Thus he spent the afternoon, feeling a misfit, and somehow betrayed—by his birth or character. He returned to his room eventually, consigned Wagner to the gramophone, Tristan und Isolde, and threw himself onto the bed. This was his fate, was it? These hotels his purgatory? He’d proven himself to be incapable and undeserving of normal life, and places dedicated to health or amusement in which he didn’t truly believe had become the limbo he was destined to inhabit. He struggled to sense Valeria lying beside him, their hands interlaced. His guilt was still shocking. The stain of it that would not be cleansed by all the bathhouse cures of Arabia.
Harry was at table with the Jackmans when Teresa entered the dining room, the Russian at her elbow. He was hovering like an insect around sweetness, but you could tell even from a distance that she was being offhand with him. Also that he was a seductive personage, despite there being nothing particularly imposing in his face or physique. Where did that come from? Was she really insensible to it? The Russian gestured to the table where his friends sat. Harry distinctly saw Teresa shake her head and glance at Mrs Jackman, who waved. Her eyes only hopped over his.
A long moment later she was settling herself at Mrs Jackman’s side, with a smiling though inscrutable look.
‘We’ve chosen the French menu,’ Mr Jackman informed her. ‘Will you be our accomplice?’
‘Certainly,’ she said, all diffident courtesy.
‘I lost you at the baths,’ Mrs Jackman lamented. ‘After my first dip in the plunge bath I couldn’t find you.’
‘I lost this chap here, too,’ Mr Jackman said.
‘I was ages in the Hot Rooms,’ Teresa explained. ‘You forget yourself in those.’
‘You haven’t braved the plunge bath yet?’ Mr Jackman wanted to know. ‘I submerge myself fully, head included, five or six times during a Turkish visit. Swear by it.’
‘And look at his beautiful skin,’ remarked his wife earnestly. ‘You’d say he wasn’t a day over forty.’
‘Indeed.’ Teresa was straight-faced.
Was she thinking what Harry was? They are old and love each other, still find each other beautiful. A success of a marriage. How is that done? She flushed slightly, looked down.
From the other side of the room the Russian was trying to catch her eye. Harry would have liked to pass him a surreptitious message: Desist from your designs. He noted the disagreeableness of his own disgruntled manhood.
Lobster bisque. Harry took to the chablis with a vengeance. Teresa was sipping only water, and he asked himself, Does she never drink?
‘She never drinks,’ Mr Jackman said. ‘Poor thing. Nice chablis, don’t you find?’
‘I do.’
‘Perhaps you can help us decide on an outing for tomorrow,’ his wife proposed. ‘Ramble to Birk Crag or motor ride to Ripon Cathedral with the Lady Entertainer?’
‘We usually steer clear of such people, on principle,’ Mr Jackman added, with a hint of being wicked. ‘We’ve no interest in being entertained, and most definitely not with bridge or whist. One rather goes on holiday to get away from all that. But Yorkshire beauty spots are a different kettle of fish and we’re considering it.’
‘Actually,’ Mrs Jackman interjected, ‘we’d be thrilled if you’d come. Both of you.’
‘Birk Crag is the more woodsy choice,’ her husband supposed.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but everyone raves about Ripon. Can’t think why we’ve never gone before.’
They were savouring their ambivalence, and life generally, in which there were so many pleasurable things to choose between. What effortless enjoyment.
‘Thank you, but I don’t think I can tomorrow,’ Teresa said. ‘Massage appointment, you know.’
‘Nor I, I’m afraid. I also have an engagement.’
Teresa and Harry had let them down. They were all on to the boeuf.
Mrs Jackman rallied. ‘I’m worried something terrible has happened to the lady novelist. I just have this sense of dread about it.’ She dabbed at her lips with a serviette. ‘Don’t you, Teresa? You saw the piece in The Times?’
Teresa swallowed, and said in a contracted voice, ‘I really wouldn’t know. I’m rather lazy with newspapers. It’s more the crossword puzzles I take them for.’
