The Lie of You: I Will Have What Is Mine (5 page)

She had an exquisite voice and would sing hymns and carols for us at Christmas. When she became weaker she moved into my grandfather’s house and I remember her sitting in her wheelchair in his garden, always with a book on her lap.

My parents decided I should go to her funeral. On the morning of the burial my father came into the breakfast room at my grandfather’s house. He sat down next to me and stroked the hair
back from my face.

‘Heja, my sweet, Tanya was such a special person and Granddad loved her so much. He is very sad and I want you to sit still and be quiet in the church today.’

‘Why did she die?’

‘She’d been ill for many years.’

‘Why didn’t the doctor make her better?’

‘He tried. They all tried. Granddad even arranged for her to go to New York, but they couldn’t help her.’

‘Why not?’

‘Some illnesses can’t be made better, sweetheart.’

‘I liked it when she sang to us.’

My grandfather walked in just then. He bent over and kissed me on my cheek. There were tears caught in the swollen pouches of his lower lids that looked as if they were about to spill over.

‘Yes, my darling, Tanya sang like an angel.’

The funeral frightened me. The coffin was highly polished and set up on a table at the top of the church. I knew that my great-aunt Tanya was lying in there. I remembered an incident with her one summer when we were staying at Grandfather’s house. It was a dazzling day. I was lying on my stomach with my book in the long feathery grasses beyond the vegetable garden. It was so bright. The sunlight was bouncing off the pages and the black print crawled in front of my eyes like a procession of ants. I could smell the life in the earth and hear tiny scratchings and scurryings going on around me. I took my glazed pottery mouse out of my pocket and stroked its curved back. I decided to make a home for my mouse in a cave of the shimmering grasses. I would leave my mouse there overnight. I knew that after I was gone it would uncurl and skitter off through the stalks.

Just then I heard the whisper of wheels on the path that ran down the centre of the vegetable garden. It was Great-Aunt Tanya wheeling her chair towards where I was hidden. Then the wheels stopped at the end of the path, by the strawberry beds, and I heard her crying. I lay flat in the grass, my heart throbbing against the warm earth, thinking, She’s a grown-up; she won’t want me to see her crying, she will see me and be angry. I lay there unmoving as long as I could. Still she cried. Then I had to sit up to breathe deeply and she saw my head bob up above the grasses. She looked startled for a moment. Then she smiled tremulously and beckoned me over to her. I picked up my book and my pottery mouse and walked slowly towards her wheelchair.

She took my free hand in her cool hands that always shook slightly and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, darling Heja. Sometimes tears are good. They make new life grow.’

After the hymns and the speeches four men, including my father, carried Tanya’s coffin on their shoulders out of the church. They walked slowly and stiffly down the aisle. Why were they carrying her coffin on their shoulders? It looked so uncomfortable. Why didn’t they carry it with their hands? We followed them out of the church across the graveyard to the hole in the ground. The mound of freshly dug earth next to the hole was like a blanketed body. I watched as my grandfather threw a clump of earth on to Tanya’s coffin. Tears were running down his face.

I walked back to the hardware shop and picked up my new set of keys and felt that my power had grown. In the event it was as easy to put her keys back as it had been to take them. Aisha is the same kind of trusting fool as Kathy.

Tonight Robert came over. He has been in New York, visiting his mother and sister. When he arrived he handed me a black box sumptuously gift-wrapped with yards of silver ribbon.

‘I saw this and had to get it for you,’ he said.

I opened it carefully. Inside the box there was thick white tissue paper folded around a full-length, black silk crêpe kimono. I lifted the kimono free of the paper.

‘It’s lovely.’

‘I bought it at a vintage shop. It’s eighty years old. Put it on and see if it looks OK.’

He held it up for me and I put it on over my clothes and pulled it around me. It had a thick sash belt and wide sleeve cuffs.

‘The material is so fine,’ I said, stroking the sleeves.

‘It does suit you.’

‘It is perfect, Robert. Thank you so much.’

‘My pleasure.’

