English Correspondence (4 page)

She wondered, looking back, whether she shouldn't have faked it. The engagement, that is. By concentrating properly, being in the moment, even if she didn't exactly feel she was, she might have joined up the attempt with the experience, or, at least, narrowed the gap. She would have had to concentrate hard, and right from the beginning, from Graham saying, as he walked in, in a kindly sort of way and not too pompous, the sentences, I am the resurrection and the life, and one or two others, because it was over very, very quickly.

She had been surprised to see people she recognised from a long time ago. They bothered her more than the coffin. It seemed to her a coincidence that they should be there. She hadn't felt this kind of pervasive Englishness since she'd been a girl and gone visiting George's relations. It overwhelmed her. The clumsy way the women carried and delved into their handbags, the men's entanglements with their handkerchiefs, their non-committal eagerness to please, their worried smiles, reminded her of awkwardnesses she had forgotten. She wasn't like them. She remembered being twelve or thirteen; the feeling of being on the wrong side of a door. She even remembered the particular door, the English four-panelled
sort, covered in white gloss paint, that looked so ship-shape to anyone not brought up to them. She'd gone to pick apples, or play with the dog in the garden, something that they thought she might like doing, while they sat and talked. Then, after getting cold out there, she'd come back in the house again. She had hung about outside the room where they were sitting, George and Eve and George's cousin and his wife. And her father was at home because he was English and related, and quite pleased to slot back into the rhubarb crumble for a short while, and Eve was the adored French wife who was never overwhelmed by anyone, least of all the comfortable English cousins with their huge biscuit tins and calendar of Devon hedges. At the funeral, the feeling came back complete, of being an equivocal age and size and nationality, of being a girl on her own, someone tacked on to her parent's relationship and not part of a family. And much as she wanted to be George's representative at his funeral, as well as his next of kin, she felt cut off, an outsider. Her age and size had been sorted out by time, she had stopped being thirteen and all arms and legs, but not the rest. She still felt alone. Everyone knew who she was, though. She had George's eyes.

Don and Judith had been good enough to lay on tea afterwards. The mourners were all glad of it, hot and sustaining, most welcome, though some of them realised that they'd developed a tremor since they last tried to balance a cup in a saucer. The spoons were abandoned, and the small bone china plates, with the cake and the cake crumbs at a tipsy slant, ended up in odd places, half way under the sofa and on top of the television. Once it turned five o'clock Don opened a bottle of wine. In many ways it was easier than tea. They talked fondly of George. They'd all liked him. There was no equivocation. They said he wouldn't have wanted to linger, or lose his faculties, or his marbles and they were partly talking of themselves, and one or two were on the way there. They said he had missed Eve and there weren't many marriages like that nowadays. That made them conscious of
Sylvie. As she didn't have her husband with her, and failed to mention him, they were left uncertain of her marital position. She wasn't certain of it herself. Her father's death had shifted something. Paul had said he wouldn't come to the funeral. He would look after the restaurant and Lucien. She couldn't see what he was avoiding and didn't try to persuade him. He made it sound positive, as if he were doing it for her benefit. So she made the journey on her own, lonely and cross at first, then she forgot him.

DON'S LETTER ARRIVED
a week after Sylvie's return. He must have sat down and replied to hers immediately. She didn't open it.

She held two distinct and contrary sets of thoughts about Don. She knew clearly what kind of man he was; unbending, inhibited, well intentioned, and most unlikely to write a good letter. Her father had chosen him for his ability to play a fair game of chess and his availability. He lived round the corner and had a comfortable sitting room. She knew, for a fact, that he would never tell her anything interesting. He would bore her with information, particular and general; holidays, politics recycled from his newspaper, planning permission and problems with transport. He would keep count of wet Julys, put a number to them. She would have trouble replying. She could see herself sitting there. Spontaneity would be out of the question. What could she ever want to say to him urgently? She would have to pretend to be like him to manage at all. And yet, after she'd written to him, she felt buoyed up, almost elated; though it wasn't real free-floating elation. She felt as if she had pushed herself against a tight thread that was barring her way, and that, for a moment, the pressure was so great that her feet left the ground. Paul noticed. He hoped she was coming out of it. The gloom she'd been in. For a few days they had been quite nice to each other.

