“I was going back.”
She said tartly, “If you want to go—then go!”
As she spoke, she opened the door on his left. He had a glimpse of white walls, a carpet. White and gold furniture, not very much of it, a radiogram, bookshelves. But this is my dream! A white piano near the window, and on it, a large photograph. He thought angrily, That wasn’t there in the dream!
She said, “You’re looking at Matei, my husband. Didn’t you see a picture of him in the apartment in Bucharest?”
“No.” This man looked about sixty or seventy—anyway at least fifty, and much much too old for her. He felt a wave of nausea. It’s disgusting, he thought, disgusting that someone like that should touch her.
“We’ll have a drink now,” she said. “We’ll get it ourselves and not ring for anybody. After that, why don’t we dance?”
She was hunting through records. “I don’t know,” she said, “not much of a selection here. I mean every year to bring chic ones with me from Bucharest. Some of these are from Matei’s time. Look, Viennese waltzes recorded only one side.”
Her scent came toward him. “Put on something while I’m looking,” she said. Then as the music started: “I don’t like this. It’s gypsy music, we can’t dance to that.”
He liked the rhythm. He thought it might have belonged to the dancing that had gone on where now the soldiers slept neatly in rows, Eroul above them.
She gave a little scream of delight. “Oh Mikki, look! Something in English!”
He went over. “No,” she said, “I can’t understand. ‘Little Boy Blue.’”
“No,” he said, “‘Blues’.”
“Blue, blues, I shall play it at once. Who is this singing? June …”
“It comes from the twenties,” he said. “I’ve heard of her. Grandma told me. June Tripp was her real name. She became Lady Inverclyde.”
“Your grandmother, she was also a milady, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” he said. He paused. “My mother—she came from a farm.”
“Peasant blood, it’s good. It’s red and healthy. Why not?” she said, putting on the record. She put out her arms so that he would dance with her.
“It’s nice, it’s rather chic,” she said. “It must have been put there specially for us.”
They danced to it three times in all. Then they walked back to the gramophone, and he thought she leaned forward to pick up her drink.
She was stroking his cheek, his hair, his forehead. “I’m so lonely,” she said. “So lonely.”
He said awkwardly, “You’ve got lots of friends. In Bucharest anyway. And here too—”
“Oh, it’s not that sort of lonely,” she said. “Mikki, Mikki, look at me, Mikki.”
He didn’t want to.
“You mustn’t be shy,” she said. “Are you frightened of me? Is that what it is now, you’re frightened? Sit down. Let’s sit down and finish our drinks.”
The chair she took him over to was like the chair in the dream. She sat on the arm of it. Her hand was stroking his neck and the back of his head. She ran her hands over his lips. He didn’t protest. She buried her head in his neck. Then, sitting up again, laughing:
“Which woman is it, Mikki, which she is the more beautiful—me or the Bugatti?”
“Comparisons are odious,” he said, “that’s what I was taught.”
She ran her hand suddenly along his thigh on the inside. When it came to rest he knew it was the dream. Perhaps, he thought, I have brought it about, willed it. But then it changed from the dream. Her hand didn’t rest there. She put it about his arm, pulling him up. She said in a strange voice, lower than usual, urgent:
“Come with me, come, Mikki, please, please.” When he resisted a little, she said, “You know you want to, you know you do.”
Then: “Quietly,” she said, “we must go up quietly.”
The rest, everything else, it was so different from the dream. All he could recognize was the sharp delight which in the dream had brought him from sleep to waking. Now it lasted longer, and happened later.
When she said, “Let me teach you. I’ll give you lessons,” he remembered suddenly about the dancing lessons and how he’d been angry. But these were lessons he could hope for again and again. They lay still; the sweat ran down his forehead. Then she sat up beside him in the bed. The sheet was silk. She pulled it around her. He said:
“What are you trying to hide?” He felt embarrassed to be speaking. She had turned away a little. He saw her bare shoulders above the silk slip. Her heavy-lidded eyes were closed. He said, “Are you all right? You’re sure you’re all right?” All he could remember was a violence he had wanted and he thought she had wanted. He told himself, Of course I always knew it wasn’t blond hair.
