Joanna Kavenna - Inglorious

She walked to the fridge and looked in it for a few minutes. At the bottom of the fridge she found a bar of chocolate, which she ate. She ran her hands under the tap in the kitchen. Then she poured herself a bowl of cereal and used up the last of the milk. She imagined Jess shaking the container in fury, noting the absence of her chocolate, counting her cornflakes at midnight. That was probably why she had stopped the deal. Too many small pilferings. She was thinking again about the thousand pounds. The unceasing quandary of the furniture. As you have pilfered so others pilfer from you, she thought. Galvanised by all the sugar she had eaten, she called Liam again and found him at his desk. Of everyone, all the other shirkers, he was there. It was strange, and Liam seemed to be finding it so. He seemed stone cold and mystified. Really they hadn’t talked for months and as she spoke Rosa found her voice was trembling. Her hands were shaking; her entire body was in nervous motion. She was gripping the phone, as if that could steady her. She didn’t quite know how to start, so she said:

‘Liam, how are you?’

‘Very well, how are you?’

‘Good. Anyway. I just wanted to ask, have to rush, but can you please sell the furniture? I’m just short of liquid funds at present. I’m moving flat, it’s costing a load. Could really do with the money. If you can’t sell then perhaps you could just pay me my half?’

Liam was civil, if a little tense. His voice sounded dry. But he still had his melodic alto range. Liam had a light, soft voice. You didn’t notice how gentle it was until you heard him on the phone. He had the slightest trace of a Yorkshire accent. ‘The furniture?’ he said. ‘God, that friend of yours, Kersti.’

‘Yes?’

‘She calls me all the time about the furniture. It’s like a joke. Could you ask her to stop?’

‘I’m not responsible for Kersti’s actions,’ she said. Which was wrong, considering the hours she spent begging Kersti to call him.

‘Look, you’ll get your share when I sell the furniture. Or when I get back from the honeymoon. I said this to Kersti. I don’t know what else to suggest. I agree we should give you some money, but a grand is a lot. I haven’t been able to think about it. I’ve had a few other things to think about.’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Your guilty conscience.’

‘Rosa, I will have to go if you start on,’ said Liam. She could tell he was trying to be stern with her. It was covering up. A psychic paint job if she ever saw one.

‘No time to discuss. I just need the money. Really, Liam, it would really help. What about an advance? A payment plan. What about I rent you the furniture?’ said Rosa.

‘Hardly likely.’ She could imagine him slapping the phone cord on his desk, shrugging round at his colleagues. My ex, you know, freaking out before the wedding, quite the worst time. Then she remembered someone had told her — as if she cared! — that he had recently gained an office of his own. Well, that sounded nice. She imagined him with a framed picture of Grace on his desk, a picture of his mother, a pencil sharpener and some really good pens.

‘Come on, Liam, just a grand or so.’

‘A grand! For that bunch of junk! Get a grip!’

‘The sofa, easily, and the rest. The bed!’

‘I really can’t see it,’ he said. Now he sounded as if he was smiling.

‘Then Grace will have to buy me out.’

‘Buy your share of some old furniture she hates? Rosa, come now,’ he said. She thought he was trying to josh her, be jovial. He had recovered from his surprise, and now he was thinking the best way was fake conviviality. He wanted her to see the humour in it, but as far as Rosa was concerned there was nothing funny about it at all. Had he known how serious she was he might have pitied her, and this was the last thing she needed, Liam offering her consolation. Years and years, and you end up fighting over scraps, she thought.

Hearing his voice made her sad, and angry, and she tried to keep it back. That effort failed. She heard herself saying, ‘But don’t you think she ought to? Don’t you think it would be decent? Both of you sitting there, on the sofa I picked, the bed I even built, putting your cups on the table I found on Golborne Road, don’t you ever think — is this fair? I don’t want to have to call you at all. It’s plain humiliating, to have to call you up. For a grand! Come on, it’s nothing to you!’ And really, it wasn’t much, when she thought of what he earned. It was a figure she had once commanded herself, though now it seemed like the most decadent wad of cash, superfluous to requirements. ‘It would cost me far more to buy the furniture again. In fact, why don’t you give me the furniture? I’ll sell it and pay you your share. OK? So tell me, when will it arrive?’ She was trying to sound exasperated, but she couldn’t keep the latent whine out of her voice.

‘Arrive where, Rosa? Where is it you’re dossing this time?’ And now he sneered a little. She imagined him, tidy suit, tidy hair, sitting in a tidy box-like room, surrounded by papers. Polishing his pens. Did Grace buy his ties, she wondered? It was the sort of thing she might do. With irony of course, smirking prettily as she handed them over. But she would buy them all the same.

‘When can you bring it round? Saturday? Sunday?’

‘Rosa, could it possibly wait a couple of weeks?’ said Liam.

Now he wanted to goad her, so she said, ‘Liam, let’s be rational. You have everything you want and really I just want to get away. I just want to leave the country.’

‘Really? Going on holiday?’ He sounded amused. ‘Sorry, Rosa, I really have to go. I’ll talk to Grace. She’s busy today, as you can imagine. But we’ll discuss it when everything is calmer.’

‘It’s not the money that’s important, it’s the symbolism, the symbolism is what matters!’ she said, aware that she was now shouting, but hardly bothering to control it.

‘A symbolic thousand, or a real thousand?’

‘It’s my money, you know it is!’ she said. There was a silence on the other end, then Liam, in a voice that betrayed a hint of superiority, said, ‘Rosa, no one wants you to die in a ditch.’ She was thinking that he was spoilt. He had always been indulged. Women had always rushed to indulge him. She blamed her sex, and she blamed him for lapping it all up, all this lust-based praise. ‘Just sell the furniture,’ she said. ‘Or hand it over.’ Then she put down the phone.

And she remembered her and Liam outside a country pub on her thirtieth birthday. The day was brilliant, the air shimmered with heat. There was Liam with his hand above his eyes. The garden of the pub wound around with ivy and wisteria. She could still remember how much they had been in love. They were incessant in it, quite steeped in it. Forlorn, she thought that five — nearly six — years was a long time, but all experience was only that, experience in the end. The conversation had lacked a conclusion. He hadn’t committed himself, so she couldn’t quite tick the item off her list. She took a pen, finding her hands were oozing sweat, and wrote: Call Liam back and check whether he said yes or no.

She shrugged it off, and went to the bank one more time, to try to talk to Sharkbreath. Stepping out of the flat she moved quickly along, locked in her thoughts. She passed the billboard on her left. Yes, yes, here come the tears, she thought. At the roundabout, there were cars turning the usual slow circle, the shops were sketched in their fading paints and the air was thick with petrol. Phiz had lived here, said the sign, many years ago, and now Phiz was nowhere to be seen, and Rosa passed along Ladbroke Grove with the hammer and thump of the Westway dawning above her and the sun shining through thick trailing clouds. Skeletal trees, tops to the sky. The pile of rubble and the metal grilles. A factory to her right, industrial twine around the walls. Equal People, she saw, and the celestial stairs. TEMP .