Flight

by Victoria Glendinning

  ‘He was strong, he could tolerate, he could inhabit – can you say that? – the extremes. I’m like that too. You’re always talking about good and bad. My father wasn’t good and he wasn’t bad. They aren’t the only standards. There is ordered and disordered. There is strong and weak.’

  ‘I hate the idea of veering between extremes, though,’ said Martagon. ‘I’d like to be the same all the way through, like a bar of chocolate. Or a sheet of clear glass. Though I suppose even they are made up of warring molecules held in equilibrium … My God, have we have lost our equilibrium, you and I?’

  * * *

  It had to be she who put out a hand first, and she did.

  ‘Don’t go, Marteau. We can do it,’ she said. ‘We can start again. We can get back to where we were, only better and different. If you are sure. Only if you are sure.’

  Martagon was sure.

  From that moment on they were, tentatively and carefully, with talk and thought, rebuilding – stone upon stone. There was no facile resumption of ecstasy. This was work. When their structure seemed sufficiently stable, they crept into its dark interior and were kind to one another, looking out on to a landscape through which they would soon walk together. The day had moved on and the terrace was already in shade, under an indigo sky. The sun still poured down obliquely on the far end of the garden, spiking the grass into black-green brilliance, every blade casting a shadow.

  Marina imposed one condition. He must come permanently to live with her right now, making the farmhouse his home. It didn’t matter that Child’s Place was not yet sold, it didn’t matter that his business and his office were in London, that could all be sorted out afterwards.

  Martagon heard what she said. He did not reply at once. He nodded, thinking, working it out.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can do that. I’ll do that. But I have to go back to London tomorrow, just for the day.’

  ‘Why?’

  At that moment he heard his mobile phone trilling in the kitchen. He went to answer it automatically.

  It was Tim Murtagh at Bonplaisir. He didn’t want to cause trouble but the men who were moving around the heavy installations in the arrivals hall had felt a bit of sway in the floor. He’d been up there himself and had detected nothing. But he thought he’d better report it.

  ‘Who else knows about this?’

  ‘No one. I tried to speak to Mr Harper in London but he wasn’t available, so I was put through to Lord Scree. He told me I’d probably get you at this number. I didn’t tell him what it was about.’

  ‘Good man. Give me a moment.’

  Martagon put down the phone on the kitchen table. He did not panic. His mind did not race. He did his job and exercised his hard-won professional judgement. He knew the arrangements and specifications for the arrivals hall flooring and its supports intimately, as if it were a street-map he had by heart. He thought it all through, rapidly and, he knew, accurately. Everything – the multiple layering of the glass, the silicon, the seating, the fixings, the specifications for the glass columns – had been tested and retested. The load-bearing was calculated to a factor many times greater than could ever be required. It was all right. He knew it was.

  He picked up his phone again. ‘I wouldn’t worry, Tim. If there was any sway, it was probably minimal, and just a question of settling, under the weight of what you’ve been putting on it. I’d been meaning to make a flying visit, but I find that’s impossible now. But take my word for it, there’s not a problem.’

  ‘I just thought I should tell you.’

  ‘You were quite right.’

  Not alarmed but fortified, he returned to Marina.

  ‘Why?’ she said.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why do you have to go back to London tomorrow?’

  He looked her in the eye. ‘I have to see Julie.’

  She made a despairing gesture.

  ‘Listen, my dear love. Listen carefully. I’m doing a big thing. I’m committing myself to you for ever. It’s what I want to do. She knows nothing about all this, she is – innocent. She hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s I who did wrong. She deserves better. I have to see her, I can’t tell her in a letter, or on the telephone, I must do it properly, the difficult and honourable way. It won’t be nice, but I have to do it. You must try and understand that.’

  ‘But what if you don’t come back?’

  ‘Of course I’ll come back.’

  ‘Marteau, I’m so cold.’

