…I’ve got an English-French dictionary beside me. But I haven’t opened it once, Jean-Marie. I find it so easy to write to you. I’m a bit like your little French saint who spoke about her visions in every language…
…I’m leaving for eight days in Scotland, on my own at first – my husband will be joining me next week. I’ll be at the Learmonth Hotel in Edinburgh. You can write to me there if you still want to. You can find me there if…
The letter stopped dead. It wasn’t even signed. She had chosen to end it there, with her appeal.
5
I thought Denise would be waiting for me in my MG, parked under a reed shelter near the hotel. But she wasn’t there. I drove slowly in the direction of the beach. I followed our usual route, scouring the already-crowded pavements. I spotted Denise in the throng. She was wearing very short pale-blue shorts, covering nothing of her long, brown legs, and a kind of white towelling pinafore top, whiter than any white thing around it – dazzlingly white. Denise tapped her racket against her legs as she walked, hurrying along much faster than usual.
I drove two metres ahead of her and pulled over.
“Need a ride, pretty lady? You seem in a hurry.”
A street sweeper clearing the gutter paused in his work and stared at me with outright admiration. Then he stared at Denise, wondering if she would “take the bait”. She did. Wordlessly, impassively, she climbed into the passenger seat.
“Thanks,” I muttered, driving off.
“I’m sorry.”
This was unexpected from Denise. She hated apologizing, especially when she was in the wrong.
“Well, there’s a surprise.” I pushed my advantage. “Do you even know who was writing to me?”
“An Englishwoman you met when you first got here,” she answered. “An Englishwoman who fell for your charms and can’t get your nights of wild passion out of her mind.”
She wasn’t mocking me, exactly; there was just a hint of bitter jealousy. Denise had guessed everything. Nights of wild passion excepted.
“What happened doesn’t deserve so much as the scowl on your face,” I assured her, gently stroking her thigh.
I told her about meeting Marjorie. She seemed not to listen, staring intently at the other cars. We drove at a crawl, with long stops at the traffic lights. Newspaper vendors in striped swimming shorts sold the latest calamities to customers on café terraces. The air smelt of saffron and hot oil. Outside the arcade, children practised shooting electric rifles at bears scurrying in circles in a glass cage. When the “death ray” struck, the bears would stop in their tracks, rear up with a cavernous roar then pirouette on the spot and hurtle in the opposite direction. The crackle of gunfire and the din of the thunderstruck bears rose above the noise of the street. Denise stared at the creatures’ clumsy toings and froings, against a forest scene worthy of the backdrop for a scout-hut pantomime. I was telling her about Marjorie, in what I felt was appropriately jocular fashion, but she appeared interested in nothing but this tawdry fairground game.
“So there’s really nothing to make a scene about, you see?”
She turned to look at me. She had her own particular way of diving straight into my innermost thoughts. Then she took her sunglasses out of her bag and put them firmly on her nose. Not a word was spoken until we reached the beach.
Even the habitués at the bar of the Grand Café in some minor provincial capital have a less developed sense of ritual than the beach regulars of the Côte d’Azur. Entrenched habits are contracted faster at the seaside than anywhere else. Everyone clings fiercely to the same proud possessions: their spot, their parasol, their circle of shade, their sand and their deckchair. We were against the back wall of the beach, near the volleyball pitch. Our parasol was plain blue; our deckchairs too. The parasol was always closed when we arrived, and we never opened it straight away. Denise would anoint herself with Ambre Solaire. I would do her back before hurrying to the tap to wash my hands. I hated the feel of the filthy stuff. Next, we would spend a good hour frying gently in the sun. I read the newspaper while Denise supervised her tanning with scientific precision. Once she judged herself done to a turn, she would open the parasol and resume conversation in that lovely, languid voice that made me want her so badly.
That morning, I had forgotten to buy the newspaper, and our routine was disrupted. I tried to lose myself in the burning heat, to think of nothing at all, but Marjorie Faulks’s letter danced in my head.
Now I know what it means to belong to an island nation… I am in exile here. From you!
