The Man Who Understood Women (10 page)

‘Whose idea was all this?’ Iris asked.

‘Taormina’s. We’re starting off in Algeria. We leave at the end of the month.’

Iris looked around. ‘There’ll be no elms,’ she said, ‘no
dancing
on the lawn, no tennis …’

‘We’ll be back from time to time.’

‘I knew it couldn’t last. I told your father.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing. I’m going in to lie down. You’ll pick up the gooseberries?’

‘Of course, and I’m sorry …’

But Iris had gone.

When Miles came back from church he went up to change. Iris was lying on the bed.

Dangling his tie, Miles looked out of the window. Suddenly he chuckled.

‘What is it?’ Iris said.

‘Taormina. She’s wearing scarlet trousers and she’s walking round the pond on her hands.’ He turned to Iris, rolling up his tie neatly. ‘Excellent company, I must say, but I doubt if she’s a thought in her pretty little head.’

Iris got off the bed and stood where her husband had been watching the flash of red slowly circumvent the pond in the washed sunlight of the garden.

‘You know, Miles, there are times,’ she said, ‘when one can be hideously, hideously wrong.’

Peeping Tom

1965

We met at the Ritz, the Lisbon one. I was dining when she came in, and all through the potato soup and the beef with mustard sauce I had been wondering who she was. I say came in. It was not so much a coming in as an ingression, an
intrusion
upon the suitably muted brouhaha of the Grill. She was cocooned in mink under which there was the suggestion of nothing, for she did not remove it, and flanked – or more
precisely
, followed, so fast was her progress from door to table – by two alpaca-suited, be-ringed youths too old for sons, too young for … No, perhaps she liked them tender. One felt one should know her face. An examination of it brought hints of gossip column and glossy magazine. She looked at no one, occupied only with her paramours and the undivided
attention
of the maître d’. She was satisfied to be looked at. Every pair of eyes was turned in her direction, openly or secretly. One sensed she recognised this as her due. She had not so much beauty as presence, an élan vital, the current of which
had charged the entire Grill, waiters and diners alike. Her hair (burnished copper was too dull, red misleading, more I would say autumn leaves of a particular variety brought to a high gloss) was done up in a kind of cone effect, its symmetry
perfectly
balancing her face. I have said it was not beautiful, the eyes rendered her remaining features superfluous. From where I sat I could not distinguish their colour, but the light that emanated from beneath their shadowed periphery dimmed the two small, shaded table lamps. They were truly enormous. The maître d’, inclining from the waist, almost drowned, the attendant circus danced in their fulguration. The slim hands, illustrating her requirements, were good too, pale
ambassadors
of her desires. I had seen her before. The name was
titillating
my tongue. Actress? Screen star? I could almost, but maddeningly not quite, recall.

The beef had lost its savour. I was forking it into my mouth, although it might now have been hay, and looking in her
direction
when she glanced round. I am forty-two and personable. The touch of grey above my ears lends an air of board or
consulting
room. I am intimate with my looks and the effect they are likely to produce, I have lived by them and my wits for a great many years.

She did not look away. Not until a delicate frisson of
rapport
had woven its web between her table and mine. I
wondered
what was under the mink. Predictably, aware of my interest, she turned her attentions more animatedly, or so she intended it to appear, to her companions. Their hands made brief contact, they raised glasses, shared intimate, divinely
humorous jokes. I wagered with myself that before I laid down my fork she would look at me again. She did. With immense subtlety, of course. I was merely in her line of vision as her eyes swept the room seeking some elusive face-saving figment of her imagination. The field, I sensed, was open. Madame, for all her entourage, was bored.

I was feeling in my pocket for five escudos with which to bribe my waiter for her name when the very good King
Wenceslaus
of a diminutive page hopped down the marble steps and into the restaurant. Less elevated establishments might call their guests over speakers. Not so the Ritz. Unwilling to
shatter
the dearly priced silence, they dispatched a page, for whose buttoned uniform the ragamuffin youth of the city would give its eyeteeth. He passed from table to table with a neatly
lettered
billboard held proudly at chest level. Madame Gonzalez was wanted on the telephone.

