and watching videos, either, as I did. He liked finding new restaurants and eating out; he would drive halfway across the country to find a good restaurant. He loved going to the casino and betting all his money on one number. I was intrigued by his boldness, but looking back I should have known then that I would never have been enough – life with me was probably boring, with my constant refusal to go away with him and rushing off home to my parents instead. But he said we were good together, that I brought calmness to his life; but then he said many things, most of which probably weren’t even true.
I switched my phone back on and the message box was full. All of them were from him, frantic messages, every one saying how much he loved me. I so desperately wanted to believe him, to speak to him and have him put his arms around me and tell me that there had been some terrible mistake, that he could explain it all, but instead I made myself delete the messages one by one. Time, that was what I needed, time to sort out my head. I bought a coffee, sat on the park bench and thought more about the quote before setting off for home.
No sooner had I turned the key, my mum was waiting anxiously, rolling pin in one hand, telling me that Raj would be calling at seven-thirty.
‘You already told me that before I left,’ I said.
‘Good day?’ my dad asked, turning back to watch the television before I had replied.
What was I supposed to say? That Henri Matisse had given me some much-needed peace.
‘Yes, good day.’
I went upstairs, quickly had a shower, and bang on time the phone rang. No unpredictability there, then.
‘Hi Nina, it’s Raj.’
‘Hello.’
There was a moment’s hesitation and then he took control.
‘I hear you’re a lawyer and working in the city?’
‘Yes, and you?’ I asked in a half-hearted attempt to deflect the conversation away from myself.
‘No, I’m not a lawyer,’ he laughed. Well, it was more of a grunting sound. And why did he laugh? I mean, if the man thought that was humour we might as well put the phone down now.
‘No,’ he said, gathering himself together, ‘I work for a consultancy firm as an accountant.’
There wasn’t much to say to that.
‘So what do you like doing?’ he began again.
There was no stopping this man; he careered straight past the silences and kept on going.
Be kind to him, Nina, talk. It’s not his fault, none of it is his fault. What did I like doing? Suddenly I felt a sense of panic. It was the realisation that my life up until that moment had revolved solely around Jean and work. I had to say something, and so, like an eight-year-old, reeled off a list of hobbies. ‘Reading, cinema, watching TV, painting.’
‘Oh, painting? What do you paint with?’
‘A paintbrush,’ I replied.
He laughed again. ‘Very good, that’s very good, I see you too have got a sense of humour. I’ve dabbled in watercolours but I’m not very good,’ he added.
Then there was another silence.
‘Seen any good films?’ he asked.
I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘The Matrix.’
‘I saw that on the plane to Japan.’
For the first time he had my attention. Japan? What was he doing in Japan?
‘Japan?’ I enquired.
‘Yes, I have to travel for work and so I extend my stay wherever possible. I love to find out about other cultures. It’s important to expand the mind.’
‘Where else have you been?’
He listed practically half the countries in the atlas but not in a pretentious way. I stopped him at Chile and asked what it was like, and for the first time I sensed he was being himself.
‘I’ve always wanted to go there,’ I said, and to my surprise he did not come out with a cheesy line like, ‘I’ll take you’ or ‘Maybe you’ll go there soon.’ Instead, he said it was beautiful.
There was a pause but now it wasn’t awkward.
‘Perhaps you’d like to meet up?’ he asked.
I had images of my mother, a protagonist in an Indian film, wailing and beating her chest in despair at the thought of me saying no, so I said ‘Yes'. It would be just one meeting and then I could say it didn’t work out.
‘For dinner or a movie?’ he asked.
Movie? Before I made a comment on his use of the word ‘movie’ I thought twice. It was only the Croydon multiplex and I wouldn’t have to talk to him that much if we were seeing a film. ‘Yes, a movie sounds good.’
‘Great, I’ll pick you up on Saturday, about three?’
‘All right.’
‘See you then, Nina.’
My mother was downstairs, eagerly waiting for me. I could hear her pacing. As soon as I came down she pretended to look disinterested, resuming the rolling-pin position. She turned around for a second and her right eyebrow signalled as if to say, ‘Dish the dirt.’ The other eyebrow said, ‘He’s a good boy, got a good job, coming from a very good family, now tell me you have arranged to meet him.’
‘Three o’clock on Saturday,’ I said.
‘OK, OK,’ she muttered as if she wasn’t bothered, but when she turned back to her perfectly circular rotis I could feel her beaming.
Knowing that my parents were distracted with the whole Raj scenario, I felt less guilty the next morning about putting on a suit and pretending to go to work. Jean Michel had left three more messages. I wanted to listen to them but again deleted them one by one. Then I went back to see Matisse, the only person who I could turn to at that moment in time.
I bought the book I had seen the day before. It told me about his life and each of the paintings. It also included a commentary by critics on what he was trying to achieve, saying something about his search for chromatic equilibrium. How did they know that anyway? Maybe he wasn’t trying to achieve anything except to express his feelings? Did it matter what they thought he was trying to do? What mattered was how the paintings left you feeling, not a skewed interpretation on what he did or didn’t want to do. I searched the book for his own words and came across another quote: ‘There are always flowers for those who want to see them.’
‘Are there, Matisse?’ I wondered aloud.
The cafeteria was full again at lunchtime and I found myself having to ask if I could sit next to a girl with long, mousy-blonde hair.
‘Sure,’ she replied in an Australian accent, smiling away. When she spotted that I had bought the same book on Matisse as her and commented on it, I nodded
