Harm's Way (18 page)

Confident that Christian would sooner or later turn up on my doorstep or wander through the revolving doors of the museum, I delighted in having Beth to myself again. There was a newfound fascination for me in the sheer physicality of her, and the knowledge that at night we both conjured up the same face in our dreams helped to cancel out any sense of wrongdoing on my part. I urged her now not to hold back in her sexual descriptions, recognising my own experiences in them, taking instruction even, and relishing how similar our tastes were. Our weekends had regained their initial flavour: tender, aimless, languorous days of the kind I have never experienced since. Only now there was this slow-beating sensuality infecting everything. We would discuss our common passion affectionately together, and where I had been careful to keep any of my views quiet in the past – whether real or concocted for her benefit – I was now happy to join in with the deconstructions of his character, which Beth never
seemed to tire of. I have since wondered why she did not question my readiness to devote whole hours of conversation to Christian, knowing, as she affectionately did, that nothing usually aroused my interest unless it had some bearing on me. But suspicion was an alien concept to Beth. Despite the knocks she had suffered throughout her life, she had an amazing capacity to see only the good in others, naturally expecting the trust she held in them to be mirrored by those close to her.

I likened my initial meeting with Beth to falling in love. If that were the case, then those first days of September were our belated honeymoon. Splashing through the puddles of rain that lacquered the pavements of Paris and ruined our shoes, we walked from one side of the city to the next, down the banks lined with booksellers, sharing muscat grapes, soon to be out of season, from a paper bag.

She was enchanted by the discovery of Shakespeare and Co., a second-hand bookshop on the rue de la Bûcherie where expats and ambitious young poets congregated. We would browse the shelves silently, never once buying a thing, whispering our findings to each other so as not to wake the homeless students sleeping on battered sofas at the back of the shop.

However, after the first week without him, my physical yearning for Christian became insufferable. I hungered for sensations that might appease the restlessness: going from one exhibition to the next, preparing elaborate plates of food I couldn't eat, endlessly switching radio channels unable to settle on a song I wanted to hear and struggling every night to find a comfortable position in which to sleep. My twin infatuations had become one. Watching Beth try on a trouser
suit in an expensive shop on the Champs-Elysées, I sat in the communal changing room transfixed by her perfect hourglass shape from behind. I wondered if he'd ever seen the knickers she was wearing – plain black silk with a scalloped waistband – and for a moment allowed myself to enjoy the image of the two of them together.

Christian had explained this temporary period of absence from her life (and mine) claiming two of his staff were off sick. Perhaps it was true. Anyhow, it didn't matter. The idea of us becoming a couple had never even occurred to me: how would I be able to keep Beth? No, I was quite content for things to carry on the way they were.

Thursday was late-night opening at the museum, and a miscellaneous crowd filtered through the doors from six o'clock onwards; lawyers and bankers with RSI, still clutching their briefcases, escaped their computer screens to seek an injection of culture. I had missed lunch that day and glared at the forlorn suits, waiting for them to feel they had seen enough to go home so that I could run to the supermarket and buy sufficient food to fill my tiny fridge.

Franprix lit up its shoppers like mannequins in a warehouse. Guided by the blazingly cool tubes of light lining the aisles, I zigzagged past the fruit and vegetables, narrowly avoiding running over a crouching infant with my diminutive Parisian trolley. Intrigued, the four-year-old followed me at a respectful distance to the delicatessen, where I retrieved a single
oeuf-en-gelée
from a fridge shelf above his head. His quietly judgemental gaze made me uncomfortable, and, stashing the packet furtively in my trolley, I hurried on. The choices I had looked forward to making earlier on in the
day now seemed mundane, with every option failing to arouse my taste buds. Catching sight of myself in a mirror above the freezer, I noticed a smudge on my cheek, and began to wipe it off with my sleeve.

‘Trust you to find somewhere to admire yourself, even in a supermarket,' came a voice from behind me.

‘Beth,' I said before turning, recognising that ironic Irish lilt instantly. But my surprised smile froze when I saw who was with her. ‘Christian. Hi.'

