by Sue Gee
Harriet followed the tide of life along the broad pavement, catching up with them as they reached the glass door of a restaurant hung with pink awnings. On the glass a gold creature was painted, a twisting serpent with malevolent gaze.
‘The Cockatrice.’ Hugh told Marsha, holding open the door, and then, to Harriet, ‘Sorry – you’ve been rather left behind.’
‘I have been with my thoughts,’ she told him primly.
‘And what were they?’ asked a voice behind them, and they turned to see Christopher Pritchard, who made an inclination, saying, ‘Sorry, couldn’t resist it. This is on me.’
‘The thing is,’ he told them, as they settled themselves bemusedly at a comer table, ‘that I thought I might not see you all again for an age, and I didn’t like the idea of venturing to the interior without a return of hospitality.’
‘Which interior are you venturing to?’ Hugh asked him, picking up the menu.
‘The east dear fellow, always the east. Now, then.’ He ran his eyes over the wine list. ‘Who’d like what?’ A waitress hovered, young and superior. ‘Probably doing her PhD.’ He gave her a breezy smile. ‘Can you bear to take an order?’
‘Monsieur?’ She observed him from the heights.
Under the table, Marsha gave Harriet a kick. Harriet winced, and frowned at her.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Christopher. ‘Susanna – what will you have?’
She shook her head, looking at him quickly, then away. ‘I don’t really drink at lunchtime, thanks.’
‘Oh, surely –’
They established, with difficulty, that none of them drank at lunchtime. Hugh compromised with a beer; Christopher, with a great show of reluctance, ordered juice and mineral water.
‘So. Cheers. Cheers when it comes, anyway. And what shall we all have to eat?’
Eyes down, they perused the menu with the utmost concentration, aiming for something light but sustaining, fending off persuasion towards the rich and heavy. In the end, after a certain amount of argybargy, smoothed over by Hugh, they settled on fish, received their drinks, and sat back, politely raising glasses.
‘Cheers again.’
‘Cheers.’
‘So. What have you all been up to?’
This, thought Harriet, at her most acid, was the kind of question guaranteed to kill all conversation dead. Who should answer first? What had they been up to? Tricks? No good? Ho ho ho. And then, seeing a flicker – just a flicker – of discomfiture in his heavy face, as he looked round the table, she thought: but what a very critical person I am. Do I really need to pick up on his every intonation? No wonder Marsha reacted so strongly against him: she gets it all from me, and how is her passage through the world to be tolerable, if she cannot learn to tolerate?
‘Susanna has been showing us Brussels,’ she said with a smile.
Susanna made a deprecating, gesture. ‘Some of it.’
‘I wish I had had such a guide when I first got here. Ah. Nibbles.’
They described, over a dish of crudites, something of the past few days: markets and churches and galleries and music in the park.
‘No low life?’ asked Christopher. ‘No dives?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Hugh.
‘What’s a dive?’ Marsha was munching on a radish.
‘A graceful plunge into a swimming pool.’
‘Ha ha.’
Dishes were distantly delivered by the waitress. They shook out sugar pink napkins.
‘This really is terribly kind of you,’ said Hugh, deftly slicing along the backbone of his trout.
‘My pleasure. As I said, I wanted to catch you all before –’
‘Yes. Where are you –’
‘Prague,’ said Christopher Pritchard, helping himself to potatoes. ‘Prague, of course. Where else?’
Outside, it had begun to rain. Drops fell against the window panes and trickled down the golden cockatrice; people hurried past beneath unbrellas. Inside, the restaurant had darkened; art nouveau lamps with pale pink opaline shades were switched on by the manager. A couple pushed open the door and came in laughing and wet.
‘M’sieur-dame?’ He went to receive them, taking their umbrella.
Harriet said, carefully, studying her fish, ‘You didn’t tell us you were going to Prague.’
‘When I came to dinner? Didn’t know, then. Thought it might be Budapest. Thought I might be here for the duration. Yesterday a phone call from a useful contact. So – I’m off in a couple of days. Looking forward to it.’ He raised a forkful of plaice to his lips, saying to Harriet: ‘We should meet up. When did you say you’d be there?’
