Lover

by Anna Raverat

  “I’ll tell him,” I say, soothing her hair back, noticing they’ve outgrown their pajamas.

  “And will you tell him that Charlie is ill?” says Milla.

  “He knows that—Charlie’s been ill for a while—but I’ll tell him again and he’ll come and visit while I’m away. It’s only for one night—I’ll be home before you go to sleep tomorrow.”

  * * *

  I call Adam, tell him the girls are unwell, and ask him to take Charlie to the vet again. “The medication doesn’t seem to be helping. If anything, he’s getting worse,” I say.

  “Should I have him?” says Adam.

  “No,” I say. “The girls can’t lose their dad and their dog in the same week.”

  “They haven’t lost their dad,” he says.

  * * *

  I pack to the tune of “Humpty Dumpty” and “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” and hear the girls giggle and I’m relieved—not that ill. I make them some jam toast and hot chocolate and take it up on a tray.

  “I’m feeling better!” says Hester, gobbling hers all up.

  “I’m not,” says Milla, pushing hers away. I’m impressed with Hester’s lack of duplicity and with Milla’s cleverness. Whatever happens with me and Adam, at least I have my brilliant kids.

  * * *

  My parents arrive from the airport. Mum stands in the hall in her coat while I run outside into the rain to help Dad and the driver with their bags. Her stiffness seems more than can be attributed to the overnight journey. I realize they’ve had a row because it’s “Your Father” and “Your Mother” instead of Mum and Dad, as in: “Your Father needs to pay the taxi,” and “Your Mother didn’t sleep on the flight.”

  * * *

  “Sweetheart,” my dad says, pulling me in for a big hug.

  “That’s right,” says Mum, patting my shoulder while Dad is still hugging me.

  “It’s really awful, what’s happened,” she says. Dad releases me and Mum swoops in for a quick embrace. “But you’ll be all right, won’t you?”

  “Of course we will,” I say, including the girls in my answer, who I see waiting shyly at the top of the stairs in their too-short pajamas and unbrushed hair.

  * * *

  I make tea and give the girls more watered-down juice in their baby bottles.

  “Aren’t they too old for those?” says my mother.

  “Yes, but they like them,” I say firmly.

  I ask Hester to put some biscuits on a plate and she and Milla open a family pack of digestives and pile the whole lot out. There must be about thirty McVitie’s there. They each take six. “I think you’ll be well enough to go to school tomorrow,” I say.

  Hester sits on Grandpa’s lap and Milla sits next to the biscuits and my mother, who doesn’t have a lap as such.

  I ask about my brother Greg and his family.

  “Oh, they’re fine,” says my mother. “We had a good visit, didn’t we?” My dad nods in agreement. “Apart from your phone call, of course, which was awful. We felt we should come straightaway but the flights were all booked because of New Year. Greg and Susannah tried so hard to find us an earlier flight back.” Dad nods again.

  “But we want to hear about you, darling,” Mum goes on. “What happened? What’s going on?”

  “Adam is staying with his friend George for the time being. He’s going to come and see the girls while you’re here and take Charlie to the vet.” Everyone looks at Charlie, who trembles in response. Hester climbs down and goes to hug Charlie.

  “Don’t get in the basket,” I warn. “I can’t really talk about it right now,” I say, meaning because the girls are in the room, but my mother thinks it’s because I have to leave for the Eurostar and bustles me into my coat. In fact I have another hour before I need to go and two-thirds of a cup of tea left, but their formality has eased up and I don’t want to jinx it, so after several clammy hugs with the girls, I say goodbye to my parents, pat Charlie, and head for the Eurostar.

  22

  I watch the flat fields of rural East Kent from the train and think bitterly of Louise, and of Lorna. I never understood what people see in Judy Garland and I have no idea what or who Louise looks like, but I know she lives somewhere in this pale expanse where puddles are acres wide.

  On my way back from the buffet with a large white coffee I notice it’s not just me; almost everyone is holding these long white cardboard cups or has one in front of them. I wonder what we all did before it became normal to be giant babies sipping on big bottles of milk; from where did everyone derive their comfort before Starbucks answered the problem with latte? Perhaps there was none. Perhaps that’s why my mother is so buttoned up.

