My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

6 Barbara Strunk

I was sitting naked on Brian’s unmade bed on a Saturday morning. Alone. I’d had a lie-in and Brian hadn’t woken me. I didn’t hear him anywhere, no sounds but the traffic on the Embankment. Naked me on the bed; naked me on the wall. I wasn’t exactly thinking but I was thinking about thinking when I heard the front door open and close downstairs. Then there were quick footsteps on the stairs, a female voice said, ‘Bri?’ and a girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty burst into the room. Blonde, good figure, very pretty — well, she would be, wouldn’t she. And she had a key because she’d let herself in. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘are you posing for him?’

‘Not at the moment,’ I said. ‘Are you Cheryl?’

‘Yes. Has Brian mentioned me to you?’

‘Briefly.’

‘And you,’ she said, ‘you’re …?’

‘Just leaving,’ I said. I went to the bathroom but didn’t bother to take a shower. When I came out Cheryl wasn’t in the bedroom. I picked my clothes up off the floor, got dressed, walked up to the King’s Road and caught an 11 bus.

When I got off in Harwood Road I was about halfway between my flat and Phil’s place. Which way will my feet take me? I thought. I watched them take me back to Moore Park Road and over to Eel Brook Common. No, I thought, not with the smell of sex with Brian still on me. I turned back and went up Harwood to Fulham Broadway and home to Sir Cliff Richard and the Spanish dancer on black velvet and Hilary’s latest happy news, if she was there, of the Alpha course. She wasn’t there, probably out laughing it up with some happy-clappy Jesus crowd. My room looked small, the way childhood rooms look when you come back to them as a grown-up. There was Hope on the wall. I bought that print after Troy broke my nose and I moved out. Pathetic.

I had a shower, put on fresh jeans and a sweatshirt, thought about going to Phil’s place, then decided not to just yet. I put on a jacket and went out to look for Hope of a Tree. WH Smith didn’t have it so I went back to the Fulham Road and over to Nomad where I bought the one copy they had. ‘How has this been selling?’ I asked.

‘We had two copies,’ said the woman at the till. ‘Sold the other one a couple of weeks ago.’

I didn’t want to go directly home so I went past the North End Road to Caffe Nero at the corner of Vanston Place. It was busy but I got myself an Americano and found an empty table by the window where I could start Hope of a Tree while drinking my coffee. The day was sunny and the Fulham Road was thronged with people doing their Saturday things. With my book and my coffee I felt as if I was in a little island of no hurry and no bother where I could let my mind be quiet for a while.

I opened the book. The dedication was To the memory of my father, J. B. Ockerman. The epigraph was from Job 14: 7:

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut

down, that it will sprout again, and that

the tender branch thereof will not cease.

Well, I thought, that’s optimistic. Then I started chapter 1 and there’s Cynthia on Clifton Bridge thinking about jumping and here comes Sam to talk her out of it. OK, I thought, you can get a good love story out of a beginning like that. Then I noticed a woman who’d just sat down at the next table watching me. She was about my age, not bad looking, maybe a little too much jaw, dark brown hair in a Louise Brooks cut. Black polo neck, little pink leather jacket, black trousers and Birkenstock. Very sleek, very cool and sure of herself.

She gave me a sort of knowing leer and said, ‘Enjoying it?’

‘Just started it,’ I said. ‘Have you read it?’

‘Had to,’ she said. ‘I was married to the author.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Do you know him?’ she said.

‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘I’m his girlfriend.’ I was surprised to hear myself say that but I tend to take against sleek women on sight.

‘Really!’ she said. ‘He usually goes for the intellectual type. Which you don’t, at first glance, appear to be.’

‘It could be that he’s looking to change his luck,’ I said.

‘Which way?’ she said.

I stood up and took half a step towards her. She suddenly looked less sure of herself. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘You’d like to continue this discussion outside?’

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Phil has come a long way down the female evolutionary ladder. This conversation would seem to be at an end. I suggest that you go back to your book and I to my cappuccino.’

‘While you still have your teeth,’ I said. She stayed quiet then, and when she picked up her cup it rattled in the saucer. I was amazed at my behaviour and quite pleased with it. Ms Ex-Wife finished her cappuccino quickly and left, avoiding eye contact the whole time.

I sat there with my book but I wasn’t reading it; I was thinking about what I’d said: ‘I’m his girlfriend.’ Just like that. It’s funny how you can have something in your mind but not know it until you hear yourself say it. So that was it — I was Phil’s girlfriend. One more thing for me to deal with. Not simple. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be Phil’s girlfriend. I imagined the two of us walking down the street; did we look like a couple? Yes? No? OK, I thought, I’ll go see him but first I’ll read some more of his book.

Sam talks Cynthia down off the bridge and they go to the camera obscura. ‘It’s a dark chamber,’ says Sam, ‘but you get a clear bright view of things from here.’ I imagined him saying that in the kind of film where you can see what’s coming long before it arrives. Sam — he’s American — would be played by Jim Carrey without his usual gurning and pretty soon we’d find out in a flashback that he’d been contemplating suicide after being dumped by Jennifer, played by Emily Watson. Cynthia would be Kate Winslet. An American film shot on location here.

