Flight (14 page)

The stock phrase ‘the dear departed' did, he discovered, mean something. His mother was dear to him and she had departed. For most of his adult life, she had never gone anywhere at all, and it had been his departures that counted: ‘I can't stay, Mum, I have to be at Heathrow in a couple of hours.' Now it was she that had gone, departed, taken her departure. He was the one left behind.

Martagon sold White Gates – it went within a month. He sent most of the contents to auction, and the residue to Oxfam. He gave Audrey five thousand pounds and told her to take any of his mother's clothes and handbags that she wanted, and she sensibly took the lot.

He kept his mother's books. He gave Giles and Amanda six Irish eighteenth-century silver spoons, which had come from his father's family. He gave Julie his mother's tortoise brooch. He took back to Child's Place her wedding ring and her engagement ring, a small sapphire set between two even smaller diamonds, and the family photographs, his mother's old walking-boots, her curved sickle – her ‘slasher' as she called it – and the worn old pashmina shawl.

He wished, afterwards, that he had also kept her patchwork quilt, the palimpsest of his childhood. Looking at it might have triggered more memories, of things that he had forgotten about his father and mother. And he began to think about her – about the trajectory of her life, the paths taken and not taken; her longing for Europe and England when she lived in Asia, her pleasure in the long dreamed-of English garden, which she created all on her own. Because his mother had loved England he began, in a spirit of enquiry, to think a bit about England, too.

*   *   *

It occurred to him, when months later he was lying in the grass in the garden of Marina's farmhouse, on the day of the airport opening: Perhaps, if my mother had not died, I would never have got involved – not
so
involved – with Julie.

FIVE

In London in the late autumn of 1999, following the death of his mother, Martagon was depressed. Ignoring the invitations on his mantelpiece, alone most evenings, he drank to make himself sleep. All he wanted was to be with Marina, in their enclosed and private world. Not as a substitute for his mother – no one could be less like her, or less maternal towards him, than Marina. He had never even seen Marina in the company of children.

He conjured up a picture of her with a baby in her arms and saw her as altogether lovely. But not quite real? Babies and small children cry and make demands. He knew that from Fasil, and had seen Julie's patience, and her tiredness.

But, then, Julie was a single parent. Amanda had let slip that she and Giles were planning to start a family; that was perfectly easy to imagine. Amanda's warm largeness, and her kitchen world, would absorb not one baby but two or three noisy, squabbling, lively, small people quite naturally. Giles might set out to be a disciplinarian, but in practice he'd be indulgent and ineffably proud. Amanda would be a focused mother, her relationship with Giles would change. The children would come first. How would Giles like that? Martagon's mother always said that having a child transformed a woman's life more utterly than love or marriage. He knew that although his parents loved one another, it was he, Martagon, who had given meaning to her life. He had experienced this knowledge as a burden, when he grew up.

Yet it was knowing he came first with her that gave him his sense of himself and his ability to be alone. Lapped in her approval, he didn't need to prove anything to anyone, or test his attraction or value. That was a weakness, though, in some situations. Not enough drive – the thing Giles was getting at when he complained that Martagon lacked the killer instinct, wasn't firing on all cylinders. Martagon sighed, and dragged his attention back to the plans and calculations on his desk.

*   *   *

He had every reason to go and see Marina often, because of the airport. He and the contractors, Heaney Mahon, were sourcing most of their materials in France, and using French firms both for the manufacture and the installation of his glass. Martagon used an empty bedroom at the farmhouse as his office. Sometimes Billie was there for the day, word-processing Marina's revises and reports on scripts. She was an equable presence. Martagon hardly noticed her. She did not blaze like Marina did.

Now that the weather was growing cooler, they spent more time indoors at the farmhouse, and lit fires in the evenings. They talked and talked. Martagon was curious about other men she had been with. She didn't want to tell him anything, at first.

‘Tous les hommes sont des salauds.'

‘Excuse me – I'm not a
salaud,
a shit if that's what you mean.'