Her hand lay on his belly. He could feel that he stirred again. I would, I would—he could think of nothing he wanted so much …
A small carriage clock chimed in the room. She gave a little cry. “We must go, at once. If Sophie should want—”
At the dressing table he watched as she put on more scent. It was a large flat-fronted bottle, Mitsouko of Guerlain. She said, “I like this song, this record I found, it was clever of me. We must play it again, Mikki—shall we?”
He couldn’t keep his eyes off Corina, or his hands. That a few days ago he had thought lovingly only of handling the Bugatti. Now I go every day on long journeys.
“It’s easy, Mikki,” she would say to him. “Now I’ve shown you, isn’t it easy?”
Yes, with her it was. He felt secretive about it, and could not imagine ever mentioning it to Stingo. He remembered Ferguson Major at school, boasting of three nights with a French actress. But that is not the same thing.
“My little boy blue,” Corina said to him.
“Blues,” he explained again. “It’s the blues, you know. Misery, upset…”
“Oh I know,” she said offhandedly, a little impatiently. “You’re so sweet … and so big.”
They lay in bed together, drinking wine. She was eating some small biscuits made of chocolate and walnuts. Fursecuri. Every now and then— often to stop him talking—she would pop one into his mouth.
“So big. It points up to the sky like a skyscraper. Gratte ciel. I never saw anything like it—and it is the first time, truly? I’m the first? That you should be so clever, all without any practice! I show you of course some little details. I teach you and then you will always be amazing. A master. You will be able soon to make any woman happy—”
“But I want only to make you happy—”
“Oh you do, you do.” Her voice seemed to him suddenly so humble.
The days stretched out. Grandma wrote that Willow was in plaster, after a fall from a horse. Silly kid.
Sometimes he wondered if anybody here had noticed anything. Then he realized one day that everyone knew exactly what was happening—and thought nothing of it. One half of him was shocked, deeply. He even heard Stefan refer to him as Corina’s amant. He wondered if Elena would like him to confide in her. She said once, “You must always talk to me if something worries you.”
“No, no,” he said, “there’s nothing.”
“I see you’re happy,” she said now. “And that you make—friends.”
When he realized there were only three weeks left, it came to him as a shock. He had been living in a world without minutes, hours, days. He thought, In three weeks it will all be over.
Corina said, “What am I going to do when you’ve gone, Mikki? Shall I have Little Boy Blues?” She understood now what it meant.
“We’ll write to each other—”
“Oh, I don’t write letters,” she said. “It’s you I need—and him.” She looked down to where her hands encircled him lovingly. “Yes,” she said, “I shall have those little boy blues.”
That was the day he told her about the Diamond Waterfall. He didn’t mention his family often, and had told her only that his father had been killed and his mother was dead. Now he told her a l
ot about himself, and about others in the family.
She said, “So this great house will be yours, one day. Do you become a milord?”
“The ‘sir’s’ not hereditary. My grandfather got it for public services. Yes, I own The Towers at twenty-one. And of course, the Diamond Waterfall.”
She had been most interested in that. He had never given it much thought before. Now she made him describe it—gasping in amazement at so many diamonds.
“Ah,” she said, eyes open wide, “what must a woman do to wear this wonderful parure?”
But that was easy. It came to him in a flash. The answer to everything. What could be more beautiful, he thought, than to be always with Corina? To see her naked—and then to cover her in diamonds. To see them trickle over her white skin, to take them off before … Best of all to have her beside him always. To be as happy as this forever. That was what the fever in his blood meant—that he should make her happy and never, never lonely again.
That night he told himself that his father married before he was twenty. At university there’d been married undergraduates after the Great War. He could ask for his wealth in advance. There was plenty. When she saw The Towers, for all its vulgarity, she would—it would probably be the sort of place she liked. Grandma and Erik could continue to live there.
