The Muse Page 4

  ‘In that case, I’m going to call you Lawrie.’

  He laughed, and my jaw tingled, threatening a smile. ‘I don’t think this was done by an amateur,’ I said. ‘What did your mother know about it?’

  ‘No idea. And all I know is, she took it with her wherever she went. At home, it was always in her bedroom. She didn’t like it in the public rooms.’

  I pointed to the initials on the bottom right of the painting. ‘Who’s I.R.?’

  Lawrie shrugged. ‘Not my forte.’

  I wondered what Lawrie’s forte was, and whether I would ever find out, and why did I want to – and was that the reason I was feeling so odd?

  In case he could read my thoughts, I bent my head down again towards the girl in the painting. She was wearing a light blue dress with a dark woollen cardigan – you could even see the cable knit. The head she was carrying had a long dark plait, which snaked unsettlingly out of her cradled arms, towards the red earth floor. The strange thing was, even though she had no body, the floating girl didn’t seem dead at all. She was inviting me in, but there was a note of caution in her eyes. Neither of them were exactly beaming in welcome. They both seemed oblivious to the lion, which may or may not have been waiting for the kill.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said, pushing the painting away into his surprised hands. Lawrie, the party, the poem, the Dubonnet, Cynth’s marriage, the painting; suddenly I wanted to be alone.

  Lawrie took the painting from me and closed the boot. He looked down at me, his head cocked to one side again. ‘Are you all right? Do you want me to walk you back in?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean, no. I’m fine. Thank you. Sorry. It was a pleasure to meet you. Good luck.’ I turned away and made it to the entrance of the block of flats, before he called out to me.

  ‘Hey, Odelle.’ I looked back to see him jam his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, hunching his shoulders again. ‘I – you know – that really was a good poem.’

  ‘It always takes longer than you think, Mr Scott,’ I said. He laughed, and I smiled properly then, nevertheless relieved to be out of the street lamp’s glow.

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  V

  When I was growing up, my mother and I would always eat lunch with Cynth’s family on Sundays. Four in the afternoon, a big pot on the hob, everyone coming in and out and dipping for themselves – and once the meal was done, we’d draw our chairs up to the radio at seven thirty and listen to the BBC’s Caribbean Voices, the only broadcast that mattered if you dreamed of being a writer.

  Here’s the mad thing: poets from Barbados, Trini, Jamaica, Grenada, Antigua – any part of the British Caribbean – would send their stories all the way to Bush House on London’s Aldwych, in order to hear them read back again in their homes, thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean. There seemed no local facility to enable these stories to be processed, a fact which impressed upon me at a very young age that in order to be a writer, I would require the motherland’s seal of approval, the imperial sanction that my words were broadcastable.

  The majority of the work was by men, but I would listen enraptured by the words and voices of Una Marson, Gladys Lindo, Constance Hollar – and Cynth would pipe up, ‘One day you be read out, Delly’ – and her little shining face, her bunches, she always made me feel like it was true. Seven years old, and she was the only one who ever told me to keep going. By 1960 that programme had stopped, and I came to England two years later with no idea what to do with my stories. Life at the shoe shop took over, so I only wrote in private, and Cynth, who must have seen the piles of notebooks which never left my bedroom, simply stopped her pestering.

  She and Sam had found a flat to rent in Queen’s Park, and she’d transferred to a north London branch of Dolcis. Up to that point, I’d never really known loneliness. I’d always had my books, and Cynth had always been there. Suddenly, my thoughts were enormous in that tiny flat, because there was nobody to hear them and make them manageable, nobody cajoling or supporting me, or holding out their arms for a hug. Cynth’s absence became physical to me. Do you have a body if no one is there to touch it? I suppose you do, but sometimes it felt like I didn’t. I was just a mind, floating around the rooms. How badly prepared I’d been for the echo and clunk of my key in the lock, the lack of her sizzling frying pan, my solitary toothbrush, the silence where once she hummed her favourite songs.

