"Until it's Over" - читать интересную книгу автора (French Nicci)

Chapter Seven

‘That’s such a nice jacket,’ said Orla.

‘Oh, thanks,’ I said. ‘I just wear it for my job.’

‘You a photographer as well?’

‘I’m a bike messenger,’ I said. ‘I’m being Owen’s assistant for the afternoon. Carrying his bags and holding up the silver umbrella.’

‘Where’d you get it?’

‘The jacket? Another rider gave it to me,’ I said. ‘He was from Poland. I think he got it there.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Owen, with a nasty politeness. ‘We haven’t really got much time.’

‘It’s great,’ said Orla. ‘ Poland?’

‘I think so. Perhaps we should get on with the shoot, though. As Owen said, we are running a bit -’

‘Is there a toilet here?’ asked Orla.

Owen looked at her. His expression didn’t change but I saw him clench his fists. ‘Outside and up the stairs,’ he said.

‘Ta.’

Orla – allegedly one of the ten most promising young actresses in the UK – scampered out of the studio, pulling the door shut behind her with a loud bang. Owen rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and wandered over to the small window that gave out on to the street. He leaned his head against the pane and closed his eyes.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘What in hell am I doing here?’ he said.

‘It’s not that bad. It’s going to be fine.’

‘The picture editor wants “vivacious”.’

That morning, Owen had phoned me as I was cycling past King’s Cross and asked me if I would help him out. He didn’t ask me very politely and he made no reference at all to the fact that in the past few hours we’d had sex twice. ‘Say “please”,’ I said sweetly.

‘Please,’ he muttered.

I told myself it would be a change from delivering packages, anyway, and called Campbell to inform him that I wouldn’t be available for the afternoon. As a last-minute stand-in, Owen had been commissioned to take a portrait for a feature on young British talent. Nineteen-year-old Orla Porter, rake-thin, pasty and pouty, had been the star of a TV soap I had never seen and she was apparently about to become famous in a film that hadn’t come out yet. But she wasn’t a real star yet. She didn’t have an entourage, a press representative, a makeup artist. She had just shown up at Owen’s friend’s studio and said she had to, absolutely had to, leave by four. And she hadn’t looked vivacious once, except on the subject of my jacket.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I see. Vivacious. I see.’

‘She looks depressed,’ said Owen. ‘Depressed and ill. She looks like a rubber band. There’s no life in her. I hate jobs like this – artificial photographs of fake celebrities wearing too much makeup and too few clothes, who’ve been spoilt rotten by attention but who’ll get dumped next season. Look at the pages of the magazines – these women all end up looking the same. You can hardly tell them apart. And that’s what everyone wants. They don’t want a real photograph. It’s just a con and I’m part of the whole stupid process.’ He turned away from the window and faced me. ‘Why the fuck am I doing it?’

‘For the money?’

‘Yeah. Money.’ He snarled the word at me, as if it was an obviously bad thing.

‘What’s the problem? Don’t take yourself so seriously, Owen.’

‘That’s it. I’m out of here.’

And he actually started picking up his equipment and stuffing it clumsily into bags. I put my hand on his forearm, but he pulled away. ‘Fuck off,’ he said. ‘You’re just like the rest.’

‘The rest of what? The capitalist system? Humanity?’

I tugged at the bag he was holding but he wrenched it back and it fell with a thud. A zoom lens rolled across the floor. ‘Have you any idea what that costs?’

‘I’m just a stupid bike messenger, remember? But it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s just money, after all.’

He gripped me by the forearm; I could feel his fingers digging into my flesh.

‘You’re hurting.’

‘You’re asking to be hurt.’

‘I never ask to be hurt.’

‘Oh, excuse me.’ Orla’s drawl made us spring apart. ‘Am I interrupting something here?’

‘Nothing at all,’ I said brightly.

Owen muttered something and retrieved the lens. I had thought Orla might have gone to the toilet to snort some coke. No such luck. She was as lackadaisical as ever, and asked if she could have something to drink before we resumed. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Coffee, tea, water, orange juice, cranberry?’

‘Do you have mint tea?’

‘No, sorry.’

‘Or camomile?’

‘Just Tetley’s.’

She winced. ‘Is the coffee decaffeinated?’

‘Not as such.’

‘What kind of water?’

‘Tap,’ I said.

She made another disgusted face. ‘I’ve got a headache,’ she said.

‘Do you want a paracetamol?’

‘No.’

‘Would you like to reschedule this for tomorrow?’ asked Owen. His voice was soft and creepy.

It didn’t bother Orla, though. ‘I’m on set tomorrow,’ she said.

‘Then we’ll just have to do it now, won’t we?’

