Joanna Kavenna - Inglorious

Her mouth was dry and she could smell her own breath. Somehow the door came closer and closer until she could see the peeling paint and the small bare garden and then she dropped her keys. She scrabbled in the earth thinking it is today and I am the mother god. When the door opened she felt faint for a moment and stumbled in the hall. At the door to the flat she paused and wondered if she heard a movement within. That made her heart thump madly in her breast. She had avoided Jess for days, but it was never certain when she would be at home. She was holding the handle, but she couldn’t twist it. Then she heard a noise and the door swung open.

*

When she regained her focus, she saw Jess had a steely gaze and a resolute air. She was by the table, a Marlboro Light in one hand. Jess was dressed in pristine cream, she had a first-rate brain, and she commanded a decent salary that she had used to buy a flat in no-man’s-land. Jess was a guardian, tending her own personal shrine to normality. She was standing straight-backed, making herself as tall as she could. She stood with her cigarette in one hand, the other hand in her pocket, eyeing Rosa calmly. Then she tossed back her glossy hair; Jess was defined completely by her brown mane. Rosa had never seen her naked face; it was always half-concealed by hair. Jess lined herself up with the window, and cast a reluctant glance towards her. By God, you are a redoubtable foe, and I concede before the contest , thought Rosa. She had nothing in her armoury at all, nothing to say, and no way to defend herself. Besides, her head hurt. She knocked something off the table, a bottle of something, and it rolled away, under the sofa. Something to sort out later .

‘Rosa, now we’ve coincided, let’s go and have brunch,’ said Jess in a flinty tone. ‘I’ve been working from home this morning. Now I have to go into work. Let’s grab a bite to eat while I’m on my way. We need to talk about a couple of things. Have you got time now?’

That was clearly ironic, and Rosa rose with a sense of foreboding, staggering under it, or under the weight of something else she couldn’t identify. ‘Of course. Just have to wash my face,’ she said, her throat tight. Jess nodded, as if she understood Rosa’s reluctance, commended it as a fair assessment of the situation. ‘I have to drop off some dry cleaning. I’ll meet you at Café 204 in twenty minutes,’ she said tersely, and stalked out of the door.

In the bathroom Rosa put her head under the tap and washed her face. She rubbed the condensation from the mirror and looked at herself — mostly unchanged — wry smile, deliberately cultivated at fourteen, thin face, pale cheeks, dark eyes, nothing unattractive about her, older of course, but her family aged well, their cheekbones grew more chiselled and their jaws kept their lines, and their fat turned to scrag. Recently she had noticed deep lines across her brow, a sceptical puckering of the skin. A vein had burst on her cheek, but there was nothing else that singled her out. She looked well enough. Slightly anaemic, but she had always looked bloodless. The bags under her eyes were swarter by the day, but that was to be expected. Anyway, swart was just her colour. ‘Amor fati,’ she said to the mirror, the steamed up smear in front of her. ‘There’s no happy ending anyway.’ Through the narrow window of the bathroom she saw the feathery texture of the sky. Later the sun might shine on the city, brightening the grey fronts of the Georgian houses and the dusty terraces. There would be a smell of the approach of winter and dried out petrol and she would walk in Kensington Gardens and watch sunlight skimming on the surface of the water and people playing football in the grass. If she went to the interview and did well, she thought, then she would take a book to a quiet corner of the park and read for a while.

Now she turned off the taps. The pipes made a low groan. She took a towel from the rack and smelt it. She used it sparingly on her skin. Because Jess had already gone out, she drew the curtains and dressed quickly in the living room, looking round at the familiar objects, silhouettes in the half-light. In the corner she saw the diodes of a stereo, glinting like rubies. She could see Jess’s coat hanging on the half-open door like a timid man too nervous to approach. Then, prepared to beg, she walked out onto the street.

She caught up with Jess at a café on Portobello Road, a place where they sold designer clothes and food at the same time. The waiters passed their time sniffing down the menus, styling themselves on Satan and his minions. In the designer kitchens of Beelzebub they were dishing up much-adorned plates. Everyone in there was well clad, loaded with the latest styles. Even the brunch was as elegant as anything. Rosa didn’t care about the contrasts. It was only when she had eaten half her salmon and eggs that she understood she was there to receive advice. Jess was a small, precise person, who always thought before she spoke. She had been generous for months. Now Rosa’s whole Weltanschauung , to give it a name it hardly merited, was wearing thin. They ate toast and failed to talk seriously until a second round of coffees came. Then Jess — who was a kindly person and really quite hated to kick people in the teeth — said, ‘Rosa, I brought you here to suggest that you take a break. Why not go away for a while? A change of scene. How about it?’ She was twirling a napkin round her neat little fingers.

‘No need,’ said Rosa, her mouth full of toast.

‘Now, Rosa,’ said Jess. ‘I mean it. Have a holiday. Take a break. Go on, go and see Will and Judy. You said they invited you the other week. Go for some brisk walks, get some country air. I’ll lend you some money, if you need it’ — and Rosa said, ‘No thanks’ — and Jess made a pishing noise as if to say that they would argue about this later. ‘So why not go off for a while and then we’ll see if you don’t come back full of gusto. Give them a call later.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Rosa. ‘Quite enough gusto. Thanks for the suggestion.’

‘Why not consider it at least. It’s easy to get trapped in a way of thinking about things. You’d find it’d give you some distance. Look, I’ll square it.’

Rosa was about to say no thanks , but then she realised she wasn’t sure if Jess meant her holiday or her brunch. The holiday she could turn down with dignity, but she was hoping Jess might expense brunch. Playing for time, she said, ‘Jess, you’ve been really saintly. As soon as I regain my poise’ — at this Jess kept a straight face and said nothing — ‘I will definitely take your advice. But for the moment, I don’t want to leave the city when everything is so indeterminate. I have to get a job. I can’t just borrow money from you.’

Jess greased her lips with spittle. She said, ‘As long as you know the offer stands. The other thing is, well, I think it might be time for you to move on.’

‘Move on from what?’ said Rosa, with a heightened sense of foreboding. There was a pregnant pause while Jess seized her coffee and drank it down. When she had finished she said, quite calmly, ‘From my flat.’

‘You want me to move out?’

‘In short, yes.’

That was a blow, though far from surprising. Really, Rosa agreed. She was an imposition. However penitent she was, she was still there in Jess’s flat all day, scattering books and scraps of paper across her stripped pine floorboards, violating the sanctity of the bathroom, leaving stains on the coffee cups. She was intrusive and the offer had originally only been for a few weeks. Besides, Jess and Neil were settling down. They wanted to start a family, Jess was explaining. ‘At thirty-four,’ she said, ‘we think it’s high time. We just want a bit more space. You know, so we can sort things out and really get on to the next stage.’