On the Blue Train (16 page)

‘Your poor hand.' He stroked where she had hurt herself.

In her blood that was so dark when spilled and dried there was a great suspense. She only leaned a hair towards him. He crossed the remaining distance at once, but then hesitated. Teresa's lips came to rest against his. He accepted the kiss as if lost in thought, or willing himself sedate. She felt his chest expand as he inhaled, a set of fine bones adjacent to her own heart's cage. She drew back.

‘Teresa.'

He touched the side of her face. His fingers at her temple, thumb behind her ear, warm palm cradling her jaw. Next their mouths were meeting again and they had given themselves to something fuller. It was like being borne on a wave in Torbay. Limpness and vigour.

Recovering herself somewhat, she half whispered, ‘Going down a well? What do you say to that?'

‘Hmm?'

‘Drowning in a well.'

He seemed to shrink away. ‘As a means of dying?'

‘Yes. Harrogate should be the very place for such a method.'

Just then a pair of old ladies crested the stairs, tittering breathily as though at a mild impropriety.

‘Well, goodnight, Harry,' Teresa exclaimed, stepping away from him. ‘Thank you again for returning my book.'

They nodded to the ladies. One raised a waggish eyebrow and the other waved indecisively before passing Harry and Teresa.

He approached once more. She was cautious, now. She had not been afraid to kiss him, only conscious of her fretful blood. But she could almost have drawn a man she barely knew into her room! She could not trust the vacillating body being returned to her. Hotels distracted you from your usual life, offering that choice of corridors radiating out in a circle, breathing into your ear that you could take any one of them, be whomsoever you decided to be. ‘I must to bed.'

‘Teresa, please.' He came closer still. ‘You're
her
, aren't you?'

She must have jumped. A different fear.

‘No, please don't be frightened.'

She had turned and clumsily fitted the key into the lock. ‘I don't know what you mean,' she said, as steadily as she could. ‘Who?'

She had believed herself incognito here, smugly pleased with—indeed, half convinced by—the story of the elegant, capable widow vacationing alone. The freedom of it had gone to her head. She had exposed herself horrendously. Allowed a man to come near her and find her out.

‘No,' he whispered. ‘I wouldn't tell anyone. It's of no importance to me. None. That's not why . . .'

She was turning the key, opening the door.

‘I'm sorry. Please! I just wanted you to know you could talk to me, if you wanted. Or not, of course.'

She was in the doorway of her room, inside at last, and she turned back, trying to smile. Her face was trembling. ‘I've no idea what you're referring to.'

‘I want to be your friend.' He looked distraught. ‘Whether or not you confide in me.'

She lifted her hand and he attempted to take it.

‘Trust me,' he insisted plangently.

Tugging free, Teresa folded her arms. ‘Trust a man?' She managed more or less to chuckle. The bitterness was real enough. ‘'Night, Harry.'

‘There are many sterling reasons not to trust men, I know.' His hand on the doorjamb as if he would prevent her from shutting him out—but he removed it quickly. ‘Couldn't agree with you more there. Frankly, I myself have hardly represented my sex as well as I might have and should probably warn you away from me.' Curiosity stopped her from closing the
door. ‘However, I do believe I'd do anything to help you.' He paused, gazing up at the ceiling. ‘Teresa, I'm falling in love with you.'

It was those you presumed you could trust who revealed themselves as Judases. Harry's eyes were brown, richly dark, and somehow deeply set in a face of hollows, but how not to remember the suave transparent blue of the Gun Man's stare? The temptation to believe him was insidious. One always
wants
to believe oneself loved, and is hasty to take this bait.

‘I think it would be better if we didn't meet alone again. Goodnight.'

She shut the door, registering the vibration unleashed by this action in the building's walls and in herself, as if she were part of that structure of interconnected rooms and corridors.

She was walking back and forth, unnerved. Could Harry be a Gun Man? He knew who she was.

And claimed she could trust him, despite the fact that he had not behaved well in the past. Said he was falling in love with her.

Who
exactly did he think he was falling in love
with
? Teresa Neele, whom he had known for a few days after she materialised from the blue at the Hydro, shared some chats with him, two dances and a walk? Was it love at first sight, then? Flattering to her vanity—but if he knew who
she was, wasn't it more likely he was smitten with the idea of a Mysterious Woman? With notoriety, maybe, the dirty excitement cooked up by newspapers? She flinched. (Stay clear of all that, it will make you sick again.)

Who, furthermore, was
she
attracted to? Was she really so taken with Harry? Or was it the memory of Shy Thing and Australia? A romantic dream making a halfwit of her. She reflected, Will we never know just what we desire, and if this is
real
? All terrifyingly unreliable.

She was discovered.

She was shaking. Would Harry keep her secret? She realised she still had his handkerchief. She'd been wringing it in her hands as she paced and the thing was utterly twisted. Rusty flakes of blood upon it. She went to the basin and ran warm water over her hand. She soaped and studied the cut, which could barely be made out. She washed Harry's handkerchief, inhaling the lily scent of the soap, quaking.

