A young couple came in; the woman sat down at a nearby table while the man went to fetch the drinks. She was very pretty, nice figure, wearing tight jeans and a loose Fair Isle pullover. She looked a little truculent. What have you got to look truculent about? I thought. You’re young, you’re pretty, your whole life is before you.
The man came to the table with two pints, put one in front of her, sat down, and lifted his glass to her but she didn’t respond. He was a nice-looking City type and his manner made me think that he was the one who always made an effort to please. It won’t help, I thought. ‘Well, Hilary …’ he said.
‘Well, what?’
‘Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?’
She took a good pull at her pint before answering. ‘Our expectations aren’t the same.’
‘How do they differ?’
‘You seem to think we have a basis for a long-term future.’
‘What is it you think we have?’
‘Had. It was one of those interim things, and you knew that very well from the outset. You’d have liked there to be more but that’s all there was and you’ve had it, so now it’s time for you to move on to the next thing.’
‘That’s easy for you to say.’
‘Right, everything’s easy for me, Andrew — that’s why I have such a great life. I have to go now.’ She got up and walked out, leaving her unfinished pint on the table. Andrew watched her leave, then finished her pint and his, smacked the table once with his hand, and went to the bar for another pint.
Poor Andrew, I thought. I finished my wine and left, shaking my head over the non-easiness of everything. I had things I could have been doing at home but I didn’t feel like doing any of them so I wandered down Basuto Road to Eel Brook Common, then over to the Fulham Road where I fetched up at Coffee Republic drinking coffee and accepting the fact that I wasn’t going to bump into Roswell Clark.
On Monday morning Roswell appeared at the Jubilee Market, looking as if he’d been dragged backwards through a very thick hedge. ‘Well, here I am,’ he said as if he knew I’d been looking for him. I could feel myself blushing.
‘What’s up?’ I said.
‘Well, I’ve done something,’ he said, ‘OK?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’ve wanted something from me, haven’t you? You forced that wooden hand on me because you knew it would start working on me, which it did. And now I’ve done something.’
‘What?’
‘Would you like to come see it?’
‘Yes, I would.’
‘When?’
‘This evening?’
‘When this evening?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Fulham, SW6. Kempson Road.’ He wrote down the address and gave it to me.
‘You’re quite close — I can be there about eight.’
‘Right. See you.’ And he was gone so quickly that it almost seemed I’d imagined the whole thing but there was the address in my hand.
For the rest of the day my mind was busy with what Roswell had said about my wanting something from him. I’m always surprised when things I say or do have an effect on people, and I was flustered by his words but not displeased. I couldn’t help putting out I-want-to-improve-you pheromones and he had responded appropriately.
Sometimes I observe myself as from a distance doing this or that and it isn’t what I usually do but I’ve learned not to ask myself too many questions. I left the Jubilee Market at three, took my trolley and rucksack and shoulder bag home, went to Marks & Spencer at Marble Arch, bought a pair of peach-coloured silk knickers with lace inserts, went home, had a long shower, dabbed on some Ma Griffe, tried on three or four outfits, and finally settled on a navy Jean Muir and a pink cashmere cardigan that I got at a charity shop. With black tights and high-heeled black boots. ‘Do you want to talk about this?’ said my mirror self.
‘No,’ I answered. I had a cup of tea and scanned The Times, in which it was reported under the line ORKNEY’S GIFT TO EROTICISM:
The erotic combination of suspender and stocking that launched a million pin-ups was patented in 1896 by two young islanders who saw the potential in an idea for holding up baggy farm overalls. Andrew Thomson and James Drever, 22, apprentice tailors, went to California and lodged a patent for ‘a clasp serving to secure the stocking’.
Giles sometimes, not as often as he’d have liked, talked me into wearing suspenders and stockings for him; he said that the division of female flesh by straps or harness of any kind excited him. Now he and his needs were no longer part of the world and I was in tights. I shook myself and looked at my watch: quarter to eight.
From Doria Road to Kempson is a short walk past Parsons Green and across Eel Brook Common. The air was cold and still with a feeling of impending snow. The street lamps, the lights in windows everywhere, and the people who passed me all seemed part of a silent background that heightened my separateness. I found the house, rang the bell, and the door opened immediately as if Roswell had been standing behind it. ‘You’re here,’ he said.
‘Well, that was the arrangement, wasn’t it?’
‘Sorry, please come in. I’m really glad to see you.’
‘Are you all right?’ I said. ‘You seem a little …’ I could smell that he’d been drinking but drunk wasn’t the word I was looking for.
‘I am,’ he said. He helped me out of my coat and hung it in the hall. ‘You look great,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen you dressed up before.’
‘Thank you. This seemed something of an occasion.’
‘I suppose it is, in one way or another. The studio’s on the top floor.’
I followed him up the stairs past a living room full of books and not too much furniture, a cosy-looking study, and a very sparsely furnished bedroom. The studio was two storeys high with a skylight; for a moment we stood in darkness looking up at the sky, then Roswell switched on two banks of fluorescent lights and there leapt into view a crucified crash-dummy. ‘Oh my God,’ I said.
Up there on the cross it looked enormous at first but then I realised it was only life-size. The cross was leaning against the wall as if the figure had just been nailed to it and raised up to hang there until dead. The figure was of pale wood, unpainted except for the usual black-and-yellow discs, the blood from the wound in its side and those in its hands and feet; there was also a little blood from the shiny chromium crown of thorns on its bald and eyeless head. The figure was more elongated than the dummies I’d seen in photographs and on television; this had an El Greco effect that accentuated the pain not visible on the blankness of the face. The cross was of a rough dark wood that heightened the pale vulnerability of the body. There was no INRI.
After the first shock a wave of sadness swept over me; my throat ached and my nose tingled and I thought I might cry but I didn’t. This sadness wasn’t from the crash-dummy Christ but from thinking of the poorness of spirit that had led Roswell to spend all those hours carving it. His soul must be absolutely skint, I thought, for him to come up with this. The reduction of Christ to a dummy made to crash into the wall of our sins, the stripping of a complex and haunting idea to a simplistic metaphor, made me so sorry for Roswell that my heart opened to him and I wanted to take him in my arms and rock him like a baby. I realised that I was standing there looking gobsmacked and I tried to find something to say.