Seahorse (23 page)

When we passed the old Faber & Faber building, he stopped.

“Nem,” he said, “do you feel up for a quick drink?”

I was about to remind him we wouldn't be left wanting a bar at the party, but something about him—the look on his face, his gestures—made me acquiesce.

Our nameless bar was surprisingly busy that evening, invaded by students intent on end-of-term revelry. The management had made a not wholly uninspired effort at festive décor, and Santanu and I squeezed in at the end of the bar counter with an assortment of plastic candy canes and fat Santas dangling above our heads. All around us, the tables were crowded twice over, the air vivid with snippets of laughter and conversation.

We ordered our drinks—two pints of St Peter's, a dark, sweetly smooth stout—and I waited for him to speak. I'd hardly, if ever, seen Santanu at a loss for words. For as long as I'd known him, he was articulate and eloquent, at times happily loquacious. Now, he gazed at his glass, at the wooden counter, the beer taps, as though these things might offer him some inspiration.

“Is everything alright…” I offered, thinking it might make it easier for him to begin. “I mean, with Yara…”

“That's the problem, I'm not sure…” He sipped his ale. “I suppose it all started at the Queen's Head…”

I couldn't tell where this was heading.

We'd spent a few evening there. It was nicer than this bar, more atmospheric, complete with roaring fire, standing piano, and an excellent beer and whisky list. But it was also further away. Hidden in a row of bleak sky-grey buildings down Acton Street near King's Cross.

“Remember that evening…? You, me and Yara…”

Not long after they first met. They invited me for an aperitif, and I found, when I arrived, that it was a special occasion—the publication of her poetry chapbook. I ended up walking home well past midnight.

“We were talking about the dedication…”

“What dedication?”

“In her book…”

My memories of the evening were dim. She'd pressed a copy into my hand, navy, with an illustrated cover. Santanu was rifling through his. “For Maher and Liana… your mom and dad?”

Yara sipped her wine; her cheeks the same color as her dusty pink sweater. “No, my boyfriend and his wife.”

“Ex-boyfriend I should hope?” said Santanu. “Or else his wife might be upset.”

“Perhaps,” she tapped him playfully on the cheek, “he and his wife have different arrangements to the ones people think of as
normal
…”

“Like an open relationship…”

“If you want to call it that…”

“I'm not really aware of other terms.”

She smiled, wide and carefree. “There are many others, habibi… look them up.”

We clasped our pints in silence. The student crowd around us burgeoning; a group nearby had ordered multiple rounds of tequila, and I could hear enthusiastic cheers.

“A few weeks ago,” continued Santanu, “I met her in Brixton… remember?”

After we'd walked to Camden to join Eva at The Mexican.

He swilled the stout in the glass, a dark miniature whirlpool. “We talked for a long while… and at the end of the evening, she gave me this…” From his pocket, he pulled out a paper napkin. On it, in pencil, a sketch.

“An… infinite heart?”

“It's meant to be a symbol of polyamory…”

Between my fingers, the paper lay thin and soft, insubstantial tissue.

She told him she wanted to be honest.
She was of many loves.

Maher lived with his wife in Hackney. Liana too loved a man there.

There was no need for secrets. No subtraction of affection, only an infinite multiplication.

“She said they didn't condone these hierarchical terms, but it made it simpler to explain the relationships to me… Maher and Liana are a “primary” while she and him share a “secondary”… so does Liana and the other guy… are you following?”

I nodded.

“But you?” I asked. “Are you okay with it?”

“What would you prefer?”

He lifted his gaze, to the Santas with their big-bellied grins and the cheap, cheerful candy canes. “I don't know, Nem. I just don't want to seem… uncool.”

When we arrived, the Christmas party was well underway—Michael Bublé on the stereo, and chatter and laughter spilling generously into the air. It wasn't as extravagant as I'd expected. (I suppose, everything else appears subdued when you step away from the glittering streets of Central London.) The gathering had convened in a courtyard on the ground floor; one corner taken up by a decked tree sprinkled with tinsel and star-shaped lights. A buffet table, spruced-up with wreathed holly, was laden with wine, mulled and otherwise, and an assortment of seasonal foods. I hadn't imagined there'd be such a crowd—I came into contact with so few; mostly only with the faculty from the literature department.

Eva and Tamsin were there already. Conversing with the dean, a small balding, bespectacled man with fascinating elfin ears. I watched them carefully; even in public there were hints of their closeness. Or
perhaps every gesture—Tamsin's hand briefly on Eva's back, their touching shoulders—was now laden with new meaning. I remembered the evening in my room, Eva's quiet sadness. Today, she was wearing a high-necked red silk dress that wrapped her entirely to the knees. Like a cocoon, an exquisite plaster to hold her in place, to make her invulnerable. When she turned, though, her dress was gashed at the back, opening in a pointed oval. An elegant Achilles heel.

Eva smiled. “Well, you'll soon find out.”

They were heading to Japan for a fortnight, she explained. An impulsive, last-minute decision. When Tamsin turned to greet someone else, Eva added quietly, “I didn't feel like spending Christmas in Beirut.”

“You can't spend it alone.”

