As she walked she thought that she must definitely wash her clothes. And clean the kitchen. She should certainly — today, having failed to do so yesterday — call up Liam and ask about the furniture. It would help if he sold it, or gave her the money. She should call Kersti — though Kersti was sometimes frosty, if you caught her at the wrong time. But before, Kersti had offered to help; Kersti who was a lawyer had said she would write a legal-sounding letter to Liam. Dear Mr Peters, Our client Rosa Lane expects the return of her furniture or a financial agreement. Failure to comply will result in another such letter, phrased in a more baroque dialect. Then we will whirl you into the abyss of legalese. As well as that she should really get a job. That was clearly a priority. Reading History of Western Philosophy was not immediately necessary, but it might help her with the basics. There was much she had to read, but she also had to buy some tuna and spaghetti. Sit down with Jess. The bank — she had been putting that off for days, but a quick personal appearance might still win them round. Shakespeare, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and sundry others — if she had time. Hoover the living room and most important of all — clean the bath and toilet. And now she really had to write to Whitchurch. She felt bad now, that she hadn’t apologised. She should have thanked her. Though for what, precisely? The beer, the consolatory shandy? That had been kind, the carrion hunting vulture. She thought of calling her up. Hi, Sandra, sorry to bother you at work. How are you? I wanted to call to say I’m very grateful for all your kindness. Let’s meet again soon. She thought of Whitchurch in her office, biting her pencil, totting up accounts. Truly, she was blameless. Dear Sandra. Great to see you. Thanks so much. Thanks so very much. Soon you’ll be ashes, or bones. Yours, Rosa. If she had an hour before bedtime she could consider the lilies, sort through her papers and phone her father. Now she could hear the sound of birds singing. They were perched on the branches of the trees, and for a moment she thought how beautiful. The colours were pristine in the morning — the cold white sky, the white buildings dappled with sunshine. Everything was scrubbed and pure, the streets were clean.
In the bank there was a low sound like the sifting of envelopes and a mechanical whir. Machines beeped and gave out money. There was a long line of people, receiving cash. She had once seen a sci-fi film about a lottery. Each week you bought a ticket and entered into a draw. There were two prizes: one was 50 million dollars, the other was public execution. The chances of either were equally slim. Yet people entered, bought their tickets and waited. She had waited with her hand out at a million cash machines. Part of the cycle, taking and giving money. Now her own personal supply had dried up. She had a small segment left of her debt, a tiny pile of remaining slosh, and then even her borrowing would be stopped. This had caused her to question her assumptions. She had thought they let you pile up debt indefinitely, but that wasn’t true. They let you pile it up while they thought you could pay. When they realised you really couldn’t pay, they stopped the flow. They dammed up everything and told you to come in and talk about a repayment plan. They sent you tactless requests for money. They left messages on the answer machine. It was nice of them to call, but it didn’t make things better. She had to tell them that it wasn’t a lack of concern for her place in the international system of debit and credit, she was fantastically concerned about it, but she had been prioritising other things, and she had lost her sense of financial basics. She had ignored the rules of supply and demand, and her supply had simply vanished.
Therefore, she waited patiently while the clerks talked to each other and then she asked if she could see the manager. Of course he was busy, this moneysmith, and they told her to come back later. Better still, she could ring in for an appointment, said a brusque woman with a face like a piano. ‘Just a minute or so?’ said Rosa. ‘I’d be very brief. Just a question or two really, simple questions, requiring simple answers.’ Can you give me more? More time to pay off my debt, or more debt? She knew the answer anyway. But the heel-clicking woman didn’t want to help her. She didn’t even want to talk to her. Perhaps she looked unkempt, or maybe it was her unstudied air of desperation. ‘I’m sorry, but Mr Rivers is very busy. We can do you an appointment for Thursday,’ she said, this zipper-mouthed woman. Do me? thought Rosa. Do me an appointment? Thursday was three days away. ‘Perhaps tomorrow?’ said Rosa. ‘Tomorrow morning, first thing?’
‘Why not leave your number,’ said the woman.
‘Mr Rivers has my number.’ That old Sharkbreath knew everything about her. He had been patient for a while, but now he was getting sterner by the hour. ‘I’m sure he would like to see me,’ she said. ‘Please could you at least ask?’
Thus conjoined, Mandy clipped off. She vanished into another part of the bank and Rosa waited. She was too nervous to sit, so she stalked along the banks of machines and watched people taking money from them. We can do you an eviction on Tuesday, she thought. We can do you a spell in a reform centre for the fiscally incontinent on Wednesday. She edged around posters of perfect people with mortgages and TESSAs, smiling broadly because their mortgages made them so very happy. Whatever they might all say, she had really been trying to get a job. She knew money was an illusion, but she also knew that she needed food in her hardly illusory belly. It gave her something to aim for, and in recent weeks, she had tried a teeming array of things. Her terms were vague enough. She had to find a way to make money without being required to lie, to feign a certainty she didn’t possess. She thought that was broad enough. So she had tried to become a gardener. For a week she sat in the local library reading books about botany. The supply was patchy, but she learnt some definitions, tallied words with pictures. She pushed flyers through letterboxes and had a few calls. She went round to the house of a Mr Lewis, and they were getting on fine until she dug up a sunflower and he sent her away again. She had been applying for a variety of things, writing letters.
Dear Sir, I would like a job. Actually that’s not true. Without wanting to trouble you with my ambivalence, a job is what I need. Sheer bloody debt has forced me back. I am quite free of many of the more fashionable varieties of hypocrisy, though I suffer from many unfashionable varieties of my own. I have many strengths, most of which I seem for the moment to have forgotten. However, I am a goal-oriented person and so on, und so weiter … Yours ever, Rosa Lane.
Dear Madam, I am a person of inconstant aims and mild destitution. I find this combination of qualities excludes me from many jobs. But working together, I’m sure we can exploit my talents successfully. I still have a cream suit, a relic from a former life. I am unexceptional in every way, and eager to serve. You can find me in a borrowed room, in west London. Yours faithfully, Rosa Lane.