‘But what can have happened to her? I’ll lend you my newspaper if you like.’
‘I did glance at the article. She must be a very elusive person.’
‘That’s my feeling,’ Mr Jackman said. ‘Elusive. But who isn’t?’
‘You aren’t,’ his wife said, smiling. ‘Not to me. No, but I’m afraid she must have been quite desperate, to drive off at night like that. Why would you do such a thing?’
‘She might be—desperate.’ Teresa was cutting fervently into her beef.
She was the first to finish eating. Her blancmange had been dealt with when the rest of them were barely beginning dessert. She laid down her spoon. ‘I’m drooping. Think I’ll go straight up to bed.’
Harry tried to concoct an excuse for leaving the table after her, but Mr Jackman detained him. In an undertone: ‘I saw the physician this morning, and he mentioned you’d missed your weekly appointment. Asked how you were.’
By the time Harry had promised to fix another appointment and made his escape, she wasn’t in the lounge, on the stairs, or in the first-floor corridor. She was still loath to have a tête à tête with him. She felt remorse—disgust?—at what had passed between them. He was bothered and hurt.
He lacked the courage to knock on her door. He left a request with the night hall porter, a discreet round-faced man of about fifty, for the Daily Mail to be brought to him the following morning with his tea. He envisaged relying heavily on sherry and Teresa’s novels to get himself through another night in limbo.
16
BRAIN FAG AND DEBILITY
But after only two sizable glasses of sherry and a generous dose of Teresa’s fiction, the uneasiness that had haunted Harry’s day dulled, was quelled, and he was gifted a run of hours’ sleep. Consequently, he woke on Friday feeling stronger and much more solid. Almost proud of some achievement in which the merit was his. You see, you’re not in as bad a state as all that, my boy. You’re a machine that functions. He was roused, not by the door opening—strange, given the usual sensitivity of his sleep—but by tea and newspaper being deposited by his bed. He thanked the ruddy-cheeked, mannerly lad, who got a fire going while Harry arranged pillows and ordered bedclothes so he could sit up comfortably.
He was hardly thinking of Teresa this morning—only softly, obliquely. It was possible after sleep of the better kind for the mind to be so freshened it appeared to have wrested back control of itself from alien agencies. It merely existed for itself again, at its own leisurely rhythms, naturally and philosophically. What was the problem, again? Anticipating disaster was melodramatic. Things would find some satisfactory resolution, or not, which was the nature of life, wasn’t it? All the energy one expended fretting! He wondered whether he’d only imagined himself in love with Teresa. Wanting to see Valeria in her, wanting to revive the past. He’d always been prone to hyperbole . . . If this placid condition could be bottled and sold as a tonic, what a mad success it would be!
Once the fire was going, he was left alone. He downed half a cup of tea—properly brewed, hydrating, renewing—complimenting himself on being rather a sane man, everything considered. A sip more, and he unfolded the newspaper. He perused idly.
And came to it.
Five hundred police had gone looking for her. Photographs of the search. People striding across fields in woollens and high-minded expressions.
Comments from the Colonel. They had not rowed. (Why say this? Why be defensive?) He’d have no tolerance for tittle-tattle. (What was he worried would be said?) His wife was self-willed, capable, and had on occasion mentioned the possibility of disappearing. She was wont to discuss poisons.
When they had taken her little dog to the site of her vanishing, he had run straight down the hill.
Harry’s fears returned. And his emotion for her. He saw her pale eyes, recalled the warmth of her kisses. With searches of this magnitude and such insistence from the press, it couldn’t be long until someone here was on to Teresa Neele. He didn’t know how, but he had to protect her from that.
Poisons? She’d spoken of poisons to him, too. Though that could have been related to her literary interests, or her experience as a nurse, couldn’t it? Or did she also have to be protected from herself, after all?
He leaped out of bed and dressed hectically, not troubling with a shave.
He rushed down the flight of stairs separating them, almost tripping before he reached the bottom. No one in the corridor. On, down to the ground floor. She wasn’t in the dining room. Up again to the first floor.
