Above her, she heard a low, guttural laugh. ‘Thank-you for that. Thank-you, Mrs. Caldwell. Mrs. Stephen Caldwell.’
Tessa sprang up. He was whistling. Nonchalantly zipping up his trousers. She turned away. Her throat felt bruised as she mumbled, ‘So you’ve found out?’
‘I have. And it doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’ Tessa’s hand trembled as she straightened her jumper. ‘So you’ve talked to him? He’s here?’
‘I would have thought his wife could tell me that. Where were you? Yesterday? Today? And what do you think you’re up to? Lying to me like that.’
Her legs felt weak. She wanted to head for the door, but one glance at his face told her she wouldn’t make it without an explanation. She perched at the edge of the bed, clasped her hands together on her knees. ‘I…’ She averted her eyes. ‘I want to adopt a baby.’
‘Adopt! What! Have you gone crazy?’
She could feel him staring at her. ‘Why do you say that?’ she asked softly. ‘Anyhow. That’s where I’ve been.’
‘Tess, no! Not really! I don’t believe it. Anyhow is that a reason to lie to me?’
‘I didn’t exactly lie. I just omitted. I… I liked you and I thought if you knew, you… we wouldn’t…’ She shook her hand vaguely, examined her shoes.
‘And this adoption business? Christ! I knew you wanted a child. But not this way, Tess. Really. Its’ mad.’
She shrugged, her face desolate.
From the small ice box hidden inside a cabinet, he pulled out a bottle of whisky and poured them each a glass. On his way back to her, he paused at the fax. She saw his shoulders stiffen, saw consternation cover his features. She could go now, she thought.
‘You need to work,’ she murmured, hurried towards the door.
‘No, Tess, stay. We’ve gotta talk. What’s got into you?’ He put a glass into her hand, urged her into an armchair, tidied faxes into a pile. ‘You can’t do this,’ he was smiling at her, his face all sweet concern. ‘It’s Stephen, isn’t it? I never thought he was up to much that way. But look. I showed you how easy it all is. Marriot’s clinic. There are lots of good places in England, too. But adoption… believe me, Tess. You have to be careful of these things. The genetic mix and all that. You never know what you could be getting into. Some half wit. Drink up. You’re looking pale.’
He refilled her glass.
‘You know…’ He came to sit at her feet, stroked her fingers. ‘Look, I’m sorry about just now. I know you didn’t like it. I was just, well, jealous, I guess. I thought you and that Dr. Martin…’ He waved his arm. ‘Feeling a bit miffed, too, to tell you the truth. I thought you trusted me.’ He wrapped his hand softly round hers and gazed at her in silence for a moment, an appeal in his eyes.
‘And rather than have you contemplate that - adoption, you know.’ He shook his head with an air of apocalyptic gloom. ‘Well, you and I, if you like, if that’s what you want, if Stephen can’t. We could have a go. My track record for babies is pretty good. Though you’ll have to make yourself small and secret for the next few days. Stephen isn’t here yet, as far as I know. But he’s due any minute. I gather you don’t want to be found out.’
That rugged face met hers in soft persuasion as she shook her head, though she didn’t quite know why she did so.
‘Jan Martin doesn’t know who you are, does he?’
‘No.’
He pulled her gently down beside him on the carpet, held her. ‘What do you say, Tess? Now that everything’s open between us.’ He touched her breast, brought her hand to his trousers and for a shiver of a second she almost forgot Amy.
-13-
_____________
‘Madame Lalande Debray? One moment, Sir. I will check.’ The stiff-lipped receptionist behind the desk at the Europa Hotel picked up the telephone, waited for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No, Sir. It is as I thought. She has not yet returned. You wish to leave a message?’
Stephen penned a quick note. He had hoped to find Simone in time for dinner. He needed to find out whether she had heard anything of Ariane. But he was evidently too late. His plane, not unusually, had been delayed.
