THE PEARL NECKLACE is finished at last, nestling in its box between cushions of black taffeta, ready to be returned to the owner.
Angelina’s long filed nails are clattering across the keyboard. She is typing some letters via Dictaphone, and tossing her head. Every other toss whips out the wired earpiece so she has to keep rewinding the tape, but to her mind that’s a small price to pay. Because Handsome Henry is still around. Over by the dispatch counter. In full view of her gloss-sprayed hair floating like the silkiest scarf. If he cares to look, that is. He’s helping Celia wrap and label some parcels that need delivered. Only it seems to Angelina that Celia is standing rather close to him. Standing and bending down. Letting her clingy skirt ride up against his thigh. Too bloody close for comfort, or Celia’s own good. Henry will get a real eyeful of all those wrinkles and blemishes, the crêpey skin of her throat. The thought cheers Angelina. A few flecks of Galactica polish gleam faintly along the curve of her nails where she hasn’t removed it properly after the Carnival Ball.
She clicks PAUSE and taps out a fantasy letter to pretend she’s busy.
Loads of men (and women, though she’d actively discouraged them) had wanted a feel that night. The soldiers were the worst, drunk and sex-starved, with hard-ons even before they’d touched her, or her crystal ball. Three or four of the costumed men must have been older, they kissed her with such sloppy greed. Especially that arlecchino outside the Métropole – him and his pink women’s glasses which made her giggle when he held her pinned to the wall. He never said a word, just panted like he’d been jogging – randy as anything, of course. Afterwards the beetroot-red paint of his mouth was all over her face.
For a moment Angelina rubs at the star shimmer on her nails, utterly self-absorbed.
The boss has a no-perfume-no-nail-polish-no-hand-cream policy, to protect his merchandise from what he calls ‘aggressive attacks’. Lucky his list of no-no’s doesn’t include Coke. Angelina couldn’t do without it, she loves the way it fizzes on her tongue, and always has a can or two stashed at the bottom of her pouchy leather handbag. Better the boss doesn’t know. Celia had lectured her on the subject when she’d spilt some drops on her desk shortly after starting her apprenticeship.
‘Please don’t drink that in here, Angelina,’ she’d said. ‘Have a seat over in Reception. Coke’s something of a hazard in our line of business. To pearls particularly.’
One word about tooth enamel or stomach linings, and Angelina would have told her quite sweetly to cut it out, she doesn’t need two mothers, thanks very much. And anyway, hadn’t Celia registered yet that Coke was harmless nowadays?
Celia had flipped a hand towards the glass door, half-smiling and almost apologetic, it seemed to Angelina, then calibrated the Mettler scales and pincered up a diamond for weighing.
‘Well, what about the pearls?’ Angelina had asked, wiping at the spillage on her desk with her fingers and sucking them as nonchalantly as she could. Drawing Celia out a little, for the fun of it.
Celia had kept her waiting. Finished writing down the carat value on the stone paper in front of her and folded the diamond back into it before lifting her head: ‘Put one in a glass of Coke and you’ll soon find out. There won’t be much left in a while. Usually a nucleus. A piece of grit or the like if it’s a naturally grown pearl; if cultured, probably a small bead of mother-of-pearl, spherical in most cases – though all sorts of shapes and materials have been tried down the ages, in China even tiny metal Buddhas. So, you see …’ On and on and on.
To stop her, Angelina had slipped off one of her own earrings, silver with a rose-coloured freshwater pearl, and placed it in a small leftover puddle of Coke. It worked like a dream: Celia cried out and snatched the piece away, then dabbed it dry on a clean cloth.
‘Silly girl!’
‘Only joking.’ Angelina had tittered uneasily. ‘That earring’s from an ex-boyfriend.’
‘Doesn’t matter who it’s from! Don’t ever do such a thing again …’ The tone had been ominous.