He looked unflinchingly at me and allowed a polite smile to spread slowly across his lovely, blank face.

‘Hello.'

‘So, what are you two doing here?'

‘Errrm …' Beth had cocked her head to one side and was frowning indulgently at me. ‘We're buying food. Why? What do you usually come here for?'

She had sensed my embarrassment and in a second would begin to wonder about the reason for it. I knew I had to say something, anything, quickly.

‘Oh, I don't know. Supermarkets are amazing if you open your mind to things … So what have you got in there anyway? Let's have a look.' I peered into the plastic basket Christian was holding. ‘Jesus, you've bought half the shop. I hope that's not all just for you two.'

As soon as I'd said it, I realised what it must sound like: a plea to be invited for dinner.

‘God, you're right. Darling we've got way too much here. Why don't you come and join us, Anna? We're making a
raclette
.'

‘Oh.' I played for time. ‘Isn't that meant to be a winter dish?'

‘Look outside: winter's pretty much here.'

It was the first thing Christian had said to me, and I wondered whether, like poor dialogue from a romantic novel, he was referring to the end of our relationship. Suddenly the allure of the evening ahead, with all its enjoyable complications, flared in my imagination.

‘Well, I have always wanted to try it. Yes, why not. I'd love to.'

‘Were you just going to have a quiet one?'

She'd said it kindly, prompting them both to look into my trolley as we walked towards the checkout, but suddenly it sounded like pity.

‘I wish,' I replied quickly, darting a glance at Christian to see if he was listening and hastily resting my trolley with its tell-tale contents in a corner. ‘No, I was supposed to be having someone over for a drink but I might just call and tell them I'm not feeling well. I wasn't really in the mood for it anyway.'

‘If you're sure,' said Beth. And, like a perfectly functioning family, we formed a conveyor belt with our groceries by the checkout counter.

Looking back on that night, I find it hard to believe that I sat between those two, my conscience calm and my hands steady, eating the dishes Beth had painstakingly prepared, laughing at her jokes, once even kissing her on the cheek at a compliment she'd paid me. I don't recall feeling any shame; initial discomfort faded as soon as we'd entered the flat. There seemed to be nothing more natural than spending the evening with the woman I adored and a man I desired. As soon as we'd walked in Beth had shrugged off her fitted Chinese satin
jacket to reveal heavy breasts full of movement, the tips skimming against the thin cream jersey material of her top. Rather than feel the nudge of competition, I remember enjoying her figure, appreciating it like a man.

‘Now you two: make yourselves comfortable next door and open this.'

She was made to be a mother, I thought, bossy and tender, warm and practical. She handed me a bottle of Fleurie from the top of the fridge, and Christian a corkscrew. A wall partially separated the kitchen from the sitting room, so that as I placed the bottle on the coffee table, steadying it with one hand and twisting the metal spike into the cork with the other, we were still able to hear Beth speaking to us from next door. Amidst the gongs of saucepans and slamming of drawers, she told us she was convinced she was going to be promoted. Her boss had praised her that day on a project she'd just completed on the forthcoming season's Maoist look.

‘He told me he had “great things in store” for me. I mean, what else could he mean?'

‘Here, let me do that: you're making a total mess of it,' Christian whispered, dragging his teeth across his bottom lip in consternation at my miserable efforts.

Picking my fingers gently off the neck of the bottle as though they were a bird with a broken neck, he put the wine between his knees and uncorked it in one swift movement.

‘So that's all pretty good news, don't you think?'

From next door, Beth's words had been tripping over each other in their continuous sing-song rhythm without me hearing them.

‘Great news,' we chorused: she had just walked into the room holding a bowl of pistachio nuts.

‘If I do get a promotion, I might even move out of this place and get somewhere of my own.'

The way she looked at Christian when she said this (‘of my own' not ‘
on
my own') with a barely perceptible widening of the pupils, left no doubt as to its meaning. Unimpressed by her homely female politics, I picked up a magazine and started casually flicking through pages sticky with colour, waiting for the threat of bad humour to dissipate.

