Inglorious

TRIALS

Now she was brisk and urgent. It was important not to be late, or she would lose this job, like all the others. Then Mr Sharkbreath would be angry, and her father would sound disappointed again. These were immediate concerns; the rest was indeterminate. Umbrella in hand, she walked back to the station, passing along the queue of cars. IT’S NOT ENOUGH said a billboard. TEARS ARE GOING TO FALL said the next. TEMP TEMP TEMP TEMP said the writing on the red steel of the bridge. She nodded and walked on. The air was damp. It had been raining earlier, and there were puddles where the roads dipped to meet the pavements. She heard fragmented conversations, and the dulled sound of music inside cars. She breathed deeply. She could walk all day, except it made her hungry. She passed a bank of adverts by the tube. Bras, beer and butter. We are meant to be cheerful. She nodded and walked on. A man was leaning against a wall, whistling. He was a tall African, his arms folded across his chest. He ignored Rosa as she passed. A gang of kids cycled past, a few of them spitting into the gutter. ‘Fucking slag!’ one of them yelled and Rosa thought, Do they mean me? There was a poster outside the tube, a decorative frau, legs hairless and shining. Now she carried on walking, avoiding a glittering puddle like a stranded mirror and stepping round a woman with a child strapped to her body. Everything was fine when Rosa walked. She made a steady progress along the road, threading a path from streetlight to streetlight.

Despite her sense that she was quite out of synch, she was still acutely aware of the things around her. The people filing along, forming impromptu patterns then dispersing. A man in a black leather coat who was dragging a white dog along on a lead. A woman in a burkha. Then a woman walked past, pushing a pram. She was wearing knee boots and a fur coat. Further along a man was sitting outside a second-hand clothes shop, whistling a tune. He was dressed in a smart red suit. In his gloved hands he held a cane. He had a carnation pinned to his lapel and Rosa thought of him standing in front of the mirror, fixing it there with trembling hands. All to sit on a folding chair outside his shop! It was raining softly now. But the man stayed there, stroking his cane. His eyes were turned towards the street, and she wondered what he saw. The cars slipped by. The lights changed and changed again. There was the flower shop, bouquets stacked in buckets. It always lifted her mood when she saw their forms and colours.

Suddenly the clouds moved and there was a cold bright sun shining on the street. The dog-touting man moved slowly behind her. She could hear the lead jangling. The dog was straining towards a tree. A woman was running towards her, in shorts and trainers. On a pedestrian crossing a man moved slowly. Music was coming from an open window, a radio playing a contemporary tune, something with guitars and a kid singing falsetto. At the gym she saw people sitting outside, drinking coffee. It had once been a hospital, or a lunatic asylum, she thought. She wasn’t sure which. Inside she could see people running on treadmills. There was a sign saying ‘HazChem’ on the wall.

Now she passed an ancient woman who looked like a sage, quite decayed and withered, moving slowly on her stumpy legs. Propelled by something, some inexplicable urge to go forward. Meanwhile Rosa was solid and vital, not exactly youthful but passably fit, walking towards Holland Park. The old woman was moving along, trembling with each movement, and if she was still standing then Rosa had no excuse. If she had thus far failed to release her cognition from the services of the Will, and the rest, then she really had to try harder. If there were mornings when the street appeared as an endless tunnel, drawing her into a pool of darkness, that was clearly her own small problem. On St Mark’s Road, things were mostly seedy: a group of boys yelling and kicking skateboards off the pavements, laughing as they tripped, cars speeding through the narrow streets, crumbled bricks ornamented by graffiti. DEATH TO YOU ALL. FIGHT THE STATE. Slogans, the occasional cri de coeur, scrawled machismo. FUCK YOU ALL. Maxims: WE CAN DO IT IF WE TRY. Pleas: DON’T LET THE LIGHTS GO OUT. Do not go gentle into that good night. She turned away and went into a corner shop to buy some chocolate. The shop was full of faded adverts for long-vanished brands. She took the chocolate from a grinning man, and fled onto the street. She saw a man in a suit walking swiftly up the hill, so she followed him along for a while, watching the regular movements of his limbs. She stalked along behind him, matching his stride. He had soft blond hair, which curled onto his collar. She couldn’t see his face, until he turned to pull his phone from his pocket. On the corner of Clarendon Road, he stopped and said a few words to someone. She craned her neck greedily towards him, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he sped up, and waved his arm for a taxi. With a slam of the door, he disappeared.

*

Still you must get a job. Find somewhere to live. Talk to Jess — perhaps you can beg her! Talk to Liam. Beg the bank. Collate your papers. Read the comedies of Shakespeare, the works of Proust, the plays of Racine and Corneille and The Man Without Qualities. Read The Golden Bough, the Nag-Hammadi Gospels, the Upanishads, the Koran, the Bible, the Tao, the complete works of E. A. Wallis Budge. Read Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the rest. Get to the bottom of this TEMP. She ducked into Holland Park tube and stayed quiet and thoughtful on the platform. She heard voices from the tannoy, injunctions, exhortations. Do not travel without a ticket. Buy a Season Saver. Do not stand at the edge. Do not hurl yourself on the tracks. Do not take the tunnels as a metaphor. Do not despise your fellow commuter. We are all human, only human. Each separate thing, regarded in and for itself, dissociated from the temporal flow of casual laws becomes, when so regarded, an epiphany of the whole, equivalent to the entire unending manifold of time. Mind the doors. There was a busker playing Bach on a flute, the music cracked and beautiful. The platform was grey and stain-daubed. The walls were spotted with mould. Above she saw lines of neon lights, and everywhere she was surrounded by useful objects, fire alarms, signs telling her the way out, should the platform burst into flames. You cannot take the tunnel as a metaphor. Because there are no fire alarms and hammers encased in glass to help you through your own private tunnel, this metaphysical corridor you think you’re in. Not a single miniature mallet to smash a way out. Not a single mallet! Now a train rocked along, scattering the mice and rats to their tubeside hideouts and Rosa positioned herself by a man with a T-shirt saying ‘THE REAL THING’ and read a poem on the wall (poetry on the Underground), which said ‘I am trapped in time/ Living without a purpose/ Waiting for the end’ — Of course not! As if they would put that sort of rubbish on the walls, thought Rosa. That would certainly demoralise commuters, as they stood crushed together, sweating onto each other. Instead, the poem said, ‘We are feverish and then we fly/ All is gracious in the sky/ Like angels blazing higher and higher/ Into a celestial fire/ Oh God — my God, your Allah, your Buddha — you understand our prayers/ They are for peace and for celestial stairs/ To reach the place beyond all cares.’ Beyond all cares. It sounded like the perfect destination. Caring was precisely the problem. She shivered and stared round at the passengers. All of them innocuous enough. Beyond all cares, she thought. She wanted to imagine her mother in a transcendent state, lyre in hand, or somewhere, in some sentient shape, but instead she thought of her mother as scattered dust, wafted across the Mendips on a windy day, having been shaken from an urn by her daughter — tightlipped, quite unaccepting — and her husband — shuddering with horror and in tears. It wasn’t too bad, to be scattered dust in the wind. That really wasn’t so terrible at all. Better than a lot of options, the circles of hell, eternal torment, reincarnation at the bottom of the wheel and the rest. Feel Your Inner Purity said an advert for Japanese beer.

