Graham smiled to himself at the thought of that. Her sense of time didn't seem to be like everybody's else's. She kept her own time; some inner, erratic clock regulated her. Like some conventional caricature of female punctuality, she always arrived late. But she usually did turn up. Almost always. They met on weekdays, not weekends at first, in pubs never very far away from the flat. Small talk mostly; a slow process of discovery. He wanted to find out all she'd done and been, everything she thought, but she was reticent. She preferred to talk about films and books and records, and though she seemed interested in him, asking him about his life, he felt cheated as well as flattered. He loved her, but his love, the love he wanted to be their love seemed stalled, stuck at some early stage, as though hibernating until the winter had passed.
She wouldn't talk about Stock at all.
Graham walked up Amwell Street. How are you? he asked himself. Oh, I am well. He looked at his fingernails. It had taken him half an hour to get his hands and nails clean, using white spirit and a nailbrush as well as soap and water. A couple of specks of paint on his shirt had surrendered, besides. He had used a friend's Nivea to restore some moisture to the scrubbed, parched skin on his fingers. The only stains left on his hands were a few stubborn traces of India ink, left from the drawings of Sara he'd finished the previous day. Graham smiled; she was ingrained in him.
He passed the entrance to a courtyard. There was a banner slung slackly over it, advertising a fete. He gave the banner a second glance, fixing its curves and lines in his mind, storing the sight so that he could draw it some time. Tricks could be played, points made by drawing a drooping banner so that certain letters and words were obscured and altered by the folded fabric.
He remembered one time he'd walked up here, in May, after she had started seeing him in the afternoons and going for long walks along the canal-side. It had poured with rain; a total cloudburst, thunder cracking and grumbling in the skies above the city. He'd been soaked, and hoped that at least this might finally gain him entry to the flat; she'd never invited him in.
When he got there he pressed the button on the entryphone, waiting for the crackle of her distorted voice, but there was nothing. He pressed and pressed. He stood back in the street, the rain stinging his eyes, wetting him to the skin, getting in his mouth and eyes; warm rain, huge hard drops, slicking and sticking the clothes to his body; erotic, making his heart beat faster in a sudden, squally sexual fantasy; she would invite him in... no, better yet, she would turn up in the street, having been out, also wet to the skin, she would look at him... they would go in...
Nothing.
He walked all the way to Upper Street, near the bus-stops, before he found a free phonebox. He stood in it, his clothes and skin steaming, dripping water into the urine-scented callbox, called her number, listened to it ring, called again, saying the numbers to himself like a chant, making sure his finger was in the right hole on the dial each time. The double ring: trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr. He listened to it, trying to will her to the phone; imagining her coming back to the flat after being out; she might hear the phone from the street... now she would put the key in the lock... now running up the stairs... now dashing in, dripping, short of breath, to grab the receiver... now... now.
Trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr.
Please.
His hand hurt, his mouth ached with the expression of tense anguish he knew he wore, water ran from his hair, over his face, down his back. Water dripped from his elbow where it bent, holding the phone up to his ear.
Be there: be there: be there: trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr...
There were people outside the callbox. It was still raining, though more lightly now. A girl outside tapped on the glass, he turned away, ignored her. Please be there... trr-trr: trr-trr: trr-trr...
The door of the callbox opened eventually. A wet-looking blonde in a rain-darkened coat stood there, glaring at him," "Ere, wot's your game, eh? I've only been standin" "ere twen'y minutes, "aven" I? You ain't even put your bleedin" money in yet!"
He said nothing; he put the phone down and walked away to get a bus. He forgot to take his ten pence out of the slot where he'd had it ready, and he'd left a pile of tens and fives sitting on top of the directories. He felt sick.
She apologised, over the phone, the next day; she'd been hiding under the bedclothes, playing her favourite David Bowie cassette at maximum volume on her Sony Walkman, trying to drown the noise of the thunder.
He laughed, loving her for it.
Graham passed a small hall; in its courtyard was a little stall selling cakes. He considered buying a cake to eat, but while he was thinking about it he kept on walking, and thought it would look stupid to turn back so far up the street, so he didn't, though at the thought his stomach suddenly rumbled. He'd last eaten about four hours earlier, in the same small cafe where he'd got Slater to tell him about Sara that January.
Graham crossed the road. He was approaching Clairmont Square, at the summit of the hill, where tall houses, once genteel, then decaying, now undergoing gentrification, faced over tall trees to the bustle of traffic on Pentonville Road. Graham shifted his plastic portfolio from one hand to the other. Inside were drawings of Sara ffitch, and Graham was proud of them. The drawings were in a new style he had been experimenting with recently, and now, he felt, he had got it just right. It was perhaps a little early to be certain, but he thought they were probably the best things he had ever done. This made him feel good. It was another sort of omen; a confirmation....
Once they'd had a conversation on two levels, from street to first-floor window; it had been in April; on the second occasion he'd visited her in the afternoon, for a walk along the canal.
She came to the window when he pressed the button on the entryphone, poking her head out of the lower half of the opened sash window, through dark brown curtains. "Hello!" she'd called.
He went out into the middle of the street. "Coming out to play?'. he said, smiling up at her in the sunlight. Just then the window had slipped, the lower half falling down on her; she laughed and turned her head round.
"Ouch," she said.
"You all right?" he asked. She nodded.
"Didn't hurt." She wriggled. He shielded his eyes to see better. "I think I can get back in. Hope so, or I'm stuck here."
He gave a small, concerned laugh. He thought suddenly of how she must look, seen from inside the kitchen she was leaning out of; an ugly sexual idea occurred to him, and he looked about for the big black BMW bike, but it wasn't there. It never was when she invited him to meet her at the flat; she was keeping him and Stock out of each other's way. Sara was giggling.
Things like this are always happening to me," she "said, and shrugged, put her elbows on the sill of the window and smiled down at him. She wore a loose, heavy tartan shirt, like some fake lumberjack.
"So," he said, "are you coming for a walk?"
"Where shall we go?" she said. "Tempt me."
"I don't know. You fed up with the canal?"
"Maybe," she shrugged. Her eyes seemed to wander away from him, scanning the horizon. "Ah," she said, "the Post Office Tower."
He turned round, looking south and west, though he knew he couldn't see the tall building from the street. "You want to go there?"
"We could go to the revolving restaurant," she laughed.
"I thought they'd closed it," he said. She shrugged, stretched her arms out, arching her back.
"Have they? How boring of them."
"Bit out of my price range anyway," he laughed. "I'll buy you a Wimpy and chips if you're hungry. There; how's that for an offer?"