A Heart Bent Out of Shape (27 page)

‘You’re right to be angry, Hadley.’

‘I’m not angry. It’s too stupid to dignify with anger.’

‘And you’re right to be upset.’

‘I’m not. I’m not upset.’

‘Hadley, please know this; the last thing that I would ever, ever want to do is hurt you.’

She opened her mouth, a stony response at her lips, but she faltered. ‘That’s one thing I do know,’ she said, quietly.

‘Then you must listen to me, Hadley. I’m certain that if you cast your mind back, if you try to think along the same lines that I have, you’ll see what I see. There will be reasons, two or three things that just don’t quite fit. Things that at the time didn’t seem that unusual, because there are always excuses, and there are always explanations. But now, in this light, on this day, think again, Hadley. Think again and tell me it’s not a possibility.’

It had begun yesterday, as something small and dull and niggling, and last night it had crept and crawled, an ever-mounting sense of unease starting to shape itself. Now, as she let herself listen to Hugo’s words, it became whole. She knew then that realisation wasn’t something that lived in the mind; instead it was a physical sensation, a strangling hold, a flat-out blow.

‘A possibility?’ she said. ‘No, I don’t think it is a possibility.’

‘Hadley . . .’

She was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling rapidly. As soon as she became aware of it, she couldn’t slow down, she couldn’t begin to catch her breath. She closed her eyes to concentrate. She felt Hugo’s steadying hand on her arm. Tears fell from her lashes.

‘She teased me about him once,’ she said, her voice as tight as a knot.

‘Who?’

‘Kristina. She teased me about Joel. She told me she’d noticed that I always wore something nice when I had American Literature. I had on a dress, and I’d painted my nails. It was my birthday. I told her it was just for my birthday.’

‘Ah.’

‘I wanted her to meet him because I thought they’d get on, but I wanted to keep him to myself, too. You see, I thought that if he saw her, if he got to know her even just a little bit, he wouldn’t . . .’

‘Hadley?’

She was speaking into the cup of her hand, muffled, delicate words that Hugo strained to hear. He bent closer, his eyes never leaving her face.

‘He was my tutor. But I never really saw him like that, because I met him before term started, and it didn’t occur to me that he was anything to do with the Institute. I just thought he was someone like me; another person on their own in Lausanne, excited to be here, finding their way.’

‘A chance meeting,’ Hugo said, ‘two strangers.’

Hadley stared at him and he stared back, with perfect symmetry. At last, they were matched.

‘Joel,’ said Hadley, ‘Jacques.’

‘
Mon Dieu
.’

The room around her ceased to exist. Gone were the flat-footed orderlies and the dim smell of expensive disinfectant and the china pots of tea served at all the wrong times. Everything went, and all that was left was Hugo, and the pieces of his story.

Outside, beyond the rows of pom-pom headed trees, sunset was falling over the water in a blaze of iridescence. Hadley sat slumped in a chair, an invalid’s pose, with her back to the window. Hugo watched her intently, the colour high in his cheeks. She’d told him about the tiny, insignificant strip of paper that said
Kristina Hartmann
, and how pathetic she had felt as she challenged Joel over it in the car, her voice brittle and quavering.
He stuffed it in his pocket and said he’d throw it away because he didn’t want me getting sad every time I saw it, but instead he kept it. He kept it in his wallet, Hugo, and I found it and I didn’t know if it meant something or nothing
.
She told him about the dust-scuffed copy of
A Moveable Feast
that Helena had discovered kicked beneath the bed in Kristina’s room.
Joel gave it to her, didn’t he? Because he told me that he used to do that, he used to give all of his girlfriends a copy of that book as a kind of test, to see if they liked it. I laughed when he told me that, because I loved that book. And when Kristina told me she bought it herself I believed her
.
Hugo listened and nodded, his eyes wide, for there were no such florid ideas scribbled in his notebook.

‘He never gave me a reason not to believe him, Hugo,’ she said. ‘Just since yesterday I started feeling like something wasn’t right but I didn’t know what. I never thought it was this. Never this.’

‘Didn’t you? Hadley, try and think. Did you tell him about Kristina, or did he already know?’

‘I told him. I went looking for him. I wanted his help.’

‘And what was his reaction?’

‘He was . . . shocked. Like anybody would be. No, wait, there was something. He was stressed. Before I got there he was already stressed. He said it was over a deadline. He was tearing his hair out. Do you think he was already lying? Was that
grief
? It can’t have been, Hugo, because he was so kind. He set himself completely aside. He listened, and straight away he was kind. And supportive. He was so, so supportive. He was the only person I really wanted to talk to about Kristina because he understood. Oh God.’

