On the landing, Alec was coming out of Alice’s room, pulling the door shut.
‘Una still with her?’ whispered Larry.
Alec nodded.
They moved away from the door towards the window that overlooked the garden.
‘What was she saying?’ asked Larry.
‘Una?’
‘Mum. All that French.’
‘A lot of things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as who brought the flowers. What it was like at the hospital. She said she wanted to go back to the old house. To Granny Wilcox’s.’
‘Wow. I don’t even remember how to get there. Do you?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘You think she’s well enough to go anywhere?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We practically had to carry her up the stairs.’
‘It’s what she wants.’
‘Does she know what she wants?’
‘You think you know better?’
‘Of course not. Jesus. No need to bite my head off.’ He almost said: She’s my mother too. Being back at home he suddenly felt about fourteen. ‘Maybe we should talk to Una about it. Brando says she knows her stuff.’
‘She does.’
Pause.
‘I’ll be in the summerhouse,’ said Alec.
‘Fine.’
‘She’s got a bell.’
‘I know.’
‘She said she was glad you’re back.’
‘Yeah. Me too.’
Passing the orchard, Alec heard the reverend counting.
‘Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three…’
Ever since coming down from London he had longed for others to share the burden with him. Shield him. But now that they were here he found he missed the solitude of the week before when the garden’s great resource of quiet had begun to tease out something equivalent in himself, which now all these voices drove away. It made it hard to be civil. It certainly made it harder to think.
The air in the summerhouse was flat with heat and heavily scented with the honeysuckle. He left the door open and set the manuscript on the table by the window. On the shelf, where clay flowerpots had once been stored, he had put his dictionaries and other useful books, including copies of Sisyphus Rex and Flicker in the Eliard translations. His own effort had ground to a halt a third of the way through the second act. After Alice’s fit, which had taken on in his mind the dimensions of mythology, he had found it almost physically impossible to concentrate. It was like lying with his head below a finely suspended anvil, trying not to think of what would happen when it fell. He couldn’t do it. Not even a letter from Marcie Stoltz, forwarded by Mr Bequa, in which she confessed herself ‘intrigued’ to know how the work was progressing, had made any difference. Anything beyond the white front gate of Brooklands had a remoteness that beggared the imagination, though he thought Stoltz might start to phone (she had his number at the house), and he would have to start lying to her, saying how well it was going and how excited he was.
He polished his glasses with the tuck of his shirt, then took a pencil, sharpened it, and opened the manuscript:
Mineur un: J’ai revé de ce moment cent fois. Même quand j’étais éveillé.
Mineur deux: Et comment termine le rêve?
He didn’t think Larry understood a thing. Larry was thinking about Larry. Or about Kirsty or America or something. But not about Alice. Of course he cared, they all cared, but the others were just looking on, and that wasn’t enough. He didn’t believe any of them could see what he saw: the complete impossibility of letting it go on and on for weeks and months. But what could he do? Did he still believe in fairytales? In stumbling across a magic cure? He thought perhaps he did, and this seemed funny in an utterly bleak sort of way, and he was laughing to himself when Una tapped on the timber by the open door.
‘I didn’t know it was a comedy,’ she said.
‘Only in parts,’ said Alec.
She stepped into the shed. ‘Is that him?’ She pointed to the portrait of Lázár in the Luxembourg which Alec had pinned to the edge of the shelf. ‘What’s that he’s carrying?’
‘A cake perhaps. Or a bomb.’
‘I’d say he’s got a kind face, so it’s probably a cake.’
‘Probably.’
He studied her while she studied Lázár. A slight pout to her lower lip. Pale lashes. Grey eyes touched with violet. A little round scar on the side of her nose as if once she wore a stud there. She had on a blue cotton dress, sleeveless, and her shoulders were tanned, honey-brown against the just visible plain white strap of her bra. She must have been lying in the sun at the weekends, and he imagined her with a boyfriend, a doctor perhaps, who had a boat or a convertible. Someone like a young Brando.
‘What was your mother saying?’ she asked.
He told her about the house.
She nodded. ‘Let’s see how we get on. You’re going to need to keep a closer eye on her now.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ve put the Dexamethasone on top of the chest with a note explaining the routine. Will you make sure she takes it? We don’t want her back in the hospital if we can help it.’
‘I’ll put it on the list,’ he said.
‘I like your brother,’ she said.
‘We’re very different.’
‘Oh, I’m not so sure of that,’ she said. ‘Are you nearly finished with the play?’
‘It’s coming on.’
‘That’s grand.’
Dennis Osbourne, red-faced from his exertions, was trying to conceal himself behind a slender tree in the orchard. Una waited, smiling at him, until Ella came through the long grass and captured him.
‘Your daddy wants you,’ she said, holding out her hand to the girl. ‘Sorry to spoil your game, Reverend.’
‘I need a sit-down,’ he said. ‘How’s Alice?’
‘Back on the English now. She’s getting quite mischievous, isn’t she?’
‘Poor woman,’ said the reverend, squatting awkwardly on the grass. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘She’s sleeping. Best let her get on with it.’
‘Yes,’ said Osbourne. ‘Sleep’s the great healer, I suppose. I shall see you later, Ella.’
‘Thank you for playing with me,’ said Ella, who had been carefully drilled in the importance of such remarks. She took Una’s hand and together they went into the cool of the house. Una said goodbye to her in the living room. She was running late for an appointment in Nailsea. A young haemophiliac with Kaposi’s sarcoma. Mother going out of her mind. Afraid to sleep. Asking why all the time. Why him, why us. Why why why.
‘Be a good girl now,’ she said. ‘Keep an eye on them all till I come back.’
Ella waited. When she heard the front door shut she switched on the television and started flicking through the channels, though without a remote control she wasn’t sure at first how to do it, and even when she had worked out how to use the buttons she couldn’t find MTV. She settled for a cartoon, and had curled herself on to the sofa to watch it – the manic pursuits, the crash-bangs – when her father appeared, wrapped in a white towelling bathrobe, the wash bag in his hand. He switched off the television and knelt on the floor in front of her.
‘We have some talking to do,’ he said. ‘Some very serious talking.’
6
The evening that followed his meeting with Emil Bexheti, László dined with Kurt at Marco Polo’s on the rue de Condé. Asparagi di campo, risotto alia sbirraglia, tortellini bolognese – all the good things. Then they walked home together, hand in hand, past the church of St Sulpice and along by the side of the Luxembourg. It was a little after twelve. A scattering of stars showed faintly above the lamplight, and the air was redolent with that mix of gutters and public gardens, tobacco smoke, restaurant steam, and the sour but somehow likable breath of the Métro exhaled through broad grills in the pavement, which give to Paris nights their inimitable savour.