Harriet was conscious of her family’s eyes most consciously averted, and of Marsha’s desperate, silent signals coming across the airwaves as she picked up her glass of mineral water and watched the little bubbles rise gently within it to break on the surface.
‘I don’t think I did,’ she said slowly, and there was no way in which her obvious withholding of any more than that could be interpreted as anything but rude.
For a moment there was a silence. Conversation from other tables, the splash outside of traffic through the rain, people making a dash for it – all sounded, within this horribly awkward pause, like dinner gongs.
Then Christopher said pleasantly: ‘Well. Perhaps we’ll bump into each other.’ And then, picking up a small silver boat of caper sauce: ‘Can I offer anyone this?’
Hugh came to the rescue, as always, taking the dish and changing the subject, as Harriet, drinking her sparkling water, felt herself blush to the roots. A discussion began between the men – contracts, negotiations, financial backing, plant – from which, in any circumstances, she would have switched off. She let the blush fade, not looking at anyone, then raised her head, smiling distantly at Marsha, and glancing at Susanna, to share the moment.
Susanna was not eating, and now she came to think of it, Harriet realised that she hardly ever did. She cooked, she presented and served most beautifully, but she did not, actually, eat. She toyed with, she picked, she pushed to one side. And what was she doing now?
She was looking at Christopher Pritchard.
And Christopher, as though he felt her gaze upon him, turned from his conversation with Hugh and returned that look – only for a moment, with not a word spoken between them, but it was clear to Harriet (and surely, surely to Hugh?) that for those few seconds, for both of them, all else ceased to exist.
The moment passed, the meal ended. Outside, they stood beneath dripping pink awnings, saying their goodbyes. The rain had stopped as they had coffee; puddles shone, the sky cleared, and afternoon traffic sent up sprays of water.
Across the street from the Cockatrice a man in a good grey suit came down the steps of a white house and turned to wave to a woman at the window, touching his hand to his lips. The woman nodded, returning the gesture; she pushed up the window and leaned out, watching him go.
Harriet turned from this scene, and rested her hand on Marsha’s shoulder. She said goodbye to Christopher Pritchard, who did not, on this occasion, move forward to kiss her, but nodded to both of them, with a smile. He shook Hugh’s hand, and he kissed Susanna – lightly, a brush on the cheek, once, twice. He said he hoped they’d all see each other again on his return, and they all thanked him, again, for the lunch, and then he was gone, walking away up the wet street towards a tree-lined boulevard, not looking back.
Hugh put his hand beneath Susanna’s arm. He shepherded his family from beneath the dripping awnings, and along the pavement, keeping them out of the way of a passing taxi. People went to and fro; Harriet and Marsha fell back, allowing them room. They held hands, walking behind the others, and Marsha, who had been silent through most of lunch, began to talk again, asking what they were going to do now, and what they would do tomorrow, and what time their train went on Sunday. Harriet made perfunctory answers, watching the last of the clouds ahead drift away, and a watery sun appear; watching Hugh and Susanna, arm in arm, looking now a
nd then in shop windows: seeming, from this distance, so companionable and close.
He moved on, and I followed him, through the darkness and the small, soaking rain. The boulevard was all deserted, its path miry, the water dripping from the trees; the park was as black as midnight In the double gloom of trees and fog, I could not see my guide; I could only follow his tread. Not the least fear had I: I believe I would have followed that frank tread, through continual night, to the world’s end …
Is it me, thought Harriet, late in the night: is it me, or is it Susanna?
The bedroom was dark, the apartment quiet. She sat by the balcony window, whose long fine curtains let in a little of the light from the street lamps below, touching the walnut wardrobe, the pale carpet, the bed across the room where Marsha lay sleeping. In ten years they had been separated for two or three nights at a time – no more, and not often. My dear companion, Harriet thought, watching the stillness of the form beneath the bedclothes, hearing the light high breath.
