Doctor's Wife (13 page)

    “Very well. Do you wish your key now?”

    “No, we’re going to the bar.”

    They went toward the lift. “There you are,” Tom
said. “No sweat. You just tell them and they do it.”

    “Still, I’m glad it was him and not Madame,” Mrs.
Redden said, and she
was
glad, it was impossible to
explain: here she was deceiving her husband, taking all sorts of
risks, and yet she had worried all through dinner about a simple
thing like having to tell the hotel she was leaving early, when she
had booked for two weeks. Now her mind moved to her next anxiety.
“When we go to Paris, I’ll have to tell Peg what’s going on.”

    “I guess you will.”

    “I mean, in case Kevin rings her up to ask if I’m
there. I hate telling her about us, though.”

    “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll take care of
you.”

    And it was true, from the moment she paid her bill
next morning he seemed to take charge of things as never before,
handling the luggage, making sure she got a window seat on the
plane, ordering champagne from the stewardess, turning the airlines
lunch into a celebration. But despite all that, when they landed in
Paris, she was again filled with a sense of anxiety. In
Villefranche they had been isolated, their universe narrowed to a
backdrop of a few beaches, a quay, a restaurant terrace, and two
hotel bedrooms. Anonymous among other holidaymak-ers, they had
moved in the protection of a crowd. But now they were moving closer
to that life she had left. Now, as they took the bus into Paris,
they re-entered dangerous terrain, offering themselves again to the
world, their enemy.

    When they reached the town terminal it had begun to
rain. He unlocked his duffel bag and pulled out a very rubbery
Irish riding coat. She smiled when he put it on. He took a flat
tweed cap from the raincoat pocket and stuck it, comically, on his
head. “Perfect,” she said. “I can see you holding up the end of the
bar at O’Donoghue’s.”

    They took a taxi from the Invalides, and by the time
it let them down outside the worn façade of the Hôtel des Balcons,
the rain had almost stopped. The wind blew strong, blustering their
clothes against them, bringing her hair down into her eyes. As he
went to pay the driver, she ran into the entrance hall of the hotel
carrying her own suitcase, waiting there uncomfortably until he
dismissed the taxi. They went together to the waxy wooden reception
desk to ask for a double room. The woman at the desk, after
scrutinizing the ledger in a doubting manner, tapped her finger on
a page, turned to check the keys, and, with a sudden smile, took
down a key and led them up two flights of stairs along a
linoleum-covered corridor which smelled of cleaning fluid, to
unlock a door, switch on a light, and ask if this suited them. And
when they agreed that it did and the woman handed over two passport
forms and the key and withdrew, they were alone in a high-ceilinged
room with a large double bed and a heavy wardrobe of dark pine, a
yellowed washbasin and bidet in a corner, and shuttered balcony
windows overlooking the street. She caught him and hugged him,
delighted with this dark chamber of landlord browns and institution
greens, which, had either of them entered it alone, would have
seemed a place of purgatorial gloom. Here in this room, shut in
from the world, she regained her elation. This was their home. In a
few minutes they would go out and walk together in Paris. Nothing
else seemed to matter.

    As he put his duffel bag down in a corner, she
noticed the stencil on its side. “Signal Corps? Were you in the
army?”

    “No, that’s just army-surplus junk.”

    “Tell me, is that all your luggage?”

    “Right. All my worldly goods.”

    “You mean that’s all you brought over from America
for three whole years?”

    “Well, I had some books and papers, but I shipped
them home last month.”

    “Oh? When are you supposed to go back?”

    “I have a charter flight on the twenty-eighth.”

    “Of
this
month?”

    “Right.”

    She turned away from him, went to the window, opened
the shutters, and stepped out onto the balcony.

    “Hey, isn’t it raining out there?”

    She did not answer. After a moment, she came back
in, went to the bed, and picked up her raincoat. “Let’s go for a
coffee.”

    “In the rain?”

    “Yes.”

