Love Tastes Like Strawberries. Rosamund Haden

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СКАЧАТЬ place where things are allowed to happen that are not permitted elsewhere.

      In the midday summer heat the garden smells alive. The undergrowth is encroaching over the paving stones on the garden path. Stella finds this odd because Ivor is usually fastidious about the garden. They joked about him clipping borders with nail scissors and wiping each shiny leaf of his beloved orchids with a wet tissue. In the heat it is alarming how quickly the plants have become unruly. The moonflowers are threatening to block out all the natural light that is “so essential” for his classes. The jasmine is choking the gutters and even the aloes seem to have multiplied. The only plants that haven’t grown are the strelitzias that stand in two tubs guarding the entrance to the house, like birds of prey.

      There is something else different today. There is no music. Stella realises this when she notices the sound of insects in the undergrowth. She can hear them rubbing their legs, humming in the heat, because the house is so silent. The opera that normally pours out of all the windows is absent.

      As she enters the cool dusty interior she is met by a smell she can’t pinpoint, but that makes her chest tighten. Nobody comes to greet her. It is silent inside as she walks through into the art studio; a room with a bay window, high ceilings and wooden floors. French doors lead out from the far side of the room into a small enclosed back garden. The room is set up as it had been for their classes. Easels stand in a semicircle facing a Chinese screen behind which is a bed where the models used to lie or sit. The walls, usually dotted with sketches and Ivor’s paintings, are stripped bare, except for one small painting. It hangs alone near the French doors. Stella walks across to look at it. It is the same painting that has been reproduced on the exhibition invitation – Françoise, sitting thin and straight, staring at the wall in front of her, all alone in the studio. Abandoned, thinks Stella. Underneath the painting is pinned a piece of white card. Typed on it in a bold black font is: Black Girl Reading

      Stella’s palms are sweaty and she finds it hard to breathe. All the time she expects Ivor to come bounding in or appear from behind the Chinese screen announcing that he has fooled her. That this is one of his elaborate pranks, the clues left to guide her here. So that what? He could forgive her and they could go back to how it had been before “the incident” with all the benefits that came with being part of his close little circle of friends. Was this his way of saying, “come back all is forgiven”?

      She’d push back the screen and there he would be lying, his dark curling hair flecked with grey, his olive skin smooth for someone of forty-two. A prank! But there is no one behind the screen and no sound from the rest of the house.

      Stella opens the French doors for some fresh air. The room feels like it is closing in on her. In this lush back garden they had drunk wine during the break in class. Against the wall in the dank shade grow the clivias.

      “Until spring they are just drab boring green leaves. But then, darling, when they flower . . .”

      A window bangs somewhere in the house. Stella runs out of the studio, out of the house and on to the street. Where is Ivor? Then she remembers, with shock, that he is dead.

      She hears a voice from across the road and turns to see a young girl sitting on the low wall of the block of flats opposite, swinging her legs and popping her bubblegum. “The man’s gone out,” she says.

      Stella waits awkwardly for ten minutes, hoping that someone will come back to the house. The girl watches her, a know-it-all smile on her face. Stella wonders what the girl has seen from her watching place on the wall. Did the ambulance come for Ivor’s body? Had he swallowed a whole bunch of pills from Tony’s pharmaceutical stash that he siphoned off from work? Had it been a heart attack? A stroke?

      After ten minutes Stella can’t stand the girl watching her any more and walks away down Kingston Road and around the corner into Bishop. Without thinking she is retracing, in reverse, the steps that she took a year earlier when she first found Ivor’s house. When she had stopped to listen to the music streaming out of the studio windows because she had recognised it. And before she could walk away a student had come around the corner and stopped in front of her. “I’m Jude,” she had announced. “Are you part of the life drawing class?”

      Stella tries Timothy again.

      The person you are calling is unavailable. Please try again later.

      Françoise

      On Monday afternoon Dudu is back at school and at sports practice. She is good at netball. She can shoot a hoop from the far side of the court and it will almost always go in. But when she gets the ball she never passes it on. From wherever she is on the court she will take the shot.

      Françoise smooths down her hair and her skirt as she waits for the manager of the Spar. Things are beginning to return to some sort of normality. She waits on a plastic chair outside his office. She watches him drink a Coke, make a phone call, chat to customers, scratch his balls, go to the toilet, come back. When he finally beckons her in an hour has passed. When he asks her why she left she hesitates.

      “A family emergency,” she explains, looking at the clock above his head. Dudu will be getting home soon. The manager says nothing. “A death,” Françoise adds.

      “It’s always a death, then you people need money for the funeral.” He is bored, impatient. “You can come back. You were a reliable girl before you left. Not as stupid as some of them.” He doesn’t even look at her. “But no more deaths. Understood?” Then, “Are you legal?” Then, “Never mind.”

      By the time she is back out on the street, dusk is falling. Instead of heading down to the main road to go back to their room, Françoise turns left and walks up the road towards the mountain and Timothy’s block of flats. She is nervous. He might not want to see her. What will she say? What will he do? What if Dudu . . .?

      She feels her mind racing, gathering speed, exploding through the sound barrier. Suddenly she is floating.

      A lightness fills her. She closes her eyes and sways on the hot tar.

      There are the pale blue walls of the Catholic church on Isabano Street in Gisenyi. There are the flamboyant trees filled with red blossom. It is late in the dry season. There are the nuns walking in a row, their faces black against the white rims of their habits. The church bell is ringing for Mass. She looks down at her shoes, so polished, so shiny; she can see her ten-year-old face in them. She smiles. Her friend runs across the road laughing to point at the nun in front of them. She has her habit hooked up in her large white underpants. They puff out like a cotton balloon.

      Then she hears Dudu’s voice behind her. “Wait for me. Papa says you have to take care of me.”

      Her eyes open. She takes a deep breath and enters the bookstore where Timothy works. It is nearly closing time. The student behind the counter tells her, “Timothy is away but you can leave a message.” She hesitates then shakes her head.

      “No. I will come back.”

      He’s gone. She’s too late. Dudu has ruined it for her again.

      “Didn’t say where he went,” the student calls after her. “And I’m afraid I can’t give out personal numbers.”

      When she is outside the store she keeps walking up the road towards his flat. By the time she gets to the gate to his complex Dudu has caught up with her. She is still in her netball clothes.

      “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?” says Dudu.

      “None СКАЧАТЬ