And if you looked beyond the face, what did you see? I peered out into the twilight. Nothing much. A few scattered lights had been turned on across the courtyard, and the gentle babble of televisions and stereo systems drifted over from open windows. It was a muggy August evening, entirely typical of a summer which seemed to be taking a malicious pleasure in testing Londoners to the limit, drenching them day and night in dense city heat. Looking down, I noticed the movement of a shadow in the gardens. Two shadows, one very small. An old woman walking her dog, probably struggling to keep up as it zig-zagged from bush to bush, its nerves stretched and tingling with the excitement of secret, nocturnal pleasures. I listened to its intermittent rustles and scuffles, the only distinct sounds to be made out, apart from the occasional siren, above London’s buried monotonous hum.
Turning away from the window, I fetched a carton of orange juice from the fridge and cracked three or four ice cubes into a tumbler. I poured the juice over the blocks of ice, enjoying their dull music as they clinked together and rose to the top of the glass. Then I poured myself a glass of beer and took the drinks into the sitting room.
As I paused on the threshold, I tried to look at the room with the same objectivity I had brought to the reflection of my own face: wanting to imagine the impression it would have made on Fiona. She was watching me, now, so I didn’t have as much time, but some quick observations presented themselves: the fact that the curtains, which had come with the flat, and the pictures, which had been bought many years ago, reflected nothing of my present taste; the fact that so many of the surfaces — the table, the window-sills, the top of the television, the mantelpiece — were stacked with papers and magazines and videotapes rather than the few well-chosen ornaments which might have given the room form and personality; the fact that the bookshelves, which I had put up myself, also many years ago, had been largely cleared of books (now jumbled into a tower of cardboard boxes in the spare bedroom) and were scattered, instead, with still more videotapes, piled both horizontally and vertically, some pre-recorded and some filled with scraps of films and programmes taped off the television. It was a room, I thought, which presented an aspect not dissimilar to the face reflected in the kitchen window: it had the potential to be welcoming but for the moment seemed to have transformed itself, through a mixture of carelessness and disuse, into something ungainly and almost eerily neutral.
The first thing Fiona said about the flat, after we had been talking a little while, was that she felt it needed some pot plants. She sang the praises of cyclamen and hibiscus. She waxed lyrical about the merits of cineraria and asparagus fern. She had gone crazy on cineraria recently, she said. It would never have occurred to me to buy myself a pot plant and I tried to imagine what it would be like to share this room with a living, growing organism as well as my stale litter of films and magazines. I poured myself another beer and fetched her some more orange juice and this time she asked me to put some vodka in it. I could tell she was a warm and friendly woman because when I came to sit next to her on the sofa in order to fill out her sponsorship form, she was quite happy to let our legs come into occasional contact: there was no shrinking away, and as I wrote down the amount and signed my name I could feel our thighs touching, and I wondered how this had happened, if in fact it was Fiona who had edged closer to me. And soon it became clear that she was in no great hurry to leave, that she was for some reason enjoying talking to me — I who had so little to give in return — and I could only conclude from this that she must in some brave, quiet, reckless way have been a little desperate for companionship, because although I was a poor companion that evening, and although my behaviour must certainly have frightened her to start with, still she persisted, and grew more and more relaxed, and more and more talkative. I can’t remember how long she stayed, or what it was we talked about, but I can remember enjoying it, at first, this unaccustomed business of talking, and it must have been quite a while, several drinks later, before I began to feel tired again and uneasy. I don’t know why this should have happened, because I was still enjoying myself, but I had this sudden and intense craving to be on my own. Fiona carried on talking, I may even have been answering back, but my attention had started to wander and she only regained it by saying something which surprised me very much.
‘You can’t switch me off,’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘You can’t switch me off.’
She nodded at my hands. I had gone back to the armchair opposite her and without realizing it I had picked up the remote control for the video. It was pointed in her direction and my finger had strayed to the pause button.
‘I think I’d better go,’ she said, and stood up.
As she made for the door, sponsorship form in hand, I made a sudden bid to save the situation by blurting out: ‘I think I’ll get myself one of those plants. It’ll make quite a difference.’
She turned. ‘There’s a little nursery on my way home from work,’ she said softly. ‘I’ll get one for you if you like. I’ll bring it round tomorrow.’
‘Thanks. That’s very kind.’
And then she was gone. For a few seconds after the door had closed behind her I experienced a peculiar sensation: a feeling of loneliness. But this loneliness was mingled with relief and before long the relief had taken over, swamping me and calming me and guiding me gently back to the armchair and to my two friends, my trusted companions, the remote control units for the television and the video, resting one on each arm. I switched the machines on and pressed play, and Kenneth said:
‘Well, a — a handsome face isn’t everything, you know.’
I woke up the next morning with a sense that something subtly momentous had happened. The event, whatever it was, would clearly not bear analysis at this stage, but in the meantime I was anxious to take advantage of its most immediate symptom, which was a surge of mental and physical energy unprecedented in my recent experience. A handful of disagreeable tasks had been gathered, cloudy and lowering, on my mental horizon for some months now, but today it felt as though their weight had been lifted and they lay before me, unthreatening, inviting even, like a set of stepping stones which would lead me to a brighter future. I wasted no time lying around in bed. I got up and showered, made myself some breakfast, washed up and then began to hoover the whole of the flat. After that I went round with a duster, creaming off layers of dust so thick that I had to shake the cloth out of the window with every wipe. Then, tiring a little, I did a bit of desultory tidying and re-organizing. I was anxious, among other to make sure that certain papers were still to be found where I had left them many months ago, because I intended to re-acquaint myself with these and to start work on them again in the afternoon. They turned up after a search of perhaps thirty minutes, and I dropped them in a single pile on my freshly cleared desk.