False River, page 8
‘She’s got you there,’ he said, kicking at Terri under the table with such fervour he almost fell out of his chair.
‘Martin knows what he’s doing. He’s a toxicologist.’ Leonora pushed away her plate; it was heaped with uneaten pizza crusts. ‘If he says it’s safe, it’s safe.’
‘See how she supports her husband?’ Craig demanded, not yet entirely upright in his chair. ‘Unlike some wives I could bloody mention.’
‘Just wait until you have children,’ Terri told Leonora. ‘It all changes then. No, no. I’ll say no more. Just remember that. No — no, I’ve said my piece. I’ll say no more.’
‘No one is asking you to say more, you stupid woman!’ Craig waved for the bill, and Martin reached for his own wallet. There was sure to be a stand-off over this, and he knew that Craig would win. But the drawing of weapons was essential, even if Martin had no chance in the duel.
They walked home via a circuitous route, to look at all the people looking at all the other people, and to observe the Slinky sellers in action on the Spanish Steps. Leonora was tipsy, leaning hard against Martin. Terri pointed out plaques high on ice-cream-coloured buildings — places the Shelleys lived, or the Joyces — as though they were personal friends. Outside the Louis Vuitton shop Craig lumbered to a halt.
‘This is what I’m talking about,’ he said and prodded the glass of the shop window. ‘Look. Da Vinci. I ask you. Da Vinci!’
‘What have you got against him?’ Terri asked, rolling her eyes. ‘You made us go to that big show at the National Gallery often enough. It was marvellous, I thought. Did you two see it?’
Martin shook his head. Leonora had gone, he thought, but he’d been too busy.
‘It’s Leonardo, not Da Vinci.’ Craig sounded outraged. ‘Da Vinci isn’t a last name. All that money at Louis Vuitton and they don’t know that!’
‘But look, Craig,’ Leonora said, stepping close to him, touching his arm. ‘This line — it’s something to do with Jeff Koons. I’m sure it’s all supposed to be ironic and kitsch.’
‘She’s very good at making him see sense,’ Terri murmured to Martin. ‘By the way, I was thinking. Couldn’t something natural be used to get the white colour into things? Instead of titanium dioxide?’
‘Titanium is natural,’ Martin explained again, trying to repress the snap in his voice. The day had been too hot and too long, and this evening there’d been too much Terri and Craig, and too much rosé. ‘It creates a very pure white pigment.’
‘As pure white as a seagull?’ asked Terri. She looked pleased with herself. ‘Couldn’t you find a way of extracting white from the feathers? Now, that’s truly natural.’
‘All this does,’ Craig was ranting to Leonora and the offending window display, ‘is contribute to world ignorance. You try to teach things to people and all around you, everyone and everything is un-teaching them. You say to students, don’t say Da Vinci, but then they turn around and look, here’s Dan Brown doing it, and now here’s Louis Vuitton doing it, and they think it’s normal and OK. So what’s wrong becomes right because of ignorance. I can’t stand it.’
‘Didn’t he have an Italian wife?’ Martin asked. He wasn’t sure how he knew that. He wouldn’t be able to point out a work by Jeff Koons, but he could summon up knowledge, if you could call it that, about the irony and the kitsch, and the Italian wife.
Craig turned to him.
‘Leonardo was gay.’
‘Jeff Koons, I mean.’
‘Yes, quite right, quite right. She was a porn star and a politician.’
‘This country,’ groaned Terri, now intent on her phone. ‘So backwards! No wonder their economy’s down the drain.’
‘Haven’t you heard? It’s making a comeback because of you, spending all our money on more things you don’t need.’
‘Still,’ said Terri, as though Craig hadn’t spoken. ‘We’ll be shot of them soon, won’t we? With Brexit. Personally, I can’t wait.’
‘Well, more fool you,’ he snapped. ‘We won’t be able to afford this apartment next year, not with the exchange rates. Didn’t think of that, did you?’
Martin reached for Leonora — pulling her to safety, he felt, away from the spotlight of the window — and tugged her close. He wanted to get back to their bedroom and close the door on the Thompsons, just to get a few hours of peace from their circus. They did not, he decided, bring him joy.
