The Rendezvous (13 page)

He didn't work, he thought about her, and her image eased the sickness of self-disgust and made him calm. She was dangerous; she and what she represented to him were the most dangerous contingency he had faced since his escape through Spain after the war. It was madness to see her, madness to allow this infatuation to develop far enough where Julia could see it and accuse them. His first impulse after they met at the cocktail party had been the right one. To pack and run. He had known it then and he knew it now. There was still time to get away, time to avoid the inevitable ending of that unfinished love affair of long ago.

All he had to do was cut it off, go back to Julia and resume the safe life; the Bradfords would leave New York, go back to Boston after a time. They never stayed for long. He need never see Terese again. That was the right course, the sane decision. But he couldn't make it; it was too late for Julia Adams and the old arrangements that were quite satisfactory for Karl Amstat. They weren't acceptable to him, to Alfred Brunnerman. The past and the present had met and fused in the resurgence of his emotional need, and his need for Terese Bradford was stronger than his caution or his interest in the future. She could be his death, but now life itself was incomplete without her. He wasn't going to run away; he wasn't going to give her up and sink for ever into a vacuum. He was going after her and he was going to get her. His habits of self-discipline reasserted themselves and he settled down to work until the daylight came.

5

‘It's a Mr. Amstat on the line, madam.'

‘Oh.' Terese had made up her mind that she was never going to see him again. That was decided. Now she had only to pick up the bedroom extension and she could talk to him. ‘Say I'm out, please, Mary.'

‘Oh I'm sorry, madam,' the maid said, ‘but I told the gentleman you were here. I can say I was mistaken …'

‘No, no,' Terese said, ‘it might sound rude. All right, I'll talk to him. I'll take it in the bedroom.' She walked through from her husband's dressing room, closed the door and picked up the phone.

‘Good morning,' his voice said. ‘Did I disturb you?'

‘No.' She tried to sound normal, but the effect was strained. ‘No, not at all. How are you, Karl?'

‘Very well. It's a lovely day. Are you busy today?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, we're planning a trip; I'm making the arrangements, Bob's very tied up at the moment.'

There was a pause, and when he spoke again his accent sounded stronger; she knew that her own pronunciation faltered when she was upset. Why was it, she thought in the few seconds' interval, why did an emotional pain become something physical, turn itself into a positive ache – heart-ache? It was such a cheap little cliché, but that was where the pain lodged. She had hurt him, and she hated it.

‘I didn't know you were going on a trip. When are you leaving?'

‘In a week or so, we're not sure. We're going to Portugal.'

‘I'm glad it's not immediate.' He gave a little laugh at the other end to show he was relieved. ‘For a moment I thought you were going within the next few days.'

‘We're not sure of the date,' she said. She had asked Bob to take her away and he wouldn't do it. ‘It probably won't be till some time next month.' She had tried to lie, but she was giving in already. Just by hearing him on the telephone.

‘Couldn't we meet some time today? I've got something to tell you, I wanted to ask your advice. Let me take you for a drive this afternoon.'

‘All right,' she said. ‘But if you want to talk to me, perhaps we'd better have lunch first. If you're free.'

‘I'd make myself free,' he said. ‘I will pick you up at twelve-thirty.'

‘No, I'll meet you.' The maid was beginning to notice the phone calls, the porter had seen him drive in the apartment courtyard so often that he called up to the Bradfords' internal number to let her know a gentleman had arrived. It wasn't innocent any more, not now. He had better not be seen too often. ‘I'll meet you at the Algonquin, in the restaurant bar.'

It was a prestige restaurant, semi-tourist in reputation, a place where visitors to New York were always taken at least once, because the wits and writers of the city used it, and it had a pleasantly old-fashioned air, like an English club. They sat at a table at the far end of the room, side by side. She wore a simple suit of pale green, and an emerald clip which Bob had given her one Christmas.

Amstat looked at her beside him. ‘You look beautiful,' he said. ‘You make me feel very proud to be with you. Everyone stares at you and envies me.'

