The Deadly Space Between (6 page)

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UMMARIES OF HIS
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: Delicate interpretation of the novella by Heinrich von Kleist
Die Marquise von O
. Directed by Eric Rohmer who also wrote the screenplay (1975) Janus Artemis Films du Losange & United Artists Starring Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz, 102 minutes.

Kleist? Oh yes, we’re doing one of his plays for A-level. I didn’t know he wrote short stories. He’s difficult. Feels very modern. Not nineteenth century at all. Thomas Mann admired his style. That’s a bad sign.

Aristocratic Marquise von O. finds herself pregnant but retains no memory of ever having been seduced. She is repudiated by her family. Advertises for the father of her child.

Advertises? That’s as bad as issuing suicide invitations
.

Distraught, handsome army officer arrives. She refuses to speak to him. Her final capitulation. ‘Why did you repulse me as if I were the devil?’ ‘Because when you first came to me, I took you for an angel.’

This is nothing but Prussians with crazy codes of honour
.

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ROEHM, Gustave (1755–1786) eighteenth-century Swiss botanist. Alpine explorer. Lost during the first successful ascent of Mont Blanc. Jacques Balmat, mountaineer and crystal-hunter, Michel-Gabriel Paccard, native of Chamonix and the region’s first physician together with Gustave Roehm decided to find a route to the summit of Mont Blanc. On the afternoon of 7th August 1786, they departed from La Prieuré in the valley, bivouacked between two rocks at the top of the Montagne de la Côte and began their attempt on the summit at 4 am the next day. Their progress crossing the glacier was followed by telescope. Dr Paccard lost his hat on top of the Rochers Rouge. They attacked the final slope at 6.12 pm and reached the summit at 6.23. They took some measurements and began the descent at 6.57 pm. Gustave Roehm was lost in one of the crevasses on the Grand Plateau. His body was never recovered. Balmat returned to La Prieuré the following day leading Paccard, who was snowblind, by the hand.

Roehm’s research on glaciology and his development with his friend Horace-Bénédict de Saussure of such measuring instruments as the hair hygrometer had considerable influence on Alpine exploration in the period.

F
URTHER
R
EADING
: Roehm, Gustave,
Alpine Plants: Their Varieties and Habitats
. Abridged and translated by Katherine Holroyd, Cambridge University Press, 1977 (Original Edition, 1782, 2 vols)

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It’s not worth it. Nazis, film directors and a man lost in ice. Who is this man she calls Roehm?

_{*  *  *}

I climbed back into bed, fully clothed and alarmingly aroused. Why? The search had yielded nothing. I was no closer to finding out who Roehm was. I lay flat on my stomach until the heat had passed away. I was forced to do the one thing I found difficult. I was forced to wait.

_{*  *  *}

I monitored every phone call that came in and went out of the house. This was easy to do. The phone had an illuminated green panel, which gave the last number that had called. But the days came and went. He never rang. Luce was constantly in touch, full of her latest, greatest coup. Her textile designs had been chosen, more or less en masse, by an Anglo-French
maison de coûture
, Lewis and Gautrin. The deal was through. The entire spring collection would be awash with her colours. The show was being presented, first in Paris, then in London and finally in New York. We were all going to be millionaires. I heard my mother laughing in the hallway, then moving away as she fiddled in the studio, cradling the phone on her shoulder.

Roehm did not ring. Neither her nor me.

On Thursday she was late back. I had cooked dinner for both of us and eaten mine. I didn’t get up when she came into the sitting room, where I was sunk into the sofa, eating crisps and watching mindless murders on the television.

‘Hello, darling. Mmmmm, gross. Crisps.’ She swallowed a handful and sat down on my right leg.

‘Get off. You’re crushing me.’

‘Sorry.’ She watched the car chase and the shoot-out. Her right breast hung across my line of vision, cutting off half the screen.

‘Move. I can’t see.’

‘Aren’t we irritable?’

She pushed me over and lay down beside me. She smelt of turps and linseed oil, but not of cigarettes. I put my arm around her, longing to touch her breast. I had never touched a woman’s breast. Now that she was with Roehm it was easier to look at her simply as a woman and not as my mother. I did some sums, lying there with her in my arms. I was eighteen. She was thirty-three. It was as if the gap between us had suddenly, dramatically narrowed. She took another handful of crisps and stuffed them into her mouth. I leaned over and kissed her ear.

‘My sweet love, am I forgiven for missing supper?’

I laid my head on her shoulder and watched her right nipple, swollen and rising beneath the wool. Then the phone rang. She rolled onto the floor, scattering crisps, and sauntered into the hall. It was eleven twenty on Thursday night. She came back into the room, her eyes still fixed on the television.

‘It’s Roehm. For you.’

My mouth went dry. She took my place on the sofa and seized the packet of crisps.

‘Hello.’

There was a long pause at the other end as if he had already vanished.

‘Hello?’ I said again.

‘Would tomorrow suit you?’ The same cool, slow voice, disengaged, indifferent.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Meet me at seven thirty in the Earl of Rochester, Old Compton Street. Your mother knows where that is. She tells me that you like the food in L’Escargot.’

‘Yeah. I do. OK.’