‘This time next week I’ll be home,’ Leonora whispered in his ear. ‘Now you know why I was so desperate for you to come and visit.’
Martin hadn’t realised she was desperate. She’d never complained, not once. She’d made the Thompsons out to be eccentrics and amusing. Perhaps tonight they were on especially bad behaviour. He picked up his pace, and soon Craig and Terri were far behind them, their shrill argument lost in the commotion of the evening crowd.
Something woke Martin in the night, maybe a truck rumbling past. Leonora was asleep, snoring a little, the way dogs did, and small children. He’d been dreaming about his Oma, his father’s mother. He hadn’t seen her since he was a teenager, on a rare visit home for Christmas. The green of his Oma’s wooden house was a colour from an old movie, washed out like the birch logs stacked outside in the woodpile, like the winter sky tense with snow.
By then his Latvian was going, reduced to fragments that felt uncomfortable in his mouth. People in the village where his Oma lived spoke Russian as well, but he didn’t. He spoke English to the kids who were learning it at school — because it was 1998 and Latvia was rid of Russia and Germany at last, of their armies and languages and names.
In his dream a dry snow was falling and his grandmother was in the distance, too far away to hear him. Snow white as seagull feathers, he thought, and wanted to laugh.
Noise surged somewhere close by, a high-pitched sound between shrieking and sobbing, and Martin blinked, wondering if he was still dreaming. Something banged — not a door, but an object, hitting a wall, maybe. Then footsteps, someone running. Someone pounding on the bedroom door.
Leonora stirred, and Martin was out of bed, pulling on his boxer shorts, when the door opened. He blinked again, and then the light was on, a blazing yellow, and there was Terri in a white dressing gown, face livid. Like a seagull, he thought, a giant seagull trapped in the apartment, trying to beat its way out.
‘What’s happened? What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Is it Craig?’
He grabbed the t-shirt he’d dropped on the floor hours ago. Leonora was sitting up now, clutching the sheet to her chest.
‘Shall I call an ambulance?’ she asked, reaching for her phone. Terri was still standing there, with her gargoyle’s face and shocked hair.
‘You really don’t know?’ she said to Martin, her voice surprisingly low and calm. ‘You really don’t know, do you?’
‘Know what?’ Spikes of cold needled their way up his arms and legs.
‘About her.’ Terri jabbed a finger at Leonora. ‘And him. My husband. Don’t try to deny it! He’s told me everything.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Martin demanded. He glanced down at Leonora: she sat still, phone like a slab in her left hand, the white sheet tucked into her armpits. Her mouth open, transfixed by Terri the seagull.
‘Him and her. Her and him. They’ve been having it off. He’s told me — he just told me now. You’ve been sleeping together, and making a fool of me. Making a fool of your husband.’
The finger jabbed at him. Another truck rumbled outside, and then another. It was the middle of the night, whatever that meant. Was a military coup taking place? Nothing would surprise Martin. Nothing about tonight would be surprising or surreal. Perhaps they weren’t even in Rome anymore; perhaps they were still asleep.
‘It’s not true,’ said Leonora, her voice squeaky as a child’s. ‘It’s a lie.’
‘Why do you think he wanted her here, eh? He could have had his pick of colleagues back in London for a month in Rome, proper lecturers, but no, he wanted her. And he wanted her right here, in this apartment, to …’
‘Stop talking,’ said Martin. His voice sounded much calmer than he felt. ‘This is complete bullshit. Where’s Craig?’
‘It’s not true,’ Leonora said again. ‘Please, Martin, don’t listen to her.’
‘I said, where’s Craig?’
Terri stepped out of the doorway and gestured like a magician’s assistant.
‘It’s a terrible ugly lie!’ Leonora cried, but Martin charged out of the room without looking at her. It was better to act than to think. He had to do something.
Craig was a shadowy lump on a sofa in the living room.
‘Get up,’ said Martin, groping for the light. Terri got to it before he did, revealing Craig, his shaggy head drooping, also in a white dressing gown. He made no attempt to stand. Leonora arrived, in bare feet and yesterday’s sundress.
