Letters From Prague (13 page)

Marsha shook her off. ‘It's too hot.'

They wandered, with Susanna, out on to the street again, passing a dimly lit bar, chip stalls and kiosks. Students on bicycles wheeled in and out of traffic, almost at a standstill; they came to a crossroads, and smelt something different.

‘Fish?' asked Marsha.

‘Mussels,' said Susanna, indicating a stall on the corner. A girl in frayed shorts and long, untidy hair had parked her bike and was dipping into a plastic container with her boyfriend. Lemon juice ran down their fingers, they picked out soft flesh from open shells, dropping them, empty, into a litter bin.

‘Mussels from Brussels.' Marsha was watching uncertainly.

‘Quite. Want to try some?'

She shook her head.

‘Oh, go on. It's almost a national dish. And delicious.'

They all had some, standing on the pavement by the litter bin, stepping out of the way of swerving bicycles with violent bells, getting hot. This was Indian summer weather, quite unlike the rainy day of their arrival. Sweat ran down the backs of their necks; the mussels were tangy and rich.

Marsha licked her fingers. ‘I feel foreign.'

They wandered on, Susanna asking about other holidays, other trips abroad. There had not been many. Harriet and Martin, before his abrupt departure, had talked of taking their baby with them everywhere. In the end, on her own, Harriet had taken her to Brittany once, with her old friend Dido, from university days. That was when Marsha was three, and it had been a success in its way, with carefree days on the beach and evenings over a bottle, letting their hair down while Marsha slept.

‘I wish I had a child,' said Dido, whose men, like Martin, had proved unreliable.

‘It can be a bit of a strain,' said Harriet.

It had been, then, working and doing it all on her own. Holidays were required to be undemanding weeks with other families on the domestic and familiar English coastline. And anyway –

‘I don't think of this as a trip,' she said to Susanna. ‘It's a journey.'

‘Of course it is.' Susanna changed her bag to the other shoulder, moving slowly in the heat, still rather pale.

And here was someone else who craved a child, and who knew what else besides, and Harriet must find the right moment to listen.

On the Place du Jeu de Balle there was a flea market. The best time to come here was early morning, when the stalls were being set up; Harriet, when Susanna had told her about this, had pictured damp cobbles, grey light, the banging of trestles and tables, bread and hot coffee. There were no cobbles and no grey light, and in the mid-morning heat the stalls were laid out beneath awnings. Much of the best had gone. They moved into the shady aisles, picking up flowery plates and putting them down again. There were racks of coats and jackets, rows of old shoes; plastic Mannekin Pis dolls; there were secondhand books, a stall of LPs.

‘This looks more like it.'

Harriet stood flicking through peeling record sleeves in cardboard boxes. Well-worn Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Brahms, played by unfamiliar orchestras, rested against jazz, against rock, against Sixties pop.

‘Hey –'

Françoise Hardy pouted at her from beneath a heavy fringe, eyes thick with liner.

‘Remember her?'

‘A bit before my time.'

‘Yes, I suppose it would be.' Harriet began to hum, then to sing. ‘Tous les garcons et les filles de mon âge/ se promenent dans les rues deux par deux …'

Marsha looked at her. ‘What?'

‘Everyone has a lover but me,' said Harriet. ‘In essence.' And then regretted it, as Marsha, frowning, turned away, wandering on to the T-shirts on the next stall. Lovers were not on the agenda in mother and daughter discussions. Harriet, as far as Marsha was concerned, had friends who were men, and had once had a husband, who'd left her. That was quite enough for now. Her precocity, and their discussions about other people's domestic arrangements – adopted children, neglected children, divorce, contentment – had never included a direct look at her and Harriet's arrangement, or the possibility of change. Harriet had tried, wanting to air it; Marsha had resolutely refused to discuss it – knowing, it seemed, what was good for her.

‘You know you can ask me things,' Harriet would say from time to time, as they finished their supper.

‘Okay.' And Marsha got down from the table, and asked nothing.

‘Do you remember this?' Harriet asked Susanna now, turning the LP over. ‘I used to listen to her mooning about like a loony, all through '66.'

Susanna shook her head. ‘You're a different generation.'

