I asked her what the photojournalist had talked about, on their walk.
His wife, she said. About how intelligent she was. And how talented.
At some point he had told her that he and his wife had separated for a period. She had asked him why. He said it was because of work: the wife had got an important promotion which took her to the other side of the country, and he had things he wanted to do here, in Europe. They had lived apart for two years, each pursuing different projects. At the end of that time they had come together again, in their home in Wyoming. She asked him, boldly, if there had been infidelity. He denied it. Vociferously, she added.
I knew then, she said, that he was a liar, that for all his reportage and his honesty he was determined to keep himself untouched, to take without giving, to hoard himself like a greedy child. I knew, she said, that he wanted to sleep with me, had considered it thoroughly, and decided – from experience, I’ve no doubt, she said – that it was too much of a risk.
I asked her why she had felt such excitement, after this deflating encounter.
I don’t know, she said. I think it was the feeling of being admired. She was silent for a while, gazing towards the window, her face lifted. Admired, she went on, by someone more important than me. I don’t know why, she said. It excited me. It always excites me. Even though, she said, you could say I don’t get anything out of it.
She looked at her watch: it was late; she ought to go, and leave me in peace. She took her bag and stood up amid the dust sheets.
I said she should think about our conversation, and about whether anything had been said that might provide her with an opening. I said I felt sure it would become clear soon enough.
Thank you, she said, shaking my hand lightly with her slender fingers. I could tell she didn’t believe me.
We went out into the hall and I opened the door for her. The neighbours from the flat below were standing outside on the pavement in the grey afternoon, shabby in their coats. At the sound of the door they turned to look, their faces grim and suspicious, and Jane returned their look imperiously. I imagined her in the dusk of a Paris garden, untouched in her white dress, an object thirsting if not for interpretation then for the fulfilment at least of an admiring human gaze, like a painting hanging on a wall, waiting.
The builder’s van had broken down: the foreman Tony said it happened all the time. We were in Tony’s gleaming maroon Audi, driving to the hardware depot to pick up some materials.
‘This is nice car,’ he explained, taking his hands off the steering wheel to demonstrate. Inside, the car was spotless black leather. ‘I buy a car that never break down,’ Tony said, ‘and look what happen. It’s me has to go pick up cement.’
Earlier I had stood in the street and watched him line the boot carefully with dust sheets.
‘Like assassin,’ he said, grinning widely to show an impressive set of white teeth. ‘Room for two bodies,’ he added significantly. He pointed at the door to the basement flat. ‘In Albania,’ he said, ‘I know people – big discount.’
We sat in the slow-moving traffic with the radio on. Tony said he kept it on to improve his English. His daughter spoke better English than him, and she was only five.
‘Five years old!’ he yelled, slapping the leather steering wheel. ‘Amazing!’
The grey roadside inched along beside us. Tony glanced out at it frequently, drawing himself up in his seat. He drove erect behind his mirrored sunglasses with a single finger resting on the leather steering wheel. His big hard thighs were splayed comfortably in a perfect V. He wore a tight red T-shirt that showed his powerful chest and bulging forearms.
‘I love England,’ he said. ‘I love most the English cakes.’ He grinned. ‘Especially the hijack.’
You mean flapjack, I said.
‘Flapjack!’ he shouted deliriously, throwing back his head. ‘Yes, I love the flapjack!’
His daughter, he went on, enjoyed school – she talked about it all the time. In the mornings he would find her sitting fully dressed in her uniform on the stairs, waiting. Her teacher had told him she read better than some of the ten-year-olds.
‘My daughter,’ he said, jabbing his own muscled chest, ‘reading English better than the English.’
The family had moved to England three years before. The only person they knew when they came was Tony’s sister-in-law, who lived in Harlow. Since then Tony had persuaded his brother and cousin to come here too. He liked to have his family around him – he returned to Albania every couple of months, driving non-stop in the Audi until he got there – but he wasn’t sure it was so good for his wife.
‘It stops her getting used,’ he said.
Used to it, I said. It stops her getting used to it.
‘Yes,’ Tony said, nodding his head approvingly. ‘It’s good.’
It stopped her getting used to it, he went on, having her family to depend on. She had made no friends and was frightened of going anywhere on her own. She wouldn’t even go to their daughter’s school: it was Tony who dropped her off and picked her up and went to the assembling.
Assembly, I said.
‘I love,’ Tony said, grinning widely, ‘the assembly.’
Unlike their daughter, his wife could speak no English at all.
‘And my daughter,’ he said, ‘she don’t speak Albanian.’
She could understand a few things but English was the language she knew.
So effectively, I said, his wife and daughter couldn’t speak to one another. Tony nodded his head slowly, his eyes on the road.
‘In other words,’ he said.
At the depot I waited while Tony collected the builder’s order. I paid the bill and we set off on the return journey. On the road a small battered truck loomed up right behind us, blaring its horn repeatedly, and then swerved out so that it drew level with Tony’s Audi. The driver was waving his arms and leaning over to shout through the open window. He was a tiny, piratical-looking man with an elaborate black moustache. Tony laughed and pressed a button so that the electric window slid down. The two of them drove along, shouting back and forth in a foreign language, while the oncoming traffic emitted a cacophonous blaring of horns in protest. Presently the truck accelerated away, the contents of its open bed – rubbish sacks, old furniture, broken planks and piles of rubble – jolting up and down under the madly flapping tarpaulin.
‘That’s Kaput,’ Tony said, buzzing the window shut again. ‘He crazy. Even for Albanian.’
Kaput never left his truck, Tony said. He drove it all day and all night, round and round the city, collecting rubbish. Rubbish was a problem for people here, hundred per cent: there were so many regulations, and getting a skip cost a lot of money. It was cheaper to pay Kaput to come and take it away.
I asked where he took it.