The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (10 page)

‘You’re still on probation, you know,’ he said. ‘This role comes with a six-month probation period.’

I lifted my head and made myself look straight into his eyes.

‘I understand. I’ll prepare a really detailed analysis for the board. You’ll have it by the end of the day.’

‘OK.’

He walked out.

His criticisms were fair, although they made me feel wretched. I have lost some of my clarity since Billy was born and the old Kathy would never have lost her notes or fluffed her presentation. I went to the Ladies, locked myself in a cubicle and allowed myself to cry for five minutes. Then I spent the next three hours trying to put things right. I used Aisha’s password and got into her system. I wrote a concise and persuasive explanation to accompany the table of figures we had produced. I printed it out and handed it to Philip just as he was leaving the building at six.

JUNE

Kathy is unsure about her role as editor. And it does not take much to destabilize her. I saw her as she came out from the board meeting. She did not say a word and she looked devastated. She can never hide her emotions. Her face is an open book. It was wonderful to see her looking so brought down.

It had been so easy to go into her office while she was in the Ladies and take her notes. Aisha had left for the night. The folder was lying there on her desk. It was a matter of moments to flick the folder open and grab the notes. I put them in my desk drawer. Then I tapped on Philip’s door and said could I have a quick word. He invited me in with alacrity and offered me a drink, which I accepted. He keeps a bottle of whisky in his office. I dislike whisky and toyed with the glass. He didn’t notice because he was sitting back and talking about the magazine. I knew it would unnerve her seeing me sitting in there with him. She would wonder what we were talking about.

She does not know how to manage Philip yet he is easy to manage. If I gave him the slightest encouragement he would ask me out. Stephanie told me he has had affairs with colleagues before. There was a woman on their team, Andrea, who became his lover. She was riding high for a while, Stephanie said, and started to throw her weight around and cause resentment. Finally another member of the team alerted his wife. The very next week Andrea was gone. I asked Stephanie who had told Philip’s wife about the affair. She said she did not know. Whoever it was had done them all a favour, she said. I am sure she does know but she was not going to tell me. Perhaps it was her. I established that it had happened two years before and that Kathy was working on the magazine.

I have been watching her flat for the last few days and something has happened to change the nanny’s routine. She still takes Billy out for his walk. She goes in the opposite direction now. Today I saw her leave the building. I took the lift to the third floor and let myself into the flat. I went straight into Markus’s workroom. I like being around his things, his books and his plans. It makes me feel close to him. I was looking at his books when I saw the old album that had belonged to his grandfather Billy Hartman, the news photographer and communist. I pulled it out and sat on the floor and looked again at the best of his grandfather’s work.

Billy Hartman worked all his life as a photographer on the
Helsingin Sanomat
. He was proud of his work and over the years he had pasted his best pictures into this album. Markus loved his grandfather dearly. I remembered his fury when his parents put his grandfather into a nursing home when he got ill with Alzheimer’s. Markus fell out very badly with his parents over that. He thought they should have kept him at home with his familiar things around him.

The nursing home was miles away from his grandfather’s usual haunts. Markus was still at university, in Helsinki, and it was a long way to go. In spite of this he would visit him regularly. Sometimes I went with him. I remember one of my first visits there. Markus was carrying this photo album. We were sitting in the station, waiting for the train to come.

‘What’s that?’

‘Can you believe my parents? They exile him to this place and they don’t even pack his album!’ he said.

‘What’s in it?’

‘Only his whole life...’

He said when he was a kid he used to ask his grandfather to go through the album and tell the stories behind each picture. Billy Hartman’s work had taken him to every kind of news event: shipping accidents; political rallies; and strikes. There was one picture that made a deep impression on Markus. I looked at it now. A young man is lying stretched out on the ground. There is blood coming from the side of his head and it makes a sticky shadow on the ground. His eyes are open and his look is one of surprised pain. There is the trace of a moustache on his upper lip. One arm is trapped under his body in an awkward way. The other arm is flung out with his fingers curled as if in a gesture of calling to someone. He is wearing jeans and one of those rough blue work jackets. Close to his body a crate lies smashed open, spilling the metal parts it contained.