  Martagon couldn’t find any kindling wood or firelighters, though there were big logs in the fireplace. He followed Marina’s custom and went around the house, upstairs and downstairs, collecting up from jugs and vases and from hooks on the walls all the bundles of dry, greyish and now scentless lavender from last year. Leaving a trail of dusty shreds in his wake, he carried the lavender over to the hearth and piled it on top of the logs. He found some white household candles in the kitchen and wedged them upright in the lavender, like on a birthday-cake. He lit the candles – and in a few seconds the lavender flared up, regaining fragrance as it burned, filling the room with its healing aroma.

  They cooked some pasta, mixed it with garlic softened in plenty of olive oil, and ate it by the roaring fire. They discussed practicalities. He called Julie and left a message on her answering-machine. He booked by telephone a seat on the earliest plane out of Marseille. That would mean he’d have to get up at five o’clock in the morning to be there in time to pick up his ticket. He would return on an afternoon flight.

  ‘So I’ll be home in time for a drink before dinner. Don’t meet me, I want to find you here at home waiting for me. I’ll pick up a car at the airport.’

  ‘That would be better, really. I’ve said I’ll look after George for a bit. Lin’s going away, and he’s getting Deng – remember that sweet Deng? – to drive over and dump George with me some time during the day.’

  ‘Horrible dog,’ said Martagon, not really meaning it this time.

  Their mood lightened. They discussed what they would have for dinner tomorrow, the first evening of their new life.

  ‘Do a pigeon, a pigeon de Bresse, like you did once before.’

  ‘But it was very plain, I cooked it just with butter and salt, like the man at the market told me.’

  ‘It was pure heaven. And beans, I think beans would be good with it. And tomato salad.’

  ‘I’ll leave the tomato salad for you to make, when you come. You do it better than me.’

  ‘There’s two bottles of the good Gigondas left, open them during the afternoon. And put some champagne in the fridge.’

  ‘And the day after we’ll go to the airport opening, together. I bought a wonderful dress for it, before – before all this.’

  They did not make love that night. He kissed her on the lips and sensed that she recoiled. His mouth was viscous with exhaustion. They were both still fragile. Again Marina got up in the small hours and wandered out into the garden. But she did not lie down in the grass, she returned to the house and to the bedroom, and the bed.

  ‘Your feet are cold,’ Martagon said.

  She lay on her back and put her hand in his. He held on to it. At last, peace and warmth flooded through his system. They were back together again. The way they were. Christ, the relief. He breathed deeply. He smiled in the darkness and, turning his head, thought she was smiling in the darkness too. Neither of them said anything. He didn’t want to sleep, he didn’t want to miss one second of being in harmony with Marina, ever again.

  But again he must have slept a little, because when the alarm clock shrilled at five he found she had rolled away from him, on to her side. She was sound asleep. The alarm hadn’t woken her. Her feet were warm now. He got up, leaving her in the bed.

  * * *

  As the plane began its descent into Gatwick, he began to wish that he had taken the easy way out and stayed on with Marina. He could have left the confrontation with Julie for another time.

  No, he could not.


  He called Julie at her office as soon as he reached Gatwick. She wasn’t in. So he called her home number.

  ‘I’ve taken the day off work. I don’t want you here at the flat,’ said Julie. ‘I’ll meet you somewhere outside. Where we can walk.’

  ‘OK. How about Regent’s Park? The rose gardens. There’s one or two things I have to do first. Say around twelve.’

  Martagon tried to keep his voice normal. This was going to be the hardest thing he had yet had to do. He was about to hurt someone he loved because he loved someone else more.

  The first thing he did was to go back to Child’s Place. He unhooked the abstract woodland scene from the wall, and wrapped the painting – still with the photos of Marina stuck on it – in his mother’s pashmina and then in newspaper. He secured the rectangular bundle with brown parcel tape. It seemed very important to take something back to France which was his, to put in the farmhouse as a gauge of his permanent residence there. At the last moment, he went to his top drawer and found his mother’s engagement ring where he had hidden it, in the toe of a yellow sock that had lost its partner. He put the sock, with the ring in it, in his pocket. All the rest of his stuff, and the files and equipment from his office, could come by carrier later. He quailed at the thought of the administrative complications involved. It would just have to be done.