  When you saw a person every day – a person you liked, a person who lifted you up – you thought you were your best self, without trying very hard. Now, I saw myself as barely interesting, not so clever. No one wanted to hear my poems except Cynth, no one cared or understood where I was from like she did. I didn’t know how to be Odelle without Cynth to make me so. Cynth had done so much for me, but because she was gone, I still managed to resent her.

  Her work commitments and mine meant we were only meeting once a fortnight, in the Lyon’s on Craven Street round the corner from the Skelton. I barely credited Cynth for the fact it was she who always arranged it.

  AT THE COUNTER, THE WAITRESS had slopped our cups so the liquid had spilled onto the saucer, and the bun I’d asked for was the most squashed. When I asked for a replacement saucer, the waitress ignored me, and when I paid for it, she wouldn’t put the change in my hand. She placed the money on the counter and pushed it over, not looking at my face. I turned to Cynth, and her expression looked familiar; closed. We walked to find a spare table, as far away from the counter as we could.

  ‘How is it at the work?’ she asked. ‘You still trailin’ after that Marjorie Quick?

  ‘She my boss, Cynthia.’

  ‘So you say.’

  I hadn’t realized how obvious it was, the impression that Quick had made on me over the recent weeks. I had tried to find out more about Quick from Pamela, who could only tell me that Quick had once mentioned the county of Kent as her childhood home. What she did between being a girl and a woman in her fifties was a grey sketch. Perhaps she had been destined for a genteel, Kentish life, a magistrate’s wife or some such, but she chose instead to find a different kind of fortune in the rubble of post-­war London. Her name was not in Debrett’s: she was not a Skelton descendant, one of my initial lines of thought. Her impeccable sartorial choices exuded power, a care of herself that was for nobody’s benefit but her own. Each perfect blouse or scarf, each pristine pair of trousers was a pre-­emptive self-­narration. Quick’s clothes were an armour made of silk.

  I knew she was unmarried and she lived in Wimbledon, just off the common. She smoked constantly, and appeared close to Reede in the sort of way that water is close to a stone that it has worn down over decades. Pamela said that Quick had been here as long as Reede had, when he’d taken the directorship of the Skelton in 1947, twenty years ago. How she had come to meet Reede, or why she decided to take employment, remained a mystery. I wondered what sort of battle it had been to get to where she was now, and whether she’d read those Roman histories to give her some lessons in war.

  ‘She not like anyone I ever met,’ I said to Cynth. ‘Friendly one minute, a sunlight beam. Then she like a hog-­brush woman – she bristle so, it pain you to be near.’

  Cynth sighed. ‘We bought G Plan for the flat.’

  ‘G-­what?’

  ‘Oh, Delly. Sam work hard hard, so me say, let we buy we a nice G Plan sofa so he can put up him feet at the end of the day.’

  ‘Hmm. And how your feet doin’?’

  She sighed, stirring her lukewarm tea with a spoon. ‘Oh, let me tell you a thing. So our new postman get the letters mix up, and our neighbour knock with them.’ Cynth cleared her throat and put on a posh English voice. ‘ “Oh, hell-­air. Yes, these must be yours. We saw they had a black stamp.” It a letter from Lagos, Delly. Me name not on it, and me no know no one from Nigeria. “Black
stamp”, I ask yuh.’

  Her laugh died. Normally we would have discussed something like this in order to remove its barb, but after the waitress neither of us had the energy.

  ‘Tell me about the feller you were talking to at the wedding,’ she said, looking sly.

  ‘What feller?’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Lawrie Scott. The white one; handsome, skinny. He friend to Patrick’s Barbara. Me didn’t drink that many Dubonnets – I saw you in the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh him. He real dotish.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, her eyes taking on a secret glow, and I knew I’d given myself away. ‘That strange.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Patrick told Sam he been asking ’bout you.’ I shut my mouth tighter than a clam and Cynth grinned. ‘You writin’?’ she asked.

  ‘You only start asking me that, now you’ve left.’

  ‘I not left. On the other end of the tube map, is all.’

