Mazarine

by Grimshaw, Charlotte

  She breathed in slowly through her nose, trying to get me to imitate her and calm down. In a quiet, gently incredulous tone she said, ‘But why would we make a drama? Why would we invent reasons to be worried? We are worried. We only want to find them.’

  Her expression was earnest, encouraging.

  She reached across and took my hand. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll work it out.’

  When I didn’t answer, she added, ‘Let’s make a list of what we want to do. If we’ve crossed everything off and still haven’t heard, we’ll ask the police what else we can do. How about that?’

  I looked at her hand holding mine.

  She squeezed my fingers. ‘It doesn’t need to be a long list. Also, can I say something, Frances?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying, but I think you overthink things. This is straightforward.’

  After a while, still looking at her hand and my inert fingers, I said, ‘It strikes me, that you say that.’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘That I overthink things. How do you know?’

  ‘It’s just my impression. Some things you said. You mentioned “making a drama”. You write fiction, right. I had a vague idea, I don’t know, that you wanted to make sure …’

  ‘Make sure?’

  She shook her head, changed tack. ‘You doubt yourself, but you shouldn’t. You know why? Because Maya is a wonderful girl.’

  I didn’t smile, but still. I did finally meet her eye.

  ‘She had a wonderful father,’ I said.

  There was a pause while we finished the coffee, Mazarine reading the newspaper, and I looking gloomily at the portraits of former directors mounted on the walls, a severe bunch, many of them in uniform, since the trust in charge of the Residence seemed to hire most of its executives from the army.

  Mazarine laughed.

  ‘What?’

  She pointed at the newspaper. ‘The Republican primary candidates. This one, the vampire. And this one, the narcissist. As if. In a million years.’ She shook her head, pressing her lips together.

  Some part of my mind was still mulling over what we’d been talking about.

  I said, ‘My sister recently described me as toxic.’

  She looked up from the page. ‘Really?’

  ‘Because,’ I went on, ‘I said my brother has some problems. And that they can’t all have been caused by his wife.’

  ‘She actually said you were toxic?’

  ‘I think she was a bit drunk when she said it, to be fair. But what I thought was, Why does she need to shut me down? Everything that’s affected Frank is part of me.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  ‘Whereas she won’t confront anything. She denies our reality, mine and Frank’s. I always got on okay with Frank. He’s lovely, but he’s sort of nuts.’

  Mazarine considered this.

  ‘What kind of nuts?’

  ‘Well, eccentric.’

  ‘Is he autistic?’

  ‘No. He’s sweet and clever, but he’s obsessive compulsive. Also an addict who sometimes has a lapse.’

  ‘I see. Frances, you know what would be really good for you? Yoga.’

  ‘Yoga?’

  ‘You see, the tensions in our body when we feel—’

  My phone was ringing. There was no caller ID.

  I answered.

  A woman, polite, well spoken, said, ‘Is that Frances? My name’s Angela Lang. I was just talking to Daniel Gray; he mentioned you were here. He asked me to give you a call, apparently you wanted to speak to me.’

  It was so unexpected I couldn’t think how to respond, and stared at Mazarine, wondering what I would regret saying, and whether I should call the woman back when I’d unscrambled my wits, but Mazarine made a circular gesture with her hand, meaning, Get on with it, say something, and I swallowed and answered, ‘Oh, yes, lovely, hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  I said, ‘Yes, Daniel and I talked. I was so sorry to hear about your … about Aiden.’

  ‘God, yes, it’s awful. Completely unexpected. We’ve all been shattered; you too, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes, Aiden was a friend of my late husband, and I—’

  Silence.

  ‘And your daughter worked for him, of course. He spoke very highly of her.’

  ‘Oh, did he, that’s nice, thank you.’

  ‘She must be so sad. They were getting on incredibly well at work.’

  ‘Yes, it’s devastating.’

  ‘Where are you staying, Frances?’

  There was something about her use of my name that made me evasive. ‘Um, a hotel, where is it … Cartwright Gardens.’