‘No, not you, Marteau. But I don't know what to tell you. It always goes wrong … It went wrong with Erik.'

‘Who's Erik?'

‘Erik Smedius. He's Swedish.'

‘Film-director?
Blood On the Snow?
I really hated that movie.'

‘You are wrong. It's a great movie, Marteau.'

She told him about her affair with Erik. It had started as pure fun. Erik was an idyll-maker, he had taken her on trips to Bali, to St Petersburg, and to his family home in the north of Sweden where they had been quite alone for two weeks, in the spring, with the snow melting and the wild flowers coming out. She had never been so happy. ‘I adored him, during those two weeks.'

‘So what went wrong?'

Marina shrugged. ‘I can't explain. It sounds so stupid. We were on the plane from Stockholm, coming back to Paris, after that heavenly time. He was talking about our future life together. Suddenly I was shaking, in a panic. It was all too much for me. I was terrified. He was so intense, so serious, so happy, he was so much in love, I just could not take it. I began to be horrible to him, on the plane. He didn't understand.'

‘I'm not surprised.'

‘I had to get away from him, from
it.
I broke it off, just like that. I told him when we got to Paris that I didn't want to see him any more, I wanted to go back to Bonplaisir by myself and he wasn't to ring up or write to me or anything.'

‘You ran out. That's what you did.'

‘I didn't run.'

‘You ran out. My father used to bet on horses, it's a racing term. It means that the racehorse suddenly opts out of the race and veers off-course, towards the rails, and won't be brought back, and there's nothing the jockey can do about it. It sounds to me as if you are – or were – frightened of such extraordinary happiness. Perhaps you are frightened of ordinary happiness too, I mean with a man. Are you?'

‘Maybe. I'm not used to it. I couldn't handle it, not with Erik. Perhaps because he was so wonderful. He really was. I'm used to the horribleness of Jean-Louis, and Papa. When he was drunk. I loved Papa very much and he did things to me which were not nice, when I was little.'

‘You never told me that before. Poor Marina.'

She shrugged again. ‘It's how it was. I am – how shall I say? – comfortable with it.'

‘But it sounds to me that you end up punishing men for what you think they are like. Or punishing yourself for – I don't know, I'm getting in a muddle, and it sounds so trite.'

‘I know Erik was very sad for a long time. He did not understand. Friends told me. It was after Erik that I started up with Pierre.'

‘The wine-maker. You said to me once that he is a brute.'

‘He is a brute. But I've known him since I was a child, he is so familiar, he is part of the home world, he didn't make complicated demands, he doesn't love me. He likes sex, and he likes hurting. That's why I say he's a brute.'

‘Marina, it's different now. It doesn't have to be like that. You don't have to hurt or be hurt any more. You're safe with me.'

‘I think so.'

That night she lay in his arms peacefully. Then turned half away, saying as if to herself, ‘Everything is all right now,' and fell deeply asleep. Martagon continued to lie still with his eyes closed, his body touching hers where it chanced to. In the hallucinatory state of half-dream in which reason sleeps and unreason wakes, a vapour-trail wreathed itself loosely round his head and around hers in a figure of eight; and around their bodies, and around their ankles. He breathed with her breathing. Their peace was a lake within which the waters of two rivers cannot be separated.

‘We are becoming the same person,' she had said, as they went up to bed. ‘Only together are we complete.'

Martagon opened his eyes and saw the full moon shining through the skylight window. He looked at the bright flood of her hair on the pillow. He scrutinized her sleeping face. If her face were made unrecognizable by some terrible accident, would he still know her from her body? He tried to memorize her total appearance, to know her by heart like a poem, from the the pearly skin of her shoulders to her heavy, relaxed legs. She had painted her toenails an underwater shade of blue-green.

‘Everything is all right now.' He would make it all right for her, and keep it that way.

