Her Lover (123 page)

'That he was an intelligent man, cultured, refined and a bit shrinking. (Not in every department, he thought.) We just talked.'

'Yes, darling. And then?'

'Well, as I went home I felt quite happy. Then a few days later Alix and I went to see him conduct. The Pastoral was on the programme.'

He frowned. Of course, the lady was artistic and so one simply said 'the Pastoral': it gave the impression that one was close to Beethoven. And to Dietsch. She'd have to pay for 'the Pastoral'.

'Go on, darling.'

'Well, anyhow, he was standing in for the regular conductor, whose name I've forgotten. (Couldn't remember the name of the regular conductor. But she remembered the name of the stand-in perfectly. She wouldn't get away with any of this.) I hked the way he conducted.'

In his mind's eye he saw Dietsch the genius twitching like a puppet, conducting without a baton, and the two dim-witted women swooning, convinced that here was Beethoven himself before their very eyes! Beethoven and Mozart were never admired the way people admired conductors, who were the fleas of genius, the ticks of genius, bloodsuckers of genius who took themselves so seriously and had a ridiculously inflated sense of their own importance and had the nerve to let themselves be called maestros and took bows as though they were actually Beethoven and Mozart and earned so much more than Beethoven and Mozart ever did! And why did she admire the leech Dietsch? Because he could read music written by someone else! Dietsch, the little tick, was just about up to writing, at a pinch, a short military march.

'I can see that he was a more interesting proposition than your husband.'

'True,' she conceded, giving the matter her serious and objective consideration. He was so angry that he bit his lip until it bled.

'Tell me just a little more about him, darling, and then it will all be over.'

'Well, he was Principal Conductor with the Dresden Philharmonic. When the Nazis came to power he resigned. Actually he was a member of the Social Democratic Party.'

'That's nice. And?'

'Well, he came to Switzerland and had to settle for being Second Conductor of the Geneva Symphony, although he had been Principal
Conductor of the leading orchestra in Germany. (She was obviously crazy about Dietsch! So what on earth was she doing at Belle de Mai with a man who couldn't read a note of music?) There, I think that's plenty for now, if you don't mind.'

'Just one last thing, darling, and then we'll draw a line under it all. Did you sometimes spend the whole night with him?'

The question was crude, so he squeezed her hands lovingly, kissed her hands.

'No, but can we please stop? All that is dead and buried, and I don't like thinking about it.'

'It's absolutely the last question. Did you ever spend the night together?'

'Very infrequently,' she said in her angel voice.

'There, you see? Nothing dreadful happens when you give me a straight answer. But how did you manage it?' he smiled, amused and teasing.

'Through Alix,' she said, smoothing her dressing-gown over her knee. But please let's just leave it there.'

He took a long, hard pull on his cigarette so that his voice would be steady when he spoke. Then he gave her a nodding, winking smile of complicity.

'Ah, I get it! You were supposed to have gone to see her, whereas in reality you were with him, and you rang your husband to say it was too late to get back and that she insisted you stay the night! That's how it was, right, sly little minx?'

'Yes,' she breathed, head down, and there was a silence.

'Tell me, darling, have you had any other men?'

'God, what sort of woman do you take me for?'

'A whore, of course,' he said sweetly. 'A very sly little whore.'

'It's not true!' she exclaimed, rising to her feet, hackles raised. 'I forbid you to say that!'

'But why? You don't mean to tell me that you really believe you're an honest woman?'

'Certainly I do! And you know very well that it's true! I was trapped in my horrible marriage, didn't know which way to turn. (Enter spiderwoman, he thought.) I am an honest woman!'

'Pardon me, but . . . (He gave a polite, hesitant shrug.) But when you got back to your husband you were . . . (He pretended to search for a suitably polite adjective.) Damp after what you'd been up to with Dietsch and, well anyhow, it struck me that you weren't being entirely honest.'

'I admit I was wrong not to have told him everything, but I was afraid of hurting him. It's the only thing I did that was wrong. I'm not ashamed of any of the rest of it. My husband was an oaf. And I met a man who had a soul, yes, a soul!'

'A big one, was it?'

