East Fortune (16 page)

‘How are you managing?' Krystyna asked.

‘Better than I thought.'

‘You see. It is good for you. I am sure you will work better after you have done this.'

‘I'll certainly be keen to get on with it,' said Jack.

At the edge of the wood he could see a white fog approaching, the haar off the sea, shrouding the distant fields and heading towards them. He had known this mist since childhood and yet it always surprised him, filling the valleys and the woodlands with its speed and thickness.

‘We should get back,' he said.

‘I am not ready,' said Krystyna. ‘We haven't enough.'

Jack pointed to the advancing haar.

‘Soon we'll hardly be able to see our hands, never mind the mushrooms.'

‘What is it?'

‘It's the east coast of the North Sea, the fastest fog you'll ever have known.'

‘Do you know the way home?'

‘You may have to hold my hand.'

‘Let me finish with this tree.'

Krystyna stooped down, brushed aside some leaves and made a firm incision in the base of a young cep.

The sky had already darkened; the light in the clearings had faded.

‘We must get to the main path before we can't see.'

‘It's so bad?'

‘Trust me.'

The air filled with storm. Jack was becoming impatient. He held out his hand.

Krystyna swung her basket over her shoulder and looked down her muddied arm.

‘I should not have worn a white blouse.' She took his hand.

They reached the path just as the fog closed around the trees. Jack insisted they walk slowly, looking down at the uneven track and then ahead to check the way forward. There were steep ditches on either side.

‘You are very tense,' said Krystyna. ‘I can feel it in your hand.'

‘I don't want you to stumble or fall.'

‘I will be all right. I am quite strong,' she said.

‘It always takes people by surprise,' said Jack, ‘this haar.'

The ash and birch by the roadside disappeared into a mist which was thick and bright, more luminous than the day had been, with dusk behind it. It was like the ground of a painting. Darkness would fall as soon as the layer of light had been stripped away. A wood pigeon flew out of the hedgerow directly in front of them.

‘It's like being in a horror film,' Krystyna said. ‘I never know what is going to happen next.'

‘Stay with me,' said Jack.

They kept to the margins between road and ditch, following the lines of hedge and fence through the enveloping whiteness. They could hear traffic but could not tell how close or far it was. Then they saw the lights of a Land-Rover, crossing their path, distant in the fog.

‘Perhaps we can get a ride,' Krystyna said.

‘They won't see us. Keep to the edge of the track…'

‘Are you frightened?' Krystyna asked.

‘Of course not.'

‘I think you are.'

‘I'm only worried about you.'

‘I'm used to the countryside.'

Krystyna thought back to the dark mornings when she had risen with her father, putting on as many clothes as possible and setting off in the Fiat 126, going into the woods with torches so that they could be sure of being the first to find the best of the mushrooms as dawn broke. It was so cold and her father was always determined, involved in a personal battle with nature itself; angry and cheated when they failed, victorious and loving when they were successful.

Now she worried about twisting her ankle and did not know how she would be able to help Jack if he fell himself. The wind in the mist was colder than anything she had anticipated. It brought with it a relentless dampness. Krystyna could feel her hair matted against her head, the cold and the wet in her face, and swore that she would never go for a walk in Scotland again. It was July and here she was, lost and freezing with a middle-aged man in the middle of nowhere.

‘Nearly there,' said Jack.

The white light was passing beyond them, leaving a clouded darkness that was almost transparent. Krystyna sensed that the haar was easing; but in the distance, she could see a further band of whiteness unfurling towards them.

They waited until there was no sound of traffic and crossed the road. Two sheep skittered away in front of them.

‘They are so stupid,' Jack said.

‘Almost as stupid as us,' said Krystyna.

It had been so long since Jack had walked out into the woods that he had become confused on their return, taking the long way round through the whiteness. Only when he saw the farm buildings with the grain store beyond did he know that they were almost home.

‘It must be this way,' Krystyna said as they neared the house. ‘We were lost. Why didn't you tell me?'

