The collected stories (65 page)

No longer: Sophie and I were dining at Le Gavroche, having just seen a spirited Hamlet at the Royal Court. She smiled at me from across the table. There was a flicker of light in her eyes, a willingness to agree, good humor, a scent of jasmine on her shoulders, and a certain pressure of her fingers on my hand that offered hope and a promise of mildly rowdy sex. I was happy.

She talked the whole time, which was fine with me. By habit and inclination I never discussed my work with anyone outside the Embassy. I listened gladly to everything she said; I was grateful that I did not have to ask my ignorant questions about London. And yet, though she talked mostly about herself, she revealed very little. She told me her plans - she wanted to travel, see Brazil ('again') - she had friends in Hong Kong and New York. She was vague about what she was doing at the moment. She seemed surprised and a little annoyed that I should ask.

"What do you do for a living?"' Her accent was the adenoids-and-chewing-gum American drawl that the British put on when they are feeling particularly skittish, which, thank God, is seldom. She went on, 'It's not a question people ask in England.'

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (il): THE LONDON EMBASSY

'It wasn't my question. I didn't say, "What do you do for a living?" I said, "What are you doing at the moment?"'

'I know what you meant, and you shouldn't have asked.'

'I wonder why.'

'Because it's bloody rude, that's why,' she said softly, and seemed pleased with herself. 'Anyway, why should one do anything? I know plenty of people who don't do anything at all - absolutely nothing.'

'You like that, do you?'

'Yes, I think there's something really fantastic about pure idleness.'

'"Consider the lilies of the field," et cetera, et cetera.'

'Not only that. If a person doesn't really do anything, you have to take him for what he is rather than what he does. Your asking me what I'm doing is just a cheap way of finding out what sort of person I am. That's cheating.'

I said, 'I don't see why.'

She shrugged and said, 'Daddy didn't do much, but Daddy was a gentleman. You probably think I'm a frivolous empty-headed girl who sits around the house all day varnishing her nails, waiting for parties to begin.' She worked her tongue against her teeth and said, 'Well, I am!'

'It's been the ruin of many a Foreign Service marriage - I mean, the wife with nothing to do but advance her husband's career. All that stage-managing, all those tea parties, all that insincerity.'

'I'd love it. I wouldn't complain. My headmistress used to say "Find a husband who'll give you a beautiful kitchen, and lovely flowers to pick, and lots of expensive silver to polish." That sort of thing's not fashionable now, is it? But I don't care. I like luxury.'

And although this was only the second time I had seen her, I began seriously to calculate the chances of my marrying her. She was glamorous and intelligent; she was good company. Men stared at her. She had taste, and she was confident enough in her taste so that she would never be a slave to fashion.

I was turning these things over in my mind when she said, 'What do I do? A bit of modeling, a little television, some lunchtime theater. You probably think it's all a waste of time/

'You're an actress,' I said.

'No,' Sophie said, 'I just do a little acting. It's not what you'd call a career. Everyone criticizes me for not being ambitious. Crikey,

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of course I spend time, but I don't waste time - are you wasting time if you're enjoying yourself?' She did not wait for my reply. She said, 'I'm enjoying myself right now.'

'Shall we do this again sometime?'

'Again and again,' she said slowly, in a kind of heated contentment. 'Would you like that?'

'Yes,' I said, 'I really would.'

She reached over and touched my face, brushed the aroma of jasmine on my cheek - it was the most intimate, the most disarming gesture - and said, 'It's getting late-'

I kissed her in the taxi going back to her house. She did not push me away. But after a few minutes she lifted her head.

'What's wrong?'

'This is Prince of Wales Drive,' she said. 'Aren't those mansion blocks fantastic?' She kissed me again, then she took my arm and said, 'Wouldn't you like to live there?'

They were not my idea of mansions, but I found myself agreeing with her: yes, I said, and looked through the taxi window at the balconies. It was as if we were choosing a location for a love nest. Sophie squeezed my arm and said, 'That one's fun.'

I saw dark windows.

'Wouldn't it be super to live here?' she said. And it seemed as if she were speaking for both of us.

I said, 'It sure would.'