As the train went through the tunnel Rosa saw the headline on a paper. MODEL, 17, FOUND MURDERED. The platform vanished and she saw blackness and her own reflection, mingled. A poster above her head saying ‘Millions are happy with our insurance!’ Another said ‘Simply inspired’. The heating was on too high in the carriage, and Rosa’s hands were sweating. If the train stopped she would be late, but the train kept running steadily along the tracks. For this she gave thanks to the driver and all the functionaries of the Underground. At Shepherd’s Bush she saw the platform sliding towards her as the train uncoiled itself from a tight corner and came to a sudden halt. The platform had been ornamented with green and red pillars. In the tunnel she heard three men talking about football, and she passed a crowd of women in burkhas holding bags from Harrods. A sign said MILLIONS. They kept on with the bombardment, until you capitulated. They wanted you with your hands up, saying ‘Yes, yes, I’ll buy it! Whatever it is!’ As she stood on the escalator going upwards she saw the face of a celebrity, she couldn’t remember her name. If You Can Imagine It You Can Achieve It said a poster for a motivational agency. But that was clearly untrue, thought Rosa. It was precisely the problem; there was much she could imagine but couldn’t achieve.Dream the dream the dream the dream …

When she came up into the sunshine she waited for the lights to change. There was a sign in a shop saying MORE FOR SALE. More and more and more. The water tower stood like a totem. Ritualistically, the cars circled it, lucid strings of red and blue and silver. A man was running quickly towards her, followed by a man with a broom. She stepped aside and let them pass. The lights changed and she crossed in a group, losing the others at the other side. Now she was walking swiftly, realising she was late. There was a brown high-rise block and an immaculate white shopping centre. She passed a jeweller’s and a shop selling Aussie Pies. There was a queue at the bus stop, and a formidable block of banks. Still you haven’t managed to see Sharkbreath, she thought. Plain reprehensible. They have certainly tried to help you. The bank had been sending her sympathetic offers, suggestions for repayment plans, and really it was only recently they had brought on Sharkbreath. It was unfair to demonise them, those legions of lenders and their zipper-mouthed minions. So they had taken an axe to her credit cards? What did she expect? Why would they entrust them to her any more, when she was so clearly incapable of paying them off? She understood the rules, they had been explained clearly to her, and if she was incapable of abiding by them — ‘Well, then you get Sharkbreath,’ she said aloud.

The green was clad in trees, branches defined against thick clouds. She walked down Shepherd’s Bush Road, where every shop was selling cut-cost bargains, and picked a path through slow-moving children and men like Elde and the disconnected variety of the crowds. A man was shouting at an intercom. She turned left and found herself in quieter streets, so idyllic that the houses had a sense of smugness to them. There were geraniums in the gardens and ivy on the walls. There was a penguin statue on the steps of a cottage. That was a tidy gimmick, she thought. Her footsteps rang out as she picked up speed. She saw a car sticker saying ‘Experience the Meaning of Life’. She turned at a corner where a man with a white beard was brushing the pavement, and a woman was saying ‘C’est catastrophique’ to her friend as they stood in the garden of a cottage.

At Brook Green she was late and trying to run. Hindered by her stacked-up shoes, shoes made for self-mutilation, she hopped and skipped along the street. There were people playing tennis though the day was cold. She passed them quickly, and ran up Bute Gardens. To the sound of dogs barking she rounded another corner, nearly collided with a group of kids singing, saw the blank glass of an office block and stepped onto the main road. Hammersmith was a woven mass of cars, steady at the lights. Trees, glass, marble and old white stones. A pattern of materials, she picked them out against the cold sky. Behind stood the old shopping centre and the sign of the Underground.

Now she was cursing as she ran, staring down the lights while they ambled on red, slalom-racing along the road, twisting out of the way of other people. Her hips ached, and she found herself panting along the river, past the backs of quiet pubs. Her head was still sore and she wondered what was ague and could she have it? She thought she might. At the prospect of an interview she felt a mingled sense of joy and death come quickly. She wanted to be saved but the taste was bitter. Acrid air around her and a swelling on her heels. She should stop borrowing Jess’s shoes, she thought, they didn’t fit at all. Then she found she was lost. She was frantic for a few moments, scrambling around dirty streets, finding herself in a housing estate which had a map like hermetic code and she was spitting mad when she found the path again. But other than that it was a fine day. Her suit was tight and she had sweated liberally, but the water glinted in the sunshine. The big old muddy river was tranquil in the afternoon and the sky was clear above it. So she walked more slowly, trying to catch her breath. On the iron bridge a dozen cars coursed along, crossing into the south.

There were lions by the gates, grim-faced, chipped by age. She stepped past them, her heart thumping. She saw pebble borders containing sumptuous flowerbeds and a big wooden door. She adjusted her shirt, tucked it into her belt, noticed she had scuffed Jess’s shoes, blew her nose on her hand and wiped her hand on a hedge. She saw a gargoyle doorknocker and used it. There was a pause, and then Rosa found she was being drawn inside by a woman with long thin hands and a bony face. She was admitted to a long grey corridor where the walls were decked with portraits. It was clear that Mrs Brazier had been a handsome woman until she had her skin tightened. She had shining auburn hair, in abundance, and her face had been stretched behind her ears. Her breasts were made of marble, or some modern equivalent. She looked pretty surprised about all of this, but that didn’t help her much. She had an ironical voice to match her ironical face, and she never smiled. Insistently thin, she had made herself still more angular by squeezing everything into jodhpurs and stiletto boots. Her hair was curly and she looked like a Corinthian column. This unnerved Rosa, and she stumbled as she went to shake hands. Rosa said, ‘Hello’, and Brazier said, ‘You must be Rosa.’ She had a cool, manicured hand. Anointed with expensive oils. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Rosa, smudging sweat onto la Braze’s pearly hand. Further platitudes followed, which Rosa failed to commit to memory. Mrs Brazier wanted a tutor for her children, who were small and apparently gifted. Rosa wanted a shot of adrenalin and a large gin and tonic, but she sat there nodding politely, raising her accent with every syllable.

She noted that the doors were arched, and found bouquets arranged on the tables. The house was clad in lustrous flora, and every piece of wood was recently polished. The floors shone. Paintings were hung in hammered silver. The chair Rosa sat in, like a tarnished throne, was — said Madame Braze — a family heirloom, which went back to the Tudors. She stroked the arms and felt the shock of the old.

