Letters From Prague (25 page)

That couldn't be right: the past was everything.

‘What you were yesterday is still with you today.' Truffaut had said that, in some long-ago film seen on some long-ago winter's evening down on the South Bank, down at the NFT. Hugh had never gone to the NFT, he'd told her. He spent all his time making money.

Christopher Pritchard had no money. Susanna, a banker's daughter, had lots.

Lot's wife.

No, Hugh's wife.

No, Christopher's.

Liesel was beside them again, smiling. Harriet, with apologies, indicated the napkin, the wine stains, the salt. It was not a problem. A clean white cloth was brought, the table relaid; hot, heavenly-smelling dishes were set before them: schnitzels in paprika sauce, red cabbage, potatoes fried in garlic butter. How could you eat, now?

‘Please,' said Christopher. ‘Just a bit. It'll do you good.'

She ate, just a bit, and it did her good.

‘So,' she said, wiping her mouth, ‘tell me. Please.'

‘I've shocked you – I didn't mean to –'

‘Perhaps I over-reacted. I don't know. It's just that Hugh –'

‘Hugh is a very nice man, I know.'

‘He's my brother,' said Harriet, and could not eat any more. How was it possible to convey that bond, which went back further than any other, which lasted, unlike marriages now, until death? ‘Do you have a brother or sister?' she asked.

‘No. I'm an only child.'

‘Like Marsha.'

‘Yes. Like Susanna.'

Harriet drew a breath. ‘Go on.'

‘It's a long time ago,' he said slowly.

‘A lot of things are, when you get to our age.'

‘Like the start of your sentimental journey.'

‘Yes. Go on.'

Christopher put down his knife and fork. He lit, with a tremor, a cigarette. ‘We met when Susanna was very young – in 1983. January. I was working in London, as a broker – I told you, didn't I? The firm had connections with her father, very useful ones, and we met at a New Year party. Susanna was twenty-four, but looked younger. She was –' He spread his hands – ‘completely beautiful.'

‘I can imagine.'

‘And close to the edge.' He paused. ‘I don't know how well you know her –'

‘Neither do I.' It was Harriet's turn to pause. ‘Anyway, you tell me. I'm not in the business of disclosing confidences.'

‘Discretion itself. Like your brother.'

She did not answer.

‘Well.' He was smoking, smoking. ‘She has a very dark side, which in some ways I shared. Dark and destructive and fatal in marriage. I was almost eight years older, but not exactly on course myself.' He gave an ironic smile. ‘Now, of course, I'm completely balanced.'

Like Susanna, thought Harriet, and then, with a feeling of dread: and Hugh? What is to become of Hugh in all this?

‘So.' Another pause. ‘This isn't an unusual story, you know, Harriet. Lots of young marriages burn out fast.'

For the hundredth time, Harriet recalled the Cockatrice, the complicity, the look. Burning, she realised now. It was burning.

‘Go on.'

‘We fell upon each other. That's what it was. Not falling in lovedevouring.' He was no longer looking at her. ‘We were married in April, we bought a little house in Chelsea. Stretching it a bit. I was making money, but I was losing it, too, investing rather unwisely. That's another story. And in this little house we proceeded to tear each other apart. She wanted a baby, because she didn't know what else to want, she didn't know what to do with her life. I was drinking. I was worried about money, I couldn't even think about children. I refused, or at least I wanted to put it off, and she began to hate me. Except that Susanna doesn't really allow herself to hate other people, she turns it all in on herself, and becomes –' He broke off. ‘When she was in her teens she went through some kind of religious thing. She called it a conversion – I thought of it more as an obsession, the way she described it. Controlled by God: every thought, every wish …'

‘
When I was younger, I wanted to be a nun … Would you like to visit a convent? The Béguines live as a sisterhood but without vows. They have power to return to the world
…'

They had been sitting in the Little Church of the Carmelites, where Susanna came to listen to Bach at lunchtime. She leaned back, closing her eyes, excluding everyone.

They were walking through the quiet rooms of the convent at Anderlecht.