Fist poised to knock on her door, he stepped back. It was early. He didn’t wish to wake her. He retreated to the lounge, where he went to stand before the fire.
After a while, hearing the Jackmans’ voices as if the couple were emerging from the reading room, he hurried back up the stairs to the first floor. Down the corridor, finally, and to her room. He was sweating. It was eight thirty.
Before he could knock, the door opened. He drew back. A chambermaid.
‘Oh,’ he said, feigning casualness, while no doubt sounding and looking horribly suspicious. ‘Mrs Neele is awake? I have a message to convey to her.’
‘She’s gone out, sir.’
‘What!’ He stared. The girl was somewhat startled to see him so shaken. He enquired more docilely, ‘Ah, really?’
‘She said she was going to do some shopping and she’d be back tonight.’
‘It’s just that I thought she was feeling poorly, you see. That’s why I didn’t expect she’d be going out today. Seemed quite well, did she?’
The girl turned side on and resettled the pile of linen in her arms. He suspected this of being a contrivance, a delaying move to help her settle on an answer. ‘When I brought her tea this morning, she said she’d have her breakfast in bed, because she was going out early.’
He nodded. The girl hesitated.
He endeavoured to coax her. ‘So she was quite well, then?’
‘She didn’t say, sir. She didn’t mention being poorly.’
He could see there was something else that she might have afforded him. She battled with herself. He respected her discretion even as he sought to breach it. He wondered if she were weary, at such an hour perhaps already having worked for some time. ‘However . . . ?’
Her eyes lifted to him, and for a moment their training in blank servility was perforated. She found Teresa Neele curious. She hadn’t guessed her true identity, had she? Could she read? Had she read the newspaper before delivering it and become watchful? He prayed not.
‘Yesterday she was very cheerful, and today she wasn’t. I didn’t know she was poorly. When I brought her breakfast in . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Her manner . . .’
‘Her manner was . . . ?’
‘Odd, sir.’
‘Ah?’
‘A bit odd.’
‘I see. Thank you.’ He nodded. ‘Perhaps she’s not entirely improved, but still felt well enough to go out. I’m glad.’
‘Did you want to leave the message for her?’
‘That won’t be necessary. It’ll wait.’
He didn’t know how to read this. Had Teresa run? Gone somewhere . . . to . . . Was shopping a code word for ultimate nothingness? Or, at best, her departure from Harry’s life forever? He mustn’t even think these things. He waited for her return, unsure if she really would be back. Cruel process.
He lunched late and reluctantly. The Jackmans were away on their pleasure tour, so he wasn’t obliged to talk. He did rather miss them, though. He continued with the last of Teresa’s novels.
As he was making for the smoking room, the physician accosted him. He was a burly yet neat fellow, with understanding eyes. Whether that was duty or natural inclination, it was impossible to know. Harry apologised for missing his appointment and mumbled that he’d make another. For this afternoon? Having no excuse ready, he accepted.
When the time they’d set—the amorphous half past three—arrived, he was glad to have somewhere to go. He descended to the basement, reporting to the room where he had lukewarmly visited the physician twice since his arrival at the Hydro.
‘I hope you are well?’ the physician enquired.
‘Oh, you know,’ Harry said. ‘Yes, pretty well.’
His pulse was taken, and he was appraised.
‘Last week it seemed as if your vitality was coming back. I’d thought we were making good progress.’ The professional man smiled delicately. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been—let’s say, living in rather a high fashion? I often see that here. Enjoying oneself is one thing, but we must be careful of excess.’
Harry protested that his living had been tolerably low, except for a little drinking of an evening.
The physician raised his eyebrows, but appeared not unamused.
‘My sleep has been irregular. But then that’s quite regular for me. Actually, last night I had a particularly good rest.’
‘Hmm. Gratified to hear it.’ He uncapped a handsome fountain pen. ‘I think I shall recommend the Chalybeate waters. Just the thing for brain fag and debility.’
