The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (2 page)

‘No. Why do you ask?’

‘Because you have this way with you of listening, and I always think that you’re reinterpreting what is being said.’

‘We all do that. We filter everything, don’t we?’

‘It’s usually people who have been in a long analysis who acquire a habit of interpretation, as though experience is a code to be cracked.’

‘I was never in analysis,’ I told him.

This was a lie. When my depression had become unbearable I had sought out the revered psychoanalyst Arvo Talvela. There was a two-year waiting list and no one could get access to him. I wrote to him in confidence, explaining my situation, and he agreed to see me at once. Celebrity has some benefits, it seems. He wrote back to me asking me to come to his consulting rooms in the centre of Helsinki. My early reaction to him was one of profound antagonism. At our first meeting he opened the door and gestured in a courtly manner for me to come into his room. His face was fierce and intelligent. His grey eyes scanned my face.

‘Please take a seat, Heja.’

I looked around the room: the large, gracious windows; the books floor to ceiling; an expensive carpet; and the couch placed with a chair at its head.

‘You are not going to make me lie on the couch, then?’ I asked in a combative tone of voice.

‘I let people decide for themselves when they feel ready to lie down,’ he replied.

‘I will never be ready to lie down!’ I snapped at him.

I was now standing in the middle of his room and noticed this perfect blue glass vase that sat on his polished desk. He followed the direction of my eyes and he knew that I wanted to pick up that vase and smash it on the floor so that it would break into a hundred pieces. My rage consumed me. We battled for months and gradually I fell in love with him. It was not transference; it was love.

Good Friday and Robert had bought us tickets for a performance of Bach’s
St Matthew Passion
at St George’s Church in Hanover Square. He picked me up at my flat and drove us to the church. We joined the queue. What a middle-class English crowd; they looked like civil servants, librarians and lawyers. We were among the youngest ones there. The doors were pushed open and Robert manoeuvred us to prime seats in a box pew in the gallery.

There were six chairs in each box pew. They did not look comfortable and I knew that the music would last for over three hours. The players were tuning their instruments and then the noise fell away as an elderly white-haired canon walked slowly towards the pulpit. The conductor walked just behind him.

The canon mounted his pulpit and asked us if we would please turn off any mobile phones and not to applaud, as this was both a service and a performance. He sat down in his pulpit and was almost dwarfed by its high, carved sides. He was wearing a heavily embroidered cope, gold on black. It was as if the weight of his robes was pressing down on him. The sun was pouring through the high arched windows of clear glass on either side. I enjoyed watching the shadows of the panes as they worked their way up the stone arches. The man who sang Christus was marvellous, he had a memorable voice. The soprano was a bit shrill, I thought.

After two hours there was an interval and I was grateful to stand up. We walked back to Robert’s car and he produced smoked-salmon sandwiches, a half-bottle of champagne and two glasses. He opened the bottle and poured a glass for me.

‘You think of everything,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Do you believe in any of this?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Resurrection, the salvation of souls, the afterlife.’

He chewed on a sandwich. ‘No, I don’t. I see religion as a check on human vanity.’

‘Vanity...?’

‘We can’t understand everything and the absolute certainty of our individual death stops us from being lords of the universe.’

‘You mean death as the great leveller...’

‘The great humbler.’

‘I can find no comfort in that,’ I said.

‘Has someone you loved died?’ he asked. His voice was gentle but there was an inquisitive glint in his eyes.

‘Only my great-aunt, many years ago.’

‘Were you very close?’

‘She was a special person, Tanya. She was a great singer. And I did love her.’

He nodded, waiting for more detail. I looked out of his car window.

‘She used to sing this piece, she was famous for it. She said I had a good voice too and she would teach me songs. She was always so patient with me.’

‘So she died quite young?’

‘Yes, too young.’

