Significance (9 page)

Beyond the three older men towards the back of the cafe, a young man with blue
-
black skin, cleaner and leaner, more reticent, more shy than all the other men. She noticed a gleam of perfect white teeth as he smiled warmly.

One guy on his own near the front – she must have breezed straight past him – the ashen
-
skinned loner in a crumpled suit, his tie pulled askew, his collar curling.

At the back of the bar, his body bent over the slot machine, stone
-
washed denims, jacket and jeans, another man, young and dark haired, but with a bald spot on the crown of his head.

Then last, the patron, slick and shiny, and full of overtures of control, the only one, really, with the right to address her. He lifts up the flap in the bar, growls rapid words at the men, particularly the younger ones, and gestures for her to sit in the empty booth.

She had planned a quick departure, to buy cigarettes then exit stage left not pursued by a bear, but perhaps with dogs, snakes and rats watching the switch of her tail as she went.

But the bartender is partly blocking her way, and his gesture is so theatrical, so kind, and he has swiftly put the other men in order. One by one they look away, go back to their conversations. He makes her feel safe, but also childlike.

She sits. The patron wipes the table in front of her, replaces the dirty ashtray, clears away the empty beer glasses. He has black hair, very straight and very fine, she can make out his scalp just below the lank hair. His hands are very large, meaty and pale, they remind her of wax.

He calls her Mademoiselle. He is respectful without being obsequious as he takes her order. He brings her a brandy, an espresso and a packet of Marlboro, which he unwraps and offers to her, so she is forced to take a cigarette and smoke it at once. He returns to his station behind the bar and keeps a proprietorial eye on her. Perhaps he has a daughter her age. Or rather a daughter the age he assumes Lucy to be, perhaps twenty or twenty
-
one.

Lucy takes a sip of the brandy, holds the liquid in her mouth where it tingles and stings. On swallowing she shudders slightly.

She feels oddly peaceful – as if she were a princess surrounded by the men of her kingdom, knights and serfs and peasants, none of whom dare harm her.

The man in the crumpled suit gets up from his table and heads for the exit. His shoes are grey plastic loafers. She knows they are plastic as they have a split on one side which reveals a line of white sock. No one acknowledges his departure. She senses his loneliness; it hangs over him like a shabby miasma, presses his thin shoulders down, hunching his neck.

Behind her in the next booth, the young men are playing cards. She can hear, but not see, the way the cards are slapped down on the table top and the accompanying shouts.

The young black man walks toward her then stands just beyond her table. He looks nervously at the other men, but only the patron is paying any attention.

‘Anglais?'
the young man asks.

‘Oui,'
she says.

The bartender lifts his chin and turns the corners of his mouth down as if to ask her if she wants to be saved. She ignores his signal and smiles brightly at the young man with his gleaming black skin.

‘You are English?' he says. His smile is wide; his teeth are even and very white. His track suit is bright red with crisp white stripes. Very new, she thinks.

Lucy nods.

‘I am Joseph. I am learning to speak English,' he says proudly.

‘Really,' she says, uncertain what else to say.

‘You are here on vacation?' he asks. His pronunciation is good, the accent slightly American.

‘Yes.'

‘I am visiting here with my aunt's son,' he says. ‘He is a paediatric surgeon. He has an emergeny now.'

‘Ah,' she says.

‘My other cousin is at the Royal Holloway Hospital. She is a gynaecologist and lives in Camden Town. Her father, my uncle, is a doctor in Paris.'

He does not make any move to sit at the table with her. Lucy can't think of anything to say but smiles in a slightly glazed way. She is aware that they are being watched and this makes her feel awkward, as if she were in a play and hasn't learned her lines.

‘I am going to London to study medicine soon, I hope,' he says. Then abruptly, he adds, ‘Goodbye. So long,' and returns to a booth near the back of the bar.

Perhaps she should have invited him to sit, or made a better attempt at conversation. She hopes he doesn't feel rebuffed. Hopes particularly that he doesn't feel rebuffed because he is black.

She swallows the espresso in three sips. It's thick and sweet. Takes another sip of brandy, doesn't shudder this time. Lights a cigarette. Thinks about the walk back to the hotel. Looks at her watch. It's almost midnight. She is surprised; she had thought it would only be ten or perhaps eleven. She should go.

She drinks the last of the brandy, finishes her cigarette, stubbing it out in the Cinzano ashtray. Then just as she uncrosses her legs in readiness to rise from the table, another brandy is placed before her by the patron. She frowns at him in confusion and he gestures towards the three older men at the bar. One of them has turned towards her; he lifts his glass as in a toast.

‘Oh,' she says, embarrassed, but lifts the drink, nods and murmurs. ‘
Merci
.'

Behind her the younger men suddenly roar at the result of their card game. One swears, then laughs and gets up and walks past her. His pockets jangle with loose change. His body is long, but his legs are short and slightly bandy. As he nears her she can smell earth and putty.

One more brandy will not kill her, but she must refuse if another is offered.

She feels safe here amongst these working men. Feels a little ashamed of that frisson of fear she'd felt as she first entered. One should never make assumptions, or jump to conclusions. She should remember that.

Lights another cigarette. Looks at her watch again. Twelve
-
twenty.

Underwater

When Marilyn was four years old she'd almost died.