The volleyball players arrived, jostling one another as they ran. Magnificent young men, eyed by every woman on the beach. Denise had her particular favourite: a tall, handsome, dumb blond who strutted as if he had spent his entire life in front of a mirror. We called him Narcissus. Denise swore she would happily succumb. “Because he’s a ravishing young brute,” she explained, in her defence. She had always fantasized about making love to a labourer, or a docker. She said intellectuals ruined the act of love by complicating it.
“Did you see? Narcissus has yet another, different pair of shorts today,” I whispered. She was lying flat on her stomach, on top of her still-folded deckchair. She lifted her head and half-opened one eye with that economy of gesture shown by intoxicated sun-worshippers everywhere. Then her eye closed, her head dropped once more, and she lay still for a long while. I gazed at the American warships anchored off-shore. They looked like something from another era, so close to the bathers. Motor boats buzzed. Skiers traced the horizon, infinitely close, with the mechanical haste of the fairground bears we had seen earlier.
“Did she write in English or French?”
I heaved a long sigh.
“Listen, Denise, you’re not going to…”
“No, I’m not. Just so I know.”
Her skin gleamed liked freshly polished walnut. She gave a little laugh.
“You and an Englishwoman. It’s quite… hard to understand. Don’t you think?”
I didn’t think. I was gripped by fever. A full-blown attack – raging temperature, teeth chattering, icy sweat on my back.
I opened the parasol and lingered in its ruffled shade. I had come to an unexpected realization. This couldn’t work any longer, Denise and me. We had nothing in common. The usual hubbub continued all around us. Sometimes, the volleyball landed at our feet, spraying us with sand.
Narcissus came to fetch the ball, prancing over the hot sand. The blond hairs on his tanned legs gleamed like threads of gold.
He shot me a disdainful look by way of a greeting and paused in front of Denise, the ball tucked under his arm, conquering and smug.
“How’s the sun this morning?” he asked her, bringing his full powers of seduction to bear on this banal question.
Denise didn’t open her eyes.
“Like you,” she enunciated. “Getting in my eyes but leaving me cold.”
The youth departed, cut to the quick, while his comrades roared and slapped their thighs.
“What was that for?” I objected.
“Just to be mean. I feel better now.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Yes. Don’t let it go to your head.”
I took Marjorie’s torn letter from the pocket of my shorts and tossed it under Denise’s nose.
“Read it. You’ll see.”
“What will I see?”
I knew full well my gesture was pointless and in poor taste, but like every man who falls in love with a new woman, I needed her predecessor’s opinion.
“I don’t know, just read it!”
She read. Unhurriedly, holding the two halves of the letter in careful alignment. Her hands were perfectly steady.
I watched for her reaction, shielding my eyes with my hand, because the sun was shining straight into my face now.
When she had finished, Denise returned the letter to me.
“Odd sort of girl! Quite unusual for an Englishwoman, it seems to me. Interesting. Romant
ic, rather mysterious, but clearly very much hooked. It’s always marvellous at first with people like her because they start out thinking you’re quite wonderful.”
I felt a sudden flare of anger.
“You’re quite the psychologist!”
“I know what I’m talking about. They’re in constant need of a hero, and so they find one. And then as time goes on they discover their romantic Ivanhoe is a respectable architect with a gentleman’s club, carpet slippers and a tendency to sore throats; who has to shave every day, and likes veal stew. And so the illusion crumbles. It’s perfectly normal.”
She propped herself up on her elbows to get a better look at me.
“Do you need to be an Ivanhoe, chéri? Go on, admit it! Don’t all men? That’s why little girls like her are always half right, to start with. What will you do, go to Scotland?”
“Stop talking nonsense, will you?”
“But she’s waiting, Jean-Marie. She’s waiting – can’t you read between the lines? You can’t leave her in the lurch just because she’s in Edinburgh and you’re in Juan-les-Pins.”
“Listen, Denise, if you don’t shut up immediately I’ll do something very… unpleasant.”
She stared at my hands, clenched tight around the armrests of my deckchair, and gave a sad smile.
“Come and play badminton, it’ll help you relax.”
