Flight

by Victoria Glendinning

  It’s because I am I, because she is she, and together we are complete.

  * * *

  During that day Martagon concentrated on checking the specifications for the glass floor of the arrivals hall at Bonplaisir. This was the feature he was most excited about, and one of the hardest to get absolutely right. It had been done before, but not by him, and not in the way he was doing it. The idea had come to him soon after he joined the project, when he was leaning over a bridge in Regent’s Park, watching the play of the evening sun on the water. The sun went behind a cloud and took all the silvery glitter with it. Martagon now saw through the surface – he saw darkly waving weeds, and the darting movements of small fish.

  He went to the Glasstec Fair in Düsseldorf to look at high-tech production methods for what he wanted to do, and satisfied himself that it was possible. He explained his idea to Lin Perry, and to Giles, and they were all for it. The glass floor must of course be non-slip and opaque, and therefore sand-blasted – or, better, laser-etched. He was using hefty sheets of annealed compound glass with an acoustic layer to absorb sound, all mounted on glass supports calculated to a far higher load than they would ever be required to bear. But he would also – and this was his big idea – have a series of larger and smaller ‘pools’ of clear, light green glass, beneath which the ducts, pipes and cables of the different services would be visible, painted in coded colours – like a coral reef, like sea-serpents, like the Sargasso Sea, said Martagon, his enthusiasm getting the better of him.

  It put an extra burden on the engineers and fitters responsible for the services, since the under-floor area had to be scrupulously cleaned up; plus, work usually well hidden had now a design function, and was subject to aesthetic criteria, which did not always tally with the easiest way of accommodating the material. But they entered into the spirit of the thing and came up with some bright ideas of their own. Artificial fish, perhaps; or artificial sea-weed; or a mermaid? Or scales and fins painted on the pipes and cables?

  I don’t think so, said Martagon. He wanted a reference to underwater, not a Disneyland imitation of underwater. He did not want the functionalism of what was glimpsed in the ‘pools’ to be disguised. The final effect was random. A Coke can was left where it fell, likewise an empty pack of Marlboro Lights. Martagon knew that the workmen were secreting small fetish objects of their own among the painted pipes and cables just before the floor was laid, like dogs burying bones. There were rumours of condoms, but Martagon, discreetly checking, hadn’t seen any. He himself, surreptitiously, hid a small photograph of Marina between an emerald green pipe and a blue one.

  The glass supports of the flooring had been tested to destruction. Martagon boasted that it would bear a convoy of trucks. Nevertheless, he sat at his computer going through the calculations again and again.

  In the late evening Martagon went back to Julie’s flat, because he had said he would. She was in bed, but not quite so desperately miserable. Fasil was back, and asleep in his room. Julie had had a bath and washed her hair. It fell pale and smooth round her wan face. She tried to smile at him.

  He thought of what Marina always said. ‘Do you think all men are shits?’ he asked Julie.

  Julie said:

  ‘Believe it, men have ever been the same,

  And all the Golden Age is but a dream.’

  ‘You have a motto for every occasion,’ Martagon said. ‘You’re like a Christmas cracker.’

  ‘It’s Congreve,’ said Julie. ‘His last poem.’

  ‘What’s it meant to mean?’

  ‘It means that even if you are a shit, you’re not any more of a shit than men always were. But I don’t think you are one,’ she said.

  She was naked under the covers. Who put out a hand first? Their hands were dry and warm, gentle. Their touches were light but they carried the burning weight of knowing what passion was – transferred, transposed to another person. Perhaps it was the ache of that familiarity, and that difference, which made Julie gasp and Martagon suddenly pull back the duvet, and made Julie lock her arms round his neck and put her face up to his. After that, it was too late to remember anything, and there was only Julie and Martagon.

  EIGHT

  I can stop this whenever I want. It is just for now. Marina is seven hundred miles away.

  Excuse me, so what difference does that make? What is the precise distance that makes betrayal OK? Seven hundred miles? Seventy miles? Seven miles?

  The point is that this cannot hurt Marina. There is no way that she will ever know. The thing with Julie has absolutely no bearing on Marina and me, or on our future, or on the way we are. I am committed to Marina.

  I can stop this whenever I want. It is just for now.

  * * *

  For three weeks, Martagon went to Julie’s flat every evening. He discovered, among other things, that she was writing stories in her free time.

  ‘You really have come a long way,’ he said, looking at the small pile of typescript on her table.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you are in the driving seat. It’s like you aren’t wearing L-plates on yourself any more.’

  ‘I guess I’ve passed my test,’ Julie replied drily.

  ‘What are you writing about?’

  ‘That one there’s about a marriage.’

  ‘Can I read it?’

  ‘Certainly not. It’s not finished.’

  ‘Tell me about it, then.’

  ‘What do you think about marriage, Martagon?’

  ‘I think a marriage, a good marriage, would be like the sea with the tide always going out or coming in, except when it’s on the turn and the waves are still – but only for a moment, because nothing ever stays the same.’ He was thinking about himself and Marina, and how it might be, for them. An act of faith at a time of faithlessness.

