NW (14 page)

“Not even lunch time.”

“On the contrary, that
is
lunch. Do you mind terribly putting it back where you found it?”

They stood either side of the toilet: the obvious gesture suggested itself. It would be one way of saying what he had to say.

“Put. It. Back. Please.” Annie smiled with all her showgirl teeth. Someone was knocking at the door. Felix spotted a wayward shiver in her eyelid, a struggle between the pretense of lightness and the reality of weight. He knew all about that struggle. He put it back. “Coming!”

She grabbed a silk Japanese thing off a hook on the door and slipped into it, folding one side into the other so as to hide a gigantic rip. It had a flock of swallows on the back, swooping from her neck down her spine to the floor. She ran out, shutting Felix in. Out of habit he opened the glass-fronted cabinet above the sink. He pushed the first row aside—Pond’s Cream, Elizabeth Arden, an empty, historic bottle of Chanel No.5—to reach the medications behind. Picked up a bottle of poxywhadyacallitrendridine, the one with the red cap which, if mixed with alcohol, had a manic-mellow buzz, like ketamine-laced Ecstacy. Worked very well with vodka. He held it in his hand. He put it back in its place. From the other room he heard her, suddenly strident: “Well, no . . . I really don’t see that at all . . .”

Bored, Felix wandered in and parked himself on an uncomfortable high-backed wooden chair that once graced the antechamber of Wentworth Castle.

“I barely use the stairs. It may be a ‘shared area’ but I don’t use it. My only traffic is the occasional deliveryman or friend coming up. Very occasional. I don’t go down, I can’t. Surely the people you should be talking to are the ladies downstairs, who, as we both know—I’m assuming you’re a man of the world—have people stomping up and down constantly. Up, down, up, down. Like Piccadilly bloody Circus.”

She stepped forward to demonstrate, with a finger, this popular right of way, and Felix got a glimpse of the man in the doorway: a big blonde, buff from the gym, in a navy suit, holding a ring binder that said Google on it.

“Miss Bedford, please, I am only doing my job.”

“Sorry—what’s your name? Can I see some sort of official . . .”

The blonde passed Annie a card.

“Do you have instructions to come and harass me? Do you? I don’t think you do, Mr.—I can’t possibly pronounce that name—I don’t think you do, Erik. Because I’m afraid I don’t answer to Mr. Barrett. I answer to the
actual
landlord—I’m a relative of the
actual
landlord, as in the lord of the land. He’s a close relative, and I’m quite sure he wouldn’t want me harassed.”

Erik opened his ring binder and closed it again.

“We’re the sub-agents, and we’re instructed to advise the tenants that the shared areas are to be improved and the cost split between the flats. We’ve sent several letters to this address and received no reply.”

“What a funny accent you have. Is it Swedish?”

Erik stood almost to attention: “I am from Norway.”

“Oh, Norwegian! Norway. Lovely. I’ve never been, obviously—I never go anywhere. Felix,” she said turning round, with a louche lean into the doorframe, “Erik is Norwegian.”

“Is it,” said Felix. He moved his jaw rigidly in impersonation of hers. She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Now Erik, is it Sweden that had all the recent trouble?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, Norway. Oh, you know, with the money. Hard to believe a whole nation can go bankrupt. It happened to my aunt Helen, but of course she was really asking for it. A whole country seems rather . . . careless.”

“You are speaking of Iceland, I think.”

“Am I? Oh, perhaps I am. I always get the Nordic ones sort of . . .” Annie tangled her fingers together.

“Miss Bedford—”

“Look, the point is, nobody wants to see this place tarted up more than me—I mean, we haven’t had a film crew here since—whenever that was—and that roof is crying out to be filmed from, it really is, it’s just absurd to leave it lying fallow. It’s one of the best views in London. I really think it would be in your interests to make the place more attractive to outside investment. You’ve been very slack indeed as far as outside investment is concerned.”

Erik shrank a little in his cheap suit. It didn’t matter what nonsense came out of her mouth, her accent worked a spell. Felix had seen it magic her out of some unpromising corners, even when the benefits people turned up, even when the police raided the brothel downstairs while a sizable bag of heroin sat just out of sight on her night table. She could talk anybody away from her door. She could fall and fall and fall and still never quite hit the ground. Her great uncle, the earl, owned the ground, beneath this building, beneath every building on the street, the theater, the coffee houses, the McDonald’s.

