The Red Queen

by Margaret Drabble

  She assures him that she had enjoyed every minute of it, and was very pleased that he had been able to come.

  ‘I still have your book by the Crown Princess,’ he says.

  She is keenly aware of this, and badly wants to get it back, but she bides her time and says nothing.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to come up to my room for a nightcap when we get back, and I can return it to you?’ he suavely and it would seem tentatively suggests.

  ‘That would be very nice,’ says Dr Babs Halliwell, with a decorum that entirely conceals what can only be described as a sense of triumph. Wow! is what she is thinking. It is an almost wholly pleasurable thought, with only the slightest tinge of shame attached to it.

  ‘I’m in Room 1712,’ he says, discreetly. ‘The year that Rousseau was born. The year of the publication of Pope’s Rape of the Lock. The year before Diderot was born.’

  And, to calm her nerves, he proceeds to demonstrate to her the little Dictionary of Dates that he keeps in his palmtop. He says he uses it constantly as an aide-mémoire. She tells him that her room number is 1517, and together they discover that this was the year that Magellan sailed on his first voyage, and the year that Martin Luther nailed his theses on the church door at Wittenberg. She agrees with him that his date dictionary is a very amusing bit of software. It is largely Eurocentric, he says, and he has found few Korean dates in it. It has nothing on the Koryo period, and nothing on the Silla. The Imo Incident of 1762 is not recorded in it, though it has one or two entries noting the kapsin coup of 1884, the death of the last queen of Korea in 1895, the Japanese annexation in 1910, and the North’s invasion of the South in 1950. But nevertheless it is interesting and sometimes useful. He confides that he has selected the date of the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 as his PIN. She does not tell him about 7777 and her disaster with Dr Oo’s suitcase. But maybe, quite soon, she will. She feels all manner of indiscretions mounting up on her.

  Dr Oo’s room number, which she remembers well, is 1529, which seems to be the year that the Turks had reached the gates of Vienna. She checks this discreetly, but does not divulge it or comment upon it, for fear that Jan van Jost will think she is a scarlet woman, familiar with too many hotel bedrooms. She has not led a chaste life, but she is not a libertine, and does not wish to be taken for one.

  They part, politely, in the dimly lit lobby: she says she is off to powder her nose, and will join him in ten minutes. He makes a slight bow: ‘Room 1712,’ he reminds her. ‘The birth of Rousseau,’ she responds.

  Is that her putto minder, watching her, making sure she goes liftwards to her bed? Or is it some other spy, sitting darkly in the shadows?

  In 1517, she does indeed powder her nose, which is looking much less offensive than it had appeared in the aeroplane toilet. She is looking good. As she brushes her bright brown and streaked yellow hair, and adjusts her underwear, and sprays herself with eau de Cologne, she congratulates herself on having drunk very little alcohol at the reception. She had been too nervous about speaking her few words of thanks to accept more than one glass of wine. She never drinks and speaks, or drinks and drives. But now she can accept a nightcap. She wonders what he will offer her? The prospect of a nightcap with the legendary van Jost is almost too exciting. Is he a man, as other men are?

  She taps on his door, and he is there, immediately, in wait for her. She had been right about his accommodation. He occupies a suite: he greets her in the hallway of a large room with two large settees, an armchair or two, several occasional tables, a desk with a fax machine and various other unidentifiable executive items upon it, and a large TV set. A folding double door, slightly open, reveals a further room which contains his king-sized bed. There are vases of flowers, and bowls of fruit. And there, on a Victorian-style polished wood cocktail cabinet, is a silver tray, with various half bottles of spirits, and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket.

  ‘Now,’ he says, in a firm and friendly manner, ‘you must sit yourself down, and make a decision.’

  She wonders what he is about to propose: is he about to be frontal? But no, all that he now says is, somewhat quizzically, ‘You have to decide whether you would like champagne, or some other drink. The champagne is there, and it is chilled. But it may well be that you do not like champagne. Or that you think it is too late at night for champagne.’