‘It’s a very powerful picture,’ I said.

‘My grandfather was at the dockyard when the accident happened. He’d been sent to photograph some visiting trade delegation. He got there early and was walking around the yard to see where he could take his pictures. He always said to me: “Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted.”
That was one of his favourite sayings. So he saw the crate fall and hit the young man on the side of his head and saw him crumple and die in front of his eyes. He decided he would record it.’

‘What a terrible accident,’ I said.

‘It was an outrage. That dockyard had a bad safety record. He’d heard that from some of the dockers who were in the Communist Party with him.’

As it turned out, his grandfather’s shocking photograph kick-started a campaign to improve safety at the dockyards in Finland. His work had made a difference.

When we reached the nursing home Markus walked in front of me and found his grandfather sitting on a bench under the trees. It was one of Billy Hartman’s more lucid afternoons and he was very happy to see Markus and to get his album back. He was a committed communist. On other occasions when we went to see him he would say to us over and over again: ‘From each according to their means, to each according to their needs, it’s the only thing that will work. You’ll see.’

I am sure she knows none of this. She has no idea what a special man Markus is or what matters to him. I remembered that man at the window, the man holding Billy while Markus was away. I put the album back exactly where I had taken it out and went into her study. I went through the drawers in her desk. She had stuffed all kinds of things in there. Old floppy disks, some used-up cheque books and in the bottom drawer I found a pile of loose photographs. I scanned through them. I found what I was looking for. There were quite a few photos of him. In one he was stripped to the waist, his torso tanned, standing in a garden. Her lover... I took this photograph and placed it right in the centre of Markus’s drawing table. His table was clear and he could not miss it.

JUNE

I was in the kitchen, trying to decide what to make for supper. I felt the need for comfort food. Billy was playing at my feet and I was so despondent. Philip had given me no feedback on the paper I’d done for him and the board members. I knew he had sent it out because I’d asked his PA. He hadn’t mentioned it to me once. Philip is very unforgiving. It takes a long time to gain his respect and then you can lose it very quickly. I heard Markus unlocking the front door and he came into the kitchen and kissed me and Billy.

‘I feel like a night off,’ he said. ‘Let’s take Billy for a walk.’

It was rare for Markus to suggest such a thing and I agreed at once.

I was glad to get out of the flat. It was a mild and luminous evening and we headed for Regent’s Park. There were quite a few couples strolling along the paths of the park, arm in arm, enjoying that peaceful after-work time, and I wished that I felt more peaceful. As we walked around the boating lake, pushing Billy, I confided my fears to Markus.

‘I’m having a bad time at work and I’m not sure I can hack it as the editor.’

It was hard to voice my feelings of inadequacy to him but I needed to talk about it.

‘It’s still early days,’ he said in a kind voice.

I could feel my eyes filling with tears.

‘I seem to be messing up, losing things, forgetting things. And the more I doubt myself the more mistakes I make.’

‘You lost your notes and that was a pity. You came up with a good idea for the guide,’ he said. ‘And it’s still going ahead, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is. Philip reminded me that I’m on a six-month probation. I think he’s lost faith in me.’

‘I doubt that. Perhaps you try to do too much. Let your team do more. Let them do the writing and you sit back and be the calm and benevolent boss.’

‘I like doing the writing.’

‘Do some, then, but be generous with them. Let them have the pick of the sites. You’ll get them onside and with a loyal team behind you Philip can’t touch you.’

It was good advice and his support made me feel better. I decided I would do as he suggested: yes, I would hold individual meetings with each member of my team and ask them which sites they wanted to cover. It would make them feel valued and it would help me get back my good feelings about the project. I squeezed his hand.

‘Thank you.’

