Snowstorms in a Hot Climate

by Sarah Dunant

  I stared at her, face white and drawn, eyes lost in shadow. I imagined her last four hours, caught in a web of unknowing, with no one left to trust. And I realized then that knowing the truth and suppressing it does not make it go away but may, in some cases, make it even more terrible. We had been friends for eighteen years. She was the most important person in my life, and I had hurt her. I reached out from the bed and put my hand on her knee. My fingers rested there uselessly, the extent of my physical courage. I had one defense. And I knew it would not be enough.

  “Elly, I was only trying to protect you.”

  “Protect me! Christ almighty, Marla, protect me from what?” And now came the anger. Anger and pain, a great rushing wind of it, filling the room like howl round. “What am I, some piece of porcelain too fragile to be told the truth? J.T., Lenny. Now you. How come nobody tells me what’s going on? Fuck it, for the last year I’ve been trying to reestablish control. Take back the part of me that’s mine. How can I do that when everybody around me is making my decisions for me? Treating me like a child. For better or worse, this is my life. How can I live it if I’m not in control of it? God, Marla, you of all people should have understood that. There are some things you can’t do for people. However much you love them. I asked for your help, Marla. I didn’t ask you to do it for me. No one can do that. Don’t you understand? You should have told me. I should have known.”

  She broke off with a kind of moan, pulling herself out of the chair and away from me. But the room was too small for her furious energy, and after a few moments prowling she pushed herself into a corner, arms huddled around her body, eyes down. And all this time I sat paralyzed, waiting for the storm to pass. I had no memory of such ferocity in her. Or if I did, it had never been directed at me. Outside the rain blurred everything. What could I say which would bring back the love? I had done it all for her. Just as she had once done it for me. But how to tell her? It was my turn to speak. But not without sanction. I looked up at her, and across the room our eyes met. And she smiled, a weary, desperate little pucker of skin, no pleasure in it. But it was a kind of welcome.

  “Elly,” I said. “There’s more that you should know.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “So tell me.”

  And so it came flooding out, all of it, from that first vision of male beauty in the Club Class of a jumbo jet to the last telephone call on a Manhattan pavement. From Lenny’s first deception to Indigo’s last. I spared her nothing. Not even a mother and child at the bottom of a Santa Cruz canyon. Surely now she would understand why some of it had been so hard to tell. Surely now she might forgive.

  And in the silence that followed she stared at me, dry-eyed and still. And when at last her voice came out of the shadows, it was quieter, in sorrow rather than in anger. “Oh, Marla. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I was afraid you’d go to Lenny,” I said, emboldened by her kindness, and because there was nothing left to lose. “And that he would lie to you and you would believe his lies. Because you needed to.”

  “And is that why you believed J.T.?”

  It was said so softly that I had to strain to hear the words. And even then I didn’t—or couldn’t—grasp the implication behind them.

  “Elly, haven’t you heard what I said? He set you up. Don’t you understand? The cocaine was meant for him. And when he found out about it, he passed it on to you. He knew that you’d be caught.”

  “No, he didn’t.” And this time her voice was loud and clear. “He knew I’d be saved.”

  “Elly, listen to me. Look at the facts—”

  “I said he knew, Marla.”

  “Knew what?”

  “He knew that you’d take them out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. How could he ‘know’ that?”

  In answer she smiled grimly and walked over to the bedside table. From the top drawer she drew out an envelope and handed it to me.

  “When I cleared Customs, I found this on the message board at Heathrow. We had agreed that if he needed to get in touch with me, that was how he would do it. Tradition. Read it, Marla.”

  I withdrew a sheet of paper. A British Airways message. On it were written the words “Don’t fret. Marla has your luggage. You have her to thank for carrying it.”

  I stared down at it, and my brain whirled. Lenny trapped like a fish on a hook, wriggling to get free. I made a clumsy lunge through the water.