‘S’pose.’

Owen unscrewed his camera from the stand and walked over to her. ‘I’d like to make things a bit more casual, less posed,’ he said. ‘But you know that the magazine wants you animated, happy. Do you think you could manage that?’

Orla just shrugged and stayed in exactly the same position, staring into the lens. Owen took some photographs and Orla was as unresponsive as it was possible to look. She didn’t even glower.

‘Orla,’ said Owen, eventually. I could see a muscle working in his jaw.

‘Yeah?’

‘You’re an actress, aren’t you? Can’t you manage one small smile? Look at you – you could be made of wax. Not my idea of sexy at all.’

‘There’s no need to be so rude. I think I’m going to call my agent and ask for someone else to photograph me.’

I looked at Owen, standing there clutching his camera as if he was about to bludgeon her with it. Then I nodded at Orla. ‘Can I have a moment?’ I said.

‘Astrid?’ said Owen. ‘You want a fucking girls’ chat now? You want to find out how she puts on her makeup?’

‘Behave,’ I said. I signalled to Orla to follow me across to the far side of the huge studio. We were standing by a window, latticed with steel bars, that looked out over the canal. It was raining, the drops dimpling the surface of the grey water. I took my jacket off.

‘You said you liked it,’ I said. ‘I want to give it to you.’

‘Are you sure?’ she said, unsurprised. ‘That’s really kind of you.’

‘It’ll suit you,’ I said.

She pulled on the jacket with the eagerness of a small child.

‘Could you do me a favour in return?’ I said.

She stood in front of a full-length mirror on the wall opposite the window and admired herself. ‘What?’

‘Like Owen said, you’re an actress,’ I said. ‘I know it’s grim and you’re tired, but for the next five minutes, could you play the part of a person who’s happy and vivacious and having a really great time?’

Orla’s expression was thoughtful, then she looked round at me and smiled, her eyes suddenly illuminated as if from the inside, her thin face radiant and sweet with imitation joy. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Astrid?’

We were walking back along the canal, through the gathering rain, both carrying a bag with Owen’s cameras and equipment.

‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Except that I hate myself for not kicking her out on her little arse.’

‘Don’t hate yourself.’

‘I’ll buy you another jacket.’

‘I didn’t even like it that much.’

‘And you’re getting wet and cold. Put this on.’

He took off his own and put it over my shoulders. ‘Are you always this forgiving?’ he asked.

‘Of you or her?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

The rain was heavy now, ploughing up the canal and pattering in the leaves of the trees. It trickled down my neck and bounced off my nose. I could hear the water squelching in my shoes. Owen’s hair was plastered to his skull and his shirt was wet through.

‘Dario will have used up all the hot water,’ I said.

‘Do you want to get a bus or a cab?’

‘Not unless you do.’

‘I quite enjoy walking in the rain.’

We walked in silence, taking care not to touch and not looking at each other but staring ahead at the muddy path, the grey water. I was hot and cold at the same time.

We went under a bridge and in the half-light, without knowing we were going to, we stopped and kissed urgently, pressed up against the damp wall, water dripping from our hair and running down our cheeks like tears. Our wet clothes clung to us. Then we moved apart and set off along the canal again. Owen hadn’t even let go of his bag full of equipment.

‘Do you like being a despatch rider?’ he said.

‘Kind of. I don’t want to do it for ever. Who wants to be a despatch rider when they’re sixty? I’ve already been doing it longer than I thought I would. I thought it was just for a few weeks in the summer while I made up my mind what I wanted to do next, and that was a year ago.’

‘So why did you continue?’

‘Because I never made up my mind what I wanted to do next. I was studying law, you know. That’s how I met Pippa. But I never really knew why I was doing it. I went travelling instead, worked abroad. It’s been fun, but at some point I guess I’ll have to get a grown-up job. It’s odd, isn’t it? I mean, I look at someone like Miles. When I first met him he was radical and dangerous. He was always going on about individual freedom and the way the system imprisons you. But what was I expecting? That Miles should still be chaining himself to trees and Dario should do botched painting jobs and get stoned and I should cycle round London until I drop dead in the saddle? And that we should all live like students in Maitland Road for ever and ever? Maybe that’s why we’re upset about moving. Because it means we have to look at our lives.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Are we having a conversation?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. You’re doing most of the talking: I’m just letting you.’

‘Oh. Well, I won’t say anything else, then.’

But he took me by the wrist, pulled me to a halt again and stared at me in the streaming rain. ‘Listen. You know you said I didn’t even see you. It’s not true. I see you. Here, look at your cheekbones, you could be from Lapland. Your eyes are set wide apart. You’ve got quite a sharp collarbone’ – with one finger, he traced it – ‘and strong arms and a flat stomach. On your shoulders, under your shirt, you’ve got small prominent knots of muscle. But then you’ve got these full breasts and -’

‘You’re talking about me as if I wasn’t here. I don’t like it. Stop it.’

