Urdhava means upward, dhanu means bow. This invigorating pose replicates the movement of a bow as it arcs when pulled by the bowstring. With the soles of the feet and palms of the hands set firmly on the floor, the spine arches up, flying free as a bow. This pose benefits the digestive, respiratory, cardiovascular, and glandular systems. It influences hormonal secretions and can relieve gynecologic disorders. This inverted pose places the whole body and nervous system in an abnormal position. It is difficult to raise the body up if the nervous system is not ready. While holding the pose, if the practitioner loses a sense of position in space, or proprioception, strength is also lost.
Grace had allowed herself to be seduced by Harry’s conviction that much would change after the feng shui consultation. They were both disappointed when, some weeks later, apparently nothing had. ‘I suppose there’s only so much feng shui can do,’ Grace commented. ‘At some point we’ll have to change more than your colour scheme.’
‘Like what?’
A long list occurred to her, but to steer clear of trouble, she said instead, ‘We need to go back to Swami D’s. We haven’t been for ages.’
‘At the gym, yoga classes are free,’ Harry countered.
‘Don’t confuse Swami D’s with stretching in a mirrored room that smells of stale sweat,’ she said, though no longer surprised that Harry equated her teacher’s wisdom and experience with the banalities of the twenty-five-year-old erstwhile aerobics instructor who taught yoga at his revered gym. Harry had been given a free membership by its new manager, a friend from his acting days, and he was spending more time there. Grace didn’t blame him. That she paid for his yoga classes and suppers at Swami D’s made him feel wretched, which defeated the point of going.
‘Harry, so many of our problems come down to the fact that you aren’t earning anything. I think, sweetheart, you’ve got to accept that it’s time for you to get a job,’ she encouraged.
‘Working for the minimum wage is a waste of time. I’m better off signing on, getting the rent paid here,’ he said.
‘Why don’t you drive a minicab and study to be a yoga teacher?’
‘I thought you were the one who wanted to be a yoga teacher, once you stop dealing drugs.’
‘Criticize my job when you’ve got one of your own,’
Grace said. ‘Grace, I can’t take this pressure anymore.’
‘You can’t take it?’ She sounded like an exasperated mother.
‘I’m going.’
‘Going?’ Her voice betrayed her.
‘Going out.’
‘Where?’
‘The gym,’ he said.
Grace had expected him to say the minicab office, and as she watched him walk out it was as though an invisible cord that connected her to him was cut and pinged back into her belly.
When Harry returned to Grace’s later that night, he was uplifted. He fished inside a Boots carrier bag and produced a bottle of Chanel, which he gave to Grace with a kiss. ‘Things are going to change. They are changing,’ he said, then went into the bathroom and shaved his head.
In a last-ditch attempt to please the casting directors, Harry had been growing his hair. Grace found the buzz of hair clippers more tantalizing than the sound of his daily blow-dry. The short hair transformed him. It was enough, anyway, to persuade Grace to believe him when he said, ‘I’m tired of castings and counting on my looks. From now on I want to concentrate on designing yoga clothes. And you’re right. I should be a yoga teacher.’
Harry pulled Grace to him, but deep inside she held back. For a reason she could not rationalize his plan left her deflated, even alarmed: to be a yoga teacher was her dream and she feared he would rob her of it.
Harry called Grace late Friday morning. He was sorry, he said, but Vicky’s plans had changed at the last minute and he was staying the night with Lucy.
‘Babysitting?’ Grace asked, upset but not unaccustomed.
‘I can’t babysit my own daughter,’ he said, but Grace knew that’s what it felt like and how Vicky intended it to feel.
Grace’s night, home alone, turned out to be a pleasure. She cooked, and opened a bottle of wine without the guilt that accompanied every glass she’d ever had in Harry’s sober presence. Beside the log fire, listening to Late Night Junction on the radio, she relished the bliss of solitude when it isn’t all there is.
On Saturday afternoon (Harry had called three hours later than he said he would) they agreed to meet on Queensway, that thoroughfare of Chinese restaurants and raunchy underwear shops between Westbourne Grove and Hyde Park. From a distance, Harry watched Grace walk toward him, then turned back to his newspaper. Sports—the football in particular—was his section. His team had floundered in the league most of his adult life but was now top of the Premiership and winning games in Europe. Finally the Blues were where they deserved to be. Chelsea’s success, Harry confessed, took some getting used to. Absorbed in the day’s prematch commentary, he leaned against the wall, one leg bent, a foot pressed against the brick as he read. When he looked up again, Grace was right beside him, unsure that she would ever get used to his short-short hair. He looked sheepish, a shorn sheep she thought.
