, of which there was only one, stood a fruit bowl that changed colour with the fruit.

  It was not obviously a moneyed room. It was full of air and space and reflections, and sometimes the soft uncanny music of Debussy or Scriabin.

  The bedroom, where sometimes they went to fetch something or compare some new garment, or try out new make-up, was undersea and blue, with a low single wooden bed, a Chinese chest and carved yellow wood armoire to hold clothes.

  Susan admired these rooms. Their oblique colour-combinations and shapes, which worked together, and the lack of clutter. There were no awkward hung-on-to objects. No plants, even. The few books were in a case against the corner.

  “I always want to change my flat after I’ve been in yours.”

  “Yes, I do sometimes after yours. But,” said Crissie, “we don’t, do we?”

  She didn’t play at assertiveness or indecision, or at anything, it seemed. Not Crissie. Even her sexual ventures with men were unfazed and unfaked. “I just like sex so much.”

  “But – even if your clients – if they’re –”

  “Nasty, you mean? No, I avoid nasty ones, or unhygienic ones. But anyone else is fine. I don’t mind how he looks. Or if he’s old. Or what he wants. Or if he’s too fast. I can come –” she said, airy as her rooms, neither boasting nor apologising, “like that.” Her turn of phrase, still somehow old-fashioned. Charming. Unfazed

  Susan also helplessly admired Crissie. For her work not the least. Though it must also be unwise and risky – and every day the media carried more horror stories of HIV and AIDS. But Crissie had even spoken about that. “The agency, G.D. – is very good. They try to screen everyone. We use protection. And I have a check every couple of months. Oh, it’s not foolproof. I could get it, I know that.”

  “You’re only nineteen –” That was another astonishing fact that had been established early.

  “Well, I am nineteen. But even children die, Susie-Woo.”

  “You mean, if it happened, you would be dead-pan and philosophical about dying.”

  “No, not dead-pan. But, well, we all die sometime. I mean, you can die at seven or seventy, nine or a hundred and nine.”

  “You’re not afraid of dying.”

  “Maybe. It would depend how, perhaps.”

  “No, I mean, you’re not afraid of being dead.”

  “No such thing,” said Crissie. In the lamplight, like a creature of clear glass; easy to believe she meant what she said.

  “I see. You know.”

  “Oh, we all know.”

  “I don’t, Crissie.”

  “You do. You’ve just forgotten. Look, Susie,” (Susan never minded it when Crissie did things with her name) “think of it this way. You’re born and you’re alive. What’s your earliest memory?”

  “I’m not sure…”

  “Well, but how old were you when you started to be aware of things that you still remember now?”

  “About three, I think. I know my mother said her first memory was when she was four.”

  “There you are.”

  “Where?”

  “You were alive and in the world, from nought upwards, but you don’t remember it. Nothing for three or four years. So it’s just possible there was something even before nought that you don’t remember.”

  Later Susan had said, “Under hypnosis people can sometimes be regressed to earliest childhood. To birth even. Then they seem to remember everything.”

  “They sometimes remember other things, too.”

  Susan’s first visit to Crissie’s flat, soon after the New Year, had been for a meal. As in all else, Crissie was open and pulled no punches.

  “I like female company, too. I don’t mean I’m gay. I enjoy sex with men. But women – they’re fun. And here you are. I was alone at Christmas. I don’t see my parents now. And I love cooking things for people. I’m greedy and very clever. Come on, I dare you not to like my risotto with baked lamb.”

  Susan, drawn in during the cooking by Crissie for a glass of buttery claret, sat on a stool in the identical fitted kitchen to her own, but looking-glass effect, everything the opposite way round. She watched Crissie moving about in a huge black apron, effortlessly cutting and chopping and mixing, speaking of a hundred different things, while the wonderful scent of the food intensified.

  “Taste this.”

  “Oh – it’s –”

  “You like it. Guess the vegetables? Well, guess the herbs.”

  “I can’t – it’s like everything in the world –”

  “It is everything in the world.”