There was some talk of pay. It sounded good enough for Rosa. She quickly came to understand that Mrs Brazier was a flinthead who despised the younger frau. She emanated an air of refined selfishness. She offered Rosa tea in so reluctant a way that Rosa knew she had to say no. So she said no, though her mouth was dry after running from Shepherd’s Bush station. She kept her lips pursed and hoped she didn’t smell too foul. Brazier explained in detail what she wanted, and said that Rosa would have to start on Monday. Rosa said that would be fine and clamped her mouth shut. The children came in, Tabitha and Harry, and they were spoilt little darlings kitted out for luxury. At forty-five or so, which Rosa thought la Braze must be behind her face, she had two children of five and seven. Must be tiring, thought Rosa, but la Braze treated her infants like members of her retinue. Little Tabitha ran for mummy’s pashmina and little Harry was told to take the dog to Nanny. So the dog and Harry trotted off, leaving Rosa and Madame Braze looking at each other across a luxurious room. Cream cotton and rouge silk, thought Rosa. Taffeta, a word she hadn’t thought for years. The table was crystal. The fireplace was original. There was a Regency mirror which reflected Rosa half her girth. Madame la Braze said she felt the secret of good parenting was discipline. This was Rosa’s cue to agree slavishly, so she did. She nodded like a nodding dog, and said she couldn’t wait. They talked about qualifications, Rosa had few, but she held out her degree like a votive offering, and la Braze nodded curtly. Rosa said she loved children, loved them passionately. ‘They are the future,’ she said, with what she thought was an eager smile. La Braze didn’t respond. ‘It’s very important to educate them well,’ said Rosa, pushing on, and Brazier snapped out, ‘Of course it is. They have to be taught how to think.’ Interesting, thought Rosa. Very interesting. Then Rosa took the hand that was extended to her, received a still more stony nod, and turned to leave. She tripped again on a Persian rug, steadied herself on a plinth, and skirted round a statue of Athena. By then old Braze had gone off to slap another layer of acid on her face. Smiling at the retreating form of the nanny, Rosa walked out onto the river path.

Well, la Braze was truly spoilt, she thought. So terribly spoilt. What the hell did Brazier ever do for her cash? She hadn’t met Mr Brazier, but she imagined him louche and resilient, big-boned, with deep pockets. They were both rich, both steeped in wealth. She envied them their house, their fine little kids, and their view of the river. They woke to the sound of cars and planes all the same, but they walked into the sun-striped beauty of their living room, sat on the ancestral furniture, everything dusted by the cleaner, gazed out over the garden as the nanny made them coffee. She imagined Herr Braze coming home from his office, finding his wife had been under the knife again. ‘Darling, new face?’ he would ask, as he picked up the newspaper and rustled it open. ‘How do you like my eyes?’ la Braze would ask, as if she had just bought a new dress. ‘Love your eyes,’ il Braze would reply, scanning the stocks and shares. There would come a day when Lady Braze would stop talking for fear of sagging back the latest stretch. She would stand, immaculate and eternal, nodding imperiously at her children. Did it frighten them, thought Rosa, to see mummy in so many guises? But she was being cruel. She could hardly judge others. They were all scrambling away, filling time, and if la Braze wanted to tighten her face who was Rosa to tell her not? She walked slowly back to Hammersmith, because Jess’s shoes were too small and had carved off the skin on her ankles. She was hobbling along, breathing deeply, enjoying the distilled smell of city breath, and she heard a low humming in the air. The light was fading behind the houses. And then the lighting of the lamps, she thought, and wanted to laugh. His soul stretched out against the sky. Anything but that! she thought. It was a bad business when you thought Modernism could help you. I am a bat that wheels through the air of Fate, she thought. I am a worm that wriggles in a swamp of Disillusionment. I am a despairing toad. I have got dyspepsia. Now she smiled. That wasn’t what she meant at all. There was much she couldn’t remember and her efforts kept her stationary on the corner of Brook Green for a few minutes, as she rocked backwards and forwards, trying to summon whatever it was she had forgotten. She stared at the sky. Clouds scudding. Later it might be fine. Then she abandoned the attempt, and retraced her steps past the green, noticing the tennis players had gone. The last ball had been thwacked, and now they were heading home for tea and buns. She knew full well there were places in London where people did just that, sustaining their perfect rituals, bestowing gifts upon themselves. She passed a crowd of kids, hissing on a corner, eyeing her with practised stares of contention. She smiled weakly and shuffled on.

She thought of her childhood and her parents who taught her to read themselves, of course, without any hired help. The idea would have been inconceivable to them, to invite someone in and pay them to take their child in hand. She remembered her parents reading to her in the evenings and she remembered a few early books they had read. Susan Cooper, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien — who taught her about death — Joan Aiken, the rest. She remembered being taken to a mobile library by her mother, and told to choose some books. Then there was the city library, a place with a bright inflatable caterpillar and rows of splashy children’s books, and she remembered her mother guiding her through the shelves, suggesting books she might enjoy. Her parents liked to read, and their house was full of books. Rosa tried to climb up the bookshelves as a toddler, and was grabbed and rebuked by her mother. Always in these scenes it was her mother in the background, teaching her, telling her how to do things. With Liam she had considered the question of motherhood, and was never sure how to weigh it against her career. That had caused her to delay matters, though she knew that Liam had been urgently waiting for fatherhood — the next stage. It was curious to Rosa that she was the last of her line — her parents both only children — and yet she had postponed and postponed for a job she now realised she couldn’t do. And if she couldn’t do that job, tot up alleged facts and feign them into coherence, then she could hardly presume to bring up the young! And now she wondered if she was merely a coward, afraid of the pure biology represented by pregnancy, the immersion in the body it required. Or that was blather, and she was only trying to step aside from adult responsibility, the subjection of her own desires. Trapped in analysis, Rosa stared around, saw the street as a succession of indistinct shapes, colours shifted by sun and shadow. Her mother had never said a word, but Rosa knew she was expectant. Well, there was another thing, that if she ever came to terms with procreation, and found a partner in the act, her child would never know her grandmother, and that was the sort of thing Rosa would have cried about, had she not been gritting her teeth and trying to quash another sort of feeling, a plaintive cry, the cry of an abandoned child, Mother! Mother! Entirely impotent, and she started to move onwards again, feeling the pain in her feet like a slap in the face, bringing her round.