  “Elly, how do you know this is from Lenny? If it’s a tradition, then why shouldn’t someone else have known about it? Why can’t it be from J.T.? He was the only one I told. He knew I’d saved you. It could be from him.”

  The little smile was still there, sadder now than tears. “Look at the envelope, Marla.”

  I picked it up from the bed. On the front the words Pamela Richardson. “A joke,” she explained. “Heroine and author. We always did it. A different one each time. We decided on it just before he left. No one else knew the name. It was his message. It came from him.”

  “But how could …”

  “I don’t know. That’s one of the things I have to find out.”

  No. I refused to accept the words. “It doesn’t change anything, Elly. Think about the past, about what he’s done. The woman in California. Indigo. Think about them.”

  “I don’t know anything about the woman in California,” she said harshly, as if to dismiss the subject. “But Indigo—” She gave a sharp little laugh. “Oh, Indigo I knew all about. How could I not? You’ve met her. You know what she’s like. She’s had the hots for Lenny ever since she first set eyes on him. It was no secret. They had even got it on while I was in Hawaii. He told me when I got back. But he also told me it wasn’t important. And he told me she knew nothing. I believed him. Maybe I was wrong. But she would have done anything for him. Believe me, if Lenny had told her to go to the airport and check our destinations, she would have done it, no questions asked.”

  “Elly.” I couldn’t bear it. This dreadful doomed revisionism. “Listen to what you’re saying. The man lied to her. He lied to you. How can you believe a word he says?”

  “He’s not the only person who has lied to me, Marla,” she said softly, and if it was intended to wound it succeeded. She sounded so certain, so worldly-wise. So she had known about Indigo all along. Yet I hadn’t even noticed. “You live too much in here”—Germaine’s words echoed in my head. “You are sometimes very careless with your life.” Mine and other people’s. How could I have been so wrong? I could not believe it.

  “He wants to see me,” she said quietly. “I think I owe him that much.”

  “No.” And the word spat across the room.

  “Marla, listen to me. It isn’t your fault. I know that. But you have to understand that this is my story and you can’t finish it for me. You, J.T., anyone. I need to know the truth. I’m not naïve. I know what he’s done to me. All the pain and the dishonesties. But I also know that he didn’t set me up. I owe him the chance of an explanation.”

  Like rain on a watercolor, the picture of our promised future began to drain away. Lazy French days of sunshine, the new life in London, time spent doing nothing, all of it blurring into itself, leaving nothing but a few rain-washed smears.

  “But—”

  “I know what you’re going to say, but I don’t want to hear it. He has been nearly two years of my life. I’ve loved him more than I loved anyone, and I have to know for sure what the lies were. I deserve that much. And anyway,” she added, this time more gently, “I owe him one.”

  I felt a kind of physical pain, somewhere deep inside my bowels. Conscience again? “Elly, you don’t owe him anything,” I said, horrified.

  She looked at me with a sort of tenderness. “Did anyone stop you as you went through Customs this morning, Marla? You knew that someone had set him up. He knew that you knew. Yet you said nothing. You didn’t lift a finger to save him. It would have taken only one phone call to the Paris Customs to make you quits. But he didn’t do it.
He saved you. That’s why I have to see him.”

  Just like that. From horns to halo. I had lost her. I knew it then, and it hurt so much it took my breath away. The world went black, and for a moment I seemed to be falling through space. Even the room had lost its definition. When I heard my voice, it came from a long way away.

  “Where is he?”

  “In a hotel. In Scotland. That much at least was true.”

  “When will you go?”

  “I don’t know. When I feel ready.”

  I rallied for one last stand. “Let me come with you.”

  She shook her head. “No, I think you should go home now. I won’t do anything without telling you. I promise. But I think we both need some time alone.” She waited, then said again softly, “Go home, Marla. You look exhausted. You need to sleep. It will be all right. I’ll call you later, I promise.”

