Here's Looking at You (16 page)

Anna tried to quell the urge to gabble like a fan girl. And failed.

‘The thing with Theodora is trying to choose which part of her life to highlight,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘There’s so much to her. I mean, you can go with the traditional rags to riches tale. What’s more interesting than the money and power is what she did with her position. She set up safe houses for prostitutes and outlawed pimps. She worked for women’s marriage rights, anti-rape legislation. Her laws banished brothel-keepers from Constantinople. You could say she was one of the earliest recorded feminists.’

‘Fit, too,’ James said, looking up from a brooch, with a smile.

If he was risking jokes like this, he must think Anna had a semblance of a sense of humour. He was so relentlessly
flippant
though, she thought. Nothing ever mattered, unless he was under fire.

‘Definitely. The Greek Elizabeth Taylor,’ Anna obliged. ‘And intelligent and spirited and courageous and all those less important things too. Justinian was no slouch either, according to the pictures.’

‘Though these were times when you could be executed for an unflattering portrait,’ James said, glancing up.

‘True.’

‘If only we had those rights with people who tag bad photos on Facebook,’ James said, smiling. It seemed they were both glad not to fight.

‘But if you try to make an unabashed heroine out of her, she’s too slippery for that. She could be utterly ruthless and bloodthirsty towards female rivals. You had to be then, I guess, or be eaten alive. You live life in the present, you don’t think of how it’ll look in the future. There should be a Hollywood film.’

‘Yeah … they’ll probably cast Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, and turn it into a gross-out comedy.’

Anna laughed. ‘I only hope that the show goes well. I have a fantasy that her story will inspire a raft of new Theodora enthusiasts.’ She paused. ‘The later stuff, not the porny floor shows quite so much, obviously.’

James laughed. ‘Wait, I thought you were scandalised by Parker calling her origins tale smutty?’

‘Well, you know. I’m not judging her …’

‘It’s OK. This is a sign you’re going to approve of our title: ‘
Theodora the Whorer
.’

Now Anna laughed. He was quick and witty with the comebacks at school, she remembered that. A sense of humour that ran as far as hilarious japes.

‘I don’t think we have anything to worry about with the show, it’ll be very popular,’ he said, politely, although Anna couldn’t tell if he was genuine or humouring her.

‘This could look fantastic in the app, actually,’ James said, turning a golden cloisonné enamel brooch around in white gloved hands, like a magician with a coin trick. ‘We could magnify it so you could see the detail in the illustration.’

James leaned over it and Anna found herself staring into his midnight-inky hair. Despite her best efforts, in the peaceful suspended reality of the room, she weakened and admired him.

Even if he wasn’t your thing, it would be contrarian to pretend he wasn’t easy on the eye, in a timeless sort of way.

Some handsomeness was the fashion of its era. Her mum thought Ryan Gosling looked like ‘the result of cousins marrying, he reminds me of that Nicholas Lyndhurst’, for example. But her mother – hell, even Granny Maude, when the glaucoma had really taken hold – would announce James Fraser to be
a dish.

His face fitted age-old rules and measures and formulas for good looks, so much so, you could have dropped him into any other era with just as much success. If only they had.

And the structure was brought alive by his skin, with that ethereal, moonstone glow … wait, what was she
doing
? What had possessed her to admire this pile of man-shaped villainy in a mascara beard?

Anna remembered what she used to write about his face in her diaries, penning pages and pages of fevered adulation about what his outsides could do to her insides. And then the day she never wrote in a diary again. Yep – this was what happened with James. If there was a positive, it was swiftly followed by a negative.

‘Showy stuff isn’t usually my taste, but I have to concede this is beautiful. I’m finding it hard to stop gazing in wonder,’ James said sincerely, looking up from under his movie star brow, giving her a jolt of embarrassment in echoing her own thoughts. Or, some of them.

‘We can only get to you during office hours this week, I’m afraid,’ said the bloodless
eat-shit-and-die-while-I-study-my-manicure
female voice on the other end of the phone line.

‘Guess where I am during office hours?’ James said. ‘There’s a clue in the question.’

‘Sorry, that’s all we have. Do you want the Thursday appointment?’

‘I think I’ll see what Foxtons can do, actually. Thanks,’ James said, tartly, ringing off.

