On the Blue Train (27 page)

He had had—amazing luck—ten years with Valeria.

Outrage.

Harry searched again, still without success, for a note addressed to himself, an explanatory note. Its absence was conspicuous and unthinkably callous. Diabolical, this doubled silence.

During that depraved dilated night, the face of Giacomo Petri, Valeria's first lover, came before him as he'd seen it in the last moments at the Caffè degli Specchi, after she ended her liaison with him. Harry's sympathy for the man had always been theoretical, and it remained so. No, he did not exactly feel kinship with Giacomo, but he did give him a good deal of thought when he too learned what it was to lose her.

In a windy square, telling Harry why she wanted to be done with Giacomo, she had said, ‘Because I'm not happy, of course.'

How so, ‘of course'?

Had she been warning him, right at the beginning, that for her happiness was unsustainable, impossible? An unworkable ideal, a flawed proposition. A faulty promise.

22

TENTH DAY, AFTERNOON

She was absorbed as he told her about the night he had returned home to find that his wife had suicided. Much of the fear stirred in her vanished. When he reached Valeria in bed, she had seen her mother, also, expiring in the bed at her sister's house—a particular death having a way of sponging up the rank overflow of others. She thought of Mummy wondering whether her youngest daughter, still on the train from Manchester, would arrive in time, and later understanding she couldn't wait for her. Just as Valeria had decided she could not wait for Harry to come home
that
night, nor ever again face a night, nor the wait for anyone. Both women had finished with waiting. She'd perhaps have wept if she'd been alone.

Harry looked spent and glazed. It was safer not to go to him.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

‘Thank you,' he replied. ‘And I'm sorry for frightening you before. I . . .'

They added nothing for several minutes.

‘You thought I was like her? That I'd do what she did?'

‘I was afraid of that.'

He considered her interrogatingly, but she only shook her head slightly. ‘Why? Why did Valeria . . . ?'

He raised his shoulders, and sighed when they lowered. ‘Why indeed? Because I failed her, I expect. I certainly couldn't make her want to live.'

‘Will you let me look at the view now? I promise . . .'

He hung his head. ‘Yes.'

Near the edge, though not too near, she gazed down. After a moment the surroundings appeared to come closer, as if they'd been lurking back and abruptly stepped forward. In gaps between the alders, ferns and bracken were milky flashes of the small brook they could hear. There it was, travelling irrepressibly along the bottom of the glen, around the boulders that littered its bed. Lichen lying ghostly over rocks. Moss like sections of delicate Turkey carpets. Green! So unadulterated it poked at the eye—had it been a flavour it would have been acerbic, exhilarating. The air, too, became an insistent pressure against the skin, cold and very clean. Mountain air, old-world. Holly, white thorn, ashes, oaks, hazels. The birdsong, ringing within a parcel of crystalline
silence, made her think of flutes played inside a church. What a life force there was in that mountain glen. It passed through her, subtle but clear and relentless. She had a sense, almost, of resurrection. She was happy then to be in that place in that instant that was so whole.

‘I'm happy.'

‘What did you say?'

She walked back to Harry, who had remained sitting where he had told his story. She was still wary, but mainly because of her desire for him. She did not say again that she was happy, or touch his shoulder, as she might have done. ‘Let's go down somewhere nice and low and have what we can salvage of our picnic.'

They descended the way they had come. She was now unafraid of slipping.

Harry remarked, ‘I sometimes wondered, not very often, if Valeria thought of other men. Married men, I think, tend not to imagine such things about their wives. Maybe we should. It might help us to see the other person better. Marriage can make you invisible to each other.'

‘Yes. And I know what you mean—some men don't appear to imagine much at all.'

‘Were
you
attracted to other men?'

She wouldn't look at him. ‘It's a writer's business to picture alternatives.'

They settled on a pair of large broad rocks, and ate nearly without conversation. The Stilton was very nice, and the cheddar and pâté divine, earthy and sharp. Buns simple and enjoyable.

As they were munching apples and passing the bottle of cider back and forth, he said, ‘Can't we play that we're going to send everything to the devil and go and live in Nice?'

‘Together?' she enquired innocently. ‘In the same house?' The horror of what he had evoked earlier seemed to push them into a light, slightly absurd tenor. It was the only reaction to it they could find. Grief made logic convulse.

‘Only if you wanted. We could also be neighbours, if you'd prefer—or think it more the decent thing.'

‘One of the qualities of the French is that they appear less preoccupied with decency than we are.' She was flushing.

‘And that is very pleasant.' He gave her an open, delightful smile, and then looked away.

She stood and brushed off her skirt. He stood, too.

‘Our home in Nice,' he went on. ‘How shall it be?'

She composed a thoughtful face and they resumed walking. ‘Of course, we must have a sea view. And a terrace overlooking it where we'll eat enormous resplendent meals.'

‘Yes, won't we? What do you say to a little wrought-iron balcony, also? That could be charming,
n'est-ce pas
?'