‘I’d like to photograph you.’

‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.’

‘All the contradictions.’

‘Didn’t you hear me? I’m not one of your subjects.’

‘A beautiful object, an object of desire.’

‘Oh, please.’

‘Black-and-white. By a window.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He put his hands on my shoulders and looked at me. ‘I’d like to photograph you, Astrid,’ he said softly. ‘Please?’

‘I tell you what. Let me look at your other pictures and then I’ll see.’

‘Come on, then.’

He set off at a stride, and I had to almost run to keep up, the heavy bag bumping against my shins. We got to the house and he took it from me, then helped me out of his sodden jacket. There was the tinny sound of a radio coming from the top floor, but otherwise it seemed empty. We went up the stairs together. He opened the door of his room and looked at me.

‘Now?’ I asked, running my hands through my dripping hair and feeling my jeans cling to my legs.

‘Unless you don’t want to.’

‘Of course I want to,’ I said crossly. ‘I’m just wet through and – oh, never mind. Show me.’

Owen’s room looked different now, in the daytime, when I was fully conscious. The previous tenant, a friend of a friend of Miles, had been called Annette. She was an insomniac accountant who used to make cakes in the middle of the night, and who’d left to move in with her boyfriend when she got pregnant. She had almost parodically female tastes: the walls had been pink, the curtains lilac, with a frilly valance round the bed to match; there was a dressing-table with a folding mirror in the corner – I hadn’t known anyone of our age ever had things like that – and several soft toys heaped up in the armchair. It was very different now. The pink had been painted over with pale grey; the bed had been replaced by a futon, there were dark blinds instead of curtains; a dressmaker’s dummy stood in one corner, draped with scarves, and photographs hung on the walls.

‘Yours?’ I asked Owen.

‘Only that one.’ He pointed at a black-and-white picture of a swimmer, her body almost entirely submerged; the water, and the light that bounced off it, distorted the figure into a series of impossible angles, so that the image became almost abstract. ‘The others are by friends.’

There were photographs leaning against every wall, and more stacked on the table under the window. I felt apprehensive and self-conscious.

‘Why don’t you sit there?’ he said, gesturing to the chair by the side of the table. ‘Here, rub your hair with this towel.’

I sat down awkwardly. Owen picked up a stack of photographs and put them in front of me.

‘This is some of my more recent work,’ he said formally.

I stifled the impulse to giggle or run away. ‘Right,’ I said.

‘I’ve been working on them during the last couple of weeks. I’m trying to put together a portfolio.’

I turned the first one and was relieved: it was simply of water, full of ripples and glancing light – like the image on the wall, but without the human figure. Then I felt a quiver of shock run through me. It wasn’t just water after all: there was a face beneath the dislocated surface, barely visible, eyes staring up, hair spread out like weeds. Like a suggestion of a drowned woman’s face.

I turned over the next one. A naked woman was lying on a stained mattress, as white and flawless as a marble statue, her long hair rippling over her face so that it was only possible to see her open mouth. One hand was flung over the mattress and open, with writing on the palm that I couldn’t decipher; the other was between her legs. It was both erotic and impersonal and I shivered in my clammy clothes.

‘Your women don’t have faces,’ I said.

Owen didn’t reply, just turned over the next picture for me.

A stubby thorn bush in winter, looking as unyielding as metal. That was all right.

Another naked woman – the same as the first? – this time just standing very straight and letting herself be scrutinized by the camera lens.

The same woman, her hands tied with rope, a calm smile on her face.

‘Who is she?’ I asked.

‘Her’s name’s Andrea. We studied photography together.’

I felt a jab of something. Was it jealousy? ‘Does she have a problem doing these?’

‘Why?’ said Owen. ‘Would you?’

‘I don’t know what to make of them,’ I said. ‘I mean, they’re powerful, but I don’t know.’

‘They’re just exercises,’ said Owen, pulling out another print.

A foot, twice the size of real life. You could see every detail – the chipped nail, the hairs on the toes, the tiny specks of dirt.

Like a slap in the face, a sudden flamboyance of colour and life: an ordinary street scene, but Owen had made it look like an exotic carnival, as if Hackney was Brazil. I smiled.

Black-and-white again. A woman sitting by a window, her back to the camera, her head completely bald, her spine running in a knotted track up her smooth back.

The same woman close-up and facing the lens, with her eyes unnaturally wide. In them I could clearly see the reflection of the photographer. I put out a finger and touched it.

