Letters From Prague (10 page)

‘Where's Marsha? I'm surprised she's allowed to read him.'

‘I believe in confronting issues, not in censorship,' said Harriet primly. An enormously fat blonde singer in a tight green dress hit a top note, her eyes closed in rapture; Tintin and Calculus covered their ears, Snowy hid beneath the table. ‘He was a misogynist. The only time a woman makes an appearance, and she hardly ever does, it's to make an ass of herself.'

‘Oh, well.'

‘What do you mean, oh well? Don't you care?'

‘Not at the moment. I'm coming up to a high.'

Harriet looked at her.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I'm feeling a bit better. I'm feeling better!' Susanna stepped forward and kissed her.

Harriet was bemused. ‘How come?'

She shrugged. ‘Who knows? Perhaps it's having you here – perhaps it's getting it out of my system this morning – perhaps it's having an argument with you.'

‘I should hardly call this little exchange an argument.'

‘It's something, though, isn't it? An exchange. I dared to disagree.'

‘Don't you usually?'

Susanna shook her head, and her whole face looked different now: lit up, open, engaged. ‘I'm a diplomat. The perfect Brussels wife.'

‘Even in 1993?' asked Harriet. She hesitated. ‘Don't …don't most of them work? I can't understand why you –'

‘Where's Marsha?' Susanna demanded. ‘Where on earth has she got to now?'

They looked along the gallery, they walked through to the next. Marsha was bent over a glass cabinet, giggling. She looked up and saw them.

‘I like the swearing best.'

‘What?'

‘Captain Haddock.'

‘Blistering barnacles,' said Susanna.

‘**!@!!**?' said Marsha, after a fashion.

They fell about.

No one, after Tintin, felt like visiting anything else. They went home by tram, not talking much, listening to the hum of the wheels on the rails, looking out contentedly at neat little parks, well-kept squares, elaborate statuary.

At just after five they let themselves into the silent apartment which yesterday had felt so unsettling and unfamiliar. Susanna opened the balcony windows; Marsha flopped on to the sofa.

‘Have a rest,' said Susanna. ‘Have a sandwich.'

She had both, half-watching Belgian television in a corner of the drawing room, setting up little models of Tintin and his companions, bought in the museum shop, on the table in front of her. Harriet had a shower, and went to help Susanna, who was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, listening to the radio.

‘Les événements en Bosnia-Hercogovine aujourd'hui ont passé une nouvelle état …'

The last time Harriet had listened to French radio had been in the summer of 1967, when she had spent the month of August with a family in Nantes, before going up to the Sixth. The family had been kind, and she had been homesick, helping to look after two little boys, sorting their clothes out, taking them to the park, sitting over endless lunches of pâté and salad, listening to the news while they played with pellets of fresh baguette, and kicked each other under the table.

‘Moi, je n'aime pas Harriet …'

‘Moi n'en plus …'

‘Ding-dong. Les ouvriers de Renault aujourd'hui déclarent …'

It had broadened her vocabulary, the purpose of the visit, but it had not been French she had required the following summer, when she and Karel spent long afternoons in the Earls Court basement room. Now, sipping tea, looking at Susanna deftly slicing aubergines and courgettes, sweeping them into a pan where garlic and onion sizzled in oil, she said, ‘I suppose you must be completely fluent.'

Susanna turned down the flame. She seemed, once again, rather tense. ‘Pretty much.'

‘Could you use it? I mean for work …'

She snipped at rosemary and thyme, growing in pots on the windowsill, catching the last of the sun. ‘Brussels is crawling with interpreters and translators – it's very highly paid and very competitive. Sometimes I don't feel up to it …' The herbs went into the sizzling pan, she stirred it all round with a wooden spatula.

‘President Clinton disait ce matin que les Etats-Unis sont encore préparé d'utiliser des armes si c'est nécessaire …'

‘The UN doesn't seem to be doing a very good job,' said Harriet, listening, picturing the fall of American bombs on mountain strongholds.

Susanna shook her head. ‘It's almost impossible …' She ground in sea salt and black pepper.

Harriet, half-watching, half-listening, said, ‘We haven't talked about any of this, have we? I've just been a tourist all day. In London I think about it more.'

‘Of course. You're on holiday here.'

