He drank some whisky, cleared his throat. “There’s something different about the room,” he said at last.
“I got rid of the junk.”
“Junk?”
“The postcards, the ornaments, the stones, the mobiles, the bits of pottery. All that glorious memorabilia.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I gave whatever was useful to the Girl Guides for their jumble sale. The rest I burned. I assumed you didn’t want anything you left.”
“So my study,” Chae started to say, and then smacked the side of his head. “Christ, that’s what I hate about myself. I come here to talk to you, and the first thing I do is ask about my papers, as if they were the Holy Grail. Don’t answer that. Whatever you’ve done, it doesn’t matter. You did what you had to do.”
“I didn’t do what I had to do,” Mollie said contemptuously. “I did what I wanted. Wasn’t that your message? Be spontaneous. Acting decently only clogs the arteries, like cholesterol.”
“Yes, yes.” Chae buried his head in his hands as if to fend off her blows. Then he stood up, took off his jacket, and slung it over the back of his chair. She noticed, not wanting to, that he had lost weight. “I’m a little drunk,” he announced. “I was worried I’d get stopped, so I drove like a driving instructor the whole way. It took three hours to get here. I had a pint at the Melville to recover.”
The Melville, Mollie almost gasped. Was it possible that that was the pub from which the man had phoned? Maybe he, too, was on his way here and had stopped for a quick drink before the final leg of the journey. The purpose of his call had been not to talk to Ewan but simply to ascertain her presence. Then she shook herself free. She was being ridiculous. This was much too far-fetched.
“A bloke at the bar told me a joke,” Chae said. “How did the—” He glanced at her face. “Never mind.”
He got up again and wandered around the room. “Why do you have the shutters closed?” he asked. “What are you weaving?”
“It’s warmer. A blanket.”
While his back was turned, she picked up her glass and managed a quick, shaky swallow. She could feel the words brewing up inside her. She had fought so hard to get rid of the desire to talk to him, to have nothing at all in the world that she wanted to say to him, and yet here it was, as strong as ever.
“Nice colours,” he said, bending over the loom. “I wish I did something like weaving. Something where you don’t have to think. I haven’t been able to write for two months. Well, just one or two reviews with a gun at my head.”
Mollie wanted to say six things at once. Go home. My heart bleeds for you. Won’t you ever get it into your thick skull that weaving is an art too? You need a haircut. Stop pawing at my work. What the hell are you doing here? And said nothing.
Chae circled round again and sat down. He put his elbows on the table and looked her full in the face. “Have you been crying?”
“No.”
He held his gaze steady. The first time they made love, he had told her Sartre’s theory that every intimacy originated with the gaze which acknowledges the other as separate and distinct from the self. He had kept the light on and watched her as he moved first above her, then beneath her. Now he put his hands on the table, and she saw the slight dryness fanning across the knuckles, the long straight fingers and square-cut nails. He had played the piano as a boy. “I’ve missed you,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” Mollie said, forgetting her resolution not to question him.
“I was walking down the Royal Mile and I passed Deacon Brodie’s. I was walking down Dundas Street and I passed the shop where you bought me that Art Nouveau lamp for Christmas the first year we knew each other. Wherever I am, you appear. Last week I went into Colin’s and he told me he’d sold all the pieces you’d given him except two. I bought one of them—a lovely brown and purple hanging. I remembered us walking on the moors and then you picking out the colours when we came home.”
“Oh, yes,” Mollie exclaimed. “It was the last piece I wove from our own wool. Dear Miss Havisham.”
“Dear? Think of all the times she broke into the Youngs’ garden. She was a pest.”
“I suppose. Pip and Estella weren’t much better. Oh, Chae, the ducks are dead. I forgot to put them in one night, and a fox grabbed them.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. They’d had long, happy, fat duck lives already.” He reached across the table. “Mollie, I miss you.”
“You should’ve thought of that sooner.”
His face puckered. “Aren’t you ever going to forgive me?”