'Are you looking for a place to rent? Your hotel must be rather cramped.'

'I'm moving the first chance I get. I'm going to buy a place -renting is pointless, and anyway I've got two years' accumulated hardship allowance to spend.'

She kissed me then, and we were still kissing as the taxi sped on, turned into a side street, and came to rest on Albert Bridge Road in front of a tall terrace of narrow houses. I paid for the taxi, then walked with her to the front gate.

She said, 'Your taxi's driving away.'

'I've paid him. I told him to go.'

'That was silly. You'll never get another one around here - and the buses have stopped running.'

I said, 'Then I'll walk,' and clung to her hand, 'although I don't want to.'

'It's not far to your hotel.'

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (il): THE LONDON EMBASSY

'I didn't mean that. I just meant I'd rather stay here with you.'

'I know/ she said. 'You're sweet.'

The English are frugal. They can even economize on words. Sophie gave nothing away. She planted a rather perfunctory kiss on my cheek, and when I tried to embrace her she eased out of my grasp and said comically, 'Do you ra/W?' and took out her door key.

'You're beautiful,' I said.

'I'm tired,' she said. 'I must get some sleep. I have a big day tomorrow — a screening — and I have to be up at the crack of dawn.' She gave me another brisk kiss and said lightly, 'Otherwise I'd invite you in.'

I said, 'I want to see you again soon.'

'I'd like that,' she said.

I was half in love with her by then, and in that mood - half-true, half-false - I strolled home whistling, congratulating myself on my good luck. London is kind to lovers - it offers them privacy and quiet nights and spectacles. Albert Bridge was alight. In the daytime it is a classic bridge, but at night all its thousands of yellow light bulbs and its freshly painted curves give it the look of a circus midway suspended in the sky. The lights on its great sweeps are very cheering at midnight over the empty river.

The next day I wanted to call her, but a long meeting with Scaduto held me up. It was eight o'clock before I left the office. Scaduto furiously preened himself in the elevator mirror as we descended to Grosvenor Square. He said he had called his wife to tell her he'd be late. She had screamed at him.

'Get this,' he said. 'She says to me, "You never listen." That's interesting, isn't it? What does it mean, "You never listen"? Isn't it a paradox, or some kind of contradiction? Tell me something -has anyone ever said that to you? "You never listen"?'

I said no.

'Right. Because you're not married,' Scaduto said. 'You've got to be married to hear things like that. Isn't that terrible?' He began to laugh, and said, 'You wouldn't believe the things married people say to each other. You can't imagine the hostility. "You never listen" is nothing. The rest is murder.'

'Awful things?'

'Horrendous things/ he said. 'What are you smiling for?'

'What does it matter what people say, if you never listen?'

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Steam came out of Scaduto's nose - the sound of steam, at any rate. Then he said, Tve seen guys like you - nice, happy, single guys. They get married. They get ruined. Unhappy? You have no idea/

I was indignant at this, because I took everything he said to be a criticism of Sophie. His conceited and miserable presumption belittled her. I thought: How dare you - because his cynicism was about life in general, the hell of marriage, the tyranny of women. He was cheating me out of my pleasant mood, the afterglow of having met someone I genuinely liked and wanted to be with. I hated his sullen egotism: his marriage was all marriages, his wife was all women, he and I were brothers. Ain't it awful was the slogan of this fatuous freemasonry of male victims.

I said, 'I pity you.'

'Keep your pity,' Scaduto said. 'You'll need it for yourself.'

His voice was full of fatigue and experience - and ham. The married man so often tries to sound like a war veteran, and the divorced one like a man discharged because of being wounded in action.

I met Sophie for a drink a few days later. We went out to eat again the following week. On our first date I had wanted to go to bed with her. That desire had not passed, and yet another feeling, a deeper one, like loyalty and trust, asserted itself. It was compatible with lechery - in fact, it gave lechery an honorable glow.

And now she called me occasionally at work. She had a touching telephone habit of saying, 'It's only me -' What could be easier or more intimate? She liked to talk on the phone. It was fun, she said, whispering into my ear.

About two weeks after Hamlet she called and said, 'Are you free this evening?'

