Joanna Kavenna - Inglorious

A rite, she thought. A culminating rite! And Rosa stood and walked away. She swung from optimism to foreboding as she walked, oscillating like a pendulum. Her gait was uneven as she went towards Bayswater. She passed the long lawn and saw it was scattered with a few people. They were walking on the paths, not saying much. At the road she emerged into a lingering cloud of car fumes. A bus rattled past her. A cyclist dashed past, almost hit a lorry, swerved around a car, and turned right suddenly. All the cars honked. She had hurt her back carrying her bag the previous day, and she found she was limping slightly. But the thought that Jess was eagerly awaiting her departure, that her father was worrying about her, even as he played a lento game of tennis, that Andreas was puzzling over her note, made her pick up speed. Rocking a little from side to side, hardly graceful but still going forwards. She trod steadily, engrossed in her thoughts. At Notting Hill station she found another payphone. She spent a while in the phone box, fending off all comers, the tourist with a map, the backpacker wanting a hotel, but gone were the days when countless dozens bawled each other out of phone boxes. She called Whitchurch and Kersti, but they weren’t answering their phones. She called Andreas a few times, and every time it switched to his cheerful message, optimism coursing along the line. He’ll think you’re mad if you call him again, she thought. One side of her brain was trying to persuade her to desist, but she was bi-cameral with desperation, and when she had been standing there in the phone box for a good few minutes thinking about pressing the numbers again she realised she was being a fool. Now she wanted to bawl, stand in the phone box weeping like a child. She gripped the phone and dialled half of Andreas’s number. She slapped down the receiver, then picked it up and dialled half of his number again. Then she stopped. She prised herself away, and walked onto the street.

She thought of a few dozen unrelated things, but through them all the idea kept coming back to her, so she walked quickly past the tube and found herself outside the block of flats she once lived in with Liam. It felt strange as she pushed through the doors. She buzzed, she slapped her hand on the buzzer, but there was no reply. In the foyer, she had a lucky break with the concierge. She had known him when she lived there, bought him a few bottles of wine. She had always stopped and talked to him. She put him in the paper once, as a vox pop. He found it hilarious. So today he smiled broadly at her, a thick-necked man, his eyes shrouded in fat. ‘Sorry to hear about you and him upstairs,’ he said. He gestured upwards. For a moment she thought he meant God, and she span round thinking, What does he know? But then she realised he meant Liam. That was kindly, so she smiled and said, ‘Thanks. All completely amicable.’ She smiled through the lie.

‘What have you been doing? Writing stories? The usual stuff?’ he said. ‘Any exclusives recently?’

She laughed uproariously. ‘No no, none at all,’ she said. At least that was honest. He had a shining bald head and an expression of tranquillity. You’ll be less tranquil later, she thought, and she smiled and laughed and went off to the lift. She pressed the button to the eleventh floor, waited while she was carried upwards. Seeing her reflection in the metal walls she wiped a smudge from her nose.

In the silence of the corridor it wasn’t clear why she had come. The place wasn’t as she remembered it at all. Even the corridor seemed indistinct and unknowable. With a patched carpet beneath her, a smell of dust and chemicals around her, she waited. She took out her notebook and wrote: Tomorrow they will be married and this particular small epoch will be over. But the trials will continue thereafter. Yim yam yum. Shantih Shakti Sha sha. She wondered briefly if she might be a prophet, and no one had noticed. She might be the emissary of a banished god. I come to deliver unto you the true divinity, Shakti Yam. They wouldn’t entrust such a thing to a fool like you, she thought. She stood there for a while, counting minutes, feeling really sick at heart and then she heard the grind of the lift. She saw Liam before he noticed her. She stood up, and was about to say something when she saw he was looking at her, suddenly dismayed. His expression was unstudied, quite transparent. After all these months, she could read his furrowed brow, the action of his hands, his unsmiling mouth.