  Mazarine raised her eyebrows, mouthed, ‘Who is it?’

  I gestured at her to shut up.

  ‘Sort of around there,’ I added. Ridiculous. As if it were possible, in this city of surveillance, to pretend to be staying in a place that you weren’t, and why did I want to hide from this person anyway, it was just a reflex, some anachronistic instinct.

  Angela Lang’s voice was cool and curious. ‘I expect you’d like to talk about Aiden.’

  I did have a memory of telling Daniel that I was considering speaking to Angela Lang, but I’d never imagined he’d think I was asking him to pass on a direct request, and I was embarrassed, unable to think what on earth we would talk about, but for god’s sake this was important, stop being so pathetically tentative, and I said in a strained tone, ‘It would be great to meet, if you’re able?’

  Angela Lang said it would be lovely, and she’d had in mind a drink, if that would suit. She suggested a bar in the Rosewood Hotel in Holborn, and hoped that I would bring Maya, whom she’d met a few times, and of whom Aiden had spoken so favourably, until then it would be a pleasure and she looked forward.

  We discussed what day would suit us, then I put the phone down.

  ‘Angela Lang,’ I said. ‘Aiden Wood’s friend. What are we going to talk about?’

  ‘About him of course.’

  I made a guilty face. ‘I don’t know Aiden.’

  ‘You can pretend you were “close at one time”, make it seem significant. Also you can convey that you value his connection to your late husband.’

  ‘How cynical, Mazarine.’

  ‘This is the way I look at it: until the kids turn up, we’re trying to find out everything they’ve been doing. Once they’ve turned up, we’ll stop snooping and leave them alone. Okay?’

  I was recalling Angela Lang’s tone, something hard and insistent in it.

  ‘It’s strange that she called me. Why would she?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There’s nothing in it for her. She doesn’t know me.’

  ‘Maybe she wants something from you.’

  ‘You mean information? But what kind?’

  ‘Could she be wanting to speak to Maya?’

  ‘She told me to bring Maya to the Rosewood.’

  ‘Oh? Why didn’t you say she’s out of town?’

  ‘I was trying to think on my feet. I was worried I’d say the wrong thing.’

  ‘But the fact that you didn’t immediately say, “Oh, Maya’s out of town” — will she remember that when you turn up without her? Doesn’t that reveal that you don’t know where Maya is?’

  ‘Why would it matter? Maybe you’re overthinking this.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Well, yes, this Angela is pretty much a side issue, anyway. The friend of a colleague, so what?’

  ‘A dead colleague.’

  I winced. ‘It’s not a game. It’s serious.’ Sudden misery. ‘It’s about Maya. I can’t live without her. We’re close. It’s not like—’

  But she was distracted, chewing the side of her thumb and deep in thought, her eyes absently on the portrait above our table of a red-faced chap in a khaki hat.

  I pushed back my chair and stood up.

  She followed me out. ‘It’s the same for me, Frances. I lost my husband, Jasmine, Mikail maybe.
I’m not going to lose Joe.’ She took hold of my arm (she’d got very free about touching me, I thought, carefully extracting myself) and said, ‘Nothing is more important than our kids. Not laws, not rules, not countries, nothing.’

  I wondered at her uncharacteristic tone, since she was hardly given to melodrama, but perhaps she was responding to a kernel of accusation in my outburst, that for me Maya’s welfare was everything, whereas she’d seemed rather casual about her sons’ habitual failure to check in.

  TWELVE

  I hadn’t expected Sophie Greenaway to be at work in the middle of the summer break and so soon after her husband’s death, but I called her at Gillmans since it was the only contact I had, and left a voicemail message. When she didn’t reply, I found my way to a secretary, who was guarded but gave me a work email address, to which I sent a message containing my cellphone number, saying how sorry I was about Aiden and mentioning his and Patrick’s connection.

  Mazarine dragged the picnic table into a shaded corner of the roof terrace and sat out there wearing sunglasses and coughing and typing on her laptop, while I ranged around London on foot, visiting all my old haunts, the street where Patrick and I had lived with Maya, University College Hospital where she’d been born, even past her old nursery and her junior school, Christopher Hatton, behind Gray’s Inn Road.

