Paradise City (45 page)

Standing at the railings, she feels the September breeze on the backs of her legs. She breathes in, inhaling the scent of the river: a rich, mineral smell like a soaked sponge.

The light is so clear Beatrice can see all the way to the opposite bank. She watches as a group of rowers climbs into a long, slim boat that seems too fragile to carry the weight of six men. One of them stands thigh-deep in water, steadying the boat as the other rowers slide into their positions. From this distance, their every movement seems elegant. They take up their oars, push away from the bank and glide off down the river, the unthinking fluidity of their simultaneous movement like a rippling muscle under skin.

She can just about make out the drip and eddy of each stroke, the shouted orders from the cox and these sounds mingle with the other noises of a warm day in London: the cries of children on swings, the glockenspiel chords of an ice-cream-van tune, the faraway judder of a double-decker bus, the quickening pace of a weekend jogger, the thwack and thud of a football being kicked into goal.

‘Beautiful day, isn’t it?’ says Tracy.

‘Mmm.’ Beatrice wipes her brow with the back of her hand, lifting her face to soak up the welcome heat on her skin. She glances sideways at Tracy, who is wearing reflective sunglasses that remind Beatrice of the security guards in Kampala, the ones who stand at the entrances of posh hotels with upturned mirrors on long metal poles to sweep under each car, checking for explosive devices. At the thought of home, she gets a tightness in her chest. But it passes just as quickly as it came. Her homesickness no longer lasts for weeks on end. She can think of Susan without the simple act of it undoing her. She is getting used to it, to her new home, to the continued absence.

‘Shall we go and get some lunch then?’ Tracy asks cheerfully.

‘Yes. I’m starving.’

Beatrice links her arm through her friend’s and they walk into the park, away from the river, past a fountain and a playground with climbing frames and a concreted-over crater that young boys are using to practise their skateboarding, and soon they come to a small café with a plastic sign outside with a picture of a red coffee cup that swings to and fro in the wind.

They sit inside and, despite the heat, they order two bowls of carrot and coriander soup and a ham and cheese baguette that Tracy divides so they each have a half. The paper plate comes with a pile of crisps on one side, an English custom that Beatrice finds ridiculous.

‘Crisps are snacks!’ Beatrice protests. ‘Why not have something proper on there, like potatoes?’

They look at the crisps and giggle. It feels good, Beatrice thinks, to be understood by someone else again.

‘This is tasty,’ Tracy says, spooning the soup delicately into her mouth, dabbing at the corners of her lips with a paper towel. It is a Saturday but Tracy has still dressed for the occasion as if she’s about to be called into a meeting. She is wearing a pair of freshly ironed navy-blue trousers with an off-white shirt, accessorised with her pearl necklace and a jaunty pink scarf. Even this is fairly casual for her. In Uganda, Beatrice thinks, these would be the clothes you saved till Sunday to wear to church.

Beatrice has been working at Paradiso for almost three months. For the first time since arriving in this country, she has a bank account, into which her salary is paid with reassuring regularity, and she is accumulating a healthy stash of savings that she intends to use as a deposit for a one-bedroom flat when the time is right.

Tracy says she should think about moving out of London, to Epsom, because the property prices are cheaper and the rail connections into town are so good, you’d never notice the distance. Beatrice is considering this. She likes the idea of being near her friend but, at the same time, she craves the anonymity of the city. She has grown to love the grit and bustle of London, the way it pumps through you like an exhaust fume: a dirty surge of kinetic energy pushed through the bloodstream each day. She thinks she will miss it if she moves too far away.

‘Penny for them,’ Tracy is saying.

‘I was just thinking how long I’ve been working at Paradiso, how quickly the time has gone.’

‘You’re enjoying it, aren’t you?’ Tracy asks, concerned. ‘You don’t want to leave?’

Beatrice laughs. ‘No! It’s the best job I’ve ever had. Better than the hotel.’

Tracy tuts.

‘I don’t know how you put up with it there. All that mess.’

‘It wasn’t so bad.’