‘He understood,’ said Hugo.

‘He understood better than anyone.’

The last of the sunlight had fizzled from the room. Hadley got up and walked over to the window. Down the lake towards Geneva, there was the smallest strip of burnt orange then it went, quick as a switch, as overhead the sky thickened with a band of snow clouds. Everything ran to a blur and she rubbed fiercely at her cheeks. She turned back to Hugo.

‘It was all right there in front of me, and even then I couldn’t see it. I don’t understand how you worked it out, Hugo.’

He told her that he had moved the pieces of the puzzle, this way and that, until they created a pattern that made a sort of sense.
Just an idea for a story
, he’d said,
at first
, and as he talked, Hadley’s mind ran on, tracing miserable shapes. It all made dreadful sense. Kristina concocting the story of the broken marriage, a cover for the real fact of Joel’s position at the Institute, the illicit romance with a tutor that she now knew all about herself.
Jacques.
A French dream of a name, a clean white lie. Perhaps they did meet on the Riviera; Joel had a deep and even tan, and in class he clicked through slides of palm-tree lined promenades and bathing-suited socialites, talking of the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, speaking of the summers that changed everything with an aficionado’s familiarity. Yet it still would have been a coincidence that he was bound for Lausanne. She would have changed all the details, who he was and what he looked like, and where he lived, to keep the veil of secrecy. Just as Hadley had gone skiing with Swiss friends. And just as the American she gave her mum, was a student in her class. A fluttering line of little white lies. But Joel hiding who he really was? There was nothing little or white about that. A picture began to root itself. It was the thought of how perfect the two of them would have looked together. Kristina all long blonde hair and endless limbs, eyes as wide as windows, and Joel chucking an arm around her carelessly, dragging her into a kiss. They would be the same height, their lips would match perfectly
. The most handsome man in the world, and the most beautiful woman
.
Hadley remembered the pained look in Joel’s eyes as she told him what Kristina had said about her lover. She had mistaken it for sympathy.

‘Hugo, it wasn’t just one lie,’ said Hadley, ‘it was layer upon layer of deception. We walked all over Geneva, looking for someone who doesn’t even exist. How could he lie and lie, again and again?’

‘Perhaps he felt he didn’t have a choice,’ Hugo said. ‘Consider it from his perspective, just for a moment, if you can bear to. If the girl he wasn’t supposed to love was killed, a student, an illicit romance, he’d have had to mourn in private. And then you arrived at his door. What could he do? He couldn’t show you his grief.’

‘You’re defending him?’

‘Far from it.’

‘I fell for him, Hugo.’

‘Yes, you told me that,
ma chérie
.’

‘What, and you didn’t believe it?’

‘You were terribly unhappy, and he managed to change that. I witnessed as much with my own eyes. And you, without realising, perhaps did the same for him. I wonder if that’s the same thing as two people coming together under ordinary circumstances. I think perhaps not.’

‘Nothing’s ever ordinary, is it? Not for the people involved.’

‘You and I met in a bar. Hasn’t that got a terrific ring to it? I could fancy I was forty years younger.’

‘And was it ordinary?’

‘It was the most extraordinary thing to happen to me in a very long time.’

Hadley let her face drop into her hands. She felt Hugo’s hand on her shoulder, a barely there touch.

‘It’s not inconceivable that in the time that you spent together, and the comfort you drew from one another, you replaced Kristina in his affections.’

‘I don’t want to replace anybody,’ said Hadley, ‘and especially not like that.’

‘But no one is a clean sheet.’

‘I was.’

Hugo sat back in his chair and stared across the lawn towards the lake. His face trembled, as he struggled to find something to say to her.

‘I wasn’t looking for anything, Hugo. It was enough just being here, in this beautiful place. And then everything fell apart and he was there.’

‘He was never the only one.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘but he was the one who really mattered.’

‘He never deserved you, Hadley.’

‘He told me he loved me,’ she replied quietly.

‘When?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘And?’ he replied.

‘I didn’t say it back.’

Hugo sighed. A long, slow exhale. His briefly brightened cheeks were pale again.

‘He’d know though, wouldn’t he?’ he said. ‘People always know.’

‘Do they? I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure about anything. The girl in your story, what does she do?’

‘I didn’t get that far.’

‘But what would you have her do? And him, what about him?’

Hugo slipped the notebook into the pocket of his dressing gown and clasped his hands in his lap.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t see the rest of the story any more. It’s gone.’