“I doubt it.” She put down her glass, dreading the familiar conversation. “I’ve tried to explain, it’s not a question of forgiveness. It’s a question of who you are. I trusted you, more than I trusted myself. When I read the book, that vanished utterly. I realised you weren’t the person I thought you were. Maybe you never had been.”
“But you always seemed glad to be in my books before. You were so pleased when I borrowed that remark you’d made about Penelope.”
“Chae, we’ve been through this.” She began to crack her knuckles, ferociously. “It’s one thing to use the odd quotation, quite another to make me a central character and tell everyone my secrets.” All my secrets, she thought. “In fifteen years you’re the only person I’ve ever told about Edward, and what did you do? You put it in your book for everyone to see.”
“Edward? Who the hell is Edward?”
“The old guy who raped me in a castle. You changed his name, but that’s the only thing you did change.” She squeezed her knuckles harder. “And then when Leo and Maudie screw, fuck, whatever, it’s as if you’d taken notes while you and I were doing it.”
Chae’s eyes were swimming. For a moment she yearned to comfort him. Then she reminded herself he’d always been an emotional drunk. “Don’t you understand?” she went on. “What Edward did was bad, but what you did was much worse. You stole from me twice over, once by telling my secrets and a second time by destroying my idea of you. I didn’t just lose our life together, I lost the whole foundation upon which it was built. Can’t you see how painful that is?”
The tears overflowed his brown eyes and ran down his cheeks, but he did not blink or move or shift his gaze. He kept his eyes fixed on her until Mollie felt her hands unfold. She saw one hand reach across the table to touch his cheek. And the other reach for his hand. She stood up and leaned to kiss him.
Chae was still moving in her, the last dreamy motions of sex, when Olivia started to cry. “What on earth is that?” he said, pausing.
“Don’t worry.” She arched against him to finish him sooner. “It’s just the baby I’m looking after.”
He was slipping away, away from her, away from the waking world. “Baby,” he murmured, and disappeared into the vortex of sleep.
Downstairs, Mollie changed and fed Olivia. The edges of everything were softened, blurred, and as she gazed at Olivia’s face, Mollie knew now the answer to the question she had asked a few hours earlier about what they should do.
III
Chapter 13
After his shower, Ewan shaved and brushed his teeth. He had slept for only two hours, but in the mirror he regarded his reflection approvingly: his eyes were clear, his cheeks rosy, his hair, responding to being shampooed twice in a single night, fuller and sleeker. He whistled as he dressed, a chorus from The Mikado, and chose the raciest of the four ties he’d packed, a vivid paisley bought during the Christmas sales. To hear from Vanessa, under any circumstances, made him glad. The easiest way to follow her injunction, he decided, was to check out of the hotel; then no one could even leave a message for him. The point was not merely to avoid Coyle but to do so without appearing to. To slip through the net without seeming to notice it was there.
He picked up his notebook from the bed and saw Call Yvonne. Of course any attempt at normality must include letting her know his whereabouts; how to explain his
brief absence? He paced up and down. Business? No. Everywhere he went, phones and faxes embraced him in their many tentacles. An old school friend, he thought. An image of Sophie and Carolina appeared before him. An old school friend with a baby. He had to go to the house to see the baby. His sixth-form tennis partner, Martin Pettitt, came to mind. He and his wife, Valerie, lived in Dorset; their first child was born in November. Briskly, Ewan moved them to Milan and gave Martin a job at the university for a year.
No, on second thoughts, Yvonne might be rather too interested in an academic. Only a few months ago she had asked if he knew anyone who could translate some medieval French verses that her husband was setting to music. A software consultant, he thought. She respected his terrific vagueness about computers. He sat down on the bed and rang the office answering machine.
“Yvonne, it’s me. Things are winding up here. I’ll be hard to reach today. I’m seeing an old school friend later this morning. Then I’m being met at Heathrow and going straight to dinner. If you need me, the best bet’s probably a message on the machine at home. I’ll be in by nine tomorrow. Bye.”
