Coral Glynn

by Peter Cameron

  “Lazlo is bad sometimes, but I love him.”

  “He was not bad to me,” said Coral. “You must not think that. He was good to me.”

  “Oh, Coral … What will you do? He seems such a nice man, your husband. Surely you will go and be with him now. This is no life for you.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Coral.

  “I mean here, in this room, in this house. Going out every day as you do, taking care of strangers. I do not think that is a good life for you. Do you not want a home, and children?”

  “I don’t know,” said Coral. “I don’t know what I want. But I like my life. Here, in this room, in this house. Taking care of strangers.”

  “I do not think it is a life for a woman like you. You will finally be like Miss Lingle, with her rabbit.”

  “Miss Lingle seems very happy to me,” said Coral. “I could do much worse.”

  “Yes, of course, but you could also do much better. Now is your chance for a proper life.”

  “A proper life? What is a proper life?”

  Madame Paszkowska crossed the room and sat beside Coral on the bed. She reached out and patted Coral’s hair, smoothed it, and held her hand gently against Coral’s head.

  “You seem so lost, so unhappy,” said Madame Paszkowska. “What is the problem with this man? He seems to love you, I think. Do you love him?”

  Coral said nothing. She did not realise she was crying until Madame Paszkowska wiped the tears from her cheek.

  “What did he do, that you run from him? Did he beat you?”

  “Oh, no,” said Coral. “No. He was good to me. I always felt safe with him.”

  “Then why? Why do you leave him, and come here to London, and be alone?”

  “I told you,” said Coral. “It was all a mistake. A muddle. We were both scared, frightened—”

  “Frightened? Of what?”

  “I can’t explain it all,” said Coral. “It was like a dream, a bad dream, and now it is over. Or I thought it was, until he appeared today.” She stood up and looked out the window.

  “It is not over,” said Madame Paszkowska. “It has hardly begun.”

  “No,” said Coral. “It is over. Or perhaps it never was.”

  “Did you not ever love him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Coral.

  “I think you did. You must have. Otherwise, why would you wear that dress? Why would you look so beautiful?”

  “I don’t,” said Coral. “And this is my only dress.”

  “It is not. You have several dresses. I have seen them. None is like this. You always look very pretty, yes, but not like this. So you must feel something if you wear this dress.”

  Coral said nothing.

  “You said he was good to you. And that you felt safe with him. No?”

  “Yes,” said Coral. “But that is not love.”

  “Is it not? How do you know? Do you know what love is?”

  “No,” said Coral.

  “I think you do,” said Madame Paszkowska. She got up and stood in the doorway. She turned and smiled at Coral. “Of course you do,” she said. She left the door open behind her.

  Coral looked out the window. The woman had left the garden next door, and the sun had fallen behind some distant buildings.

  * * *

  Clement sat in the lobby of Durrants. The grating noise of mirth flowed out of the dining room. It was far past the expected hour, and there was obviously no point in him sitting there any longer, abandoned, on display, but he could not bear the thought of returning to his room, or the prospect of dining alone. He had engaged a table for two and asked for a chilled bottle of Sancerre to be waiting.

  A maid came through the lobby and turned on the lamps: it was getting dark. The porter asked him, for the second time, if he was waiting for a taxi. He shook his head and then got his key and went up to his room. He left the lights turned off and crossed the room to the window, where an artificial brightness from the world outside dully shone.

  He sat on the bed. He wanted to get out of the hotel but he had no idea where he could go. He supposed he could try to get a train home—it was still relatively early—but he realised the idea of arriving at Hart House in the small dark hours of the morning was as unbearable as staying where he was.

  In fact, he suddenly realised, there was nowhere he could bear to be.

  He got up and opened the closet. The rod was too low, and his weight would break it in any case. He wished he had brought his gun with him, but of course he had not. That left his razor.