She hasn’t had any more run-ins with Celia since then, grazie a Dio. Angelina continues typing: ‘Per favore, signore, un poco d’amo–’ At this point she tosses her hair extra-violently because she’s just observed Handsome Henry touch Celia on the shoulder. When she glances back at her computer screen, the fantasy letter she’d been writing to a Signor Spaghetti in Carbonara has vanished. All that remains is an infinity of pale grey dots, as if the space bar had gone into spasm.
‘Sorry about your mother, Celia.’ Henry had paused and, after squeezing her shoulder very gently (affectionately, she realises now, only it’s too late), passed a forearm over his face, perhaps to make himself look more respectable. ‘I meant to come to the funeral, with Eric. But then my wife and I … well, things went completely haywire.’ His eyes, suddenly bright and golden again, had rested on hers for just that split second too long, and something turned over inside her.
‘That’s okay,’ she’d replied with a shrug, unable to smile, and to her horror had heard herself add, ‘A card would have been nice though.’
Goodgodwhywhywhy had she said that? She didn’t mean to. She likes Henry. Likes him a lot (more than she’s prepared to admit to herself) and wouldn’t mind getting to know him a bit better. She must be cracking up. And now he’s ignoring her, has even taken a step away and is gazing over at Angelina, fixedly. Longingly.
The girl is conscious of his interest, Celia can tell: already she’s started playing to the gallery, putting on her ‘diligent apprentice’ act and clearly surpassing herself. Her silver crucifix swings wildly, flashing fire; and as she leans forward, her wide-necked red Benetton sweatshirt frames rather than conceals her breasts.
‘No bra,’ whispers someone. Who? Celia wonders. Then, all at once, everything bends and buckles and blurs around her and she is off, staggering through the glass door, past the maroon leather seats to the washroom in the corner.
Angelina has shot bolt upright, her cheeks mottled chalk and scarlet. Henry’s, eyes have swerved down and away to study the carpet fluff along the skirting. There’s a patter from the umbrella plant as a whorl of dead leaves falls to the floor.
Celia is hunched up on the toilet seat, face in hands, knees cuffed together by the metal-grey fabric of her tights. She hasn’t pulled down her knickers. Her elbows are pressing into the flesh of her thighs.
Of course she’s had other boyfriends besides Franz. Several with whom she slept, a few with whom she laughed but didn’t sleep, and two or three she laughed and cried and slept with. Franz has outlasted them all. A prerogative of the dead, perhaps their only one: they never leave you. Even if she hadn’t moved back to her mother’s, even if she had chucked in her job and gone abroad like Walter and Lily, the memory of Franz’s death would have followed her like a shadow.
But she doesn’t want to be celibate, goddammit. Or jealous. She knows there’s no chance in hell she could ever compete with a smooth-complexioned olive-skinned soft-bodied girl like Angelina. No chance she could ever claim Henry’s sexual favours. Damn right she knows.
It’s warm in the cubicle. The radiator on the wall next to her gives out puffs of hot dopey air.
Celia doesn’t stir.
She’s not really the jealous type, is she? Temporarily a little more distrustful perhaps, a little more emotional – which is hardly surprising. And those blasted tulips yesterday didn’t help. As if her mother had employed some kind of spirit messenger to taunt her now that she herself is no longer around.
Celia pictures her kitchen table with the vase of tulips dead centre: the stems are in contortions and the waxy black heads have split open towards the pale light seeping through the unwashed net curtains. (She’ll buy new ones when the paint job’s done, when her kitchen is sunny day and night – ‘Yellow and orange, with the merest hint of red,’ she’d told the decorator on their tour of the flat. ‘The warmest tones you can get.’ By that stage he had no longer put up a fight, just sighed and beamed his electronic measuring tape round the room, then scribbled in his notebook.)
The two men will be having their mid-morning break about now, complete with meat-filled rolls from Bänninger’s and Nescafé from the jar out on the worktop, prominently displayed next to two old mugs and spoons, some sachets of sugar, cream in portions, and the pink post-it with her office phone number. They might be going into the kitchen this very moment. Celia can almost see the arm reaching out to push the vase roughly up against the wall so the tulip heads bob and shake, raining pollen on the shiny wood inlay. Easy to guess who the arm belongs to. No one but Lehmann’s assistant would behave in that carefree manner.