‘Yes, but –' She finished her tea, and sat thinking. ‘I imagined that once I'd crossed the Channel it would all be upon me – well, I suppose it will be, as we travel. I feel hermetically sealed from world events here somehow, even though Brussels is a sort of nerve centre –'

‘It's half-asleep. Like me.' Susanna gave one last stir, turned the flame right down, and looked in the fridge. She took out tomatoes and mushrooms in plastic boxes, and peeled off the cellophane. ‘I find it difficult to concentrate on the news. Hugh has an update every fifteen minutes – if Clinton sneezes it's on the office screen before he's got his handkerchief out, but I – of course I try to keep up with things, but sometimes –'

Harriet looked at hard red clean tomatoes, spotless white mushrooms. Like them, the kitchen was immaculate, pale grey worktops and cupboard doors without a finger mark, plates shining, every cup on its hook.

She thought: You don't work, and it's too much of an effort to take in the news. If I had not begun, today, to understand you, I should be dismissing you. And I only begin to understand because you dropped your guard – uncontrollably, in a way most people hardly ever do.

How often did that happen? What did most people make of Susanna? Who did she talk to? Who were her friends?

She said: ‘Susanna, do you mind if I ask you –' and then there were sounds from out in the corridor: a key in the lock, the door opening. They heard Marsha, running out excitedly, and Hugh's voice, and another voice, and more than one briefcase dropping to the floor. They looked at each other.

‘Oh.' Susanna frowned. ‘He's brought this man – he's already with him. I thought –'

Then Hugh was in the kitchen, which all at once felt small and cramped, and full of dolls'furniture, as he – looking also much smaller, with a subdued Marsha beside him – introduced the man who was having this effect on everything.

‘Susanna, my wife – Christopher Pritchard – my sister, Harriet Pickering – Marsha, my niece.'

Christopher Pritchard held out an enormous hand to each of them, and even his smile seemed loud. He was six foot two, perhaps even taller; he was overweight; he wore a creased linen jacket and trousers which also looked in need of a press. Dark straight hair flopped across a broad forehead; his skin was open-pored, with a faint sheen of sweat, a shadow of stubble. A narrow crimson tie was loose at the neck: he loosened it further, revealing to Harriet's critical gaze a missing button.

‘Okay if I smoke?'

‘Of course …' Susanna opened a cupboard and passed him an ashtray; Hugh was getting out cans of beer from the fridge.

‘Mind, darling –' He gestured to Marsha, who shrank. She moved behind the counter where Susanna had been chopping and made a face at Harriet. Harriet looked away.

‘Well,' said Christopher Pritchard, inhaling deeply, ‘it's good to be here and meet you all. I've been looking forward to this.' He coughed, and flicked ash into the ashtray. Some of it missed.

Hugh handed Christopher can and glass. ‘Nice to see you again, too. Harriet, what will you have? Shall we go and –'

‘Yes,' said Susanna, somewhat to the air. ‘Why don't you all go and have a drink while I –' She gestured at the vegetables, the room. ‘And I must change …'

‘Must you?' asked Christopher Pritchard. ‘You look pretty good to me.'

She gave a careful smile. ‘That's kind of you, but –'

‘I think,' said Hugh, moving towards the door with a tray, ‘I think we'll go through, shall we, Christopher?'

Christopher inhaled, dropping the lighter back in his crumpled pocket. ‘Sure.' He looked at Harriet. ‘You joining us?'

‘Yes,' she said, ignoring Marsha's wild grimacing. ‘I'll just give Susanna a hand for a minute.'

‘Okay, good.' He put an enormous arm round Hugh's shoulder. ‘Well leave the ladies to it while we catch up, then.'

‘We're not
ladies
,' Marsha blurted out with scorn.

‘So-rry.' He flicked ash somewhere. Marsha flushed. ‘You're a bit of a little madam, aren't you?'

There was another, ghastly silence, as Harriet felt these phrases land in the room and roll around on the floor like marbles. She wanted to grind them underfoot.

‘What's a
madam
?' Marsha demanded.

‘Marsha –' Hugh's, Susanna's and Harriet's voices, in tones ranging from the soothing to the severe, descended in unison upon her head. She hung it, scarlet-faced and furious.