  We reach the tunnel. Across the table, a young woman is reading intently. Her book is called Magnetism: How to Attract the Life You Want, about the cosmic law of attraction, which I’ve heard about from Sam, who told me it’s the reason she made the large collage she keeps on her desk. It’s quite eye-catching; center-page is a rainbow and at the end of it, a photograph of a woman’s extremely toned stomach, although I think there’s a pot of gold elsewhere on the board. Rosenfeld and Abrahams are in my bag but I wouldn’t read them in public, just as I wouldn’t purchase I Can Make You Thin from the bookshop even though I too want an extremely toned stomach. There were four golden rules in I Can Make You Thin but I can’t remember them so I resolve to call into the bookshop when I’m back and have a sneaky peek.

  * * *

  The rhythm of the train is a lullaby but still I can’t sleep. Instead, I work. I answer emails from Trish, who keeps up a relentless stream. Trish and Don favor hotels that are highly efficient; Valerie, Richard’s secretary, has been heard to mutter that what Trish and Don seem to want is a kingdom of covered car parks. Richard is opposed to this type of hotel because they are highly impersonal; guests come and go, never interacting with each other or with staff. “There’s no reason a man should creep into a hole and watch TV alone,” he says. “A good hotel is like an old-fashioned travelers’ inn, a place of conviviality where stories are shared and adventures happen.” It’s a difference not just in style, but in values. Richard wants hotels with life and soul and the Belgian palace has potential for that.

  Despite the mess my marriage is in, I’ve really started to enjoy my job, to see how I can contribute: it’s not just about innovation for income generation—though that seems to be Trish’s focus—it’s also about the reputation of PHC as a market leader and place of excellence. I’m supposed to build an “entrepreneurial culture” that shores up long-term success and sustainability. I’ve been busy putting forward a few different projects. What I’ve proposed with this concept hotel is fairly radical, and there’s nothing like it on the market: an immersive experience at the 1930s Royal Spa Hotel, with costumes, music, food, decoration, and lots else from the era, backed up by state-of-the-art technology. To create a sense of being in that world, to conjure up an atmosphere that feels authentic, every single thing needs to be very specific. Getting it right is going to take the utmost precision and an unbelievable attention to detail, which is why I’ve hired two historians from University College London, and an independent film production company. The pilot is all about 1930s Belgium, but if this works well, we’ll apply the concept to different geographies, cultures, and periods. Personally, I’d love to re-create a Persian caravanserai—a roadside inn along the Silk Road where travelers could rest, free from danger, and recover from their day’s journey. Inside the walled exterior, small bedrooms—or not really rooms as such, more alcoves—were located off a central courtyard, and in the evenings meals were offered communally and people would talk, smoke, drink, and dance.

  * * *

  At the Gare de Bruxelles–Central I buy a box of Belgian truffles for my mother and some chocolate biscuits for the girls. I get a pair of socks for Dad; the truffles are meant to be shared with him, but I know he’ll only get one, maximum, and Mum will scoff the rest. Her sweet tooth is insatiable, as Greg and I le
arned one Easter when I was ten and he was eight; we rewrapped our unfinished chocolate eggs in the purple foil, but while we were at school, she polished them off.

  I board a smaller train, which chugs through the suburbs of Brussels and then Ghent and then Bruges, through people returning home from school and from work; shoes coming off, lamps and fires going on; children spreading out homework on kitchen tables, adults preparing dinner, steam from saucepans misting up the windows. Hotels are theatrical by nature, but homes are too—all those lighted interiors, framed by curtains. As a teenager, cycling slowly through the village on my way home from work, I used to glimpse into other people’s houses and wonder what their lives were like. By the time I freewheeled into our yard it would be nearly dark. In my own home, everyone would be in separate rooms, Greg watching TV on his own, my father reading academic papers in his study, my mother marking schoolbooks in hers.