‘Splendid.’
‘You are taking the sulphur water?’
‘Oh yes. Maybe not with the greatest consistency.’
The physician sighed. ‘You know, we don’t advise self-treatment. The guidance of a medical man is important.’
‘I set no great store by my own guidance.’
‘Well, we’ll do our best,’ the physician concluded lightly. ‘Come and see me next week?’
Harry nodded—wondering whether he would, and at the queerness of this man’s profession. Even in this territory of prosperous tranquillity, what a river of vulnerability he must daily watch passing.
The afternoon drifted into a wicked evening of waiting. He finished Teresa’s novel, enjoying it. There was a ploy in it that she had handled dexterously, with cunning calm. Once he was out of the convivial enclosure of the book, he was on tenterhooks. It didn’t suit him to be inactive.
Not wanting to go far, he wandered the hotel grounds and smoked. It wasn’t especially cold. Though sundown had passed, two men of middle age, one very bald and the other endowed with a berserk chestnut mop, took to the tennis court. Harry watched them for twenty minutes or so, relieved at the diversion, but they were playing a haphazard, frustrating game not aided by the risibly poor visibility or any talent to speak of.
He was in one of the lounge’s armchairs looking at the grandfather clock at a quarter to seven, the time at which, on a lightly snowy night, Valeria hadn’t been lying on their sofa as usual with her feline companion, a book and a hoard of digestives, because her life had ended.
He hadn’t eaten anything, knowing he couldn’t have coped with the dining room, nor even with the Winter Garden Ballroom—that unseasonable conservatory ambience and would-be insouciance.
The grandfather clock was striking ten when Teresa passed quietly in. She didn’t look discontented.
17
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH DAYS
On Thursday, Teresa had to take action regarding her finances, which were running low. The rather comfortable sum of pounds she’d had the foresight to be supplied with was naturally enough after a certain number of purchases depleted. Bothersome.
She’d noticed a sign in a jeweller’s on James Street—with a tempting Pearl Salon—declaring that old items would be bought for cash. She directed herself there, after forsaking Mrs Jackman at the baths, and was able to bring off an adequate exchange for her wristwatch and a ring to which she refused to wonder if she might be attached. Both being respectable pieces, her funds were decently replenished. They’d last until her husband’s arrival, which shouldn’t be delayed much longer.
But the
moment had come to accelerate proceedings with that message in a bottle.
An advertisement in The Times?
Yes, capital. More stylish than a letter. The kind of gesture required of one living under a pseudonym, clinically clean. But standing in the post office, preparing to deliver a line or two, blankness came over her. The fuzziness, the dental-surgery fog. Damn and blast this writing fiasco. She was positively unfit to combine words to set on paper. Senseless.
Somehow, she calmed herself down.
And finally, a miracle. Friends and relatives of Teresa Neele, she jotted messily but there it was, late of South Africa, please communicate. And a box number.
Ha! Clever, really. Was it?
Errands concluded, she returned to the Hydro with the itchy impression back that something was approaching. The day had felt ghost-thin. At dinner, there were the challenges of eluding the Russian, discouraging the Jackmans, who wanted her to go on their driving excursion, and ignoring Harry without seeming to. She felt observed. It could have been her imagination.
The next morning, waking from another heavy sleep, she found her mind veering into her elaborate romantic dream from two days before. She and Shy Thing were outside inhaling the stormy air.
Embarrassed by having almost slid over in the mud, she told him, ‘You have the most amazing fruit here.’ It came out sounding saucy. She hurried on: ‘I’ve been terribly disappointed, however, to learn that pineapples grow on the ground. I was expecting grand trees offering them to you at a civilised height.’
‘I know what you mean. When I first saw bananas growing as a child, I was aggrieved because I’d imagined they’d be yellow, not green. Where’s the pleasure in something you can’t enjoy immediately?’ The Australian boy was speaking without his colonial accent, in deep, pleasantly hard-to-place English tones. Rather like Harry.
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