They lapse into a companionable silence, watching the café customers come and go. A tall man with a baby in a pushchair comes to the counter, trying to ignore the screams of his child as he places his order. He has sandy hair and is sporting shorts and a pair of those unappealing sandals with Velcro straps that Beatrice has noticed are the special preserve of the English middle-class male.

And then, apropos of nothing, Tracy says, ‘It’s Ada’s memorial service next week.’ When Beatrice doesn’t respond, she adds, ‘Poor Sir Howard.’

Beatrice looks up. She has noticed how frequently Tracy likes to get a mention of their boss into the conversation. She talks about him with such fondness and affection and respect, even though Beatrice feels he treats Tracy as little more than a reliable dogsbody. She does everything for him. It is Tracy who keeps things going. It was Tracy who, in the aftermath of the discovery of Ada Pink’s body, fielded the phone calls, who typed the thank-you letters, who cleared Sir Howard’s diary without anything needing to be said, who sweet-talked the buyers and the accountants and the CEOs, who dealt with the internal staff complaints and updated Excel spreadsheets without a word, as if she had been doing it all for years. Tracy had kept Paradiso afloat for weeks before Sir Howard returned to work and, when he did, he was looking thinner than before and older, too, with a greyness around his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

Even after he came back, Tracy took it upon herself to shield him from the work that had piled up high in his in-tray. She was Sir Howard’s gatekeeper, his protector. And it wasn’t just a matter of practicality. On an emotional level, also, Tracy seemed to share the acute physicality of his grief. Beatrice had twice walked into the Ladies and found Tracy sobbing into her handkerchief, her make-up in disarray, mascara gathering in dark pools under each eye. It was almost as if Tracy thought she could lessen the burden of Sir Howard’s devastation if she felt it as deeply as he did.

It was then that Beatrice realised the truth of the situation. It had been slowly dawning on her for weeks that Tracy was in love with Sir Howard and had been for years. She experienced his sadness in the deep, connected way that only an unrequited lover could. In many respects, the discovery of Ada’s body was nearly as bad for Tracy as it was for her boss: Sir Howard had an outlet for his torment but Tracy had to keep it all tied up inside, packaged like a post-room parcel.

Beatrice had tried to comfort her. She would pat Tracy on the back gently as she cried, then take her out to a wine bar round the corner at the end of the day and order her a glass of her favourite Pinot Blush. They would share a bowl of pistachio nuts, flicking open the shells with their nails and leaving behind a trail of salty flakes on the scrubbed pine table when they left.

After a while, Tracy had regained her natural equilibrium and Sir Howard, too, seemed to emerge from a shadow. He still didn’t speak directly to Beatrice, but he had taken to smiling at her when he walked down the corridor past her desk. And Beatrice finds that, in spite of herself, she is developing a sort of affection for her employer. The fact that he has endured personal tragedy has, in many ways, made him easier for her to identify with. She recognises pain; respects the withstanding of it. The rest of it, she finds she can almost forgive.

In the café, Beatrice takes a crisp from the side of the plate and holds it up to the light, contemplating whether to eat it or not.

‘Go on,’ Tracy says with a chuckle. ‘It won’t hurt you.’

She eats it in one mouthful. It tastes like pickled cardboard.

‘When’s the memorial service?’ Beatrice asks.

‘Tuesday morning.’

Beatrice nods.

Tracy moves the crisps back to her side of the table.

‘You could come.’ Tracy hesitates. ‘If you wanted to, I mean.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Beatrice says and then she sees Tracy’s eyes, the pleading in them. ‘I can come with you if you want company. But I don’t want to go to the service. I’ll wait for you outside.’

She doesn’t explain why. Tracy doesn’t ask.

After lunch, they take their bowls back up to the counter and throw away the paper plate so that the waitress doesn’t have to clear up behind them. Tracy does this efficiently and without discussion, as though it is the most natural thing in the world. It is one of the many things Beatrice likes about her: that Tracy always thinks about other people.

