Juliette stood with her back to the barrier, her elbows propped up on the edge behind her. A train hurtled by, its noise shattering the unreality of our view. With a sudden lithe movement she pushed down on her arms to hoist herself up on to the narrow ledge.
‘Don’t do that,’ I said. ‘It’s dangerous. You might fall backwards.’
‘You’re not scared of heights are you?’ she taunted.
She proceeded to bring her feet up on to the top of the barrier and stand up on it, still facing inwards on to the footpath. Her hair was blowing all around her. I could see her teeth smiling between the strands.
‘It’s so easy to play with death. Tickle it under its armpits until it squeals with laughter. I could just jump. Or, if you like, you could push me. Death depends on the smallest of gestures.’
She outstretched her hands to me and I gratefully took hold of them so that I could bring her down.
‘Hold tight,’ she said.
She stepped backwards off the barrier into the space that hung hundreds of feet above the wrestling river. She hung for a moment dangling from my arms. She had now let go of my hands altogether: I was holding hers.
She smiled up at me between the bars of the barrier that separated us.
‘If you wanted, you could let go.’ Her face looked calm.
It was mine, I imagined, that looked tortured.
Summoning my strength I hoisted her hack over the barrier. We stood facing each other on the bridge.
‘That was an incredibly stupid thing to do,’ I said.
But without replying she turned on her heels. I followed her across the bridge on to the Embankment. She was now walking with alacrity, as if being chased by an invisible demon snapping at her ankles.
We walked up Charing Cross Road into Soho. Unlike me, she was obviously used to London on foot, used to its narrow crannies and ungiving crowds. Up until now, I had only experienced London (only experienced this century), at a safe and privileged distance. Juliette then turned off Old Compton Street into a dark street full of scaffolding. I could see no sign of a restaurant at all, just tall terraced houses fronted by narrow entrances with entry systems to them marked by names such as aphrodite or diana. The rooms on the above floors were suffused by red light where these goddess-whores turned men into trees or deer.
The garish lettering of the café’s name only became visible when we were standing directly beneath it. The flashing sign written in green neon light, the lorelei, had been concealed by the metal scaffolding. I followed Juliette up some shallow stone steps into a small room.
The light was dim except for the flickering of candles on the checked tablecloths. Home-made wooden tables dotted the room. Covering one side of the wall was a painted mural. The painting was of the Lorelei on a rock, naked, her marigold hair falling over her breasts. A ship in the distance, far out to sea, was sailing in her direction. She was luring the ship to her doom with her voice. But I am safe, I thought, because I can’t hear her singing.
SEVENTEEN
As we sat down Juliette pointed to the mural and asked me if I liked it.
‘It of course depicts a truth – the extraordinary power of women over men. Women are without question the more dangerous sex,’ I replied.
Juliette was now looking at me in a particularly unthreatening way. She looked about as dangerous as a dormouse.
‘Oh, but you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Men make women dangerous.’
Did she mean ‘make’ as in make up or ‘make’ as in incite? I really couldn’t be bothered with her riddles. I was just about to change the subject when my elbow grazed against my glass of red wine and knocked it over. The table cloth was soaked and we had to move to another table.
We talked for an hour or so while eating a bland, unappetizing pasta, but I managed to learn little about her or Justine.
‘Whose funeral was Justine at?’ she asked.
‘My mother’s.’ I expected the standard response of sympathy but she said nothing.
‘What was she like?’ she asked.
‘Beautiful’ I replied.
‘I don’t mean Justine.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘And?’
‘And? What else do you need to know? Isn’t a woman being beautiful enough for you, enough for anyone?’
Juliette looked down at the table and I tried to read her face. Seven different emotions seem to cross her face at the same time, not one of them I could distinctly interpret. This was why Juliette could never be beautifuclass="underline" too many emotions ran cross-current in her. She lacked the severe implacability whose raison d’etre was to be ruffled by desire. Juliette had too much character in her face to allow a lover room to leave his mark. Her countenance left nothing for him to do. Far better the tabula rasa, the divine blankness of a Justine, that begged me to write all over her.
EIGHTEEN
I walked Juliette home. She lived in Waterloo, above a pet shop, down a gloomy street called The Cut. The street was deserted and the moon shone high and round in the starless sky.
‘The moon always makes me want to take risks,’ Juliette said.
She was standing on the doorstep of the pet shop. Litter fluttered beneath her feet and the smell of rotten vegetables emanated up from the street. Out of the blue, a newspaper article I had recently read came to mind. An animal behaviourist had wanted to find out the most effective way of winning an animal’s love. He constructed an experiment involving three puppies. The first puppy he showered with affection, the second he consistently verbally and physically abused and the third was treated on alternative days with both methods. At the end of the experiment it was the third puppy who ended up most devoted to him. The insecurity of being treated so inconsistently triggered off the third puppy’s need to please. Juliette was to be my third puppy. I was serious about winning her love. She looked up at me and, in the doorway’s shadow, her face could have belonged to Justine. I bent down and kissed her mouth. However, it was the face of Juliette who turned away from me a few moments later.
In the background the tannoy of Waterloo Station was announcing the times and destinations of the trains running out of London. The rhythm and intonation sounded like the chanting of a litany. In the grey empty street it had started to rain, drops falling down over Juliette’s face. In the blue light from the fish tank in the pet shop window she looked like a sorceress.
‘I’ll get you an umbrella,’ she suddenly said.
Before I could stop her, she had disappeared inside the pet shop and shut the door. The light in the floor above the shop went on and I saw her silhouette move about the rooms that faced on to The Cut. The door opened again and she reappeared on to the street. Handing over the umbrella without a word, she went back in and shut the door behind her.
The design of the umbrella was hideous and having opened it up, I had to shut it again at once. I was unable to find a taxi and finally had to walk home. I arrived home aching and drenched to the skin.
NINETEEN
I waited a fortnight before phoning Juliette again. Mainly because of a bad cold that I had caught, but also because it gave me a certain pleasure to think that she would be waiting in for my call. As far as I could tell, there was nothing to fill up her thoughts but a kind of waiting for her Prince to come. Just existing is never enough for anyone. So I was surprised that when I did phone there was no reply. I phoned consistently over the following few days but still there was no answer. On late Sunday evening I finally got through to her. She recognized my voice immediately, which I took to be a good sign, and she eagerly accepted my invitation to supper the next day.