Without Her

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Without Her Page 22

by Rosalind Brackenbury


  We sit there, and wait for the Air France flight from Paris. Surely he remembers where we are to meet? Half an hour passes, then three-quarters. Phil says, “Claudia, perhaps you should go and ask?”

  We’ve watched well-dressed French people stalking along with their little wheeled suitcases, until the crowd dwindles, and no more seem to be coming past from the Paris flight. I go to investigate. I haven’t told them about my last email to him, which went unanswered. I try him on my cell phone; leave a message. I think: surely, he can’t have let us down? What was our last communication, I try to remember; scroll through my old emails, till I find his name. Ambiguous, as usual. If he can get away, he says. If. I think, oh, damn you, now of all times, don’t do this to us.

  The doors are closing in front of me, the announcements on the board changing: Dusseldorf. He was not on the flight from Paris. There seems to be nobody to ask. I say to him in my mind, You must come. Please. Don’t let us down now. I think—he’s not coming. He’s decided as a lawyer, not a friend. He’s simply not up to it. We are not the people we were, the three students on the train, the way we have always remembered; that story is gone, has been deleted, he doesn’t remember, doesn’t care. He and I are finished; he is telling me this. I watch the doors close and the flight attendant walk away, through a blur of tears.

  I go back to where Phil and Hannah are, and they look small and somehow cowed, he bending over her. “No luck?”

  “Seems not.” I think, Alex, I will never forgive you. You have ended something that was not yours to end: my belief in you.

  “So, should we go on waiting?”

  “I think we should go. He’s got the address, if he comes late.”

  I look at Hannah. She gives a little shrug. Ah, well.

  And then I see him, coming from a quite different direction, his wheeled bag at his heels like all the others, his free hand waving. He’s walking fast, towards us. Back to us, I think, back to where he knows he should be. He is in designer jeans and a green linen jacket, as if he were on vacation, or as if this is all he has when he isn’t wearing a lawyer’s suit. His white hair is flattened, cut shorter than I’ve seen it. It suits him, makes him look younger; also, he seems to have lost weight. We have not had time alone together since that last afternoon in Paris when he walked away from me without a backward look.

  I watch him now, coming closer, at each step more real. I think—there is this total opposition between absence and presence. Absence leaves you alone in an emptied world: presence fills the world up again, so that you can move on. So that you can live.

  He says, seeing me, “What’s the matter?” He reads me accurately, always.

  “I thought you weren’t coming. I watched everyone come off the Paris flight.”

  “Ah, I came on a different one—Swissair, it just got in. The Air France flight was full, they asked me if I could get on a slightly later one. But it was only minutes later. Claudie, why, you look strange?” He kisses me on both cheeks. I stand, tears in my eyes, taking him in. It was so nearly true that he did not come; but here he is. We have been reprieved, brought back from the brink.

  Philip gets up. He and Philip shake hands. “Bonjour.” It is a meeting of men: matter-of-fact, smiling, the way they have been taught.

  “Bonjour.” From Phil’s face, I can’t guess what he is feeling. I remember him in England: nothing else matters now. Alexandre, with his impeccable sense of the appropriate, is simply friendly and polite. He’s unaware, Alexandre is, that we nearly gave up on him—or I did. Everything changes in a moment. Life, even now, rushes us on. Alexandre bends to kiss Hannah, one on each cheek. She gives him a little nod.

  “Claude, come with me? I need to find the loo.” Hannah and I leave the two men together. I go to help her into the disabled toilet in the Damen and wait for her.

  “So, he came.”

  “Yes.” What else can I say? The threesome she wanted, and the man she married: all here, for her.

  She reaches to wash her hands at the basin. “The thing about Alexandre was, that you never could rely on him. I suppose that was what made him interesting. But look, here he is, reliable after all.”

  I don’t want to comment. There were all those meetings, across time and space, when as if by a miracle he and I came together; like birds to a cliff-top, a cliff-top homing, exact. “How has everything been, since last year?”

