Joanna Kavenna - Inglorious

‘My prince?’ she said. She thought she had heard him wrong, but he was smiling back at her.

‘Yes, your prince,’ he said. His face had wrinkled up and he meant to be kind. Like so much these days, it made her quite confused. She couldn’t think how to reply. Well, perhaps she appeared solitary to him — was it the deep lines in the centre of her brow, or something else about her all-over aspect, that made him think she was questing for love? She wanted to say ‘No, no, you’ve got me wrong, all wrong, that’s not the point at all’ but it got tangled up. She ended up blushing and backing out of the door.

*

Now she heard the distant chimes of a church clock. 1 p.m., and she really had to deal with the day’s events, rather than wallowing in thoughts of the past. She had three hours until her interview. She was considering the importance of living in the present when the phone rang. That made her jump and then she edged towards it. Nervously, she held her hand above the receiver. She meant to let it ring, knowing it was likely to be someone either threatening her with dissolution or offering her advice. Yet she lacked willpower. She was too lonely and eager to leave a ringing phone. There was a pause after she answered. ‘Rosa,’ said her father. ‘Rosa, how are you?’ The old rasper, on the phone again. Good God, thought Rosa. He wanted to mend her, with his rasping voice. It was with a thick throat that she answered.

‘Dad, hi. I was just about to call you. I did get your messages. Thanks so much. I wanted to call you when I had some news, but nothing so far has happened.’

‘Yes, yes. So what’s happening?’

‘I’m going for an interview later, then I’ll call you and let you know,’ said Rosa. Her father sniffed and paused. He was about to challenge her outright, and then he decided that being wry was best, so he said, ‘Excellent, Rosa, what is it for this time?’

‘Oh, something I’d like to do,’ she said. That wasn’t true, but she didn’t want the inevitable row. She didn’t like lying to her father. But the other option — being honest with him — was out of the question.

‘Well, you really do need to get a move on with it. Speed up a bit. So silly! Such a silly waste of your talents.’ He was still angry. But mostly he was confused.

‘Dad, the last thing I need is more speed. Everything’s fast enough already. Even today — the morning has just vanished.’

‘Vanished has it? Another day! Of course — because you don’t have a plan. Look at me. I’m retired. I woke at 7 a.m., learnt some Spanish, read an account of the fall of Berlin in 1945, took the dog for a walk, went for a Spanish lesson, and later I’m meeting my friend Adam for lunch, playing a round of bridge with Sarah and two of my neighbours, and finishing that account of the fall of Berlin this evening. And then my doctor tells me to take it easy!’

‘Gosh, Daddy,’ said Rosa. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t take it easy?’

‘Yes, I’m quite sure. I feel better by the day,’ said her father. ‘Now, let’s see, I have to come to London tomorrow, to see a friend who is emigrating to America. You know, at my age, you have to mark these partings. So why don’t we have lunch? You can tell me all about the job.’

‘Let’s,’ said Rosa. ‘Thanks for the invitation.’

‘If you want to come for the weekend some time, do come down and stay with us,’ he said.

She said, ‘Thanks, thanks so much.’ Us meant him and Sarah. Sarah was new, improbable, but there was no point getting into a funeral-baked-meats frenzy about it all. She didn’t want to think about Sarah, she didn’t want to stand on the parapet mouthing Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt so she had been avoiding her father. That was unkind, when the man was like a mummy, dried out and shrivelled and really not looking his best. She ought to have been glad he had Sarah. When you were seventy you had to get along as best you could. Really, Rosa understood that. She didn’t judge him. She just found it hard to talk to him. She understood what he was doing. If he could sling it all off, mourn and then displace his wife, then she admired him. It was just Sarah’s lisp and her wide-eyed benevolence that made Rosa want to wander away yelping like an injured dog.

But now she wondered if she should just go home after all. Get a job in Bristol, and live with her father. She thought of going back to that tall cold house and imposing on his privacy, disrupting the delicate balance he had established for himself. He and Sarah in their last-stop love nest — it would hardly improve her mood. Rosa wandering down to breakfast, into their cloud of amiable grey. It was regression, or worse, but she was tempted by it nonetheless. They fixed a time and Rosa’s father said, ‘Don’t forget like last time and don’t be late,’ and then they said goodbye.

Things to do, Monday

Get a job.

Wash your clothes

Clean the kitchen.

Phone Liam. Furniture. Ask him.

Phone Kersti. Entreat.

Find a place to stay. WHO? Whitchurch? Impossible! Kersti?

Too flinty by half. Then WHO? Andreas? Could you?

Absurd!

Buy some tuna and spaghetti

Go to the bank and tell them you need more time — more time to pay back the rest of your debt.

Read the comedies of Shakespeare, the works of Proust, the plays of Racine and Corneille and The Man Without Qualities.

Read The Golden Bough, The Nag-Hammadi Gospels, The Upanishads, The Koran, The Bible, The Tao, the complete works of E. A. Wallis Budge

Read Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the rest

Hoover the living room

Clean the toilet

Distinguish the various philosophies of the way — read History of Western Philosophy

Sort through your papers and see if there is anything you can send to anyone who might plausibly pay you some money for it

Clean the bath

Unearth the TEMP

Go to see Andreas and ask him for somewhere to stay for a few days until you find somewhere else.

The last she could do, or at least she could certainly go to see Andreas. It was a quick walk to the corner, and at the corner she saw pink and blue walls and signs on the guttering and she heard the planes whining their descent and the trilling choirs of birds. An immaculate day stretched out before her, around her, and Rosa was walking past the lines of cars and the ragged thin-stripped trees, laughing quietly to herself. ‘Ridiculous,’ she said. She was leaning back now, finding that her head was sore. She was aware of a vague smell of sweat and dust. Her mouth was dry and she wanted something to drink. She saw the roads winding along the canal, and the concrete skeleton of a new block of flats. There was a church and a matted line of old houses. She saw everything in monochrome, because she had screwed up her eyes. The light made her head pound, but really, the doctor had misdiagnosed her. It was perhaps not significant, but she had a prince. It was uncertain what they were to each other, but he was called Andreas and he was a fine man, presiding over a few feet of space by another stretch of railway tracks. Had she been less distracted she might have fallen in love with him. But love was quite impossible, given the conditions. With things as fleeting as they were you couldn’t risk it. Instead she turned up at his flat and they slithered in the darkness. He was young — perhaps too young, at twenty-five — but he was beautiful, with his brown hair, brown eyes, long limbs. He was German and he wanted to be an actor. Beauty hadn’t yet propelled him onwards, so he waited on tables and taught German. They had little in common, and they couldn’t express themselves together. Nonetheless she liked talking to him.