Letters From Prague (7 page)

And yet – every now and then there passed across her face an expression which Harriet could not quite understand but which gave her, once again, that sense of things being not quite as they should be.

Susanna, in the portrait, wore sleeveless silk and was set against an indeterminate background of short, painterly brush strokes, in ochre and green. The whole of the painting was done in this manner – soft, informal, intimate, even, as if whoever painted her had known her well. And yet – all this was belied by the gaze beyond the painter, beyond whoever would stand and look, and seek to know her. Perhaps the painter, too, had seen what Harriet, looking back at the original, saw now: a fleeting preoccupation, quickly covered as she felt her sister-in-law's eyes upon her, and smiled, coming back to the room again.

‘I thought we'd eat early tonight – after your journey, and with Marsha here. About seven-thirty – would that suit you?'

‘Of course. Then we can be fresh for tomorrow.'

‘Yes,' said Hugh. ‘But tomorrow night I'm afraid we shan't be just us – well, I don't know if “afraid” is right, but it does feel nice to be
en famille
, doesn't it?'

‘Very,' said Harriet, aware of Marsha's adoring look at him as he rose to refill their glasses. ‘What's happening tomorrow?'

‘Believe it or not –' he was holding the bottle above her glass, ‘someone I knew at school is coming to dinner.'

‘How extraordinary. Thank you.' Harriet lifted a newly foaming glass to her lips. ‘Who's that? Did we ever meet him?'

‘Did you ever meet anyone from school?' Hugh was refilling Susanna's glass: their hands touched briefly, and he turned back to Harriet. ‘Chap called Christopher Pritchard, who interestingly enough has some kind of East European connection, as we do.' He smiled at her. ‘Everyone seems to, these days.'

‘Yes,' said Harriet, recalling a letter whose contents she had skimmed. ‘Remind me what yours is.'

He sat down again. ‘You're making your journey, we're in a joint venture with the European Bank – financing a clean-up job on a power station in northern Bohemia. I haven't been there, yet, but it's near the Krus˘ne Hory mountains – along the German-Czech border.'

‘And what are you doing exactly?'

‘Lending the money for a desulphurisation unit. Trying to help do something about the fact that Bohemia has some of the worst acid rain pollution in Eastern Europe.'

‘We've done pollution at school,' said Marsha.

‘Have you, now? Do you know anything about lignite?'

She frowned. ‘No. But I know about acid rain.'

‘Well, then, you might be interested in this. Bohemia's power stations run on stuff called lignite – that's brown coal to you and me; it gives out grisly amounts of sulphur. You have to burn more of it than ordinary coal, so that makes it worse. And the countryside in that part of Czechoslovakia – the Czech Republic, as it is now – is choking to death. Fish dying in rivers, trees all bare, the air too thick to be safe for children so they have to stay indoors in winter, sometimes. So we're lending money for this unit to take the sulphur out, and help reduce pollution. Does that meet with your approval?'

‘Yes,' said Marsha. ‘It sounds good. I could do a project.'

‘And this schoolfriend of yours?' asked Harriet. ‘What's his connection?'

‘He wasn't exactly a friend – it seems extraordinary that he's resurfaced. I think he must have come across my name through common contacts – or perhaps he looked me up somewhere, I'm not sure.' Hugh raised his glass again. ‘Cheers once more.'

‘Cheers,' said Harriet, realising that the ‘somewhere'Christopher Pritchard might have used to look up his old contemporary could well have been
Who's Who.
Hugh was modest, but he was making his mark and how was it possible to connect, now, this charming and quietly successful man, with his lovely wife and elegant apartment, with the lonely child who had kept everything stiffly laced in behind perfect manners; whom Harriet used to come upon, muttering to himself in an empty dining room?

‘Anyway,' Hugh was saying. ‘Pritchard seems to be acting as some sort of east-west middleman – I'm not quite sure about his field. He has a background in the City, but he didn't say much about that. Funnily enough, his name rang a bell in that connection, too, when he called, but I can't place it. Too many names to remember in my old age. But he's a bit of a one-man band these days, I gather – office somewhere out in the suburbs, been here only a few months. Couldn't quite get the picture, but no doubt I'll hear more. He seemed keen to renew our acquaintance, and it seemed a reasonable idea to invite him over while you're here. He might even be useful to you. Is that all right?'

