‘I didn’t know it showed.’
Tessa gazed out of the window at a landscape blurred by speed. It was true. She had wanted to murder Jonathan once. It was towards the end of their long drawn out affair and she had imagined serving up a plateful of his beloved fungi, tossing in a little death cap masked by plenty of garlic, and waiting for the ghastly and inevitable symptoms to set in. A fitting end, since they had met on a mushroom hunt organized by the college.
She could still remember the way Jonathan had ploughed his little fork into the ground, had pulled out base and earth and fungus, sniffed and peered at stem and flesh and gills and ring. Occasionally tasted and spat, his lips pursed like a triumphant child’s engaged on something naughty. He had talked too, conjured up a darkly fertile world, a vast thread-like undergrowth which spread for miles beneath their feet and of which the visible mushrooms were only the reproductive organs waiting to spill their spores. When they had first made love in the woods, she had imagined she was lying on the crest of buried trees as thick beneath as they were above, a bed as abundantly fruitful as its canopy of oak and chestnut.
But, of course, she had been on the pill, Tessa reflected. So all that fertility had done her little good. Perhaps she should have taken more note of the lethal bombers overhead, darkly ominous birds which took off from the sprawling Lakenheath airbase and regularly punctuated the tawdry idyll of their lovemaking with their ear-shattering noise.
Stephen had saved her from all that. She had loved him then.
Tessa shook her head and avoided his image.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she turned to Ted.
‘Vendôme. Another forty-five minutes or so and we’ll be there. Why don’t you choose your favourite music and put your hand just where I like it.’
The first she saw of the town was a curling river, followed by a steep hillock topped by clustered gables and slate roofs. A towered gate complete with sculpted dolphins led them into its centre.
‘Fourteenth century,’ Ted offered. ‘The abbey and the church are even older. Flamboyant gothic, I’m told. Apparently old Geoffroy Martel, while he was in Constantinople, picked up the tear Christ shed at Lazarus’ resurrection and brought it back here. It used to be a great pilgrimage centre.’
‘Can we visit?’ Tessa gazed up at ancient stone spires and a wonderfully slender bell tower.
‘Sure. But I have to tell you, just in case you’re feeling in need of resurrection, that the Revolution put an end to all that. A little blunt reason in place of Christ’s tear.’
‘You approve, of course?’ Tessa had rather fancied a touch of salutary magic.
‘That’s hardly up to me. The Lazarus motif is still everywhere though.’
They parked, and walked through a pretty, perfectly symmetrical square where the market was just shutting down.
‘Which reminds me. If we don’t eat now, we won’t get any lunch. We’re in the provinces. And lunch is as sacred an affair as any church visit. How about it?’
Tessa laughed. ‘I suspect you didn’t bring me here for sight-seeing in any event.’
‘Maybe just a very little. After lunch.’
They ate tucked away in an arched alcove of a small restaurant, had a peak into the cold, silent church, then strode rapidly through the town.
‘It’s time for your surprise.’ Ted urged her back into the car.
They drove over narrow roads which cut straight lines through bare wintry fields, a flatness indented only by small stone hamlets. Ruffled clouds scudded across a vast sky. Their destination, when it emerged, bulked large on the landscape, a turreted stone building at the end of a row of sentinel-like cypresses. The open iron gate bore a plaque:
Tessa read, ‘Centre de Procréation Médicalement Assistée’. She hesitated, felt the aura of romance she had created for herself plummet as surely as a wounded bird. ‘Is this what I think it is.’
‘Yeah. It’s one of the best IVF places. Professor Marriot has a high success rate. And he’s discovered this apparently brilliant technique for testing frozen embryos which I need to check out. Meanwhile I’ve arranged a tour for you. Thought you’d be interested after our conversation yesterday. I want to introduce you to the excitements of the twenty-first century.’
Tessa found a brittle laugh. ‘I guess I should be relieved you haven’t brought me to a cryogenics centre.’
They walked into an airy waiting room, leafy with fern and figus and dotted with armchairs in bright primary colours. The chairs were discreetly distant from one another, perhaps so the waiting patients couldn’t see the expressions on each other’s faces. Tessa stared.
