Letters From Prague

by Sue Gee

  He said gently: ‘I don’t want to harm Hugh. Or anyone. Please believe me. I said I didn’t know why I was telling you these things. That isn’t quite true – I think I do know. I want to get them out of the way. I want you to know the worst. Then –’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘And then we’ll see,’ he said slowly. ‘Shall I explain?’

  She nodded, unable to speak.

  He was drinking again, cradling the glass. ‘There are people who are good for each other, and there are people who make each other unhappy. Susanna and I – I’ve told you. When she went – when her father took her away – I was in pieces. Not just because of her, because of the trial, the aftermath. Close to skid row, I was, really. Anyway. I did, in the end, get back on my feet. I did things like sell on commission – that’s a whole world in itself, bloody awful, but I did it.

  ‘Then I had a break. I had a poor old aunt in a home in Hastings, whom I never went to see. She died, and left me a bit, just enough to keep paying the fine off and start up on my own. But I wanted to get out of London, start again, travel. When everything changed in ’89 it seemed like the perfect opportunity – go east, young man, go where your heart is. My heart wasn’t anywhere, of course, it didn’t matter where I went. I came here, to Berlin, I nosed about, talked to people, went to Warsaw, went to Prague … Things began to take shape – I saw I could act as east-west middleman, and Brussels seemed as good a place as any to have a base. It’s solid and respectable and full of useful contacts, so that’s where I moved to.’

  ‘You didn’t know Susanna was there?’

  ‘No. I told you, we’d lost all contact.’

  ‘You said you’d been living there for a year or so.’

  ‘Yes. And one day I bumped into her. I was walking one way, and she was walking another – it was as simple as that. A lunch-hour encounter on the Grand Place, outside the Hotel de Ville. Neither of us could believe our eyes. We went for a drink, we talked – she told me she had married again, and that she was happy. I was pleased for her, but I didn’t quite believe it, and I was right.’ He had put down his glass. ‘Wasn’t I?’

  Susanna was weeping, inside the Hotel de Ville. Before her was a tapestry: two lovers, a delicate glance of desire. ‘I have watched you, and watched you: at last you are mine –’

  Harriet closed her eyes, remembering. ‘Go on. Did she tell you who she had married?’

  ‘Yes – she told me his name and I recognised it, and at first I couldn’t think from where and then I remembered. And then, I’m afraid, I couldn’t resist looking him up, and phoning. I thought he’d be a good contact anyway, and I was curious.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell him who you were – I mean that you and Susanna –’

  ‘No. She had asked me not to – she didn’t know I would get in touch, but she said, if I ever bumped into him, that she didn’t want me to tell him.’

  ‘But why? Why?’

  Christopher was silent for a few moments, thinking. ‘The truth is I don’t really know. Susanna’s a great one for denial – to herself and to other people. And a great one for wanting to make everything right – to start again, and have everything perfect. She did that all through our marriage – such as it was, short as it was. A terrible row, and then: please, let’s pretend that didn’t happen, let’s have a baby, let’s pretend that you’re not drinking, and I’m not depressed –’

  Harriet said: ‘Don’t most of us want to put bad things behind us, and start again?’

  ‘Yes, but with her it’s a refusal to look at things at all. Believe me, I know her.’ He stopped again. ‘Even so, I don’t fully understand why she didn’t want Hugh to know about me. She’d told him she was married before, of course, she had to. But she’d never told him who I was – perhaps because of all that misery, and the scandal. And perhaps, to be honest –’ again, that gesture, rubbing his face, over and over, as if trying to wipe things away – ‘Christ, how hard it is to be honest. Perhaps because, when we saw each other again, we both knew there was still something between us.’

  Yes. Of course. Because, if Hugh didn’t know, she and Christopher could meet without question, exchange looks without being noticed.

  Harriet said shakily: ‘I know. I knew. I knew the first moment I saw you together that evening, the way you looked at each other. And then at that lunch.’ She stopped, reliving it all. ‘I feel ill. Why did you ask us all to lunch? How can you say you don’t want to harm anyone?’