He looked round the lobby and wondered whether he might still have time to walk down river and just catch Jan at the Congress venue. Jan would be eager to hear about the meeting with Franklin at Camgene that morning. It had not gone too badly, despite Stephen’s tension. He had minimized his fears about the possible leak, concentrated instead on the miracle of Chrombindin, on the need for a quick patent application, on collaboration with Jan’s Institute. Franklin had bought it all with a rare display of enthusiasm.
The down side was that when he had rung the Cambridge travel agency to get Tessa’s hotel number, they had told him she had cancelled her trip to the Caribbean at the very last minute. He had considered ringing her sister, but hadn’t wanted to set off alarm bells. Tessa would have her reasons. He didn’t think he was going to like them.
Glancing at his watch, Stephen concluded that he would probably just miss Jan. He would try him at home later. The door to the restaurant caught his eye. Simone might be in there.
The crooning voice of a latter day Frank Sinatra made its way to him through billows of cigarette smoke. He peered through gloom, wound his way slowly amidst tables and quick-paced waiters and their mirrored reflections. From the cacophony of voices, he suddenly distinguished his name. He turned to see a waving arm. It didn’t belong to Simone. For a moment, he wasn’t certain to whom it belonged. Then beneath a swirl of blonde hair, he distinguished the face of her granddaughter, Antoinette.
‘Come and join us, Dr. Caldwell. No, I’m not a phantom. Grand-mère invited me along, though I don’t know where she’s got herself to. And I’ve brought along a new friend. I think you know each other.’
The friend, who had had her back to Stephen, turned and stared up at him with a slightly fearful smile. ‘Hello Stephen. I told Antoinette you had helped me when all my things were stolen.’
Antoinette clapped her hands, laughed gleefully. ‘And since Cary had taken such a dislike to Paris, I suggested she come along with me.’ She gestured Stephen towards the empty chair.
Stephen felt a flush creeping up his face. He raked his mind for an escape route and, unable to think of one, sank into the proffered chair with as much dignity as he could muster.
‘Your money came through then?’ He risked meeting Cary’s eyes.
She fidgeted, matched his discomfort. ‘As promised.’
‘So I took her mind off Paris and asked her to come along with us. Grand-mère is not a great one for clubs. She prefers this.’ The girls looked at each other and burst into giggles as Antoinette raised a hand to hail a waiter who arrived with smitten alacrity..
Watching them, listening to their patter about the clubs they had visited the previous evening, Stephen suddenly felt like some invisible ancient. He downed the tiny glass of Becherovka that had been placed in front of him and cleared his throat. ‘Are you expecting Simone?’
Antoinette hoicked up the sleeve of her leather jacket, glanced at her watch. ‘She’s over an hour late already. She told us to meet her here. Maybe the snow’s held her up.’
‘You’ll tell her I came by.’ Stephen signalled for the waiter. ‘And that I’ll try and get hold of her later.’
Antoinette nodded. ‘You do that. She’s in a foul temper and needs cheering. I don’t know why she’s bothered to come here if it puts her into such a bad mood. And despite the fact that I told her I was going to break up with Jean-Michel.’
‘I think she’s terrific,’ Cary offered. ‘On the plane, she gave me a lecture on Communism and Capitalism. No one at college taught me that much.’
‘Mmnn. That’s what I tell her.’ Antoinette flicked her hair back to reveal a stretch of smooth skin. ‘Between her and my parents, university’s a waste of time.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Stephen heard himself saying. He stood up abr
uptly. ‘I had really better be off.’
‘We’ll see you around, then.’ Antoinette flashed him her languid look.
Cary raised her eyes to his. ‘And thanks. Thanks for rescuing me. It’s great to see you again.’
‘Yes.’ Stephen’s smile felt like a grimace. He turned away with an attempt at a breezy wave and made his way out into the cold.
The extended rectangle of Wenceslas Square was shadowy with artificial light. Neon tinged sky and snowflakes a ghostly pink. The pavements teemed with the youth of all nations. Like exotic birds, they spilled out of the new fast food spots, sprawled against the facades of buildings, sat around the fountain buttressed with an assortment of rucksacks. To his side Stephen could hear the strumming of a guitar and in the air he smelled the slightly fetid odour of marijuana riding high above petrol fumes. In the distance two women’s voices, hoarse with the night, merged in the mournful strains of some American folk song.