His unshaven face gruffly scraped her cheek but she liked the way he kissed her full on the mouth. He folded the newspaper and stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Sorry about last night, darling,’ he said, as they walked down Queensway. Darling? Grace softened. She could still want to be his darling.
‘I was thinking we’d get a falafel,’ Harry said.
Grace was starving. Waiting for Harry to call, anticipating breakfast together, and then lunch, she had missed both. ‘What about the Four Seasons?’ she said, peering beneath the row of roast ducks skewered in the window of the Chinese restaurant. She wanted to sit down and eat hot food somewhere warm. Before Harry had detoxified, the Four Seasons had been his favourite. ‘Half a duck for £5.50 has to be a bargain,’ she said, reading the gilt-framed menu outside the door. Instinct told her the dark meat would satisfy; the queue of Chinese people winding its way onto the street was all the confirmation she needed.
‘There’s a higher price to pay. Duck that cheap can’t be organic. Let’s stick with falafel.’
The Lebanese takeaway was one of the few places Harry could afford and the first place he had ever taken her. They walked to it, past tourist shops selling British flags, plastic police helmets, and postcards—pert breasts painted with dog faces, nipples for noses, alongside dead members of the Royal Family smiling in perpetuity beneath well-made hats.
‘I used to think the Princess of Wales had it all,’ Harry said. ‘But in the end she was just another desperate parent making all the wrong moves.’
‘Not that that should be any consolation,’ Grace said, but supposed it was.
The falafel was as good as any food anywhere, even sitting on the stone step of a scaffold-clad building, the cold creeping into their bones. Grace had needed to eat: her humour improved as the fried chickpeas and crisp cabbage settled in her belly. There was tahini sauce in the corner of her mouth. Harry leaned forward to wipe it away. Things were looking up.
‘You know, Harry, last night I decided I’m going to give Suprafarma my notice,’ she said.
‘That’s good,’ he said, without enthusiasm.
‘I hear a but . . .’
‘The but is money.’
‘I’ll make money as a yoga teacher,’ she countered, aware that she was now on the defensive.
‘But when, and how much? There’ll be no buying what you like when you like.’ He bit into his falafel and stared ahead, chewing. ‘I know how hard it is to get a plan off the ground. Look at me.’
‘You won’t be my role model,’ she said, resenting his lack of support. Her approach would be pragmatic, productive. She would not waste time waiting, as Harry had done and continued to do. Resisting the temptation to fall into a childish squabble, she screwed the rest of her food into the tinfoil wrap and aimed at the bin. The silver ball hit the metal edge and fell in.
‘That means something good is going to happen,’ Harry said, still sitting on the stone step.
She looked up at him. ‘I’m about to train to be a yoga teacher and that sounds good to me.’ She turned toward Hyde Park. Harry stepped up casually beside her, subduing the urgency she could feel in him. ‘What brought this on?’ he asked as they crossed Bayswater Road.
‘To be a yoga teacher is the only thing I know for sure that I want.’
Harry caught the implication. They walked to the park in silence, darkness falling. ‘I missed you last night,’ he said, his hand moving inside Grace’s coat and under her T-shirt.
‘It was good for us to have time apart.’
‘Didn’t you miss me?’
‘Not really.’ It was true she hadn’t, but accepting his hand on the small of her back negated the subtle hint that she was better off without him.
Harry loved Grace’s bottom in her blue jeans; his hand edged lower. ‘Let’s go to Swami D’s if you want, or a movie, then have an Indian at that restaurant behind The Gate. I’ll pay,’ Harry said, definitive.
Grace looked sideways. Harry never suggested going out, let alone paying, and his new attitude drew her to him. Perhaps she had been right to have faith in him. And then there was the familiarity of skin to skin. ‘I’d love to go out this evening,’ she said.
‘I’ve been meaning to give you this.’ He pressed four fresh pink fifties into Grace’s hand. They felt nice.
‘Are you sure?’ she frowned.
‘It’s about time I put in the footwork, pay my way.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘That tree they talk about.’
‘No really, how come?’
‘After our minifight the other day, I went to the gym and got back late, remember?’ Grace remembered. ‘I was with Nick and Joe. I’d sent them some designs, which they liked, but I’ve waited until our deal was signed and sealed before telling you. They’ve asked me to work part-time, strange hours, but it’s a start.’
Grace smiled widely and right then everything was all right. At the tinkling tone, the sound of a message landing, she checked her pockets. ‘My phone?’
‘It’s mine,’ Harry said, consulting the latest BlackBerry.
‘Things really are looking up. When did you get that?’
