Letters From Prague

by Sue Gee

  ‘It does.’ Harriet wiped her face. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Good. Well – shall we swim?’

  ‘I’d never keep up with you.’

  ‘Try.’

  She followed him through the water.

  Herr Scheiber’s sitting room, up on the first floor, was more of a snug: the kind of room which in Harriet’s experience as a waitress in long-ago student days was only to be found in small hotels and restaurants, where almost all family life was lived in public and the one room marked Private was consequently precious, and crammed with belongings which in an ordinary house might be spread all over the place.

  Marsha was curled up with the kittens on a low sofa behind the door, watching television. A window on the far wall overlooked the little garden where they’d had lunch; the hot summer sky was cooling and darkening, now, smoky fingers of cloud stretching towards each other above the hill of Prenzlauer Berg. Harriet, watching their gentle drift, saw lights come on in the streets below and in the tenement buildings. She imagined families returning from work, preparing a meal, watching whatever Marsha was watching now, and she imagined herself, watching Christopher Pritchard across the white linen tablecloth in the hotel dining room.

  Light spilled out from the kitchen window below on to the square of garden; through the open back door she could hear dishes and saucepans clattering, and then Frau Scheiber, to whom they had been introduced on their return from swimming and tea in the park, came out of the door with a crate of empty wine bottles, dumping them down on the flags. Harriet turned from the window.

  ‘Shall I draw the curtains?’

  Marsha shrugged. ‘If you want.’

  Against the wall opposite the window stood an upright piano, with heaps of yellowing music piled on top and a mildewed mirror on the wall above. Next to the television an embroidered screen stood before the fireplace. There were bookshelves, a chair piled high with clean aprons, stacks of magazines on the floor. The walls were hung with family photographs, going back to distant pre-war days. The room could not have been cosier; Marsha, even with kittens, could not have been grumpier. Harriet left the curtains as they were.

  ‘Right,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ll see you in a bit.’

  Marsha gazed fixedly at the screen. ‘I don’t understand a word of this.’

  ‘Shall I switch it off?’

  ‘No. It’s better than nothing.’

  ‘Have you had enough to eat?’

  ‘Yes.’ She had been given a cutlet and fried potatoes and salad down in the kitchen by Scheiber’s granddaughter, whose name, they discovered, was Liesel. This had been followed by a pancake with a hot vanilla sauce, the presentation of the kittens, and the freedom of the snug. Harriet, faced with such mulishness after such treats, did not feel inclined to pander to moods any longer. She gave Marsha a peck on the cheek, which was not returned, and went to the door.

  ‘I’m downstairs if you need anything. We’ll leave about half-past nine and take the U-Bahn home.’ She had said it all before.

  ‘It isn’t home,’ said Marsha, addressing the screen.

  Harriet gave up and left her. It was true.

  She went to the bathroom along the landing, and washed her face and brushed her hair, which was rather flat after the swimming. She put on some lipstick, and looked in the mirror once more before leaving. The woman who returned her gaze seemed apprehensive. ‘Come on,’ said Harriet aloud. ‘Let’s see what’s what.’

  She went down the steep stairs into the hall and into the dining room. Christopher Pritchard was sitting at the same table they had occupied at lunchtime, smoking and looking at the wine list. Now there were no shafts of sunlight, but candles. There were other guests, at other tables, but Harriet did not take them in as she crossed the room towards him, and he rose, and kissed her on both cheeks. They sat down.

  ‘Well,’ said Christopher, picking up the menu.

  ‘Here we are again,’ said Harriet.

  Liesel came to take their order. She brought them a bottle of wine and a basket of bread, and Harriet broke a roll into little pieces, absently. Wax trickled down the side of the candle, whiter than white; smoke from his cigarette drifted in and out of the flame. The voices of other guests murmured through the room.

  They looked at each other in silence.

  ‘Tell me about your wife,’ said Harriet. ‘Tell me about Susanna.’

  ‘They are one and the same,’ said Christopher. He put down the glass and his hand was trembling. He drew in smoke and blew it away from her. ‘So. Now you know.’