‘You must be used to that,' she said. ‘Being with Julia. She's one of the smartest women in New York.'

‘That's true,' he said. ‘But I won't be with her any more; that's over. That's what I wanted to talk to you about – I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to behave under the circumstances. In Europe I'd know, but here …' He let the sentence drop unfinished. He wanted her to know that there was no other woman now; he had to tell her about Julia because that commitment had made it impossible to take their relationship any further. And also he had begun to have a conscience. He wanted to do the right thing, so that there was the minimum of ill-will on either side.

‘Did you have a row?' Terese asked him. He had broken off with his mistress; he was free. She began to eat the olives on the table, one by one, trying not to show that she was pleased because she hadn't any reason to be jealous now, imagining him in bed with someone else.

‘Yes, unfortunately. The details aren't important, but I'm sorry to end it on bad terms. Julia was very kind to me; I owe her a lot of things apart from the relationship. She introduced me to her friends, she helped me considerably. I'd like to say goodbye as nicely as I can.'

‘Then why not say just that. Thank you for everything, with some flowers. I'd like it that way if I were her. It'll make it easier for her too, because you're sure to meet each other.'

‘Yes, I'll do that.'

They were through lunch by now, and they had been talking without looking round them once. Neither of them saw Vera Kaplan take a table with two other women on the left-hand side halfway down the dining room.

‘Terese – do you remember the first time we had lunch together, at the Cremerie, at Banksville?'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘I remember. I remember all the places we've been to. Why?'

‘I held your hand then,' he said. ‘And you got up to go. I want to hold it now. Will you run away again if I do?'

‘No.' Their hands came together on the seat and gripped hard. ‘Did you love Julia?'

‘You told me I didn't that first day, when I said I was lonely. No, I never loved her. I liked her; she was very attractive. And now I want to be nice to her, as I said. I don't want to be cruel.'

‘You've lived with her for how long? Two years? And it meant nothing to you, Karl. How funny, and how sad too. To live with someone and never to be in love with them.'

‘How do you know about that?' he asked her. ‘Didn't you love your husband when you married him?'

‘Why do you say didn't, as if it was all over? I love him now.' She tried to take her hand away, but he was strong and wouldn't let her. Their clasped hands came into view, and he laid his other hand over them both and stroked her wrist as he had done before. ‘I wish you wouldn't do that,' she said. ‘It's making love to me. Please, Karl, if I ask you, don't make me feel these things.'

‘I feel them too,' he said. ‘Every time I look at you I wonder what it would be like to kiss you. Just to kiss you as a beginning. I'm going to get the bill, and we're going to drive out somewhere.'

She went out of the restaurant with her head down, not seeing anyone, and Vera Kaplan watched them leave.

He drove up the Saw Mill River Parkway to get out of the city.

‘Where are we going, Karl?'

‘I don't know, somewhere quiet, where we can stop. I just took the route because it was the first way out. Otherwise I'd have taken you back to my apartment. I know you don't want that yet.'

‘I don't want it ever,' she said. ‘I don't want it to happen between us. Pull in as soon as you can. I've got to talk to you about it.'

They went on driving and the highway became a quiet road, a place with trees and open country, where it was possible to stop. Outside the village of Chappagua he pulled into the side and switched off. It was a pretty place, with its original Indian name. The city itself seemed many miles away.

‘Don't touch me,' she said. ‘Don't touch me, let me talk to you.'

‘I'll give us both a cigarette,' he said. He lit two in his own mouth and gave one to her. ‘I won't do anything you don't want, my darling. I'm listening to you.'

‘You talked about owing Julia gratitude,' she said, drawing on the cigarette, her hand trembling as she held it. ‘What do you think Robert did for me? He took me out of nowhere, sick, without a memory – ill, penniless, without a relative or a friend in the world. He married me, Karl. I have no beginning before Robert, I'm nothing, I don't exist. I said I loved him and I do, I really do. I don't want to cheat him now, after fifteen years. I don't want to do it and then find that I've cheated you, too.'

‘How can you cheat me?' he asked her.