“It’s not time!”
“Come on! A romantic hero doesn’t need an allotted time!”
I played reluctantly, missing the shuttlecock at least every second stroke. I hated the ludicrous, feathery projectile twirling in the air between us.
A vigorous swipe from Denise sent it spiralling into the sky. I watched it twist and fall, endlessly down and down. My thoughts raced ahead. I told myself, “If I don’t reach a decision by the time it hits the ground, it’s all over.” The shuttlecock hit the sand with a soft thud. I picked it up, but instead of hitting it back to Denise, I took it over to her.
“Come on,” I muttered, “Let’s go back. I’m leaving for Scotland.”
She nodded.
I could see my decision came as no surprise.
“Poor Ivanhoe,” she sighed. “You have no idea what fools heroes can be.”
6
I arrived in London that same evening. I had hoped to take a flight to Edinburgh straight away, but a strike by cabin crews had just broken out and I was forced to take the train. At King’s Cross station I was informed that there were a few places left on the night train to Edinburgh, but its departure time was unclear. The strike looked set to extend its grip. Some suburban trains had already stopped running, and walkouts had begun across the network. I booked a couchette nonetheless, pleading with the Almighty to let my train leave the station. I could think of nothing but Marjorie. I was obsessed, and my need to find her again became more and more urgent. It was powerful, wonderful and painful all at once. I was wildly happy and desperately sad. But my thoughts of Denise were dispassionate and detached. She had accompanied me to Nice airport in the MG.
When we parted, she said quietly:
“I’ll stay here until the end of the month. If you aren’t back by then, I’ll take your car to Paris and park it in your garage.”
Mechanically she proffered her lips. I kissed her swiftly and left.
My train was scheduled to leave at eleven o’clock in the evening. At 10.30, it was ready and waiting at the platform, but the sight of it inspired little confidence in the otherwise deserted station. A strange atmosphere prevailed. It reminded me of the war. Everything around me was silent and tense. A handful of black porters went about their business, escorting sullen passengers to their compartments without a sound. I left my case on my couchette and paced the grey concrete of the platform to calm my nerves. Walking the length of the train, I realized no locomotive was attached.
If the train failed to leave, I would take a room for the night and attempt to hire a car in the morning. How long would it take to reach Edinburgh? Perhaps two days. I knew how narrow and congested the roads were in England.
At a quarter to eleven, an engine pulled into the station, puffing and gasping and filling the immense terminus with its miraculous din. The train jolted with the shock of the buffers. At eleven o’clock precisely, we shuddered into life. I hardly dared rejoice, fearing a false start. But no, leaning on the window rail in the corridor, I watched the gloomy station hall recede into the distance, with its pale lights and curving lines of trolleys, like the truncated sections of a snake. Little by little, the giant clock faces dwindled to bright, inexpressive dots.
Damp, ugly suburbs drawn in shades of Indian ink shot past faster and faster beside the tracks. A piece of filthy grit caught in my eye and I wound up the window, reassured.
I was fast asleep when the steward rapped on my door. He was a tall, thin, disagreeable-looking man with a pointy face.
His burgundy jacket was filthy with soot. I realized all of a sudden that the train wasn’t moving, and thought the gangling creature with his shifty, spy’s expression was coming to tell me we were stuck in the middle of nowhere.
“Six o’clock, sir! Edinburgh in one hour!”
As if by magic, the train began moving again. The steward handed me a narrow tray set with a meagre breakfast: pale, tasteless coffee and a shortbread biscuit that disintegrated the moment I sank my teeth into it. The smell of stale sheets, rusty taps and soot, the grim landscape rolling by under sheets of rain, did nothing to quell my excitement. In one hour I would be in Edinburgh. I was going to join Marjorie Faulks. Her Ivanhoe! Denise was not mistaken: I was playing the hero all right, but a hero of a different sort, determined to offer Marjorie all the love and support she so plainly hoped from me.