He paid for his pride: he was having to make these calls to estate agents outside on his mobile, so nosy sods in the office didn’t listen in. After more inquiries, hand on phone turning to a block of ice, it was obvious that late afternoon was as good as he was going to get. He gave in and booked one for the same time and day he’d rejected two conversations ago.

Hmmm, mind you. It was welcome time out of the office. He’d claim he was getting his washing machine fixed or something. He didn’t want questions about where he was moving to.

It was pretty shabby that he merely wanted to scare Eva into returning. He was trying to ignore the question, bubbling under:
and if she comes back because she doesn’t want to lose the place, what sort of victory is that?

He remembered what a surprisingly emotional trial house hunting had been and felt bad that he’d be inviting other people to imagine themselves installed at his address, when it had scant chance of becoming reality.

However, if Laurence was right and he needed to do something provocative, metaphorically flexing his muscles to sharpen Eva’s attention, then the Crouch End Castle was it. He figured it was either house, cat or him. He didn’t want to hold Luther hostage, nor did he want to climb into bed with someone else for the sake of it, as Laurence advised.

There was no greater passion killer than your new wife leaving you, it turned out. It was as if Eva had inflicted wounds to his head, chest and stomach, shutting off certain functions below. The thought of this notional affair, using another human being like a CPR dummy, made him feel slightly sick and sad.

Returning to the antics of his twenties now, as a broken impending-divorcee, who was liable to feel teary about his lost spouse after he’d shoved the shag-piece in a cab?
Nein danke.
This kind of misery liked no company.

James pocketed his phone, returned to his desk and flipped through his diary. He was going to have to cover this with a meeting. What could he move to a meeting at home? Not much, as it turned out.

He needed a good excuse though as Harris was on the warpath, looking for things to complain about.

Harris wasn’t senior as such, but he had the ear of Parlez’s owners, a luridly rich fifty-something couple, Jez and Fi (never Jeremy or Fiona), currently making alterations to an eco-home in Umbria that had been featured on
Grand Designs
. Though given it was wildly over budget and the locals wanted to have them killed,
Grand Follies
might be more apt.

Harris was their lidless, unblinking eye and was due to give them their monthly update soon. ‘Lead swingers and piss takers’ were obviously going to form a reasonable part of his report and James was already on Harris’s Watch List because Harris knew James couldn’t stand him.

Ah, wait. The Theodora project. He had a note scribbled here that he needed to run the items they’d picked for the app past Anna thingy from UCL.

Did he want her in his house? Not really … but it should only take an hour or two, tops. And she’d been fine last time at the British Museum.

He decided to wimp out and send an email, penning an apologetic request to her to relocate to his house due to plumbing woes.

‘What can you tell us about your new woman then, Jay Fray?’ Harris asked, behind him. Harris adjusted his electric blue velvet fedora, complete with a feather in the hat band. It was only Harris’s third worst hat.

‘Hmmm?’ James said, feigning absorption in his work.

‘Your human woman you’re bringing to the fifth do.’

‘Ah. Mmmm. Early days.’

‘Come on, you can tell us something …’

Harris really was a little tit. He was obviously fishing for no other reason than he’d sensed James didn’t want this particular stream fished in.

‘Meet her with no preconceptions!’ James tried for fake friendliness.

‘What’s she called? How did you meet her?’

ARSE OFF, KING OF ARSES.

‘Friend of a friend.’

As James was weighing up how the hell to bluster his way out of having an imaginary girlfriend, Harris’s eyes lighted on something on Parker’s screen and he let out a bloodcurdling howl.

‘Parker, are you on Google Plus?! Who’s on Google Plus? You must be talking to yourself because you are the ONLY PERSON ON GOOGLE PLUS.’

‘No, your mum’s on here too,’ Parker said.

‘Hahaha,
your
mum uses Google Plus,’ Harris said. ‘Create a Google hangout for your MUM. Your mum has a circle and you are in her circle.’

‘Your mum uses Outlook Express at the weekends,’ Parker said.

‘Your mum uses Pegasus mail!’ said Harris.

‘Your mum has a FAX machine that she FAXES people on …’

Their delighted tones of voice revealed they thought this was a comic double act that could echo down the ages. A Pete and Dud, Morecambe and Wise standard of free banter improv.

