Midnight is a Lonely Place. Barbara Erskine
the room immediately gave the lie.
Still thinking about Byron, she had not immediately sensed his excitement. ‘You’re coming with me, Kate!’ He picked up the letter which he had put on the table between them and waved it at her. There was a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
‘Coming with you? To the States?’ Giving him her full attention at last, Kate looked at him in surprise. ‘I can’t.’
The expression of baffled anger which for a moment showed in his face confirmed her sudden suspicion that he was not going to understand.
‘Why?’ He was hurt and astonished by her response. He had thought she would be as excited as he was. He scowled. Why was it that she never reacted the way he expected? ‘This is the most important time of my life, Kate. My new novel being published in the States. A lecture tour. Publicity. Perhaps real money at last. Isn’t that what you want for me?’
‘You know it is.’ Her tone lost its defensiveness. She regarded him fondly. ‘I’m terribly pleased for you. It’s wonderful. The trouble is I am writing a book too, if you remember. And I can’t just swan off on a tour at the moment. My research is complete. My notes are ready. I am about to start writing. You know I can’t go with you. It’s out of the question.’
‘For God’s sake, Kate, you can start the book any time.’ Jon flung the letter down. He had counted on her; he could not visualise himself without her. ‘I’m not asking you to give it up. I’m not asking you for a vast amount of time. We would be in the States less than a couple of weeks.’
Kate glanced at the Japanese woman sitting opposite her. Her eyes tactfully lowered, the woman was unwrapping a vast multi-layered sandwich, from which tranches of ham and cheese and various highly-coloured salad leaves hung in festoons. The air filled suddenly with a mouthwatering aroma of cooked meats.
‘You know as well as I do that a couple of weeks is a hell of a long time when you are writing,’ she retorted crossly. Her headache had worsened, she felt tired and depressed and she could be as stubborn as he on occasions. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Jon. Anyway, you would get on much better without me.’ Somehow he had managed to make her feel guilty.
‘But I need you. Derek has got some terrific things lined up for me.’ Jon stubbed at the letter with his forefinger. ‘Telly in New York. And some wonderful parties. An interview with the New York Magazine and Publishers Weekly. You would meet everyone. He is expecting you to be there, Kate. We’re an item on the literary circuit –’
A wave of impatience swept over her. ‘I don’t care if your publisher is expecting me, Jon. I don’t care if the President of the United States is expecting me. You may be an item, but I am not. Nor am I a natty little accessory to complement your glittering image. If I tour New York it will be to publicise Lord of Darkness, not to be photographed smiling at your elbow. I’m sorry, but I’m going to stay here and work.’
Jon shook his head. His voice was suddenly bleak. ‘You can’t stay in the flat, Kate.’
‘What do you mean? Of course I can.’ Even then she took no notice of the warning bell clanging away at the back of her head.
He folded his arms, the familiar stubborn expression beginning to settle on his face softened by a hint of anxiety. ‘Derek has asked me to lend the flat to Cyrus Grandini while I’m away.’
Kate was speechless for a moment. ‘And who, may I ask, is Cyrus Grandini?’ she spluttered at last.
‘Oh, Kate.’ He was impatient. ‘The poet. For God’s sake, you must have heard of him!’
‘No. And I don’t wish to share a flat with him.’
His reply was apologetic. ‘There’s no question of sharing the flat. I’m sorry, Kate, but I have agreed he can have it for two weeks.’
‘But what about me? I thought it was my home too.’ She fought to keep the sudden panic out of her voice.
‘It is your home.’ He sounded angry rather than reassuring. ‘You know it is. Derek expected you to come to New York; so did I. I thought you would jump at the chance!’
‘Well, I haven’t.’
‘Then you will have to find somewhere else to go for a couple of weeks. I’m sorry.’
So, that was it. She knew where she stood. A lodger. A lover. But not a partner.
She stood up, scraping her chair back on the floor with such vehemence that the Japanese man next to her nearly dropped his pastry. He too leaped to his feet, climbing from behind the table so that she could squeeze inelegantly past him. A wave of frustration and anger and unhappiness swept over her. ‘If I go, I go for good,’ she stated flatly as her neighbour subsided once more into his chair and reached rather desperately for his pastry.
‘OK. If that’s the way you want it.’ He had turned away from her and sat, chin in hand, staring up at the horsemen from the Parthenon on the frieze on the wall above him, suddenly and shamefully near to tears. Correctly interpreting his rocklike stance the Japanese lady who had been preparing in her turn to rise and allow him to leave the table relaxed and took a large mouthful of sandwich.
It was after eleven when he returned to the flat that evening.
The front door led straight into the small sitting room where she was sitting reading, cosy in the warm light of the single table lamp. Outside she could hear the sleet hitting the window. The shoulders of Jon’s heavy jacket glistened and sparkled with unmelted ice. ‘Well, have you changed your mind?’ he asked.
For a moment she was confused, still lost in the world of Lord Byron and his friends. Unwillingly she dragged herself back to the present. ‘No. I haven’t changed my mind.’
‘It’s not working, is it?’ He stood in front of the electric fire and began slowly to unwind his long scarf.
‘What isn’t working?’ She kept her eyes on the book before her. Her stomach had clenched uncomfortably at his tone and the print blurred into an indistinguishable black haze.
‘Us.’
She looked up at last. ‘Because I won’t go to the States with you?’
‘That and other things. Kate, let’s face it. You’re too obsessed with your damn poet to have time for me. Look at you. Even now you can’t take your eyes off some bloody text or other.’ He swooped on her and grabbed it out of her hand. ‘See!’ He held it up triumphantly. ‘Victorian Poets!’ He hurled it down onto a chair. ‘He –’ by implication Kate gathered that ‘he’ meant Byron, ‘– comes between us all the time. You have no time for us; for our relationship, Kate.’
‘Jon –’
She was stung by the injustice of the remark but he swept on. ‘No, hear me out. You’re completely obsessive. You have no time for me at all.’
She leaped to her feet. It had taken her much of the afternoon to calm down after their exchange at the British Museum earlier. She had thought they could work things out amicably once he came home, once he had had time to think about the justice of everything she had said. ‘You … you say that, when all you ever talk about is your own work. Your friends, your parties, your TV interviews! You admitted that you only wanted me to go with you to the States as an appendage! The Jon Bevan literary circus. The wonderful, clever, stunning novelist and poet Jon Bevan and his cute girlfriend who writes such glitzy biographies – though heaven forbid that they should be taken as seriously as Jon’s oeuvre.’ Her hands had begun to shake as she realised the implications of what she was saying. She was condemning their relationship unequivocally to death. There would be no going back on this, no making up, no withdrawing of hurled insults. ‘You’re right, Jon, This relationship is not going to work. It’s over. Finished!’ Pushing past him, she flung out of the room.
Their bedroom was very small. The double bed, pushed against the wall, left space for a desk – her desk. On it her laptop sat amongst piles