The couple in the far corner were leafing unseeingly through magazines. Their faces had a dogged patience about them, as if they had been here many times before and hope was being clung to against the odds. Another woman beneath a vast potted palm sat very still, all her nervousness displaced into her gloves which she wound and wound into tight thin strips with quivering fingers.
In the window seat, a man was clutching his wife’s hand. There was a look of entreaty on his face. His eyes had a vagueness about them, a poignant, unfocussed air of loss. Perhaps he was at fault, Tessa thought, his sperm unequal to the task. She glanced at the woman’s haughty face and wondered about their rows - bitter, accusing.
She shivered and turned away, met the eyes of a small, dark woman, who beamed a confident reassurance, as if she wanted to tell Tessa that it could be all right. It could work. Her hands, Tessa noticed, were clasped protectively round her stomach, signalling a tell-tale bulge which wasn’t yet visible. Tessa returned her smile.
With a deep, uncertain breath, she positioned herself and Stephen in a more distant, shadowy corner. Stephen would have that blank look on his face, the one that denied his surroundings, denied her, refused to face their plight. Unless she kidnapped him, she would never even be able to get him near a place like this. That was clear. He had never actually said so, but she sometimes thought he didn’t really want a child at all; that the notion of a baby’s eventual reality had less existence for him than any of those gooey substances in test tubes. He left all that to her. And now he had left it to her absolutely.
Tessa forced a brightness onto the face she turned towards Ted who had just finished talking to the receptionist. Moments later a man and a woman emerged from separate doors and Tessa found herself shepherded off by the woman, efficient in a white uniform and sensible shoes. Her English was only slightly accented, as she explained the various kinds of fertility treatment the Clinic offered. Tessa listened with half an ear. She was more intent on seeing what she had only read about: banks of donated eggs and sperm, dishes where the two met for fertilisation, ranks of instruments and hormones her mind wouldn’t focus on.
Yes, Tessa thought. Everything would be so much easier with Ted. Sex. Simple. Infertility treatment. No problem. He would ring and fix up the dates. Quieten her fears. Happily do it into a bottle. Might even twinkle and ask the nurse for a helping hand.
Yet, as she tuned into a ream of statistics about the relative successes of intra-uterine insemination and in vitro fertilisation, the wonders of the newest technique of intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection - which culled a single recalcitrant sperm and introduced it directly into an egg - she had to acknowledge to herself that for all the romance of science, she would far prefer the human romance.
Averting her eyes from her guide’s, she hid her hands behind her back, crossed her fingers, thought of Ted and made a wish.
-6-
_________
Stephen Caldwell cast a covert glance at his watch and waited impatiently for old Lefort to get through the rhetorical flourishes which were de rigueur in his quarterly progress reports. No sooner had the man finished speaking, than he sprang up, muttered apologies for his haste, and stole, a little guiltily, from the meeting. To delay would mean to be caught up in the inevitable drinks and chit chat. He had two pressing reasons for avoiding these. The first was pardonable: h
e didn’t want to have to avoid Lefort’s eyes as he grilled him about his own research. The second was less so.
He rushed down the boulevard, squeezed between the homeward-bound commuters on the RER and found a few centimetres of space at the rear of the train.
When he had left her yesterday morning, Ariane had told him she finished early on Thursday, so he could be as early and as punctual as he liked. She had said it with her teasing smile, straightened his tie flirtatiously. Wednesday evening wouldn’t do though. She was busy then.
He hadn’t liked to ask whom she was busy with. What did it matter in any case? He would have one more glorious night with her before leaving Paris. The knowledge of that had hung over these last hours like the promise of brilliant sunshine. It was odd how the excitement of her had returned to him, as potent as in those first days. He wondered for a moment why that should be. Maybe the success of a long bout of scientific work really could have an effect on his private parts.