She thought she could remember it, but wasn't certain if she had embroidered the memory – if part of it was what her mother had told her and the rest was a sort of flotsam and jetsam garnered from other sources: films and books. She seemed to remember moving or running awkwardly with her arms outstretched and there was a something she was determinedly heading for. This ‘something' was a phenomenon she didn't understand, but wanted to explore. She moved closer. Water. That's what it was. Or more particularly water whose surface was covered with a carpet of green. Green like a floating carpet of grass that you could walk on.

Marilyn had tried at least ten times in her life to write a poem about this, but she always found the resultant verse to be mawkish and naïve. Too reminiscent of certain poems by Sylvia Plath. Or just plain clumsy. She did not fully understand why she kept returning to this subject.

But there again why had she so readily adopted her mother's interpretation of the event? For her mother it was always the day Marilyn nearly died. But she had only been in the water for a second or two at most, before her father, who had been right behind her all the way, plunged his hand into the pond, caught the back of her dungarees and plucked her out in an explosive spray of stagnant weeds and stinking water. It should only have been the day Marilyn fell in the pond.

Maybe that was why the poem would never work. Its premise was dishonest and she knew it.

And yet here she was sitting in the bedroom of their borrowed house in France, attempting the same subject again. This time however, partly because she was pregnant and partly because a few months before she'd seen that Nicholas Roeg film
Don't Look Now
for the first time, she was trying to write it from the point of view of her mother. To make it a poem about her mother's fear and hyperbole.

Occasionally she got up from her desk and went down the hall to check that she could still hear Aaron's heavy adenoidal breathing.

At other moments she went to the window and gazed out at the garden behind the house where there were apple, cherry and pear trees. And beyond them a greenhouse with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs and other plants which were not in fruit and which she couldn't identify. Part of the deal with the house was that they would keep everything watered and tended. They had been told to help themselves to any of the fruit or vegetables they wanted, but Scott restricted them to a few string beans, an overripe tomato and the odd pinch of parsley or basil.

She wandered back to the table, picked up the small notebook with its scribbled out and overwritten words, and in a whisper, moving rhythmically around the room, she read the poem aloud.

My mother said, and said again,

that almost dead, my father, oh Polonius,

saved me from the stagnant pool.

Hyperbole, hangs heavy in the drowning

air around the Formica table.

You make a legend of me, Mother.

Amongst the Tupperware and easy mix,

the ennui of a winter evening…

She stopped mid
-
sentence. Displeased. Closed the notebook and placed it on the table. She went to the window again, rested her forehead on the cool surface of the glass, cupped her hands around her eyes in order to see into the darkness. Sighed.

Perhaps she was too tired to write tonight. Slightly jet
-
lagged still. She drifted away from the window, out of the room and, after a moment listening again to Aaron's breathing, went downstairs and switched on the TV. In the kitchen she poured herself a glass of milk and put three chocolate chip cookies on a plate, then carried both through to the living room where she curled up comfortably on the couch.

Using the remote, Marilyn flicked through the channels on the TV. French rap music over visuals of skateboarders on one channel, a news debate, a group of seven earnest intellectuals drinking and smoking in a gloomily lit studio on another, a black and white film – a French costume drama featuring foppish eighteenth
-
century men in lipstick that stained their mouths black. An advert for a car. A soap opera, a woman in high
-
waisted jeans and big backcombed hair crying, then running from a room, slamming the door so hard that the wall shuddered. Then, at last, a Woody Allen film dubbed into French. Perfect.

Marilyn breaks the first biscuit into four pieces. Licks her forefinger and uses it to capture a stray crumb of chocolate, lets it melt on her tongue. Takes four long glugs of the cool creamy milk, feels something close to rapture as it fills her mouth, slips down her throat. And the film,
Annie Hall
, she sees, has only just begun.

Life is actually rather perfect. Just as long as Aaron doesn't wake up and if Scott doesn't come home and insist on watching the news.

Halfway through the film, Marilyn took the empty glass and the plate out to the kitchen. Back in the living room she switched off the main overhead light and put on the small table lamp. She arranged the pillows on the sofa so that she could prop herself up comfortably on them while she watched the rest of the film. After ten minutes she pulled the grey mohair throw from the back of the sofa and draped it over herself.

She had no plan to fall asleep. She must have been half
-
dazed with sleep to even think this. Woody Allen and Dianne Keaton were attempting to cook lobsters. Marilyn shifted her body on the couch so that her head was now on the cushion. She closed one eye and continued to watch, then during the commercial break decided to close the other eye just until the film started again.

Innocence

Why had he said that to her?

Those crude cruel words to that strange girl. Or not girl, but woman.

Not that it seemed to faze her.

Thinking about it, Scott pictured Marilyn finding out what he had said. Overhearing his words, ‘I let strange women follow me, then I fuck them…'

‘I was being ironic, Marilyn,' he finds himself thinking in his defence.

He imagined her eyes upon him, judging him.

‘Hey, you think it's only women who have to deal with predators? How do you think men feel when women throw themselves at them? Offer it on a plate? Say no and you're some weak sexless pussy who can't get a hard on. Say yes and then she's got you – you're snared.'

‘But, Scott,' the Marilyn in his imagination said, ‘you were the one who brought up the subject of sex, not her. Why didn't you just ignore her?'

‘Because…' Even in this imagined conversation he does not want to admit to Marilyn that the young woman had aroused him. She wouldn't understand.

There had been a moment as he sat with the English girl when Scott thought it possible that she might invite him back to her hotel. That he might accept and once there they would have wild abandoned sex with no recriminations, no emotional ties. They would be two strangers pounding it out for the pure pleasure of it. Wasn't that why she'd followed him?