  Julie raised her eyebrows at him, mocking. ‘Oh, my, Martagon. But you’re dead right that nothing stays the same. My story is going to be called “The Worst Scenario”. I don’t think I would ever marry someone I loved.’

  ‘You’re so cynical.’

  ‘You’re so romantic.’

  ‘I didn’t used to be. I am now. I must be getting old. So tell me about the worst scenario.’

  Julie told Martagon the outline of her story as they lay in her bed, after they had made love. Martagon held a strand of her hair between his fingers and thumb, rubbing it and rubbing it as Fasil did with the old piece of patterned cotton he used as a security blanket.

  ‘This man and this woman got married and were very happy together. Then he took a job that paid a great deal of money and took him away from home for fifty per cent of the time. She thought that was rather a lot. He did too. But he wanted the job, and the money, and he was used to travelling all the time for his work. She didn’t want to stop him doing what he wanted, though she didn’t care one way or the other about the money.’

  ‘Why didn’t she go with him? My father worked abroad, but my parents were never separated.’

  ‘She could have, if he was posted to one country for six months or a year. But this is more like a long series of different trips, staying in hotels, moving around all the time. She could go and join him for holidays when he was in an interesting place. But to trail round with him all the time would be the life of a dog. Live like an airhead and you become an airhead. Anyway, she’s got a career at home she doesn’t want to give up. I haven’t got all that thought out yet.’

  ‘You’re right that it’s not in the culture for spouses to go on all the business trips, however devoted the couple.’ Martagon was remembering a night in the New Otani in Tokyo, back in the Cox & Co. days, when he had glimpsed from the lobby one of his colleagues disappearing into the lift with a Japanese hooker. He knew the colleague’s wife and had visited them at home in Chelmsford. They were patently a contented couple. He had been surprised at the time – still was, when he thought about it.

  ‘Go on,’ he said to Julie.

  ‘Well
, they started out on the new life with mutual goodwill. They could handle this. And so they did, after a fashion. When he was away she worked, and saw her friends, and went out like a single person. So, when he was away, did he. It was all rather stimulating, really.’

  ‘And they were delighted to see one another when he came home,’ said Martagon, wanting it to be true.

  ‘Sure. But he was always tired, and had his mail, and messages, and the office to attend to. Sometimes she had things arranged, which could well have included him, but he had so much to do, and they were her friends rather than his, so perhaps, he said, he’d give it a miss … As time passed they hardly communicated during his periods away, except about dates and times of his returns. He didn’t really feel the need now for daily calls or e-mails; and she wouldn’t have felt good if she’d faced up to how much she missed him. It was more positive to get on with her life. Sometimes, at his suggestion, when he was at home they would give a dinner party, mostly for old mates of his. They were both good people. It’s just that what happens, happens.’

  ‘So what did happen?’

  ‘I’ll read you this bit. Remember it’s only a summary, though, not the real thing yet.’ She picked up her typescript and read:

  ‘Really nothing happened – except that they never used the word “love” to each other, apart from putting “lots of love” at the end of faxes and e-mails. The way they were together when they were first going out was all in the past – not that either of them thought about it very much, he hardly at all. The house, and his wife, always seemed in good order when he did come home, and his travelling life just seemed normal. “My wife and I are very good friends,” he would say to women in bars in the evenings in all the countries he travelled to. At home, she was saying on the phone, “Yes, he’s away as usual, I’ll come on my own, if that’s all right?”

  ‘Then he had to retire, because of his age, and he was at home all the time. It was a bit awkward to start with. They slept in separate rooms, because their sleeping patterns were so different. It was just for a while, they said. But he never moved back into what was now her bedroom. They were still good friends, and they never had rows. On a good day, he thought, This was really all I wanted, all along, and tried to believe it. On a good day, she thought, There is still time … and tried to believe it.’

  Julie put down the typescript.

  ‘So what happens next?’ asked Martagon.

  ‘Nothing happens,’ said Julie. ‘Maybe they’ve had children, maybe they haven’t, I haven’t decided yet. They grow older. One of them dies, and then later the other one dies. That’s it.’

  ‘Is it a tragedy?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s what I have to work out. I’m calling it “The Worst Scenario” like I told you, but perhaps it should really be “The Best Scenario”, or “An Everyday Story”.’

  ‘I bet you were thinking of Tom and his marriage when you started writing it.’

  ‘Kind of. He read my first go at an outline.’

  Martagon was stung. ‘OK, so what did he say?’

  ‘He laughed. He said I’d missed out one important thing. He wouldn’t say what, he said I had to find out for myself. I asked him again what it was, yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Oh, we still talk. He worries about me.’

  Martagon, outraged, sat bolt upright in the bed. ‘For God’s sake, Julie. That man wants to have his cake and eat it. You shouldn’t have anything to do with him any more. He’s just messing you about. You should tell him to bugger off.’

  ‘He’s away anyway now for a bit, for meetings with his Grid Group people. Apparently Orford Mulhouse has taken a huge villa for them all, in Biarritz.’

  ‘Orford Mulhouse?’