'Yes,' I said, and thought of an excuse to dispose of the appointment I had - a journalist that Jeeps had urged me to meet. I could meet him any time, but Sophie -

'It's a flat,' she said.

What was she talking about?

'Just what you've been looking for,' she said. 'Bang on Prince of Wales Drive. Overstrand Mansions. It's at the front, with that lovely view.'

'That's wonderful - shall we meet there?'

'I'm afraid I can't make it. I've got a screening on. But you

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS (il): THE LONDON EMBASSY

should go. I'll give you the owner's number. It's a friend of a friend.'

'I was hoping to see you,' I said, interrupting her as she told me the price. 'What about going with me tomorrow?'

'This flat might not be available tomorrow,' she said.

'I'll look at it this evening then.'

'Super.'

'Will you be available tomorrow?' I said.

'Quite available.' She said that in what I thought of as her actress's voice. Whenever she said anything very serious or very definite, she used this voice, and sometimes an American accent.

I went to see the flat. Its balcony was the brow of this red brick mansion block, and from it I could see my own hotel beyond the park and the river. This pleased me - my own landmark, in this enormous city, among the slate roofs and steeples and treetops.

The flat was larger than I wanted, but I thought of Sophie and began to covet it for its extra rooms. The owner, a friendly German, offered me a drink.

He said, 'As you probably gathered, my wife and I decided to split up.'

I told him I had gathered no such thing, that it was none of my business, but the longer I sat there trying to stop him telling me about his divorce (it seemed to cast a blight on the place), the more I felt I was sitting in my own room, enclosed by my own walls, the crisp shadow spikes of my balcony's grillwork printed on my own floor.

'She is now back in Germany,' he said. 'She is an extremely attractive woman.'

Because I felt it was already mine, and because I knew it was a sure way of getting him off the subject of his wife, I said, 'I want it - let's make a deal.'

Later I gave him the name of the Embassy lawyer and said I wanted to move quickly. By noon the next day my deposit was down and a surveyor was on his way to Overstrand Mansions. Within a week papers were examined and contracts exchanged. It was the fastest financial transaction I had ever made, but I was paying cash - my accumulated hardship allowance from my Malaysian post, and the rest of my savings. It was my first property deal, but I felt in my heart that I was not in it alone and not acting solely for myself.

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I had called Sophie the day after visiting the flat. I was, I realize, intent upon impressing her. Would she want me if she saw I was powerful and decisive? When I finally found her, she was pleased but said she couldn't meet me. 'Quite available' meant busy. She had a 'sitting' or perhaps a 'shooting' or a 'screening' or a 'viewing' or an 'opening' or a 'session.' What did she mean? I had never come across these obscure urgencies before. Language is deceptive; and though English is subtle it also allows a clever person - one alert to the ambiguities of English - to play tricks with mock precision and to combine vagueness with politeness. English is perfect for diplomats and lovers.

Some days later I was making Sophie a drink in my hotel room - a whiskey. I had the bottle in my hand.

'It should be champagne,' I said. 'We're celebrating - I've exchanged contracts.'

'Whiskey's warmer than champagne,' she said, and sat down to watch me.

'How do you like it?'

'Straight,' she said. She was not looking at the glass. 'As it comes.'

'How much?'

'Filled,' she said, and showed me her teeth.

'How many inches is that?'

'Right up,' she said, and sighed and smiled. She had said that in her actress's voice.

There was no hitch, the survey encouraged me, and Horton - as if praising my on-the-job initiative - said that London property was a great investment. I was more than hopeful; I had, mentally, already begun to live at Overstrand Mansions. In this imagining Sophie was often standing at the balcony with a drink in her hand, or in her track suit, damp with dew and effort (running raised her sexual odors, the mingled aroma of fish and flowers), and she was laughing, saying, 'Do you mindV as I tried to hold her, and driving me wild.

I had to be reassured that she needed me as much. We had not so far used the word 'love.' We pretended we had an easygoing, trusting friendship. I think I joked with her too much, but I was very eager — foolishly so. Instead of simply saying that I wanted to see her and making a date with her, I said, 'Sophie, you're avoiding me.'