Edinburgh station was scarcely more heartening than King’s Cross, but its bustle was consoling in its way. A train coming in is always cheerier than a train pulling out. Coming straight from Juan-les-Pins, I had no raincoat. Standing in line for a taxi beneath the great glass roof, I felt idiotic in my lightweight clothes. My pearl-grey raw silk suit was far from ideal for the Scottish weather, even in August.
The station occupied an immense gully of sorts. When the taxi emerged from the ramp leading down to it, I discovered Edinburgh at a glance. Dark, austere and formidable, the castle on its black crag seemed to have risen up from the past. I think at that moment, I sensed a vague foreboding of the drama that would befall me there.
The taxi drove along Princes Street, Edinburgh’s very own Champs-Elysées, a great, broad thoroughfare flanked with modern buildings along one side, and on the other by a steep valley transformed into public gardens. On the far side of the valley, the old city soared on its rocky crag, the jagged outline of its sinister, black castle rising from crenellated walls masking its antiquated artillery. The policemen looked nothing like their counterparts in London. They wore flat-topped caps and white overalls, like the employees of some transport company. I had hoped to find the entire population in kilts, but the passers-by wore poorly cut suits. They had a down-at-heel, but contented air.
My taxi left Princes Street and its shops to dip into another valley. We crossed a bridge and emerged onto a tree-lined road, not quite an avenue, nor merely a street, as such. Reddish-coloured double-decker buses followed one behind the other in obedience to some strange logic. The taxi turned sharply across the road and pulled up behind a luxurious Swedish coach. Immaculately groomed elderly ladies surrounded the vehicle, chattering animatedly, accompanied by a handful of infirm or senile old men.
I read the neon sign flickering wanly on the front wall of a forbidding edifice with all the charm of a municipal office block: Learmonth Hotel. She was here, in this great, blackened fortress. My heart leapt and knocked violently at my ribs. I trembled with emotion at the thought of our impending reunion.
As I made my way to the entrance, a Scotsman in a green kilt and a tall black fur hat stepped out to greet me. At first sight, I took him for a soldier. He wore a heavy cape thrown over on
e shoulder, and clasped a fat tartan bag firmly under one arm, bristling with black pipes. His kilt, cape and doublet, and the bag of his pipes were all cut from the same green-and-red chequered woollen cloth. The musician positioned himself in the hotel entrance and began to play a traditional tune. The Swedish tourists were enraptured, snapping photographs by the dozen. The nasal whine was an ode of welcome, it seemed. I stared at the hotel’s austere façade, scrutinizing each window in hopes of seeing Marjorie’s face. But the Learmonth’s residents were clearly uninterested. The windows remained firmly shut.
When the musician had finished his piece he came towards me and took my luggage with confident authority. This was the hotel’s porter – a fine, broad man with red hair and pale-blue eyes.
He led me into the reception area. In all my travels, I had never seen a hotel lobby like it. The floor was covered in strips of tartan carpet, each different from the next. The same was true of the wallpaper. The effect was crazy. A chameleon wandering into this multicoloured décor would have exploded on the spot. The hotel proprietor, on the other hand, was very like his opposite number in Juan-les-Pins, but chubbier, pinker, balder. He greeted me with an air of vague defiance, unsure what to make of a client who turns up at half past seven in the morning, without a reservation. With my tanned skin and flashy suit (clearly unwearable here in Edinburgh), I made a singularly “loud” impression.
He gave me a room, nonetheless, but asked me to wait as it would not be ready straight away. I was on the brink of asking him to call Marjorie, but held back at the last minute. Her husband would be joining her at this hotel, and I didn’t want to compromise her good name. I left my case under a wall seat and waited for breakfast. After an hour, the hotel’s residents began to come down, making their way to the dining room. They were mostly elderly, and I quickly understood that the Learmonth did the bulk of its business with tour operators, concluding furthermore that the cruise companies in question catered exclusively to widows, elderly spinsters and arthritic couples. More coaches were pulling up outside the hotel, and each time the piper shouldered his instrument and stepped out to greet the new arrivals with a dawn serenade. I felt increasingly impatient. How idiotic to have travelled so far, only to sit for hours in a hotel lobby, waiting for the woman I was desperate to find.
The King of Fools Page 3
