The Blue Afternoon

by William Boyd

  “Salvador, did you have anything to—”

  “He’s back. I just met him at the docks. Back from Mindanao.”

  Her face changed: she looked sick, a hand went to her throat. How he loved her for that.

  “But how—”

  “It’s worse,” Carriscant said, turning to check their conversation was attracting no attention. “He has a new posting. Back home. Back in America.”

  “Oh my God.” Despite herself she clutched at his arm, then released it immediately. Just at that moment the summerhouse roof caved in with a damp sigh, sending great billows of white smoke across the lawn, dispersing the coughing onlookers.

  Carriscant drew her to one side. “Listen to me,” he said, urgently, “you must go home. You have to tell him you think you’re pregnant.”

  “Oh, Jesus Lord, I don’t think—”

  “You must.” She was in real distress, he could see, but he pressed on. “When was the last time you and he were, I mean, were…”

  She put her hands to her temples, massaging. “Ah, about a week, I think, a week before he left. Yes.”

  “Four months? A bit more?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was small, frightened. “I think so.”

  “So don’t forget. You’re four months pregnant. Four. Send for me and I’ll confirm it to him. All right?”

  “Salvador, I—”

  People were drifting back from inspecting the drenched ashy remains of the summerhouse. He moved round behind her, his hand on the brim of his hat as if he were taking his leave. “We’ll be free soon. I’ve got an idea. A brilliant plan. Everything is under control. We’ll be safe.”

  He bade a cordial goodbye to Mrs Oliver and walked out of the garden to his waiting carromato.

  PRAGMATISM

  Annaliese was trying not to cry. Her hands were wringing the napkin, twisting and knotting it, then unknotting it again, spreading it out and smoothing it flat on the table before beginning to twist it up again. All the while she was talking in a low voice, explaining, apologising, criticising herself, criticising Carriscant more mildly, blaming them both for mistakes made.

  Carriscant took the napkin from her, gently. She was driving him mad with her fidgeting. They were sitting at the dining table, the meal cleared away. Carriscant had been pouring himself a large brandy when Annaliese came through and said she wanted to talk. They had sat down facing each other and she started to twist the napkin as he listened in some amazement to her apologies. She blamed herself, she said, she had been too unfeeling, too severe. She hated this coldness that existed between them; the lives they were living at the moment were no marriage—worse than no marriage.

  “I want us to try again, Salvador, to try and make a go of it, to be man and wife again.”

  “Annaliese, I don’t think—”

  “Look, just say we’ll try. Surely we owe that to each other? I want things to be as they were. Don’t you remember, when you first came back from Europe? It was my fault, I know. I turned from you. When Papa and Hannah left I felt so awful. And then when Papa died, I felt—And you were at work so much of the time. I drew in on myself, I know. I gave you no affection. I know I made the mistakes. But my nerves, you see…”

  Carriscant tried to listen but his mind kept returning to the question of whether Delphine would tell Sieverance right away or wait a day or so. Now Annaliese stretched a hand across the table top. He took it dutifully, dutifully squeezed it, gently.

  “Can we try, Salvador, can we try?”

  “Of course, my dear. It’s never too late.”

  “Bless you. I don’t deserve you. I’m sorry. Everything will change now for the better, you’ll see.”

  Her tears had exhausted her and she went to bed early. Carriscant stayed up late checking his accounts, running over the plan in his head, making refinements to the organisation, trying to establish if anything could go wrong. He retired to his study about midnight and was just drifting into sleep when there was a light tap on the door and it swung open.

  “Salvador, it’s me.”

  The room was so dark all he could see of her was the ghostly pale rectangle of her nightdress.

  “Annaliese,” he said, trying to keep the astonishment out of his voice. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was waiting for you.” The rectangle enlarged as she moved closer to the bed.

  “I didn’t want to disturb you,” he said, deceitfully. “You seemed so tired.”