  Then he went into Trailfinders just round the corner in Kensington High Street and confirmed his booking back to Marseille, leaving Gatwick at around three in the afternoon. They printed out his ticket. It had come to £149 for both ways, not bad.

  All this to-ing and fro-ing is costing a fortune, though. I can’t charge it all up to the firm.

  The wrapped painting was awkward to carry. It was just too big to be comfortably tucked under his arm. He had his computer case too. Moving fast was not easy.

  He must leave Julie by one o’clock if he was to catch the flight. He would have to try not to keep looking at his watch, while remembering to keep looking at his watch.

  Julie was waiting at the ornate gates of the rose gardens when he arrived, by taxi. ‘You look a bit rough,’ she said.

  He did not attempt to kiss her. He touched her awkwardly on the shoulder, and felt her fragile bones. ‘I expect I do,’ he said. ‘I seem to have lost touch with my clean shirts.’

  They began to walk around between the beds of roses, not speaking. Martagon was waiting for her to say something.

  He thought the roses were hideous. Coarse oranges and reds, brash and fleshy. He wondered whether Julie disliked them too, but it was not the moment to discuss roses. He shifted the wrapped painting to his other side. Julie did not ask what it was. That was perfectly in character. He watched a three-generation Asian family preparing a picnic in a glade just beyond the roses – women in saris spreading out rugs and unpacking food, men in dark trousers and white shirts fooling around with little children. They had hung the children’s jackets on the overhanging branches of trees. He would have liked to ask Julie why she thought it was that people from the sub-continent used London’s open spaces so much better, and so much more decorously, than anyone else did. He’d often noticed it. But it wasn’t the moment to discuss comparative cultures.

  ‘Is it true, then?’ she said, after a long time.

  Now that the moment had come, Martagon was speechless.

  ‘Everyone knew about it but me,’ she said. ‘Everyone we know. Except that poor old Giles thought it was all over.’

  ‘What was over? Everyone knew what?’ he said, not sure what she did know.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to cry, not like after Tom. I’m not going to make a scene.’

  ‘I didn’t think that you were.’

  ‘Didn’t you? What exactly did you think, all of this time, Martagon?’

  ‘I suppose I thought that things would sort of evolve. Like you yourself said, when we were at the empty house. You and me, it’s something real, something else, quite separate, absolutely nothing to do with…’

  ‘Go on, you can say her name, can’t you?’

  ‘Nothing to do with Marina. With Marina and me.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me, at the beginning?’

  ‘It was too soon, and then it was too late. And you never asked.’

  ‘That’s an absolutely terrible thing to say, you can’t get away with that.’

  ‘I’m not trying to get away with anything,’ said Martagon.

  ‘I never asked because I trusted you. Of course I assumed that there must have been someone, before. That’s normal. But I never imagined … until Tom put me wise. Just last week. I didn’t want to believe him. When I asked you not to go to France this last time it was like saying, prove to me that it’s not true. Didn’t you understand that?’

  ‘Not at the time. I did wonder, afterwards. Julie, I am so ashamed, so very sorry.’

  ‘Don’t say you’re sorry. It doesn’t help.’

  They walked on again in silence for several minutes. Martagon just had to look at his watch.

  ‘Why don’t you say anything?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You see, all this time with you, I was getting quite good at being happy,’ said Julie. ‘It was a new thing for me, ordinary happiness. Not like when I was seeing Tom. That was all over the top. And I found I was happier when I was happy, if you see what I mean. Some people aren’t, they’re really only happy when they’re unhappy. It suits them. It doesn’t suit me, not any more. But I keep being pushed right back into being unhappy again.’

