The Night Manager (21 page)

The scenery was slow and majestic, with rolling blue forest and a drained sky. But as they pressed north the day darkened and an east wind turned to drizzle. It was raining by the time they reached the cottage. They undressed each other, and a lifetime passed for Jonathan in which for a long while there was no appeasement and no release as he made up for months of abstinence. She fought him without taking her eyes from him except to offer him a different attitude, a different woman.

"Wait," she whispered.

Her body sighed and fell again, then rose, her face stretched and became ugly but did not burst. A cry of surrender escaped her, but from so far off it could have come from the drenched forests that surrounded them or the depths of the grey lake.

She mounted him and they began the climb again, peak to peak until they drowned together.

He lay intently beside her, watching her breathing, resenting her repose. He tried to work out whom he was betraying.

Sophie? Or just myself as usual? We're betraying Thomas. She rolled onto her side, turning her back to him. Her beauty added to his loneliness. He began caressing her.

"He's a good man," Yvonne said. "Into anthropology and Indian rights. His father's a lawyer working with the Cree. He wants to follow in his footsteps." She had found a bottle of wine and brought it back to bed. Her head was resting on his chest.

"I'm sure I'd like him very much," Jonathan said politely, picturing an earnest dreamer in a Fair Isle pullover penning love letters on recycled paper.

"You're a lie," she said, distractedly kissing him. "You're some kind of lie. You're all truth, but you're a lie. I don't understand you."

"I'm on the run," he said. "I had a problem in England."

She clambered up his body and put her head beside his.

"Want to talk about it?"

"I've got to get hold of a passport," he said. "That stuff about being Swiss is junk. I'm British."

"You're what?"

She was excited. She picked up his glass and drank from it, watching him over the brim.

"Maybe we can steal one," she said. "Change the picture. A friend of mine did that."

"Maybe we can," he agreed.

She was fondling him, eyes alight. I've tried everything I could think of, he told her. Explored guest bedrooms, looked in parked cars. No one carries a passport round here. Been down to the post office, got the forms, studied the formalities. Visited the town graveyard looking for dead men of my own age; thought I might apply on their behalf. But you never know what's safe these days: maybe the dead are already in some computer.

"What's your real name?" she whispered. "Who are you? Who are you?"

A moment's wonderful peace descended over him as he made her the ultimate gift. "Pine. Jonathan Pine."

All day they lived naked, and when the rain cleared they took the boat out to an island in the centre of the lake and swam naked from the shingle beach.

"He's turning in his thesis in five weeks," she said.

"And then?"'

"Marriage to Yvonne."

"And then?"

"Working with the Indians in the bush." She told him where. They swam a distance.

"Both of you?" he asked.

"Sure."

"How long for?"

"Couple of years. See how it goes. We're going to have babies. About six."

"Will you be faithful to him?"

"Sure. Sometimes."

"Who's up there?"

"Cree mainly. He likes Cree best. Speaks it pretty well."

"What about a honeymoon?" he asked.

"Thomas? His idea of a honeymoon is McDonald's and hockey practice at the arena."

"Does he travel?"

"Northwest Territories. Keewatin. Yellowknife. Great Slave Lake. Norman Wells. Goes all over."

"I meant abroad."

She shook her head. "Not Thomas. He says it's all in Canada."

"What is?"

"Everything we need in life. It's all here. Why go further? He says people travel too much. He's right."

"So he doesn't need a passport," Jonathan said.

"Fuck you," she said. "Get me back to shore."

But by the time they had cooked supper and made love again, she was listening to him.

Every day or night they made love. In the small hours of morning when he came up from the disco, Yvonne would lie awake waiting for his brushing signal against her door. He would tiptoe to her and she would draw him down on her, her last long drink before the desert. Their lovemaking was almost motionless. The attic was a drum, and every movement clattered through the house. When she started to call out in pleasure, he laid his hand over her mouth and she bit it, leaving teeth marks in the flesh around his thumb.

If your mother discovers us, she'll throw me out, he said.