‘Of course. An interesting diversion. And did you like the sound of him, after all these years?'

Hugh thought. ‘Not sure. The last time we saw each other was in '66. I can't say I cared for him much.'

‘Why?' asked Susanna from across the room.

He shrugged. ‘I don't know. He was a bit of a bully in those days.'

‘Was
he?' Marsha was all ears. ‘We talk about bullies at school, in social education. What did he do?'

But Hugh did not elaborate, and Harriet sensed that he did not want to be pushed. What in childhood had been deep reserve had developed, as he grew older, into deep discretion – a quality which had no doubt done much to earn him trust and respect among the bankers of Brussels, but was possibly not always easy to live with. Still. Was not a sister allowed to know a little?

‘I hope,' she said thoughtfully, drinking, ‘that this chap did not bully you.'

Hugh shrugged again, and who knew just what he meant by that. ‘I kept out of his way. But people used to have an eye on him, I think. Especially where younger boys were concerned.'

‘You mean …' she hesitated, and broke off. Who knew what Hugh himself might have got involved in, amongst that community of boys?

Marsha was fully focused now. ‘Are you talking about child abuse?'

Hugh's and Susanna's mouths both fell visibly open. Harriet laughed.

‘Sorry. This is precocious only child in 1993.'

‘This is my niece!'

‘Come off it.' And she suddenly switched from long-ago concerns about her little brother to her life as it was lived now, in multi-cultural London, with a daughter she was bringing up to be confident and direct. Her earlier sense of uncertainty and displacement fell away: she was no longer intimidated by these surroundings but was making her own mark.

‘I suppose,' she said clearly, ‘it must seem bizarre when you don't yet have children of your own, but London kids are streetwise now, you know – they have to be. I mean, I try to protect Marsha from growing up too fast, but it's rather a losing battle. And if that's the case, I'd rather we talked about things – wouldn't I, Marsha? – so that she knows how to cope –'

She heard her voice, no doubt all the stronger for a couple of glasses of champagne on an empty stomach, ring out into a deafening silence.

‘Well, of course,' Hugh said smoothly, ‘you're talking to the uninitiated. You're right – what would we know? It just seems rather a far cry from our own protected childhood, doesn't it?'

‘It does,' said Harriet, trying to cover her own confusion, thinking, as she looked at the rise of bubbles within her glass, breaking on the surface: but how protected were you, Hugh? Any kind of abuse might have been done to you in that distant and expensive place.

‘Supper,' said Susanna, rising rather quickly. ‘I'll just go and see how it's getting on …'

‘Can I help?' asked Harriet. ‘You've been doing everything.'

‘It's fine, I enjoy it. I'll call you in a few minutes.'

And she went gracefully from the room. The linen trousers had been replaced by a skirt in the finest cotton, a dusty jade, with a loose cream shirt tucked into the narrow waist. She's perfect, thought Harriet, watching her. She's perfect. What has gone wrong?

‘On formal occasions,' said Hugh, leading them along the corridor, ‘we eat in there. When it's just us, we use the kitchen.'

‘Good,' said Harriet, looking in at ‘there': a dining room hung with striped wallpaper and containing a table intended for twelve. It looked like nothing so much as the dining room in her parents' house, as if Hugh and Susanna had skipped a generation and landed, effortlessly, with the accoutrements of late middle age. Again, for an instant, following her brother, she saw him murmuring at the long mahogany table of their childhood, and then they were all in the kitchen, assembling round something much less formal and quite charming: print cloth, china candlesticks; basket in the centre heaped with fresh rolls, butter imprinted with oak leaves.

Marsha sank happily into her chair and took a roll from a solicitious uncle. Susanna served soup from a pottery tureen. They began to talk of parents, in Kensington and Wiltshire; of life in retirement – useful committees, private views and dedication to the garden. Such talk felt cementing and, in still strange surroundings, comforting, so that when they turned to plans for the week it did feel as if they would be setting out on excursions as a family, known and secure.

‘And tomorrow the bully's coming,' said Marsha, tucking into a warming casserole.

‘Marsha,' said Harriet.

‘What?'