  Her voice was rising: the couple at the next table were turning discreetly to look. Marsha’s right, she thought miserably: she’s sensed everything wrong about this man, she knows he’s not to be trusted –

  ‘Harriet – please.’ His hand came towards her across the table; she withdrew her own, and feelings of loss and betrayal swept over her. He said carefully, ‘Can I ask you something? What is the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?’

  She looked at him. ‘I’m tempted to tell you to mind your own business.’

  He was visibly taken aback. Then: ‘I’m sorry. You’re right. Just because I’m talking as if I were in the confessional –’

  Lucy Snowe, broken and desperate, had gone to the confessional in Villette. For that read Charlotte Bronte, in Brussels, suffering the anguish of unrequited love. For that read who? Who was broken and desperate?

  Susanna.

  Christopher.

  Susanna: pacing, weeping, craving a child, a purpose.

  Christopher: divorced, disgraced, close to skid row.

  She said distantly: ‘I suppose it was when my husband left me. Marsha was only a baby. And before that –’ No, she was not going to talk about Karel, who just at this moment could not have felt further from her thoughts, her life. ‘Never mind about before that. Let’s say when my husband left us. Why?’

  ‘Just – you don’t have to tell me anything about it, of course. But you see, when Susanna and I broke up, and I was kicked out of the firm, and all that – I suppose I did hit rock bottom. The worst. And when that happens, you go under, or else you come through. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that how you felt when your husband left? And I’ve tried to come through. There’s still a side of me which is – well, I suppose you could call it dangerous. The impulse to ring up Hugh, and invite myself to dinner – inviting you all out to lunch – I can remember how I felt; on the edge, tensed up, waiting to go, wanting to stir everything up with a stick and see what happened. I don’t think I really knew what I was doing, except getting high on a risk. That’s what it was like as a broker, it’s in my blood, I almost can’t help it. I’m still involved in one or two things I’m not very proud of – in work, I mean. But not with people. That I can do something about.’

  He pulled out a cigarette. ‘I mean it,’ he said, lighting up. ‘That’s what I mean when I said I don’t want to harm anyone – not Hugh, not Susanna, not myself. I’ve had enough. You may not believe me, but it’s true. Never again.’ He smiled at her, a smile full of warmth and liking. ‘And now I have told you the worst and now you know.’

  There was, after that, a silence.

  The voices of the other diners rose and fell, smoke drifted through the candlelight, as it had drifted through the shafts of light that afternoon. Harriet had her face in her hands, thinking, thinking. And something of the moments in the afternoon were returning, now – perhaps, after all, recapturable. She looked at Christopher, and he looked at her, and she thought: I am on the brink. We are on the brink. How completely unexpected, and how disturbing.

  So. She drew a long, long breath.

  ‘I’ve exhausted you.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at her watch. ‘And I must go home. Poor Marsha.’ She pushed back her chair. ‘Thank you for – well, for talking to me.’ A sudden thought. ‘Christopher?’ It was the first time she had used his name. It really was. And how did that feel? It felt right. How very unexpected.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You being on the train – you hadn’t planned t
hat, had you? You weren’t following, or anything –’

  He smiled again. ‘I wasn’t following or anything. As I said at the time, it was an extraordinary coincidence.’ He drew in smoke, and blew it away again. ‘Or fate. However you want to think of it.’

  ‘Mmm. I don’t know how I want to think of it. Or anything. I’ve got a lot to digest.’ She stood up; he rose, too. The couple at the next table were watching, she could feel it, as he leaned towards her, and kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Thank you for listening.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me. I must go –’

  He walked beside her to the door. ‘I’ll see you to your hotel’

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  But the thought of going out now, with a tired, cross Marsha, getting on to the U-Bahn across the city, back to their bleak hotel room—

  They walked across the lamplit hall, and up the steep stairs to Herr Scheiber’s sitting room. Marsha, on the sofa, was fast asleep, and someone had covered her up with a rug, turned off the television, and taken the kittens away. How very kind. How comforting.