‘I’ve told her everything,’ he said, sounding maudlin.
‘Everything what?’ Leonora demanded. ‘You’ve made this up. Go on, tell Terri that you’ve made this up.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Yes,’ said Terri. ‘Why would he make it up?’
‘I don’t know. Because he’s insane? Because you’re both drunk?’
‘Nobody’s drunk here, madam.’ Terri was affronted. ‘Very sobering news, isn’t it, to hear your husband’s screwing the … the lodger!’
‘I’m not a lodger, and I’m not having an affair with your husband. Tell her, please, Craig. Tell everyone.’
Craig said nothing.
‘Why would you do this?’ Leonora asked him again. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s true,’ he said, petulant, still slumped forward.
‘No it isn’t,’ said Martin. He wanted to grab a handful of Craig’s mangy hair and pull it out of his stupid thick head. ‘You’ve said it to wind Terri up and now you can’t back down. Even though it’s spiteful and stupid, and it’s dragging the two of us into your crap.’
Craig looked up at Leonora.
‘You know it’s true,’ he said, and she shrieked, launching herself at him, pummelling his head.
‘You bloody liar! You bastard! You lying scum!’
‘Get off!’ Terri screamed. Craig ducked and cowered, his arms raised against the onslaught. ‘Get her off my husband!’
Martin was already wrapped around Leonora, pulling her away.
‘Are you lying?’ Terri asked Craig.
‘What does it matter?’ He sat back, arms folded, mouth rolling into a pout. ‘You never believe me. You always accuse me of having an affair. So here you are. I’ve admitted it. Happy now?’
‘You don’t care if I’m happy!’ shrieked Terri, and Martin saw this as their chance to escape. Inside their bedroom he stood with his back against the door, and tried to block out the squawking from the living room.
‘For god’s sake,’ he said. Leonora sat on the side of the bed, sobbing. He wanted to say more — that this was ridiculous and surreal and horrible, and that he was furious with everyone and everything: Rome, art schools, relationships, English people.
Leonora started hyperventilating, bent double and wheezing out her despair.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she managed to say. ‘I know what … you think.’
Last time, after Leonora told him she’d been sleeping with someone else, she’d caught a taxi to her parents’ place in Beaconsfield. A week later, Jack, her father, drove over to see Martin. He brought a brace of craft beer with him, and set the bottles on the kitchen table. He wasn’t there, Jack said, to endorse or excuse his daughter’s behaviour. But he wanted Martin to know she’d spent the week sobbing and repenting. At least she’d been honest and owned up to Martin about the whole sorry business.
Her head had been turned, Jack said. Poor judgement. Rash. Naïve. Foolish. So very, very sorry. This Anthony bloke was clearly a predator — divorced, disastrous, a loser. And Leonora’s job at the Slade was temporary anyway. In a few weeks she’d never have to see the stupid bugger again. If only Martin could forgive her.
Of course he’d forgiven her. He had no one but Leonora. She moved home again, shivering like a beaten dog, sniffing and red-eyed. He’d given her conditions — conditions of surrender in a battle neither of them had won. There would be no more talk about it, he said. And in the future, if something like this ever happened again, Leonora would keep it to herself. No tearful confessions, no admissions, no pleas. If she met someone else and decided to leave Martin, she should leave. If she decided to stay, then she could keep the guilt of it, and the misery, all to herself. He couldn’t go through this again.
Now she was kneeling on the bed, gulping, smearing tears from her face.
‘You’re thinking I’m not telling you the truth,’ she spluttered. ‘Be … because of what I promised.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of anything,’ he lied, though there was some kind of emptiness opening up inside him, a blank that rubbed out any thinking or feeling. ‘Really.’
The apartment was quiet now. Craig and Terri may have fallen asleep or fallen off the terrace — he didn’t care either way. Leonora clasped at her chest, trying to steady her sobs.
‘It’s like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in here,’ he said, and Leonora managed a weak smile.
‘They probably don’t even have a son,’ she said. Martin tried to smile as well.
