Her parents dined in Marlow, a town an hour from London. The restaurant was crowded. The heat of the day was ebbing at last. They had a table in the corner. Beyond the windows the Thames, narrow here, was filled with pleasure boats. They read the long menu. The waitress appeared. Viri looked up at her. She was fresh-faced, even freckled, with large, blue eyes. She did not seem to notice him, she moved with a deep self-involvement, her hand a bit jerky as she carefully placed the spoons before them—she had memorized all her acts—and folded the napkins into cones before their eyes.
“Do you take our order?” Viri asked.
A long pause while she continued to work. She looked at him vacantly. “No,” she said.
She left them, the faint smile still on her face. Her legs were shapely, she wore a very brief skirt. Near the hem was a spot of whipped cream.
“Did you see that girl?” Nedra asked.
“Yes. This promises to be quite a meal.”
In the end it turned out she merely served and poured the wine. The headwaiter, a foreigner whose jaws had a dark sheen, took the order. Every table was filled. There were silent older couples, girls with outrageously painted eyes. The interval between courses was long. They drank the white wine.
“Have you noticed these people?” Viri said. “Look around. Isn’t it incredible?”
“How ugly they are?”
“But every one of them. If their noses aren’t long, their teeth are bad. If their teeth aren’t bad, they have dandruff on their collar. Can you believe they come from the same clay as the Albas? That it’s all one race?”
“I was very impressed by Alba,” Nedra said. “Did you see his hands? They were very strong.”
“It’s strange how you feel right away that some people are your friends, isn’t it?”
“Yes, very strange.”
The waitress, in slow bewilderment, was serving other tables. One could see above her stockings when she leaned forward. At last she brought the fish.
“You know, this has really been the most wonderful trip,” Nedra said. “It’s just the way I always knew it would be, I’ve loved every minute. Look at the river. Everything is perfect. And whatever we’ve seen, it’s only been a glimpse. I mean, you realize that England has so much; endless riches. I love that feeling.”
“Would you like to try and get tickets for the National Theatre tomorrow night?”
“I don’t think you can get them.”
“We can try.”
“No, I don’t think so. Anyway, it’s our last night here and I don’t want to spend it at the theater.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“I just want to thank you for a wonderful trip.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t make it long ago. We always wanted to.”
“I’m glad we didn’t. Think of how much better it is now. It’s like opening a door in your life.” She took a sip of wine. “And that can only happen when the time comes. Well, there’s one thing I’ve decided definitely…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to go back to our old life.”
She said it casually. The waitress was trying to pour more wine, but the bottle was empty. She looked into the neck for a moment as if uncomprehending and then turned it upside down in the bucket of ice. “Would you like some more wine?” she asked.
“Uh, no, thank you,” Viri said.
They ate in silence. The river was flat and unmoving.
“Would you like to see the sweet tray?” the girl recited.
“Nedra?”
“No.”
Afterwards they strolled across the bridge into the little market town where Shelley once lived. The whiteness of day still filled the heavens. The shops were closed.
They stood near the church. “The hand of St. James,” Viri said, “is reputed to be in the chapel.”
“His real hand?”
“Yes. A relic.”
He was still disturbed by her words; he had been unprepared for them. In the summer heat, in the silence of the village with its dark houses and curving streets, he suddenly felt frightened.
He was reaching that age, he was at the edge of it, when the world becomes suddenly more beautiful, when it reveals itself in a special way, in every detail, roof and wall, in the leaves of trees fluttering faintly before a rain. The world was opening itself, as if to allow, now that life was shortening, one long, passionate look, and all that had been withheld would finally be given.
At that moment as they stood in the leafy churchyard redolent with the dust of Englishmen, with murmured ceremony, he had a sickening vision of what the years might bring: the too-familiar restaurant, a small apartment, empty evenings. He could not face it. “What do you mean by our old life?” he said.
“Look at this headstone,” Nedra said. She was reading a thin, weathered slab dense with words. “Viri, you know what I mean. That’s one of the things I like best about you. You know what I mean at every level.”
“In this case I’m not certain,” he said hesitantly.
“Don’t worry about it now,” she said reassuringly.
“It was like being hit by something. It was just such a surprise.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“When you say our old life, I don’t know exactly what to imagine. Our life has been changing all the time.”
“Do you think so?”
“But you know that, Nedra. As time has gone by, it’s always taken a form that more or less satisfies us, that allows us to be content. It isn’t the same as when we started.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“So what do you mean?”
She did not answer.
“Nedra.”
She turned toward the bridge. “The time will come to talk about it,” she said.
They walked back in the dusk. The river slept beneath them. The boats were almost gone.
They slept in Brown’s, the midnight cool at last, the city covered only with the sound of an airliner crossing. They bathed and undressed in the comfort of rooms maintained for a race that loves hunting, that knows perfectly the rules of behavior, is laconic in personal talk and triumphant in public. Side by side in separate soft beds they lay, like rulers of different realms.
She wrote to André: We have never walked in Hyde Park, which is one of the things you said you’d like to do when you showed me London. Of course it hasn’t been hard to avoid the park, there’s so much to see. It’s such a great city that you could never use it up.
I walk along these marvelous streets, I think of your face and how I love you, of those things you say which are somehow everything. I think of you often and and in ways I leave for you to imagine. For some reason I feel quite close to you here, and I’m really not unhappy because we are apart. No unhappiness can come because of you—that is the sun you’ve put inside me (the only son, I hope). I miss you, I long for you, I see you everywhere.
We are having a wonderful time. We talk buildings, we travel to see buildings, we track them down. I’m like the wife of a bug collector. We are on this extraordinary island of forests, concerts, restaurants—and everything is bugs. But I’ve always believed, I know it’s true, that any main branch leads you straight to the trunk. If you know one thing completely, it touches everything. But, of course you have to know it.
I love you very much today. I hug you with all my heart.