The second half was longer than I had expected. The canon delivered his Good Friday sermon before the music could start again. I wondered at Robert liking this piece of music and wanting to come on this day. As a child I had been used to sitting through long musical performances. I had heard Tanya sing this oratorio so beautifully once. It was not something I would have expected Robert to like so much. Finally the last words of the
Passion
were sung.

And call to Thee, entombed in death:

Rest thou softly, softly rest.

The canon asked us all to stand and sing a hymn and then it was over. As we turned to leave the church I looped my arm over Robert’s. He looked pleased at my gesture and we walked down the stone stairs and out into the early evening coolness.

MAY

I’ve been back at work three weeks now and it’s far more difficult than I imagined it would be. My tiredness goes down to my bones and it’s as if the world is wrapped in this layer of something soft and fuzzy that cuts me off and I have to work very hard to penetrate the layer. I was reading an article about a high-powered woman in New York who was back at her desk two weeks after the birth of her first child, kicking ass and delivering targets, and I thought how was it possible to do that?

So why did I go for the promotion to editor? Because the magazine is Britain’s most prestigious architectural magazine, and because Philip Parr called me at home and said it was as good as mine if I wanted it. He had the old Kathy in mind, I’m sure. I also thought, This is what I’ve wanted for years and I’d regret it if I didn’t take the opportunity. I hadn’t reckoned on how exhausting it was to work at full throttle when you have a small baby.

I got through the day at the office. This evening, after Billy was asleep, I was languishing over the soup and salad and Markus said, ‘Go to bed, you look worn out. I’ll clear up here.’

I stretched out between the sheets of our large bed hugely grateful at the prospect of unconsciousness and must have slept for five and a half hours, which is the longest stretch of uninterrupted sleep I’ve had for months. I don’t know why I woke up. Markus was lying with his back to me, deeply asleep, and I put my hand over his stomach, which is deliciously soft and hairy on top and firm underneath. He stirred and slept on. I looked at the digital clock: 02.57. I got out of bed and went to check on Billy. We moved him into his own room last weekend and I’m still a bit anxious about it. It’s a lovely room, though, one of the lightest in the flat.

We live in this 1930s mansion block off Baker Street. It’s an old-fashioned place with a long central corridor and odd angles in the rooms, and although the ceilings are high it is rather a dark flat, some people might even describe it as gloomy. It will never match up to an architect’s ideal of modern, bright living. My Aunt Jennie, my dad’s sister, lived here for twenty years and when she retired to Cornwall she signed the lease and most of her furniture over to me. She helped me so much by doing that; you could say that she put my life back on track. I needed somewhere to live. It was just after Eddie and I had had our last, hopeless reunion, when he tried to stop drinking again. It ended badly, as it always did, and I needed to get away from him. In spite of the flat’s faults I love it because it feels so safe and solid and no sound comes through these substantial walls from the streets below.

Billy had rolled onto his back with his arms outstretched and his sleep blissful. He has the most adorable peachy fat cheeks and I wanted to pick him up and cover him with kisses. When he was born I was filled with this healing love that made me feel I could have a good life after all. When they put him into my arms all my fears that I might not be able to cope with a baby just melted away.

I met Markus at an architectural conference in Newcastle. We were in the same break-out group and were discussing the role of regeneration. Markus was so articulate and emphatic in his views on everything. It was obvious he didn’t like the man who was chairing our group, who was the well-known architect behind the successful regeneration of London’s East End. This man had made a fortune from the regeneration and he and Markus got into this argument about the social responsibility of architects.

Markus said it was the role of the architect to make living in cities and towns better for the majority of the people, not just the wealthy. We should never create ghettoes of the rich and ghettoes of the poor; communities should always be mixed. I could see that Markus was winning the argument and asserting himself over the rest of the group. Then I was asked by the chair to do the report-back. He’d seen me scribbling away on my pad while the two of them had argued. We all shuffled out then to get coffee, except for Markus who stayed behind in the room, writing something. Fifteen minutes later he came up to me and handed me a sheet of paper with all his arguments listed in perfect logical order.

