The moment she walked into the restaurant, I knew it was her.
I should have known who it would be, anyway. And, I must confess, I’d been pretty certain. But seeing her made things different.
I looked at the slender figure poised in the doorway, silhouetted against the rain-wet street outside, and I thought to myself: dearest God. This is where it all gets real.
* * *
I had been back in town for a couple of days when she called me. It had been a strange time.
I spent most of it resting. Or recovering. Call it what you will. Our big deal had been negotiated, the contract drawn up, and Peter had decreed that our team, having gone many extra miles for Soft Info, were to take a week or so of well-deserved leave to spend some quality time with the loved ones. We’d all come home. All of us except Lucy and Charles, of course, who were off to some dreadful conference or other.
So all of a sudden I had time on my hands. Time to be alone. Time to be with myself. The days, which had for so long been crammed with frantic activity and rising tension, were suddenly empty and spacious.
I slept late, had a lazy breakfast, watered the plants. And I sat on the couch for hours, watching veils of rain blow past in the air above the river. I gazed at the pearly, luminous, shimmering skin of the river, so restless and so peaceful. I heard no sound except the rattling of water on the roof, my own breath and Mr Thelonious’s deep throaty purr. I did not even switch on the hi-fi or the TV. I just let the rain fall and let my thoughts float by.
How long since I had done this? I had for so long been a man of quiet, reflective habits. Or so I believed. Now I saw how for year after year I had filled up my days carefully, till every centimetre and second was carefully occupied. Not only with work, of course. But with hobbies, with activities, with music, with books and old films. Anything to keep the silence from coming in. Anything to avoid hearing my own thoughts. Anything, as long as I did not have to remember.
Now, the thoughts and memories washed over me. I remembered Ruth. The beautiful Ruth, as she was before the darkness took her and she became a haunted, emaciated, paranoid wreck, tormenting herself and everyone around her.
I remembered the rain falling just like this ten years ago, on the day they fished her body out of the river. I remembered the mixture of shock and relief when I heard the news.
Friends had been concerned about me initially, then relieved to find that I was taking it fairly well.
He’s taking it fairly well
, they said, as the tall, handsome, soft-spoken man seemed to settle into life on his own. He’d always been withdrawn, so they did not even notice when he became more so. He kept himself separate from everyone around him, buried himself in his work, permitted himself to love no-one, and did not allow himself to be loved at all by anyone - except his cat. He’d had a few girlfriends, to be sure, but they had drifted away. After a while, he stopped having girlfriends and took to using the service of an expensive escort agency. Those girls did not even have to drift away. They were gone when you closed the door. After a while, it was a relief to have the door click shut behind them. I stopped the habit. Only the cat remained.
The car purred, entirely content, as I idly fondled his ears. Mr Thelonious liked peace. He had no cravings. They had been cut out of him when he was a small rambunctious Tom. With a snip of the vet’s scissors, he’d left all restlessness behind.
And for years, I had tried to do the same. But my desire could not be cut away, and hard has I had tried, it could not be numbed. I had almost succeeded. But now a tall young woman with piercing grey eyes and a sudden, impish smile had smashed all my carefully constructed defences to bits. A quiet, reserved, dark-haired girl with long legs and full, soft breasts. A shy girl who had overwhelmed me with her fierce, uncompromising passion. Suddenly I wanted someone again. I wanted
her
. My ivory castle was in ruins.
I sat among the wreckage, stroking my cat, considering the strange new planet on which I had awoken, while the rain fell endlessly outside.
I realised that I did not really know what was going to happen next. Clear as Lucy’s passion for me was, she was still a strange and uncontainable creature. Couple-hood seemed only a faint possibility. Domestic bliss? Dream on.
And yet, I could not feel anxious or fearful. I desired her utterly. But even if she moved on, even if we never made love again, it was worth it. She had given me back something I had not even known I’d lost. She’d given me back myself, and the sweetness of life.
It was startling, overpowering, to be back in the sensuous world again. Late Sunday afternoon, when a lull came in the rain, I stepped outside to get some household necessities – coffee beans, some vegetables and garlic, litter for Mr Thelonious. I wandered dreamily down the block to the deli, lost in sensation. The clean, rain-swept freshness of the air, the wet street sparkling in the sun. Children playing.
And women.
I saw the women. And I desired them all.
