Sorrow and Bliss(36)

When Patrick pulled me out of their way, it had been so that my back was against the plinth of a statue and when the rollerbladers turned around and came back, uncoupled and both out of control, he was forced to step in so that we were face to face and close enough that breathing out, our bodies were barely separate. I wondered if Patrick was aware of it too, at all or as powerfully as I was, before he said, ‘This way, then,’ and led off in the direction of his flat.

*

Patrick promised me it was usually much tidier than this as he opened the door, then stood aside so I could go in first. It was on the third floor of a Victorian mansion block in Clapham, on a corner of the building so the living room overlooked a park from tall, perpendicular windows. He bought it after he graduated and lived there with a flatmate called Heather who was also a doctor. A mug on the arm of the sofa seemed to represent the total mess Patrick was talking about. Because it had lipstick on the rim, I assumed Heather was the sloven.

She came home while he was making me a bacon sandwich, wandered into the kitchen and went up behind him, picking a burned bit out of the pan he was holding. She ate it like it was a delicious little sweet, then wafted over to a cupboard and got something out like she knew where everything was and had agency in it being there in the first place. I felt like I had never hated another woman so much.

Once we had eaten, I watched him do the dishes. Patrick dried things. I told him if he just left them on the board, physics or whatever would dry them so he didn’t have to.

He said he wasn’t sure it was physics. ‘I don’t mind doing it. I have a bit of a completist mentality. I’ll be finished in a minute. Do you know how to play backgammon?’

I said no and conceded to being taught. We went into the living room and while he was setting up the suitcase thing, Patrick said, ‘I meant to tell you, I’m going to Uganda.’

I frowned and asked him why.

‘For work, a placement. I told you I was applying. A while ago I guess.’

‘I remember. I just didn’t think that you would still –’ I wasn’t sure what I meant, then I was and couldn’t say it.

‘Still what?’

I meant, I didn’t think you would still want to go because of me. I said, ‘I just didn’t realise it was still happening, that’s all.’

Patrick asked me if I minded. He was joking but I felt exposed and said no. ‘Why would I mind? That would be weird.’ I picked up one of the counters and turned it over. ‘When are you leaving?’

He said in three weeks. ‘The tenth. Back at Christmas. I think, the day before.’

‘That is five months.’

Patrick said, ‘Five and a half’ and finished setting up the board. I tried to focus on his explanation of the rules but I was preoccupied with the idea of him being away for so long and said, when he kept reminding me whose turn it was, ‘You just roll for me and I’ll watch.’





17

HOW LONG THE man had been standing there I don’t know but when I raised my head because I had heard somebody say, ‘Hello there,’ it sounded like it wasn’t the first time he had said it. It was October and cold. I was at Hampstead Heath sitting in an area of tall dead grass between the gravel path and a narrow stream with my arms around my shins and my forehead on my knees. I had cried enough that the skin on my cheeks felt sore and tight like it had been soaped and over-scrubbed.

The man, in his oilskin jacket and tweed hat, was smiling cautiously. He had a dog on a leash, a large Labrador that was standing obediently beside him, beating its tail against his leg. I smiled back, involuntarily, like someone who has just been tapped on the shoulder at a party and is turning around in happy anticipation of seeing who it is and hearing whatever wonderful thing it is they’ve come over to say.

He said, ‘I couldn’t help but notice you here.’ His tone was very fatherly. ‘I didn’t want to invade your privacy but I said to myself, if she is still there on my way back –’ he did a single nod to indicate that I was, indeed, still there and asked me if I was alright.

I was sorry and wanted to apologise for becoming a factor in his afternoon, for complicating his walk and demanding to be thought about. The dog put its nose down and sniffed towards me, as near as it could get on the leash. I reached out and the man gave out more so it could put its nose in my hand. He said, ‘Ah there, she likes you. She’s rather old and doesn’t like many people.’

I squinted up at him. I wanted to tell him that my mother had just died to justify why I had been crying so hard in public. But it would be a burden beyond this nice man’s solving. I went to say that I had dropped my phone in the stream but I did not want him to think I was stupid or offer to retrieve it.

I said, ‘I’m lonely.’ It was the truth. Followed by some lies, told to absolve him of concern. ‘I’m just lonely today. Not in general. Generally I’m completely fine.’

‘Well, they say London is a city of eight million lonely people, don’t they.’ The man gently tugged the dog back to his side. ‘But this too shall pass. They also say that.’

He nodded goodbye and moved off along the path.

*

As a child, watching the news or listening to it on the radio with my father I thought, when they said ‘the body was discovered by a man walking his dog’, that it was always the same man. I still imagine him, putting his walking shoes on at the door, finding the leash, the familiar dread as he clips it onto the dog’s collar, but still setting out, regardless, in the hope that, today, there won’t be a body. But twenty minutes later, God, there it is.