He embraced me and stroked my bottom through the material of the kimono. Then he put his hands beneath the kimono. He pulled my skirt up and stroked the backs of my thighs. He pushed my mouth open with his tongue and his hand moved round between my legs. Then he put his third finger right up me. His face got very hot and he pulled his mouth from mine, then took his finger out of me and put it in his mouth. His thick fleshy lips closed around his finger, right up to the knuckle, and he slowly pulled his finger out, watching me closely all the time. He repels me when he does this. I have never said anything about it to him. I do not let him see my repulsion.

I often think that Robert has a transactional attitude to our sex life. He gives me an expensive gift and he expects good sex in return. I am using him too. He has a large, sturdy penis and sex with him helps me to sleep. It stills my mind for a few hours. It never moves me, as it did with my true love.

The next day, and the day after, I waited in my car in her street during my lunch hour. I watched the building closely. I was anxious to try out the keys to see if they worked and to get into her flat at last. On the third day the childminder came out of the block with Billy in the buggy. She set off in the direction she had gone before, no doubt off to that housing estate again to meet her boyfriend.

I know the precise position of their apartment in the block. They are on the third floor, the left-hand corner. The first key into the entrance hall worked perfectly. It slid into the keyhole and turned with a satisfying click. I pushed open the heavy wooden door into an entrance hall that was larger than I expected and that had a decayed grandeur about it. It was high ceilinged and painted a dull cream. There was a long marble-topped table along one wall with letters stacked on it. The letters had an abandoned look, creased and curling up at the edges: to tenants who had gone away or who had died. On one wall a huge, slightly spotted mirror gave me back my reflection. As I looked at myself I saw again how my descent into depression and my sessions with Arvo Talvela have somehow changed me permanently. This was not the face that Markus loved.

The lift has a metal grille door that clanks as it concertinas open and closed. I must remember this. I took the lift to the third floor. The second key worked as well as the first. You had to turn the handle too. I opened the door slowly on to a long corridor. There was a russet-coloured carpet that ran along the centre of the hall, with polished wood on either side. A small round table held a lamp with a dark red shade. Off this long corridor was a series of doors. I walked into what must be their sitting room. I was surprised at the heavy old-fashioned furniture. There was so much inlaid walnut, a patterned sofa and a standard lamp with a dull gold shade with a fringe. The flat was a puzzle.

There seemed to be no trace of Markus. Then I found the room that had to be his workroom. It was opposite the sitting room and it was white and uncluttered and functional. There were well-made bookshelves with his books arranged in immaculate order. I looked along the shelves. I had given him some of these books. I recognized one on an upper shelf, the first book I had ever given him: a collection of photographs from The Hermitage. I reached up and took it down and opened the book. I read my loving inscription to him, written with a flourish on the flyleaf. The book had cost me a lot at the time. Then I pushed it back carefully into pos-ition. Markus would notice if it was at all out of place.

In the centre of the room there was his drawing table with an Anglepoise lamp clamped to its side. I touched the high stool that stood by the table. It was made of wood and smooth to my hand. His plan chest stood by the wall. I wondered if I would find the plans to our house in there, the house we had wanted to build.

I got down on my knees in front of the plan chest and pulled the bottom drawer open. I know him so well. Of course he would arrange his drawings chronologically – the oldest at the bottom, the most recent in the top drawer. The large sheets had been laid out meticulously. There must have been over twenty in the bottom drawer. I took them out carefully. I remembered the obsessive care with which he treated his work. I found the plan of our house near the bottom of the pile. I had not looked at this for many years. There were deep crease marks on the sheet. I lifted the plan onto his drawing desk and looked at the outline of the house: the house he was going to build for us by the sea. It was the work of a young and passionate architect.

I went into the large old-fashioned kitchen. It was messy and had all kinds of nooks and crannies and much-used appliances. There were a lot of recipe books on the shelf by the cooker. On the windowsill by the sink a large earthenware pot was filled with stained wooden spoons of various sizes and shapes. There were two aprons hanging on the kitchen door. So she must cook a lot.