James put headphones on.

Imagine what it must be like to work with grownups, he thought.
Imagine
. His mind returned to poring over those antiquities with Anna at the British Museum. Given how she’d reacted to the website larks, James couldn’t begin to imagine her contempt if she spent an afternoon in this playpen.

The annoying thing was, as he’d conveyed in a slightly too aggressive outburst, he heartily agreed with her.

Anna rapped the metal knocker on the black glossed door and felt a flicker of curiosity about James Fraser’s domestic arrangements. It was an ordered, quiet street of Victorian villas with white eaves, fronted by neatly clipped box privet hedges. Properties here were too expensive not to be well-kept. James’s mid terrace had the mandatory blank white blinds, the front bay window ones at half mast, and tiled porch with repro gas lamp.

He answered the door in dark blue shirt sleeves, cardigan mercifully MIA. He looked less guarded and more approachable than he had done before. Inevitable on home turf, she guessed.

‘Thanks for schlepping out here,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

‘No problem. It’s not far from home. I’m only in Stoke Newington. Hope the washing machine’s sorted?’

‘Ah. Yeah.’

Anna followed him into the dining room off the hallway. In the narrow kitchen beyond she could glimpse a black Smeg fridge, a range cooker and lots of spotless chrome. Wow. He must never come to hers. She heard an inner voice saying:
done.

‘Cup of tea? Coffee?’

‘Tea would be nice, thanks.’

‘You drink raspberry, right? I think I have some.’

‘Yes, thanks,’ thinking that was more observant than she expected.

A tatty, tufty throw on a stud-back leather armchair squeaked, unfurled, sat up and blinked.

‘Argh!’ Anna cried, before she could stop herself.

James laughed. ‘Anna, Luther, Luther, Anna.’

‘It’s a cat? It’s huge.’

‘Yeah he is quite huge, isn’t he? Though I suspect if you shaved all the hair off, you’d be left with Gollum.’

‘Why’s he looking at us like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like … he’s plotting to kill us all.’

Anna was relieved that James grinned.

‘He
does
look like he’s plotting an extinction event doesn’t he? I’ve been trying to sum that expression up for ages, well done. Never mind North Korea, when the nuclear mushroom plume shoots into the sky, there will be a grey paw on the red button.’

‘Is it Luthor as in Lex Luthor?’

‘Haha! Sadly not. Luther as in Luther Vandross.’

Anna wasn’t sure if the form was to touch it or not.

‘I’m not a cat person,’ she said apologetically.

‘I’m not smelling a lot of Doctor Doolittle here, no,’ James said, folding his arms, still smiling. ‘Prefer dogs?’

‘No, no pets ever. Oh, other than my hamster when I was a teenager,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘Chervil.’

‘Chervil? What, the herb?’

‘Yes. It … suited him. He had big cheeks. Cheeky Chervil.’

‘Bizarre. If you went for Basil it’s a herb but at least it’s a male name,’ James said, smilingly.

‘Well … thanks for the advice. He’s dead now.’

‘Of
shame
,’ James said, and Anna laughed despite herself. ‘Luther’s got a lot of problems but at least we didn’t call him Clary Sage.’

James leaned over to stroke the cat but it shimmied away.

‘Aw Luther, we were only kidding!’ James called, as Luther flumped off the chair and lolloped into the kitchen. ‘He was my wife’s cat,’ he said.

‘Ah.’

She noticed he’d used the past tense and he noticed that she’d noticed.

‘Eva and I split up a few months ago.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Anna said. This wasn’t what she’d imagined. James Fraser being single seemed unlikely. No doubt he’d frenetically nobbed a fashionable friend of hers in the toilet while high on a wrap of cocaine at Cargo in Hoxton. Or whatever heartless mid-life hipsters did these days. James wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, she saw now.

He followed Luther into the kitchen and assembled the cups, flicking the kettle on.

‘I’ll grab the files,’ he said, returning, while Anna stood awkwardly. ‘Do you want me to hang your coat up?’

‘Oh … thanks …’ Anna handed him her grey duffle coat.

James bounded upstairs noisily on wooden stairs.

Without him there, Anna was able to have a good flagrant gawp at her surroundings. She’d never been in a home like this before, with rooms that had sprung from the pages of magazine shoots in
Living Etc.