‘Cheers to the lady of the house,’ she imagines him saying, his mug of coffee lifted grandiose-style, the way he’d raised his brush yesterday to wave her out of the lounge after his boss had test-painted a radiator panel for her, ‘and thanks for leaving us alone.’ Then he’ll take a bite out of his roll, his mouth stretched wide.
Lehmann, who is no doubt munching away already, may just give a noncommittal nod while squinting at a lock of hair he’s holding pinched between the fingers of his free hand, scrutinising it for paint stains. He’ll be glad she isn’t there. No danger of her bursting from the Beauty Room like yesterday afternoon when she’d made him jump nearly out of his skin. All she’d wanted was to fetch the agate vase (a birthday present to her mother, hence its tasteful interbanding of light greys and reddish browns) for the tulips.
At first she assumed he’d jumped like that because she’d surprised him hanging around the corridor mirror checking on his haircut or the Vandyke, and she smiled in spite of herself. In spite of her still-angry feelings towards whoever had left those flowers on her doorstep like a threat.
‘Oh, hello again,’ she said, trying to avoid the blue eyes. ‘Anything you need?’ Swiftly, after a glance at her reflection, she rubbed some dust off her chin.
He seemed slightly awkward. ‘The music in there’s a bit loud, no wonder you couldn’t hear me.’
That’s when she spotted the peeled-off wallpaper, the scratches and scrape marks on the wall beside the mirror. So it wasn’t mere vanity, he must have been busy and genuinely startled.
He held up a tin. ‘The radiator paint. Just checking this is the shade you asked for: Amethyst. I had it made up specially.’ He’d paused until she looked at him, losing herself in those electric blue eyes. ‘Perhaps I could show you –’
Someone has opened the washroom door. ‘Celia? I’m sorry …’ Angelina. Come to apologise for that silly incident before. Sexy Angelina, the victim of her own desires. Like Lily.
‘Don’t worry, I’m okay.’ Celia has taken her elbows off her thighs and is examining the reddened flesh. ‘Branded all right,’ she mutters to herself.
‘Pardon?’ Then a flurry of words: ‘There’s a phone call for you. They wouldn’t give their name. Said you’d know. It’s a man, I think. Or a woman with a smoker’s voice.’
It can’t be a woman; none of her female friends or acquaintances smoke that much. Most likely it’s Lehmann. Hoping to discuss paints and colours over the phone now, godforbid.
‘Guess who?’ The voice is deep all right, with a faint foreign-sounding twang, It reminds Celia of someone she can’t quite place. Definitely not the decorator.
‘Hello?’ she shouts into the mouthpiece, pretending not to understand, ‘Who did you say?’ She is sitting with her legs folded, her left hand tracing the red patch under her tights, just below the hemline of her skirt.
‘You didn’t step on them, did you?’
‘What?’
‘Would have been a shame, such beautiful flowers …’ A delicate cough, then the line goes silent.
‘Bloodycrank,’ Celia says, replacing the receiver.
Angelina and Henry are looking at her from the dispatch counter. Angelina’s screen saver is on: a sea-floor scene of acid-green weeds, crabs and multicoloured fish glug-glugging away. ‘What do you mean? Of course it’s a real aquarium,’ Celia had overheard Angelina say into the phone on various occasions. ‘Here at Eric Krüger’s everything is real. We don’t go in for imitation and fake, you should know.’ Angelina’s a cheeky little flirt the way Celia has never, never been.
‘Bloodycrankbloodystupidcrank,’ Celia whispers down into her décolleté. She’d taken off her bra before leaving the cubicle and now she can see her nipples. They’re hard and unashamed, and the sight of them makes her feel strangely invincible all of a sudden.
She’s not afraid. No, no, not really. She is safe here at Eric’s. Couldn’t, indeed, be safer. She almost laughs out loud as she sits contemplating the video surveillance system, the steel-enforced entrance to the office premises, the bullet-proof glass partition and windows.