As he crossed the street, the raucous blast of a rock band assaulted his eardrums, music with a beat which was like speed itself. Leather clad men, drunk on night and youth and equally short-lived substances, heaved past him, their assortment of chains clinking as they strode from the door of a club. One of them loomed against him, a leer on his face. He was mumbling something Stephen couldn’t make out and before he had understood it, he felt an arm through his, the rub of a hip.
Roughly Stephen disentangled himself, tried to disappear into the crowd, but the man was right there in front of him as he turned the corner into an arcade. In the light, Stephen saw he was a mere boy, the down on his upper lip as smooth as a child’s, his pupil’s vastly dark against pale eyes. He was muttering something again. Stephen stilled his nervousness, shook his head, then took some bills out of his pocket and handed them to the boy. He gave him a single wild stare and disappeared into the throng.
Money, the universal panacea. Stephen tried to calm himself, glanced at the blare of movie posters arguing with each other for space and attention, saw the straggly queue leading into the decaying grandeur of the picture palace, unchanged over all the years he remembered it, like the secession curves of the arcade itself. The young had always gathered in the grand public arena of Wenceslas Square to manifest their pleasure or displeasure, to welcome in republics or rebel against dictatorial regimes. Or simply to while away their youth.
He had never been young like that, Stephen reflected. Somewhere between the deaths of his parents and the austere excitements of the lab, the youth of all night revels and tightly knit bands and blatant excess had passed him by and not bothered to look back.
He walked on, past the entrance of the metro, into the quieter arm of the arcade with its down-at-heel emporia, as grey and faded as the Communist regime whose traces it still bore. As he turned the corner which brought him out into the cooler air of the street, a woman detached herself from a threesome and came towards him. Her skirt was so short and tight, her heels so high that for a moment he was mesmerized by the length of her legs and didn’t understand the lewdness of her expression.
‘Want love-y love-y?’ she passed her tongue over carmine lips. ‘Very good.’
Stephen blushed through darkness. He shook his head, tried to move past her but she blocked his way, pressed herself against him.
‘No, no thank-you,’ he mumbled.
‘Very cheap,’ she scurried alongside him as he quickened his pace, tottering a little as if she were unpractised on her heels. ‘Have place. Not far.’
He had a sudden image of a dank room, a single stark light bulb, long legs curled on a tousled bed, carmine lips closing over his penis which was dishearteningly hard. He forced another ‘no’ from his parched throat and tried not to break into an undignified run. From behind him, he heard the woman curse. He wanted to reach into his pocket and extract more bills, but he didn’t know how to without prolonging the encounter, so he hastily turned a corner and then more quickly another and another and only then slowed his pace and caught his breath.
The lamp-post cast a murky yellow light on a fraying poster. Harrison Ford, he read, and then the unrecognisable name of a film in translation. He stopped to look at a man’s bronzed face. Cary, had repeated to him at some point in that night they had spent together that he looked like Harrison Ford, but one who had been left out in the rain for too long and would find adventure a strain. The gym would do him good.
She had said it kindly and since the name Harrison Ford brought no particular image to his mind, he had laughed and teased her about being a card-carrying member of the Health Police and told her, give or take a few years, the gym wouldn’t make any difference. It was all there, encoded in his genes. She had come right back at him, sounding more like himself than he did at that point and told him that within pretty broad limits, you could make what you wanted of your genes and there was a difference between a well-toned gene and a sagging one.
And now here she was in Prague. Stephen stared at the tattered poster, felt his heart still pounding too loudly and acknowledged that, even though this Harrison Ford had evidently been out in rain and snow for a long time, she was right.
When he looked up and around him, he realised that in his flurry he had lost his bearings. He crossed the street and walked down a narrow lane in the hope that it might return him to a recognisable area.
How did these people choose whom to approach, he wondered. Was there a particular look on his face tonight which made him open to advances? A depressed echo to his footsteps? Hardly surprising if there were, he reminded himself. First Ariane. Then Tessa. He didn’t want to think about that.