Is it me, or is it Susanna? It is such a long time since I endured separation and parting: in different ways, on different occasions, I have endured it twice. I am alone, still, though Marsha, for all these years, has been my solace. Susanna has a husband, but is childless, and grieving, and neurotic. I fear for her, and for Hugh, and their future. What kind of separation is she enduring now?
She leaned back in the armchair, closing her eyes; listening for the opening of a door, footsteps along the corridor, a woman smothering sobs.
There were none of these sounds: only from outside came footsteps along the street, returning to other apartment buildings, the slam of a taxi door, a distant plane.
Christopher Pritchard was flying to Prague.
Harriet, in the darkened room, relived the moment in the Cockatrice when she had seen that look pass between him and Susanna, excluding everyone. She relived a number of moments in the days since her arrival: his entry into the apartment kitchen – so large, so overpowering, so hard to like; their argument at the dinner table, and Susanna’s gentle deflection of their mutual irritation; his looking up at her portrait above the fireplace; Harriet’s own recognition of his presence – and yes, somewhere within that boorish, off-putting manner, the attraction he held for her. She saw Hugh, pouring drinks, making easy conversation about his work, making Marsha laugh, and she saw Susanna, the morning after their arrival, weeping before the delicate glance between lovers on the tapestry in the Hotel de Ville.
I have watched you, and watched you: at last you are mine …
Who was watching and waiting for whom? Who in this city was destined – like Charlotte Brontë, like Lucy Snowe – to suffer the anguish of unrequited love?
It was Saturday, their last full day. In the morning, Hugh had to go into the office; Harriet, Marsha and Susanna, took the metro out to Anderlecht, to visit the Béguine convent.
‘Is that all right?’ Susanna had asked them at breakfast. ‘I think you’d enjoy it, but I don’t want to inflict –’
‘We’d enjoy it,’ said Harriet, buttering a croissant.
‘The funny kind of nuns.’ Marsha was dipping her croissant in a bowl of hot chocolate.
‘Yes. You won’t be bored?’
She shook her head, leaning over the bowl. ‘I wish we had breakfast like this at home.’ She took a mouthful, quickly, before it all fell apart.
Hugh rose to go. ‘I’ll see you at lunchtime, and we’ll walk along the canal; would you like that?’
They made their arrangements; Harriet, on impulse, followed him out to the hall.
‘Hugh?’
‘Yes?’ He was pulling on his jacket, feeling in the pocket for keys.
‘It’s just –’ She felt suddenly shy. ‘Just that we haven’t really had time to ourselves. And we’ll be gone tomorrow –’
‘Is there anything special –’
‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘It just feels strange, to spend all this time with Susanna, but not you. I mean, she’s been so good to us, but you and I –’
He had found the keys and picked up his briefcase. ‘Well. Let’s try and have a talk this afternoon, shall we?’
‘Thanks.’ She reached out and kissed him, touching the smooth, well-shaven cheek with her lips, smelling the subtle scent of expensive soap. Then he was opening the door of the apartment, saying he must be off, and she rejoined the others – feeling, she realised, better than she had done for days.
And now the three of them, this familiar little company so used, by now, to spending time together, came out of the metro at Saint-Guidon, and walked through clean, half-empty streets towards the convent. It was after ten, but the atmosphere, as Marsha said, felt more like Sunday than Saturday: few morning shoppers and few tourists, just a handful of early visitors to the nearby church and the museum of Erasmus House. Susanna led them past the church on the Place de la Vaillance, and into a little square. The morning air was light and cool; a bell began to ring.
‘That’s it.’
She nodded towards a dark door, half open, set beneath an arch in a medieval wall; they followed her across, and as she fully pushed open the door Harriet felt as though she were stepping into a Dutch painting: a door opening into a courtyard; flagstones; a woman in a silent room beyond; the sound of a bell. But this woman was not the serving girl of a Vermeer, nor, dressed in a dull blue satin, was she playing upon the lute or virginals. She was a nun, a middle-aged woman in black and white, bent over her book, who looked up at their approach and smiled calmly. They greeted each other and walked on, Susanna leading them through room after small quiet room, where heavy oak furniture stood against whitewashed walls.