She gawped at him, nonplussed. Then the penny dropped.

'You are disgusting!'

He clapped his hands and raised his eyes to take heaven as his witness. That beat everything! She had done it three maybe four times a night with her bandleader, gone at it hammer and tongs, and he was the one who was disgusting! It was enough to make a chap want to run away and hide his face.

To hide his face, he yanked a sheet off the bed and put it over himself. Draped in his white winding-sheet, he stalked around the room. As she watched his ghostly figure striding to and fro, she told herself she wasn't to laugh and said sobering things to herself. It's very serious, my life is at the crossroads, she said to herself. Eventually he abandoned his shroud and lit a cigarette. She wasn't laughing now. Yes, she was at the crossroads.

'Listen, darling,' she said, 'allthat's dead and done with now.'

'On the contrary, it's very much alive. Dietsch will always lie between you and me. And of course on you. He's there now. He's at it all the time. I can't live with you any more. Go! Get out of this house!'

CHAPTER 99

No, it was impossible. He could not bear to be alone, he needed, her, needed to see her. If only she would smile at him, that would be the end of it, everything would be all right again. He stepped out into the hall, sounded his chest, tweaked his hair, sharpened his nose with thumb and forefinger, and made up his mind. To avoid losing face, he didn't knock but just walked in masterfully. She did not look up but went on putting clothes into the open case on the bed, first folding them neatly, absorbed, impassive. She was enjoying making him suffer. This was it, he'd see that she'd made up her mind and was going.

To hide how much he needed her, to show her how little he cared, he said sarcastically: 'So it's goodbye then, not
au revoir?'

She nodded a yes and carried on with her careful packing. To make her suffer, to show her that he was fully expecting her to leave, he lent a hand and passed a dress from the wardrobe.

'That'll do, my case is just about full,' she said as he held out another dress. 'I'm not taking everything. I'll write and let you know where to send the rest.'

'Let me give you some money.'

'No thanks. I've got all I need.'

'What train are you catching?'

'It doesn't matter. The first one that comes along.'

'It's almost three in the morning. The first train out is the Marseilles train, and it doesn't leave until seven.'

'I'll wait at the station.'

Brows knitted and forehead furrowed, she stuffed shoes into one corner of the case.

'Mistral's blowing. It'll be cold hanging about in the waiting-room. Don't forget to take a coat.'

'I'm not bothered about the cold. Catching pneumonia would be one way out.'

She forced the family photograph album into another corner of the case. He whistled under his breath.

'I suppose you'll make for Geneva. Is that so you can go to more symphony concerts?'

She turned on him belligerently, fists clenched.

'You lied when you said it would be all right if I told you everything. I trusted you: I don't have a suspicious mind.'

She was quite right, of course. She was an honest woman. Still, that honest mouth of hers had been intimate with a moustache.

'You shouldn't have made bed-spring music with your bandleader three hours before you turned up and kissed my hand!'

His breath rasped in his throat. It was intolerable to be perpetually confronted by the spectacle of the most loving, the noblest of women, so pure in face, and have to picture her incomprehensibly impaled beneath the weight of an orchestra-conducting chimpanzee, gasping, panting beneath her chimpanzee. Yes, the most loving of women. What other woman had ever loved him as much as she had? That night at the Ritz, as she kissed his hand, she had seemed so pure. And afterwards, at her house, she had looked so young and so innocent sitting at her piano, so gravely robed in love. And yet only hours before, sprawled under the chimp!

'You ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking to me like that! What harm did I ever do you? It all happened before I met you.'

'Get on with it. Shut your case.'

'So it doesn't bother you at all to let me walk out by myself into the night and the cold?'

'It's a pity, of course. But there it is. We can't go on living together. Don't forget your coat.'

He was pleased with his answer. The cool manner was the most convincing, it made the fact that they were going their separate ways crystal clear. She was crying and blowing her nose. Fine. At least at
this moment she preferred him to Dietsch. She snapped the case shut, blew her nose again, and turned to face him.

'You know, don't you, that there's no one in the world I can turn to?'

