Tremor (13 page)

‘Thank you, Mr Burford. It is so good here. This was a beautiful dinner, better than I can ever cook for you. I am sure I am going to enjoy it all.'

He said: ‘OK. OK. But let's just make one move forward, can't we? Could you after all this time come to call me Lee?'

She looked up almost in relief, as if she had been afraid the move forward he was going to suggest was something more physical. ‘Of course … Lee. Thank you. What time do you wish in the morning?'

‘I'll ring you. Breakfast in bed, of course. If you like you can tell me what you want and I'll order it for you.'

‘Thank you, Mr … Thank you, Lee. You have been very good to me.'

‘Not perhaps as good as I'd wish to be.'

This was more than he had ever said before. He blamed the wine.

Perhaps it was the familiarity about travel which had brought them literally closer together. Heads bent over passports, food on trays on the plane and her difficulty in getting the knives and forks out of their plastic wrappings. Trying to sleep, hands and knees almost touching. Her luggage coming first off the carousel and their amusement and speculation because his was the last. Sitting together in a taxi, she dropping her handbag and spilling tweezers and nail varnish and some coins, and their groping together on the floor to retrieve them, signing in at the hotel, and shall we have coffee now or go straight to our rooms? Translating dollars into francs and changing money.

Before they left – two weeks before they left – Lee had had another letter from Ann. He carried it with him but had not shown it to Letty.

Darling, darling,

I am writing this from a yacht called
Nimrod
and we are off the coast of North Borneo. We're at anchor, having taken refuge from the high winds that have blown up. There is a heavy swell, so do not take my erratic handwriting for some sign of deterioration!

I love New Zealand, and have crewed for many people who have come out here to escape the pressures of civilization. Normally I go out just for the day, or maybe two days, but this time I was invited by the Parfitts (whom I mentioned in my last letter) to go off for a long cruise round Papua New Guinea, and thence on to Borneo. There are three of the Parfitts, English and very charming, and I simply could not bring myself to refuse!

There are pirates, we're told, in these waters, apparently Filipinos, but it is really the weather that is holding us up, and I don't think we shall get home for Christmas. There's a hurricane somewhere in the vicinity and John Parfitt is taking no chances. In the meantime I could write you ten pages describing all the remarkable things I have seen. I hope sometime next year to sail up to Cairns in Queensland and travel back overland by bus, south, probably to Sydney and then get a crewing lift home to N.Z. I want to see much more of Australia.

Darling, something frightful has turned up. The N.Z. Immigration Authorities are prepared to accept my application for Residency only if I have no dependants who might come over and apply later! I have told them I have no children and that I am amicably separated from my husband, but this does not satisfy them. You are of almost pensionable age and they are anxious that you shall not arrive, say, next year, take a job and presently expect to be supported by them! Isn't it pathetic?

Forgive me, all this seems terrible, and it is all my fault, I know. Would it be possible that we could be divorced?

Of course this would not prevent your coming out to see me – as I
truly
hope you will. Perhaps next spring? When I left N.Z. the bottle-brush trees were just coming out, a glorious crimson. I hope they will not be over too soon.

How is everybody in Oakbridge? Please give my love or regards to anyone you meet and who asks about me. Father writes to say he is well and I know he would like to come over. But he does not want to leave his cats.
Nous verrons!

Dearest love,

Ann

On the second day in Paris they walked for miles; Lee reckoned it was the equivalent of thirty-six holes of golf. They lunched at the Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower. They ate
pigeonneau rôti aux bolets
and drank a good white wine. She obviously liked wine and as yet she lacked his or Ann's fastidious tastes.

As did all her experience. In spite of being thirty-eight she had seen so little and done so little. She had married Carl Heinz nineteen years ago. Leon had been born the next year. She had had a bad time, had had a bit of a breakdown. Heinz had been able to provide an apartment for his family but had necessarily been away a lot. What interested Lee to speculate was what happened when he came home.

