Sitting there, it all became horribly clear. This dullness that seemed to inhabit every corner of her spirit was nothing but the unpainted, unadorned face of reality. She had no resources herself to enliven it. She had always captured emotions and then visited them like animals at a zoo, saddened by their moulting pelts and mournful eyes. And as for love, well! Had she not once felt herself to be rich with it? Had she not once ruled her world like a queen with palaces? It angered her that John had created a version of herself which she could somehow never imitate afterwards. Try as she might to accommodate them, her subsequent lovers had stood in her life like Ming vases in a council flat.
Agnes sat slumped in her pew for some time. It seemed that she could no longer shelter in the conviction of her own sanctity. Once he had wanted her, but that didn’t mean she was chosen. There was, however, she saw, a certain liberation to be found in ordinariness. Without John, without the myth of his faith in her, the cursed claim it made for her own exceptionalness, she was free to be as miserable as she liked.
Chapter Twenty-one
IN daydreams Agnes had construed her future as a career woman with elaborations which at the time had not seemed particularly fantasticaclass="underline" herself at the frantic centre of office life, fielding calls and making deals, jittery with caffeine and wearing a suit perhaps. The reality was at once more demanding and more pedestrian.
On Monday morning she sat alone at her desk with an interminable set of galleys for the new issue. A wet stain from a cup of coffee spilled moments before over her leg was beginning to cool, and her trousers adhered damply to the flesh of her thigh. It was eleven thirty and Greta had not yet appeared. The office was overheated, although outside the winter air was unusually damp and sticky. Agnes leafed disconsolately through the pages and grew tearful. She could sit here and weep and no one would notice. This realisation alone was enough to make her cry. Instead she stamped her foot and, in a fit of daring, brought back her hand in order to sweep the pile from the desk and send it flying, disordered, to the floor.
‘Not in yet?’ said Jean, putting her head round the door before Agnes could follow through her sabotaging blow.
‘Not yet.’ Agnes replaced her hand on the desk and suddenly found herself strangely absorbed in her work. She creased her forehead at the page in front of her and scribbled something in the margin. ‘Is that hotel feature ready for layout?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ replied Jean, with the ineffable certainty of her position. She hovered in the doorway. ‘When you have a moment, dear,’ she continued presently, ‘perhaps you could give her a little ring on the telephone. Make sure all is well.’
Jean disappeared from view, leaving Agnes to nurture feelings of resentment that Greta’s failure to come to work should be met with a tender concern somewhat lacking in the admonishments she received for her own shortcomings. In the spirit of defiance she loitered over her proof-reading for a further half-hour before making the call. She was sure Greta would not be at home in any case. Her lapses tended to occur in transit. She would emerge from the grey area of hazard and adventure which was the transport system with the triumphant aspect of one who had overcome great odds and gambled with death to do so.
To Agnes’s surprise, however, the phone was picked up after several rings, albeit without any of the usual pleasantries.
‘Greta?’ she ventured into the silence. ‘Is that you?’
‘Who is this?’
The voice sounded so unfamiliar that Agnes thought she must have dialled a wrong number; but while her feelings on such occasions were normally a mixture of horror and fascination as she landed with the arbitrariness of a falling meteor on the house of a complete stranger, her prevailing sense of Greta’s essential oddness led her to persevere.
‘It’s me. Agnes. From the office,’ she added stupidly.
‘Oh,’ said Greta (for it was indeed she), apparently enlightened by this latest addition. ‘What do you want?’
‘Well — nothing really. It’s just that you didn’t come to work and we wondered what had happened to you. We thought you might have overslept so we decided to give you a wake-up call!’
‘Just leave me alone.’
Greta’s voice had at least the effect of distracting Agnes from uncomfortable ruminations about her own tone of asinine plural jollity. Greta put the phone down. Agnes stared at the receiver in her hand and felt unutterably wounded. How could she speak to her like that, she who was only trying to help? As if she, Agnes, were in the wrong, sitting here alone in the office at twelve o’clock with no one to help or comfort her! Worse still, as if Agnes were not a friend or a sharer of confidences! As if she didn’t have her own cross to bear on this muggy Monday morning, with Finchley Central loitering on her doorstep like a persistent beggar and a stack of work dull as a telephone directory on her desk!
The receiver in her hand began to emit an alarmist noise. She recognised within its unrelenting blare the possibility that Greta had come to some harm which she was not prepared to divulge over the telephone. She wondered what she should do. To phone again would be futile; to raise the alarm somehow presumptuous. To do nothing would assist neither of them, for she would surely not be able to concentrate on her work with such a conversation so recently in her memory? The only remaining option appeared to be an impulsive act. She must go to Greta’s house herself and offer succour.
‘I’m going out!’ she cried, barrelling into Jean in the corridor, who wisely stood back as if from the path of a wailing ambulance.
She left the building and headed for the tube station. As if sensing her new-found command, a train came immediately. She boarded it and the crowds seemed to part like water before her, affording her a choice of seats. As the train was set in motion, Agnes felt the very tracks reverberating with her intent. Her face reflected in the window opposite looked severe but heroic, and the other passengers maintained a respectful distance. She drew herself up, ruminating upon the defence a sense of self-importance could provide against the importunate presence of the general public.
As the train rattled downhill towards Camden, however, the mysterious nature of her crusade began to nudge against her consciousness. What manner of thing could it be that had laid Greta, normally blithe and buoyant in adversity, so low? Perhaps she had received bad news from Mrs Sankowitz, her voice leaking through the interference from Saskatchewan to relay the particulars of death or destitution. Or something closer to home, a burglary or even an attempt upon her life. Perhaps she was unwell. Agnes disembarked at Camden with less composure than she had set out. What help was she, who knew so little of the world? What comfort could she offer, what unconventional wisdom, that she did not herself require? She trudged disconsolately over the lock and turned into Greta’s road. Perhaps, worst of all, Greta was merely suffering from world-weariness and angst; and for that, Agnes knew, there was no cure.
She knocked softly at Greta’s door, half-hoping not to be heard. Within seconds, however, the door flew open and Greta was before her. Her eyes were red and her cheeks puffy, but otherwise she seemed unharmed. She stood back to allow Agnes through.
‘What do you want?’ she said when they were in the sitting-room. Before Agnes could take steps to defend herself, she added: ‘I’ve got tea, decaff, or juice.’