‘Rosa. What are you doing here? How did you get in?’ said Liam, walking towards her. He was certainly horrified. Of course it was the worst time. Anyway it looked as if she had come to beg him. Retract! She suddenly thought that tonight must be the rehearsal dinner, but he hadn’t dressed himself up yet and must therefore be running late. The whole thing was beginning any minute! And here he was, in jeans and a jacket, looking as if he had just come in from the shops.

He wiped his arm across his face and said, urgently, ‘Rosa, what’s up? What are you doing here? My God, I have to get going. What can I do for you? Come on, quickly. What is this?’

He wasn’t sure what to do, no one was sure, but he was weighted down with bags and in a hurry so with a brisk sigh he opened the door. Uncertain, Rosa followed him in. He turned and said, ‘God, Rosa, come on. Christ, can you go? Can we talk when all this is over? Why now? I haven’t seen you for so long? What is it that can’t wait? Come on, because I really haven’t time.’ Really, he seemed quite agitated, and that surprised her. On the phone he was always so buttoned-up, almost laconic. He wasn’t looking at her; he was unpacking the bags, hurling things into cupboards, hanging his suit on the back of the door. His gestures were automatic. Clearly he was trying to work out what to do. Meanwhile, she was struck silent by the flat. The place had been transformed; the hand of Grace was on it all. The white walls had been softened to a pale red. It oozed taste, but the shade was somehow sanctimonious. There were paintings on the walls, proper art, bought from a gallery, contemporary daubs and the rest. The West Country prints had gone. The furniture was still there, all her and Liam’s mismatched articles, but now there was a lot of rustic pine and oak as well. Everything was tidy, though the place was full of colour. The flat had been recast, and now it stood in crisp antithesis to the place as she left it. This seemed significant, almost as if Grace — despite her claims to the contrary — wanted to wipe away all trace of Rosa, obliterate the past, smash it to pieces. In the kitchen, which had been painted too, the surfaces were covered with wine glasses, left over from a pre-wedding party. A half-eaten cheese stood on the hob. It looked like a flat where people had fun.

Liam took off his jacket and put it over the back of a chair.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said, turning to Rosa. She could see he was angry. He never liked being put under pressure. It was his controlling instinct; he felt it as an assault. ‘Come on, Rosa, what is it? What do you want?’

‘I apologise for intruding,’ said Rosa, getting her breath back at last. ‘I’m aware of course, momentous things are happening. Love and the celebration of love. Marriage. A culminating rite! In honour of the profound shift, I have one last request. Then I won’t bother you at all. I’m quite spun out. Really, as I said to you on the phone, I’d like to go away. Try harder, fail better next time, the rest. So, I just want the money for the furniture. It’s not much. Just a token. Look at it all, arraigned around you.’ And she waved an arm at it, though seeing it now in the sallow light of a dying day she nearly saw what he meant. The sofa was wrecked, and the table was stained with grease. The bed she imagined in a similar state. They had bought it years ago. It had lasted longer than their love, of course, and she briefly considered the nature of transience, though she knew that was hardly the point. The point was how much money she could get. It was her last chance to salvage something. That sent her muttering about the need for a gesture, to close things between them. ‘A final act,’ she said. ‘A denouement.’ Meanwhile, Liam was positively pacing around, really focused on his interrupted evening and the ticking of the clock. He was thinking of Grace, of course. Perhaps he expected her any minute, and Rosa thought that would be a shame because the scene would shift and gain a different theme. Grace would add her own variety of needless talk, and then Rosa would have to leave. Even now, Liam was trying to shunt her out. ‘Rosa, you can imagine that now is not the best time,’ he was saying. ‘But I promise we’ll sort this out soon. Not today, obviously. Or tomorrow. But I’m aware it’s a question you want to discuss.’ He wanted to sound strict. ‘I’m going to call you a taxi. It’s either that or I call the police.’ He was trying to look imperious, drumming his fingers on the back of a chair.