In the sun and the high mountain air, two, three days passed. He was at once nervous of asking her and impatient. He couldn’t wait to make her happy. He thought he’d like to ask her, not in bed where it might seem obvious, but somehow in a celebration.
He told the others, “I’m taking Corina out for a meal. Partly an early farewell, partly a celebration.” When they asked, “What of?” he said, “Does it have to be of anything?”
On the way there in the Bugatti, they met traveling gypsies. He saw it as some good omen. Their joint mood was one of absolute gaiety. He told himself, She knows.
The restaurant was open-air, vine-covered. She had taken a party of them there at the beginning of the holiday. He remembered it as a place where the tables were well separated. He wouldn’t want to be overheard.
They ate pastrami and then crayfish with saffron. They drank a very dry Aligote. He was almost too nervous to eat. He felt instead a deep thirst. He said to her, “You might look sad at my going.”
“I am,” she said, laughing. “You remember where we were when I told you that. Yesterday. What we were doing.”
Then: “Oh,” she said, “what am I going to do?” Her face suddenly very solemn. She fingered her wineglass, looking out a little beyond him. “Life isn’t easy, Mikki.”
He started the wrong way, of course. He could have guessed he would do it wrong.
“Corina,” he began. “You know I’m going to be very rich?”
She said, “I’m very happy for you. Rich people—sometimes they’re happy. I hope you will be.”
He said, “That’s not the sort of thing I meant.” He tried again. “I’ve told you about the Waterfall. The Diamond Waterfall.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “that So lovely.”
“You remember what you said?”
“What? When?”
“You said the other evening—you remember where we were …‘What a lucky woman Mikki’s wife will be. Diamonds trickling down her. Lucky,’ you said.”
“Certainly she’ll be fortunate—and rich.”
“Corina, listen, please. Corina, Corina—now listen to me, I want you to be that woman.”
“What ever are you saying?”
“I want you to be … I want you to wear the Diamond Waterfall.”
She opened her mouth a little.
“Corina darling, I want you to be my wife.”
She put her head on one side. “Oh Mikki—Mikki.” It was a funny little voice.
He said, “You think I’m not serious?”
“Are you?”
“Corina, don’t”—He trembled, felt the sweat grow cold on his forehead —“don’t I look serious? Look, darling, I’ve thought it all out …” He could hardly look at her as he explained everything, all that he had pictured, and planned.
“You’ll like England—and there’ll be money enough to travel, to shop in Paris—and Rome and … You see, my father married very young, and two of my aunts … It’s meeting the right person, it’s knowing …” His head was turned away.
An unexpected sound distracted him. Yes. No. Yes, she was laughing She put out a hand. “Mikki, you are a funny little boy.”
“What’s funny? What do you mean, funny?”
“All right, funny big boy. It’s just so—” And she started to laugh again. “It’s just the idea. You, me—”
“Well, what’s wrong with us?”
“Oh Mikki, it’s—absurd, Mikki. Mad. Crazy. You’re a dear boy, and of course you make me happy, and we have fun—and we’re perhaps a little in love, but—to be married …”
Cold with anger, he said, “It is not funny!”
“But it is,” she insisted. “It can’t be that you haven’t seen … we’ve been having fun, that’s all, Mikki.”
“Funny,” he said, “fun. What about love?”
“Well, what about love?”
“It’s what I feel for you. God, it’s what I feel for you. And I think, I thought it’s what you felt for me. You said—”
“Mikki, darling Mikki, please—your voice down. Look, Mikki, of course when people are in bed, and they say it, they mean it. And I do, I do love you —when we are having fun.”
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t answer her.
“Mikki,” she said, “it’s been a holiday and soon it’ll be over. You go back to England, to your university. You forget me. I—forget you. That’s all. And our memories are happy.”
“I don’t want memories,” he said. “I want you.”