As her station approached, he ceased wondering and raced over the bridge towards the house. No need to stop for flowers today. He leapt up the stairs of the porch and pressed the bell into prolonged shrillness. He hoped Ariane would like his little present for her. He hadn’t been able to resist it when he had spied it in a shop on the Rue du Bac. A translucent perfume flask, bell shaped and ripely yellow, at once opaque and vivid, as lovely and mysterious as one of Morandi’s bottles. Or Ariane herself.
He peaked round the banister of the porch to see if he could spot her through the window and suddenly noticed that her lace curtains were down. She must have embarked on one of her cleaning expeditions.
Stephen rang again, impatient now. Ariane couldn’t be late today.
From somewhere he heard a dog’s bark, the sound of a door. A moment later a voice called out to him, ‘Il n’y a personne.’
Stephen turned and saw the tiny figure of Ariane’s landlady, making her way slowly from the side of the house.
‘Ah, Monsieur Caldwell. C’est vous. Venez, venez.’
Pebble-dark eyes beamed at him from beneath a wisp of white curl. ‘Entrez,’ the woman repeated. She stilled her yapping terrier and ushered Stephen towards the door of the basement flat.
‘Mademoiselle Ariane has gone. Didn’t she let you know?’
Stephen stared at the woman in incomprehension. ‘Gone?’ he mumbled. ‘When will she be back?’
‘No, really gone.’ She gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Left yesterday. Gave me two months rent to complete her lease. And this morning the removal men came. They didn’t take everything though. I’m to keep the rest. Un petit verre?’ she queried as he followed her into her overheated front room. ‘I was just going to serve myself one.’
Stephen shook his head, then changed his mind and nodded. ‘But I don’t understand, Madame Sorel. You mean Ariane has moved out.’
‘Yes. All of a sudden.’ She handed him a glass.
‘Do you know why?’ Stephen felt a shiver of apprehension.
‘No. She didn’t say. I shall miss her.’
‘Did she leave a message for me? A letter perhaps.
‘Ah non, Monsieur Caldwell. I would have given it to you straight away.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Stephen downed the sweet aperitif.
‘And the movers? Did you speak to them? Do you have a forwarding address?’
‘Mademoiselle told me she would send me one in due course.’ She peered up at him curiously. ‘I think she was putting her things in storage.’
‘I see.’
‘If you know any other charming young women, like Mademoiselle Ariane, you will tell them about my house, yes?’
‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’
Stephen let himself out before he was drawn into further conversation. His pulse raced wildly as he walked down the street. He should have paid more attention to Ariane’s fears instead of behaving like a man made complacent by too many years in a country where the rule of law largely prevailed. There must have been a new threat. Or worse. He didn’t want to think of that.
His mind sped over the list of friends and contacts they had in common. Then he hastened his pace, burst into a run as he heard the sound of a train approaching.
At the flat, there was no blinking light to signal the hoped for message. Quickly, he disburdened himself of computer and conference materials and Ariane’s present in its careful boutique wrapping. He hunted through the Minitel to see if he could locate her friend Natalya Yurasovska’s number. He searched under various spellings to no avail. Just to check he wasn’t dreaming he tried Ariane’s number and got only a high-pitched tone. Disconnected. He chased away the image of a hand brutally yanking a cord from a wall.
He was about to leave the flat when he remembered the igloos. Better to check those out now, just in case he was detained. He couldn’t take any chances, even if the freezer had proved reliable so far. Deftly, he pulled the styrofoam cages from the compartment, extracted the small tubes from the dry ice and examined the tiny quantity of sludge at the bottom of each. No change. Elation shot through him and disappeared as quickly.
After that, he took the metro to Pyrénées. He walked along darkened streets dotted with homely restaurants, Chinese, Yugoslav, Portuguese, Armenian. This old working class quarter with its tiny, hidden work-and-sweatshops had paid host to immigrants and refugees over centuries. Here they lived side by side, whatever it was that divided them in their own countries.
Stephen turned into a deserted square where regularly placed iron poles and heaps of rubbish signalled a day-time market. A woman appeared from nowhere dragging a squalling toddler behind her. The child gulped down his whines at the sight of two patrolling policemen, gazed up at them with frightened eyes before he was yanked away with a ‘Ca va pas, non!’