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

‘
You want all sorts of things when you're young
–'

And when you are older, too, thought Harriet –

‘Some of all this came back,' Christopher was saying. ‘She was praying for a child, like a woman in the Middle Ages, praying I'd change my mind.' He stubbed out his cigarette, rubbed his face. ‘She was in such a state that I couldn't bear to come home at night.'

Liesel was beside them, smiling again. They had enjoyed their meal? They would like dessert?

‘Dessert,' he said. ‘How does that sound?'

It sounded like something from another planet. Harriet shook her head. ‘Just coffee, please.'

‘And brandy. I think we need one. I do, anyway – I haven't talked like this for years.'

Coffee came on the little red tray. The brandy came from the sideboard, near the hawk. The bottles and decanters clinked, the conversation of other guests rose and fell, the candle flame was getting low. Wax dripped, solidified. The room felt smoky and intimate and warm, but there was, for Harriet now, none of the feeling that had been here this afternoon: of a moment concentrated, held, breathless, waiting for something to happen. Everything, it seemed, had happened already to Christopher, in long-ago unhappiness. And here he was: overweight, drinking and smoking, someone who seemed, on first impression, to be just a loud-mouthed boor.

And now?

‘The thing is,' he said, swirling the brandy over the flame, ‘that I make it sound as if it was all Susanna. It wasn't of course.'

‘You said you had a dark side, too –'

‘I did. I suppose I still do.' He raised his glass. ‘Anyway, I got in a bit of a mess on the market. A hell of a mess, actually.' He stopped. ‘I don't know if I should be telling you all this, I don't really know why I am, except –' He lit a cigarette. Another cigarette. He saw her expression. ‘Tut tut tut. It's all a far cry from the history department, isn't it? Or perhaps there are swindlers in education, too. I expect there are I shouldn't think many places in the Eighties were untouched by corruption.'

‘Probably not,' said Harriet, ‘but please don't patronise me. I know very well what the Eighties were like, I spent quite a lot of time fighting what Thatcherism was doing to schools. I told you in Brussels – I've been a socialist all my life.‘

‘More fool you,'
Christopher had said, and Marsha had been furious.
‘Don't speak to my mother like that!'

‘I'm sorry,' he said now, and sounded as if he meant it. ‘You must forgive me – my manner. At least, you don't have to, but I'd be grateful.' A rueful smile, full of charm. ‘I am a bit of a wreck, you know.'

Harriet looked at him, trying to work him out, feeling out of her depth, uneasy.

Getting my fingers burned
– What had he done?

‘What are you thinking?'

‘I don't know what to think. Go on, tell me what happened.'

He rubbed his face again. ‘The atmosphere in the firm was vicious. Long knives everywhere. Someone who didn't like me suggested I put money in crude oil. I thought I'd recover my losses and pay off my debts. So I did, like a bloody fool, the one thing you should never ever do, which was play with the firm's money. I played with it quite a bit. Crude oil plummeted, and I got caught.' He was watching her, waiting for her to react.

‘Oh,' she said, and didn't know what else to say.

‘It
is
a long way from the history department, isn't it? Well. There we are. I should have gone to prison, I very nearly did go to prison. But Susanna's father got me off – another little piece of corruption, I suppose – and by the skin of my teeth I was fined. And booted out, of course. We sold the house, but I'm still paying the fine off. And that was the end of the marriage, no question. Susanna's father saw to that – but it felt as if we'd run our course by then anyway. Too many tears, too much shouting, too much pain. Better to kiss and part. Which we did. She went back to her family, they moved to Zurich, and then Brussels, though I didn't know that. We broke off all contact. And in the meantime, naturally, no one would employ me. No one would touch me with a barge pole, actually –' He gave a little laugh. ‘This is the point where people throw themselves off bridges, or end up sleeping under bridges, isn't it?'

Harriet was silent, listening. She didn't know what to say.

‘I don't know – I suppose so – I'm sorry, it must have been terrible–'

It was also – it was true, he was right – unthinkable, beyond her experience. All those years in meetings, on marches, had not prepared her to sit face to face with one of Thatcherism's casualties: a bent ex-public schoolboy who'd fallen horribly foul of get-rich-quick.