Stephen shivered, forced himself into a brisk pace. He avoided the eyes of passers-by. Coming on top of the meeting with Cary, those two separate advances had unsettled him. Seeing her with Antoinette had underlined for him just how inappropriate the whole thing had been. She was just a girl. Yet he had wanted her. He had to come to grips with that. Not now though. He didn’t want to think about it now.
His street suddenly appeared at an odd angle, when he least expected it. He made his way gratefully toward the hotel. He had stayed here on his last two visits, drawn to the place, because it had once been a dilapidated barracks of a house which had served as a dropping point for manuscripts. It was also conveniently near the Institute and he liked the fact that it was too modest to sport a name. It went only by the number of its street.
He liked chatting to the owner too, who had a distant, barely polite smile and who seemed to spend her life behind the reception desk. The hotel was in fact her childhood home, taken away by the state in ‘48 and recently returned to her. A bank-loan had been used for refurbishment and would be paid back for many years to come. Meanwhile Pani Stasna worked and worked and sometimes chatted in order to complain about how only she and none of her employees worked and worked. It was the state of the state, she mourned, as it had always been.
Tonight she was in her customary place behind the mahogany veneer of the new bar which doubled as reception counter. She greeted him benignly and handed him a number of folded messages along with his key.
He didn’t stop to chat. He couldn’t have brought out anything sensible now. Instead he made his way quickly up the stairs which curved round one side of the atrium and shook the snow from his hat on the way. When he reached the third floor, the lights came to the end of their timed cycle. He fumbled unsuccessfully for the switch and ended up by groping towards his room at the far end of the corridor. His key when he tried it failed to fit the lock. With a flare of impatience, Stephen prodded the latch. The door swung open.
A scent of lavender mingled with a whiff of mothballs caught at his nostrils. He found a light switch. He was in some kind of linen store. Blankets and sheets lay neatly folded on shelves along the walls, but beneath them on the floor there was a scramble of odds and ends - lamp bases without shades, white candles in stubby holders, a tangle of loose wire, an old wooden chest creamy lace peeping from its interior. Stephen stared, then hurri
edly closed the door and tried the one beside it. It opened smoothly to his key.
The scent of mingled lavender and mothballs followed him. He pushed open the window with its new casing and watched the gauzy curtains billow. But the smell wouldn’t leave him. It made his head swirl. Dizzy, he stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes.
He was at the door of some dark musty room. His legs ached. He had walked too quickly, climbed too high, and the stairs seemed hugely big, too tall. Perhaps it was because he was so small, his legs too short for the stairs’ height. A little boy standing by an attic door which squeaked. He was clutching something in his hand and as the door opened wider, that smell was there, dust and mothballs and a lingering scent of crushed lavender. His mother picked it from the garden and crushed it into a bowl. She must have brought it up here into the dark.
There were a lot of boxes here and a lamp base and a stack of old blankets. But they would find him if he lay on those. They were rough and damp anyway. There was a box though, a big chest, just big enough for him. He opened it and smelled the lavender again. There was something white and satiny inside. He climbed in on top of it and made a soft nest for himself. He was excited and a little frightened. He took the tiny torch from his pocket and shone it on the object in his hand. It was beautiful. A pale yellow stone. A crystal tear. An elephant’s tear. It glowed softly. And inside the shapes glinted and changed, tiny thread’s of them like the cat’s eyes. The tear was warm from his hand as he pressed it against his cheek. It had been warm when the woman had taken it off her neck and given it to him. Because he had been staring at it. Because it had perched there skirting the V of her dress and catching the light like a giant eye. And it was warm with her skin.
Stephen snuggled more deeply into the creamy satin, let the lid of the chest fall over him. They would never find him here. He could bury the tear here if he liked and come back to see it when he wanted. But his father would be angry. They hadn’t seen him sneak away. His mother was making tea and his father was too busy talking to the lady who had given him the stone from her neck. She was sweet. Had smiled at him sweetly and had talked in a funny accent. The satin was as soft as her smile. He put the tear on it and stared into it for a long time.
The Things We Do For Love Page 23