In mid-February, after she had agreed to come away with him, she had taken another week off to visit her son in New York. When she came back she said that this time he had been difficult to find but she had eventually seen him three times. He seemed, she said, contented enough in his new life – if content was a word that could be properly used in this respect. He belonged to a youth cult, advocating peace and love. She thought there were drugs involved but hoped they were the innocuous ones. At least he had made clear that, while acknowledging her concern for him, he did not want to come back to Concord.

That second night they dined at L'Arpège. As they were drinking coffee at the end of a wonderful meal Lee showed her Ann's letter. She read it slowly, then again.

‘Ah, so. That is unfortunate. And shall you agree?'

‘Agree to what?'

‘A divorce.'

‘I haven't decided. But yes, I suppose I shall. She has chosen that life, and I don't want to put obstacles in her way.'

‘You must try not to be bitter, Lee.'

‘No,' Lee agreed. ‘No. I am trying not to be.'

There was a long silence. The extra wine he had drunk had given him broadening thoughts.

‘Did your husband beat you?' he asked eventually.

‘Did he what?' Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Beat me? Ah, no. He is not that type.'

‘Never even hit you?'

‘Of course not!'

‘Sometimes I fancy I could hit you.'

She stared at him, half laughing at the outrageousness of this statement from such a restrained man. ‘I don't believe that! Why should you?'

‘Why should I not? You are so damned – reasonable. So detached.'

‘Oh.' She was scandalized. ‘You have been very kind to me. I hoped I had been of help to you. And I have come away, and it is lovely.'

‘Do you love your husband?'

‘… No.'

‘Whom have you loved, then?'

‘Loved?'

‘Yes, loved properly.'

‘Oh … my brother. My son …'

‘That's a different sort of love.'

‘And in a way … Mrs Burford. I care so much about her happiness. And I care for yours. She asked me …'

‘What?'

‘She asked me to look after you when she was gone. I – have been trying to do that.'

Quicksands moved.

‘Is that all you have been trying to do?'

‘Yes … mainly.'

‘She asked you …'

‘One day she made me promise. She said: “ After I have left he will need all the company and help he can get. He won't
seem
to. He looks very composed, very self-sufficient, but really he'll need kindness and thoughtfulness and friendship, and I want you to promise me …” So I promised.'

‘That's what she said?'

‘More or less.'

‘And I guess that's what you've done.'

‘It's what I have tried to do. I do not know if it has been successful. At first I did not like to intrude on you. I thought you might feel I was interfering. But gradually it came to something more. You began to ask me to do things, and I did them gladly. For me – I have enjoyed it.'

‘Because you were obliging Ann?'

‘That, yes. But not just that.'

A lady in an extraordinary hat, conceived as a jockey cap out of the light dragoon guards, was entering the restaurant. At any other time Letty would have been hypnotized by the sight, but now she scarcely saw it.

Lee said, choosing his words carefully: ‘How I regarded you when you were first a friend of Ann's I'll not bother to go into. But over the months I have come to regard you a little differently. Life has changed very much since Ann left. And it has changed me. I confess I have found you – attractive and good company. Other thoughts and expectations have flowed from that. I hoped that this holiday would be a mutual pleasure for us both. But … but if you have only come away with me because of a promise you made her – and if you feel – feel some sense of disloyalty to her in – in being anything more than a companion to me … then I am defeated … Completely defeated.'

She didn't reply, and presently he called for
l'addition
and they left.

They saw much in the afternoon, but later he could not remember what he had seen.

Whether he liked it or not, on this trip his blood had begun to carry an extra charge. What was happening or had happened in the world around him seemed to have less importance. Waves of pleasure made him even forget his work, the briefs and the cases he had left behind him – and nearly forget the disaster of Ann's desertion and the contents of her latest letter. He was truly alone, and yet there was excitement in being alone – and a new excitement in this new companionship.