Gonzalez. Of course. The Madame was a courtesy. She was one of the famous Gonzalez sisters. Of course I knew her,
everyone
did. There were three: a pianist, a physicist and a social butterfly. The hands, nails almond-shaped, that gesticulated less than ten feet away were not on close terms with a
keyboard
, their owner, I was willing to bet, was ignorant of the simplest scientific formula, she blazed a trail, though, from Madrid to Monte Carlo, settled, for no longer than a
moonbeam
, in London or New York. Her pace was matched, but only just, by the newshounds. Lucia Gonzalez.

The page had reached her table. One companion touched her sleeve, the other held her chair. She looked at me for a
brief moment, clutched her coat more tightly round her,
elevated
her head and was gone. Everything went with her.

Noses were back in the soup. I glanced up to see if the lights had really dimmed. She did not return.

I was due to drive next morning to the Algarve. At nine the car, a Mercedes, was at the door. I instructed the girl from the hire company to park it. I would leave later in the day. She shrugged. ‘It is a six-hour drive, señor.’ I told her not to worry and she got in the car with a final word of warning to take the Villafranca road if I delayed my start later than three o’clock.

All morning I haunted the foyer, having ascertained from the desk that Madame Gonzalez was still in residence. By three o’clock, when I should have been speeding south through the cork trees and the rice fields, I was hungry and nauseatingly familiar with every item of local art and craft in the gift shop. I lunched hurriedly – well, hurriedly for the Ritz against whose tradition it was to hasten – and emerged, coffeeless in my
anxiety
, in time to see the copper-red-autumn-leaf-burnished
coiffure
disappear, minion-flanked, in the back of a matching sedan.

For ten escudos I learned that she had left for Estoril where the weary croupiers raked the tables laid only sparsely with plaques after the summer season. I coaxed the Mercedes to action and took the Auto-estrada, rehearsing my speech of introduction en route. In the casino parking lot there was no sign among the Fiats and Studebakers of a bronze car of any description. The man at the door was helpful. The señora had looked in for a moment only and had gone on, he thought, eyeing the crumpled note in my hand, to Cascais.

The boats at Cascais siestaed still in the sun of what, to the local inhabitants, was winter, but would have done an English August proud. Two mottled, scrawny dogs chased each other and their tails outside the bay hotel. A waiter cleared away debris from the few outside tables. He had not seen a señora with red hair. Yes, certainly he would have noticed. Perhaps she had gone to Sintra.

The afternoon was heavy, the square at Sintra empty except for cab drivers waiting for fares. Yes, a señora with red hair had driven up, to the Palace.

The scent of camellias on the steeply winding road almost overpowered me. I drew the Mercedes perilously close to the edge to allow a coach to pass. A huddle of sightseers stared from the courtyard at the grotesque contours of the Palace. Slightly apart, a girl with red hair leaned against her
companion
in a stance that cried out honeymoon.

I drove back along the coastal road. By now I could have been in Faro. Women had always been the primroses in my path.

No, the hotel said, Madame Gonzalez had not returned. Next to me an American enquired about tickets for the
bullring
. I could no longer tolerate the sight of the gift shop. I decided to be bold.

A chambermaid who supported a family of six let me into the señora’s suite. For the second time in one afternoon, I was almost anaesthetised by the fragrance of flowers. The
paramours
had done their work. The sitting room was a
veritable
bower. I telephoned for champagne and two glasses, and
settled into an armchair behind one of the floral tributes from where I could see the door. This time she couldn’t escape. It didn’t occur to me that it would be I who would wish to.

The waiter came, fussed over the ice bucket and left. Apart from the flowers and one photograph, the room was
impersonal
. The photograph was of a schoolgirl desperately plain.

At five-thirty it grew dark. I lighted one lamp, not wanting to frighten her, and wished I had brought the English
newspaper
. I think I must have dozed, drugged by the flowers. I was awakened by the sound of the door opening. I hadn’t heard the key. Madame Gonzalez extended a limp hand into the
corridor
for kissing. She wore a greyish jersey suit. It sculpted
contours
of which an eighteen-year-old would not be ashamed. I knew she must be almost twice that age.

