On the Blue Train (11 page)

‘I was sleepy. And anxious to get back to a book. But today I feel so full of energy. The ghastly water doing its witchcraft. Or this place. Harrogate is, I'm convinced of it, a tonic. And the shopping is delightful. Today I've decided that I need a shawl.'

He didn't presume to know Teresa. How could he, when she was barely an acquaintance—an acquaintance who was possibly lying to him, to everyone at the Hydro? But this talk was, he sensed,
wrong
coming from her. To his ears, it had a slightly manic flavour.

‘Indeed? I might be able to advise you on shops,' Mrs Jackman offered timidly.

‘I'd like that. What was the clue?'

‘The clue? Oh. Typical, now I've forgotten it . . .'

Finding the situation unreal, he returned to his newspaper. A Mrs de Silva, described as a family friend, said that the missing woman was a kind, sweet person, devoted to her husband. She had been severely afflicted by the loss of her mother, who had recently died . . . This had left the authoress poorly and unable to write.

Plates were taken away and Teresa, pink-cheeked, pronounced, ‘Delicious.'

Her eyes finally met Harry's and she smiled, just a quiver. In that moment, he was certain she was
her
. To be the only one who knew her true identity was electrifying. It created a curious subterranean intimacy between them. He smiled in return and suffered from an urge to reach across the table to touch her hand, which seemed stranded. He was also entertaining a fantasy of catching her alone somewhere, cornering her and obliging her to explain everything to him.

‘I hear you have every kind of dangerous animal over there,' Mr Jackman was saying to him.

‘Hm? Oh, in Australia? Well, I haven't been back in over a decade, but, yes, the last time I checked.'

‘Harry grew up on a farm,' Mr Jackman explained to his wife. ‘Livestock?'

‘Fruit orchard.'

‘Ah, what kind of fruit?'

‘Cherries, mainly. And some plums. Stone fruit.'

‘You have all that over there? I suppose you do. We're fanatical about cherries. And I gather you have snakes that will kill you?'

‘Indeed.'

Harry was awarded a fascinated smile.

Mrs Jackman and Teresa left the dining room, bound in a tête à tête. Mr Jackman paused as the two men made to follow. ‘One last question about the Australian wildlife. Is it true you have a spider that . . .'

‘Yes, yes, it will all kill you.'

By the time they'd arrived at the foot of the stairs, the ladies were not to be seen.

He encountered another newspaper soon after. On Crescent Street, just outside the Royal Baths, a gentleman stood absorbed in a
Daily Express
. Harry halted. Staring right at him from the front page was Teresa.

It wasn't at all how he had grown used to seeing her, and once again the image was grainy and shadowy, yet in some way he thought it came closer to precision than the last photograph.

She was accompanied by a female child. Of six years or so, he guessed. Had to be her daughter. Very pretty child. Their faces alongside one another, the child was notably prettier than the mother, with features neater and finer. She was more attentive to the camera, too, though her demeanour was somewhat cold. They were both sombre, but the mother looked weary with it, and aware of looking weary. What a thin, deflated mouth. Eyes a little hooded. The long, strong nose verging on hooked. Roman? Next to her daughter, she was slumping morosely into middle age. He had to recognise it: into plainness. Was that what Teresa had run from? This diluted, defeated version of her face? He found that because half of her true name was her husband's, he was disinclined to stop thinking of her as Teresa Neele.

‘Can I help you, sir?'

Harry gave a start. The gentleman had lowered the screen of his newspaper. He was elderly and moustachioed, and Harry had the sense that they were taking part in some comical turn in a music hall performance. ‘Excuse me?'

‘Lost, are you? Wanting directions?'

‘Yes, thank you, yes. The Royal Baths. That's what I'm after.'

The gent grunted. ‘Right under your nose.'

While lowering his body fatalistically into the frigid waters of the plunge bath, it came to him that not only were Teresa and Agatha likely one and the same, but the woman in question would
do something desperate
.

He gasped. Stood bolt upright, the shocking water at his waist, his lungs astonished. He remembered his negligent banter about desirable methods of taking one's life and the gentleness of her response. Her description of a lovely last day, of swimming off to meet the end. It hadn't occurred to him to carefully consider the consequence of her words—to ask himself, indeed, whether she could have designated the Hydro as the last hotel at which she would ever be a guest. Had she tried to put him off the trail by declaring she'd only countenance for such purposes an exotic locale like Casablanca?