“The
idea
that a vulnerable woman who lives alone and barely leaves her apartment is required to pay the same amount as a group of ‘business’ ladies who entertain their male visitors approximately every eight minutes—I think it’s incredible. Stomp stomp stomp,” she shouted, and marched out a rhythm on the doorstep. “That’s what’s wearing the bloody carpet away. Stomp stomp stomp. Gentleman callers on the stair.” Erik looked over—a little desperately—at Felix. “That,” said Annie, pointing, “is not a gentleman caller. That is my boyfriend. His name is Felix Cooper. He is a filmmaker. And he does
not
live here. He lives in North West London, a dinky part of it you’ve probably never heard of called Willesden, and I can tell you now you’d be wrong to dismiss it actually because actually it’s very interesting, very ‘diverse.’ Lord, what a word. And the fact is, we’re both very independent people from quite different walks of life and we simply prefer to keep our independence. It’s really not so unusual, is it, to have—”

Here Felix jumped up, passed his hands around Annie’s waist, and drew her back into the room. With a sigh she wilted into the chaise and gave all her attention to Karenin, who looked like he considered it no less than his due. Erik opened his binder, detached a sheaf of papers and pushed them toward Felix.

“I need Miss Bedford to sign this. It obligates her to pay her share of the works that—”

“You need it right now?”

“I need it this week, for sure.”

“This is what we’ll do. Leave it here, right? Come back for it, end of the week—it’ll be signed, promise you.”

“We have sent many letters—”

“I appreciate that—but—she’s not well, boss. She ain’t in her right . . . she’s got this agrophobia,” said Felix, an old error no amount of Annie’s eye-rolling had been able to correct, maybe because his portmanteau version expressed a deeper truth: she wasn’t really afraid of open spaces, she was afraid of what might happen between her and the other people in them. “Come back later, it’ll be signed. I’ll get it signed.”

“Well, that was dull,” said Annie, before the door had quite shut. “I’ve been thinking, Felix—ever since the sun came out—let’s spend what’s left of this summer on my roof. We used to love knocking around up there. This weekend, stay over—Monday’s the bank holiday! Long weekend.”

“It’s carnival this weekend.”

But this she didn’t seem to hear: “Not with a lot of people. Just us. We’ll make that chicken thing you like, barbecue up there. Jerk. Jerk chicken. For us two jerks.”

“You eating now as well?”

Annie stopped laughing, flinched, turned her face. She crossed her hands delicately in her lap. “It’s always nice to watch other people eat. I eat mushrooms. We could get some of those legal mushrooms. Do you remember? Just trying to get from here to there”—she pointed from the chair to the chaise—“took about a year. I was convinced this was France, for some reason. I felt I needed a passport to cross the room.”

Felix reached for his tobacco. He would not be drawn into fond reminiscences.

“Can’t buy ’em anymore. Government shut it down. Few months ago.”

“Did they? How boring of them.”

“Some kid in Highgate thought he was a TV and switched himself off. Jumped off that bridge. Hornsey Lane Bridge.”

“Oh, Felix, that one’s as old as I am—I heard that in the playground of Camden School for Girls in about 1985. ‘Suicide Bridge.’ It’s what’s called an urban myth.” She walked over to him, took off his cap and rubbed his shaved head. “Let’s go up there right now, and tan. Well, I’ll tan. You can sweat. Inaugurate the summer.”

“Annie, man: summer’s almost over. I’m working. All the time.”

“You don’t appear to be working now.”

“Usually I’d be working Saturdays.”

“Well let’s do another day then, you choose, make it regular, like,” said Annie, in her idea of a Northern accent.

“Can’t do it.”

“Is it my charms he can’t resist”—an American accent—“or my roof?”

“Annie—sit down, I want to talk to you. Serious.”

“Talk to me on the roof!”

He tried to grab her wrist, but she quickened and passed him. He followed her into the bedroom. She had pulled down the ladder from the trapdoor in the ceiling and was already halfway up.

“No peeking!” But she made her way up in a manner that made it impossible not to, including the little white mouse-tail of a tampon’s string. “Be careful—glass.”

