The Essence of the Thing (10 page)

38

‘Susannah?’

‘Oh, Nicola—at last! I was going to ring you myself—’

‘Susannah, listen, I have to ask you a favour—’

‘Are you going to come and stay here? Will you come tonight?’

‘Are you quite sure you can bear it? I’m not much fun at the moment. I’m no fun at all, as a matter of fact.’

‘You will be. Of course I can bear it—when will you come?’

‘On Saturday—is that all right?’

‘Yes, of course it is. Why do you keep asking? I think you should come today, tonight.’

‘I can’t, I have to sort my things out and so on. I’ll come on Saturday.’

‘All right, Saturday. Are you all right?’

‘No, I think I might have died and gone to hell, I’m not quite sure.’

‘Oh, Nicola.’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘I think we should kill Jonathan. I think that might be best.’

‘No, it won’t make any difference.’

‘It will make me feel better.’

‘Oh, well, that’s a good enough reason. All right, kill him.’

‘We’ll plan it together after you get here.’

‘I have to go now, Susannah, I have to go to the Tuesday meeting.’

‘Oh, yes, that. Well, look—’

‘I’ll be with you on Saturday about midday, okay?’

‘I could come and fetch you, shall I do that?’

‘No, please don’t worry, I’ll get a taxi.’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘Yes. Susannah—’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you so much.
So
much.’

‘Just take care, Nicola. We love you. Till Saturday!’

Susannah replaced the receiver and stared at the telephone. So it really had happened. Nicola had lost her lover and her home, just like that,
kaput
. What vile cruelty. It was like an Act of God in its suddenness, its comprehensiveness, its magnitude; it left one gasping. It was almost enough to make a person start smoking again: one really might as well, considering how many much worse ills awaited one. For several minutes the world looked to Susannah unutterably dreadful. Then she went on with her work. She was a picture researcher and at the moment she was attempting to collect together colour transparencies of all the paintings of J. B. Chardin. She picked up one which had arrived in that morning’s post and looked at it again through the viewer. The world was unutterably dreadful,
but
. There might be almost nothing one could do about it, but there was after all something one could do in spite of it. Hallelujah, she said to herself, hallelujah. Whatever that may mean. And so she consoled herself.

39

Jonathan had not come back to the flat on Tuesday night by the time Nicola went to bed, but the next morning she found signs of his having eaten a sketchy breakfast before vanishing again, still unseen. A sort of dull fatigue had taken possession of her but she too was reluctant to linger here: once more she left the house much earlier than usual and once more she went into the little coffee shop.

‘Good morning,’ said the young man politely.

She managed to smile at him.

‘Filter coffee?’ he said. ‘And one croissant?’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and she sat down at the same table as before.

When she returned to the flat that evening, after having worked on well past the usual time, there was a letter lying open on the kitchen table. Attached to it was a note: ‘For your information, J.’ It was the house agent’s valuation. She put the letter back on the table and then on second thoughts found a pen and wrote at the bottom of Jonathan’s note the single word ‘Noted’ and her initial.

Still Jonathan did not appear; Nicola returned to the task of sorting out her clothes and other possessions: those she must take away immediately, those she must leave behind to be called for in due course, those she would throw out. What else should one do, dazed by grief, but sort out one’s possessions? Just before she fell asleep she thought she heard Jonathan coming in, but she was too exhausted to be dragged back from the brink, and if he made any further sound she was unconscious of it.

On the following morning she simply smiled at the young man in the coffee shop, and said, the usual, please, and he grinned back: right you are, he said; coming right up. As she sat down she at last saw why it was important, and even essential, that she should come here each morning, that she should continue to have this glancing encounter with this nameless dark-haired young man: because it was the only one in which she was not known to be—to have been—the Nicola who had lived with Jonathan; loved Jonathan; belonged, altogether, to Jonathan. Here, and only here, she could fairly purport to be unashamed and whole. It might be a sort of rehearsal for a new existence.

By ten o’clock that night she had finished sorting out all her more personal belongings: these included the china dogs from the mantelpiece, which was now quite bare. She sat down on the sofa and looked at it, forcing herself to contemplate this detail of the enormity which had overtaken her. At last she heard Jonathan’s key turning in the lock, and got up, and he, seeing the light, came unbidden to the doorway.

‘I shall be leaving here on Saturday,’ she told him quite calmly. ‘I’m going to stay with Susannah for the time being. If you need to get in touch with me for any reason you can call me at the office. Or write to me.’

He seemed taken aback, and said nothing; she went on. ‘I won’t be able to remove everything on Saturday,’ she said. ‘Some of my things will have to wait until I’ve got my own place. If they’re in your way,
tant pis
. Finding something else to do with them is one more thing than I can manage. As for the books, the tapes and CDs, the furniture and the etcetera—do what you like with them. I renounce all title. Oh, and there are a few boxes of stuff for Oxfam—perhaps you could drop them off some time if you wouldn’t mind.’

He seemed by this stage of the speech to be stunned; he did not seem to know what to say.

She shrugged. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think that about covers it, so I’ll leave you in peace.’ She began to cross the room; but Jonathan stood, still, in the doorway, effectively obstructing her exit.

‘Look,’ he managed to say at last, ‘there’s no need, you know, to make a dash for it like this. I didn’t expect—’ but what was he saying? It was what he had in fact hoped for, as recently as last weekend: coming back from the country on Sunday night he had hoped, he had even expected, that he would find her gone. It was recent, but at the same time, how long ago that evening seemed! ‘I didn’t expect,’ he repeated, ‘that you’d be able to find somewhere else to live just like that, before we’ve even sorted out the money and so on—technically this is still as much your place as it is mine, after all. There’s no need for you to camp out with Susannah.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Obviously you’re right,
technically
. I’d simply rather.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see.’

