The Essence of the Thing Read online

  ‘Oh,’ cried Nicola rather wildly, ‘don’t—don’t be too hard on him—I don’t know—we don’t know—the whole story; he may be entirely justified—it’s probably my fault completely—I just don’t know, yet.’

  ‘Only because he won’t tell you. The pig, the pig, the absolute pig. Your fault! My God, that creep of a Jonathan should go down on his bended knees to you every day of his life—you should have seen the state he was in before he met you! You’re the best thing that ever happened to him, and he doesn’t deserve you, not for five seconds. You’re well rid of him. He can go right back to where he was, and good riddance. Mournful putrid boring old Jonathan— he’s had his last invitation to my house, if Alf wants to see him he can have lunch with him, I’m not having him about the place. These old bachelors, really! Useless! My God! Men!’

  Nicola had begun to laugh: and then she began to cry, as well: and then she was crying, as if her heart might break, and not laughing at all.

  ‘Oh, Nicola,’ said Lizzie, patting her shoulder; ‘he isn’t worth it; he can’t be; a man who can behave like that just isn’t worth it. A man who makes you cry so is never worth your tears.’

  ‘But I love him,’ said Nicola. ‘That’s the trouble, you see. I really do love him.’

  ‘You couldn’t have found anyone less deserving,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘I didn’t really try,’ said Nicola; and in the midst of her tears she and Lizzie began to laugh.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ said Lizzie; ‘I mean, Christ.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicola. ‘You never said a truer word.’

  16

  ‘Leaving aside the question of how you can love a rotten little creep like Jonathan in his present mode,’ said Lizzie, ‘not that women aren’t absolutely famous for loving rotten little creeps—’

  ‘Susannah says he’s a prat,’ said Nicola. ‘So does Geoffrey. Do you think he’s a prat?’

  Lizzie considered.

  ‘Prat,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, yes, he is also a prat. Quite certainly. How are Susannah and Geoffrey? Nice people.’

  ‘They’re well.’

  ‘Bloody Jonathan. Your friends are wasted on him too. He doesn’t begin to appreciate you. But look, the point is, Nicola sweetie, what exactly are you thinking of doing, apart from ironing Jonathan’s shirts, which I absolutely order you not to do, my God, I can’t believe it, bloody shirts, of all things, Jermyn Street too I’ll bet, really hard work—’

  ‘Yes, well…’ said Nicola sadly.

  ‘The point is,’ said Lizzie, abandoning Jonathan’s shirts as a bad job, ‘what were you thinking of doing next, exactly? Now that the master has spoken.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nicola wanly, ‘I was just—I was more or less expecting, or hoping, to see him tonight. I thought we might be able to talk, then. After he’s been away from me for two days. And then, maybe, maybe we can sort it out. Maybe. I mean, I have to hope that. I have to hope.’

  She looked as if she might begin to cry again.

  ‘Of course you do, my sweet,’ said Lizzie quickly. ‘Of course you do. But just in case you don’t. Just in case Jonathan’s decided to become a full-time complete professional dedicated creep and stick to his last, what then?’

  ‘Well then,’ said Nicola, ‘I’ll just have to clear off, won’t I?’

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Lizzie. ‘I mean, where will you go?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nicola, ‘Susannah says I can go there until I get sorted out.’

  ‘That might take a while,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicola hopelessly.

  ‘You haven’t really thought this through, have you?’

  ‘No. I thought there wasn’t really any point until I knew for certain that I had to.’

  ‘It’ll mean buying another flat, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Something really cheap, at that.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘The whole thing is a disgrace. You seem to have forgotten, you of all people, that this flat is actually your territory, morally speaking.’

  Nicola pondered. ‘Well, I suppose you’re right,’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘You bloody bet I am,’ said Lizzie.

  And as a matter of fact, she did have a point.

  17

  Nicola had moved into this flat in her late twenties; quite soon she would have been living here for exactly five years.