  “Good. No, of course not good, pretty terrible in most ways. But, good between me and Phil. He’s kept the whole show on the road, the business, the house, my nursing arrangements, everything. He’s calmed the kids down. He’s lied to our friends and neighbors, as I didn’t want the whole of England knowing, obviously. But anyway, here we are, and he’s going to come home with you two afterwards. Claude, if you can be with him a bit, I’d really like that. Now, can you pass me some of that hand lotion, we might as well make the most of all the freebies, don’t you think?”

  I squirt lotion into her hands. We both smell of gardenias now. A woman comes in wearing huge dark glasses and carrying a tiny Gucci purse and Hannah and I glance at each other in the mirror and smile and raise our eyebrows.

  “I feel like a conspirator,” she murmurs.

  “I always do, with you.”

  “You see,” she says, “I didn’t need to protect Phil, after all. I wanted it all to be very discreet, and it has been. It’s brought us together, him and me, in a way I’d never imagined. A sort of daft honeymoon. Now, can you pass me my stick?”

  I say, “I’m so glad. For you and Phil, I mean. But what do you think they’ll be talking about out there?”

  “Him and Alexandre? God knows. What do men talk about when we aren’t there? The World Cup? Outer space? I’ve never been able to guess.” Her gravelly voice, speaking slowly, even sounds quite sexy.

  “You sound like Lauren Bacall. I’m sure someone must have told you that before.”

  “No one who isn’t as old as us even knows who Lauren Bacall is anymore.”

  “You know, I thought Alexandre wasn’t coming. I thought he’d panicked and dropped out.”

  “And you minded, that much?”

  “I minded for you. I didn’t want him to let you down.”

  “Ha. Claude, you should have seen your face when he showed up.”

  “I was feeling furious with him, on your account, and then there he was.”

  “So, you see? Everything has turned out all right, and they’re even talking to each other like the civilized fellows they are. Thank God. Perhaps there’s less testosterone around than there used to be. Now, let’s go and join them. Do I look all right?”

  We go back to meet them, our dates as I now think amusedly to myself, and they even get up slightly from their seats to welcome us back. Hannah waves them down again. “No need for the regal treatment, boys. We’re fine. So, when we’ve all finished our coffee, shall we be on our way?”

  Alexandre takes my hand briefly and squeezes it in his own warm one as we leave the café, walking slowly behind Hannah in her wheelchair. I glance up at him, and he lets me know with a flicker of his eyes that he’s there, for me as well as for her. I take a deep breath, adjust my stride to his. Phil is pushing Hannah along, and we come behind them, like bodyguards.

  We leave the airport terminal, trailing our small bags that hint, I suppose, at the short time we are planning to stay here, and a taxi rolls up, and we all get in, and Phil gives the driver the address of the hotel, in a small town that is about an hour’s drive away. The driver, a big blond man with hair short as wheat stubble, nods, no problem. He must have done this before. I watch the back of his neck, where sunburn ends in green polo shirt. As we give the address, I shake inwardly, as if guilty of some crime about to be discovered. It goes back, this feeling, to being with Hannah at school, about to break another law. I pull myself out of it by leaning forward to mutter in her ear, “What wo
uld Miss McKinley say?”

  “Poor old dear’s pushing up daisies by now,” she says back over her shoulder in her new slow voice—she’s in front with the driver, the rest of us are in the back with Alexandre sitting in the middle, his knees in their clean denim pressed together. “Or thistles and nettles, more likely. Actually, I hope she rots in hell.”

  “Hannah!” says Phil.

  “Well, she wasn’t nice to us. Claudia will tell you.”

  Alexandre asks the driver, in French, how far it is. Not so far now, says the driver in English, only about fifteen minutes. Maybe a little more. We watch Swiss suburbs become countryside, and suburbs again. Phil looks out of the window, silent. He may be thinking that he shouldn’t have corrected her. But it’s what you do with the living, you react, you say what’s in your mind. Alexandre starts asking him what he thinks Portugal’s chances are against Germany in the Cup, and the two of them chat quietly in French, Phil’s accent as clunky as ever, Alexandre knowing what his job is, to draw him out.