‘Vicky. Last night,’ he said, reading his e-mail. Grace was losing the habit of needing to know what Vicky was up to—a freedom she had worked hard to achieve. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked, casually.
‘Everything’s cool,’ he answered, switching the device off, sliding it away.
‘That’s a first. No interruptions and a date.’ She kissed his cheek, pressed up close, then kissed him again.
The air was bitter cold. Harry wrapped his arm around her and pulled her to his side. ‘I like the park best like this, nothing going on,’ he said, his nature to prefer trees without leaves, everything still.
‘You’re a minimalist right through,’ she said, keeping it to herself that she preferred spring’s rising, summer’s heat, anything but this melancholy time that reminded her of death. Grace walked ahead of Harry, then turned in his path. He stepped up to hold her and kissed her forehead, which was hot.
‘This is enough, isn’t it?’ she said, pulling back to see him better.
‘What?’
‘This love.’
He nodded and Grace was satisfied. She could overcome the demands of inconsistent fatherhood. She could take Harry for himself, for herself. They would make the future work. Later, in the darkness of her bed, she whispered close to his mouth and beautiful face I love you, and he took her with a passion that was rare. Lying together, the back of her body curled into the front of his, his arm around her, Grace couldn’t imagine being without this intimacy.
‘Do the yoga training with me,’ she said.
‘What, come away with you?’ Harry’s voice lifted, as though he was glad and would come.
‘It might be good for us. I can pay.’
He reached to kiss her, and in the dark his mouth quickly found hers. It felt right.
‘So you’ll come with me?’ she asked.
‘When are you going?’
‘As soon as I find a good school.’
‘It’s Lucy’s birthday next month. I said I’d go.’
‘Go where?’ The edge was in her voice first.
‘Ibiza.’
‘To stay with Vicky?’
Harry rolled onto his back and folded his arms.
‘Are you really going to stay at Vicky’s?’ Grace asked.
‘With my daughter’s mother, where the party is. She invited me in front of Lucy. I couldn’t say no.’
‘If you go as a family Lucy will be confused. We all will.’
‘I’m going because I want to be a good father. I didn’t think it would make me a bad boyfriend.’
They fell asleep, a wide space between them in the bed. In the morning the mood was brittle, the quietness between them convenient but uncomfortable and a consequence of all they had left unsaid.
But gossamer threads of hope and expectation bound Grace to Harry tighter than she knew. Lucy was such a pleasure and Vicky was in an unexpectedly cooperative phase. Harry’s sporadic work for Nick and Joe was certainly better than none at all, and they paid him cash, so he no longer called on Grace to be the lender of last resort. She didn’t mind him driving her car to work in the evening; since he had a job, he always returned the tank full. Who said men can’t change? Grace continued her daytime discipline convincing psychiatrists that the paper-thin difference between Procent and rival antidepressants was door-wedge wide in Procent’s favour. Driving out of the Chelsea and Westminster hospital car park one time, she had glimpsed Dr. James crossing the Fulham Road. Some part of her felt relieved that he was still in the system they had both talked of leaving. She fantasized for a second about contriving to meet him, but for what? He had placed an order for Procent and there was no reason for her to be in contact for a while.
Most weekends, Grace still trawled the web searching for the perfect yoga training but sensed that Harry could make it to the hallowed ground of yoga teaching before her. His spare time (while he had less of it than he used to, he still had plenty) was spent in practice: every morning, even on Sundays, he put on his Ashtanga Vinyasa DVD, and in front of a full-length mirror, observed his poses. Curled up in the warmth of Harry’s bed, Grace heard the DVD slide in. ‘You’re so dedicated,’ she said, eyes closed.
‘I can be,’ he said.
‘Don’t forget your Ujjayi breathing,’ she teased. Grace decried the American Ashtanga star’s approach but could not deny its effect on Harry. In a few weeks, not only had the contours of his body changed, but so had his spirits. The pre-Ashtanga Harry had called nine o’clock ‘early doors.’ Now he was up before the sun, naturally high.
The studio was cold, but Grace propped herself up against the pillows to watch her favourite sequence. She was amused by Harry huffing and puffing through the dynamic moves in his black Calvin Kleins, which were not so unlike the form hugging shorts worn by the muscle-loaded yoga instructor, but when it came to the splits, he was defeated. Rare among men, the DVD yogi had elastic hamstrings and in a flamboyant interpretation of the splits he balanced on straight, iron-strong legs between two trucks as they took off across the hard, flat sand of an exotic beach. ‘Let me know when you get to this bit,’ Grace chuckled.
Harry switched off the DVD. ‘Instead of mocking, why don’t you help?’
