This was incoherent, seemingly, but then the money came, a dollar cheque now, which Susan’s bank would not baulk at, since she had for years been receiving U.S. dollars for some of her work. The bank did baulk slightly, however, because the cheque was substantial. It was for thirty thousand dollars, about eighteen thousand pounds.
What was she supposed to do with it?
Find a new flat? Eighteen thousand wouldn’t be anywhere near enough, obviously. Visit her mother and Wizz? No.
Susan had been working an extra day a week at Paragon, to make up the money for her slippage over covers. Coming back from London in March on the train, she picked up a local paper discarded on the seat beside her. She had decided to look for a new flat after all, the eighteen thousand providing some sort of down-payment. The flat in Brashspeare Road was where she had been in love with R.J.
The local paper covered an area she knew. She had lived there once, with Anne.
The carriage was fairly full. A man with a penetrating voice kept talking on a mobile phone, arch insults bounced off his (presumably) girlfriend, but it was more a display apparently intended for the uninterested and resentful other passengers.
Rain smashed into the windows, trying to get at him, but failing.
In the colour photograph, it looked a sort of salmon shade, the house, the deep green trees grouped selectively and graciously, as in a theatre set. Where the drive had been widened was an ornamental thing, perhaps a fountain.
(“Yeah, Donna, I ain’t saying you ain’t a sharp dresser. I mean I ain’t saying it, Donna.”)
Tower Gardens. ‘A fine and large house, of great character, parts of which were built prior to 1900, but all extensively modernised in its conversion to self-contained flats, with gas-fired central heating and double-glazing throughout.’ Two of the sought-after flats were now on offer.
One of these was spacious, the lounge twenty-seven feet by thirty-six, and having two bathrooms and four bedrooms. The other flat was two-bedroomed, with bathroom and cloakroom, and modern fitted kitchen. Both flats had ‘beautiful views of secluded communal gardens.’
She could afford neither, even with Anne’s (Wizz’s) money.
I’m thirty-two, she thought.
She felt old and dry. How long before her voice began to crack?
(“Donna, just don’t push it, girl. No,” he was stern now, “just watch your mouth.”)
Old enough to saddle herself with a mortgage.
Perhaps strangest of all, when told, Anne had never queried the new address, which might, surely, have rung some sort of bell with her – Tower Gardens etc: coupled with the known area. Could Anne have forgotten? But then, Susan had never said just which house she was thinking of living in.
Susan waited. She said, “Yes?”
I didn’t mishear. I know what she said. She said she is a prostitute.
“Funny, isn’t it,” said Crissie, drinking her mint tea. “Actually, it’s quite a good job. I mean, if you like it.”
“Do you… like it? No, sorry –”
“Why? I wouldn’t have told you if I was upset about it. I don’t tell everyone, obviously. But we’re – neighbours.” Still carefree, lovely, smiling. “I’d better reassure you though, I work through an agency, and I never bring my work home.”
VI
Summer came and went. Autumn arrived, turning much of the rich green of the garden to ochre and sallow red. In the autumn, they repainted Crissie’s ceiling, perched up on a couple of high ladders, dust sheets everywhere, rollers, and pale peach emulsion. It was the second repainting. She had wanted to try coral before.
Crissie’s flat was, Susan supposed, what might be called minimalist, but without that spindly starkness she, Susan, associated with the term.
Crissie had kept the ivory walls, hanging in the main room only two faded prints, one seeming to be Pre-Raphaelite, and one of a drawing by Mervyn Peake, representing a curious elongated child. There was also a big mirror in a black lacquer frame. The floor was the bare polished wood, which someone came in to ‘do’ at regular intervals, with a couple of rather tattered but glorious gold and maroon rugs with gold fringes. There were also two armchairs, narrow, old-fashioned wingbacks, in a dark coppery velvet. No couch. The French window had rough blanched muslin curtains, which at night, when the four side lamps were switched on, would hide nothing. There was also, despite the lack of noise, an involved music centre with four speakers, and a smallish TV.
This was really all.
Sometimes two tall blue willow pattern vases manifested, holding up flaming gladioli or vermilion lilies. There were hardly any ornaments – a misted-glass apple, the slim figure of a Greek god, perhaps Apollo, nearly three and a half feet tall and done in white marble. On the polished table, of which there was only one, stood a fruit bowl that changed colour with the fruit.
It was not obviously a moneyed room. It was full of air and space and reflections, and sometimes the soft uncanny music of Debussy or Scriabin.
The bedroom, where sometimes they went to fetch something or compare some new garment, or try out new make-up, was undersea and blue, with a low single wooden bed, a Chinese chest and carved yellow wood armoire to hold clothes.
Susan admired these rooms. Their oblique colour-combinations and shapes, which worked together, and the lack of clutter. There were no awkward hung-on-to objects. No plants, even. The few books were in a case against the corner.
“I always want to change my flat after I’ve been in yours.”
“Yes, I do sometimes after yours. But,” said Crissie, “we don’t, do we?”
She didn’t play at assertiveness or indecision, or at anything, it seemed. Not Crissie. Even her