  Babs Halliwell, who has seated herself as instructed, is finding this scene immensely enjoyable. It is like being in a movie with a nice old-fashioned script. It is a movie, and she is the heroine.

  Now, the fact is that there is nothing Babs wants less, at this point of time, than a glass of champagne. Unless, of course, it be an aphrodisiac with a bottled snake in it. Champagne is glamorous, but it is also fizzy and full of wind. It may be that Jan van Jost is longing for a glass of champagne – had he texted through to room service for it on his palmtop while she was powdering her nose? – but if so, he will have to drink it on his own. She wants something short and straight and stiff. She peers past him, as he hovers by the silver tray, and says, firmly, ‘No, I don’t think I’d like champagne. I’d like some of that J&B, please.’

  He looks pleased with her decision and, indeed, he utters or mutters the words ‘Thank God for that!’ Would she like ice, or water, or soda? No, she’d like it just as it comes.

  He pours her a few fingers of pale Scotch, into a cut-glass tumbler, and hands it to her. She watches with interest to see what he will select for himself. He appears to pause for a moment, then reaches for a bottle of gin. He extracts a few cubes of ice from the ice bucket, and carefully pours over them a large quantity of the transparent slightly viscous liquor. He does not add any mixer. Then he settles himself down, at her elbow. They are sitting on separate items of furniture, she in an armchair, he on the end of a settee, but they are adjacent.

  ‘You see,’ he says, as he raises his glass in a gesture towards a salutation, ‘in the matters of spirits, I conform to the national stereotype. And so, it seems, do you.’

  He takes a sip from his glass, and she takes a sip from hers. They both put their identical glasses down, side by side, on the glass-topped table, next to a fruit bowl.

  ‘It was good of you to reject the champagne,’ he says, after a short pause. ‘If you had chosen the champagne, I should have felt obliged to drink some myself. And I am very much happier with a glass of Hollands. As it is, maybe we are both suiting ourselves.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she says.

  They both take another sip.

  ‘Are you always so well mannered?’ she enquires.

  ‘I see no virtue in bad manners,’ he says. ‘I was brought up to behave correctly.’

  ‘Well, it’s very pleasant to be with someone so polite,’ she says.

  ‘It is very pleasant to be with you,’ he says, and again gives a little bow towards her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘I wanted to say to you,’ he says, ‘but so far have lacked the occasion – I wanted to say to you that I found your paper very interesting.’

  This is unexpected.

  ‘I didn’t think you heard me,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, yes, I came to hear you. Did you not see me? I sat at the back in the shadows. I wished to sit quietly and without people talking to me.’

  ‘I didn’t see you,’ she says. Then, a little more boldly, ‘I looked for you, but I didn’t see you.’

  ‘You speak very well,’ he says. ‘It was a beautiful paper.’

  This gives her pause. ‘Beautiful’ seems a very strange word for him to use in this context. It is true that he is a foreigner, and that possibly he may mean something more everyday, like ‘fine’ or ‘good’: but this she doubts, for up to this point his use of the English language has been more deliberate and accurate and refined than her own. So why should he stumble now? She does not believe that he has stumbled: he means something particular by this remark, and he will shortly, no doubt, expand upon it. She takes another sip of her J&B, her mind by
now in turmoil. Maybe she has mistaken his agenda? She is, of course, immensely flattered that he had taken the trouble to attend her paper, but at the same time she is confused and disappointed. She is aware that her awareness of disappointment reveals that she had expected this assignation to end in bed, and that she had been looking forward to this denouement. Can it be her mind that he is after, and not her body? Is he intent on a heavy late-night discussion of triage, fatality, uncertainty and bone-marrow disorders? And if so, is she up to it?

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, demurely, playing for time.

  He, too, takes another deliberate sip from his glass.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Beautiful.’

  He lets the word linger.

  ‘And so difficult,’ he says, ‘with the simultaneous translation. Which is so unnecessary, as they have the text.’

  Maybe he is referring to something as trivial as her delivery, which she knows to be good. She doesn’t need him to tell her that she has a loud and musical voice, and that she speaks clearly.