  They drank all the large bottle of wine with the meal, and afterwards Crissie brought brandy, and Algerian coffee in little blue cups. They had moved to the main room by then, having eaten in the kitchen at a table with an apricot cloth, with one tall church candle.

  Presently Crissie put on a single short piece of music to be listened to. It was winding and serpentine. Then they talked again, then grew sleepy. It was only ten but, “Time for bed,” said Crissie softly, rising without subterfuge or excuse. “See you tomorrow.” They had been all evening in perfect agreement, or rather, perfect counterpoise. And it was the first time since R.J. Susan had slept really well. Afterwards, she could never remember the name of the music, or its composer, or remember to ask Crissie what they had been. Like the life before life?

  They were divided by thirteen years, but like the hallway and the two front doors, this partition seemed to mean nothing. If anything, Crissie was far more mature, Susan thought, than she herself. Perhaps her extraordinary job had contributed to this, but there were other things.

  Contrary to the first evening, when they had parted after only three and three-quarter hours, there came to be nights when they sat, in one or other of the flats, talking until two or three in the morning. Or later. Once they had even both fallen asleep over a late night TV horror film, running on Susan’s larger TV, and woken up at eight in the morning. Then they had breakfast, (Crissie insisting on making porridge, with oatmeal brought from 6C) like lovers.

  But they were not lovers. They were – what were they? Friends? More than that.

  There was a closeness, a knowing between them, almost from the first. No, from the first. Though they liked many different things, were separated by an age gap, their backgrounds, and by how they earned a living, they somehow tied up with each other, as Crissie one day, unembarrassedly said, like two gloves.

  “Which is right and which is left?” Susan asked.

  “Oh, I’m the sinister one.”

  But Crissie was not sinister. She was mild and transparent as the muslin of her sitting-room curtains, which by night showed every glowing lamp and movement in the room beyond: nothing to hide.

  Susan thought, I do love her. And briefly felt uncomfortable, wondering if this were somehow wrong, to love a woman if one weren’t gay. But why would it be? And Crissie seemed to like, to be fond of – to love Susan.

  It was not that they were always exchanging touches, or hugging, though now and then, as on Crissie’s birthday in November, this had spontaneously happened. They simply co-existed. Yes, that was the word. With most
people you got by, you evaded or pretended, or as in the case of a man you loved, became absorbed – and the bits of you that were left outside ached in the cold. But with Crissie, with Crissie and Susan, they lived their lives together and apart, with no sense of chafing, no desire to break away or – more terribly, push closer, thrust inside.

  Crissie did not even look so much the younger, nor Susan much the elder. Susan looked young for her age, and had often been taken for someone in her late twenties. Crissie of course looked older, a woman in her early twenties.

  Though they dressed for differing tastes, they did not, as Anne might have put it, clash in their appearances.

  Their light brown hair and pale skin were similar. And their eyes. Their height if not figure.

  Nothing demanding was said by either about a filial resemblance. Sisters – no, this was not it at all. They were not alike in that way. Two gloves of nearly matching colours, but of uncorresponding materials, and patterned quite differently. But still, two gloves.

  When they went out, usually in the middle of the week, or the odd weekend when Crissie was not working, Susan felt unavoidably proud of Crissie – “This is my friend.” Sometimes men would be interested in them, and gravitate their way, sitting at the next table in the restaurant, perhaps, or picking them up in the bar or on the train after a film. They were nice to them, these men, liked their fleeting company, but never wished to develop the liaisons. Susan actively did not want another man after R.J. It had become almost cosy, this state, since Crissie. Whereas Crissie had said privately, during one of the long night talks, those talks when the afterlife and AIDS and so on had been mooted, “It wouldn’t be fair on a man. Maybe one day. I can’t see it, somehow.”

  Crissie, (at nineteen) did not look into the future, although sometimes into the past.

  “Dad was a builder. My mother – well, she was into being a Gold-Medal Mother. We were quite well-off. I went to a fee-paying school, you know the sort of thing. But – there was some trouble. I told you, I don’t ever see them now. I haven’t since I was fifteen.”