  The flat was one of those lucky scores—such things can’t be sought or even found serendipitously: they fall into the laps of those who manage to be in the right place at the right time by sheer accident. It had been one of the last of those dilapidated, rent-controlled Notting Hill flats, in a Victorian building whose 120-year lease was due when Nicola first moved in to expire a few years later.

  The time arrived, the freehold of the building duly changed hands, and the new owners promptly notified each of the building’s several tenants of his or her consequent options. Nicola, like her neighbours, was presented thus with the choice either of vacating her flat in return for a cash payment, or of purchasing the leasehold of the flat herself. Were she simply to remain as tenant the flat would be modernised and, as the house agents say, substantially upgraded; a new and quite unaffordable rent would thereafter be levied. Nicola’s only possible choice—unable to afford to pay a higher rent, or to buy the leasehold—would have been to take the money and run; and she would have had to run rather a long way before finding another affordable flat—whether to rent, or to buy. It would not be so pretty nor so conveniently situated; she would certainly have been thrown into disarray for a period of several months or even years, had it not been for Jonathan.

  Ah, Jonathan.

  ‘Well, it all looks pretty straightforward,’ he said.

  He was sitting on the sofa—the sofa that had been, the old wreck with its faded linen slipcover, when Nicola had been the sole inhabitant of this second-floor flat—reading through the letter from the new landlords, a property company with a Mayfair address. It had arrived in that morning’s post; she’d read it walking up the street to the tube: horrible. She’d telephoned Jonathan at work and asked him to come round that evening and take a butcher’s.

  They’d been walking out for slightly less than a year: it seemed to be going quite beautifully: except for that edge of anxiety or even of fear—‘Can it last? Are we actually—shall we—do you really love me?’—never articulated but always there, like a drone note which was silenced only during the act of love itself. But they lived, she lived, in hope, because it seemed, it just absolutely seemed to be the right, and just possibly, in so far as anything might be, the perfect thing: Jonathan and Nicola. A nice couple. Nicola and Jonathan— a couple: better off in every significant way together than alone: a couple, with their own jokes, their own memories, and their own impregnable psychic space.

  ‘You couldn’t pop round tonight could you? Just quickly?’

  ‘Of course. No problem. Shall I bring something to eat?’

  ‘No, it’s all right. I think there’s some food…’

  ‘Well, we can always go out. I’ll see you about sevenish.’

  He’d arrived with some flowers for her, and a bottle of wine.

  ‘Jonathan, you are nice.’

  ‘Am I? Am I? Come here.’

  The dark blue smell of English serge: nothing else like it. Then the smell of Jonathan. Nothing else…

  ‘Now, where’s this letter of yours?’

  Jonathan sitting on the old sofa, glass of wine in one hand, the letter in the other.

  ‘Well, it all looks pretty straightforward.’

  ‘I hoped it wasn’t.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I hoped there was a loophole.’

  ‘No; you see…’

  ‘So—’ While she was chopping something, or peeling something, getting their dinner together; he had come into the kitchen, he was leaning against a workbench, watching her; she stopped what she was doing. She stared down a
t the chopping board. ‘So… I don’t really have any choice.’

  She felt completely hollow. It was a disaster. She was so perfectly happy, here. There was a view from the bedroom window of the communal gardens; you could hear children playing, shrieking, sometimes, with the joy that only children know. She picked up the vegetable knife again and stared at it as if ignorant of its function. ‘I’m going to have to find somewhere else to live.’

  Slowly. The horror of it.

  ‘You could buy the leasehold. It’d be a steal: as the sitting tenant you’d get something like a one-third reduction in the market price.’

  ‘I know. I can’t afford it even then. I’ve been doing the arithmetic all day. You know what I earn—it’s just not possible.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘Well—look, what about getting on with the dinner, eh? I’m starving: I could get dangerous if we don’t eat soon. Here, have some more of this.’ He refilled her glass. ‘Can I do anything?’