‘Bring on the trucks,’ she said. Laughter played across her face.
‘The splits are impossible with hamstrings like mine, but I’m close to Urdhva Dhanurasana.’ Harry hadn’t expected the Sanskrit to roll off his tongue quite so smoothly.
Grace smiled. ‘Saying Urdhva Dhanurasana is harder than doing it.’
‘Then show me,’ he said, pulling the bedclothes from her.
She got up from the mattress. Harry was already on his back, still and beautiful as a painting. She looked down at him, his glacial eyes turned dark, and Grace was mesmerized. Perhaps the back bend was a ruse to get her to touch him, but when she did, Harry turned his face to the ceiling and closed his eyes. She had a yoga student on her hands, not a lover.
Grace stood over Harry, her feet on either side of his head. ‘Put your hands on my feet,’ she instructed, her voice flat to conceal her desire to kiss him. He pressed tentatively. ‘Press harder,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘You can’t.’ Grace leaned forward with her hands on his quadriceps, which he tightened to show their strength and shape.
‘Stop that,’ she said, slapping his legs. ‘The muscles need to be long, not tensed up.’
Harry sneaked a look at the circle their bodies made: his head between Grace’s feet, her hands on his thighs, her breasts and belly swooping above him. She moved her hands to support his shoulders. ‘Now lift your pelvis,’ she said in the same flat voice. As he did so, she lifted his shoulders and Harry’s back rose, table flat. His spine from pubic bone to collarbone was rigid as armor.
‘My first back bend!’ he said, straining to speak. ‘Let go. See if I can stay up.’
Tactfully declining to point out that there was no bend in his back, Grace withdrew her hands. Harry’s face turned red from effort, the veins bulged blue on his neck, but his back was off the floor and that’s what mattered to him. She helped him to land softly back on the mat.
He waited, quiet. ‘Nobody’s ever touched me like that before,’ he said.
‘Like what?’
‘As though they wanted nothing from me,’ he said, his raised eyebrows threading lines across his forehead. Grace thought he might reach out and show her what it was like to receive that kind of touch, but he rolled away to grab the fat yoga book by the bed.
Yoga in the 21st Century was a recent addition to the yoga canon, edited by a fashion-director friend of Vicky’s. At £45, it was Harry’s most significant investment in his yoga future and he consulted it often.
‘What do you think of this?’ he asked, opening the book at a marked photograph of a girl sitting in lotus.
‘Her knees are too far from the floor,’ Grace observed.
‘Not the pose, her top. What do you think?’
‘It’s transparent.’
‘But cute. I’m working on the idea for Nick and Joe.’
Grace snatched the book. ‘Rumi quotes in grey italics don’t make sense scrawled across pictures of models trying to do yoga. This book is pretentious. Chuck it.’ They tussled on the bed, apparently for the book, which Grace held to her body like a shield. Harry prized it from her, but let it fall to the floor and, cupping her face in his hands, put his mouth on hers. They stayed like that, focused in fingertips and lips, aware of every breath and touch, until her mouth opened for his kiss and right through her heart she longed for him. Which is when the doorbell rang.
Harry went to the window. ‘Vicky,’ he said.
‘How could she know we’d be here?’
That Vicky could intuit his whereabouts was no surprise to Harry. She’d been at it for years. ‘Best get dressed,’ he said, and headed for the stairs.
Vicky had parked the Range Rover on the pavement and left the engine running. ‘Have a lovely time with Daddy and don’t forget to brush your teeth,’ she said, kissing her daughter, then rushing back to the car.
‘What’s going on?’ Harry called, tying his cotton robe against the windy morning.
‘Tokyo. Got the call last night. I’ll be in touch,’ Vicky called back.
She U-turned on Westbourne Grove, her wave small and frantic as though she were rubbing him out. To save his daughter from confusion Harry played along, carrying her up the steep stairs while she chanted, ‘I’m staying at the little house, I’m staying at the little house.’
‘How fantastic is that,’ he said. ‘Did Mummy say for how long?’
‘As long as I like.’
Harry pushed the door open with his foot, feeling the grit stick to his soles, and set Lucy down. He pulled her out of her coat and went back for her suitcase. When Grace emerged from the bathroom, dressed and ready for whatever surprise Vicky had in store, the bulging pink suitcase told her all she needed to know. This was no sleepover. Grace touched the tip of Lucy’s chin and said hello. A warmer gesture would, she knew, make Harry nervous, but Lucy smiled to see her. Everyone softened a little.
‘Let’s go to Lucky Seven,’ Harry said, glancing at Grace, even though it was Lucy’s approval he sought. The breakfast special at Lucky Seven, Notting Hill’s all-American diner, was Harry’s affordable treat and Lucy’s favourite place to eat.