‘It was terrible,' he was saying, ‘but I have lived to tell the tale. A round of applause, please.' Liesel was at the next table, taking an order. He gestured to her, when she looked round. ‘I'm going to have another brandy. Will you join me? No? It isn't good for a man to drink alone, you know, but I'm used to it. Bring on the violins.'

Liesel brought brandy from the sideboard. Around them, early dinner guests were leaving, later ones arriving. Harriet looked at her watch, feeling dazed.

‘It's almost nine – I must do something about Marsha, soon.'

‘I've unnerved you, haven't I?'

‘Yes,' she said, looking down at the tablecloth, turning a spoon over, trying to collect her thoughts. ‘I think you probably have. And I still don't understand –' She looked up at him. ‘Brussels. You're working in Brussels. You came to dinner that night, you'd looked Hugh up – that's what he said. Someone from his old school had telephoned out of the blue –'

‘
Pritchard was a bit of a bully … I kept out of his way
…'

That was on the night of their arrival: Marsha relaxing, beginning to enjoy herself; Harriet, too. Susanna quiet, withdrawn. Had that phone call really been out of the blue?

She and Hugh were walking along the canal at Charleroi. Leaves blew ahead of them, riverboats came and went.

‘Did he ever do anything to hurt you?'

‘
No, never, he just had a reputation
–'

They were all having lunch at the Cockatrice. Across the table, that look: just for a moment, but she had seen it –

She said, hearing herself sound cold and direct: ‘If you do anything to harm Hugh, I'll –'

She would what? What would she do? Rise from the table and leave the hotel with Marsha and never set eyes on this man again.

But then – if she never saw him again –

She felt as if she were being drawn in towards darkness: towards someone she did not know, and did not understand.

Was it him, or was it herself? She covered her face.

‘Harriet.' She felt his hand on hers: a large hand, with a warm touch, and a tremor. ‘Harriet?'

She uncovered her eyes, but she could not look at him. ‘What?'

He said gently: ‘I don't want to harm Hugh. Or anyone. Please believe me. I said I didn't know why I was telling you these things. That isn't quite true – I think I do know. I want to get them out of the way. I want you to know the worst. Then –'

‘Then what?'

‘And then we'll see,' he said slowly. ‘Shall I explain?'

She nodded, unable to speak.

He was drinking again, cradling the glass. ‘There are people who are good for each other, and there are people who make each other unhappy. Susanna and I – I've told you. When she went – when her father took her away – I was in pieces. Not just because of her, because of the trial, the aftermath. Close to skid row, I was, really. Anyway. I did, in the end, get back on my feet. I did things like sell on commission – that's a whole world in itself, bloody awful, but I did it.

‘Then I had a break. I had a poor old aunt in a home in Hastings, whom I never went to see. She died, and left me a bit, just enough to keep paying the fine off and start up on my own. But I wanted to get out of London, start again, travel. When everything changed in '89 it seemed like the perfect opportunity – go east, young man, go where your heart is. My heart wasn't anywhere, of course, it didn't matter where I went. I came here, to Berlin, I nosed about, talked to people, went to Warsaw, went to Prague … Things began to take shape – I saw I could act as east-west middleman, and Brussels seemed as good a place as any to have a base. It's solid and respectable and full of useful contacts, so that's where I moved to.'

‘You didn't know Susanna was there?'

‘No. I told you, we'd lost all contact.'

‘You said you'd been living there for a year or so.'

‘Yes. And one day I bumped into her. I was walking one way, and she was walking another – it was as simple as that. A lunch-hour encounter on the Grand Place, outside the Hotel de Ville. Neither of us could believe our eyes. We went for a drink, we talked – she told me she had married again, and that she was happy. I was pleased for her, but I didn't quite believe it, and I was right.' He had put down his glass. ‘Wasn't I?'

Susanna was weeping, inside the Hotel de Ville. Before her was a tapestry: two lovers, a delicate glance of desire. ‘I have watched you, and watched you: at last you are mine
–'