Hadley stared at him, frustration swelling. She had the sudden desire to shake Hugo, grab hold of his arms and rattle him until he told her something different. She bit her lip and looked away from him.

‘This fiction, this
truth
 . . . it didn’t just occur to you in a dream, did it? You suspected it before. Long before. I can see that now, with all your talk of phantoms, and pen names. You hinted, but too softly. You should have just come right out and said it. What were you afraid of, Hugo? That I wouldn’t want to hear? That you’d scare me away?’

‘It was only an idea. A foolish fancy. One fuelled by my somewhat prejudiced distrust of his motives. You would have laughed at me, Hadley. Or yelled.’

‘Yes, probably.’

‘And you would have been terribly hurt,’ he said.

‘And now?’ she said. ‘What am I now?’

‘Perhaps you’re someone who knows the truth.’

His voice was as soft as the snowflakes that had started to fall outside the window. They both turned their heads to look.

‘Jacques is Joel, and Joel is Jacques,’ said Hadley, in no more than a murmur.

She watched as each snowflake spiralled gently, melting just as soon as they touched the ground.

thirty-two

Before she left the Résidence Le
Printemps that day, Hugo
tried to warn her.

‘Let him speak, Hadley,’ he said, ‘we may still be wrong.’

He had stroked her fingers as he spoke, brushing the length of them from knuckle to tip. Hadley moved her hand gently away and Hugo nodded. A rueful smile.

‘I’m going to wait,’ she said. ‘I want him to tell me first. I think he will. I know he will.’

‘Don’t be so sure.’

‘You never liked him, did you? Even without this.’

‘No,’ said Hugo, ‘but I shouldn’t think that’s any kind of comfort now.’

She walked down the dark sweep of drive. At the gateway she turned and looked back. Hugo was watching her from his window. He held up one hand in farewell. She nodded, and briefly raised her hand in silent reply.

She sat through Joel’s class the next morning. She took a seat right at the very back and watched him. He appeared brisk and bright, but Hadley was looking for the cracks of a grieving man and she saw them. They were there in the dark stains beneath his eyes, the creaking in his voice, the pressure of his fingers as he leant on the desk, their tips turning quite white. Yet he still made the students in the front rows sway with easy laughter. People still wrote down the things he said and underlined them for emphasis, swept them pink with highlighters, and threw their hands up in the air as he turned a question on them. At the end, eager students crowded his desk and Hadley hung back. She heard banter about his ski accident. His cheek had bloomed into a yellowing bruise, blackened scabs beneath his eye, but he no longer looked daring to her, just broken. She saw him glance in her direction, peering past the earnest figures that circled him, just as he had all throughout the class. Hadley stared back at him evenly. In front of her, her jotter page was etched with black lines. Her pen was cracked along its stem. She left before the crowd at his desk had cleared.

In the cafeteria at lunchtime she saw him standing at the counter, slinging back an espresso, Italian-style. He was with Caroline Dubois and they were deep in conversation. Caroline’s loose chignon had uncurled, and a lock of auburn hair fell across her shoulder. She leant close to Joel as she talked. Hadley looked down at her plate of
frites
. She selected a chip and dipped it in a pool of ketchup, then nibbled it intently.

Later that afternoon, he caught her arm in the corridor as she passed.

‘Hadley, what are you doing this evening? I want to see you.’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘Hadley, please.’

He gripped her arm and said only that he wanted to see her again. No, when Hadley replayed it later, he’d said that he
needed
to see her. And amidst it all, it still felt like a good thing; his inconsumable desire for her.

That evening, she buzzed at the door of Joel’s apartment block. There was no answer, and so she buzzed again.

‘Hello, yes?’

‘It’s me.’

‘Hadley?’

‘Who else?’

He let her in. The vestibule looked shabbier than she remembered. Empty bottles of wine were scattered like bowling pins. She kicked through a flood of free newspapers and pizza leaflets. She hadn’t felt nervous until now. A wave of nausea hit her and she hung on to the banister as she climbed the stairs with shaky steps.

He had left the door to his apartment ajar and she pushed at it. Joel emerged from the kitchen, a dishcloth in his hand. He blinked at her, and his look was so heavy-hearted that she felt her insides wrench in pity.

‘You wanted me to come over,’ she said, as levelly as she could.

Joel passed the cloth from one hand to the other and Hadley shifted the weight on her feet with matched unease.

‘No kiss?’ she said, attempting brightness.

