*
At Ladbroke Grove station she felt a low sense of disappointment because she had failed to ask. Something in his cordiality prevented her. He kept it all humorous, and she was forced to play along. He made jokes and laughed loudly and she thought, A BED! Still she couldn’t summon it, and he pushed his hair out of his eyes, wrapped his arms around her and said, ‘So I’ll see you later?’
‘Later?’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Is that why, or the everlasting why?’ he said. He had been making this joke for a few weeks, ever since she had mentioned it. Still, she laughed politely. ‘I’m proposing that we meet again later. Because I haven’t enjoyed enough of your company just now. How about it? Dinner? Something? Drink?’ He shrugged his shoulders at her.
A place to stay? she thought. Anyway it was a reprieve. She could go round and ask him over a bottle of wine. Casually, not urgently and in the harsh daylight. So she nodded. ‘That would be great,’ she said.
‘Always great, this word, great.’
‘It is all great,’ she said, and he smiled a thin determined smile and said, ‘See you later. Any time. Drop by. I’m just learning lines,’ he said. ‘Any old time.’
‘OK,’ she said.
‘Ciao bella,’ he said.
They kissed at the entrance of the tube, surrounded by the milling floods of people and then she turned and, like a villain thwarted, walked home again.
Things to do, Monday
Get a job.
Wash your clothes
Clean the kitchen.
Phone Liam.
Ask Andreas if you can stay
Read widely in world religions
Buy some tuna and spaghetti
Call Jess and apologise.
Go to the bank and beg them for an extension — more money, more time to pay back the rest of your debt.
Read the comedies of Shakespeare, the works of Proust, the plays of Racine and Corneille and The Man Without Qualities.
Read The Golden Bough, The Nag-Hammadi Gospels, The Upanishads, The Koran, The Bible, The Tao,the complete works of E. A. Wallis Budge
Read Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Bacon, Locke, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and the rest
Hoover the living room
Clean the toilet
Distinguish the various philosophies of the way
Unearth the TEMP
Collate, sort, discard your so-called papers
Clean the bath
Before Jess gets home — clean!
When she got back she saw the answer-machine light was flashing, and in the hope that one of the messages might be for her, she pressed the button. Eternally optimistic, she was thinking the flashing light might save her. If she had been offered a celestial helping hand, she would have grasped it. But instead there was a computer pretending to be a man: ‘HELLO, THIS IS DAVE CALLING TO TELL YOU THAT YOU HAVE WON AT LEAST A THOUSAND POUNDS’ it said. ‘CALL THIS NUMBER TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE. MANY CONGRATULATIONS!’ The computer pretending to be a woman said ‘To listen to the message again, press one’, and Rosa pressed two instead.
‘This message has been deleted.’
‘Hello, this is Jackie from the bank calling for Miss Lane. Can you give me a call when you have time.’
An emissary of Sharkbreath, so Delete! DELETE! Rosa instructed the friendly computerised voice, and the message vanished for ever.
She thought she might clean the kitchen, but instead she made another call. After a few rings Kersti answered. Kersti was definitely becoming waspish. Here they were, this afternoon, this day fleeting softly towards evening, and Rosa said, ‘Hello, Kersti, it’s Rosa’ and there was no reply. No trace of friendly recognition at all! That sounded bad, so Rosa, nervous and picking up speed, said, ‘Hi, Kersti, sorry to bother you, it’s Rosa.’
‘Yes, Rosa, what?’
‘Hoping you have worked a miracle of legalese.’
‘Don’t you know it’s Monday?’
‘Monday? What happens on Monday?’
‘Monday is my worst day.’
‘Should I perhaps call later?’
‘I haven’t been in touch with Liam,’ said Kersti. ‘I’ll let you know when I do.’
‘Look, Kersti, I know you’re very busy. It’s very kind of you to help. I know it seems stupid, trivial, to be quibbling about a tacky sofa and some chairs, a second-hand bed, the rest. But my credit card is about to explode in a ball of fire, so satanic is the interest. And then there’s the overdraft, you know, it’s dull but it would really help,’ she said. ‘The furniture would help. If Liam would only do the decent thing, sell it, give me my half.’
‘You see, Rosa, the rest of us prefer to have a JOB,’ Kersti said, repeating the refrain. Everyone hymned it in a different way, but they all hymned it the same. It reminded her of a song someone sang when she was young. You got to have a J O B if you wanna be with me. Anything would be better, Kersti was saying, than ringing around begging her ex-boyfriend to sell her furniture. Almost anything would be more dignified.
‘A lot isn’t,’ said Rosa. ‘Believe me, I’ve had a look. A lot out there isn’t dignified at all.’ And after dignity, there was the getting up, getting there on time, sitting yourself down, the rest.
‘Rosa, I have to go,’ sighed Kersti.
‘It’s not lassitude that stops me.’
‘Rosa, I’m going now. Talk to the bank.’
‘The bank is proving intractable.’
Kersti said, ‘Yes, tell him to come in. OK, Rosa, time’s up. I’ll have another go soon, OK. Now Mr Wharton is waiting.’
‘I do understand, absolutely. I agree, you must get on. If you could call Liam, that would be great. But I’ll understand if you’re too busy.’
‘Yes, thanks for your call. I’ll get back to you soon,’ said Kersti, because Mr Wharton had just come in.
‘Well, it’s very kind of you. I am very grateful,’ said Rosa.
She had phoned a few too many times already. Really, it was sketchy of Liam. He was holding onto the stuff, waiting for her to succumb to madness or to marry rich. She couldn’t think why else he was delaying. Negotiations had stalled. The furniture was still in his flat. The bank sharks were getting vicious, showing a distinct sense of purpose. They really wanted the money back. Or her head on a platter. Now it was just Rosa and Kersti, trading barbs. Kersti smiling through her deep sense of frustration.
‘OK, Mrs Middleton, I’ll speak to you soon,’ said Kersti.
Then the line went dead, leaving her standing with a rictus grin and a receiver pressed superfluously to her face. Tabula rasa, she thought. Hardly possible at all.
*
Now she heard the dry speech of the commentator, releasing the latest. Today the war continued. The police caught a man trying to board a train with a bomb. The prime minister announced that global warming is a serious threat, perhaps the most serious our civilisation has faced. Interest rates went up. The archbishop said that abortion laws should be revised. England lost at sport. And, breaking news, Rosa Lane distinctly failed to pass the guardians of the gate and unearth the thing that lies within. Yes, that’s right, initial reports are confirming that Rosa Lane — thirty-five and quite a lot, creeping towards the end that awaits us all — is still steadfastly failing to cast off the manacles, mind-forged or otherwise — and gain the pearl beyond price! We’ll be following that story through the evening but now let’s go back to the war. The clock in the corner was like a metronome. It steadied her nerves. She found some pieces of paper on Jess’s desk, and a black fountain pen in a silver box. She sat down to write. She wrote to her father, telling him not to worry. Things were fine. The furniture was well in hand. The furniture is definitely going to come good. The cash is mine, daddy, all mine.