Russell Hoban - My Tango With Barbara Strozzi

‘You’re right. I must do better. Fancy some lunch?’

She looked at her watch. ‘I can’t — I’m meeting my agent for lunch in Soho.’

‘What’s his name? Maybe I’ve heard of him.’

‘I doubt it — he’s from Jo’burg, an old friend of the family, Teddy von Augenblick.’

‘ Theodor von Augenblick?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Actually I have heard of him. My ex-wife works at the Nikolai Chevorski Gallery and he was in there trying to promote some painter whose talent wasn’t as big as his canvases. I haven’t seen the paintings or met von Augenblick myself.’

‘Teddy has his finger in all kinds of pies — I don’t know anything about his painters.’

‘But you trust him to represent you.’

‘Why shouldn’t I? I’ve known him since I was a little girl. As I’ve said, he’s an old friend of the family and he’s been like an uncle to me.’

‘Uncle Teddy.’

‘Yes, that’s what I used to call him.’

‘Did he use to take you on his lap?’

‘That’s what uncles do, isn’t it? What’re you getting at?’

‘Nothing. Being a writer, I’m always interested in a character’s back story.’

‘I’d rather you backed away from mine, it’s not that interesting.’

‘If you say. Could I have the words to “Used-To-Be”, both the Setswana and the English?’

‘What for?’

‘It’s a lament and I’m into laments.’

‘I’ll send you the words after we do the final recording.’

‘You don’t trust me, do you?’

‘Not really. I have to go now.’

‘When can I see you again?’

‘I’ll call you after I get back from Cape Town.’

I walked her to Putney Bridge, and even for that short distance she stayed a little way ahead of me. At the entrance to the tube station she said, ‘See you,’ and was gone.

I was sitting naked on Brian’s unmade bed on a Saturday morning. Alone. I’d had a lie-in and Brian hadn’t woken me. I didn’t hear him anywhere, no sounds but the traffic on the Embankment. Naked me on the bed; naked me on the wall. I wasn’t exactly thinking but I was thinking about thinking when I heard the front door open and close downstairs. Then there were quick footsteps on the stairs, a female voice said, ‘Bri?’ and a girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty burst into the room. Blonde, good figure, very pretty — well, she would be, wouldn’t she. And she had a key because she’d let herself in. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘are you posing for him?’

‘Not at the moment,’ I said. ‘Are you Cheryl?’

‘Yes. Has Brian mentioned me to you?’

‘Briefly.’

‘And you,’ she said, ‘you’re …?’

‘Just leaving,’ I said. I went to the bathroom but didn’t bother to take a shower. When I came out Cheryl wasn’t in the bedroom. I picked my clothes up off the floor, got dressed, walked up to the King’s Road and caught an 11 bus.

When I got off in Harwood Road I was about halfway between my flat and Phil’s place. Which way will my feet take me? I thought. I watched them take me back to Moore Park Road and over to Eel Brook Common. No, I thought, not with the smell of sex with Brian still on me. I turned back and went up Harwood to Fulham Broadway and home to Sir Cliff Richard and the Spanish dancer on black velvet and Hilary’s latest happy news, if she was there, of the Alpha course. She wasn’t there, probably out laughing it up with some happy-clappy Jesus crowd. My room looked small, the way childhood rooms look when you come back to them as a grown-up. There was Hope on the wall. I bought that print after Troy broke my nose and I moved out. Pathetic.

I had a shower, put on fresh jeans and a sweatshirt, thought about going to Phil’s place, then decided not to just yet. I put on a jacket and went out to look for Hope of a Tree . WH Smith didn’t have it so I went back to the Fulham Road and over to Nomad where I bought the one copy they had. ‘How has this been selling?’ I asked.

‘We had two copies,’ said the woman at the till. ‘Sold the other one a couple of weeks ago.’

I didn’t want to go directly home so I went past the North End Road to Caffe Nero at the corner of Vanston Place. It was busy but I got myself an Americano and found an empty table by the window where I could start Hope of a Tree while drinking my coffee. The day was sunny and the Fulham Road was thronged with people doing their Saturday things. With my book and my coffee I felt as if I was in a little island of no hurry and no bother where I could let my mind be quiet for a while.

I opened the book. The dedication was To the memory of my father, J. B. Ockerman . The epigraph was from Job 14: 7:

For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut

down, that it will sprout again, and that

the tender branch thereof will not cease.

Well, I thought, that’s optimistic. Then I started chapter 1 and there’s Cynthia on Clifton Bridge thinking about jumping and here comes Sam to talk her out of it. OK, I thought, you can get a good love story out of a beginning like that. Then I noticed a woman who’d just sat down at the next table watching me. She was about my age, not bad looking, maybe a little too much jaw, dark brown hair in a Louise Brooks cut. Black polo neck, little pink leather jacket, black trousers and Birkenstock. Very sleek, very cool and sure of herself.

She gave me a sort of knowing leer and said, ‘Enjoying it?’

‘Just started it,’ I said. ‘Have you read it?’

‘Had to,’ she said. ‘I was married to the author.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Do you know him?’ she said.

‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘I’m his girlfriend.’ I was surprised to hear myself say that but I tend to take against sleek women on sight.

‘Really!’ she said. ‘He usually goes for the intellectual type. Which you don’t, at first glance, appear to be.’

‘It could be that he’s looking to change his luck,’ I said.

‘Which way?’ she said.

I stood up and took half a step towards her. She suddenly looked less sure of herself. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘You’d like to continue this discussion outside?’

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Phil has come a long way down the female evolutionary ladder. This conversation would seem to be at an end. I suggest that you go back to your book and I to my cappuccino.’

‘While you still have your teeth,’ I said. She stayed quiet then, and when she picked up her cup it rattled in the saucer. I was amazed at my behaviour and quite pleased with it. Ms Ex-Wife finished her cappuccino quickly and left, avoiding eye contact the whole time.

I sat there with my book but I wasn’t reading it; I was thinking about what I’d said: ‘I’m his girlfriend.’ Just like that. It’s funny how you can have something in your mind but not know it until you hear yourself say it. So that was it — I was Phil’s girlfriend. One more thing for me to deal with. Not simple. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be Phil’s girlfriend. I imagined the two of us walking down the street; did we look like a couple? Yes? No? OK, I thought, I’ll go see him but first I’ll read some more of his book.

Sam talks Cynthia down off the bridge and they go to the camera obscura. ‘It’s a dark chamber,’ says Sam, ‘but you get a clear bright view of things from here.’ I imagined him saying that in the kind of film where you can see what’s coming long before it arrives. Sam — he’s American — would be played by Jim Carrey without his usual gurning and pretty soon we’d find out in a flashback that he’d been contemplating suicide after being dumped by Jennifer, played by Emily Watson. Cynthia would be Kate Winslet. An American film shot on location here.