‘Come come.'

‘Ten years.'

‘God, is it really? Let's sit down.'

Trees bordered the square; tables stood in a corner, in the shade, outside a café. Marsha was beside them again, touching her purse.

‘That's kind.' Susanna admired the purse. ‘But drinks are a fortune here.'

‘It doesn't matter. You've done nice things for us. And I'm really thirsty after the mussels.'

‘Well. We'll see.'

They made their way to the café: doors wide open, a dark interior, invitingly cool. Marsha took their orders, and went inside.

‘She's wonderful.'

‘She likes you.'

They sat at a table on slatted chairs.

Harriet said: ‘It would be nice to have a talk.' She took a packet of sugar out of the bowl before her, and fiddled with it, suddenly shy. Should she, however gently, be confronting Susanna in this way? She looked up. ‘Would it?'

Susanna looked away. ‘Perhaps.'

The packet of sugar slid between Harriet's fingers.

‘How are you this morning?'

‘All right. Better than yesterday morning.' Susanna leaned back in her chair. ‘Yesterday was an aberration – I'm sorry.' She smiled at Harriet. ‘You were very kind.'

‘I didn't do anything. When you say an aberration – you mean to cry like that, in the mornings, or to cry in front of someone else?'

‘In front of someone else.' She made a gesture, coolly dismissive. ‘Please don't worry about it, Harriet, it's just how I am.' Footsteps came out of the café towards them. ‘Here's Marsha.'

‘The drinks will be here in a minute.' Marsha sat down beside them, and looked about her. A family two or three tables away were tucking into enormous ices: a mother in bright pink skirt and top, a large balding father, two large boys. The father said something: the boys burst out laughing, chocolate ice-cream was dropped from a spoon down a T-shirt. Everyone groaned. ‘Boys are so
messy
,' said Marsha.

‘What's it like at school?' asked Susanna. ‘Do you play with the boys?'

‘Not if I can help it.' Marsha rested her arms on the table: looking, this morning, completely in control. The nerves which had attended their arrival, making her as clumsy as anyone, were clearly forgotten. Harriet did not remind her.

‘But do you feel at ease with them?' Susanna was asking. ‘I mean when I was your age, boys were alien beings.'

‘They are alien beings,' said Marsha. ‘That's the point.'

Their drinks arrived in tall glasses. The boy scraping ice-cream off his front made a remark; the balding father guffawed.

Marsha shrank. ‘He's worse than Christopher Thingy.'

‘Did you really dislike him?'

‘I really disliked him.' She sipped at her Coke through a straw.

Watching her, Harriet thought: I could be in trouble one day. If Karel and I … If someone else and I … If she took against him, what would I do?

In the Little Church of the Carmelites, the organist was playing Bach. Harriet, Susanna and Marsha, seeking refuge from further walking in the heat, had crossed the Boulevard Waterloo and came in through the door from a side street near the Place Louise. They made their way quietly to empty seats by a pillar.

‘It's nice,' Marsha whispered, as they sat down, and she looked about her, at smooth, cool, creamy white walls, high windows, worn flagstones, full pews.

‘It's packed.' ‘It's a concert,' Susanna whispered ‘Ssh,' and closed her eyes.

You could hardly exclude people more effectively, but in some ways this, with the whispering, seemed a rather intimate thing to do: nothing dramatic, like weeping, but something which nonetheless you might allow yourself only with people you trusted. And Harriet, on the other side of Marsha, felt briefly as though she had stepped just over the threshold into a room from which she was, indeed, normally excluded, but where she was for a few moments permitted to observe something private. She looked over her daughter's dark head at Susanna's fine features, at her pale thin-skinnedness, and soft fair hair, as though she were in the doorway of a bedroom, where a woman rested alone upon white pillows, waiting – for what? To sleep? To be woken?

Bach took possession of the church, and its congregation. Harriet leaned back, closing her own eyes, and let the music possess her, too. And as last night, watching Hugh and Susanna move about their kitchen when Christopher Pritchard had gone, she allowed herself to bring to the surface what at home she pushed most resolutely away. The organ rose and fell and she thought once again of Lucy Snowe, driven to the edge of breakdown during the endless weeks of an empty summer, creeping, one wet evening, into the sanctuary of a Catholic church. Bells rang; she was almost fainting.