Felix emerged into light—it took a moment to see clearly. He placed his knee carefully—between one broken beer bottle and another—and pulled himself up. His hands came away covered with white flakes of sun-baked, rain-ruined wood. He had helped lay this deck, and painted it, along with a few techies and even one of the producers, because time and the budget were so tight. Everything covered in a thick white gloss to maximize the light. It was done very quickly, to service a fiction. It was never intended for use in the real world. Now she picked up a crushed cigarette packet and an empty bottle of vodka, fastidiously cramming them into an overflowing bin, as if the removal of these two items could make a serious difference to the sea of crap everywhere. Felix stepped over a sodden sleeping bag, heavy with water and filled with something, not a person, thank God. It had rained last night—there was a dewy freshness—but a serious smell was coming, and every minute of the sun made it slightly more serious. Felix headed for the far eastern corner, by the chimney, for its shade and relative unpopularity. The boards under his feet made desperate noises.

“This all needs redoing.”

“Yes. But you just can’t find the help these days. Once upon a time you’d get a lovely young film crew turning up, they’d pay you two thousand pounds a week, lay a deck, paint it, fuck you passionately and tell you they loved you—but that kind of service is a thing of the past, I’m afraid.”

Felix put his head in his hands.

“Annie, man. You give me jokes, for real.”

Annie smiled sadly: “I’m glad I still give you something, at least . . .” She righted an upturned deckchair. “Looks a bit rough at the moment, I know . . . But I’ve been entertaining—I had one of my big nights, last Friday, such a nice time, you should have been here. I did send a text. You contrive not to see my texts. Lovely crowd, the sweetest people. Hot as Ibiza up here.”

She made it sound like a society party, filled with the great and good. Felix picked up an empty bottle of Strongbow cider that had been repurposed into a bong.

“You need to stop letting people take advantage.”

Annie snorted: “What nonsense!” She sat wide legged on the little bridge of bricks between the chimney stacks. “That’s what people are for. They take advantage of each other. What else are they for?”

“They’re only hanging round you because you’ve got something they want. Soho liggers. Just want somewhere to crash. And if there’s free shit—bonus.”

“Good. That’s what I’ve got. Why shouldn’t people take advantage of me if what I have is useful to them?” She crossed one leg over the other like a teacher reaching the substance of her lecture. “It happens that in this matter of property and drugs I am strong and they are weak. In other matters it’s the other way round. The weak should take advantage of the strong, don’t you think? Better that than the other way round. I want my friends to take advantage. I want them to feed off me. I want them drinking my blood. Why not? They’re my friends. What else am I to do in this place? Raise a family?”

That line of conversation Felix knew to be a trap. He swerved to avoid it.

“I’m saying they ain’t your friends. They’re users.”

Annie fixed him with a look over her shades: “You sound very sure. Are you speaking from personal experience?”

“Why you trying to mix up my words?” He was easily flustered and it mistranslated as anger. People thought he was on the verge of hitting someone when he was only nervous, or slightly annoyed. Annie lifted a shaky finger into the air.

“Don’t raise your voice at me, Felix. I hope you haven’t come round here for a fight because I’m feeling really quite delicate.”

Felix groaned and sat next to her on the bridge of bricks. He put his hand softly on her knee, meaning it like a father or friend, but she grabbed it and held it tightly in her own.

“Can you see? Over there? Flag’s up. Somebody’s home. Best view in town.”

“Annie—”

“My mother was presented at the palace, you know. And my grandmother.”

“Is it.”

“Yes, Felix, it is. Surely I’ve told you that before.”

“Yeah, you have, as it goes.”

He worked his hand free and stood up again.

“They flee from me that sometime did me seek,” said Annie quietly, removed her robe and lay naked in the sun. “There’s some vodka in the freezer.”

“I told you I don’t drink no more.”

“
Still?
”

“I told you. That’s why I ain’t been round. Not just that, other reasons, too. I’m clean. You should think about it yourself.”

“But darling, I am clean. Two years clean.”

“Cept the coke, weed, drink, pills . . .”

“I said I’m clean, not a bloody Mormon!”

“I’m talking about doing it properly.”

Annie got up on her elbows and pushed her shades into her hair: “And spend every day listening to people bang on about the time they found themselves in a bin covered with vomit? And pretend that every good time I’ve ever had in my life was some kind of extended adolescent delusion?” She lay back down and replaced the shades. “No thank you. Could you fetch me a vodka please? With lemon, if you can find it.”