A Friend from England (24 page)

My time was my own until twelve o’clock, but I found myself hard put to fill it with incident. It had resolved itself into pure waiting, and with the recognition of this state came dangerous intimations, driftings and longings that I had thought I had entirely forsaken. I settled down to a morning of coffee drinking, desultory exploring, examining of faces. I knew the route I had to take: across the Piazza, past San Moisè, across a tiny bridge to the pretty eventless square in which I had watched the child with the ball the previous day. After a fruitless hour in which I selected and then disheartenedly rejected churches that might be visited, I made my way back to the little Bar Ducale where I decided to sit out the intervening time. I had nothing to read. Indeed, I had come prepared only to look for Heather, not to divert myself. I sat in a trance-like state, trying to will back into myself something of that tonic anger with which I had set out on this quest. But there seemed to be no anger to hand today. My earlier good humour had entirely disappeared, and with it the rigid armature that normally sustained my days. I was at a loss. My amusements were too secret, too deliberate to spread themselves into the benign air of the working week, and now even that week had been taken away from me. A pale sun came out; water glinted shiftily behind me. As
the half hour boomed mutedly from a distant campanile I started up in fright, thinking that I must have missed something, a clue, a means of cutting short this abominable visit. For if the anger had left me, the fear seemed to be returning. ‘
Ancora
,’ I said to the waiter, indicating my cup. For suddenly there was nothing for me to do but sit there until the chimes of another bell were to release me.

At half past eleven I got up. I had forgotten whether she had asked me to meet her inside or outside the Gritti, and, if inside, whether in the bar or in one of the salons. And if in one of the salons, which one? I strolled as carelessly as I could into the lobby. On the terrace, perhaps? That was the obvious and most pleasant place for a talk. But she had not mentioned the terrace, I remembered: I would have retained the sound of the word if she had. If she were staying there I might enquire for the number of her room, but I had this tenacious feeling that she was somewhere else, her tracks covered, at an address that her father, having heard it only on the telephone, confessed that he might have got wrong. In any event her address would be of no use to me. I had no intention of searching for her; the topography of Venice had always eluded me. That people might actually live there always struck me as impossible. I think I really believed that they all shipped themselves back to the mainland at nightfall and there lived entirely unremarkable lives just like everybody else, parking the car, watching television, and shopping in supermarkets. The silence of the hotel seemed to bear out my assumption that she was not there. I took a last look down a vista of deserted salons, and then resigned myself to waiting outside. As I turned to go, the concierge closed his great book with an air of finality, as if ringing down the curtain on the day. It was quite clear that he would allow nothing untoward to happen within the walls of his precinct, that he would stand
stalwart behind his desk to repel intruders. Our conversation therefore must take place on neutral ground.

I wandered up and down outside, turned the corner, and then I saw her. Or rather them, for she was accompanied by a man whom I took to be Marco. She was, as I had expected, dressed in black, and so was he, a tall slim black-haired man in black trousers and a black blouson jacket, a black scarf round his neck. Heather herself was wrapped in a black shawl-like garment, through the sleeves of which, obviously obeying some injunction of his, she suddenly thrust her arms. From the slight distance at which I observed them they looked exactly alike. I remembered with a jolt how closely she had resembled Michael at her wedding, and I just had time to wonder whether this twin-like capacity of hers might not play her false in exactly the same way as it had before. But the two of them, engaged in conversation, did not have the factitious appearance that had so worried me the first time that I thought about it. What they were saying appeared to be entirely serious. They stood face to face in the middle of the square, not looking about them, not anxious, not reluctant, not fearful. I wondered how much Italian she knew or whether he spoke English. In any event, she looked completely at home. She lifted a hand to his arm and he strode off, disappearing down one of the dark exits, between a pharmacy and a blank-faced building that gave nothing away.