She wouldn’t suffer the scrutiny of the tube, so she walked home. Because her heels were raw and bleeding she took off Jess’s shoes and trod on tiptoe along the streets, stepping from light to shadow. Her hands were pearled by the sunlight. It was a hazy, gauzy afternoon; the sunshine was grated by the shadows of the trees, falling in flakes on the grass. She whistled ‘Ode to Joy’. She was impressed by her composure. She had out-brazened the Brazier. She had spoken through her teeth, keeping her face in a constant smile. She had managed to look thin by luxury gym not thin by nerves and overdraft. She was now within grasping distance of a job. It was a spitting mockery of a job, but it might be hers. It was better than some of the rest. Today, she thought,you may have won the chance to sell yourself again!! Sold in a better way than before! Perhaps this was it — pure compromise, the thing they had all been telling her to do. She was sure Brazier had wanted her! La Braze had praised her, high praise indeed, from a taut-skinned millionaire with a palace by the river. And suddenly she felt sick and found she was clutching at a wall, her eyes swimming and a cold fog closing around her. The noise receded, all the intertwined sounds of the street, and she put her hands out, holding onto the wall behind her, quite sick and bemused by it all. Now she looked she saw her ankles were stained with blood. Yes, she said, that must have worked in my favour! ‘Second candidate, the one with the bloodied leg, like a girl who shows a bit of gore, let’s have her.’ She saw herself, here, a dozen years ago, working as an amanuensis for an old journalist — he had lived just round the corner, on Milson Road, in a tall, narrow house with a grand piano. He sat at a desk layered with papers. He went out early and bought all the newspapers, sifted through them for material for his columns. He liked to drink wine at lunchtime, and he had taken her to the local pub and paid for her to eat. He had been kind, she thought, but she had barely noticed it. Then she had really thought she was an aesthete. She had been reading Oscar Wilde and hadn’t had a chance to adjust to the real world. It took her years to understand that there was no bohemia to find and anything she did would be assessed for its financial worth. She sat in the journalist’s basement struggling under the weight of her ambition and she stared at the walls, the rust on the drainpipes, the paving stones, the pale bricks and the low green hedges. There was a ladder with broken rungs, and a set of shattered plant pots, like broken relics. The journalist was always at his desk, peering at the screen of his computer. She had sat in the basement of his house, with ivy at the window, and a view of a long garden, running towards a pond. He was a kind man.

So she walked on slowly, Jess’s shoes pressed to her chest. She rounded a corner and saw a church silhouetted against the sky. There was a faint smell of carbon lingering in the air, but the square was quiet. The sports cars, Volvos, 4WDs and Rovers were parked, each next to their respective mansion. Everything was quieter for a few streets, as Rosa passed boutiques selling brightly coloured children’s clothes and a restaurant with its tables full. The evening rush was beginning, and the hum of cars from Holland Park was constant. Rosa trotted down a few more mews streets, past neatly painted houses. On Holland Park Avenue everything was blurred. She walked faster, hoping to tire herself out. She turned uphill to take a look at the park. The winter was sitting hard on it, and the fronds had withered. She stood at the edge, watching squirrels. So much bounce, she thought, in your average squirrel! But that was plainly irrelevant, so she turned to the pond and watched ducks paddling around a small lake. A few geese stood on the side, emitting sporadic honks. It was almost the end of the day, and the park was emptying out. The benches were empty now. On the surface of the lake she saw the reflected forms of the buildings, the abandoned tearoom, the ice-cream shop which was closed for the winter. She stood at the gates for a while, passed by successive mothers with pushchairs, and then she turned away.

She crossed the main road and saw everything the same as she had left it. At St James’s Place the houses were immaculate, still in their undivided forms. Each mansion was supplied with its own single buzzer, the badge of the millionaire. The windows were lit up, a halogen glow, showing rooms clad in books, everything plush. Rosa liked a spot of lecher les fenêtres, it was modus vivendi for those who could never buy. London spun you out like that, made you envy wealth. You envied it because it seemed like freedom — the freedom to choose where you lived, to travel as you liked, to conduct research and leave London, if you wanted. This hyper-wealth was everywhere, impossible to ignore. In one room, a man sat at a fine oak desk, leafing through his papers. In another, a woman read by a fire. She caught a glimpse of flames and a lustrous hearth. Still you must get a job. Get a place to live. Ask Andreas. Talk to Jess. Talk to Liam. Beg the bank. Collate your papers. Read Shakespeare, the works of Proust, the plays of Racine and Corneille and The Man Without Qualities. Read The Golden Bough, The Nag-Hammadi Gospels, The Upanishads, The Koran, The Bible, The Tao,the complete works of E. A. Wallis Budge. Read Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the rest. The TEMP. A JOB! Really! NOW! Soon she discovered she was walking swiftly; she was hastening along with her chin into her collar. And then she thought, If you don’t get this job then what will you do?

She arrived panting at Ladbroke Grove, gulping down lungfuls of Westway smoke. She stood on the edge of the pavement, watching the lights change and the day grow darker. The Arabs were standing behind her, laughing together. Now a man threw a cigarette in the gutter, and checked his phone. She counted the number of people holding phones to their ears. Dozens, and then she stopped. She counted hats and colours. With a grimace she forced Jess’s shoes back onto her feet. The tube was beginning to pour out commuters. She heard the trains clattering overhead. Nice to have the tracks above the road, she thought. Gave you a view when you went home. The westbound trains were heading out to Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, edging towards the curve of the river. The shores would be dim in the dusk. Beyond was the smog of the motorway, the exit routes. This time of day there were no short cuts. The cars nestled bumper to bumper. The air was warmed by car exhausts, and the streetlights had just come on, each with its surrounding circle of light. Consider the meaning of TEMP — she thought this as she passed below the bridge and saw the word, still up there, repeated across an iron buttress. TEMP the rest, she thought. What the TEMP! The light was fading across the grey-fronted grime-dusted houses. But today the sky had dazzled her. Now the evening was crisp, the wind was swift and cold.

In the shop on the corner they never greeted her, and she appreciated their discretion. She asked mildly if there was any semi-skimmed milk and was gestured towards a sour-smelling fridge. A radio was playing a tinny tune, something from the eighties, remixed for the present. The shop door was banging in the breeze. She scattered a few packets of biscuits in her basket, then she bought an apple and a banana and a tin of tuna and a tin of tomato soup. She saw a man with a wart on his forehead, like the eye of the Cyclops. That disturbed her, and she stood by him for a moment, watching as he dropped mushrooms into a paper bag. When he had gone she moved towards a pile of tins, each tin with a miniature portrait of peas or carrots. It was hard to know which one to choose. The fridge was full of creams and fats, and now she found there was nothing else she wanted to eat. So she stood in a queue marking time and then a bag was slung towards her. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and received a returning silence. ‘Goodbye,’ she added. The silence was rich and thick, so she took the plastic bag and walked round the corner, casting casual glances at the things of the street — the paving slabs that were chipped and cracked, the trees rooted in their small patches of earth, the shut up windows, the bolted doors.

Now she was outside Jess’s flat. Pausing to note that the bins were still overflowing, she opened the door. Inside she kicked off her shoes and undid her coat. The bag rustled when she set it down on the kitchen table. In the flat she took off her smart clothes and exchanged them for jeans and a sweater. She wiped the blood from Jess’s shoes. She washed them carefully in the bathroom and thought they might be OK. She packed them back into their tissue paper and stashed them away. Would there be hell to pay? she wondered as she shut the door of the wardrobe. In the kitchen she ate quickly, drinking the soup and mashing the tuna with borrowed mayonnaise. She scooped everything into her mouth. When she had eaten, she washed her plate in the sink. She wrote:

Dear Mr Bright, In reference to your advertisement for a Human Wretch (salary scale B for Blimey that’s not much), I would like to present myself. I am quite sure I am lowly and ravaged enough for the job. A starting salary of B for Barely enough for rent and food is just what I want. I am aware that, being almost entirely witless, I should expect no more. Yours ever, Rosa Lane.