‘Let’s try to get some sleep,’ he said, and Leonora clambered into the rumpled bed without taking off her sundress, her face red and puffy. ‘In the morning, we can sort something else out for you. Somewhere to stay.’
‘What about you?’ she asked, her voice shaking, as though she was afraid.
‘For both of us, yes. For Sunday night. Then you can stay there until your classes finish.’
He got into bed next to her, following her lead by keeping on his t-shirt and boxer shorts. Maybe they’d have to leap out of bed again. Maybe Terri would set the whole place on fire with one of her contraband cigarettes. Leonora nestled into him, clinging like a child.
Before Leonora flew to Rome, they’d talked about having a baby. She was shy about bringing the subject up, though they’d talked before about having children — when they first met, and before they were married, when everything was theoretical and in the future.
‘We could give the baby a Latvian name, you know,’ she’d said. ‘Would you like that?’
‘No,’ he’d told her. ‘An English name would be better.’
That was as far as they’d got, but the step felt big, both a challenge and a relief. Now they were in Rome, just trying to get through the night. Leonora’s breath steadied, and she seemed to be sleeping, one arm draped over Martin, her body curled like a seahorse. He tried to be still, although he couldn’t sleep anymore and his eyes were chalk-dry, too hard to close. Tomorrow they would leave this place and find a hotel. Somewhere in Trastevere, perhaps, on the other side of the river. He’d fly back to Brussels and she’d teach her final classes. This time next week, they’d both be home.
That final time in Latvia, before his Oma died, it snowed a few days before Christmas, the first snow of the winter. She sent him out into the scrappy yard to bring in an armful of wood, and he’d sung a bit of ‘White Christmas’ to make her smile. He shouldn’t hope too much, she told him. The snow would be gone again in the morning. The third snow, she said; now that was the real snow, the one that stuck around.
Everything was in the past now. It couldn’t be resurrected. Things were lost to him, and people, and places. He wanted Leonora, but he’d never been able to hold on to anything, not even the letters of his name. There might come a time when she met someone else she really loved, more than the last man, more than him. If she decided to leave, he wouldn’t stop her. Perhaps he was a fatalist like his father — a Latvian deep down, after all. The past took things away, and no one could trust the future. The present was all he had. This moment, and this moment, and this moment, with the apartment still, the city quiet at last, and his wife holding him, never letting go.
Isn’t It
after ‘The Garden Party’
At first people thought Uncle Jack had been killed in a hit-and-run, mowed down crossing the road near the May Road dairy. That was what Lorenzo heard in the first delirious phone calls from his mother: Uncle Jack had been mown down, and it was a brutal, heartless and sadistic act, no doubt perpetrated by someone twenty-one and Chinese in a brand-new car with a learner’s licence and no insurance.
In fact, Uncle Jack had just collapsed while crossing the street and died from a heart attack. This was explained in the second wave of phone calls. Cigarettes killed him, and cream on his porridge, and old age. He was eighty-six, and on his way to buy a Lotto ticket.
‘Thinking of us,’ said Lorenzo’s mother, ‘right to the end.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lorenzo. He imagined murmured last words, overheard by good Samaritans kneeling at the side of his great-uncle’s frail, crumpled body.
‘Well, he didn’t need the money, did he?’ said Lorenzo’s mother. ‘What would he have done with it, if he’d won?’
Gone to Bali, Lorenzo suspected. Last year one of Uncle Jack’s RSA friends had gone to Bali for the first time, aged seventy-eight, and returned with news of a much younger girlfriend. He’d sent her and her family almost ten thousand dollars before his grown-up children got wind of it, and changed his mobile phone number so the girlfriend in Bali had no way of tracking him down.
‘Uncle Jack was always thinking of us,’ said Lorenzo’s mother. She was ringing Lorenzo from the big New World because they would be needing food, huge amounts of it, when the undertakers brought Uncle Jack back to the house. He would lie there in his coffin for three days, and people would need to be fed.
‘Why was he walking all the way to the May Road dairy?’ asked Lorenzo, because part of him still wanted to believe there was something suspicious about all this, something needing investigation and possibly a visit from TV3 news.