  * * *

  I take out the clear plastic wallet containing the palace details and read the estate agent’s blurb. Facing onto a beautiful wide beach, there is a horse-racing track next to the palace grounds and on the other side a busy thermal spa and open-air swimming pool. Nearby are several parks, a golf course, and a cinema. A note in Trish’s flamboyant handwriting says, Location. Location. Location—perfect.

  * * *

  There’s no real need to check the building before I sign the papers—all that’s been done by teams of surveyors, engineers, and architects—but I want to and Henri the Ostend lawyer thinks this is a splendid plan. Over the phone he says, “Of course you must—it’s why you came. You can’t go home without a tour!”

  The long white palace stretches along the shore, fronted by two Royal Galleries—high colonnades with domed ceilings and beautifully tiled floors. It’s eighty-five years old with all the old elegance of a grande dame. The proportions are spectacular—I feel my heart lift just to look at it. The winter sun, reflected off the walls and the white sand, is piercingly bright, strong enough to burn. Up close, there are signs of dilapidation and neglect; plaster is flaking like patches of dry skin and some of the tiles are cracked or missing. A cold wind blowing in from the North Sea has made sand drifts against the outer wall and is stirring up flurries of dry leaves around the Doric columns. Once upon a time I suppose there would have been someone to sweep up the sand and shoo away the leaves.

  Henri has sent his secretary to meet me, a young girl called Ann with a blue wool coat and a neat brown bob who unlocks a side entrance, holds open the door, and says she will return in an hour unless I want her to stay. She clearly can’t wait to be gone—I imagine there’s a boyfriend to meet. I tell her two hours would be better. Ann looks delighted. The door clicks shut behind her.

  I fish out the floor plan from my briefcase. It shows a T-shaped building, with banqueting halls and ballrooms named after members of the Belgian royal family past and present: King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola, the old Kings Leopold I, II, and III, the reigning King Albert and his Queen Mathilde, their children and grandchildren: Amedeo, Astrid, Aymeric, Emmanuel, Filip, Gabriel, Eleonore, Laetitia-Maria, Luisa-Maria, Maria-Hendrika, Maria-Laura, Maria-Theresea. A family mapped out in rooms. I think about which of them is alive today and wonder where they are and whether they’re still together.

  One hundred and eighty rooms over four floors, the largest of which, Albert, is seven hundred square meters with a ceiling height of nearly eight meters. The palace is empty, as Trish had said it would be, but I wasn’t prepared for the echo of my heels tap-tapping along acres of tiled floors.

  The space is breathtaking. Wood panels glow where the sun falls in great shafts through tall windows that look onto the beach at the front and gardens growing wild at the back. Shadows in corners and between windows make a tapestry of light and dark. Movement is generous—passages are broad and sunlit, with seats in them, and they are more or less continuous with the rooms themselves, so that as you walk around, the smell of perfume and cigars, the sound of glasses and laughter and conversation, a grand piano, a string quartet, can be felt, or imagined.

  Seduced entirely, I want to explore hands-free. I leave my briefcase in a banqueting hall named Leopold II and discard the floor plan in the ballroom called Baudouin. I roam a wide and ample loop. Somewhere roughly in the middle the main staircase sweeps down and embraces the entrance hall. Not just a way of getting from one floor to another, the staircase is a space in itself: a volume, part of the building where action takes place, a stage.

  Upstairs, the rooms and corridors feel like part of the same continuous fabric. I walk in and out of large suites with views out to sea and faded red velvet cushions in the window seats. In the crease under the seams I can see the scarlet they used to be. Despite being threadbare in places, the carpet muffles my footfall and the quiet draws attention to the emptiness, to all the people who aren’t here.

  I only realize I’ve entered a kind of dream when I hear my name being called.

  “Kate? Kate! Where are you?”

  I come out of the bedroom I’ve wandered into and see a man with white-gray hair that’s been blown about by the wind. He is standing in the corridor holding my brown leather briefcase, which looks disproportionately small on him. He’s in a navy suit, an apple-green tie, and camel overcoat; and despite being impressively big he’s completely unthreatening, like a Saint Bernard rescue dog.

  “Hello, Kate! I’m Henri. Ann called and said she was feeling unwell so she’s taken the rest of the day off. I know she’s exaggerating, but I don’t mind—I was young once. How do you like the palace? Magnificent, isn’t it?”

