‘I see.’ Tessa began distinctly to sympathize.
‘And you? Are you one of these brilliant gals?’
‘I’m afraid not. I work in publishing. Academic publishing.’
‘So you’re headhunting too?’
He had provided her with an alibi. ‘In a manner of speaking.’ She faltered, grappled for a little truth. ‘I’m about to start a holiday.’
‘Oh? Well what do you say you start it right now? Forget about the rest of the conference for today. We can take a little stroll towards my hotel. Give me a moment to check messages. And then the President of the Edward S. Knight Agency will offer you the dinner of your choice.’ He winked at her roguishly. ‘Maybe even dancing.’
Edward S. Knight, Tessa thought. That was it. The name on the letter she had seen in Stephen’s office.
‘The S by the way stands for Samuel. What do you say?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Tessa demurred.
‘I am. That’s always a start.’ He glanced down at her hand and she was suddenly aware of her wedding band. ‘Unless you’re otherwise and irretrievably engaged?’
‘No. Yes. No.’ Tessa was no longer sure which of his series of questions she was answering.
Ted Knight leaned back into the banquette and smiled lingeringly at the woman opposite him. He was back in Europe, he thought, and he liked it. A part of the globe where there were an infinite number of subtle gradations between yes and no and where the arts of flirtation he had imbibed with his French mother’s milk so long ago did not constitute a felony. He had missed it. Lord knew, he had missed it. And this Tessa Hughes was interesting. She looked as if she wore very clean, very white underwear and had forgotten how attractive she was. He would remind her. He liked her. He liked women. They had nearly always been good to him. And useful.
-4-
__________
Stephen Caldwell stepped out of the train into the small station which despite its proximity to Paris retained an air of countryside quiet. Outside, along the strip of track, birds swooped from mountain ash to bramble in search of late berries. Their chirping followed him across the narrow bridge. At its end, he paused at a flower stall and after a moment’s reflection, he bought the entire contents of a tub of white tulips at the vendor’s urging. Cut rate for closing time. Ariane had a predilection for white flowers. Only white, he had learned.
He hadn’t intended to see her. But when he had arrived in the flat in the Marais, there were no less than three messages from her. She was in some kind of trouble, she intimated.
That was the single disadvantage of using Marco’s flat in Paris, as he mostly had over these last two years. People knew where to get hold of him.
When he had returned Ariane’s call, she had insisted he come out to the house. For dinner, like in the old days. She needed to talk. He couldn’t really say no, even though the pressure of work was more than usually acute. He had never been able to say no to Ariane.
The last time he had walked up this slight incline and turned into the street of small, steeply roofed, stone houses, they had been all but hidden by a thick canopy of chestnut trees. Summer. Over a year ago now. The months had sped by, eaten up by work. And in these last months, hard, utterly absorbing work in the relative tranquillity of the lab.
Stephen felt excitement tingle through him. He had come up with something singularly important this time. A veritable coup. A ground-breaking discovery. He could barely contain himself from talking about it, had almost found himself doing so to a French colleague today. And in Lille where he had stopped over on his way to Paris to take a look at the bioengineering plant with which Camgene had recently set up an affiliation. But Jan had to come first. Until then and after that for the time it took to file the patent application, the discovery had to be kept secret.
He had bumped into Ted Knight in Lille. What Ted Knight was doing there he had no idea. But the man was everywhere sniffing out his contacts, plying his trade, looking out for investments.
Still, the meeting had had its use. He had taken the opportunity of telling Ted about Jan, built him up. And Ted was a good catalyst. He always knew where the action and the money were. Scared him a little, though. The man had a way of entering a room or a life and pouncing with such vigour on whatever it was that he wanted, that one had to have one’s immune system in full working order.
Stephen chuckled out loud. His immune system must be all right. He had managed to stop himself from burbling his findings to Ted.