I assured her I wouldn't.

“But what will you do?”

I said something suitably vague—see some friends, get some work done. “Also Santanu's around…”

She looked doubtful. “He'll be busy with the poet.”

And Maher, I wanted to add, but held my silence.

Later, I stood aside, watching the party unfold; Bublé, on loop, was singing about a winter wonderland for the third time now, someone had brushed against the tree and it stood woefully lopsided, and the buffet table had lightened, as had the bar. I checked my phone surreptitiously, but it stared back grim and blank. Only once, a hopeful blip.

An email from my sister. A chain letter, containing a novena started by Mother Teresa in 1952. Not sharing it placed me in immediate danger of, among other catastrophes, dying, losing my job, losing my family.

I hit delete.

It had been many Decembers since I'd headed back to my hometown for Christmas.

My father, retired now from his job at the hospital. My mother said he spent most of his time in the garden, growing masses of purple
hydrangeas, lines of pale roses, and an assorted variety of orchids. Gardening, I thought, was as solitary an undertaking as healing people. Initially, my mother would ask often about my plans to visit, but I think she'd grown resigned now; I could hear it in her voice. Rather in the silences that had replaced the questions.

My sister, long married, with her young children, working as a nurse at the same hospital where my father had retired from.

How close, and how distant, the threads of our journeys.

One evening, after what seemed a century of waiting, it was there.

A new unread message. Bright and shining.

Myra didn't begin with an apology—perhaps, for her, it hadn't been long at all—and asked instead if I had plans for the December holidays. I held my breath, swiftly scanning the lines.
Would you like to come up to where I live in the country?

She understood, of course, if I had made other plans, and if so, we could work out something else… maybe early in the new year. I would have liked to hit reply immediately—
I'll come I'll come I'll come—
instead I paced my room, to walk off a sudden sharp burst of energy. I still had a choice to turn away and let things be. Like the man at the end of
Acte sans paroles.
To do nothing. But I'd already thrown the pebble in the pond, and this was one of its inescapable ripples. Somewhere, in the distance, I could hear the tolling of church bells. From nowhere came the image of a girl at the bottom of a stone tower, her hair the color of golden corn, fresh as the English countryside. Suddenly Myra, in a grey dress, walking sleepily across a sun-lit lawn. And Nicholas, always Nicholas.

I sent her a reply late that night. Saying I looked forward to taking a break from the city. If she could send me her address, suggest suitable accommodation…

The next morning, already, I had a reply.

I could stay, she suggested, at a bed & breakfast in the village closest to her house—“The Mildmay Arms is small but, to my knowledge, exceedingly comfortable”—for three days—“So we may, depending on the weather, perhaps drive to the moors… which are well worth a visit.” I pre-booked it all online, my room and tickets, and waited.

A week after the Christmas party, I traveled out of London.

The journey felt momentous.

The carriage was soggy with the smell of damp clothes and lost hope that they'd ever dry. A man in a billowing black coat read
The Times,
a woman fed a toddler in a buggy, two teenage girls giggled into each other's ears sharing secret after secret, a gangly young man with a guitar case stepped in, glanced around, and stepped off.

Leaving London by train was like pulling out of the innards of the city, still caked with the industrial grime of the Victorian age. The tracks were vast exposed veins, cutting and crossing, flanked by buildings with rattling rooms shaded by dirty curtains. Some were higher, floor upon floor of boxy windows, through which I could see people watching television. A vision of some forgotten dystopia. Sometimes, the screens were left on in empty rooms with images dancing like mad ghosts.

Or the tracks were backed by warehouses with empty car parks hedged by tall wire fences. On some, ballooned colorful graffiti—“Hang the bankers.”

This was a city visited by a whale, and the creature had died.

Slowly, like long drawn breath, the buildings fell away, and we came upon quick glimmerings of wilderness—a hedged station, a cluster of bare oaks, the hint of open space, until it unfurled and opened and stretched into all the horizon. In summer, this must look different, the grounds brimming with radiance—although even now, it surprised me, the muted beauty of the earth. Rinsed and rained upon until only the resilient colors remained. As the afternoon drew on, a light mist rose above the fields, the earth's silvery aura.

It pleased me, my reflection on the glass. The quiet suspended stillness of this space.

We stopped at increasingly desolate stations. At one point, we were shuttled off into a bus for a stretch where the railway lines were submerged. The weather reports, I overheard someone say, predicted continuing storms. At times, I dozed, lulled by the motion of the bus, the low roar of the engine.

At a small, barren station, I waited on the platform, the winter light already fading around me. I was almost there—this was the shortest leg of the journey. A thin rain trickled down, timid and indecisive. Myra had offered to pick me up—“there may not be any taxis waiting”—but I assured her I'd manage. We'd meet the next day in the village for an early lunch.

Back on a carriage the world rapidly fell behind. Time, I've often thought, could easily be captured inside a moving train. When the natural light outside has faded until it is even with the artificial light inside. And a passenger, looking at the window, sees two images at once. The dim landscape rushing past and the interior of the carriage, reflected with its motionless occupants.

Moving and still. All at once.

Moving and still.