  ‘That’s the Texan who finances the Grid Group. I met him with Tom, I must say he’s extremely nice, for a rich person. Very modest, very quiet. Someone you can really talk to.’

  ‘What did you talk to him about?’

  ‘I told him about what I did, and he said he’d like to have me in the Group, working for them, they were going to be looking for an administrator for the London office. It’d be in Queen Anne’s Gate, Martagon, right beside St James’s Park – a bit of a change from Hackney! But I don’t suppose anything will come of it.’

  ‘Mulhouse. There’s a rich American woman called Nancy Mulhouse who lives most of the time in Provence.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s his wife. He told me about her and her French house, when I was telling him about my family, about Giles, and about Harper Cox doing the new airport for Provence. She’s in Biarritz with them now. Why, do you know her?’

  ‘No, no, I’ve never met her … Small world, though. It would be difficult for you, I’d think, working for the Grid Group, now that it’s all over with Tom.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’m perfectly all right talking to him now, it doesn’t upset me, not since you … not since we…’

  He looked down at Julie’s face on the pillow. She was sweet, not wanting to say the words, not knowing what words to say. Martagon lapsed back into a comfortable position in the bed and took her hand in his. ‘And when you spoke to him yesterday, did he say what it was that you had left out of the story?’

  ‘Passion.’

  ‘Passion … I suppose he meant, what did they do about sex.’

  ‘He said you can’t suppress passion, it always has to spurt out somewhere.’

  ‘He’s the expert,’ said Martagon.

  ‘He said the husband would have had adventures with Thai bar-girls and affairs with his secretaries.’

  ‘Like he has.’ Like most men, thought Martagon, remembering the scene at the New Otani.

  ‘I said to Tom, “It never says in the story that he did not. I just don’t choose to spell it out.” And I said to him, “Why just the husband anyway? The wife might have had affairs too.” And Tom said, “Opportunity.”’

  ‘Opportunity. Your brother’s favourite word.’

  ‘Not in that sense.’

  ‘I think you’re being defeatist,’ said Martagon. ‘You’re writing that story to prove that there’s no point in committing yourself to anyone, let alone marrying.’

  ‘Listen who’s talking.’

  ‘I’d get married, now,’ said Martagon, ‘if I couldn’t bear not to, if I was so taken up with someone, if she’d got under my skin so far that life without her wouldn’t be worth living and I wanted to be with her all the time.’

  It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her something about Marina. Perhaps not everything, but something.

  ‘But she wouldn’t be with you all the time, would she? You’d always be rushing off to the airport, like in my story. Giles and Amanda manage, though.’

  ‘Solid as rock. Your sister-in-law isn’t perfect—’

  ‘She’s a real cow sometimes.’

  ‘Right. But she provides what Giles needs. She knows what’s right and what’s wrong. He’s not always sure, he’d be all over the place without her. Besides, Giles is basically a settler. Home matters to him. Everyone’s either a settler or an explorer.’

  ‘I’m a settler and an explorer. I am at home wherever I happen to be with Fasil. At the moment it’s this flat, though that could change.’

  ‘You’re a nomad, taking your tents around with you,’ said Martagon, looking round at the colourful confusion, and the folkweave curtains shutting out the night. ‘Sweet!’ he added mockingly – though he did find her shoestring home-making sweet.

  ‘And you’re an explorer, I suppose.’

  ‘Certainly. Though recently I’ve diagnosed in myself symptoms of becoming a settler.’

  ‘How very unsettling for you! By the way, did you know that Amanda’s going to have a baby? She’s only just found out for sure.’

  ‘No! That’s wonderful. I must give them a call.’

  ‘You might see if they’d like us to go round for supper on Sunday, after we’ve been out with Fasil, like you said we would, if it’s a
nice day.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Martagon. One of the family.

  * * *

  I can stop this whenever I want. It is just for now.

  A person who is trying to do good feels elated when, occasionally, he does something not good. Something secret, something for me. It puts things in proportion. Marina had said something to that effect, hadn’t she?

  In any case my being with Julie is not being bad. It is helping her to get over the débâcle with Tom. She seems happy with me. Good things can be the result of bad things, such as deceit.

  He took Julie to see the film Magnolia. He told her she looked a bit like Melora Walters.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Julie. ‘She was a loser. And you’re the nice cop, right? Wanting to do good?’

  * * *

  What happens, happens. Frogs falling out of the sky, like in Magnolia, or whatever. Martagon has put his house in Child’s Place on the market. Waiting for the estate agents to come and value it, he stood at his bedroom window looking out into the sunlit street. On the other side, a little way down, there was a yellow crane in the roadway, and a removals van. A grand piano hung from a top-floor window-frame, half in half out, secured by thick yellow strapping. The great hook of the crane, after two failed attempts, latched on to the strapping. As the crane’s neck turned, the piano lurched as if it were going to crash down – and then floated lightly free of the window-space, in a wide arc, over the trees, over the parked cars, swinging slowly round and round, down and down, until it landed gently on the sloping backboard of the van. Once unhooked, it reassumed the dead weight proper to a piano, as the removals men struggled to get it up the ramp into the van.