Aminatta Forna - The Memory of Love

Next to Saffia, Vanessa sat looking around, wearing a slightly sullen expression she imagined passed for sophistication. Saffia leaned forward and whispered something in Vanessa’s ear. And judging by the smirk that appeared on Vanessa’s face, I dare say Saffia was congratulating her upon her wits in securing the table.

We ordered drinks. Saffia asked for a ginger ale. I urged her to accept a real drink. She shook her head. I told the man to bring her a rum and Coke, whisky for me. Saffia requested a Guinness for Julius, who had yet to reappear. My back was to the room, to the dance floor. The room throbbed with sound. Impossible to talk over the din. Saffia, seemingly unconcerned, leant forward, smiling, watching the dancers behind my head.

Presently the waiter arrived with our drinks. Something scarlet and sticky, for Vanessa, imported and doubly expensive for it. I watched as Saffia sipped her drink, bending her head to the glass. She leaned back, caught my eye and smiled.

‘How is it?’

Yes, she nodded and began to hum, moving her head to the beat of the music. ‘Julius says I have no head for drink. It’s true. Not like him. When we were students I used to drive them all home at the end of the evening. I never really acquired a tolerance for it. Now I am stuck with driving.’

At least that is more or less what I think she said; what I caught were phrases, punctuated by the bass beat. ‘You studied together?’

She nodded.

‘Engineering?’

She cupped her hand around an ear for me to repeat myself. She laughed, leaning back into the seat, shaking her head. I felt foolish.

‘Botany,’ she said.

‘Flowers?’

‘Well, plants really. Plant systems, soil. That sort of thing.’ Her eyes slid sideways again, over my shoulder. Watching the dancers, or looking for Julius? Her hands were clasped on the table in front of her, the fingers interlaced. With the nail of her forefinger she began to trace an imaginary circle on the table. I looked at her and our eyes met, for the second time. I held her gaze, as long as I dared. She smiled and looked back at me, and then looked away. For a moment I was unable to breathe. I studied her profile and took a sip from my drink. From a different direction I felt the heat of Vanessa’s glare. I swivelled my stool around, showing her my back, and studied the people dancing.

So you see moments later when Julius joined us at the table the currents between us all were fractionally altered.

Vanessa began to flirt with Julius, of course. Touching his forearm, whispering in his ear, wriggling upon the banquette in time to the music. Julius responded, after a fashion. The record changed, Julius and Saffia stood up to dance, and I, following his lead, asked Vanessa. I accompanied this request with a show of courtesy, helping her out from behind the table, and this mollified her somewhat. We followed the other two on to the crowded floor.

Later we strolled on to the terrace, easing our way through tables of people taking a respite from the music, their faces glowing beneath the clarity of the moon. Julius seemed to recognise a good few people, or at any rate they knew him. He was the kind of person they call the life and soul of the party. Life and soul. Life and soul, without whom the rest of us collectively comprised nothing more than an inert corpse. Vanessa had found somebody, an age mate, a girl in a shiny black dress, and they were standing a distance away, whispering, shielding their lips from view behind the backs of their hands.

Saffia and I were alone.

A blind man sat with his back against the wall. She said, ‘Look at his smile. Why do you think he’s smiling like that?’

‘The music?’ I replied.

‘Yes, perhaps.’

We both watched the blind man. He sat, a great smile on his upturned face. He wasn’t tapping his feet, or marking the beat with his hand. He was just smiling.

Saffia said, ‘But do you notice how often blind people smile? Or don’t. Sometimes cry. I once saw a blind man in the street, the tears pouring down his face, he was quite alone. I thought about him for a long time; perhaps it’s a lack of self-consciousness, you know. They don’t realise people are watching them.’

‘Does that make it better or worse?’

‘I can’t help thinking it could only improve things if we all said and did exactly what we felt.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘Do you really believe that? About the blind?’

‘Yes. I do.’ She watched the blind man, frowned slightly and then added, ‘And of course, he doesn’t even know I’m looking at him now.’

Saffia watched the blind man and I watched her.

‘Dance with me,’ I said, because it was uppermost in my mind. I could think of nothing else until I had voiced that one thought.

And so we danced. The way she danced with me, as though the act required concentration. Or perhaps it was just the rum, perhaps it had gone to her head, though with the effect of forcing her to focus rather than relaxing her. Her hand on my shoulder. My hand at her waist. I had taken her to be taller. Between our bodies, a few inches of warm air. She kept her eyes averted from me.

As we danced I tried to inhabit the moment to remember it for later. I had it in my hand, and then it was gone. I walked her back out on to the terrace.

There was Vanessa. Mouth like a wet prune, wearing an expression that made her face look as though the skin was stretched over a substructure of granite. Not a word all the way home. I remember Julius passing silent comment, the way men do. A surreptitious slap on the back as we parted. He slipped into the passenger seat next to Saffia, and as he did so he wagged his finger, grinned, raised an eyebrow and shot a glance at Vanessa and then back at me, as if to say, ‘Elias, you old rascal.’

Thursday, he is called to attend a child. The address he is given is the local police station. Inside a row of people wait upon a bench. Through a door left partly ajar Adrian can see several police officers. One, a fat woman officer with a hairstyle as elaborate as a prom queen’s, sits at a desk. A male officer is perched on the edge talking to her. Two others stand close by. There is the occasional sound of laughter. Adrian hovers outside, waiting to be noticed. Someone glances in his direction, and away again. He raps on the door. Soft, even-spaced knocks. The woman at the desk waves at him to wait. He moves away to lean against the wall. When, finally, he is called inside and states his name, they exclaim and apologise. Not a crime victim then, somebody important. He should have said so.

Adrian follows the woman officer down the corridor, in silence except for the sound of her uniform trousers rubbing together between her enormous thighs. By a door she stops and gestures to Adrian to enter. He peers through the glass. A child sits alone in the empty room.

‘What do you want me to do?’ he asks.

‘Well.’ She shrugs as though she wonders why he should be asking her . ‘They want you to examine him.’

Adrian approaches the boy and squats down in front of him.

‘What’s your name?’ The boy looks at Adrian through dark, unblinking eyes. He doesn’t answer though his gaze is steady.

‘Your name?’ bawls the woman from the doorway. The sound makes Adrian start. He turns and holds up a hand, but fails to impress her. ‘An idiot.’ And shakes her head, sucking her teeth as she does so. When Adrian turns back the child is still watching him. Adrian regards him for a few moments. He wonders what kind of trouble the boy is in.

‘Excuse me,’ he says to the officer, keeping the dislike out of his voice. ‘Can you leave us a moment?’