‘I checked it in the Michelin.’
They were well out from land, but mist reduced visibility to a few hundred yards. Engines vibrated underfoot as if to remind her that she had cut herself loose. How long would it be before Tom seemed familiar? It had not yet happened. Her eyes looked from the middle of a stone that would never dissolve. To break out was to know him absolutely, but being on a ship emphasized how hard a move it would be. There was too much of him that she did not know, because there was so much of herself she had never known. Leaving the flat had robbed them of what familiarity they had gained.
Did he feel the same, or was he more sure of himself, or less caring? Greater confidence diminished the importance of the problem. He assumed her attachment to him, and was content with the quality of his to her. He had often set out from coastlines in his life, and on every occasion alone, so how did he view the present departure now that he had company? The newness of everything eased her speculations. She was new to herself, yet trusted to whatever might happen. She had accepted, and couldn’t swim back. As Sedgemoor had said, ‘He was a good man,’ though perhaps she had gambled at setting out with him. She repeated the word whenever another ship passed by. Every move you made in life was a gamble, big or small. Hard to know whether she had done right or wrong. The main thing was that she had done it. Yet she felt that leaving England with Tom was of absolutely no importance. It was impossible to explain. She could not regard it as in any way significant, being tired of considering every uttered word as vital, of looking on all her moves in a way that seemed crucial.
There was less mist near the French coast. Buoys and breakwaters could be seen, and Tom was interested in observing the ship go in. Her resistance was breaking down. But resistance to what? The boat rocked faintly as it made a turn. Before the change that mattered, any resistance formed by the past must finally crumble away. When an announcement said they should return to their cars she followed him down the companionway.
2
Every car started at once, and their exhaust fumes made her feel sick, but when on the ramp and in the open air she felt better. They passed the police and customs posts, and drove by railway lines towards the town. He went with care, not heeding that cars behind wanted him to get a move on. ‘I’ll speed up when I’m used to this side of the road.’
A red sports car, flat as a bug, shot out and overtook, and narrowly missed a French van coming the other way. ‘Probably going to Barcelona,’ Tom said, when they found the car waiting at the first set of traffic lights, ‘so you’d think the odd minute wouldn’t matter.’
She could tell he was glad to get out of the built-up area. He felt his freedom. So did she, with the wide rising fields on either side. French cars came towards them like bullets along the tree-lined roads. Threading Montreuil, as he said, for the hell of it, he thought aloud that he had read of Sterne’s passing through on his somewhat sentimental journey, and hiring a servant there.
‘I haven’t read it,’ she told him.
He laughed. It was a long time ago. ‘One reads all sorts of books,’ he said, ‘in the Merchant Navy, from the misadventures of Elephant Bill to Charles Dickens and the Bible. You scan whatever you come across. My mind’s a tuppenny bin, and I remember them all.’
Beyond Montreuil it rained a few showers. Then the crooked road became straight, and the sky cleared. High white clouds let them through. At Arras he drove along the Rue St Aubert and turned into the hotel courtyard.
Fifty years before, his grandparents, mother and Aunt Clara had made their visit in a family motor with the spare tyre on the outside. A cap and cloche hats had been in fashion, as magazines and photos showed. Now he was here himself. A few months ago, he had not known. How had he lived so emptily? He hadn’t even known other things. Now he was someone else. You were composed of what information was revealed, the sort that took a grip because it was the deepest truth. Someone died: it hit you like a road accident in which, among the injuries, your soul was so smashed that you needed to be completely refurbished by the plastic surgery of memory. It was still going on, but he had already learned to live with the final effect.
The paving and surrounding windows seemed familiar, and he heard Clara shouting his mother’s name for the echo. ‘Ah yes, Monsieur,’ he expected an old woman in black at the reception desk to say, ‘I remember them well. Such a tragic family, come to visit the grave of their dead son!’
A pretty girl asked for his passport: name, address, nationality, and date of arrival to write on a bilingual form in exchange for a door key. Would they eat here? Yes, he told her. He’d never been inside France, he said as they walked up the stairs, though some harbours he knew. Their room overlooked the yard. She liked the flowered wallpaper. On trips to Spain she had stayed in new hotels with white walls, balcony and shower, and built-in noises from people in a similar box next door to embarrass you as much as your own sounds were doing the same to them.
She sat on the bed. ‘I’ll put a dress on.’
‘Then we’ll go to the Grand Place,’ he said, ‘for coffee and a sandwich.’
‘Do you know where it is?’
‘There’s a town plan in the guide book.’
‘Useful things.’ She opened the case. ‘Or maybe a cake to eat.’
He put his arms around her. ‘Why not? France is a good place to be hungry in.’
She stood in her slip. ‘Then again, maybe we won’t go out. It’s sexy, being in our first hotel room. So intimate and strange, don’t you think?’
‘I chose the right place,’ he said, ‘especially for you. There’s a guide book to sexy hotels, comes out every year, and this one has four stars!’
‘Really?’ She half believed him. Anything was possible these days, with so many sex shops, strip shows and dirty films everywhere. And who am I to talk? Here I am, a married woman, come away with a man I hardly know. Yes I do. I already know him more than I ever did George. It’s easier to know someone who is more complicated than someone who is not. He kissed her, and pushed the straps of her slip over her shoulders. She touched his face. Why not? Most hotels are still like this, he said. Shall we? He had to ask, and she wondered why. Shall we? she asked in her turn, smiling, kissing his face and throat. Yes, he said, unclipping her brassiere to run his hands beneath, then lowering his face to the nipples. The air was humid, and she stood in her pants. While he undressed she pulled back the bedclothes, freeing the top sheet to cover them against the draught. She didn’t want anybody to see them, and drew the curtains.
I’m tired, really, she said. I hardly slept last night. The pleasure had not been all hers, she knew. But she couldn’t sleep now, either. This was the only thing left if you did not know what you wanted out of life, or didn’t have any idea as to where you were travelling. How many more times are you going to say it? She wanted him with her all the time, his finger playing at her so that she never failed to come, then feeling him inside her as far as he was able to get. He filled her, nothing sacred any more. Her own smell excited her. He had explored in all ways, every other part, discovering responses that she herself had never known. Such orgasms left her feeling as if there was no spare flesh on her body. Immediately afterwards she knew how much they had separated her not only from him, but also from herself.
In the street her sight was sharper, all senses keen. In utter exhaustion, she was set totally within her own spirit. She laughed that she knew why it was that all the nice girls loved a sailor. He took her hand. It was as if the scale of their exhaustion was manifest only now that they were in another country. People spoke a different language, so they were more enclosed in themselves. She had not expected to make love during the afternoon, had imagined a decorous though perhaps less passionate encounter after a celebratory supper. Its intensity had divided her from him at a time when she wanted to be close, though the detachment seemed more in her than him. His care and attention was twice as necessary to get her back into the orbit of his affection, and therefore into her own. As time elapsed her tenderness and desire would return, and he was always sensitive to her when it did. What had started as an affair had become a prison that she could not bear to escape from, a prison in which she felt herself to be at least his equal because she was also her own jailer as much as he was his, prisoners and jailers both. He didn’t like the comparison, he said, but supposed it ought to be thought about, though for himself he never felt so liberated in his life – being on an extended holiday with someone he loved.