He ticked off Call Yvonne, slipped the notebook into his briefcase, and whisked out of the room. The lift was in use, so he took the emergency stairs two at a time to the lobby. At the front desk only one couple was ahead of him, a stout Frenchman and his slender wife, leaving for Venice. Within minutes Ewan had handed his bag to the concierge and bought a copy of the Herald Tribune. Briefcase in hand, he was out in the street.
He headed towards the Piazza del Duomo. The paving stones were still wet from last night’s rain, and the air felt soft and damp. As he stepped round a puddle, he remembered the flower sellers that had lined the pavement the previous day. Perhaps he could take Vanessa something? A bunch of violets or lily of the valley.
He found a café, crowded with people on their way to work. Half a dozen men in overalls, with orange hard hats dangling from their belts, stood at the bar, bantering back and forth over espressos. Ewan hesitated, uncertain whether to try and squeeze in amongst them, until a lithe young man, moving like a dancer between the tiny tables, beckoned him to sit in one corner, next to a bushy ficus tree. “Espresso, cappuccino, caffè grande, caffè latte?” he chanted. Ewan chose the last and asked for a pastry. In a few minutes the man was back with a caffè latte in a tall glass, a pastry that contained apples, a glass of water, and a reassuringly thick napkin.
“Grazie,” said Ewan. He tore open a packet of sugar. As the crystals fell into the milky coffee, he realised he had lied to Yvonne. He stared at the poster on the wall beside the ficus tree: it showed the rugged peaks of Valle d’Aosta against a sky of Titian blue. Why hadn’t he minded at the time? Why hadn’t he even noticed? He smelled the sandalwood fragrance of the hotel soap and, looking down, saw his fingers smeared with newspaper ink.
When he had read the paper cover to cover, it was still only eight-thirty. On a hectic day at Ginestra and Sedara, one could usually find someone to take a message by nine-thirty. Most of the people Ewan talked to made a point of getting in soon after ten. His own meeting with Marco was not until ten-thirty. A brisk walk, he thought, and perhaps another hotel, where he could wash his hands and sit in the foyer, working unobtrusively. As he tucked the newspaper into his briefcase, he had a sudden feeling of vertigo. What was he doing, skulking around the streets of Milan, moving from café to café? Already, without even speaking to Coyle, he was behaving like a criminal.
The meeting with Marco was in the same boardroom where Ewan had given his presentation the day before. They sat at one end of the long wooden table, files and charts spread around them, and tried to figure out where to raise the last $2.3 million. They were discussing insurance when the door of the conference room opened and a woman in a black dress came in and whispered something to Marco. She left the room and Marco stood up. “A telephone call for you,” he said. “Very urgent. I will get the figures on Calogero.”
Ewan, still engrossed in the chart before him, picked up the phone on the table. The only person who ever called in these circumstances was Yvonne. “Hello,” he said. After a pause a hesitant British “Hello” came back to him. “I’m trying to find Ewan Munro,” the man said. “This is David Coyle.”
Ewan reached up to loosen his paisley tie. He heard Vanessa’s voice from only a few hours before—“Whatever happens, don’t speak to Coyle today”—but he was already doing so. Somehow Coyle had breached the wall of secretaries. “Ewan Munro speaking,” he said. “I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Coyle had a surprisingly mild voice. What was the accent? Birmingham, Ewan thought, and the small, useless insight made him feel a little better. “I was afraid of missing you. Sometimes you international business types flit off to another country between elevenses and lunch.”
He paused to allow Ewan to respond, then filled the pause himself. “I’d like to talk to you as soon as possible. Let me see. There’s a flight to Milan at one-fifty today.”
The tie Ewan had just loosened grew chokingly tight. “I’ll be back in London this evening,” he managed to say. “I don’t have a second while I’m here.”
“Good, good,” said Coyle as if their social calendars were falling nicely into place. “Perhaps I can meet your plane?”
“No, that won’t be possible. Let me check my diary and see what I have on tomorrow.” Keep talking, he thought, that was the strategy in presentations. Don’t leave them time to disagree. He stared at Friday: a full moon was marked. “Lunch?” he offered. “I can meet you for lunch with a little rearranging.”
