Incidents in the Rue Laugier (15 page)

‘I’m cold,’ he said heavily. ‘Let’s have tea.’ And seeing her face again, however unwilling he was to meet it, he added, with an attempt at good cheer, ‘I’ll take you to Angelina. Have you ever been there?’

‘What is Angelina?’

‘It’s a tea-room. My parents used to go there before the war. It used to be called Rumpelmayer. Come,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘It’s only across the road.’ Her hand in his was cold, unresponsive, but this time she did not withdraw it.

In the hot steamy clattering room, ignored by sharp-faced waitresses, they sat silently, while he tried to look about him, and failed. He was aware of a company of worldly women,
and was repelled by their hammering conversation, the sharp descent of their forks into the masses of cream and chocolate on their plates. The air was thick with smells of sugar. Maud sat huddled in her wet raincoat, her head bent, making no attempt to drink her tea. Two tears slid down her face. With an effort she wiped them away, sat up straight, and composed herself. Watching her covertly, he was relieved to see something of her old resolution return. Yet he was aware that she hardly noticed his presence, and was surprised to discover how much this hurt him.

‘Shall we go?’ she asked.

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Back to the flat. I’m tired. Aren’t you tired? I think I’d like to lie down.’

But despite their fatigue, his now as well as hers, they walked back, up the Champs-Elysées, not speaking. At some point he was aware that more tears escaped her, that she wiped them away almost angrily. She took his arm, but he thought that was simply because she was tired. He was aware of her chill face, her hair beaded with moisture.

‘You ought to have a hot bath,’ he said, as he shut the door to the flat behind him.

‘Yes. Yes, I think I will. What will you do? Will you go upstairs?’

‘No, I’ll wait down here for a bit.’

She disappeared. He sat in the salon, trying to ignore the damp patch his shoes had made on the yellow carpet. He wanted to summon help, but did not know whom he could ask. Tyler had been too clever to leave a telephone number. For Tyler he now felt an immense hatred. Perhaps he had always hated him. No, that was not true. He had liked him, been amused by him, though always aware he was not to be trusted. He would have continued to like him, to be amused
by him, had this situation not arisen. For that, Maud was to blame as much as Tyler. He tried to hate Maud, and for a brief moment succeeded. Then he remembered her trembling figure beside him as he had manfully tackled his cake—and expected her to do the same—in the tea-room. So much for his treat, he thought, with a poor smile.

He badly wanted to leave all this and go home, but when Maud called to him from the bedroom he rose swiftly and went to her. She was naked, he could see, under the sheet. When she stretched out her arms to him he got down on one knee beside the bed and gathered her up. She pulled him to her, and he embraced her, awkwardly at first, then with rising excitement. When she kissed him, he kissed her back, feeling the tears on her face. His sadness did not surprise him. If he was aware of anything it was of descent into an even lonelier condition. He did not then, or for some time afterwards, identify this as love.

Gently, as gently as he could, he pushed her away, disengaged himself.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said. ‘I’ll marry you.’

Later they lay very still, side by side. ‘Did you know this would happen?’ he asked. ‘Did you intend it to happen?’

‘I didn’t know,’ she replied, and he believed her, for was not ignorance an essential component of her behaviour?

He raised her up and looked at her, at her full and as yet unaltered body, her face so marked by pain. He fell in love with her then, or he supposed it was love, although it was for him a mournful moment, full of regret. He saw with relief that the colour had come back into her face, though there were lines round her mouth. He saw how she would look when she was older, as he supposed he would see her as time took charge of them.

‘You’ll telephone your mother?’ he said, and then, as the tears started once more, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’