‘I knew we'd find our way in the end,' said Jack.

Krystyna sat down on the bench in the porch and took off her shoes. She was relieved to be back in the warmth.

‘I'll fetch you a towel,' Jack said. ‘I hope you weren't too afraid.'

‘You were the one that was afraid.'

‘Never.'

‘Not of the mist. Of me.'

‘Nonsense.'

Krystyna turned on the shower. She felt the water soak into her skin and washed her hair free of its cloying dampness.

Jack set out warm towels and waited for her while pretending that he was working.

Half an hour later Krystyna walked into the kitchen and turned the hob on low. She began to melt butter and crush some garlic ready for the mushrooms.

‘We can have mushrooms and toast,' she said. ‘Andyou can have wine…'

‘I thought you had to be careful with alcohol and mushrooms.'

‘I won't be having any…'

‘Nothing?'

‘Just the mushrooms. If your brother Douglas was here…'

‘There's no need to bring him into it.'

‘I like him.'

‘Don't tell me you prefer him to me?'

‘It's not a competition, I think?'

Krystyna dropped the mushrooms into the saucepan and began to coat them with the butter and garlic.

Jack poured Krystyna a glass of water. Then he opened the red wine.

‘How much garlic are you using?'

‘A lot. You like garlic?'

‘I only worry about bad breath.'

Krystyna picked up her water and teased the glass below her lower lip.

‘We are not going to be kissing.'

‘No. I don't think so.'

‘You don't think? You mean it's possible?'

‘I didn't say that, Krystyna.'

‘I am joking. There is no need to be scared. I'm just going to make the mushrooms.'

‘Good.'

Krystyna gave them a final stir.

‘Don't sound relieved.'

‘I'm not.'

Krystyna poured the mushrooms on to the toast.

‘I think you are supposed to be disappointed. It would be polite.'

Jack pulled out his chair and sat down.

‘I don't know what I sound like.'

Jack added black pepper to his mushrooms and drank the red wine. Before Krystyna arrived he had always eaten his meals too quickly. Now he took his time, enjoying the silences between them.

When Krystyna had finished she looked up and smiled. Jack wondered if she had been waiting to say something but had then thought better.

‘What?' he asked.

‘Nothing…'

‘No. Go on…'

‘You are good-looking. In your own way. If you tried harder.'

‘I don't believe you.'

‘I am sure that if you wanted you could find a very nice woman.'

‘It's all right.'

‘Don't you ever want to? You are free, aren't you?'

‘Yes, I suppose I am.'

‘Then what would be the harm?'

‘I can't,'Jack said. ‘I just can't.'

‘Then that's a shame.'

Jack couldn't imagine what it would be like to be in love again; the desperation and the need: how much he would have to risk and how it would unsettle his life.

He thought of their return from the walk, and seeing Krystyna's cold red hands taking off her shoes, the dark hair falling in front of the pale face, and then her looking up at him:

You were the one that was afraid.

Never.

Not of the mist. Of me.

Douglas missed the excitement of being with Julia. He knew it was wrong but he did not care. He no longer had the morals for resistance.

They had arranged to meet in Amsterdam and were staying in a hotel by the Vondelpark. The stairwell was decorated with portrait busts of Descartes and Spinoza. Douglas and Julia were told that there were philosophical discussions in Dutch every Thursday night.

A long quotation about absolute beauty from Plato's
Symposium
had been painted on the wall of their room. The white gauze curtains were embroidered with a poem telling them that life should be taken ‘little by little'.

‘This could become annoying,'Julia said, as she locked the door and started to take off her clothes.

‘Yes,' said Douglas, ‘there's even a mirror over the bed, for God's sake,
Heb lief en doe wat je wilt.
Have love and do what you will. We could give it a go, I suppose.'

‘You suppose? Is that all?'

Julia tilted her head to one side and took off her earrings. Then she pushed back her hair and waited for him to speak.