‘Hugh didn't say he was a bully
now
…'

‘Hugh wishes he hadn't said a word,' said Hugh, with a forkful of beef. ‘Niece please forget. He's probably charming.'

‘He might still be horrible.'

‘Beware, Marsha,' said Susanna, thawing now, Harriet could see: no longer the dutiful hostess but relaxed, genuinely pleased they were there. ‘Someone might say unkind things about you, one day.'

‘Impossible,' Marsha said calmly. ‘I'm a Sabbath child.'

‘So you are,' said Hugh, and there was a pause, as he and Harriet, in different ways, recalled that summer Sunday, nearly a decade ago, when Marsha, after a long struggle, had made her entrance into the world, and Martin had rung Harriet's family to tell them. Hugh had been living in London, then: he had kept a brotherly distance from an over-emotional mother, and arrived on the Tuesday, with a pile of novels for Harriet to read while breastfeeding.

‘Thank you,' said Harriet, bemusedly, looking at them from the frontiers of another country. Marsha, scarlet from overheating, slept in the crook of her arm. Hugh bent over her, and his face took on an expression which Harriet had never seen there – had not, indeed, seen even on the face of Marsha's father. Not quite like that.

‘She's – gosh. Isn't she –'

‘Isn't she?'

In the weeks of colic and screaming that followed, Harriet had barely opened a newspaper, never mind a book. In the winter after Martin's departure the pile of novels had, however, proved comforting – like Hugh.

‘See much of Martin?' Hugh asked casually now.

Harriet frowned. ‘You know I don't.' Perhaps, from her earlier remarks about openness, he thought it all right to mention him in front of Marsha. It was, at home. Not here, not at the start of a holiday.

‘My dad might as well not exist,' said Marsha, yawning.

‘I don't know if that's quite true,' said Harriet.

‘Yes it is.'

‘Salad?' asked Susanna. ‘Has everyone had enough?'

‘Salad would be great. Thank you. Marsha – eat something, please, don't just fiddle about.'

Marsha yawned again.

‘She's done for,' said Hugh. ‘Look at her.'

‘You can get down if you like,' Susanna said kindly.

She shook her head. ‘I'm not a bit tired.'

But she was, after pudding, persuaded to retire.

Harriet kissed her as she lay beneath the thick blue eiderdown. The balcony curtains were drawn and a lamp between the beds shone softly through parchment-coloured silk.

‘Nice evening? Everything all right?'

‘Mmm. Are you going to be long?'

‘No. I'm tired too.' She kissed her again, wondering about Martin, and Marsha's relationship with him. ‘Do you really feel –' She began, and stopped. It was late. She wasn't up to it.

‘Feel what?'

‘Nothing. Goodnight.'

‘Night.' Marsha turned over, heavy-eyed. ‘Leave the light on.'

Harriet rejoined the others. They sat over coffee in the drawing room.

‘She's a very nice child,' said Hugh, sipping from a white and gold cup. ‘You've done well with her.'

‘Thank you. She loves being here – she loves being with you.'

‘Sorry if I blundered, earlier on. About her father.'

‘It's okay.'

‘There hasn't been anyone –'

‘No. Not serious, anyway. Of course –' she held out her cup for Susanna to refill. ‘Thanks. Of course, there's always my Czech chap. Remember him?'

‘Yes. You're not really going all that way just for –'

‘No. No – I'm going for its own sake. For Marsha's pleasure and education. And my own. Still – you never know.' And at the prospect of this unknown future she saw again Karel's lean, vital face, and smiled, despite herself. After all. After all these years of keeping the show on the road, and doing right by Marsha, it might be nice to strike a blow for romance.

‘We'll see,' she said, and found herself yawning, too.

They kissed goodnight with affection.

Harriet was tired, but she could not sleep. On the other side of the bedside lamp, switched off now, Marsha was sunk into the pillows, an arm in red and white spotted pyjamas flung out across the eiderdown, her breathing steady. Harriet lay listening, and thinking. From beyond the curtained balcony came the muted sound of traffic. From somewhere outside her door came the sounds of an apartment being put to rights for the night: doors closed quietly, considerately; footsteps along thick carpet, a tap run; another door opened and closed. Then silence.