  The city was teeming, vivid in the heat wave, and I walked through the green parks and crowded streets, the summer air vibrating with sirens, and at moments forgot why I was there, drifting about mindlessly in the city, until the sight of French schoolgirls gossiping and giggling as they queued for the London Eye, or a young woman with long dark hair disappearing into the crowd at a Tube station, reminded me of Maya, and my anxiety would flare again.

  Everywhere I walked, I looked for her. I must have scanned every street in Queen’s Park, in case I should see her wheeling a battered suitcase out of the Tube, just back from some European music festival or clubbing spree, or among the crowd at one of the bars on Salusbury Road, or strolling with Joe across the dusty grass in the park, and imagine her surprise when I raced up to her and threw my arms around her, my darling my joy, and then I walked all the way back to the Normanby via Notting Hill, the edge of Hyde Park, the West End, arriving back at the flat with sore feet, worn out, discouraged, Mazarine greeting me with her coughing and her cooking.

  After that first night, I’d said that I was going to check in to the hotel in Cartwright Gardens and Mazarine said, ‘Okay. But how will we coordinate?’

  ‘By phone,’ I said coldly.

  ‘Let’s eat first. I’ve bought wine. I’ll be the one to move — this is your flat after all.’

  After dinner she felt weak, her cough had exhausted her, she must spend a long time in the shower ‘to steam open her airway’, and then she sank down on the bed (her back) and I made her a cup of tea, and my legs ached and my feet were killing me, and it would have been monstrous of me to make her get up and walk to Cartwright Gardens with her unwieldy suitcase, but she wouldn’t hear of me going, that wouldn’t be fair, by the way she couldn’t believe how expensive London was, the food, the transport, and then she started telling me a story. It was about herself and her ex-husband, and how they’d met at Oxford where his degree was in linguistics, and how he had perfect English and perfect teeth.

  ‘Perfect teeth?’

  ‘He’s very handsome. And clever. His family sent him to Britain to be educated.’

  ‘Why did you split up?’

  ‘Hopeless incompatibility.’

  ‘So, no regrets.’

  ‘Life has its own way of working things out.’

  ‘Do you want to understand why though? I spent my whole life just accepting everything, until suddenly I wanted to find out.’

  ‘Find out what?’

  ‘Why I am the way I am. Which has annoyed people.’

  ‘Your family doesn’t like you questioning.’

  ‘No. You know the story of Theseus? He has to enter the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur, and Ariadne gives him a thread to take in so he can find his way out again. The past is the labyrinth. The self, too.’

  ‘The self?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘You need an Ariadne,’ Mazarine said.

  I woke in the night hearing voices, the same American students heading back to their rooms late, a couple of noisy women with them this time. I went to the peephole and listened until the corridors went silent, but just as I was about to turn away a woman came soundlessly up the stairs and looked straight at me, looked at the peephole I mean, her face greenish in the institutional light of the stairwell, a face I felt I’d seen before, with full lips, a turned-down mouth, straight brown hair, brown eyes. I resisted the urge to step back and for a second we were staring straight at each other, although she couldn’t see me, and then she pulled out a phone, sent a text, turned, and slipped away down the stairs as noiseless and quick as a fox, leaving me uneasy, frightened even.

  Had she been on her way up to one of the rooms on our floor, then changed her mind? Her quickness and silence seemed odd, and I puzzled over where I’d seen her before, presumably in the dining hall or the Square, but I had a sense it wasn’t around here but on one of my long rambles across the city that I’d caught sight of that pale, intent face.

  On a hot morning, Sophie Greenaway called.