What united them at that moment was a sensation of unwanted maturity, of irrevocable and necessary compromise. They had reached a psychological watershed, in which love and even trust were irrelevant. He was aware of his crumpled shirt, she of her nakedness. She got back into the bed, feeling that she should cover herself. She did not quite understand what she had done, only that instinct had guided her. She felt like Eve after the Fall, remembering the stricken agonised figure in Masaccio’s fresco, which Jean Bell, on one boring afternoon in Dijon, had excitedly explained to her, caressing the plate in her father’s volume on Florence that she had been so glad to discover on Pierre-Yves’s shelves. The book had lain unopened for years, since neither Maud nor her mother had been sufficiently interested to open it. Masaccio’s Eve had seemed bent over in grief, her mouth apparently open in what could only be a howl. Maud understood, in the space of seconds, how one reacted to what was unalterable. The tears coursed silently down her face as she digested this knowledge. She was aware of Harrison standing silently beside the bed, looking at her. She was grateful to him for not speaking, not for insisting that her gaze meet his. Gradually she felt warmer, fell into a lethargy. As she slid into sleep one fact remained with her, a fact that would not be dismissed. When he had held her in his arms, and moved into her, she had felt nothing, even though she was aware of his arousal. That would be the way of it now. She had tried, and she had succeeded, somewhere along the line; she could not now remember whether she had willed her actions or not. As sleep overcame her she realised that this was a matter she was genuinely incapable of deciding. If she had acted unwillingly, the fact remained that she had acted. She could reproach Harrison with nothing; he had been entirely honourable. It was not his fault that he was not Tyler: bodies are not interchangeable, nor are feelings. But she had felt nothing, and the only alternative to this realisation
was the deeper unconsciousness to which she now surrendered herself.

When she awoke it was to find Harrison again standing by her bed—or had he been there all the time? He sat down beside her, and with an awkward hand smoothed her hair back from her face. She willed herself not to draw away. ‘I made some coffee,’ he said. ‘Would you like some?’

She nodded and sat up, drawing the sheet around her to hide her nakedness. She drank down the coffee, felt its heat suffusing her face. This was almost a blush; she felt embarrassed. ‘Talk to me,’ she said.

‘In a moment, when you’ve had your coffee, I’ll telephone my mother. You’ll love my mother, everybody does. And my father. And my sister. You’ll love Bibi. You’ll have to speak to them. Can you do that?’

‘Not yet,’ she said.

‘But you’ll have to meet them.’

‘Of course. And I suppose you’ll have to speak to my mother. You remember her—well, of course you do.’

‘I remember her,’ he said, with some distaste. He wondered what had prompted this sudden coldness.

She smiled faintly. ‘You don’t like her.’

‘No, I don’t, as a matter of fact. Though as we shall be living in London that hardly matters.’

‘Tell me about your home.’

‘Well, my real home is by the sea, where my family lives. I only have a rented flat in London. Though that can be changed. In fact, if you like I’ll go on ahead and look for something bigger. Then you can join me. You’ll have to go home to Dijon, you know. In fact when I’ve telephoned my mother you’d better telephone yours. You know you must do that, don’t you? After all, time enters into things now, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she sighed.

‘You’d better get dressed,’ he said, gathering up the cups. He was absurdly sad. I am too young for this, he thought. I was never meant to be a married man. I was going to see the world, when I had summoned up the courage. But this has taken even more courage. At the same time he remembered Maud’s body, and knew that he would never let her go. He knew that she did not love him, had known that she would never love him when he had watched her with Tyler. That had been love, blatant, shameless, the real thing. At the back of his mind, behind the sadness, was a small feeling that he was owed something. This he resolved to suppress for as long as he decently could. He would respect her; he would not act like Tyler, who took no heed of reluctance, or refusal, or any of the other reactions that indicated caution, hesitation. He had not inherited a violated woman. She had been all willingness, all eagerness. But not for him. He had not misread her hopelessness when he took her in his arms. But his mind was imprinted with the image of how she had looked when she had reached out to him, not loving, but longing. On that image he would hope to build.

Maud, washing up the cups in the kitchen, heard him on the telephone. ‘Yes, it is very sudden, but I know you’ll like her. Maud. Yes, it is unusual, isn’t it?’ She intuited excitement at the other end of the telephone, in that house by the sea. ‘We’ll have to get married in Dijon, of course. Oh, pretty soon, I should think. Tell Dad I’m counting on him. Oh, next week. I’ll explain everything then. Lots of love. Goodbye.’

He judged it tactful to take her place in the kitchen while she telephoned her mother. After what he assumed to be the usual reproaches, he heard, quite clearly, the excited question, ‘Tyler?’ ‘No, Mother,’ said Maud tiredly. ‘Edward … The other one.’

He did not wait to hear any more. Throwing down the dish towel he strode to the front door and opened it, incandescent with anger. He then strode back to confront her, only to be faced with more tears.