  ‘Like you worried I got nothing to do these days. Don’t worry, I writin’,’ I said, but this was a lie. I had stopped entirely at this point, believing that the idea of myself as a good writer was laughable.

  ‘Good. I glad you writin’,’ said Cynth firmly. ‘You know, there a poetry night going at the ICA,’ she went on. ‘Sam’s friend is readin’, and he a real dotish boy compare to you. Him poem be sendin’ me to sleep—­’

  ‘I not readin’ at some meet-­up, Cynthia,’ I said, wrinkling my nose. ‘Make no mistake.’

  She sighed. ‘I not. Just that you do better, Odelle. You do better and you know it, and you do nothin’.’

  ‘Eh heh,’ I said. ‘I busy. I work. You go with your G Plan and stop all this foolishness. What, because I got no husban’ feet to worry me, I better go speakin’ my poetry an’ ting?’

  Cynthia looked distraught. ‘Delly! Why you so vex? Me only try to help.’

  ‘Me not vex.’ I drained my cup of tea. ‘It all right for you,’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me how to live.’

  Cynth was quiet after that. I should have said sorry then and there, but I didn’t. She left soon after, pinch-­faced with tears, and I felt like a monster come out of the sea to grab her legs.

  We didn’t meet up the next week, or the one after that, and she didn’t ring. Neither did I, and I felt so embarrassed, such a fool – a real dotish gyal, as Cynth no doubt described me that night to Sam. The longer she was silent, the more impossible it seemed to pick up the telephone.

  All I really wanted to say was that I missed us living together. And I was someone who was supposed to be good with words.

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  VI

  Lawrie found me on the fifteenth of August. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and I was doing the early reception shift. Shops were still shut, the buses that moved along Charing Cross Road were less frequent. I walked on to the Mall, and the long thoroughfare, usually busy, was an empty road of greenish light. It had been raining for a week, and the paving stones were wet from a dawn downpour, trees springing in the breeze like fronds beneath the sea.

  I’d seen much worse rain than this, so I wasn’t too bothered, tucking the copy of the Express I’d bought for Pamela into my handbag to protect it from any spatters, crossing up Carlton Gardens and over the circular centre of Skelton Square. I passed the plinth of the long-­dead statesman adorning the middle point, a blank-­eyed fellow whose frock coat was messed by pigeons. In the past, I would have found out who he was – but five years in London had purged my interest in old Victorian men. The statue’s infinite gaze made me feel even more exhausted.

  I glanced up towards the Skelton. A young man was standing by the doors, tall and slim, wearing a slightly battered leather jacket. He had a narrow face and very dark brown hair. As I approached, I knew that it was him. I could feel my throat tighten, a little hop in the gut, a thudding swipe to the breast. I approached the steps, fetching the Skelton door key out of my handbag. Lawrie was wearing glasses this time, and their lenses glinted in the subterranean light. He was carrying a parcel under his arm, wrapped in that brown paper butchers used to wrap their slabs of meat.

  He grinned at me. ‘Hello,’ he said.

  What was it like to see Lawrie smile? I can try: it was as if a healer had placed their hands upon my chest. My kneecaps porridge, jaw tingling, no hope to swallow. I wanted to throw my arms around him and say, ‘It’s you, you came.’

  ‘Hello,’ I said instead. ‘Can I help?’

  His smile faltered. ‘You don’t remember? We met, at the wedding. I came along with Barbara’s gang. You read a poem, and you wouldn’t go dancing with me.’

  I frowned. ‘Oh, yes. How do you do?’

  ‘How do I do? Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here?’

  ‘It’s seven o’clock in the morning, Mr . . . . ?’

  ‘Scott,’ he said, the joy draining from his face. ‘Lawrie Scott.’

  I walked past him and put the key in the lock, fumbling as I did so. What was wrong with me? Despite all my fantasies about how this was going to play out, faced with the reality, I was being just as obstructive as I had been before. I pushed inside and he followed me. ‘Are you here to see somebody?’ I said.

  He gave me a hard look. ‘Odelle. I have visited every art gallery, every museum in this bloody city, trying to find you.’

