David Szalay - Spring

Leaving Alan to his liqueur—he tippled weird liqueurs, though he never seemed even slightly drunk—James and Freddy ended up in some place in South Kensington where Freddy knew the eponymous proprietress, a middle-aged American woman who had had some famous lovers in the past. The photos of these lantern-jawed men—half-familiar faces from the Eighties, politicians, newspaper editors, presidential emissaries—were on the walls.

In the morning James had a stinking hangover, which worsened until he switched off the TV and just lay there on the sofa. Later he took Hugo for a walk. He stared into the empty fridge. He had a shower. He phoned Katherine.

They went to the Old Queen’s Head. She was in a surprisingly talkative mood. She was frolicsome. She was tipsy. He insisted on paying for the food and drink, and produced a huge wad of money from inside his jacket—a market trader’s wad that made her laugh out loud. He was just like the men she saw in Chapel Market, she thought, those sharp-eyed men, forever permutating over their stalls of tat. She smiled and let him hold her hands over the tabletop. He was nicer than that, of course. He had been telling her about starting a business, the things she needed to think about—he himself had been starting businesses since he was seventeen. She liked the way he had done it, without patronising her, or not much. Now he was talking about his friend Freddy, how he had spent thousands of pounds—the money he won on their horse—on a single week in Paris, and about some prostitute he seemed to have fallen in love with… It was a funny story. It made her laugh. Perhaps that was why, looking at her watch, she said, ‘Do you want to watch a film or something?’

Walking down Packington Street in the hook of his arm, however, she started to wish she had not invited him home. She even wondered, unlocking the front door, whether to say to him, Look, I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to watch a film. I want to be on my own. Instead, she preceded him into the downstairs hall, pressed on the timed light, and started up the thin stairs. She said, ‘What do you feel like watching?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t mind.’

He made himself at home. Took off his shoes. Flopped down on the sofa, feet on the pouf.

‘I don’t have anything to drink,’ she said.

‘That’s okay.’

She turned on the TV. There was some film on TV, and they just started to watch that. Obviously feeling encouraged, he tried to kiss her at various points, tried tentatively to start undressing her. Each time, she went along with it for a minute, then fended him off, and there was another stretch of staring at the television, until he tried again. In fact she was no more interested in the film than he was and in the end she let him undress her. Sometimes she had to augment her lover with her own finger to make herself have an orgasm, and that was obviously easier if he found his way into her from behind, and easier still if he forewent her sex altogether. This she encouraged him to do, awkwardly using her unseeing hand to alter his angle until he understood what she wanted. ‘Please,’ she said. For a while she felt the floor’s nap under her face. Then, starting to hyperventilate, she did not feel it. She felt nothing. There was only light, and pleasure.

Finding her suddenly limp and heavy, he finished with a few hurried movements, immediately toppling over and experiencing a soft occipital tingle as the blood flowed once more into the parts of his head that think.

They were lying on the floor.

The film was just ending. Worried now about stains, she sat up and looked at him, lying there naked, his hairless thorax still heaving.

*

In the morning the light was white. The light was tender, like something unhealed. She woke with the first twinges of period pain and Fraser in her formless thoughts. She lay there, encircled by James’s arms, thinking for a few moments, as the sleepworld faded, of Fraser. He kissed her neck. He said quietly that he had to leave, and finally unsqueezing her, he left the bed and started to dress. There seemed to have been so many mornings like this. Him leaving early, perforce, to walk poor Hugo. It was later than it usually was when he left. It was eight. ‘Do you want some coffee?’ she said. He did and while he was dressing she went to make it.

There was a Sunday-morning quiet. The espresso maker mumbled on the hob and she looked out the window. Packington Street. The weather still making up its mind what to do.

They drank their coffee in the white kitchen. They did so in silence.

When he had finished his coffee he put his arms around her and she put her head on his shoulder.

She said, ‘Don’t you want to know what happened with me and Fraser?’

He shrugged. ‘Okay. If you want to tell me…’

‘It’s not that I want to tell you!’ she said impatiently, almost pushing him away. ‘Do you not want to know? Are you just not interested?’

‘No, tell me,’ he said, holding her. ‘Of course I’m interested. Tell me.’

‘We went to Edinburgh,’ she said, putting her head on his shoulder again. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t let him have sex with me. I know it’s… important to men.’ He said nothing. ‘Isn’t it? Fraser was jealous when he heard about you. ’

‘Was he?’

He felt her head nod on his shoulder.

‘So you went to Edinburgh…’

‘It was depressing,’ she said.

‘Why was it depressing?’

‘I don’t know. Fraser was depressed.’

She put her feet on his—her naked feet on his larger socked feet. He was looking down at them. For a long time he looked down at them.

‘And now?’ he said finally.

‘Now?’

‘M-hm.’

‘I don’t know. I’m going to Greece.’

He sighed. Tired and sad and slightly exasperated. Still looking down at their feet, he said, ‘I just wish it was…’

‘Simpler?’ she suggested.

‘Yeah.’

She nodded.

‘Will I see you later today?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I have loads of things to do.’

‘What time’s your flight tomorrow?’

‘Nine o’clockish. From Stansted.’

‘I wish I could spend the whole day with you…’

‘No.’

He squeezed her firmly for a second or two, then went into the hall to put on his shoes. ‘I’ll phone you when you get back from Greece,’ he said, stooping.

‘Okay.’

‘When is that?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘What do you mean—you’ve only got a one-way ticket?’

She nodded.

His shoes were on. He straightened up and put on his jacket, which was there on an overloaded peg. ‘Okay…’ he said. ‘Well… have fun.’

‘Okay.’

What to do now? They were standing in the hall. There seemed to be no natural way for him to leave, nothing that would do justice to the situation as he saw it, nothing that would not seem hopelessly peremptory. Finally—it was hopelessly peremptory—he just kissed her passionlessly on the mouth and said, ‘Bye.’

‘Bye,’ she said, and opened the door for him.

He was halfway down the stairs, halfway to the narrow hall, where the ownerless sideboard was swamped with letters for people who no longer lived there, when she shouted his name. In the shadowy space halfway down the stairs they kissed properly, for a whole minute perhaps, while the wind fiddled impatiently with the street door.

‘Okay,’ she whispered unentangling herself. ‘See you.’ She scampered up the stairs and went into the flat, leaving him to take the final steps, to pause in the familiar stillness of the hall, and then to pull open the door—even the way it stuck for a moment as he pulled it was familiar, seemed like something he had once loved—and step out into the light.