A kind of melancholy grew in him as he walked along the promenade. It troubled him to realize how so much money could mean so little.
While most of the boats were occupied, only one appeared occupied, with a couple on board, who were preparing for the evening: L’Olympia, Bordeaux, stately white and blue, held herself politely in the water.
On a first pass Parson saw through to the saloon. A woman in the lower cabin, dressed in a long cream-white dress, prepared for her evening. Above, on deck, a man in slacks, similarly presentable, busied himself tying ropes, securing blue hoods over white seats, a cloth in his hand, an impatience about him. Two worlds in one view. The man on deck, in public. The woman alone, studying herself, hand roving down her stomach, shifting from side-view to three-quarter to make up her mind. Sunlight softly breached the port windows and bounced off the water, the water, untroubled, stirred with a soft lick and a lap.
Parson found shade and sat on the wall so that when the man straightened up he would look across the promenade and see Parson, or rather, not Parson but Paul Geezler, or rather, not Geezler, but Stephen Sutler as Paul Geezler. For this to work they would need a name, Sutler or Geezler. Either would work.
When the couple came off the boat Parson stood up, brushed pastry flakes from the front of his shirt, and swore loud enough to get the man’s attention.
He followed them along the promenade’s curve. As they walked the couple admired the boats massed about the slat-wood piers before the Sailing Club. He allowed them to move ahead certain that he had fixed himself as an event in their minds.
Once the couple entered the restaurant bar of the Msida Sailing Club he decided to return to his hotel.
* * *
Parson reserved a table under Geezler’s name at the Hotel Blass Grand — why be subtle now? If Sutler had money, this would be the time to spend it. He leaned over the counter as he made the booking, spelled out the name, insisted that the clerk repeated it, and gave him a tip for pronouncing it right. After roughing it in Iraq and Turkey, the luxury of the Blass Grand would be impossible to resist, and Parson wanted the idea put out that Sutler was beginning to spend his money. The hotel sat on the harbour edge, elegant in the day, but splendid at night with strings of light reflecting in the bay from the terrace, the city appearing as an extension of the hotel, as wings opening out, honey yellows and gold.
* * *
The next afternoon Parson returned in the same clothes to the Msida Sailing Club restaurant and bar, and was the only client for the first hour. When a group of women came breezily off the promenade, he assumed that they were tourists and noticed that some of them were dressed alike. He watched out of idleness as they took two tables by the windows, and realized that the women were in pairs because they were twins, not all identical, but still, twins. He counted as more came off the promenade, seven couples now, eight couples and more, all of them women, and this time their likenesses being very close: not only their faces and build, but the clothes and hairstyles were matched without flaw. Parson welcomed the diversion. He no longer wanted to think of Sutler, the whole situation having occupied him continuously for so long that the idea just tired him out.
The group of women grew, split, spread to five tables, then six: women from different cultures, some Asian, most European-looking, and different age groups, but all of them paired. By eight o’clock Parson was beginning to sober up again. The day was working in waves, dry and wet. He moved tables to sit closer to the massed twins who now gathered around a stage — a platform with a small sequinned arch that famed a handsome view of the old city. The bold fortress walls, a stone ribbon outlining the bay. With no guarantee that the couple from L’Olympia would show up, he began to consider another plan.
Soon, with every table occupied, the room became loud. The twins largely kept in their pairs, American and English voices rising above the humdrum. Some of the women sang along with the music and the small glass-walled room took on the air of a private party.
‘What’s happening?’ he asked the couple closest to him. Sisters dressed in white blouses and ice-blue cardigans, their eyes the same intense blue. The women did not understand, could not hear him. One leaned closer with a smile, suddenly intimate.
‘Is this a conference?’
The woman nodded enthusiastically. Her sister sipped her beer, cool and untaken with him, looking at him as if measuring him up.
‘For how long. How many days?’
‘Today,’ the first sister answered and smiled. ‘Tomorrow we go.’
Parson also nodded. He couldn’t guess from her accent where they were from, but was happy that she could understand him, happy to keep the conversation small.
‘To Malta.’ He offered up his beer.
The women nodded politely, again with smiles, then understanding that he was proposing a toast they raised their glasses with him.
The first woman leaned forward and indicating the room with one finger she said something that he couldn’t hear, then sat back and nodded again as music began to play. The women turned to the stage.
On the stage two other twins, smart and severe in evening dress, began to sing. Microphone in hand, they leaned shyly forward to read from a monitor. The first few bars played too loud, soon quelled, so that their voices could be heard, sweet and fresh, and Parson thought that this was something of great beauty. Delicate and shy, their voices seeped across the room, singing easily of love and loss to the cheers of their friends and a synthetic beat — and while they looked similar, moved with the same gestures, sang with similar voices, it was the slight mismatches which kept his attention: one hand slightly out of time, one word sung a little faster, or clipped a little short.
The sentiment woke in him a longing. And where were his friends? A serious question: where was his room of people ready, rowdy, happy for him? Where were these people after all his years of labour, the constant moving, the broken associations, and the endless starts? Parson sang along, the table sang along, the women looking one to the other as if one common thought passed between them.
The couple from the boat sat at the bar. Heads turned to the small stage. The woman smiled, her hand to her chest, amused. She pointed to the group and leaned toward her husband, who turned and looked about the room, a realization coming slowly to him.
Parson asked if the table needed more beer. The women said no with generous smiles and Parson struck his heart in mock hurt.
‘It might be my birthday,’ he said. ‘I might be very insulted. I can’t celebrate alone.’
But the women still said no, no thank you.
He stepped up to the bar, and took a position beside the woman from the L’Olympia, and a smile passed between them at the strangeness of the circumstances. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ he asked. ‘There’s a conference. Twins. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
The couple looked to each other before including Parson, a quick check between them.
‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I know your boat.’
The woman leaned back, her husband leaned forward, hands folded on the bar. Parson ordered drinks for the table.
‘You’re French?’ Parson offered his hand to the husband. ‘You have a beautiful boat. I was looking at her earlier. Did you sail from Bordeaux by yourself?’