Who cares, she whispered, gathering herself more tightly round him. I'll go with you. She seemed to have forgotten everything she had told him about her future plans.

I need more time, he insisted.

For the passport?

For you, he replied, smiling in the darkness.

She hated his leaving, yet dared not keep him with her.

Madame Latulipe had taken to looking in on her at all odd hours.

"You are asleep, cocotte? You are happy? Only four weeks to your wedding, mon p'tit chou. The bride must have her rest."

Once when her mother appeared Jonathan was actually lying beside Yvonne in the darkness, but by a mercy Madame Latulipe did not switch on the light.

They drove in Yvonne's baby-blue Pontiac to a motel in Tolerance, and thank God he made her leave their cabin ahead of him, because as she walked to her car, still smelling of him, she saw Mimi Leduc grinning at her from the next-door parking space.

"To fais visile au show?" Mimi yelled, lowering her window.

"Uh-huh."

"C'est super, n'est-ce pas? T'as vu le little black dress? Tres low, tres sexy?"

"Uh-huh."'

"I bought it! Toi aussi faut I'acheter! Pour ton trousseauuu!"

They made love in an empty guest room while her mother was at the supermarket, and in the walk-in airing cupboard.

She had acquired the recklessness of sexual obsession. The risk was a drug for her. Her whole day was spent contriving moments for them to be alone together.

"When will you go to the priest?" he asked.

"When I'm ready," she replied, with something of Sophie's quirkish dignity.

She decided to be ready next day.

The old cure Savigny had never let Yvonne down. Since childhood she had brought him her cares, triumphs and confessions.

When her father struck out at her, it was old Savigny who dabbed her black eye and talked her round. When her mother drove her to dementia, old Savigny would laugh and say, She's just a silly woman sometimes. When Yvonne started going to bed with boys, he never told her to slow down. And when she lost her faith, he was sad, but she went on visiting him each Sunday evening after the Mass she no longer attended, armed with whatever she had filched from the hotel: a bottle of wine or, like this evening, Scotch.

"Bon, Yvonne! Sit down. My God, you are glistening like an apple. Dear Heaven, what have you brought me? It's for me to bring presents to the bride!"

He drank to her, leaning back in his chair, staring into the infinite with his leaky old eyes.

"In Esperance we were obliged to love each other," he declared, from somewhere in the middle of his homily to intending couples.

"I know."

"It is only yesterday that everyone was a stranger here, everyone missed his family, his country, everyone was a little afraid of the bush and the Indians."

"I know."

"So we drew together. And we loved each other. It was natural. It was necessary. And we dedicated our community to God. And our love to God. We became His children in the wilderness."

"I know," said Yvonne again, wishing she had never come.

"And today we are good townspeople. Esperance has grown up. It's good, it's beautiful, it's Christian. But it's dull. How's Thomas?"

"Thomas is great," she said, reaching for her handbag.

"But when will you bring him to me? If it is because of your mother that you do not let him come to Esperance, then it is time to submit him to the test of fire!" They laughed together.

Sometimes old Savigny had these flashes of insight, and she loved him for them. "He must be some boy to catch a girl like you. Is he eager? Does he love you to distraction? Write to you three times a day?"

"Thomas is kind of forgetful."

They laughed again, while the old cure kept repeating "forgetful" and shaking his head. She unzipped her handbag and drew out two photographs in a cellophane envelope and handed one to him. Then handed him his old steel-framed spectacles from the table. Then she waited while he got the photograph into focus.

"This is Thomas? My God, he's a pretty boy, then! Why did you never tell me? Forgetful? This man? He's a force! Your mother would kneel at the feet of such a man!"

Still admiring Jonathan's photograph at arm's length, he tilted it to catch the light from the window.

"I'm dragging him off on a surprise honeymoon," she said.

"He hasn't got a passport. I'm going to press one into his hand in the vestry."

The old man was already fumbling in his cardigan for a pen.