  Now the shape of the nightdress was changing again: it shrank to a square, disappeared, reappeared for a brief second, thinner and then disappeared completely. He heard the whisper of the mosquito netting being raised and the next sensation he was aware of was Annaliese’s naked body sliding into the divan bed beside him.

  “We must make a new start, my darling,” she said.

  The absolute darkness of the room and her bed-warm small body squirming beside him were having an effect. He put out a hand and it struck one of her small breasts and he cupped it instinctively. He felt her breath on his cheek and at the same time her hand slid under the hem of his nightgown and travelled up his thigh. He flinched as she grasped him.

  “See, Salvador, I knew. I’m so pleased, I—”

  “No tears, my love, please.”

  Her lips were on his face, dabbing, searching for his mouth. In the confusion of tactile messages that his body was receiving some portion of his mind counselled restraint, that this was wrong, that this was some kind of double betrayal. But she was pulling him round on top of her and without thinking he was kissing her breasts. In the darkness she was like a warm writhing anonymous girl, he thought, quite unlike the Annaliese he thought he had come to know and barely tolerate. Why, he thought, as she widened her legs to accommodate him, she might be anybody. And this was the sophistry with which he comforted himself as he lay with her later: a brief physical encounter in the night, and given what was about to ensue with Delphine it would not have been pragmatic to deny her. It had to be gone through with to allay suspicions. His conscience was clear.

  VIENNA, PARIS, MOSCOW, ROME…

  “I haven’t told him yet,” Delphine said. She looked tired, under strain, her eyes dark. “I just don’t think I can face his huge smugness,” she went on with some vehemence. “His self-satisfaction.”

  “Have you had—” Carriscant began, unreflectingly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t ask.” He knew he wanted to ease his own guilt.

  “No,” she said bluntly. “If you must know. He doesn’t…It was part of the problem between us. He…” She squared her shoulders. “He finds it difficult to stay hard.” She looked at him unflinchingly. “Ejaculatio praecox, I believe is the correct term.”

  “Oh.” Carriscant tried not to show how pleased he was at this news. “I see what you mean about the smugness, then.”

  “He’ll go mad with joy, ecstatic.”

  “Don’t delay too long, that’s all.” He reached out and cupped her face. “I’ve spoken to Axel today. There was no problem; in fact he was positively unperturbed. Everything is ready.”

  They were sitting, fully clothed, on the camp bed in the nipa barn. She reached out for him and pulled him to her and they hugged each other silently for a moment or two.

  She was still tense. “You understand now why I said the thing had to be finished once and for all. We can’t just run away. You see, once I tell him about the child he’d never let me go. Follow me anywhere, for ever.” Her face darkened as if she were contemplating this prospect. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell him about the child.”

  “It won’t work otherwise. He’d suspect instantly. He’d know everything within hours. This is the only way we can be truly free. For always.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just difficult, I—”

  “But look at it this way, now I know how he feels about being a father it’ll work all the better.” He could see how she wanted to believe him. “He’ll never know. Trust me.”

  “What about you?” />
  “I’ll say I’m going to the country to see my mother for a week or so. When they come looking for me it’ll be too late.”

  She exhaled and slumped, her shoulders rounding, as she rubbed her face with her hands.

  “My God,” she said. “Can you believe it? Just think, Salvador, Vienna. We’ll be in Vienna in a matter of weeks.”

  “Or Paris, or Moscow, or Rome, or Athens…”

  “And nobody will know who we are or where we came from.”

  He laughed, the joy suddenly effervescent in him. “Nobody’ll have heard of the Philippines.”

  She was sober again. “We’re booked for Yokohama on the twenty-fifth.”

  “That gives us plenty of time. Axel’s waiting, ready. I just have to give him a few days’ notice. He made absolutely no fuss about the conditions. A routine job for him, probably, all this clandestine stuff.”

  “All right,” she said, making a decision. “I’ll tell him tonight.”

  She rose to her feet and gathered up her pencils and sketch pad and looked around the barn. She left the grip with a change of clothes that he had asked her to bring.