  ‘What a nice-looking child she is,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Thank you.’ Harriet crossed quietly over, not knowing what to do. Marsha was sleeping peacefully, deeply: terribly tired. She’d been travelling from Brussels, then all across Berlin; she was about to do it all over again, to Prague.

  Remember Prague?

  Harriet touched her daughter’s cheek, and listened to the light high breath. How could she wake her now?

  ‘Leave her,’ said Christopher. ‘Scheiber won’t mind for a night.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But where will you sleep?’ he asked, smiling down at her. ‘Now there’s a question.’

  She stood up slowly; she could not look at him. He reached out towards her and touched her cheek, a little as she had touched Marsha’s – just a fingertip, just a brush. She felt as though she had brushed an electric fence.

  ‘I’ll find you a room,’ he said gently. ‘Yes?’

  She came back from another country. ‘Yes.’ And then: ‘It seems dreadfully extravagant, two hotels, our rooms already paid for –’

  ‘Well. Perhaps it should be one hotel. Much more economical. Why don’t we talk about it in the morning?’

  And then he was gone, and she sank to the sofa at Marsha’s feet, and did not know what to think.

  Chapter Four

  Harriet woke in a high iron bed in a small white room at the top of the hotel. Last night, conducted up precipitous uncarpeted stairs by Frau Scheiber, she had barely taken in where she was, turning out the lamp as soon as she climbed into bed and reliving, in a daze, the evening’s conversation. Now, lying against snowy square pillows, beneath a heavy quilt, she looked sleepily at bare walls, stained floorboards, tall shutters through which she could hear, from down in the garden, the hotel day beginning. The back door was opened, and bottles put out; water ran into a drain; there was a saucer put down on stone – someone was feeding the cat. She could smell coffee. She looked at the clock on the chest of drawers: twenty to eight. She must do something.

  Footsteps up the uncarpeted stairs, a tap at the door.

  ‘Frau Pickering?’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Marsha?’ Harriet sat up, calling out ‘Come in, please,’ and Liesel and Marsha came in together, Marsha unbrushed and rumpled but clearly content, and Liesel with a large cup of coffee.

  ‘Good morning.’ She set it down on the bedside table and returned to the door.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ said Harriet, and then, in German, ‘Wait, please –’

  Harriet indicated the coffee; the child, who had been cared for. ‘Thank you.’

  Liesel smiled. It had been a pleasure. Breakfast was served until nine. Harriet had slept well?

  ‘Very well, thank you.’ She looked at Marsha, who had gone across to the window and was opening the shutters. ‘What about you, on the sofa? Did you know where you were when you woke up?’

  ‘Of course I knew where I was.’ She lifted the flat iron bar. ‘I’ve been feeding the cat.’

  ‘It was you.’

  ‘It was me.’ Marsha unfolded the shutters and the room was filled with pale morning light. ‘I wish we had shutters at home.’

  Liesel was leaving. If there was anything else they wanted, please ask. The door closed behind her, they heard her light step on the stairs.

  ‘Well,’ said Harriet. She reached for her coffee and leaned back against the pillows. Bliss. She patted the quilt. ‘Come here.’

  Marsha came. They kissed; she perched, and looked round the room.

  ‘It’s lovely, this place.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I like it better than Brussels.’

  Now there was a thing. Harriet sipped. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just – this room.’ She indicated the bare stained boards, the rug, the wicker chair in the corner, where Harriet had folded her clothes. ‘Our room in Brussels was so posh and grand – I mean, I did like it, but this is nice and simple.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Like the convent,’ Marsha said suddenly. She got off the bed and walked round it. ‘It’s like a nun’s room, sort of.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘When I was younger, I wanted to be a nun –’

  ‘She called it a conversion – I thought of it more as an obsession .… She was like a woman in the Middle Ages, praying for a child –’

  Harriet closed her eyes. Christopher’s face across the candlelit table swam into focus again, as it had followed her into sleep last night: heavy, intent, unlike any face she had ever been used to looking at, or wanting to look at.

