‘Of course.’
Still, she does not speak for a few seconds.
From the start he has frequently had the sense that she is measuring him against Fraser King—measuring him in every way, from the most obviously physical to the most ineffably emotional—measuring him, and finding him wanting. There have been times when seeing her lost in thought—for instance on the Eurostar as it left Lille Europe—he experienced the precise, painful feeling that she would prefer to be there with Fraser King than with him. That she would prefer to be anywhere with Fraser King than with him. And yet now she is telling him, in effect, that this is not true. Hearing her say it, he feels a hint of euphoria. Fraser King is no longer a factor. Everything is now okay.
It is a feeling that lasts only a few seconds, until she says, ‘I don’t think we should see each other for a while.’
And when that elicits a prolonged silence, ‘I’m sorry.’
He turns to her and sighs and they smile wistfully at each other.
She lets him slip his arm under her neck and snuggles up to him. The way she does this makes him improve his prognosis. When she says she does not think they should see each other ‘for a while’, what he now takes her to mean is maybe a week or two—until she has told Fraser that she intends to turn him down. Poor Fraser.
‘I’m sorry, James,’ she says.
‘I understand.’
‘Thanks for being so magnanimous.’
‘That’s okay,’ he says. (She laughs.) Easy to be magnanimous when he is the one in her bed. He says, ‘When you say a while…’
‘Mm.’
‘What do you mean?’
She shakes her head—he feels it move in the hollow of his neck. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I just… I don’t know. Sorry.’ And as if it were part of the apology, she strokes his leg with her foot.
Still studying the ceiling fan, he twists a lock of her hair around his finger. Then he turns onto his side, and studies her face. She submits to this study with a small smile. For the first time that night she does not try to move away when he kisses her on the mouth. Indeed, she even opens her mouth, and there is an immediate surge to heart-hammering intensity. She does not let this last long, however. He encircles her with his arms and squeezes her. She squeezes him too, and for a long time they lie there like that.
‘Should I turn off the light?’ she whispers.
‘If you want.’
With a sudden twisting movement she turns and sits, takes a sip of water—with water in her mouth she offers him the glass, he shakes his head—and switches off the light.
*
It is still dark when he leaves the bed and feels for his things, which are mixed up with hers on the floor. He has a terrible feeling that he is neglecting poor Hugo—who, having spent the night unexpectedly on his own in Mecklenburgh Street, must urgently need a walk. That is why he is standing there in the dark, even though to all intents and purposes it is still night outside and he has not slept much on the thin pillows, frequently waking to look at the time, in spite of the fact that the alarm was set. Then it went off—loud and shrill—and he sat up while she struggled, still essentially asleep, to make it stop.
He is feeling for his things on the floor when she turns on the light. She puts a hand over her eyes. ‘No, it’s okay,’ he says quietly, doing the same. ‘I don’t need the light. Thanks.’ His mouth is thick and faecal-tasting. He is sweating. It is too hot for him here, where the storage heater seems impossible to switch off and leaks nasty heat all night.
When he is dressed he sits on the edge of the bed, wondering whether she has fallen asleep again. She has not—as soon as she feels his weight on the mattress, she sits up, and seems to prop herself on an elbow.
‘Okay, I’m going,’ he whispers.
‘Okay.’
He kisses her, lightly touching her lips with his own. Her lips are sleepily warm. Her whole face, which he can hardly see, is sleepily soft and warm. He kisses her again, and is just standing up to leave when she says, ‘James.’
‘Yes.’
‘So… What are we going to do?’ she says. ‘Just carry on as before?’
For a few seconds he says nothing. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
This time it is she who does not speak for a few seconds. ‘Okay,’ she says eventually. ‘Nothing too intense, though.’
He is not sure what she means by this. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Nothing too intense.’
‘Okay.’
‘Sorry to wake you up.’
‘That’s okay.’
She hears him tiptoe through the squeaking hall. There is a suspenseful silence while he puts on his shoes and jacket, then she hears the front door swing open and shut. Twice. In an effort to be quiet, the first attempt was too tentative.
2
1
She is half an hour late for work, and striding across the lobby she sees immediately that Carlo is upset. ‘I’m sorry, Carlo,’ she sings, while still out in the open space, under the shimmering spectrums of the two-tonne chandelier. He just shakes his head and skulks into the staff cloakroom. For a few seconds she stands at the front desk, paying down the oxygen debt of her hurry.
Then she follows the small Italian into the staff cloakroom. In the mirror, she sees what a mess her hair is, how pouchy her eyes look.
Carlo is shrugging on his smart blue overcoat.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says flatly, as if it were a final offer.
‘S’okay,’ Carlo says, without looking at her. He straightens his scarf. ‘You owe me though.’
Throughout the morning the huge hotel empties. The lifts ping. Porters push trolleys loaded with luggage. Taxis swarm on the manicured forecourt. The doormen endlessly open the doors, while from the windows of the top floor the waiters have no time to look out over the massed treetops of the park, pushing westwards for over a mile into the indistinct distance.
At about eleven, when things up there have finally quietened down, Ernő—the Hungarian waiter, her silent suitor—steps out of the lift with something in his hands.
‘Is that for me?’ she says, matter-of-factly.
‘Naturally,’ Ernő says, under the innocent impression that this is just an elegant way of saying yes.
‘Thanks. That’s very sweet of you.’
‘Nothing,’ he says.
She puts the coffee under the summit of the desk and stares out at the long perspectives of the lobby. The shimmer of its spaces, of the chandelier—an inverted wedding cake, listlessly iridescent—seems superannuated. Its luxury seems stale. The little shops in the neglected, marble-floored passage seem frumpy, superfluous, survivors from a time when only the shops in luxury hotel lobbies were open on Sunday, or even Saturday afternoon.
She has lunch in the subterranean warren of linoleum passageways the public never sees, and it is sitting there in her sober work clothes that she starts to think properly about what has happened. She feels uneasy. When she said, ‘I don’t think we should see each other for a while,’ that was what she meant, and yet somehow it is not how things seem to have been left. She shouldn’t have had sex with him, of course. Probably she should not have let him stay the night at all. Should not even have let him kiss her. It had been her intention not to let him kiss her. She had felt sorry for him. She had felt sorry for him when he said, in that oddly simple way of his, ‘Why won’t you kiss me?’ There is something about him that tugs at her heart. (‘Why won’t you kiss me?’) So yes, she felt sorry for him. That was not the main thing, though. The main thing was that she seemed to find it impossible not to kiss him when he was there, in front of her. His mouth. The way that kissing it her whole mind seemed to melt… Pondering this phenomenon, she pours herself some water. Her failure to hold to her intentions makes her wonder whether she is wrong to want not to see him for a while. It makes her wonder whether that is in fact what she wants. Does she know what she wants? She does not seem to.