Jessie Burton - The Muse

I hadn’t realized how obvious it was, the impression that Quick had made on me over the recent weeks. I had tried to find out more about Quick from Pamela, who could only tell me that Quick had once mentioned the county of Kent as her childhood home. What she did between being a girl and a woman in her fifties was a grey sketch. Perhaps she had been destined for a genteel, Kentish life, a magistrate’s wife or some such, but she chose instead to find a different kind of fortune in the rubble of post-war London. Her name was not in Debrett’s : she was not a Skelton descendant, one of my initial lines of thought. Her impeccable sartorial choices exuded power, a care of herself that was for nobody’s benefit but her own. Each perfect blouse, each pristine pair of trousers, was a pre-emptive self-narration. Quick’s clothes were an armour made of silk.

I knew she was unmarried and lived in Wimbledon, just off the common. She smoked constantly, and appeared close to Reede in the sort of way that water is close to a stone that it has worn down over decades. Pamela said that Quick had been here as long as Reede had, when he’d taken the directorship of the Skelton in 1947, twenty years ago. How she had come to meet Reede, or why she decided to take employment, remained a mystery. I wondered what sort of battle it had been to get to where she was now, and whether she’d read those Roman histories to give her some lessons in war.

‘She not like anyone I ever meet,’ I said to Cynth. ‘Friendly one minute, a sunlight beam. Then she like a hog-brush woman — she bristle so, it pain yuh to be near.’

Cynth sighed. ‘We bought G Plan for the flat.’

‘G-what?’

‘Oh, Delly. Sam work hard hard, so Ah say, leh we buy we a nice G Plan sofa so he can put up he foot at the end of the day.’

‘Hmm. And how your feet doin’?’

She sighed, stirring her lukewarm tea with a spoon. ‘Oh, let me tell you a thing. So our new postman get the letters mix up, and our neighbour knock with them.’ Cynth cleared her throat and put on a posh English voice. ‘“ Oh, hell-air. Yes, this must be yours. We saw it had a black stamp .” Is a letter from Lagos , Delly. Meh name not on it, and Eh know nobody from Nigeria. “Black stamp”, I ask yuh.’

Her laugh died. Normally we would have discussed something like this in order to remove its barb, but after the waitress neither of us had the energy.

‘Tell me about the feller you was talking to at the wedding,’ she said, looking sly.

‘What feller?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Lawrie Scott. The white one; handsome, skinny. He friend to Patrick’s Barbara. Ah didn’t drink that many Dubonnets — I saw you in the kitchen.’

‘Oh him. He real dotish.’

‘ Hmm ,’ she said, her eyes taking on a secret glow, and I knew I’d given myself away. ‘That strange.’

‘Why?’

‘Patrick told Sam he been asking about you.’ I shut my mouth tighter than a clam and Cynth grinned. ‘You writin’?’ she asked.

‘You only start asking me that, now you leave.’

‘I not gone. I on the other end of the Tube map, that is all.’

‘Like you worried I got nothing to do these days. Don’t worry, I writin’,’ I said, but this was a lie. I had stopped entirely at this point, believing that the idea of myself as a good writer was laughable.

‘Good. I glad you writin’,’ said Cynth firmly. ‘You know, there a poetry night going at the ICA,’ she went on. ‘Sam’s friend readin’, and he’s a real dotish boy compared to you. His poem does send me to sleep—’

‘Ah not readin’ at some meet-up, Cynthia,’ I said, wrinkling my nose. ‘Make no mistake.’

She sighed. ‘I not. Is just that you better, Odelle. You better and you know it, and you doing nothin’ .’

‘Eh heh ,’ I said. ‘I busy. I work. You go with your G Plan and stop all this foolishness. What, because I got no husban’ foot to worry me, I better go speakin’ my poetry an’ ting?’

Cynthia looked distraught. ‘Delly! Why you so vex? I only trying to help.’

‘Ah not vex.’ I drained my cup of tea. ‘Is all right for you ,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me how to live.’

Cynth was quiet after that. I should have said sorry then and there, but I didn’t. She left soon after, pinch-faced with tears, and I felt like a monster come out of the sea to grab her legs.

We didn’t meet up the next week, or the one after that, and she didn’t ring. Neither did I, and I felt so embarrassed, such a fool — a real dotish gyal , as Cynth no doubt described me that night to Sam. The longer she was silent, the more impossible it seemed to pick up the telephone.

All I really wanted to say was that I missed us living together. And I was someone who was supposed to be good with words.

Lawrie found me on the fifteenth of August. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and I was doing the early reception shift. Shops were still shut, the buses that moved along Charing Cross Road less frequent. I walked on to the Mall, and the long thoroughfare, usually busy, was an empty road of greenish light. It had been raining for a week, and the paving stones were wet from a dawn downpour, trees springing in the breeze like fronds beneath the sea.

I’d seen much worse rain than this, so I wasn’t too bothered, tucking the copy of the Express I’d bought for Pamela into my handbag to protect it from spatters, crossing up Carlton Gardens and over the circular centre of Skelton Square. I passed the plinth of the long-dead statesman adorning the middle point, a blank-eyed fellow whose frock coat was messed by pigeons. In the past, I would have found out who he was — but five years in London had purged my interest in old Victorian men. The statue’s infinite gaze made me feel even more exhausted.

I glanced up towards the Skelton. A young man was standing by the doors, tall and slim, wearing a slightly battered leather jacket. He had a narrow face and very dark brown hair. As I approached, I knew that it was him. I could feel my throat tighten, a little hop in the gut, a thudding swipe to the breast. I approached the steps, fetching the Skelton door key out of my handbag. Lawrie was wearing glasses this time, and their lenses glinted in the subterranean light. He was carrying a parcel under his arm, wrapped in that brown paper butchers used to wrap their slabs of meat.

He grinned at me. ‘Hello,’ he said.

What was it like to see Lawrie smile? I can try: it was as if a healer had placed their hands upon my chest. My kneecaps porridge, jaw tingling, no hope to swallow. I wanted to throw my arms around him and say, ‘It’s you, you came.’

‘Hello,’ I said instead. ‘Can I help?’

His smile faltered. ‘You don’t remember? We met, at the wedding. I came along with Barbara’s gang. You read a poem, and you wouldn’t go dancing with me.’

I frowned. ‘Oh, yes. How do you do?’

‘How do I do ? Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?’

‘It’s seven o’clock in the morning, Mr. .?’

‘Scott,’ he said, the joy draining from his face. ‘Lawrie Scott.’

I walked past him and put the key in the lock, fumbling as I did so. What was wrong with me? Despite all my fantasies about how this was going to play out, faced with the reality, I was being just as obstructive as I had been before. I pushed inside and he followed me. ‘Are you here to see somebody?’ I said.

He gave me a hard look. ‘Odelle. I have visited every art gallery, every museum in this bloody city, trying to find you.’

‘To find me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You couldn’t find me in five weeks? You could have just asked Patrick Minamore.’