And now, excitably, Fraser was saying something else.
‘What?’ she said. She had not heard. There had been some furious shouting—a pap and a security guard were still having a private feud.
‘I want to buy you a drink,’ he said. ‘What time do you finish work?’ His face was still shining with joy.
‘Eight,’ she said.
‘I’ll meet you here at eight. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ she said, and he jogged off, whooping and waving to some of the others.
He was early. At ten to eight she saw him waiting in the lobby. No longer in his photographer’s fatigues, he was wearing a suit with an open-necked shirt and two-tone shoes. (Those shoes made her smile.) And he looked touchingly nervous. He was nervously pacing.
As soon as they were out of the hotel he surprised her by lighting a cigarette. A Silk Cut. It seemed an effeminate choice of smoke for him. He offered her one and she shook her head. Then she said, ‘Yes, okay.’ He lit it for her—together they made a tulip of their hands in the fresh night wind. She was so intensely aware of the points at which their fingers were touching that for a second she felt slightly faint. The frail flame steadied. They started to walk towards Hyde Park Corner. ‘I don’t really smoke,’ she said.
‘No, me neither.’
He told her that a London tabloid had snapped up his pictures of ‘Jane Green’, and they were selling well in other territories too.
‘How much for?’ she asked.
‘Quite a lot.’
‘How much?’ she insisted.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not that much.’ He was smiling, very pleased with himself. ‘Enough for a drink in one of these places.’
They went to one of the other handsome Park Lane hotels for their drink, and there, in the very first lull, with her poor heart moving into overdrive, she lifted her eyes to his and said—‘I find you very attractive.’ It was not the sort of thing she was in the habit of saying to men she had only just met. It was not the sort of thing she was in the habit of saying at all. That she said it was part of the intense strangeness, the strange intensity of those days. It was what she was thinking, and she felt a sudden vertiginous freedom just to say it. So she did.
For a moment he seemed less sure of himself. There was in his smile for the first time a shadow of self-doubt. It was not what she had said—that or things like it he had heard many times. It was the essentially unflirtatious way that she said it. She said it as if it was something important. She looked very serious. It was very intense. He smiled—the shadow of self-doubt—and seemed to be about to say something himself, he was not sure what, when she leaned through the elegant light and kissed him.
Without saying a word, she then placed herself entirely in his hands, and he seemed happy to take the initiative. The luxurious mojitos finished, and paid for without her noticing when or how, she found herself in a throbbing taxi, then in a street somewhere south of the river—perhaps Battersea—then in a tiny lift, and then in an equally tiny flat, then on a sofa that seemed still to wear the plastic wrapping in which it was shipped, with his tousled head between her white thighs (his hair was thinning on top), and then naked on an enormous bed, and all the time her heart was pounding. He would not let her lift a finger. She loved the way he would not let her lift a finger, the way he let her lose herself again and again in her own passivity. Her fantasies were mostly fantasies of passivity, for instance of medical examinations, of white-smocked professionals straying from their task and starting to touch her in ways they were not supposed to.
‘You’re too smart to work in a hotel lobby,’ he said. He was propped on his side, peering at her in the imperfect darkness of the London night.
‘I know,’ she said, and then laughed—Ha! — at her own immodesty.
‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘So why do you? You went to university?’
She nodded.
‘Which?’
She told him.
It made him laugh. ‘Jesus!’ His smile shone. ‘That’s quite intimidating!’
‘Is it?’
‘So why do you work in a hotel?’ he said.
She said she wanted to set up a small hotel, somewhere near the sea, and she needed some experience of hotel management. That was why.
‘That’s very sensible,’ he said. ‘Most people would just get on a plane somewhere and fuck it up.’
‘I know,’ she said. This time she did not laugh.
‘How long have you been working there, in the hotel?’
‘A few months.’
‘What did you do before?’
‘I worked in publishing…’
She had taken his flopping penis idly in her hand—or it seemed that she took it idly. In fact, she felt quite self-conscious, and she just held it as in slow pulses it started to stiffen. ‘I worked in publishing,’ she said. He seemed to have no further questions. Still feeling quite self-conscious, she moved on the mattress until her flaxen hair spilled onto his furry stomach.
Some time during the night, when she went to the loo, she opened the fridge in the tiny kitchen. It was entirely empty—not even milk. It had the pristine white look of a display fridge in a department store. It was then that she noticed there were no covers on the duvet or the pillows. In the morning, while he showered, she started to wonder about these things. The flat had a totally unlived-in feel. It seemed to be very new. In the living room there was nothing but the sofa, still in its plastic wrapping, and a TV—its packaging too was still there. The kitchen was equipped with two mugs, one plate, one knife and one spoon. The oven had never been used—it still had pieces of polystyrene and an instruction manual in it. The expanse of built-in storage space in the bedroom was empty. She was looking into this surprising void when he put his arms around her waist and picking her up, spun her once, twice—she squealed, her legs kicked and flailed—and fell with her onto the bed.
‘Why isn’t there anything here?’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean those cupboards are empty. There’s nothing there. Don’t you have any clothes?’
‘Clothes? What do I need clothes for?’
‘And there’s nothing in the kitchen. Not even a kettle.’
‘I’ve just moved in,’ he said, more seriously. ‘That’s obvious, isn’t it?’
‘Where are all your clothes then?’
‘They’re somewhere else. I’m moving my stuff here next week. What’s the matter?’
She did not press him.
Instead, she went and had a shower. There was only one towel and it was already quite wet. While she was using it, and looking at herself in the steamy mirror, he shouted through the door, ‘Do you want to go out for breakfast, or do you want me to go get some stuff?’
‘Go out!’ she shouted back. She brushed her teeth with his toothbrush, and daubed some of his deodorant under her arms.
He was smoking a Silk Cut in the kitchen with the little window open, using the sink as an ashtray. ‘Okay?’ he said, smiling.
As they went down in the tiny lift—the flat was quite high up, had a view over the huge normality of south London—she surprised herself again. She said, ‘I’m in love with you.’
* * *
The past. As if someone had forgotten to lock its cage and it had slipped out, looking for her. It is on the loose now. It is at large in the lobby. It is there with the multilingual louche flâneurs who populate it at this hour of the day. Half past four, p.m. She stands there next to an enormous vase of flowers, staring out at the public luxury.