  ‘It’s okay. All right. I’m nearly there.’

  Carry on; be brave.

  After they’d sat down and begun to eat, he looked across at her. ‘There is one other solution,’ he said.

  She’d thought of it too, of course. She was almost sick, now, with apprehension, hoping almost to the point of panic that he might say what she yearned to hear, fearful almost to certainty that he wouldn’t.

  ‘What could that be?’ She was wide-eyed with feigned innocence. What could that possibly be?

  ‘I seem to be spending most of my free time here as it is, these days,’ he said, in the tone of one making the most casual of remarks. ‘Crawford Street’s becoming simply a place where I keep my clothes.’

  Jonathan had a murky little flat in a Georgian house in Crawford Street, W1.

  He ate another mouthful. ‘This is very good,’ he said.

  ‘You were saying.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well. I mean, it does seem an awful pity to let this place go.’ Another mouthful. ‘We’ve been happy here, haven’t we?’

  She said nothing; she was too fearful, too overwhelmed with fear and terror and burgeoning hope. He looked up from his food, still holding his fork.

  ‘Haven’t we?’ he repeated: and she saw anxiety, even fear, in his eyes too.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, we have. That is, I know I have. If you have too.’ She was still terrified of what he might or might not say.

  ‘Come here,’ he said. ‘You’re too far away.’

  She got up and went to him, and he pulled her down onto his knee. He held her in his arms for a moment and then looked up at her. ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘that we might manage to make a go of living here together? All the time? Are you game for that?’

  She smiled, she could not for the moment speak. She buried her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

  18

  Michael Gatling (very distantly related to the inventor of the gun) had just returned from taking his daughter Nicola to the station for the London train. His wife, Elinor, was still washing up the tea things.

  ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t have done, and marry her,’ he said, getting out the sherry.

  ‘I suppose he will, in due course,’ said Elinor, rattle, rattle. ‘He’s just running a little trial.’

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ said Michael. ‘The trial’s on the other foot, as far as I’m concerned. The nerve of these chaps.’

  ‘Still,’ said Elinor, ‘at least she’ll be able to keep the flat. Such a very charming place. It’s a pity we couldn’t help her more.’

  ‘Tush,’ said Michael. ‘I’m only a poor civil servant. She hardly expected anything at all, she’s more than grateful for the five thou’. So she should be.’

  ‘Ah, my baby. My last child. How sad it all is, somehow.’

  ‘Honestly, Nellie, you do talk some awful rot. It’s fathers who are meant to be sentimental, not mothers. Here, stop washing up and drink this.’

  He handed her a glass of amontillado. She sat down. She was frowning slightly.

  ‘I do hope they’ll be happy,’ she said. ‘We must look out something for a housewarming present, once it’s all settled.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Michael. ‘Wait until it’s time for a wedding present.’

  ‘Just something very small,’ said Elinor. ‘I might go into Brighton this week and have a poke around the junk shops.’

  ‘All right,’ said Michael. ‘But something truly small. They might feel we’re putting the pressure on, otherwise.’

  ‘Oh, but we wouldn’t dream of doing that,’ said Elinor. ‘Would we?’

  ‘Not us,’ said Michael. ‘Not card-carrying moderns like us. Nevertheless, I don’t know why he doesn’t have done, and marry her.’

  Nicola, travelling back to London in a second-class compartment on the Brighton–Victoria line, was almost delirious with happiness. It had all happened so fast—just a few days ago she had been holding that appalling letter in her hand, her heart beating with fear and dismay: now with a turn of the kaleidoscope all the pieces of her life had been rearranged into a different and more beautiful pattern. Jonathan and she were going jointly to purchase the leasehold of the Notting Hill flat; they would own a half share each, because her total contribution to the cost would take into consideration the discount due to her as the sitting tenant. Her parents having so magnificently chipped in with £5000 she should be able quite easily to borrow the remainder of her share from the bank: you could almost hear the click as everything fell into place.