'Just keep a firm grip on your conductor's baton. (Oh, if she would only take one step forward, if she would only hold out her hand, he'd take her in his arms and all this would be over. Why didn't she come to him?) So you think I'm coarse?'

'I didn't say a word.'

'No, but that's what you were thinking! You believe that being noble means using quality words, avoiding words which are supposed to be cheap and vulgar, and doing exactly and as often as possible the things the cheap, vulgar words describe. I said "keep a firm grip on your conductor's baton" and that makes me vulgar, I can see it in the curl of your eyelashes! But, if you're so noble, what precisely were you up to on the quiet behind locked doors in a bedroom with Dietsch while your poor husband waited for you trustingly, lovingly?'

'If what I did with D was wrong . . .'

He gave an amused, pained laugh. So modest, so decent! She'd gone to bed with an initial! She had deceived him, was still deceiving him, with an initial!

'Oh, I get it. If what you did with Dietsch was wrong, then what you did with me was also wrong. As if I didn't know! I've had to pay a high enough price for it.'

'What do you mean?'

Yes, he at least paid for adultery in the hell of a love lived in quarantine, a hell that had lasted thirteen months, twenty-four hours a day, the hell of living with the knowledge that each day she loved him a little less. Whereas her bandleader was a lucky man, for every time they met was wonderful because they did not meet often, every time was party time, and the presence in the background of her grindingly boring husband added spice to the proceedings.

'What do you mean?' she repeated.

Should he scream at her that this was the first time in an age that they were free of their anaemia, that at last being together actually
meant something? But if he did, what would the poor girl have left? No, he must spare her the humiliation.

'I don't know what I meant.' . 'Well, in that case I'd be grateful if you'd go away. I must get dressed.'

'Does it bother you to put a skirt on in front of the man who succeeded your bandleader?' he said, lisdessly, mechanically, feeling no pain, for he was weary.

'Please go.'

He went. In the hall he felt a twinge of anxiety. Surely she wouldn't call his bluff and actually leave? She appeared, suitcase in hand, wearing a smart grey suit, the one he liked her in best, and face made up. How beautiful she looked. She made slowly for the door and slowly opened it.

'Goodbye,' she said, and she looked at him for the last time.

'I can't say I'm happy at the idea of your leaving at three in the morning. What will you do in the station until seven? It's only a halt, and the waiting-room is locked at night. It would be more sensible to leave just before the train is due, at least that way it won't be as tiring for you as standing around in the cold.'

'Very well, I'll wait in my room until twenty to seven,' she said when he'd been sufficiently insistent for her to feel that she could accept with honour.

'Get some rest, try and get some sleep, but set the alarm in case you go off into a deep sleep. Set it for six thirty, or even twenty past six, it's a fair way to the station from here. Well then, I'll say goodbye now. Sure you don't want any money?'

'Positive, thanks.'

'Right then, that's it. Goodbye.'

Back in his own room, he removed his white gloves, picked up the teddy-bear, and changed its boots for green espadrilles and its sombrero for a little straw boater. The charm of this soon wore off. Telling himself he was thirsty, he went into the kitchen, got a bottle of lime cordial from a cupboard, and then put it back again. He returned to his room to put his gloves on again, then knocked on her door. She was standing by her case, with her arms crossed and her hands on her shoulders, and wearing a dressing-gown, which reassured him.

'Sorry to disturb you, but I'm thirsty. Where's the lime cordial?'

'In the big cupboard in the kitchen, bottom shelf, left-hand side.'

It struck her immediately that if he went and got it himself she wouldn't see him again. So she offered to go and fetch the juice of the lime herself. He said thank you. She asked him where he wanted it, here or in his room? It struck him that if she brought it to his room she'd go away again at once.

'Well, I'm here,' he said coolly.

Alone, he checked in the mirror. The white gloves looked very well against the black dressing-gown. When she returned from the kitchen, she set the silver tray gracefully on the table, poured the lime cordial, topped it up with mineral water, added two ice-cubes with a pair of silver tongs, stirred, handed him the glass and sat down. She pulled her dressing-gown down modestly so that it hid her legs. He tipped the contents of the glass on to the carpet.