Amantine's Song

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 2

Every Sunday morning I used to leave home early. Even earlier than the other days. I used to spend the day with some friends and with Geoffrey, my pseudo boyfriend, or put more accurately... my regular boyfriend.

I had been thinking for some time about leaving the Parkers’ house and making myself completely independent, but that would have meant moving to live with Geoffrey and intensifying the level of our relationship, which I did not feel ready for and was not sure I wanted.

Geoffrey Carter, nice guy, serious, motivated, brilliant. He understood me and supported me in my studies. A common destiny, almost. And my parents liked him. His father had been in high school with mine. We were basically made for each other. But to live with him, that would be rushing into things. No, I wasn’t ready yet to turn our thing into a serious relationship that would easily point us towards marriage, children and all the rest. I needed intellectual depth but emotional lightness.

I still needed personal freedom. I fought not to fall into that trap like many others. Twenty-seven years were too many or too few, depending on the point of view. Too many, according to someone, to still be sentimentally unresolved, to have no idea about what it meant to truly love. Few, in my opinion, to make a lifetime commitment. Few for a yes, few for a forever, few for a trap from which I would have tried to free myself at all costs, if by chance or by mistake I had ended up in one.

I had learned from experience that it was convenient for me to go out early on Sunday mornings. Not having to go to kindergarten, Jinny had the habit of sticking to me and preventing me from leaving her alone with her mostly absent and distracted parents, during the week. So I tried to sneak out before she woke up, begging me to make up a story on the spot.

I walked quickly to Notting Hill tube station, intending to get to Geoffrey’s apartment on Edgware Road. We had started a kind of literary circle with some friends, although by Sunday after a fairly heavy week, most of the time we ended up drinking, smoking, and talking about our tragic and boring lives of assimilated Londoners. The prospects for serious and highly cultural conversations were all there, though. At least they were.

However, on that day, I was firmly determined to show Geoff and the others my notes on Lord Byron’s letters. I had found some I had never read before and I felt particularly enthusiastic about it. They showed how the poet was cynical and even a little cruel, especially in love. But maybe he wasn’t completely wrong; he was allowed to be like that.

Then I couldn’t get it out of my mind the dispute over the non-existence of Shakespeare. I had witnessed a debate in which it was claimed that his was only a fictitious name and that in reality his works had been written by several people. It seemed unacceptable to me as a hypothesis.

‘No, no, I can’t even think about it. It’s crazy and anyone who believes that is crazy!’

I stopped in front of the tube station, shaking my head firmly. The cold was bitter that morning. Too much for my taste. And it wasn’t even seven. I let down my brown hair, which I had tied in a ponytail, so that it warmed my neck a little and slipped the hair band around my wrist, like a bracelet. I wrapped myself tightly in my woollen coat. I absolutely needed a hot coffee. Maybe I should stop at a coffee shop. Geoff almost never drank it and always forgot to buy it, so there was little hope of finding it at his place.

There wasn’t a soul around at that time on a Sunday morning. Of course, they were not entirely wrong to lie in bed, lounging. I looked around to see if I was in the right place and realized I was wrong. There was a soul around. Two, actually. They stood at the corner, between two streets. I turned to avoid making eye contact but not fast enough. The younger of the two souls looked straight in my direction with an expression of mockery. He had an absolute and perfect punchable face and a look that made me feel inadequate and out of place, as if I had a face full of cream or had gone out, forgetting to put on my underwear.

‘Hello, sweetheart. Going somewhere nice at this time?’ Punchable face waved his hand to beckon me towards them. He was standing, leaning against the wall. He wore torn jeans and jacket, a black wool hat and fingerless gloves of the same colour. I looked over at the other, an old man sitting on the ground, dressed even worse. Both homeless, of course. Against my will I went back to staring at the young man. His green eyes looked me up and down, sly and restless. He seemed calm but at the same time without peace. I couldn’t understand what attracted me in that look or even why I didn’t decide to walk down the tube stairs and disappear forever from their path.

I had to reach my friends, soon. We had so much to discuss. I just wanted to stop for a moment to get a coffee. It wasn’t my intention to disrupt my life forever. Absolutely not.