  The room seemed to rock, and then it was steady again. Harriet,

  sitting absolutely still, knew that she had gone white: she could

  feel the blood drain from her face – as though, in a great gush, it were flooding out of her body entirely, leaving her lifeless, a white shocked thing of no use to anyone.

  Christopher said: ‘Harriet –’ He was leaning forward, his face full of concern. He was speaking to her from a long way away, from down in a tunnel, dark and endless. ‘Here.’ He put her full wine glass into her hand. ‘Or perhaps you should have a brandy. Would you like a brandy? Harriet?’

  ‘I –’ she raised the wine glass and spilled it, and wine spread everywhere, like blood.

  She watched it seep into the white linen cloth. From a long way away came the murmur of voices: she saw herself standing, a long time ago, at the half-shut door of her parents’dining room, hearing the murmur of a voice inside, a river of words which she could not catch. Legs in long grey socks swung back and forth beneath the polished table, fingers drummed. A child so lonely, so locked away. Her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Harriet – please – I’m so sorry –’

  ‘It’s all right, I’m all right.’ The tears were hot and comforting, a release, but she could not cry here, in front of everyone.

  Susanna cried in front of everyone. She cried in galleries and gardens and in her apartment at night, and could not stop.

  ‘I’ve been like this all my life –’

  Christopher was passing a handkerchief. Harriet swallowed and wiped her eyes. She drank what was left in the wine glass – quickly, all in a rush. There.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘A bit better.’

  She sprinkled salt from an old-fashioned salt cellar on to the wine stains and covered it all with a white linen napkin, remembering, in the kind of association you might make in a dream, Lot’s wife, who had dared to look back on Sodom, and was turned into a pillar of salt. How extraordinary, how absurd: why salt? But still – there was a lesson: never look back.

  That couldn’t be right: the past was everything.

  ‘What you were yesterday is still with you today.’ Truffaut had said that, in some long-ago film seen on some long-ago winter’s evening down on the South Bank, down at the NFT. Hugh had never gone to the NFT, he’d told her. He spent all his time making money.

  Christopher Pritchard had no money. Susanna, a banker’s daughter, had lots.

  Lot’s wife.

  No, Hugh’s wife.

  No, Christopher’s.

  Liesel was beside them again, smiling. Harriet, with apologies, indicated the napkin, the wine stains, the salt. It was not a problem. A clean white cloth was brought, the table relaid; hot, heavenly-smelling dishes were set before them: schnitzels in paprika sauce, red cabbage, potatoes fried in garlic butter. How could you eat, now?

  ‘Please,’ said Christopher. ‘Just a bit. It’ll do you good.’

  She ate, just a bit, and it did her good.

  ‘So,’ she said, wiping her mouth, ‘tell me. Please.’

  ‘I’ve shocked you – I didn’t mean to –’

  ‘Perhaps I over-reacted. I don’t know. It’s just that Hugh –’

  ‘Hugh is a very nice man, I know.’

  ‘He’s my brother,’ said Harriet, and could not eat any more. How was it possible to convey that bond, which went back further than any other, which las
ted, unlike marriages now, until death? ‘Do you have a brother or sister?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I’m an only child.’

  ‘Like Marsha.’

  ‘Yes. Like Susanna.’

  Harriet drew a breath. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s a long time ago,’ he said slowly.

  ‘A lot of things are, when you get to our age.’

  ‘Like the start of your sentimental journey.’

  ‘Yes. Go on.’

  Christopher put down his knife and fork. He lit, with a tremor, a cigarette. ‘We met when Susanna was very young – in 1983. January. I was working in London, as a broker – I told you, didn’t I? The firm had connections with her father, very useful ones, and we met at a New Year party. Susanna was twenty-four, but looked younger. She was –’ He spread his hands – ‘completely beautiful.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘And close to the edge.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know how well you know her –’

  ‘Neither do I.’ It was Harriet’s turn to pause. ‘Anyway, you tell me. I’m not in the business of disclosing confidences.’

