Joanna Kavenna - Inglorious

She thanked him while he snorted and told her not to worry, it was quite all right, he often — now that Egyptology had become so popular, something to do with Hollywood perhaps, and he said this with distaste — got applicants who were unsuitable. She apologised to Pennington for wasting his time. He nodded with a steely little smile. ‘Thanks so much, goodbye, dear, goodbye.’ Goodbye for ever, he meant, and Rosa thought, Well, that’s that . Once he had shut her out she went back out through the little gate. She side-stepped round a yellow digger, which was sitting on the kerb like an industrial scorpion. Pennington was nothing but a diversion. He was a wrong turn, if anything, and for a moment she wanted to go back and tell him. She had a few urgent questions to answer, and none of them, but none of them, had anything to do with Osiris. Except, it was Osiris who weighed you in the balance after death. It was Osiris who put a feather on one of the scales and your heart — or soul — on the other, and if your heart sank lower on the scales than the feather, then you were doomed. Well, we must all be doomed, she thought. Every last one of us! For who, in this day and age, can make any claim to having a heart lighter than a feather!

*

‘Mr Rivers is in a meeting,’ said the woman. Mandy had come back from the store cupboard with this news. ‘Really, are you sure?’ said Rosa. She tried to sound incredulous. Had Sharkbreath really not wanted to see her? ‘Can’t you try again?’ said Rosa.

‘He is too busy to see you,’ said Mandy. She said that with an officious twang, rustling her papers.

‘But I really do need to see him,’ said Rosa. ‘I’ve been a good client, a client of many years. It’s true, my debt is quite bad. I’m not pretending there’s no debt. But I am actively seeking work. I am busy about it. And I just need some flexibility on my debt.’

Mandy bridled. She was definitely becoming sanctimonious. ‘If you’re in debt, then there’s nothing I can do about that. Mr Rivers can’t see you. I can’t help you any more,’ she said.

‘Perhaps you can help me,’ said Rosa, in a tone of ill-advised optimism. Mandy shrugged and looked as if she thought it was unlikely. When Rosa said a couple more things Mandy told her she had to talk to Rivers. Shaking her head brusquely, Mandy walked away.

*

Eager and ready, awaiting enlightenment, Rosa sat on the top deck of a bus as it rounded the corner and moved on to Kensington Park Road. There was still much to anticipate. Today she had an interview and she hoped she would get the job. She had to go back to Jess’s flat, pass the day writing applications, and prepare herself. She had to prime herself for her interview at 4 p.m. It seemed a real possibility, this job she was going to win. Her deviation would be corrected; she would climb out of her fiscal pit. After that, when that was settled, she would really get to grips with the basics, with the essential mysteries and underlying causes. She inhaled sharply as a woman elbowed her in the face. She heard Arabic behind her and German to her left. Auch wenn wir nicht wollen: Gott reisst . Then she heard the tinny sound of an iPod, whispering a tune she couldn’t remember. The bus scraped past the parked cars and people. A scaffold and the sound of drills. The yellow-fronted self-service laundry, always for let. Shops with their windows full. Pale slabs. Enfeoffed, she thought. My kingdom for an epiphany. The sun ascending. The sky a lustrous pale blue. Soon it would be mid-morning. The morning was half-finished, half-begun. And onward the day went, unstoppable, quite incessant in its vigour.

Ahead she saw the blue bridge hanging over the road, cars filing across it. It was a slung construction of steel and on its curved belly were signs and shapes, cryptic clues, left there by the taggers. TEMP. She had a fine view of a high-rise block, faded turquoise trim on the windows. On a balcony she saw two eagles, painted in gilt. Then there was the pebble-dashed side of another bank. Another bank, she thought, with bars on the doors. But there was no point trying to get symbolic about the fact that she had ripped through her overdraft and failed to supply a payment plan. The glass shivered as the bus turned abruptly and everyone swayed, rubbing shoulders in a friendly way. For all of this, despite the deep sense of community, the Blitz spirit of the upper deck, Rosa found she had her head in her hands. Suddenly she wanted to get out, she was racked with a sense of unease, and when the bus came to a halt under the Westway she ran down the steps. At the side of the road, she wondered if she should wait for another bus or walk home. Indecision stopped her for a second, then she walked up the hill and along the street thinking that here was another Georgian terrace and here a window with the curtains gusting in the breeze. She picked her way past the station where an old man was chanting a mantra, begging for change. A man with a grey face was selling papers, his hands in fingerless gloves. He mouthed an ‘A’ at Rosa, and then she heard the rest: ‘ARSENAL WIN CUP’ he was saying, and then his voice faded again. Pressing her feet carefully on the pavement she walked up the hill, passing the stalls selling falafels, the late night shops, the all-night chemist. She noticed the taggers had scrawled new words along the walls. EASY I, she read. THAT and what? she thought. She couldn’t read it.

She reached the funeral parlour on the corner with the growl of the Westway at her back. The houses were yellow and blue and some of their lintels were crumbling. The traffic lined up in queues, and she heard the low moan of brakes. But really, she added, we’re nearly in the suburbs. She stared intently at the rooms she passed, seeing an African woman with her hair scraped into a bun, spreading out sheets on a bed, and a Middle Eastern man tying back the curtains of a bedsit — she could see the bed behind him and beyond that the shabby frame of an ancient cooker. He caught her staring and she looked away.

Everything was named for outmoded pastoralism — Oxford Gardens, St Michael’s Gardens, Ladbroke Grove. There was a sign pointing left, saying EQUAL PEOPLE. So that’s where they live, she thought, moving past. The houses on this road were Victorian, with pillars and grand windows. They were haughty in the cold sunlight. There was a mural on the side of one row, an image of stairs ascending to a celestial place. Even here they were bugging her with thoughts of eternity. Meanwhile she nodded at the blue plaque which said ‘Phiz lived here’, nailed to a house with yellowing curtains, a neon light by the door. Now she could see the Trellick Tower with washing on the balconies like semaphore flags. A pair of men who were covered in paint and a kid with a hood slung over his eyes. There was a blue sign saying offices to let, and a man saying ‘Fuck shit’ to the open air, and the number 52 was shuddering past. Beyond the prophet on the corner was the roundabout where everything looked ruined, patched in pinks and blues. There was the cheap call centre, the takeaway with its plastic pictures of faded food in the windows, a set of banished office blocks, and on a low wall running up to the red steel bridge she saw TEMP again, and a billboard saying HERE COME THE TEARS. Her mouth filled with fumes; the air was thick with the smell of petrol. Rosa always turned the corner wheezing, vowing to get out of the city. Her street had a few Victorian houses, stranded amid rubble and nothing, as if the row had been bombed and never rebuilt. On the other side of the street was a high-rise block. There was a hoarding further away, decorated with leftover scraps of former posters. One day they had pasted a sign up saying ARMAGEDDON. It was a huge hint from God. The back windows of Jess’s flat had a view of the receding parallels of train tracks, coated with moss, and a red steel bridge. To the west was a gas tower like an abandoned shrine and a burial mound of rubble.