‘By not being able to love you either, when it comes to the point. I've never felt anything with him – never. He's been so patient with me, so good to me – but I can't love him, Karl. Oh God, what a thing to have to admit to you! I'm frigid, useless!' She began to cry.

‘And that's what you're afraid will happen between us?' He asked the question very gently, and at the same time he took the cigarette out of her fingers and threw it away. Twenty years ago he had given her his handkerchief when she was crying. Now he did the same thing, but he wiped the tears away himself.

‘You're very tender, aren't you?' she whispered to him. ‘You're so gentle with me, always.'

‘I love you,' he said. ‘I've always loved you.'

‘I feel the same.' She let him hold her and she leant against his shoulder with her eyes closed; she felt drained, and yet liberated.

‘I feel everything I should feel when I'm with you. But mostly love; can you believe that?'

‘Yes. That's what I feel too. Love for you, Terese. Love in my body and in my heart. American is a bad language for expressing these things. It's not our language, is it?'

‘No, but it's the best we've got. What are we going to do?'

‘Prove that you're not frigid. Not with me. I don't care about your husband. He didn't know how to love you properly. I'm going to prove it to you, darling. Not completely, but enough, so you can decide. Give me your mouth.'

This was where they had been interrupted; his body was at the same physical pitch then and she was open to his conquest. The twenty years fled and no telephone rang, no nightmare intervened. ‘Oh don't, don't,' she whispered to him, and it was the primeval contradiction of the female cry of invitation. He put his hand over her eyes, blindfolding her, and lost himself in the exploration of her mouth.

At last they broke apart, and both were trembling. ‘I've lost it,' she said, groping, bringing her soaring senses under control with the first inconsequential thing that came into her head.

‘What, what have you lost?'

‘My cigarette – I've dropped it.'

‘I threw it away,' he said, and held her still, making her look at him.

‘I'm going down to Chicago the day after tomorrow, on business. My firm has an apartment there; I use it when I have to stay over. Will you come down with me?'

‘Will I have an affair with you?' she asked him. ‘Yes, I will.'

‘Don't use that word,' he told her. ‘It's cheap. It's what I've had before, what all our friends keep having with each other, coupling without love. This isn't like that. I love you. I'm going to-sleep with you because I love you. And do you know something?' He held her very close to him, as if someone might drag them away from each other. ‘We're very lucky, you and I. This is a second chance.'

‘It's like that,' Terese said. ‘Like going to a place for the first time and recognising something, feeling you've been there before. I knew you before, I think, in some dream of my imagination. Girls dream of a lover, they give him a film star's face, or put him together out of a book. I've made you up and you've come true. I want to come to Chicago with you. And you're right, it's not an affair we're going to have.'

‘No,' he said. It was crazy, like driving a car and finding the accelerator jammed and feeling no fear at all. ‘It's a rendezvous.'

Vera Kaplan didn't linger over lunch; she was not a woman who really enjoyed the company of other women, and these were two casual acquaintances from Florida, paying a visit to New York to do some shopping and look up the people they knew. They had a good lunch, and she made an excuse to leave immediately after they'd had coffee. She wanted to ditch them and go home; she had a call to make before Joe came back from the hospital. They lived in a large apartment on the corner of 53rd and Park Avenue, and it was all paid for by Joe. One thing her family hadn't been able to say about him was that he had married her for money, and it was about the only calumny they hadn't used. It was funny how fiercely she sided with her husband when she thought of him in connection with her family and any of her friends she suspected of snubbing him or patronising her. It wasn't on his account any longer; much of her loyalty to him had gone as her love diminished and her muddled resentments grew. Now she fought his battles on her own behalf, defending herself, not him. She hated other people trying to hurt him because they inflicted a double wound; nothing could have prevented her hurting him herself, and now she had the best opportunity of their married life. She could hardly wait for him to come through the door. She changed out of her lunch time dress and coat, and put on a long housegown. The preparations heightened her sense of theatre and excitement. Then she sat down and dialled Julia Adams' number.