  They seem to be poised, motionless, on the edge of some glassy ridge or slope. It is not a bad place to be, but they cannot stay there for long. It is too exposed and too chilly and too alarming. She tries not to slip or waver.

  ‘So you have no children,’ he says, out of this silence.

  This is a surprise move. It could lead in any direction.

  ‘No,’ she says, looking at him directly.

  ‘You had a child who died,’ he says, returning her gaze.

  ‘Yes, I did. How did you know that?’

  ‘I was told,’ he says, unhelpfully.

  Shall she ask who told him? She does not dare. But speak she must, now.

  ‘And you?’ she decides to ask. ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he says, in a resigned and despondent manner. ‘Oh, yes, I have children. But they are no longer children. They are grown now.’

  She does not want to descend into the banality of an explanation of the whereabouts and a recitation of the exploits of these grown children, so she remains silent, and refuses to enquire after them. She is not interested in the grown children of strangers. She is interested in the sick babies of strangers, but that is for other reasons. So she says nothing, and waits for him to continue his discourse. This strategy works well, perhaps too well.

  ‘But my wife,’ he says, ‘my wife has no children.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Babs.

  This is new territory. They have abandoned neutral ground. A third party has entered the room to join them, and Babs is not at all sure if she wants her there. But she is not sure how to evict her. She keeps silence, and so does he. He gives way first.

  ‘My wife,’ he says, ‘is very anxious to have a child. She is very much younger than I am. She is, you know, my third wife. And I am getting old.’

  She manages to assume an expression of denial, which he waves away, as though his age is not the issue. She wonders if he is about to leap into another banality, the banality of telling her that his wife does not understand him. She is not sure what she wants by now – bed or exposition, or both? She is certain that she does not want banality. She wants to continue in her admiration for this man, and she wants him to admire her.

  She can see that he is bracing himself to make another significant move, and, shortly, he does.

  ‘I want your advice,’ he says.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My wife wants to adopt a baby. We shall never have a baby. I believe that she will never have a baby. I want your advice on this subject.’

  ‘Why?’ is all that she can think of to say.

  She could hardly have asked a better question.

  ‘Because,’ he says, ‘you look so wise and so beautiful. In those large spectacles that you always wear.’

  He leans towards her now, across the firmly upholstered arms of the chair and the settee, and puts his right hand gently on the side of her face. He strokes her cheek, and then he removes her glasses, and lays them down on the glass table, between their twin tumblers of cut glass. She gazes at him, mesmerized. It is a very intimate and delicate gesture. Nobody has ever done this to her before. Nobody has ever dared to do this to her before. Does this gesture come from some well-known continental or Hollywood repertoire, written before she was born? She knows that it must, but she does not care if it does. She is entranced.

  ‘You look just as beautiful and as wise without your glasses,’ he says. ‘You look like Athena.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  He takes her hand now, and holds it, and caresses it. She returns the pressure. This is all very good. It cannot go wrong now.

  ‘Tell me about your wife,’ she prompts him.

  His wife, it seems, is young, and she is infertile. For two or three years, she had attempted to conceive. She submitted to all the tests, and had now given up hope. ‘And now,’ he says, in a plain way, ‘I do not wish to sleep with her anyway. I have had enough of that. That is finished between us.’

  Other people have said this sort of thing to Babs Halliwell, and other people, as she has on several occasions subsequently discovered, have been lying when they said it. But nevertheless she feels inclined to believe him. She wishes to believe him. For the short period of their acquaintance, in this foreign demilitarized zone, she might as well believe him.

  ‘My wife wants to adopt a Chinese orphan,’ says Jan van Jost. ‘She sent me to an orphanage in Beijing, to look at babies, and to negotiate. It is on this subject that I want your advice.’

  She knows that seduction may take strange forms, but this is the strangest that she has ever encountered. He approaches her not as a swan or as a shower of golden rain, but as a prospective adoptive father. It seems that he seriously wishes to discuss with her the practicalities of transcultural adoption, and the ethics of the purchasing of an unwanted little Chinese girl.

