‘Rip Van Winkle again you mean? “Change and decay in all around I see.” Or something. No, it’s not that. I’ve just been in England. This is America; it’s new to me. That’s all. A little cultural shock, I told you.’
How close she could come to the truth about me, I thought. And how far away, despite all the evidence in her letter to Graham, I was from her real verities.
‘Of course,’ she said suddenly, as though she had just then realised the sum of all our talk was diagnosing an illness we both shared but refused to admit to, ‘the most tiresome thing about both of us is our indulgence in the past — and in the future. And the little action we give to now. We miss out on that vital link — the present, the here-and-now.’
‘Was George Graham like that too?’
‘No. He was good at all three. He had hopes and memories everywhere, but he never let them slow him up.’
‘That’s just temperament isn’t it? Other people can complete us. We may have something special for them. What do you think you had for him?’
We were half-way through a bottle of light Beaujolais. I poured her another glass and it bubbled slightly. The chatter in the dark room was dying about us as people moved out back to work.
‘I’m sure I just had all the ordinary things for him. We didn’t have to talk about it. We had trust. We knew each other very well — and that didn’t kill the other thing, you know, the excitement. Just saying that now it sounds extraordinary, not ordinary. Of course affairs are far easier than most marriages, I know that. That’s really the whole point of them. But this one lasted. It might just as well have been a marriage.’
‘Yes, six years. They don’t usually last that long, I suppose. How was it your husband never came to find out about it, even suspect it. Or did he? Six years is a long time to pretend — and gallivanting round East Africa with Graham, how did you manage that without his knowing?’
‘We separated for six months in the mid-sixties, a year after we moved to Nairobi. I went round East Africa with Graham then. Afterwards my mother was ill before she died, upstate here, and I came back to help look after her.’
‘What brought you back to your husband then? Why didn’t you stay apart, get a divorce, marry Graham — or whatever you wanted to do together?’
‘Back in your best Sherlock Holmes mood, aren’t you?’
I thought I might have gone too far. But no, there came another of those easy smiles that she was so ready with, as if the worst of life could be dispelled by this — shining teeth, the Colgate gleam.
‘I was with child. Two childs in fact,’ she said, lightly, happily. ‘And they were his, not George’s.’
‘Twins?’
‘Yes. Sarah and Sheila. Twins. They’re almost five. They brought us together again, like the good books say. But it wasn’t really a happy ending. It began to die again, I’m afraid.’ She paused, almost visibly casting her mind back over the marriage. ‘Though there are many ways I’m perfectly fine with him, when he’s at ease — and not trying to possess me like a life-insurance policy.’
‘Your husband doesn’t look the unconfident sort. Rather the opposite.’
They’d brought some cheese, Brie and Caprice des Dieux, and a big wicker basket of fruit and she chose Brie and an apple.
‘He’s not. He has bouts of manic jealousy, that’s all — when he wakes up out of his work. He’s very English. He had to feel he owned me before he could love me — had to see me as a dependent relative before he could bed me. He’s frightened of me, I think, but won’t ever admit this. He never trusted me, because he didn’t dare to know me, couldn’t face what he might find. We were always that little bit off-beam with each other. And of course soon that means you’re going in totally different directions — heading straight for two different sets of rocks.’
‘Yes, the oldest journey in the world. Did he have you followed then — or now?’
‘I thought he must be doing that once, in Nairobi. But he said no, of course not. And I never noticed anyone.’
‘You wouldn’t — if they were doing their job properly.’
‘Well, maybe he did. He should have been able to arrange it properly. After all he’s in the same silly business himself.’
Coffee came. She sniffed and then tasted some of my Calvados, not wanting any herself. ‘Burnt apples,’ she said listlessly. She had tired of all her lighter, happier attributes — of all those airs of bright invitation when, before lunch with whisky in her hand, she had seemed so at ease in the sway of the world, to be so happily anxious to take what it might bring in the way of present adventure or future reward.
She had dragged herself back into her past, and I had helped her willingly, and I regretted it now, ashamed at my curiosity that had dulled her. At the same time, though, I felt just as clearly that somehow she needed that past, to explain it, re-live it. She needed it more than drink; it was her drug, her tipple, and I had encouraged her, as she had wanted, in this real and secret excess.
She said, lighting one of her long thin cigarettes, ‘Now you know it all, really. Rather a sordid little tale, even without private eyes. I should have left him — organised the whole thing better. There were the children, I know. But we could have arranged something before about them if I’d really wanted. I was tired. And I shouldn’t have been tired,’ she said with sudden energy. ‘I was tired of another change after moving around the place for ten years. And he’s moving again now. Quite soon. Back to England, some new posting.’
‘London?’
‘No. Something in the country. A Foreign Office job, to do with communications. In the Cotswolds, Cheltenham. Do you know it?’
‘No.’
‘No. Anyway, there’s no good reason for leaving him now. Our mutual friend, Mr Graham — he’s disappeared. Dead for all I know. Or a dead end for me at any rate. I’m not likely to find him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes, you told me. You’re sorry. I know that. But I don’t know anything else about you.’
‘Wait. Wait and see.’
‘Wait and see what? You turned up from nowhere. You’re just as likely to disappear in the same way. The March Hare.’
‘Oh, I’ve come from somewhere, all right. And if I disappear I won’t know any more than you about it, I can tell you. I’m in the dark as much as you are. I’m not the conjuror in all this. I told you; I’m just the trick.’
She believed me. It wasn’t difficult. ‘Jesus God. I’d sooner you weren’t. Tricks, games — I’d sooner we were all out of that and could find some living to do.’
‘Yes.’
Her face had become dull, drawn. Nothing stirred in it — asleep, apart from the open eyes. I could sense very well her horror in the mysteries I had put around her. I was the false Prince Charming that could not kiss her back to life. George Graham had been that figure, the key to her bright future. I had set her adrift in the dark, far from land, and delivered her over, not to making up for the past in a new life, as she had wanted, but simply to remembering all the old dooms. I had condemned her to sudden age in the middle of a perfect maturity.