Dear Sir or Madam, I would like to ask you if you are really sure you don’t want me for the job of librarian? I am really quite certain I love books — big books, as well as thrillers and the rest — more than anyone. I would dust them lovingly and talk with faltering enthusiasm to borrowers. Surely you have a place for me? Are you sure you’re not tempted? A little after all? Yours eagerly, Rosa Lane.

Dear Madam, I would like to propose myself as a piano instructor at your school. I can play the piano, took a few grades, I was quite good at sight-reading. I wasn’t ever going to be brilliant, you understand, however much I practised, but I was all right. The old liked to listen to me play, grandparents and the rest. My parents suffered it — my father never really liked it but my mother quite enjoyed it. It was my mother who was really musical. She had a really lovely voice. You should have heard her sing the Queen of the Night. Oh, it was really beautiful. If I listen to that music now, I weep wretchedly, I confess. But thanks to my mother, I’m good at beating time. I’m sure I could help a few children learn the basics. I would dress appropriately and never be late. I would never slam the lid on their fingers if they forgot their scales. I would not wrap their knuckles with a stick. Unlike Mrs Watson in year nine I would not tremble with ecstasy when sopranos sang. I always found it embarrassing as a child, to see her there, so surrendered and out of control. Yours, Rosa Lane.

She flicked on the television for the evening news. The friendly announcer, explaining things quietly. Today the pound rose and the dollar fell. The Bank of England announced that interest rates would go up. Fifty people died in a car bombing in the Middle East. A whole host of people left the planet, gone we know not where, and a whole host arrived. The TEMP remained unsolved. She changed channels and found a quiz show, a well-greased presenter with a fistful of cards. Two members of the public stood there, in their ordinary way. ‘Now, Wendy and David,’ said the host, smiling broadly, ‘we’ll have the Quick Fire question round. The Prize is waiting for you. Fingers on the buzzers. Are you both ready?’ ‘Yes, Dale.’ ‘Yes, Dale.’ ‘OK, Wendy and David, let’s play. Name two of the stars of the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic.’ Bzzzz. ‘Yes, David?’ ‘Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.’ ‘Very good. Next question: who is now divorced from Brad Pitt?’ Bzzzz. ‘Wendy, I thought you might know that one!’ ‘Is it Jennifer Aniston, Dale?’ ‘Good! Next question: what are the two ways in which Hume claimed impressions come to us as ideas?’ Bzzzzzz. ‘Yes, Wendy?’ ‘Ideas of memory and ideas of imagination.’ ‘Good, good. What is the part of Kant’s treatise which is devoted to the necessary conditions for human sensibility called?’ Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. ‘Yes, David?’ ‘Oh, God I know this, I know this … Oh, the Transcendental Aesthetic!’ ‘Very good! Staying with Kant, what did Kant establish to contest the inescapable contradiction within any attempt to form “cosmical concepts”?’ Bzzzzzzzzzzzz. ‘Ah, Wendy you just got in there first. Yes?’ ‘Antinomies.’ ‘Very good Wendy! It’s neck and neck, now. So, last question. What the hell is going on?’ Silence. ‘I’ll repeat the question. What the hell is going on?’ Wendy and David, hands above their buzzers, paused and looked at one another. ‘Time’s up, both of you! Well, that was a shame. Neither of you gets this week’s prize, which was a luxury break in the Temple of Truth!’

As she surveyed the small debris of the evening, the sheets of paper she had stained with prose, the tablecloth stained with tea, she thought she had to get out of the city. It was making her skin crawl. She tidied everything up again, thinking of Jess and the key in the door and the disapprobation of her stare. It was only dignified to run. She thought of hills and trees and then she was trying to find a number, a number she suddenly needed. She went into her bedroom and searched her address book. She was well into her notebooks, flicking past notes of great age and certain irrelevance, but she still couldn’t find it. If she could just get out of the flat, she thought, if she could just get out before Jess came home. Then she saw the number scrawled on a piece of matchbox she had taped to a section of her address book, a section unrelated either to Will or Judy. There was the sound of a phone ringing through the rooms of a quiet cottage, and Rosa imagined Judy and Will out walking hand in hand across the fields, or chopping wood for the fire, or planting herbs in their kitchen garden. The phone rang for a long time, and then Judy picked it up, sounding breathless and happy.

‘Judy, it’s Rosa,’ said Rosa, waiting for feigned joy. But Judy seemed genuinely delighted to hear from her.

‘Rosa! How lovely! Where are you?’

‘In London,’ she said. ‘I was just sitting here wondering about taking a couple of days off, heading north. I thought I might come up to the Lakes. It would be lovely to see you while I’m there. I would stay in a B and B, of course, and I wondered if you had any suggestions.’

Judy started talking, her voice teeming with kindness. That was Judy all the way. Gracious, uncontrived. ‘Rosa, we’d really love it if you came. And you must come and stay with us! I know, the kids are absolutely everywhere. But you get used to them after a couple of days.’ She laughed slightly. Rosa joined in, weakly. ‘No no,’ she said. ‘I’d really love to see the children. But I shouldn’t impose. It’s so last minute.’

‘Oh, rubbish, we’ve masses of room. Really, I’d be horrified if you didn’t stay. Promise me you’ll come. When? Come as soon as you can. Come tomorrow!’ Judy was open and honest, as always. She was standing in a rural kitchen, a cake to her left, a row of pots and pans to her right. Rosa could see her there, patting a child on the head, a symbol of nurture and comfort. A healthy woman, with glowing skin, bright eyes, glossy hair tumbling onto her shoulders.

‘That’s really kind. Could I? Would that really be OK? I’d only stay a night.’ Would it? she wondered. And what would happen when she arrived? The giving of presents and the taking of tea. Walks on the fells. Children at her feet. It would only help. Certainly it would calm her, and while she was there she could apply for some more jobs, ring Liam about the furniture, explain things to Andreas. There was much she could usefully do.

‘Of course. We’re always doing the same things. Our house is so big we could lose you in it. Promise me you’ll pack for a few days, give yourself the option.’

‘Judy, that’s really kind. But I do have to get back to London. I have a lot to do.’

‘What is it you have to do?’ asked Judy.

‘Just detritus, but it’s very pressing.’

‘Can’t you do some of it here?’

‘Oh, you know, possibly. But thanks so much.’

‘Rosa, come on, surely a rest would be much better? Just give yourself a break. A few nights won’t make a difference, will it?’