Yet the moment was temporary and temporal and something would happen to end it. At the very least, one of them would have to get out of bed. And one of them would have to die before the other. He faced the reality of that. One of us
does
have to die before the other. But if the equilibrium exists at all, it exists, notionally, all the time. It's just that we don't always have access to it. Our separateness in the world, our disagreements and discordances, make reference to it. Disequilibrium can only exist because we know what equilibrium is.

*   *   *

Martagon, back in London, with Marina on his mind all the time that he was not working, found it hard to maintain his equilibrium, and to believe that they were together even when they were apart. There was a signboard he passed just before Dijon whenever he was driving south to Provence. He always looked out for it –
Partage des Eaux.
He liked knowing he was crossing this line beyond which the rivers and underground streams stop flowing towards the Atlantic and start flowing towards the Mediterranean, towards Marina. Driving north,
Partage des Eaux
spelt separation.

He thought about himself, and her, and the way they were together. He thought about Marina as Marina. What was she doing, at any given moment, away from him?

What kind of person was she really? Surely no one so exquisite could be less than intelligent, honest, kind? Beauty is ‘only skin deep' as they say. Beautiful people can be shallow or uninteresting or malevolent. He could not read her mind or her thoughts. She thought and dreamed in French, for a start. They had come together from different places, and he could not retrace the way she had come. The Château de Bonplaisir had formed her, and her world was there, and with the
gratin
of Paris society. If she were not so lovely, would I still love her – for her character, for her mind, which I can never really know?

The questions are meaningless. Marina is a world, and she has a world – several worlds. She is damaged perhaps, but not broken. What is important is that I love her and know I can take care of her. The real beauty is not in the love object but in the loving.

*   *   *

There were so many Marinas. She was a bad long-distance communicator. Martagon would e-mail her, and she would reply within a day or two. He longed always for the sound of her voice. But when they spoke on the telephone it was rarely a success. He only rang when he was missing her badly, and usually put the phone down after the call feeling disappointed, or dissatisfied. Marina had a quick, sharp tongue – he could well imagine her being ‘horrible' to Erik. Over the phone, when he could not see her smiling face, she could sound dismissive or impatient just when he needed her to be loving and supportive. Perhaps it was a language difficulty. Her near-perfect English was deceptive, she missed the nuances.

He sent her picture postcards from the different places he went for his work, and the occasional short letter. He was no letter-writer and neither was she. In the days of Jutta, Martagon used to get letters twice a week at least – six or eight pages every time, each covered on both sides with her dense, curly handwriting. Jutta's letters had been about what she was doing, what she was thinking, what she was reading, and how she was feeling. Jutta's letters analysed his infrequent letters to her, and his character and personality, and her own, and their relationship – endlessly, and in depth.

In early days he had been touched and impressed by Jutta's letters. Later, he had come to dread the familiar fat envelopes with German stamps, lurking in wait for him on the doormat in the mornings or when he came home from work. Long before he found the strength to break with her, he was just scanning them, quite unable to plough all the way through. One of the blessings of the end of their relationship had been the cessation of the letters – after, that is, a final spate of accusations, reproaches and pleadings, which had only gradually slackened and stopped.

It's a terrible thing that once you've stopped wanting someone, all you long for is to get out from under and go on with your own life, somewhere else.

For a cool second he saw how it would be if he stopped loving Marina. No more heartache and longing, no more hectic agitation and raw vulnerability, no more inconvenience and endless plans and arrangements, no more anxiety about the future, more time for his work – and his mind emptied of her overwhelming image, set free to meander, like in the past.

The next second, as awareness of the reality of her returned in a hot flood, he knew he did not have that choice. Marina had given him a new self, more alive and vivid. He could never go back to what he had been – temperate, disengaged – even if he tried to. It was about his desire for Marina and sex with Marina but it didn't stop with sex, it started there. The poem Julie had copied out for him was pinned up in his office. He had just been ‘a man who looks on glass' before. Now he looked through it and saw, in the brightness beyond, how life should be lived.