Caryl Phillips - In the Falling Snow

She laughs now and reaches both hands up to the top of her head, where she bundles her hair together and then holds it in place with one hand as she takes the plastic clip from her pocket. The girl then pulls her hair back and secures it so that her whole face seems brighter and more attractive. The young can do this. He has noticed it on the tube, in the street, in his office, young women who by undoing a button, or putting on some lip gloss, or hooking in a pair of earrings can suddenly, and dramatically, transform themselves as though they have plugged themselves in to an energy source. She walks to the window where she picks up the small framed photograph and looks closely at the image of Brenda, before replacing it and then peering down into the darkness. He notices the irritating flicker from the faulty streetlamp that is clearly visible through the window. Last month he urged Ruth to write to the appropriate department of the local authority and suggest that they immediately send somebody out to fix the problem. Apparently, either Ruth forgot to write, or the email landed on the screen of somebody who must have deemed his request low-priority. Danuta turns from the window and appraises the small flat as though considering whether or not she should buy the place. And then her eyes alight upon the present occupant.

‘You like women or you like men, or both?’

‘I have no interest in men.’ He pauses. ‘Well at least not in that way.’

‘Never?’

‘Never seen the point. I have enough trouble with women.’

He realises that she has teased out of him a little more than he intended to say. He will have to be careful for, until the night he told Annabelle about the encounter in the New Forest, he had no idea that the urge to confession played any part in his character. She leaves the window and sits back down.

‘I have to go.’

‘Are you sure? I’d like you to stay.’

‘I work, Mr Keith. I have to go to work or how else do I pay for my English lessons.’

Well, he thinks, you’ve just had a free conversation class. Perhaps you can skip work tonight and keep me company.

‘One for the road?’

He stands, picks up her glass, and gently touches her shoulder as he passes behind her. He tops her up and then quickly washes out the bottle and puts it by the sink with the empty Perrier and Gatorade bottles ready for recycling. The metal cap he pushes into the tall swing bin, and then he carefully carries her glass back into the living room. As he hands her the wine, he ignores the wooden chair and sits next to her on the sofa. They clink glasses, drink, and then he replaces his glass on the table and turns to face her. He reaches over and gently cups the right side of her face in his left palm and feels the softness of her skin.

‘You know, you’re quite beautiful.’

She looks at him, but says nothing. He stretches out his other hand so that her face now sits in the chalice that he has created. His eyes lock with hers, but he is conscious that he must not hold this pose for too long. He leans forward to kiss her, but at the last moment she twists her head offering him a cheek and withdrawing her face at the same time.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to do anything to cause offence.’

Suddenly, the confidence seems to have drained out of her and she stares at him, her eyes moist with what he imagines is disappointment.

‘At night I am a cleaner. I work in an office building so I must go and do my job.’ She puts down her glass of wine and stands. ‘I do not wish to be late.’

To be misunderstood, and thereafter disliked, is always hurtful. At work he is a boss, and his colleagues have not always appreciated his gestures of authority, no matter how sensitively he has tried to bestow them. Clive Wilson has occasionally reminded him that he is not paid to win popularity contests, and the discomfort of being misunderstood comes with the privilege of being a decision-maker, so he just has to ride it out. Sometimes he can repair the damage of a comment or gesture that is offered in innocence and received with indignation, but more often than not he has learned to say nothing further and trust that time will heal any temporary distress in the workplace. However, as far as women are concerned, he has little experience of how to navigate such awkwardness, and the unfortunate episodes with Lesley and Yvette speak eloquently to this fact. Really, he asks himself, why push it and cross a line with this young woman? He could have waited and seen how things developed and discovered how she wanted to play it, but instead he stupidly does something which makes him feel like he is taking charge and now she is rightly outraged. She moves quickly to pick up her rucksack, and he finds himself stricken with anxiety. Okay, he does want to kiss her, and yes he doesn’t want her to leave, but he also doesn’t want to have full-on sex with her, at least not yet. Jesus Christ, he’s already seen the mess that can get you into. Perhaps some kissing and fooling around, but her eyes indicate that she thinks he wants more than this, and maybe she is even a little saddened that their promising friendship should have been sabotaged by his pitiful impatience.

‘I am sorry, but I must leave.’

He stands and walks with her to the door.

‘Will you be getting a cab? There’s a minicab place on the corner, I can walk you there.’

‘No, it is not necessary.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

She silently follows him back down the stairs and he scrambles around in his mind for something to say. He unlocks the front door and holds it wide open so she knows that she is free to go.

‘I don’t have a car. It’s just too much hassle in London.’

He wants to reassure her that he earns more than enough to have a car. That he is a respectable middle-class professional man, not some leering jerk who preys on women. He wants her to know that the attempted kiss wasn’t a clumsy gesture of foreplay, with the next stage already programmed in his seedy mind. He likes her, even though she is a little bit chippy. She is a single woman from another country, on her own, learning English. Of course, she has to be a little bit chippy to survive. He understands, he gets it, it’s fine.

‘Thank you for the drink, Mr Keith. And the conversation.’

She tosses her rucksack up on to her shoulder and deliberately avoids any eye contact as she sweeps past him.

One hand holds the edge of the open door, while his other hand is jammed flat against the wall as if to steady himself. She doesn’t look back as she turns right at the gap where there should be a gate, and he watches as she walks up towards the main road. No hug, no peck on the cheek, no wave, just withdrawal and retreat. Poland. Back at college watching Wajda’s Man of Steel and Man of Marble . Solidarity buttons. Lech Walesa as a cool guy before it became clear that he was an anti-Semite. But it’s Poland, right. Home of Treblinka and Auschwitz. You don’t change people’s minds in a couple of generations. What else did he know? Kielbasa sausage, but he’d never tasted it. And Chopin, the man she probably thinks of when she imagines a real composer, not Wynton Marsalis. He closes the door and listens as the metal letterbox rattles noisily, and then he is suddenly enveloped in darkness as the sixty-second delay expires and the light clicks off.

Back upstairs and in the privacy of his flat, he opens another bottle of wine, this time with a corkscrew, and pours himself a fresh glass. He then scatters a few crackers on a plate and cuts off a hunk of Gruyère, before carrying everything through into the living room. He kicks off his shoes, and puts his feet up on the coffee table, then reaches for the remote control and turns up the volume of the CD player. Strange, but the flat suddenly seems empty without the girl. He again notices the framed image of Brenda’s face on the windowsill and remembers that it was Annabelle who took this portrait. Although Brenda was clearly ill at the time, there is a serene aspect about her in this photograph which he has always liked. At the end of their first year at university, and before Annabelle went back home to do the work experience job that her father had set up for her at the Wiltshire Times , they travelled north together. He had telephoned Brenda as soon as he got the letter and insisted that he would be spending the summer with her, and although she had tried to persuade him just to go ahead with his Inter-Railing plans, his mind was made up. When Annabelle said that she would like to meet Brenda, he called again and having asked her what medicines the doctor had prescribed for her, and checked if she would mind if he did some university work at the city library from time to time, he eventually raised the subject of his previously unmentioned girlfriend. Brenda laughed, then coughed long and hard, before finally asking, ‘Well, is she coming with you or not?’