Come here. Have patience. I can have patience later, I want you now, is there anything wrong with that? No, nothing's wrong with that.

She started to unbutton her blouse.

‘Come on then.'

Here he was again, Douglas thought. He could do nothing but this; and it was for this, he thought, that people wrecked marriages,
ruined careers, and destroyed lives: and it was this that, when denied or abandoned, made people despair and drink and die. ‘What now,' she said, ‘what next?'

The next morning a whole new set of messages had been posted in the Hotel Filosoof.
Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
Douglas was amused that even the toaster had a message stuck to it.
Silence is a friend who will never betray – Confucius.

‘I wonder if Confucius had any friends.'

‘Only very silent ones,' Julia said.

They walked to the Rijksmuseum. An opportunistic busker was singing ‘Waterloo' outside the Hotel Abba. One of a group of English stag-weekenders was enjoying his first pint of the day, telling his mates how he had been punched for trying to take a photograph of a prostitute in the red-light district.

Inside they began to walk freely through the galleries, aware of each other's presence but never coming too close. They spoke so little that at one point Julia came up behind Douglas and whispered, ‘Hello, Confucius.'

They stopped in front of a painting, a Brueghel featuring a series of miniature dramas set in a small town square. It was a folk painting, earthy and unsentimental. There was country dancing and drinking, there were children playing with spinning tops and men with dice. In the foreground, the figure of Carnival sat astride a beer barrel. He was preparing to joust with Lent, an elderly woman with a bee-skelp on her head.

‘What do the bees mean?' Douglas asked. He thought of his father tending the hives in East Lothian, smoking them out while wearing his large hat and veil.

‘Diligence. Temperance. Something you might need to work on.'

‘I'm very diligent.'

‘Just not so good on the temperance.'

The painting was a minute depiction of the daily process of living. It was a world without individualism, a song to the unsung. A woman had climbed a ladder to clean her windows, another sold fish, while a beggar with a bedridden child received money from strangers.

‘Let's see if we can find ourselves,' Julia said. ‘Who is most like us?'

‘I'm not some sixteenth-century peasant …' Douglas began.

‘Look. There you are,' she said. ‘In the top window of the pub, observing the action.'

Douglas tried to think what it would be like to film the scene from a high angle. He tried to find someone who looked like Julia, but the women all wore headscarves or danced with their backs to the picture frame.

‘I can't see you anywhere.'

‘Of course not. I'm far too glamorous.'

Douglas looked at her and then at the dead in the painting, unnoticed amidst the revellers, the crippled and the blind.

‘Haven't you got any work to do?' she asked.

‘I've done most of the filming; I've just got a little more setting-up to do. I've called this a recce.'

‘I hope I'm not compromising your work.'

‘Does that mean I'm compromising yours?'

‘Well, we certainly can't do this at home.'

They looked at simple paintings of Dutch interiors: a woman taking off her stockings, a mother delousing her child's hair, a roistering man proposing a toast.

They stopped in front of Rembrandt's painting of the
Jewish Bride.
Julia pointed out the sweep and volume of the groom's golden arm, his right hand on her breast, her left hand on his; pearls and jewellery, cream and gold, ochre into darkness.

The husband was trying to give his wife comfort. Her eyes were past and beyond him, saying, ‘I don't know … I don't know.' She was wearing bracelets of pearls, four twists on her right hand, and one on her left. Douglas could imagine her distracted with her jewellery, playing with the weight of the gold.

‘What if that was us?' he asked.

‘Look at their hands.'

‘I can understand being him,' Douglas said, ‘reaching out…'

‘They seem so gentle with each other. So full of care.'

Douglas began to think that perhaps this was a painting not about themselves but about their partners. He and Julia were already corrupted, fallen. And here it came again, without
warning, the same feeling that he had had in Paris after Julia had left; the thoughts of Emma, the inevitable guilt. Was this going to happen every time or would he get used to it? He wanted to ask if Julia felt the same, if she was thinking of her husband.