  ‘Mum? What are we going to do today?’

  She opened her eyes. Marsha was beside her again.

  ‘Have breakfast.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘And then we’ll see.’

  ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all these things – well, perhaps I do – I want you to know the worst –’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we’ll see …’

  Marsha was frowning. ‘You’re still half asleep. And what on earth are you wearing?’

  ‘I don’t know, what am I wearing?’ She looked down at flowery nylon. ‘Oh, yes. Frau Scheiber lent it to me. It was very kind of her.’

  ‘But how come we stayed the night? You said we’d be going back on the U-Bahn.’

  ‘I know, but you fell asleep.’

  ‘Only because you were downstairs for such a long time. What on earth were you talking about?’

  ‘Oh.’ Harriet finished her coffee. ‘I can’t remember now.’

  ‘Yes you can.’

  ‘That’s enough.’ She pushed back the heavy quilt and got up. There was no basin in here. ‘I’m going down to the bathroom.’

  ‘That nightdress is awful.’

  ‘Marsha.’ With the memory of last night’s ill-humour from Marsha returning, Harriet turned to look at her. Nylon static clung to her legs. ‘We are in east Berlin. A lot of things here are still awful, you little snob. Just because we’re staying in a nice hotel. What happened to the girl who worried about people sleeping rough? People are putting up with a lot worse things than nylon nightdresses here, I can tell you.’

  Marsha’s mouth was hanging open. ‘Mum! I only said –’

  ‘Well, stop saying. Just for once, stop.’

  ‘What on earth’s got into you?’

  Marsha had gone pale; Harriet was flooded with remorse. What had got into her? She was barely awake, they hadn’t even had breakfast. Perhaps that was it. Of course it wasn’t. She held out her arms.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, as Marsha came into them. ‘That was unforgivable. You’ve been absolutely wonderful, I don’t know what all that was about –’ She kissed the unbrushed hair. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘So l
ong as it wasn’t me.’

  Marsha drew away; Harriet felt some of their usual spirit returning. ‘Of course it wasn’t you. Last night, after all, you were an angel.’

  Marsha frowned again. ‘Are you getting at me because of that?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be getting at you for anything. Come on, let me go to the bathroom – or do you want to come too? Let’s have a bath to make up for no clean clothes. And then well have breakfast.’

  ‘Okay.’ They went down the precipitous stairs one by one. ‘Mum?’ asked Marsha, in the airy bathroom, as Harriet ran a bath from ancient taps.

  ‘Yes?’ Pipes banged, water spurted wildly, there were clouds of steam.

  ‘We don’t have to have breakfast with Christopher, do we?’

  A civilised hush hung over the dining room. The shutters were open but the morning was hazy still, and the light still pale. The smell of hot coffee and warm bread filled the room; there was the rustle of newspapers, quiet conversation. Christopher had not come down yet.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Marsha.

  Harriet said nothing. There had been enough misplaced reproaches already this morning; she would save up one suited to this particular attitude for a moment when it might become really necessary.

  What sort of moment might that be?

  ‘Let’s sit over here.’ Marsha was leading the way to a comer table, laid for two. ‘I’m starving. What can we have?’

  Harriet’s mouth was dry. She could not, at this moment, waiting for Christopher’s arrival, imagine eating anything much. She hadn’t eaten anything much last night, either.

  ‘You can have what you like,’ she said, sitting down.

  ‘I love the smell of the bread.’ Marsha was looking round the room. ‘Who do you think killed that bird?’

  ‘An ancient Scheiber.’ Harriet shook out her napkin, ‘Here comes Liesel.’

  Dear Liesel. She began to feel like a friend. They ordered coffee, hot chocolate, a platter of Wurst and Käse for Marsha, and lots of bread.

  ‘What about you, Mum?’

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  A sigh.

  Harriet said cautiously, ‘I’d like to go a bit further east today, if we can. I haven’t arranged it properly with Christopher yet, but –’