Stephen crossed the street, stopped in front of a door which had needed a coat of paint some years back, and pressed a buzzer.
‘Da?’ A muffled voice eventually emerged from the ansaphone.
‘Boris est là?’ Stephen didn’t dare his few rusty phrases of Russian.
The door opened into a hallway cloudy with smoke, which grew thicker as Stephen walked into the main room. Even at this early hour the place was crowded. Couples and groups sat huddled over small square wooden tables as dense with bottles and glasses as a Russian forest. Ashtrays disappeared beneath their baggage of ash and old stubs. Muted voices occasionally burst into argument or spilled over in laughter. In the distance there was the sound of a wailing violin.
Half club, half dive, Stephen had told himself when he had first come here with Ariane some years back. He had always liked the place.
A balding man with a snub nose and moistly dark eyes came towards him. His shirt was rolled up to the elbows. His baggy trousers were loosely gathered with an old belt which flopped as he walked. He stretched his arms out to Stephen and hugged him hard.
‘Long time no see, Stephan. Welcome. Welcome.’ He spoke in heavily accented English.
‘Good to see you too, Boris. Can we have a chat?’
‘And some dinner, yes. Come, come. In the back.’
He led him up some stairs into a smaller room where tables were set for dinner. The violinist, as lean and pale as if he had been starved of food and daylight for years, sat in the centre of the room on a creaking wooden chair. A cigarette hung from his lips as he played.
‘In a moment you will hear something fabulous.’ Boris urged Stephen into a chair, came back with a bottle. ‘That one he is very good. And that one he is at the Conservatory and almost as good.’
A younger man bearing a cello sat down beside the violinist. They gave each other a single look and burst into a duet, staccato rhythms gathering momentum as they played, challenging each other with virtuosity.
Stephen listened, fascinated by the cigarette between the violinists lip’s. Its ash grew and grew, daring gravity, beating it as the duet reached its crescendo and the room erupted in applause. Only then did it spill over the v
iolinist’s knees, a prisoner of music released.
Boris hastened to put a glass of vodka in the men’s hands, patted each on the shoulder in turn.
‘With these two, we shall soon rival the Salle Pleyel,’ he grinned at Stephen. ‘So what brings you to us? You want some best piroshki? Anya will fetch them.’ He gestured at his plump wife, held up two fingers.
‘I was wondering whether you’d heard anything from Ariane. I’m worried about her.’
‘Our Arianouchka? Ha!’ He slapped his head in evident exasperation. ‘She’s been behaving like a bear who has danced for too long and wants to breathe the fresh air of the forests. Always in a bad temper.’ He lowered his voice. ‘My Anya thinks she maybe is…’ His hands drew a circle around his stomach and he winked at Stephen. ‘Maybe it is yours?’
Stephen flushed. ‘No, no. I don’t know…’ He pictured Ariane’s slender curves, then forced himself back to Boris. ‘She’s left her house.’
‘Really? This I did not know. The last time we saw her, three weeks ago, four maybe, when she came back from Russia, she mentioned nothing. Only said she had to work too hard. Then made the piano tired.’ He gestured towards an old upright in the corner of the room as his wife set a plate of piroshki and sour cream in front of Stephen and smiled.
Stephen shook her warmly by the hand, waited while Boris spoke to her in Russian for a few moments.
‘No. Anya knows nothing of this move.’
‘Did she mention anything about her brother to you?’
‘The one who imports wine from Texas?’ Boris guffawed.
‘No, the other one, the younger one.’
The man shook his head. ‘Natalya. You should speak to Natalya. She knows everything. Even that Frenchman, what’s his name, François something, who was courting our Ariane. A conductor or a banker. I don’t remember.’
‘Do you have Natalya’s number?’
‘Sure, Anya will bring it for you.’
Stephen made himself swallow the food, chatted for a few moments more with Boris, tried to draw him out on any Russian racketeers plying their trade in Paris. On the last score he met only with deviations and finally a stubborn silence.
The Things We Do For Love Page 9