  He turned then and looked at the window, at the night light falling through the net curtain, and listened for a moment to the sounds that rose up from the street. A woman’s laughter—laughter!—and automobiles passing in front of the hotel. He crossed the room and shut the windows and pulled the drapes closed and then it was dark in the bedroom, and almost silent. He removed his jacket and his shoes and socks. He undid his tie and then undressed completely. He turned on the light in the bathroom only long enough to find his razor and balance it on the rim the tub, and then he went back and turned the light off. It was completely dark then and he felt his way across the room to the tub. It was old, deep and long, and he stepped up into it and then lay down along the porcelain, and felt the coolness of it against his naked flesh. It was the right time and the right place. He felt certain about it, and for a moment there was something positive about this surety that confused him, that made him think perhaps he was wrong. But no—that was a trick. He was sure. He lay very still in the dark, letting the feeling of surety well up inside him.

  After a moment he heard someone walking along the corridor, towards his door, and he thought: Coral has come; she has changed her mind. He sat up and listened to the steps come closer and then stop outside his door.

  While hoisting himself out of he tub, he knocked his razor to the floor. He heard it skitter across the ceramic tiles and stepped upon it while searching for the light. It seemed blindingly bright in the bathroom when he had turned it on, and the knocking on the door sounded extremely loud, as if his nakedness exposed him too vulnerably to the assaulting world.

  He stood there for a moment, confused, dazed by the light and the sound and the sharp pain he suddenly felt on the sole of his foot where the razor had cut him, and then he heard the knock again and realised it was not Coral at the door, not Coral at all: the knock was far too brisk and bold to have come from her.

  “Who is it?” he called.

  “Major Hart?” A young man’s voice: the porter. “I have message for you. A note.”

  “I’m in the bath. Slip it beneath the door.”

  “Yes, sir,” the porter said, and Clement heard the sound of paper being pushed beneath the door, but the carpet inside the room prevented it from entering.

  “It won’t go,” said porter. “The carpet or something is stopping it. Can you open the door, sir?”

  Clement realised he did not want the message in the room. “No,” he said. “Read it to me.”

  “Sir?”

  “The message. Please read it to me.”

  “I believe it’s a private message, sir.”

  “Of course it is. Just read it.”

  He waited but heard nothing. “I can’t hear you,” he said.

  “I’m opening the envelope, sir. It says, ‘I am terribly sorry, but I think we both know it is not meant to be. Better to stop now. Coral.’”

  After a moment the porter said, “Did you hear, sir? Would you like me to read it again?”

  “No,” said Major Hart. “I heard. Thank you.” He felt his foot slip against the floor and looked down to see the blood.

  “Will you still be wanting your table, sir?”

  “What?”

  “The table you reserved in the dining room. Mr. Simpson, the maître d’, wonders will you still be wanting it, sir?”

  “No,” said Clement.

  “Very good, sir. Is there anything else?”

  “Could you br
ing me a bandage or something? I’ve cut my foot.”

  “A bandage, sir? Are you bleeding?”

  “Yes,” said Clement. “I am.”

  * * *

  The following morning, before she left the house, Coral found Madame Paszkowska reading the morning paper in her private sitting room.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Coral!” cried Madame Paszkowska. “Come in. Sit down.”

  “No,” said Coral. “I’m late for work. I’ve only come to tell you that I will be leaving Grantley Terrace at the end of the month. I want to give you proper notice.”

  Madame Paszkowska smiled at her. “So, you will be joining your husband after all?”

  “No,” said Coral.

  “No? But why? I thought—”

  “I will be staying here in London,” said Coral, “but I must leave Grantley Terrace.”

  “Buy why, Coral, why? What has come over you? What has happened?”

  “Nothing has happened. Nothing at all. I just don’t feel it is right for me to live here any longer, under the circumstances.”

  “There are no circumstances. Do you mean Lazlo? He will not be here again until Christmastime.”

  “I will not want to be here then, so it is best for me to leave now. I have thought it all over, and I am sure I am doing the best thing.”