  “Your French is quite good,” he says, squashed up against Phil in the back of this speeding but silent car.

  “Depends what I’m talking about,” Phil says. “I can do football, and cars, and sometimes politics. Oh, and restaurants, of course.” He sounds relieved.

  “What do you think, is Britain going to leave Europe?”

  Phil says, “I think it’s a crazy idea. This bloody referendum, nobody can talk about anything else. But I don’t think it will happen. I don’t think anyone takes those clowns seriously.”

  Alexandre says, “Yes, it would be quite a mistake. Not good for any of us.”

  They have switched to English. The driver is listening to the radio in German. We are slowing into a small town now. I poke Alexandre with my elbow to tell him, good job, keep going, the referendum will keep his mind off what we are doing. I see how men use their familiar topics for covering up feelings, how they feed each other lines, spark off controversies, just to stop themselves from focusing on what is going on underneath. Today this seems to be an excellent idea. We women are always digging for what’s underneath—feelings, truth, experience—and sometimes in life, as now, I don’t want to do it, not at all. If we can see Hannah off while sticking to the World Cup, the British referendum on Europe, the coming US election—it will be Hillary, surely—or even if her anger at Miss McKinley can go on fueling her, so much the better.

  “So, how was it?” I ask her as I help her settle into the room she will share with Philip for their last night together. He is downstairs in the bar with Alexandre, being plied with drink, I imagine, or more questions about British politics. “When you came here before and fixed it all up? You never told me.”

  “I went to see the doctor—no, not in a hospital, not even a clinic, it was a largish house, nearby, very comfy, sort of lived-in. With lots of bookshelves and books on them in leather bindings, in French and German. They were mostly on psychology and medicine, some on history, some poetry. I found Goethe, remember, we had to read him at school? I was just looking for that poem about the oranges in Italy, when he came in.”

  “Lemons, they were lemons. Zitronen.”

  “Oh, well, lemons. They didn’t grow in Germany, either. Anyway, he offered me tea, said, I hope I never see you again.”

  “What?”

  “I think he meant he hoped my diagnosis was wrong. I was shocked, because I thought for a minute he was refusing to do the deed. But no, he patted my shoulder, and said, I always hope that, because there is always, in this life, another chance, something we have not yet thought of. Then I went back to my hotel and had a stiff drink and watched Swiss TV.”

  “The doctor said that, about there always being another chance?”

  “I think he wants to know that his patients will only use him as a last resort. Anyway, I’d already paid my money, so I said, thanks, and goodbye. I probably won’t see him again, because he can’t be the only one, can he? I imagine they must have a team. Tomorrow it might well be someone else.”

  Tomorrow. She says it so lightly. I want to ask her, Hannah, are you sure? But I can’t. Just as I could not at her wedding: are you sure this is what you want to do? We have sworn, all of us, not to do this, however hard it gets. If Philip can decide not to do it, so can I. I hang up her dressing gown and lay her nightdress on the bed and ask her, “What would you like to do tonight?”

  “Oh, find a good restaurant, I think. I noticed an Italian place down the street, we could try that. And a good bottle or two. Don’t they have some decent wines here? Let’s ask the guys if they are up for it, when you’ve finished fussing with my clothes. Claude, I’m not going to need any of that, you might as well leave it in the suitcase, that skirt. I’ll wear the old silk outfit tonight, it’s nearly in rags but Phil likes me in it, a bit of cleavage may cheer him up.”

  I want to hug her, and cry, but have promised not to: no scenes, Claude, promise? There will be a moment for it; but it will be when it is right for her. She’s leading the way. The rest of us are stumbling through the jungles of our feelings, stepping over roots and snakes.

  I say, “That’s a lovely suit, where did you get it?” The dark blue silk falls over her thin shoulders, her smaller breasts; there isn’t much cleavage anymore, but a pair of fine clavicles, an elegant if stringy neck.

