“An invitation?”
Jude wasn’t sent one. No hand-delivered envelope for her. This means something, but Stella is not sure what. She opens her bag and takes out the glossy exhibition invitation. Jude stares at it for a long time.
“It’s Françoise,” says Stella.
“I see,” says Jude. “Timothy really fell for her. He thought he could rescue her.” She turns to Stella. “Can I take this?” Before Stella can agree she has already put the invitation in her canvas satchel.
“What do you know, Jude?”
But Jude, for once, goes silent.
“And Luke?” Stella asks quickly.
“He’s flourishing,” says Jude with an edge of resentment in her voice. “You don’t even have to know how to cook these days. I taught him how to make flambé. We nearly set the house on fire. We were naked,” she adds, looking at Stella for a reaction.
“Let’s go,” Jude says suddenly, standing up. “Nobody’s coming.”
“Who did you think . . .?”
But Jude has already crossed the road and is on the pavement on the other side. Stella follows her around the corner to the bar that they used to go to after the life drawing classes. She remembers Timothy hovering, torn between Jude pulling him inside and Françoise on the pavement outside, walking home in the dark after class.
Stella follows Jude into the small boudoir. The bartender, a very well built black man, is cleaning glasses. There are a couple of small tables near the window. Stella is always amazed how they manage to cram so many customers in here at night, and musicians too. There is a very steep staircase up to a room above with couches, where students lounge until the early hours of the morning. On the staircase Jude had once pulled up her T-shirt so that one of the waiters could feel her breasts – he had refused to believe that such perfectly shaped, gravity defying boobs could be real.
The bartender’s eyes light up when he sees Jude. She leans over the bar and gives him a long kiss on the mouth. Jude has passed out many times in this bar and been carried home.
“We are not open for drinks yet,” says the manager, coming in from the kitchen. “Well, maybe a glass of wine,” he says to Jude’s crestfallen face.
Jude takes out the invitation and studies it again. “Ivor’s a terrible artist. I don’t know how people could have paid for his classes. It’s soon. Next week. Do you think they’ll all be there, the whole class?”
“I don’t know. Will Luke come?”
“Maybe,” Jude runs her finger over Françoise’s face on the invitation. “Perhaps Ivor’s paintings will be worth something now.” Jude frowns. “Don’t worry, I won’t smoke,” she says, then falls silent. She stares glumly out on to the street. Stella drinks her wine too fast. Her head is spinning.
When Jude focuses on her again she says with urgency, “Are you going to go to the exhibition?”
“I don’t know,” says Stella slowly.
“You must. Promise you will.” Jude squeezes Stella’s hand across the table.
“Maybe I will.”
“I’ll tell Luke to be there.” Jude looks at Stella to see her reaction.
“Do you know anything, Jude?” Stella looks at Jude, who is fiddling with the socks on her wrists. “Do you know how Ivor died? Does anyone? They don’t say in the paper.”
“Perhaps he killed himself.” Jude waves at the bartender who fills her glass again.
“Not Ivor.”
“You weren’t there for the last lesson.”
“What happened, Jude?”
“I gatecrashed. It was Luke. Well, he’d got tired of Ivor by then . . . and,” she hesitates, “Luke can be cruel when he gets tired of you.” Jude downs the free tequila shot the bartender has brought her. “But why are we talking about Ivor? It’s you, Stella, that I wanted to see. What have you been doing, hiding away from all of us?”
“Luke broke Ivor’s heart,” Stella says softly.
“Maybe you broke his heart?”
“Where is Luke?” Stella tries to sound casual, like she doesn’t really care.
“It’s over,” Jude says. “Luke and me, it was over a long time ago. Now he’s just a habit.” She looks edgy, something is bothering her. “But forget Luke, Luke’s boring.”
“Jude, do you know something?”
But Jude doesn’t hear her. She drinks another shot and then smiles at Stella. “Isn’t life weird, Stella? None of it would have happened if we hadn’t seen the ad at varsity for art models for his life drawing. Ivor knew that students were cheap labour. Luke was excited. So was I. But Ivor didn’t want me. You should have seen his face when he first saw Luke . . .”
Jude crushes out her cigarette on the floor. She rolls another. “It started with a piece of paper stuck on the wall at the university. It ended in tragedy.” She picks a piece of tobacco from her roll-up off her tongue. “Luke’s writing about it, you know.”
“I thought he was cooking?” says Stella.
“And writing. I need to see Timothy,” says Jude suddenly.
“Why?” Stella says defensively. Timothy is hers. He is her friend. Jude can’t have everyone.
“I need him to help me with something.”
“With what, Jude?”
“It’s something I’m working on.”
“I am worried about him. He has disappeared.” As soon as Stella says it she regrets it. Jude latches on immediately.
“How do you know? Do you have his email address?”
“No.”
Jude looks at her like she knows she is lying.
“I can’t remember. My computer crashed.” Now Stella is humiliated. All she wants to do is leave the bar. It was a mistake to try to get hold of Jude, or any of them. The best thing to do is just walk away. She stands up to go. But Jude stays. Her shoulders hunched and her arms wrapped around herself, like she is cold. “Where are you going after this?” Stella asks her.
But Jude just looks at her blankly. “I think I’ll stay here for a bit,” she says. “I’ve been practising,” she continues, “writing obituaries. Timothy showed me once. He has a scrapbook. I need some cash.”
Stella leaves Jude in the bar and retraces her steps to Kingston Road. She is feeling light headed from the heat in the bar and the drink. Outside Ivor’s house she stops. The door is shut. It had always been open when she had walked past. There was always a flow of people in and out.
“The doctor left this morning,” Stella recognises the voice from across the road. It’s the young girl watching her. “You missed him. He left just before you arrived.”
“The doctor?”
“Yes, in his white coat,” she says, smiling.
Stella nods, not knowing what to say. The girl must have mistaken Tony’s white pharmacist’s coat for a doctor’s. He is still living there then.
She walks quickly to the corner and into the next road that runs down to the parkway. Then she turns right into the crescent. This is the route, backwards, that she took that day when she first came across the house in Kingston Road. Now she walks past her therapist’s rooms and sneezes. The tree in her garden is full of pollen. It’s the same time of year as when she first found the house in Kingston Road – hayfever time.