    At once he knelt and began to pull sweaters, socks,
and a sports jacket from his duffel bag. She thought of Danny, back
from scout camp a few years ago, pulling clothes out of his
rucksack, the good tweed jacket she had bought for him at Austin
Reed’s lying crumpled on the floor with a big oil stain on the
back. She remembered the row about that jacket, her complaining
about the money she’d wasted buying him good clothes. She watched
Tom take out a small folding umbrella and open it to test it, its
hood shooting up with a flat-sounding boom. “
Voilà,
Madame
.”

    She put on her blue canvas hat. “Let’s go.”

    But as they walked down toward the Carrefour
Saint-Germain huddled under the umbrella, the rain increased to a
soaking torrent, filling the gutters, spattering their clothes,
sending them into the Saint-Claude for shelter. He ordered coffee
and sat relaxed, making funny comments on the passersby. She
laughed once or twice, but said little and, when the rain had
stopped, asked if they could go out again. And so they strolled
back to the Place de l’Odéon and up the winding street which led
past the École de Médecine, there to meet and mingle with the great
aimless crowd which drifted up and down the Boulevard Saint-Michel
as though it were the central arcade of an amusement park, eyeing
its shops stuffed with leather coats and blue jeans, its
self-service cafeterias, bookshops, brasseries, souvenir stands,
corner cafés, cinemas, and the sidewalk stalls which sold
croque monsieur
, hot dogs, and
crêpes Bretonnes
.
As always on this boulevard, the faces were young, coming annually
in an endless migration from every country, every continent, to
alight here once in the long journey of their lives. Only the café
waiters seemed native to the street: in their shiny black jackets
and skirtlike white aprons, deftly flicking crumbs with their
napkins, balancing trays, opening fat wallets stuffed with small
notes for making change, they were the true custodians of this
great thoroughfare, the guardians of its dens and entrances, wary
yet confident, as different from their customers as sheepdogs from
sheep.

    When they reached the iron railings enclosing the
medieval ruins of Cluny, he stopped and said, “Weren’t you supposed
to get in touch with Peg today?”

    “I’ll ring her tomorrow.”

    “But what if he calls today?”

    “I know. I should get it over with.”

    “Otherwise, you’ll worry.”

    She gave him a sad smile. “I see you know me.”

    “There are phones in that bar there. Or, we’re quite
close to her place. Do you want to drop in and see her?”

    “No. That’s the last thing I want.”

    “All right, then, it won’t take a moment to phone.
Just say you’re back in Paris, staying at the Balcons, and tell
her, if your husband phones, will she give him the hotel number.
You don’t have to mention me at all.”

    “What if she suggests I stay with her?”

    “Say your husband might be joining you.”

    “Oh, you’re very clever.”

    Then, taking charge again, he led her by the hand
into the big corner brasserie, through a room full of customers to
a flight of steps over which a neon sign read LAVABOS— TÉLÉPHONE.
He told her to wait, bought a
jeton
from the woman at the
cash desk, and led her down the steps to a tiled corridor. The
phones were in the open, but partially enclosed by plastic bubbles
which resembled giant football helmets. He ducked under one, found
Peg’s number, wrote it down, handed her the
jeton
disc,
then moved off upstairs, going out of earshot.

    •

    That night when Peg Conway met Ivo Radie for dinner,
she said, “Well, you were quite right.”

    “About what?”

    “He did chase her down to Villefranche. And, would
you believe it, they’re back here in Paris. Together!”

    “
Eh bien
.”

    “No, but Sheila Redden, of all people! I couldn’t
believe it. She tried to pretend she was on her own at first. But I
said we’d heard that Tom had gone to Villefranche and asked if
she’d run into him. And all of a sudden she spilled the beans. He’s
here with her at the Balcons. And if her husband rings up, I’m to
say I’d no room to put her up and that she’s staying at the hotel.
Sheila! If you knew what a shock that is.”

    “Why not?” Ivo said. “These things happen, even to
Irishwomen.”

    Chapter 9

    • Mrs. Redden watched as he pulled the visa form
from his pocket and held it out for her to take. She did not take
it. He placed it, like a piece of evidence, on the bedspread. “I
looked it over on the bus coming back,” he said. “There’s nothing
to it, it’s very simple.”

