Эдвард Докс - Pravda ['Self Help' in the UK]

They walked together now, beneath November skies of pond-sodden bread. The rain had stopped since he had been out for the permit, and London seemed to be prepared to make a go of it again. It was not yet eight-fifteen. Already Frank was assiduously under way with the plumbing and Gabriel was feeling a little better. He knew Lina well enough not to try anything when he was covered in mud and bleeding. So instead he had merely told her how pretty she looked, then dutifully taken a shower, dressed in his favorite shirt, and asked her about her trip as they moved around the bedroom, before telling her that he had transferred all her music to her new MP3 player, which won him a kiss.

Lina took his arm and he crooked it for her, as he always did. They crossed Tufnell Park Road, solid at this hour with precious mothers off-roading precious children to precious schools, and began to make their way toward the main junction. Traffic wardens were swarming on the corner. In the middle distance, the sirens sounded like eight-year-old girls making fun of their friends’ boy stories. Gabriel could scarcely believe that he was the same person who only an hour ago had been cycling, bleeding, having a breakdown. And it wasn’t anything Lina had said—it never was; they seldom talked about feelings, his or hers—but now, for the first time, he smiled rather than flinched as a memory of his mother entered his head: a policeman parking illegally to nip in and get a pizza in Highgate village, his mother remonstrating, he embarrassedly waiting so that they could hurry up and buy the promised tennis racket, policeman catching schoolboy’s eye, mutual sympathy. Yes, though light on his arm, Lina felt steadfast and certain. He was glad to be with her this morning. Glad the world contained her. Glad that she was here with him. Maybe it was because she had been away for a couple of days, but he was struck again by how calm and together and resourceful he felt in her presence. There was nothing he could not do with this woman at his side. Oh God.

Breakfast was already well under way in Martha’s Café. His hangover was hungry. They were greeted by the welcoming aroma of fresh-ground coffee as they opened the door, which gave way to a delicious smell of bacon toward the kitchen at the back. They sat at one of the miniature tables under the blackboard on which the menu was scrawled. They had been coming here most days since the work on the kitchen had started.

She ordered some inscrutable confection of muesli and he went for the half English, which, after all, was what he was. Conversations of football crises, of such and such a figure in the news getting exactly what he deserved, of so and so needing to get her act together, of problems, rumors, plans, and hopes reached his ears. To Gabriel, the whole experience already felt as though it would be something that they would look back on and remember… Someday, twenty or so years from now, when visiting one of their children at university perhaps: breakfast at the local college café, newly independent child assuming parents had never dreamed of eating such a thing, mute parental complicity as child talked through the menu as though it were the most recent thing on earth.

Lina reached up to remove a stray eyelash from his cheek and took the opportunity to hastily rearrange his hair more to her liking, a habit that he vehemently disliked.

“Lina. Pack it in.”

“What have you been up to, then—apart from throwing yourself at the local pavements?”

He grimaced. They had only talked about her trip so far—her real dad’s birthday.

“Larry came up last night,” he said. “It was terrible. He’s an alcoholic. He’s definitely an alcoholic.”

She smiled. “What did you do?”

“We went to the pub for a quiet one and then into Camden… Ended up drinking in some pig-packed shit hole until Christ knows when.”

“Fun?”

“At the time.”

“Sounds it.”

“Actually, it wasn’t.”

“When did you get in?”

“Two.”

“Larry meet anyone?”

“No, he just got a cab home.”

“At least none of your friends can stay over when they’re drunk at the moment, so you don’t have to go through all the rigmarole with the futon.”

What she really meant was not all the rigmarole of turning the futon into a bed but the secondary rigmarole of putting a sheet down —one of her pet insistences. She was the most hygienic woman in the world. She would physically cringe at the thought of a man falling asleep on their furniture without the prophylactic of a clean sheet, duvet, pillowcase. And yet there was never a word of censure about what he was doing until two in the morning. He could have turned up three days later without his trousers and said that he had been in Rio judging the Miss Porniverse Pussy-Pumping Pageant and she would have been just as calm. And he loved her for that.

Her coffee (decaffeinated) appeared, his tea hot on its trail with a jug of milk. There was a sudden sizzle of sausages arriving for the workmen on the next table. She spoke over the top of her raised mug. “You should get him a girlfriend. Then you could both go out and do something you actually enjoy.”

“What do we enjoy? I’ve lost track.”

“Swimming on the Heath.”

“Lins, it’s absolutely freezing at this time of year.”

“Joke.” She eyed his hand, gauging his minor thumb injury as he gingerly removed the teabag.

“He wants you to get him a girlfriend.”

“Me?” She raised her eyebrows.

“He thinks you know loads of beautiful Swedish women.”

“What? From ten years ago?” She affected consideration. “Well, there’s Anya—she’s thirty-one and about to have a cesarean any day. She’s my oldest friend and happily married, but I could ask if she’d like to give it all up for an overweight TV producer.”

“No. Forget it. She goes out clubbing. Larry only goes out eating.”

Someone swore at a bottle of ketchup that could not be bullied into dispensing its chemical treasure.

“I could have a look at the office. What type does he like?”

He also loved it that Lina wasn’t on some phony high horse about womankind; he loved it that she could talk about other girls—minds, bodies, behavior—without all the invidious ancillary crap that so many women had to shovel into such conversations all the time.

“Medieval barmaid type.”

“Blond?”

“Yes. Blond, big baby eyes, breasts…”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s such an easy look.”

“…comely, honest but saucy, daughter of local miller, weaver, wainwright. You get the idea.”

“I’ll do a round-robin e-mail.”

“You still want me to order your mum music for Christmas?”

“Yes. Thanks for doing that, Gabe. Choose things she would like, though. Nothing too weird. Maybe those cello pieces you listen to.”

“Nothing too weird.”

“I’ll give you the money.”

Their breakfast danced into view. He was starving. Having poured her milk—she always swamped her cereal, causing Gabriel to think that what she really wanted was muesli-flavored shake—Lina did not start eating but instead began to watch him with mild disapproval (which she never could hide) at the sheer speed with which he was devouring his food.

“Try not to eat so quickly, honey—it’s really bad for you.”

“I know.”

Maybe that was it: the fact that she couldn’t hide a single thought that came into her head… This relentless compulsion for honesty, transparency, as if the epitome of human goodness was merely the willing ability to broadcast every last waking thought, no matter how trivial. Was it actually possible to resent someone for being so honest? What kind of a monster was he becoming? Anyway, why was he attacking her all of a sudden? Her request was perfectly reasonable. Slow down, Gabriel. Slow the fuck down.