‘Mon père, je suis Protestante
…'

I said, I was perishing for want of a word of advice or an accent of comfort. I had been living for some weeks quite alone; I had been ill
…

Bach came to his conclusion. There was silence, then a respectable applause, steady as rain, a murmur of conversation. After a while, people got up to go. Harriet and the others sat watching them.

‘They record these concerts sometimes,' said Susanna. ‘For the radio. I come here quite often – it's a bit like going to St John's, Smith Square, except that doesn't feel at all like a church when you go there, does it?'

‘I can't remember – I haven't been there since I was a child,' said Harriet, returning. ‘The last time we were near Smith Square was on a march, wasn't it, Marsha?'

‘What?'

‘Never mind. Shall we look round?'

She shook her head. ‘I like sitting here.'

‘So do I,' said Susanna. ‘People have been sitting here since the Middle Ages. What's the rush?'

So they stayed, as the pews gradually emptied, leaving the statutory old women in black, heads bowed, hands trembling. Tourists wandered along the aisles, and up to the altar rail; a young man in his twenties, with the face of a Modigliani, long, narrow-eyed, intense, moved from station to station of the Cross.

‘Why don't we go to church?' Marsha asked Harriet.

‘Oh, God.'

Susanna looked at them both. ‘Why don't you?'

‘Do you?'

‘No.' She hesitated. ‘But when I was younger, I wanted to be a nun.'

‘Did you?' Marsha regarded her in fascination.

‘Lots of young women think like that.' Harriet, her fleeting sadness briskly put aside, spoke as she might during one of their conversations at home, after supper: with adult authority, clear about what Marsha should know. ‘It's just a phase.'

‘Did
you
want to be a nun?' Marsha asked her.

‘No. Never. I was much too engaged with the world.' She looked at Susanna. ‘But for you –'

‘I took it rather seriously. For a while. Anyway. As you say, it's a phase.'

‘You didn't go to a convent school.'

‘No. I just read things, and hid away. My engagement with the world has never been very secure.' Susanna spoke lightly, but it was clear she was serious. The church was emptying; the sound of departing footsteps on stone, and their own conversation, floated into the quietness.

And now is the moment, thought Harriet, but Marsha is here. Marsha is always here, and in the evenings there is Hugh, or a visitor, and when shall we talk? Perhaps she doesn't want to, perhaps she really doesn't. But –

‘I think I'd like to be a nun,' said Marsha.

‘You don't know anything about it.'

Marsha turned to her, in a spasm of irritation. ‘Why are you so bossy?'

‘I –' Harriet, long used to mother and daughter confrontations, was on the whole used to having public ones only in front of people she knew well – other mothers, other single parents whose children drove them, at times, to the edge. Also, she had been enjoying Marsha's affection and loyalty in recent days, and had forgotten how it felt to be spoken to like that. Especially here. Especially now. She floundered; she was hurt. ‘I –'

Marsha turned back to Susanna. ‘Tell me about it.'

‘You have to be strong.' Susanna made a gesture. ‘I should have been hopeless. Some people think of it as escape, and repression, but actually I think it can be full of purpose. It requires limitless reserves of generosity and discipline. I think it's admirable.'

Marsha was silent, and who knew how much of all that she had understood, or how much Susanna had cared if she understood? She had been talking for herself. And Harriet, listening, thought: this woman has missed her vocation. Not to be a nun, or not necessarily, but to be directed, to be fired by something. She's lost: her life is nowhere.

Early afternoon sunlight streamed through high windows. Marsha said: ‘I'm strong.' She shifted in the pew. ‘I think.'

Susanna regarded her. ‘Yes, I should think you probably are. No doubt it comes from your mother.'

‘She's a bossy boots,' said Marsha, but leaned against Harriet briefly. ‘Sorry, Mum.'

Harriet patted her. ‘It's okay.' She stretched, partly out of genuine need to, partly as distraction from a disconcertingly powerful rush of maternal affection. I'm at her feet, she thought, bewildered. She has the power to crush me utterly – how have I not realised that? And if I were to lose her –