  “But you must not leave, Coral, you cannot! Oh, what have I done? I see now I was wrong to speak to you yesterday, it is always wrong to interfere, I should have kept my tongue still in my head. Oh, please, Coral, forget everything I told you. I wanted to help you, but I see now I was wrong.”

  “Oh, no,” said Coral. “No. You did help me. You did. If it weren’t for you, I might have…”

  “What? What might you have done?”

  “I might have behaved foolishly,” said Coral. “For a second time.”

  Madame Paszkowska got up from her sofa and came to Coral, and held her in her arms. Then she stood back and touched Coral’s cheek. “I do not accept this. You must think. Don’t worry about proper notice or anything like that. We decide nothing now. You stay here as long as you want. It is your home. Promise me you will think.”

  “I have thought,” said Coral. “I am sure. I will leave at month’s end.”

  * * *

  Clement and Coral’s marriage was legally and amicably terminated in 1954, on the basis of three years’ desertion.

  PART FIVE

  They had left London early and had driven all morning, travelling north along the smooth new motorway. Lazlo had bought special gloves, which revealed a square of bare flesh on the back of each of his hands, and special shoes, whose supple leather soles were stippled with bumps, for their trip, as if they were going on a safari or some special expedition, not simply driving to Yorkshire. But his vanity was good-natured and enjoyable. It was one of the many things Coral loved about him.

  He was also a very good driver, and Coral liked that as well. Lazlo drove fast, deftly weaving in and out of the traffic, passing almost every car they encountered, as if they alone had a future.

  Coral did not think about stopping in Harrington—indeed, she did not know they would be passing by Harrington—until she saw the sign proclaiming its distance from them.

  “Harrington,” she said.

  Neither of them had spoken in over an hour. He took one of his hands off the steering wheel, reached over, and grasped her hand.

  “What silly gloves,” she said.

  “I like them,” he said. “What did you say?”

  “Harrington,” she repeated. She touched the skin in the window of his glove.

  “What is Harrington?”

  “We just passed a sign. It is a town, ahead of us. Twenty miles. I lived there once.”

  “In your nursing days?”

  “Yes,” said Coral. “In my nursing days.”

  “Who was your patient?”

  “An old lady, dying of cancer.”

  “Sounds very cheery,” said Lazlo.

  Coral turned and looked out the window. “It was nearly fifteen years ago,” she said. “Imagine that. The spring of 1950. A very wet spring.”

  “All springs are wet,” said Lazlo.

  “That spring was especially wet.”

  “Does it have a decent restaurant? It is about time we stopped for lunch.”

  “It’s where I met Clement,” said Coral.

  “My God!” said Lazlo. “No wonder you remember it. The famous Clement. My predecessor.”

  “No,” said Coral. “He wasn’t that.”

  “Then what was he?”

  “I don’t know,” said Coral. “I don’t think I shall ever know what he was. You are the one with a proper predecessor. Or rather, I am: Yvonne.”

  “Less said, best forgotten,” said Lazlo, which is what he always said when Yvonne was mentioned. “Shall we stop? Perhaps we shall find your Clement. I should very much like to see him.”

  “There is a place for lunch,” said Coral. “At least, there was.”

  “Then of course there still is,” said Lazlo. “These provincial towns never change.”

  * * *

  They drove along the High Street. The flower shop was still there, but Dalrymple’s Better Dresses had become a greengrocer’s. The Black Swan remained The Black Swan, and very little about it seemed to have changed, including the menu. It being summer, melon was in season.

  “A dismal lunch,” Lazlo announced as their table was cleared. “We shall do much better at Hatton Hall.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Coral.

  “Really, Coral, how can you doubt it? Ye of little faith.”

  “It’s not your abilities I doubt,” said Coral. “I know you can do better than this, but the place isn’t ours yet.”

  “Formalities,” said Lazlo. “Simply a matter of formalities. I know it shall be.”

