Through the phone Edward hears a creak and a sigh of air escaping from a pillow. ‘Are you in your room?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ says Claudia, annoyed by the digression.
‘Where is everybody?’ He hears her breathing, then something hard being set on something hollow and wooden: a cup, probably, being placed on the wooden chest beside her bed.
‘My mother’s watching rubbish on TV,’ she eventually replies, flatly, like someone obliged to report on an event of no significance. ‘Father has gone to bed. Pierluigi is out.’
A window must be open: he can faintly hear car tyres clacking on the cobbles of Via Antonio Calcagni. ‘With La Stupenda?’
‘I don’t know. I guess.’
He hears himself and Claudia talking like lovers who are separating, and it strikes him that this may be what is happening now, a thought that seems to make the pressure of the air change. ‘You have the window open?’
‘It is summer.’
‘You’re extremely angry with me,’ he says.
‘I am extremely angry with you,’ Claudia replies, as if reciting a catechism.
‘And hurt.’
‘I am extremely angry with you and hurt. Yes,’ she states. ‘I have a good reason,’ she calmly adds.
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Yes.’
‘But I love you. You know that,’ he says, but in response there is only the sound of the cup on the wooden chest. ‘You know that, yes?’
‘You say so.’
‘Why do you think I write to you every day?’
‘Not every day.’
‘Almost every day.’
‘You write to clear your head.’
‘Because I love you.’
‘You say so.’
‘Yes, I do. Because it’s true.’
‘Perhaps we don’t mean the same thing.’
‘Perhaps we don’t. But I think we do.’
‘Perhaps I want to be with you more than you want to be with me.’
‘No, Claudia. It’s not a question of wanting.’
‘I think it is.’
‘It’s a question of what is possible.’
‘No. It is not a problem in philosophy. It is about what you want. That is all. It is simple but you are making it not simple. You are always thinking. You think too much.’
‘A peculiar thing for a scientist to say,’ he tries to jest, but his words fall into silence. Again he hears cars on Via Calcagni; it is possible that he will never hear them again.
‘Edward, I am going to sleep.’
‘You mean you want to go to sleep or you are falling asleep?’
‘I mean I am going.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘For what are you sorry?’
‘For upsetting you.’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll write to you soon. Tomorrow or the day after.’
‘If you like.’
‘Goodnight, Claudia.’
‘Goodnight,’ she says. There is a pause, then the line goes dead.
When the door from the corridor closes it is blindingly dark. Stephanie gropes for the wall and steadies herself to remove her shoes. Probing the floor with bare feet, she creeps crabwise towards the pool, until her foot finds empty space. She crouches and lowers herself onto the tiles. This is what it must be like in the heart of a pyramid: perfectly black and perfectly silent. She raises a hand and stares towards it, but it stays invisible. She clicks her fingers, making a sound like a whipcrack. On her hands and knees she crawls to the edge of the pool. Leaning out, she looks down into a darkness that cannot be distinguished from the darkness above her and in front. She reaches down, and her fingers push holes into the water. The water fastens on her wrist, but it does not feel like water. It is coolness that she is experiencing, and the experience of it is very strange, as if she were somehow receiving sensations from a severed hand that is gloved in coolness. Snatched from the pool, her hand comes out with a crash as loud as a diver. She brings the hand to her face, pressing the wet skin over her eyes, and it makes no difference to the depth of the blackness. Seeing nothing, she stares.
Drugged by darkness and silence, she is in a lucid dream, a marvellous catalepsy. The darkness into which she stares does not decay, but when at last she turns to look around once more, her eyes detect, where the door must be, a filament of light so faint that it has no definite form. It is more a flaw in the darkness than a line of light, yet it is enough to bring her out of her dream, to remind her of where she is, in the basement of the hotel in which her father works, the father for whom she seems to feel nothing and who seems to feel nothing for her. When she talked to him on the phone and he kept defending her mother, she began to suspect what he felt, and as soon as they arrived she could see it was true, right away, from the way his eyes reacted when her mother got out of the car, and when he ran to get her bag, and the way he took the car keys from her, like a little routine they used to do when they were married, and showing her the hotel as if he’s inviting her to move in. When her mother says ‘we couldn’t live together any more’ the ‘we’ means the three of them, not the two. That’s what it’s about. That’s why her mother is such a bitch: she’s the kid who wrecked the marriage. It’s obvious he’s not overjoyed to see her, despite what he wrote, and when he talked to her it was like a distant uncle talking. Which is how he appears if she tries to remember him. Not that she can remember much of him, and they don’t make her sad, the paltry memories she has, and neither do they make her happy. Presumably they once did, but over time they’ve lost all life, so that now, if she tries to think of the father she had when she was small, it is not how remembering your father should feel, just as today, when she saw him, it was not how meeting your father should feel.