Harry shook Lucy back into her fake-leopard-skin coat, fumbling with buttons too tiny for his fingers. Thin wool tights, a purple leather miniskirt, and black boots with two-inch heels: Lucy’s outfit didn’t make sense on a five-year-old. Loobiloo clumped down the stairs, Harry and Grace behind her. ‘She looks like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver. Where does Vicky get her clothes?’ Harry said in a low voice.
For harmony’s sake Grace resisted sharing her theory that Vicky, too fat for fashion, dressed vicariously through her daughter.
At Lucky Seven, Lucy settled into a red booth by the window, excited to be their first and only customers. ‘Not enough room,’ she giggled. ‘Grace, sit over there.’ She pointed to the table opposite. Grace bit the inside of her cheek. Crazy how a five-year-old could hurt.
A young waitress came over, tying her apron, not ready for early risers. ‘Cheese toasty,’ Lucy said, brightly.
‘One cheese toasty,’ Harry said, overruling the dairy ban. ‘And what would you like, darling?’
‘I’ll have pancakes,’ said Grace.
‘Blueberry pancakes for two,’ Harry said. That he was the one to order, and pay, was still a novelty that Grace enjoyed.
‘Maple syrup with that?’ said the waitress.
‘Yes,’ Grace and Harry said together.
‘I don’t know why I ask. Everybody has maple syrup,’ the waitress said, walking off.
They sat in complicated silence, waiting for the food. It was often like this at the beginning when Lucy came over. The more Lucy loved Grace the more guilt she felt for betraying her mother, and it took a while for them to fall in with each other. A game helped.
‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with p,’ Grace said.
‘PT Cruiser!’ said Lucy, pointing to the car parked outside.
‘I spy something.’ She clapped her hands to her face, shaking her head for missing the i-rhyme and began again: ‘I spy with my little eye, Dada and Grace, something beginning with . . .’
The game went on, the girl setting Grace’s name beside her father’s and seeming to like the sound of that.
‘Toasty?’ asked the waitress, back at the table balancing three white plates.
‘That’s a big sandwich,’ Grace said, passing it to Lucy.
‘That’s a hell of a sandwich,’ Harry said.
‘The cheese isn’t melted,’ Lucy whined.
‘You won’t know till you take a bite,’ said Harry, tucking into his pancakes. Grace reached across and sliced Lucy’s massive slab of bread in half. The child smiled. Lucy’s devotion to her mother was automatic, and she loved her father as a five-year-old should, but in the canny way of a child, she trusted Grace to see what she needed. The big promises her parents made were seldom delivered, but in the two years she’d known her, Grace had never broken a promise. The girl had learned to love her for it.
Lucy wiped her finger through the pale yellow goo oozing onto her plate and, dangling a thread of cheese above her mouth said, ‘Look, Grace, a worm,’ then bit down on the congealed cheese.
Harry didn’t mind Lucy having fun with her food as long as she ate it, and he seemed content as he poured more maple syrup over his pancakes. ‘Thanks for going along with the change of plan,’ he said.
Grace was gripped with a desire for them all to be happy and she believed they could be. Lucy’s unexpected appearance hadn’t ruined anything, nor could it: Grace loved the girl. Perhaps it was a maple syrup sugar rush, but Harry was equally optimistic. ‘You’re wonderful,’ he said to Grace, then turned to make a fuss over Lucy, wiping her buttery mouth, covering and uncovering her eyes with his paper napkin.
With Vicky away, life was less complicated. Grace and Harry knew where they stood; they had Lucy and the days unfolded peacefully around the girl. Harry’s work, such as it was, was going well, and brought the kind of changes Grace had given up hoping for. The little gifts bestowed by a lover upon the beloved were finally part of Harry’s realm, and he was more the man, from opening doors for her to how he made love. If it’s true that manners maketh man, Harry having money made his manners possible.
With Lucy with them, they got by for a few days in the studio, but had moved into Grace’s house by the weekend. Harry agreed that it was time for Lucy to settle in there, and it also didn’t seem fair to leave Grace with Lucy in his studio on the evenings he worked for Nick and Joe.
Then, one evening Grace returned from work to find Harry sitting on her garden step, head in hands. Harry explained, through tears, that he’d been on time for the school pickup but Vicky had beaten him to it; the form teacher had released Lucy when her mother appeared half an hour before the end of class to take her home.
The house without Lucy was quiet, organized. The weekends once again belonged to Harry and Grace. Grace tried to believe she was glad for the freedom, but with Lucy gone so had her joy.