IRINA
‘You look tired,’ Andrew said as he pulled out her chair for her and smiled, his eyes crinkling kindly. It was a smile you couldn’t help but return, it was so open and honest. He pushed his hair off his forehead, looking like an overgrown schoolboy, the burgundy jumper and brown cords too adult for his youthful face. He didn’t seem to have developed any new lines and Irina wondered if he would always look cherubic.
She thanked him and sat down, nodding in acknowledgement. ‘Busy week.’
He paused momentarily, wavering, and then sat, hands clasped together, elbows resting on the table.
The restaurant was dim, the dark red walls and oak panelling rich, giving everyone a warm glow. Andrew looked good, she thought; he always had. When she recalled him in her mind he always seemed too heroic, too perfect almost, but the hole in his jumper, shirt peeking through, was a much-needed flaw. She smiled at him as he picked up the wine menu, feeling her body unfurl against the distant clatter of pans and the smell of spices wafting from the kitchen every time the door opened. A waiter appeared and they ordered a Rioja, grinning stupidly at each other as the bottle was produced and the waiter showed it to them on a napkin-covered arm and walked them through its particulars.
‘Very good,’ Andrew muttered after swilling it around and raising one eyebrow at Irina. His cheeks were reddening, the scrutiny perhaps too much; he had always hated being put in the spotlight.
She felt a flutter in her stomach and the urge to laugh. They both felt relieved as the waiter walked away. Andrew poured the wine into her glass, a thick red wave that soon settled.
‘I’m glad you called,’ Irina said quietly, fiddling with the stem of her glass. ‘I know I’ve not… well… I don’t deserve it.’
Andrew swatted the comments away with a hand. ‘I’m not here to go over old ground: I’ve missed you, simple as that, and I wanted to see you.’
She was grateful for the easy way in which he’d moved things on. She’d always known where she stood with him as he’d always made things abundantly clear.
‘How are this year’s students?’
‘Hard work,’ he said, his mouth twitching. ‘We’ve just had the half-term break and they still know next to nothing. They’ve got exams, so they keep coming and seeing me for last-minute revision sessions.’
‘What does that involve?’
‘Mostly panic – me, not them.’
‘Oh dear.’ Irina laughed, feeling as if she’d been whisked back a year, their easy conversations over a bottle of wine, waving forkfuls of food around as they chatted. ‘Well I don’t have sympathy for you really, you do have about five months off a year.’
Andrew nodded, raising his wine glass in a toast. ‘This is true.’
‘Plans?’
‘I’ll spend a few weeks pretending to work on my PhD of course.’
‘Have you still not finished that?’ she said, her mouth agape in mock horror. ‘You won’t be made a doctor without it.’
‘Reena, it’s eighty thousand words, that is… so many words.’
‘That is a lot of words,’ she agreed, taking another sip of her wine, trying to block out the heat coursing through her stomach as he used his nickname for her. Stop it.
Andrew had an MA in French history and was now exploring the French Wars of Religion of the sixteenth century. At first she had wondered how anyone could be so absorbed in such a small part of one country’s history, but he had brought the period to life for her, fired up by the stories of the gruesome St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the controlling Catherine de Medici.
‘How about you? How’s the shop? Doing well?’
Irina paused momentarily before answering, the bureau flashing across her consciousness. ‘Yes, well, we’ve had a lot of people through the door and it’s busy.’
‘What are you working on at the moment?’
‘Bits and bobs,’ she replied, picking up her wine glass and drinking, her eyes off across the room. Another couple were sitting picking at their food in an alcove. She had a sudden flash of memory, Andrew perched on a stool in her workshop as she glued and sanded, the radio playing, him doodling pictures in wood shavings on the bench as they chatted. She had put away the second stool when they’d broken up, but she pictured it now, dusty and unused in the cupboard under the stairs. She had hated looking at it.
‘Interesting bits and bobs?’
She was drawn back to the restaurant a moment before she really heard him. She held her breath as his question opened up a desire in her to share everything with him, wondered what he’d think if she did. She looked at his face, expectant, unhurried. He had never been one to laugh at her over such things.
The waiter was standing by their table again and Andrew had sat back and asked for a couple more minutes. ‘We’re being hopeless,’ he said with a laugh.