‘You,’ I said.

‘Self-portrait.’

Another tree, charred but with shoots growing from its blackened stump.

‘Trees, water and naked women,’ I said. ‘Lots of your photographs don’t look like photographs.’

‘What do they look like?’

‘Paintings. Sculptures. I don’t know.’

‘Do you want to see any more?’

‘Bring it on.’

He put several more prints on the table. I worked my way through them, and it felt like work, under his unblinking gaze. I laid the final one aside and swivelled round in the chair.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘They’re troubling.’

‘They’re meant to be troubling. At least you didn’t just say they were nice.’

I pulled my shirt over my head. ‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘They’re not nice.’

I unclipped my bra and dropped it on the floor. Owen was looking at me with an intensity I’d never seen before, even from him. I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my wet jeans and knickers.

‘You want me to photograph you?’ he said.

I shook my head.

Afterwards he lay beside me on the bed, stroking my stomach.

‘So is it still a no?’ he said.

‘That’s right.’

‘Don’t be such a prude.’

I shook myself free of his touch, got out of his bed and started to pull my clothes on. I had the impulse to shout at him but I resisted it and when I spoke it was in a calm tone. ‘We live in the same house, but until yesterday we’d scarcely exchanged a word. Then in the last twenty-four hours we’ve – what? We’ve fucked. Three times, though the first time it was like a fight and the second time you had your eyes shut all the way through, and then there was this. I have no idea what you think of me. Maybe you dislike me. Maybe you have contempt for me. Maybe you don’t think about me at all. I would feel really uncomfortable letting you stare at me through the lens of your camera in the way you’ve stared at these other women.’

Owen just looked at me. I thought I could detect the hint of a smile.

A door opened and shut downstairs and Davy called, ‘Hello!’ I shivered.

‘Is that it, then?’ I asked.

‘Is what it?’

‘With us – it’s finished, is it?’

‘It? I didn’t know it had ever actually begun,’ he said, in an indifferent voice.

‘No?’ I put my hands on either side of his beautiful, hurt face and kissed his angry mouth hard. ‘Then how can it be over?’

That night, I stood by the window and wondered what Owen was doing in his room, just a few feet away from me. But Pippa interrupted my reverie. As always, she didn’t knock or call, just pushed my door open and sat on the side of my bed. Her cheeks glowed. ‘Hey! Guess what?’

‘What?’

‘Mick used to be in the army.’

‘Did he? That makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it? It explains how he can cook meals for large numbers of people, anyway. Why’s he so secretive about it?’

‘He was in the first Gulf War and he left after. He doesn’t like talking about it.’

‘Clearly.’

‘After he left, he just travelled for years. I don’t think he has a clue what to do with the rest of his life.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Oh.’ Pippa gave a little giggle and threw me a coy look.

‘No! You didn’t?’ I said, dismayed at the thought of all that was going on in the house.

‘I did.’

‘You had sex with him? Just now?’

‘I thought he looked sad and I was curious about him. I thought it might cheer him up.’

‘You make it sound like half a pint down the pub.’

‘It wasn’t the most intense experience of my entire life. Nice, though.’

‘Did you just knock on his door and ask him if he wanted to have sex?’

‘Not quite. I went to his room. God, Astrid, it’s completely bare. There’s nothing in there at all. It’s like he’s still in the army. Just a bed and a chest and that cupboard we hauled up from the junk room, nothing else. No personal touches. Anyway, I poked my head round and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea or a beer or something. And when he said no, I just kind of went in. And one thing led to another.’

‘God,’ I said. ‘Mick.’

‘Mick.’ Pippa grinned.

‘Will you do it again?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. It wasn’t like that. It was just fun.’

‘Won’t it be awkward between you?’

‘Why should it?’

I found it difficult to answer. ‘It would be awkward for me, I guess.’

‘I just thought you’d want to know.’

‘Yes,’ I said dubiously.

‘How about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Your love life.’

‘I don’t have a love life at present.’

‘No?’

‘No!’

‘Then you’re going to, aren’t you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘Come on, Astrid. Owen. I saw the way you were looking this morning. And then not looking. I could have sworn you two had…’

I felt I was being cajoled into sharing confidences. But I wasn’t in the mood for bantering and giggling.

‘There isn’t any “you two”, and I wasn’t looking like anything. I was helping Mick make bacon butties.’

‘This is me you’re talking to, world champion at deciphering erotic glances in the morning. He’s gorgeous and he’s free. Why don’t you pounce? I would. Hey, can I borrow this shirt tomorrow?’

‘All right.’

‘Mick’s got a huge scar on his back. That was rather thrilling.’