Authors: Sam Baker
I showered, washed my hair, upended my rucksack of filthy clothes into the washing machine and then did one more test in the hope it had changed its mind in the last hour. It hadn’t. I would have taken a taxi but there weren’t any, and I was between stops when a number 73 passed, so I ended up walking. As I was passing the Tesco Metro on the way I realised Art wouldn’t have any milk, let alone food. Filling a basket with Tesco Finest – Art didn’t really approve of Tesco – I added a bottle of good Chilean Merlot to the bread, tomatoes, cheese, olives and posh crisps already in my basket.
If Art wanted real food we could call out or drop down to the pizza place on the corner. Art’s flat was on the top floor of a sixties block between Soho and Regent Street, an area they’d just started calling West Soho. The porter, a sweet old Irishman with a face like a scrunched-up flannel and swept back white hair too thin for its length, smiled and told me Art was in. He watched me choose a lift, since all three were at the bottom, and smiled again as the doors closed, leaving me to the slow hum of the winch above, my reflection and my bag of shopping. I checked my hair, my clothes, my make-up from habit. I’d made an effort in that I had actually applied make-up, but that was about it. Art could live with me in jeans and a T-shirt and my old black leather jacket. He’d seen them often enough.
‘You’re …’ Art paused. ‘I was expecting you earlier.’
‘I stopped off at the shops.’
He caught me as I slipped past him on my way to his kitchen, wrapping his arms tight around me, so the Tesco bag was trapped at my side, and leaned his forehead against mine. I closed my eyes and when I opened them he was smiling.
‘Let me,’ he said, taking the bag from me.
Art raised his eyebrows approvingly at the Merlot, which cost more than the rest of the shopping put together, and nodded towards a cupboard when I suggested olives. I knew where the little bowls lived. They were a Christmas present to Art from my mother the Christmas before, along with a cashmere jersey, which he admired at length and then put in a drawer, complete with its label, where to the best of my knowledge it was still languishing. The bowls were Spanish pottery translated by Marks & Spencer. Faux Spanish, Art called them.
I emptied the olives into a bowl and tore off two sheets of kitchen roll to act as napkins. Behind me I heard a slight pop as Art uncorked the Merlot and a clink as he took two glasses from a different cupboard.
‘To us,’ he said, raising his glass.
As we toasted each other I watched Art suck air through the first slight sip of wine and smile. I returned his smile and drank mine down, aware the wine was smooth and more than drinkable but not appreciating it in the way he seemed to.
‘Glad to be back?’ I asked.
‘Happy to see you,’ he said. ‘Always happy to see you. But this city … After Afghanistan … Most of the people here don’t know how lucky they are to be alive. You know, over there, tribal feuds are obvious. Someone dumps an IED beside the road and blows up their neighbour’s truck, you’re not left in much doubt. Where you come from matters. What you believe matters. Here, we’re still pretending it doesn’t.’
‘Still …?’
‘World’s changing, babes.’
He knew I hated ‘babes’.
‘It’s getting harder. We were better off when the wall was up. At least no one pretended the Soviets were our friends. It was tough for the poor bastards they ruled, of course. But they had their rules and we had ours and everyone understood how it worked. America arming the Afghans was bloody stupid. I know it brought down the Russians, but now it’s just a mess. And we sit here, letting our boys get killed in the name of democracy, and half the people we’ve made government ministers out there couldn’t run a village council.’
‘You don’t think they deserve democracy?’
‘I’m not even sure
we
deserve democracy.’
I sighed and didn’t challenge him further. It was best not to when he was in this mood.
Perhaps my news should wait until tomorrow.
He nodded towards the Heal’s leather sofa which I’d gone to buy with him and ended up wishing I’d simply let him make the choice himself. I was more of a distressed leather, collapsed cushions, sloppy enough to look as if it had been there forever kind of girl. Art wanted chrome and white and let himself be edged into cream and wood. Neither of us was happy with the result, but it was Art’s money, and it was a lot of money, and every time I saw the sofa I wished I’d been out of the country that Saturday.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what’s been happening in your life?’
I paused too long and Art’s eyes narrowed very slightly, his gaze hardening.
‘Well?’ he said.
He was sitting into the corner of the sofa, his hair in need of a cut and his stubble at exactly the right length to make him look piratical. He was wearing chinos and a pale short-sleeved shirt that looked expensive. It suited him and he knew it. He always knew it. His clothes were meant to look thrown on while on his way to do something more important. Art was never one to underestimate his own attractiveness; and he’d mastered the subtleties of appearing famous, even if no one could quite put their finger on who he was. In restaurants, bars and private members’ clubs you could see people feel they should recognise him and compensate accordingly. It had happened more when we were first together. He’d thickened at the waist in the three years since. But he still, just about, had his looks. When I looked up, he was staring at me and there was a tightness to his eyes.
‘Thinking about when we were first together.’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘All those glamorous clubs and restaurants.’
‘And all you wanted to do was go to that pizza joint in Soho.’
‘They do—’
‘Yeah, I know. They do pasta too and salads. I half expected you to suggest we meet there tonight. So, what’s been going on? How was Haiti?’
‘Grim. I’m pregnant.’ I stopped. That wasn’t how I’d planned it.
Art blinked like someone had just turned on a floodlight. ‘How did that happen?’
‘The usual way.’
He wasn’t amused.
I shrugged apologetically.
‘How pregnant?’
I looked at him. ‘You left what, eight weeks ago, nine …? That pregnant, I imagine. When I missed the first period I didn’t think much of it. You know I’ve always been irregular.’
‘And then you missed a second?’
I nodded.
‘I thought you were on the pill?’
‘I am … Well, I was. I stopped taking it when I started to suspect.’ I’d stopped the migraine pills too, but I didn’t mention that. Art took a dim view of my migraines. ‘You remember I was sick the morning you flew?’