‘It’s lovely,’ said Marsha. ‘I’d like to live here.’
Susanna put her arm round her. ‘I’m glad you like it.’
‘Now I see why you wanted to become a nun.’
‘Well –’ Susanna released her. ‘You want all sorts of things when you’re young.’
And when you are older, too, thought Harriet, listening. She turned from the contemplation of a tall white candle set in an alcove beneath a painting of the Ascension. What, or who, do you want now, Susanna?
It was afternoon. Hugh and Harriet walked along the waterfront of the Canal de Charleroi. The air was warm, and the sky was hazy; people were lingering over coffee outside cafés on the boulevard running alongside, sitting on benches on the broad pavement overlooking the water. There were bookstalls, one or two news-stands; a few leaves drifted from the trees and fell. It reminded Harriet a bit of the South Bank, of walks along the Thames after a movie at the National Film Theatre, and she said so.
‘Your London is so different from how mine used to be,’ said Hugh. ‘You do interesting things.’
‘You must have visited the NFT.’
‘Perhaps I did.’ Hugh stepped out of the way of a cyclist. ‘Mostly I made money: very dull.’
‘I don’t think of you as dull. Or as one of Thatcher’s children.’
‘No. Even so – that’s what I am, I suppose. Enough of one to come here and live as I do.’
‘But with a heart,’ said Harriet, thinking of good causes in Bohemia. She put her arm through his. ‘You do have a heart.’
‘Somewhere.’ He patted her wrist.
Susanna and Marsha were far behind them: deliberately so.
‘I want to talk to my brother,’ Harriet told them, outside the café where they’d had lunch. ‘I want to re-establish our unique relationship: is that okay?’
Everyone laughed, and everyone knew she was serious.
‘Marsha and I will linger outside shop windows,’ said Susanna. ‘We might even shop.’ A light breeze stirred her hair; she held out her hand. ‘Come on, niece. Let us enjoy the last hours of our own unique relationship.’
They made their arrangements to meet. Tonight, their last night, they were going to the theatre. Then Susanna took Marsha’s hand and led her away. And once more Harriet wondered at the manner in which Susanna’s inner turbulence
was so successfully kept hidden: no one, seeing her and Marsha now, so contented in each other’s company, would imagine the solitary weeping, the sudden breaking down in public, the look of desire at a man who was not her husband. Everything, it seemed, was facade.
And Hugh?
‘Tell me about your life,’ she said to him, leaning her head on his shoulder. ‘Talk to me.’
He smiled down at her. ‘I have talked.’
‘No, you haven’t. Not in the way I mean.’ She raised her head and looked at him. On the broad stretch of the canal boats were going by, drawing up at the quay across the water. Pleasure boats, cargo boats, leaving and returning. Gulls wheeled in the hazy air above them.
‘Are you happy?’ Harriet asked.
There was a silence. Leaves scrunched beneath their feet.
‘With reservations, yes.’ He patted her wrist again; lightly, keeping things light. ‘I’ve been happy having you two here.’
‘We’ve loved it, too. It’s been wonderful for Marsha.’
‘Does she see – forgive me. We all have our boundaries – I know you don’t like talking about it. But does she see her father at all?’
‘Sometimes. She finds it difficult – she doesn’t say so, but she does. It’s like old-fashioned ideas about visiting children in hospital: they get upset when you leave, so you shouldn’t see them. Better to let them settle down and get on with it. I think there’s something to be said for all that.’
‘And it’s not as if she has childhood memories. Of him being with you both at home, I mean.’
‘No.’ There was another silence, in which Harriet revisited some of her own childhood memories. She said: ‘When you were little, I felt that I couldn’t get near you.’ And then, after a pause, ‘Now we’re grown up, I realise how much you mean to me.’
‘What a nice thing to say.’
‘It’s true. I’ve realised it since coming here. Amongst other things.’
‘What things?’ He was looking down at her again: she smiled, then withdrew her arm from his. To broach certain subjects needed distance. They walked on, passing other people.
She said: ‘You’re right. We all have our boundaries. I don’t like to intrude.’