The wooden steps to the porch creaked a little beneath Stephen’s weight. From the basement flat, the old landlady’s dog barked once hoarsely. Stephen turned to see whether Ariane was poised behind the white of her curtains as she had sometimes been in the past at his arrival. But there was no dark-eyed face peering through the intricacies of lace. She was probably in the kitchen preparing one of her sumptuous dinners, all sweetened cream and dill and roasts surrounded by black cherries.
She had chosen this suburban house, she had once told him, because it was like the dacha she would never have. And she had reinvented it in that spirit, covering every surface with embroidered cloths and gutting candles, draping shawls over sofas, painting old furniture with bright motifs, filling the open fire with pine cones. So that when he crossed the threshold, he lost his bearings and was no longer quite sure what country he had travelled to.
He was suddenly pleased that he had made the journey, instead of seeing Ariane in town as he had mostly done of late. After all, he had cause for celebration.
He pressed the doorbell and waited for the sound of answering footsteps. There were none. He tried again and glanced at his watch. Trust Ariane to be late, after all her insistence.
He paced a little, shifted his computer bag onto the opposite shoulder, and then with a grunt of impatience began to retrace his steps along the street. It really was time he stopped standing to attention any time someone shouted, ‘Help’.
A car screeched to a halt behind him.
‘Stephan, wait. Forgive me.’ Ariane’s throaty voice hailed him.
She was out of the low, sleek car in an instant. Thigh high boots like a second skin on long slender legs, soft clinging jacket, a broad-brimmed hat half-hiding a vivid face. The stark drama of her beauty always startled him anew.
She caught his appraising glance and with a smile that was both rueful and teasing, she placed a gloved hand on his shoulder. ‘You should know not to be so admirably punctual.’
‘I should.’ He laughed, a little embarrassed. ‘But you were so urgent.’
‘It’s hard to get you here these days.’ She took the flowers from his hands and nestled her nose in them. ‘Perfect.’ She led him into the house and pulled off her hat, letting dark, abundant hair cascade over her shoulders.
‘So. Now I can greet you properly.’
Stephen met the proffered embrace, smelled a scent both delicate and tangy.
‘I’ll begin to think you’re trying to seduce me all over again.’
‘Maybe.’ She gave him an arch look. ‘But not until after dinner. And only if you’re very good.’ She took the computer from him and with long strides walked into the living room and placed it carefully on the small desk beneath the front window.
‘Have I ever been very bad?’
‘You neglect me,’ she sighed, though the face she turned back to him was impish. ‘But never mind. Now you are here. And you may light the fire and I will bring you something to warm you up even better.’
Within moments she was back with a tray, a bottle of vodka and two tiny crystal glasses. She poured.
‘Na s’drovie.’ She emptied her glass while Stephen lingered a little over the sharp, peppery taste. ‘You have been well? Yes, I can see. You are tired, but very well.’ She appraised him as frankly as a doctor performing a check-up. ‘And if you are very well that means your work is very well. Am I right?’
‘You are right. As always.’ He laughed.
‘Good. That has a good so
und. You will tell me about it. And I will tell you my problems. But first, I must see to the dinner. You relax now.’
‘Can I help?’ Stephen called after her.
‘Never. I do not allow men, as you know, into my kitchen. Especially Englishmen, my Stephan.’
Stephen eased himself into the deep fireside chair and gazed into the flames. It was true he was tired. He was always tired of late, except when it came to work. Though he had thought he had left the tiredness at home with Tessa, had hoped the crossing would eradicate it. But he could still see her gazing at him with that abject disappointment he could do nothing to rescue her from, since what she wanted was not in his power to give. Tessa’s suffering, that waiting and wanting and silent accusation, annihilated him. It reduced all his accomplishments to nothing.
He had always assumed that time would do its work and heal the scars, the sadness, the miscarriage had left. But it hadn’t. Time had simply made the problems more intractable.
It was too bad about the lack of children. Really too bad. For her sake. He didn’t mind one way or another. They had got into a knot about it. The more she tried to untie it, the tighter it got. And the more she asked of him, the less he seemed to be able to give. All tangled up.