Joel threw the cloth at the countertop and it missed, falling to the floor. He ignored it and took Hadley by the shoulders. He pulled her towards him. But he wasn’t all there. His lips were tight and hard. Hadley turned away, her own masquerade a failure. She wished, fleetingly, that Hugo Bézier were there with her; far better for him to tell this far-fetched story. She sat down on the edge of the sofa, her body set tight. He hovered beside her, loose on his feet.

‘You hung up on me the last time we spoke,’ he said, not quite looking at her.

‘I didn’t plan to,’ she said.

‘I told you I loved you, Hadley.’

He met her eye then, and she held it. She tried to see all the way inside him, but all she got were pale mists, a wash of blue, shrinking pupils that told her nothing.

‘I know you did,’ she said.

‘That’s it?’ he said.

‘I didn’t know what to say.’

‘Right.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Hadley, listen. It’s me who should be sorry. It was too soon for what I said. And too late for other things.’

‘Joel . . .’ she began.

‘You deserve better,’ he said. He crouched beside her and took hold of her hands. His palms were dry and warm and she held on tightly. ‘I said it at the beginning, and I always meant it. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these last couple of days. Hadley, I need to end it.’

It was a slap. The last thing she expected.

‘So, you said
I love you
and, what, now you don’t?’

‘That’s not it.’

‘And what about this weekend? Locarno? We’re not going any more? Just like that?’

‘I wish we could.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ said Hadley.

‘I don’t blame you,’ he said.

‘What kind of answer is that?’

He’d turned away and gone to the window. The same spot he had stood in on the first morning when she’d woken up at his house, when he was hunched and smoking and staring at the street, instead of lying beside her.

‘Joel,’ she said again, as forcefully as she could muster.

She saw then that his shoulders were shaking. At first she thought that he was laughing, and she wondered briefly if it was all a bad joke, a misjudged piece of play acting, but then she heard a sob, a strangled sound that seemed to rip from him, possessed of a life of its own.

‘Joel,’ she said, the same sob threatening her own words, ‘it’s okay. I know.’

She saw him freeze. Heard his intake of breath. She went over to him, and her steps across the room were slow and steady, one foot in front of the other. She curled her arms around his waist and leant her head against his back. She moved with him, as he shook. She hadn’t planned to do any of this, but she did.

‘How?’ he said, turning to face her. ‘Not because of that damned slip of paper?’ His voice was a hoarse whisper.

‘Jacques . . .’ she said.

‘Kristina . . .’

As he said her name his face was locked in a soundless scream. Silence roared around them and the name,
Kristina,
twisted in the wind. Hadley tightened her hold on him, her fingers pressing into his arm.

‘There’s so much I need to say to you,’ he said, ‘but the one thing you need to believe is that I do love you.’

She stared at him, her eyes watering. His hair was awry, and falling into his eyes. He was a man split open with sorrow. How could there be any love left for her, in all of that? It was only then that she realised she hadn’t really believed it before, not wholly, not completely. But now, every single lie he had ever told was all around them.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said, ‘do I?’

‘Hadley, I barely know myself.’

‘I shouldn’t be here,’ she said, ‘I have to go.’

‘Hadley, I need to explain . . .’

‘I don’t see how you can.’

‘You have to let me.’

‘You made a fool out of me. Maybe you had your reasons, and maybe you never meant to, but you did. So, I can’t hear anything yet. I don’t want to know. I will, but not yet. Not now.’

She walked out of the apartment, pulling her coat around her, fumbling with the buttons. As soon as she was out of the door she dashed down the spiralling stairs. When she got to the bottom she heard a sound, and paused to listen. It could have been the wind moaning outside the building, the whine of a passing car, perhaps, even the growl of an old man’s tethered dog. It could have been any and all of these things, or it could have been Joel Wilson weeping.

Two days passed and he didn’t try to contact her. Hadley skipped class, eschewed Les Ormes, and kept away from the Résidence Le Printemps
.
She lost herself in the city. She walked the length of Rue des Mirages
,
looking for something and nothing. In the end, the mountains pulled her to the lakeside. The Alps that day were mud-grey and massive, with burly rolls of cloud scudding the low slopes. It was a landscape that rooted her and gave perspective, and she stared into it, letting it take her. Just a few streets away Hugo would be sitting in his dressing gown, his bony ankles showing beneath the roll of his pyjama bottoms. She knew he would wake up each day and wonder if she’d come again. Was he scribbling in his notebook, even now?
I wanted to write my own story
. That was what she would tell him later.

Suddenly she knew that what she really needed was to hear her parents’ voices. She took out her phone and rang.

