Joanna Kavenna - Inglorious

‘Ah yes, Rosa Lane.’ The voice was businesslike.

‘I just wondered if you had made a decision yet. Not wanting to overstep the mark,’ she said.

Fortunately Frau Braze was quick and to the point. She was sorry but she didn’t want Rosa after all. ‘I’m afraid the children didn’t like you,’ she said. ‘I thought you were fairly suitable.’ But her little darlings, the pashmina-touting infants, hadn’t wanted Rosa. Balanced in the scales, she had been judged unworthy by children!

‘Well, I understand,’ said Rosa. ‘I understand. Of course, it wouldn’t work, if the children didn’t like me. Thanks for letting me know.’ She kept her voice quite firm and relaxed. Just before she hung up she thought of saying, ‘I could try, I could try to make them like me,’ but stopped herself in time. Please ask your infant bastards to give me another chance! she thought, but instead she said, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Brazier. So nice to have met you.’

‘Yah, herum,’ said Brazier.

Then she put the phone down. She was aiming for stoicism as she snagged it on the cradle. And now the children hadn’t liked her. The mini-Brazes had seen straight through her. They knew she didn’t care a hoot about them, couldn’t care less if they lived or died so long as she got money in her hand each month. The profundity of children, she wanted to raise a glass to them, those clever kids! Anyway, they had sniffed her out. The question of money was as pertinent as ever, quite as harsh and pressing, though she had definitely had a go at solving it. She had gone along, ripped her feet to shreds, inhaled a few pints of lung death and sat there talking in a measured way. Now she took her notebook and sat down. The birds were still singing in the silver trees. The trains still shuddered on the tracks. A car stalled on the corner and was answered by a choir of horns. A cacophony of rage. Outside, the denizens of TEMP were waiting. Then the car revved up again, revved away, and the horns abated. She had to think more clearly. She had the interest to pay, she had to service her overdraft or watch as everything came crashing down on her. So she wrote a pared down list. Economy, she was thinking. The basics. These small things you can do!

Things to do, Thursday

Find a place to stay

Phone Liam and ask him to sell the furniture

Phone Kersti

Explain to Andreas

Get a job

Find the way to the truth that is concealed

Unlock the casket

Unearth the TEMP

She looked at it admiringly for a moment. It was certainly succinct, expressive mainly of the essentials. She really had to find a place to stay. She phoned Whitchurch and found she wasn’t in her office. Then she tried Jess, who was in a meeting. She was tapping her fingers and then she found she was dialling Andreas’s number. She wasn’t sure what she would say to him if he picked up the phone. Calmly and at a moderato pace, she would unfurl it all. Nothing sensational. The starting point is a place to sleep. I have options, of course. Of course I have options! And the rest, the whole rest and nothing but the rest. Much in her approach was foolish, that was plain to her. Andreas was genuinely relaxed. Of course he is. It’s only you with your tone of melodrama, trying to sweep the boy into a farce of your own devising. He doesn’t much mind! Things should be easy, if you just accept Andreas as a nice kid with a big heart and a surprisingly consistent way of being. That’s all. No need for further talk. Yet she couldn’t stop it. It was absurd to be so reticent, when the man even liked her. But he liked her because he hardly knew her. That was far from the point, she thought. Why would he care, if she was slightly in debt? Everyone was in debt. The entire world was in debt, whole countries, economies, why, the whole thing could collapse tomorrow. If she was lucky, it would. Her debt would be wiped out in an instant. Wishing for a global recession was unkind, hardly fair to those who worked so hard amassing money. But anything, thought Rosa — a lightning bolt, a fire in the vaults, the banks destroyed. A collective realisation that money was meaningless! It was a blank wall.

She thought all of this, while the phone rang into empty space and then Andreas’s voice said, ‘Hi there, leave me a message. If it’s work then call my agent on —’ She was clandestine and didn’t leave a message. She dialled another number. A few rings, and she had conjured the voice of Kersti, though it was peremptory this morning, rich in reluctance.

‘Yes,’ said Kersti. ‘Yes, Rosa, don’t you know it’s Thursday?’

‘And Thursday is?’

‘The worst day, after Monday. Full of disorganised fools who should have called me earlier in the week.’

‘But I did call you earlier.’

‘Not you, Rosa. I can never complain about you failing to call me.’

‘You sound a bit spun out.’

‘You know, Rosa, it was strange, yesterday the birds were singing, the sky was blue, I felt a great sense of joy and couldn’t work out why. And now I realise, it was because I hadn’t heard the word furniture for the whole day.’

‘I went away for a night,’ said Rosa.

‘Sounds nice,’ said Kersti.

‘Though perhaps you mean undeserved?’

‘I mean I really don’t have time to talk. Yes I’ve phoned Liam. Yes the guy’s busy. Yes he’s getting married tomorrow. He says, and I understand his point, can’t it wait? He appreciates you want to sort it out. But it’s a load of mouldy old furniture. He’s not going to sell it, so you have to come to an arrangement. He thinks a thousand is probably too much. So he says when he’s finished with the wedding chaos he’ll talk to you.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten,’ said Rosa. ‘I’d forgotten the wedding was tomorrow.’ But those words sluiced down the phone, saturated with improbability.

‘OK, Rosa, I’ll call you if there’s anything to say. So you’re not going to the wedding, I assume?’

‘No, not,’ said Rosa.

‘Well, speak to you later.’

‘Sorry. Thanks for everything. Goodbye.’

Rosa put down the phone. Now she was gritting her teeth, feeling a sturdy sense of her impotence. Her moods were shifting from one extreme to another. She had returned with a sense that she must progress somehow, that she had finally plumbed the depths and formed a resolution — desperate, tenuous, but a resolution all the same — to reach, if not the surface, then a point less deep than the depths. But the waves were strong and she couldn’t break the water. She was struggling with this heaviness, weight of water, something was pulling her down even as she struggled. At the surface you’ll breathe better. She stood by the radiator and thought how fine it was to be inside on a day like this, casting a glance at the window which was slurred with rain. Bent trees beyond, a dancing row. Green and grey, the slick sky flooded with clouds. She had failed to have breakfast, so she ate a bowl of cornflakes and drank one more cup of tea. The stuff keeps you happy, she thought as she drank. She rang Liam at work. He wasn’t there. ‘He’s gone to a meeting,’ said a secretary. She was determined and so she left a message asking him to sell the furniture. The secretary said, ‘What?’ and Rosa said, ‘The furniture. F-U-R-N-I-T-U-R-E. Tell him thanks. From Rosa.’ Still she was sounding reasonable, even as she dictated the sentences. She couldn’t quite explain about her cash-flow crisis. It was definitely none of his business, and she hardly thought he would reach into his pockets. Would he? Sudden hope, and then she thought it was impossible. Call up Liam and ask for money! It would never happen. Better call up Grace and — and she wondered — could she? — but that was a poor idea. She had to come up with something much better than that.