Stephen shifted uneasily in the comfortable chair and prodded at a log in the fire. Though he was no expert at such things, didn’t really like to think about them much, it was clear to him that Tessa wasn’t interested in him anymore, nor really in the sexual act. Only in its possible product. Her single-minded purposefulness made him utterly weary. Impotent, too. Yes. He might as well put a word to it, though it went against the grain, as if the naming fixed in stony permanence what he hoped was a passing difficulty.
Nor did he want them to go through the endless haul which assisted pregnancy could be. Like Sysiphus, pushing his rock up the mountain, only to find, next month that one had to start all over again. Tessa didn’t really understand how potentially long and difficult and obsessive and too often unsuccessful the process could be. He didn’t think she, let alone their marriage, could take it.
Tessa and he had started out so well, too. He liked her so much, respected her. He liked the mixture of sunniness and coolness in her, her dry humour, her incessant curiosity which had nothing invasive about it, her ability to be silent, to immerse herself with intense concentration in her own projects, her self-containment which obviated any need for those kinds of confessionals he felt intensely uncomfortable with, her patience with his own lacks. He had felt safe with her. And lucky. So very lucky that she would have him.
He had never told her that he knew about her and Jonathan Faulks. He had waited for her to tell him herself and when she hadn’t he had felt strangely pleased. Tessa had discretion and integrity, an inner honesty which didn’t ask for public confirmation. She had no need to spill or spell things out. A woman after his own heart.
He had learned about Jonathan Faulks in the way one always learned things in that small world which was Cambridge - by chance or grapevine. It was after a guest lecture he had given at King’s. His host had taken him to the Combination Room for a drink and introduced him to a gaggle of Fellows, amongst whom there was one who prodded and sparred with him, not unintelligently, about certain points in his talk. Jonathan Faulks. Later, when he had already picked up his coat and bag in the hall and had wanted to ring Tessa, he had seen Faulks in the telephone box ahead of him. He had stood by idly, but he couldn’t help noticing the sequence of numbers Faulks had tapped out. He spent most of his life, after all, with sequences. And this one was Tessa’s number. He had heard Faulks quite clearly, could only not have heard if he had left the corridor. And he was too interested to do that.
Funny, how he could still quite clearly recapture Faulks’s words and tone. First a little bark, a surprised yelp, ‘What do you mean you’ve fallen in love with someone else?’ And then after a pause, in a voice that was all smiles. ‘But my dear Tessa, you and I have been going on for some four years now. It’s a little late to complain about secrets. You’re being childish. When you grow up a little more, you’ll realise secrets are amongst the best things in life.’
He couldn’t, of course, hear Tessa’s response, but Faulks had looked thoroughly disgruntled as he left the cabin and had given Stephen only the most cursory of nods.
Stephen had been privately proud of Tessa then. Altogether thrilled when she answered the phone to him and in a blithe voice told him he must come over straight away. She was cooking a special dinner for him. He felt not only chosen, but as if he had helped to save her from a fate she didn’t want. That night he had given her the locket he had purchased for her from a jeweller’s in King’s Parade a few days back. It had seemed so right for her with its delicate leafy tracery and pale amethyst flowers, its subtle clasps and tiny partitions. The rightness had been confirmed by the glow in her eyes as she lifted her hair and asked him to fasten it round her neck. A smooth, graceful neck, which he had touched with shy lips.
Yes, it had all started so well, Stephen thought. Within a few months of their marriage, Tessa had been promoted to commissioning editor and his own work had flourished. He had published a series of papers in quick succession, the fruit of long research, and he had been toppled into the ranks of a certain scientific fame. They were happy, settled, productive, fed off the warm certainty of each other.
And after the fiasco of the miscarriage, it had all come to nought. Sometimes he thought that his life with Tessa now had become an endless circling round a windowless, airless tower. At times, she was barricaded inside and there was no height he could scale to get her out. At other times, he was on the inside, his cries silenced by the sheer thickness of the walls. In or out, his helplessness stifled him.