Now, with Judy so generous and insistent, Rosa found she didn’t know what to do. That was the glaring question. The dilemma of the minute! Already breezing away into nothingness, but still, she was concerned about it. She wasn’t sure. She was still trying to excuse herself. ‘Well. I’ll do what you say. Pack for longer. But I’ll probably come back. Thanks very much. How are your kids? How’s Will?’

‘Oh, we’re all great. The kids are lovely. It’s mad and complete havoc, of course. Will is great. He loves them. So you’ll come tomorrow then. Stay until the weekend.’ Judy was sounding firm. She had sussed Rosa out; she understood it was only nerves that were making her reluctant. ‘You can work as much as you like.’

It was startling but Judy genuinely seemed to want her to come. That made Rosa so grateful that she gripped the phone and started nodding. ‘I don’t want to impose,’ she said. But it was clear that she would. ‘I’d really like to do that,’ said Rosa. ‘Perhaps I can help with the kids.’ She could hear her voice and it was thin and tinny. She coughed and tried to deepen it. ‘Thanks so much for offering, you modern-day saint,’ she said, trying to throw in a joke. Judy was kind as anything, but Rosa hadn’t spoken to her in a while. Thinking of it now she reckoned it must be nearly a year. Of course Judy had heard. She had heard everything. She had doubtless been informed that Rosa was crazy and sad. This made Rosa feel embarrassed, and she was thinking she really ought to decline everything, explain she had an appointment, couldn’t leave the city after all. Judy was still insistent.

‘Rosa,’ said Judy. ‘That’s all great. Now, when are you coming? Do you know how to get to our house?’

So Rosa took instructions. She said she would leave London after lunch, when she had seen her father. She was willing to be persuaded, and she thought at least this would get her away from the TEMP and the things that perplexed her. The neon-lit shop and the dusted archways and the shaved strands of twilight. And the trains that woke her before dawn. Yet even as she thanked Judy she was wondering if silence was the last thing she needed. She nodded and wrote down directions. They parted the best of friends.

*

Later, when she had packed a bag and checked the trains, she knocked on the door of Andreas’s flat and found he was definitely alone and quite happy to receive her. ‘Rosa, darling,’ he said, smiling and kissing her cheek. ‘It’s been a while.’

‘Yes, so many hours.’

‘And what, what has been happening? We didn’t really talk earlier. Well, I think I talked and you were mysterious, as ever. Come in, come in. What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing at all. And you?’

‘Oh, I was abused by the dentist. It was truly horrible. But it’s my fault, for being so scared I never go. Look,’ and he opened his mouth to show her something — a new set of fillings. ‘All of these are new,’ he said. ‘Terrible. It cost me so much money. I almost cried. Now I am just numb.’

They walked along the corridor greeting each other. ‘Good,’ said Andreas, apropos of nothing much. ‘Good. Come in, come in,’ he said again. The flat was warm, and she was aware she was sweating, out of breath. ‘You ran?’ he said. ‘Eager to see me?’

‘Yes, yes, couldn’t wait,’ she said, smirking at him. And it was true, she had run, because the evening was cold.

‘I like my women to come panting to the door,’ he said. She laughed indulgently, and he said, ‘Anyway, you have perfect timing. I’m just trying to digest the terrible food I made.’ They walked along the hall, which he had adorned with antiques — a grandfather clock, china figurines and the cuckoo clock on the wall. There was a Bavarian hat hanging on a peg, with a green feather in it.

‘That’s new,’ she said.

‘Yes, it’s vile,’ he said. ‘My grandfather sent it, to remind me of my roots or something. I think I will throw it away soon.’

‘So you have a grandfather?’ she said.

‘I have four grandparents.’

‘That’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I have none.’

‘Well, that’s a shame.’ And he pouted at her, trying to stop her from being too serious.

They walked past the mirror which distorted their reflections, so old the glass, and into his kitchen. That was a place of solid wooden chairs and a big old table which smelt of sap. He pushed a chair out for her. There was a plate of food on the table, a book open next to it. ‘I’ve been trying to learn my lines,’ he said. ‘I’m in rehearsal at the moment. I told you — I have a real job. Fortunately I hardly have any — lines that is. My best line is “Fuck you fuck you all you fucking fools, you wasted shits and fuck you all.” You can imagine it’s a real task getting the fucks in the right sequence.’

‘Who is the playwright?’ said Rosa, as she followed him admiring the contours of his legs and the strong line of his shoulders. She wanted to put her hands on him, but he was setting a place for her.

‘I don’t know, I’ve no idea. It doesn’t concern me. The play is so terrible that I really don’t want to know. Imagine if I met them, one day, I would have to fight them! “I’ll fuck you so you cry and I’ll fuck you so you want to die you bitch you bitch get down there and I’ll fuck you” — there’s another bit I get to say. All these beautiful lines, and just for ME!’ And he slapped his chest, in mock pride. That made her laugh, quite genuinely.

‘Wow, it sounds like the play really taps into the zeitgeist,’ she said.

‘Ah, you know German,’ he said, putting a fork in her hand. ‘Anyway I get paid. Really, I actually draw a cheque each week, and it’s going to be running for several months. It’s on south of the river in an experimental theatre, of course. I’ve always hated experimental theatre, but now I find they pay you to do it, so who cares? I am a convert. You should come and see it, if you want to experience something truly horrible. I’ll get you some comps. Bring your friends. I am on for literally three minutes. The play goes on much longer, all will say too long. They are hoping it will run for months, though. But I can imagine we’ll be playing to a house of five each night. So the more the merrier. Anyway you can imagine how pleased my mother is. She’s even saying she will come over from Berlin to see it.’ He smiled slightly, cracked his knuckles, and looking more closely she thought he was tired. His face was more shadowed than usual.

‘Is she really pleased?’ asked Rosa.

‘Oh yes, she’s delighted. Do you want ketchup with your melted cheese?’ He had a bottle in his hand.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘I’d have it. Otherwise the cheese is quite monotonous.’

‘OK, thanks.’

‘Anyway, so you’ll come to my terrible play, yes?’ he said. ‘You can meet my mother.’

By now she was sitting at the table, while he stood at the cooker, stirring some food in a pan. ‘Yes, of course,’ she said. There was a gentle pause, while he turned to the pan and pretended to sniff the air like a chef. She smiled at him. Then she said, ‘So, have you been burning the wick?’

‘Burning the wick?’

‘You know, staying up late?’

‘A little, at the bar,’ he said, putting down the book again. ‘I’ve been rehearsing all day and then working at the bar. In a few days I’ll have to quit the bar. They won’t keep my slot open while I do my Art.’ And he laughed again. Still, it was clear that he was becoming industrious. A glimmer of success, and he started trying. Perhaps he would never be more than a bit-parter. Perhaps he would go from one minor play to another, stating the lines of bad playwrights. But he would throw himself into it, all the same.

‘But you know, these bars, you can always find another terrible bar to work in. Although I am sentimental about this bar, because it’s where we met.’ And he patted her hand, laughing.