‘Excuse me,' said a very handsome young man, not apologising but merely confirming his right to the space
Harry had been occupying. He proceeded to plash and prance, undeterred by the iciness of the water, executing swimming strokes, then shaking water from himself like an unruly pup, laughing. Exuding health, athleticism and exuberance. ‘Aren't you cold, standing still like that?' he thought to ask.

‘I daresay I should be, but I'm quite resilient to the cold.' Harry barely kept his teeth from knocking against one another. He turned away and exited the pool that he'd hoped would brace his mind.

‘Admirable—I mean, at your age,' the younger man opined.

He was possibly sincere. He didn't look subtle enough for irony. But Harry wasn't in a mood to take a generous view of the insolent Adonis. He secured a towel around his waist, his body wanting to quake from the cold. The boy was performing some lazy form of callisthenics that permitted him to show off an enviable musculature and sensuous grace. How many would lose their hearts to him? Poor silly dears.

‘Age isn't my exclusive property,' Harry said, confronting him. ‘Wait and more will come to you. You won't need much patience. Provided, of course, you don't meet with an accident before then, there's nothing on which you can rely more.'

And with this attempt at reinstating his honour he departed for the Caldarium, where he laid himself out on a
deckchair like the sanatorium exhibit he was, one arm draped rather effetely over his eyes. He was chilled to the core.

Yes, it followed that Teresa spoke so readily of self-harm because this was at the forefront of her thoughts. It wasn't her earlier queer languid manner or maybe sadness that had tipped him off, nor even his discovery of the notoriety she was earning in her escape from her detestable husband (assuming she truly was Agatha), but her brightness that morning at breakfast. Her ebullience, her almost aggressive gaiety. It appeared to Harry that this
had
to be a mask. And possibly—was it plausible?—a decoy to distract observers not only from her identity but from her serious plans. If grief over her mother's death had left her ill and incapable of literary work, what role might this have played in the unusual measures she had taken? The loss of a loved one affected a person in unexpected ways. He had found her lucid, if erratic and novel—however, what if the illness mentioned had taken its toll on her mind? Should she have been laughing, eating with gusto in company and going about shopping when all the while the police and the press were after her, hunting her libidinously, and anyone at the Hydro who picked up a newspaper might have summed two and two, and known it?

His tension spurred him into a cold shower. What was Teresa planning? He was sickened to have arrived at her own
death, that ultimate flight from any and all versions of one's face, as her probable next move.

He didn't return to the Hydro after the baths, because he didn't know how he would have deployed himself there. Had he run into Teresa, he could hardly have questioned her. If she'd been willing to accompany him on another walk, as he'd have been tempted to propose she do, pretending that he hadn't discovered her secret would have been difficult. The desire to plead,
Tell me why
, or,
Don't do it!
might have overpowered him. And speaking his mind could lose him her trust, even conceivably cause her to run away once more. So he wandered about.

On Parliament Street he came to W.H. Smith and entered. Three of her books were in their circulating library.

‘Oh, she's the one that's gone missing.' The lady who found them for him was affected by a marked rounding of the upper back that did not prevent her from somehow moving harmoniously, horsey and courtly. ‘She's surely dead, poor thing. Dreadful for the family. Everyone will be wanting these now. I warrant it'll make her reputation.'

Teresa's other name on the books' covers seemed an affront.

He proceeded to the Stray, where he began, while meandering along, to examine one of the novels. The cover was rather theatrical: a bear in a man's suit appeared to be
removing—or was about to hide behind—a human mask, whey-faced, raffish, vaguely lecherous. Harry smiled over the first lines. And, surprisingly quickly, was ensconced within the story, where he spent some hours, by turns drifting on foot and sitting.

A dog bounding into him returned him to himself some time later. An eager, pure-faced terrier. Remembering Teresa's passionate glance at the corgi, he stooped to pat the animal, which became increasingly excited until his master, an indeterminate sort of man in a mackintosh, forcibly reclaimed him. It wasn't raining, though the opaque sky was threatening. This man would be at home in the rain, and not just because he had dressed for it. His features already appeared nebulous and forlorn. He bid Harry good evening with a woebegone, slightly reproachful tone. The terrier extended a reluctant farewell. It was chilly and Harry had rushed out without his coat. Had he left it at the baths? He was also, he found, half starved but inclined to continue with the novel.

He was installed at Bettys a handful of minutes later, reading as he awaited poached salmon, the intrigue rolling up around him like the light sheath of a stocking over a woman's leg.