“Oh well,” she said. Her voice had an edge of impatience now. “You can’t have me then, can you?”
“But why?” He said it again, like some lesson he couldn’t understand, “Why? I thought you loved me. That all this was serious. You said—”
“Mikki, please. We have had a good meal, we are going to have a drive. We go back to the villa, maybe have a little sleep—”
“No,” he said. “No. Corina, please, please be serious. I love you. I want to marry you.”
She stood up from the table, refastened her hair clasp, picked up her handbag.
“Where are you going?”
“Look,” she said, “I go to the ladies’ room—it’s allowed, yes?”
She was gone five or ten minutes. Perhaps she meant him to calm down. He poured more of the wine, tapped on his glass for the waiter, called out “Domnulef” twice. He ordered a ţuicâ then one for her, and more coffee.
She came back. “What’s this? Do we start again?”
“Yes,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Please, can we talk about it?”
Her voice snappy: “No, we can’t. I thought while I was out there, I thought—Mikki is being a nuisance, Mikki is spoiling it all.”
“How can loving you be spoiling it?”
“Listen,” she said, “listen. How can I say this? Now you know how to do it, what we do together, then really one cunt is as good as another. Maybe even, one cock.”
He didn’t or couldn’t answer. She accused him then of sulking.
He paid the bill. He felt strange. His head, which had been clouded, was now clear. Anger, which he couldn’t distinguish from pain.
They went out to the Bugatti. There she stood in all her beauty. He thought then, Something is going to happen.
She got in beside him—he hadn’t showed her in. She didn’t speak. He started up the Bugatti almost before she had shut the door. She was still arranging some things in her handbag. The car shot forward and everything fell from her lap.
“Mikki,” she said. “Look, Mikki—”
Oh beautiful Bugatti. Naught to thirty in seconds. They drove toward the afternoon sun.
“Look, Mikki, what
’s that—you’re crazy, that’s—you’re on the left of the road.”
Anger growing, he swerved back to the right. They were near a corner. He took it at great speed. The car swooped. She called out, “Don’t drive like that—”
I want the world to end. The world must end soon. Soon. And her with it. He drove faster still as the road sloped downward. The speedometer— seventy-five, eighty. On either side were the pine woods.
“Stop that! It’s much too fast. You’re crazy.”
Her scent. Mitsouko, Mitsouko, came over in waves. She must have put more on when she left him in the restaurant. She was desirable, disgusting, beautiful, she could not mean to be so wicked. She never said all that, she could not have meant it.
I shall drive faster and faster. We shall … where shall we go? Something is going to happen. I shall make it happen. His rage and sorrow terrified him. Faster, faster.
Something will happen to her. But it must not. She must be saved. At once. He pulled the car across the road, brakes on suddenly. The tires screamed. She fell forward—putting out a hand to guard her face.
“My God,” she said, “you’re mad. Save me, God—”
“Get out,” he said, “you whore. Get out. Out. Whore.”
She was already opening the door. He gave her a push. She stumbled a bit, then, righting herself, stood on the grass edge by the roadside. Her red slashed mouth was open in fear. He banged the door shut.
And away. Bottom gear, second, third. She can do seventy uphill in third. Top gear. Foot down. Speedometer rising—eighty, ninety, ninety-five …
Of course I should be driving on the left. You drive on the left …
The engine roared in his ears. A hundred, hundred and five, hundred and ten …
The sun made a pattern through the trees. A way through the pines. The sun fragmented, like stars.
Oh my God—oh my God, my God … Something is going to happen …
15
Send for Teddy, Teddy to the rescue. It was Sophie who telegraphed Paris: MICHAEL IN MOTOR ACCIDENT STOP NO DANGER STOP PLEASE COME. Later, Mother had called from Yorkshire.
She was glad she’d postponed the trip she was planning to the States— she had been about to sail on the Mauretania the first of September. Now, instead, here she was on the Orient Express.
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