‘Something in my eye,’ she muttered. ‘Will you see if you can see it?’ She tilted her head back and pulled the skin away from beneath her eye. I’m squeamish about eyes and I almost had to cry off, but I steeled myself and peered into the red insides of Annie’s eye. There was a tiny particle.
‘Found it,’ I said.
‘Will you get it out for me?’
I had to see what I could do — she was in discomfort — so I took a clean tissue from my jeans pocket and folded it to get a stiff corner. I asked Annie to lick this so it would be less abrasive and very gingerly I lowered it to the inside rim of her eye where the little black mote was lurking. I felt queasy dipping into such delicate matter. I didn’t like to see the hems along which the body could come undone. But with careful probing I caught the piece of grit on the end of my tissue and removed it. I showed it to Annie and she looked at it — holding my hand to steady it — and said, ‘God, it felt like a rock.’ I was sorry when she took her hand away.
We wound up in Rusholme and had lunch in one of the dozens of Indian restaurants that lined both sides of the road.
‘How do you decide which one to go in?’ I asked as our jug of Cobra beer arrived and I poured us both a glass.
‘Easy,’ she said, breaking a poppadom. ‘I go in a different one each time.’
‘Then you know which ones are no good and you avoid them next time around?’
‘Nice idea,’ she said, dipping popadum into chutney, ‘but I always forget.’
We ate in silence for a while. There were so many things I wanted to say to her that I couldn’t think how to start.
‘Food’s good,’ I said when the main course had arrived.
‘What’s your favourite kind of food?’ she asked.
‘Oh, Indian, I think, or Chinese. There’s this great Chinese right underneath my flat. You must come to London again and try it.’ I cringed inwardly. It was like, Do you want to come up for a coffee?
Annie smiled.
‘What’s yours?’ I asked.
Because she had a mouthful of aloo gobi she pointed at her plate with her fork. ‘This stuff,’ she said after a moment. ‘Indian vegetarian food. It’s bloody great.’
‘Ask me what my favourite word is,’ I said.
‘What’s your favourite word?’
‘Yearning. And my least favourite is inevitable.’
‘Clearly,’ she said, ‘for what they mean rather than the sound of them.’
‘I had a friend who said life is yearning. I didn’t know what he meant at the time but I think I do now.’
‘How come?’
I told her about the map. That wasn’t the whole story, of course, about yearning, but it had become a quest that seemed to represent the way I felt about life.
I told her how I’d found it and verified that the streets belonged to none of the major towns in the country. I tried to explain how I’d decided the map represented a real place despite this, and how I was determined to find it. She listened closely and at no point did she attempt to rationalise the whole business.
‘How will you find it?’ she asked as the waiter hovered. We ordered gulab jamun.
‘There are clues,’ I said. ‘All around us.’ I realised this was the point at which she could either accept what I was saying and go with it or decide I was paranoid and announce she would never see me again.
‘What sort of clues?’
‘People must know about this place,’ I said. ‘Someone lost the map in the first place. So sometimes I see people talking and something about the way they look makes me think they know.’ I spooned a suet ball into my mouth. ‘Have you never sat on your own somewhere and watched other people?’ I continued. ‘And seen two people sharing a joke or talking with serious looks on their faces and wanted — and I mean really wanted — to know what they’re on about?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, that’s all I’m saying. That’s the reality. The rest is metaphor, if you like. It’s all about knowing what they know, slipping into their lives, almost being another person. Have you ever thought how strange it would be to be another person?’
She nodded again, frowning.
‘That’s all it is,’ I said. ‘Knowing what others know. We’re all too isolated. It’d be great to know everything.’
‘I don’t know. I like the mystery.’
‘So do I, though. That’s what it’s all about. Mystery. Not knowing. Wanting to find out. Mystery is a transient thing on its way to knowledge. It’s like a sheet that you’re trying to get at to pull aside. Look,’ I said with a sudden movement backwards. I reached into my back pocket. ‘This is it. This is the map.’ I unfolded it and spread it out on the cloth. ‘What do you think?’
I watched Annie looking at the map, followed her eyes as she examined the streets, the squares, the boulevards.
‘It exists somewhere,’ I said, then the waiter came back and we ordered coffees.
We walked slowly back to Annie’s place, taking short cuts down back entries.
‘I like these places,’ I said. ‘They’re like secret passages.’
Annie laughed. ‘We’re trespassing really,’ she said. ‘It’s only the kids who use them. Grown-ups use the streets. It’s a sort of unwritten law. I use them sometimes because they remind me of being a kid. I like that.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘It’s like me and my map. Your childhood is a strange place, like the city in the map. And it’s good, isn’t it? It’s good to go back there. Or make it feel like you’ve gone back.’
‘Do you want to play Scrabble when we get back?’ she asked out of the blue.
I gave her a look.
‘I used to play it when I was a kid,’ she offered with a smile.
‘In that case, yes.’ I said. ‘I like Scrabble.’
I did like Scrabble but I never won.
Annie made a pot of tea and we sat on the floor in her living room.
I got rubbish letters to start but got rid of them in a couple of goes and after ten minutes I had five letters of a seven-letter word. The word was ADVANCE and I needed only the last two letters. In their place I had a useless K and I. So for the next quarter of an hour I scored in single figures, placing only one tile each go while I hoped to pick up the C and the E. Annie laughed at my piddling scores as she raced ahead. I got the E but it took ages to get the C and of course once I’d got the word the board was almost full and there was nowhere to put it. Chasing a fifty-point bonus had lost me the game, as it almost always did.
Game over, we sat back against her huge cushions and our sleepless night caught up with us. Within seconds I was drifting off, dimly aware of Annie’s head resting nearby. I felt very peaceful, extremely relaxed.
We weren’t actually asleep that long, a couple of hours at the most. Annie stirred first and her movement woke me. Her head was inches from mine and I could see her eyes moving and a wisp of hair that had fallen across her mouth rising and falling.
‘Sleep well?’ I said.
‘Mmm.’
I took hold of her hand, which was lying curled up on the cushion next to her head, and she squeezed my hand firmly. Then she turned and was facing me and I looked at her for a moment before leaning forward and kissing her.
We made love slowly, undressing gradually and spending a lot of time just holding on to each other and either just watching or kissing each other softly.