    “Why did you go there?”

    “I don’t know. When I came out of American Express,
I just got the idea of going over to the embassy.”

    She sat in the only chair in the bedroom, wearing
her raincoat as a dressing gown, the coat pulled low around her
bare shoulders as she made up her face. It was an unseasonable
fifty degrees and the hotel heat had been turned off until October.
“What time is it?” she asked.

    “Nearly twelve. What would you like to do
today?”

    She shrugged.

    “Think of something. It’s your holiday, after
all.”

    “
What
holiday?” She threw her eyebrow
pencil into the tray.

    “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

    She stood up, pulled the coat up around her
shoulders, and went toward the unmade bed. She lay on it face down,
sweeping the consular visa form to the floor. He knelt, picked it
up, and threw it in the wastepaper basket.

    “All right, forget it.”

    “No, don’t throw it away.”

    “Why not? It seems to irritate you.”

    “It’s not that. I don’t want to think about it
today.”

    He picked the form out of the wastepaper basket.
“Look, Sheila, I don’t want to do anything to make you angry.”

    “It’s not your fault. A few days before my period,
I’m not fit to live with. Wouldn’t you know it would happen this
week.”

    He went over to the bed and began to stroke her
hair. “What about lunch, are you hungry?”

    “Lie down. Just hold me for a while.”

    He lay beside her, putting his arms around her. He
put his hand under her raincoat and, pulling down her pants, began
to caress the insides of her thighs. She kissed him. “Waste of time
putting on makeup,” she said. But then, abruptly, she eased back
and pulled up her pants. She got out of bed, dropped the raincoat,
pulled a brown rollneck sweater over her head, and hooked a skirt
about her waist. “Let’s go out and have a sandwich, or something.
I’ve got to phone Peg.”

    “Oh, did you arrange to phone her?”

    “I was supposed to ring her up yesterday.”

    As they went down the winding staircase, he put his
arm around her waist. “I’m glad you didn’t call yesterday,” he
said. “We had a great lazy day, didn’t we?”

    “Today will be all right, too.”

    “Maybe it’s not your period. Maybe it’s just not
knowing what’s going to happen.”

    They had come into the lobby. She nodded and smiled
mechanically to the old woman at the desk, but when they moved out
into the street, she turned to him again, her face set and pale. “I
thought we weren’t going to talk about it!”

    “I’m sorry.”

    She turned away, walking down the narrow street as
though trying to get away from him. Rain started to spit as he
hurried after her, overtaking her. They walked on, side by side, in
silence, she staring ahead as though he were a beggar she was
trying to ignore. Then, in a shift of mood, sudden as the shower
which had stopped, she took his arm. “It
is
premenstrual.
And thank God. Do you know, I was afraid I might be pregnant.”

    “What would we have called it?”

    But she did not smile. “Do you know what I did this
morning, after you left the hotel to go to American Express?”

    “No, what?”

    “I lay in bed telling myself to get up and get
dressed and phone Peg. I lay there all morning. That’s
premenstrual. I had this feeling that something awful has happened
to Danny and that Kevin is trying to get in touch with me. But I
didn’t do anything. When you’re premenstrual you’d rather worry
about not doing a thing than do it.”

    “Look,
I’ll
phone Peg, if you like. You
just want to know if your husband called, right?”

    “No, I’ll do it myself. Let’s go to the Atrium. I
can phone from there.”

    In the phone booth at the Atrium, she dialed Peg’s
office. A woman’s voice asked, in French, who was calling. She gave
her name and the woman said, “Sheila? Here’s the two of us talking
to each other in French. How are you?”

    “Oh, Peg, hello. Is everything all right? I had this
awful premonition last night.”

    “Where are you?” Peg asked.

    “The Atrium.”

    “Listen, Sheila, I’m glad you rang. Something
has
come up. Could you come over to the Right Bank and
we’ll have a quick lunch together?”

    “What? Did you hear from Kevin?”

    “Yes. Listen, were you out this morning? I rang your
hotel twice.”