She undresses, and the water engulfs her. Floating in the black pool, under the black roof, she feels nothing. She feels nothing, nothing at all.
nine
Malcolm pulls the curtain cord and the room brightens moderately, without shadows, in the light of a chalky sky. The trees in the garden are as motionless as a photograph of trees. He raises the window an inch and lies down on the bed. It is not yet six o’clock. Drowsily regarding the stain in the corner of the ceiling, he observes that during the last couple of days its border has darkened into a rust-coloured fringe. A fine crack has appeared in the plaster, crossing the angle from wall to wall. Unconcerned, he takes note of the damage. Cooler air is creeping into the room; a blackbird is singing. Lying on the softly sprung bed, in the quiet room, in the easeful air of a summer morning, he allows himself the illusion of being a guest at the Oak, slowly waking at the start of an idle day. In a reverie of indolence he loses himself in the depths of the sky, until a bolt scrapes on an outside door, a sound signifying the beginning of the day’s work in the hotel, his hotel. He washes and shaves, and takes his suit and shirt from the wardrobe. Dressing, he thinks of the pleasure of arriving at a hotel for the first time, of taking possession of an unknown and well-appointed room, a pleasure heightened by the brevity of its duration. He thinks of conversations in corridors and dining rooms, of the temporary community of strangers, united in contentment. As he locks the door of room 48 he decides that he will take a week’s holiday, at the first opportunity after the Oak closes. He will go back to Switzerland, perhaps with Stephanie, at half-term, he proposes to himself, passing Mr Morton’s room.
He goes down to his office to check his e-mail. In the midst of the usual junk – lose forty pounds in a month, Lolitas XXX, make a thousand dollars a day, penis enlargement!!!! – there is a message from Giles Harbison, sent shortly before midnight, urging him to reconsider the Scottish job. He replies, thanking Giles for his kind words, but again rejecting the offer. Hearing the front doors bang, he returns to the hall. Jack is on the steps, correcting the fit of his cap as he inspects the sky. They exchange waves, then Jack tucks his canvas holdall under his armpit and sets off for home, striding down the centre of the drive, as alway
s, with his eyes fixed straight ahead, as if the bag contains something valuable that he has been entrusted to deliver to someone who is waiting for him outside the gate.
From the kitchen comes a clink of crockery. He walks through the dining room, and on opening the kitchen door he sees Eloni trimming flowers at the chopping board, and Kate standing by the cooker. ‘Good morning,’ Kate greets him, pouring cereal into a bowl, giving him a smile that seems to say that the previous evening is forgotten. She’s wearing a loose grey T-shirt and jeans, and her hair is tied back and her face slightly flushed, as if she’s just had a run and a shower. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ she asks, placing a cup of tea beside Eloni, who glances at him, seeming to ask him what she should do.
‘You go and sit down,’ he says to Kate. ‘You’re supposed to be the guest. Go on. I’ll bring your breakfast,’ he says, reaching for the bowl.
‘This will do fine,’ she tells him, drawing it to her midriff. ‘As long as I’m not in the way. I’m not in the way, am I?’ she asks, looking from Eloni to him and back to Eloni. She leans against the sink, supporting the bowl on a cradle of manicured fingers.
As if severing wires that might be live, Eloni continues to trim the stems of the roses.
‘We were out in the garden,’ says Kate, pointing the spoon at the row of flowers. She kicks off her sandals and crosses her ankles. Her feet, steeply arched and as smooth as her hands, make a dancer’s shape of complementary curves. Noticing the direction of his gaze, she raises the front foot, inspects it and restores it to its place. ‘Beautiful roses,’ she remarks.
Eloni sweeps together the snippets of stem and scoops them into her palm. ‘I will put the roses on the tables,’ she says to him, dropping the scraps into the bin. She lays the cut flowers on a tray and backs out of the door, with a small smile for Kate.
‘She’s sweet,’ Kate comments after the clatter of the door, setting the bowl down and picking up her cup. ‘Where’s she from?’
‘Greece.’
‘How old?’
‘Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Thereabouts.’
‘Lucky girl.’ She takes a long sip, seeming to weigh up the information about Eloni. ‘Seems younger,’ she says.
‘She’s nervous.’
‘Of me?’ she enquires, her eyes ingenuous.
‘She’s not confident about speaking English.’
‘OK,’ she responds in a sceptical drawl. She closes both hands round the cup and holds it under her chin, while her eyes search the floor around her feet. ‘Likes you,’ she says, dipping an eyebrow at him.
‘She’s glad of the work.’
‘Of course she is, Malcolm. Of course she is,’ she replies with an arch grin, then she turns her back on him to rinse the bowl.
‘Leave that,’ he says, looking into the dining room, where Eloni is making the arrangement of the roses last as long as she can, placing each flower as if inserting a needle into a tiny hole.