She closed the door, turning the key in the lock, and leaned against it breathing a sigh of what sounded like relief. The beautiful eyes were closed. I waited a moment, not wishing to scare her, until she emerged from her reverie. I had my mouth open to say ‘Madame Gonzalez’ in as gentle a voice as I could when she did something that cleaved the words to my tongue. I thought she was running her fingers through her hair. She did in fact put her hands to her head. When she lowered them the burnished-copper what-have-you hairdo was between them. What remained was a short crop of dull,
indeterminately
coloured strands, springing from a crown lamentably flat. I shut my mouth unable even to think. She set the wig, like an empty busby, on the table near the champagne and walked to the mirror on the far wall. Facing it, she cupped
one hand beneath her eye, extended the lid with the other and blinked; when she had repeated the process with the other eye she set two tiny objects into a small box which she took from her handbag. Before I had decided what to do she disappeared into the bedroom. I knew I must go. I was a crafty operator at best but did not care, unless the occasion provided no
alternative
, to wound the susceptibility of others.

I took two burglar-worthy strides to the door. She had not only locked it but removed the key. I was trapped, an unwilling peeping Tom. I resumed my seat behind the flowers and was wondering what I should do, wishing I had driven, as planned, to the Algarve, when she came out of the bedroom. I assumed at least that it was Madame Gonzalez, for it was she who had gone in. The woman who walked slowly into the sitting room reading a letter would scarcely have raised a flicker of desire in the least discriminating man. The straight crop was brushed behind her ears, which were none too small, she wore glasses with unflattering frames and heavy lenses, her silk wrap clung to her flat figure.

I was not ignorant of women and their wiles, which were as ancient as time. It was the complete metamorphosis that threw me. Somewhere I had seen this woman. I refused to admit even to myself that this was Madame Gonzalez.

‘Madame Gonzalez!’ The words came, ejected by my
conscience
, softly.

For a moment her eyes remained on the letter; from there they swivelled to me and from me to the red wig shining in the lamplight on the table. She might have been naked.

Her hand was on the telephone. ‘I shall call the manager.’

‘No, please; let me explain.’

‘How long have you been there?’ She was looking again at the wig.

‘Long enough. I had no intention …’ I took the receiver from her hand. ‘Let me give you some champagne.’

She sat down abruptly and I could see that she was
trembling
. The empty wig, like an evil eye, shrieked traitor, as I did battle with the cork. I looked from it to her in all her
plainness
, quite stupefied and trying not to let her see.

We both needed the drink. She didn’t look at me. The scent of the flowers filled the silence. I cleared my throat. ‘Madame Gonzalez, I would like to explain …’

She held up her hand. ‘It is all the same …’ She turned the photograph of the schoolgirl on the table towards me. Of course, the eyes. I should have known.

‘My mother used to say, “You have beautiful eyes.”’ She spoke as if to herself. ‘Eyes and hands. It was by way of consolation. I was neither talented like Maria or Rosanna, nor beautiful as she. I favoured my father. People remembered him by his nose. On him it was an asset. Maria had her piano, Rosanna her
laboratory
, Mother her looks, Father his nose. Wherever we went, the Gonzalez family made its mark. When I was with my
sisters
, one was begged to perform, the other to speak about her work. When I walked in the street with my mother, heads were turned at every step. When I walked alone I remained alone, attracting less interest than a paving stone. I did not want to be a paving stone. The nose was painful but soon over. That was
the least. It takes me an hour, at the very least, to assemble Lucia Gonzalez for the street. You cannot know what it is like.’

‘Is it worth the candle?’

‘I am no longer a paving stone. Wherever I go heads are turned. There are three sisters.’

She picked up the photograph. ‘There used to be two, Maria, Rosanna and that plain one, I cannot remember her name. I killed her long ago. Only when I am alone does she rise from the tomb – or when I think I am alone.’

Alone and lonely. I pitied her, desire long ago having fled. I tried to think of something to say. That she was more
beautiful
without her aids. She was not. A woman on a bus. A paving stone.