  “I won’t see you here again, I suppose,” she said, a little sadly. “Or this preposterous flying machine. Poor Pantaleon.”

  “Well, it keeps him busy. And it was a good place for us.”

  “Yes,” she said emphatically. “Yes, it was.” Then she kissed him, hard, pushing her tongue into his mouth, feeding on him. They broke apart and looked at each other.

  “We’ll be free,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I love you, Salvador,” she said. After she had gone he realised that it was the first time he could remember hearing the words from her lips.

  A BOTTLE OF BLOOD

  Jepson Sieverance sent for Dr Carriscant at 9 the next morning. It was raining hard and as Carriscant dashed from the carriage to the front door he saw that it was Sieverance himself who was holding it open.

  “It’s the most wonderful news,” Sieverance kept repeating as he strode beside him down the corridor towards the bedroom. “And I’m sure she’s right. Woman has an instinct about these things.”

  For some reason Carriscant found his use of the general noun offensive. “We’ll confirm it soon enough,” Carriscant said, managing a thin smile. Delphine was right: the man’s preening elation was offensive, rebarbative.

  She was in her room, waiting, wearing a plaid robe over her nightgown, sitting in an armchair. She looked calm, he thought, very serene. They greeted each other with their usual cordiality, and then Sieverance obligingly excused himself.

  “No Nurse Aslinger?” Carriscant said.

  “I was obliged to let her go.”

  He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead fleetingly. He could hear Sieverance pacing the corridor outside, already a parodical expectant father, he thought. He lowered his voice.

  “Everything is organised for the twentieth,” he said. “Axel is prepared. I’ll have everything ready.”

  “I know what to do.”

  He opened his bag and removed a brown medicine bottle which he gave to her. “Here. You’ll need this to make it convincing.”

  “What is it?”

  “Blood.” He touched her arm, and her face. She kissed his fingertips as they brushed her mouth.

  “You can’t bring anything with you, you know. You’ll have to tell me what other clothes, powders, rouge, things you need, essentials…”

  “All right. A complete fresh start,” she said, smiling,

  “Good. I like that.”

  “I’ll make sure they’re on the boat.” He paused, the reality of what he was asking her to do sinking in. “Won’t you miss anything?”

  “My books, I suppose. I can always buy more books.”

  “Axel says he’ll get us to Singapore in six or seven days. We can pick up any boat going west to Suez. Then, once we’re in the Mediterranean…”

  “We can get off anywhere we want.” Her eyes went distant, as if she were focusing again on those magical cities that had been the context for their fantasies of escape. “What about money?” she said, suddenly practical again.

  “I’ve got plenty. Look, let me take care of the details. You’ll have enough to go through.”

  “I’ll be safe, won’t I? I mean, nothing could go wrong, could it?”

  “Nothing. And remember we’re committing no crime. We’re doing nothing wrong.”

  “Nothing legally wrong.” She looked solemn, then. “What about you and your…I never ask you about her. I feel I don’t—”

  “It’s easy for me,” he said, bravely. “The whole thing’s been a sham for years. A big mistake. I don’t think there’ll be too much surprise on her part.” The words came so easily, he thought. “I’d better go and tell him the good news.”

  Sieverance was waiting in the living room.

  “Congratulations,” Carriscant said, feeling oddly formal. “Your wife is expecting a child. She’s almost five months pregnant.”

  Sieverance was overcome, but at least he did not weep, Carriscant thought. He managed to leave the house without having to drink the baby’s health:

  THE TOY

  Nicanor Axel accepted the small jute sack of silver Conant dollars with a look of surprise. Carriscant thought it was the first expression of emotion he had ever seen register on that inscrutably filthy face. The eyes widened and the whites showed unnaturally blanched in their deep swart sockets. “That’s more than generous, Dr Carriscant.”

  “Just a down payment. There’ll be the same once we make landfall at Singapore. I want you to know how important this is to me and how much I count on your absolute discretion.”