Next to the kitchen there was a small room, which I assumed was her study. Markus would never leave any room of his in such a state. There was a small desk with a laptop on it and a mess of pens and paper lying next to it. And in front of the desk there were shelves with books and manuals and sheaves of paper stuffed together, looking as if they might fall out at any moment. A wastebasket, full to brimming, stood at the side of the desk. The room was very small. Only enough space for one person to sit in there. I did not have the time or the energy to go through her papers. That would have to wait.

As I was leaving her study I saw a notice board on the back of the door covered with photos of Billy. I looked at them closely. She has charted his development from a few days old. One was a hospital shot. Billy was lying in a plastic see-through cot and had one of those identity bracelets around his wrist. There are several shots of Billy in the bath and one of her breastfeeding him. Her shirt was open and she looked sleepily self-satisfied as Billy sucked at her breast. Markus must have taken that one.

There was only one photograph of him. He was lying on a carpet with Billy resting on his stomach. Billy was naked except for his nappy. His chubby back had little pleats of fat as he strained his head up to look at Markus, who rested his hand protectively on Billy’s bare back. Markus’s eyes were crinkled with laughter. I took out the drawing pin and put this photograph in my pocket.

My time was nearly up so I took a quick look around to establish the layout of the other rooms for my next visit. I looked into their bedroom; more heavy furniture. Billy has his own room with a white wooden cot and orange curtains.

I found it hard to imagine Markus living in that flat. It was not what I had expected. He has had to compromise to live there with her. I will go back there again soon.

JUNE

I’m beginning to think that childbirth sends us all a bit crazy. One day last week I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to work and had fallen asleep with my head scrunched up against my laptop. Markus had tried to help me by putting the clothes into the washing machine. When I woke up some time later and with a stiff neck, I emptied the machine.

‘
Oh, no!
’

‘What is it?’ Markus asked, coming into the kitchen and sounding alarmed.

He had put his black socks in with Billy’s pristine white vests and Babygros and the colour had run and all Billy’s things now had an ugly grey tinge to them.

‘You’ve ruined his clothes. You’ve ruined them,’ I said.

I was filled with a completely disproportionate anguish as I pulled out the grey baby clothes. Then I sat at the kitchen table and cried over the soggy little pile of spoiled clothes. Markus looked at me as if I was demented.

‘I’m sorry! Those black socks must have got caught up with the towels somehow.’

Markus was in Durham for a couple of days. The company he works for is competing for a major project there and he’s leading the team. The city of Durham has got together lottery and sponsorship funds to build a big arts centre with a cinema, café, gallery and bookshop and Markus really wants this job.

I thought I’d welcome a few days alone with Billy. In fact I felt edgy and lonely as the flat settled around me with its odd creaks and sighs. Perhaps I could call Fiona. She’s my best friend, but Fiona is in Glasgow and the distance felt too far to bridge tonight. I’ve started to realize that it can feel lonely, being the editor. I guess you cross the tracks somehow and your relationships with the team are changed, you have to hold yourself a bit aloof. It would probably suit Heja better than it suits me because she seems such a solitary person and I know nothing about her life outside work. I’ve never seen her leave with the others for a drink and she usually lunches alone. Yet how intriguing that she was a famous presenter in Finland, and it
is
odd that she left all that behind. Markus doesn’t get it, why I’m interested, that’s because he’s contemptuous of celebrity and would think it unimportant.

Billy woke up and he wanted a feed. It was always the most marvellous feeling to have him grow heavy and sleepy in my arms as he sucked on my breast. At first his little face was all concentration and then, gradually, his cheeks and forehead softened, his face became blissful and his limbs were abandoned voluptuously against my stomach.

When he was deeply asleep I put him down in his cot carefully, walked into my office, looked at the pile of papers on my desk that I had planned to sort through, lost heart immediately and went and sat in Markus’s room, which he always leaves so tidy and immaculate. I found the book on Lisbon, which I’d bought on impulse last week when I was missing my parents. As I was flipping through the pages I came to a spread on the Torre de Belem, which I think is one of the world’s most beautiful examples of military architecture. How lovely and how un-British it looked in the brilliant sunshine of Lisbon. I read that UNESCO had named it a World Heritage Site in 1983. Then I came to the spread on my favourite building in the world, the Mosteiro Dos Jeronimos, also a World Heritage Site.