‘And now if you’ll excuse me,’ said Nicola, ‘I’m going to bed.’

He stood aside for her and she left the room, and it was now that he saw what was different about it;
wrong
with it: the mantelpiece was bare; all the dogs were gone.

40

‘Geoffrey, what have you done with the drill?’

‘Why do you want the drill?’

‘So that you can put up that rail.’

‘What rail?’

‘For Nicola’s clothes.’

‘Oh, not that again.’

‘She’ll be here on Saturday.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m not though.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘So where’s the drill?’

‘Sam’s got it.’

‘
Sam?
’

‘Yes, he borrowed it, a while ago, to put up shelves.’

‘Honestly, you’d think with a whole house to fix up he’d buy his own drill. Pathetic.’

‘Yes, well, there it is.’

‘Well, you’d better get it back, pronto.’

‘I can’t go round there now, I simply
can’t
.’

‘You don’t have to, Guy can go on his bike. Just ring up and say he’s coming.’

‘Oh, God, must I?’

‘Please. I just want to get this bloody rail sorted out once and for all.
Now
. Look, I’ll get the number for you. Where’s that address book? Ah, here we are. Now.’

They did the business: Sam was in, thank goodness, because it was his turn to look after baby Chloe while her mother, the not-so-very-fair Helen, worked in an advice centre. Guy was called and sent off to do the errand and within half an hour Geoffrey with loud complaint was at work fixing the rail. The task itself was accomplished in ten minutes flat, it was only the stages leading up to it which had taken up a total of—con servatively—five hours, spread—to be fair—over four days.

‘Shall I take it back to him now?’ said Guy. ‘He said he hadn’t finished with it.’

‘Of all the bloody cheek!’ said Susannah. ‘No you won’t. He can bloody come and get it himself. The very idea!’

‘How long is Nicola going to stay here?’ asked Guy.

‘I don’t know. As long as she likes. Listen. I want you to be very very nice to Nicola when she’s here, okay. Not that you wouldn’t be, but still. She’s feeling rather frail.’

‘Frail. What does that mean?’

‘Fragile.’

‘Like glass?’

‘Yes, exactly.’

‘Might she break?’

‘Yes. In a way.’

‘Cor.’

‘So just be very very nice, so that she doesn’t.’

‘I’ll let her play with my mice.’

‘That’s the ticket.’

‘She can have them in here if she likes.’

‘That might be going a bit far. Just let her play with them, if she wants to. She might not want to.’

‘Oh, she will.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘Yes, we’ll see—when’s she coming?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Oh, but that’s when I’ll be at my riding lesson!’

‘So, she’ll be here when you get back.’

‘Whizzy!’

41

She did not know where he might have gone, rising while she still slept and leaving the flat before she had got out of bed: bargain-hunting (some chance) in Portobello Road, or playing squash with some athletic crony, or simply wandering in a stupor of unease around the neighbourhood, up to the Gate, through the park, all the way to Kensington, and even beyond: who knew? He was returning, had already returned, to the secret state of his bachelor existence, before she had met him; all that was wanting was the murk of Crawford Street.

It was eleven o’clock already: she had done almost everything which had been listed under the rubric of ‘last things’ and was anxious to be gone: to prolong the appalling horror of her departure—a horror so appalling that she could not face it, but had hidden from her grief behind a storm of activity—was out of the question. She would leave him a note. She began to write.

Last Minute

1. Boxes marked Oxfam under window in bedroom.

2. Three other boxes of my gear in wardrobe, to be called for asap.

3. Don’t forget to leave out wages for Mrs Brick on Weds. mornings—£20 (in cash).

She took the last load of laundry from the dryer and packed it and was ready to leave. First she would just take everything down to the entrance hall; then ring for a taxi. And that would be that. She put the front door on the latch and carried the first box downstairs.

As she was coming down with the second box she met Jonathan on the stairs.

‘Oh!’

‘I was just leaving.’

‘Oh.’

‘I’ll be back for the suitcase in a minute.’

She continued on her way and then ascended the stairs once more and entered the flat. Jonathan was hovering in the sitting room.

‘I’ll just call a taxi,’ she said; she picked up the receiver.

‘I could take you,’ Jonathan said.

She glanced at him and began to telephone for the taxi; then she looked up again. ‘Drop dead,’ she said.

Five minutes, the taxi controller told her. She hung up.

‘I’ve left you a note,’ she said, ‘on the kitchen table. I wasn’t sure you’d get back before I left. There’s nothing more to say.’

The telephone rang; she picked up the receiver and listened and after a word of thanks hung up.

‘That’s the taxi,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Jonathan.’

She walked over to the doorway and picked up the suitcase.

‘Let me take that down for you,’ he said.

‘No,’ she replied. ‘I can manage it easily. Goodbye.’

And she was out of the front door, and had closed it behind her, and was gone, just like that.

The driver helped her with the boxes and then they were off. She sat back in the rear of the taxi, looking at the gay and carefree Saturday crowds thronging the streets all the way across the Royal Borough, and then they were on the Albert Bridge crossing the mysterious Thames, and then they were in the otherworld of south-of-the-river, and Nicola, stricken almost unto death, sat there, immobile, incredulous, her broken heart thumping, thumping, her hands curled into fists so that she should not even begin to cry.