Outside, the sky is a high, clear blue speckled with small clouds. Tracy proffers her arm and Beatrice links hers through it and they take a stroll through the park, into the grounds of the former Bishop’s Palace, where there is a hog roast in full swing and a pretty walled garden open to the public. The two of them dawdle in and out of the neat pathways, past a flower bed filled with vivid purple blooms neither of them knows the name for. They walk underneath the sweep of a willow tree, its branches so low that they have to slouch forwards in tandem to stop their backs being scraped.

The air is heavy with honeysuckle and lavender. Beatrice breathes it in and, as she does so, something unclenches within her. She imagines all her silent anxieties, released like dandelion spores into the warm summer air. They swirl upwards with the barbecue smoke and beyond the tree-tops into the sky where an aeroplane has left a thread of white stitched into the blue so that it is almost as if Beatrice is flying above herself, looking down at the grass and the river and the rowers and there, just to one side of the frame, the two of them, arm-in-arm.

She feels the pressure of Tracy’s shoulder against hers. She wonders if now is the right time to tell her, to unburden herself of all the things that she is ashamed to have kept secret. Susan. What happened with Sir Howard. How she blackmailed him into giving her a job. Will Tracy think differently of her when she knows?

‘There are things I—’ Beatrice starts. She stares straight ahead, focusing on an orangey pebble on the ground that has a soft grey underside like pigeon feathers. She picks the pebble up and clasps it tightly in her hand. She won’t be able to carry on if she meets Tracy’s eye. ‘Things I need to tell you. About me. About how I came to be working in the office. About—’ She coughs. Her throat is dry. She pretends it is the pollen and presses on. ‘About how I left Uganda.’

‘You don’t need to tell me anything,’ Tracy says firmly.

‘I do, I want—’

‘No, Bea, you don’t. I already know.’

Tracy has pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. The skin around her eyes is creased with concern. The glossy peach lipstick she always wears is smudged slightly at the corners.

‘I don’t . . .’ Beatrice starts. ‘How?’

‘Who do you think got the email in the first place? I know what happened. I know what you must think of How . . . of Sir Howard for the way he behaved.’

Beatrice steps back, stumbling. Tracy leads her gently to a bench and they sit next to each other, half a foot apart, not touching.

‘I know why you had to come here,’ Tracy says eventually. ‘I was told everything before you started and, the thing is, I was glad they told me because it meant I could look after you. Or at least, I hope I did. I haven’t ever brought it up, Bea, because I thought you might not want to talk about it, that you might be trying to forget. God knows, I would. What you’ve been through . . . No one should have to go through that.’

Beatrice lets this new knowledge settle. She holds it, weighs it up in her mind, contemplates the size of it. And then, when she is sure of it, she puts it down and lets it go.

‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘I’m glad you know.’

‘Are you?’

Beatrice nods.

They sit there, aware that a defence has been breached, that both of them need to get used to this new thickness of the air between them.

‘People you love can act in ways you don’t understand, can’t they?’ Tracy asks. She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘I’m not sure anyone ever really knows what goes on in someone else’s heart. I don’t think it means they’re bad people or that your love is wasted. It just means they’re . . . well, they’re trying to see their way through, I suppose. Just like the rest of us. Life’s a bit of a muddle sometimes.’

They don’t say anything for a while. The park starts to empty: the families with young children go first, the parents carrying their children’s scooters and pink rucksacks and squidgy metallic packets of puréed fruit. It gets cooler and the early evening air warps and buckles with heat.

‘Come on then,’ Tracy says. ‘Let’s get going.’

They wind their way back towards Putney Bridge, standing aside to let past a group of cyclists. The fountain by the entrance to the park is still working, the flow of water trickling down over the stone. A boy of about nine or ten is reaching up and dipping his fingers into the shallow basin, flicking out his hand to spray his younger sister with the droplets. The little girl shrieks. The boy laughs: a pure bubbling up of joy and she thinks of her brother, of John, and she says a silent prayer for him and promises herself that one day, she will go back. One day. When she is ready. When she is no longer scared of what she will find.