She held one ready. She turned the photographs facedown for him and watched him while he signed them one by one, at child's speed, in his capacity as a minister of religion licensed by the laws of Quebec to perform marriages. From her handbag she drew the blue passport application form: "Formule A pour les personnel de 16 ans et plus," and indicated for him the place where he must sign again, as a witness personally acquainted with the applicant.

"But how long have I known him? I've never set eyes on the rascal!"

"Just put forever," said Yvonne, and watched him write down "la vie entiere. "

Tom, she telegraphed triumphantly that night. Church needs sight of your birth certificate. Send express to Babette. Keep loving me. Yvonne.

When Jonathan brushed against her door she pretended to be asleep and didn't stir. But when he stood at her bedside she sat up and seized him more hungrily than ever. I did it, she kept whispering to him. I got it! It's going to work!

It was soon after this episode and at much the same early-evening hour that Madame Latulipe paid her call by appointment on the oversized superintendent of police at his splendid offices. She was wearing a mauve dress, perhaps for half-mourning.

"Angelique," said the superintendent, drawing up a chair.

"My dear. For you, always."

Like the cure, the superintendent was an old trailman.

Signed photographs on the walls portrayed him in his prime, now in furs handling a dogsled, now as lone hero in the bush pursuing his man on horseback. But these mementos did the superintendent little service. White chins now hid the once manly profile. A glossy paunch sat like a brown football over the leather belt of his uniform.

"One of your girls got herself into a spot of trouble again?" the superintendent asked with a knowing smile.

"Thank you, Louis, not so far as I know."

"Somebody been putting his hand in the till?"

"No, Louis, our accounts are quite in order, thank you."

The superintendent recognised the tone and erected his defences.

"I'm glad to hear that, Angelique. There's a lot of it about these days. Not like it used to be at all. Un p'tit drink?"

"Thank you, Louis, this is not a social visit. I wish you to make enquiries about a young man whom Andre has employed in the hotel."

"What's he done?"

"It is more a question of what Andre has done. He has employed a man with no papers. He has been naïf."

"Andre's a kindly fellow, Angelique. One of the best."

"Perhaps too kindly. The man has been with us already ten weeks, and his papers have not arrived. He has placed us in an illegal situation."

"We're not Ottawa up here, Angelique. You know that."

"He says he is a Swiss."

"Well, perhaps he is. Switzerland's a fine country."

"First he tells Andre that his passport is with the immigration authorities, then he tells him it is with the Swiss Embassy for renewal, now it is back with another authority. Where is it?"

"Well, I haven't got it, Angelique. You know Ottawa. Those fairies take three months to wipe their arses," said the superintendent, imprudently grinning at the felicity of the phrase.

Madame Latulipe coloured. Not with a becoming blush, but with a sallow patchy fury that made the superintendent nervous.

"He is not Swiss," she said.

"How do you know that now, Angelique?"

"Because I telephoned the Swiss Embassy. I said I was his mother."

"And?"

"I said I was furious at the delay, my son was not permitted to work, he was acquiring debts, he was depressed, if they cannot send his passport they must send a letter of confirmation that everything is in order."

"I'm sure you did it well, Angelique. You're a great actress, We all know that."

"They have no trace of him. They have no Jacques Beauregard who is Swiss and living in Canada; it is all a fiction. He is a seducer."

"He's a what?"

"He has seduced my daughter, Yvonne. She is infatuated by him. He is a refined impostor, and his plan is to steal my daughter, steal the hotel, steal our peace of mind, our contentment, our..."

She had a whole list of things that Jonathan was stealing.

She had compiled it as she lay awake at night and added to it with each new sign of her daughter's obsession with the thief.

The only crime she had omitted to mention was the theft of her own heart.

TEN

The airstrip was a green ribbon stretched across the brown Louisiana swamp. Cows grazed at the edge of it, white egrets perched on the cows' backs, looking from the air like dabs of snow. At the far end of the ribbon stood a busted tin shed, which had once been a hangar, A red mud track ran to it from the highway, but Strelski didn't seem sure it was the place, or perhaps he wasn't happy with it. He banked the Cessna and let it slide, then he made a low diagonal pass over the swamp.