  “Armani. It’s ancient. Phil said to me once, after the twins were born, just buy something you love, no matter what the price, and I did. Even though I couldn’t really get into it, at the time. I knew it would last a lifetime and I’d always feel good in it, and look, here I am, and it has. Could you do up this necklace, I can’t manage the hooks?”

  I reach the lapis lazuli around her throat and lift the strands of her hair to fasten the hook and eye.

  “Thanks. But look, you must stop behaving like my lady’s maid, you must go and change too. Oh, are you and Alexandre in the same room? I never thought.”

  “No, we aren’t. We have two separate rooms.”

  “Not even adjoining?”

  “Not even adjoining.” I know she’s teasing me, but it still hurts that she asks this. About Alexandre and me, I simply don’t know anymore. We have this job to do, that she has given us, and beyond it I can see nothing. It’s become a cul-de-sac, a dead end.

  “Claude, just to be serious for a moment, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. But you must go on living. I said this to Phil. He must live, he must enjoy himself, he must if he can find someone else. And the same goes for you, and Alexandre. You’ve loved each other a long time. Remember on the train? And when we met him with that Italian chick in the Uffizi—I saw your face, then. You looked just the same in the airport today.”

  “No, I can’t see what can possibly happen between us now. He’s still officially married, I live in another country. You just can’t organize our lives for us after you’ve—gone. We’re here now. We’re all four here this evening. Beyond that, we simply can’t go. Sorry.”

  “Okay,” she says, “but don’t forget what I said, will you. You could do me at least that favor.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “And another thing. You’re retired now, right?”

  “Yes, I’ve said all my goodbyes. They gave me a new camera, I didn’t dare say I mostly use my phone these days, but it’s a complicated beauty.”

  “The film. Our film. You won’t forget that.”

  “No, I promise. Of course.” I can see, written at the very end before the credits, between its two dates, her name.

  When I see Philip standing alone in the lobby, I take my chance.

  “Phil.”

  He turns. I’m not going to tell him what Hannah has said, any of it, at least not now. He looks so alone; I slip my hand through his arm, feel the hard bone under the sleeve. An aged man. What was it Yeats said? “Unless soul clap its hands and sing.” Everything speaks t
o me of our mortality; not just Hannah’s. Hannah is out in front of us, laughing, grimacing, even making jokes. She knows the day of her death; is this what has freed her? She is clapping her hands and singing, till the end.

  “Claude.”

  It’s one of those moments in between, in the wings of life, its corridors, when you can’t tell if the time passing is a minute or half an hour. I say almost shy with him, “How are you?”

  “Well, I’m simply following her lead. I always have, really. It even simplifies things. Afterwards, I’ll have to—well, make the best of it. So, here I am. I’m hers. I always have been, you know that.”

  “I admire you for it,” I tell him, and I squeeze his bony arm, and for a moment, there in the hotel lobby, we stand together, awkward, heartfelt.

  He says, “At least, for these last months, I’ve had her with me, and nothing was in the way between us. It was out in the open. We’ve been closer than we’ve ever been. That has made such a difference. It’s been, in its own way, quite amazing.” Then, “Don’t admire me, Claude,” he mumbles into my hair. “It’s too remote. Please? Just be my friend?”

  Before dinner, the doctor comes to see Hannah. He apologizes for not having come earlier, he got held up. He comes into the room where all of us are assembled, and now it’s not possible to talk about the World Cup or Britain or Armani suits or dinner or any of the frail props of the living. He’s younger than all of us, not surprisingly, but it still surprises us; you expect doctors, like judges, always to be older, however old you may be. He has all his hair, it’s dark, and he’s a handsome man who could be our child. He brings forms to sign, and Hannah signs them, over and over, her hand only a little shaky, her signature slightly better than her usual scrawl, as if she’s decided it must be legible. The young doctor asks her three times during this half-hour if she really wants to die tomorrow, and she says yes. The third time I want to ask him, why do you doubt her, do you think she would be here, if there were any doubt? But I don’t, and then I see that it is part of the protocol, he has to be sure beyond a shadow, a sliver of doubt. Doubt is not allowed.

 

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