  ‘You’re very good at being happy,’ said Martagon. ‘We have been happy together, in our way which is no one else’s way.’

  He wanted to talk to her about the little unit that they made, she and Fasil and himself, and how precious and comforting it still seemed to him, but could not find the words. He knew he could not expect Julie, at her age, to have Nancy Mulhouse’s stoic philosophy.

  ‘You’ll be happy again,’ he told her. ‘You probably think you won’t, but you will. You and I can be happy again, too. In time. Differently. We will reconfigure.’

  He really meant all that. He didn’t say that he was sure she would like Marina when she got to know her. He wasn’t at all sure it was true. He wanted to say only what was true. He felt responsible now, and careful, as if he were easing a piece of heavy engineering, fuelled with dangerous emotions, into its casing.

  It was not so easy.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Julie, in response to his little speech. ‘Because we won’t be seeing each other. I never want to set eyes on you again.’

  He did not want this at all. Julie was part of the fabric of his life. Fasil too. He took her hand. She did not take it away, but let it lie inertly in his. After a few seconds he let her hand go.

  ‘Remember our deal?’ he said. ‘That you would always be there for me? That I would always be there for you?’

  ‘There is no deal. There never really was.’

  Time was passing.

  ‘Let’s just leave it for now. You’re coming to the airport opening tomorrow with Giles and Amanda, I’ll see you there. We’ll find time afterwards, and talk again. Properly.’

  ‘I’m not going. I told them already. And I told them why.’

  That hurt. He looked at his watch, quite openly. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Plane to catch, Martagon?’

  ‘Yup … What will you do?’

  ‘That’s none of your business now.’

  ‘Will you go back to Hailu?’

  ‘That’s none of your business either.’

  ‘What will you do right now, after we leave here?’

  ‘None of your business. Though, actually, I’ll probably go for a walk. A very long walk.’

  She adjusted her little backpack on her shoulders, pulling at the straps.

  ‘Give my love to Fasil.’

  ‘What do you care about Fasil? You’ve let him down, too, you know.’

&nb
sp; ‘I care a lot about Fasil. I care about you, too. I always will.’

  She interrupted him before he finished the sentence. There were tears glittering in her eyes now. ‘Just don’t say it, Martagon. Don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it.’

  She turned aside and ran from him, lightly and fast, not through the wrought-iron gates but in the opposite direction, back through the rose gardens and towards the wide open area of the park. He watched her disappear, her backpack bobbing behind her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, knowing she could not hear. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  * * *

  Martagon just missed one Gatwick Express train at Victoria. It was drawing out as he reached the platform. If he had found a cab two minutes earlier he would have caught it. He had to wait fifteen minutes for the next. No problem. He still had time. Just.

  At Gatwick, the electronic sign announced that the next shuttle to the North Terminal would arrive in eight minutes. Eight minutes! So slack, so inefficient. They should be non-stop, one every minute. Thank goodness he had picked up his ticket earlier.

  When at last he got to the check-in there was no queue. Thank God again. Phew.

  The woman at the desk took his ticket, set it down in front of her, and worked at her keyboard, looking at the screen. ‘I’m sorry, sir, this flight has closed.’

  Martagon looked at his watch.

  ‘But it doesn’t leave for nearly half an hour. And I’ve only got hand luggage.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, the flight is already closed.’

  ‘The plane’s still on the tarmac, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is, sir, but the flight is closed.’

  ‘Then just phone through to the gate and say I’m on my way.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, the flight is closed.’

  ‘But I have a ticket. A seat.’

  ‘There were stand-by passengers. We’ve filled the flight now. I’m sorry, sir, but we have to do that, we do get a lot of no-shows.’

  Martagon took a deep breath. He mustn’t shout at her. It wasn’t her fault, after all. ‘OK, OK, so get me on the next one.’

  She resumed clicking on her keyboard and looking at the screen. ‘I’m sorry, sir, all our flights are fully booked for the rest of today. I could get you on a flight early tomorrow morning.’