‘Not at all, sir.’
They ordered and talked about politics then and Petworth, and the food came and they ate and commented on it being delicious, the meat tender, the seasoning just right. He didn’t ask again and Irina didn’t offer anything more. She told him about Pepper and Patricia and her mother. He made her laugh into her napkin with stories about a couple of his more eccentric colleagues. She wanted to relax completely, found herself immersed in this old, familiar set-up, wondering at how easily it came to her. Then she thought about returning to the workshop, her apartment. Andrew stopped in the middle of a sentence, probed again.
‘Is anything wrong? You seem distracted.’
She twisted the napkin in her lap, feeling silly, and cross with herself for ruining what had really been a perfect evening.
‘I’m being idiotic,’ she said, feeling the wine washing around her head. ‘I just need some fresh air.’
‘Well let me pay up and I’ll walk you home,’ Andrew said, signalling immediately for the bill, his eyes crinkling again, the irises indigo.
Irina went for her handbag, knowing it would be a futile effort.
‘My treat, please,’ Andrew said, touching her lightly on the forearm.
She looked down at his hand, the scar on his forefinger, the nails squared off. His touch was gentle and when he removed his hand she placed her own where it had been, brushing lightly at the skin, remembering.
Something had shifted and they walked out of the restaurant in silence. Irina had brought an umbrella and she opened it in the high street when tiny drops pattered around them. She was relieved that she couldn’t see his face, hidden as she was, and when he asked her again what was wrong, she couldn’t help it, she started to explain. The bureau, the drawer, the feeling that something wasn’t right. It spilled out of her in little bursts, like the drops of rain. Andrew was quiet for a while and she watched their feet moving in tandem down the street, her black brogues, his dark brown loafers. When she could bear it no longer, she pushed the umbrella backwards and looked at him.
His face had a puzzled look, as if he’d read something he was still trying to compute or was reflecting on what answer to give her. She felt a strange tug of déjà vu, back to the day they broke up, didn’t stay in that moment, worried she would feel the pain, fresh perhaps, now she had seen him again. She tipped the umbrella back down, listening to their footsteps echoing on the pavement, out of sync with another couple’s, further ahead and moving at a different pace.
‘Can I see it?’ he asked eventually.
Irina felt relief, instant and gratifying.
They arrived at the back door of the workshop and Irina propped the umbrella against the doorframe as she searched her bag for her keys. Andrew stood a little way behind her and there was a second where she wondered whether he was remembering another night when they had stood like this, when he had encircled her waist, dropped his head down onto her shoulder and whispered in her ear. She had leant back towards him, happiness coursing through her as they’d giggled and pushed their way into the room, up the stairs to her apartment. The space now seemed bigger and she gave him a self-conscious look over her shoulder.
‘It’s in here,’ she said pointlessly as they stepped into the workshop. She flicked the switch and the room came flooding into view. Everything seemed so stark and dirty in the light: smeared glass, her coffee-ringed workbench, the shavings on the floor in small heaps, the dust suspended in the air, dead flies collected in the strip light.
She watched him make his way across the workshop, his movements careful, his hair curling over the top of his jumper, hints of reds and browns highlighted by the light above him. He stopped before the bureau, both hands on his hips, observing it like a policeman might take in a suspect, or a teacher berate a pupil; a challenge. The air hummed with his energy, this other person in her space. Patricia nipped in and out on occasion, but Irina wasn’t used to this scrutiny. He had tilted his head to one side and was staring at it still.
She stood next to him, silently, her hands brushing her side. She watched him move around the bureau, sucked in her breath, half-expecting something dramatic to happen. She felt her palms dampen at the prospect, her chest tighten. She could hear his steady breathing, which grounded her once more. The atmosphere was changed, with him there it seemed the bureau was simply that, a bureau. She felt ridiculous then. Had she been imagining things? Winding herself up in this space? The wooden top looked smooth, a lighter square patch in the centre where she had removed the leatherette. The pigeonhole drawers were still out on newspaper, only the jammed one sitting stubbornly in its place.
Andrew went to pull on its handle, turning to her as he realized it was stuck.