A young mother bustled by me pushing a pram, wholly absorbed in the life within. She wore no make-up. She had long, hastily tied, pitch black hair, an aristocratic, aquiline nose, delicate high cheekbones, and full, dark lips. I imagined her to have Arabs in her ancestors, perhaps from Morocco or even Portugal or Spain. I imagined her making love in her marital bed, arms and legs passionately wrapped around her man, fertile and beautiful in the fullness of her womanhood, crying out as she came.
I saw a petite black woman, energetic and vivacious. She had chiselled, ebony features and sparkling, clear brown eyes under a fierce, spiky explosion of hair. She almost cannoned into me as I entered the deli. “Watch it, pops,” she said solicitously before she flew off into the distance. She moved with the swift, terse grace of a dancer. In the produce sector, I saw a young girl with green eyes, a tousled mane of red hair and pale pale skin. She was barely coming into her womanhood, trying – and failing - to hide the sudden voluptuousness of her body in a long, shapeless black Goth dress. She used her chaotic red ringlets to half cover her face. She met and avoided and then again met my gaze, painfully aware of my eyes, acutely self-conscious and touchingly beautiful. I saw the girl weighing my garlic and tomatoes, barely out of her teens herself, plain faced and red-nosed from a cold, but with friendly, humorous eyes. I saw her confident, friendly, warm sensuality, the affection she would give her boyfriends, how uninhibited she would be in bed.
I saw a woman in her forties, tall and rangy, with expensive clothes and the fine, aristocratic features of a ramp model. Her face was no longer free of wrinkles, and her eyes were intelligent, kind and warm - the eyes of a woman who had seen both joy and sadness. She moved slowly and thoughtfully, carefully choosing a bottle of red wine. She’d bought cat litter, too, I noticed. I wondered whether she too lived alone with her cat, or whether she had someone with whom she would sit naked in bed with that night, drinking that red wine after making love.
She noticed me watching her. She was unruffled, and acknowledged my gaze. She liked the look of me. She lived alone,
and
she liked the look of me. She smiled, a, sweet, slow, sidelong smile.
My phone rang. I wondered who it would be. I should have switched it off while I was on leave. Could it be Lucy? I answered.
“Is that John Gray? “ It was a woman’s voice, aggressive and demanding.
“Speaking. “ Who could this be?
There was a silence. I pictured the woman at the other end – edgy, angry by the sound of it – suddenly hesitating and filled with doubt. The line went dead.
I shrugged and continued my shopping. I considered switching off the phone, tuning out whoever this was. She would either not call again, or she would leave a message, and then I would have the option of calling back or not. But who was this? And why was she calling? While I was wondering what to do, it rang again.
“John Gray here. Who is this?”
“You know who this is. Don’t you know ? You should know!” Was it anger? Perhaps not. It was a tense and edgy voice, with the merest trace of a foreign accent. A voice that trembled ever so slightly in spite of the speaker’s efforts to sound in control.
“No, I certainly don’t,” I said, though a hard knot of certainly I did not even want to acknowledge to myself had suddenly formed in the pit of my stomach. There was a pause. I tried again. “Look, can I help you? Who is this? Why are you calling me?”
There was another uncomfortable pause. For a moment I thought she was going to switch off on me again. Then there was a rather breathy sigh.
“Look,” said my unknown caller, “this is stupid. We’ve got to meet. I was just going to shit on you but it won’t work. I have to see you. “
“Well, – “ I began, but she cut me off.
“Tomorrow, lunchtime. One o’clock. At Zanzibar’s. You know Zanzibar’s?”
“And how will I know who I am meeting? “ I said, with a tinge of irony.
“I will be right at the back. The table in the corner. You will know who I am,” she said decisively, and rang off. I stood staring at my phone for a long while, wondering, until I came to myself.
The woman with the wine had moved on. And I, it appeared, had a lunch date.
* * *
I did know Zanzibar. And I knew the table in the corner.
It was a perfect table.
It was a William Gibson table. No, it was a John le Carré table. It was the table the old spymaster George Smiley would have chosen to meet one of his East German double agents, had they ever chosen to conduct their dark business in our part of the world. Almost hidden from sight, in the far corner of an inexpensive and noisy but surprisingly good downtown eatery, it was the ideal table from which to “make your meet” - to study them as they sidled among the other guests and tried to pick you out of the shadows.