  She asks if he wants to stay married to his wife. Why not, he says. He will not marry again, he is too old, he has been married often enough. And it is easier for his wife to adopt if she is still in a regular marriage. Even in the enlightened Netherlands, he says, it is easier for a married couple to adopt than for a single person. So he will stay married to his wife for her convenience. And of course he will pay for the child, and take an interest in the child, in so far as his interest seems desirable to his wife and useful to the child.

  ‘But what about you?’ she asks. ‘Do you want to adopt a Chinese baby?’

  ‘It will not matter to me,’ he says. ‘One way or the other.’

  ‘Why not? What do you want?’

  ‘At this moment,’ he says, ‘what I want is to be with you, and to listen to what you have to say. And I think we could talk better about this in bed.’

  He is still holding her hand, and he is looking intently from his keen blue eyes into her myopic brown eyes. She leans forward towards him, slightly, and places her other hand on top of his.

  ‘Are you sure that would be a good place to talk?’ she enquires.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. Then he smiles, suddenly, in a different and less grave mode, and says, ‘Well, almost sure. It would depend on whether you agreed that it might be a good idea.’

  She will have to commit herself now, one way or another. The chance may not come again. Her heart is pounding. He has made it necessary for her to speak. He has cornered her into a verbal response.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, carefully following his lead and his syntax. ‘Yes, I think it might be a good idea.’

  She is thinking that whatever happens to her, in bed with Jan van Jost, cannot be unwelcome to her. If he wants to talk, she will talk. If he wants to make love to her, she will make love to him. If he wants to do both, she will do both. He is a very attractive man, and her hand is burning in his. His mixture of confidence and diffidence is extraordinarily calming. She feels elevated and unreal. Part of her consciousness seems to be floating somewhere near the ceiling, looking down with interest and approval upon this uneart
hly bodily drama. She watches herself lean further towards him: he releases her hand, and cups her face with both his hands, and kisses her, very lightly but very slowly and carefully, upon the lips.

  ‘Come,’ he says, and rises to his feet, and draws her upright. She is only an inch or two taller than he is.

  ‘I will take my glass through with me,’ he says, reaching for it. ‘My Dutch courage. Shall I take yours?’

  But she has already picked up her glass. He leads her to the double door that opens into the spacious and luxurious bedroom: he does not attempt to carry her large person over the threshold, but he does usher her over it, with a certain formality. The bed has already been turned down, she presumes by the room staff, and two white bathrobes with royal purple trim and Pagoda monograms upon their breast pockets are laid upon it in expectant attitudes. She sits down, on what she takes to be her side of the bed, and kicks off her shoes. He takes up his bathrobe, and disappears into the bathroom. She looks around her, covertly, rapidly, taking in the large pile of books and papers and the bottles of pills on his bedside table, the beige canvas slippers neatly placed under the oriental lacquer bureau, and the aggressive television set that is openly staring from its winged mahogany shutters at the king-sized bed. One cannot tell from any of this if he is a tidy man or an untidy man. Then, rapidly, decisively, she undresses, and heaps her outer clothes on the bedside chair, and folds herself into the hotel bathrobe in her underwear, and climbs into the wide bed of Jan van Jost.

  He takes his time, and, as she is about to reach for one of his bedside books, she realizes she has left her glasses in the outer room. But she does not want to get out of this bed to go to look for them, in case she is caught in some indeterminate attitude. She needs to stay where she is, looking composed. Shall she switch on the television? No, that would be very vulgar. Instead, she rapidly scans the titles of his bedside reading matter, which she can read quite well without her spectacles. Like most intellectuals, she has a habit of spying on the titles of other people’s books, and the habit does not abandon her now. She recognizes the names of Ulrich Beck, Jonathan Spence, Michael Walzer and Pierre Bourdieu, the texts all well marked with Post-It notes. There are one or two Chinese titles, evidence of his recent travels – she is just trying to make out what appear to be the words ‘Lu Xun’ on the spine of one of these volumes when he reappears from the bathroom, wearing not the white hotel robe, but a rather attractive black Chinese silk dressing gown embroidered with dragons of scarlet and gold.