‘
Tout à fait
. Maybe I could learn to drink, at least champagne.'

‘I'll do my very best to teach you.'

‘We'll have an excellent French maid or two. Not too pretty. Old and haggard.' The shared pipe dream was intoxicating.

He hesitated. ‘We could have Venus herself for a maid in our house in Nice and I'd be entirely indifferent to her charms.'

She sniggered. ‘You wouldn't be.'

‘I would. On my honour.'

‘I'll hold you to that.'

‘Please do.'

He tossed her a lasso of a look, from which she slid free, with some awkwardness, continuing, ‘We won't welcome into our home anyone who likes golf.'

‘That goes without saying. They'll be barred. Or we'll have a legend over the door to frighten them away: Abandon all hope golf players who enter here.'

She just wanted to think of fun. ‘You realise that with our high-toned life we'll need plenty of money?'

‘Well, there's my fortune,' he said.

‘You know, I think I
could
earn my living,' she boasted on a little wave of jubilation, ‘maybe even well, if I really set my mind to it.' For now, no need to consider never publishing again, having no legs to walk on, et cetera. The virtue of fantasies naturally being that disappointment and dullness didn't have to reside within them. They were making a splendid vision.

‘I doubt it not. You'll make a princely living. When we first arrive in Nice, we can stay at the Negresco, while hunting for our perfect abode. I met my employer, Mr Ainsworth, there. In 1913. I associate that night with the lightness of things before the war. An ambience—balmy and frivolous—in which anything seemed possible.' He paused, and added quietly, ‘It was just youth, too, I suppose. That right to frivolity . . . Not that I ever particularly felt I possessed it.'

Returning to a road full of people, motorcars and carriages was discordant. The day faded. They were like children who, having been left to their own devices playing at dress-ups, must take off the bright finery and face sullen adults. They concurred that in the interests of discretion they wouldn't dine together. Only Teresa would eat with the Jackmans. Passing the Grand Hotel, they nodded to a regally stout old lady being towed along by a bent-backed bath-chair man. Teresa tried not to think of the other Grand, where she had spent her wedding night.

‘We'll meet tomorrow?' Harry enquired.

She nodded. She'd lost all judgement concerning her conduct with him, and though she did not know what they were to one another, she was inclined to go on feeling like a lover. ‘Could we listen to the chamber ensemble together at the baths?'

‘Mightn't it be injudicious—at this stage of affairs—to meet somewhere so public? How about the gardens opposite
the Imperial Café? If we proceeded on across the Stray, we'd hopefully have some privacy.'

‘Yes, of course. All right. Three o'clock?'

‘I'll be looking forward to it. We can make further plans for Nice.'

She smiled and without further rejoinder hurried away from him. Her shoes were rimmed with the dark mud that appeared to ooze everywhere from the peaty northern earth.

23

TENTH DAY, EVENING

The Jackmans lamented Harry's absence and the headache Teresa claimed had obliged him to dine in his room. When she reported her impressions of Birk Crag, a hopeful glow came to Mrs Jackman's cheeks. Teresa had determined not to dilate on the excursion, but it was tempting to gush over the grace of that place. She noted a warning of inexplicable tearfulness, warmth and constriction, in her sinuses and throat. The roast pheasant was tender and she tried to engulf her mind in that savoury submission to her teeth.

‘I don't suppose you'd find such country in South Africa?' Mr Jackman asked.

Mrs Jackman came to her aid. ‘I think that in the matter of beauty—true beauty—no style of nature, no particular lovely place can be said to be superior to any other.'

‘Well said, my dear.'

The Hydro Boys weren't playing that evening, and they were all intent on retiring early. By nine thirty they'd said their goodnights. Teresa checked with the night porter for letters. Not one.

About to mount the stairs, she was startled by a hand on her elbow. Recalling the fine roots of an elegant dwarf tree. Mrs Jackman. She was, Teresa thought, prettily old.

‘It never seems right to bring this up before the men,' Mrs Jackman murmured. ‘But I've been wanting to say . . .'

Teresa nodded, light-headed. There it was: she was discovered.

‘About your little daughter you lost.'

‘Ah. Yes.'

‘I don't speak exactly from my own experience—still, I observed it with
my
daughter.' They moved to one side to let a young man pass. Mrs Jackman gazed at him, then appeared to make an effort to focus and brighten. ‘You won't be as you were before, yet you will carry on. And you must remember that this is the case for us all, to a lesser extent. I mean, every day something is lost and we're a little changed, are we not? And onward we go. But destiny might reserve any number of surprises for us. New loves, even . . .'

Teresa assented dumbly. Though she was safe, her heart remained flustered. She was praying that Mrs Jackman, who was taking such an interest in her happiness, would never find out she'd lied to her, to them, that she wasn't the woman
she masqueraded as. ‘I'm terribly sorry for your daughter's loss. And for yours. It must have been dreadful. Is it a happy marriage, your daughter's? Impertinent question, I know.'