*
The Surface of Things
Since my mother died, fracturing her skull after slipping on ice on the pavement at Claridges, I must admit that it has been a struggle to keep the flat clean and the things in order.
Well, perhaps struggle isn't quite the word. I don`t fight with the problem, really, I just ignore it. But I caught my image reflected in a shop window and was quite shocked: I saw myself and what I was wearing resembled nothing so much as a sheet of dirty, crumpled newspaper.
So, I decided to take my clothes to the dry cleaners. I even took a day off to do that, and other domestic chores, my shirts too needed attention, the collars were quite worn through, and the flat itself had dust everywhere.
It seemed to me, indeed, that my cleaner, a garrulous Bosnian, had been neglecting her duties. I rang her.
"What sort of cleaner are you, letting me go round like a tramp? I have a responsible position to hold."
"Oh no, David. You look so nice, very nice," she replied.
"No I don't," I said, "I look dreadful, why, there is a stain down the lapel of my check jacket, and what about the egg on the cuff of my blue suit? How is that nice?"
"Oh" Oh"" said Vesna.
"My clothes are crumpled as well. I suppose you think that is nice too?"
"Oh no David, I don't."
"It is a disgrace. "I thought you were supposed to keep my things in order?"
"Oh Mr David, I am sorry."
"So am I. I am sorry too. I am so sorry I don't want to see you again."
"No no. no, Mr David, give me another chance. Please."
"Oh buzz off, " I said, ending the call.
So, there I was, going through my things, deciding which to take to the dry cleaners, checking the pockets. It was really quite shameful how Vesna had neglected me. The more I thought about it, the sorrier I felt for myself. I wouldn't be surprised if my career had suffered as a result of her lapses, I thought as I noticed a strange yellow matter congealed on the shoulder of my linen suit and a weird fuzzy skin on the elbow. I tried to recall when I wore it last: I put my hand in the inner pocket: a piece of stiff card: an invitation to a wedding, that of my cousin Helen, to a man called Steve.
What a dull sod he was! What on earth did Helen seen in him? He wasn't even good looking, there were acne scars on his face.
Unsurprisingly, and with characteristic dullness, they had taken a thirties semi up in High Barnet. I went one evening after the wedding with Lucy (when we were still together) and we spent an unforgettably tedious evening admiring their consumer durables.
Actually, that was one to the last outings that Lucy and I had made together before separating. Recalling the incident reminded me that one of Lucy's charming qualities was an intense impatience with material exhibitionism, which she found absurd. I remembered her face in a spate of giggles as she spoke, in the taxi home of the solemn way in which Steve and Helen had oh so nonchalantly shown off their new kitchen, And Lucy's ironical smile when praising the couple's new bottle opener, over-designed and doubtlessly ridiculously expensive: she held it and winked at me making me chortle silently.
I put the invitation in the bin.
I felt in the side pockets of the coat. Something else: a little silver locket, in the shape of a heart, engraved with a floral design and the image to two hands clasped and the initial "T". I opened it: a tiny piece of paper: Teresa 0207 289 8763
Teresa! The image of a girl faded into my mind, more particularly of a birthmark on a smoothly carved neck: it took the form of a flying swallow, so exquisitely drawn that I remember that I had felt urged to discover if it wasn't indeed a tattoo: I leant across the banquet table at the wedding dinner with my spectacles on.
I put the locket on the mantelpiece wondering what to make of it, but the next day, on return from work (I worked in a surgery off the King's Road, where I was a dermatologist) I called the number, though I was somewhat pessimistic, it seemed so long ago. How on earth could she be expected to remember me?
I paced the room while the phone rang.
"Hello, it`s Victor."
"Oh, hello!"
"How are you?"
"I am fine. How are you?"
"I am fine too"
"So you finally found my number? You can't clean your jackets very often," she laughed.
"Well, my cleaner was supposed to do it, but she is useless."
She laughed, "Well, how is everything? How is the medical world? You do spots, don't you?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, pleased she had remembered something about me. "I do! And eczema and rashes and pimples too. Also boils and stings!"
"That's magnificent, " she said.
"It seems to keep me out of mischief," I said.
"Well, it would, " said Teresa, " there's an awful lot of skin about...I guess that's why it took so long for you to call? You were lancing a particularly recalcitrant pustule? Or is there an acne crisis among our youth?"
"The crisis is in skin cancer, now" I replied soberly. "Anyway, are you around this weekend?"
"Yes," she said, "But I think I may go and see Helen."
"Have you seen her recently?" I asked.
"Yes" said Teresa. They are going through a bad patch.
"Oh!" I said, I could hardly contain my glee.
"Well," Teresa continued, "Steve lost his job with the supermarket, and they had money problems."
"Oh."
"And," continued Teresa, suddenly whispering, although there was no-one who could have heard us, "they just kept arguing".
"Really?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"So when are you going there?" The thought flashed through my mind that I had a concomitant obligation to visit Steve, though I can't say the thought stayed long. The man was an arch-bore and my curiosity had largely been sated by Teresa.
"Not sure," said Teresa.
"Well, let's meet on Sunday. We can meet at the National Gallery, at the Flaying of Marsyrias."
"No, let's meet at Ingres' Mme Moitessier, " said Teresa.
So I met Teresa in the overheated French rooms.
To my delight, Teresa took my arm as we looked at Ingres' wonderful portrait. Madame Moitessier was a huge powdered octopus. There was something repulsive about the sexuality of Ingres' women, too soft, too complaint. But perhaps it was not the sexuality that repulsed me, it was she conveyed no other qualities: she was a primitive organism, made for nothing but reproduction, a fleshy termite.
Teresa herself was all grace and tenderness, and I saw what fortunate sense it was that I had contacted her. I noticed the exceptionally graceful shape of her wrist, no bone too weighty and the skin deliciously smooth. And she advanced a playful romanticism towards me. The warm air of the gallery brought a faint moisture, like dew, to her cheeks.
We looked at a few other pictures. I pointed out the lead-whitened skin in Gainsborough, the dappled surfaces of Rembrandt's portraits, the creamy smoothness in Velazquez's Rokeby Venus.
This was merely the first of several meeting with Teresa over the winter. In each of our meetings I grew fonder of her. As I despised Steve and Helen I was always keen to hear news of their decline, and indications of contempt on her part for them. But while I treasured every sign of their demise, it became clear that Teresa did not, and did not enjoy taking an ironical stance in relation to it, and was genuinely distressed by their separation.
The fourth time I met Teresa she was, unexpectedly with Helen, whose arms had, I observed, developed liver spots since out las encounter. I was somewhat taken aback, embarrassed even, as I had imagined what Teresa and I were to be going on a date. My discomfort was a symptom of guilt, a feeling that I ought to have gone to see them, but that my interest was largely motived by spite.
Nonetheless I asked, "Are you all right?"
"Oh fine," she said", and we left it at that.
*
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