But now he had a feeling that he had come up suddenly, horribly against a brick wall. If Letty was only companioning him because she had promised Ann … his hopes and pleasures and emotions of yesterday were in the trash can.

Was there, he wondered, a hint of lesbianism in the situation? It had never crossed his mind in Ann's case, in spite of the odd women friends she had sometimes picked up. But if Letty were a full-blown lesbian it might have touched some responding spark in the other woman. But
was
Letty that? Did that explain the breakup of her marriage, the absence of men friends, her withdrawn attitude to him, finally her confession that she had never ever been in love?

In the evening they dined at Le Dôme. At the end of the meal he could contain himself no longer.

‘Are you in love with Ann?'

‘What?' She blinked. ‘What is that?'

‘I said are you in love with Ann – my wife?'

She hesitated. ‘In love with her? I do not know. I am not sure how you mean it. I think I love her, yes. She is perhaps the most lovable woman I ever met.'

‘If she had stayed, could it have become a relationship?'

‘You mean women together? Butch women and dykes – is that what you call it?'

‘That is what people call it, yes.'

‘Well, the answer is no.'

‘No?'

‘No.'

‘So your marriage with Carl was for real?'

‘Of
course
it was for real! But it was not a
happy
one!'

He blew out a slow breath. ‘Oh, my God! Take another glass of wine!'

‘Thank you,' she said stiffly, ‘I do not wish more wine.'

In enormous relief he put his hand on hers. ‘ Forgive me. I've been getting my wires crossed. But can you blame me?'

‘Of course I can blame you!'

‘Look,' he said. ‘Look. There's a lot I don't understand, but thank Christ one cloud has been cleared away. Look …'

‘Why should I look any more?'

‘Letty,' he said. ‘I am not a conceited man. I am
years
older than you, and it is not difficult to appreciate that you may like me but not come on for me in other ways. Also that you feel a loyalty towards my wife. What I can't quite figure out is why you have allowed me to kiss you over the last months and have apparently shown no aversion – and seemed to welcome my company – yet it has apparently meant nothing to you at all.'

‘Of course it has meant something!' she said. ‘It is – it brings the pleasure! I enjoy it. I am also … still flattered by it.'

‘But you want nothing more.'

She frowned as if in slight perplexity, but did not speak.

‘You dislike what is called the sexual act?'

‘Yes, I think that may be so.'

‘You see …' He ran his hand through his hair. ‘ Of course I understand your feeling about Ann. And in no time, it must seem to you I have thrown off my love for her and am looking elsewhere! It isn't natural, you think. Or if it is natural it is not admirable. Well, that may be so. But humanity is often not very admirable – as I have spent a professional life discovering. And since Ann left I have been – lonely.'

‘Ah, lonely. That is a different thing.'

He said suddenly: ‘ Did you often make love with Carl?'

‘What? Oh … I do not know. What is often? He is – was away so much.'

‘And when he did make love to you – was it pleasurable?'

She hesitated. ‘ I do not wish to talk about it.'

He refilled her wineglass and moved it a few inches nearer to her. ‘ I want you to tell me about it.'

She looked at him with a flicker of anger in her eyes. ‘ Why should I? It is no business of yours.'

‘Forgive me but I consider it to be so.'

‘I am not in your court to be cross-examined in front of a judge!'

‘Certainly not. But I want to understand – to help.'

‘You will help by not asking such things.'

‘So it wasn't pleasurable.'

‘Probably that is something wrong with me.'

‘I doubt it.'

‘I think we should go home.'

‘Cab tonight? I think I've walked enough.' He motioned for the bill.

She nodded, and they waited in silence. Then he said: ‘ So he was brutal …'

She carefully folded her napkin and stood up. ‘Shall we go?'

‘And be arrested for leaving without settling the check? Sit down, Letty. Please, dear Letty, sit down.'

She sat down and he saw she was close to tears. He said nothing more. Money passed, compliments were exchanged, he took her thin arm; a taxi was summoned, and they were driven back to their hotel.