  ‘To find me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You couldn’t find me in five weeks? You could have just asked Patrick Minamore.’

  He laughed. ‘So you were counting.’ I blushed and looked away, busying myself with the post. He held up the brown-­paper package, and said, ‘I’ve brought the lion girls.’

  I couldn’t conceal the suspicion in my voice. ‘Who are they?’

  He grinned. ‘My girls in Mother’s painting. I’ve taken your advice. Do you think someone will have a look at them for me?’

  ‘I’m sure they will.’

  ‘I looked up those initials you pointed out, I.R. Didn’t find a single name. So it’s probably not worth anything at all.’

  ‘Are you planning on selling it?’ I asked, my head still fizzing, my heart thumping uncomfortably as I moved around the other side of the wooden counter. I’d never been so direct with a boy before in my life.

  ‘Maybe. See what happens.’

  ‘But I thought it was your mother’s favourite?’

  ‘I was my mother’s favourite,’ he said, laying the parcel on the counter with a grim smile. ‘Only joking. I don’t want to sell it, but if it’s worth something, it will get me started, you see. Any minute, Gerry the Bastard – excuse my French – could kick me out.’

  ‘Don’t you work?’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Don’t you have a job?’

  ‘I’ve had jobs in the past.’

  ‘The dim and distant?’

  He pulled a face. ‘You don’t approve.’

  The truth was, I didn’t approve of ­people who did no work. Everyone I knew since coming to London – Cynth, the girls in the shoe shop, Sam, Patrick, Pamela – we all had jobs. The point of being here was to have a job. Where I was from, doing your own work was the only wake-­up from the long sleep which followed the generations in the fields. It was your way out. It’s hard to change the messages that circulate all your life, especially when they’ve been there since before your life was started.

  Lawrie stared into the brown wrapping paper. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said, sensing my disapproval. ‘I dropped out of university. That was a few years ago. My mother wasn’t – oh, never mind. But I’d like to start something new.’

  ‘I see.’

  He looked embarrassed, jamming his hands into his jacket pockets. ‘Look, Odelle. I’m not . . . a layabout. I do want to do t
hings. I want you to know that. I—­’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I asked.

  He stopped, mid-­breath. ‘Tea. Yes. God, it’s early, isn’t it,’ he laughed.

  ‘Were you going to just stand out there until I turned up?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a mad boy.’

  ‘Who’s mad?’ he said, and we grinned at each other. I looked at his pale face. ‘Even without a job, my mother would still think you’re perfect.’

  ‘Why would she think that?’

  I sighed. It was too early in the morning to explain.

  WE HAD AN HOUR TOGETHER, sitting in the reception hall, the front door locked as I sorted the post and brewed the tea and coffee that Pamela and I had to keep renewing throughout the day. Lawrie seemed genuinely delighted by his cup of tea. It was as if he had never seen a hot beverage before.

  He told me about his mother’s funeral. ‘It was awful. Gerry read a poem about a dying rose.’ I put my hand over my mouth to hide my smile. ‘No, you should laugh,’ he said. ‘My mother would have laughed. She would have hated it. She didn’t even like roses. And Gerry has a terrible poetry voice. The worst voice I’ve ever heard. Like he’s got a plunger up his bum. And the priest was senile. And there were no more than five of us there. It was bloody awful and I hated that she had to go through it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He sighed, stretching his legs out. ‘Not your fault, Odelle. Anyway. It’s done. RIP, all that.’ He rubbed his face as if erasing a memory. ‘And you? How’s life without your flatmate?’

  I was touched he remembered. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Bit quiet.’

  ‘I thought you liked quiet.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘You didn’t want to go to the Flamingo.’

  ‘Different sort of quiet,’ I said.

  We were quiet ourselves then, me sitting behind the counter, and him on the other side, the brown-­paper package between us, waiting on the wood. It was a nice silence, warm and full, and I liked him sitting there unobtrusive – yet, to my eyes, fizzing with the light I had sensed when we first met.