‘Mum?’ she said, cupping her hand to her mouth as the wind upped its roaring.

‘Hadley, oh Hadley, what a lovely surprise.’

She shut her eyes. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Oh, the usual,’ her mum said. ‘Sam’s at his friend’s house, your dad’s just in from work. Where are you? It’s noisy.’

‘I’m down by the lake,’ said Hadley. ‘It’s the wind.’

‘You’re not on your mobile phone, are you? It’ll cost a bomb.’

‘I wanted to speak to you, that’s all.’

‘Well, that’s very nice. Love, we didn’t hear from you after your ski trip, was it everything you hoped?’

She passed the telephone to her other hand and blew on her freezing fingers.

‘I’ve never been anywhere as beautiful,’ she said.

‘And could you do it? Could you ski?’

‘I could,’ said Hadley.

She thought of how once she spun out of control and Joel caught her, his arms encircling her waist, her legs with their skis sliding between his own. They’d sunk into the snow, laughing and laughing, as she pulled him down on top of her. His skin tasted of sun-cream and his lips were roughened by the cold, hard air. Then she thought of him skiing through the rocks; the deafening speed, the crazy leap, not seeming to care if he lived or died. It made sense now, the erasing of all feeling except that which existed in the moment. The grim abandonment.

‘Tell me some things,’ said Hadley, struggling to keep her voice even. ‘What’s Dad up to?’ she said. ‘Is he okay?’

‘Oh, he’s fine, you know your dad,’ her mum said. ‘Here, have a word with him, he’ll be so pleased to hear from you.’

Hadley shut her eyes again as she heard the telephone being passed between them.

‘The cat wants letting out,’ she heard her dad say.

‘Never mind the cat,’ said her mum.

‘Hadley! We looked for you on
Ski Sunday
and we couldn’t see you.’

‘Hi,’ she said weakly. The bars of their fire would be glowing red and they would probably have drawn the curtains early. When Sam came home he’d be pink-cheeked and full of chatter.

‘And you’re all right?’ he said. ‘Everything’s all right?’

‘Always,’ said Hadley. One word was all that she could manage. She bit her lip and hoped he’d launch into a torrent. A detailed account of the latest piece of mischief from Sam,, perhaps, or the winners he’d had from his small bets on the horses.

‘You enjoy yourself, Hadley, but don’t forget your studies. Now, what’s all this about an American boy?’

She heard a muffled admonishment in the background. She saw her dad shifting on his feet like a slow old boxer as her mum wrestled back the phone, her laughter chirruping.

‘Never mind your dad, Hadley. You have the time of your life,’ she said. ‘Don’t waste a minute of it.’

She knew then that she had to go. She mustered an exuberant sort of goodbye, one that smacked of things-to-do and places-to-go and happiness, happiness above all else, but in the end it came out as a whisper. Her parents’ voices rang out in their own farewell chorus. In their bid to wish her well they had missed the fact that she wasn’t, and that was exactly as she needed it to be. She imagined them settling back into whatever they were doing before, but with a new charge about them, a sense of brightness.

Hadley held the phone in her hand, turning it over and over. Joel was the only person who had ever torn the earth from beneath her feet, in all of the good ways, and now in an unimaginably bad way. But the good ways were still there. They still counted. Wasn’t it her choice, to decide how much it mattered that he had lied?

She thought of what she knew, and what she could imagine. Joel had caught the sun in the Riviera, she saw that now; the creases round his eyes were from squinting past spiky palm trees and glittering water. He wasn’t a departing husband, but a new professor on foreign shores, a romantic, treading in the footsteps of his literary heroes. Maybe he noticed Kristina’s hair first, the way it held the sun’s light in every strand. Lausanne would have been a talking point over a harbour-side dinner, a realisation that, miraculously, their fates were bound. Joel would have kicked back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head, a fine mess, a love affair with a soon-to-be student, but he’d tasted her honey skin, her frangipane lips, and it couldn’t be the end just yet. They had decided on
Jacques
on their last night down south, Kristina’s idea, proffered with laughter. Maybe she had imagined Joel in a shirt and tie in a lecture hall, chalking love hearts on the board, thinking she would catch his hands later and press them against all the places that he couldn’t touch by day.
Jacques.
She would weave a story for the other students,
a failing marriage
, she would say,
a stop-start romance
. Perhaps she hadn’t counted on the English girl who became so dear a friend, and grew so starry-eyed whenever she said
love
.

Hadley pushed her hands to her eyes. Quietly, into her gloved hand, with only the water as witness, she began to talk.