Heather came towards me, expressing no surprise at my presence. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘How are you? Shall we sit down somewhere?’ And without breaking her stride she held out her hand to usher me along the same path as herself and guided me to the same little bar at which I had spent most of the morning. Seated, I felt as if I were a guest in her house. She ordered two coffees and then lit a cigarette, something I had never seen her do before. ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I said stupidly. ‘Oh, now
and then,’ she said. ‘You don’t, do you?’ And she put away the packet, shook an amber bracelet further up her wrist, and drank her coffee.

Since she had apparently nothing to say, and since I was certainly not going to launch an appeal, I addressed myself to my cup and covertly studied her appearance. She had never previously struck me as attractive, having too mulish an air, which seemed to imply a passive, even a dormant nature. Only the long jet earrings that I knew so well seemed to have been added to give the face some sense of decoration. Her fine skin was innocent of colour, as were her pale lips. Only the dark eyes, under the arching black brows, betrayed some sign that unknown factors, to which I had no access, had entered her life. She gazed past me, looking preoccupied and faintly melancholy, rather as her father might have done. Finally, as if having reached some resolution, she turned to me, smiled, and said, ‘I suppose you’ve come to tell me to go home.’

‘I think you might give it some thought, yes,’ I said.

‘Oh, I have, I have.’

‘And what have you decided?’

She laughed. ‘It was all decided long ago. Didn’t they tell you? I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey, Rachel. Unless you’re on holiday, of course.’

‘I came because your mother wanted to know how you are. How you are living. She is pining, I think.’

‘I’ll go home soon and see them. In the meantime you can tell her that I’m perfectly happy. I’m living here, with Marco and his mother, and I propose to go on doing so.’

I stared at her. She was quite composed, quite normal. She had gained something, authority, perhaps, but it was, as ever, understated. I saw then that I had no hope of getting her to change her mind. I tried once more.

‘What about all that you’ve left behind you? Your
own home. Your parents. The shop. Your own
life
, Heather.’

‘My life is here,’ she said.

‘But you could have had it all. You could have had Marco, too. People manage. Why go to such extremes? It may seem all right now, but in ten years’ time? Supposing you change your mind?’

‘Oh, I don’t think I will.’

‘And what am I to tell them? That you’ve gone for ever? That they’ll never see you again?’

‘There’s no need to tell them anything. They understand.’

‘I’m sorry, Heather. I don’t see it. I came here to talk sense and you don’t want to listen. I suppose I’ve failed.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘You’ve succeeded beyond all expectations.’

‘Succeeded? Then …’

‘Not this time, Rachel. The last time. When we spoke in my flat. The day Mummy was so ill.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ I said impatiently. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When you told me about that other life you wanted me to lead. Deceit. Control. Arrangements. Mismanagement.’

‘
Mismanagement
?’ I nearly shouted, stung to fury. ‘You call my life mismanagement? But you’re living a fantasy, Heather. Oh, I’ve said all this before. I’m not going to go through it all again. But I’m sorry I’ve given you the impression that my life is
mismanaged
.’ I was breathing hard. ‘I do the best I can,’ I said, more quietly. ‘And if I should have liked a softer option, well, nobody hears me moaning about it.’

‘I think you’re very brave,’ she said.

‘Yes.’ I looked at her. ‘Yes, I am brave. I’ve learned to be. I’ve learned a lot of lessons. Unlike you, I’m afraid. I’ve learned to keep my life to myself, not to belabour others with it. I’ve learned not to back myself against
the world, because I know the world will win. Always. I’ve learned caution, politeness, what you call deceit, but what I call good manners. I’ve learned how to be alone and to put a good face on it. And you call that
mismanagement
.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to. Shall we have some lunch? I’m afraid I’m busy this afternoon.’

‘Have lunch by all means,’ I told her. ‘I couldn’t eat a thing.’

‘Then I think I’d better go. The only thing is, I had one or two things for Mummy and I wanted you to take them home. I left them in the flat. Could you meet me later, for a minute or two? Here? About five? I won’t keep you. Just a couple of little things to cheer her up. I know what she likes.’