  The room began to slide again. “Let me stay with you, Elly. I won’t disturb you or try to persuade you.” I could feel a wave of panic building. It came from a long way away, down through many years, back to a time when each tomorrow seemed an unbearable prospect and when I had begun to realize that she was the only one who mattered. Maybe the panic touched her too, because she leaned over and put an arm around me, laid a hand on my head. We sat for a while in silence. Mother and child. It had happened before.

  “I’ll call you a cab,” she said at last. “You mustn’t worry, Marla. Nothing will happen to either of us. I know what I’m doing. Go home and sleep. I’ll talk to you tonight.”

  And because it hurt so much, I pulled away from her and clothed myself in adulthood. I stood up and fumbled for my bag. “All right, Elly. You do it your way. But remember that I warned you.”

  Home. Gray skies over Haverstock Hill, an afternoon turning to evening with no change in the light. Up the stairs a musty, dusty little flat with five letters on the doorstep and a triumphant total of three messages on the answering machine. The fruits of two weeks’ absence. I could not bring myself to listen to them. I made black coffee to keep myself awake and lay on the sofa wondering when she would call. I thought about ringing California but had no idea what I would say. In the heavy gray of an English evening, everything seemed so far away. I would close my eyes to stop them hurting. But I would not sleep. The coffee would keep me awake, and even if I did doze off, the telephone would wake me. That is the last thought I remember.

  The phone did not wake me; neither did the dawn. I suppose if I hadn’t been so stupid with tiredness I would have realized—realized that I had left the answering machine on, so that when the call came the machine would take it on the first ring and Elly would talk onto a piece of tape. But I didn’t realize. If you believe in fate, then that was what it was. I have not yet made up my mind on this. When I woke, it came with a rush. Outside it was brighter. At first I thought the storm had simply passed into a glow of evening. When it finally hit me that I might in fact have slept through a night and a day, I was mad with shock. On the hall table the telephone sat quietly. Beneath it a little red light flashed a fourth message. I whirled it back. A man’s voice was talking about double glazing. Then the bleep. Then Elly, curious and tired.

  “Marla, where are you? It’s eight o’clock. Listen, I have to talk to you, tell you what’s happening. Are you there …?” Pause. Then, “I’m taking the night train to Scotland. Lenny will meet me in Inverness, then we’ll drive together to the hotel. I know this news is going to hurt you. I’m sorry. But please understand. I have to do it. See him, talk to him. And I have to do it alone. The hotel is the Metropole. In a place called Inverlochy. On the west coast, not far from Ullapool. Telephone number: Inverlochy seven-four-eight-nine. But please don’t call it. Not until I ring you, all right? God, I wish I could hear your voice. I so wanted to talk. Tell you I’m sorry. We were both so tired and strung out. I didn’t mean to be angry. I just felt so out of control. But it wasn’t your fault. I should never have got you into all this in the first place. That’s why I have to resolve it alone. You do understand that, don’t you? I love you, and I’ll see you soon.”

  Sooner than you think. I picked up the phone. The man whose job it is to tell the time told me it was 7:56 P.M., precisely. British Rail took longer to answer, but I still made the night train. It never occurred to me to call first. Elly had told me herself. I owed Lenny. Whether it was an apology or an attack would become plain in due course. But whichever it was, I would deliver it in person. And I would not leave him alone with her.

  The train was fully booked, with no sleeping berths. But then I wasn’t sleepy. I sat through an endless night watching fields flash by, ghostly under a half-moon. And in the small hours I was joined by J.T., conjured up as an ally and traveling companion. Why not? In a symmetrical universe he would have been here anyway, the fourth star in this doomed little cluster. And with him came his words: “She’s got no protection against herself. That’s how come Lenny can fuck her over. He speeds up the process of her own destruction … Get her out … before it’s too late.”

  And, just as in childhood the train wheels had always sung the chorus, now the smooth electric rumblings echoed his exhortation.

  I’m coming, Elly. I’m coming.

