Authors: Esther Freud
Lara followed him, sticking close as they hurried through the mass of people, straining her eyes for a clue to the right platform. It was early, but the station was crowded, backpackers sitting like flocked seagulls on the ground. Families, dressed for a day out, on their way south to Eastbourne or Brighton, and businessmen, with matching suitcases, trousers pressed to a fine point above their shoes.
And then, with a jolt, Lara realised she’d lost him. She looked around, saw only a sea of summer heads, and as she searched more wildly, clutching the handle of her bag too tight, she was gripped by the desolation of someone who has given up all responsibility. Christ, she thought, I have no ticket, no idea where we’re going, and then she caught sight of him again, taking his change, stowing a sheaf of newspapers under his arm. ‘Dad!’ she yelled, and it shocked her to feel how quickly she’d become a child.
There were only five minutes now before the train was due to leave. Lara felt the imagined whistle blowing right under her skin. But Lambert moved towards another kiosk, where, taking his time, he bought a box of matches and a packet of Gitanes. You can buy them at duty-free, she would have told anyone else, but she stood obedient while he chose and handed over change. Three minutes, she hissed just under her breath, and then, turning, he began to run, his bag flying, his shoulders jostling people with all the time in the world. ‘Excuse me, so sorry.’ His apologies floated back to Lara, running behind, and then they were at their platform, hurtling along its length, pushing the bags ahead of them, leaping aboard their train.
‘It is very important,’ he panted, ‘how you leave your destination.’ A whistle blew and the sound of doors slamming rattled every carriage.
‘More important than how you arrive?’ Lara sank gratefully down into a seat.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ he smiled, and he opened up a paper and with convincing nonchalance began to read.
As a child Lara had seen very little of her father: the occasional summer ice cream, a trip once to a bookshop where she was told she could choose anything she liked. She’d picked out a copy of
Little Lord Fauntleroy
, with a sky-blue cover and tall brown writing. It was something she still owned, and whenever she caught sight of it amongst her books, mostly old paperbacks and battered hardbacks bought more for their beauty than their content, she felt a vague unease, as if, aged ten, she’d made too sentimental a choice. Should she have chosen one of his books? she wondered, knowing it would have been ridiculous if she’d asked for his study of Europe in the years between world wars, or the book he’d written about Great Britain, his adopted country, about how the people had changed so radically during the immediate post-war years.
After India, when she and Cathy came to live in London, they began to meet more often. They met for breakfast in hotels, the old and formal kind, Claridge’s or the Dorchester, and sometimes, at the end of the day, she’d meet him at the entrance to a museum where just before it closed they’d pace fast round exhibitions.
Less often she visited him at his flat, where occasionally, forgetting she was there, he would finish a telephone conversation and then go back to his work. Lara would sit in his kitchen, leafing through old auction catalogues, ancient treasures about to be bartered for at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, or spend an hour reading every lurid page of the
News of the World
.
Lambert’s kitchen was piled high with newspapers. Why doesn’t he throw them out, she wondered, but when she inspected the dates she saw that often they were just the accumulation of a week. But why buy so many? Surely they all said the same thing. Sometimes she’d watch him, too little time to read them, flicking through each page, scanning it, as if there was something he was hoping to find out.
Eventually, on these afternoons, Lara would put her head round Lambert’s door and see him, a pen in his mouth, staring into space. ‘Dad . . . I’d better go now,’ she’d whisper, and he’d start out of his seat when he realised she was still there.
That morning they’d barely had time for breakfast. Just an apple and a cup of pale tea. Lara had brought the remaining apples with them, thinking they’d only rot, left in their bowl. She’d packed them into her bag with an unopened bottle of Perrier that was standing in the hall. She opened the Perrier now and took a gulp that fizzed so fiercely in her throat she almost choked.
‘Steady on,’ Lambert said, and he reached out for a drink.
She didn’t know if it was the fizz of the water or the act of sharing the unwiped bottle but she suddenly felt quite heady with excitement. They were going away. Setting off on an actual holiday! Until now, she hadn’t quite believed it, and to hide her excitement she turned to the window and looked out. They’d left London behind, were already rumbling through a suburban landscape, were soon rolling out through scrub and fields. She looked over at her father, but he had closed his eyes and was gripping the bottle of water by the narrow top of its neck.
Although the train was full, with people standing in the corridors, they were alone in their first-class carriage, the dark seats, wider than standard, draped with head-protectors, like the starched white pinnies of a hotel maid. Lara knew it was wrong, felt the unfairness of it in her bones, but all the same she stretched luxuriously, ate an apple, threw the core out of the slip of window, watched it drag backwards in the wind.
She thought about her mother, as she’d left her the evening before, rinsing lettuce for a salad, and it occurred to Lara that she’d never asked her what she planned to do. Maybe Cathy would do what Lara did when she was away, have a party, upset the neighbours, eat tinned vine leaves for breakfast, take baths three times a day. Suddenly she felt supremely happy, the sun streaming in through the window, aware she was at that perfect stage of a journey, safely begun but with no danger of having to arrive.
She thought of how miserable she’d been on the last day of term, only ten days before. How cowardly she’d felt when she’d missed her chance of saying even one word to Clive – Clive, who for three terms she’d dreamed of, yearned for, fantasised about, and who still, for all she knew, didn’t know she was alive. She’d sat behind him every Monday in history, too distracted by the black curls of his unbrushed hair, the wide shoulders of his donkey jacket, to take more than the most illegible notes. And then she’d made a decision. She’d talk to him at the college disco, the finale of all the Wednesday lunchtime discos, where for three terms now she hadn’t danced. Lara and her best friend Sorrel swung in and out of the swing doors, hovered by the curtained windows, whispered in dark corners, and always there was the suspenseful feeling that something was about to happen.