  “But of course,” Axel said, scratching energetically at the volute of a nostril. The nail sickle was quite black against the dull nacreous pink of the nail. Indeed the whole nail was outlined in black as if with a pen or an indelible pencil. But somehow his blond hair always looked clean: how did he manage that?

  Axel grew aware he was being studied. “Is there anything wrong?”

  “Nothing. And you can guarantee that there will be no other passengers?”

  “Completely.”

  “And that you will not return to Manila for at least two months after you have deposited…the two passengers at Singapore.”

  “Goes without saying.” Axel offered his grubby hand and Carriscant shook it. The palm and fingers were astonishingly calloused, as if carved from pumice. Strangely, Carriscant felt he could trust him.

  “May I ask who these two passengers are?” Axel enquired, a little shyly.

  “A gentleman and a lady. I think for the moment we should leave it at that.”

  Axel nodded hastily. “Till the twentieth, then,” he said.

  Carriscant stowed a suitcase of clothes in the small cabin that had been made available and walked back up top to the reeking deck. Thin ropes of steam rose from one of the forward holds. It was a hot, foetid night and all the moist warmth of Manila seemed to have congregated around this noisome craft. Across the treacly, smeared waters of the Pasig the lights on Fort Santiago burned, a fuzzy areola of moisture haloing the moth-battered bulbs. Carriscant felt the enormity of what he and Delphine were about to do. Then the awful trepidation passed as he stood there, almost magically it seemed, giving way to a strange boyish surge of excitement, a vision of horizons receding, of worlds waiting to be explored.

  “Goodbye, Doctor,” Axel said. “We’ll be ready for you.” He corrected himself. “Your passengers.”

  “Not a word to Udo, mind,” Carriscant warned. Axel was no fool. Carriscant said goodbye and cautiously made his way across the sagging planks between the moored cascos to the quayside, the black waters slapping the wooden hulls. He walked up to Escolta and hailed a carromato. Nobody had seen him.

  Back in his consulting rooms Carriscant, in his new mood of calm, ran through the details of the plan for what seemed the thousandth time. Delphine had told her friends a
bout her pregnancy and was fully involved in the packing up of the house in preparation for the return to America. Everything was as ready as could be. Carriscant had informed the hospital authorities that he was taking two weeks’ leave and going south to visit his mother on 21 May. Annaliese had protested a little at this news and had offered to accompany him, but as there was scant affection between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law he knew she could be easily dissuaded.

  He held his hand out palm down, fingers spread. Not a tremor. Surgeon’s hands. He contemplated his new life ahead with calmness and contained excitement. Somewhere in Europe he and Delphine would settle, raise their child, and he would take up the scalpel again. To be in a centre of medical excellence after this backwater: what challenges there would be, what reputations to make! If this was indeed the golden age of surgery, as the great surgeons claimed, then it was only fitting that he…He checked himself. He should keep his ambitions more modest: it would not do to become too celebrated. Perhaps his dreams of glory would have to be set aside—a small price to pay, he conceded, a small price to pay.

  He poured himself a glass of rum from the bottle he kept in his cabinet and told himself to relax, everything was in order. He merely had to live out the next few days as normally and as ordinarily as possible. He was going to make a new life in Europe with the one woman he had ever truly loved. He was, he told himself, the luckiest man alive. He grinned. Sieverance’s luck had proved to be Carriscant’s luck after all, and Carriscant’s luck was about to have its day.

  He was refilling his glass when Pantaleon rapped on the door and came in. He was carrying a newspaper in his hand and his manner was both agitated and excited.

  “There’s nothing for it, Salvador. Fate, destiny, demands we go!”

  “Steady, steady. What’re you talking about?”

  Pantaleon spread the newspaper on the desk. It was an edition of Le Figaro, about five weeks old. Pantaleon pointed to an announcement on page seven, published by ‘Le Jury du Prix Amberway-Richault’.