So she walked on slowly, Jess’s shoes pressed to her chest. She rounded a corner and saw a church silhouetted against the sky. There was a faint smell of carbon lingering in the air, but the square was quiet. The sports cars, Volvos, 4WDs and Rovers were parked, each next to their respective mansion. Everything was quieter for a few streets, as Rosa passed boutiques selling brightly coloured children’s clothes and a restaurant with its tables full. The evening rush was beginning, and the hum of cars from Holland Park was constant. Rosa trotted down a few more mews streets, past neatly painted houses. On Holland Park Avenue everything was blurred. She walked faster, hoping to tire herself out. She turned uphill to take a look at the park. The winter was sitting hard on it, and the fronds had withered. She stood at the edge, watching squirrels. So much bounce, she thought, in your average squirrel! But that was plainly irrelevant, so she turned to the pond and watched ducks paddling around a small lake. A few geese stood on the side, emitting sporadic honks. It was almost the end of the day, and the park was emptying out. The benches were empty now. On the surface of the lake she saw the reflected forms of the buildings, the abandoned tearoom, the ice-cream shop which was closed for the winter. She stood at the gates for a while, passed by successive mothers with pushchairs, and then she turned away.
She crossed the main road and saw everything the same as she had left it. At St James’s Place the houses were immaculate, still in their undivided forms. Each mansion was supplied with its own single buzzer, the badge of the millionaire. The windows were lit up, a halogen glow, showing rooms clad in books, everything plush. Rosa liked a spot of lecher les fenêtres, it was modus vivendi for those who could never buy. London spun you out like that, made you envy wealth. You envied it because it seemed like freedom — the freedom to choose where you lived, to travel as you liked, to conduct research and leave London, if you wanted. This hyper-wealth was everywhere, impossible to ignore. In one room, a man sat at a fine oak desk, leafing through his papers. In another, a woman read by a fire. She caught a glimpse of flames and a lustrous hearth. Still you must get a job. Get a place to live. Ask Andreas. Talk to Jess. Talk to Liam. Beg the bank. Collate your papers. Read 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. The TEMP. A JOB! Really! NOW! Soon she discovered she was walking swiftly; she was hastening along with her chin into her collar. And then she thought, If you don’t get this job then what will you do?
She arrived panting at Ladbroke Grove, gulping down lungfuls of Westway smoke. She stood on the edge of the pavement, watching the lights change and the day grow darker. The Arabs were standing behind her, laughing together. Now a man threw a cigarette in the gutter, and checked his phone. She counted the number of people holding phones to their ears. Dozens, and then she stopped. She counted hats and colours. With a grimace she forced Jess’s shoes back onto her feet. The tube was beginning to pour out commuters. She heard the trains clattering overhead. Nice to have the tracks above the road, she thought. Gave you a view when you went home. The westbound trains were heading out to Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, edging towards the curve of the river. The shores would be dim in the dusk. Beyond was the smog of the motorway, the exit routes. This time of day there were no short cuts. The cars nestled bumper to bumper. The air was warmed by car exhausts, and the streetlights had just come on, each with its surrounding circle of light. Consider the meaning of TEMP — she thought this as she passed below the bridge and saw the word, still up there, repeated across an iron buttress. TEMP the rest, she thought. What the TEMP! The light was fading across the grey-fronted grime-dusted houses. But today the sky had dazzled her. Now the evening was crisp, the wind was swift and cold.
In the shop on the corner they never greeted her, and she appreciated their discretion. She asked mildly if there was any semi-skimmed milk and was gestured towards a sour-smelling fridge. A radio was playing a tinny tune, something from the eighties, remixed for the present. The shop door was banging in the breeze. She scattered a few packets of biscuits in her basket, then she bought an apple and a banana and a tin of tuna and a tin of tomato soup. She saw a man with a wart on his forehead, like the eye of the Cyclops. That disturbed her, and she stood by him for a moment, watching as he dropped mushrooms into a paper bag. When he had gone she moved towards a pile of tins, each tin with a miniature portrait of peas or carrots. It was hard to know which one to choose. The fridge was full of creams and fats, and now she found there was nothing else she wanted to eat. So she stood in a queue marking time and then a bag was slung towards her. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and received a returning silence. ‘Goodbye,’ she added. The silence was rich and thick, so she took the plastic bag and walked round the corner, casting casual glances at the things of the street — the paving slabs that were chipped and cracked, the trees rooted in their small patches of earth, the shut up windows, the bolted doors.
Now she was outside Jess’s flat. Pausing to note that the bins were still overflowing, she opened the door. Inside she kicked off her shoes and undid her coat. The bag rustled when she set it down on the kitchen table. In the flat she took off her smart clothes and exchanged them for jeans and a sweater. She wiped the blood from Jess’s shoes. She washed them carefully in the bathroom and thought they might be OK. She packed them back into their tissue paper and stashed them away. Would there be hell to pay? she wondered as she shut the door of the wardrobe. In the kitchen she ate quickly, drinking the soup and mashing the tuna with borrowed mayonnaise. She scooped everything into her mouth. When she had eaten, she washed her plate in the sink. She wrote:
Dear Mr Bright, In reference to your advertisement for a Human Wretch (salary scale B for Blimey that’s not much), I would like to present myself. I am quite sure I am lowly and ravaged enough for the job. A starting salary of B for Barely enough for rent and food is just what I want. I am aware that, being almost entirely witless, I should expect no more. Yours ever, Rosa Lane.
Dear Sir or Madam, I would like to ask you if you are really sure you don’t want me for the job of librarian? I am really quite certain I love books — big books, as well as thrillers and the rest — more than anyone. I would dust them lovingly and talk with faltering enthusiasm to borrowers. Surely you have a place for me? Are you sure you’re not tempted? A little after all? Yours eagerly, Rosa Lane.
Dear Madam, I would like to propose myself as a piano instructor at your school. I can play the piano, took a few grades, I was quite good at sight-reading. I wasn’t ever going to be brilliant, you understand, however much I practised, but I was all right. The old liked to listen to me play, grandparents and the rest. My parents suffered it — my father never really liked it but my mother quite enjoyed it. It was my mother who was really musical. She had a really lovely voice. You should have heard her sing the Queen of the Night. Oh, it was really beautiful. If I listen to that music now, I weep wretchedly, I confess. But thanks to my mother, I’m good at beating time. I’m sure I could help a few children learn the basics. I would dress appropriately and never be late. I would never slam the lid on their fingers if they forgot their scales. I would not wrap their knuckles with a stick. Unlike Mrs Watson in year nine I would not tremble with ecstasy when sopranos sang. I always found it embarrassing as a child, to see her there, so surrendered and out of control. Yours, Rosa Lane.