‘That’s true, how could you leave it?’ she said, awkwardly, and thought Now what? But now he was giving her a plate of something he had cooked, which tasted of cheese and spinach and grease. ‘You know, I should have cooked something better,’ he said, shrugging at the mass of cheese he had created.

‘It’s great,’ she said. ‘Delicious.’

‘You’re lying, and you can’t even do it well,’ he said. He smiled. ‘You are such an honest person, to see you struggling to praise my food is moving. Really, it’s moving.’

‘I’m not lying,’ she said. They smiled at each other. That was easy enough, and then there was a pause. They brushed each other’s hands, claimed it as an intimate moment. They paused again then Rosa told him she was going away. ‘Tomorrow, for a few days,’ she said. ‘But only for a few days.’ Then I will need a place to stay. But how about it, Andreas? For a week, or so? The problem was she hardly knew him. This banter, and the way they stuck to facts, concrete statements about family history and observable qualities, meant they never really progressed. They talked like friendly strangers, for the most part. It unnerved her. It seemed to be what he wanted. And she, perhaps she had also insisted upon this careful talk, because it allowed her to conceal her thoughts. Much of what she thought she couldn’t say to him, aware that he would believe her arrogant or a fool. And what would she say? Andreas, you’re a great guy, better than I deserve. It’s a failure of mine that I can’t respond to your overtures of kindness. But thanks for the melted cheese. She would hardly be saying that to him. So she put her head down to the trough and ate.

‘Lucky you, to go away,’ said Andreas. He took her hand and brought the fork to her mouth. Then he smiled and made to wipe her lips. She shook him off, but gently.

‘Where are you going anyway?’ he said, leaning back in his chair again.

‘Oh, friends of mine. They have a house in the Lake District. It’s very beautiful.’

‘Why are you going away, when you could hang around with me and be fed with a fork?’

She laughed and said, ‘I know, it’s crazy.’ But he seemed serious. ‘Really, don’t go away,’ he said. ‘Or come away with me in a couple of weeks. When I get paid I’ll take you away.’ Now he took her hand. ‘You know you want to.’ He looked directly at her, and this made her embarrassed. She held his gaze for a brief moment, then dropped her eyes. She was trying to think of something light to say. ‘I’d love to,’ she said, looking down at her plate. ‘The thing is, I’ve been promising these friends of mine for months that I would go to see them.’

‘Aren’t you worried about how it looks?’ he said. She looked up at him, and saw he was quite relaxed, his legs slung over the arm of a chair, his hair falling onto his fine face. He lifted a hand and seized his glass. He drank, staring at her over the brim.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s looks as if you are running away because you can’t control yourself with me,’ he said.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. She always entered into his badinage, though she sometimes cringed a little as she did it. ‘I’m hot-footing away from my powerful feelings.’

But that was close to the bone, if not the bone of their relationship — dalliance, friendship, however she was naming it — then certainly it was quite close to the raw and ragged existential bone, and Rosa stopped. She even blushed, which confused him, and he leant across the table and kissed her on the cheek. Really, Andreas was like a symbol of simplicity — dark eyes and hair, white shirt, crisp clothes. This is how it might be, he was saying, if you just relax. She dropped her fork on the plate and sat back. ‘Still, I tell you, you are a little too thin,’ said Andreas. ‘You need much more cheese in your food.’

‘It’s delicious, thanks.’

‘So how was your day?’ he asked.

‘Oh, busy,’ she said.

There was much Andreas didn’t know, and at present he thought she was between contracts, looking for something truly fine with a decent offer already in hand. He thought that because she had told him and he seemed to believe her. She wasn’t sure why. It only made things more complicated. Instead of telling him about Brazier and the agony of the shoes, she had to summon an altogether different day, invent and galvanise. ‘How’s your search for the perfect job going?’ he asked. He spooned her out some more food.

‘Nervous energy,’ she said. ‘That’s the thinness.’

‘Yes, but you could plump up and no one would mind,’ he said. ‘I’d enjoy it.’

‘The job hunt is fine,’ she said. ‘Just as usual.’

‘I’m glad you came,’ he said, kissing on the cheek again. ‘I was having a really boring evening.’

‘I wanted to see you,’ she said. ‘Of course, that’s why I came.’

In fact I wanted to ask you. Could I come and stay? Just for a few days? The weekend and then a few days beyond. Just while I look for somewhere else and find a job? She was very hungry, so she thought she would eat a little more and then ask. When she had finished she ran her fingers across the plate and licked them. A neon light spluttered above their heads; behind the smell of soap was a background trace of detergent. Andreas passed her a glass of wine and said, ‘Better?’

‘Much better,’ she said, cracking him a smile. He took her hand and kissed it.

*

Later they were sitting in his small living room, where the furniture was old and matted with dust. There was a jaundiced collection of newspapers on an oak table. ‘My cuttings,’ he had explained, when she asked. A spotlight was angled from the mantelpiece, beaming at the fireplace. He had stacked a series of plants by the window, set off against thick green curtains. The effect was determinedly theatrical. There was a piano, its keys chipped at the ends. On the piano was a portrait of Andreas, in theatrical mode, lit carefully, the shadows making him more chiselled than he was. But he looked more beautiful in the flesh, she thought, turning towards his wide, solid back and the slender lines of his hips. Their talk kept drying up, like a stream in a drought, but they battled on, determined to wring out every last word they could think of. That was part of the problem, these heavy pauses they sustained. She felt them like a kick to her stomach; they made her hunch up. He was more relaxed than she was, and didn’t seem to mind. He could sit cracking his knuckles, smiling at her. As if it didn’t matter at all! Several times, Rosa asked Andreas about the other actors in his play. Several times he replied. It was a conspiracy between them, to pretend each time was the first. And when he talked he moved his hands, and his hands were elegant, good to watch. He had a wide jaw like a dog. This suited him and made his hair curl up at the ends. It was all delightful, this vision of youth was quite the consolation she required, and for a few moments she thought that instead of going north she would settle herself in Andreas’s flat and stay there, until he noticed that she did nothing and asked her to leave.

‘Can I help you with your lines?’ she said.

‘Which lines? Oh those. Yes, well, I have managed to commit them all to memory. It’s been a long day. But you are a sort of highlight.’

‘Thank you.’

Then Andreas said, carelessly, ‘Are you going to stay up in the country and become a lass?’

‘A lass?’ she said.

‘You know, a wench. These are archaic words I was definitely taught when I studied Chaucer.’

‘You studied Chaucer?’

‘Yes, they let me do it, even a person as idiotic as me,’ said Andreas. He smiled, but she thought he was offended.

‘No, no, I meant, I’m surprised, in all your international schools and so on, that they bothered with medieval English.’

He thrust out his lower lip and looked more boyish than before. ‘Well, they had to teach us something. So are you?’

‘Staying in the countryside? Of course not,’ she said. ‘My invitation is for a few days only.’

‘Well, make sure you come back,’ he said. And there was a subtle shift to his expression; she noticed he looked briefly embarrassed.