‘For your report-back,’ he said, his first direct words to me.

He had a physical presence about him that you couldn’t ignore with his handsome, broad face, long, ice-blue eyes and narrow, straight nose. His notes were a test, I think, which I must have passed because at the end of the conference he came up to me and said, ‘Can I call you when I get back to London?’

On our first date he took me to The Widow’s Son pub in Bow in East London. It was a large, noisy, cheerful place close to where he lived. We sat in a corner by the window and Markus pointed over to the bar.

‘Look up there,’ he said. ‘See all those hot-cross buns?’

I looked up and hanging from the rafters above the bar was a collection of hot-cross buns at various stages of age and decay. Some were large and glossy, others small and blackened with age, and there must have been well over a hundred buns hanging there.

‘Every year they add another hot-cross bun to that collection,’ he said.

‘How strange...’

‘It’s a tradition. The first owner of this pub was a poor widow with an only son. He was a sailor and was expected home at Easter, so she kept one of her hot-cross buns for him. But he didn’t turn up. She waited and waited, and he never came back from his voyage. She couldn’t accept that he was drowned, so every year she baked her buns and put one aside for him. And the collection grew. As long as she kept the buns for him she thought that one day he might come home.’

‘That’s such a touching story.’

‘It is. When she died they found the buns hanging from that beam and they’ve kept the tradition going. Every Good Friday a sailor comes to the pub and adds a hot-cross bun to the collection.’

‘Wouldn’t the buns smell? I mean, as they got old and mouldy.’

‘Strangely enough, they don’t,’ he said. ‘Something in the spice mixture made them turn brown but not mouldy.’

On our second date he took me on a tour of his favourite buildings in the East End. He liked industrial buildings, those with a clear function: warehouses; printing works; grain stores. Most of these stood by the river and had been turned into expensive riverside flats for city workers. He enjoyed looking at the Victorian brickwork and the original tiles and the elaborate chimneys and he pointed these out to me.

We ended up in another pub after three hours of walking and talking and I was so attracted by his heartfelt enthusiasm for the buildings. I also thought how sexy he looked in his black leather jacket and jeans. We sat next to each other on the banquette in the pub and our thighs touched. You know that moment when you make physical contact for the first time with someone you are attracted to – shy, embarrassed, awkward, happy. The evening slipped away.

Markus seemed to spend a lot of time on his own, working in his stark, barely furnished flat or going for walks along the canal towpath near where he lived. He had grown up in Helsinki and didn’t have many friends in London and I think I brought some warmth and colour into his life. He made me feel safe at last after the chaotic ups and downs of my years with Eddie and we started to see each other regularly.

Six months after that first meeting in Newcastle I discovered that I was pregnant. This was entirely unplanned and came as a shock to me. Markus was also stunned by the news of my pregnancy, so much so, in fact, that I did a second pregnancy test at my flat. He arrived on that Saturday morning unshaven, looking like he’d had a bad night. I had bought a more complicated pregnancy test from the chemist, just to be sure. I set the apparatus up in the bathroom and made coffee for us while we waited for the result. After ten minutes I called him through and showed him the tell-tale dark red circle in the bottom of the test-tube. It’s always quite chilly in the bathroom. Was that why he shivered as he looked at the result of the test?

‘What happens now?’ he said finally.

‘We need to give ourselves time to think about it. It’s come as a shock to us both.’

‘You must know what you think, Kathy.’

‘I guess I feel relieved that I
can
get pregnant and a bit scared that I
am
pregnant. How do you feel?’

‘Overwhelmed, I hadn’t expected this to happen.’

We walked back into the kitchen and sat at the kitchen table. I felt obscurely guilty.

‘Would you like some more coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

My kitchen is a comforting kind of place. I felt I wanted to sit there all day at my aunt’s much-scrubbed and scratched wooden table. I got up and rinsed the coffeepot and then Markus was standing right behind me.