‘I thought that was …’
‘An excuse for not seeing you off?’ I ventured a smile. He didn’t return it.
‘Nerves, at the gallery thing. How did that go?’
‘Well enough. I had to fly to Haiti almost straight after. I must have thrown up that day’s pill.’
I didn’t tell him, because why make trouble – and with Art, I was starting to discover, trouble could be trouble – that I’d also forgotten to take my pill the previous day in the stress of trying to get pictures chosen and to the developers before Art took me to lunch and then, inevitably, back to his flat so we could spend the afternoon in bed before going out to supper and returning to bed, which should have been a repeat of the afternoon, but ended up being one of those lying in silence rigid and parallel to the edges of the bed arguments after I told him I didn’t have time to see him off at the airport.
And now I’ve come back to this.
I could see that in his face. I wanted to say I’d thought it through, and I was going to ring a clinic in the morning. Or that I’d thought it through and it was OK, I was going to take responsibility for this and being a single mother wouldn’t make that big a difference to my life. Who was I kidding? He’d know that for the lie it was. But at least it would be my lie and it would give him an out if he wanted one and he could live with that. The trouble was, I’d been thinking it through for weeks and still couldn’t reach a decision. In that moment, watching Art watch me, I wished I’d taken the decision earlier and dealt with it ruthlessly enough not to be having this conversation.
It would have been the end of us, but from the look on his face, it was anyway.
‘Hungry?’ Art said suddenly, drawing a line under the conversation.
I shrugged, taken aback. ‘Can be.’
We ordered takeout pizza, more for something to do than anything else. Art finished his and I ate half of mine and left the other half in the box, carrying both boxes through to the kitchen and hoping he wouldn’t look later. I considered going home, I even worked out the words, but when I got back to his living room it was empty. Through the bedroom door I could see the side light was on, hear water running in the en suite.
‘Shattered,’ he said, wandering through. ‘Need an early night. I’ll run you a bath if you need one …?’
I’ve never been that good at keeping my thoughts off my face. Certainly not as good as Art, who’d respectfully interviewed people I knew he despised.
‘You seem tense, babe.’
‘I’m just …’
‘Worried about stuff?’
I smiled, willing it to reach my eyes.
‘I’ll run you a bath …’ Water splashed like a little waterfall from the Italian monoblock he’d found in some magazine and the lights went out, followed by the flicker of a match. When I went through he’d lit the three candles on the windowsill and was sitting on the loo with the lid down, waiting for me. ‘There,’ he said.
‘How was it? You want to talk?’
‘I hate doing embedded. They keep us from the real stuff. How can you be expected to file proper copy if they won’t let you write about what matters? It’s all colour stuff. Our brave boys. Not that they’re not brave,’ he said hastily. ‘They’re bloody magnificent. Better than the moron politicians who sent them out there. But you know …’
Yeah, I knew. It was an opinion that used to be mine. One of many.
‘You all right?’
‘Just thinking about Haiti.’
He smiled sympathetically. I could feel him staring as I stripped off my jeans and T-shirt and reached behind me to unhook my bra. His reflection was watching me intently as I climbed out of my knickers and into the water, wishing Art believed in bubbles. With him sitting there and neither of us in the mood to talk it wasn’t possible to stare at the ceiling and simply soak. So I washed in a businesslike fashion, Art staring openly now. ‘Here,’ he said, handing me a towel.
In the bedroom he hesitated. ‘On or off?’
‘Off, if that’s OK.’
‘Whatever you want.’ He flicked the room into darkness, considered it for a second and dragged back one curtain, letting in a sliver of communal area lights from the office block behind. He stripped briskly, draping his shirt and jeans neatly over his bedroom chair as always and climbed in beside me.
He reached for me and I rolled into his arms, wrapping my own around his neck and holding him tight. I was glad to see him, I told myself. Glad we appeared to have made friends. Also it stopped him simply grabbing bits before I was ready. He suffered it for a few seconds and hugged me back, before reaching up and gripping my hair to turn my head so he could kiss me. It was hard and deep and fierce.
‘Missed you,’ he said.
‘Missed you too.’
I felt him smile in the darkness before shifting his other hand to my breast, fingers tightening on flesh.
‘Gently …’
He stilled. ‘It’s been a while,’ he said, not bothering to keep the irritation from his voice.
There was no pretence, no kissing or stroking. He just hammered into me, hard fingers digging into the soft flesh at the top of my arms. In the morning there would be finger bruises. Biting my lip until it hurt, I wondered: Was it the baby? Having put it into me, was he trying to get it out again?
He changed positions a couple of times. I didn’t realise at first that I was counting, silently, methodically in my head. Not Art’s thrusts. Not anything really. Just crouching outside myself, letting the long seconds pass, like a child playing hide and seek. Finally, he collapsed at my side, gasping like a drowning man.
‘You OK?’ he asked eventually.
‘Fine.’
‘Do you want me to …?’
My hand found his and I squeezed it briefly. ‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘You’re tired. I’m tired. It was a long journey. You should sleep now.’
Unconsciousness descended on him almost before the last word was out of my mouth. Slowly his breathing regulated and I slipped noiselessly from the bed, shutting the bathroom door behind me before turning on the light over the basin. I slid the lock as an afterthought, before running a basin of cold water and using Art’s flannel to numb myself. In the mirror finger bruises already blossomed on my upper arms and the back of my thighs.
I stepped closer to the mirror and peered at myself. I didn’t look any different. I certainly didn’t look pregnant. But I would, and soon, a little thickening at the abdomen, people who didn’t know me wondering if I’d put on weight. It occurred to me, belatedly, that pregnancy might be the reason my breasts were more tender than usual when Art snatched at them.