The letter sat in the drawer of her desk until the evening. She thought of it from time to time, but couldn't face dealing with it. She used the words to herself; dealing with, not
reading, that was too pleasurable. They had more bookings in the restaurant than they had had for weeks. She was relieved to be busier. The car park was half full. That was how she and Paul judged it. No one came here on foot. The village was separate, cut off by the main road and, in any case, dead. Clients were passing on the stairs. The ones coming down, tidy for dinner, vaguely scented, lightened by anticipation. The ones going up, lagging behind in contentment, the day's small desperations still hanging about them. Felix, the waiter, was late, so Sylvie was rushed, having to hurry between the front of house and the bar. After she'd come back from the funeral, he had surprised her by hugging her. She couldn't be impatient with him because of that and was simply relieved when he appeared at the door, hot and cold from his bike ride, breathing fast. He took his waiter's jacket from its hanger, put it on, looked efficient, shook off wherever he had come from, his girlfriend, the football, a fight with his brother. He took the tray of drinks from her hands and carried them over to the four men in suits who were looking up expectantly. There were still ten minutes to go before dinner. Sylvie suddenly felt she could cope with Don's letter; with having sent it, as well as what he might have said in reply. With her back to the room, she poured herself half a glass of wine from an uncorked bottle and drank it. Then she went to the desk in the hall and opened the letter.

Once all the clients were sitting down for dinner, the restlessness was over. They were tucked up at tables, all dining early, subdued, respectable. Mostly it was like this. There might be disruption at nine thirty or later. Dramatic couples walked in from over the Belgian border, careless, young, thin, blackened by fashion. They always chose minute or enormous amounts from the a la carte menu, without even glancing at Paul's choice for the evening. They wanted to know about particular ingredients. Then they ate without appreciation, shovelling food down, or leaving it. They drank cocktails and water, often just water, made all the
others feel red faced and uncomfortable as they finished their bottles and started new ones. Sylvie always made a point of reassuring the frumpish diners. She smiled and filled their glasses, reintroduced the wine list. What she really wanted to do for these innocent, guilt-ridden victims was whisper, don't worry they're on something too, you just can't see it.

She was taking their orders, standing there in a proper frock, narrow necklace, tights, polished shoes with curved heels. She was cool but attentive, pointing things out, making suggestions. Some of them tried to engage her in conversation, telling her, God knows why, what they'd done during the day. Usually it was men that did this. Some were overwhelmed by their own garrulity; their mothers had admired them, let them run on. Occasionally male clients dealt in matrimonial trade-off. She knew the signs; the gaze never leaving her, moving between her eyes and her breasts. The wife overruled, not even able to say what she wanted to eat. Sylvie ignored the scrutiny and sped through the order. The present encounter was different. She was standing by a table for two. The man had stopped speaking and was staring at her. His voice had been monotonous and he had tapped the menu in appropriate places. She lost all connection between what he had been saying and what she had to write down. She stared back at him. Her eyes couldn't leave him. They seemed to get stuck on his face; the wispy grey eyebrows, the half-moon spectacles that he was now looking over the top of, his pale tweed tie. She registered in a far away part of her brain that he wasn't attractive. It wasn't that. It was as if they were locked together in an unsatisfactory embrace on a dance floor, neither of them wanting to be there. She breathed oddly, too shallowly. She was unable to speak. She dropped her pen. It hit his wine glass, the large one. The glass rang like a bell and then smashed.

‘How far have you got with your order, Sir, Madam? Perhaps move to this table. If it's not too much trouble.' Felix was next to her, speaking to the couple, one finger
in the small of her back, as precise as a compass, pointing her in the direction of the door. She admired it and went there.