“You’re certain about the plane?” Coyle said wistfully. “I’d be happy to drive you wherever you’re going.”
“The plane is out of the question. I really do have to get back to this meeting, Mr. Coyle.”
“Of course. How about breakfast? Safer than lunch. Last day of the working week tomorrow. Who knows what might come up, for either of us. Which would you prefer? Barnsbury or the City? It’s all the same to me.”
Out of the depths of his panic, Ewan suggested a coffee bar at Liverpool Street Station. He was not having Coyle come to either his home or his office. He hung up, and Marco came through the door as if he had been listening, waiting for the call to be over. He waved a file cheerfully. “Here’s the Calogero stuff. It looks possible. Quite possible.”
Good, Ewan was about to say, but the G proved insurmountable. Yes, he approached, but the Y rose like a pylon. Splendid, he thought, but the S writhed like a snake. He simply nodded.
On the plane, even The Dark Forest proved useless. Who cared if Leo was unmasked or Aunt Helen dropped dead? Ewan drank a gin and tonic, put on the headphones, and listened to music. A Beethoven concert carried him back to his first term at Edinburgh. Mollie was a year ahead of him and had slid into university life like Cinderella into her slipper. And Bridget, then in her final year, was living with a biology student and had her own fast friends. But Ewan was still passing through the lecture halls and cafeterias like an invisible man. At the time, he had thought he kept his secret pretty well, and said nothing to his parents on his frequent visits home. Later he realised they must have guessed everything about his loneliness. One night toward the end of November his father asked if he’d like to meet him for a drink at the Café Royal, just the two of them. He had never before issued such an adult invitation, and Ewan was thrilled.
He had made a point of getting to the Café early. He stood at the bar, nursing a half pint of bitter, and gazed around the old-fashioned room with its stained-glass windows showing men doing manly things—playing cricket, slaying deer, inventing the steam engine—until his father came in, brisk and ruddy from the cold. “Ewan, sorry I’m late,” he said, clapping him on the shoulder.
Further along the bar two men abruptly set down their drinks. “Munro,” spat one of them, a sallow-skinned man whose face Ewan could still recall, and then they were gone.
“What was that about?” he a
sked.
His father took out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and ordered a pint. “They offered me a wee gift to lose my specs, and I told them to get lost.”
Ewan regarded him with amazement. “Does that happen often?”
“Not really,” his father said. “Everyone who works for city planning gets the odd nudge, but they’ve more or less decided I’m a hopeless case.”
A hopeless case, Ewan thought now; he, too, had aspired to that ironic understatement. No longer. He stopped the stewardess and asked for another drink. The pilot announced they would soon be over the Channel. Ewan doubted his father had ever had a colleague as attractive as Vanessa, but that was no excuse. In comparable circumstances, Ewan knew, he would have gone out to dinner, made excellent conversation, and let slip not one jot of useful information, irrespective of his companion’s charms. “Oh, God,” he muttered.
The stewardess put the drink down before him. “I’ll have to collect the glass in ten minutes,” she warned.
“No problem. Thanks.”
When he stepped into the arrivals hall, Ewan’s first impression was of a squadron of men holding signs with names—Smith, Pelletier, Bosola, Bekes. He moved forward, carried by the momentum of the crowd, embarrassed to look at so many faces, waiting, and none of them for him. He squeezed between two porters. Suddenly Vanessa was beside him. She was wearing casual clothes of a kind he had not seen her in before: jeans, a grey sweater, and a black leather jacket. Her fine, marmalade-coloured hair was caught back in a ponytail and, as usual after any interval, she was smaller than he remembered.
“Come on,” she said, tugging his arm. “I’m parked right outside.”
Whatever had occurred in the last few days had not compromised her posture. She glided through the crowds, and Ewan followed clumsily: the second drink had been a mistake. Soon he was sitting beside her in a small white car, heading into the city. “How was New York?” he asked when they stopped at a red light.
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