‘Fine. See you tomorrow, then.’

Click. Hummmmm. Roehm disappeared. I put the phone back in its cradle and bit my lip. When I looked around the door I saw that she had settled down into the hollow I had left and eaten all the crisps. She scrunched the empty bag, disappointed.

‘Have we got any more?’ She looked up, childish, demanding.

‘I’ll go and see. You haven’t eaten any supper, have you?’

‘No.’

I went off to light the gas, shaking my head free of her image. She didn’t ask what I had arranged with Roehm. I wanted to tell her, to boast. She never gave me an opening.

_{*  *  *}

Old Compton Street was not like any other street in Soho. I realized, with a flash of curiosity and panic, as I looked into the video store, that this was London’s gay ghetto. It was a cold wet night, but the street was illuminated, ready, en fête. All the red bulbs flashed and glared around a bevy of leather men suggestively wielding chains and whips on cover after cover of the lurid, empty boxes. There were one or two videos with images of women, some flaunting buttocks and breasts, others wearing uniforms reminiscent of the Waffen SS. I looked inside. A man bristling with silver jewellery and tattoos smiled at my hesitation.

‘Hi there,’ he said, ‘can I help you?’

I fled down the road, looking for the pub. It was an ordinary Victorian pub with stained glass and tiles. Inside the music was turned down to levels that made conversation possible. All the men behind the bar wore white T-shirts and had shaved heads. Every single face turned towards me when I came in; the polished bar reflected my reddening cheeks. I noticed my school scarf with a twinge of horror. I looked like a boy in one of Gide’s novels, much too young and unwittingly asking for it. There was no sign of Roehm.

‘Yes, darling? What can I get for you?’

The man behind the bar was brisk and knowing. He wasn’t young. There were very few young men in the pub. I muttered, ‘A half of Flowers.’ The beer appeared before me. I had intended to guzzle it down and then wait outside, but he vanished away to serve someone else while I was still fumbling for the money. I was completely unnerved by the fact that the men didn’t just take you in and look away as locals do when you enter their strange, flyblown cafes. A good many of them just went on staring. I leaned on the bar, mortified. I couldn’t face the mirror and so began reading the cocktail suggestions and the notices about Happy Hour. A man in a checked shirt and leather trousers with thongs up the sides caught my elbow as he pushed past.

‘Sorry, love.’

He turned sideways and smiled. He had a heavy florid face and a wide smile.

‘New girl here, aren’t you?’

I nodded, turning even redder. It seemed to me that everyone was listening and I was too self-conscious to speak.

‘What’s your name?’ He settled onto the stool beside me.

‘Toby.’

‘You on your own?’

‘No. Well, sort of . . . I’m waiting for someone.’

He gave me an amused, private smile. But he was neither threatening nor unfriendly. I began to relax.

‘I see.’

He paused, smiled again.

‘Maybe I’m the man you’ve been waiting for?’

I was terribly serious. I took everything seriously. While it was happening I didn’t even realize that I was being picked up.

‘I don’t think so. He’s called Roehm.’

My companion burst out laughing.

‘Well, at least you know his name already.’

I felt another rush of panic and tried to catch the barman’s eye. I still hadn’t paid. The red-checked man read my mind.

‘I’ve already bought you that one. Drink up and let me buy you another.’ He turned back to the bar and waved to the nearest white T-shirted tattooed arm and shaved head. I was suddenly aware of Roehm standing behind me. The red-checked shirt had seen him first.

‘Whoops. Here’s your date. Looks like Big Daddy’s here.’

‘Good evening.’

Roehm simply occupied all the space around us. There he was, like a Zeppelin slowly inflating.

‘Just keeping your seat warm for you. And Toby entertained.’

The two men actually shook hands, meeting each other’s eyes. Both were unworried and calm. Someone shut the outer door and the cold dark gust which had licked in behind Roehm settled about him.

‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’ said the man who had been chatting me up, but had never given me his name.

‘Yes,’ said Roehm, ‘we have. I hope we’ll meet again.’

‘Oh, we shall. I’ll see to that.’

The stranger stroked my cheek reassuringly as if I was a nervous horse, then slipped away. I had no time to draw back or speak. I was left gazing into Roehm’s heavy white face and grey eyes. He looked patient and amused. He didn’t say anything. I gulped down my beer and stared. He was wearing a huge leather trenchcoat with padded shoulders, which made him even larger than he actually was.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked at last.

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘Come, then.’

Roehm nodded to the bar staff, one of whom saluted, and then strolled out of the Earl of Rochester. I trailed along behind him, like a tug attached to an Atlantic cruiser. On the street, groups of men gathered and talked, their breath forming smoky gusts in the frosty air. The tarmac glittered beneath their feet as if they were walking in pools of red and gold. Roehm waited for me to catch up.

‘Did you really know that man?’

‘Yes. After a fashion. We met in that club over there.’

I saw a blue neon sign curved over a tacky black doorway.

VERITABLE CUIR

MEN ONLY

I stood, open-mouthed with surprise, puzzled by the name in French. Then I realized that it was a joke. Roehm smiled slightly, enjoying my discomfort.

‘I’ll take you one day. You’re over eighteen. You’d be quite a hit.’