‘I don’t know why I’m crying,’ she sobbed. ‘I never cry.’

He could well believe it, had never seen her express any emotion other than ardour in Tyler’s presence. He put a reluctant arm round her, feeling the softness of her breast against his hand. They sat together, wordless, in the dying afternoon, until she grew quiet. At last she heaved a long sigh. When he looked up Tyler, deeply tanned, stood in the doorway.

‘Well, well,’ said Tyler. ‘You’ve been busy, I see.’

Harrison fished the key to his room out of his pocket. ‘Go upstairs, Maud, and wait for me. Go on,’ he said. ‘I’ll join you later.’

She looked at the key in her hand, looked at Tyler, waited for him to say something. Then, when he said nothing, she got up and went out of the door without a word.

‘Indeed,’ said Tyler, throwing his bag down on the bed. ‘You didn’t wait long, did you?’

‘Maud and I are going to be married,’ said Harrison.

A complicated expression, in which he could distinguish either anger or relief, passed over Tyler’s face, and just as rapidly vanished.

‘And then what will you do with her? Take her back to that shop of yours? How long will she put up with that, do you think?’

‘Sod you, Tyler.’

‘You know what this means, don’t you? Jealousy, pure jealousy. You wanted what I’ve already had. Well, I doubt if you’ll get it.’

‘You never loved her. You’ve never loved anyone. I doubt if you could love a woman to the extent of taking care of her.’

Anger, he decided. It had been anger. But there had been
relief there too. Which argued that the stay in the Ardèche had been a tactical withdrawal. Nevertheless Tyler’s face was pale, as Harrison had never seen it.

‘We’ll be leaving tomorrow.’

‘Yes,’ said Tyler, gazing out of the window. ‘It’s time to be moving on.’

‘You will stay here. That will give you an opportunity to clear up this flat. The bed will have to be changed. And you might think about having the carpet shampooed. You’ll have to ask your friend the concierge about that. Perhaps you could get her to give you a hand.’

Tyler smiled. ‘This is really about you and me, isn’t it, Noddy?’

‘There’s a laundry on the corner. I reckon a few thousand francs should cover your expenses. I’d be only too happy to let you have some money. If your journey to the Ardèche left you short.’

‘You hate me, don’t you?’

‘I never want to see you again.’

‘And I thought we were friends.’

‘We were.’

That was the crux of the matter. In the dark room they gazed steadily at each other. Neither thought to switch on the light. In the street, beyond the window, the sounds of an ordinary day could be heard. Tyler’s expression, which he could see clearly, despite the darkness, was rueful. Harrison had seen that rueful smile when Tyler was taking his leave, as he so often was, of a woman. He put his hand to his head and said, with some difficulty, ‘I don’t suppose we shall meet again. I’ll go back, as you say, to my shop, and you’ll no doubt have a flourishing career, in, what was it? Adverstising? You should do well at that. Advertising is what you are particularly good at. After all, it’s the others who have to deliver.’

‘The clients,’ said Tyler, with a smile.

‘The clients. Who after all have the final say.’

‘I never suspected you of this, you know.’

‘That may have been your mistake.’

‘Possibly. Though the story’s not finished yet.’

‘It is, as far as you’re concerned.’

Tyler turned away, apparently unconcerned. ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

‘We’ll go to a hotel. I hate this place anyway. Tomorrow I’ll put Maud on a train to Dijon. Then I’ll catch a plane to London. You can stay as long as you like.’

‘Oh, I shan’t stay. It’s a pity we can’t be friends.’

It was a pity, Harrison thought. He had loved the man, in a way, although he had disliked him. Now he looked at him blankly, aware that anger had deserted him. Tyler, head bent, appeared thoughtful, regretful. Yet even in this circumstance, Harrison saw, his physical splendour had not deserted him, saw also that Tyler knew it, was contrasting his long lean body with Harrison’s shorter one, his finely shaped head with Harrison’s unremarkable face, even his effortless elegance with Harrison’s neat blazer. Harrison was aware that he was sweating, that he needed a bath. There was no question of that here. Slowly he straightened his back, summoned his suddenly depleted forces, gathered up Maud’s things. ‘That raincoat will have to go to the cleaner’s,’ he said.