‘Another dark chamber?’ says Cynthia as they start taking their clothes off at Sam’s place on page 17. They get through the sex pretty quickly because that part is only foreplay for a whole lot of talk about books and music and painting and movies. With quotes from here and there in italics. Italics always tire me out. I had a second Americano because I was getting sleepy. Then I got up and walked down to the New King’s Road and over to the river. I found myself a bench in Bishop’s Park and sat there in the sunshine watching a crew rowing down the river with the cox yelling at them. For a while I just sat there trying to let my mind go blank but the book was in my hands and I kept thinking, Am I this guy’s girlfriend? It’s always a bad sign when you start thinking in italics. I read a little more but by then I knew I wasn’t sure I could finish the book, it was too boring.

So where are we then? I thought. Am I his girlfriend because I feel that he needs me? Women who try to save drunks or gays hardly ever straighten them out. Was I going to be a boring-writer-saver? Phil’s wife told him he was a failure when she divorced him. I pictured her saying that, sneerer that she was. Maybe she brought out the failure in him — that could happen with a guy like Phil. Could I bring out the non-failure? Did I even want to? I spun around a couple of times deciding whether to head for Phil’s place or mine, then I shook my head and went home.

Back at the flat I breathed in the stale air and saw Hilary’s Bible on the coffee table in the living room. I picked it up and it fell open to John, 11. My eye went to Verse 43:

And when he thus had spoken, he

cried with a loud voice, Lazarus,

come forth.

‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘gimme a break.’ Then I thought I’d better check Phil’s novel again to see if there were signs of life. I made myself a coffee, put on The Essential Billie Holiday, and settled down to carry on with Cynthia and Sam.

Cynthia is tall and blonde; Sam is short and dark. No surprises there. Cynthia is an assistant editor at the Raven Press; Sam is a painter. Cynthia’s contemplating suicide because she’s been dumped by the man she’s been with for two years and Sam is still emotionally entangled with his wife who killed herself three years ago. Of course Sam talks her down off the bridge and pretty soon they’re sleeping together regularly but they don’t enjoy it all that much — they’re both holding on to the past and they can’t let go of the bad experiences they’ve had. The story drags along with a lot of moaning and groaning on both sides until finally the two of them are on Clifton Bridge again looking down into the Avon Gorge but they don’t jump. They decide to go their separate ways and search for new roots elsewhere. I wished they had jumped. So there I was back at the question of whether or not I wanted to be a boring-writer-saver. He wasn’t boring to talk to and he wasn’t a boring lover but still … Come to think of it, Brian was a better painter now than he’d been before he took up with me.

I needed a holiday from thoughts about Phil. If I went to Cheyne Walk Brian would be glad to see me and I was sure he’d put Cheryl on hold for as long as I stayed. So I left the flat, went to Fulham Broadway, caught an 11 bus, then walked from the King’s Road.

I rang the bell, Brian buzzed me in and I went up to the studio. The floor was littered with Conté crayon sketches of Cheryl and she was on the model stand when I came into the room. ‘Hi,’ said Brian. To Cheryl he said, ‘That’s it for today. I’m not sure how I’m fixed for next week — I’ll call you.’ Cheryl nodded, got dressed, kissed him goodbye, and left. ‘Old friends are the best friends,’ said Brian as he grabbed my arse.

Later, with our clothes scattered on the floor, we sat in the studio without turning on the lights and watched the evening on the river. The lights on the Albert Bridge, the lights on passing boats and the look of the darkening sky all seemed as if I’d seen them before from this window. ‘“Some things that happen for the first time, Seem to be happening again…”’ I sang softly.

Brian took my hand and kissed it, then he ordered up pizza and we drank almost two bottles of Chianti and fell asleep feeling well satisfied. No heavy thinking, just good clean fun.

Sunday, after a late breakfast and a lazy time with the papers, Brian got me out of my clothes again for some serious work. He tore off a large sheet from a big roll of brown wrapping paper and pinned it to a cork board which he put up on the easel.

‘I haven’t seen that before,’ I said.

‘I’m going to work with brush and ink and casein paint,’ he said. ‘It helps me to loosen up.’

I did twenty-minute poses and we worked for an hour before I rested. Brian had put up a new sheet of brown paper for each pose, so there were three of them lying on the floor. They were nothing like the Conté sketches he’d done of Cheryl; they were big and free but at the same time quite delicate. Full of tenderness, really, and the most sensitive nudes he’d ever done. ‘These are beautiful,’ I said. ‘They’re so different from your drawings of Cheryl.’

‘Are you surprised?’ he said, looking at me with his good eye foremost. Hearing what was in his voice I backed away a little and said, ‘Better not.’

‘Better not what?’ he said.

‘Get serious.’

‘Why not? My feelings can’t be that much of a surprise to you.’

Those were almost the same words he’d used when he’d tried to rape me the first time I posed for him. ‘Stop right there,’ I said. ‘Put your heart back in your pants or I’m out of here.’

Brian found it hard to believe that I was rejecting his love. ‘Can you do better?’ he said. Always the pragmatist.

‘Maybe I already have,’ I said. I gathered up my clothes, got dressed and left.