  ‘Well—I might as well put Crawford Street on the market straightaway,’ Jonathan had said before leaving her, that night of the letter. He was going to do nicely out of Crawford Street, which he’d bought at the very beginning of the property boom.

  ‘You’d better wait until I see my parents,’ Nicola had replied. ‘I don’t know that I’ll be able to manage my share without them.’

  ‘Oh, everything will work out,’ said Jonathan airily.

  He was so very much richer than she: he could afford to be airy. But now everything had in fact worked out; it was almost magical.

  ‘Come round to Crawford Street tomorrow night after work,’ Jonathan said when she telephoned him with the good news after reaching home that evening. ‘And we’ll decide which pieces of furniture we want to keep from here. Then we might go out for some dinner.’

  And so she had; and so their common life had properly begun.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I am. Old mahogany wardrobes like that are almost priceless these days. A real armoire.’

  ‘Well, if you say so. I’m sure I didn’t pay more than £50 for it.’

  ‘Well, you can add another nought, now. At least.’

  ‘I’ll be blowed.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Nicola!’

  19

  And so Jonathan did all the conveyancing, and Nicola disposed of all her tatty old furniture, and they had someone in to sand and seal the sitting-room floorboards, and they bought a discreetly magnificent new bed, Empire style, in the Liberty’s sale, and Jonathan and all his chattels moved in. He opened a half bottle of Bollinger and poured each of them a glass, and in due course another, and then he lobbed the empty bottle into the waste-paper basket.

  ‘And you won’t get any more where that came from,’ he said, ‘until we’ve finished painting this room: is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, master,’ said Nicola. Bliss!

  ‘I say, Lizzie, where are you?’

  ‘I’m here, where should I be?’

  ‘Oh, jolly good.’

  ‘Give me a kiss.’

  ‘All right. Here.’

  ‘You smell of whisky.’

  ‘Well spotted. I ran into Jonathan Finch just as I was leaving chambers. He’d been in conference with Jessop. That Lloyd’s thing.’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed, that Lloy
d’s thing. Is there even one of you who hasn’t got a piece of the action?’

  ‘No, shouldn’t think so. It’s going to pay for all the school fees for the rest of the century, and beyond.’

  ‘It’s an ill wind.’

  ‘Right. So anyway, we went for a drink.’

  ‘Thrilling.’

  ‘No, listen. I’ve got some gossip for you.’

  ‘Never. Stuffy stagnant old Jonathan? Never.’

  ‘Hang about. He is stuffy and stagnant no longer. He’s full of beans, you never saw the like. Transformation.’

  ‘Oh—discovered his hidden powers, has he?’

  ‘You could say so. Tantamount. He’s just bought half a flat in Notting Hill.’

  ‘Say no more.’

  ‘Listen, try to be serious. We’re talking about my old mate Finch, J. H. God, we went through purgatory together.’

  ‘If you ask me he’s still there.’

  ‘But I’m not asking you, I’m trying to tell you. God, but you do try a chap’s patience. Now: who do you think owns the other half of the aforementioned Notting Hill flat?’

  ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess.’

  ‘You never will, so I shall. Note my grammar, by the way.’

  ‘Yes, very well, noted. All right, so tell me: who is the abovementioned co-owner?’

  ‘Only a sweet young thing called Nicola Gatling.’

  ‘Like the gun.’

  ‘Yes, like the gun.’

  ‘How do you know she’s sweet?’

  ‘He showed me a photo.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘A photo. Sweet. Dark hair, thin face. Intelligent. Thirtyish.’

  ‘He had a photo?’

  ‘Yes, why not? Just a small one. In his wallet.’

  Lizzie left the stove and sat down and began to laugh. ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘He’s serious.’

  ‘Well of course he is. He’s bought this flat with her. There they are, living in sin together at this very moment. So there.’