That Wednesday she’d stood near Clive, waiting, nothing between them but a stack of chairs, and then, just when she was sure she’d plucked up enough courage, a girl from drama A level swept in, and without a moment’s hesitation took Clive’s hand and pulled him out on to the floor. And he’d allowed it. It was as easy as that. What kind of a spineless idiot was she to have been so afraid? Why was she so stupid? She closed her eyes against the vision of the two of them, Meg and Clive, only half an hour later, kissing hungrily behind the stage.
‘My God.’ Lambert sat up with a start as the train began to slow. ‘Here already,’ and they gathered up their bags and shouldering themselves into the scrum, they prepared to crowd off the train.
There was a bar on the boat, already beery with overflowing ashtrays, and a canteen into which Lara hungrily peered, but it was in the restaurant that Lambert had decided they should eat. By the time they found it there was only one table free and almost as soon as they’d sat down they were asked if they would share. Would they? Lara had no idea. But Lambert nodded his head courteously and a man, too sleek and well-groomed to be British, introduced himself and immediately began to open up a conversation as if this lunch had been pre-arranged.
He was a professor of medicine, from Belgium, involved in research, and soon it was clear that he had heard of Lambert, recognised him now, was thrilled to have this chance to talk to the great man. Ideas were exchanged, opinions, names and theories introduced, and to Lara’s surprise, Lambert, who always protested he hated to see too many people, loathed having to discuss his work, was nodding, interrupting and admonishing the Belgian with real pleasure in their every word.
Lara sat and listened, hoping to find some way to contribute, aware she should be concentrating, hoping she might even retain something of what she knew to be great talk, but soon she realised she was listening too hard to take in anything, and so instead she excused herself and went out to find the loo.
She made a detour past the shops, the information desk, the duty-free and then, seeing a door open, she stepped out on to the deck. She was high up, the sea swirling dark-green and menacing below. She leant over the rails, pushing her feet between the painted poles, and thought how easy it would be to slip. Shouldn’t they be more solid, shouldn’t the temptation to slide through unnoticed be put further out of reach? Lara pulled herself back. Gulls screamed and dived around the boat and children ran squawking along the ramps.
She walked to the very front of the ship where couples huddled out of the wind, their faces bright with spray and happiness, their arms around each other, the remnants of their packed lunches scattered along the wooden bench. She scanned the shoulders of the men for signs of Clive, longing to see him in this unlikely place, wanting a chance to turn fate around, to claim him, or even say hello, but although there were a number of dark-haired, donkey-jacketed men, none of them, quite obviously, was him.
Lara suddenly remembered she was meant to be having lunch. She turned and ran, slipping through the nearest door, rattling up and down the metal stairs, losing her way, then finding it again at duty-free, back past the canteen, the information desk, and there they were, her father and the Belgian, still talking, the waiter having given up on her, clearing the plates. Lara sat down with a small nod of apology and there was a pause while it was decided no, they wouldn’t need dessert.
‘First class?’ Lambert asked a guard on the platform at Calais. ‘
De premíre classe avec couchette
?’ but the guard shook his head haughtily and said there was no first class on this train. He seized the tickets and flicked them mockingly. No couchettes either. Not for them. For a moment they both examined the tickets, disbelieving, and then, realising they were losing precious time, they boarded the train and began searching for two seats.
It seemed impossible, but there were not two seats together the whole length of the train. Anxiously they moved from carriage to carriage, peering into compartments where people, already ensconced, looked up with hostile eyes. Who were they? Lara thought. Where had they come from, how had they settled themselves so soon? She began to hate them, they looked so smug, as if they owned their seats, had inherited them, had not a thing in common with her at all. Lambert looked defeated as he let yet another heavy door slide shut, and Lara had to stop herself from reaching out to take his arm.
Maybe he shouldn’t have left London, the safety of his study, the largeness of his reputation; and then just in time they came across a carriage where a buxom woman with quantities of luggage had taken up three seats.
‘
Excusez-moi, pouvez-vous enlever vos baggages
?’ Lambert asked in chivalrous French, and with perfectly good grace she stood up and began to stow away her bags.
Lambert sat beside the woman and Lara opposite him. They smiled at each other, relieved, and Lara opened up the Perrier and took a swig. She leant across to offer it to him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, as if it were champagne, and he held it as he had done before by its neck.
They nodded to each other, consolidating their ritual, and it pleased Lara just as much as if they had clinked glasses and said cheers.
Whistles blew and doors, heavy as walls, slammed shut. They were moving slipping out of the station, into France, away from the sea, towards Switzerland, the Alps, towards Italy, and Pisa.
‘Do you know any Italian?’ Lambert asked later, when half the people in their carriage were asleep.
‘No.’ Lara thought for a moment, and then with some alarm. ‘Will that matter?’
Lambert leant towards her. ‘The rudest thing you can say to an Italian, worse than’ – he flailed around – ‘your mother is the mistress of a two-headed chimpanzee . . . ’ He lowered his voice to a whisper and Lara looked round to check they were not about to be overheard. ‘Is
Porca Madonna
.’
‘
Porca Madonna
,’ she whispered back, and the lady with the luggage snapped open her eyes.
It was three o’clock when they boarded the train and by seven they were starting to feel hungry.
‘Shall we find the restaurant car?’ Lambert suggested.
Lara imagined the evening spent sipping wine, eating delicate courses, broken up maybe by a sorbet or a bowl of soup. They would sit at a narrow table, set for two, with a ruched curtain and a lamp, the tassels hanging down in a fringe of burgundy while a waiter hovered over them in white gloves. It was a scene from a film, she knew this, or from a novel she’d once read, but she still looked forward to entering into it for a night.