‘I know,’ she said, stepping forward. ‘There’s no key or keyhole, but I can’t seem to get it open. There was another drawer, like a secret compartment, along the bottom.’
‘A secret compartment…’ He lifted an eyebrow at her as he moved his hand across the desk. ‘Well, we should find out how this one opens.’
The ‘we’ made Irina glow from the inside.
‘It’s funny,’ he said, squatting next to it, feeling along the side of it, in the gap from the other drawer, ‘it looks like it has a false back, like the drawer is too short for the space.’
How had she missed that?
She crouched down, peering over his shoulder, aware of their closeness for a moment before her curiosity made her forget everything else. ‘You’re right.’ She could feel a spark of excitement as she spotted the gleam of bronze. ‘Look.’ She pointed at it and he looked at her, a smile forming. There was a small hook attached to a strip of wood at the back.
‘Ready?’ he said, reaching to lift it up.
Irina knew the drawer would open. She felt her skin prickle again, relieved Andrew was there with her as she reached a hand out. She could feel him suck in a breath, the atmosphere in the room closer. The strip light flickered, as if it were crackling with anticipation. She drew the drawer out, preparing herself for more postcards, or an empty space, a pile of jewels, she wasn’t sure what. But she knew that somehow she was meant to open this drawer.
There were items collected in the bottom and she carefully pulled them out. A small feather, light grey, tickling the centre of her palm; a tiny key. She laid them to one side and pulled out a ticket stub, its faded logo indistinct, then went back for more items. She drew the drawer out, her shoulders sagging with disappointment. The contents were strangely sad, yet they’d been locked away in this secret drawer, important to someone.
Andrew had picked up the ticket stub, held it under the strip light as he scanned the letters and numbers. ‘It’s for a railway,’ he said over his shoulder.
It was green, a hole punched through one end, a picture of a carriage in a circle printed on it, ‘L & L Clifftop Railway’ written in italic scroll around the logo.
‘Clifftop?’ Irina frowned at the unusual name. On the back someone had written on it in blue ink. ‘It’s a date. “June 1952”,’ she read.
‘All very mysterious.’ Andrew looked at her, eyebrows waggling, which made her smile. ‘I wonder…’ He trailed off, looking back at the bureau.
‘Wonder…?’
‘If there’s more.’ He bent down to inspect the edges of the desk, feel along the legs. ‘It’s clever.’
She knew then that he was right, that there might be more discoveries. She had heard of pieces of furniture like this, with cleverly constructed secret compartments and complicated routes to reach them. She remembered her days as an apprentice in Chichester and thought back to a desk there, something sliding about inside it, unreachable; her master had become so fed up that he took a sledgehammer to it until finally they discovered the drawer, behind a false panel at the back, accessed via a button nowhere near it.
‘Have you tried contacting the owner? Does he know, do you think?’
‘I’ve just got out-of-office emails.’
‘Shame.’ Andrew was still staring at it intently, the researcher in him awake. He picked up the ticket stub. ‘Would you mind?’ He raised it to her. ‘Can I keep it?’
She shrugged. ‘Of course.’
He looked at it thoughtfully.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘Nothing. Well, something.’ He slid the stub into his wallet, patted his pocket. ‘I’ll let you know.’
A warmth spread through her stomach, she felt calmer than she had in days, a weight lifted. ‘Do.’
‘I better go,’ he said, his voice lower.
She pressed her lips together, nodding.
He hesitated by the door to the shop, turning to give her a kiss on the cheek. He smelt of their meal, the candlelight, oak and rain. She momentarily shut her eyes and then he stepped back and she smiled at him, gently closed the door. He disappeared down the path to her left.
Resting her head against the glass, feeling the cool seep into her forehead, she breathed slowly in and out, the window fogging. She thought back to his last look before she lost his expression in the shadows. She felt an ache for him that she had spent months resisting.
She was still smiling when she moved back into the workshop, crossing towards the door to her flat. As she reached for the light switch she caught a movement from the corner of her eye; a gasp, she spun round, seeing a blur at the edge of her vision. For a split second she could have sworn she saw a woman running, darting through the workshop. She felt her happiness abruptly drain away, pulled the door to her quickly, raced out of there and up the stairs.