‘So where's Stephen?'

‘Out on a date with some girl he met on the métro.'

‘Really? My God, that boy is unbelievable. How does he do it?'

‘You know how he does it: you've seen him in action.'

A bubbling sound from next door had sent Beth speedily out of the room.

‘Potatoes are done,' she flung back through the partition. ‘Now we … Oh, damn.'

‘What?'

‘I've got oil on my top. How did I do that?'

Leaving Christian in the sitting room, I went to inspect the damage. With her chin to her chest, Beth was dabbing at the stain with a kitchen towel, darkening an already noticeable discolouration beneath her left breast.

‘Take it off and put it in some cold water. I would.'

‘Good idea. Keep an eye on the vegetables while I change.'

I was doing just that when, a minute later, Beth called out from her bedroom. ‘Anna – can you help me with this a second?'

Facing the mirror, her hair held high above her head with both hands like a Degas pastel, she was waiting for me in a dark-green shirt of the sheerest silk, a spine of tiny mother-of-pearl
buttons breaking apart halfway up her back, where she could no longer reach them.

‘Sorry.'

‘Don't worry.'

The skin of her neck was even paler than the rest of her, sheltered, as it had always been, by her hair. In fascination I absorbed how the subtle gradations of colour on her back became translucent where the crest of her shoulders curved into her neck. A single curled wisp of hair, shorter than the rest, purer in colour and sweetly tender, had escaped her grip, and as I brushed it aside, I suppressed a furious impulse to press my lips against that unsuspecting skin.

‘Anna?'

‘Yes?'

‘There's a hook at the top.'

‘Yes – I got that.'

‘Good. We'd better go and check on things next door.'

We sat in that tiny kitchen, chatting, cutting up mushrooms, peppers, ham and salami into geometric shapes which might have belonged in an infant's play box, while I waited for my moment of disorientation to pass. Later, as Beth handed out the little iron trays of bubbling cheese to us, forgetting to put one on her own plate, her eyes creasing into slits at one of her own jokes, I noticed that her benevolence actually infused the air around her, so that she took ownership of the spaces she moved in. For a moment I pictured all three of us settling into some
Jules et Jim
-style scenario, until after dinner Beth threw a look my way. The significance of that raised eyebrow and kindly set mouth from a hostess is unmistakable, but Beth had never used it with me before. I was being asked
to leave, which meant that I was not (as I had thought) in control of the situation: there was still something between Beth and Christian that bore no relation to me. I did not enjoy the feeling and I wasn't sure which of the two my jealousy was directed at.

Deciding to ignore her unspoken plea and delay my departure, I watched Beth scrape the plates clean of congealed cheese, each swipe of the knife making her tacit demand more insistent. When the last one had been placed in the dishwasher, I capitulated, resentful of the indelicate way I was being thrown out.

‘Where's my coat?'

‘It's on the back of the chair next door, darling.'

The exchange was a fraction too rapid. Christian was already crouched in front of the television, a blue screen of flickering white ants, fiddling with the channels. Were they going to watch a film together after I left? Had they, in subdued voices while I was out of the room, already decided which one to watch?

‘Are you off?'

‘Yeah. I've got things to do.'

‘Sure you do.'

Taking advantage of the moment he hoisted himself up by the arm of the sofa. I kissed him peremptorily on the lips and whispered: ‘When can I see you?'

‘Beth and Stephen are having dinner with the old couple from downstairs next Tuesday …'

Terrified we would be heard, I mouthed: ‘Come at eight.'

I left jettisoned by the thought that Beth had stepped into the role of the wife with tiresome friends. As the door closed I stood for a while, deciding between the elevator or a four
storey descent, determining whether or not to let this fling with Christian become something more serious.

It was on the Monday, while awaiting the arrival of two omelettes in the brasserie on the corner of quai Voltaire and rue du Bac that my phone gave a tell-tale hiccup: a text message from Stephen.