  PART THREE

  … and nothing but the truth?

  fifteen

  The Inverlochy Metropole was not hard to find once you had found Inverlochy. God knows how Lenny had come to pick this particular spot. Maybe somebody from the Scottish Tourist Board was involved in payola. At a rough guess, the Metropole had last been fashionable (and full) around the time of the Festival of Britain. It was perched on the edge of the coast in crumbling dignity, looking out over a dark gray sea furrowed with waves. Summer, it seemed, had not yet reached this far north, if indeed it ever did. Even from a distance the place reeked of Daphne du Maurier. Probably the only trade it got now were old ladies who had fallen into a habit of holidays, and the occasional television crew filming yet another period serial. I parked the hired car carefully in an empty courtyard. Our relationship had cautiously improved over the sixty miles or so from Inverness, but we were not yet on speeding terms.

  Inside the Metropole, the girl at the desk was the only new thing since the fifties, young and fresh, with peaches-and-cream skin and nut brown hair, which waved unfashionably but exuberantly around her face. The kind of hair which, no doubt, she tugged and ironed into temporary obedience, not yet understanding that its very nonconformity made her spectacular. She smiled me welcome, and it was clear from her bright eyes that nothing really painful had ever happened to her, nor did she believe it ever would. She reminded me of someone I had once known.

  “Gud afternoon. Can I help you?” The voice danced. Obviously she liked her work, liked the sensation of being an adult when she was still so close to a child. I realized with alarm that she made me want to cry. I was not as in control as I had thought. I took a hold on myself.

  “Yes, I’m looking for a couple who are staying here. He’s American, she’s English. She would have arrived some time yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes, the American gentleman.” She smiled, and I read in her eyes fantasies of lovers to come. “He met her off the train. They arrived in the afternoon. They’re in Room Twenty-five.”

  So, they had spent the night together after all. Like Bothwell and Mary Queen of Scots. Elly did not mind the smell of blood on his hands. Romantic fiction. It hurt like hell. I took a breath.

  “Would you call them for me?”

  “Och, no, they’re no in now. They’re out sightseeing. The gentleman asked me to mark out some places of interest on his map. They left a couple of hours ago.”

  My stomach felt funny. But then I hadn’t eaten for a long time.

  “If you’d like to wait for them, there’s a wee lounge across the hall. But I doubt they’ll be back before afternoon. They took a long list of places and brochures, and they didna make reservations for tea.”

  Her words gave me time to think. I turned back to
the bright, eager face. “I wonder, do you have a room?”

  “Aye yes. You’ll be wanting a single? There’s a lovely room on the third floor with a view of the sea. Number Twenty-two. It’s just a few doors down from your friends.”

  “Fine. I’ll take it.”

  “Do you no want to see it first?” It was part of the game: the appraisal before the acceptance. You could see she enjoyed it.

  “No, no, I’m sure it’s lovely. Can you tell me which way they went, so I can try to catch them up?”

  She frowned slightly. Things were not going entirely according to protocol. “I’m a close friend,” I added quickly. “And I have some rather important news for them.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, I could point you out the same route I showed the gentleman.”

  “You didn’t speak to the lady?”

  “No, no, she didna come down for breakfast, took tea in her room. I talked to the gentleman, and then they left about an hour later.”

  How did she look? How were they together? Had they been quarreling? Were her eyes swollen? This girl had probably noticed nothing. Just a good-looking couple, the man doing the organizing, the woman following on behind. Just as it should be.

  I bought a map, and she set to work, drawing a thick pencil line across from Inverlochy through the peninsula below, snaking round lochs and across marshland down into Ullapool, then out to the east, taking in part of the road to Inverness, and from there looping up and back toward home.

  “Actually, the gentleman was very interested in this piece of countryside. The castle by Loch Assynt. It’s the place where the Earl of Montrose was imprisoned on his way down to Edinburgh to stand trial. He was executed later for high treason. Really, there’s no much there anymore, it’s all ruins. But he seemed very keen to see it nevetheless.”