‘If her highness appears, she’ll find me in the garden,’ says Kate, drying her hands. ‘Get some country air into the lungs before getting back.’
‘Shall I come with you?’ he asks.
She looks at him and looks away, stooping to hook the heel straps of her sandals. ‘I’m sure you must have work to do.’
‘Nothing that can’t wait.’
She pushes the door open to let Eloni through. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she says. ‘You should have some breakfast.’
With unwarranted urgency Eloni busies herself with the coffee grinder, and he pretends to be bothered by the wiring above the light switches. When she has finished pouring the coffee into the hopper she half turns, showing a fraught brow. ‘She would not let me make her the breakfast,’ she explains. ‘I tried to make her go, but it was not possible.’
‘She knows her own mind,’ he reassures her, and adds a quiet laugh, which Eloni mimics.
‘She is nice,’ she remarks, but not to his face.
‘Yes.’
‘Pretty.’
‘Indeed.’
Eloni nods at the wall and starts to load the juicer with oranges.
‘This is getting cold,’ he says, picking up the cup of coffee that Kate made for her. ‘Shall I get you another one?’
‘Thank you. No, this is good,’ she says, taking it from him as though it were an embarrassing possession that she had dropped.
‘I’ll make you another one,’ he insists. He puts a new cup underneath the spout and presses the button. They stand side by side, a foot apart, eyes straight ahead, while the coffee machine gargles. He wonders what, if anything, Kate talked about with Eloni. ‘Looks like we’ll be busy on the last night,’ he tells her, and then, at the periphery of his vision, a movement catches his attention at the same instant as Eloni looks towards the door. In the dining room Mr Grierson is pointing to a table by the window.
‘That is Mr and Mrs Gierson?’ Eloni asks, washing her hands.
‘Grierson, yes.’
‘Grierson,’ she repeats. ‘Grierson. Grierson.’ Behind the door she flexes her hands and rolls her shoulders three or four times, like a runner limbering up. She takes the notepad from her pocket and turns back the cover. Composed, she opens the door.
A minute later he follows her into the dining room, greets the Griersons, and goes through to the hall and on to the porch, from where he can see Kate, standing by the sundial. He observes her as she lifts her sunglasses to read the time on the dial and verify it by her watch. She ambles away, across the main lawn, where she takes off her sandals to walk barefoot. Slowly she walks the perimeter of the lawn, the sandals hanging from a finger behind her back. He watches her as she inspects the flower beds and the shrubs. The way she looks around the garden reminds him of the way she would stroll with him through the Valley Gardens, the way she would look at things with great concentration, yet with detachment, as if committing it all to memory because one day, soon, she would be gone, for good. Waiting to be moved he watches her, but the sight of her does not move him. The woman he is watching is a woman identical to his wife but she is not his wife: she is her twin, re-enacting what she used to do. She returns to the sundial, where she stands with her hands joined, upright, against her lips, as she looks towards the horizon. Kate stood like that in the Valley Gardens, and once when she lowered her hands she turned to him and said, ‘Where shall we go?’ Remembering this, watching her, he waits for a pang of loss – like the pang he felt last night when they were talking, but all he feels is an anaemic disappointment at feeling so little, as she disappears beneath the pergola of vines.
At ten o’clock Stephanie at last appears in the doorway of his office. ‘Coast clear?’ she greets him, though she must know that Kate would not have left without saying goodbye. He calls Kate’s room, then takes Stephanie to the hall. The lift door opens and Kate springs out, smiling as if in anticipation of an enjoyable day out.
‘Good morning,’ she says to Stephanie, gesturing to David, to whom she hands her suitcase and car keys. ‘Sleep well?’ she asks breezily.
‘Thank you,’ says Stephanie, matching Kate’s spurious good humour. ‘And you?’
‘You’re sure about this?’ Kate asks him. ‘I should pay. I invited myself, after all.’
‘On me,’ he says.
‘Last chance,’ she says, preparing to unfasten her handbag.
‘Not discussing it.’
‘OK,’ she declares. Briskly she surveys the hall: the staircase, the gallery, the skylight, the vases, her daughter, him. ‘That’s everything. Time to go.’ Side by side they walk to the porch. On the top step Kate puts an almost contactless kiss on Stephanie’s cheek. ‘Back on Saturday,’ she reminds her.
‘Back on Saturday,’ Stephanie repeats.
He follows Kate to the car. ‘You all right?’ he asks, opening the door for her.
She turns the ignition key, winds down the driver’s window, closes the door, locks the seat belt. She looks at him and blinks. ‘No,’ she cheerfully answers. He puts a hand on
her shoulder; she lets it stay there, but does not react. ‘Have fun,’ she says, reaching for the radio. She drives away, past the porch, where Stephanie is waving goodbye. Five minutes have passed, no more, since he rang her in her room.
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