Ralph’s footsteps sounded down the hall behind her and she lowered her gaze to the mantelpiece, where she was confronted by a photograph of Stephen Sparks in a silver frame. His presence surprised her, and she greeted it with mingled bitterness and excitement. It was a close-up of his face, although she could see his hair, which was much longer than it was now. It looked unfashionable and rather silly, she thought disappointedly.
‘Here we go,’ said Ralph, putting two glasses on the table.
The stain had disappeared from his lips, and the sight of his short hair made Francine warm to him. He came and stood beside her at the fireplace.
‘Stephen in his hippie era,’ he said, nodding at the photograph.
‘I like your flat,’ said Francine. The presence of the photograph suggested something complicated which might interfere with the now-smooth transmission of Ralph’s interest in her. Unconsciously, she hoped that Stephen would be admonished from the mantelpiece by the sight of them together. ‘How much do you pay?’
‘What? Oh, I don’t — I mean, I do, but I own it.’
‘Really?’
Francine’s sense of her own foolishness was ameliorated by her pleasure at his ownership. She felt the reassuring thirst for conquest rise in the wake of this newly ingested information.
‘Well, it’s only small,’ Ralph said. ‘Here, have some wine.’
He handed her a glass. The wine was red, and she felt a slight cooling of her admiration as she wondered why he hadn’t given her a choice, or at least offered her something like a gin and tonic instead. When he had suggested drinks she had vaguely imagined them having cocktails, with a lustrous cherry speared by a parasol. Red wine tasted bitter to her, and in any case she thought people only drank it at dinner-time, not before. The memory of their unpleasant doorstep encounter began to rally from its consignment, and with it came the recollection of their telephone conversation, in which Ralph had been abrupt and not at all polite. At the time she had been quite impressed by his assurance, though, and this factor, along with Ralph’s flat, his now improved manners, and his really not unpleasing appearance, rose in battle against Francine’s disaffection. She waited to see what his next move would contribute to the conflict.
‘Do you know, I didn’t even ask you if you wanted red wine,’ he exclaimed suddenly. He made a gesture with his hands which suggested impatience with himself. ‘It’s just that it’s all anybody seems to drink these days — sorry, would you have preferred something else?’
‘No, I love it,’ said Francine, immediately taking a mouthful as if to mark it territorially. It tasted acrid and rather dirty.
Ralph glanced at her and then looked down. He wasn’t looking at her as much as she had expected: when she had met him by chance that time in Camden Market his eyes had kept bounding towards her, two shining, hungry dogs straining on a leash, and she wondered why the more comfortable element of his ardour had been exchanged for this new atmosphere of restraint. It proved difficult to locate a solution to this mystery which pleased her, and she abandoned it with the thought that the very darkness of Ralph’s motives at least guaranteed an intensity of which she was confident of being the object. He drank from his glass, tipping back his head slightly so that most of the wine drained down his throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then looked at it.
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ said Francine.
‘No, please do — please, go ahead.’
She put down her glass and crossed the room to find her bag with a sense of liberation in the movement and the noise of her heels knocking against the wooden floor. The commotion seemed also to arouse Ralph.
‘Have you come straight from work?’ he said, raising his voice behind her.
She rummaged gracefully in her bag and came back across the room towards him before she answered. His eyes, awaiting her reply, were fixed on her as she approached.
‘Oh, yes. I often have to stay late. Would you like one?’
‘Oh — OK, why not?’
His tone was warmer now, and the exchange of the cigarette manufactured a successful intimacy. He met her eyes, and Francine felt confident that she had magnetized his thoughts and was drawing them out of their dark recess towards her. She was unused to having to do so much to secure her victories: the normal pattern of such engagements invariably permitted her a defensive position, from which she would admit or repel foreign advances. Ralph’s seclusion, however, demanded some form of attack, and the discovery of a small but none the less unexpected body of resistance barring the path to his surrender was beginning to inspire in Francine the idea that what lay beyond it must be of greater worth than she had thought.
‘What exactly is it that you’re doing?’ said Ralph. He seemed to comprehend the stiffness of his own question, and added: ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever even asked you.’
‘I work for the director of a company in the City,’ said Francine. She waved her cigarette distractingly. ‘I don’t have a light.’
‘Oh — let’s see, there’ll be some matches in the kitchen. Come on, I’ll give you a guided tour.’ He led the way across the sitting-room. ‘So is your director a bit of an ogre?’ he said over his shoulder. ‘It sounds like he works you very hard.’
‘He does.’ Francine followed him. ‘But a lot of it’s my own work too.’
‘How’s that?’ said Ralph.
‘Well—’ Francine was glad that he couldn’t see her face. ‘I’m trying to learn a bit about the business.’
‘So is this a long-term thing?’ They entered the kitchen and Ralph began searching the counter-tops. ‘For some reason I thought you did temporary work.’
He opened and shut drawers loudly. The end of a metal bottle-opener flew up and jammed at a right-angle from one of them, and Ralph tried unsuccessfully to slam it shut two or three times without noticing the impediment. His face was red, and in the strong light Francine could see it was covered with a boisterous mask of sweat.
‘I can’t seem to find them — oh, hang on, I can just light it from the cooker, can’t I?’
He put the cigarette in his mouth and bent down over the hob, turning a knob with his hand. A ring of blue flame leapt up towards his face and he shied slightly, straightening up seconds later with the smouldering cigarette still hanging from his lips. An oddly sweet smell of burning drifted towards Francine in a cloud of cigarette smoke, and she saw that Ralph’s face was screwed up as if a bright light were shining in it.
‘There we are,’ he said, handing her the cigarette. His voice wavered with physical strain. ‘Can you light yours from that?’ He rubbed his hand across his face as she lit her cigarette and then touched his eyebrows tentatively with his fingers. ‘Oh dear,’ he said.
‘It’s a nice kitchen,’ said Francine, looking around to avoid giving the situation her attention. Suddenly she remembered a time, a few years ago, when she had gone to meet a man in a bar which was in a basement and had a long, steep flight of steps down to the entrance. She had stumbled and fallen all the way down, and although the pain had been severe, she had picked herself up, examined her clothing to make sure that no trace of her accident remained, and had walked into the bar as if nothing had happened. Fortunately, there had been no one else on the stairs at the time to witness her mishap. When she got home that evening, she had found large, black bruises across her back and legs which had taken weeks to disappear.