‘So tell me something else about your play,’ she said, quickly.

‘Rosa, there’s nothing more to tell.’ He took her hand again.

*

‘Job interview,’ she said, to change the subject. He hardly knew the half of it. ‘I had an interview with a company in Hoxton,’ she said, dimly remembering a scenario from some weeks before. Then she really had an interview, had really worn a suit and tried to impress some kids of thirty who were wearing spotted ties and handkerchiefs in their breast pockets. They claimed to be a ‘media consortium’. She claimed to be a ‘top arts correspondent for a leading newspaper, enjoying a career break while I reprioritise’. They were all on the same page for a good twenty minutes and then Rosa was aware that she had fallen silent a while ago and so had they. Perhaps it was round about then that they looked her up and down and wondered why her suit was frayed and what she had done to her hand — earlier that day she had shut her hand in a door in a mistaken moment, and had really ripped it apart. Her hand was black with bruises. She couldn’t do it, and after a decent interval they thanked her and said they would call her. That was a resounding lie, and she never heard from them again. The doors of their office were swing doors, like a cowboy saloon, and once she swung them open she trotted out of their particular town and never went back. She was telling this to Andreas, cutting out some of the details, and he was laughing at the image of the kids and the cowboy door. ‘Kids?’ he said. ‘How old?’ Five years older than you, she didn’t say, and laughed and said, ‘Kids in mind, of course.’

‘Rather than kids in station, like me,’ he said. That was another of their clunky bits of repartee, and she laughed and allowed him to stroke her hand. If there had been an audience she would have cared more. Still, she had to drink a jar just to get over the embarrassment of watching herself tapping her hand on her knee as he played her a song he liked. All this furniture, she thought, suggested permanence. It was clear that Andreas had affluent parents, because there was no way he could have bought all of this from his bar tips. It evoked a large parental house, rooms full of superfluous objects, shipped out to their son as he struggled in London. It was a touching idea, these comfortable generous parents. For a moment she admired the leather of the chairs and then she wondered what she was doing here, smiling and talking very loud, lying mostly. It was a good question, one she consistently failed to answer. It was solitude she craved and feared, attracted to its possibilities and then repulsed again when she glimpsed them. So she came round here and said her nothings to Andreas. She was a metic, she thought. But perhaps they were all metics, after all, waiting patiently for keys to the city.

Andreas leapt at the shelves with enthusiasm, and brought back a CD. It was traumatised guitar music, he said. ‘It has a veneer of angst. Musical Weltschmerz. I picked it out thinking of you.’ That was another joke and she laughed. This mess we’re in, went the song. The city sun sets over me. And I have seen the sun rise over the river … This mess we’re in. This sort of music was familiar to her. As a teenager she had consoled herself to the sound of countless guitar bands. Like millions of others, she sat in her room with the curtains drawn, headphones on. It irritated her mother, who thought she was wasting her time. She was indiscriminate — miserablism to the sound of a guitar was fine enough. The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Field Mice, The Breeders, Babes in Toyland, The Sugarcubes, The Pixies.A dreaded sunny day so let’s go where we’re happy and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates. Keats and Yeats are on your side … they were born and then they lived and then they died. Seems so unfair, I want to cry. She had listened to The Pixies at the age of sixteen, touting around in second-hand shops for bargain bohemian cut-offs, wearing grandad coats and black plimsolls. Andreas had been six at the time, though perhaps that didn’t matter. She had always liked guitar music. But she was quite eclectic, even as a kid. Opera, classical orchestral, plainsong. La Traviata, Bruckner, Mozart, Carmen, Schoenberg, Tallis, Schubert, Cage, Glass, anything, almost anything, except jazz. We sit in silence you look me in the eye directly sang Thom Yorke in a falsetto. Rosa tapped her foot. She had recently stopped listening to music, because she had sold her stereo and all her CDs. Of course, this is youth, she remembered. Not so much has changed.

‘I was thinking about you the other day,’ said Andreas. He put his arms around her. It was a clumsy gesture, but they sustained it.

‘And what were you thinking?’

‘I was wondering if you would like this band I was listening to. They’re called The Kills.’

‘Love is a Deserter,’ said Rosa promptly, thinking of the signs she had read.

‘Very good. And there’s another song I’ve been listening to, I’ll play it,’ said Andreas. There was a static pause while he stood and switched the CDs over. Then she heard a guitar and a voice and the lyric was ‘Hey Lyla, a star’s about to fall.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Rosa.

When the cuckoo clock rapped out midnight, Andreas moved her on to the sofa, told her to lie back and relax. ‘Let’s stay up really late,’ said Andreas. ‘You only have to travel and travelling when you’re tired dulls the boredom and I have, as I said already, almost nothing to do.’ He always spoke in this precise way. He was careful with English, concerned to keep himself accurate. For him it was definitely a game. The idea made her more comfortable, and she tried to relax into it, watching his back while he went to find another CD. He flicked his hair from his face, showing a fine stretch of cheekbone. His shirt was still creaseless. At 1 a.m., with empty bottles lined up on the table, she said, ‘Andreas, do you believe in providence? Or in something else? Do you believe in God? Or in Osiris, Shiva, Buddha, Viracocha, Yabalon, Allah, any of the rest?’ He shook his head. She wasn’t sure if he meant he didn’t believe in any of them or he didn’t see the point of talking about it. Always he was more decisive. He stopped drinking. Batting away another enquiry, he undid his shirt. She was tired; her vision was no longer clear. She saw him as if from far away, bringing his mouth towards hers. Automatically, she received his kisses. He was moving her towards the bedroom and she allowed him to lead her. She watched him undressing, smoothing out his trousers and putting them on a chair. She allowed him to take off her clothes. She saw the smoothness of his skin, the strong contours of his thighs.

*

At 3 a.m. she was watching the time flashing on a radio alarm clock. Andreas was lying with his head in his arms. She turned towards him, thinking why not just say it all, when she heard the regular sound of his breathing and saw his eyes were shut. She stared at the gaps in the curtains, where the streetlights flickered across the darkness. She saw Andreas’s shirt, hung neatly on his cupboard door. She fell into a doze which continually threatened to become wakefulness, coasting uneasily through the dark hours, lying half-conscious with the day breaking around her.

Get a job.

Read the The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Read History of Western Philosophy

FIND A PLACE to live

ASK ANDREAS

Read Francis Yates on Giordano Bruno

Explain everything to Andreas

Wash your clothes

Clean the kitchen.

Phone Liam and ask about the furniture.

Go to the bank and beg them for an extension — more money, more time to pay back the rest of your debt.

Read the comedies of Shakespeare, the works of Proust, the plays of Racine and Corneille and The Man Without Qualities.

Read The Golden Bough, The Nag-Hammadi Gospels, The Upanishads, The Koran, The Bible, The Tao, the complete works of E. A. Wallis Budge

Read Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the rest

Unearth the TEMP

Distinguish the various philosophies of the way