An Australian had once reminded her of herself as a woman, and the past seemed to be repeating itself. How was it that one's erotic life came to be buried? She had never stopped admiring her handsome husband, but along the misty path of marriage much was obscured, and that certain lack had come about for which retribution was being exacted. Her sensual impulses, it appeared, had been diverted into a deep place, where they had bided their time. Lambent.

A question of fault? Of going cold and staid? Her husband had not known how, perhaps had not cared, to reach the deep place. This had so dispirited her, she had to admit, that she had made no sincere effort to guide him there. She'd grown resigned to making love as though with a clumsy understudy in place of the leading man. Her own attempt at leading lady was certainly second rate. Heart not entirely in it, body an interloper displaying counterfeit emotion. Physical love had often been a question of settling on a serviceable part to perform, and fumbling to pull it off.

The sodden handkerchief appeared bluish white and compromised. Oh God, Teresa had sung before an audience. She'd played—admirably at that—a merry game of billiards! These things all at once seemed almost as shamefully immodest as the kiss. It was like that shuddering point in a particular sort of dream where you abruptly observe, Dear me, I've just gone down the high street without a stitch on! She wrung the water from his handkerchief violently and hung it over the towel rail, smoothing it.

Take care of chores, at least. Remove the black silk evening dress. Brush teeth, wash face with the
crème de lys
soap. Apply face cream, drawing the excess down the neck. Change into welcoming flannel nightdress.

The night was clear, she saw from the window. That moon could have been fully swollen, houses and trees and the curve of the road were so absolutely defined. Inside the room,
too, the furniture looked burnished by moonlight. The bed and the wardrobe, the humiliating writing table. The indispensable books on the bedside table. Beside those the bottle of sleeping draught she might yet need. Shivering, she went to the fire.

She'd told herself she was waiting to be found, awaiting her husband's arrival. The Russian's nasty friend was right: before her own journey, assuming this would do the job, she had sent a letter to her husband's brother advising him she was going to a Yorkshire spa. But the message she had believed clear had proved cryptic (things so upside down). Or her husband had not given the message as much attention as she had hoped. He had not come, anyhow. In the meantime, she had been found, yes, but by someone else.

Harry, whom she had kissed as Teresa—whose husband was dead—might kiss. Like a free woman, that is. Was she free?

She had run away.

Brought suspicion on her living husband.
Mr Neele
. Created rather a bad mess. Thrown a teapot. (Only because he refused to see reason, insisting he wanted a divorce. Hideous snake's hiss of a word,
divorce
.)

She was swaying on her feet again. The fire had almost burned itself out in the grate. She was
so
tired.
Extenuée
, one could say in French. Not the same in English but she was
lessened and made thin, too. She brought her hands to her hips, not unpleased to be rediscovering their bony design.

She
must
think that her husband would come for her (what alternative was there?). Would see what he was doing (the barbarity of that hissing word). Should she send another message? It would have to be a message in a bottle, from this shipwreck. Train wreck. Until he arrived she would be careful, and
very
careful of Harry and his unbending brown gaze. Mightn't be too extreme to avoid him altogether. Remembering desire was confusing, that was all. It was something of a battle not to be carried by it, as by a wave on Babbacombe Beach, manhandled and made amenable, so free.

Collapsing into bed, she seized a book from the bedside table, already the third of the borrowed ones. They had been all right. Teresa would be all right. She read at speed till the story had her and her sangfroid began to return.

A little later, she noticed music in the background of her mind—the same music she'd heard that morning? Just beyond the reach of recognition, persistent. And she was scared all over again, because it wouldn't be easy now to be Teresa Neele. Harry would interfere with her pretending and forgetting, with the lightness of her thoughts. He would churn up the pieces of the past that she'd been keeping low and invisible. And they would ascend like fireflies, abruptly flashing on.

13

SAN CARLO WHARF

His intuition was corroborated: confirmation had been in her eyes and voice. He would go on calling her Teresa Neele, to maintain her cover, and out of respect. Didn't she wish to jettison the old name? There followed an awkward night, antsy, almost perfectly sleepless. He swung between exultation—replaying for himself their kisses and caresses—and despair to think that she regretted them and there would be no more. He listened to a quantity of Elgar on his gramophone and drank sherry until his mouth was sickly and an imprecise aching commenced behind his eyes. He reached the usual haze, surpassed it, swallowed by a veritable pea-souper, but his thoughts went on shining obstinately from within this like electric lamps. He had told her he was falling in love with her. And, oh Lord, he appeared to be. But surely there was no way for him and Teresa to be together. On the other
hand, if he really was falling in love, then he was letting down Valeria. Once more. He had been convinced he could not, would never love any woman but his late wife. That there was some consolation and even belated honour in this. Now he came face to face with his inconstancy.

Worse still, the terror that he would lose Teresa as he'd lost Valeria. Unbearable.

The only thing that gave him comfort during the night, any feeling of keeping the train of his thought on secure tracks, was reading her. Having finished the first novel, he went on with, and far into, the second.

When the dawn coyly announced itself he rose to confront in the glass livid circles beneath his eyes and the impotent, haunted air of a consumptive. It was Thursday. His beard was sore and sulky against the razor, with the result that he cut himself rather a lot shaving. Brilliant drops of blood dappling the sink's white porcelain. (
It's funny
, he heard her saying,
that blood should be so
. . .
scandalous.
)