‘Sylvie, what is it?'

She was sitting on the ecclesiastical bench in the hall, her head slightly bent, her hands clasping her knees. The fire in the wood-burning stove was throwing off too much heat. Paul stood looking down at her.

‘I thought you were better. I'd no idea you'd do this. I haven't got time to look after you as well as everything else. I told you to rest. But you seemed to be better. This last week I really thought you'd cracked it. Sylvie. Are you listening to me?'

She moved her head. It could have been a nod.

‘I shouldn't have taken any notice of you. I should have gone ahead and done what I wanted to do. I blame myself; it was stupid.'

She straightened herself and pulled the hair that had fallen forward, away from her forehead. It wasn't a cosmetic gesture; she tugged it quite hard.

‘I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to me. What did Felix say?'

‘He just said you weren't well, you'd broken a glass.'

‘It doesn't sound too terrible. Why are you making a fuss? I'll be all right now. You go back to the kitchen and do what you've got to do.'

‘No, Sylvie I can't take the risk. Not twice in an evening. It upsets people.'

‘How can breaking a glass upset people? It's always happening. They're not that sensitive. I'm going. I'm fine.'

She stood up, steadied herself on the back of the bench. She heard a car pulling up outside.

‘You called her. What did you go and do that for?'

‘Sylvie.'

‘She's like some sort of mother to you. You can't wait for a second before you go crying after her. Is that what you meant
when you said you should have done what you wanted to do? Got her here for the duration?'

‘If you were more reliable I wouldn't have to. Do you think I actually enjoy asking her to come out at no notice in the middle of the evening?'

‘What's she done with her kids then? Or are you more important?'

‘Don't be stupid. Her husband's home tonight.'

‘You know a lot, don't you? Does she write you a timetable?'

‘Give it up, Sylvie.'

‘Hi, you two. I didn't hear any of that.' Maude was already inside the door, one hand over the top button of her shirt, doing it up. ‘Sorry you're stressed out, Syl. You got back to work too quickly. It's always a mistake.'

Sylvie thought, checking buttons is a reflex action at seeing me, or she got into her smart restaurant clothes too quickly.

‘I'll catch up with you both later,' Maude said.

She and Paul exchanged looks, then she went into the dining room. Paul sat down and put his hand over Sylvie's. She was still clasping the bench.

‘I'm sorry if I got cross,' he said.

‘You got what you wanted anyway.'

‘Don't say that sort of thing, Sylvie.'

She stood in the same position without looking at him.

‘Are you still thinking about your father's letter?'

‘I don't know really.' She sensed Maude moving about the dining room. She didn't want a witness.

‘Why don't you write it?' Paul said.

‘Sorry?'

‘Why don't you write the letter he might have written.'

It took a moment for Sylvie to take in what he'd said. Then she felt as if she were in vast emptiness, caught across a towrope between two moving vehicles.

‘I don't know where he is.' This wasn't what she meant to say. It was pathetic, too childlike.

Paul tightened his hand over hers.

‘I don't know what he was thinking, what his thoughts were,' she said.

‘How long did it take you to write to him usually?'

Sylvie thought, I can't cope with this. He doesn't know what he's saying. Maude must have suggested it, or his mother. He wouldn't have come up with this on his own. She could hear Maude chinking glasses together.

‘Half an hour or so.' She pulled her hand away from underneath his. ‘Do I write it as if he were writing it now, or then, on the day he would have written it?' Her voice was suddenly sharper.

‘I don't know,' Paul said. ‘You'll have to decide.'

God, thought Sylvie, he doesn't understand anything. She stared down at him.

‘Don't dismiss the idea. It might help,' he said.

She took a deep breath. ‘All right,' she said.

‘Go and have a nice bath, or read a book or something,' he said. ‘You haven't read at all since you got back. I won't be late coming to bed. No one new will arrive now.'

‘I don't seem to be able to. Read, I mean. I'll go out. I need to walk.'