  “Formalities and money,” said Coral. She stood. “I’m returning to the ladies’.”

  “I’ll meet you outside, then. I want to look around for your corporal.”

  “He was a major,” said Coral.

  “An old duffer with a gamey leg, at any rate,” said Lazlo. “He should be easy enough to spot.”

  Coral leant down and kissed him. “Don’t make fun,” she said.

  Lazlo watched her walk across the dining room and disappear into the lounge. He paid the bill and then went through the lounge and out into the little garden that stood between the Swan and the street. It was overcrowded with hollyhocks and lilies and all the other tiresome flowers expected in an English garden. If it were his, he would tear them all out and do something very modern and elegant: a lawn and miniature privet with a white gravel border. Perhaps some topiary. He lit a cigarette and strolled up the walkway and stood in the sun on the sidewalk along the High Street.

  A large woman in a flowered dress whose pattern echoed the garden he had just passed through stood behind a little table in front of the tobacconist’s next door. “Come here and buy a flower,” she called to him, holding out a tin filled with different-coloured tissue-paper poppies. “It’s for a very good cause.”

  Lazlo ambled over to her. “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Good afternoon,” the woman said. “Will you buy a flower? Or several? A half crown each. They make very nice boutonnieres, and I can’t help noticing that you are without one.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “Spastic children. St Hilda’s Hospital. We’re building a new ward.”

  “What colour?” asked Lazlo.

  “Red, I think.” She picked a red posy from the can and held it against Lazlo’s lapel. “Or pink, perhaps. I don’t know.” She repeated the procedure with a pink flower. “What do you think?”

  “The pink, I’d say.”

  “Yes,” the woman said. “The red is too bold. The pink suits you perfectly.” She tucked the flower into his buttonhole. “There,” she said. “And one for the lady as well?”

  Lazlo t
urned to find that Coral was standing beside him. “Do you like my flower?” he asked. “It’s for a children’s hospital.”

  “Very pretty,” said Coral. “I’ll have the red one, please.”

  “Lovely,” said the woman. She handed Coral the red flower.

  “Dolly?” Coral asked. “It is you! I thought it was.”

  “Coral!” said Dolly. “My stars! Can you imagine—Coral!”

  “I take it you two know one another,” said Lazlo.

  “Yes,” laughed Coral. “This is Dolly Lofting. And, Dolly, this is my husband, Lazlo Paszkowski.”

  “How do you do,” said Dolly.

  “Very pleased to meet you,” said Lazlo.

  “Dolly and her husband were close friends of Clement’s,” said Coral.

  “We stood with you at your wedding,” said Dolly. “Do you remember?”

  “Of course I do,” said Coral. “How is Robin?”

  “I don’t really know, to tell you the truth. Our marriage ended. He has moved away from here.”

  “That’s right—to Australia, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, no,” said Dolly. “That was just one of his fancies. He got only as far as Brighton. He runs an antique store there called The Gilded Age, with a gentleman friend. The contents of Eustacia Villa comprise the lion’s share of their inventory.”

  Coral turned to Lazlo. “Dolly and Robin had the most wonderful house, full of beautiful things.”

  “Most of it was junk, I’m afraid,” said Dolly, “but I suppose most so-called antiques are. And of course you never know what’s what in Brighton.”

  “But don’t you miss all your lovely things?” asked Coral.

  “Not at all,” said Dolly. “I have never been sentimental about objects. It seems such a waste of feeling to me.”

  “But you had such unusual furniture,” said Coral. “I remember your house so well. It must seem quite empty without it.”

  “Oh, Coral,” said Dolly. “Didn’t you know? I was sure you did.”

  “Know what?”

  “How funny, how odd, life is: I live at Hart House now. I’m married to Clement. I imagined you knew, but of course how could you, as we’ve lost touch.”

  “Dolly—are you really? Married to Clement?”

  “It’s been several years—since ’56. It just suddenly made sense you know, in the most wonderful way possible. We have been very happy together.”