‘It's okay.' Hugh patted her shoulder. ‘Go and get a Coke or something from the fridge. Now. Christopher.' He led him firmly from the room.

‘Must just go to the bog,' said Christopher, as the door swung to behind him.

They looked at each other.

‘He's awful,' hissed Marsha. ‘He's
awful.'

‘Have a drink,' said Susanna, passing her, as suggested, a Coke from the fridge.

Marsha tore at the aluminium ring and tipped the can up into a glass. ‘Sexist,' she muttered, drinking. ‘He's sexist and horrible.' Bubbles went up her nose and she sneezed. Ash from the ashtray flew into the air. She pushed it violently away. ‘A bully. And he
smokes.'

‘All right, all right.' Harriet removed the ashtray and swept its contents into the bin. She felt completely at home, she realised, doing this: extraordinary how being one day ahead of a new arrival could anchor you. Particularly an arrival such as Christopher had proved to be. Marsha was right: he was pretty awful. She straightened up, wondering if he had this effect on everyone. If so – She said, ‘Even if you don't like him, you can't behave like that, it's terribly rude.'

‘He
was rude.'

Harriet gave up.

‘I don't think he meant to be,' said Susanna. The last of the vegetables and herbs had gone into the pan; she wiped the chopping board and returned it to its place on the worktop, leaned against it, pushing her hair back. ‘I think perhaps he's just a bit shy –'

‘Oh,
sure.'
Marsha rolled her eyes to the heavens, as Harriet, recalling ancient Flanders and Swann songs played on their first gramophone when she and Hugh were small, suddenly heard herself sing:

‘He's shy, he's shy,

He's really terribly shy …'

Marsha, who knew this one, joined in, so that when Hugh pushed the door open, coming back for nuts, he found the two of them in stitches, Susanna watching in amusement. He looked from one to the other, smiling; he took packets of cashews and pistachios out of the drawer.

‘Hey,' said Marsha, ‘can I have some? We only have peanuts at home.'

He tossed her a packet. ‘Share the joke?' he asked mildly, tipping them into a bowl.

Harriet thought: He's probably pleased to see Susanna relaxing. So am I. She felt a wave of affection for both of them saying: ‘Nothing, just –' and nodded towards the open door, the absent Christopher.

Hugh said,
sotto voce:
‘I shouldn't take too much notice, I think he's just a bit shy.'

They held their sides.

Supper, at Marsha's request, was to be in the dining room. Susanna,

heaping broken meringue, frozen raspberries, redcurrants and cream into layers in a snow-white bowl, reminded her that they only ever used it for formal dinners.

‘But you're not going to have one of them while we're here, are you?' Marsha licked a finger and pressed up crumbs of meringue from the worktop.

‘No, thank God.' The last spoonful of cream dropped into the bowl; Susanna slid it into the fridge. ‘You'll be ill,' said Harriet, seeing Marsha lick the spoon. ‘We've been eating all day.'

‘And walking.' Marsha held the spoon under the tap, and turned it on, too hard. Water fanned into the spoon and sprayed everywhere. ‘Help. Sorry.' She turned it off. ‘Please,' she said to Susanna, brushing her wet T-shirt. ‘It looks so special in there, we never have meals anywhere like that at home.'

‘Oh, all right, if it makes you happy. Christopher can be the excuse.'

‘And we can lay the table,' said Harriet. ‘You go and join the men.'

‘Yes, I must. But don't worry, I'll do the table, I know where everything is.'

Harriet protested. Susanna insisted. They should go to the drawing room; she'd join them in a few minutes. They did as they were told. She's powerful, thought Harriet, taking Marsha down the corridor, with a bottle of wine, hearing Susanna, in the dining room, slide open drawers. She falls apart but she never lets go of the reins. Are all her guests made impotent? What happens on other people's territory?

She led Marsha into the drawing room: the men rose.

Christopher, his back to the open balcony doors, glass and cigarette in hand, looked as though he had unwound a little. The sheen of sweat had gone, he had brushed his hair, and standing here now, in the context of this beautiful, well-arranged room, he looked less disorderly than raffishly eccentric. Actually, she realised, greeting the two of them, he had presence, and not just because of his size. It was hard to know yet what qualities might redeem his earlier crassness, but she sensed, suddenly, that they might be there.