  ‘Discretion itself. Like your brother.’

  She did not answer.

  ‘Well.’ He was smoking, smoking. ‘She has a very dark side, which in some ways I shared. Dark and destructive and fatal in marriage. I was almost eight years older, but not exactly on course myself.’ He gave an ironic smile. ‘Now, of course, I’m completely balanced.’

  Like Susanna, thought Harriet, and then, with a feeling of dread: and Hugh? What is to become of Hugh in all this?

  ‘So.’ Another pause. ‘This isn’t an unusual story, you know, Harriet. Lots of young marriages burn out fast.’

  For the hundredth time, Harriet recalled the Cockatrice, the complicity, the look. Burning, she realised now. It was burning.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We fell upon each other. That’s what it was. Not falling in lovedevouring.’ He was no longer looking at her. ‘We were married in April, we bought a little house in Chelsea. Stretching it a bit. I was making money, but I was losing it, too, investing rather unwisely. That’s another story. And in this little house we proceeded to tear each other apart. She wanted a baby, because she didn’t know what else to want, she didn’t know what to do with her life. I was drinking. I was worried about money, I couldn’t even think about children. I refused, or at least I wanted to put it off, and she began to hate me. Except that Susanna doesn’t really allow herself to hate other people, she turns it all in on herself, and becomes –’ He broke off. ‘When she was in her teens she went through some kind of religious thing. She called it a conversion – I thought of it more as an obsession, the way she described it. Controlled by God: every thought, every wish …’

  ‘When I was younger, I wanted to be a nun … Would you like to visit a convent? The Béguines live as a sisterhood but without vows. They have power to return to the world …’

  They had been sitting in the Little Church of the Carmelites, where Susanna came to listen to Bach at lunchtime. She leaned back, closing her eyes, excluding everyone.

  They were walking through the quiet rooms of the convent at Anderlecht.

  ‘Did you really want to be a nun?’ asked Marsha.

  ‘You want all sorts of things when you’re young –’

  And when you are older, too, thought Harriet –

  ‘Some of all this came back,’ Christopher was saying. ‘She was praying for a child, like a woman in the Middle Ages, praying I’d change my mind.’ He stubbed out his cigarette, rubbed his face. ‘She was in such a state that I couldn’t bear to come home at night.’

  Liesel was beside them, smiling again. They had enjoyed their meal? They would like dessert?

  ‘Dessert,’ he said. ‘How does that sound?’

  It sounded like something from another planet. Harriet shook her head. ‘Just coffee, please.’

  ‘And brandy. I think we need one. I do, anyway – I haven’t talked like this for years.’

  Coffee came on the little red tray. The brandy came from the sideboard, near the hawk. The bottles and decanters clinked, the conversation of other guests rose and fell, the candle flame was getting low. Wax dripped, solidified. The room felt smoky and intimate and warm, but there was, for Harriet now, none of the feeling that had been here this afternoon: of a moment concentrated, held, breathless, waiting for something to happen. Everything, it seemed, had happened already to Christopher, in long-ago unhappiness. And here he was: overweight, drinking and smoking, someone who seemed, on first impression, to be just a loudmouthed boor.

  And now?

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, swirling the brandy over the flame, ‘that I make it sound as if it was all Susanna. It wasn’t of course.’

  ‘You said you had a dark side, too –’

  ‘I did. I suppose I still do.’ He raised his glass. ‘Anyway, I got in a bit of a mess on the market. A hell of a mess, actually.’ He stopped. ‘I don’t know if I should be telling you all this, I don’t really know why I am, except –’ He lit a cigarette. Another cigarette. He saw her expression. ‘Tut tut tut. It’s all a far cry from the history department, isn’t it? Or perhaps there are swindlers in education, too. I expect there are I shouldn’t think many places in the Eighties were untouched by corruption.’