Stephen sank more deeply into his chair. Yes, he was tired. But this room of Ariane’s did him good. It hadn’t changed. The baby grand was still there with its candelabrum; the vase with its surfeit of white flowers, brought, he had no doubt, by some ardent admirer; the table in the alcove, covered by a starched embroidered cloth and carefully set for two, the sofa with the bright shawls draped over it. They had had good times here. On and off over that first year, before guilt had taken him over. Wonderful times. At home he was about as adept as a fumbling schoolboy. But Ariane had turned him into someone else.
‘So. You must start with these that you like so much.’ Ariane was back carrying a platter of canapés: dark bread covered with herring and caviar. ‘I have been to Moscow, so the caviar is the real thing.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘You are already beginning to look more relaxed. Another five minutes and I am with you.’
Yes. Ariane, this house, there was a genie in them which knew how to make him relax. How to take pleasure.
Even after they had stopped going to bed together, he had kept coming back, sporadically, in nostalgia, in friendship. Ariane would tell him stories. Stories which entranced him, literally put him into a trance. In that rare state ideas, connections popped into his mind, more readily and boldly than at work, which too often - particularly in those early years when he had first gone full-time to Camgene - had meant too much time away from the lab.
It didn’t matter whether the stories were about her family, her friends old and new, the run of everyday events. Or whether they were wilder, more fanciful childhood tales about the witch Babayaga. Tales which always included three sons, the youngest of which, the innocent fool, inevitably embarked on a quest which always lasted three times a year-and-a-month-and-a-day. And somewhere on that tripling quest for a princess spellbound in a frog’s skin, or imprisoned in a distant tower or for a golden apple as bright as the sun or a fiery bird with lavish plumage, he would meet Babayaga. Babayaga who lived in a little cottage surrounded by a fence made of bone and skull deep in a dark forest.
Like his own witch, Stephen reflected. He remembered distinctly how during one of Ariane’s Babayaga stories, he had seen models for the interactions between calcium binding proteins and neurotoxins spring up
before his eyes.
This house was part of the magic too. A small secret place, concealed from the rest of his world, to escape to now and again. Yes, it was the secrecy he had been hooked on, as much as anything else. Had thrived on it, like some spy made superfluous by the end of a war, hot or cold, who still needed his fix.
Perhaps he hadn’t got over it yet, he thought as he watched Ariane wheel her serving trolley into the room. She had piled her hair up and the mysterious symmetry of high cheek bones, deep set eyes and a neck, languidly long, played over him.
She met his gaze with a knowing smile. ‘Come. You’re hungry. I can see. And you need another glass of vodka.’ She poured without waiting for his answer, cut into a duck stuffed with kasha, heaped his plate. ‘The vodka is good. My mother made it. Better than my big brother’s wine. Ha!’
She sat down opposite him. ‘I saw Sacha. He has grown fat.’ That deep, luxuriant laugh tumbled out of her and tickled Stephen’s skin. ‘He has a new business venture. He is importing wine. Wine from Texas. Texas! Do you believe it? It is the first time I have drunk wine from Texas. Texas in Moscow. Sacha has been watching Dallas. Watching with all the seriousness he once gave to medieval icons. And he has been inspired.’ She rolled dark eyes at him. ‘I think he wishes to be like J.R. I have no doubt he will succeed.’ She hoisted up her shoulders, puffed out her stomach comically and was suddenly walking round the room with stiff heavy steps, making the parquet rebound.
Stephen laughed. ‘And your mother?’
‘My mother is not so good. It is not good for old people in Moscow. Even with the money I give her.’
He searched her face. ‘Have you lost your job with the computer firm. Is that the problem?’
‘Not so fast, my Stephan.’ She chewed a piece of duck carefully. ‘And no. You are out of touch. I had a new job months ago.’
‘So? What is the problem?’
‘Okay. You don’t want to enjoy my food in peace. I will tell you then.’ She folded her napkin abruptly, lowered her voice. ‘It is my little brother, Dmitri, the one who lives in Petersburg. I saw him too. He has got himself into serious trouble.’
The Things We Do For Love Page 5