  I was in the shower and didn’t pick up, but she left a message. She’d flown back from New York the day before, and was in her office at Gillmans. Despite the fact that she’d worked on her accent she was immediately identifiable as Australian, which Daniel Gray hadn’t mentioned. It made the task of calling her marginally less daunting, since it was never easy to decode British manners, even after living in London for years. It seemed to be the rule that the posher people were, the more inscrutable their demeanour, which made the highest caste of British person both Sphinx-like and unpredictable, if that’s not too oxymoronic. Anyway, what I mean is, my British was rusty, but I could talk Australian.

  ‘Look. It’d be great to meet you,’ I said.

  ‘Come around for a drink tonight,’ she said unexpectedly, and gave me an address. ‘Look, that’d be great, I’ll see you then.’

  Just like that.

  I was pleased, since I’d expected a brush-off, and then immediately uneasy, wondering what I would say, dreading meeting a stranger in such odd circumstances, depressed by the fact that there was no word from Maya or Joe. Still, I’d agreed to Mazarine’s plan that we would work through our list before consulting authorities who, Mazarine emphasised, wouldn’t be interested, given that our children were adults and free to evade their mothers as long as they liked.

  Mazarine sat out on the roof terrace drinking a spritzer and conducting a long, earnest conversation with her aunt in Amsterdam, while I looked up Sophie Greenaway’s address and wondered what I would say to her.

  I gave myself an hour to get there, by Tube and then on foot.

  We had decided I would go by myself, but as I came up from the Tube and set off towards Oxford Terrace I wished Mazarine was with me, so awkward did this seem, going to visit a woman I didn’t know, with no other purpose than to ask about her dead husband, whom I was intending, guiltily, to pretend to have known.

  I rang the bell of the ground-floor flat, and the door was opened by a tiny, dynamic, voluble person who shook my hand and ushered me in, through the apartment and out to a spacious garden with a wooden deck, on which there was an outside table, a barbecue, an umbrella, deckchairs and large pot plants, even a papyrus, and beyond the deck a little outhouse made of Scandinavian-style joinery, with glass sliding doors, the whole space enclosed by high walls covered in green climbing plants, one of those unexpectedly beautiful spots you find hidden in the city, and surprisingly quiet, too, although we were close to busy roads.

  Sophie Greenaway handed me a glass of white wine, looked at me with exaggerated, almost theatrical warmth and said, ‘God, I miss Patrick.’

&nbs
p; ‘Patrick?’

  Surely she meant Aiden?

  ‘He was great, so warm and funny. Do you remember the night we went to that exhibition, there was a party in the pavilion and then a whole lot of us walked back through the park when it was just about to close?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, I did remember that party, in fact it was my only clear memory of Aiden Wood, and yet I’d had no idea that Sophie Greenaway was there; if you’d asked me I would have said that before she’d opened the door of her flat I’d never seen her in my life.

  ‘You were great company that night too. Remember we thought we were going to get locked in the park? And then we went to some terrible nightclub and Patrick and I danced, and Patrick fell over and injured his knee.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. I did remember the knee injury, but had it happened the night of the exhibition? Perhaps she was right, she must be, yet still I had no memory of her.

  ‘God, it’s weird, isn’t it, that we both …’

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded. I knew what she meant. Patrick and now Aiden.

  ‘I mean, who gets “widowed” at our age? Both of us.’

  Silence, while we looked at the garden in the green evening light, the delicate fronds of the papyrus, a cat walking along the top of the wall.

  ‘Was he …?’

  ‘He jumped in front of a train. I guess he must have been depressed. Is that what you were going to ask? But the thing is, Frances, I saw no sign of it. He and I were happy, we’d worked everything out.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, you must remember, he was such a one for flirting. You know, we were together a long time, and after a while I had to get someone else too, or I would have just been heartbroken, or a complete doormat. I sort of knew it when we got together, that he was a terrible commitment-phobic. We couldn’t have kids, which neither of us minded too much. So, when he died we were both seeing other people. But he was happy, we both were, that’s what I can’t understand.’

  ‘Maya enjoyed working for him,’ I said, trying to be enthusiastic. ‘Unsurprisingly,’ I added, and then winced, it sounded so insincere.

  ‘He thinks very highly of her — thought. They got on, he said she was clever.’