  His eyes are bright and he must take lots of walks in the fresh sea air because his face is quite tanned, or maybe he’s been skiing. I am so grateful for Henri’s company that I immediately develop a crush on him despite the fact that he’s slightly pear-shaped and about sixty.

  “There’s something downstairs I’d like to show you—part of the palace. Come on!” he says, and takes off back down the corridor, still carrying my briefcase.

  Downstairs in Maria-Theresea, the smallest of the banqueting halls, Henri puts his ear to the wood paneling as if listening for a heartbeat and taps with his fingers.

  “We have to find exactly the right place,” he says. “Aha!” He gently pushes the wall with both hands. Nothing happens.

  “The spring is a bit stiff these days,” he says. He lays his shoulder against the wall and heaves and this time there’s a creak and a rebound and the wall cracks open to reveal a hidden door.

  “Wow!” I say.

  “Wow indeed,” says Henri, smiling widely. “Let’s go!”

  A narrow passageway leads along the inside of the wall. We use the light of our phone screens to see.

  “Are we in the wall?” I ask, shuffling close behind Henri.

  “Yes. We are like giant mice,” he replies. After about fifteen meters the enclosed corridor opens out into a plain room with uneven flagstones and a window with small diamond-shaped panes. The glass is dirty and overgrown shrubs outside render the light greenish. The air feels heavy with damp. A wicker armchair is lying on its side near a heavy wooden door, mildewed. The room seems to hold all the abandonment of the rest of the building and there’s something dangerously magnetic about the undisturbed sadness. Old cobwebs hang in soft gray droops from the ceiling; newer ones span the window, doorway, and corners and stretch between walls. The spiders have been industrious, but all they’ve caught is dust.

  “I wonder if we can unlock that door,” says Henri, taking a bunch of keys from his coat pocket, looking through them as if each one holds a message. He moves toward the door, breaking the Miss Havisham feeling as he goes, tries one key and another and another but none fit. Eventually he pulls the door in toward him and draws back the bolt. “Maybe it’s not locked,” he says, and shoves hard. The door bursts open and Henri spills out into the garden.

  * * *

  It’s toasty warm in the café. The windows are all steamed up. There are lo
ts of small red tables, very close, with people crammed around them, coats and scarves bundled over the backs of chairs, hats and gloves on tabletops or poking out of handbags. Our table is a bit rickety. A couple at the next table lean toward each other, foreheads and elbows nearly touching. The woman’s hair is up in a chignon and a lock keeps falling across her face whereupon she twists it back into the knot. After this happens three or four times, her companion gently lifts the strand of hair and tucks it behind her ear, smoothing it down. He frames the side of her face with his hand and gazes at her and I feel bereft.

  We order French onion soup and a small carafe of wine. Henri pushes the sugar bowl, salt, and pepper to the edge of the table and lays out the floor plan. He unbuttons his cuffs and rolls up his shirtsleeves.

  “Can you read anything? I can’t!” he says cheerfully, and dips into his jacket pocket for spectacles. He may be older but he has strong forearms and a sparkle in his eye and right now that’s enough. The skinny waitress plonks down a basket of bread and pours the wine sloppily so that a fat drop lands on the map. Henri brushes it away and leaves a pale red streak on the paper. “Excusez-moi, monsieur,” says the waitress about the spillage.

  “Pas grave,” replies Henri without looking up from the map.

  “C’est une carte au trésor?” asks the waitress, craning for a look.

  “Oui, c’est ça.”

  “Allez, bonne chance!” and she wiggles off.

  “The garden room is here and this double line indicates the hidden passageway, I think, but there’s nothing to show the secret door. Here’s Baudouin, here’s Maria-Theresea, and here’s Albert, adjoining—so it should be round about here,” says Henri, his forefinger tapping the place, but I’m distracted again by all the names.

  “Where are they all?” I say.

  “Who?” replies Henri.

  “Astrid, Albert, all the Marias—”

  “Some are in Brussels, some live by a lake in a very large house, some are in the countryside near a forest—they’re dotted all over the land.”