  ‘Probably not,’ said Harriet, ‘but please don’t patronise me. I know very well what the Eighties were like, I spent quite a lot of time fighting what Thatcherism was doing to schools. I told you in Brussels – I’ve been a socialist all my life.‘

  ‘More fool you,’ Christopher had said, and Marsha had been furious. ‘Don’t speak to my mother like that!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said now, and sounded as if he meant it. ‘You must forgive me – my manner. At least, you don’t have to, but I’d be grateful.’ A rueful smile, full of charm. ‘I am a bit of a wreck, you know.’

  Harriet looked at him, trying to work him out, feeling out of her depth, uneasy.

  Getting my fingers burned – What had he done?

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. Go on, tell me what happened.’

  He rubbed his face again. ‘The atmosphere in the firm was vicious. Long knives everywhere. Someone who didn’t like me suggested I put money in crude oil. I thought I’d recover my losses and pay off my debts. So I did, like a bloody fool, the one thing you should never ever do, which was play with the firm’s money. I played with it quite a bit. Crude oil plummeted, and I got caught.’ He was watching her, waiting for her to react.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘It is a long way from the history department, isn’t it? Well. There we are. I should have gone to prison, I very nearly did go to prison. But Susanna’s father got me off – another little piece of corruption, I suppose – and by the skin of my teeth I was fined. And booted out, of course. We sold the house, but I’m still paying the fine off. And that was the end of the marriage, no question. Susanna’s father saw to that – but it felt as if we’d run our course by then anyway. Too many tears, too much shouting, too much pain. Better to kiss and part. Which we did. She went back to her family, they moved to Zurich, and then Brussels, though I didn’t know that. We broke off all contact. And in the meantime, naturally, no one would employ me. No one would touch me with a barge pole, actually –’ He gave a little laugh. ‘This is the point where people throw themselves off bridges, or end up sleeping under bridges, isn’t it?’

  Harriet was silent, listening. She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I don’t know – I suppose so – I’m sorry, it must have been terrible–’

  It was also – it was true, he was right – unthinkable, beyond her experience. All those years in meetings, on marches, had not prepared her to sit face to face with one of Thatcherism’s casualties: a bent ex-public schoolboy who’d fallen horribly foul of get-rich-quick.

  ‘It was terrible,’ he was sayi
ng, ‘but I have lived to tell the tale. A round of applause, please.’ Liesel was at the next table, taking an order. He gestured to her, when she looked round. ‘I’m going to have another brandy. Will you join me? No? It isn’t good for a man to drink alone, you know, but I’m used to it. Bring on the violins.’

  Liesel brought brandy from the sideboard. Around them, early dinner guests were leaving, later ones arriving. Harriet looked at her watch, feeling dazed.

  ‘It’s almost nine – I must do something about Marsha, soon.’

  ‘I’ve unnerved you, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at the tablecloth, turning a spoon over, trying to collect her thoughts. ‘I think you probably have. And I still don’t understand –’ She looked up at him. ‘Brussels. You’re working in Brussels. You came to dinner that night, you’d looked Hugh up – that’s what he said. Someone from his old school had telephoned out of the blue –’

  ‘Pritchard was a bit of a bully … I kept out of his way …’

  That was on the night of their arrival: Marsha relaxing, beginning to enjoy herself; Harriet, too. Susanna quiet, withdrawn. Had that phone call really been out of the blue?

  She and Hugh were walking along the canal at Charleroi. Leaves blew ahead of them, riverboats came and went.

  ‘Did he ever do anything to hurt you?’

  ‘No, never, he just had a reputation –’

  They were all having lunch at the Cockatrice. Across the table, that look: just for a moment, but she had seen it –

  She said, hearing herself sound cold and direct: ‘If you do anything to harm Hugh, I’ll –’

  She would what? What would she do? Rise from the table and leave the hotel with Marsha and never set eyes on this man again.

  But then – if she never saw him again –

  She felt as if she were being drawn in towards darkness: towards someone she did not know, and did not understand.

  Was it him, or was it herself? She covered her face.

  ‘Harriet.’ She felt his hand on hers: a large hand, with a warm touch, and a tremor. ‘Harriet?’

  She uncovered her eyes, but she could not look at him. ‘What?’