We walked some more and admired the light shining on the lake. As we were both enjoying being out we decided to make an evening of it. We found a café with tables on the pavement that was serving tapas. We sat down, parked the buggy next to us and ordered two beers.

‘You’re bound to be a tapas expert,’ Markus said, ‘so I’ll let you do the ordering.’

‘It’s true, lots of tapas during my childhood, though Dad always remained a meat and two veg man.’

‘Well, mine was a pickled herring, potatoes and rye bread childhood,’ he said with a rueful smile.

I looked at the menu. ‘We have to have garlic shrimp, patatas bravas, marinated anchovies, tortilla and some chorizo, I think. I’m torn between fried squid rings and stuffed mussels. Do you have a preference?’

‘I’ve never had stuffed mussels.’

‘Well, they’re stuffed, breaded and fried, and very tasty.’

‘Do we need another dish?’ he said.

‘Maybe not, maybe I’m just being greedy. It’s a bit of a treat, though.’

Our plate of tortilla arrived first and I cut off a small piece for Billy to chew on. He wasn’t very interested. His eyelids were getting heavy and I tipped his buggy seat back and Markus rolled him back and forth till he was asleep.

We had a second beer and the rest of our tapas arrived. I told Markus to close his eyes and I would feed him random forkfuls and he had to tell me which dish he liked best. I fed him garlic shrimp and then patatas bravas and then the other dishes, and we were both giggling and being a bit silly. He said he liked the bite from the Tabasco in the potatoes’ sauce. His overall favourite had to be the marinated anchovies.

‘That’s your picked fish heritage coming through,’ I said.

‘And I’m guessing your favourite is garlic shrimp.’

‘Spot on.’

When we had finished the food and wiped our bread around the plates to catch the last bit of sauce, we both looked at our sleeping son next to us.

‘Nothing prepared me for the feelings I have for him,’ Markus said. ‘It’s really quite primitive, isn’t it, how you feel?’

I put my hand over his. ‘It really is.’

We walked back to the flat and there was a lovely united feeling between us. It was quite late and I carried Billy into his room and was putting him to bed.

‘Did you put this on my table?’ Markus said, coming in.

He held out a photo to me and it gave me a jolt because it was my favourite photo of Eddie. In it he is standing in a garden, one of the places where he often worked. He is stripped to the waist, his chest and arms are tanned, his face is freckled and he is grinning broadly into the camera. He looks the picture of healthy male sexiness.

‘That’s Eddie, my ex. I told you about him. Where did you find it?’

‘On my work table just now...’

I immediately felt a bit defensive.

‘That’s strange. I didn’t put it there. I haven’t seen this in ages.’

‘Maybe Fran, then?’ he said.

‘Where would she have found it?’

I was sure that I’d tucked all my photos of Eddie away in my bottom desk drawer. I remembered doing it just before Markus moved into the flat with me as I thought it was the tactful thing to do in the circumstances. Markus just shrugged and left Billy’s room. He didn’t seem to be irritated about it, just puzzled. It had made me feel uncomfortable and guilty as I hadn’t told him about Eddie’s arrival at the flat. It was possible he might have been annoyed about that late-night visit. I’m no good at keeping secrets and I don’t like to do it. Now this photo was a potent reminder of my not telling Markus and I’m sure my face had given me away.

I covered Billy with a light blanket. Then I looked at the photo again; Eddie on a good day. I went into my study and opened the bottom desk drawer and there were all my photos of my life with Eddie, just as I’d thought. I added this photo to the pile. It was a shame because it had created a slightly jarring note to the end of what had been a loving evening together.

JUNE

This afternoon I had my meeting with her. She called me into her office and we sat at her meeting table. She is always very scrupulous to sit at this table. She would never conduct a meeting with her sitting behind her desk. She had a sleeveless red linen dress on. I noticed dark crescent-shaped marks of sweat on the dress under her arms.

‘It’s very hot, isn’t it?’ she said as I sat down. ‘I can’t open the window any further and anyway there’s no breeze today. Would you like a glass of water, Heja?’