She stood up to go. I made no effort to detain her. I felt too bitter and too disgusted. My rage had subsided, leaving me feeling chilled in the misty air. The coffee I had drunk had made me nervous and my hands trembled slightly. I flung down a handful of coins and turned up the collar of my eternal raincoat. The afternoon stretched emptily before me. One thing I could do, I thought: I could book my ticket home for the following day. I would never come back to this place again. Failure was in my mouth like ashes.

I strode off in the direction of the Piazza San Marco. Pigeons infested the sky, which was clouding over. I pushed my way past the lunchtime crowds and made straight for the Pensione. It seemed to me imperative to retrieve something from this day, which was turning out so badly. I sat on my bed in my raincoat, wondering what to do next. What surprised me was the hatred that seemed to have sprung up between us. I had always thought her a dull person, hardly a woman at all, and she had apparently thought of me in the same way. Or perhaps she had simply thought me irrelevant, marginal.
The curse of happy families again, so absorbed in themselves that they hardly perceive the reality of anyone else. I got up and paced about the room, which was dull and cold, reflecting the metallic light of the canal. I did not like myself for what I was feeling. I have never been comfortable with hatred, never found it invigorating or compensatory. Hatred seemed to me pure loss, if only for the amount of energy it absorbed. In fact, with this journey, I seemed to have entered a zone of loss, and I could not honestly see that Heather would gain from it. We had each of us inflicted wounds on the other, from which we would continue to suffer. And I had never wanted to serve as a warning to anyone. Nor, I am sure, had she. She liked to think of her life as a secret, banishing all witnesses from the scene. And I had been such a witness. She would never again feel uninspected. Even if her life turned out to be happy, she would know that there had been some dereliction, some loss of faith, even some loss of nerve. She would have left unhappiness behind her, and the discomfort of such a predicament would grow in her mind, eventually to rise up and overwhelm her.

And yet in a way I could not fault her, that was the worst of it. To strike out and claim one’s own life, to impose it on others, even to embrace a caprice, was, though monstrous, sometimes admirable. Sometimes it just had to be done. And her actions would be seen by the world as acceptable, I had no doubt of that. She would, once again, have the status of a married woman, a condition which a person as conventional as herself would consider indispensable. She might even have the great love she claimed as hers. Eventually she would have children, would bring them home for a visit, and be acclaimed, simply for the fact of having passed the essential test. For that is the test, make no mistake about it. And I? I would plough on to a game middle age, and it was I who would be the audience, the reflector, the
confidante, the baby-sitter. No one would know the inner workings of my life, nor would anyone enquire, thinking me to be a creature without mystery. It was I who would become untidy round the hips, and tired, more and more tired. I suppose I would still continue to visit the Livingstones and assist in a subordinate capacity at their gatherings. I would become ‘poor Rachel’. Perhaps I already was.

I think that afternoon was one of the worst I have ever spent. Much later, when I looked back, I experienced discomfort, uneasiness, even grief, whenever I thought about it. Still in my raincoat, I paced the room, and when the room became intolerable to me I went out and tried to work off my tension in the misty streets, which always impeded me by turning into water. There was nothing I wanted to do except go home, bury myself in work, and try to rid myself of this curious feeling of shame which seemed to have come upon me. For the moment I was without resource. I was even without resource in my wanderings, for I shortly found myself pacing the short trajectory that would take me back to the Bar Ducale. I sat there, unmoving, for an hour, and then, as various bells for five o’clock boomed out, I saw Heather coming towards me. She appeared calm but preoccupied, as if she had passed an afternoon of indecision. She was carrying two plastic bags which she put on the table between us.

The light in the little square was fading fast, and her face seemed to me to have the same moody distant expression as the woman suckling her baby in the picture I had seen the previous day. Already my humble tourist excursion had vanished into the remote past. The weather, blurred and darkening, was nullifying my every activity, as if my place were simply here, and my function simply to wait. I was almost bereft of words by this time and looked to Heather for my cue.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Are you having a good stay? Venice
never disappoints, does it? Although you’re not seeing it at its best.’